Decency and Disorder
Ben Wilson
Faber paperback: £12.99
Whether or not you think that the law exists only to protect the ruling classes and their status quo at the expense of the freedom and rights of the masses, this exhaustive study of the puritan reaction to the licentious eighteenth century, deeply researched and documented while highly readable, will fill the gaps in your perception and understanding of the state machinery we have inherited.
The original organised police force, in London, was certainly, like all police forces, given the brief to rid the streets of 'undesirable' persons, rendering them safe for the ostensibly wealthier sort, and so they were, as they continue to be, fundamentally driven by a form of snobbery, their excesses of zeal and lack of probity justified by their seeing themselves as serving their masters. Ben Wilson takes us right back into the steamy, seamy cradle of today's rightwing extremism, although he skips over the parallels between then and now. Jeremy Bentham said, ' …the more strictly we are watched, the better we behave.' His solution was a network of paupers' prisons where every single action of the inmates would be under constant surveillance. It might have worked, if they could have then sold their stories to the red-tops.
His contemporary in London, ex-Glasgow Lord Provost Patrick Colquhoun was well ahead of his time; although much of what he proposed was already in force in urban France.
'The new police force would be centralised and superintended by a board under the direct control of the Home Secretary. It would gain its information from parish officials in order to compile a national database…it would be a thorough and never-ending inquisition into the habits of the people of England and Wales…Every aspect of lower-class life would be put under iron control.'
The one fundamental difference between the police of then and now is that then, poverty, drunkenness, freedom and rebellion were all seen to be equal symptoms of godless immorality. The police of 1808 were being asked to act like the 'religious police' of today's Saudi Arabia. In today's UK we have dispensed with the cloak of philanthropy and go Straight to Jail.
And now we are having it both ways: the mass drunkenness, the clashes between 'the mob' and the police force on one hand, and CCTV and (as yet, unarmed) drones on the other.
This book is indispensable for anyone who wants to know what life was actually like a little while ago - although packed with hard facts, it's entertainingly visual, wrily funny and hellishly dark by turns. Although it’s almost inevitably about England rather than all Britain, and narrows down to London life, it’s one to savour.
Ben Wilson
Faber paperback: £12.99
Whether or not you think that the law exists only to protect the ruling classes and their status quo at the expense of the freedom and rights of the masses, this exhaustive study of the puritan reaction to the licentious eighteenth century, deeply researched and documented while highly readable, will fill the gaps in your perception and understanding of the state machinery we have inherited.
The original organised police force, in London, was certainly, like all police forces, given the brief to rid the streets of 'undesirable' persons, rendering them safe for the ostensibly wealthier sort, and so they were, as they continue to be, fundamentally driven by a form of snobbery, their excesses of zeal and lack of probity justified by their seeing themselves as serving their masters. Ben Wilson takes us right back into the steamy, seamy cradle of today's rightwing extremism, although he skips over the parallels between then and now. Jeremy Bentham said, ' …the more strictly we are watched, the better we behave.' His solution was a network of paupers' prisons where every single action of the inmates would be under constant surveillance. It might have worked, if they could have then sold their stories to the red-tops.
His contemporary in London, ex-Glasgow Lord Provost Patrick Colquhoun was well ahead of his time; although much of what he proposed was already in force in urban France.
'The new police force would be centralised and superintended by a board under the direct control of the Home Secretary. It would gain its information from parish officials in order to compile a national database…it would be a thorough and never-ending inquisition into the habits of the people of England and Wales…Every aspect of lower-class life would be put under iron control.'
The one fundamental difference between the police of then and now is that then, poverty, drunkenness, freedom and rebellion were all seen to be equal symptoms of godless immorality. The police of 1808 were being asked to act like the 'religious police' of today's Saudi Arabia. In today's UK we have dispensed with the cloak of philanthropy and go Straight to Jail.
And now we are having it both ways: the mass drunkenness, the clashes between 'the mob' and the police force on one hand, and CCTV and (as yet, unarmed) drones on the other.
This book is indispensable for anyone who wants to know what life was actually like a little while ago - although packed with hard facts, it's entertainingly visual, wrily funny and hellishly dark by turns. Although it’s almost inevitably about England rather than all Britain, and narrows down to London life, it’s one to savour.
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