The Policing of Protest, Disorder and International Terrorism in the UK since 1945

Britain in Comparative Perspective Since 1945

Peter Joyce

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781137290595
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines the nature of protest and the way in which the police and state respond to the activities associated with this term. Protest is explored within the context of the perceived decline in public engagement with recent general election contests. It is often thought that protest is regarded as an alternative to, or as a replacement for, formal political engagement with electoral politics, and this book provides a thoughtful assessment of the place of protest in the contemporary conduct of political affairs. Analysing key forms of protest such as: demonstrations, direct action, protest conducted within the workplace, riots and terrorism, this study also illustrates each of these activities with a wide range of examples of events that have taken place within the UK since 1945. It will be of keen interest to students of criminology, criminal justice studies, police studies and politics.

© The Author(s) 2016

Peter JoyceThe Policing of Protest, Disorder and International Terrorism in the UK since 194510.1057/978-1-137-29059-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction – Conventional Politics and Protest

Peter Joyce¹

(1)

Department of Sociology, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, United Kingdom

End Abstract

This chapter will consider a range of factors that relate to the role played by protest in the contemporary politics of the UK. It will argue that there has been a decline in popular involvement in conventional political activity since the latter decades of the twentieth century which had created political space for citizen involvement in a range of other mechanisms (collectively termed protest or ‘extra-parliamentary political activities’) in order to bring about policy changes. The chapter will argue that for some people, this constitutes an alternative to conventional politics as the mechanism through which to inaugurate change but for others it acts as a supplement to conventional political activity.

The Decline of Engagement with Conventional Political Activity

Conventional politics entails activities that are conducted through formal institutional channels of which Parliament, political parties and voting are integral features. The role performed by members of the general public is confined to joining political parties and voting in election contests after which those elected to public office take decisions on behalf of the general public from whom they can claim a mandate to act.

There is, however, evidence that public involvement with these aspects of conventional political activity has been in decline in the latter years of the twentieth century and the early decades of the twenty-first century. This is evidenced by declining membership of political parties and reduced voter participation in national election contests. The reasons for this are considered below.

Political Party Membership and Party Affiliation

The membership of the main political parties in 2001 was less than 25% of its 1964 level (Kennedy, 2006: 46), leading to the conclusion that ‘Britain now has one of the lowest political party membership rates in Europe…the public is deeply disenchanted with political parties’ (Hansard Society, 2009: 50).

Current estimates of the membership of the major political parties indicate that

• The Conservative Party had around 149,800 members, as of December 2013.
• The Labour Party had around 270,000 members, as of August 2015.
• The Scottish National Party had around 110,000 members, as of June 2015.
• The Liberal Democrat Party had 61,000 members, as of May 2015.
• UKIP had around 42,000 members, as of January 2015.
• The Green Party (England and Wales) had 61,000 members, as of June 2015 (Keen, 2015).

Membership of the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats was stated to be at a historic low – ‘in 2015 1.0% of the electorate was a member of these three parties and, in 2011, 0.8%. This compares to 3.8% in 1983’ (Keen, 2015: 3). Additionally, it has been argued that many of those who did belong to political parties do not play an active role in party affairs (Kennedy, 2006: 47–48).

This situation reflects a wider issue, that of identification with and allegiance to political parties. These have also significantly declined: ‘the proportion that said they identified “very” or “fairly” strongly with a party fell from 46% in 1987 to 36% by 2010, while, conversely, the proportion that said they did not support a party at all more or less doubled from 8% to 17%. Four years later those figures are much the same; 37% claim they “very” or “fairly” strongly identify with a party, while nearly one in five (19%) say they do not have an affinity with any party’ (Simpson and Phillips, 2015: 136–137). Additionally, affinity with a political party was exerting a reduced influence on the likelihood of voting: only 76% of those who indicated that they are a strong supporter of a political party stated that they were ‘certain’ to vote in the 2015 general election (Hansard Society, 2015: 6).

Voter Participation in Elections

Among the wider general public (i.e. those who are not members of political parties), affinity to a political party is an important determinant of political engagement, including voting (Hansard Society, 2014: 26). Thus, the decline of the first will inevitably result in the reduction of the second. This section examines the extent to which the general public engage with election contests.

General Elections

General elections are an especially important indicator of active citizenship and traditionally a high proportion of citizens felt that they had a duty to vote. Although the majority of the general public subscribe to this view (in 2013, 57% accepting that they had a duty to vote), this figure was considerably lower than the 76% who expressed this opinion in 1987 or the 68% who agreed with this proposition in 1994) (Simpson and Phillips, 2015: 137).

Popular perceptions of this sense of civic duty are reflected by participation in general election contests (as measured by voter turnout).

In 1950, the turnout was 83.9% and in 1951 was 82.6%. In subsequent general election contests held in 1955, 1959, 1964 and 1966, voter turnout exceeded 75% and although it was reduced to a figure of around 72% in the 1970 general election, it rose to 78.8% in the February 1974 contest. Turnout was reduced to 72.8% in the October 1974 general election but remained in excess of 75% in 1979, 1987 and 1992 (although it fell to 72.7% in 1983 Joyce, 2004, passim).

