Protest and the urban Guerrilla

In 1971 I read Tom Critchley's moving account of Britain's transition from a violent to a non-violent society, The Conquest of Violence (Constable, 1970). As I digested it I realized that the British record of non-violence, as indicated by the figures I have given in Chapter 1, was almost beyond belief. I have spent over half my working life over seas, mainly in countries where there was either a war or some other form of political violence in progress, and each time I returned to Britain I was conscious of coming back to a more peaceful society, but I had never appreciated just how peaceful it was. Sadly, however, I feel less sure now than I ever did that this will continue, and I decided to study why it has been so, and how it is being threatened-in an

international setting. In Part I I have tried to account for the phenomenon in Britain itself, both historically and now. In Part II I have looked across to Northern Ireland to see why things have been so different there.

In Part III I have examined the spread of dissent and violence, both in Britain and elsewhere; the methods used by international revolution ary and guerrilla movements; and the internal sources of conflict notably in industry and in the universities. In Part IV I have tried to assess the prospects for Britain, not only of greater violence but of the threat, perhaps even more hideous, of a backlash against it.