It is difficult to believe with my current working lifestyle of working for 8 hours a day, that I was once working a security guard. Although the job was only temporary whilst I tried to obtain more qualifications, it was meant for real situations and was a real job.

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 naturally caused widespread devastation within the hotel, and nearly succeeded in assassinating the prime minister and members of the cabinet. The political scene may change, terrorists networks rise up and then dissolve, but some policies are set in stone until the next major event.

Security guards work alongside the police force, who find it hard not to look down upon their ‘inferiors’ from the private sector. There is a certain irony in the fact that many member of private security companies have at some point been in the police force themselves.

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. Sometimes a small number of people try to drive up to the entrance of the conference, just to ask directions to the clearly signposted carparks! 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. My colleagues told me they were an organises group, determined to protest about the foxhunting bill that was to be debated in parliament. 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!