UK Riots

Odysseus

The first is just a commentary on the riots; the second is a pdf authored by psychologist Clifford Stott who is a main contributor to the first article. I'm not familiar with the site "Minds Hacks" or the author by based on a quick glance they both seem worthy of a read, the link are http://mindhacks.com/2011/08/10/riot-psychology/ and20Final%20Submission%20Draft%20%2814-9%29.pdf


http://www.liv.ac.uk/psychology/staff/CStott/HMIC%20Report%20Crowd%20Psychology%20-%I was sent these links by a friend; and was thinking that a few people here may be interested.

The post ended up a bit messed up the last line should be the first, it should still make sense.

krd

Yeah, I do know Mindhacks. It's a pop psychology blog. I have never found anything useful on it.


vaughanbell
I’m no expert and I’ve been watching the UK riots from 5,000 miles away from the safety of Colombia (a sentence I never thought I’d write) but it strikes me that most of the rioters probably never thought of the police as a legitimate force to begin with.

This goes beyond establishing police legitimacy on the day and means many of the standard assumptions of behind crowd control probably don’t work as well.


The question you'd have to ask, is not whether there's been a failure in the application of crowd control psychology. But, has the legitimacy of the police been eroded long before the day. Have the individuals had individual experiences that have coloured their feelings. Rioters in apartheid era South Africa, did not see the police as legitimate. And the same in troubles era Northern Ireland. Mingling among them rioters would have likely inflamed them more.

You're not looking at a failure in application of psychology in crowd management. You're looking at a political failure. Even if the rioters are not politically concious. Even the criminality, theft, arson, it comes down to a political problem.

There is something good in this. If the police/authorities have been employing psychologists to help them manage political problems through "Jedi" mind tricks - then they have failed. The problem of legitimacy is a deeper problem.
Which has to be dealt with by legitimate means, and not by some Wizard of Oz trick.

I was at all the major protests in Dublin over the last few years. Despite what the news media said, there was usually very little trouble. And this would be because, most people know the guards are as pissed off as everyone else. At the December budget protest, the streets were covered in ice and snow, passions were running high, and not a single snowball was fired at the guards.

At that protest, I was standing beside people who lit flares. Just theatrics. This was reported by some elements of the media as protesters threatening gardai. If there had really been trouble makers there, there would have been a snowball fight. In reality there was nearly a sense of solidarity. There was a sense of solidarity.

There's a real moral problem in how psychologists should let themselves be used by politicians or military. Even how they should let themselves be used by employers.

Allegedly, Fidel Castro used psychologists to assist him in controlling the people of Cuba for decades. Even using them to assist in torture. Castro, was so quite about the torture in Guantanamo bay, because he knew to say anything would be like a very dirty kettle calling the pot black. There are over 700 hundred prisons on the island of Cuba.

The torturers at Guantanamo were assisted by psychologists.

A psychologist assisting in psychological torture, is as guilty as a doctor assisting in applying physical pain to a subject.


Crowd psychology does not explain violence in the video clip below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cbVW_QS2eE

TrollHammaren

This is better than those other pop psychology articles that throw around terms like "groupthink" and "mob mentality" without questioning whether they're applicable to the situation.

The UK riots are quite complicated in that just assessing the social psychology of the group fails to account for the wider social and the political elements. I can't argue with the reasoning that a few agent provocateurs can rally all kinds of chaos. If you see how the riot police traditionally work, they create a barricade of bodies and face off against the crowds. A rioter in a group is well aware in this situation that he or she can blend into the crowd, and confronting the riot police in this situation could allow for all kinds of fun.

In these situations, it makes most sense to break the rioters up into individual, manageable cells. Horse and dog units can be very effective for this, because no one wants to fúck with a growling German Shepard. Obviously it's easier said than done, and a lot more complicated than this, but pulled off properly, this approach is much more effective than creating a wall of targets for the group to throw bricks at.

