The Battle of Westminster by Reicher (1996) - Article

Classical theories of crowd behaviour have been attacked. These theories explain the outcomes of social processes in wrong terms. These classic theories don’t look at the social context of crowds. Crowds can’t easily be reduced to a set of behaviours and they are not all destructive and violent. It is not surprisingly then, that the traditional accounts of crowd behaviour have been criticized. Other subjects in social movements have also seen a shift in the way they are studied. For example, a couple of researchers have stated that it’s important for the actors of a collective to assume a collective identity if they want to act cohesively. However, there have not been many studies that have examined the processes whereby identities are constructed. An exception to this is the emergent norm theory. This theory proposes that emerging collective norms shape crowd events. The words and actions of some individuals will be used as a means to determine appropriate actions. More people will follow these actions and the norm will become more established. Because of this, even more people will be influenced by these actions. However, to this approach two objections can be made: the approach deals inadequately with situation where crowds act and change rapidly and the character of the norms that emerge come from the predisposition of a prominent individual, which doesn’t explain the cultural bases of crowd actions. Reicher tries to explain this by looking at the self-categorization theory (SCT). According to this theory, seeing oneself as a member of a social category ‘causes’ group behaviour. Social identification goes together with self-stereotyping and members will try to conform to the beliefs of a category. In order to shift from individual to group behaviour, one must shift from personal to social identity.

It’s difficult for crowds apply general standards to particular contexts. Routinized norms are hard to apply in crowds, because crowds exist in new and ambiguous situations. Crowds differ from each other in their objectives and also in the reason that the members came together. Crowds don’t have discussions or a formal hierarchy, and so they have trouble to transform the social identity to a situational identity. But some have suggested that one way to infer the nature of the identity, is by looking at the behaviour of typical group members. However, some limitations to this point can be made: determinism denies a crowd the role in transforming society and not much regard is paid to intergroup dynamics. The writers of this article will look more into these two topics.

The study of the event

The writers of this article investigated the Battle of Westminster, which was a demonstration of British students, whereby the students and the police entered into a conflict. In November 1988, the National Union of Students organized a demonstration. This demonstration was held to protest against plans to replace student grants with student loans. Most students kept to the official marching route, but some went to Westminster Bridge, because they wanted to reach the Houses of Parliaments. They were blocked by the police and this led to conflict. The writers wanted to analyse the perspective of both students and police, but the access to the police was very limited. They therefore decided to ask the students how they entered into conflict with the police and how the involvement of the demonstrators had developed in the course of the day. The writers used materials from media that came from television reports and private videos from students. The organizer of the student protest event was interviewed and three participants gave written accounts of the event. 15 participants gave tape-recorded interviews and seven participants were shown a video-tape of the event and asked about their reactions and perceptions of the portrayed events in the video. They could also stop the video at any moment with a remote control. These seven students were videotaped.

With help of data triangulation, a general consensus has been reached on what happened at the protest:

After it had been made clear that the government wanted to freeze all student grants and to introduce a loan system, the National Union of Students (NUS) wanted to organize a protest. It was planned to be a mass lobby, but it became clear that the number of students that wanted to come was too large for a lobby. After meetings with the police, the lobby was turned into a demonstration. The route that was supposed to be taken, had been outlined. At the end of the route, a rally would be held. NUS called student unions to tell them about the plans. During the day of the demonstration, a group of people near the front of the march broke through the cordon and went towards Westminster Bridge. Police prevented the students to go to the House of Parliaments. The police and NUS stewards told the students to return to the official route. Some students who had arrived at the planned endpoint of the rally, decided to go back and attempt to get onto the Westminster Bridge. After a while, there was a huge crowd of students (6000) on the southern side of the bridge. There were approximately 200 foot police, 24 mounted police and police vans blocking them. After a while, approximately 0 police horses rode into the demonstrators and the demonstrators scattered. Most students stated that the charge wasn’t announced. However, the police stated that they had given several warnings. Most students weren’t aware of any warning given. After this, there was a short period of intense confrontation between the police and students. By the beginning of the evening, the event was over. The following day, this was the lead story in the press. Most accounts employed classic agitator theory to explain crowd violence: a couple of anti-social individuals have used the lack of judgment of crowds for their anti-social ends.

