Violence In England Research Articles

Strangled Women: Popular Culture, ‘Conservative Modernity’ and Erotic Violence in Britain, c.1890–1950

ABSTRACT This article analyses popular novels and films in early-mid twentieth-century Britain. It argues that strangled women were increasingly depicted in violent narratives of adventure and domination by a male lover. The mass female audience for these erotic fictions demonstrates the psychic realm of escapism embedded within Alison Light’s paradigmatic framework of ‘conservative modernity’. During the interwar period, an erotic imaginary of sexual violence emerged that glamourised non-fatal manual strangulation as a transgressive form of courtship. This built on a late-Victorian cultural script of the ‘monstrous stranger’ that persisted into the twentieth century. Strangled women were commodified and normalised as mass entertainment by the 1940s, becoming the acceptable face of sexual violence.

Electoral Violence in England and Wales, 1832–1914

Abstract This article analyses over 19,000 articles from newspapers and parliamentary commission reports to reveal endemic electoral violence in England and Wales between 1832 and 1914. It offers a new understanding of the phenomenon in three main ways. First, the extent of election violence, which regularly featured major riots requiring police and military intervention, disturbances of the peace, and deaths, questions conventional understandings of Britain's comparatively peaceful political development through a century of gradual suffrage expansion, rising literacy and economic development. Second, the trajectory of the electoral violence, which peaked in the period after the Second Reform Act of 1867 rather than after the Great Reform Act of 1832, challenges the linearity of these accounts. Third, despite the recent historiographical emphasis on explaining electoral violence as a ritual expression of discontent, much violence resulted from elites strategizing to win elections. Electoral violence occurred disproportionately when and where it was most useful to candidates and parties, and often involved the previously overlooked figure of the ‘hired rough’: men employed to disrupt elections by force. We thus advance a political, rather than cultural, explanation for electoral violence.

The misogynist incel in the news: Analysing representations of gender-based violence in Britain

The Plymouth shooting in August 2021 attracted worldwide attention after media outlets reported on it as ‘incel violence’. By examining misogynist incels’ discussions of the shooting, the perpetrator’s YouTube videos, and media reportage by five UK newspapers, this article takes a critical look at newspapers’ representations of the shooting. While the perpetrator did not unambiguously self-describe to the incel identity, and misogynist incels were divided on the perpetrator’s incel status, the newspapers saw the attack as the spread of ‘incel culture’. This indicates that the media plays a role in the public imagination of misogynist incels. The article argues that the concept of incel violence risks overshadowing other forms of misogynistic violence in society through how the misogynist incel is imagined in public discourse which, consequently, impacts our understanding of misogyny. This article contributes to our understanding of how public discourse forms representations of gender-based violence in Britain.

Parole decisions about perpetrators of domestic violence in England and Wales

AbstractThis study, the first to examine parole decisions for perpetrators of domestic violence in England and Wales, examines how parole boards reach decisions through a thematic analysis of interviews with 20 Parole Board members, alongside logistic regressions of all 137 parole decisions about perpetrators in an 18‐month period. In this sample, recommendations of professionals, especially psychologists, were by far the strongest predictor of a release decision. The nature of offending was also significant in predicting release. Size and composition of the panel may also affect decisions. More panel members, and longitudinal feedback, may encourage more reflective, considered decision making.

The Sights and Sounds of State Violence: Encounters with the Archive of David Oluwale.

This article dwells in the archive documenting the existence of David Oluwale, a Nigerian-born British citizen whose life is captured historically by way of his encounters with the state. Working within and against the dynamics of violation, racialization, and dispossession structuring his archival presence, this article looks to the visual and sonic registers of an archive of Black dispossession to excavate histories of anti-Black state violence in Britain during the second half of the twentieth century. Likewise, it considers the extent to which an archive steeped in Black dispossession might offer possibilities for imagining Black emotive lives and constructing histories of Black sentience and affect even as they are produced in the context of racialized violence and duress.

