Scarman: The Police Counter-Attack

Abstract

On April 14, 1981, William Whitelaw appointed Lord Scarman to inquire into the serious disorder in Brixton, South London on 10-12 April 1981-- and to report with the power to make recommendations. When Scarman reported, everyone -- government, police and media -- welcomed his report almost uncritically, at least in public. The male, white, seventy-year-old Lord and judge provided, they said, something for everybody. British fair play and commonsense shone through in every carefully written page. In reality, the issues involved in, and the pressures surrounding the publication of Scarman's report were much more complex, involving a number of different, often contradictory, groups and strands within the British state. From the point of view of the police, for example, any proposals for reform, however liberal, as was the case with Scarman, were regarded as a threat to their power base and autonomy. This power base had been built throughout the 1970s and was constantly being legitimated by their more powerful and often eloquent spokespersons. Any challenge to them was therefore likely to meet with stiff resistance and outright hostility. It is not the intention here to discuss the complexities surrounding the setting up of an inquiry such as Scarman's, nor the power struggles within the state between different interest groups to harness such inquiries for their own ends. Rather we wish to pinpoint the role of the police (despite the contradictions in the force) in undermining Scarman's proposals for limited change in their policing methods and structure of accountability. In doing this they picked up on some of the processes which had been in motion before he reported. They also utilised and emphasised one crucial factor, their belief that black people were disproportionately involved in street robbery. As we saw above, the force had been pushing this line since the early 1970s. Scarman, himself, in the construction of his report, left the door open for the force. It was an opportunity that the police, and in particular the Metropolitan Police (the Met), were not to pass up.