Conceptions of Police and Policing

257 Pages·2017·1.86 MB·English

Policing protest in an age of austerity:
How the Metropolitan police service (MPS) responded to anti-austerity movements after the
financial crash
Aidan O’Sullivan

Abstract

What follows is PhD-level research submitted in 2017 to the University of Liverpool. The research
examined the response of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) to anti-austerity protests in London
following the financial crisis of 2008 and the election of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition
government in 2010. Research began in the wake of prevalent controversies at the time around how
the police deployed force against demonstrators including the use of containment of large crowds
for a substantial length of time and the death of a member of the public, Ian Tomlinson, after being
struck with a baton during the G20 protests in 2009 (Rosie and Gorringe, 2009). There were also
concerns around how the MPS gathered intelligence with Forward Intelligence Teams (FIT) accused
of gathering and retaining data improperly (HAC, 2009), as well as emerging scandals of undercover
officers amongst environmental and social justice campaigns (BBC, 2012a). These controversies led
the police to innovate new methods of communication with protesters including liaison officers to
mix in the crowd and explain police tactics for the day.
This research investigated how the MPS deployed its different tactics which were grouped
under the strategies of force, surveillance and negotiated management. Drawing primarily on
writings on police culture it used a documentary analysis and a series of semi-structured interviews
with MPS officers to examine how the police conceive of public order policing, anti-austerity
protests and how their tactics were deployed and may change in the future.
The conclusion ends with several interesting insights from the data. The most significant is
how the police interviewees see little problem with how the MPS deploy surveillance. This is
important as they recognise the controversy that can arise through the use of force. They tend to
treat the recent moves towards liaison policing to replace the use of force at protests as the
uppermost concern. They acknowledge the hostility that surveillance can engender in activists but
see this as largely unavoidable and can be dismissive of civil liberty concerns. This is in contrast to
the fact that the documentary analysis of policy recognises that the use of intelligence gathering
needs to be proportionate (ACPO, 2010). It is also concerning in a time when there are several
revelations around undercover officers embedded in environmental and social justice campaigns.
This leads the research to recommend that any future research on public order policing must find a
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way to surmount the obstacle of gaining access to, and properly assessing, the role of undercover
policing to complement research on overt forms of intelligence gathering on the day of the protest.

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Policing protest in an age of austerity:
How the Metropolitan police service (MPS)
responded to anti-austerity movements after the
financial crash

Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool

for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy by
Aidan O'Sullivan
30/09/2016

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Acknowledgements

First and foremost, thanks must be given to Prof. Barry Godfrey and Dr. Ross McGarry, whose
constant supervision and valuable suggestions were essential for the formation, and completion of
this thesis. Appreciation is also extended to the respective internal and external examiners, Prof.
Barry Goldson and Dr. Bethan Loftus, for a challenging yet enlightening thesis examination and the
necessary revisions they recommended. Finally, the five years of counsel and general support of
family, friends and colleagues is too extensive to satisfactorily detail here, but special mention must
be reserved for Lucy Townsend, who has lived with this thesis as long as I have.

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Table of contents

Chapter 1: Introduction............................................................................................................P. 6

Chapter 2: Theorising policing, crowds and powers.……………..………………………………………………..P. 13
Chapter 3: Methodology...........................................................................................................P. 47
Chapter 4: Conceptions of police and policing...........................................................................P. 72
Chapter 5: Conceptions of anti-austerity activism.....................................................................P. 92
Chapter 6: Tactics of force.......................................................................................................P. 121
Chapter 7: Tactics of surveillance.............................................................................................P. 162
Chapter 8: Tactics of communication.......................................................................................P. 184
Chapter 9: Conclusion..............................................................................................................P. 206
Appendix 1: Coding Guide for analysis of documents and interview data……………………...........P. 221
Appendix 2: Information sheet and consent form.…………………………………………………………………P. 225

Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….P. 231

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Chapter 1: Introduction

This work is the culmination of five years of research on the response of the Metropolitan Police
Service (MPS) to the anti-austerity protests in London. It covers a timeline from the financial crisis of
2008 and the election of the Conservative and Liberal Democratic coalition government in 2010 who
instigated a wide-ranging series of austerity policies on public spending. The timeline ends just after
the election of a Conservative government of 2015. This research analyses how rank and file police
officers conceived of the MPS public order response to protests against austerity and how these
interpretations differ from the narratives of policy bodies, civil rights observers and activist
organisations. It argues that unresolved issues in the police use of surveillance can undermine
attempts to move to a style of policing based more around facilitation. Also due to certain aspects of
the police role, such as the expectation to protect private property and maintain public order, there
are limitations as to how far the police can facilitate peaceful protest.
This introduction will explain the background to this research. The next subsection will
outline the research questions and the major theories used to answer them. It will reference the
major findings at the end of this research and their contribution to knowledge, before outlining the
structure of the thesis and its chapters.
The research starts with the G20 protests in 2009 as they were the first significant protest
action after the financial crisis. Although they occurred when Labour was in office and before the
austerity policies came into being, these protests form an important prelude to protests against the
austerity policies of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition voted into government a year later.
How the MPS reacted to them gives a good indication of what strategies they had in place just
before the anti-austerity movements. The most serious incident however was the death of a
member of the public, Ian Tomlinson, who collapsed and died ten minutes after being struck by a
police baton (Rosie and Gorringe, 2009; Hemmings, 2009).
Police action was prominent at anti-austerity demonstrations. As well as large national
demonstrations from public sector unions, there were a lot of different protest groups with differing
sizes of memberships, protest methods and objectives. In 2010 student union protests against
university fees were prominent. This resulted in high profile stories of damage to the headquarters
of the Conservative Party on Embankment in London resulting in several arrests (BBC, 2010) and
property damage at another student protest in Parliament Square the same year when the police
put them into containment for several hours. Even VIPs were affected when a car carrying the Prince
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of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall got caught up in a melee after breakaway groups of protesters
ran through the West End (Wintour and Watt, 2010; Hudson, 2011). Another high profile story
involved the UK Uncut collective who engaged in peaceful disruption of businesses it believed
avoided tax, thus increasing the austerity burden on public services. Protesters occupied the luxury
shopping arcade, Fortnum and Mason and after negotiations with the police, they received a
promise of no arrest if they left. However when they complied the police immediately detained
them (Malik, 2011). Another key civil disobedience campaign was the Occupy London protests that
drew inspiration from the Occupy Wall Street Protest in New York. Occupy London attempted to set
up a protest encampment within the London Stock Exchange, but the heavy police presence
prevented this happening. This resulted in the encampment being set up in front of the nearby St
Paul’s Cathedral and remaining there for months under intense media scrutiny before the police
broke it up in February 2012 (BBC, 2012b). This was followed by a later protest by Occupy London in
2014 outside Parliament Square that the police once again cleared out after a few days (Johnston,
2014). Controversy often surrounded police tactics in response to these protests. The outcry caused
the police to try and redraw their approach and reduce the use of force to a minimum.
All of these examples are only a selection of the many different protest activities and groups
that formed in the wake of austerity reforms. It demonstrates how nebulous and widespread they
were, consisting of several different groups with different dispositions and styles of protests. The
protests that followed in response to austerity presented a substantial new challenge to MPS public
order policy and the research built an analysis of how they responded to this by facilitating protest
and limiting the disruption it caused.
The following subsection will outline the research questions formed to investigate this new
policing environment.

