The politics of legal signification: Press coverage of urban disorder in 1985

Press Coverage of Urban Disorder in 1985

THE POLITICS OF LEGAL SIGNIFICATION: COVERAGE OF URBAN DISORDER IN 1985"

Lindsay Farmer**

3

PRESS

L Introduction

On Saturday 28 September 1985 a black woman, Mrs. Cherry Groce, was shot and seriously injured during the course of a police raid

on her home in Brixton. During the day the anger of her family and

the community grew at both the injury to Mrs. Groce and the police

attitude to the raid and its consequences. Later a crowd gathered

outside the police station and the rumour spread that Mrs. Groce had

been killed. This developed into a series of outbreaks of violence as stones and petrol bombs were thrown at the police station and the police charged out in riot gear. The crowds were f'maUy dispersed by a

heavy police attack at around midnight. The following Saturday on

the Broadwater Farm housing estate in Tottenham, another black

woman, Mrs. Cynthia Jarrett, suffered a fatal heart attack during a

police raid. The raid was carried out following the detention of her

son, despite the fact that he no longer lived in the family home. Her

family alleged assault and insensitivity on the part of the police

officers involved. Anger grew locally and on the Sunday a public

meeting was held to protest at the police conduct and to demand an

independent inquiry into Mrs. Jarrett's death. Later there was a

confrontation between youths and the police and the police sealed the

area. In the course of the disorder which followed a policeman was

stabbed to death and guns were fired by the rioters. The disorder

* My thanks are especially due to Ruty Ambalo for sharing the original hard work and many ideas. I would like to thank Peter Goodrich for encouraging me to write and commenting on an earlier draft. ** Research Assistant, Strathclyde University.

4 The Liverpool Law Review VoI.IX(1) [1987]

eventually petered out around midnight although the situation

remained tense for weeks afterwards due to intensive police presence

on the estate.

These two events demanded an explanation. My aim in this study

is to examine the terms in which the event was represented and

explained in the national daily press, and to relate this representation

to elements of legal discourse in order to raise questions about the

ideological functions of law in contemporary British society. The

study is based on daily readings of four papers- the Times, the

Guardian, the Daily Mail and the Sun - from 30 September to 13

October 1985.1 These papers were chosen for their range from

'quality' paper to tabloid and also because they represent a range of

political viewpoints from the 'liberal' Guardian to the conservative

populism of the mass circulation Sun. I will concentrate on the news

coverage of the events examining their immediate impact and the

terms in which the event was described, setting the tone for the further

coverage and providing a framework within which the subsequent

discussion was carried out. 2

1 The study was originally carried out over the coverage of the disorder in 1981 and 1985. I have decided for reasons of space and topicality not to refer to the 1981 coverage. A good basic account is to be found in A. Hansen & G. Murdock, "Constructing the Crowd; Populist Discourse and Press Presentation", in The Crit ical Communication Review (ed. Mosco & Wasko), Ablex Publishing Corp., 1985. 2 S Hall et al, Policing the Crisis, Macmillan, 1977; C. Sumner, "'Political Hooliganism' and 'Rampaging Mobs', in Crime Justice and the Mass Media (ed. C. Sumner), Cropwood Conference Series, Cambridge, 1982.

Press Coverage of Urban Disorder in 1985 5

IL Discourse and Ideology

"Current concern over violence and riot then involves a problem of the political language in which these events are described and interpreted. ''3

Before I move to examine the substance of the press reports I

want to give some brief consideration to the theoretical importance of

examining the relationship between legal discourse and journalistic

text, and also outline the conditions which make it possible to read

the ideology within the text.

