ABSTRACT
The “authoritarian state thesis” fails to explain the policing of political protest because it subscribes to an impoverished conceptualization of policing itself. It assumes that, because a legal or coercive capacity exists, that capacity will be used to the full. It is a view of policing rightly ridiculed by Robert Reiner (1985) as the “law of inevitable increment”. It is as inapplicable to public order policing as it is to policing in general. Patrolling police officers massively under-enforce the law, and so do their public order counterparts. If we take the policing of political protest as seriously as resource mobilization theory takes political protest itself, then we must seek to understand the aims of police officers, the obstacles they face and the resources they are able to utilize. This requires us to contextualize the policing of political protest within the wider ambit of policing in general and public order policing in particular. Thus, in this chapter we will consider how the policing of political protest fits into the wider picture of the policing of public order, including the policing of ceremonial events and celebrations, specifically the policing of New Year’s Eve in Trafalgar Square.
