Police Integrity in Modern Britain: A Long-Term Perspective

• In Event: EHC-WG Panel 3: Police and Sanctions in Historical Context

Abstract

In June 2021 the Daniel Morgan Independent Panel found London’s Metropolitan Police to be ‘institutionally corrupt’, echoing the Macpherson report of 1999 which found them ‘institutionally racist’. The 2023 Casey report branded the force institutionally racist, homophobic and misogynist and the just-published Angiolini report continues this torrent of criticism. Having once been a symbol of British liberalism, democracy and the rule of law, the public image of policing in Britain appears to have reached an unprecedented low point in the decline from ‘from plods to pigs’ as Reiner memorably put it, a descent beginning, he argued, in the 1960s. Reiner’s account of the ascent of the police officer from ‘blue locust’ in the 1830s to an icon of Britishness in the 1940s and 1950s, back down to the nadir of ‘institutional’ failure in the 21st century, is echoed in Clive Emsley’s affectionate histories of the British bobby, not only in terms of the general periodisation, but also in the extent to which the changing image of the ‘bobby’ is taken as an indicator of the broader state of British society and its relationship to the rule of law. This paper revisits the arguments of Reiner and Emsley to explore the ways in which the state of the police has been narrated and related to the state of British society more generally, from the contested establishment of the ‘new police’, through the corruption scandals of the 1870s, 1920s, 1970s and 2020s. In doing so the paper will say something wider about current trends in the historiography and question whether current interpretations still represent a ‘neo-Reithian’ synthesis.

Author

• Francis Martin Dodsworth, Kingston University London