Police violence at anti-fracking protests: pacifying disruptive subjects

Will Jackson and Helen Monk maintain that the ‘extreme’ policing of anti-fracking protestors needs to be understood as a routine function of policin

Pacifying Disruptive Subjects: Police violence and anti-fracking protests

This article considers the policing of protests against “fracking” at Barton Moss, Salford, Greater Manchester between November 2013 and April 2014. The article seeks to make sense of the policing response to the protest camp established at the Barton Moss site and to consider what the policing of anti-fracking protests reveals about state responses to resistance in the current era. The article begins by sketching out the background to fracking in the UK and to the specific protest at Barton Moss. It then provides some detail about the nature of policing experienced at the camp during its five month operation before considering how the policing of anti-fracking protests – and protest policing more generally – need to be considered in relation to the general function of police . To do this we draw upon the concept of pacification to consider both the destructive and productive effects of the exercise of police power and suggest that this concept, and the reorientation of critical policing studies that it demands, are essential for understanding police and state violence in the contemporary liberal democracy

Keep Moving! Report on the Policing of the Barton Moss Community Protection Camp, November 2013-April 2014.

This report contains interim findings from research into the policing of the Barton Moss Community Protection Camp at Barton Moss, Salford, Greater Manchester, conducted by researchers from Liverpool John Moores University and the University of York. The camp was in place from November 2013 until April 2014 for the duration of the exploratory drilling operation conducted by energy company IGas Energy at Barton Moss. Camp residents and supporters engaged in a campaign of protest and direct action to raise awareness about the apparent dangers of hydraulic fracturing – better known as fracking – at Barton Moss. Greater Manchester Police (GMP) conducted a policing operation – codenamed Operation Geraldton – at Barton Moss over the course of the drilling operation conducted by IGas

Playing the Game? A criminological account of the making and sharing of Probationary: The Game of Life on Licence

This article reflects on the production and dissemination of Probationary: The Game of Life on Licence. Probationary is an artwork in the form of a board game that takes its players on a journey as they navigate the complexities of the probation process. This article explores the interdisciplinary collaborations that underpinned both the making and the sharing of the game and examines the benefits and challenges of working with stakeholders in this way. We suggest that creative methodologies can provide new ways of engaging with research subjects and new means of disseminating academic research with a view to informing change

Researching the policed: critical ethnography and the study of protest policing

This article seeks to consider the value of critical ethnography for the study of policing. Specifically, the article explores the benefits and challenges of using ethnographic methods to explore protest policing from the perspective of the policed. Drawing upon a longitudinal study of the policing of protests against ‘fracking’ in England, the article examines the process of conducting research with groups who are being policed in extended protest situations. Writing from a critical criminological perspective, the article suggests that this approach to studying policing from below can help advance our collective understanding of both protest and policing. In this sense, ethnographic research can play a vital role in exploring the experiences of groups marginalised in current debates and this approach provides us with an alternative viewpoint from which to examine the development of police policy and practice. The article suggests that to make this contribution to the study of protest policing, we require research that maintains a critical distance from police forces to gain access to those groups who, due to their negative perceptions and/or experiences of policing, are reluctant to engage with research. Reflecting on the development of ethnographic research on, but not with, police, the article suggest that this critical distance brings both benefits and challenges to academic research

Police Power and Disorder: Understanding Policing in the 21st Century

This article considers how critical scholars and activists should understand policing in the 21st century. Challenging the disciplinary enclosure of the concept of police in ‘police studies’, the article aims to contribute to the development of a critical theory of police power. By considering the policing of populations marked as ‘disorderly’ in the UK, the article suggests that for those on the left seeking to understand and challenge the violence of police power, replacing liberal definitions with an understanding of the general function of police is vital. To do this, the analysis draws upon, and seeks to develop the account of police power provided in Mark Neocleous’ The Fabrication of Social Order (2000). The article demonstrates that this work forces us to rethink many of the demands made of police, including from the left, and to start imaging a post-police future as central to a wider project of social and political transformation

Out of Place: Women’s experiences of policing in protest spaces.

