I have to say, this is a really excellent post.

There’s another side to your analogy that probably also applies, with the window-smashing anarchist twats filling the ‘tiny violent minority who fuck things up for everyone else and make the rozzers hate the crowd in the first place’ role that the firms filled in 1980s football. And it’s harder to see what mainstream demonstrators can do about them, protesting being inherently a less organised activity than major league sport…

(excellent post, in any case)

Glorious piece, JQP.

Excellent post

True that

*grins*
you’re great, you are.

Lovely literary post. But I think you’re overdoing it a bit here:

“When America invaded Iraq, most Iraqis didn’t really have an enemy, but they did have someone they disliked intensely in their own Glorious Leader. Now, most Iraqis have an enemy; the West. And other Iraqis. And the Kurds. And so on.’

Sadly it wasn’t the American invasion that gave birth to people of one ethnicity hating another. It happened a bit earlier than that.

I mean there’s the Iran/Iraq war, invasion of Kuwait, gassing of the Kurds, and the destruction of the Marsh Arabs just in the previous decade. Whilst Saddam was responsible for these disasters he was working with existing hatreds, which one can be sure were then fiercely reciprocated (mostly towards the Sunnis).

The lack of Leviathan in the aftermath of war kicked off a free-for-all but don’t pretend enemies were born for Iraqis in 2003.

Excellent post.

It was pretty disgraceful to see a comment recently on LC inviting all coppers to kill themselves, just as it was disgraceful to read the obsessive, and frankly stupid, ravings of Claude Carpentieri about soldiers a couple of weeks ago. John Q’s post, by contrast, is a statement of genuinely liberal principle and we should get behind it.

Hold individual coppers- or soldiers- responsible for crimes which they themselves commit.

Hold senior police officers- or generals- responsible if they encourage, or fail to prevent, brutality by those under their command- and require that the services they lead do actually serve society.

But don’t endorse Ali G-style rhetoric about the rank and file of the uniformed services. It’s vicious (unless there’s another word about calling on several thousand people to kill themselves, or saying that you hold nineteen year old soldiers responsible for the decisions of a millionnaire lawyer like Tony Blair), it’s laughably ineffective, and using it serves only to mark you out as a moron.

I add my congratulations to the pile. That was very enjoyable and very insightful. One quibble – I think to be fair (!) to the right-wing, quite considerable numbers of their pundiits have gradually revised their position about the policing of the G20 as more evidence comes out. Can’t say fairer than that.

“I add my congratulations to the pile. That was very enjoyable and very insightful. One quibble – I think to be fair (!) to the right-wing, quite considerable numbers of their pundiits have gradually revised their position about the policing of the G20 as more evidence comes out. Can’t say fairer than that.”

True, but last time I checked Letters from a Tory was still a cunt. As long as we’re all clear about that.

A* for JohnQP.
First class.

Next up, the heart warming tale of a Jewish survivor encountering a Nazi after the war where both learn that they were equally victims of the terrible system that they found themselves trapped inside even though one side did the dying and the other the killing.

‘Next up, the heart warming tale of a Jewish survivor encountering a Nazi after the war where both learn that they were equally victims of the terrible system that they found themselves trapped inside even though one side did the dying and the other the killing.’

Yes, because a police constable in Yorkshire in the 1980s was exactly the same as an SS guard in an extermination camp.

…What, some of you don’t agree? Why are you so blind, you fools? Why is the left always on the back foot?

Very nice piece indeed – other than the obligatory reference to Thatcher!

The lack of *empathy* on both sides of this issue has been tragic.

Really good post.

I think though there is a difference between Hillsborough and Bishopsgate. Hillsborough was an accident caused by outdated attitudes on all sides (forgive me if that is too sweeping). Bishopsgate was caused by two sides looking for some “fun”. Many of the protestors were looking for peaceful “fun”, some were not. Some of the police’s idea of “fun” was aggro and they were upfor it. Their plan did not encompass a carnival.