Analysis

Some students stated that only on the day of the demonstration, they heard there would be a demonstration. They received the map in their coaches on the day of the demonstration. When some students got out of the cordon to go to Westminster Bridge, it was unclear for the other students what to do. Students stated that some had said that they were told by a couple of people to follow the original route, but they were told by others to go onto the bridge. Some students stated that they went to the bridge because most people were going there, while others stated that they went to the bridge because they thought that was the whole point of the demonstration (to get to the MPs). Some students stated that it was not just wanting to get to the parliament, but also having the right to demonstrate. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to cross the bridge? Many students saw the police action in preventing them from crossing the bridge as illegitimate. Some students stated that they did want to leave the bridge and return to the original route, but that the police prevented them from leaving. They lost trust in the police. Once students believed they had the right to go to the bridge, anything that denied this right was seen as a provocation. Officers stated that they prevented the students from going to the bridge, because they saw them as dangerous. The police believed that the small minority that first went to the bridge had intentions of causing trouble. They saw these students as a threat to law and order and that the presence on the bridge was illegitimate. A pattern of action and reaction was generated which led to violence. Police pushed some students and the students saw this pushing as aggressiveness and responded back by pushing. The police then pushed more aggressively and the students’ perception of the police as hostile was confirmed, so they pushed harder.

Students first stated that the crowd was heterogeneous in nature. There wasn’t a great feeling of togetherness until they assembled on the bridge. When the situation with the police got more tense, the crowd felt more as a unit. The willingness to support other students in conflict against the police was a criterion of crowd membership. The students changed to self-perception to a collective self-perception and they also changed their concept of the outgroup. They saw the police as more oppositional.

Implications

It seems that the conflict on Westminster Bridge arose because the concepts of the rights that the students and police had clashed. The students thought it was their right to get to the bridge, while the police thought t wasn’t their right to get to the parliament. Both saw each other’s actions as illegitimate. This sets of processes of interaction, which lead to conflict. The concept of legitimacy is important, because it determines whether a crowd will enter into conflict. It’s also important because it can help determine the circumstances under which crowds will enter into conflict. Also, it appears that conflicts only arise when they are seen as efficacious. The writers think that 3 hypotheses can account for the processes of crowd involvement in conflicts:

1. When behaviour is seen as legitimate, outgroup behaviour is seen as not and conflictual actions are considered an effective way to meet the ends, crowd members will enter conflict

2. This legitimacy and identification of ends are defined according to the collective beliefs of the appropriate social category

3. When the differences in the concept of proper social behaviour become concretely enacted, a crowd originates.

The spread of conflict goes together with changes in the self-categorization of crowds. According to Tajfel, the ingroup is defined in relation to the outgroup and because of this, changes of the self-perception of ingroup members will also change the perceptions of outgroup members. The police saw the students as dangerous and started blocking them from crossing the bridge. While they used their power, they acted in an indiscriminate way. They saw all the students as the same and contained everyone on the bridge, irrespective of their intentions. When they went in with their horses, all students were equally liable to get knocked over, independent of their intentions. This indiscriminate nature can explain how a fragmented group of students formed a homogenous crowd. Three hypothesis of how collective conflict spreads are:

1. Limits of involvement in conflict go together with the perception of denied rights.

2. The categorization of a crowd will get stronger the less the outgroup differentiates between the members of a crowd. The crowd will support each other more and they will feel more empowered to challenge the actions of the outgroup.

3. When an outgroup reacts to the actions of a crowd by denying what people in the crowd see as their rights, the conflict will be generalized and the section of the crowd that is reacted upon will gain influence

Of course, further study is needed to validate the hypotheses of the writers. It’s best to have contemporary studies, not retrospective ones. This will overcome methodological objections and it can also give more details of the crowd processes. Also, this study mostly looked at the perceptions of demonstrators. It would have been better if the police perception was also examined. What has been shown with this study, is that social identity and self-categorization play an important role in collective action. This study has also shown that categorization and context mutate into each other because of intergroup relations and that crowd actions can bring about social change.