Duties as a security guard at the Labour Conference
It is difficult to believe with my current working lifestyle of working for 8 hours a day, that I was once working a security guard. I have to stress that the job was temporary whilst I was studying, but none-the-less it was a real job, in many real situations.
Perhaps the crowning glory, for me, was being on duty during the Labour Party Conference in Brighton in 2006. It was not enough for the Labour lot to need the police force to protect them, they also needed private force of security guard specialists to give extra help. Most of the current policies on security have been in place since 1984 and the IRA bombing of the Grand Hotel. Obviously this caused massive damage inside the hotel, and almost wiped out the prime minister of the day and most of her cabinet. Political landscapes change, terrorist organisations come and go, but once a policy is in place, it often takes a further catastrophe to change it again.
Security guards work alongside the police force, who find it hard not to look down upon their ‘inferiors’ from the private sector. There is a certain irony in the fact that many member of private security companies have at some point been in the police force themselves.
My day as a security guard at a major national event, was one that I will certainly remember for many years. I had the impression that I would be standing outside the Brighton Centre asking people not to drop litter, or moving suspicious looking cars along. Often you will see some people try to drive up to the conference entrance just so they can ask for the whereabouts of the car park! It takes quite a bit of driving to successfully negotiate the concrete barriers specially erected for the conference, but there are the few that succeed.
Almost immediately prior to the conference, a large noisy crowd began to make it presence known. My colleagues told me they were an organises group, determined to protest about the foxhunting bill that was to be debated in parliament. The thoughts that were going through my mind as I was being sworn at and spat upon, was that I would like to get a large quantity of security screens and surround the lot of them!
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