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.