 The book is somewhat defensive about some of the accusations of violence made against the Special Branch, but is honest in describing how unprepared the branch was for protest movements and how amateurish information on people was categorised.He admitted that the Special Branch treated protesters as they did with criminals.And he was scathing about the pre-Whitrod 1970 memorandum on 'subversives' that directed the police to classify suspects on a hierarchy of values down to '"a person suspected" by police of possessing certain opinions and views'.