ABSTRACT
The supposed growing affluence of society in the late 1950s and the 1960s, illustrated by the comments from politicians of the time that the British had ‘never had it so good’, led to an increase in car ownership and the consequent extension of police work into traffic duties. This increased the potential for antagonistic encounters between citizens and the police (‘they should be catching criminals, not bothering law-abiding folk like me’ is a widely held attitude). Of course, there has been widespread debate within sociology over the ‘meaning’ of this increased affluence (in terms of perceptions of class position, for instance), and notions of consumerism and the consumer society have been used to suggest that modern societies are increasingly characterised by and organised around patterns of consumption. The ownership of more consumer goods – in particular, cars with all the attendant legislation surrounding their ownership and use: speeding, parking, taxing, and so on – can lead to more frequent opportunities for encounters with the police.