Current interest in the realisations of legal discourse in textual and

institutional practices has tended to concentrate on the ideological

effects of legal method and theory and the social institutions and

practices that these supp•rt. • Foucault s argues that a concern with

discursive formations should examine three areas of relevance. First

there are the points of diffraction of the discourse where equivalent

elements cannot remain within the same discourse without

contradicting each other and so form genuine alternatives. Second

they must be studied in relation to "the economy of the discursive

constellation ''6 to determine the factors affecting the choice of one

strategy from a possible number of alternatives. Finally he argues

that it is necessary to look at the function that the discourse studied

carries out in the field on non-discursive practices, as a further means

of understanding the determinations of the theoretical choices that have

been made and are being made. The argument is thus that discourse

3 A. Silver, "The Demand for Order in Civil Society" in The Police: Six Sociological Essays (ed. D. Bordua), J. Wiley & Sons, 1967, 23. 4 P. Goodrich, "Law and Language: An Historical and Critical Introduction", 11 J .L.S. (1984), 173; P. Goodrich, Reading the Law, Basil Blackwell, 1986. 5 M. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, Harvester , 1972, 64-70. 6 1bid. at 66.

6 The Liverpool Law Review Vol.IX(1) [1987]

organises around and supports social institutions and practices which then appropriate the authority to speak and control the parameters of

development. Such work as has been carded out in this last category

has tended to be related to authority, language and the operations of

power within legal institutions. 7 There has thus been a failure to

consider legal discourse in fields of practice that are not related directly

to the functioning of legal institutions. Further, a study of the law as

a social practice requires that notice be taken of the way that an

ideology of "common sense" informs legal discourse, and the everyday

understanding of social practices that bolster the view of the law as an

autonomous institution. The paper is thus concerned with the

ideological effectivity of law beyond its institutional setting - that is,

with the way that legal concepts are utilised in the journalistic

representations, articulating around other social concerns and practices

and thus their relevance to contemporary political debate. It is less of a direct concern with the authoritarianism of"Law and Order" politics z

than an examination of particular strategies of legitimation.

The idea that legal discourse as ideology can be seen and read

within the journalistic text rests on the argument that because events

themselves do not have any intrinsic meaning they must be explained

in terms of social discourses and understandings that already exist 9

While the process of news production is surrounded by the social

practices of news gathering and the assumptions and values of

journalists and editors, 1° the most basic process is the representation of an event in a textual form. However, this process despite appeals to a distinction between fact and value, is far from innocent. The use

of language and photographs to construct meaning relies on the

7 P. Carlen, Magistrates' Justice, Academic Press, 1976; D. McBarnet, Conviction, Macmillan, 1981. s S. Hall et al., s u p r a n.2. 9 Ibid.

lo S. Cohen, & J. Young (eds.), The Manufacture of News, Constable, 1981, 2nd Edn.; S. Chibnall, Law and Order News, Tavistock, 1977.


operation of shared understandings or codes which 'reference' domains of 'social meaning '11 Thus to provide a representation of an event,

the text is simultaneously drawing on a range of social discourse and shared social meanings to attempt to address the perceived audience in terms that they can understand. The text is also working to provide

what may be termed the "preferred signification" of the event- a signification provided by the hegemonic institutions of a society explaining the event in terms that do not challenge the existing social

relations and legitimate the actions of the state agencies. 12 It is beyond the scope of this paper to examine the decodings of these significations by the 'audience' or to relate them to a study of

hegemonic institutions and social crisis. My aim is to use the systematic nature of the process of signification to analyse the entries of legal discourse into the text.

I must conclude this section with a brief warning. It is important

that ideology is not regarded as a unified structure but as a process. It is founded in social relations and as such it is also an area of struggle.

Just as a single meaning cannot be provided of an event or the decoding of the audience guaranteed, the elements of an ideological

discourse such as law require to be continually reaffirmed in relation to

social practices beyond which they have no meaning. Thus while the

importance of the examination of the effectivity of legal discourse cannot be denied, this effectivity is not general but relates only to a

particular historical moment. Thus the study of the politics of legal signification is, of necessity, linked to particular events and social relations at that juncture.

11 S. Hall, "Culture, the Media and the 'Ideological Effect'",. in Mass Communication and Society (ed. J. Curran et al), Edward Arnold, 1977. 52 S. Hall et al., supra n.2.


IlL Representing Disorder

Rather than attempting to regard the news coverage as though it

in some sense provided a narrative of events, I shall look at it in terms

of the strategies and techniques that are associated with legal

signification. The news coverage demonstrates two apparently

contradictory processes in terms of which it is possible to analyse the

bulk of the relevant coverage. The disorder is described in sweeping

and extravagant terms to emphasise how it is both unprecedented and

irrational. However it is simultaneously explained in the language of

individual crimes and victims, describing violence but also stressing

the rational behaviour of the rioters. I shall discuss these more fully in turn.

