ABSTRACT
Police forces and officers are involved not merely in enforcement but in regulation. Police constables thus regulate behaviour just as factory inspectors regulate health and safety at work. In turn they themselves are regulated and the individual force is subject to pressures in the same way that the regulatory agency is. In the century preceding the 1960s, industrial and social activities were largely controlled in an arms-length manner, that is, there were few specialist regulatory agencies set up to keep watch over specific areas and considerable reliance was placed on control by ministers and the law as applied in the courts. By the 180s a further change had occurred. It was less important to make agency regulation and tripartism work than to develop ways of loosening the reins. The Department of Trade and Industry argued that disburdening would create jobs, and a task force, the Enterprise Unit, was set up in the Cabinet Office.
