AS the country began to piece itself together after WWII, police were confronted with a scourge that would spark a different kind of battle – the war on drugs.
IN the dark and difficult days after World War II, a new enemy began to creep insidiously into Britain. As the country began to piece itself together, police were confronted with a scourge that would spark a different kind of battle – the war on drugs. It is one we fight daily on streets across the country today. But in those early days there was no organised opposition – until three men were picked to lead the charge. One of them was George Lyle, a young CID officer from Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire, who became a founding member of the Metropolitan Police Drugs Squad at Scotland Yard. It was to become a unit acknowledged and imitated across the world as it fought the increasing menace of drugs. George – who died in May at the age of 96 – became an expert on trafficking in London, writing papers and addressing audiences on addiction.
Yesterday, as she remembered her father, his daughter Jennifer recalled some of the early exploits of the unit trying to stamp hard on a habit increasingly rife in the Chinese immigrant community. Jennifer said: “He told me the drugs came in through the Chinese, and that was in Soho originally. Of course, there were raids. The squad had to try to get into the opium dens, which was not easy. “It required a Chinese password, which my father would learn phonetically. “On one raid, however, it all went wrong when he shouted the password and five stupefied Chinese sailors made a bolt for it, crashing through a back window. “He always thought his Scots accent had somehow changed the meaning of the password and alerted them.”
