A while back I read Dominic Adler’s first part of a two part essay on the history of public disorder policing in the latter part of the 20^th century and the early part of the 21^st. I was extremely impressed by the first part and wanted to run a link to is as a From Elsewhere piece on here. However I wanted to wait until Mr Adler had written and published his part two before doing that and I’m glad that I did as you really need to read the two articles consecutively to get the best from them.

In part one of Mr Adler’s essay he speaks of the period between the anti-Vietnam war protests and riots from 1968 onwards through the Great Miners Strike in the 80’s and up until the 1990 Poll Tax protests. He writes of how there have been changes in how public disorder is policed with officers having much better kit in the 90’s than they had in 1968.

Part Two covers notable public disorder occurrences since 1990 and encompasses the Oldham and Bradford riots of 2001, the riots of 2011 and the big ‘anti-capitalist’ protests of 2009. He also covers the disturbances following the Southport Atrocity and marks the police and justice system response to these disturbances as the moment that the idea of ‘two tier policing’ became cemented in the public’s mind. However Mr Adler goes back further to the aftermath of the Oidham and Bradford riots to find the roots of today’s two tier policing in the culture that grew up after these disturbances in the police’s prioritisation of ‘community cohesion’, which has often in my view meant pandering to this or that group in order to keep things quiet and peaceful.

Mr Adler’s posts on public disorder are well worth reading and can be found via the links below:

Part One

https://dominicadler.substack.com/p/riotous-assemblies-part-one

Part Two

https://dominicadler.substack.com/p/riotous-assemblies-part-two