Lessons from Orgreave: Police Power and the Criminalization of Protest

In October 2016, the Home Secretary ruled out a public inquiry into the ‘Battle of Orgreave', arguing that ‘very few lessons’ could be learned from a review of practices of three decades ago. It was suggested that policing has undergone a progressive transformation since the 1984–5 miners’ strike, at political, legal, and operational levels. This article, in contrast, charts a significant expansion of state control over public protest since the strike, including a proliferation of public order offences and an extension of pre‐emptive policing powers. Whilst concerns have been raised about the impact of these developments on protest rights, there is an absence of socio‐legal research into the operation of public order powers in practice. In this article, I begin to fill this lacuna. Drawing on three empirical case‐studies of protesters’ experiences of arrest and the criminal justice process, I highlight the relevance of Orgreave for contemporary policing practice.     

Iati‐Onkwehonwe: blood quantum,membership and the politics of exclusion in kahnawake∗

The decades since the 1970s have seen an ‘explosion of interest’ in the concept of citizenship, both as means to elucidating the compromises over demands of justice and membership which underlie communities and feed into definitions of citizenship, and the increasing instability of those communities and ideals in the modern era. While there have been as many contexts of the negotiation of citizenship as there are nations (whether real or imagined), within Canada some of the most intriguing discourses around belonging have occurred within First Nations. This article is an attempt to elucidate the struggles over citizenship and membership within one Canadian Aboriginal community, the Mohawk Nation at Kahnawake. Here, intertwined with issues of blood, ‘Indian status’ and entitlement, Kahnawake has been riven by contests over the meaning of ‘belonging’ and who should belong in this First Nation.     

Narcotics interdiction at sea: UK‐US cooperation

This article examines, from a legal perspective, the nature and extent of UK‐US co‐operation in the interdiction of the traffic in narcotic drugs by sea. In particular, it addresses the background to, the provisions of and practice under the 13 November 1981 Exchange of Notes between these two states on this subject and draws certain conclusions concerning both the adequacy of that Agreement and whether it constitutes an appropriate model for use elsewhere.     

Linkages between Parliamentary and Ministerial Careers in Germany, 1949–2008: The Bundestag as Recruitment Pool

Germany is noted within Europe for its weak tobacco control policies and its opposition to European Union tobacco control legislation. In this article, we aim to explain Germany's stance on tobacco control. We review two explanations commonly proposed, namely tobacco industry donations to political parties and the legacy of the Nazis' opposition to smoking, and examine the politics of tobacco control in detail. We suggest that the interplay of numerous factors explains Germany's stance. Aspects of political culture including the Nazi heritage which has resulted in a dearth of public health research and teaching, institutional factors such as the reliance on industry self-regulation facilitated by Germany's system of corporatist policy-making and interest group politics are key. The tobacco industry has also successfully used framing strategies to uphold the social acceptability of smoking and undermine the acceptability of tobacco control in Germany. In addition a phenomenon that we call ‘autarkic epistemic isolation’ explains why so little policy learning from abroad has occurred. We suggest that our multi-factor model has significant explanatory power for Germany's weak stance that has resulted in a long-standing policy equilibrium. Recent events, however, suggest that this equilibrium may now have been punctuated.     

Withdrawal of Parental Responsibility: Lost Authority and a Lost Opportunity

This comment examines Re D (Withdrawal of Parental Responsibility), the first reported Court of Appeal decision on withdrawal of parental responsibility pursuant to section 4(2A) of the Children Act 1989. It demonstrates that the Court overlooked earlier Court of Appeal authority, resulting in tension in the Court's guidance. The comment criticises the Court of Appeal's characterisation of parental responsibility as entirely child‐centred and its uncritical acceptance that the child's welfare is the paramount consideration in applications for withdrawal of parental responsibility. It argues that such an approach may not adequately respect the parent's interests in retaining parental responsibility, especially in the context of an order which is more draconian in effect than a care order. The impact upon applications for removal of parental responsibility of the new presumption of parental involvement, which was implemented shortly after the decision in Re D, is also considered.     

Innovation in the public sector: Dilemmas in the use of Ad Hoc processes

Increasingly, public sector executives are using ad hoc groups and processes—what we term “parallel processes”—as a vehicle for innovation. The central question is, however, when parallel processes are developmental and when they are bypasses that avoid critical issues. This paper reviews some potential weaknesses in the use of such groups by examining several cases that show how they can impede the actual implementation of the innovation. We propose a transitional perspective that regards parallel process as scaffolding, enabling new ideas and behaviors to grow strong enough to eventually allow their transfer to the permanent structure.     

Results of a curriculum intervention with seventh graders regarding violence in relationships

This research measured the effects of a violence prevention curriculum on the knowledge and attitudes of seventh grade health education students (N=239) about woman abuse using a valid and reliable inventory. Pretests, post-tests, and post-post-tests were administered to experimental and comparison groups. The experimental group received the curriculum intervention,Skills for Violence-Free Relationships. Significant differences were found between the experimental and comparison groups from pretest to post-test on both the knowledge (p=.0027) and attitude (p=.0089) sections of the inventory. This impact did not remain stable at post post-test. These results confirm those found in other studies and reinforce recommendations of the battered women’s movement to integrate violence-free principles into school curricula. Within the experimental group, significant gender differences were found only on the attitude section from post-test to post post-test (p=.0335); females showed greater change over time. Such limited change was not unexpected in a middle school population given the reported formative nature of the subjects’ gender acquisition as contrasted with those at an older age.     

Contact/Shared Residence and Child Well-Being: Research Evidence and its Implications for Legal Decision-Making

This article considers the implications for legal decision-makingof one aspect of research on children’s adjustment toparental separation: the significance for child well-being ofmaintaining a relationship with both parents, either by wayof contact with a non-resident parent or by means of a shared(dual) residence arrangement (known in some jurisdictions as‘joint physical custody’). It is argued that policy-makerswho have rejected recent calls for a statutory presumption ofchild/non-resident parent contact, or of equal division of achild’s time between parents, have acted appropriatelyin the light of the research evidence.