I tend to agree with krd's assertion that psychologists should be responsible about how they assist governments, armies, police forces etc. I'm usually quite anti-authority in general, but there's definitely something to be said for police using the advice of psychologists to effectively resolve a riot peacefully. Rather this than Cameron's sickening "let's monitor the lowlifes" approach.

Edit: Just for the sake of fairness, that's not me directly quoting David Cameron, but rather my interpretation of his attitude.

krd

TrollHammaren wrote: »

This is better than those other pop psychology articles that throw around terms like "groupthink" and "mob mentality" without questioning whether they're applicable to the situation.

There isn't a simple answer. With some of the people who've been coming before the courts so far, there seems to be a real mix of backgrounds. Some people do get caught up by the excitement, and get carried away. A few years back, at the love parade riots in Dublin, two Eastern Europeans were prosecuted for rioting. They weren't Irish republicans. They just got caught up in the riot and got carried away.

I knew someone who was in the Brixton riots in 1981. They had a good job and a university education. They were black and lived in Brixton. They said it had been building for years. The community's relationship with the police and vice versa was really awful.

The UK riots are quite complicated in that just assessing the social psychology of the group fails to account for the wider social and the political elements.

Something very complicated happened. I heard one guy in the English media saying not to rush to judgement, because a lot of it doesn't easily fit together. In different parts of London, different things happened. Some places there was outright simple looting, other places arson, different targets. It seems to run from destruction, to opportunistic theft and violence, to what could be carefully selected targets, and old grudges being settled.

I can't argue with the reasoning that a few agent provocateurs can rally all kinds of chaos.

I think there has to be some underlying tension before they can do that. I think the idea of small groups of diabolical ringleaders is typical authoritarian paranoia. Often these things are more spontaneous. The death of Mark Duggan sparked the riots. Like the court judgement on Rodney Kings case sparked the riots in Los Angelous. In LA there were no ring leaders. Within minutes of the court judgement angry people were on the streets smashing windows.

During the Civil Rights era in the US, the CIA and the FBI spent a fortune trying to find what they believed to be the secret ring leaders. They believed there was a secret cabal of white communists behind the movement. In reality it was much more spontaneous and grassroots.

If you see how the riot police traditionally work, they create a barricade of bodies and face off against the crowds. A rioter in a group is well aware in this situation that he or she can blend into the crowd, and confronting the riot police in this situation could allow for all kinds of fun.

The idea of the barricade is to focus the rioters in one place. If they're focussed on confronting the police they don't have time to rampage through the streets destroying stuff.

But there is a problem that the barricade in itself will provoke a riot. As it sets the stage.

In these situations, it makes most sense to break the rioters up into individual, manageable cells. Horse and dog units can be very effective for this, because no one wants to fúck with a growling German Shepard.

Fear in itself is a one time trick. If the crowd loses their fear of the dogs and horses, they become useless and even a problem for the police. I think horses are a bad idea. They're very skittish and once they lose their nerve they can be hard to control.

Obviously it's easier said than done, and a lot more complicated than this, but pulled off properly, this approach is much more effective than creating a wall of targets for the group to throw bricks at.

The English police may have been the victims of their own cleverness. The old technique was to form a wall - and do charges with that wall. But in recent years the English police came up with a new innovation which may have led to their downfall; The Kettle.

The Kettle works by surrounding the protesters, then moving in and trapping them. At first this was very effective. It was used against the student protests in England. Then the students discovered how to beat the kettle. Which was to break up into small groups and duck down side streets before the kettle could enclose them. They were even using text messages and twitter to coordinate their movements. The London rioters ,many whom had been at the student protests, copied this technique.

Small cells are the opposite of manageable. It's nearly impossible to coordinate police around them. You'd need an overwhelming number of police nearly everywhere.