Various @several:

[penny in a mug]

Thank you [1]

JohnB @

I think you’re entirely right. My initial reaction to the death of Mr. Tomlinson also queried what we should do about our internal violent tendencies. By the way, has anyone seen a picture of the wanton destruction which included more vandals than photographers? They all had the air of a staged photo-shoot, one teenager swinging a bat and thirty cameras.

I don’t have a good answer. The theoretical answer is ‘self-policing’, but when they’re violent and we’re not, they win. Some variant on the mosh-pit method of giving an idiot an involuntary crowd-surf straight into the hands of security might work, but I do not have any better ideas than that. I’m hoping some of the people here can come up with some.

Gaw @8:

The 9 Provinces were partitioned by Britain and France under the Treaty of Paris in 1916, explicitly to even up the oil reserves between those two powers (this being before the major fields in Iran were discovered). Of course there were internal divisions in Iraqi society before the two wars, mostly to do with everyone hating the Kurds: but there most certainly were not anything like the number of paramilitary operatives and organisations there are now: even the CIA have admitted that. When you attack someone who wasn’t doing what you said they were, with government-sponsored military force, you generate paramilitary opposition and an enormous degree of aggrieved rage. I don’t think that’s a viable long-term strategy for British constitutional democracy.

Alix @10:

Yes, that’s true. Particularly the recent article from Graeme Archer that was highlighted here. The reason I’ve hesitated about explicitly recognising it in this article is two-fold: firstly, I’ve been perturbed by the right wing tendency, in the press and on here, to hammer away at the idea the man might have had a drink as if that excused his death. Secondly, I have yet to see much recognition beyond Mr. Archer’s piece that the protesters themselves didn’t deserve exactly what they got. But yes; as Mr. Eugenides pointed out, the right has come to realise after the death of Mr. Tomlinson that it could have been them.

cjcjc @15:

I call ’em as I see ’em. Neither Wilson nor Callahan could have acted this way, and neither tried though both faced as much provocation as Thatcher did in ’83. Thatcher used the economic upturn and the Falklands War, and she funded her social revolution on North Sea oil and gas. Scargill handed her the opportunity to take on civil dissent from higher moral ground than any government has held since. She got away with it, and proved you could win in British politics with directed violence as long as no-one found out, or as long as the victims weren’t One of Us. The only reason the Battle of the Beanfield got out (the press were having their cameras smashed: eerily familiar) is that one of the great unwashed happened to be a peer of the realm.

The Conservatives rode out the 90s recession, allowing Blair and Brown to surf into power on the .com boom and they have evolved an attitude to domestic policy which inherits Thatcher’s successes and continues in her principles. Noticeably, they’ve gotten worse at it as they’ve felt their grip on power slipping: so did she, but the rest of her party nobbled her after the Poll Tax. Where, I wonder, is the parliamentary revolt against Smith going to come from?

[1] I grew up on the Goon Show and other BBC World Service classics.

Majestic JQP, simply majestic.

What a load of emotional bollocks! Get me a bucket, Tarquin. “When I was a boarding school” from the man who thinks he’s working-class because he doesn’t earn what his education deserves.

Alan Hansen – the new hero of the Left! LOL! What does he know. He was running about in his tight shorts whilst most of the 96 fans were already dead.

Is obvious you know FA about football culture. All I hear from some Liverpool fans and the usual bleeding hearts is ‘Justice’. Its become a cliché which is just spouted without any thought to what it means.

What justice do you want? Compensation? Police prosecuted? The FA prosecuted?

Personally I hate public mourning, which ever since the Diana fiasco has become a media led indulgence for too many people. A lot of people want to be victims or want escapism from their tedious lives. Anniversaries allow the Media to create print and politicians to chase votes, as with Andy Burnham calling for another inquiry to waste yet more of our money. There’s also the usual lefties wanting to hijack any cause where there is an anti-authority aspect, without possessing any knowledge of the events or the times – just snippets of police failings that they feed on like pigs in their marxist’s troughs. There’s a good article in today’s Times slating the politicisation of Hillsborough by someone who was there.

It was a sad event and I feel sorry for the people who lost someone. I remember being crushed against the fence at the Park Lane End at Spurs (where they were known for overfilling the pens), aged 15, just wanting the game to end so I could get out alive. However, I was back on the terraces, a week later because being part of a packed terrace was an exhilarating experience.

