ABSTRACT
"Police vote for the right to strike" declared The Times' headline on 25 May 1977. The next morning there was a picture of a less than ecstatically happy Merlyn Rees (Home Secretary) surrounded by fist-shaking, banner-waving, plain-clothed policemen. In trying to develop an account of the police in the class structure, three levels of analysis will be considered. First is place in the class structure i.e. the location of the police in relations of production and the social division of labour. Second is class condition, that is, the actual correlates of their place in concretely perceptible economic, political and ideological terms and Class position, that is, the consequences of place, as mediated by condition, for consciousness, action and organization. The police occupy a contradictory place in the class structure. Economically, the police (at any rate all but the most senior officers) are working class.
