CLIFFORD STOTT OPINION Mob mentality?


The study of crowd psychology is essential to understanding how and why riots come about, and how to prevent them, argues Dr Clifford Stott


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AIRO HAS RECENTLY been the focus for perhaps the most fascinating series of crowd events since the ‘velvet revolutions’ of the late 1980s. Despite a peaceful


beginning, conflict emerged when the widely despised police tried to disperse the crowds through force. The violence ebbed as the police withdrew, and the arriving army were embraced as liberators. This was not an uncontrolled explosion of rage


then, but a meaningful attack on a specific authority that had lost legitimacy. Of course, there were other transitions; at the height of the protest pro-Mubarak supporters mobilised in an attempt to destabilise the crowds’ revolutionary thrust. And it was only then that widespread collective conflict again emerged. Eventually, the forces of change became so strong


that the army effectively undertook a coup d’état. This episode demonstrates once again how the actions of crowds are not peripheral phenomena of passing curiosity. These crowds have played and will continue to play a central role in global politics. In this sense alone, Egypt demonstrates precisely why the study of crowds should be central to the social sciences. In particular, we see some powerful lessons about the nature of crowds in our own society. It is hard to see how the Cairo crowds can be


understood from the perspective of theories that render crowd action irrational. These were not ‘mobs’ blindly open to the casual influence of ‘foreign’ agitators seeking to destabilise a legitimate political regime – despite the regime’s attempts to define the situation in such terms. The crowds mobilised around a shared belief in the illegitimacy of the Mubarak regime and acted to create meaningful social change. These crowds were not the enemy of enlightened democracy but its origin. But the events in Egypt resonate powerfully


with the Elaborated Social Identity Model of crowd behaviour (ESIM). Research within the ESIM theoretical tradition demonstrates how crowds act in terms of shared beliefs about the social world around them. It has shown that the perceived legitimacy of the relationships between crowds and the authorities can be central to whether or not widespread collective violence develops. This is a general pattern: what is true of crowds in Egypt is true of crowds in the UK and this is why we have argued forcefully for an analysis of the role of police tactics in the disturbances surrounding the recent student protests in central London (Gorringe, Stott, and Rosie, 2010). The ESIM has recently played a significant role


in informing Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of the Constabulary’s (HMIC) inquiry into public order policing. The inquiry came about as a consequence


of the death of a member of the public following the use of the police tactic of ‘kettling’ during the 2009 ‘G20 protest’ in central London (Stott, 2009). In my report to the HMIC, I suggested that the police often rely too heavily on the use of force in their attempts to manage crowds. Such police tactics inadvertently run the danger of initiating and escalating ‘rioting’. Preliminary research suggests that there is


a need to develop techniques of dialogue and communication with the radicalised groups within protests crowds. Such non-confrontational techniques allow the police to move from the reactive controlling of ‘public disorder’ to the proactive facilitation of ‘public order’. Consequently, the police are much better positioned to prevent escalations of disorder and avoid the use of ‘kettling’ with all of its subsequent dangers.


“ ” i These crowds were not the


enemy of enlightened democracy but its origin


Not long after these recommendations were


published, November and December 2010 saw a series of student protests in London. During the first of these, protestors managed to occupy Conservative Party headquarters. Almost immediately the Metropolitan Police faced a media backlash against the core recommendations of the HMIC and of the science that underpinned them. And by the time the largest of these demonstrations occurred in December we had witnessed a return to ‘kettling’ in Parliament Square, widespread rioting and serious injuries to both protestors and police. There can be no sense in which the science of


crowd psychology can or should be seen as some panacea that can remove the potential for conflict from society. But this science has begun to make an important contribution to our understanding of how and why riots come about and of how to prevent them. What these episodes make clear is that an understanding of crowds is fundamentally important and has a place of central theoretical and practical importance within the social sciences.n


Dr Clifford Stott is Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology and director and founder of the Henri Tajfel Laboratory at the School of Psychology, the University of Liverpool. In 2005 he completed an ESRC research grant on Crowd Dynamics, Policing and ‘Hooliganism’ at Euro2004.


Email c.stott@liverpool.ac.uk Telephone 0151 794 1417 ESRC Grant Number RES-000-23-0617


SPRING 2011 SOCIETY NOW 17


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