I’ve also been at games, where garden walls have collapsed in the crush to get in, fans have charged the gates, jumped the turnstiles, climbed the walls, etc. It’s a fact that fans without tickets or with tickets in the wrong end would turn up with those coming out of the pubs to join the last minute crush and hope the authorities would panic and either open the gates or let you jump the turnstiles. I know because I’ve done it several times. It recall it happening in Bratislava, when there were several thousand fans without tickets or tickets in the home end. They all turned up late and tried to force the gates. The Slovakian Riot Police would have none of it and battered hundreds of fans. If this had been the UK, the Police would have been accused of brutaility.

The coroner claimed Nobody had entered the ground without a ticket or payment. This is impossible to prove. The gates were opened. If you got in without a ticket would you volunteer yourself after the event as doing such a thing after 96 people died? I think not.

In 1989, they had only just started making big games all ticket. When it was pay on the gate, thousands of fans would get into the ground early to ensure they weren’t locked out, as happened frequently. When you have a ticket there is more of a tendency to turn up late. You look at grounds now, they are empty 20mis before KO. I remember the same places being half-full 30-40mins before KO.

Hooliganism had been on the wane since Heysel, the Bradford Fire and the kid that was crushed to death at Birmingham – all in 1985. The FA, the Police and the clubs were under severe pressure from the Govt to act. Britain had become renowned for hooligans. Violence had rapidly decreased by ’89 and attendances were rising, but the measures in place were still geared towards hooliganism. Unsurprising, when you consider the level of violence just 4yrs earlier. One of the main problems was the high fences and the low lying terrace, making it impossible to escape the crush at the front. The dividing pens were there for segregation and to stop mobs charging across the terraces. If they’d been removed, no fans would have died.

The point about the ambulances is a red herring. Can you imagine trying to get 40 ambulances into a football ground with 50,000 people coming out of the ground and milling around the pitch?

Yes, there were failings all round, but it was general incompetence, lack of planning and a 20yr record of bad behaviour.
A minority of Liverpool fans must also share the guilt with the organisers and the Police, due to their behaviour at the back of the terrace and outside the gates. Its hypocritical for them to claim the Police should have recognised earlier that people were dying, when some of the fans who escaped onto the pitch went up the other end to goad and challenge the Forest fans on the Kop. That’s not a Sun lie. Just ask any Forest fans.

The trouble is all these myths get perpetuated and picked up by people who know FA, but have an axe to grind.

Anyway, there’s some Afghani women protesting about the legalisation of rape. Anyone for a demo to show their support? I thought not.

An interesting post, but ultimately I tend to agree with the view that you’ve oversimplified the politics of football in the late 1980s.

To state “The actual football supporters, the people who want to watch a good game and then go home, hadn’t seen what happens when you fail to self-police; the spread of violence beyond the red-vs-blue into the football-thugs-vs-the-world atmosphere of the 90s.” is a gross over-simplification of the state of play at the time in my view.

As another poster says, violence was declining by then, but more importantly there *were* huge efforts from fans to change fan culture, not least through the fanzine movement, a bottom-up movement that spread to every club. In fact, rather than changing fan culture it was as much – if not more – about changing and challenging the perceptions of football supporters.

The discourse of the Thatcher government was unremittingly based around the view that football supporters were nothing but hooligans, and special policy interventions that did not apply to sports like cricket or rugby were introduced or toyed with. Amongst these were: heavy policing, alcohol bans, talk of ID cards being introduced for all supporters and, above all else, fences that caged fans into terraces as if they were animals.

Hillsborough was not about supporters failing to recognise their duties as citizens or being unable to see beyond the ends of their noses. It was about a catastrophic failure of policy both in its formulation and implementation that had its roots in this hugely negative characterisation of football supporters. This is why calls for ‘Justice for the 96’ remain today and why Hillsborough is different from virtually every other stadium disaster.

Ach, curses, with the spirit of goodwill in this thread I thought that maybe – just maybe – Chavscum would keep his bile duct from overflowing across the comment thread. But no, here they come; his private army of strawmen stormtroopers.

