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).