Clifford Stott, University of Abertay Dundee, email: c.stott at tay.ac.uk John Drury, University of Sussex, email: j.drury at sussex.ac.uk
Address for correspondence: Clifford Stott, University of Abertay Dundee, School of Social Sciences, Marketgait House, 158 Marketgait, Dundee, DD1 1HG, Scotland.
Abstract
The paper offers an analysis of empowerment in crowd events based on the social identity model (Reicher, 1987, 1996; Stott, 1996). According to the model, action by a powerful external group which functions to increase internal unity in a crowd enhances expectations of support and hence feelings of empowerment among crowd members; this allows the crowd, in turn, to resist the external group. A study of the Trafalgar Square poll tax ‘riot’ of 1990 was carried out, using participant observation and interview data from both crowd participants and police. During the early stages of the demonstration, the police attempted to move sections of the crowd away from Downing Street and cordon off part of the area. Shortly afterwards, thousands of crowd members forced the police back and attacked them. The emergence of collective violence is explained in terms of a conflict of interpretations between crowd and police over the legitimacy and threat of each other's actions. Importantly, the police initially had the power (resources, organization etc.) to translate their construal of the situation into practice. However, by grouping so many crowd members together through their actions (cordons, indiscriminate charges etc.), the police created a new, more inclusive social identity in the crowd; ‘everyone’ in the crowd felt threatened and outraged by the police action. This new consensus entailed new expectations of support whereby crowd members felt more able to challenge the police and impose their own conception of proper practice on the situation. ...
2 The Trafalgar Square Poll Tax Riot of March 1990
The crowd event we examined was the Trafalgar Square anti-poll tax demonstration of March 1990. The poll tax was a new flat rate tax imposed by the Conservative government. The demonstration took place the weekend before the new tax was introduced. The march began in Kennington Park (see Figure 1) and was intended by the organizers to finish with a rally in Trafalgar Square. Estimates place the numbers in attendance at as high as 250,000 people. While congregating in the park, demonstrators took the opportunity to collectively express their commitment to a non-violent protest with a show of hands in response to a call from organizers. However, as the demonstration passed up Whitehall (see Figure 1), people stopped and a subsequent sit-down protest opposite Downing Street halted demonstrators' progress into Trafalgar Square. After repeated requests by stewards for those sitting down to move, the police intervened by firstly re-routing the demonstration and then by driving officers through the stationary crowd opposite Downing Street, pushing it as whole north towards Trafalgar Square.
Subsequent to this intervention, generalized conflict between demonstrators and the police occurred for the first time. Large numbers of participants resisted police actions and attempted to drive the police back. This in turn led to the adoption of riot tactics by the police who used officers in protective clothing and on horseback to drive the crowd from Whitehall and Trafalgar Square. The consequent conflict involved as many as 5000 people in running battles with the police over a period of several hours, and also involved attacks on property in the West End and around Trafalgar Square.
3 Analysis...
Initially all the participants interviewed consistently defined their identity, and hence their rationale for collective action, in terms of a common non-violent opposition to an unjust tax. Consequently they understood the demonstration as a legitimate means for a variety of diverse groupings to collectively express their opposition to it....
All of the participants that were interviewed drew a distinction between extremist factions who were associated with conflictual action and the majority who wished to act non-conflictually. Indeed, participants were explicit about the extent to which the demonstration shared a norm of non-violence.
The mood was confident but not aggressive. A vote was taken as a statement of intent that demonstrators wanted a peaceful march. It looked as though every hand in the park was raised. (Part. acc. D)
3.1 Crowd members' perceptions of the situation in Whitehall
As participants arrived in the Whitehall area, they experienced the congestion and the sit-down protest as a product of the large numbers on the demonstration filling the route beyond capacity. In line with their initial identity, participants stressed that their presence in the area was not conflictual or a threat to public order; rather they were congregating in the area because they were unable to continue due to the sheer density of people....
As the congestion intensified there were some isolated incidents of conflict toward the police and the sit-down protest took place. Participants in the area again stressed the legitimate non-violent nature of protesters' behaviour, either by continuing to differentiate themselves from the small numbers engaged in conflict or by emphasizing the trivial nature of the conflictual activity....
3.3 Police perceptions of the situation in Whitehall
However, in stark contrast, there is evidence to suggest that the police saw the behaviour of the crowd as a whole as an illegitimate threat to public order. Interviews with riot-trained police officers more generally suggested that, while the police accept that most crowd members are ordinary law-abiding citizens and that violence is the product of a disruptive minority, they also argue that ordinary people easily change in crowd situations. They argue that even law-abiding citizens are liable to become irrational, violent, and open to manipulation by extremist factions in situations where conflict is present. Consequently, they believe that the crowd as a whole poses a threat to public order when only a minority is actually engaged in initiating conflictual activity (Stott & Reicher, 1997)
Hence the spontaneous nature of the sit down protest, the initial refusal of those sitting down to move on, and some minor incidents of conflict led the police to understand the situation as conflictual. Therefore they regarded the crowd as a whole in that area to be posing a threat to public order. The following extract was taken from an interview with the commanding officer in Whitehall during the demonstration....
