YOU could be forgiven for thinking these were a bunch of rabble-rousers intent on causing trouble.

In fact, they were officers in the Oxford City police force determined to stop trouble.

The ‘bovver boys’ from St Aldate’s police station stepped out in their jeans and leather jackets to go under cover on Guy Fawkes’ Night.

Celebrations in the city in the 1950s and early 1960s often descended into violence, as city youths clashed with undergraduates.

Memory Lane this week

Every Oxford policeman had to be on duty that night, and often additional help was provided by surrounding forces.

Fireworks, some home-made, would be set off in the streets and there was frequent damage to property.

The Randolph Hotel in Beaumont Street was often under siege as the crowd ran wild.

One popular prank of the revellers was to knock off and run off with policemen’s helmets.

After several years of mayhem, the city’s Chief Constable, Clement Burrows, decided to use plainclothes officers, mostly members of the force rugby team, to form a snatch squad.

Their job was to mingle with the rowdies and identify troublemakers to their uniformed colleagues, who would then arrest them.

In 1956, the police introduced a new weapon to their November 5 armoury – walkie-talkie radios.

It was also the first time for several years that the police had been forced to draw their truncheons, in the face of a hostile crowd of about 3,000 near the Randolph Hotel and Martyrs’ Memorial.

In the melee, Inspector Nash and a woman were trampled as hooligans surged forward against the police lines.

At the end of the evening, 44 people, more than half of them undergraduates, had been arrested, held at a number of temporary police posts around the city centre, then taken into custody at St Aldate’s police station.

In the next few weeks, they all appeared before Oxford magistrates, charged with a variety of offences, including throwing or setting off fireworks in the streets and public disorder.

Seven were charged with assaulting police, mainly after snatching their helmets.

At the end of one sitting, Sir Carleton Allen QC, the presiding magistrate, said: “We don’t know what the fascination of the helmet is, but it seems to be irresistible. It is undignified and we dislike it very Much.”

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