The Special Branch of the London Metropolitan Police has been a hidden but important part of Britain's political life for a hundred years. Opinions on its role have varied between those who saw it as protecting Britain from terrorism, revolution or worse and those who regarded the Special Branch as a threat to Britain's civil liberties. The truth has never been easy to establish, mainly due to the obsessive secrecy of the Branch.

This is a history of the secret activities of the British government in response to threats to the nation's well-being and stability during the twentieth century. It is based on intensive and widespread research in private and public archives and on documents many of which have only recently come to light or been made available. The dangers perceived by the state have been manifold and various, coming from within and from abroad. Anarchists, fascists, socialists, communists, the IRA, trades-unionists and animal activists as well as spies, terrorists and saboteurs have been the subject of undercover investigation, along with almost every large-scale movement from suffragettes to campaigners for peace and nuclear disarmament. The author describes the methods and people employed, and the mixed nature of their results. The British state has always seen itself as civil and liberal, but as Dr Thurlow shows it has sometimes been far from open. The government has had many weapons at its disposal, from public order acts, censorship, internment and proscription on the one hand, to covert operations, infiltration and manipulation on the other. Yet when examined in the light of new evidence, the activities of the state are fully comprehensible only in terms of those who comprised it. The author shows the tensions among the departments (between MI5, MI6, SIS and the Special Branch, for example), and the crucial part played by individuals whose motives were often far from what the government supposed them to be. This is an at times disturbing, at others almost comical, but always fascinating account. It throws light on the inmost workings of the state, as well as on the movements and people subject to investigation and action.

A thought-provoking analysis of the historical expansion and recent dramatic acceleration of international crime control, 'Policing the Globe' provides a bridge between criminal justice and international relations on a topic of crucial public importance.

The criminal class was seen as a violent, immoral and dissolute sub-section of Victorian London's population. Making their living through crime and openly hostile to society, the lives of these criminals were characterised by drunkenness, theft and brutality. This book explores whether this criminal class did indeed truly exist, and the effectivenessof measures brought against it. Tracing the notion of the criminal class from as early as the 16th century, this book questions whether this sub-section of society did indeed exist. Bach discusses how unease of London's notorious rookeries, the frenzy of media attention and a [word deleted here] panic among the general public enforced and encouraged the fear of the 'criminal class' and perpetuated state efforts of social control. Using the Habitual Criminals Bills, this book explores how and why this legislation was introduced to deal with repeat offenders, and assesses how successful its repressive measures were. Demonstrating how the Metropolitan Police Force and London's Magistrates were not always willing tools of the British state, this book uses court records and private correspondence to reveal how inconsistent and unsuccessful many of these measures and punishments were, and calls into question the notion that the state gained control over recidivists in this period.

Biometric identification and registration systems are being proposed by governments and businesses across the world. Surprisingly they are under most rapid, and systematic, development in countries in Africa and Asia. In this groundbreaking book, Keith Breckenridge traces how the origins of the systems being developed in places like India, Mexico, Nigeria and Ghana can be found in a century-long history of biometric government in South Africa, with the South African experience of centralized fingerprint identification unparalleled in its chronological depth and demographic scope. He shows how empire, and particularly the triangular relationship between India, the Witwatersrand and Britain, established the special South African obsession with biometric government, and shaped the international politics that developed around it for the length of the twentieth century. He also examines the political effects of biometric registration systems, revealing their consequences for the basic workings of the institutions of democracy and authoritarianism.

Tracing hitherto unexplored aspects of the evolution of official detective agencies between the late eighteenth and the twentieth century, this is the first book to discuss detective agencies in a variety of national contexts, including England, France, the U.S.A, New Zealand, and Germany. The comparative studies included in this collection provide new insights into the development of both plainclothes policing and law enforcement in general, illuminating the historical importance of bureaucratic and administrative changes that occurred within the state system.