Collective Violence, Democracy and Protest Policing

David Mansley

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415659710
• eBook ISBN: 9781135114794
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

In this book David Mansley argues that the frequency with which violence intrudes on to the streets is related to both how society is governed and how it is policed. With the help of an innovative methodology, he quantifies and tests three variables – collective violence, democracy and protest policing – using protests in Great Britain in 1999–2011, for his sampling frame. The result is the design of new tools of measurement and a harvest of new data, including previously unpublished details of banning orders and riot damages, that enable us to reflect, with the benefit of broad sociological perspective, on the causes of contemporary violent events.

Mansley's explanation of the trends he identifies draws from the work of the best thinkers on violence – especially Charles Tilly, Thomas Hobbes and Norbert Elias. He shows how the style of protest policing and the depth of democracy, both of which function under the direction of the political economy, are crucial to the state's credentials as the monopoly supplier of legitimate violence. His discussion touches on such current topics as the institution of police commissioners, the privatisation of policing duties, and the decline in homicide.

This cultured study, which includes an engaging review of the existing scholarship on violence, is essential material for undergraduate and postgraduate students reading criminology, sociology or political theory.

1 Introduction

Introducing three variables

Long before it would have any claim to orthodoxy in the West, long before it would consort with kings and noblemen, long before Theodosius I, long before Henry VIII, long before English bishops would sit in the House of Lords, Christianity was a heretical little Nazarene sect that so alarmed the political elite of the day that it had to be mercilessly and violently repressed, first by the Jewish authorities, and later by Rome. No one was so dedicated a punisher of Christians as Saul of Tarsus. He personally supervised the killing of St Stephen, and did not stop at him. ‘I put many of the Lord's people in prison’, he later said, ‘and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them’ (Acts xxvi. 10).

But then, after meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus, he switched codes. Once converted to Christianity, Paul, as thereafter he was named, or St Paul, as he would become, felt the bruises of his own belt. Perhaps for whom he once was, he became subject to a terrible level of personal violence. Violent disorder marked the route of his Gospel-publishing journeys. He was physically assaulted, forcibly imprisoned without trial, flogged, beaten with rods, hunted by hired thugs, and stoned almost to death. Standing trial before Felix, governor of Caesarea, he was accused of ‘stirring up riots among the Jews all over the world’ (Acts xxiv. 5). He was glad to get out of Lystra alive after a crowd – which at first had mistaken him for Hermes – turned against him. Only an escape by night saved him from a drove of vigilantes in Thessalonica. A few years later in Ephesus, capital of proconsular Asia, another mob was gathering. It did not look friendly.

Ephesus was home to the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, where metalsmiths made good money selling fetishes of the goddess. Paul's teaching against idolatry was therefore particularly unwelcome to the ears of these tradesmen, who, stirred by an impassioned speech from their leader, Demetrius, dashed from their workshops and rioted across the city. A hostile crowd assailed Paul's companions and rushed them into the city's theatre, a 24,000-seat stone edifice used for hosting, among other things, drama and gladiators. Outside, friends loyal to Paul, fearing for his life, pleaded with him not to follow. Inside, the crowd chanted and swore in unison for two hours. A violent climax was inevitable. Or was it?

Ephesus, a ‘free city’ granted by Caesar the right of self-government, had something close to a democratic constitution. The English word democracy derives from the Greek, and means, literally, rule by the people. In Ephesus the municipal authority was vested in the senate and in the assembly of the masses. Ephesians had the right to gather in the theatre to debate civic affairs. This particular assembly led by the tradesmen therefore amounted to an emergency meeting of the citizen body.

