During the late 1970s widespread anxieties about economic,
social, cultural and moral change in British society came to be
crystallised into one primary symbol: 'law and order'. The image
of a society in the grip of muggers, hooligans, terrorists, violent
pickets, and other folk-devils condensed and made concrete
pervasive yet vaguer fears of national decline. (The definitive
analysis of this remains Hall et al., 1978, for all its flaws; cf.
Sumner, 1981; Waddington, 1986). It is true that such
'respectable fears' have a long history, and appear to be a
perennial feature of modern societies (Pearson, 1983). However,
this does not mean that there are not times when they become
peculiarly intense, and indeed may have a rational basis (Reiner,
1986, 1990a).