Policing and the Condition of England: Memory, Politics and Culture

Abstract

This book seeks to address the pathologies and possibilities that attend the cultural connection between police, state, and nation. The goal is to assess the cultural and political significance of English policing, and its place within contemporary English social relations and public life. Drawing upon a two-year study of a range of police documentary materials, and biographical and oral history interviews with various strata of the populace, senior and rank-and-file police officers, and politicians and civil servants, it constructs a cultural sociology of the meanings attached to the idea of policing within English memory and sensibility - one oriented to the ways in which policing has inte..