White Gloved Corps

The White Gloved Corps (白手袋隊 Shirotebukurotai), formally known as the National Social Reform Unit (全国社会改革部隊 Zenkoku shakai-kaikaku butai), was a political police force of Chisei during the late 19th and early 20th century, established in 1851 under the Act for the Establishment of Social Order. It's stated purpose, alluded to euphemistically in it's official title, was the 'moral reform' of Chiseian society to remove 'barbarian influences and ideas harmful to the social cohesion of the state'; in practice, this policy manifested itself as the arrest and extrajudicial punishment or imprisonment of political radicals, opposition figures and nationalists. The White Gloves were instrumental in the break-up of the Chiseian socialist school.

By the late 1910s, the White Gloves had become a symbol of repression by the Chiseian state, and their complete and total disestablishment was a common demand of protesters and radicals during the period leading up to the First Escar-Varunan War. This discontent would later be utilized by the Conciliar Government as a means to sooth the revolutionary mood of the country upon seizing power, with among the first decrees of the Yoritaka administration being the arrest of the Social Reform Unit's Chief of Staff, the release of prewar political prisoners and the immediate liquidation of the political police. Yoritaka's forced resignation a few months later however would quickly see a successor to the White Gloves emerge, first in the form of the Admiralty Police, and then the Central Security Group in 1935.