“Alan Hansen – the new hero of the Left! LOL! What does he know.”

That there are similarities between bad policing at Hillsborough and the Climate Camp. That’s why JQP said that and not “Comrade Hansen has issued a stirring denunciation of the complacent petit bourgeois etc etc.“.

Incidentally, it’s somewhat revealing that you use a full stop instead of a question mark. You really don’t – and, I suspect, won’t – pay attention to anything that we write.

All I hear from some Liverpool fans and the usual bleeding hearts is ‘Justice’. Its become a cliché which is just spouted without any thought to what it means.

What justice do you want? Compensation? Police prosecuted? The FA prosecuted?

*Sigh*

…he didn’t even mention justice. Apparently, the value of history – even recent history – is lost on you.

Anyway, there’s some Afghani women protesting about the legalisation of rape. Anyone for a demo to show their support?

I hate to break it to you, Chavscum, but a march in Britain will have remarkably little effect upon Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.

Ben

“I hate to break it to you, Chavscum, but a march in Britain will have remarkably little effect upon Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan.”

Karzai and his government rely on coalition forces for maintaining a semblance of authority and for retaining power. I would have no problem for the UK government to use this dependence to make sure Afghanistan does not revert to a sharia-adminstrated medieval torture chamber of a country. Infact Chavscum’s suggestion is a remarkably sensible one.

Chavscum @19:

Er, I was at a boarding school because I had no alternative. The country I lived in had no functioning education system (such as it had was approximately equivalent to Britain’s rural education system circa 1850, and considerably worse resourced) and to get a Western education I had to go to school where there was a school. In relative terms it would have been like a kid from Warrington going to school in Marseilles. It wasn’t exactly a leg up over UK comprehensive students, with whom I was competing for University places: my school was only capable of offering 7 subjects at GCSE and could not offer A-levels at all. Bit hard to place me as a privileged person on those grounds.

man who thinks he’s working-class because he doesn’t earn what his education deserves.</em.

Hmm. You seem to have misunderstood my earlier argument. I was using personal experience to illustrate that the term ‘working class’ doesn’t mean what people think it does, and that the definitions we currently use for class society are seriously flawed because they were written too long ago. I don’t in any way believe I’m working class. I didn’t grow up in this country; I don’t fit into its class system at all.

I have all the indicators of the middle class: my dad was a priest and my mother a school teacher, I got an Assisted Place and a scholarship to take A-levels, and I went to University. I did a white-collar job for ten years.

I have all the indicators of the lower class: my parents first owned their own home when my dad was 70, my parents combined annual income in 1993 was circa eight grand a year, I’ve been a kitchen porter and security guard, a barman and a chemical plant worker and an office cleaner. I currently earn only just over half the national median wage and do a manual, craft-skilled job, for someone else.

My whole point was the map no longer matches the territory; not that I think I’m working-class. I’m not; I specifically said I’m not in the previous comment thread, as I work in the tertiary industrial sector and have a bachelors degree.

Now, having once more deflected the ad hominems:

Alan Hansen – the new hero of the Left! LOL! What does he know.

Er, that was exactly my point. Even he can see the parallels, and he has no pretensions to political activism that I’m aware of.

Is obvious you know FA about football culture.

I know that there’s more than one culture among British football supporters. Look, I run a pub full of poor Londoners and have spent most of the last 8 years living in the shadow of either Emirates or White Hart Lane. If your side can claim to know what ordinary people think as a response to the “damage” done by protesters, recognise that I can see the damage done by the destructive footballing culture. You never, ever, go near Highbury Corner or Finsbury Park when Arsenal have played Tottenham or Chelsea at home; there is always a fan riot, every time.

Personally I hate public mourning, which ever since the Diana fiasco has become a media led indulgence for too many people.

Bizarrely we have some common ground here. The death of Princess Diana sparked a genuine public grief; the media circus which accompanied it possibly made more of that than was necessary but it also gave her brother an opportunity to have a good shout at the tabloid press, which I thought was delightful coming from the pulpit in Westminster Abbey.