The city clerk, annually elected head of the city executive and chief liaison with Rome, appealed for silence and spoke up:

Fellow Ephesians, doesn't all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of her image, which fell from heaven? Therefore, since these facts are undeniable, you ought to calm down and not do anything rash. You have brought these men here, though they have neither robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess. If, then, Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a grievance against anybody, the courts are open and there are proconsuls. They can press charges. If there is anything further you want to bring up, it must be settled in a legal assembly. As it is, we are in danger of being charged with rioting because of what happened today. In that case we would not be able to account for this commotion, since there is no reason for it. (Acts xix. 35–40)

He dismissed the company. He had suggested that the aggrieved seek redress through the proper democratic channels: the courts, and the citizens' assembly meeting at the proper time. His greatest concern was that should his administration fail to keep the peace, Ephesus would lose its status as a free city. Recognising the authority of his office, the people obeyed, and went home. And so it was that democracy, even in this rude and parochial shape, scored a victory over bloodshed.

Two or three years later: another city, another riot. Paul's travels brought him back to Jerusalem, Judea. While in the temple he was spied by his enemies who accused him of crimes against the Mosaic law and demanded he suffer for them. He was seized, dragged from the temple, and beaten. He would surely have been lynched were it not for the intervention of a third party:

While they were trying to kill him, news reached the commander of the Roman troops that the whole city of Jerusalem was in an uproar. He at once took some officers and soldiers and ran down to the crowd. When the rioters saw the commander and his soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. The commander came up and arrested him and ordered him to be bound with two chains. Then he asked who he was and what he had done. Some in the crowd shouted one thing and some another, and since the commander could not get at the truth because of the uproar, he ordered that Paul be taken into the barracks. When Paul reached the steps, the violence of the mob was so great he had to be carried by the soldiers. (Acts xxi. 31–35)

Judea had become a Roman imperial province around AD 6, and despite from time to time having its own nominal monarch, was thereafter governed by a procurator. Unlike Ephesus, Jerusalem was an occupied city. As many as one thousand soldiers were stationed in a fortress at one corner of the temple mount. The commander of the army took Paul into his custody both to protect the apostle and to restore the local ‘Pax Romana’. By doing so he was, in effect, affirming the sovereignty of Rome and its monopoly in the legitimate use of violence (outside the temple, at least). Caesar could not be Caesar and tolerate internal violence on imperial soil. The deployment of troops was a statement of strength designed to intimidate the crowd – which obligingly withdrew, after a fashion. Thus, the threat of superior state power was enough that day to stifle any homicidal urges held privately among the people.¹

So although the Gospel had a combustible quality and for various reasons was a threat to the established order of the first century, not all of Paul's visits finished with a fist fight. The moral of this tale of two cities is that other conditions are necessary for collective violence to prosper. The riot in Ephesus was interrupted by the exercising of the democratic process; the riot in Jerusalem, by the might of the imperial state. In other words, the difference between violence and tranquillity in these places was the sociopolitical environment already established therein.

To the reader who knows the works of Charles Tilly, the tenor of these words should have an agreeable familiarity, like tasting lemon curd and recognising in the taste faraway Sunday teatimes with platefuls of warm English muffins at the home of an old friend. Tilly was a historian-sociologist for whom the relationship between politics and violence was an abiding concern throughout his career. He spent much of the 1960s and 1970s investigating the correspondence between ‘contentious politics’ and big structural changes, such as urbanisation, the rise of capitalism and ‘state-making’. By the 1980s his major interest was with what he called the ‘repertoire of contention’, and how it changed over time. He based most of his historical studies on Western Europe, particularly France and Britain, after 1600. He argues that collective violence emerges as a by-product of normal political struggles for power. Collective violence grows out of the interaction of organised groups, mostly when one resists the claims of another, and especially when a government is involved. His work – which is notable for its epic scope, watertight nomenclature and methodological daring – is my foremost inspiration. I believe that his theory of collective violence is the most complete and persuasive account that we have.