So had the police never used the kettle, and had the students not learned how to beat the kettle, then the London riots may have been contained by the traditional wall. Now the crowd has learned a new technique, that they're not going to forget it. Once the shops are restocked, if the underlying problems haven't been dealt with - which it's unlikely they will have - there will be another eruption of rioting. And the rioters may be much cleverer the second time around.

I tend to agree with krd's assertion that psychologists should be responsible about how they assist governments, armies, police forces etc. I'm usually quite anti-authority in general, but there's definitely something to be said for police using the advice of psychologists to effectively resolve a riot peacefully.

There is something to be said for using psychologists to peacefully resolve a riot. But....

What I've heard about Castro's psychologists. They carefully monitor Cuban society, and advise on little pressure valves to be released here and there. Their overall mission is to serve the dictatorship.

I'm not sure if the Stasi of the GDR used psychologists. They had some highly refined techniques for inducing learned helplessness in the East German people. In the end they ultimately failed.

Rather this than Cameron's sickening "let's monitor the lowlifes" approach.

He's only playing to the gallery. As far back as 2008 he was warning there would be riots because of the underlying social tensions of "Broken Britain". He was right. Now he's in charge of "Broken Britain" it's still broken - and he's probably made it more broken and he knows it.

In Ireland people are very angry. I think had Fianna Fail tried to cling to power longer there would have been riots.


I think if we had a Cameron "I'm here to fill my boots and my friends boots and screw everyone else" we'd have riots. Maybe the advice a psychologist should give to Cameron is to resign.

TrollHammaren

krd wrote: »

There isn't a simple answer.

I absolutely agree.

krd wrote: »

I think there has to be some underlying tension before they can do that. I think the idea of small groups of diabolical ringleaders is typical authoritarian paranoia. Often these things are more spontaneous.

That's not what I'm getting at. Of course there has to be the tension and the setting there in the first place, I'm absolutely in agreement with you there. The thing is, though, everyone doesn't kick off at once. Working security at a nightclub, I've seen how gang brawls often kick off. Sure, there's the tension, testosterone, passive aggression and the likes there already, but it's usually the first guy throwing punches who sparks everything off. I'm not saying that a crowd of placid people can suddenly turn, I'm saying that a crowd of angry, tense people will, as a group, kick off when a few instigators strike first.

krd wrote: »

The idea of the barricade is to focus the rioters in one place. If they're focussed on confronting the police they don't have time to rampage through the streets destroying stuff.

I'm very familiar with the hows and whys of public order units - I'm not in a position to discuss it on boards, but I haven't always worked as a student/doorman/bum.

krd wrote: »

But there is a problem that the barricade in itself will provoke a riot. As it sets the stage.

That's more or less my point.

krd wrote: »

Fear in itself is a one time trick. If the crowd loses their fear of the dogs and horses, they become useless and even a problem for the police. I think horses are a bad idea. They're very skittish and once they lose their nerve they can be hard to control.

Unfortunately, I think you might be wrong there. Smalls cells of people are considerably easier to control, and dog and horse units have been shown to be very effective in disseminating massive groups. Obviously you wouldn't just use horse and dog units, but successfully integrated with riot units they can be an excellent asset. If you manage to successfully scatter the group once, then it's just a case of making sure that it doesn't kick off again, but that's another story.

krd wrote: »

Small cells are the opposite of manageable. It's nearly impossible to coordinate police around them. You'd need an overwhelming number of police nearly everywhere.

Are you suggesting a massive group is easier to manage? The idea is that if you break them up they can do less damage, and the more scattered and individuated groups are the easier the aggression is to diffuse.

krd wrote: »

There is something to be said for using psychologists to peacefully resolve a riot. But....

Hence why I agreed with you that psychologists should be responsible with their knowledge. I tend not to believe anything I hear about Cuba, anyway, because all the information we get seems to come from biased sources. That's another story anyway, and I don't want to derail this thread.

krd wrote: »

He's only playing to the gallery.

Regardless of whether he believes it or not, it's a sickening attitude. Again, I'm strying off topic.

krd wrote: »

Maybe the advice a psychologist should give to Cameron is to resign.

