Welsh Journals

cannot be said for the production itself. The gremlins have been allowed rather too much latitude. B. K. MURRAY University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg KEEPING THE PEACE? POLICING STRIKES IN BRITAIN, 1906-1926. By Barbara Weinberger. Berg, 1991. Pp. ix, 229. £ 27.50. The history of policing in twentieth-century Britain is gradually being placed on a new, sounder footing. Nowhere is this more necessary than in the contentious area of the policing of industrial disputes where the role of the police has often been treated in a highly partisan fashion. Dr. Weinberger examines an era when two apparently ineluctable forces tested each other's strength. The years between 1906 and 1926 were a turbulent period for the growing labour movement which witnessed the great strike waves before and after the Great War, culminating in the General Strike of 1926. It saw the creation of truly national unions in vital sectors of the economy and with them the potential for massive disruption of an increasingly interdependent society. These developments were not lost on that other rising force of the early twentieth century, the state. As early as the great Yorkshire coal strike of 1893-94, the Home Office had become practised in the deployment of police and soldiers in areas where disorder was feared. By the eve of the first world war, faced with the prospect of national stoppages on the railways, at the docks, or in the mines, government officials were firmly convinced that it was the job of central government to organise police and magistrates to counter any threat from organised labour. The police found themselves in the middle of these powerful conflicts. By the end of the nineteenth century, the police were an accustomed, if not universally loved, part of the administrative apparatus of urban Britain. Conflicts over the acceptability of the 'new' police lay well in the past and local constabularies had largely achieved a stable relationship with the communities which they served. But as local police forces found themselves involved in a nationwide co-ordination of police tactics to deal with major strikes, one consequence was a decline in police accountability to their local authorities. Chief Constables might remain constitutionally correct in their repeated assertions that there was no national police force in Britain, but a major step had already been taken in the direction of the national co-ordination of police activity. The police also found themselves drawn into a highly-charged and critical role in regulating picketing and the right of free assembly. Historically, this was one of the most confused areas of the law, dependent upon highly subjective assessments of what was lawful. There was an almost inevitable conflict of interest between workers whose success in a dispute depended upon the prevention of strike-breaking and those of employers who demanded that the police maintain rights of access to their premises and protect 'blackleg' labour from intimidation.