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The policing of protest remains a vexed and contentious area, and this article examines the operation by Police Scotland around the National Service of Thanksgiving for King Charles and Queen Camilla in Edinburgh, July 2023. There were a number of reasons why this particular operation faced a high degree of scrutiny, not least several arrests made some months previously around the funeral of the late Queen, and arrests made by the Metropolitan Police around the Coronation in London. From the outset Police Scotland emphasised a ‘human rights approach’ which aimed to balance security and public safety against the rights of those spectating and of those protesting the event. Here we examine the difficulties faced in such a complex operation, and assess the extent to which Police Scotland were able to deliver on their intended approach

This paper draws on 10 months of empirical research observing how the Scottish independence movement mobilized during 2020, the unique period of time when the UK was beset with overlapping crises: Brexit and the Covid-19 Pandemic. When the pandemic forced a cessation of physical demonstrations in March, we employed a mixed-methods research design combining manual and automatic classification of tweets with qualitative content analysis of semi-structured interviews, in order to illuminate both how the independence movement responded to the pandemic in organizational and strategic terms, as well as providing a reflection of how activists reflected on the purposes and context of their activities. We conceptualise the cessation of activities as a period of ‘abeyance’ and ask how Scottish independence activists worked to stay mobilized during lockdowns. We found that the movement utilized a variety of strategies, including online events, and by framing independence as a response to these crises. In pointing to the mishandling of the pandemic by the Conservative government in Westminster, and the oncoming end of the Brexit transition period, for example, activists were able to emphasise the importance and urgency of the movement’s cause.

In 1999, the largest Dalit movement organization in Tamil Nadu abandoned a decade-long boycott of elections and entered party politics as the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (Liberation Panther Party, VCK). The focus of this article will be on the processes of institutionalization both into political institutions and into socio-cultural ways of doing politics. It will chart both how the party has changed as a result of entering formal politics, and the ways in which it has managed to change the institutions it entered. Looking at institutionalization in this way problematizes the usual focus on a party’s electoral success or failure and compels us to analyze their political performance within its specific context. I show how institutionalization in Tamil Nadu has taken particular forms which have some benefits for VCK supporters, while also creating a rift between the party and its core support.

In the wake of the diverse mobilization for Yes in the 2014 Independence Referendum and unprecedented SNP gains in the 2015 General Election, a number of commentators deployed a rhetoric of ‘dangerous nationalism’ by way of explanation and criticism. Such an interpretation is refuted by survey evidence and complicated by sociologies of nationalism and national identity. This short article joins these debates, and presents analysis of ten explorative interviews conducted with young Yes voters between the Referendum and the General Election. There is no simple narrative of ‘nationalism’ in these young people's accounts. Some explicitly distanced themselves from nationalist sentiment, emphasising a commitment to social justice as their key motivation for Yes. Others shared this primary concern but expressed it as overlapping with a national(ist) identity in complex ways. While disavowals of ‘romantic’ or ‘narrow’ nationalism occur on bothsides of the independence debate, this study points to how more banal, and nuanced discourses of national(ist) identity underpin respondents’ explanations for voting Yes.

Ashok. K. Pankaj and Ajit. K. Pankaj (eds.), Dalits, Subalternity and Social Change in India. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019, HB. pp xv + 207. £115.00.