This article considers women’s experiences of policing at anti-fracking protests at Barton Moss, Salford, which took place between November 2013 and April 2014. Specifically, the article examines the spatial dynamics of the policing of women and argues that the policing of protest demands feminist analysis. Drawing upon narratives collected from women protesters at Barton Moss, which explore experiences of sexual violence perpetrated by police, we argue that the protest site needs to be considered as a space that facilitates violence against women. Understanding the specifics of the Barton Moss protest as an extended protest situation characterised by direct action protest and an intense and often violent police response, we suggest that women’s experiences of policing were a product of the spatial and temporal dynamics of the protest and policing operation. We consider the protest site as a productive, institutional space within which police violence takes a specifically gendered form enabling the control of those women deemed to be out of place. In turn, we argue that the women at Barton Moss were considered by the police to be transgressing the socio-geographical boundaries which establish the dominant cultural and social order and were thus responded to as disruptive and disorderly subjects

‘That is not facilitating peaceful protest. That is dismantling the protest’: anti-fracking protesters’ experiences of dialogue policing and mass arrest

In the wake of the death of Ian Tomlinson at the London G20 protests in 2009, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of the Constabulary proposed a number of reforms aimed at making public order policing strategies more ‘human-rights compliant’. One of the most significant developments has been the introduction of Protest Liaison Officers whose role is to build links between police and protesters through the establishment of dialogue and relationships based on trust. These developments have led to a burgeoning scholarship in public order policing in recent years. Whilst some studies have documented the development of ‘dialogue policing’ strategies, none have yet captured the complex interplay between these practices and the more overt forms of coercion and control experienced by protesters. In this paper, we begin to fill this lacuna. Drawing on unique data on the experiences of anti-fracking protesters – a hard to reach group whose narrative has not been presented in the academic literature to date – we contrast official accounts with the material conditions faced by protesters. Focusing on protesters’ experiences of both dialogue policing and mass arrest, we find little evidence of the progressive ‘shift’ reflected in official public order policing discourses. Rather, we argue that dialogue policing can have a legitimising function, enabling the police to define protest groups as irrational and ‘uncooperative’ and therefore ripe for violent policing

Deformed Skyrme Crystals

The Skyrme crystal, a solution of the Skyrme model, is the lowest energy-per-charge configuration of skyrmions seen so far. Our numerical investigations show that, as the period in various space directions is changed, one obtains various other configurations, such as a double square wall, and parallel vortex-like solutions. We also show that there is a sudden "phase transition" between a Skyrme crystal and the charge 4 skyrmion with cubic symmetry as the period is gradually increased in all three space directions.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures. To be published in JHE

Policing the UK's anti-fracking movement: facilitating peaceful protest or facilitating the industry

Official public order policing policy in England and Wales has apparently undergone significant changes in the period since the G20 meeting in London in 2009 in order to move towards a new ‘human rights compliant’ framework, based on dialogue, communication and a commitment to ‘facilitating’ peaceful protest, which was proposed as a necessary response to help the police service ‘adapt to the modern day demands of public order policing’ (HMIC 2009, 27). It was our aim in conducting this research to test this official position against the empirical reality of the policing of ‘anti-fracking’ protests across the UK. Drawing upon longitudinal case studies of the policing of UK-wide protests against ‘fracking’, this paper seeks to make a contribution to the growing body of academic research that seeks to evaluate the impact of the apparent policing policy changes on the ‘real-world’ day-to-day operational policing of such protests. In developing our analysis, we draw attention to the definitions of ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ protest defined by the police and consider the extent to which these definitions are reflected in the police response to anti-fracking protest. The article suggests that, in the case of antifracking protests, an official policing commitment to a human rights approach to protest facilitation is at odds with the empirical reality