THE rapid development of political policing and government surveillance in late-Victorian Britain is not easily explained given its apparent contradiction of a centuries-old belief which many Britons arguably subscribed to – namely that, ‘under God, they were peculiarly free [and] richer in every sense than other peoples, particularly Catholic peoples, and particularly the French’. This national myth of an uncomplicated Protestant liberty, stretching back to Tudor times and infused with a disdain for the ‘Jesuitical’ methods of continental governments, permeated public life throughout the nineteenth century, from the halls of Westminster to alehouses and working men's clubs. Yet much about ‘British liberty’ was always mere political opportunism or sentimental cant and in a time of grave national danger it could hardly be expected to form the bedrock of government policy.

The onset of hostilities with revolutionary France in 1793 swiftly brought home the notion that political radicals across Great Britain and Ireland formed, despite their seemingly diverging goals, a dangerous fifth column, undermining the war effort and possibly the very existence of the monarchy. The Home Office – established in 1782 as a discrete department with a national remit – joined in the effort of securing the domestic front by obtaining detailed intelligence on the extent of indigenous disaffection with the government. A network of spies and informers sprang up across the British mainland, rapidly becoming wide and effective enough to drive the bulk of English radicalism underground and in ever more ideologically extreme directions.

Prominent reformist organizations like the London Corresponding Society were assiduously infiltrated by mercenary agents after 1794, their premises raided, their leaders arrested and tried for treason. While credible evidence of an organized conspiracy for the ‘annihilation of Parliament and the destruction of the King’ remained scarce, covert support for radical ideas in the Army and Navy, continued Jacobin militancy as far north as Scotland and especially the fear of a Trojan horse of English and Irish insurrectionists working to prepare the way for invading French forces – all made the government more willing than ever to drastically curtail freedom of expression and of assembly.