Police and Class

[beccaelizabeth]

I been thinking on police and detective fiction, and I have reached a confusion. What class are police? Holmes the detective was a professional like Watson the doctor, middle class think work. But what about police officers in uniform? I'm thinking of the ways different sorts of police work are portrayed in the first episode of Torchwood. We have Gwen and Andy, who have the job of wandering around and persuading people to not hit each other and probably getting hit a bit, and then we have all those crime scene officers and the detectives in suits, and Gwen makes tea for those. It don't seem like they're the same job, and Gwen is trying to get in to the suits and offices bit from her outside walking bit. But is that a class difference?

If class meant anything in the first place that would be easier to figure out. It's a stupid label game. People made it up to describe things it don't rightly fit anyway. And now it means a whole bunch of different things.

But I'm thinking within Torchwood, we've got the doctor and the tech, who do think work, and we've got the secretary sort of, and where do secretaries fit anyway? And then we've got Gwen, and Jack. Jack's an officer so he's boss people management middle class. But when class meant people who inherited titles bossing around people who didn't Jack wouldn't be officer class, he'd be the other sort. And then getting the job would be like Sharpe and a whole big Thing.

Is Jack an actual officer? He said he worked his way up through the ranks. There's the slight problem of him being a great big liar though.

Is uniform:suits as officer:enlisted ?

... not that I understand that either.



The thing is in Children of Earth class is a Huge Great Thing, and you can draw lines, and different households are clearly on different bits of an economic ladder and have different amounts of bossing people around power. So is class always a Huge Great Thing in Torchwood?
... it's British, so British cultural studies would say YES, on account of it always is.

So it would really, really help if I understood the sodding thing.

I should get the sociology books out again and look it up some more.



See this is why I tend to stick to gender and maybe some sexuality stuff and possibly ethnicity if it's being easy and possibly disability if it's a bit I know. Sometimes the class stuff is real loud and easy too. I think this is why we study old stuff a lot.

Comments

[ericadawn16.livejournal.com]

Well, he did sort of work his way up. He was a sort of free-lancer for Torchwood until 1999 and the then leader of Torchwood 3 killed everyone and left Jack with a manilla envelope like, well, it's all yours now, have fun!

I always thought of the tea thing as also a rite of passage, like you always make the newbies at any job do the stuff that no one else wants to do...which accounts of most Ianto's job description.

[beccaelizabeth]

hmmm, yes, in Torchwood he worked for a long time and ended up boss, that's working your way up.
I was only thinking on the uniform he wears, the RAF coat. Did he work his way up there? If not, why he still wearing?


any job that made me make the tea would be a job I would not have for very long. it's not that I don't want to, it's that I never really got the hang of it, especially the 'not spilling' parts...

hang on, ongoing lack of job, phew, no worries then.

[ericadawn16.livejournal.com]

I guess, from the way he reacted in CJH, that even though the CJH persona was just one he took for convenience...after he was forced to maintain it for who knows how long, he began to feel like he had to live up to it, like he didn't want to sully his name. In the flashbacks, he's not wearing it until the 1940s or after...

[beccaelizabeth]

*nods*

except I don't think he was forced, not by externals, I think he chose it and tried to live up to it because the Doctor saw that in him.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

I wonder about what exactly Jack did in the RAF as well. But I think the reason he still wears the coat is, he looks hot in it and he knows it. ;-)

[beccaelizabeth]

:-)

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Officers and other ranks both wear uniform in the British forces, unless they're working undercover or something. You tell someone's rank by the insignia on the uniform rather than by whether they wear it or not. However, within the UK there is a convention that uniform is not worn off-duty in civilian areas in peacetime. Outside the UK, the commanding officer of a base, ship etc will issue standing orders about it, depending on e.g. how friendly the locals are (will soldiers be safer with or without the uniform?), whether there's a political desire to downplay the British presence in the country, etc.

[beccaelizabeth]

is about armed forces uniforms? is interesting.
I meant police-in-suits:Gwen-in-uniform like when she's giving them tea. On TV there's lots of police that don't wear uniforms. Wiki says Detectives don't wear uniforms but they're not the boss of other police and have the same ranks. But I was thinking about class and the nature of the job and wondering if there's an actual split there.


Now I've looked up pictures of Gwen and Andy I'll put links in cause pretty
http://disparue.org/gallery/torchwood1/101/images/tw101_00018.jpg in hi vis
http://disparue.org/gallery/torchwood1/101/images/tw101_00207.jpg in daytime
http://disparue.org/gallery/torchwood1/101/images/tw101_00196.jpg
http://disparue.org/gallery/torchwood1/101/images/tw101_00198.jpg
Gwen in shirt with shoulder things and other people in suits
but there's also
http://disparue.org/gallery/torchwood1/101/images/tw101_00200.jpg
other people in shirt with shoulders.

I know nothing about police! This is why I write SF...

[beccaelizabeth]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_ranks_of_the_United_Kingdom#Detectives

Wiki knows things, you just have to wonder how it knows or indeed if.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry, I thought you were talking about Jack and his RAF coat. So yes, I was talking about armed forces. Yes, police wear uniforms unless they're CID (detectives). I don't think that's a class-related divide.