'The riots were where the police were': Resistance in Spaces of

Urban VulnerabilityDr Bob Jeffery, Senior Lecturer in Sociology,

Sheffield Hallam UniversityDr Waqas Tufail, Lecturer in Criminology,

University of ChesterThanks to Stephen Broadhurst and Jerry Coulton

for photographs

Dominant Framing of 2011 Riots: Shopping with Violence

• Criminality, nihilism, looting like never before...– On the Right: Cameron, Starkey and Durodie (2012)

– On the Left: Zizek (2011), Moxon (2011), Newburn (2012) and Treadwell et al (2013)

• Thus was it ever so...

• But perhaps more so in an era of 24hour rolling news (Ball and Drury, 2012)

• But really a lack of journalistic coverage or sustained empirical (particularly ethnographic) work (but see Mckenzie, 2013)

Methods: One Day in a former DSS office

• Started on one day in August 2011

• Lots of informal accounts but few people willing to be recorded

• 'I can't get anyone [...] I'm having difficulty with some of our young members getting them to talk about it mate. No one's saying anything. Cos you never know what meither [...] what backlash is coming from it' (Mike, early 40s)

• 12 Interviews with police officers, witnesses, residents (range of class backgrounds)

• Draws on a wealth of empirical data from other projects on Salford (Coulton et al, 2010; Jeffery, 2011; Tufail, 2013), extensive secondary literature review

Salford: Constructing Urban ‘Vulnerability’• Dirty Old Town (Roberts, 1990)

• Deindustrialisation/Suburbanisation

• ‘Those Inner Cities’ (Residualisation)

• Era of State-Sponsored Gentrification

• Polarisation, Securitisation (Salford City Council, 2008b) and Tectonic Communities (Butler and Robson, 2003; Jeffery and Jackson, 2012)

Imperial War Museum North; Lowry Centre;

BBC ‘MediaCityUK’

Modernist restructuring, slum clearance, ‘planned blight’

Tuesday 9th August 2011: Precinct and Brydon Close

• 2pm – Salford Precinct business shut-up amid rumours of a riot

• Rumours fed by expectations of (and calls for) riot at a number of locations across Greater Manchester

• At 3.25pm police respond to reports of groups of young people gathering in the area by deploying around 50 officers in riot gear

• Just riot police, just marching through, almost like an army y'know, and there were people there just watching, and little kids there, and you didn't know what was going to happen, and it could have gone off at any time at that point [...] The lads weren't rioting at that time, although they were facing the police (Malcolm, public sector worker, early 50s)

• The crowd of onlookers grows (predominantly younger men, but all ages, male and female) and missiles are begin to be thrown

Photos courtesy of Stephen Broadhurst

Why Brydon Close/Precinct?

• '[...] they all hit Salford precinct. [...] But they all ended up there because the police was down there. The riots were where the police were, you know what I mean? At the beginning I believe the police was in Brydon Close just ready for the riots to start so wherever they turned up, that's where the riots were, that's why the riots started, but basically, again, I'm sick of it' (Mike, early 40s).

• [...] they had the armoured van on the corner. And it was just really interesting, because it's almost like [a] red rag to a bull, you know what I mean? [...] And it's that thing where [...] and then they didn't have the might behind them to deliver. So they started off with all of the best will in the world and then, they couldn't actually follow through, the police' (Beverley, late 30s)

• ‘The territorial stigma is such that violent disorder was almost summoned into existence’ (Garbin and Millington , 2012: 2076)

The Police Withdraw• By 5-6pm the police in Salford are coming under sustained attack, there is also the first reports of rioting in Manchester city-centre

• '[...] the Greater Manchester Police commanding officer took the brave decision to withdraw from Salford to ensure the safety of his officers [...] (Hanson, 2012)

• 'There weren't enough of them to do anything and they had to retreat' (Beverley, late 30s)

• As the police withdraw, the looting begins: The Money Shop, Cash Convertors, Cash Generators, Bargain Booze and Timpsons, amongst others

• A BBC cameraman is assaulted, two BBC vehicles are torched (Slattery, 2011)

Contrasting Manchester and Salford

• ‘The night of rioting in Manchester was different from what we had seen in the past, in terms of groups of youths moving from shop to shop - not attacking the police, but just out to steal property. In Salford it was different again, with those involved attacking police and fire crews and destroying local community facilities’ (Fahy, 2012)

The riot ‘commute’ in Manchester (see Rogers

and Prasad, 2011)

Was it all ‘Mindless’?• By 8.30am this evening around 300 people of all ages and races had gathered in LIDL's car park and beyond, cheering as explosions boomed from a burning car and balley-ed up kids let off fire-extinguishers. Women struggled down the street with loaded LIDL bags. Beer from smashed bottles literally flowed down the road. Pretty girls in white dresses filmed the whole spectacle on their mobile phones, older lads skinned up, the local community hung out of their tower block windows to get a good glimpse [...] all that was missing was the DJ. This was a very Salford riot (Kingston, 2011a; see also Clifton and Allison, 2011)

• Natalie describes how local residents ensured there was no damage to their property

• MediaCityUK Chaplain explains how locals protected her from volleys of missiles (Matthews, 2011)

Sources of Antagonism: Securitisation of Space

• Securitisation (Neocleous, 2000) of the urban fabric has accompanied gentrification – the attempt to fashion invulnerable spaces for the privileged– Gated communities– CCTV– Situation crime control– Dispersal orders and ASBOs– The entire social policy apparatus (social work, housing, unemployment ‘services’)

– Reordering of policing priorities to secure an urban renaissance

• Luke: […] them students are going to be the ones in ten years with big houses and nice cars! I mean I get on with a few students, but some are almost looking down on you, and then they’re the people that you want to rob. (Unemployed male, late teens, Central Salford)

Sources of Antagonism: The Police

• Mckenzie (2013) – With the retreat of (disciplinary) welfare, which agency of the state looms largest in the lives of the marginal working class?