However, the media exploitation of Diana’s death, as you say, has created a situation where the media can create a dying hero just so they get to have another media-driven public mourning episode. I didn’t see Jade Goody operating as an ambassador against war debris or doing any of the other things that made Diana worth mourning. I saw a woman who was told she might have cancer but refused to leave a publicity stunt (Big Brother) in order to get it checked while it was still possible to save her life. Her situation was sad; her family should be permitted to mourn her and her sons should definitely be left in peace. She was a celebrated figure but in no way a public servant, and Diana did try to be.

However, your statement is too sweeping. I’ve stood at a rugby game and observed a minute’s silence for Max Brito, the black Ivoirian winger whose neck was broken in South Africa ’95. The rugby field was in England. I’ve stood at work to hold a silence for our war dead every November 11th since I came to this country. There are some acts of selflessness or of heroism, and some communities of interest, which justify public acts of memorial.

From the spiel about the precise details of Hillsborough:

Violence had rapidly decreased by ’89 and attendances were rising, but the measures in place were still geared towards hooliganism. Unsurprising, when you consider the level of violence just 4yrs earlier

What about the levels of violence just 7 years later? Football violence did not end, as you imply in this paragraph. It did not significantly diminish, either; the firms kept churning out their paramilitaries and people like you kept defending them.

Yes, there were failings all round, but it was general incompetence, lack of planning and a 20yr record of bad behaviour. A minority of Liverpool fans must also share the guilt with the organisers and the Police, due to their behaviour at the back of the terrace and outside the gates.

Agreed: in fact, I’ve known this since 1992, as a result of hearing two eye-witnesses discuss it. I even mentioned it in the article:

Neither could move on or accept the hideous reality until both could forgive the people who were in that awful cauldron for mistakes that were made, mostly, by the people standing behind them.

As with G20, it wasn’t really the people in the middle who caused the catastrophe; it was the people standing behind them. Planners, senior coppers, violent Liverpool fans, the tiny group of masked vandals who happy-slapped a bank, the successors to Genghiz Condon: they’re the people we should be dealing with.

You seem to have interpreted my anecdote as some kind of sob-story. Fair enough: I don’t like human interest stories much either, but if they actually relate to a substantive point they’re evidence. What I said above was evidence: it underlines the fact that many of the coppers at the G20 didn’t like what their superiors and their violent associates had planned. A couple of quotes from here:

“I was standing there talking with a policeman, (who incidentally commented “I didn’t join the police to protect the bankers”) ”

“Most of the police were friendly decent people who were as unhappy as we were – their superiors hadn’t even arranged water and sandwiches for them and they’d been on duty for 10+ hours”

The parallel I was drawing with my personal story was that in both places the culpability lay behind the front-lines. The kettling tactic is as much designed to wind up the police towards violence as it is designed to wind up the victims.

Anyway, there’s some Afghani women protesting about the legalisation of rape. Anyone for a demo to show their support? I thought not.

Interesting. If someone organised one I’d either go, or make sure I knew people who had: but that is an issue which is more likely to be picked up by my friend the feminist activist. I find it quite difficult to get to protests (that’s why I wasn’t at Climate Camp myself) because of my job. If I do go to a future-proofing demo, I think I’m likely to wear a hard hat. Though some would say that by doing so I was ‘antagonising the police’, or ‘clearly out for trouble’, I value my head: I do my thinking with it.

John Hudson @20:

Yes, I have over-simplified my argument, because it wasn’t about football violence: it was about how the decisions of the men behind those on the front lines betray the beat coppers as much as they betray the victims.

In fact, rather than changing fan culture it was as much – if not more – about changing and challenging the perceptions of football supporters.

Hmm. When my bar got trashed during Euro ’96, that wasn’t an effort to change perceptions of football supporters. Yes: Thatcherite dogma was that all football supporters were hooligans. Yes: chavscum’s dogma is that all protesters are trustafarians who deserve a good kicking. This is the parallel I was drawing.

