NCJ Number
85887
Date Published
1980
Length
30 pages
Annotation
This study examines the response of the Danish legal system, particularly the police, to a number of labor conflicts that involved violations of public-order ordinances.
Abstract
The common feature of the conflicts examined (worker-employer conflicts and conflicts between the state and farmers and the state and fishermen) is that they were initiated by an occupational group or class to further the economic interest of that group or class. The means used by the demonstrators in each case have allegedly involved violations of public-order ordinances, such as traffic law and ordinances of the local port authorities. In all cases the conflicts were prompted by major social problems to which the law and the legal system had no solution that was acceptable to the labor groups involved. In the incidents, the police and the legal system were used to maintain order in a manner that involved a serious challenge to police perceptions of themselves as neutral and to the legal ideology of equality before the law. As long as the demonstrators conformed to traditional and acceptable means of protest supported by union officials, the police avoided confrontation with the demonstrators, but when demonstrations became more radical, even to the extent that official union support was withdrawn from the demonstrators, then the police moved in with force. The pattern of police response would indicate that in cases where worker demands cannot be satisfied by means provided within the legal system and laborers adopt coercive means that violate the law, then the police, regardless of their working-class consciousness, are compelled by the political authorities to become the repressive arm of the state. Such a scenario brings the political left and militant workers together in their charges of police brutality and harassment of workers, so that political and class lines of conflict tend to be drawn. Five notes and eight references are listed.