For people of a certain age Jack Warner was, and is, a figure of probity in British national life. His cheery, “Evening all” as we turned on to Dixon of Dock Green spoke of a Britain of close knit communities, and low level scampiness with little in the way of murders (after his ressurection following The Blue Lamp) or corruption. No problem couldn’t be solved by a stern talking to – aside from that time when Paul Eddington turned out to be a wrong ‘un – a bent copper – in the days when nefarious activities by police officers involved burgling houses rather than obtaining false confession evidence, shooting dead passing Brazilians or assaulting newspaper vendors causing their death.
Evening all
But Jack Warner was never like that. He’d not shoot a Brazilian or assault a newspaper vendor preferring instead to assist an elderly lady to cross the road. Imagine my surpise then to discover that according to Lord Triesman in his evidence to the House of Commons Culture committee that far from being this paragon of virtue the late Jack Warner was in fact something of a rogue. Apparently the policeman who railed against bent coppers wheedled his way on the FIFA executive representing the Caribbean and
“asked for around £2.5m to build an education centre in Trinidad, with the cash to be channelled through him, and later wanted £500,000 to buy Haiti’s World Cup TV rights for the earthquake-hit nation, again to be channelled through him”
Now, clearly coppers in the 1950s were paid rather more than I assumed if they could squirrel away enough money to buy a holiday home in Trinidad and work their way onto the FIFA executive committee.
Given these allegations, made under the cover of parliamentary privilege, I will be watching old Dixon of Dock Green episodes with a different eye now because that Jack Warner has certainly gone down in my estimation.
Canteen culture was different back then too.