Police reality check
By Stuart Munckton
If you are sick of the endless police dramas that fill our screens, whose primary function is to convince the working class that the police are good guys, then Irvine Welsh's novel Filth, published last year, is an antidote.
Set in the homicide squad of the Edinburgh police, Filth shows the police force in all its reactionary ugliness.
But Filth does much more. The range of issues covered in the novel is staggering: police corruption, police brutality, racism, sexism, homophobia, class struggle, poverty, the role of police as repressive tool of the ruling class, drug abuse, mental illness, domestic violence, abortion, the influence and nature of the freemasons, and even the question of whether socialism can be achieved through parliament. And Welsh manages to tell a fantastic story as well!
The story centres on Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson, a cop so corrupt he transferred to the New South Wales police because of its reputation. Robertson is a freemason as well as a cocaine addict and alcoholic. Welsh's descriptions of his personal hygiene are stomach churning.
To Robertson, blacks are "coons" or "silveries" and women are whores, cows or "silly wee lassies" who have no place outside the kitchen or his bed. Robertson enjoys the power being a cop brings. At one stage, he describes the satisfaction he used to feel when he was in uniform and got the chance to violently smash picket lines.
Not surprisingly, Robertson isn't too concerned with "getting a result" in the case of a high profile murder of a "coon who shouldn't even have been here". Aside from the chance to earn lots of overtime, the case simply gets in the way of all the alcohol, drugs and prostitutes Robertson plans to consume over the Christmas period.
As the book develops, we find out more and more about the repulsive human being Robertson is. Bitter, cynical and arrogant, he holds everyone other than himself in utter contempt and goes out of his way to fuck up the lives of his "friends" for no other reason than the pleasure he gets from seeing them suffer.
But cracks begin to appear in Robertson's arrogant exterior. As he descends further into drug abuse, we see just how vulnerable and screwed up he really is. At the same time, Welsh gradually reveals more of Robertson's terrible life, and we start to understand how he became the person he is.
Filth is about more than just the individual character, Bruce Robertson, though. Welsh lays out clearly how the role of the police is to protect private property, using a number of examples, the main one being the role of the police in attacking striking workers.
Filth provides further evidence, if more was needed, of Welsh's ability to tell a great story — it is at times funny, sickening and inventive.