Hertfordshire showed that Young wanted to be a chief police officer who made things happen. He applied unsuccessfully to be chief constable of Kent in 1946, but his next job was offered to him. So impressed was Home Secretary James Chuter Ede, he appointed Young to the vacant post of Assistant Commissioner "D" of the Metropolitan Police in London, in charge of organisation, recruitment, training and communications. To bring in an outsider to such a rank in the Met was unprecedented. The Home Secretary knew that the nation's police forces were stuck to old ways and needed the shake-up that the young chief constable had already delivered in Hertfordshire; Scotland Yard must not be left out. Things, however, did not go well. The Commissioner, Sir Harold Scott, tolerated him (although he was an outsider too), but senior colleagues cold-shouldered him. Within "D" Department, Young delivered all the Home Secretary had hoped for, a success that only alienated the hierarchy even further.
In March 1950 Young became the first former constable to be appointed Commissioner of Police of the City of London. He built up his reputation as "the policeman's policeman". Improved pay and conditions and professional standards remained his constant pre-occupations. The police under his command found him forceful but gracious, intolerant of failings in himself as well as others. In all his forces, he was popular with all ranks under his command.
Young came to love the City of London. He relished command of a force small enough to know every constable well. He enjoyed the City's rich social life too, and he much valued the invitation to join the Goldsmiths Company. The police needed to recruit and with considerable success he set about making service more attractive. Pay and allowances were increased, housing modernised, and catering improved. Uniforms were made more comfortable and practical.
At another level, he pushed through changes in career structures. He engineered a national recruitment revolution in the British police, running command courses and seeing through a fast-track entry scheme to attract graduates - and for many years he was director of extended interviews for the Senior Command Course that he had founded. These and other changes were designed to make possible the promotion of talented people. Young realised that the police could no longer rely on habits little changed for a century. He fought for the recruitment and promotion of women. He resisted the well-ingrained tradition of bringing senior officers from the armed forces into police commands; and only with great reluctance did he give in to the demand from the Hertfordshire police committee that he use his wartime military rank. He sternly opposed Lord Trenchard's officer-class way of thinking as wholly inappropriate for the British police service. He wanted to follow Sir Robert Peel's intention that the police be "filled from the bottom up". The young man whose own family had thought that being a policeman was far from suitable dedicated his own long career to making the police a respected and attractive profession.
Young's lobby of the 1960 Royal Commission on the Police overcame Home Office objections to a strengthened police inspectorate, although Sir Charles Cunningham blocked Young's selection as inaugural first Chief Inspector of Constabulary.
In November 1969 (until 1970) Young was seconded to be the last Inspector-General and the first Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. James Callaghan, then Home Secretary, sent him to carry out the Hunt Report, which introduced the standard British rank system for police officers in Northern Ireland and disbanded the controversial Ulster Special Constabulary.
He chaired the Police Council for the UK, the Association of Chief Police Officers training centres committee and the education committee of the National Police Fund. He was a governor of the Police College and of Atlantic College, and a member of the committees of the Police Advisory Board, the National Police Fund, the Royal Humane Society, the National Rifle Association, the National Scout Council and the Thames Group Hospitals. He was President of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) in 1962.
One feature of Young's career was as a police reformer in colonial hotspots. He had four such missions:
Young was brought up in a household with strong Anglican evangelical beliefs (the family attended St Jude's, Southsea for matins and evensong every Sunday as well as week-day meetings). He also patrolled Portsmouth's slums and docks as a young constable, and this had an effect on Young. Guided by his curate, the Reverend Frederick Dillistone, later Dean of Liverpool, he decided that he must seek ordination (become a priest). The Bishop of Portsmouth, Neville Lovett, however, rejected his application to attend theological college, telling him at interview that "policemen do not become priests". Although later in life Young would drift away from regular worship, the impact of Portsmouth on his world-view never shifted. Shocked by the poverty and injustice which he discovered, Young became a staunch Christian socialist and, very rare for a chief constable, a lifelong Labour Party voter. Throughout his career, he sought out contact with clergymen and in the later 1960s, encouraged by the Bishop of London, again considered Anglican ordination.
Young married three times. On 11 April 1939, at Boarhunt parish church, Hampshire, he married Ivy Ada May Hammond (born 20 December 1909), a nurse from the Royal Portsmouth Hospital whom he had courted for years - custom then dictated lengthy enagements and police pay then was very low. She died of cancer on 14 September 1956. They had one son, Christopher John Young, born in 1941.
Young married Mrs Margaret Furnival Homan, née Dolphin, in 1957. The marriage fell apart quickly and they separated. She committed suicide in Malta in 1966.
On 16 April 1970, he married Mrs Ileen Fryer Turner (née Rayner, born 19 April 1914), whom he had known since she was his police driver in Birmingham during the war and who at one time had been the mistress of his great friend Sir Edward ('Ted') Dodd, Chief Constable of Birmingham and later Chief Inspector of Constabulary. She died on 31 December 2002. In the 1980s, she declined a proposal of marriage from Sir Graham Shillington, Young's successor as Chief Constable of the RUC.
Young's career made him the most decorated policeman of his era. Young was awarded the King's Police Medal (KPM) in 1952 and was appointed Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in 1953 and Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (CVO) in 1962. He was knighted in 1965 and appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in 1971.
He was also Honorary Police Commissioner of New York City.
Speed of Sound (roller coaster)
Speed of Sound is a Boomerang coaster in Walibi Holland in the Netherlands. It is manufactured by Vekoma and opened in 2000 as "La Via Volta". It operated until 2007 when the park announced it would be shut down. In the same year, the train was sold to Pleasurewood Hills to be operating on Wipeout, also a boomerang coaster. On January 30, 2011, Walibi World announced that the roller coaster will reopen in 2011, with a new style train from Vekoma. The coaster was renamed to Speed of Sound and the track was painted orange.
The coaster also has a unique tunnel on the lift hill where the train go through before starting the ride.
Royal Victorian Order
The Royal Victorian Order is a British honour. It is given by The Queen, to people who have served her, or the Monarchy personally. Like the Orders of the Garter and Thistle, the Prime Minister does not suggest who should get the honour.