Policing the High Speed 2 (HS2) Train Line: Repression and Collusion Along Europe’s Biggest Infrastructure Project

Abstract

This chapter examines corporate-state collaboration and policing technologies along the UK’s High Speed 2 (HS2) railway project. After situating Europe’s largest infrastructure scheme as a fundamentally extractivist green capitalist megaproject, we examine policing partnerships and mechanisms including the outsourcing of policing work to private contractors, formal arrangements, and on-the-ground collaboration. The policing of HS2, we argue, relies on (a) the silencing of dissent and control of the political narrative through non-disclosure agreements and pressure on landowners; (b) (a priori) criminalisation and deterrence grounded in open-source intelligence gathering; and (c) physical coercion of resistance and violence against protesters. Policing and marketing enable the positioning of the project as environmentally and economically beneficial for Britain, especially less wealthy Northern communities, making claims that are strongly contested by protesters and observers. This chapter thus contributes to our understanding of large infrastructure projects, their extractivist nature, and their links to state power and legitimacy, and it shows how state and non-state policing combine to enforce growth at any cost.