THE rejection of the application for parole by Tony Martin should be no particular cause of surprise. It is difficult to argue that shooting intruders is using reasonable force, unless there is a genuine fear that one is in similar danger oneself.

When use of shotguns to fatal effect is allied to an apparent refusal to believe that one has done anything wrong, the result was inevitable.

The case, although extreme, brings into sharp relief the problems caused by what is perceived as an increasing level of lawlessness throughout the land.

The problems of defending often isolated farms and cottages from persistent and determined burglars are all too familiar to many country folk. This feeling of helplessness in the face of criminals is compounded by the tiny clear up rate of crime which is achieved by the police.

There is no wonder that the Lord Chief Justice caused an uproar when he suggested first-time offending burglars might not necessarily be sent to prison. The rest of us are aware how low the chances are of actually arresting and convicting anyone for an offence in the first place.

The days are long gone when each village of any size had its own policeman. Life has become far more technical and sophisticated since then, and crime is only a reflection of life.

It is necessary for the police to have access to modern equipment and it would be far too expensive to equip thousands of rural police houses to the necessary standard.

What a sad state of affairs it is when some areas feel the need to appoint private security firms to patrol housing estates. Some farms have security men checking to make sure that livestock in fields are safe.

The police have recently had a number of slices of what might be described as bad luck. Describing it thus gives them the benefit of every possible doubt.

Too often, especially in high profile cases, events have conspired to wreck the police case. The trouble is that the public perception is that those events should have been anticipated. There was clearly a procedural failure in the raid in Manchester that resulted in the tragic and unnecessary death of a police officer.

Everything is going wrong for the police. In that sense they are rather like the Conservative Party. They too can do nothing right. The consolation for both is that not many years ago the same thing was happening to the Labour Party. Neil Kinnock could not walk on a beach without disaster befalling him.

The Labour Party achieves its present high public approval by strong internal discipline and attention to detail. Both are lessons for us all and for all organisations.

They won such support that even now, when many problems are coming out of the woodwork, they seem to escape the blame. Ronald Reagan was supposed to have been the Teflon President. Nothing stuck to him. Now we have the Teflon Prime Minister.

Enough time has elapsed while Labour have been in Government for Marks & Spencer to have had a disastrous crash and to have now recovered. But faced with similar difficulties, the Government seems to still get away with blaming everyone else, for problems largely of its own making. It rides on a tide of public goodwill.

The Labour Party has changed its luck by hard work and clarity of purpose. The police will have to do likewise. Otherwise, Tony Martin will just be the first of many who feel that they have to defend their property themselves.

Updated: 12:33 Tuesday, January 21, 2003