1.1 Research question and aims
This section shall describe the main research question and aims. It will outline how this influenced
the choice of literature and the methodology to shape the analysis of the chosen topic. The next two
chapters will give a deeper insight into the literature and the methodology respectively.
The main research question of this thesis was to analyse the approaches the MPS used
against anti-austerity protests since the financial crisis of 2008. This research detailed the extent to
which the MPS resorted to strategies of force, surveillance, communication or a combination of
these to reduce disorder from opposition to anti-austerity policies. It also took into account the
extent to which the MPS tailored its deployment for each protest, depending on whether they
considered it was disruptive yet legal, or if the demonstration in question was illegal and disruptive
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yet peaceful or if it was illegal, disruptive and violent. The reason for this choice of research was
because the police use of force and surveillance had already raised serious concerns and criticisms.
This led commentators to increasingly emphasise police use of communication and facilitation while
working with protesters as a way of reshaping the public order policy of the MPS (HMIC, 2009a;
HMIC, 2009b). The latter strategies would often be manifest in tactics such as negotiated
management, where protest organisations meet the police before the day of the protest and
arrange a plan and route that suits both parties. There is also “liaison policing”, where designated
police officers mix with the crowd and inform them of what police tactics are for the day and relay
information and crowd intentions to the public order commanders.
The research assessed the extent to which the police manage opposition before they judge it
to be illegal or a risk to public safety and ultimately respond with force. It outlined the conditions
and factors that lead the police to use physical intervention and what they considered to be the ideal
balance struck between allowing dissent and minimising disruption to other users of the city.
It paid special attention to tactics of communication like negotiated management and liaison
policing and the extent they represent a move away from overt enforcement and surveillance or
whether they are just a mere corollary to these tactics. It questioned the degree to which the MPS
were receptive to criticism of their initial response to anti-austerity protests and tried to shift their
policy to a more communicative and conciliatory approach emphasising consent.
It also questioned whether liaison policing and negotiated management could also act as
methods of co-opting protests into regulatory prerogatives and if so what consequences a
movement faces if it agrees to this. This included the possibility that if social movements are to be
an effective opposition to government policy they must consider whether this requires them to
avoid co-option, and to what extent this would put themselves and their members at the risk of
more punitive police measures.
To help answer this question and the attendant aims a number of classic and contemporary
authors informed this work. Writings on public order included authors such as Della Porta (Della
Porta and Reiter, 1998; Della Porta, 1999; Della Porta and Fillieule, 2004), the strategic
incapacitation theory of Noakes and Gilham (Noakes and Gilham, 2006; Gilham, Edwards and
Noakes, 2013), Fassin’s urban ethnography of inner-city policing (Fassin, 2013) and the Flashpoints
model of David Waddington (2007). These outlined previous insights on how the strategies police
use and their institutional organisation would influence the approach towards certain
demonstrations. The thesis also uses more recent theories such as the Elaborated Social Identity
Model from Reicher (2011) that helped form the basis for liaison policing which was a focus of this
research. These were synthesised with insights from writers on policing, particularly police culture
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such as Skolnick (2011), Waddington (1994; 2005; 2006), Loftus (2009; 2010) and many other
authors. The work of these authors on how police conceive of their role and how they construct
certain individuals as likely offenders was valuable for analysis on how the MPS viewed their public
order role, and how they constructed anti-austerity protesters.
The reason the research focused so prominently on writings on police was due to the fact
that recruiting activists as research participants was unsuccessful leading the interviews to consist
entirely of police officers. It was decided to sharpen the focus of the research on how the police view
their role in keeping public order, the protesters and the tactics they used while pre-existing
research and theories helped to analyse and assess interviewees’ answers and draw out similarities
to, or distinctions from, the pre-existing literature on policing. It also analysed the extent to which
the literature on policing can apply to public order and anti-austerity protesters in London since
2008. The conclusion outlines the subtle similarities but also the differences between the picture of
policing in the literature and that gained from this research.
The data search collected a variety of policy documents for analysis including transcripts of
parliamentary committee hearings, reports from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC)
after the G20 protests, the then Association for Chief Police Officers (ACPO) (Now the National Police
Chiefs’ Council), the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime, NGOs and activists’ rights organisations.
Analysis of these focused on how the major policy making agencies described the police and the
protesters. This was then contrasted with the accounts from interviews with six police officers from
the MPS, to see what points of agreement or disagreement there were on attributing causes of
disorder. It also investigated what they viewed as the biggest challenges and opportunities for future
public order policing in the capital.
The research restricted itself to anti-austerity protest despite being able to have focused on
other types of protest such as environmental, anti-racist or far-right protests. The latter might have
consisted of entirely different participants to those in the anti-austerity protests and not only that
there might be different issues such as the fact that the last two categories often involve a counter-
protest, challenging an initial and ideologically hostile demonstration which is a situation not
prominent in anti-austerity protest.
The next subsection will outline the major contributions to knowledge that were identified
at the end of this research.

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1.2 Contributions to knowledge
Researching the response of the MPS to the anti-austerity movements after the global financial crisis
produced several valuable findings that stand in contrast to some of the key insights of the
established policing literature it relied on.
The thesis relies on the conceptual triad of the strategies of force, surveillance and
communication. This leads it to highlight how the tactics these strategies use can have an influence
on each other when the police simultaneously deploy them on a protest. The thesis states that one
of the most controversial strategies, force, can be reshaped and used more judiciously in tandem
with video recording of activists and attempts at pre-event dialogue with protest groups. Video
recording activists, as a tactic of surveillance, can identify an activist who committed an offense. This
means that the police can arrest the activist when the latter is alone as opposed to in the midst of a
crowd who can get hostile with the police there is a show of force. Meanwhile if activist groups do
not respond to attempts at communication or dialogue before an event, a tactic of communication,
then this means that the police will judge force to be better deployed against them as opposed to
groups that do engage with attempts at dialogue. This means that these strategies do not merely
complement or replace each other but each one can interact in ways to reshape how the other two
are deployed. This forms a conceptual triad, where these strategies exist in an iterative process with
each other. This can be used to analyse the public order deployments of other police forces and
contexts.
The research also highlighted how public order policing presents a much different modality
of policing for constables than the beat policing that several established texts concentrate on.
Whereas the latter often focuses on the centrality of discretion for lower-ranking constables due to
the relatively low profile they enjoy while they are on patrol (Kinsey, Lea and Young, 1986; Ericson,
2005), public order policing is much different. Commanding officers exhibit a tight control over the
operation due to the high profile of the latter scenario and the possibility of negative public reaction.
This means that lower-ranking officers often have to resolve themselves to the fact that they do not
have much independence of action in their public order roles.
The thesis also discovers instances of enthusiasm for the use of surveillance and
communication among research participants as capabilities of their role as police officers. This is not
highlighted as much in the policing literature that emphasises an excitement around the possible use
of force (Westmarland, 2008; Fassin, 2013).
It also discovers that due to the wide ranging effects of austerity to government spending,
including effects on police force budgets (Brogden and Ellison, 2013), interviewees found themselves
sympathetic to opposition to austerity. It has always been recognised that the police tend to split
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