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

States fight back 75
consolidation of state powers but remained inadequate in the eyes of senior
police officers. Sir Charles Pollard, Thames Valley Chief Constable from
1997–2002 considered that ‘If anything we have not been bold enough in
seeing where the line is and going right up to the line to stop people who
are basically criminal people doing serious things – and it is that robustness
we have still not quite got’ (BBC 2 True Spies).
Chief constables continued lobbying for more powers, something confirmed
by Amanda Webster, Deputy Sheriff of Lancashire, commenting on her
experience of running training sessions at the Metropolitan Police Academy
at Hendon, London. In her view amongst the police the ‘the will to stamp
out extreme protest has intensified’, producing an ‘effective lobby ...to
curb the Movement’. The inclusion of animal rights and similar protests
within the Terrorism Act 2000 was part of a ‘backlash against extreme
protest’, to which she adds ‘similar draconian legislation will not be far
behind’ (Webster 2002).
Underlying the fractured and episodic media representation of public order
issues within the public sphere lay police and movement cultures interacting
on a day-to-day basis. Asymmetrical access and media credibility structures
the images of these interactions, which become dominated by ‘newsworthy’
events (Wahl-Jorgensen 2003). A repetitive cycle of representation has been
established revolving around Cohen’s tripartite schema.
In the run up to a protest event, police and senior politicians issue public
announcements emphasising the violent intent of protestors and the likelihood
of damage to property which are implicitly and or explicitly linked to
a more abstract threat to democracy and or civilisation. Such statements are
justified retrospectively through past examples of riotous assembly and
warn of future repetitions. Whilst political figures typically defend the right
of citizens to legitimate protest, there are also appeals for ordinary citizens
not to participate in ‘extreme’ AGM actions.
As we showed earlier (Chapter 3) this cycle of representation owes much
to global networking within and between police, intelligence and political
offices of state, foregrounding ‘fear’, ‘terror’ and ‘anarchy’. Once established
as dominant discourses within the public sphere, these tropes tend to silence
participants’ substantive grievances and motivations, collapsing complex
multiple identities to a ‘mob’. This discursively constructed ‘mob’ then
becomes the ‘object’ of policing strategies and operational practices. The
application of this label conceals the presence of numerous ‘respectable’ and
thoughtful citizens committed to positive change within society. Attempts by
activists to gain mainstream media coverage for systematic debate on contested
issues such as social justice, rights of assembly and freedom of speech
is effectively foreclosed by their ‘deviant’ construction.
Traditionally this silencing process has been part of the establishments’
capacity to manage and control political debate and shape public expectations
(Middlemass 1979), something made increasingly difficult by modern
media technologies (Thompson 1995). Generally, politicians also attempt