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Despite the obvious limitations of the Met's one-way telegraphy system, no doubt it proved highly effective in the fight against crime. Rather surprisingly the idea was not adopted by other forces, and it was not until the General Strike of 1926 that other police forces began looking to radio. The perceived problem at that time was not so much communication with mobiles, but rather communication between forces in the event of civil insurrection accompanied by an interruption to telephone services. Their paranoia is perhaps understandable given that the Russian Revolution was only nine years earlier, and it did have a useful side effect - it brought the potential of radio communication to the notice of several Chief Constables.
The BBC already had a number of broadcasting stations serving the main population centres and the police saw these as a useful communications medium. Typical of such arrangements was that adopted in North-East England; each Chief Constable in the region simply installed a standard broadcast receiver in his office and monitored 5NO, the BBC's Newcastle Station, which broadcast from Blandford House (now the home of the Newcastle Discovery Museum). Suitable receivers were by no means cheap; the Chief Constable of Durham, for example, had to find £30 for his 4-valve receiver - and he got rather a bargain, as the set was valued at £80. Any force requiring assistance would send a message by any means at his disposal to the Newcastle studios at 54 New Bridge Street, and this would then be read over the air and heard by other forces in the area. Coincidentally 5NO changed frequency slightly (from 742 to 737 kHz) for a few weeks beginning in March 1926!
Other more direct arrangements were made using equipment borrowed from radio amateurs. Equipment belonging to a Mr O.B. Kellett (GSKL), for instance, was used to link the headquarters of Southport Police with that of the Lancashire Constabulary at
Preston.
Source: Kevin Carrig
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