London

‘The Blue Lamp’ was a cause célèbre, one of those rare films that ignites a national debate that reaches far beyond the film itself, the contentious issue being that it showed a police officer being shot, and not just shot, but shot and killed.

I suppose I was 12 when I saw it first, 12 or 13, old enough to be aware of all the fuss. The Gaumont, Camden Town, it would have been, almost certainly; just possibly Kentish Town, though, the Palace or the Forum. Feature continues

Even now, I can recall the sense of anticipation that was palpable in the cinema as the moment approached. Me, sitting on my hands, probably, so as not to bite my fingernails. Two young tearaways have attempted to hold up the box office of the local cinema, but, despite their being armed, things have gone awry. The police have been alerted. Dixon is first at the scene. Panicking, one of the hoodlums threatens him with a gun, and Dixon, of course unarmed himself, starts to walk slowly towards him. ‘I’ll shoot!’ I think the gunman says, and Dixon, stolid, calm, responds with something like, ‘Don’t be stupid. Put the gun down.’

More threats and, despite them, Dixon keeps coming. The cinema holds its breath and when the shot is fired there’s a unison gasp, a loud shared intake of breath. The inevitable, the unthinkable has happened, just as we feared, just as we knew it would.

Dixon is on the pavement, seriously wounded; when the ambulance takes him to hospital there is still a fighting chance, one that will all too soon be lost.They never should have shown it,’ my dad said. ‘Not like that.’

Showing a British policeman, on screen, being shot and killed, somehow it makes it more possible; an invitation, the argument goes, to it happening in real life. There are calls from some quarters for the police to be armed. Column after column about the breakdown of society at the hands of rebellious youth, young ne’er-do-wells running out of control. It’s the same talk that will make me think twice, not so many years later, before going into the cinema at the Archway to see Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around the Clock’, for fear of getting caught up in a riot as teenage delinquents flourish their flick knives, attack the usherettes and rip up the seats.

The young hood with the gun is played by Dirk Bogarde, who has already come into conflict with Jack Warner in the film ‘Boys in Brown’, where his borstal boy clashes with Warner’s reforming governor and Bogarde gets the chance to perfect his early persona as a sneering, ultimately cowardly outsider.

The shooting of Dixon has set him beyond the pale and at the climax of the film he is caught with the aid of older criminals who are shocked and saddened by what he’s done. Well, this was an Ealing film, after all. And made with the full co-operation of the Met. The then Paddington Green Police Station was used for filming and, when that station was closed, the blue lamp that had stood outside was transferred to the new station, built, oddly enough, on the site of the old Metropolitan Theatre of Varieties, which was also a location in the film. And when Dixon – Jack Warner – died in real life, at 85, officers from the Metropolitan Police carried his coffin. A long life, Jack – George – and a good one.

John Harvey’s new novel, ‘Gone to Ground’, is published by Heinemann