Violence, Letters, and the Law: Jewish-Christian Interaction and Episcopal Sanction in Thirteenth-Century England

ABSTRACT In June 1278, Richard Gravesend, bishop of Lincoln, sent a letter to King Edward I, begging his aid in punishing fourteen Christians excommunicated for working as servants and nursemaids in Jewish households. Eight years later, Richard Swinfield, bishop of Hereford, wrote to the chancellor of Hereford commanding that he publicly condemn Christian participants in a local Jewish wedding celebration. These letters attest to the hostile legal and political climate for English Jews in the thirteenth century. But they also hint at communal interactions between Jews and Christians that proved more intimate and amicable than statutory records tend to indicate. In this essay, the authors-a historian and literary scholar, respectively-bring their distinct disciplinary perspectives to bear on these letters and their implications for thirteenth-century English communities. Tolan analyses them within the larger context of anti-Jewish legislation in England, while Jahner looks to contemporary literary and cultural productions sponsored by Gravesend and Swinfield and their households. Together, the authors consider the legacy of anti-Jewish violence in England by focusing on the kind of domestic affiliations and arrangements that often escape historiographic notice, even as they prove foundational to the regulation of communal affairs.

Police violence and biocolonisation

ABSTRACT This essay presents a transdisciplinary, reparatory history of police violence in Britain during the nineteen seventies and eighties. I consider how the histories of transcontinental colonial nationalisms and anticolonial internationalisms were intertwined with the development of transcolonial counterinsurgency operations and local modes of policing from the late eighteenth century. I argue that this is essential to an understanding of police violence in Britain that is interwoven with the trajectories of anticolonial, antifascist and antiracist political cultures. I discuss the psychopolitical legacies of police violence which illustrates the beginnings of a broader theory of racialised subjectification that I call biocolonisation.

Homosociality, Sexual Misconduct and Gendered Violence in England’s Pre-Modern Legal Profession

Abstract Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century evidence shows that common lawyers and law students regularly engaged in sexual misconduct and violence against women. Social histories of the early legal profession give little attention to such incidents, treating them as aberrations or as the ‘natural’ excess of privileged youth. By contrast, this article uses gender analysis to argue that sexual misconduct and gendered violence were structural features of all-male legal culture, contributing to homosocial bonding and to lawyers’ performance of masculinity. Records from the Inns of Court, London civic administration and royal government reveal law students asserting manhood through shared involvement in sexual misconduct and violence. However, it is significant for the history of the profession that young men were not the only offenders. While senior practitioners condemned misconduct and violence in rules and disciplinary regulations, in practice they shielded fellow lawyers from consequences and participated themselves. As perpetrators went on to become barristers, serjeants-at-law, judges and public office-holders, a tradition of toleration and intergenerational complicity was sustained across time. These findings generate new insights into how the training and socialization of lawyers contributed to the gendered violence inherent in the patriarchal judicial system of pre-modern England.

Long-term partners – Reflections on the shifts in partnership responses to domestic violence

Whilst pioneering partnership work first took place in the battered women’s or refuge movement in England and Wales, the response that came to dominate in the 1990s and 2000s mirrored that associated with crime prevention more generally and Home Office crime prevention in particular. This reflected the increasing positioning of domestic violence as ‘real crime’ and the moves at this time to view domestic violence through a ‘crime lens’. In the last 10 years or so, there has been a clear shift, with the prevailing approach now dominated by initiatives such as Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conferences, Independent Domestic Violence Advisors and Specialist Domestic Violence Courts. These initiatives have achieved considerable success in reducing risks to high-risk victims. Yet, in doing so, they establish a very particular framework for responding to domestic violence, positioning and promoting it as high-risk victimisation and moving to see it through an ‘exceptional risk’ lens. This paper examines shifts in the partnership response to domestic violence in England and Wales. It argues that, not only are the vast majority of lower risk women excluded from the prevailing framework but, in focusing on high-risk reduction, intervention within this framework fails to address women’s complicated and often contradictory needs in relation to abuse. The prevailing partnership response rests on a notion of safety as risk cessation rather than one which prioritises expansion of women’s space for action and freedom from the legacies of abuse. It concludes that, whilst partnership has huge practical and philosophical potential as a response to domestic violence, only by seeing domestic violence through the lens of diminished possibilities and with a broader conceptualisation of safety can a partnership framework support women to achieve theirs.

