Democratic Green Socialist

By Gary Fraser 

The Golden Age of British Policing 1945-1970

The period following the Second World War has been described as a ‘golden age of British Policing’ (Emsley, 2009). By the 1950s, a police officer was regarded as semi-skilled working class job, and one whose terms and conditions had gradually improved, although the force always had vacancies. Following the war, the role of the police would change. The advent of mass produced motor cars created new crimes to investigate. ‘Traffic offences’ brought the police into conflict with the respectable middle classes, often for the first time. The police too had cars which meant a steady decline in the foot patrol. In general, relations with the wider public were harmonious, certainly more harmonious than in the period of social turmoil before the war.  With the exception of the criminal class, or those with a radical political disposition, the 1950s saw the British Bobby at the height of his respectability. Culturally, this was reflected in the Dixon of Dock Green image, popularised in the film the ‘Blue Lamp’ and subsequent television series, and whilst this image was romanticised, like all stereotypes it contained a degree of truth.

Wider social, political, and economic changes were responsible for creating the ‘golden age of British Policing’. In the 1950s, Britain had seemingly entered an era of progress and prosperity for all, an era that would have been unthinkable to those who had lived through the 1930s, or to those who had experienced the savage butchery of the Second World War. The political truce between capital and labour in the post-war years produced social stability and cohesion, which in turn improved the Police’s relationship with working class communities. The fear of the ‘red menace’ was gone and by the 1960s few people took seriously the idea that the British working classes were the agents of proletarian revolution. Instead of revolution, genuinely feared by the ruling elites of the 1920s and 1930s, the 1960s working class participated en-masse in the new consumer society. For the first time, Western market economies appeared to deliver satisfaction and security for the majority of citizens. The average 1960s British house was equipped with refrigerators, washing machines, telephones and television sets. Young people, or ‘teenagers’, occupied their time buying pop records and gorging on a steady diet of popular culture, pre-dominantly American in origin. By the late 1960s, most people owned a car and new markets in tourism meant that ordinary working class people could travel beyond the British Isles. The workers of the world, certainly by Western standards, had far more to lose than just their chains. Reflecting on the golden decades, the historian Eric Hobsbawm wondered what meaning, in the old heartlands of industrial labour, could the International’s ‘arise ye starveling from your slumbers’ have for workers who now expected to have a car and spend their annual vacation on the beaches of Spain? In terms of policing one of the consequences of the affluent society were low crime rates. It was in this context that the Dixon’s of Dock Green patrolled their beats, and that the ‘golden age of British Policing’ is contextualised.

The Golden Age Ends 1970-1985

The golden age didn’t last long. New challenges and problems emerged, which were apparent even during the good times.  The Police, an inherently conservative institution, were slow to respond to the challenges of change, particularly the social and cultural changes of the 1960s. Sexist and homophobic attitudes were common amongst 1960s British police officers whilst racism was endemic. The Police did not welcome the era of ‘multi-culturalism’ which transformed British social and cultural life. For many in the Police, ‘immigrant’ equalled ‘criminal’ and whilst a tiny fraction of the ‘minority ethnic’ community may have joined the police they were often subjected to systematic racist taunts from fellow officers.

Cultural attitudes towards young people changed in the 1960s, particularly amongst those who had benefited from the expansion of higher education. Britain had entered the age of welfarism as a penal ideal in youth justice. Welfarism would give birth to the ‘social worker’, and other public sector professionals who were proud of their liberal attitudes towards young people. The police were hostile to ‘welfarism’ with many rank and file Bobby’s dismissing ‘social workers’ ‘as ‘do-gooders’. The 1969 Children and Young Person’s Act, a pivotal piece of policy in the development of welfarism and British Social Work was strongly opposed by the Police. 

By the end of the 1970s, crime rates shot upwards turning crime for the first time in a generation into a political issue. The spectre of poverty returned (or was ‘rediscovered’), and a crisis in the international financial markets brought with it the return of unemployment. Meanwhile, the disastrous and architecturally ugly public housing projects of the 1960s had recreated the modern equivalent of the slum, or ‘inner-city’ areas. For most commentators, it was clear that the age of prosperity was coming to an end, and so too was the age of welfarism.

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher fought the British general election on a strong law and order ticket with an authoritarian political discourse dominating the Tory campaign. The Tories made reference to a ‘moral crisis’ which appeared to engulf the nation. According to the narrative, which cut across the class divide, welfarism was seen not seen as a solution to social problems, but as an unmistakeable part of the problem. The discourse had shifted from ‘blaming society’ towards personal responsibility, law and order, and punishment. Most police officers welcomed this shift and the Police Federation began to relish a Tory victory in the 1979 election. On her first day in office, Margaret Thatcher increased the pay of Police Officers and with the police being nicknamed by the press as ‘Maggie’s Boys’. However, despite generous pay increases, coupled with other entitlements, the Police were to pay another price. Under Thatcher, the era of harmonious community relations would be well and truly over and the ‘golden age of British Policing’ would seem nothing but a distant memory. Class war returned to the streets of Britain as ‘Maggie’s Boys’ were called upon to defeat the National Union of Mineworkers.

