ABSTRACT
At the level of detailed analysis, the contrasts between the incident at the Haymarket and those at Maltby and Grimethorpe are striking and obvious. For the Haymarket fracas, the crucial context was the set of relationships established between the police and the Afro-Caribbean community. For Maltby and Grimethorpe, the context was the rupture of the relationship between mining communities and the police resulting from experience of the strike. The police in turn seem to have been provoked by specific actions of the crowd. At both the Haymarket and Grimethorpe, junior officers at least seem to have been particularly incensed by attacks on women police officers, justifying instant retaliation. The circumstances under which noise becomes defined as a nuisance, the presence of people on the streets as an invitation to crime, or the perks of a trade as an act of theft, are left entirely to police discretion.