(i) The "Orgy of Violence"

As Hansen and Murdock 13 argue, the irrationality of the behaviour

of the rioters is an important theme of the coverage and it is presented through the use of two important populist themes. There is firstly a

fear of the behaviour of crowds. This is based on the degeneration of

the responsible individual that is supposed to occur when they join a crowd and the denial of collective action as an authentic means of

bringing political or social grievance. Secondly it emphasises the

youth of the participants to construct a picture of irresponsibility and 'hooliganism'14 The transformation of irrational behaviour is made especially clear in the Daily Mail. In a timetable of events on

Saturday 28 September, it is a "crowd" that meets at 12.30pm, but at 3pro after "strangers and troublemakers" arrive it has become a "mob"

(30 Sept. p.2/3). The Sun has a banner headline that captures this

theme - "THE MADNESS OF THE MOB" (30 Sept. p.2/3). Their

t3 A. Hansen & G. Murdock, supra n.l. ~4 G. Pearson, Hooligan. A History Macmillan, 1983.

of Respectable Fears,


coverage follows this up by reporting that "thugs" used the shooting

as an excuse and "roving bands of hooligans had laid in wait" to cause

"maximum disruption" (p.4/5). Similarly the Times described the youths who attacked P.C. Blakelock as a "pack of hounds" suffering

from mob hysteria (8 Oct. p.1). The Sun carries a perfect example of youth out of control, with

the story that "Disco Dollies led looting spree". The story explains how the girls abandoned a night on the town to loot alcohol from a

supermarket (30 Sept. p.5). This last story is directly below the photograph of a black girl in a white jacket confronted by a policeman in a shop doorway. In the Sun she is intended to be one of the "disco

dollies". In the Mail however, the same photograph is used in a way that links it to a significant theme in the coverage. The caption

"Ribbon in her hair, hatred in her heart", makes reference to the hatred

for whites and white society that the Mail (and also the times and the Sun), suggest as a cause of the riots. This links to a new and powerful theme in the rightwing press, in which blacks are supposed to be prone to criminality and are subverting Britain's multi-cultural society. 15 Black youth in particular are singled out for rejecting the values of their parents. Race Relations workers "privately admitted"

to the Daily Mail that young blacks were either "out of control" or "just plain wicked" (30 Sept. p.3; 8 Oct. p.2/3). In the Mail the riot at Broadwater Farm started with "POLICEMEN LURED INTO TRAP

OF HATE", and then they met an "avalanche of hate" (8 Oct. p.4). An injured policeman told the Times of the "sheer hatred" of the crowd. The Times also plays the theme in a different way when articles on consecutive days argue that Brixton is far from the "frontline of urban squalor" especially considering the money spent since 1981 (1 Oct. p.2; 2 Oct. p.2). The cause of rioting is then looked for in the rejection of white society by the black community.

~s N. Murray, "Anti-Racists and Other Demons: The Press and Ideology in Thatcher's Britain", XXVII,3 Race and Class (1986), 1; R. Ambalo, Race and the Politics of Hate, Cambridge University, 1986, Unpublished M.Phil. thesis.


The populist fear of youth is thus rearticulated around the theme of race, allowing explanations for the disorder that either remove the need

for consideration of economic or social policy, or in considering it turn the presence of blacks in the inner cities into the cause of the decline of the area.

Descriptions of the level of violence are also an import_ant part of the news coverage. 1~ Favourite terms here are those like the "orgy of violence" and the "sporadic outbreaks of violence flaring" (Times 30

Sept. p.1). In the Sun there is a reversion to the imagery of war.

