police

police For years Britons resisted having a proper police force, because they associated it with repression, especially of the French kind. They also feared it would raise their rates. Their only recourse was the army, backed up by tough sanctions. That could be counter‐productive. Peterloo, for example, and the Cato Street executions set people against the government. A gentler means of public control was required.

Sir Robert Peel devised his first police bill while chief secretary for Ireland, leading to the creation of the Irish Constabulary in 1822. In 1829 he persuaded Parliament to accept something similar for London, to be called the Metropolitan Police. All policemen were put in a distinctive uniform, so that they could not be taken for ‘spies’. They were unarmed, except for short batons. Of its first 2,800 recruits, 2,238 were dismissed from the force, sometimes for simply taking a drink or a nap. But it worked. Other areas of the country called the ‘Met’ in to help. After 1833 they were permitted to set up their own forces, on the London model. Those which did not were finally made to by Acts of 1856 (England and Wales) and 1857 (Scotland).

A later development was the growth of a plain clothes detective branch. That began in London in 1842, but consisted initially of only eight men. In 1877 a scandal implicated three of the detective branch's four inspectors in a turf fraud they were supposed to be investigating. That provoked a shake‐up, out of which the present‐day Criminal Investigation Department was born in 1878.

The police's most controversial role has always been its public order one. Its problem was that keeping order in times of civil unrest could be interpreted as acting for the state against the democracy. Strikes were the most difficult case. In general, the British police have successfully maintained their image of being ‘consensual’, though periodically accused of ‘racism’.