Emerging Agendas (1945-59)

Abstract

At first, the politics of private security in post-war Britain was a relatively low-key affair. For the most part it involved only two actors – Securicor and the Metropolitan Police – and was conducted within a rather informal institutional environment. This was unsurprising given that the basic composition of the security sector had not been seriously reconsidered within government circles since the mid-nineteenth century, when Robert Peel’s new police institutions were accepted into the higher echelons of the British political system (McLaughlin 2007, pp. 4–5). Indeed, the actual negotiations between Securicor and the Metropolitan Police, which lasted for almost a decade, amounted to little more than a series of polite letters and some back-room machinations. No face-to-face contact was made, no ultimatums were issued and no media statements were circulated. Yet, despite this lack of ceremony, these exchanges are extremely revealing and important, for they chronicle the initial, rudimentary formation of the reform and re-legitimation agendas which would come to dominate these political negotiations over the next 50 years.