December 11, 2010
Reflections on a Riot
In the press reports and police statements surrounding what happened in Parliament Square on Thursday, we’re often told that “violent extremists” ruined it for “peaceful protestors”.
But is it really that simple?
I was stood in the crowd next to Westminster Abbey on Thursday, where I saw riot police striking people with batons after they had fallen to the floor. When a young man trying to help others get away from danger took a baton to the back of the head, and came out streaming blood and unable to walk. When people around me started panicking, running, crushing and screaming in terror – and I turned around to see 15 police horses charging a packed crowd with nowhere to go.
Was I a peaceful protestor, or a violent extremist?
Certainly, I was not one of the people who brought weapons. I didn’t throw missiles at the police horses, or light flares and fireworks. The people who did that (and despite my earlier scepticism, it was true that prepared troublemakers were there on the day) can accurately be classed as violent extremists. Waving red and black flags, dressed in plain black with faces purposefully covered and snooker balls in hand, these were anarchists in the technical sense. I was not with them, or one of them, and I do not defend their actions. It would have been better for all if they had not been there.
But the prepared troublemakers were a very small minority. And yet the images you have seen of the riot in Parliament Square show police battling with thousands of protestors. So what happened?
Quite simply, ordinary people joined in. As I was not on the front row of the protest – or riot, as it quickly became – I stayed clear of the violence. But I’ll be honest: I was swept up along with the enthusiasm of the situation just like the thousands around me. Very quickly it became us versus them; the ordinary people dressed in plain clothes taking batons to the head and facing horse charges, and the masked riot police trying to get at and hurt people like us.
So how and why did the situation deteriorate so quickly? Because it was exhilarating to be part of it.
Insincere apologies for breaking the taboo, but this is a brute truth the pious po-faced tut-tutters of the media and political power dishonestly deny to be the case. Riots happen because they are exciting, because they are fun, because ordinary people who did not come for any violence or trouble suddenly find themselves in the fray and simply do not want to leave. The shackles of society are off, and the animal thrill of conflict is pumping through everybody’s system. And whilst fear and the instinct to run can get the upper hand – like when the horses charge you – adrenaline for the most part takes over. And hence people stand, and they fight.
Those who would now dismiss me as a mindless thug should be aware that this equally applies to the police on the other side. It is simply obvious to anybody who’s seen riot police in action that they enjoy the ruck every bit as much as those they are fighting. And why should that be a surprise? They are only human too; ruled by the same passions and suddenly unleashed animal instincts as the rest of us.
It is true that at 2pm on Thursday 9th November, the anti-cuts demonstration could be accurately divided into violent extremists waiting to strike, and peaceful protestors only there to march and sing. But by 3.30pm, after the batons and the horse charges, the flares and the missiles, such a distinction was spurious. The riot had started, there was violence on both sides, and we were suddenly all in it together.
We can have a simplistic discourse about “violent extremists” and “peaceful protestors”, if we want; an easy narrative in which the Bad Guys ruined it for the Good. But if we stay at that level we’ll never get beyond inaccurate platitudes, and never understand the dynamics of riots as they actually happen in practice. If the police are serious about stopping this sort of thing in future they’ll take this brute truth on board. But that is to assume that they really are interested in stopping this sort of thing in future – and there’s all sorts of reasons to doubt that.
Charlie said,
December 11, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Well, every protestor is in some sense a participant in civil disobedience. Roads are closed, time is taken away from productive activity, litter is strewn, etc.
The point of the disobedience is to make the existence of the complaint undeniable. It’s very easy for a government, with the help of an accomplice media, to deny the existence of dissenting opinions. But if the roads are covered with rocks the day after the protest, and windows are smashed, that sort of denial becomes much harder. I’d be hesitant to describe the protest as recreational: if that idea caught on, and protestors came to be widely seen as doing nothing much more than participating in a bit of fun, we’d eventually see a change in the nature of protest. Assuming no change in policy – where policy is the essential cause of the protest, because people really are hurting – I think we’d start to see things being done that look like no fun for anyone. Compared to what might happen in the way of protest, the smashing of windows in government buildings looks like quite a good trade off between effectiveness and destructiveness.