Photographs are captioned "battlefield", "refugees" emerge from their flats in the morning, and Broadwater Farm was "Terror HQ" for the

rioters. Their whole coverage is under the logo "The Bloody Face of

London" (e.g. 8 Oct. pA). The Daily Mail goes for banner headlines reading "THE TERROR OF TOTTENHAM" and the "BATIT,ES OF

BROADWATER FARM" (8 Oct. p.2/3; p.21/2). Broadwater Farm is

described in the Guardian as the "ugliest episode so far" with shotguns, stones, petrol bombs, machetes and a hurled stanley knife

(7 Oct p.1). These are accompanied by visual images that portray sustained violence either by metaphor or by reference to its effects. In the Times (8 Oct p.1) there is a photograph of a petrol bomb with the caption "Petrol bomb testimony amid Tottenham riot rubble"- testimony presumably.to the "orgy of violence". In the Times a week earlier, a similar effect is achieved by a front page photograph of cars burning "out of control". The caption here clearly references the accompanying story in which the doters are "out of control" (Times 30 Sept. p.1). The ferocity of the violence is also referenced by the extent of the damage or the number of 'crimes' committed - following Brixtonthere were 149 arrests and 137 major 'crimes' discovered (all papers 30 Sept.).

The coverage clearly aims to give a picture of the event. However, as I have already suggested, the terms in which it does so

~6 S. Cohen & J. Young supra n.10; C Sumner & S. Sandberg, Helmets Flew and Scuffles Broke Out, Forthcoming 1987.


are not neutral. The overall effect is to draw a contrast between

behaviour that is social- the policemen who do their duty (see

Guardian 8 Oct. p.2), - and behaviour that is anti-social, through use

of the metaphors of war. By defining the actions of the rioters as

irrational it places their actions outside the central values of the law. I

discuss this point at greater length below and so it is only necessary at

the moment to point out its broader consequences. The protection of

the law is to be extended only to rational actors, who recognise that

the law is supposed to protect all interests equally, as well as the

interests of property and order. The rioters are thereby defined as

having neither rational demands nor social interests. The consequence

of this ideological process is that of isolating the protestors. Crucially, it also legitimates tougher policing strategies and further

marginalises the communities to which they belong, 17 because of the

threat to the common interest that they are said to pose. Similarly it

cannot be regarded as political protest because that would not be collective action and would certainly not involve violence since this is

anathema to the ideas of liberal democracy. Finally the coverage

makes it plain which section of the community is responsible for the

threat to these peculiarly British values, by coupling a traditional fear

of youth to contemporary rhetoric about West Indian culture. Thus,

through the general ideology of formal equality under the law and

through the particular idea of the rational actor is made possible the

practical marginalisation and policing of entire communities.

17 S. Hall, "The Great Moving Right Show", in The Politics of Thatcherlsm (ed. S. Hall & M. Jacques), Lawrence Wishart, London, 1983; B. Jessop et al., "Authoritarian Populism, Two Nations and Thatcherism", 147 N.L.R. (1984), 32. These authors argue that a crucial element in the Thatcherite response to the economic and social crisis in Britain has been a "two nations" policy, whereby certain areas and communities are marginalised and whose resistance to this is policed in an increasingly authoritarian way.

12 The Liverpool Law Review Voi.IX(1) [19871

(ii) Crime and Protest

As I have already suggested above there is a second strategy at

work. In contrast to the concentration on irrationality and loss of

control it seeks to portray the rioters as more criminal and more

calculating. I would further suggest that this is more directly

connected to the transformations and techniques that are associated

with legal discourse.

The prime strategy here is that of the personalising or

individualising transformation. Hall is describes this as the process by

which a political event is mystified by displacing the ideological

significance onto the personal level. Thus the coverage of the riots

tends to concentrate on the stories of victims of particular incidents or

the descriptions of particular acts of violence. A good example of this

is found in the coverage of Brixton. A furniture store was set alight

and a 94 year old, Mr. Ernie Harris, was forced to abandon his home

on one of the upper stories. This is used to great effect in the Sun

where statistics of damaged buildings and cars are mixed in with Ernie's account of his personal loss (30 Sept. p.2). The Times reports

that he pleaded with the rioters to stop "but in vain" (30 Sept. p.3).

