Dennis Wood joined the Manchester City Police in 1950 and retired a quarter of a century later from the newly formed Greater Manchester Police, an amalgamation of smaller, intimate forces from throughout south Lancashire. The aim of the new force was to bring greater expertise and a bigger budget to policing, many small, independent, police forces not having the resources to cope with major crimes. However, and this is often forgotten, the smaller police forces, and even Manchester itself, did not have crimes on a scale comparable with today's society, and those that were committed within the individual force areas were often solved quickly because of the intimate knowledge of the constable on the beat and the sergeant and inspector who supervised them, all of whom had seen street action for themselves. Today crime has spiralled out of control, the police force has become a symbol of man (and woman) management as though those in charge were running a major retail corporation rather than a law-enforcement agency. The result is that police officers today have no powers comparable to their colleagues of Dennis Wood's time on duty; they are not allowed to use their common sense in the same way because of political correctness that means they have to fill in a form for every single incident, from cautioning someone to behave in future, to dealing with a small incident that in days of yore would have meant nothing more than a note in the constable's official notebook. And they have to report every action to the Crown Prosecution Service who decide whether to prosecute someone or not a task once left to the local inspector or superintendent who had more local knowledge. That is why Dennis's book, and its predecessors On The Beat and On Another Beat are so important, for they record an era of police work that has disappeared and which is sorely missed. Dennis brings that era back to life and his books should be compulsive reading for all present day police officers, from Chief Constable to Constable, and, perhaps, by the mandarins of government who make all today's decisions in the firm belief that they know best. Dennis's books show us that they don't and that Britain today needs a police service in the mould of those that were commonplace until the 1970s. Acknowledgements Duncan and Claire from the Greater Manchester Police Museum. With grateful thanks also to colleagues Alec, Ian and Barbara for their help in posing with the author for the front cover photograph Dedication To all my friends who are the volunteers at the Greater Manchester Police Museum. This book is the sequel to two earlier books On The Beat and On Another Beat, written by former Manchester police officer Dennis Wood. He tells many fascinating and hilarious stories of life as a policeman from 1950 to 1975, and something of a social history of Manchester, with its overcrowded gas lit streets and dwelling houses, where law and order was kept by dedicated coppers who worked and played hard.