ABSTRACT
Since the development of Britain’s modern police system in the nineteenth century the policing of suspect or actual criminality related to a political purpose as opposed to private gain has tended to reflect the dominant concerns of each time period. Thus, at the end of the nineteenth century there was a pre-occupation with anarchists and Irish republican groups (Clutterbuck 2006). In the period from 1917 to 1939 the preoccupation was with ‘bolsheviks’, ‘communists’ and ‘fascists’. Post-1945 the spectrum has included ‘communists’, Irish groups such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), nationalist terrorist groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), animal-rights groups, anti-capitalist groups, anarchist groups such as the Angry Brigade, right-wing extremist groups and now Islamist extremists. However, until the development of the UK response to the events of 9/11 and the London bombings in July 2005, the policing requirements were more limited in nature in terms of operational policing except during periods of terrorist activity by Irish groups. Essentially, the police Special Branch (SB) structure dealt with the investigation of suspect behaviour that might lead to breaches of the Official Secrets Act or ordinary crimes with a political motivation. The police, other than the SB personnel, in any given local area would mostly become involved if any of the activities pursued for political purposes that caused either public order problems (e.g. violence at political rallies) or the commission of other crimes such as break-ins to animal-testing laboratories.
