We’re all terribly surprised that Nesrine Malik has got the wrong end of the stick here, aren’t we?
Since its beginning, the primary purpose of Anglo-European policing was to exert control and quell uprisings by those demanding rights – be they sovereign, racial or economic – and protect those with land, property and wealth. The world may have changed since the days of British “bobbies” suppressing Irish republicanism, and escaped-slave-hunting militias in the US, but the mentality and structure of those institutions endures.
The entire foundation of Anglo-European policing, that idea of Peelers and Bobbies, was exactly the opposite of that. Sure, we can argue about how well those principles are still adhered to but to that’s another matter.
The entire damn point was not to be an army of occupation suppressing the proles – we had an army that did that already. It was to protect those rights of the proles just as much as those of anyone else. The police did, after all, investigate – even if without solution – the Jack the Ripper murders and which system of oppression bothers to do that for a few tarts?
That’s the thing about the Anglo part of that policing at least. The innovation was that it wasn’t to merely entrench extant privilege.
He’s got entirely the wrong actors. It’s the legislators who protect their favoured & the judges their willing instruments. The police just do as their told under those laws.
Possibly more true of European than Anglo? Some of the Continental police forces are more military suppressing the population.
“The police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.” Robert Peel
You’ve got two centuries back to front, chum.
Maybe she’d like to get rid of the Police altogether, but then she shouldn’t act all hurt when it results in her male co-religionists hanging from every lamppost in the North of England, as she doesn’t seem to realise that the Police exist to protect criminals from the public as to protect the public from the criminals.
@ Jonathan
If anything proves the UK is not a systemic racist country, it’s the fact that the rapey RoPers are not hanging from lamp posts across the North.
That or we like our curry, takeaways, taxis and drugs too much up here.
Peel also recognised that the poor were hurt by robbery more than the rich, but I can’t find the quote.
RWT, or that the English have become a bit pathetic…..
Just found the series “City of Vice” from 2008 on youtube.Dramatizing the founding of the Bow Street Runners 75 years before Peel by the Fielding brothers. Worth a watch esp for the CGI use of the famed John Rocque Map of early Georgian London. They had to have some black dude in the mix. But he gets booted off the force for being a sodomite.
Several characters express the fear that the Fielding Brothers may be trying to found a tyrannical force. With 3 agents a tad unlikely.
Mr Ecks
Iain McDiarmid ! I really enjoyed that and thought the CGI a very clever idea albeit clunkily done. The “Demi Monde” episode with the bloke out of Eastenders was a bit strange though.
Eric and Ernie did a good skit with Eric as Dick Turpin and Ernie the Runner.
The entire damn point was not to be an army of occupation suppressing the proles – we had an army that did that already. It was to protect those rights of the proles just as much as those of anyone else.
The best working out of this I’ve ever found is in Pratchett’s ‘Night Watch’. Not only Sam Vimes is one of the best, most honourable and upright men in literature, he’s also one hell of a good cop.
Along with Carrot, who is the ultimate police officer.
Carrot is the Idealist, Vimes the Realist.
Both did some growing since their original appearences by the time “Night Watch” happens though…