In this book I am going to argue that democracy and policing are today connected as strongly as ever to the level of violence in society. Both variables are reincarnated in an only slightly modified form in the modern era. Democracy has evolved from its oldest manifestations in ancient times. All-male ‘freemen’ civil assemblies like the one in Ephesus were forerunners of today's parliaments, but the democratic process has been refined to include universal suffrage and multi-party elections. In the chamber itself, nowadays a presiding officer called the Speaker chairs debates, which are broadcast to the nation, and has powers to reprove unsporting Members. And democracy in the twenty-first century is judged by the quality of not only its political institutions, but also its substantive outputs.

It is now rare in democratic Western states for the army to feature in domestic concerns. In Britain the military has not been called to a national dispute since a police strike in 1919. When rioting broke out in London, in August 2011, the acting commissioner of the Metropolitan Police told the prime minister – who had discussed with his cabinet the idea of deploying troops – that ‘he would be the last man left in Scotland Yard with all his management team out on the streets before he asked for army support’ (Official Report, 11 August 2011; vol. 531, c1053). Preserving public order remains a primary function of the state, but the power to keep it has, since the nineteenth century, been awarded to the police.

Expert opinion is divided over how democracy affects violence. Some theorists argue that violence will be lower in democratic societies because such regimes are based on universal bonds and solidarity (Durkheim 1952), channel contention into acceptable forms (Tilly 2003), and promote economic equality (Jacobs and Skocpol 2007). There is evidence that the democratic revolution experienced by Western states since the seventeenth century was accompanied by a decline in violence. Studies of homicide have consistently shown that interpersonal violence has been declining since the Middle Ages (Eisner 2001; Elias 1982; Gurr 1981; Pinker 2011). Brutal corporeal punishments of the classical age have been replaced by ‘gentler’ corrections in the modern era (Foucault 1977). And violence against women is more effectively criminalised in democratic states (Walby 2009).

But there is contradictory evidence. Britain, like many other European states, experienced periods of violent struggle (including food riots, anti-tax rebellions, Luddite loom-breaking, and Chartist and suffragette protests) in the infancy of its democracy (Tarrow 1989). Homicide and other violent crimes began to increase again after the 1960s (Thome 2001). Genocide has occurred in democratic states such as Rwanda (Mann 2005). Capital punishment lives on in radically local legal jurisdictions in some American states (Garland 2010). Some scholars are suspicious of democratic politics because it is dominated by crowds, which are inherently irrational and violent (Le Bon 1995).

Meanwhile, all commentators agree that protest policing as an independent variable has an important effect on collective violence. They differ on what effect. Some argue that ‘hard’ policing amplifies violence. They argue that ‘hard’ policing has institutionalised the deliberate and planned use of violence (Bunyan 1985; Jefferson 1990). ‘Hard’ or ‘paramilitarised’ techniques, such as baton charges or the deployment of dogs, tend to discourage mass peaceful protest, but fuel the radical fringe. The use of riot gear and riot tactics make it difficult for officers to treat a crowd as a composite of individuals (Stott and Reicher 1998a). And where police actions are perceived as illegitimate and unduly repressive, resistance to the police can be seen as acceptable self-defence. ‘Soft’ policing, by contrast, is associated with the more peaceable turn at the majority of protests of the last 30 to 40 years (della Porta and Reiter 1998).

Others argue that ‘hard’ policing abbreviates violence. They argue that ‘hard’ policing is used rarely and only after serious violence has broken out(P.A.J. Waddington 1994). Paramilitarisation can actually prevent brutality because its rigid organisational codes allow the police leadership to exercise greater control over its officers (Reiner 1998). These writers argue that developments in ‘hard’ policing have always been a reluctant riposte to developments in public disorder.

In this book I pursue my own investigations into how the depth of democracy and the style of protest policing affect collective violence. My aim is to contribute to existing scholarship by devising a means of measuring and testing these variables against each other. Before setting out my research design, I shall introduce and define each concept. Clear unambiguous definitions are important because they allow data to be collected consistently, and they supply measures that are easy to interpret (HM Treasury 2001).

