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”
Psychiatry_JC
A crowd psychology analysis of the riots . http://bit.ly/rrPlct
Neurology_JC
A crowd psychology analysis of the riots . http://bit.ly/rrPlct
King of Frogs
Anon E Mouse – what a superb example of someone Not Getting the Point! No one, I repeat, no one here is trying to make excuses for the actions of the rioters nor is anyone forgetting about the victims here, some of whom, as you say, have been rendered homeless by the rioting. What this article is about, and the point you seem to be completely missing, is that to prevent this happening again, we need to understand why it happened at all – and if there’s one thing which wont help us to prevent us understanding and controlling such events is knee-jerk vitriol-spitting about how horrible it all is.
Yes, of course its horrible, of course it needs to be stopped, of course damage has to be redressed, no one’s disagreeing with you there, you’re preaching to the choir. The importance of the kind of research Dr Scott does lies in its ability to *explain* the actions of riots and *understand* what leads to them. These things don’t just happen, events have causes.
If it was just a bunch of selfish lazy “bad people” as you would have it, then why don’t these things happen all the time? There have been ample opportunities for rioting over the past 12 months, with all the demonstrations going on – why not then, why now? If you are so convinced that the rioters are just selfish, feckless, nasty people, then I challenge you to prove it – and no their actions as a crowd do not count as proof, many actions can have many causes, and just because something seems right in your gut doesn’t make it so. This is where science comes in, to figure out what causes are involved and what ones aren’t, without relying on intuition.
These questions need to be answered, and the process of answering them is not in any way aplogising for the actions of rioters and is certainly not in any way showing a lack of sympathy for the victims of these events, its just trying to look at them objectively and work out ways to prevent them in the future. If you don’t have the strength of character to look at these things scientifically, then maybe you shouldn’t be commenting on them.
Anon2
Anon E Mouse — To explain is not to excuse. Finding the causes of harm is necessary for manipulating them in order to reduce the likelihood of future harm. Sure, punish the wrongdoers, but don’t think that’s going to prevent this from happening again.
Ellie B
“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 …”
Of course bright, shiny things are a temptation – but these items are increasingly unobtainable for people across the whole social spectrum. This is not a class issue. There are many, many people who are struggling to make ends meet. Many people are angry. Many are frightened about their future prospects. Most are not violent; most are not looters. Common sense says that the roots of the violence lie in over-crowded classrooms, where kids get inadequate schooling and little personal attention (unless they misbehave). Many will have received poor parenting. Our modern culture does not seek to give its young people a code of conduct for decent living. Our kids are exposed to violent images and a glamorisation of lawlessness and immoral behaviour every day of their young lives(via TV soaps, computer games, violent movies – and often on the streets of their own communities). Their role models, in music, sport, the media are often self-seeking too. The majority of these kids are inarticulate and likely to be stuck within their cycle of disadvantage. Self-esteem for many comes not from personal achievement but from seeing themselves on (anti-)social media sites. Testosterone filled young men have always been thrill seekers ready to take a risk. As long as we continue to perpetuate a culture where ‘anything goes’ and where immorality and violence are glamorised, and where automation and computerisation are taking the place of community, discourse and human contact – this kind of behaviour will continue. These young people need to learn skills, crafts and professions that will give them a sense of belonging to a different strata of community; that will sustain them for the future – not land them in jail. It will take commitment, dialogue and a lot of hard work. I am not condoning what has happened – but these kids need help to recognise that they are individuals, not victims (of society). If they are so easily led, then so help us all in the future.