Page 133 - Wish Stream Year of 2019

ances in ‘Silent Witness’ ‘Dr Who’ and ‘Heart- beat’ as well as being the subject of ‘This Is Your Life’ in 1988. Awarded the OBE for services to entertainment and having appeared in almost fifty films, Richard Todd died in 2009.
ROBERT MARK
(1943 Royal Armoured Corps)
Robert Mark was born in 1917 and left school in 1935 to become a carpet salesman. Find- ing this boring, he joined Manchester Police in 1937 to the horror of his father, who told him that being a policeman was ‘one step above going to prison.’ After early war service with the Special Branch, Mark joined the Army in 1942 and was commissioned from Sandhurst into the Royal Armoured Corps in October 1943. Transferring to the Manchester Regiment, he was employed liaising with Special Forces and took part in the Normandy Landings. After demobilisation as a Major in 1947, Mark returned to Manchester Police where he was soon promoted to Detec- tive Sergeant. His ability marked him out for fur- ther rapid promotion and by the mid-1950s he was a Chief Superintendent, yet younger than any of the Inspectors in the Manchester Force. During this time, he attended the Police College, the only course he ever went on despite increas- ing emphasis in training within the police. He subsequently said; ‘I must be the classic exam- ple of the man who beat the system’.
In 1957 Mark was appointed Chief Constable of Leicestershire and, in 1967, transferred to the Metropolitan Police as Assistant Chief Consta- ble (Personnel and Training) where he received a frosty welcome as an outsider. At this time, The Met was mired in a series of corruption scandals and Mark set about cleaning up the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) using the mantra: ‘a good police force is one that catches more crooks than it employs’. With a small core of loyal uniformed officers supporting him, Mark formed A10, a special unit to inves- tigate corruption. Several senior officers were investigated and jailed including the head of the Flying Squad and, ironically, the head of the previous anti-corruption unit. Some 500 officers were dismissed or forced to resign, and CID was increasingly placed under uniformed command. With a decline in ‘tip offs’ from corrupt officers, the number of bank robberies in London fell dramatically.
In 1972 Mark became Commissioner of the Met- ropolitan Police. With a provincial pedigree and a ‘Mr Clean’ reputation, he continued to root out corruption. He favoured the military style of policing, with an emphasis on the uniformed branch and he strengthened cooperation with the Army. His appointment coincided with the rise in IRA operations in London and he took personal charge of the 1975 Balcombe Street Siege, in which the SAS were deployed and resulted in the surrender of four terrorists. In typi- cally forthright terms, Mark described them as ‘four seedy, cowardly degenerates.’ Knighted in 1973, Mark resigned from his position in 1977 and made a series of television commercials for Goodyear Tyres with the catchphrase ‘I’m convinced they’re a major contribution to road safety’. His wooden delivery ensured that the adverts quickly acquired cult status. Sir Rob- ert Mark died in 2010 after a long and peaceful retirement.
FRANK FOLEY (1917
Hertfordshire Regiment)
Francis Edward Foley was born in Somerset on 24th November 1884, the third son of a Great Western Railway worker. Winning a scholar- ship, he was educated at the Jesuit Stonyhurst College before attending a Catholic Seminary in France to train as a Priest. Deciding on an academic career, he studied classics at Poitiers University and later travelled extensively on the continent, becoming fluent in French and Ger- man. Foley was studying Philosophy in Hamburg
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