Paul Evans said,
December 11, 2010 at 4:52 pm
That’s pretty close to my recollection of the Poll Tax Riot back in… whenever it was (89? 90?). I ended up spending a few days afterwards suffering from concussion – having not gone there looking for trouble (and armed only with a generally cowardly disposition).
The difference between the cops and the ‘violent extremists’ though, was clear when one of the antagonists on either side became isolated and surrounded. If you found yourself surrounded by cops, you got quite a bad hiding and got arrested. After having been hammered by the cops a few times for being in places that I just couldn’t get out of, me and a few others cornered one of the bastards ourselves. He had his baton taken off him and he was let go unharmed.
The only gratifying thing was that we’d seen him when he was on the offensive. His face had a very different expression when he realised that he could have been lynched….
Tom N said,
December 11, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Paul,
Respect, great post. Whatever disagreements there have been on recent threads, I should have said earlier that I think you’ve always called it how you see it and have never denied evidence against interest. If there are further protests when I’m back in the UK for a few weeks I will try and go because, as I’ve found living in China, there is no substitute for being at events on the ground.
Look, a lot of the exchanges on this topic recently have been of an us/them variety too so let’s try and find common ground, particularly on what measures can prevent these things happening again and again. It’s all becoming a bit like Groundhog Day with added baton blows.
‘Riots happen because they are exciting, because they are fun’.
Agreed and never denied. Part of arguing for the enforcement of the law is to counteract this natural tendency with fear of punishment. I wonder also if there is a male/female split on this. Sorry to mention the Oxford Union debacle again, but I remember feeling exactly the same way you did. The women who were with me had universally negative reactions to the whole atmosphere ranging from mild discomfort to genuine fright. Is it fair to say that the majority of the prepared troublemakers you saw were male?
Normal life can be dull, cosseted, and anodyne so of course riots offer a thrill to many. Is it so hard to believe that an element of the protest come primarily for the fun even if they’re not hardened or violent initially?
You’ve been at a few of these protests now. Honest question to which I am interested to hear your response: what do you think would happen at the protests you’ve been on if you challenged fellow protestors, either the deliberate trouble makers or the people who are clearly just caught up in the whole thing, about what they were doing? At one of the protests it was reported that a girl did exactly this. As I have said, I think THAT takes real courage. Never mind that it didn’t work, it was at least reported.
By the way, there’s a story in the Mail today about a protestor who has required emergency brain surgery after receiving a baton blow to the head, allegedly when helping others with his back turned. Could it be the guy you saw? No excuses – this is a disgrace.
Police officers may be human but they shouldn’t get caught up in the thrill of the fight to the same degree. Natural human reactions like fright, exhilaration, and anger can be controlled with training through exposure. It’s why in the US, SWAT team training involves being randomly shot with bean bags on training exercises and confronted with viciously barking dogs. Over time their heart rates stop jumping to levels were rational thought goes out at the window as lizard brain reasserts itself. There’s a good chapter in Gladwell’s ‘Blink’ about this (relating how a group of New York police shot a totally innocent man they wrongly suspected of being a drug dealer). Closer to home we have the de Menezes case.
A well-directed police force should be able to keep these feelings in check and behave with discipline and despite protestor violence should be able to keep their emotions in check. It is pretty disturbing that recently this has proved beyond them.
Urgent matter for coalition now is police reform focussing on quality of recruits, focus of their activity, and general rules of engagement with the public. We only need a couple of prosecutions of the overzealous for the rest who get caught up in the thing to get the message.
@Charlie
As has been said on other threads, legitimise such actions for these demonstrations and it’s going to be hard to avoid the charge of hypocrisy or special pleading if you criticise foxhunters, anti-capitalists, racists, anti-EUers, and deficit hawks for doing something similar.
Charlie said,
December 11, 2010 at 6:44 pm
As has been said on other threads, legitimise such actions for these demonstrations and it’s going to be hard to avoid the charge of hypocrisy or special pleading if you criticise foxhunters, anti-capitalists, racists, anti-EUers, and deficit hawks for doing something similar.
Well, the only one of those groups that gives me any concern is the ‘racists’ group, by which I guess you mean the BNP or similar.
