ABSTRACT
In Scotland there has been little written about the Scottish Police Federation (SPF) or indeed the industrial relations dispensation for police officers. While newspapers and journals frequently seek comment on policing issues, it appears that there is neither space nor interest within those readily accessible publications to examine elements of the SPF behind the oft-used and self-ascribed title, ‘Voice of the Service’. This is not peculiar to Scotland, as a similar picture extends elsewhere in the UK. For example, Northern Ireland suffers a deficit of writing about police from the bottom up and this is replicated in places such as New Zealand, Australia and the United States. There has, however, been some academic interest in the Federation in England and Wales, which is hardly surprising given its size and influence, starting with Robert Reiner in the 1970s (Reiner 1978a, 1978b), through to the more recent writings of McLaughlin and Murji (1998) and O'Neil and Holdaway (2007). Additionally, journalists in English-based media are more likely to take account of the voices of this organisation and its leaders than they are in Scotland.
