My friend Fred Linge, who has died aged 88, spent most of his working life as a police officer in London, but had a parallel existence across five decades as a committed Christian Socialist and stalwart of the Labour party in east London. An active worker at election times, supporting local MPs and councillors in East Ham, he also belonged to the Quaker congregation at Bush House in Wanstead.
Fred was born in Willesden, north-west London, and after a period in a Barnardo’s home was brought up by an aunt and uncle in rural East Anglia. After elementary schooling in Ingham, Suffolk, and Ludham in Norfolk, he spent the second world war in the Royal Navy, serving as a wireless operator on Arctic convoys. On demobilisation he joined the Metropolitan Police, where he was a constable based at Leman Street in the Aldgate area for 15 years.
For the rest of his life, Fred told his friends of prostitutes and pimps, policing demonstrations, rivalry with the City of London police, appearances in court, delivering babies, domestic violence and, very occasionally, murder.
Amazingly, given his complete lack of interest in sport, he one year managed the Leman Street football team to a Metropolitan Police cup final in East Molesey.
Promoted to sergeant, he worked in Barking, where he clashed with an inspector of the old school possibly because of his socialism and alarming fascination with foreign films. He returned at his own request to a constable’s duties in Wanstead, before retiring in 1972. After the police he joined the security staff of the House of Lords and also later worked at a firm of solicitors as a legal assistant.
Fred met his future wife Helen when she was working as a police officer at Leman Street, and they were married for 52 years. When they married, she had to resign, but found work in Bethnal Green at Michael Young’s Institute of Community Studies. He cared for her devotedly in her final years when she developed severe rheumatoid arthritis.
Fred never lost his constable’s imposing bearing and, in retirement, used to informally patrol his East-End home territory of Manor Park as a kind of supernumerary community policeman, on good terms with everyone. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge and love of films, and found ways of incorporating scenes from his favourite movies into many of his conversations about philosophy, politics and religion. He travelled all over London by bus and was a connoisseur of cafes, where he took both breakfast and lunch. He was a brilliant raconteur and mimic who delighted in laughter and entertained an enormous circle of friends, from many communities.
Helen predeceased him in 2000.