I think I agree with you.

krd

TrollHammaren wrote: »

Are you suggesting a massive group is easier to manage? The idea is that if you break them up they can do less damage, and the more scattered and individuated groups are the easier the aggression is to diffuse.

It's really a case of scale. If the police are seriously overwhelmed by small groups then they're in trouble.

It's a lot like guerilla warfare. Small groups can pin down a much larger force. They're more mobile, even sometimes they're just not there. If you look at Nortern Ireland. Had the British forces been able to confront the entire republican movent on a single battle field, they would have overwhelmed them. As they were up against small cells, who could strike nearly anywhere, they couldn't defeat them.

At the height of the troubles in Nortern Ireland, it took tens of thousands of soldiers and police just to keep a lid on the place. NI has a fraction of the population of London. If the trouble was to keep going in London. Eventually they'd need to recruit a part-time anti-riot force, like they'd had tens of thousands of part-time RUC officiers in NI.


The rioters in London were communicating with each other. Identifying places where there wasn't a large police presence. The police did have thousands of officers out on the streets, but they couldn't be everywhere at once - there just wasn't enough of them.


And this is also where something funny happens. Small groups of rioters would turn up on deserted streets, and set about burning cars and smashing shop windows. You might assume, they'd need an over heated crowd for that level of aggression.


There's so many strange things about the riots.

This clip from Woolich. If you look at the rioters leading(guys in black with white trainers), and watch them throughout the clip, they look like they've been trained.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib5edeXXEN0

Torakx

I dont see the point of rioting myself.
Although i tend to have a very all or nothing approach to life,so maybe thats why.

I think overall prevention is better than the cure.

Had the government not pushed around the people its supposed to represent this may not have happened.And i think any common person could have told them that, let alone a psychologist.
The same goes for most if not all riots.
Governments are supposed to represent and when they do not the people will rise up.The more the oppression the more that will rise up and the worse it will be.

Its interesting to watch the riots though.
You can clearly tell when a rush is coming.As soon as the police look hesitant there is a mass psychological wave that most seem to pick up on and they all move as one and rush.
Its an interesting power struggle to watch.
The police should have known walking up a street was a bad idea and just standing there waiting for back up.
They should have pulled up in a couple of vans with full body padding and tear gas.Grabbed as many as they could put in the back of the vans and driven off to a holding area to be processed,then rinse repeat.

I would tend to side with the rioters though.I am against all the corrupt governments.
I dont see rioting as a solution though.
Logically if your government is misrepresenting you, it would be wiser to cut off the head...not the foot.

ps, i think it was the obvious failure of the police to commit that lead to the rioters percieving a shift in power to their advantage.
So the solution is dont give them that "in" next time.Also the rioters were afraid of the police until this happened.

krd

Torakx wrote: »

I dont see the point of rioting myself.
Although i tend to have a very all or nothing approach to life,so maybe thats why.

I think overall prevention is better than the cure.

I'm not going rioting. But I can see how it can come to people who would never imagine themselves rioting ending up doing it.

Had the government not pushed around the people its supposed to represent this may not have happened.And i think any common person could have told them that, let alone a psychologist.
The same goes for most if not all riots.

Well that's a big problem for the UK government. I think they were banking on apathy. They may have believed advisers and experts who told them their poor were happy with their mobile phones and trainers.

Governments are supposed to represent and when they do not the people will rise up.The more the oppression the more that will rise up and the worse it will be.

The problem, especially in democracy, is when a government chooses to represent one section of a population to the detriment of all others. That's what we had with Fianna Fail. A government that chose to look after pot bellied hob goblins over the rest of the people. (they're paying NAMA developers a wage of 200k a year - the poor boys are broke - bankruptcy and the dole is for the little people)

Its interesting to watch the riots though.
You can clearly tell when a rush is coming.As soon as the police look hesitant there is a mass psychological wave that most seem to pick up on and they all move as one and rush.