• B: What else do you think the authorities could do to improve things around here?Steve: […] tell the police to stop being fucking violent. They start at a young age. They’ve got no regard for the law so why should we? (Early 40s, Central Salford)

• 'They should protect and serve everyone, not just who they think they should protect and "He's not worth protecting cos' he's got previous criminal whatever", do you know what I mean?' (Mike, early 40s)

Contesting Space• I think it was about having a go at the police - you know, after years of abuse. [...] Because the police do abuse people, they do like take liberties. I know people who get harassed by the police on a regular basis, and it will always go on - and I can't see it ever stopping. What you have to understand is there are a lot of people from Salford who love Salford - who will fight for Salford' (my emphasis, 'Barry', cited in Kingston, 2011e - reporting on Reading the Riots)

• See Mckenzie (2013) on ‘being St Anns’

• 22 year old unemployed male interviewed by Clifton (2011): 'We had total control of the precinct. There's a massive police station there, and they couldn't do anything. It was ours for a day'.

Responses – Reclaiming Space• ‘Some who live outside this great city may be

unaware of the dedication shown by those Councils and other parts of the community to putting this City back on its feet once the recession of the 1980s had taken its toll [...]. The achievements in regeneration have been substantial, not least to the renewed vitality of the City Centre's commercial core. To those of us who knew Manchester and Salford in the 1970s and early 1980s, the transformation has been quite remarkable. The City has struggled and must still struggle through bad economic times so that all of its areas can benefit from the regeneration that hard work has produced. The commercial life of the retail sector is no small part of that. It provides jobs for large numbers of people, and services the whole population of the area. It also supports Manchester City Centre , and Salford Quays in providing cultural vitality to the region in theatres, concert halls, clubs and all the other incidents of a vibrant City centre which attracts up to 100,000 people in all over [sic] a weekend evening’ (Gilbert, 2011)

References:• Ball, R. and Drury, R. (2012) ‘Representing the Riots: The (mis)use of figures to sustain ideological explanation’, Radical Statistics, vol. 106 pp. 4-21.

• Clifton, H. (2011) 'Rioter Profile: "If it happened close to the election it might be more damaging"', The Guardian, 6th December.

• Clifton, H. and Allison, E. (2011) 'Manchester and Salford: a tale of two riots', Guardian, 6th December.• Coulton, J. Dennis, A. Jackson, W. Jeffery, B. Patel, T. and Smith, G. (2010) Offender Perceptions of Criminal Opportunities

(Theft from a Motor Vehicle) an Inner-City Neighbourhood, Report to Salford Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership and Greater Manchester Police.

• Durodié, B. (2012) 'The changing nature of riots in the contemporary metropolis from ideology to identity: lessons from the recent UK riots', Journal of Risk Research, vol. 15 no. 4: 347--354.

• Fahy, P. (2012) 'Greater Manchester Police chief Sir Peter Fahy: No-one would have backed us if we'd cracked down hard on rioters', Manchester Evening News, 6th August.

• Garbin, D. and Millington, G. (2012) ‘Territorial Stigma and the Politics of Resistance in a Parisian Banlieue: La Courneuve and Beyond’, Urban Studies, vol. 49 no. 10 pp. 2067-2083.

• Gilbert, A. (2011) 'Sentencing Remarks: His Honour Judge Andrew Gilbert QC The Honorary Recorder of Manchester, The Queen v Stephen Carter, David Beswick, Linda Mary Boyd, Michael Gillespie-Doyle', 16th August at Manchester Crown Court, Judiciary of England and Wales.

• Hanson, I. (2012) 'Riots one year on: Police Federation chief - I refuse to let low-life scum leave a legacy', Manchester Evening News, 11th August.

• Jeffery, B. (2011) Mobility and Inequality in a Transitional Inner-City Neighbourhood, unpublished PhD thesis, Salford: University of Salford.

• Kingston, S. (2011a) 'Salford Riots Flare as Cars Torched and Lidl Goes up', Salford Star, 9th August.• Kingston, S. (2011e) 'Salford Riots: Police and Poverty', Salford Star, 5th December.• Matthews, H. (2011) 'The Salford riots and the greed of the disenfranchised', The Guardian, 10th August.• McKenzie, L. (2013) 'Fox-Trotting the Riot: Slow Rioting in Britain's Inner City', Sociological Research Online, vol. 18 no. 4.

• Moxon, D. (2011) ‘Consumer Culture and the 2011 “Riots”’, Sociological Research Online, vol. 16 no. 4.• Neocleous, M. (2000) The Fabrication of Social Order: A Critical Theory of Police Power, London: Pluto Press.• Newburn, T. (2012) ‘30 years after Brixton, what would Lord Scarman have made of the2011 riots?’, Guardian: Reading

the Riots, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jul/01/brixton-lord-scarman-2011-riots• Rogers, S. and Prasad, R. (2011) 'England Riots: mapping the distance from home to offence', The Guardian, 5th December.

• Slattery, J. (2011) 'UK riots: Attacks on journalists and cameramen continue as trouble spreads outside London', Jon Slattery: A Freelance Journalist Writing from the UK, 10th August.

• Treadwell, J. Briggs, D. Winlow, S. and Hall, S. (2013) 'Shopocalypse Now: Consumer Culture and the English Riots of 2011', British Journal of Criminology, vol. 53 no. 1 pp. 1-17.

• Tufail, W. (2013) Investigating Neighbourhood Partnership Policing, unpublished PhD thesis, Salford: University of Salford.• Zizek, S. (2011) ‘Shoplifters of the World Unite’, London Review of Books. 19 August 2011.