The Guardian has a photograph of him standing forlornly in front of his burnt out flat, "his.home for 45 years" (1 Oct. p.2). The broader

significance of the event and the circumstances that gave rise to it are

displaced by sympathy for his feelings and losses. However it must be noted that the individualising transformation has an extra significance when considered with legal discourse, because the process

of personalising is carried out automatically by disaggregating the

disorder into a series of individual crimes. This process is initially carried out by the police as "primary definers" of the situation and is

subsequently reinforced by journalistic technique. In this way

is S. Hall, "The Determinations of New Photographers", in S. Cohen & J. Young, supra n.10.


coverage of the event is either as a mass of crimes, or focussed

through the commission of one particular crime.

Journalists are heavily dependent on the police for information.

The police provide 'authoritative' accounts of events ~9 but also in the

case of disorder they provide the initial accounts of the breakdown

since the reporter would rarely be there. Naturally enough, for an

agency concerned with crime they provide accounts of the event in

these terms. They describe how order is restored and how many

policemen are injured. The event thus becomes an unexpected and inexplicable attack on police and property. Above all the media is

rarely critical in its reproduction of this initial information.

Police information released after the Brixton disorder was that

there had been 149 arrests and 137 major crimes discovered (all papers

30 Sept.), and by the following day they revealed that they were

investigating 500 crimes. After Broadwater Farm it is revealed that 71

police and 11 other people had been injured (Times 8 Oct. p.1). The

Sun deals salaciously with an account of two rapes that occurred in

Brixton during the disorder. Described in these terms it is easy to see

how Douglas Hurd, the Home Secretary, could describe the situation

as a temporary breakdown of order and the committing of crime,

concluding that "deprivation does not lead people to rape and loot TV sets" (Guardian 5 Oct. p.1).

One event alone focussed all the accounts of Broadwater Farm and

this was the death of P.C. Blakelock. The news did not reach the

papers until Tuesday 8 October. The Sun was quickly off the mark with a page one banner headline, "I PITY THE MOB", alongside a

caption of Blakelock captioned "Riot Hero". The quote was taken

from an interview with his widow that was also carried by the other papers in our sample. Sir Kenneth Newman said that his death was

every bit as sad as the death of Mrs. Jarrett and, "not only were firearms used against the unarmed civil police but P.C. Blakelock, a husband and father of three kids, as well as an invaluable home beat

19 S. Chibnall, supra n.10; S. Hall et al., supra n.2.


officer, was savagely murdered in a knife attack" (Guardian 8 Oct. and

back page). The coverage concentrates on the killing, Blakelock's

career, and the grief of his young family. I am not suggesting that the

killing was not a tragedy but that the depth of coverage should be

compared to that given to either Mrs. Groce or Mrs. Jarrett. The

murder is thus removed from its context so that the aim of the rioters

appears to be the murder of this "mature and likeable man" (Times 8

Oct. p.1). The act is either senseless, carried out by youths described

as "a pack of hounds", or it is seen as "cold blooded" and

"unambiguously vicious" stemming from hatred of the police. These

latter terms particularly stress the rationality of the rioters.

The statements of senior police officers purporting to offer an

explanation for the event also play an important part in setting the

disorder within the explanatory framework of massed criminality.

"Police Put Riot Blame On Unruly Criminal Element" was the

headline in the Guardian (30 Sept. p.1). Richard Wells of Scotland

Yard made the comment that the shooting, "was exploited by a

substantial number of opportunists.., indulging in wanton damage to

property and injury to innocent citizens" (all papers 30 Sept.). This

was backed up by Commander Marnoch of Brixton who said, "a

criminal element took part and used general demonstration as a cover

for their activities." The formula was in fact reproduced the following

week when Sir Kenneth Newman said "criminal guile availed itself of

the respectable mantle of grief.., to burn, stone and then kill" (Times

8 Oct. p.1). Thus the violence and destruction can be blamed on the criminal element who rationally decide to exploit a situation where the

police are under pressure or, as /',lorman Tebbit put it to a press conference at the Conservative party conference- the sum total of human wickedness has not increased, it is the pressures on the police

that provide more scope for it to burst out (Times 8 Oct.). The police are similarly responsible for making a clear attempt to

shift the responsibility for the disorder onto a shadowy band of

political extremists and outside agitators who either created or exploited the situation for their own devious ends. Premeditated


violence is abhorred by the law and is clearly alien to our idea of

political process. Although this theme is clear in the coverage of

Brixton, 2° it is given its strongest expression in the coverage of Broadwater Farm. Here, the initial disclosure is made by Kenneth Newman, that agitators from outside London had been active and were