Jako…

“Karzai and his government rely on coalition forces for maintaining a semblance of authority and for retaining power. I would have no problem for the UK government to use this dependence to make sure Afghanistan does not revert to a sharia-adminstrated medieval torture chamber of a country. Infact Chavscum’s suggestion is a remarkably sensible one.”

This is O/T but…*shrugs*…

Actively enforcing anything upon Karzai would, I think, be counter-productive, and risk tainting causes* – and some of the bravest people in the world – by association. Yesterday’s wretched counter-protestors were howling “death to the slaves of the Christians!” for heaven’s sake; it’d be madness to let the worst of the Shiite conservatives look like the anti-imperialist opposition; especially when the authorities are showing hopeful signs of backtracking. The international condemnation may be more worthwhile, ‘cos this is clearly a self-serving little nod towards the fundamentalists, and Karzai’s unlikely to want to jeapordise his future.

I could be wrong, though. What with Sitara Achakzai’s murder, it’s a dire time for women’s rights, and whatever practical help we can give to activists should be given. As Orzala Ashraf Nemat said on the site a few months ago “the process of democratization and gender equality requires strengthening grass-roots initiatives working on such issues on the ground“. If Conor Foley’s around, he’ll doubtless have a more substantial view.

[*] When I say “taint causes“, I do of course mean “taint causes in the eyes of religious conservatives“, I’m not suggesting that it makes them any less worthwhile.

Balls…

* jeopardise.

The difference between the communal mourning over Hillsborough and over Diana is that the former was a response to a loss from the community in question, just as a mining disaster hits a community as a whole, and most people in Liverpool know somebody who suffered a loss. Diana was a complete stranger to most of her mourners.

Also, Diana was not subject to the intense hatred that the fans who died where, the sense that they’d deserved it and the sickening lies sucked up by retards like Chavscum.

The grief suffered by the families of the 96 was magnified by their vilification.

Excellent post. Straight out of the “Iliad”!
I have only just found this website and I am threatening to return…….
PS since when did Chavscum gain the position of official spokesman for the right wing?
Derek Draper thinks all right wingers went to Eton and I am sure he didn’t!

Mike Stallard @28:

Thank you; my wrath is not as that of Achilles, but I do have a bit of a temper.

Chavscum, as he’s demonstrated even in this thread with his analysis of Hillsborough, is a competent and frequently clear-sighted thinker who can engage with the debate when he wants to. He’s also prone to pointless ad hominem, and his paradigm has some axioms which I think distort his analysis: but then, he thinks the same of me, though I suspect he’d tell me I’m just a pompous twat.

If you’re looking for a good debate across the aisle cjcjc and CouncilHouseTory can often provide

Chavescum [19] said (amongst other things)
“The trouble is all these myths get perpetuated and picked up by people who know FA, but have an axe to grind”.
And.
“What a load of emotional bollocks”
And.
“All I hear from some Liverpool fans and the usual bleeding hearts is ‘Justice’. Its become a cliché which is just spouted without any thought to what it means”.
And
“What justice do you want? Compensation? Police prosecuted? The FA prosecuted?”
And.
“A lot of people want to be victims or want escapism from their tedious lives”.

Chavscum – what myths are you talking about it ?
96 people died.
The Taylor report highlighted police failings as the most significant factor in the deaths.
Some fans might have been saved but sadly there was NO emergency response on the day – the only people trying to rescue the situation were the fans themselves.

Perhaps in anticipation of ill-informed commentators like YOU those effected by the tragedy have set up a web-site appropriately titled (especially in your case) “Hillsborough for DUMMIES”, you can find it here:
http://www.hfdinfo.com/

If the official reports are too tedious for you, Chavscum, then there is a short film summarising the key events – you can find it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOFhqfOX7Xg

Not only do you subject us to dreary observations about Princess Di you go on to characterise supporters of the Hillsborough campaign as seeking escapism from their ‘tedious lives’ – in short you have morphed into Sigmund Freud offering a penetrating analysis of the groups mental state, thanks for that.

One key element in the justice campaign is the desire to INFORM about what actually happened on the day – disgusting lies were told in the immediate aftermath of Hillsborough and sadly they are still perpetuated by the likes of you who speak first without ever really engaging their brain.

