ABSTRACT
The first image of the police officer as a kind of social worker is clearly widely held. Public consent to policing depends upon its viability. The inception of the English police owed far more to political and economic factors than to moral entrepreneurial ones. While the origins are complex, underlying the gradual acceptance of the 'police idea' by the urban middle class was the concern of that class with political hegemony and economic order. A class conflict model is either dismissed or partially accepted on the basis of a selective head-counting of the number of police—working-class clashes. Although there is some evidence of the bias of the police in carrying out the first function, most material relates to the role of the police during industrial conflict. Collective memory contributes to police-class relations by providing a barrier which prevents the easy egress of the model portrayed by the police Public Relations Departments of the 1970s.
