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| Police protesting over pay in 2008 |
As a primary source of the state's monopoly of the use of force the police hold a uniquely powerful position in the relationship between state and citizen. That is why organised police protests tend to have a more symbolic and emotive impact than most other industrial disputes. It also explains why the structure and shape of the police workforce - and its various anomalies (for example, tenure-based, rather than performance-based pay) - have remained largely intact over the last fifty years: even the most reforming and combative Home Secretaries have tended to quail at the sight (or threat) of the police marching against them.
No doubt Teresa May and her team in the Home Office will be busy working out how best to mitigate the risk that her Police Pay Review will provoke similarly damaging protests. However, their response is likely to be tepid in comparison to the actions of the Ecuadorian police in response to President Rafael Correa's proposals to reform police pay.
Ecuadorian prosecutors have announced that a total of 57 officers are now in custody following a 'spontaneous revolt' by rebellious police who roughed up and tear gassed the president. Apparently the revolt only ended when army commandos rescued Correa in a hail of gunfire and concussion grenades at a hospital where he had been surrounded by insurrectionists...
No matter how bad things get for Teresa May and David Cameron, surely they won't get as bad as that?
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