There was this whole Establishment trying to whitewash what had happened and

There was this whole Establishment trying to whitewash what had happened and Colbeck was written out of the official history.”The photographs show scenes of the ice being blasted and how Colbeck’s skilful navigation led the rescue team to details of Scott’s position, which had been posted by the Discovery crew in a box on a tiny island in case of disaster.The National Maritime Museum believes the photographs have never been published before but were probably used in Scott’s lecture programme when he returned from the Discovery expedition. The collection was given to the museum by Colbeck’s family 20 years ago. But they have been withheld under copyright rules until now – 70 years after Colbeck’s death – because the indentity of the person who took them was unclear. Some may have been by Colbeck himself, while others were probably taken by Gerald Doorley, an officer, or J D Morrison, chief engineer.The museum now hopes to show them in a lantern show, an early form of slide show, in conjunction with its current exhibition, “South”, which tells the story of Scott’s and Shackleton’s Antarctic missions.Jonathan Shackleton, the explorer’s cousin, said Scott was known to be happiest with his own class. “Certainly Scott had his pals among the officers but he was not good at relating to the seamen. He hadn’t got that warmth of heart that Shackleton had.”Shackleton was bitterly disappointed at being sent home by Scott with Colbeck’s first rescue mission, but, Mr Shackleton said, it was probably what spurred him to his success in 1909 when his expedition came within 100 miles of reaching the South Pole, nearer than anyone had got before.Scott returned to Antarctica in 1911 in the hope of becoming the first man to reach the Pole. He reached his destination only to find he had been beaten by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen and died on the return journey in March 1912..

When police arrived to investigate reports of a shooting at the Essentials nightclub in south London last November they noticed that a number of the patrons trying to leave the building were wearing bullet-proof vests. When police arrived to investigate reports of a shooting at the Essentials nightclub in south London last November they noticed that a number of the patrons trying to leave the building were wearing bullet-proof vests.
As a 21-year-old man was taken to hospital for treatment to a bullet wound to his head, officers discovered seven abandoned handguns left in and around the club.The shocking incident is just one indication of the increasing criminal use of firearms, the extent of which was revealed last week by a Home Office minister.Lord Bassam of Brighton said that in 1999-2000 handguns had been used in 3,685 crimes, including 42 homicides, 310 cases of attempted murder, 2,561 robberies and 204 burglaries. Despite the ban on handguns in 1997, last year’s death toll from such weapons was unmatched during the 1990s. Gun crime is also on the rise in Scotland.Between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, the Metropolitan Police were called to investigate 11 separate shooting incidents related to a drugs turf war in north-east London.Weapons seized in recent police operations include a Mac 10 sub-machine-gun, capable of firing 20 rounds a second.But despite the increasing frequency of gun crime and the growing arsenal of Britain’s criminals, police methods for penetrating the network of suppliers and dealers who arm them is worryingly incomplete.The 52 police forces in the United Kingdom are under no legal obligation to trace weapons and many guns are simply placed in storage after being recovered. Because there has never been a national police firearms intelligence unit in Britain, forces are often unaware whether the gun procurement methods of local criminals match those in other parts of the country and if they are acquiring similar weapons from the same sources.An evaluation report by a team of intelligence officers based at the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) has found “major weaknesses” in the way the British police service is collectively addressing the issue of gun crime.Since the summer a team of officers, called the National Firearms Tracing Service, has been evaluating the types of weapons used by British criminals and the methods by which they are acquired.It has helped to uncover the activities of one firearms dealer in the Midlands who has been found to have supplied “thousands” of weapons to criminals all over the country.The “deactivated” firearms were supposed to be sold to collectors for ornamental purposes but were offered with a set of instructions on how to reconvert them for firing.In another operation, a series of “toy guns” – which were fully functioning Derringer pistols – has been seized in London and Birmingham and traced to a manufacturer in Italy.

