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Banks accused of rate-fixing. Members of Parliament cooking the books. Major defence contractors investigated over suspect arms deals. Police accused of being paid off by tabloids. The headlines are unrelenting these days. Perhaps it's high time we ask: just exactly how corrupt is Britain? David Whyte brings together a wide range of leading commentators and campaigners, offering a series of troubling answers. Unflinchingly facing the corruption in British public life, they show that it is no longer tenable to assume that corruption is something that happens elsewhere; corrupt practices are revealed across a wide range of venerated institutions, from local government to big business. These powerful exposes shine a light on the corruption fundamentally embedded in UK politics, police and finance.
List of contents
Preface by Will McMahon
Acknowledgements
Introduction: A Very British Corruption - David Whyte
Part I: Neoliberalism and Corruption
1. Moving Beyond a Narrow Definition of Corruption - David Beetham
2. The New Normal: Moral Economies in the 'Age of Fraud' - Jörg Wiegratz
3. Neoliberalism, Politics and Institutional Corruption: Against the 'Institutional Malaise' - David Miller
Part II: Corruption in Policing
4. Policed by Consent? The Myth and the Betrayal - Phil Scraton
5. Hillsborough: The Long Struggle to Expose Police Corruption - Sheila Coleman
6. Justice Denied: Police Accountability and the Killing of Mark Duggan - Joanna Gilmore and Waqas Tufail
Part III: Corruption in Government and Public Institutions
7. British State Torture: From 'Search and Try' to 'Hide and Lie' - Paul O'Connor
8. The Return of the Repressed: Secrets, Lies, Denial and 'Historical' Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Scandals - Chris Greer and Eugene McLaughlin
9. Politics, Government and Corruption: The Case of the Private Finance Initiative - Michael Mair and Paul Jones
10. Revolving-Door Politics and Corruption - Stuart Wilks-Heeg
Part IV: Corruption in Finance and the Corporate Sector
11. On Her Majesty's Secrecy Service - John Christensen
12. Accounting for Corruption in the 'Big Four' Accountancy Firms - Prem Sikka
13. Corporate Theft and Impunity in Financial Services - Steve Tombs
14. High Pay and Corruption - Luke Hildyard
List of Contributors
Index
About the author
David Whyte is Professor of Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Liverpool where he researches issues related to corporate violence and corporate corruption. He is the co-editor of How Corrupt is Britain? (Pluto, 2015) and The Violence of Austerity (Pluto, 2017).
Summary
An collection of powerful exposes which reveal corruption in different arms of the British state and call for fundamental political change.
