Public Order and Emergency in Britain, 1908–27

The years 1908–27 were marked by protracted industrial unrest and wartime exigency in Britain. My talk uncovers the legality of government actions taken in an attempt to meet those challenges. I will draw on a particular site of emergency power within the British legal system – the use of military force for public order purposes – in order to uncover official perceptions of the law. I hope to demonstrate an acute lack of conformity between official practice and legal doctrine in this respect. Finally, I will explore how a substantive, liberal concept of the rule of law can so easily buckle when confronted with the application of raw political expedience in a time of perceived crisis.