If any of the others (deficit hawks, really?) were committed to civil disobedience like what we saw on Thursday, I think the government would indeed have to look again at its policy. A government has an obligation to develop policy that can find broad acceptance; this goes well beyond majority support; a government must avoid outraging any single group to the point of strong, sustained protest. Personally, I felt the hunting ban brought people at least close to that point, and in fact I think that it should repealed on that ground alone.
But as far as the racists go: there are some unusual historical precedents, which we are all well aware of, where something that passes for street protest has been covertly aligned with government or party political policy. That changes the game completely. Politicians can’t be in the game of secretly (or discretely, even) encouraging civil disobedience to further their policies. Protest is only meaningful as protest if it’s sincere.
Franlydie said,
December 12, 2010 at 9:54 am
Why are the students not clearly and strongly appealing for more support from the rest of society when they plan demonstrations? Surely their grievance is understandable enough for parents to join in…
If I had been there with my grey hair, and thousands like myself had also turned up to protest peacefully (or not peacefully as the case may be), the media would not have found it so easy to mis-represent the day, and we can even envisage that perhaps the police might have received a different briefing at the start of the day.
Paul Sagar said,
December 12, 2010 at 10:10 am
Well over to you then, Franlydie – why didn’t you turn up?
Hardly the protestors fault if other people don’t turn up to a publicly advertised protest, is it?
Paul Sagar said,
December 12, 2010 at 10:12 am
Oh, and do be so complacent in your assumptions that because you have “grey hair” the police would leave you alone. The pulled a disabled kid out of a wheelchair and batoned him, for god’s sake.
Rob said,
December 12, 2010 at 11:35 am
That everyone enjoys a bit of a ruck once they’re in one doesn’t excuse deciding to make a career choice of it, which is what riot police have done. Furthermore, you’d have to be pretty bloody deontological to think that violence is never permissible or to think that you ought never to enjoy things that are impermissible. It’s not like the people on the other side are worrying about the violence committed in their cause as such, so I don’t see why you need to apologise for or otherwise excuse yours. When armoured police officers are getting hospitalised at the rate that they’re hospitalising untrained, unarmoured, largely peaceful protesters, I might start to worry about the violent extremism of people opposing the government. If this is what it’s like when some students get a bit uppity and dare to hit people who are systematically crushing them into an ever smaller space whilst charging them on horses, what the hell’s going to happen if there’s another Broadwater Farm?
Rob said,
December 12, 2010 at 11:36 am
Oh, and ironically I was trying to teach students who weren’t being kettled about the Basic Legitimation Demand whilst all this was going on.
Grace said,
December 13, 2010 at 12:35 am
“the animal thrill of conflict is pumping through everybody’s system”
Yes. That’s actually what I hated about the one protest I went to (very timid in comparison, only some pushing and grabbing and breaking through police lines)… that a part of me was enjoying it.
Paul Sagar said,
December 13, 2010 at 12:40 am
-Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
Media bias and emergent behaviour « Bernard's Blog said,
December 15, 2010 at 5:03 pm
[...] split protesters into peaceful protestors and troublemakers, and oblivious to the possibility that conflict thrill turns some protestors and police towards violent behaviour even if they set out without such [...]
Peter said,
December 15, 2010 at 10:14 pm
Interestingly, some media figures will come out and say that riots are fun. Here’s Peter Hitchens:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11990316
Gender and Protest « Bad Conscience said,
December 18, 2010 at 8:43 pm
[...] can be as brave (or foolhardy) as men. The conflict thrill of rioting does not divide on gender lines. At the London riots the commonplace clichés of female passivity [...]
On Violence and Recent Protest « Bad Conscience said,
March 27, 2011 at 9:25 pm
[...] the Parliamentary vote was passed and in that sense the student protests failed. Yet the carnage witnessed in Parliament Square will have sent a shiver down many Coalition MPs’ spines. Lib Dems [...]
Saturday’s protests and incidents of violence | Liberal Conspiracy said,
March 28, 2011 at 2:38 pm
[...] the Parliamentary vote was passed and in that sense the student protests failed. Yet the carnage witnessed in Parliament Square – chronciled by myself, Jeremy Gilbert and others in Fight [...]
Why I’m Not At The Protest « Bad Conscience said,
November 9, 2011 at 1:06 pm
[...] things. I get caught up in the moment. And I’ll be honest, riot and disorder situations are exciting – heightening the chances of me doing something stupid. But I don’t want to be [...]