"Tomlinson is propelled forward to the ground with a great deal of force"
(G20 police assault revealed in video, Guardian Unlimited*, 7 April 2009: Scene 4: 31 seconds)
courtesy: The Guardian
Following on from 'Financial Fools Day' (FuturePresent Blog, 01 April 09), the latest Saturday Guardian (hardcopy) (12 April 2009) made me return to thinking about media representation of police-precipitated violence.
Now, the questioning of police conduct has long been part of everyday discourse, part of long-running urban mythology. In Barthes' sense of the term, mythologies are narratives through which we give meaning to the world around us (Mythologies, 1972); in this case I’m referring to folk mythologies of police violence reflecting the power structures in society over time. Like all mythologies, these are partly attuned to, and partly out of tune with, actuality. Not least because the police are not a mass, but constituted by individuals with different temperaments, albeit individuals adhering to macro, formal laws and codes of conduct, and micro, informal systems of practice.
Certainly, police violence is part and parcel of the discursive territory of, say, The Stop the War Coalition (see Edwards, 'London Demonstration to Protest the Police Attack on Ian Tomlinson', Manchester Stop the War Coalition, 08 April 2009, for a pertinent example of this) and currently prominent within the blogosphere (see Bristle’s Blog from the BunKRS). However, critical perspective on 'Operation Glencoe' (the £7.5m G20 security strategy, supported by six police forces) has bled out notably to the mainstream media over the last two weeks. In context with the YouTube docs tweeted by @guardiantech: G20 protest footage: police v demonstrators ('Financial Fools Day', FuturePresent Blog, 01 April 09: comments) and the G20 police assault revealed in video (Guardian Unlimited, 7 April 2009), the front-page and follow-up double-page spread in this Saturday Guardian (hardcopy) (12 April 2009), precipitated by Ian Tomlinson's contentious and premature death after the G20 London demo, concretise what seems to me to be an unprecedented transformation in the representation of police conduct. The Guardian Unlimited's G20 coverage overall indicates the disproportionate focus on police violence at the G20 protests in London.
The Guardian are not unique here: mainstream news sources as diverse as BBC News and The Times have expressed concerns over G20 police tactics. However, it seems to be the case that The Guardian's is a much more extensive critique of 'Operation Glencoe'; it is certainly the case that the angle of media reportage changed significantly pre-and-post demos. The screenshot below of the first page of an archive search of Times Online for 'G20 + police + violence' indicates the nuanced change in reportage between 28 March and 11 April 2009.
The Times Online: 'G20 police violence ' archive search
28 March - 11 April 2009
CLICK ON THE IMAGE ABOVE FOR A FULL-SCALE VERSION
To my mind, these kinds of documents are long overdue. From an anecdotal perspective, I was impressed by the serenity and support of the police in the main anti-Iraq-War demo in London in 2003. Yet, to say I was ‘impressed’ already tells of my pre-conditioning by folk mythologies of police violence. Certainly, these mythologies were concretised by my experience of the police when I participated in the march through Brighton attempting to deliver a petition calling for the closure of the EDO MBM Factory (Home Farm Business Park, Brighton, UK) to Brighton Town Hall. EDO MBM was a prominent link between the occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine and Brighton and Hove City Council, ironically, the first council in the UK to be awarded United Nations Peace Messenger City status. Protestors were blockaded in North Street (some streets away from Brighton Town Hall) by police. Effectively, the police curtailed our right to petition our own council peacefully (for a non-anecdotal perspective, see Eccles, Police hold line against peace marchers, The Argus, 18 September 2006).
