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M1426 - COULTER TEXT.qxp:GRAHAM Q7 17/7/08 08:01 Page 110 6 Policing change: to reform or not to transform? Mary O’Rawe When the Good Friday Agreement1 was signed following multi-party negotiations in 1998, policing2 loomed large on the peacemaking agenda. This should come as little surprise, given that, from the inception of Northern Ireland, policing had been one of the most controversial features3 of the political and legal fiction that democracy prevailed in the region. The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) was overtly political,4 in many respects
2 The police This chapter examines the methods, styles and approaches used by police officers – who were on the front line of the decision-making process – in their dealings with children and young people in postwar Britain. Specialisation was apparent in the development of Policewomen’s Departments and experiments with Police Juvenile Liaison Schemes (JLSs), both of which provide instructive examples of the ways in which a ‘social work’ ethic was negotiated within policing. Nevertheless, in the vast majority of cases, juveniles continued to be dealt with by
Winston Churchill wrote in 1954 that an ‘efficient police force and Intelligence service are the best way of smelling out and suppressing subversive movements at an early stage, and may save heavy expenditure on military reinforcements’. 1 Despite IGCP Johnson’s protestations in 1948 that intelligence systems empire-wide should be improved, it took colonial unrest and
From the Victorian period to the present, images of the policeman have played a prominent role in the literature of empire, shaping popular perceptions of colonial policing. This book covers and compares the different ways and means that were employed in policing policies from 1830 to 1940. Countries covered range from Ireland, Australia, Africa and India to New Zealand and the Caribbean. As patterns of authority, of accountability and of consent, control and coercion evolved in each colony the general trend was towards a greater concentration of police time upon crime. The most important aspect of imperial linkage in colonial policing was the movement of personnel from one colony to another. To evaluate the precise role of the 'Irish model' in colonial police forces is at present probably beyond the powers of any one scholar. Policing in Queensland played a vital role in the construction of the colonial social order. In 1886 the constabulary was split by legislation into the New Zealand Police Force and the standing army or Permanent Militia. The nature of the British influence in the Klondike gold rush may be seen both in the policy of the government and in the actions of the men sent to enforce it. The book also overviews the role of policing in guarding the Gold Coast, police support in 1954 Sudan, Orange River Colony, Colonial Mombasa and Kenya, as well as and nineteenth-century rural India.
As imperial political authority was increasingly challenged, sometimes with violence, locally recruited police forces became the front-line guardians of alien law and order. This book presents a study that looks at the problems facing the imperial police forces during the acute political dislocations following decolonization in the British Empire. It examines the role and functions of the colonial police forces during the process of British decolonisation and the transfer of powers in eight colonial territories. The book emphasises that the British adopted a 'colonial' solution to their problems in policing insurgency in Ireland. The book illustrates how the recruitment of Turkish Cypriot policemen to maintain public order against Greek Cypriot insurgents worsened the political situation confronting the British and ultimately compromised the constitutional settlement for the transfer powers. In Cyprus and Malaya, the origins and ethnic backgrounds of serving policemen determined the effectiveness which enabled them to carry out their duties. In 1914, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) of Ireland was the instrument of a government committed to 'Home Rule' or national autonomy for Ireland. As an agency of state coercion and intelligence-gathering, the police were vital to Britain's attempts to hold on to power in India, especially against the Indian National Congress during the agitational movements of the 1920s and 1930s. In April 1926, the Palestine police force was formally established. The shape of a rapidly rising rate of urban crime laid the major challenge confronting the Kenya Police.
The previous chapter explored the notion of a colonial model of policing. This developed over a time-frame similar to that of the English model, with significant cross-fertilisation occurring between the two. Throughout the nineteenth century, alternative police systems emerged in colonies where policing the indigenous population to protect European settlers became the
settlement took place after self-government rather than before as in the denser and older colonies of the south-east. The organisation of policing in Queensland was almost contiguous with the arrival of self-government. Typically in Australia the police forces developed first on a local model, with constabularies responsible for the small colonial towns, subject to the direction of
As police racism unsettles Britain’s tolerant self-image, Black resistance to British policing details the activism which made movements like Black Lives Matter possible. Colonial legacies and newer forms of state power are used to understand racism beyond prejudice and the interpersonal: black resistance confronts a global system of racial classification, control, exploitation and violence. Adam Elliott-Cooper offers the first detailed account of grassroots anti-racist resistance to policing in Britain since the 2011 ‘riots’. British racism stretches back further than Windrush and beyond the shores of the British mainland. Imperial cultures and policies, as well as colonial war and policing, are used to highlight connections between these histories and contemporary racisms. But this is a book about resistance, considering black liberation movements in the twentieth century while utilising a decade of activist research covering spontaneous rebellion, campaigns and protest. Drawing connections between histories of resistance and different kinds of black struggle against policing is vital, it is argued, if we are to challenge the cutting edge of police and prison power which harnesses new and dangerous forms of surveillance, violence and criminalisation. The police and prison systems are seen as beyond reform, and the book argues that to imagine a world free from racism we must work towards a system free from the violence and exploitation which would make that possible.
Rhodesian Police militia as a sergeant. His first job as a police officer involved him in the pacification of Matabeleland, an operation led by a dashing young cavalry officer, the future Viscount Allenby, commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in the First World War. After this and other, similar police operations, Asser’s sideways move into the army seemed a logical next step. 3
In his capacity as a roaming police advisor, Arthur Mavrogordato inspected the St Lucia Police in 1948. An experienced colonial policeman, Mavrogordato had headed up the Palestine Police from 1923 until 1931. He was no stranger to the police forces of the Caribbean. He had paid an earlier visit to St Lucia in 1937 as an official police advisor in a mould similar to Dowbiggin’s. At that