The lived experiences of Turkish men’s engagement in domestic violence interventions in England

This article illustrates the first in-depth study on major conditions of engagement among Turkish men in interventions that work with perpetrators of domestic violence in England. It investigates how key circumstances related to Turkish men’s cultural backgrounds, migration status, racialisation and different interactions with facilitators shape their engagement in interventions. The data was collected from semi-structured interviews with Turkish perpetrators who participated in domestic violence interventions and professionals who worked with Turkish men in these interventions. Participants’ social and cultural background, class, gendered power relations and racialisation affected their active engagement in interventions. The insufficiency of trained interpreters and culturally-competent professionals, mistrust of the services and the social stressors about living in a society with different cultural values to their home country were identified as factors of inadequate engagement. We found that adopting culturally-sensitive strategies including professionals’ understanding of men’s social, cultural and religious backgrounds, and being aware of racism, discrimination and migration-related stressors were key in improving engagement during interventions.

The Münster Rising, Memories of Violence, and Perceptions of Dissent in Restoration England

AbstractThis article examines the ways in which the violent Anabaptist rising at Münster in 1533–5 was reinterpreted in Restoration England. Historians have often recognized that the incident was used to attack English Baptists in the seventeenth century, but there has been little systematic exploration of the processes behind this. This article suggests that recollections of Münster in later seventeenth-century England were a species of ‘cosmopolitan memory’ – an internationally shared memory of trauma put to distinctive local uses. References to Münster served as ways for English writers to tie nonconformists to specific acts of religious violence in England, including the Civil Wars and Thomas Venner's 1661 rising in London, without directly recalling these events. Historical discussions of the Münster rising therefore often directly transformed German Anabaptists into Quakers or Fifth Monarchists. Condemnations of the violence in the German city were also used by Congregationalists and Presbyterians to differentiate themselves from Baptists and Quakers and to emphasize their orthodoxy. Some Baptist writers responded by disclaiming their links to continental Anabaptists, while others moved to question the established historiography around the Münster rising. This article demonstrates these points through a range of sources, including sermons, letters, commentaries, controversial literature, and almanacs.

Risk of work-related violence in England and Wales.

BackgroundThere is an urgent need to address high levels of work-related violence (WRV) in Britain to improve the workplace experience of both employers and employees.AimsThis study specifically explores prevalence rates of work-related violence assaults (WRVAs) for staff at high risk that have supervisor responsibilities and work full-time.MethodsFive years of data were used for analysis from the Crime Survey of England and Wales (CSEW). Data were filtered for victims of crime from a working population in Britain.ResultsForty-four per cent of respondents who are supervisors and have full-time jobs report that they had been victims of WRVAs. This figure is higher than other previous studies of WRV.ConclusionsThe current study provides further alternative evidence to support high prevalence rates of WRV by selecting for analysis specific work characteristics data that are strongly associated with WRV (supervisor responsibilities and full-time work). It is therefore recommended that future work explores different means of intervention for organizations to implement within the workplace to reduce WRV and protect workers from harm.

Towards a desistance-focused approach to probation supervision for people who have committed Intimate Partner Violence: A digital toolkit pilot study

We analyse practitioner and service user reflections on a digitally enabled toolkit designed to enable desistance-focused conversations within routine probation supervision of men with convictions for Intimate Partner Violence in England and Wales. We explore how to embed inclusive therapeutic service provision within the role of public sector National Probation Service practitioners through the testimony of case managers (N = 9) and people on probation (N = 7). We discuss the strengths and challenges of the approach and its implementation. The findings are discussed in the context of: the forthcoming Domestic Abuse Bill; the renationalisation of probation; the recovery of probation services following the COVID-19 pandemic; and the emergence of technology that supports desistance.

The socioeconomic distribution of alcohol-related violence in England and Wales.

