Charged

Praise

“Brilliantly readable, it carries you with it every step of the way. One forgets how frightening authority is and the detail on police behaviour is dreadfully shocking and distressing. It never assumes what you might believe or what you might already know and at the end leaves the reader in no doubt as to what has happened in this country.”
—Emma Thompson, actor and activist

“Matt Foot and Morag Livingstone have carefully documented the organised violence and secret police tactics used to attack trade unionists and others who have exercised their right to protest in Britain since the early 1980s. They uncover the way that successive Home secretaries and chief police officers have covertly worked together, deploying and legalising draconian tactics to defend vested interests from active legitimate dissent. If you want to know the dark history that has led us to the current police bill and to understand how the powers it contains would be used, I recommend that you read this book.”
—Sharon Graham, Unite the union general secretary

“Meticulously details violent state suppression in the protection of capital; backed by a propaganda machine. Exposed is the unofficial but permanent government with sharp attention to every detail. This is a story of how justice has been repeatedly stolen in this ruthless war against the right to protest. Read every word because you are holding history in your hands. Our history.”
—Lowkey

“Foot and Livingstone have done a magnificent job of intertwining analysis of the legal system with history, showing us how the thing we call ‘the law’ morphs with what those in charge of the justice system want it to do. This is a great piece of bottom-up history because the authors write in sympathy and solidarity about what it’s been like in recent times to be a protestor on the receiving end of these changes.”
—Michael Rosen

“Foot and Livingstone show without a shadow of doubt that the suppression of protest over the past 40 years is essentially a strategic choice made by the elite in the neoliberal era.”
—Adrian Weir, Morning Star

“When you read Charged, you will see ours is one of many struggles, past and present.”
—Chris Peace, Tribune

“An important study of how history influences the present.”
—Kirsty Brimelow QC, The Times

“Timely and important.”
—Chris Nineham, Counterfire