thought to be Trotskyites and anarchists (all papers 8 Oct.). This is

then taken up by the news coverage, with only the Times bothering to report the end of Newman's statement that there was "no concrete

evidence that activities were premeditated or orchestrated by outside activists" (and in fact the evidence has yet to be found). The Sun

instead reported that there was "firm evidence" (8 Oct. p.2), under the

banner"THEY PLANNED IT LIKE A WAR". Residents had warned

of the "stockpiling of weapons" and they also claimed that lorryloads

of bricks had been moved in (see Guardian 8 Oct p.1). What is more,

according to some local neighbourhood watch leaders, a whistle was

blown to start the riot and two men with walkie-talkies guided the

stone throwers (8 Oct. p.5). It takes the Daily Mail though to make

it clear which war it was planned like. "Ambush IRA style" read the

headline, "straight from the IRA's manual of street disorder" (8 Oct.

p.4). The seeds of Newman's unsubstantiated remark reaped a

remarkably rich harvest.

The reverse side of these representations of the criminality or

rationality of the rioters is the affirmation of the legal process depicted

in the coverage of the police. In particular following the shooting of

Mrs. Groce, there was a concern over police tactics and a public

inquiry was called for. In this case the shooting incident is separated

from the rest of the disorder- which is blamed on criminal

opportunists - and is treated as a matter for the police complaints authority. It would consider the facts of the particular incident rather

2o This theme was prominent in the coverage in 1981 as well. It is interesting to note that each time it is introduced by a senior police officer. See L. Farmer, "The "Collapse" of Law and Order; Press Coverage of Urban Disorder 1981 and 1985", Unpublished M.Phil. thesis, Cambridge University, 1986.


than wider political issues it raised, and then, as Mr Hard put it, if a crime has been committed (by the police officer) then "the law will

take its course" (Times 2 Oct. p.2). 21 The police are in general

presented as being neutral and merely carrying out their traditionally

defined roles, reacting to crime and being the victims of a ferocious

attack.

Before I leave this section to go on to a closer analysis of the effects of these strategies of legal signification, I want to just briefly

note the fact that some of the coverage in 1985, particularly in the

Guardian, had begun to challenge the mainstream representations I

have described up to this point. This partly centres around the

representations of police-community relations (e.g. 3 Oct. back

page) - an issue put on the agenda by the Scarman report 22 - but there

is also some criticism of specific police actions. A female journalist

gave an eye-witness account from Brixton (30 Sept. back page) beginning with a fairly routine account of the actions of looters, when

the police suddenly appear in the story as the villains, hitting people

and pushing a man through a broken window. The reporter is twice

the victim of police violence, once when she is hit by a riot shield and

later when she is pushed into a doorway and molested. In a reversal of

the normal form, in which an area without police is "lawless", she concludes that "the police made the streets a no-go area" for civilians.

Commander Marnoch in this situation is quite happy to eschew the

legal demands of the individual case, saying that he was not prepared to comment on individual incidents because "these showed the dilemma between control and provocation" (Guardian 30 Sept. p.1).

21 In fact Inspector Love iock was prosecuted but acquitted of the malicious wounding of Cherry Grote in January 1987. Issues of police policy were not successfully raised in court. 22 Searman, Report on the Brlxton Disorders, HMSO, 1981.


IV. The Politics of Legal Signification

"It was anarchy on a massively organised scale." (Policeman quoted in the Daily Mail 8 Oct. p.4)

I have now outlined two strategies used by the press to describe and explain the disorder in Brixton and Broadwater Farm. In this

concluding section I want to look at the categories of social

understanding that these draw on, and the consequent manipulations

that are performed by the text. The apparent opposition between the

two strategies is nicely summed up in the policeman's remark quoted

above. This reveals the contradictions between notions of disorganisation and planning or rational and irrational action, but also

significantly between the apparent political threat and the simpler

notions of hooliganism and looting that are expressed throughout the

coverage. I will argue that this contradiction is merely apparent and

that the two strategies in fact complement each other. Further, that

the second, due to its more direct relationship with legal discourse is

able to perform manoeuvres which are less directly exposed to

political argument and thus reinforce the rhetorical categories of Law

and Order discourse.

