Flashpoints

Studies in Public Disorder

David Waddington, Karen Jones, Chas Critcher

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032042480
• eBook ISBN: 9781000424263
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

This book, first published in 1989, examines how a seemingly trivial incident can act as a flashpoint for wider disturbances. It investigates the underlying causes, the immediate context of the events, and the communication between police and crowd that takes place within them. The authors' findings are based on first-hand research into case studies of political demonstrations, community disorder and industrial picketing in South Yorkshire, UK over a five-year period. Wide-ranging in its approach, the book covers industrial relations, police-community relations, and questions of political representation and legal rights. The authors provide a novel theoretical analysis, drawing on both sociology and social psychology, which they apply to their own case studies and to other instances of disorder, from Grosvenor Square in 1968 to Wapping in 1986. They also consider the possible impact of new public order legislation, and the policy implications of their research.

Part one
Demonstrations and disorder

Introduction

Our first set of case studies focuses on political demonstrations. The first example quite clearly comes into that category. In April 1983, local political and trade union leaders organized a demonstration against a visit to Sheffield by Mrs Thatcher. The outcome was almost entirely orderly. This took place during the period of our fieldwork, so we were able to study the whole event in some detail. Our account is therefore based on a multiplicity of sources. Our fieldworker observed the meetings of organizers and the demonstration itself. Documents of various kinds relating to the demonstration, such as leaflets and circulars, were collected. Local and national media coverage of the event was carefully monitored. A survey of a crude sample of just over 300 of the 4,000 to 5,000 demonstrators present was conducted by a team of polytechnic undergraduates using a standardized questionnaire. The principal organizers of the protest were interviewed, as were the Chief and Deputy Chief Constable of South Yorkshire.

This example of an orderly demonstration is in this section compared with what were strictly speaking rallies. During the early part of the miners’ strike in April 1984, two rallies were held by members of the NUM in Sheffield within a week of each other. Incidents of disorder occurred both during and after the first rally, held to lobby a meeting of the union executive. The main part of the second rally to lobby a conference of national delegates remained largely orderly but there was a serious incident of disorder shortly afterwards. Both of the main rallies were observed. The same two senior police officers were again interviewed. Twelve members of the Yorkshire area NUM gave us interviews and we had access to sworn statements and court evidence given by witnesses and participants about events after the second rally. Media coverage was more extensive than that for the Thatcher Unwelcoming’ demonstration, including detailed eye-witness accounts from journalists.

Description and analysis of the Thatcher Unwelcoming’ demonstration is the subject of chapter one. The equivalent for the NUM rallies is provided in chapter two. In chapter three the case studies are compared with each other and with other major studies of disorder at demonstrations. These include the accounts by Halloran et al (1970) of the 1968 Anti-Vietnam war demonstration, the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) inquiry (1980) into events around a National Front election meeting held in Southall in 1979, and the Report of the Independent Inquiry Panel (1985) to Manchester City Council about a visit to the city’s university by Home Secretary Leon Brittan in 1985. A model is then developed of the factors which predispose political demonstrations to greater or lesser degrees of order or disorder.

1
The Cutlers’ Feast demonstration, April 1983

Background

The Cutlers’ Feast is an annual Sheffield event, with origins in the fifteenth century as a celebration of the trade. Originally, the Feast lasted for three days and was the excuse for a local holiday. A tradition was established for the Master Cutler to invite a principal guest to show gratitude for some favour extended to the cutlery industry, or in anticipation of future benevolence (De Gorde Peach 1960).

At various times in its history, the Feast, as a symbol of wealth and prestige, has been the occasion for political protest. As late as 1868, a local Liberal MP was threatened with violence should he attend the Feast. In the twentieth century, controversy has been less frequent, though in 1971 the Conservative Prime Minister, Edward Heath, attended the Feast during conflict over his Industrial Relations Bill. As he stepped from his car at the entrance to the Cutlers’ Hall, an apple was thrown at him by one of the 300 demonstrators present. Fighting broke out as police moved in and eleven people were arrested.

James Callaghan, Labour Prime Minister, fared no better in 1979 when he was invited to receive the freedom of the city during the ‘Winter of Discontent’, when the Trade Union movement opposed his government’s counter-inflationary policy. Callaghan was met outside the City Hall by 200 demonstrators campaigning against low pay. The demonstration itself was peaceful, though his acceptance speech was heckled.

The decision was taken in 1983 to invite Mrs Thatcher to be the guest of honour at the Feast. During the previous two years, the Prime Minister had become a regular target for angry protestors. Various incidents had occurred during her visits to Warminster and Bristol in 1981; Grantham, Glasgow, and Aberdeen in 1982; Bingley, Lancashire, and Cambridge early in 1983. Eggs, flour, and tomatoes had occasionally been thrown at Mrs Thatcher’s car with some arrests as a result. A hostile reception seemed likely when she visited a city whose industry had virtually collapsed, governed by a left-wing council opposed to rate-capping. Predictably, local political leaders announced their intention to organize a demonstration.

