Sir Cyril James Anderton CBE KStJ QPM DL (24 May 1932[1] – 5 May 2022[2]) was a British police officer who served as chief constable of Greater Manchester from 1976 to 1991.
He began his career as a beat constable in the Moss Side area of Manchester before being talent-spotted by the then Superintendent Robert Mark, who later became Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
Anderton replied to his critics by stating that he was responding to public complaints regarding the graphic nature of the material available in shops across Greater Manchester.
It has also been argued that organised crime gangs in Manchester controlled the sale and distribution of pornographic material as well as running brothels, massage parlours and street prostitution.
According to The Guardian, Anderton "encouraged his officers to stalk its dank alleys and expose anyone caught in a clinch, while police motorboats with spotlights searched for gay men around the canal's locks and bridges".
To avoid the high police casualties seen in the Toxteth riots, Anderton decided not to deploy static cordons of officers with long protective shields, judging that such defensive tactics would only encourage prolonged confrontations.
The specially trained TAG officers using snatch squads deployed from fast moving vans made 150 arrests in the space of two hours and quelled the disorder.
In December 1981, Anderton formed the first specialist unit within GMP based in Moss Side to investigate racially motivated violence and other crimes.
Anderton was close friends with Liberal politician Cyril Smith, who shared his traditionalist values and emphasis on law and order in the police.
He gave speeches in the context of attempts by Police Committees in Liverpool and in Manchester to increase their influence over operational decision making by chief constables.
"[9]In 1986, Anderton was embroiled in national political controversy when his deputy John Stalker was suspended over allegations of his friendship with a man called Kevin Taylor, who was accused of fraud and drug-dealing through an alleged association with the Quality Street Gang[10] when on the point of completing an official report, the Stalker Inquiry, critical of the policing policies of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
Anderton praised his officers, and warned the British public during the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union of the threat of left-wing subversion.
[11][12] When challenged by left wing Labour councillors and community activists on what they believed was his heavy-handed approach as chief constable, Anderton directly confronted his opponents and accused them of subversion, undermining police morale and threatening British democracy.
[19] He saw the police as a means of providing moral enforcement against "social nonconformists, malingerers, idlers, parasites, spongers, frauds, cheats and unrepentant criminals", and was a vocal opponent of gay rights, feminism, pornography and those who "openly hanker[ed] after total debauchery and lewdness".
"[22]In December 1986, Anderton's remark that homosexuals, drug addicts and prostitutes who had HIV/AIDS were "swirling in a human cesspit of their own making" received widespread criticism.
[23][24] Lawrence Byford, Inspector of Constabulary, said, "Mr Anderton was told that some of his recent public statements had brought ridicule upon both the association and the police service and had helped fuel the case of left wing militants", adding: "He is his own worst enemy.
"[26] Anderton also called for the castration of rapists[27] and renewed his attack on gay men, saying:"The law of the land allows consenting adult homosexuals to engage in sexual practices which I think should be criminal offences.
However other sections viewed Anderton as a populist, reactionary, autocratic chief constable, insensitive to the concerns of minority groups, who personified an authoritarian style of policing.
In 1990, the BBC musical satire on Margaret Thatcher Ten Glorious Years showed actor Ricky Tomlinson portray James Anderton in the style of a US-style Moral Majority television evangelist preaching against "Poofs" and "Pinkos".
In the first season of the Rik Mayall satire The New Statesman, police chief Sir Malachi Jellicoe (John Woodvine) believed himself to be in direct contact with Christ, and to be doing His will on earth.
One of many anti-Semitic characters in David Britton's 1989 satirical novel Lord Horror was chief constable "James Appleton", who recites Anderton's AIDS remark verbatim except replacing the word "homosexuals" with "Jews".