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Podcast: New Books in Law
Episode: Vlad Solomon, "State Surveillance, Political Policing and Counter-Terrorism in Britain, 1880-1914" (Boydell Press, 2021)
Description: In 1850 Charles Dickens wrote that Great Britain had “no political police,” adding that “the most rabid demagogue” could speak out “without the terror of an organised spy system.” In his book State Surveillance, Political Policing, and Counter-Terrorism in Britain: 1880-1914 (Boydell Press, 2021), Vlad Solomon describes how Britain gradually developed a system of “high policing” during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras that contradicted Britons’ popular belief in their tolerant society. As Solomon demonstrates, contrary to Dickens’s blithe assurance, Britain had irregularly employed political policing prior to the 1880s. The threat posed by Fenian terrorism, however, compelled the British home secretary, William Har...