ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the political response to a recent government policy requiring the police to consult local communities about the policing of their areas. If focuses around the implementation of the policy of police-community consultation in London, showing how the local form of consultation is the negotiated outcome of relations between different levels of government. The chapter describes the origins of the policy in Lord Scarman's Report on the disorders in Brixton in 1981. The government's commitment to implement Scarman's proposals on consultation was clearly signalled in London by the close personal involvement of the then Home Secretary, William Whitelaw, in establishing the Lambeth Community/Police Consultative Group. Scarman's proposal for consultation was greeted angrily by the Labour-controlled Greater London Council (GLC), arguing that this 'fell far short of providing a satisfactory system for ensuring the accountability of the police to the community they serve'.