The NCIS report, commissioned by the Home Office at the request of the European Union, will go to Europol, the Brussels-based crime fighting organisation, in March.The report will reflect the international dimensions of the British criminal gun network. Increasingly, weapons are being procured during trips to Holland, France and Belgium.One rogue British arms dealer, who had been forced to close his business after changes to firearms legislation, was found to be operating on the Continent, where his clients included criminals and a terrorist organisation.Criminals are also bringing illegal firearms into Britain from abroad by ordering their weapons by mail order.Police are concerned that gun manufacturers, particularly those in eastern Europe, are becoming increasingly inventive in devising weapons that are difficult to detect.Guns built to look like mobile phones – one of which was found in London – or key rings are designed to escape detection at airport security. Other weapons have been disguised as screwdrivers, cigarette packets and pens.A man was stopped at Waterloo International station in London wearing a belt with a buckle, which featured a miniature but functioning .22 revolver.An NCIS source said: “It is especially important that law enforcement officers should be aware of these things. If somebody is walking around with a mobile phone to their ear nobody thinks anything of it.”The NCIS research, which will complement an intelligence database on guns being compiled by the Forensic Science Service, has attempted to identify the key “pinch points” in the criminal gun network; the individual dealers, cities and countries to which weapons used in crimes can repeatedly be linked.The pool of illegal weapons also includes “souvenir” guns brought back by troops from the Falklands, Gulf and Bosnian wars, some of which have seeped into criminal hands.The rise in the availability of guns has led to a resurgence in bank robberies, a crime that was thought to be on the wane. The number of robberies with handguns rose from 1,814 to 2,561 last year.Police believe that many of the crimes are not being committed by the traditional gangs of professional armed robbers or “blaggers”, but by young street robbers who have managed to obtain a handgun, typically for as little as £100..

A national firearms database is to be established for the first time, amid fears over record levels of gun crime. A national firearms database is to be established for the first time, amid fears over record levels of gun crime.
The setting up of the database, recommended by the official inquiry into the Dunblane massacre of 1996, comes as a report by senior criminal intelligence officers has uncovered “major weaknesses” in the way British police tackle gun crime. For the past 11 months, a team of officers from the National Criminal Intelligence Service has compiled details of weapons and ammunition seized by the police and has concluded that the scale of Britain’s black market in firearms is “far higher than anybody had previously thought”.It has also uncovered shortcomings in police knowledge of the network of international weapons traffickers and rogue gun dealers who are responsible for arming Britain’s criminals. Figures produced by Lord Bassam of Brighton, a Home Office minister, last week showed that gun crime was at its highest level for seven years with 42 people being killed in 4,000 incidents involving handguns last year.

The Home Office said yesterday that the database of legal gunowners was under development and would be ready by February next year.A spokesman said it hoped that the database, which will contain the names and addresses of all licensed rifle and shotgun holders in Britain, would assist police in tracking illegal gun traffickers. “Bearing in mind the new figures on gun-related crime, everyone in the Government realises there is still work to do,” he said.But the idea of a database has proved controversial with some lawful gunholders who complained that they were being unfairly blamed for the murder of 16 children by Thomas Hamilton at Dunblane. Mike Yardley, spokesman for the Sportsmen’s Association, said: “Some individuals saw it as another bureaucratic sickener that was targeting them and not the real criminals.”He said a register made “some sense” but that there would be no impact on gun crime unless the Government tackled drug dealing and the illegal import of weapons.The criminal intelligence team investigating illegal guns – known as the National Firearms Tracing Service – was set up last summer at the behest of the Home Office after the European Union demanded that all member states compile reports on illegal gun trafficking. The British report is due to be sent to Europol, the Europe-wide criminal intelligence organisation based in Brussels, in March.It found that Britain, as well as being one of the only countries in Europe not to have a national database of legal gun owners, had no national structure for tracing illegal firearms.The report said: “Gathering and central analysis of recovered firearm intelligence was identified at an early stage as a major weakness in the UK … Police forces are not obliged to trace recovered firearms and no central figures or intelligence is available for recoveries in the UK.”.