Inequalities in alcohol-related health harms have been repeatedly identified. However, the socioeconomic distribution of alcohol-related violence (violence committed by a person under the influence of alcohol)–and of subtypes such as alcohol-related domestic violence–remains under-examined. To examine this, data are drawn from nationally representative victimisation survey, the Crime Survey for England and Wales, from years 2013/14 to 2017/18. Socioeconomic status specific incidence and prevalence rates for alcohol-related violence (including subtypes domestic, stranger, and acquaintance violence) were created. Binomial logistic regressions were performed to test whether the likelihood of experiencing these incidents was affected by socioeconomic status when controlling for a range of pre-established risk factors associated with violence victimisation. Findings generally show lower socioeconomic groups experience higher prevalence rates of alcohol-related violence overall, and higher incidence and prevalence rates for alcohol-related domestic and acquaintance violence. Binomial logistic regression results show that the likelihood of experiencing these types of violence is affected by a person’s socioeconomic status–even when other risk factors known to be associated with violence are held constant. Along with action to address environmental and economic drivers of socioeconomic inequality, provision of publicly funded domestic violence services should be improved, and alcohol pricing and availability interventions should be investigated for their potential to disproportionately benefit lower socioeconomic groups.

Terrorism before the Letter: Mythography and Political Violence in England, Scotland, and France 1559–1642 by Robert Applebaum

Reviewed by: Terrorism before the Letter: Mythography and Political Violence in England, Scotland, and France 1559–1642 by Robert Applebaum Jane Fitzgerald Applebaum, Robert, Terrorism before the Letter: Mythography and Political Violence in England, Scotland, and France 1559–1642, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015; hardback; pp. xi, 270; R.R.P. US $100.00, £55.00; ISBN 9780198745761. This ambitious work has a great deal to offer scholars of early modern history as well as the study of terrorism. Robert Applebaum reconsiders acts of political violence from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, within the framework of terrorism (p. 1). He does so, in part, to make the case for studying terrorism from historical perspectives, and for introducing such perspectives into 'critical terrorism studies' (p. 35). This is a significant departure from previous scholarship, which has considered themes of terrorism in contemporary literature, but so far avoided comprehensive examination of early modern terrorism (pp. 3, 25). Terrorism before the Letter makes a further claim for the value of cultural and literary history (p. 25). Applebaum's starting point, the 1628 assassination of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, is a compelling one. It successfully supports his argument that terrorism is discernible in the early modern political realm and public imagination, well before the term was coined in the wake of the French Revolution (pp. 10–11). In this context, Buckingham's assassin could believe himself justified in committing such an act, and others could decry or support this violence, drawing upon the Bible, classical literature, and recent political events to bolster their arguments (pp. 3–4). Applebaum's analysis suggests new ways of understanding these culturally influential acts of violence, and the nebulous role that violence occupied within early modern consciousness. Terrorism is notoriously difficult to define (pp. 6–7). Applebaum draws on Walter Laqueur's 'minimal definition' of terrorism, which specifies 'the systematic use of murder, injury, and destruction, or the threat of such acts, aimed at achieving political ends' (No End to War: Terrorism in the Twenty-first Century, Continuum, 2004). However, he also stresses the linkages between 'criminality and justifiability' and argues that perpetrators invariably justified their actions outside the legal framework (pp. 12, 18–19). This work considers mid-sixteenth century England, Scotland, and France, up until the early 1640s. Applebaum argues that terrorist violence was particularly prevalent during this period, due to 'a complex of ideas, attitudes, mythical musings, and violent struggles' (p. 3). His thesis that there is a nascent 'line of descent' in terrorist violence, from the ancient world, to the early modern, to the modern day, is compelling. It suggests new directions for historians of violence when considering early instances of terror, and convincingly argues for a broader approach to critical terrorism studies (p. 28). [End Page 273] Jane Fitzgerald The University of Newcastle Copyright © 2021 Jane Fitzgerald

Cycles of violence in England and Wales: the contribution of childhood abuse to risk of violence revictimisation in adulthood