Alternatively, in my little town of Wimborne, the police have instilled in me a sense of trust. Though the ‘bobby on the beat’ has long disappeared even from my town, from my experience, there is an air of calmness associated with local police, as they ride around, often on their bicycles, often in a pastoral, rather than disciplinary, role. Then again, I live in the kind of town where some people continue to take the risk of leaving their doors and cars unlocked. Occasionally, this turns out to be a foolish decision but, more often than not, there are no repercussions. Recently, my car wing mirror was broken overnight by two youths, who seemed to have used the roads in my vicinity as their destructive playground. A friendly policewoman informed me of the crime early the next morning, before I’d even noticed the damage to my car. The youths had already given themselves up. This was followed by police phone calls every other day updating me of the process of prosecution. The police solution was one of ‘restorative justice’, by which I mean that we, the victims of the crimes, were involved in defining a non-custodial punishment for the youths. Other local police mythologies range from the bobby who walked a friend of mine home hand-in-hand after my friend had decided erroneously that ketamine would be his drug of choice for the evening, to another arrested agressively for just walking down the street.
My point is that sometimes the police fall foul of the law themselves, sometimes not. My point is that, from my perspective, media reportage of demos generally has all too often tended to demonise demonstrators and reify police. My point is that representations of the G20 protests in London amongst certain media factions seem to be breaking this mold in the most unabashed of discourses. My friend, Daniel Cox, noted that this may signal a lingering left-of-centre-media post-2003-Anti-War-Demos-got-us-nowhere-resentment (this is epitomised, for example, in Pidd, We marched then...But what now?, Guardian Unlimited, 22 April 2005). Daniel tempered my optimism by reminding me that we're far, far off from the likes of The Daily Mail tapping into this discursive shift. Notwithstanding, the moderated Mail Online News Board on 'How well did the Police handle the G20 protests?' reveals a more complex demographic than the one one may define instinctively as the readership of The Daily Mail. Some of the comments, of course, are right on the mark. Here are two contrasting viewpoints:
"Well it was obvious that the man [Tomlinson] was no threat, he was just walking past with his hands in his pockets, maybe leaving the demo? I think that policeman should have spoken to the man first to see if he was going to make toruble!"
"Absolutely they [the police involved] should be prosecuted and fired immediately.
If it were Muslims demonstrating, they'd be running backwards, and ignoring the verbal abuse from them - oh, they've already done that!"
The complexity of discursive currents is highlighted by the sponsored links on the archive search page of The Times Online featured above: from Christian Khan Solicitors advertising for 'advice on legal actions against the police', to The US Department of Sate's America.gov's Alternatives to Violence [sic], to Assured Risk Strategies' G20 March Security consultancy service, to (some twisted humour evident here) Violent Cop on lovefilm, cash-ins on this latest news agenda item are rife. Almost enough for me to boycott lovefilm. But not quite.
In addition, any pro-Guardian discourse I may weave myself into is countered further by my distinctive feeling that The Guardian are sensationalising their content increasingly (for instance, see the disparity between the headline and body of this Saturday Guardian's front-page article - Lewis, Pathologist in Ian Tomlinson G20 death case was reprimanded over conduct, 11 April 2009: 1) and falling fouly to the 'cult of personality' (for example, see Allen, Front row fashionistas, 13 March 2009).
Ultimately, and in the name of one of their listeners, Richard_SM, BBC Radio 4's iPM asks the most pertinent question of all: The G20 protests. Does the media only cover violence? (Mair, 1 April 2009). The programme "prides itself in [giving us] '[Our] News'. [We] are at the very centre. The show revolves around [our] knowledge, ideas and experiences" (Vallance, Suggest a story, 14 March 2009). As Tracey details, "iPM has talked about Richard_SM before. He wrote suggesting we look at how the media covers demonstrations. 'Tens of thousands sacrificed their time' to attend protests about events in Gaza, but the demos were 'hardly covered'. He contrasts this with the heckling of a military parade in Luton and the Peter Mandelson green goo incident, which were widely reported." (Reporting demos, and all that Jazz, BBC RADIO 4: iPM, 31 March 2009).
The thing is: after the current forore subsides, who'll remember anything of the G20 gathering and its counter-discourses, aside from vague lingering memories of two days when British police lost it on camera big time, and one innocent bystander died?
*I'm ignoring The Guardian's recent rebranding of Guardian Unlimited into guardian.co.uk for as long as I can get away with it legitimately. As the screenshot from guardian.co.uk below demonstrates, The Guardian itself doesn't seem to have yet decided between the two variations (screenshot dated 14 April 09).