The Great Miners Strike 1984-85

The Great Miners Strike of 1984-1985 seemed like a flashback to the pre-war years of social chaos and instability. The police were central to the Government’s plans to defeat the miners, and the British Bobby began to look increasingly like a strong-arm instrument of an authoritarian state. Enormous numbers of police were moved around the country in what effectively became a national police force (the security services undoubtedly played a part in the operations). The purpose of the police strategy, and it was a strategy which proved to be successful, was to disrupt the pickets and to guarantee that imported coal made its way through the picket lines. In addition to this, the police ensured that strike breakers were escorted into work in order to maintain production. The Great British Bobby equipped with a riot shield and fitted in flameproof overalls with a vestured helmet and usually on horseback, went to war against the very communities he was sworn to protect. In what effectively became scenes resembling a civil war, the Police were willed on by a ruthless Government determined to succeed at any cost.  When the strike ended in 1985 it was evident that the Police had played a definitive role in defeating Scargill’s NUM. The scars of the strike would last a generation, and for some people a lifetime. The miners defeat opened up a whole new era in politics and in British Policing.

Consensus and Conflict: British Policing 1985-Present

The reputation of the Police was damaged in working class communities, particularly in the former heartlands of industrial labour. At the turn of the century they were called ‘the blue drones’ or ‘blue locusts’-in the 1980s they were known in some working class communities as the ‘pigs’ or the ‘scum’. The miners strike bore witness to a very public shattering of the social consensus which had existed in the post-war decades. Social life in Britain was dramatically altered, and by the end of the decade it was obvious to most political commentators, that the era when organised industrial labour could be a deciding force in British politics was well and truly at an end. The working classes were irretrievably fragmented resulting in deep social division. By the end of Thatcher’s decade, the top 10 per cent of workers had gross earnings three times as high as the bottom tenth.

Traditional political loyalties were transformed as elements of the working classes bought their way into Thatcher’s meritocracy, whilst others languished on the scrap heap and joined the swelling ranks of the ‘underclass’. For those who prospered, referred to by sociologists as the ‘upwardly mobile’, they could look forward to owning their own homes and living in private estates and buying shares in the privatised utilities. Political consciousness in some sections of the working class drifted to the right. This turn to the right was linked to the emergence of a discourse on Britain’s ‘underclasses’ characterised as a dangerous sub-group of a-morals, who lived off the welfare state and were habitually criminal.

The political narrative, encouraged by the Tories and populist press, was one in which ‘hard working tax payers’ resented subsidising an ‘underclass’ that lived on public welfare. The welfare state, seen in the decades of post-war prosperity as providing emergency aid for those who truly needed it, was now commonly regarded as being abused by a hard core who lived on social welfare as a way of life. The consequence of this narrative, and we cannot forget its significance in consolidating Thatcher’s consensus, was that many skilled workers found themselves as potential supporters of the political right.

 Policing the Underclass

How to police the ‘underclass’ became one of the dominant themes in British policing in the 1990s, with the police receiving support and sympathy from the public and politicians alike. The Police spent most of their time dealing with the everyday affairs of those living on the margins of society whose lifestyles were labelled ‘dysfunctional’ and ‘chaotic’. High levels of crime became commonplace, and a taken for granted part of life in the inner-city. In the absence of any serious response from the left (other than academics talking about ‘moral panics’) public opinion on crime shifted towards an authoritarian populism. New Labour instantly capitalised on the shift that was taking place within the working class, and Blair’s famous ‘tough on the crime, tough on the causes of crime’ (one of the greatest sound-bites of the modern age) carefully positioned Labour on both sides of the crime debate. But Blair, who in his early days was a shrewd observer of public opinion knew that it was ‘tough on crime’ which was the important part of his sound-bite.  

In the 1990s, the British public accepted a trade off between the provision of security and the loss of certain civil liberties. As a consequence, more powers were given to the police, and certain communities experienced an almost permanent police presence, alongside CCTV and other crime fighting measures. Whilst intellectuals on the left talked about the ‘occupation of poor communities by the Police’, the measures adopted by New Labour often had popular support, with ‘more police on the street’ becoming a repeated slogan stemming from working class communities.

Conclusion

The history of British policing is a history of change and continuity. Some of the changes have been striking. In the 1950s, a real life Dixon of Dock Green would patrol his beat equipped with nothing more than a wooden baton, a set of handcuffs and a whistle. Today’s twenty first century Dixon will patrol a much larger area by car, and will be equipped with a longer composite baton, a set of handcuffs, a spray which can incapacitate potential criminals, he or she will wear a stab proof vest and may even wear a head camera (thankfully they remain unarmed). He or she will also be acquainted with New Public Managerialism and the centrally imposed system of targets and ‘performance indicators’. ‘Too much time spent on paperwork’ is a common and not unfair complaint from today’s Bobby. The running battles with the industrialised working class that characterised policing in certain periods between 1829 and the present seem to be a thing of the past. However, new social actors have emerged in the past two decades, each with a range of issues to protest about, and many of these protestors come into direct conflict with the Police, although we have not witnessed anything like the ferocity of the Great Miners Strike of the 1980s. There are some important developments in policing which due to space I have not touched on.  For example, I have not had the space to discuss the important calls for an independent police complaints commission, or to discuss in detail the allegations of internal police corruption (some true, others without foundation) that are often levied against the Police. I have also not devoted attention to the ‘war on drugs’, one of the main features of policing since the 1970s, primarily because there has not been the space to do this story justice. I have also lacked the space to discuss in detail the issue of racism and the controversy over the McPherson Report labelling the police ‘institutionally racist’, and whilst it may be true that in some quarters racism is an issue it is equally true that the police have tried to improve their relations with minority groups and the community in general. I have also tried to avoid the question, often framed crudely by hard left about the ‘true purpose of the Police in a capitalist society’. For me, there has never been once definitive purpose, and as we navigate our ways through an increasingly uncertain post-modern world, it is clear that the Police will continue to face a multitude of competing demands that reflect the contradictory nature of our times.

References

 

Emsley, C, (2009), The Great British Bobby, Queraus Books, London, UK

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