Berridge, W. J. (2011) 'What the men are crying out for is leadership': the Khartoum Police strike of 1951 and the battle for administrative control. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History. 39(1), pp. 121-142. 0308-6534.
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Abstract:
The British administrative elite in Sudan represented the Khartoum Police Strike of 1951 as a ‘mutiny’, the result of a combination of both outside provocation and of the character failings of both Sudanese policemen and their British officers. This article will demonstrate
that these convenient interpretations concealed a series of wider tensions within the colonial state itself, between modernising legal professionals and colonial administrators who cherished their personal control over the police. These tensions dictated debates about the status of the police in the build up to the strike, and the manner in which the heavily politicised enquiry into it was conducted. The Sudan Political Service employed an ‘otherisation’
of Sudanese culture to argue that the country was unsuited for a modern system of policing. Meanwhile, Sudanese policemen and other nationalists attempted to seize from
the British the values of ‘civil’ policing that the colonisers preached but rarely practised.
Nevertheless, in spite of the identification of the police strikers with other branches of the nationalist and labour movement, their own association with the government
ensured that support for the strike was only limited
Subjects:
D History General and Old World > DT Africa > DT154.1 Sudan. Anglo-Egyptian Sudan > DT155.3 History
H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology > HV7551 Police. Detectives. Constabulary > HV8130 By region or country > HV8269.3 Sudan
J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration > JV1 Colonies and colonization
H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology > HV7551 Police. Detectives. Constabulary > HV8130 By region or country > HV8269.3 Sudan
J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration > JV1 Colonies and colonization
Creators:
Berridge, W. J.
Publisher:
Routledge
Faculties, Divisions and Institutes:
Date:
March 2011
Date Type:
Publication
Page Range:
pp. 121-142
Journal or Publication Title:
Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
Volume:
39
Number:
1
Language:
English
ISSN:
0308-6534
Status:
Published / Disseminated
Refereed:
Yes
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