Abstract
This research examines how the Metropolitan Police developed its operational tactics and techniques within the specialised sub-set of policing concerned with countering political violence and extremism. The emphasis is on the particular methodology that was used by its detectives to counter the threat posed by the activities of extreme Irish nationalists on the British mainland, especially from 1880 onwards. Published material and original documents new to the public domain, including material from previously unexamined documents relating to the earliest years of the Metropolitan Police "Special" Branch, are used thematically to focus the research on the operational methodology of these officers and to examine how they set about their task of tackling extreme Irish nationalism.To assist in the analysis of the research material, three working propositions are posited. Evidence is presented to show that, by the 1880s, the Metropolitan Police had a long history of gathering intelligence in connection with potential political extremism to draw on, primarily in connection with public disorder, foreign extremism and a previous wave of extreme Irish nationalist activity. However, it was the unique and unprecedented threat in the 1880s, posed by extreme Irish nationalists infiltrating Britain from the USA and using the latest technology and explosives to mount their attacks, that stimulated a quantum leap in the operational police response.
From the early 1880s onwards, an enhanced range of tactics and techniques began to be employed by the detectives of the Metropolitan Police. Some of these were already regularly used in investigations into "ordinary" crime and some were devised specifically to counter the new dimension of threat posed by a series of extreme Irish nationalist bomb attacks. These latter measures included the systematic physical surveillance of suspects; the imposing of a system of police border controls ( at both British and European ports); the covert monitoring of meetings held by suspected organisations and their leading individuals, (in the UK and abroad)~ the covert examination of convicted prisoners mail and the collation of relevant information from reports and articles in the press. At the core of their intelligence gathering activities were the crucial task of recruiting, tasking and handling of long-term informants.
All this activity was crucially underpinned, probably for the first time, by a dedicated system devised and put into place to record, collate, store and retrieve the information and intelligence that the detectives obtained. Once fully implemented in the late 1880s, the system operated effectively enough to assist in curtailing the threat to London and the mainland from extreme Irish nationalism until the aftermath of the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 when a campaign of violence erupted once more.
This thesis shows that by devising, developing and employing these techniques, the detectives were able to disrupt the extreme Irish nationalist infrastructure and hence impact directly on their ability to mount attacks. They were also able to establish a set of sound investigative principles that remain relevant to policing counter terrorism today. As a consequence, it is argued that the detectives were more successful in detecting and preventing attacks on the British mainland by extreme Irish nationalists than has previously been understood.
| Date of Award | 2002 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
|