ABSTRACT
Chapter Six sets out the context and background to the control and containment of what have come to be known as ‘suspect’ communities. The concept of suspect communities, initially applied in the early 1970s to the policing of Irish communities in the face of ‘The Troubles’, has now been extended to the identification and construction of the ‘foreign’ terrorist threat, but also, arguably, to a wider range of social groups considered to be outside mainstream British values. This chapter traces the growth and development of this concept to include the non-British, migrant communities and also to domestic extremists and the policing of protest.
