Internal Security is somewhat of a modern day anathema to the British Army. When we operate under the guise of Military Aid to the Civil Powers it is generally thought of as being primarily with niche capabilities.
It has not always been so and popular memories are short. Few remember much about Operation Banner in Northern Ireland, except the glib view that we mostly learnt the wrong lessons and misapplied even these to Iraq and Afghanistan. Stretching further back, prior to the establishment of a professional police force, the military was heavily involved in supporting the Civil Powers in the maintenance of order.
Much comment has been directed recently at the fragmentation of the public sphere. This is a trend which has been ongoing for some time, but which has been thrown into sharp relief by recent political events at home and overseas. One result of the fragmentation of the public sphere is that political polarisation and possibly extremism is not only more possible, but possibly likely, and with this comes the prospect of increasingly large scale public order issues and other threats to the public space. In any large scale breakdown of public order the issue of the appropriate use of military force becomes an issue, as it did in 2011.
When I consider both this fragmentation of the public sphere and what could be perceived as the militarisation of the police, in the absence of of British paramilitary police force such as the French Gendarmerie and CRS, I wonder what is the British perspective of the role of the military in Internal Security? What is the British perspective on the role of police in Internal Security? In many parts of the world the primary role of the police forces is internal security, not policing (law enforcement) as we might recognise from a British or other Western model. As the military looks to become more engaged in upstream capacity building and defence engagement, understanding the British perspective and approach towards the military role in internal security, and towards internal security generally, is going to become more important.