ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses an important development in British and American police forces in recent years—their emergence as overtly political. The politicization of the American police since the mid-1960s has received a fair amount of attention. But the development of pressure-group activity by the British police has not been subject to any sustained analysis. A particularly important stimulus to British police reaction was working-class militancy against the Industrial Relations Act and the Heath government. English police ideology reflects the peculiar concerns of the petty bourgeoisie, rather than as in the US the working class. It is perhaps no coincidence that the Federation 'law and order' campaign originated at the same moment as a number of schemes to establish vigilante private armies to cope with a possible breakdown resulting from industrial conflict. The implications of their political activity are themeslves ambiguous. While the content of their present demands clearly carries dangerous connotations of threat to democracy and a 'police state'.