The first strategy, that of defining the event in terms of its violent

effects and anti-social nature, must clearly rely on implicit notions of

what are social values and the proper way to behave. These draw on firstly a mixture of populist ideological themes, fear of crowds 23

hooligans and the unprecedented level of violence 24 and contemporary

racism. 25 Secondly it is founded in the rhetorical categories of liberal

democratic society, in the form that these are articulated in contemporary Britain. It is an almost Hobbesian view of man reduced

to the state of a war of all against all if authority is lost or withdrawn.

23 A. Hansen & G. Murdock, supra n.1. 24 Pearson, supra n.14. 25 Murray, supra n. 15.


The Rule of Law is thus central, protecting the social order which is in the interest of all citizens. Accordingly, breach of the law is an

anti-social act, an attempt to take advantage of other peoples'

obedience. Similarly there is a stressing of the values of political

process and the correct ways to air a grievance. We are thus introduced

to the categories of order and consensus, the responsible individual and the Rule of Law. These are the values that lie behind the specific

operations of legal discourse.

This strategy has been of increasing political importance with the growth of what Hall has termed Authoritarian Populism. 26 He argues

that developing economic and social crisis has been met by an

increasingly coercive or authoritarian response by the capitalist state. Under the Thatcher government support has been constructed and

sustained by depicting the crisis in terms that appeal to the

experienced contradictions of social democracy. Thus social decline

becomes linked to a loss of social authority and moral decline.

Solutions are sought in the return to traditional values and common

sense as being in some sense universal truths. Finally the Rule of

Law is placed at the centre of political debate as being the mechanism

which protects and enables those universal interests. 27 Accordingly

the required response is clearly the need for more authority in various

social institutions, from the family to the law. Law and Order is thus

a central theme in current political debate 2s and in looking at the

operations of legal discourse we are concerned with the way in which it legitimates the attempted construction of hegemony by coercive

measures in the authoritarian state.

This prior strategy is then concerned with theoretical categories of

liberalism as they have been given meaning in contemporary political debate. The second strategy is less a matter of rhetorical categories

than of the processes of legalism. There is no attempt to depict the

26 Hall, 1983, supra n.17; B. Jessop et al., supra n.17. 27 L. Farmer, supra n.20; I. Taylor, Law and Order, Arguments for Socialism, Macmillan, 1981, 44. 2s I. Taylor, ibid.


event as a whole or as a social phenomenon. Instead the process is

obviously more clearly related to a legal depiction of the subject

matter of the dispute and of the actors in the dispute. The subject

matter is, as I have already argued, crime - whether it be a specific

crime such as murder or rape or a mass looting which aggregates

individual crimes. The actors are criminals exploiting a vulnerable

situation and obscuring the grief of the community. They are conspirators, spreading unrest and inciting violence. Otherwise they

are the police, victims of unprecedented violence, defending the community against its enemies, and, most significantly of all, only

enforcing the law. This legal depiction of the elements of the disorder

has two important effects. Firstly, there is the exclusion of other discourses. Goodrich

describes this as the "power of the text to define its own, very narrow

conceptions of meaning and simultaneously to exclude alternative meanings, accents and contexts. ''29 There is obviously a difference

between the legal text and the newspaper but already we can see legal

def'mitions at work in the process of individuation, and performing a

series of exclusions that restrain alternative meanings. This is

expressed in a strong form by Margaret Thatcher at the Conservative

party conference - "Those who loot and plunder will be subject to

the full rigours of the criminal law.., crime is not protest." In this

construction there are only two sides, those who obey the law and

those who don't. There can be no consideration of the circumstances that lead to the breach, there can be no excuse for 'criminal

behaviour'. The social conditions of marginalisation and poverty

cannot be considered, the political resistance of the black community

to the police and other forms of state management is excluded. The history of the community and its social relations is excluded in favour

of an abstract consideration of the actions of individuals. This is due

zg P. Goodrich, 1984, supra n. 4 at 189.