One again thanks to JQP for a much more balanced set of observations.

Hillsborugh was disaster. What is surprising is that there were not similar such disasters . Large numbers of people streaming though narrow entrances and corridors into confined areas are recipes for disasters . One of the largest number of deaths during WW2 in the UK was when people were crushed at Bethnal Green underground. due to someone falling.Football hooliganism and the movement of large numbers of people through the streets around fotball stadia were a problem from the mid 70s . No organisations – the FA, clubs, players , supporters, the Police, emergency services , local councils, transport companies and the Government took sufficient concern of the risks util the mid 80s.19 Chavscum is partly correct; if the anti-hooligan measures such as the fences had not been in place, fans would have been able to move onto the pitch.

When it came to evacuation from the Twin Towers , too many people left it too late.

It is time there was far research was undertaken into large numbers of people act in confined spaces and streets, especially where there are surges in movement. The Police appear inadequately trained and there is inadequate coordination with other emergency services. How does one move ambulances through large crowds? It appears to be that every area should have it’s own helicopter ambulance. We also need to discuss what is acceptable behaviour in large crowds, not just from the right to protest angle but health and safety. It would appear that at all costs, people surging into confined areas and coming across a barrier to their progress must be prevented from happening. In buildings there are controls about the maximum number of people which are allowed to be present and the minimum number of exits; perhaps similar controls are required for the density of people in public areas.

As I said before , the marches by CNDt o in the 50s and 60s , through the countryside were not a problem. Wherever there are sufficient numbers of people to fill the width of a street and the column of sufficient length, so that those at the back do not know what is happening at the front , then there is the risk of a surge causing people to be pushed over and trampled underfoot. Where there is barrier at the front of the column, then there is always the risk that those at the front will be crushed if those at the rear keeping moving forward. Once again , this country does it’s best to avoid admitting to a problem ,analysing the causes and and creating a solution. How often are underground stations and trains overfilled during rush hour?

By the way Chavscum, here’s a few wise words from Big Phil …….. Scraton, not Scolari.

“When disasters happen, the sheer scale, confusion and trauma of the ‘moment’ overwhelm all involved: the dying, the injured, the survivors, the witnesses and the authorities. No-one should be content with pointing the finger of blame at those who make errors of judgement in the heat of the moment. Yet, when institutional complacency and gross negligence by those in positions of power contribute to the circumstances of disaster, from the failure to respond effectively to the emergency, and the treatment of the bereaved and survivors, and to deceitful allegations that attempt to shift responsibility onto the victims and their families, we are dealing with an entirely different issue. When the processes of investigation and inquiry not only fail to deliver even the basic elements of natural justice but also collude to mask the truth and deny culpability, we have to question their role within a society that prides itself on its democratic principles and its rule of law.

The deaths of 96 men, women and children at Hillsborough, the hundreds of those injured and the thousands traumatised, are the tip of an iceberg of grief and suffering among friends and families. Each year at Anfield on 15th April, thousands stand together on the Kop to share in a collective tribute to those who set out on a beautiful spring day to watch a football match, never to return. Regrettably, it is necessary to do this because the myths of Hillsborough live on,leaving the bereaved and survivors still, after 20 years, defending their reputations and those of their loved ones. In itself, this serves as a reminder that injustice was the tragedy that arose out of the Hillsborough Disaster.

It is an indictment of the ‘justice system’ that after two decades no-one has been held responsible institutionally or individually for the disaster or the cover-up that followed. There has been no acknowledgement of responsibility and no apology”.

Phil Scraton
Professor of Criminology
Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice
School of Law
Queens University
Belfast
February 2009

We will not let it lie.

Good post John Q.

Can I just say that the view of football fans by the political and media elite in the 80s is remarkably similar to the view held by those elites to contemporary ‘protestors’. Something to be ignored (think may day 99, Seatle etc) then something to be contained, finally something to be attacked. It is only tragedy that begins the process whereby your average Jo begins to question the political/media narrative.

