Derek Griffiths, a former Deputy Chief Constable talks about his life and travels.

Dr Derek Griffith’s LL.B, M.A., Ph.D aged 74, former Police officer and University Lecturer at his home in Church Stretton.

Derek Griffiths was born in 1937, in Wolverhampton, two years before the start of the World War II. He left grammar school at 16 to become a police cadet for just over a year and then served in the Royal Air Force during the Cold War. After leaving the service, at 19, he then went on to join the Staffordshire police. Serving in Cannock, a mining town, as a constable he then later worked in a rural community. Following this, he was appointed to work in a traffic office and then ran the courts and prosecution office for the Cannock division. After taking his promotion exams, he passed within the top 200 in the country and was selected to attend a 12-month special course at the police staff college for accelerated promotion. Being made a Sergeant, he was then one of the three first police officers to be sent to university to read for a law degree (1964-1967 University College London) During University vacations, he worked on police patrol in the City of London and on being awarded his 2:1 honours degree, returned to work as a supervisory sergeant in Burton-on-Trent Staffordshire. After 12 months he was promoted to inspector and in charge a patrol shift. During this time he joined with officers from other forces and army pilots to fly in helicopters to police incidents in the midlands area; an experiment to assess the value of helicopters for police purposes. A short time after, he worked as a detective inspector at Lichfield before being promoted to chief inspector to run divisional administration at Newcastle-under-Lyme. After 12 months was promoted to superintendent and worked as staff officer to Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary based in Birmingham where he spent three years inspecting police forces and reporting on their efficiency to the Home Secretary. Returning to Staffordshire, he worked with a Home Office project to install and develop command and control computers for the police. He was then selected to read a 12-month Master’s degree in Local Government at the University of Kent. Derek Griffiths then returned to Stafford as an operational superintendent. After two years, he was selected for another course at the Police Staff College to prepare for the most senior ranks in the Police Service. On completing the 6 month course, he was appointed Assistant Chief Constable of Leicestershire and in charge of the force’s administration A few months later Derek was appointed Deputy Chief Constable responsible for the day to day running of the police force numbering some 2000 staff. Later he was appointed acting chief constable for 6 months in the absence of the Chief Constable who was away reporting on the Bradford fire disaster, Mr Griffiths was then seconded to the Home Office and appointed Deputy Commandant of the Police Staff College responsible for the training of senior officers for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. During his career he has dealt with road, rail and aircraft accidents, murder and crimes of every kind. Derek Griffiths was responsible for public order events including; race riots on two occasions and also dealt with national front marches, and also prisoner, ambulance, fireman and miners strikes during the 1980’s. Derek travelled extensively on police matters throughout Europe and the United States of America and often attended conferences on criminal matters. He also lectured extensively during this time. He was responsible on many occasions for the safety of royalty during royal visits, meeting the Queen, Prince Charles, Princess Dianna and other members of the royal family.On retiring from the police at the age of 51, Derek did consultancy work with the Thai police and became a research fellow at the University of Exeter where for several years he was a tutor to a master’s degree course in policing. Whilst working at Exeter he went on to research policing between the two world wars and in 2000 was awarded a doctorate in philosophy. During this time at Exeter University, he again visited the police forces throughout Europe and travelled to Pakistan to look at policing issues and customs controls. He then took a delegation to China to meet up with representatives of Chinese Universities who had criminal justice departments. There Derek lectured in Beijing and Guilin for several days. For 10 years on retirement, Derek Griffiths acted as front of house for the Church Stretton and South Shropshire Arts Festival followed by 12 years, as chairmen and organiser of Church Stretton Good Neighbours; a charity helping the elderly to maintain their independence in the community. Married to Kathleen Blakeman, he had four children and six grandchildren. He is well known in his local community and plays an active part along with his wife.

The Mariner’s needle

Scott Devail and Helena Raby are an acoustic duet based in stafford called The Mariners Needle 

HRH Prince Charles visits Stoke-on-Trent

 

HRH Prince Charles paused to pose for Staffordshire University students at Stoke-on-Trent train station.

