Although he led one of Britain’s largest police forces for 15 years, it is as “God’s copper” that Sir James Anderton, who has died aged 89, will be best remembered. His claims that he had divine guidance in his policing duties and his inflammatory remarks about gay people ensured that he became, for a while, the most controversial police officer in Britain.
At the height of the Aids crisis in the 1980s, Anderton, then chief constable of Greater Manchester, outraged many by describing gay people as “swirling around in a cesspit of their own making” and suggesting that “sodomy in males ought to be against the law”. He advocated castration for rapists and urged a return to corporal punishment so that offenders could be thrashed until “they repent of their sins”.
Anderton made it clear that he felt answerable to a higher authority than the Home Office. “God works in mysterious ways,” he said. “Given my love of God and my belief in God and Jesus Christ, I have to accept that I may well be used by God.” Thus was born “God’s copper”, a figure of mockery to some, a bastion of old-fashioned values to others. The nickname became enshrined in popular culture when the Salford band Happy Mondays recorded God’s Cop.
Born in Wigan, the son of a miner, also called James, and his wife, Lucy (nee Occleshaw), Anderton left Wigan grammar school at 16 to work as a coal board clerk until national service in the military police. He joined the civilian side in what was then Manchester city police in 1953.
Even early in his career, which included time as a beat officer in Manchester’s red light district, Anderton was known as “Bible Jim” because of his frequent references to God and Christ. Having taken a course in criminology at the Victoria University of Manchester, he was tipped early on for high office. He served in Cheshire, Leicestershire and then in the inspectorate of constabulary in London before becoming chief constable of Greater Manchester at the age of 44, a role he held from 1976 to 1991 and which took him on to the national stage.
He was soon known for praying in the back of his car as his police driver chauffeured him to work, and one of his first symbolic acts was a crackdown on pornography and prostitution in Manchester. Nearly 300 bookshops and newsagents were raided and tens of thousands of magazines seized.
It was this moral zeal that was to define his career. Eccentric in many ways, he made a record of his dreams and believed that even when he was asleep, God was sending him messages. His religious path took him from a devout Church of England childhood to Methodism and then to Roman Catholicism, and he had an audience with the pope in Manchester in 1982. He first got to know his wife, Joan Baron, through their shared interest in the evangelical Christian Endeavour Movement in the early 1950s.
While Anderton introduced some new ideas on policing to Britain, such as using undercover officers as decoys to catch muggers, he soon became better known for his public pronouncements than for his innovations. He called the 1984-85 miners’ strike the work of a “politically motivated industrial mafia” and frequently dismissed his critics as “subversives”, portraying the police as the last line in the defence of democracy.
It was in 1986 that he made his remarks about Aids and gay people, claiming that he was channelling God when he spoke – and later telling a BBC interviewer that “if Jesus were here today, he may well have spoken in terms similar to the ones I used”. There was a huge backlash, which he dismissed as the response of “moral lepers”. However, the furore did not halt his passage to the presidency of the Association of Chief Police Officers, although many fellow officers by now found him an embarrassment. Anderton was aware of the reaction, although he claimed that his own officers saw him as a cross between the American evangelist Billy Graham and Oliver Cromwell. The following year he stirred fresh controversy by telling Woman’s Own magazine that “corporal punishment should be administered so that [offenders] actually beg for mercy”.
Anderton also clashed with his Manchester deputy, John Stalker, during the latter’s inquiry into allegations of a shoot-to-kill policy operated by the British army and Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland. The inquiry eventually came to nothing after allegations of murky, behind-the-scenes action to derail it. Stalker was suspended while his relations with a Manchester businessman were investigated, and although he was exonerated and reinstated, it was felt by many of his colleagues that he had been shabbily treated by Anderton.
Anderton always enjoyed the strong support of the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who defended him behind the scenes. Documents revealed by the Manchester Evening News in 2012 showed that Thatcher had personally suggested it would be “outrageous” if Anderton had to clear his public statements with the Greater Manchester police committee, who had asked him to temper his comments. The documents also showed that Sir Lawrence Byford, the chief inspector of constabulary, reported that Anderton had “brought ridicule” on the police service.
While the prime minister’s support may have helped him remain in post (and he was knighted in 1990), his remarks almost certainly cost Anderton the chance of taking the top job of commissioner of the Metropolitan police. Unrepentant, he continued his pronouncements and, when he grew a thick beard, appeared more than ever to be modelling himself on an Old Testament prophet.
In retirement Anderton gave his time and support to the Salvation Army, the Boys’ Brigade, the Scouts and various Christian charities. He also worked with young offenders, was a keen gardener, and continued to write poetry, as he had throughout his life.
He is survived by Joan, whom he married in 1955, and their daughter, Gillian.
• Cyril James Anderton, police officer, born 24 May 1932; died 5 May 2022
