`Aftermath: Living with the crisis': From PTC to Governing Through Crime

Abstract

In these disparate voices we can hear the closure occurring — the interlocking mechanisms closing, the doors clanging shut. The society is battening itself down for `the long haul' through a crisis. There is light at the end of the tunnel — but not much; and it is far off. Meanwhile, the state has won the right, and indeed inherited the duty, to move swiftly, to stamp fast and hard, to listen in, discreetly survey, saturate and swamp, charge or hold without charge, act on suspicion, hustle and shoulder, to keep society on the straight and narrow. Liberalism, that last back-stop against arbitrary power, is in retreat. It is suspended. The times are exceptional. The crisis is real. We are inside the `law-and-order' state. (Hall et al., 1978: 323)

Welcome to the desert of the real.¹