48 hours earlier ‘all hell broke loose’ in and around their village and late this afternoon a packed public meeting in Manea came together to question police response to the day ‘travellers’ launched an assault on the Fens.
Traveller is a pejorative term and can cause offence in some quarters but finding an alternative word to describe a horde of marauding, unkempt, uncouth, lawless gang members who caused mayhem across towns and villages is challenging.
The lack of regard for public safety for those travelling at speed through villages, tearing across ploughed and cultivated fields, stealing from shops and garages, threatening fire fighters, crashing into a farmer’s car when he confronted them, and recklessly endangering children’s lives tells only part of the story.
Those hoping for answers at today’s public meeting in the British Legion club in Manea at a hastily called public meeting probably walked away with a sense of disappointment.
Some just a day or so earlier had tried to call police to ask for help but were denied it: on their own admission Cambridgeshire police were caught short.
When Steve Barclay, a Conservative MP and former minister, called a meeting in the aftermath of the weekend mayhem, Chief Constable Nick Dean clearly felt he had no option other than to be there.
Apart from reassessing “our resources” and blaming lack of resources (he didn’t mention it was 14 years of Mr Barclay’s Government that has deprived Cambridgeshire of them) he could only promise to do his utmost to ensure the coming weekend doesn’t see a repeat.
Many will turn to Labour to see if the funding imbalance for counties such as Cambridgeshire can be improved – it will be interesting to see if they can step up technologies such as drone surveillance or ANPR cameras to monitor high-speed chases and identify perpetrators.
Today, however, offered a bipartisan approach and knowing the community efforts of the local Tory councillor for Manea, Cllr Charlies Marks, there was nothing untoward in his circulating leaflets inviting attendees to put their names, and emails and phone numbers on slips of paper to keep them updated on future plans.
Of one thing residents can be assured and that is the events of Saturday will not be dismissed lightly at the higher echelons of Cambridgeshire police. Chief Constable Nick Dean may well be approaching retirement, but he will not want to leave on a sour note brought about by rural fears that have been massively exacerbated after the events of Saturday.
Likewise, Darryl Preston, police and crime commissioner, who hot footed it to Manea today to offer reassurance and a pledge to find and punish the culprits.
His official distance from Cambridgeshire Constabulary (his role is effectively to hold them and the Chief Constable to account), means that even at this late stage of his career, Mr Dean will be anxious to please the man who, technically, is his boss.
“What happened was abhorrent – it’s criminality,” said Mr Preston, dragging out the mantra, again, of Cambridgeshire being poorly financed by successive Governments.
Mr Preston has been surprisingly chipper about Tory policies, claiming last year ahead of his re-election that investment in the Cambridgeshire Rural Crime Action Team and Countryside Watch had achieved some success.
He reported for example that “across the county, there has been a reduction in rural crime with agricultural, environmental, heritage, hunting and wildlife crimes down by 21 per cent in 2022/23 compared to 2021/22”.
But there is little doubt he will have travelled home from Manea swatting more than one flea in his ear – the public outrage was palpable and few, if any, were in the mood for platitudes.
These will have included Robert Sears, a former Conservative councillor and former chair of the NE Cambs Conservative Association.
“I haven’t seen lawlessness like this anywhere in the world” he told the meeting today, describing his how he confronted 25 muddy 4x4s driving towards him.
The price he paid for his stoic stance. They rammed his car.
MP Steve Barclay suggested lessons needed to be learned but could not sensibly assess what these might be. Unfettered lawlessness, seemingly random and spread across a huge swathe of Fenland will always be a worrying challenge.
Questions will, inevitably, be asked about potential links to more serious crime – a ram raid on the Co-op in Littleport for instance – and other lesser but nonetheless menacing intimidation of petrol station workers robbed of drinks, chocolate and crisps.
Whoever was responsible the day was a premeditated assault on communities across Fenland.
Laughing, reckless, fearless, balaclava clad hoodlums out to mock the police, threaten ordinary people, cause panic and alarm, and above all carry out meaningless and brazen acts of vandalism on an unprincipled and diabolical scale.
And those who took part on Saturday also know the powerlessness of police to firstly track them down and then for courts to punish them sufficiently to provide any sort of deterrent.
One local councillor at today’s meeting described it as a “criminal attack on the community”.
Unfortunately, the law hasn’t caught up fast enough for punishments that fit these particular crimes.
WATCH: Angry residents demand answers to Fenland day of terror