Collective violence

Most sociological studies of violence are based on ‘official’ definitions, says Mary Jackman (2002) in an article on defining violence. There are two main problems with these definitions: they are generally limited to criminal violence and to bodily injury, and as such are implicitly normative and too narrow.

‘Violence’ is more than a descriptive term. The label is moralistic underneath: its use implies a judgement on the legitimacy of the act it describes. René Girard (1977) finds in the book of Genesis a moral distinction between sacrificial violence and murder (Gen iv. 1–16). Abel slaughters the firstborn of his flock, and his offering pleases God. But when in anger Cain kills Abel, God punishes him. Girard (1977: 4) writes: ‘To say that God accedes to Abel's sacrificial offerings but rejects the offerings of Cain is simply another way of saying – from the viewpoint of the divinity – that Cain is a murderer, whereas his brother is not.’ Criminologists and historians often make a distinction between ‘force’ used by agents of the state and ‘violence’ used by their opponents – the difference being those administering force do so under the championship of the law.² Thus, an ‘execution’ is a death by law, but an unlawful death is a ‘homicide’.³ In an essay on Shakespeare's Scottish play Alan Sinfield (1986) compares two violent actions ascribed to Macbeth. When Macbeth kills Macdonwald, a rebel, he is praised for his bravery by King Duncan (Macbeth, I. ii.); when Macbeth kills Duncan, he is treated as a murderer (IV. iii.).⁴ The distinction is preserved in order to uphold the absolute authority of the state.

Language has the power to reinforce the legitimacy of state violence. In 2010, a Metropolitan Territorial Support Group (TSG) officer appeared before a court charged with assaulting a female protester, whom he had slapped across the face. He described his slapping the woman as a textbook ‘distraction clearance’. But beware euphemism (Orwell 1957). Pierre Bourdieu (1991) is sceptical about notions of ‘legitimacy’. In Language and Symbolic Power he introduces the concept of ‘symbolic violence’. For him a person with symbolic power is a person of status who is accepted as legitimate authority. Such a person carries with him the power to name, to represent ‘common-sense’ and to create the ‘official version’ of the social world. The state is engaged in ‘the struggle over the monopoly of legitimate symbolic violence,’ Bourdieu (1991: 168) writes, ‘that is, of the power to impose (or even inculcate) the arbitrary instruments of knowledge and expression (taxonomies) of social reality – but instruments whose arbitrary nature is not realised as such’. The work of creating the official version of events presupposes a particular kind of ‘capital’ that works by ‘delegation’ and ‘dispossession’. He calls the outcome of such mechanisms ‘symbolic violence’ because those who do not have the means of speech can only see themselves in the words of others.

Later we shall see how the forming and regular restating of the distinction – between legitimate and illegitimate violence, sacrifice and revenge, a judicial system and vengeance – has been successful in foreshortening internal violence (Girard 1977). But when the task is analytical description, a sociologist should be wary of uncritically admitting common sense assumptions into the apparatus of science (Schütz 1967). Every concept should be sterilised against avoidable political bias. The act of labelling certain behaviour as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ calls into question the researcher's own convictions (Becker 1967). P.A.J. Waddington (1994) divides academic analyses of public disorder into two schools separated by normative stance: ‘riffraff’ theorists versus the ‘critical consensus’. ‘Riffraff’ theorists define the perpetrators of disorder as ‘rioters’ and their actions as ‘criminal’. The liberally-minded ‘critical consensus’, by contrast, attributes rioting to genuine grievances arising from discrimination, deprivation or police harassment. This second set of scholars argues that ‘riffraff’ theory is biased towards and reinforces the status quo, in whose interest it is to drain riotous acts o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Routledge Studies in Crime and Society
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Democracy and violence
• 3 State violence
• 4 How to measure violence, plus other methodological issues
• 5 Findings
• 6 Discussion
• 7 Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index