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A deadly weapon aimed at our hearts : the scope and composition of Lord Scarman's 1981 public inquiry
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Peplow, Simon (2024) A deadly weapon aimed at our hearts : the scope and composition of Lord Scarman's 1981 public inquiry. Critical Military Studies . doi:10.1080/23337486.2024.2345550 ISSN 2333-7486. (In Press)
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/23337486.2024.2345550
Abstract
State-led inquiries have been prominently positioned within British political and social cultures, seemingly popular with its citizens. They are often tactically utilized to depoliticize issues and provide the appearance that ministers share public concern, arguably acting as a political device to maintain the state through apparent declarations of unfailing commitment to ‘accountability’ and ‘legitimacy’. Lord Scarman’s 1981 inquiry into anti-police uprisings, portrayed by the State as violence belonging in ‘less-civilised countries’, provoked opposition to its unrepresentative membership and narrow focus. Some local groups, such as the Brixton Defence Campaign, viewed Scarman’s inquiry as the state’s attempt to legitimize characterizations of the ‘riots’ as ‘blameless forces of law and order [battling] black criminals’. Characterizations of the uprisings as simply ‘irrational’ criminality attempted to remove legitimacy from actions by politically marginalized Black Britons, previously denied access to processes more widely defined to be ‘legitimate’. Throughout, this article highlights the colonial legacies of inquiries, through their aims, operation, and membership. Scarman also refused to investigate accusations of police misconduct, which depict a different situation than accepted narratives, demonstrating the state’s influence on knowledge production and suggesting the potential for such records to reveal violence conducted in the name of the state. By marginalizing certain voices and limiting the inquiry’s scope, the uprisings were characterized as simply a ‘crisis’ of law and order. This aspect of discussion adds to recent debates on the use of the concepts of ‘’militarisation’ and ‘martial politics’, demonstrating practices that reproduce violence in the name of liberal governance.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History | ||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Critical Military Studies | ||||||||
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis | ||||||||
ISSN: | 2333-7486 | ||||||||
Official Date: | 2024 | ||||||||
Dates: |
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DOI: | 10.1080/23337486.2024.2345550 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | In Press | ||||||||
Re-use Statement: | This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Critical Military Studies on 7/05/2024, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/[Article DOI].” | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 29 April 2024 | ||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 20 May 2024 | ||||||||
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