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'disgusted' by the suspension. 'We had a good holiday and everything was completely innocent.' Peter burden, crime reporte I the Dally Mall, agrees wit Mrs Drury.

He was given a full page in his Rotheremere-owned paper to tell the harrowing inside story of the copper's lot.

What a moving piece of journalism. Full of sympathy and pathos. Burden wrote:

'Several Scotland Yard detectives are this weekend making new arrangements for their summer holidays. Their travelling companions were to have been their underworld contacts-most of them with convictions.

'But now the police seem more frightened than the crooks of being found out. And I am not sure that this is such a good thing When Mr Burden writes in this disturbed vein, something must be up. After all, the headline describes Mr Burden as one of the 'Mail's' specialist reporters 'who give the "Mail" its incomparable mark of authority.

Mr Burden's comprehension of the difficult role of the policeman knows no bounds. He says: 'Much of a detective's time is spent in a murky no-man's land. It is unavoidable ... there is no room for the puritan.' As far as I know there have been no sociological surveys done on the police force to discover the number of puritans who offer themselves to the recruiting centre at the Home Office.

But the 'Sunday Times Colour Magazine' recently published a feature article showing members of the vice squad attending a stag night at a pub in N London.

Apart from a low-brow comedian, the evening featured a number of exotic females with enormous breasts who insisted to Dixon of Dock Green?

on taking their clothes off to the accompaniment of a jazz band. As the ladies walked around the tables waving baubles in the noses of the officers, it is widely believed that they applauded. Clearly no puritans at that particular gathering.

Mr Burden attempted in his article to explain this curious relationship between strip-tease and law and order. He says that good results in crime-busting can only be achieved 'by the police getting closer to the world they are trying to destroy'.

From this thesis, it's a quick step to this conclusion: 'There has to be mutual trust between a policeman and his contacts and this can often only be built up on social occasions. Flying Squad detectives say, for example, that mixing : with celebrities, crooks and ex-criminals is an essential part of their life.

"The nightclub visits, meals at expensive restaurants, even holidays abroad result in a steady flow of information and a panel major crime breaks On when a mator cole dreas. port from his colleagues.

His daughter, Sandra, was quoted as saying, 'We all know he has not done anything wrong.' The Scotland Yard inquiry which has been set up by Sir John Waldron will decide whether he has or not.

Meanwhile, another branch of the law is in trouble-this time in Gibraltar.

This item did not receive great prominence in the national press although it is precisely in line with Mr Burden's theory about the police getting close to the action to get information.

It appears that the police in Gibraltar stopped two British subjects boarding a Londonbound plane.

They found the men were carting along vast quantities of hash. In court one of the men, Donald Rowlands (47), revealed that he was not a drug smuggler but in fact a de facto employee of the Cheshire constabulary. He told the court he was smuggling drugs in an attempt to smash a drugs ring.

The story must have sounded highly implausible until into the witness box strode Inspector Stanley Holloway of Cheshire CID. He said the police had paid Rowlands' fare and asked him to travel to Gibraltar to ascertain names and details of a mysterious drugs ring.

The local magistrate, Mr Johr Alcantara, said he accepted that Rowlands had been helping the He pointed out that his job was to uphold laws of Gibraltar. He sentenced Rowlands to six months' jail and his accomplice to a year.

As law-abiding citizens we must only hope that Rowlands' unfortunate detention does not create any serious setbacks in Cheshire police's vigilant campaign against crime. The big French supermarket chain Carrefour had a doll on sale priced 23.50 Francs and labelled 'Jew'-worthy of the Streicher days in Nazi Germany.

They have now been removed from the shelves following the protests of the International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism. They were on sale alongside other dolls labelled 'monkey', 'devil' and 'witch' Evidently the buyer and manager of the supermarket saw no harm in this piece of BOOKS

PAGE 10 Workors Proce, Thuraday March 16, 1872