Complexity and Social Movements: Multitudes at the Edge of Chaos ...

74 States fight back
‘green Parliament Square’ by planting verges and ornamental areas with
vegetables, a horticultural use of public space not seen since the rationing
associated with the Second World War. We have examined the portrayal of
this event by police and politicians as the creation of a ‘new folk devil’ elsewhere
(Wahl-Jorgensen 2003, Donson et al. 2004). For present purposes
the important features of this work are, a media portrayal of AGM activists
consistent with Cohen’s original (1972) folk devil thesis; their depiction as
the ‘the personification of evil’ (Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994); and the use
of such images to enable ‘ideological exploitation’ by a range of commentators
(Thompson 1995: 39). Significantly, we found an absence of the
usual ‘moral panic’ associated with a new ‘folk devil’, which is often central
to the mobilisation of public fear and acquiescence in the face of new policing
methods and public acceptance of stereotypic representations (McRobbie
1994: 199). Despite this, prominent politicians and police commentators
acted as if such a panic was underway in terms of public order issues
without explicating the anatomy of the underlying crisis, largely because
this would involve them in accepting central tenets of the activists’ arguments
as legitimate concerns. 9 Here, we suggest that subsequent revisions to
legislation on the detention of terrorist suspects has begun to make the
normative symmetry between democracy and freedom problematic.
The ‘Devil’ is in the detail
Cohen emphasised three key stages in the media portrayal of a social actor
as demonic. A particular word or phrase – anti-capitalist protestor –
becomes associated with a delinquent or deviant status; key objects – hairstyle,
clothing – come to symbolise the word/phrase – resulting in these objects
becoming symbols of the attached status and the associated emotions
(Cohen 1972: 134). The life style attributes of targeted social actors in the
UK have been subject to a process of legal incorporation since direct action
made the legal definition of ‘breach of the peace’ problematic in the 1980s
(Welsh 2000). The 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (CJA) represented
an initial consolidation of this judicial drift re-defining trespassory
assembly and naming specific life style attributes as public order issues.
‘Rave’ culture and other urban musical innovations were also incorporated
within the CJA by reference to music characterised by a ‘repetitive beat’.
Within movement circles, this was inverted to include the repetitive beating
of police batons’ on riot shields, a rhythmic repetitive sound frequently preceding
raids and evictions. The adoption of such tactics varied across police
authorities reflecting chief constables prioritisation and interpretation of
national legislation. 10
As direct action sites spread across the United Kingdom, the number of
police authorities confronting movement activists multiplied with the use of
‘civil contractors’ and feudal legal institutions such as County Sheriffs
increasing. 11 The Prevention of Terrorism Act 2000 represented a further