CROWD ACTION AS INTERGROUP PROCESS - INTRODUCING THE POLICE PERSPECTIVE

Traditional crowd theory decontextualizes crowd incidents and explains behaviour entirely in terms of processes internal to the crowd itself . This ignores the fact that such incidents are characteristically int ergroup encounters and draws attention away from the role of groups su ch as the police in the development of events. This paper begins to re ctify this omission through an analysis of interviews with 26 Public O rder trained police concerning crowds in general and the Poll Tax 'rio f' of 31 March 1990 in particular. The analysis shows that, despite a perception of crowd composition as heterogeneous, officers perceive cr owd dynamics as involving nrl anti-social minority?, seeking to exploi t the mindlessness of ordinary people in the mass. Consequently, all c rowds are seen as potentially dangerous and, in situations of actual c onflict, all crowd members are seen as equally dangerous. In addition, police tactics for dealing with disorder make it very difficult to di stinguish between individuals or subgroups in the crowd. This converge nce of ideological and practical factors leads to rite police treating crowds in disorder as an homogeneous whole. It is argued that such ac tion can often play an important role in escalating (if not initiating ) collective conflict and is also a key component of social change in crowd contests. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.