Yeah. It is amazing to watch.

Its an interesting power struggle to watch.
The police should have known walking up a street was a bad idea and just standing there waiting for back up.

The idea was to intimidate the rioters. Unfortunately, it was the police who were intimidated.

They should have pulled up in a couple of vans with full body padding and tear gas.Grabbed as many as they could put in the back of the vans and driven off to a holding area to be processed,then rinse repeat.

They didn't have the van or body armour to spare. And they couldn't use tear gas because they didn't have masks. And they would not have the jail space to put hundreds of kids up.

I would tend to side with the rioters though.I am against all the corrupt governments.
I dont see rioting as a solution though.
Logically if your government is misrepresenting you, it would be wiser to cut off the head...not the foot.

Well. If a sector of the electorate are completely frozen out of the process. If they're isn't even a chance of electing someone who will represent their interests, then what can they do?

ps, i think it was the obvious failure of the police to commit that lead to the rioters percieving a shift in power to their advantage.

So the solution is dont give them that "in" next time.Also the rioters were afraid of the police until this happened.

Never show fear. The English police really just lost their bottle. Police forces tend to attract and like hiring bullies. And bullies usually turn out to be cowards when the odds are stacking up against them.

Once the Blue Shirts marched on a town in the 1930s; Carrick-on-Suir. There was close to 600 of them. And 12 guards. The guards ordered them to disperse, and the Blue Shirts refused. The guards charged them and cracked heads - the Blue Shirts dispersed. I knew someone who witnessed it. They said the Blue Shirts were in total shock that this small band of guards had the balls to take them on. They panicked and scattered.



Something about Dublin:

Last night I was in a shop, and a guy knocked over part of a display deliberately. There was something a little odd about it.

And today I was in Music Maker and a kid ran off with a guitar.

Torakx

Well. If a sector of the electorate are completely frozen out of the process. If they're isn't even a chance of electing someone who will represent their interests, then what can they do?

Stop destroying shops and random property and go after the source of the problem.
As i said i am very all or nothing.But if i was pushed to take arms i would move against the top of the chain of government to get their attention.
I guess in england that would mean literally sacking the prime ministers house,like burn down the whole house(without harming the occupants as much as possible) and then burn down the parliament building and finally march on the queens house and make a statement as a warning of things to come if the current situation isnt remedied etc.
Easier said than done i know, but if i was going to do something it would be extreme because i wouldnt like to be pushed to such a stage.
Fortunately that probably wont happen to me.

Once the Blue Shirts marched on a town in the 1930s; Carrick-on-Suir. There was close to 600 of them. And 12 guards. The guards ordered them to disperse, and the Blue Shirts refused. The guards charged them and cracked heads - the Blue Shirts dispersed. I knew someone who witnessed it. They said the Blue Shirts were in total shock that this small band of guards had the balls to take them on. They panicked and scattered.

Wow thats a mad story!
I knew what i was saying would be effective and more or less true but that story takes it to another level haha!

Something about Dublin:

Last night I was in a shop, and a guy knocked over part of a display deliberately. There was something a little odd about it.

And today I was in Music Maker and a kid ran off with a guitar.

LOL thats really random.You think they were connected or you just happen to witness two seperate instances of social disorder?

krd

Torakx wrote: »

LOL thats really random.You think they were connected or you just happen to witness two seperate instances of social disorder?

I've noticed a few things - today. Shop owners were a little distracted and skittish. And

And there seems to be this weird generalised tension. It's weird. And I'm trying to think is it just my imagination.

I don't know. I really don't know. Just to be on the safe side, I think I'll work on my improvised balaclava tommorow, make sure I've got everything like gloves etc - some lemon juice in a squirty little thing if there's going to be tear gas.

Torakx

lol you can form a small insertion gang called the jif boys, each with yellow lemon shaped squirters and goggles with nose plugs :P