SAGE,COVID 19 & public disorder. You can’t predict a riot
The media, often out for clickbait headlines, is reporting that the summer of 2020 will see riots over various aspects of the impact of COVID-19.
These stories are based on a SAGE report which is in part authored by Prof. Clifford Stott a social psychologist at Keele.
He has done a fair bit of work on disorder and riot and the SAGE report is below. Some, myself included, are sometimes sceptical about agendas that often run with such reports which manage to merge actual research and findings with interpretations which are actually, as always, personal opinions which can be challenged.
The brief report here (9 pages) seems to me to be in the main a decent summary of public order related matters in relation to COVID-19.
Obviously there is scope for disagreement. Like numbers of SAGE members Prof Stott seems at least professionally keen on temperance.
The report was written on 2nd July and warns of disorder as a result of pubs re-opening in England on July 4th. Of course there have been alcohol related brawls (just as there were when pubs were shut) but widespread disorder there was not. A key part of the pub’s role is to promote social control and order when it comes to drink.
Prof Stott makes a fair summary of protests and is prepared call a fascist a fascist as it were. The comment that ‘harder’ elements who wont co-operate with the police mean protests are sometimes difficult is a Johnsonian perspective though. To be effective protests sometimes need to be ‘difficult’, which is not the same as saying its fine if they are not safe from a COVID perspective.
His suggestions for what might be done to prevent all this are in a sense right but rest on a point that is not likely to happen.
Despite what the Kaiser Chiefs sang you can’t predict a riot.
What turns a protest into disorder or riot (the latter being determined by the police as in that case they have to pay for damage to property- hence the word riot is not in the report…)is not, in nearly every case, any desire amongst protesters but insensitive or inappropriate policing.
Prof Stott understands this and concludes the police should do better.
I’m making no predictions
Keith Flett is the editor of A History of Riots (CSP 2015)
SAGE Report
Leave a Reply