Context of Practice: COP part two: research

A section of my essay dealt with the idea that consumerism was and is a major factor in rioting, perhaps regardless of supposed intention. From this I have started to look at riots in general, though perhaps I will focus ones on British soil, for a little bit of structure.

A section of my essay dealt with the idea that consumerism was and is a major factor in rioting, perhaps regardless of supposed intention. From this I have started to look at riots and protest in general, though perhaps I will focus ones on British soil, for a little bit of structure.

· How much effect do protests / riots make, and how does violence affect this?

QUOTES

"they did not rebel against consumerism- but made a (misguided and doomed) attempt to join, if only for a fleeting moment, the ranks of consumers for which they have been excluded" Zygmunt Bauman
Speaking outside New Scotland Yard, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, said the force should have anticipated the level of violence "better", adding: "It is not acceptable. "It's an embarrassment for London and for us."
The NUS president, Aaron Porter, today condemned the actions of "those who are here to cause trouble." He tweeted: "Disgusted that the actions of a minority of idiots are trying to undermine 50,000 who came to make a peaceful protest."The NUS president said the march was the biggest student demonstration in generations, telling protesters: "We're in the fight of our lives ... we face an unprecedented attack on our future before it has even begun."They're proposing barbaric cuts that would brutalise our colleges and universities."
"What’s very striking is that, looking at the records of Scuttling over a 30-year period, you seldom find a clerk or an apprentice being arrested. It was always those lads in that huge swathe of society for whom there were very few opportunities, and had no political rights. So if you like, staking out a claim to territory was one of the very few opportunities to 'be somebody' and be respected - even if that was to be feared… That was the case in the late 19th Century and I would say absolutely remains the case today” Andrew Davies on Scuttlers
“With Section 2 violent disorder it’s the actions of a number of people taken together that the jury is encouraged to look at. And one of the difficulties the prosecution – and to an extent the police – have in these sorts of cases is that they view the crowd as one unit. They fail to see there are individuals within that crowd, like these two young men, who were trying to protect people and stop them getting hurt. They just viewed them as one large anonymous block.” Tom Wainwright on the student protests and the case of Alfie Meadows

FACTS + STATISTICS

· “Throughout the second half of the 1980s Thatcher continued her policy of de-industrialisation in favour of imports from abroad, effectively destroying British industry at the cost of thousands of jobs, with unemployment reaching over 11% in the UK and about 50% in mining communities by the late 80s.”

· “The average heroin use in ex-mining communities is also documented as being 27% above the national average, with usage in Wakefield, an area of West Yorkshire, increasing by 3361% between 2000 and 2004. Wakefield was also classed in an EU report of being one of the most deprived areas of Europe, along with Grimethorpe in South Yorkshire and Knowsley in Merseyside, all ex-mining communities.”

· 51 were injured and 93 arrested at the Battle of Orgreave. 72 police officers were injured. There were between 5000 and 6000 strikers, with 4000 and 8000 police officers,

· 153 people were arrested at the 2010 Student Fees Protests. Approximately 50,000 protesters turned up.