Down beat

POLICING in England and Wales is in crisis and things are about to get nasty. That, at least, is what the coppers would have you believe. Ahead of the annual conference this week of the Police Federation, the policemen’s union, Steve White, its leader, cautioned that budget cuts could mean a move towards more “paramilitary” policing, with officers using water cannons, rubber bullets and tear gas. Theresa May, the home secretary, accused him of scaremongering. Mr White’s logic is certainly fuzzy. But his warnings highlight the deteriorating relations between the police and their traditional allies, the Conservatives.

Police today are warier of heavy tactics than they once were. Chris Donaldson, a retired police officer, was on the streets of Tottenham in 1985, when riots broke out around the Broadwater Farm estate. He was back there in 2011 when disturbances erupted after police shot and killed Mark Duggan, a suspected gang member. Three decades ago, police were far more willing—sometimes overly so—to use force, says Mr Donaldson. In the 1980s, at the height of battles with striking miners, the police “would definitely be instructed to charge at times,” says Peter Neyroud, a former chief constable now at Cambridge University.

Today they are more reluctant to use such strategies. Officers try to to contain public disorder with tactics such as kettling, whereby demonstrators are confined to a small area. Rather than leading to paramilitary-style policing, declining ranks of officers could make negotiation between police and protesters more common. Short on numbers, cops policing protests will have to behave even more carefully to avoid precipitating trouble. And tougher tactics are “largely anathema to the British police”, says Tim Newburn, a criminologist at the London School of Economics, with senior officers unconvinced such tactics are effective and certain they are unpopular.

Even after the coalition government’s cuts of 20% to police budgets, and an 11% fall in officer numbers since 2010, by historical standards there are still a lot of police about. Bobbies are more numerous today than in the mid-1990s, when law-breaking was at its peak.

The police have long resisted reductions to their budgets. But few would have thought the fiercest cuts, harshest criticism and clearest diminution in their political clout would come under the Tories, so long the party of law and order. With David Cameron, the prime minister, determined to save money and reform what he once called the “last great unreformed public service”, the once-close relationship between the Tories and Britain’s law-enforcers has soured.