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Visual Surveillance and Direct Action Protest in the City of London

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Visual Surveillance and Direct Action Protest in the City of London Visual Surveillance and Direct Action Protest in the City of London Kevin Biderman Royal College of Art PhD thesis This thesis represents partial submission for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Royal College of Art. I confirm that the work presented here is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. During the period of registered study in which this thesis was prepared the author has not been registered for any other academic award or qualification. The material included in this thesis has not been submitted wholly or in part for any academic award or qualification other than that for which it is now submitted. Printed Name: ____________________________ Signature: _________________________________ Date: _______________________________________ 2 Abstract Due to its workings as a global financial nexus, activists critical of capitalism have used the City of London to stage a number of large-scale direct actions since the 1983-84 Stop the City protests. By examining protest at this renowned site of intensified observation, I argue, we can learn a great deal about what surveillance processes do in practice. To develop its argument, this thesis offers a detailed examination of visual surveillance and counter surveillance practice over four protests: the J18 (1999); the G20 Meltdown (2009); Climate Camp in the City (2009); and Occupy LSX (2011). Based on empirical, qualitative research through archival work, interviews, and video documentation stored at the MayDay Rooms, this thesis demonstrates how City and Met police used visual surveillance to disrupt, re-frame and further criminalise dissent. Over the course of these four protests the police learnt new ways to suppress what they termed ‘extreme’ protest. Conversely, activists developed choreographed, embodied movements and alternative technologies to counter new public order procedures and police surveillance. Politically driven artists, performers and technologists were at the vanguard of these new protest formations, early internet livestreaming and pioneering technical innovations that challenged existing surveillant structures. Yet, as this thesis articulates, over the course of these protests many activists’ inventions were slowly subsumed into proprietary online frameworks, which embed surveillance by default. This thesis uses insights from Marx and Marxist inspired theorists to describe how this method of surveillance and subsumption took place. While police formations informed by this history are increasingly being taken up nationally and internationally, it is vital to understand how state security forces and corporate observers have dealt with ‘extreme’ protests in the City. 3 Contents Page Abstract .................................................................................................................................. 3 Contents Page ....................................................................................................................... 4 List of illustrations .............................................................................................................. 6 Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ 7 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 8 Research aims and objectives .............................................................................................................. 9 Research context ....................................................................................................................................... 9 Situating the wave of direct action protest ................................................................................. 14 Activist research ..................................................................................................................................... 16 Chapter outline ....................................................................................................................................... 24 Part 1 - Context ................................................................................................................. 28 Chapter 1: Subsumptive Surveillance ................................................................................ 29 Surveillance as a process of doing .................................................................................................. 29 Primitive accumulation and dispossession ................................................................................ 41 New Enclosures ...................................................................................................................................... 43 Subsumption ............................................................................................................................................ 47 Deterritorialisation and Reterritorialisation ............................................................................. 54 Hegemony and visuality ...................................................................................................................... 62 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 66 Chapter 2 - Protest Prehistory ............................................................................................. 67 The City of London a brief contextual history ........................................................................... 67 The kettle: a protest enclosure ......................................................................................................... 70 Stop the City ............................................................................................................................................. 73 Anti Roads Movement .......................................................................................................................... 79 Video activism as a counter surveillance tool at George Green ......................................... 82 Undercurrents ......................................................................................................................................... 85 Inadvertent surveillance ..................................................................................................................... 90 Synching movements, art and activism ........................................................................................ 92 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 99 Part 2… and it starts again .......................................................................................... 100 Chapter 3 - The starburst and the kettle ........................................................................ 101 The police operation and scopic veriticality ........................................................................... 107 Enclosure through extended social vision in the press ...................................................... 111 Institutional vision and spectacular video ............................................................................... 119 Visualising the kettle ......................................................................................................................... 123 Development of a police commons – operation Benbow .................................................. 127 Leveraging the J18 for further undercover surveillance ................................................... 130 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 133 Chapter 4 - The first protest livestream and decentralised media ........................ 134 The first Protest Livestream ......................................................................................................... 140 The Rise and fall of IMC ................................................................................................................... 150 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 154 4 Part 3… they lay in wait ................................................................................................ 156 Chapter 5 - The reverse starburst, the swoop and the choreographed twin kettle ........................................................................................................................................... 157 The Reverse Starburst ...................................................................................................................... 160 The Swoop .............................................................................................................................................. 165 Kettled in black or rainbow colours ............................................................................................ 170 Fracturing the kettle .......................................................................................................................... 174 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................
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