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From Chapel to Chief Constable – Memoir of a Policeman
Tony Leonard

From Chapel to Chief Constable
Principles, Politics and Public Service
Tony Leonard

 Tony Leonard was born into a working-class family in Kirkburton in Yorkshire and grew up in a tied house in the grounds of a mental hospital. There he mixed with the staff of the hospital and with their children, encountering a far wider variety of nationalities, languages and political cultures than a working-class lad would otherwise have encountered in the locality.

Thiis memoir describes his personal and professional journey from that small, self-contained community, via the LSE where he was a sociology graduate and Hull University where he gained a Doctorate in Politics, into the national and international world of policing. He served in four diff erent police forces, rising from constable to Chief Constable.
Published: Jan 2021
Paperback: 117 pages
Price: £5.99
ISBN: 9-781913-425661

£5.99 (+ £2.50 postage)
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Uniting all aspects of a long and distinguished career has been his lifelong Christian commitment, also a commitment to equality and socialism, two moral positions that have guided his decision-making throughout. During the Miners’ Strike he maintained Derbyshire’s independence from external pressure through operational policies quite diff erent from those of the surrounding forces; as Chief of Humberside he repaired relations with the Police Authority and introduced widespread reforms in personnel policies, stressing the need for gender equality and insisting on high professional integrity at all times. He also successfully persuaded the Boundary Commission to retain the Police, Fire and Ambulance services on a county-wide basis after the abolition of Humberside County Council.