You also allude to the real conundrum here. Whenever you have large groups of people in confide spaces, there is a good possibility of a minority causing trouble, be they hooligans, anarchists or headbangers. The real question is how to deal with the trouble without inhibiting the liberty of others. IMO, kettling is not a general answer to the problem, but some form could be used carefully. Eg, away fans are often held in stadiums for half an hour after a match. You mention mosh pits. Can something similar be used at a protest? Not easy I would suggest.

PS. Sorry to hear about your bar, but after the police clamped down hard on fans around stadia, the trouble went to the pubs. Unintended consequences.

CouncilHouseTory @33:

The real question is how to deal with the trouble without inhibiting the liberty of others.

Words to live by, and a challenge which has troubled the Enlightenment since Tory meant ‘supporter of the divine right of kings’.

You mention mosh pits. Can something similar be used at a protest? Not easy I would suggest.

Well, this is what I was wondering. In a stadium, one way of dealing with an idiot (for example, a big drunk eejit who’s trying to crash-dance and inexplicably keeps aiming for the smallest girl he can find) is to elbow them to the edge of the crowd and hand them to gig security, who will then throw them out. That does involve a bunch of people in between who’re willing to physically confront and overpower through weight of numbers. You don’t need to hit them; just press them in and then move the whole press to the edge.

You could do that at a protest, but only if the protesters were organised and marshaled, with groups of the hardy within the crowd watching for happy-slappers and responding immediately when one is found. It would also involve the police appropriately; I suspect atm they’d baton the marshals as well as the idiot. I’m entirely sure that they’d see the marshals as having ‘started it’.

PS. Sorry to hear about your bar, but after the police clamped down hard on fans around stadia, the trouble went to the pubs. Unintended consequences.

Not really. The three offenders lived in the tower-block to which the bar was physically attached. They broke in after hours and trashed the place because it was local, they wanted to, and they could.

This was a celebration of an England victory, mark you; not an outburst of unfocused rage. A celebration. I keep using the example because I am not a survey scholar of football violence: I remember a number of much larger scale events in the same year, mostly in Europe and typified by an iconic shot of a bawling, bald lout with a lot of tattoos, but I don’t always have the details of where, when, and which teams at my fingertips. This particular example I happen to know all the details of, rather than me considering it to be typical. The other side in this debate keep trying to tell me that the football fans and the football hooligans are the same people, which they aren’t. That’s as foolish as the Thatcherite view that football hooligans and football fans were the same people; which they weren’t, as Chavscum and others keep pointing out. For some reason they don’t recognise that this is commutative.

My point is this: there are people who use the label ‘fan’ as cover. Football fan clubs have, under immense outside pressure, finally started self-policing, and have become a bit more effective.

There exists a faction of “anarchists” who are, in fact, apolitical. Mayhem is not the same as political anarchy. Protesters may need to start self-policing, whether they have a taste for it or not, if we are to avoid being tarred with a brush we don’t deserve.

The complicating factor for us is that there are cases to be made for even destructive, and possibly even violent, direct action if the pressure from above becomes too harsh. Sometimes, the only thing which remains is revolution. Britain has not even begun to come close to that balance point: I say this from the point of view of having lived in countries which fell off it.

Gandhi succeeded because the alternative was Nehru and full-scale genocide in India. Dr. King was the lesser of two evils, the greater of which was Malcolm X and his fellow travelers. Sometimes, you need a violent threat to make non-violent protest seem reasonable.

On the other hand, Gerry Adams has now been targeted by a splinter faction of the IRA because he has ‘betrayed the cause’ by becoming (relatively) reasonable. This is not an easy one, nor is it a binary analysis.

Update towards CouncilHouseTory:

The legal report from Climate Camp is now out, and it contains some interesting material, including this quote:

21.23 Double line of riot cops forms at north end. By now there are hundreds of people milling around the junction of Bishopsgate with Wormwood and Camomile, outside the police lines that are containing the Camp. Overall quite peaceful – could see this on live TV. One was throwing bottles but was stopped by legal observer.

That’s what we should be doing. I am beginning to think that a scheme of pairing LOs with teams of (say) four marshals who are on rapid-response, and can be called in to deal with internal idiots might be the way forward.