BackgroundInterpersonal violence is a leading cause of death and disability globally, has immediate and long-term impacts on individuals’ health and wellbeing, and impacts global health care expenditures and national economies. A public health approach to violence prevention is crucial, and addressing risk factors is a key priority. Global research has demonstrated that childhood adversity increases risk of a range of poor outcomes across the lifecourse. This study examined the association between being a victim of child abuse and the risk of physical assault (PA), intimate partner violence (IPV), and sexual violence (SV) victimisation in adulthood.MethodsData from a nationally representative survey of household residents (adults aged 16 to 59 years; n = 21,845) was analysed. Types of child abuse examined included physical, sexual, and psychological abuse and witnessing domestic violence. Logistic regressions examined the independent relationships between child abuse types, experiencing multiple types, and adulthood violence outcomes.ResultsMost individual types of child abuse were significantly associated with each adulthood violence outcome, after controlling for sociodemographics and other abuse types. Compared to individuals who experienced no abuse in childhood, those who experienced one form of abuse were over twice as likely to experience PA in the past year and three times as likely to have experienced IPV and/or SV since age 16 years, whilst individuals who experienced multiple types were three, six, and seven times more likely to experience PA, IPV, and SV, respectively. After controlling for sociodemographics and multi-type childhood victimisation, the type or combination of types which remained significant differed by violence outcome; child psychological and physical abuse were significantly associated with IPV; psychological and sexual abuse with SV; and psychological abuse with PA.ConclusionsPrevention of child abuse is an important goal, and evidence from the current study suggests such efforts will have a downstream effect on preventing interpersonal violence across the lifecourse. With adulthood victimisation likely to compound the already detrimental effects of childhood abuse, and given that many associated outcomes also represent adversities for the next generation, breaking the cycle of violence should be a public health priority.

Private violence/private transport: the role of means of transport in women’s mobility to escape from domestic violence in England and Wales

ABSTRACT This article highlights a gendered and forced mobility which has been under-recognised in the literature on mobility. It explores the hidden relocations of women (often with children) due to intimate partner abuse; presenting findings from mixed methods research on women’s journeys to escape domestic violence, including analysis of over 80 journey segments made by 20 women within England and Wales, and from abroad. Focusing on means of transport, the research found that under a third of journey segments were made by public transport, and these tended to be longer distances; that journeys by disabled women were more likely to be by private transport, and that journeys from rural areas were more likely to be with the assistance of others. Thematic analysis of interviews at different stages of women’s journeys is used to explore their experiences of different means of transport in terms of degrees of control and agency, in terms of losing or retaining personal possessions on the move; and in highlighting the role of others’ assistance in compounding or counteracting the implications of abuse. Women’s domestic violence journeys are thereby contextualised within wider mobilities research, uncovering the inequalities and implications of this hidden internal displacement in the UK.

No longer a civil matter? The design and use of protection orders for domestic violence in England and Wales

ABSTRACT This paper assesses the design and use of protection orders for domestic violence in England and Wales. It draws on data from 400 police classified domestic violence incidents and 65 interviews with victims/survivors, as well as new analysis of government justice data from England and Wales, to address a gap in literature on protection orders. The paper identifies an increasing civil-criminal ‘hybridisation’ of protection orders in England and Wales, and argues that a dual regime has developed, with orders issued by police and/or in criminal proceedings increasingly privileged (and enforced) over victim-led civil orders. Whilst protection orders are being used – as intended – flexibly to protect domestic violence victims, the way they are applied in practice risks downgrading domestic violence in criminal justice terms. The conclusions are especially timely in light of current Government proposals to rationalise protection orders by introducing a single overarching Domestic Abuse Protection Order in England and Wales.

Terrorism before the Letter: Mythography and Political Violence in England, Scotland, and France 1559–1642. Robert Appelbaum. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. xi + 270 pp. $100.

Terrorism before the Letter: Mythography and Political Violence in England, Scotland, and France 1559–1642. Robert Appelbaum. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. xi + 270 pp. $100.

Political Blackness in Multiracial Britain

Political Blackness in Multiracial Britain