Lunch at The Red Lion Hotel - Speaker Jim Hurst

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At this week’s lunch meeting, local resident Jim Hurst gave a fascinating account of his career spent mainly in the Hong Kong Police.

After leaving school with A-levels, having lost his father when he was 16, he realised he had to get a job. Hankering after something in the Colonial Police, he was advised to apply to the U.K. police. He joined the Metropolitan Police as a senior cadet and was one of four from 100 potential recruits who were offered a job.

Having completed the constable’s course at the Hendon Police College, he served for a time in Richmond and played rugby and cricket for the Met teams, but, in late 1961, he applied to join the Hong Kong Police.

After passing the necessary medical somewhat cursorily by an Irish rugby-playing doctor, he went out to Hong Kong in January 1962, spending six months at the police training school. The system there was based on U.K. law, slightly adjusted. At that time there were 8,000 police in Hong Kong, with virtually no firearms crime, whilst, on his retirement in 1995, the number had risen to 27,000, with crime having increased considerably including firearms.

During the time he was out there he met and married his wife Aileen, a teacher in the Army, and their two daughters were born in Hong Kong. After passing exams, he rose through the ranks, becoming Chief Superintendent. The colony, as it was then, was divided into four regions, Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, the New Territories and the Marine sector covering all the outlying islands.

He spent four years as Commandant of the Police Tactical Unit at Fanling in the New Territories at a complex which became known as “Hurst Towers.”  The unit personnel were trained in conjunction with the SAS and became known as the “Blue Berets.”

On a topical note he mentioned that he had had to deal with illegal immigration, from two different locations, some of them Chinese swimming across the river to the New Territories and the Vietnamese sailing up the coast.

He was thanked for his talk by Roger Sayer.