Victorian Spies

In the summer of 2001 Channel 4 ran a series of four programmes under the general heading of 'The History of Surveillance', the first of which was entitled 'Victorian Spies'. In this it was argued that in a pre-modern society there was little surveillance of information gathering, by the state, and that the development of such surveillance was a reaction to the rise of modern urban society. The state was acting to impose social control on a 'society of strangers' in the interests of elites. However, there are problems with these arguments. There was, in fact, plenty of surveillance by officers of the state in order to enforce official policy in early-modern England. One could indeed argue that some forms of such surveillance have declined in the modern world. The extent of Victorian surveillance described in the programme was exaggerated, especially in the case of the middle classes, and the arguments marred by some inaccuracies. The modern 'Information State' is really a twentieth-century creation, and underpins rights and liberties as well as being an organ of social control.

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