Smith (1999) suggest that the enormous significance of the subtle shift that occurred with regards to the role of the state and central government during the second half of the twentieth century and the impact that this had for the function of a wide variety of public sector agencies. Where, prior to the Thatcher reforms to central government initiated during the 1980s, there were clear and identifiable dividing lines between what constitutes public sector agencies and what constituted private sector organisations, after the reform to the core executive and the massive programme of privatisation initiated by the Thatcher regime, there has been an increasing blurring of the boundaries between the public and private sectors (Smith, 1999). As a result, where public sector work was once interpreted as being the sole responsibility of the state, in the modern era there has been a subtle yet powerful shift in the very concept of responsibility; consequently, private citizenry has been increasingly charged with maintaining the facade of health, education, local government and law enforcement of the modern welfare state. As far as the latter is concerned, there has been a wholesale revolution in the way in which the police force has been envisaged at a central governmental level brought about by the perceived crisis in British policing during the 1980s where, for instance, the Brixton riots, local communities openly rebelled against the police force as an institution of repression