This conversation with Adam Elliott-Cooper revolves around his work documenting the colonial genealogy of British policing (in Ireland, Trinidad, Malaya, and Kenya in particular) and the construction of the figure (collective or individual) of the suspect as a legitimization of this policing. We also talk about Black resistance to it, the crucial role of women activists, the paradigm embodied by the 2011 police murder of Mark Duggan and the massive revolts that followed, as well as the possibilities of solidarity.
LÉOPOLD LAMBERT: In your book Black Resistance to British Policing (2021), you establish a remarkable colonial genealogy between British policing in Trinidad, Ireland, Malaya, Kenya, and in Britain itself against colonial/post colonial migrants and their descendants. I am very attached to this methodology to understand this concept of the colonial continuum; could you please unpack this genealogy for us?
ADAM ELLIOTT-COOPER: The reason I think it’s important to consider colonial policing for Britain is because if we want to look at the history of British policing, one of the most important things to consider is that most of the history of British policing has not taken place on the British mainland, it’s taken place in across its colonies, on the African continent, across parts of South Asia and Southeast Asia, Australia, Ireland, parts of the so called Middle East and, and the Caribbean… And by doing this, I think it can help us to better understand not only some of the forms of colonial practices, policies, and techniques that are deployed, which eventually come to be used on the British mainland.