However, towards the end of the twentieth century, voter participation declined. Turnout in the 1997 general election was 71.4%, the lowest figure since that of 1945. Subsequently, the 2001 UK general election witnessed the lowest turnout in national contests since 1918: below 60% (59.4%) of those eligible to vote exercised their right to do so and the Labour Party’s alleged landslide victory was based on below one eligible voter in four supporting them at the polls (Joyce, 2002: 44). The extent of disengagement from conventional politics in this campaign in which almost 5 million fewer electors voted than in the previous contest held in 1997 (31,286,284 compared with 26,368,530) (Joyce, 2004: 396 and 407) gave rise to perceptions of a profound ‘crisis in democratic politics in Britain’ (Whiteley et al. 2001: 786) or what has been termed ‘disengagement from formal democracy’ (Kennedy, 2006: 16). In later twenty-first-century contests, voter participation marginally improved – in 2005 (turnout was 61.4%), in 2010 (65%) and 2015 (66%) – but failed to reach the high levels of citizen engagement of the 1950s and 1960s. Studies conducted in 2012 and 2013 indicated that the proportion of those who would certainly vote fell to 41% and that only 42% claimed they were ‘fairly interested’ in politics (Hansard Society, 2014: 33). However, the imminence of a general election caused an increase in the public’s interest in politics (whereby 50% claimed they were ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ interested in politics) (Hansard Society, 2014: 33).

Although reduced levels of voter participation in general election contests might create space for protest to assume a more prominent role in political activity, it has been observed that membership of the SNP, UKIP and the Green Party has increased ‘markedly’ in recent years and this was mirrored by the electoral support obtained by these parties in the 2015 general election: UKIP’s 3.8 million votes substantially outpolled the 2.4 million obtained by the Liberal Democrats (which was the junior partner in the 2010 coalition government), the SNPs 1.5 million elected 56 of Scotland’s 59 MPs and the Green’s 1.2 million votes was a record for that party (figures adopted from BBC News, 2015).

This situation indicated that for many people, political activity was conducted through what were once regarded as ‘minor parties’ enabling the 2015 election to be stylised as anti-establishment rather than anti-political (Flinders, 2015: 242). Electoral support for political parties other than the traditional ‘main’ ones could be interpreted as an indication of the continued vitality of conventional political activity as opposed to a rejection of the concept of representative democracy that had been put forward of a feature of the 1997 and subsequent electoral contests.

Disillusionment with Conventional Political Activity

Although large number of citizens in the UK continue to engage with conventional political activity, the previous section has argued that many people regard this as an ineffective mechanism through which to get their views acted upon by those who wield political or economic power. This section seeks to explore some of the reasons why this is the case.

People Lack Power

The most significant factor accounting for disdain towards conventional political activity is that it fails to provide citizens with any real power to influence decisions that shape the conduct of their everyday lives – ‘people are less likely to vote now compared to two decades ago because they feel that voting does not make any difference to the issues that matter to them’ (Simpson and Phillips, 2015: 130). It has been suggested that only 31% of citizens felt that if people like themselves got involved with politics, ‘they really can change the way that the UK is run’ (Hansard Society, 2014: 23). This view was underpinned by a perception that ‘only 26% feel they have at least “some” influence locally and only 14% nationally’ (Hansard Society, 2014: 28).

There are several reasons that might explain this disenchantment with conventional political activity. During the 1960s, the Liberal Party, then led by Jo Grimond, sought to court support from ‘the enterprising…the boys and girls who are now coming out of school, technical colleges and the Universities, knowing that they have the opportunity to do so, longing for the opportunity to do so’ (Grimond, 1964) but whose best progressive intentions were thwarted by the ‘establishment’ which he blamed for the status-conscious society and the British obsession with amateurism (Joyce, 1999: 135). This reserved the top jobs in Britain for those ‘who had the right father or went to the right school’ (Grimond, 1963).

The perception that power was wielded by powerful groups which dominated British society and whose key concern was to retain their positions of dominance has remained a current concern (Jones, 2015) and contributes to an understanding of the sense of powerlessness that underpins popular disengagement with conventional political activity, especially if this is viewed as a mechanism to ‘manage’ popular demands and ensure they do not threaten the establishment’s bedrock interests (Jones, 2015: 4).

The view that engagement with conventional political activity is adversely affected by the perception that power is wielded by an unaccountable elite is reinforced by arguments that suggest there are fundamental flaws with the operations of Britain’s system of representative democracy. It has been argued that the shift from an industrial to a post-industrial economy has rendered redundant the British parliamentary system of elected representatives which was constructed in an era ‘of very limited educational provision and in which deference and rigid hierarchy and static social relations were taken for granted’ (Kennedy, 2006: 19 and 104). The post-industrial economy has led to the creation of a large section of society which is ‘better educated, more affluent, expects greater control and choice over many aspects of life, feels no deference towards those in positions of authority, and is not bound by the traditional bonds of place, class and institution that developed in the industrial era’ (Kennedy, 2006: 18 and 103).

A further inadequacy with the operations of conventional politics is that it marginalises the involvement of citizens to that of voting in election contests but leaves the task of decision-making to those elected to public office who may (or may not as was the case of the Liberal Democrats following the 2010 general election in connection with their stance on raising fees for students in higher education) base their actions on the generalised statements that were put forward in election manifestos.

Reference was made in one study to the ‘very widespread sense that citizens feel their views and interests are not taken sufficiently into account by the processes of political decision-making’ (Kennedy, 2006: 73) in particular possessing little or no power in the period between elections (Kennedy, 2006: 77). A later study suggested that an overwhelming majority of the country felt that had ‘not very much influence’ or ‘no influence at all’ over decision-making in their local area (73%) and the country as a whole (85%) (Hansard Society, 2009: 4). For people such as this, popular disengagement with conve...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction – Conventional Politics and Protest
• 2. The State’s Response to Protest, Subversion and Terrorism
• 3. Demonstrations
• 4. Direct Action
• 5. Workplace Protest
• 6. Riots
• 7. Terrorism in the UK Within a Global Context
• 8. The UK State, Protest and Terrorism
• 9. Policing Global Protest and Terrorism
• Backmatter