All rooms are equipped with an overhead projector
Rooms C, D, E, F, G and H (H only on Saturday): slide projector (framed slides, carrousel. There are extra carrousels available to set up your presentation in advance)
Rooms C, D, M, N, O, U and Committee Room 2: beamer to connect your laptop. You have to bring you own laptop. (If you want to use your Apple notebook, please contact us, as it may be incompatible.)
Rooms C, T and U: VCR
Programme
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Vagrants, the Police and ‘Civil Liberties’ during the Interwar Period
| The interwar period witnessed rising interest in the defence of ‘civil liberties’ in England. Clumsy policing of the Hunger Marches and of the fascist/antifascist demonstrations of the 1930s arguably led to the birth of organisations such as the NCCL (the National Council for Civil Liberties). Many of those the NCCL sought to protect from arbitrary police action were obviously of working-class background. However, what was the experience of those even lower down the social scale? Did anyone seek to protect their liberties? This paper will consider the relationship between vagrants and the police in England (with some international comparisons) during the interwar period.
Clearly, the police and vagrants had a fraught relationship in latter half of the nineteenth century. Thousands slept rough in London during the harsh winters of the 1880s, and police attitudes towards vagrants were often typified by distaste and suspicion. However, Garland’s notion of the rise of a ‘penal-welfare complex’ assumes that the responsibility for dealing with itinerants had shifted away from the police and the courts by the early part of the twentieth century. Was this really the case? The police (often acting as Poor Law receiving officers) remained at the front line in this regard, and this paper will consider the actions and attitudes of the police towards vagrants. Did the ‘civil liberties’ debate filter down this far, or was it merely business as usual?
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