20 The Liverpool Law Review VoI.IX(1) [1987]

to what Norrie has called the "abstract rationality" of the law, s°

decontextualising individuals and activities to ignore motive and

situations. He concludes that the adherence to the abstract legal form

denies individual justice. Like cases are treated alike, but only at the

cost of refusing to consider the factors that make individuals and

events socially distinctive. I would take this further to argue that this

is not accidental but a social function of the legal form allowing the

systematic exclusion of other discourse. This is implicit in a remark

made by Neil Kinnock that, "distrust and tension are no reason for brutal murder" (Times 10 Oct, p.2). The most serious crime is made

central - the power to individuate - and the message is that attempts

to explain the disorder in terms of the social history of the community are merely attempts to excuse, sl Under the legal construction

attempts to explain can only be regarded as attempts to excuse,

because the legal definition can deny the relevance of social causes. The pre-eminence of the legal signification in the public discourse

can be seen in the treatment of Bernie Grant, the leader of Haringey

Council. Grant refused to condemn the rioters and launched a strongly

worded attack on the police. The reaction that this provoked from the

press was that support for the actions of the rioters was itself

tantamount to criminal action. The Sun attempted to reveal the "mad, mad world" of BernieGrant (9 Oct.). In the Times a policeman was

able to suggest that community relations were impossible with

"thugs, vandals and lunatic tearaways" (9 Oct. p.2). This links with

stories that police-community relations suffered because of the hatred stirred up by community leaders (see e.g. Guardian 11 Oct. pA). The

final word goes to the Sun editorial (dealing with the spending policies of the council) - "with half-witted creeps in power isn't it

enough to make you weep?" (10 Oct.). The campaign against Grant

was made possible by (among other things) denying the social

~6' A. Norrie, "Freewill, Determinism and Criminal Justice", 3 Leg. Stud. (1983), 72. 3z Scarrnan, supra n. 22 at 14.


meaning of the dots. His attempt to open out the terms of the debate

failed because the legal definition of the event was f'Lrmly in place.

The second effect is that the legal signification sustains the image of autonomy of the police force and legitimates a response to the

situation in the terms originally provided by the police anyway. To most sections of the press and politicians the police are clearly placed

beyond criticism. The Sun headline (12 Oct.) tells of "BLANK CHEQUE TO BEAT THE RIOTERS". It is reporting Thatcher's

speech to the party conference- "If the police need more men, more equipment, they shall have them. We don't economise on protecting

life and property." This echoes Douglas Hurd's statement that "it is

vital that the police have the equipment that they need" (Times 8 Oct. p.1). The autonomy of the police is constructed through the autonomy of the legal discourse which defines their role. This same

autonomy is used both to legitimate their actions and to allow them to provide authoritative and apparently independent accounts of events.

John Alderson, a former Chief Constable, has said "'if the police fail to produce their own official and correct version of events, they will suffer from the half-truths and opinions of other people". 32 It is the police account of the event that produces the response from Thatcher.

However it may be that this legal claim to autonomy may be in the process of being fractured and exposed to political argument. The police are being used in more overtly political situations 33 and the more aggressive attitude towards the media 34 pulls increasing attention to their actions and their supposed autonomy. The Scarman report has

put the issue of police-community relations on the agenda and this is reflected in the coverage. Further, as I have argued above, oppositional representations of police actions have begun to appear. It is not possible to draw a definite conclusion here, since this would require a study over a wider range of events. My point is that the

3z C. Sumner, 1982, supra n.2 at 8. 33 P. Scraton, The State of the Police, Pluto Press, 1985.

R. Reiner, The Politics of the Police, Wheatsheaf, 1985.


power of the legal signification is closely linked to the power of the police to project it.

I have demonstrated the power of the legal discourse to define, individuate, exclude and legitimate beyond the confines of the legal text, a power that is further enhanced by its articulations with socially

constructed fears. The significance of this power should not be under- estimated, and is revealed by examining these social significations. Law is above all a social discourse and its categories and exclusions have no relevance beyond their material applications. That the strategies of legal significance are marshalled in response to social crisis is clearly of political importance, as are the rhetorical forms of legal signification. This is something that we can no longer afford to ignore.

The politics of legal signification: Press coverage of urban disorder in 1985

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