Lorne Green, while running for police and crime commissioner in Norfolk, England, was worried that his Canadian accent might be an issue with voters.
After a 43-year career as a Canadian diplomat and head of a nuclear safety organization, Lorne Green seemed set for retirement with his wife at their home in a picturesque English village. But retirement didn't last long.
At the age of 70, Mr. Green has been elected the police and crime commissioner in Norfolk, a rural county in eastern England. Now, instead of embassy dinners and diplomatic exchanges with world leaders, he's handling complaints about traffic and dog dirt while managing a police force that covers two cities, dozens of villages, several military bases, countless farms, the Queen's Sandringham Estate and the home of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
"I love this job, I really love it," Mr. Green said as he sipped tea at a coffee shop he owns called The Old Bank in Snettisham, a village in western Norfolk. "I get calls and approaches at all manner of the day and night, everything from a dog fouling on [a] doorstep to some really serious things."
Mr. Green is part of a new approach by the British government to make policing more accountable. In 2011, the government created 40 police and crime commissioners (PCC), one for each county in England and Wales (The mayors of London and Manchester run their own police forces). Each was to be elected to a four-year term and the first PCC elections were in 2012.
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It was a controversial move. The PCCs replaced local police authorities and the government handed the new commissioners sweeping powers. PCCs can hire or fire the county police chief. They also manage the police force's budget, allocate resources and can raise local taxes to pay for services. They are also accountable to virtually no one, outside of the electorate once every four years.
"It's a big job," conceded Mr. Green who has been holding regular public consultations and meetings with police officials to get up to speed on the pressing issues in Norfolk. He'd never run for public office before and had to keep his political views private for decades as a diplomat. He's also much more used to serving politicians and civil servants, not the public.
He got his start in the foreign service back in the late 1960s after graduating from Dalhousie University. His first posting was in Pakistan just as the country was at war with India over East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. Mr. Green had to be evacuated from the embassy in Islamabad and he spent the next couple of years working out of Iran helping Canadians leave Pakistan. He then worked in London for Canadian High Commissioner Paul Martin before a stint at NATO dealing with nuclear-arms issues.
In the early 1990s, he managed the embassy in Belgrade when Yugoslavia was beginning to fall apart amid civil war. "I have vivid memories still daily of helicopters coming back from Bukova and Srebrenica with stretchers with the wounded being taken to military hospitals," he recalled.
In 1998, he left External Affairs to launch the World Nuclear Transport Institute in London, an agency that focuses on safe ways of moving nuclear material. He retired in 2011 to Snettisham, where he and his wife, Valerie, who is from London, have lived off and on for more than 40 years.
Last year, the local Conservative Party association asked him to run for PCC. He agreed but worried that his Canadian accent might be an issue. "I was mindful of my accent and whether I would be seen as what would be normal for Norfolk," he said. "We think we're embedded in the community but we weren't widely known. So I was up against the Canadian factor, the unknown factor."
He overcame that and won handily in the election last May, pointing out to anyone who asked that the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, had the same accent. He also got a lot of questions about his name. Mr. Green's parents named him after the Canadian actor, Lorne Greene, who starred in the television show Bonanza. "It actually became a plus after a certain point," he said of the name. "Bonanza was a big show here, too."
Now, he's embedding himself in local crime issues. And they include everything from people stealing tractors to domestic violence, drug trafficking and even potential terrorism. Last month, two men tried to kidnap a soldier who was out jogging near a military base. Police described the attackers as of "Middle Eastern appearance" setting off alarm bells nationally about a potential terrorist plot. Mr. Green said police are still investigating the case.
There are other peculiarities of the county, which has a population of about 860,000. He works with a special force that protects the Royal family when they are at Sandringham and others who watch over William and Kate at their home in Anmer Hall (he declines to go into detail). There are also two cities to police – Norwich and Greater Yarmouth – as well as one of the biggest agricultural co-operatives in Britain. In total, Mr. Green manages a force that includes 1,500 uniformed officers and 1,000 civilian staff; and a budget of £150-million ($255-million).
He's already developed a safe driving campaign and is studying a plan to bring dogs into a local prison. And he is working on a four-year police and crime plan.
For now, anyway, Mr. Green has no plans to retire, again. "Retirement is really hard work," he said with a laugh. "I think it was Noel Coward who said 'work is more fun than fun.' And that's been my experience."
Paul Waldie