Listen to the people

Llandudno Rotary heard from one of their own at their meeting at the Cae Mor Hotel on Tuesday 26^th February.

Mike Perry, who recently transferred to the Club on his move to Llandudno after 20 years membership of Ilkeston Rotary in Derbyshire, gave a talk to members about his 37 years of service as a policeman, starting as a rookie cadet in 1960 and culminating in his retirement as Inspector in 1996.

Policing was in Mike’s family and he heeded the advice of his uncle, a long-serving police officer, famous in the investigation of The Green Bicycle The murder case, which was “always trust and listen to the people”.. His uncle’s mantra has served Mike well, throughout his police career.

During his service with the British Transport Police, Mike was drafted in to assist with the Great Train Robbery enquiry and saw at close quarters the results of the thuggish cowardly violence perpetrated on the innocent train driver, Jack Mills, and he admits to sometimes  despairing of some of the glamour that attaches itself to this crime in the press and mind of the public. Jack was assaulted causing injuries so serious that he never returned to full duties and died not long after.

In later service, Mike played his part in the International Police Association, where he encountered a certain Inspector Garth Mann of Birmingham. They became good friends but as is the way with any service organisation, such as the police, their postings took them to fresh pastures and they lost contact.

Forty years on, when Mike first contacted Llandudno Rotary, he was dumbfounded to be put in touch with his old friend, Rotary Secretary Garth Mann. Garth, as a neat bookend, moved the vote of thanks to Mike, on behalf of the Club, for his talk that evening