The difficulty we are faced with, as a society in the context of a ‘politics of riot’, is that meaningful dialogue to address this important question is almost impossible.
By Clifford Stott, senior lecturer in crowd psychology at the University of Liverpool, and chief scientific officer for pan-European football police training project
How did a peaceful protest on Saturday evening escalate to the serious rioting over consecutive nights on a scale not witnessed since the ‘inner city’ riots of the 1980s?
The difficulty we are faced with, as a society in the context of a ‘politics of riot’, is that meaningful dialogue to address this important question is almost impossible.
What dominates at present are vitriolic debates loaded with moral indignation that are as much about pathologising crowd action, attributing blame and denying responsibility as they are about truth and objectivity.
If the political discourse is anything to go by our society is under attack from ‘outsiders’ hell bent on ‘mindless criminality’ from whom we need protection through robust policing.
The spread of this ‘disorder’ to other areas such as Hackney, Peckham and Croydon is described as ‘copycat’; a notion that conveys that people are drawn into the looting and attacks not because of any meaningful processes but simply because they have seen these things going on.
Another feature that is a focus of media analysis is the potentially negative role played by the Blackberry mobile phone and its unique ‘closed’ and relatively anonymizing mass messaging system.
But this transition from peaceful to riotous crowds is, of course, one of the fundamental questions of crowd psychology.
In addressing it over the last thirty years my colleagues and I have made some important advances in scientific understanding of how and why riots come about.
Of central importance is that we know that ‘riots’ cannot be understood as an explosion of ‘mob ‘irrationality’. Nor can they be adequately explained in terms of individuals predisposed to criminality by nature of their pathological disposition.
The behavior of these people in smashing up their ‘own communities’ may seem irrational to some but to the ‘rioters’ themselves these targets are highly meaningful. These meanings in turn always relate to their sense of themselves as a social group and of the illegitimacy of their relationship to others around them.
In this respect it is highly meaningful that these riots began in a context of the shooting of Mark Duggan. This incident represented for many within his community the ongoing antagonistic relationship they have with the Metropolitan Police that fed into the social and psychological dynamics of the events on Saturday night.
It is highly relevant that in the context of these riots people have taken the emerging opportunity to target shops selling high-end electrical goods, clothes and jewelry.
In this age of austerity, such items are becoming increasingly unobtainable to ever-larger sections of the working class and it should not be surprising that some are using the riots as an opportunity to obtain them.
To render crowd action as meaningful and driven to a large degree by contextual issues is not to act as an apologist for these riots. Nor is it to accept as legitimate the attacks against ordinary working people, businesses, homes and families.
In fact our work has played an important role in developing policing methods that prevent riots from happening. Our science also underpins many of the recent recommendations made by the HMIC following the death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests.
These approaches do not rely on the reactive use of force. Instead they prioritize proactive interventions based upon dialogue as a means for building and maintaining police legitimacy.
Our argument then is that to render the riots meaningless is actually to deny the opportunity that we must take to understand them if we are to take the appropriate measures that will prevent them in the future.
153 Responses to “A crowd psychology analysis of the riots”
Enabled by Design
RT @leftfootfwd: #psychology analysis of #riots: http://bit.ly/ppkiNo by Dr Stott of Uni of Liverpool who was interviewed on @BBCNews today
Noel McDermott
Yes we need to find the meaning in these events. I might add there are other things such as boredom, alcohol and drug disinhibition etc going on as well as some fo the factors you touch upon. Sometimes it is useful to take an aggregation perspective in terms of understanding individual agency and social action. I think this may be more true in the age of mass availability social communications media. Social in this context meaning available for opportunistic usage.
Joseph Poser
RT @leftfootfwd: Crowd Psychologists take on riots, definitely worth a read http://t.co/SXyhBcJ
Anon E Mouse
Clifford Stott, – What a load of nonsense that does nothing but feed into the bleeding heart liberal brigade batch of excuses. Is this really the best analysis that a “senior lecturer” in our country can manage?
You say that: “The behavior of these people in smashing up their ‘own communities’ may seem irrational to some but to the ‘rioters’ themselves these targets are highly meaningful.”
Yes they are meaningful to these greedy, feckless criminals who totally disrespect other people and their property. All those shops were chosen because the feral criminals wanted to steal phones, trainers and plasma TV’s.
There are people who had homes yesterday and tonight they have nothing. Absolutely nothing except a burned out shell with all their irreplaceable belongings trashed and done whilst the police watched on doing nothing because of politically correct idiots that have been given a voice in our country.
The hypocrite Polly Toynbee types who preach about climate change whilst flying to her villa in Italy every week.
What on earth does your final remark: “These approaches do not rely on the reactive use of force. Instead they prioritise proactive interventions based upon dialogue as a means for building and maintaining police legitimacy”
actually do to put a roof over those people’s heads?
A fiver says your home wasn’t under attack last night. Come down from your ivory tower, walk a mile in their shoes and let’s see if you still come up with these pathetic excuses for bad behaviour. Tough on crime?
Danny Thompson
Bleeding heart liberalism RT @hedkrash The #londonriots – a left wing analysis presents a challenging view @leftfootfwd http://bit.ly/n1aAQe