When you consider my lifestyle in front of a screen for most of the day, it is hard to believe that i was once a professional security guard. I need to point out that the job was only temporary whilst I was at night school, but it was still a very real experience.

Perhaps the crowning glory, for me, was being on duty during the Labour Party Conference in Brighton in 2006. It wasn’t enough for the party to rely solely upon the police as their only source of security, they also needed to hire a specialist service provider to bring in extra support. Many of the security ideas and rules have been there since the bombing of the Grand hotel by the IRA in 1984. This cause lots of damage to the hotel, and nearly assassinated key member of the government of the day,including the prime minister. The landscape of politics change over time, terrorist come and go, but policies stay active until another catastrophic event comes along to change it.

Security guards work alongside the police force, who find it hard not to look down upon their ‘inferiors’ from the private sector. The irony is that many of the private security guards were once employed by the police force and know the structure well.

As a security guard at the Party Conference, I have memories that will stay with me for many years to come. For some reason I thought that my duties would involve asking people not to drop litter, or moving on people who were not allowed to leave their cars nearby. Usually there is a small number of people who drive to the conference entrance, just to ask the officials where they might be able to park their vehicles! It takes quite a bit of driving to successfully negotiate the concrete barriers specially erected for the conference, but there are the few that succeed.

Just prior to the start of the conference, a big riotous mob assembled outside the building, and they were not too friendly. The security company told us that they were a committed group hell bent on disruption in advance of the parliamentary debate on foxhunting. The thoughts that were going through my mind as I was being sworn at and spat upon, was that I would like to get a large quantity of security fencing and surround the lot of them!