Trenchard was a keen advocate of British airpower. A key figure in the development of the Royal Air Force, Trenchard advocated the use of aircraft to destroy an enemy's war-making capacity, a view influential in developing Britain's strategic bombing of Germany during the Second World War.[1]
Campaigners on the Left in Britain resented what they deemed Trenchard's militarisation of police in London and saw innovations such as the Metropolitan Police College not as the professionalisation Trenchard claimed but a deliberate assault on Britain's traditional style of consensus policing.[3]
This view of Trenchardism as an authoritarian doctrine was exacerbated by specific police tactics used against hunger marches in London, including use of batons.[4]