On Wednesday 26^th October 2011, Prince Charles arrived on the Royal Train and was greeted by a cheering crowd at Stoke-on-Trent railway station. He spent a short time talking to local people and then left in the official car to make his way to the Grade II listed Middleport pottery to see a regeneration project being undertaken by the Prince’s Regeneration Trust (PRT). The charity after months of negotiation obtained a £7.5 million investment, which will secure the future for Burgess Dorling and Leigh. Importantly the money will pay for the setting up of a visitors’ centre, a factory shop and a café and it is hoped that up to 30 thousand people will visit each year.  The factory site has been working since 1889 and it will be let to craft businesses. Prince Charles toured the factory, met workers and he tried his hand at the art of transferring – the process of applying transfers to pottery.The project manager, Fred Taggart hoped that at least one hundred and fifty jobs would be created and that visitor numbers would be attracted within 5 years. Bridget Dix who helped Prince Charles to apply the transfer thought he would make a good trainee. Overall Prince Charles’ visit was of great value in highlighting the importance of regenerating this kind of traditional work in the Potteries. On leaving the site, he returned to Stoke-on-Trent railway station. He had been told after told that university students were waiting to photograph him. He was kind enough to stop, so that three Staffordshire University students could photograph him. It is unusual for royalty to actually stop and pose for photographs. He was clearly pleased and said ‘look at these pro photographers’ he then commented on the quality and size of a university camera. It was a final pleasant action by the Prince to round off a very successful visit.

 

So its a new year, and two people down.. Sarah and Michael! This year ACTUALLY starts counting towards my degree so I definitely need to buck my ideas up and start knuckling down. No more leaving work until the last minute! I want to produce some work I’m actually proud of this year, now I know what to expect.

To finish!…- This blog was mainly only to get my brain working again.. very pointless blog as you may have gathered but congrats on reading this far!

college final major project, June 2010…

(click the link to see all the photo’s)

I thought I would stick this up, even though it wasnt part of my uni course nor taken during it!!!

The idea was that, life is like a pack of cards… and a game you don’t always want to play…

“Is life like a game – is it all skill or is it all chance or is it a combination of the two? In many games there are varying degrees of skill and luck and perhaps life is like that.

Take the game of Monopoly; well known it involves skill to beat the other players but you do have to roll the dice and you do have to pick up some cards blind – if there were no chances, no luck then the most skilled player would always win and collect all the property – but luck plays a part so any one can win.

When you throw the dice you cannot recall them – like the past they are set in stone; actions equals consequences so what do you do? In a game do you take risks or stay on the safe path and play a safe game? And do you look to the past to help you with the future game of cards or life for that matter.

The past may be set in stone but what kind of stone and who’s past – it was not yours alone. Stone may be hard like marble or softer like sandstone; the past may be revisited and the stone chiselled or rubbed at the edges making it softer and easier to look back on.

And so looking back at ourselves, we can not change our ancestors, their actions have formed us but we can revisit the past and look at what it did to others – there we may have an opportunity for future change.

So I thought of making a game of cards resemble some of the things we may face in life – a life game of skill coupled with so many chances. In life we get given opportunities: we take some and we MISS some, sometimes it our fault and sometimes it’s others. Even if we get an opportunity things can still go wrong… bad luck?

Even if you have bad luck, you still build on what you’ve got… it’s all a bit like a game of cards… you get a good hand given to you or a bad hand. You can still do well out of a bad hand and you can do badly with a good hand. During a game (life) your luck can change. A good hand can get better or worse and a bad hand can get better or worse. So i had this idea of a ‘life game of playing cards’ and i developed on this idea.”

In and about Stoke.. (The Photographers Eye project.)

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Well, this was a module as part of my course, but i really didnt enjoy it atall, and i dont think alot of people on the course did to be honest. We got given a grid square from a map of stoke at random, and had to take a series of photos and do a project on anything within this area, inevitably.. my grid square had nothing interesting in it!! but here are some of my best shots i took for the project. My project was about ‘The Big Society’ our governent have thought up recently and how the ‘Broken windows’ project in america some years back, has already affected and helped communities. The idea that, if you put a little bit of money into a community to replace windows and remove graffitti etc in very run down areas, people start to take more pride in their community and start doing a little for themselves, which meant things slowly improved.

A small area of terrace streets in stoke on trent is fragmented by two large roads. the derelict property contrasts with high-rise living blocks and low-rise. The park is the best means of creating a centre of community for activity and local residents must work together to recreate a thriving community.. its a chance for the ‘big society’.

Photoshoot of Jack Brown…

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