The impetus for the demonstration was provided at a steelworkers’ rally in Sheffield on 29 January 1983, the day after her acceptance of the invitation was disclosed in the Sheffield Star. At the rally, speakers advocated some form of protest. A local political activist approached two speakers from the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation (ISTC) and expressed his willingness to organize and publicize a demonstration if they would act as figureheads. This they agreed to do.

A Thatcher Reception Committee’ was formed and expanded around this nucleus. Approaching the Labour group on Sheffield City Council, the committee discovered that the local Trades Council and District Labour Party were forming an ‘Unwelcoming Committee’ of their own. The Reception Committee were invited to merge with this ‘official’ body. Whilst suspicious of the motives of the Labour group in view of impending local elections, they agreed.

Major disagreements about strategy threatened this alliance. The Reception Committee advocated industrial action to bring Sheffield to a standstill but the Unwelcoming Committee favoured an orderly demonstration. These differences were never satisfactorily resolved. As leader of the Unwelcoming Committee, Roger Barton took the view that the impact of the demonstration would occur as much in the build-up to the event, as during and after it. Consequently the Unwelcoming Committee distributed in shopping centres, factories, and unemployment benefit offices leaflets including supportive statements from a range of local political groups. Letters and posters were sent out to various organizations requesting their support.

The Reception Committee favoured a mass appeal. The Socialist Workers’ Party produced and distributed thousands of posters and leaflets bearing a huge head-and-shoulders portrait of the Prime Minister captioned: ‘Stop Thatcher! Demonstrate April 28th’. Such differences, manifestly of style and latently of objectives, produced a deterioration in relations between the two groups, culminating in an acrimonious meeting early in March when a permanent split occurred. This division did not radically affect the outcome of the demonstration, since the Unwelcoming Committee soon established a dominant position.

This dominance was especially evident in their use of the local media to put across their hopes and intentions for the demonstration. One example of the sophistication of their strategy was to promise a spectacular finale to the demonstration which would be talked about for years to come. This transpired to be a minute’s silence for the unemployed, not a wholly original gesture, but one which served to whet the media’s appetite. Local radio gave airtime to the organizers, though avoiding any implicit endorsement of the demonstration. Thus coverage included an allegation that the City Council had threatened to blacklist the firm with the contract to ferry the Cutlers’ Feast guests to and from the hall.

Press coverage was more partisan. The pre-demonstration editorials in the local evening Sheffield Star tended to express approval for the demonstration as defined by the Unwelcoming Committee. On 27 April, its editorial saw the demonstration as ‘a welcome chance for Sheffield to state its case and express its feelings’ which ‘should not be wasted’. The following evening’s edition carried an open letter to Mrs Thatcher, appealing to her to recognize the protest as ‘a human cry of distress from a community that is suffering and full of fear for the future’. By contrast, the daily Morning Telegraph projected the views of its business readers, some of whom would be attending the Feast. Its leader writer on 28 April considered it ‘shameful’ that a guest of the city should be treated to such a reception. It forecast that ‘the whole squalid, shabby business’ would be all too predictable, ‘the converted yelling shoulder to shoulder with the converted’. ‘Rent-a-mob’ protestors and their ‘exhibitionism’ would only damage Sheffield’s reputation. Even here, however, there was no direct suggestion that any disorder would occur. The objection was to the lack of courtesy involved rather than to any threat to public order. Since the police also expressed their hope that order would prevail, the immediate context of the demonstration betrayed no hint of potential disorder.

Overview

To understand the outcome of the demonstration, it is important to establish a sense of what the crowd was like. Our survey of the demonstrators, which was random in the literal rather than the scientific sense, provided a rough profile of the demonstrators. Of the 4,000 to 5,000 people attending the demonstration, 58 per cent were male and 42 per cent female. Eleven per cent of the demonstrators were under 18 years of age; 38 per cent were between 18 and 24; 34 per cent between 25 and 34; and the remainder (17 per cent) were over 35 years old. Ninety-one per cent of our respondents were residents of Sheffield.

Approximately one third of the demonstrators belonged to the Labour Party, just under a quarter to CND, and one sixth to trade unions. Also present, though fewer, were members of women’s groups, the Communist Party, the Socialist Workers’ Party, ethnic and anti-racist organizations, and tenants’ and pensioners’ action groups. But a third of those present belonged to no such organization (table 1.1).

Table 1.1 Political affiliation of demonstrators at the ‘Thatcher Unwelcoming’

Political group	%
Labour Party	34
CND	23
Trade union	17
Women’s group	8
Socialist Workers’ Party	3
Ethnic organization	3
Communist party	3
SDP Liberal Alliance	2
None	33
Others	1

N = 314

Multiple responses allowed

Of every ten demonstrators, two were unemployed, four were students, three were employed in non-manual and one in manual occupations (t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of tables and figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The approach
• Part one: Demonstrations and disorder
• Part two: Picketing and disorder
• Part three: Community disorders
• Part four: Conclusions
• Postscript
• Bibliography
• Index