The Death of Mass Picketing

The state, the police and the judiciary in the miners’ strike: Observations and discussions, thirty years on

“…Roger Benedictus took the view that the government believed that using civil law might only serve to make martyrs of the miners, and so the primacy of criminal law was maintained (Benedictus 1985: 176). East, Power and Thomas argued that the use of the criminal law, instead of the civil law, was designed to ‘criminalise’ the miners, ‘thereby assisting in the presentation of mass picketing as anti-social and a threat to law and order’ (East, Power & Thomas 1985: 303). Bunyan argued that the evolution of policing was designed only to preserve capital (Bunyan 1985: 293).…”

“…But the government also set about constructing a framework of civil law to curtail trade union militancy. The Employment Acts of 1980 and 1982 limited union power, and they also provided civil recourse to those workers whose work was disrupted by strikes (East et al 1985: 305). The 1980 Act made some restrictions to union power, particularly around the closed shop, but it also restricted picketing rights: this would be a highly effective step against the NUM, which had won the 1972 miners’ strike largely through mass picketing.…”

“…Although the Conservative government had prepared for industrial strife through the creation of a civil framework, policing had also been evolving because of broader contextual events: the troubles in Northern Ireland, along with the inner-city riots of 1981, had caused a re-evaluation of British policing, a seed that had initially been planted following the industrial militancy of the early 1970s (East et al 1985: 293). In 1981, the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure had recommended a unified code of practice for police forces, although the resultant Police and Criminal Evidence Act was delayed by the cost of policing the miners’ strike (Jones 1985).…”

Care and control: The future of British policing

“…Beginning in St. Pauls' in 1980, closely followed by the Brixton and other inner-city riots of 1981, and continuing into the mid-1980s with disorder in Tottenham and the ructions of the Miners' Strike and the Wapping disturbances, the police were increasingly seen in their paramilitary role and the image of the old-fashioned 'bobby' on the beat was fast being destroyed (Stephens, 1988b). No police officer, certainly not senior ones responsible for planning the work and development of the police, could be satisfied with this image of the police as a paramilitary thin blue line, especially as allegations of unnecessary brutality began to emerge from the police handling of these events (NCCL, 1984 and1986;Mcllroy, 1985;East, Power and Thomas, 1985).…”

Looking Through the Guilty Plea Glass: the Structural Framework of English and American State Courts

“…These typologies are founded in criteria related to race, class and gender (Brogden, 1981;McConville, 1983;Policy Studies Institute, 1983;Willis, 1983;Dixon et al, 1989;McConville et al, 199 1).' The combined effect of these profiles has been to disable members of minority groups (Demuth, 1978;Kettle and Hodges, 1982;Institute of Race Relations, 1987;Brogden et al, 1988), organized labour (Bowden, 1978;East et al, 1985;Scraton, 1985), political demonstrators (Kettle, 1980;Ward, 1986) and the poorest stratum of society (Franey, 1983) from meaningfully challenging the legality of police stop, search and detention practices. The authority delegated to the police is encapsulated in an exchange between a supervisory officer and a researcher from the Policy Studies Institute (1983).…”