In addition to a perception of crowds as uniformly dangerous, the police emphasize the extent to which crowds are volatile. Consequently, the police are often concerned to remain in control of crowds at all times and to limit crowd action to that which has been agreed beforehand. Any deviation is seen as incipient disorder, warranting immediate intervention lest such crowd disorder should manifest its natural tendency to escalate. Thus having defined the situation as conflictual the police would be predisposed to intervention.
Hence the police decided to intervene and forcefully pushed the crowd as a whole north toward Trafalgar Square. In terms of tactics therefore, the police treated the crowd as a single unit regardless of any individuals' prior activities or intentions. Thus, those demonstrators actively engaged in conflict and those who distanced themselves from it were equally likely to be subjected to aggressive policing activity.
The crucial point here is that it is not merely that the police perceived the crowd as a uniform danger, but that they had at their disposal a great deal of legislation, weaponry and manpower. As such they had the ability to impose their perceptions of uniformity upon crowd members through the use of indiscriminate coercive force.
3.4 Crowd members' perceptions of the police intervention
Since crowd participants saw themselves to be acting legitimately, they could see no legitimate reason for the police intervention. In addition, participants stressed the indiscriminate and violent behaviour of the police once they had entered the crowd;
They were just hitting everybody and just being so violent towards everybody. I think the thing that struck me most was that there were people who weren't there for trouble, who were just there for the cause, getting beaten. (Part. acc. V)
>From the point of view of crowd participants, the use of
such force in a crowded area posed a threat to all
demonstrators' safety:
Everyone started chanting Hillsborough and that is when it really struck me, the full implication of what could happen to me and the people around me. (Part. acc. N)
3.5 Changes in crowd members' conceptions of legitimacy
Given the perceived illegitimate and dangerous nature of the police intervention, participants subsequently changed the way in which they perceived conflict and those engaged in it. Recall that prior to police intervention participants described conflict as anti-normative and differentiated themselves from conflictual factions. Subsequent to police intervention, conflict came to be seen as an acceptable way of preventing further illegitimate police action:
[Q.] What did you think of those demonstrators? [A.] I think they were very courageous taking the police on. They were angry. I mean the poll tax [demonstration] changed my mind about what I think about violence against the police. I felt like the police were being complete bastards. [Q.] Did you think the violence was justified? [A.] Oh yes. (Int. L)
Thus, subsequent to the police intervention, crowd participants emphasized the legitimacy of their own response to the police by describing it not as violence, but as a means to defend the crowd as a whole from unjustified and indiscriminately violent police actions. Even demonstrators who were not directly involved in the conflict were understood to be condoning it:
There were loads of people standing around that weren't involved in defending themselves. Every time something happened this enormous roar would go up from the crowd. So you had a group of people that were actively involved and then you had this mass of people who were not involved but were clearly supporting what was going on. (Part. acc. P)
The use of coercive force by the police created a uniform social context for crowd participants which served to change both the content of the identity and the extent to which it was shared. In a context where crowd participants saw their own behaviour as acceptable, indiscriminate police action was defined as unwarranted and illegitimate. Consequently, where crowd participants previously saw conflict with the police as unacceptable, they subsequently saw it as both necessary and legitimate. Moreover, crowd participants who previously saw themselves as differentiated from those engaged in conflict subsequently came to see themselves as the same as these conflictual groups and individuals.
[Q.] How could you tell that the crowd were united ? [A.] When we were faced by the police all the way through people were shouting 'you bastards'. The whole crowd was with each other. Everyone was outraged and were together in a certain feeling and together in what they did. The whole crowd seemed to have the same general feeling. (Int. K)
3.6 Changes in power relations between police and crowd
Importantly, then, by using indiscriminate coercive force, police action changed the situation from one where isolated individuals, or relatively small groups, were hostile towards them into one where a much larger group of people were antagonistic. This altered the power relationship between those in the crowd and the police, in that unity and hence expectations of social support within the crowd were greatly enhanced. Hence demonstrators became able to collectively resist the police's use of coercive force. Thus the new identity was bound up with a change in the power relationships between crowd participants and the police; collective resistance of police action became not only acceptable but also possible:
There was a feeling of strength and of back up. (Pris. acc.)
[Q.] Do you think being in a large crowd affects people? [A.] Certainly affected me. It made me feel safer about being angry. (Int. P)
A number of crowd participants were explicit about the sense of empowerment they felt in being in a huge crowd united against the illegitimate actions of the police; they felt enabled to act in ways which they felt were right:
The crowd went forward, because there was so many people and there was quite a strong feeling of power being in such a big group and like I said I felt I had the right to be there. (Part. acc. T)...
4 Theoretical implications
...The data we have presented and the account we have offered raises obvious questions about the extent to which such changes in intergroup power relations extend beyond the crowd event itself. Did those who participated come to see their relationship with the police and state differently after the event? To what extent were any new, more empowered identities able to be sustained outside of the crowd event and in the face of subsequent persecution by the authorities? Although some of those we interviewed did indeed speak of feeling more empowered in the months following the event, this was not an issue we examined systematically. This question of the endurance of empowerment occurring in crowd events is therefore a topic we are pursuing in further research.....
[The full text of the paper is available at <http://shs.tay.ac.uk/aetcs/BSA%20paper.htm>.] --- Sent from UnionMail Service [http://mail.union.org.za]