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Understanding a Populist Discourse: an Ethnographic Account of the English Defence League’S Collective Identity by Alexander Oaten

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Understanding a Populist Discourse: an Ethnographic Account of the English Defence League’S Collective Identity by Alexander Oaten 1 Understanding a Populist Discourse: An Ethnographic Account of the English Defence League’s Collective Identity By Alexander Oaten A Thesis Submitted to the University of Birmingham for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Political Science and International Studies School of Government and Society College of Social Sciences University of Birmingham September 2016 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. 2 Abstract This thesis will examine the collective identity of the English Defence League by utilising Ernesto Laclau’s theory of populism. The empirical research contained within this study was gained via an ethnographic investigation of the EDL which included eighteen months of observations at demonstrations and twenty six narrative interviews conducted with a small group of EDL members. The study will utilise concepts that have been developed by Laclau in order to present a theoretical understanding of the way in which the EDL constructs its collective identity. By examining the role of demands and dislocation, equivalence and antagonism and the empty signifier in constructing the EDL’s identity this work will shed new light on how the EDL emerged and the way in which it developed as a populist social movement. 3 Acknowledgments This work has only been possible because of the support that I have received over the years from the following people: at the University of Birmingham I owe a great debt to Peter Kerr, my mentor and a most wise and patient teacher who has become a friend, also at the University of Birmingham I thank Emma Foster for always being such a friendly face and for offering me support and advice on so many occasions and Cherry Miller, a fellow traveller. Outside of academia I also owe a great debt to Mitch Lake, who has been a true friend for so long. And to Rachael, the sister I never had. My thanks go to you all. This work is dedicated to my mom, my dad and my brother, for twenty seven years of love and support. Any and all mistakes remain my own. 4 Contents Page Introduction: (p.6) Chapter One: The English Defence League and Populism (p.9) 1.1 Positioning the English Defence League: A new Social Movement (p.9) 1.2 The Issue of Identity: The EDL’s Collective Identity (p.14) 1.3 The Complexity Problem: Not Just a Single Issue Movement (p.18) 1.4 Challenging Three Aspects of the Literature (p.20) 1.5 Towards a Theory of Populism (p.21) Chapter Two: Discourse Theory: Understanding Political Identity (p.32) 2.1 Laclau and Mouffe’s Discourse Theory (p.32) 2.2 Theorising Political Identity (p.36) 2.3 Laclau on Populism: Utilising Discourse Theory (p.42) 2.4 From Discourse Theory to Discourse Analysis (p.45) Chapter Three: Researching the English Defence League (p.54) 3.1 Epistemology and Methodology (p.56) 3.2 Research Design – Theory Driven Thick Description (p.59) 3.3 Locating the Field (p.63) 3.4 Gaining Access (p.65) 3.5 Participant Observation (p.69) 3.6 The Narrative Interview (p.73) 3.7 Additional Research (p.80) 3.8 Ethics (p.81) 3.9 Data Analysis (p.84) 5 Chapter Four: ‘A Populist Emergence’: Dislocation and Demands (p.88) 4.1 The Importance of Analysing Social Demands (p.89) 4.2 Dislocation of Existing Discourses (p.92) 4.3 Dislocation – 10 th March 2009 (p.94) 4.4. Unfulfilled Demands (p.100) Chapter Five: The EDL’s Populist Discourse Equivalence and Antagonism (p.126) 5.1.1 Identifying the ‘Other’ in the EDL Discourse (p.127) 5.1.2 Muslims (p.129) 5.1.3 Government (p.136) 5.1.4 Police (p.140) 5.1.5 Anti-Fascists (p.146) 5.2 ‘Black and White Unite’ – The Equivalence of ‘Demo Days’ (p.150) Chapter Six: Victims United – Analysing the Empty Signifier (p.162) 6.1 Understanding the Empty Signifier (p.163) 6.2 – Conceptualising ‘Victim(s)’ as a Collective Identity (p.167) 6.3 “Nobody cares about our problems”: Making Sense of Dislocation and Demands (p.172) 6.4 “We stick up for these Victims”: The people as ‘Victims’ (p.178) 6.5 “We stand Together to Defend England”: England as both ‘Victim’ and ‘Safe Space’ (p.187) 6.6 “We are all Tommy Robinson”: The Leader as ‘Victim’ (p.190) 6.7: “We’re the real victims”: The Movement as Victim (p.194) Conclusion: (p.199) 6 Introduction The EDL emerged in the summer of 2009 and has become a regular feature in English town and city centres where it holds regular public demonstrations which attract hundreds and sometimes thousands of supporters. Over the past seven years the EDL has been studied by a variety of academics from within a range of social science disciplines, this thesis will contribute to that literature by providing a theoretically driven ethnographic study of the movement. Until 2016 there had been no in depth full length ethnographic studies of the English Defence League and whilst two ethnographic monographs of the EDL (Busher, 2016, and Pilkington, 2016) have recently been published this thesis will provide a new understanding of the English Defence League by utilising a post- structuralist discourse analysis approach based upon Ernesto Laclau’s theoretical conception of populism. Whilst analyses of the English Defence League have provided many important insights into the movement, there is a lack of theorisation within the academic literature. Specifically, the EDL is under theorised in relation to its collective identity construction and this has a consequent impact on understandings of the movement. Whilst it has been acknowledged that the EDL is a new social movement (Copsey, 2010, Jackson and Feldman, 2011) that is focused on issues of identity there is little attempt within the literature to understand the exact process by which the movement’s collective identity is constructed. Instead, the EDL is commonly understood as simply an arena in which “a loose coalition of hardcore football hooligans, far right extremists, and politically unsophisticated white working class youth” (Copsey, 2010, p.5) engage in violence and public performance. This is a view that is also supported by Treadwell and Garland (2011), who argue that the EDL is based upon young working class males with a propensity to violence. However, such reductionist assumptions risk depoliticising the movement and belie the complexity of the EDL as a challenge to community cohesion. Because of this lack of attention to the collective identity construction of the EDL as a social movement it is often simplified and described as a single-issue anti-Islam movement (Jackson and Feldman, 2011 and Pilkington, 2016); whilst the EDL certainly spreads an Islamophobic message this thesis will seek to demonstrate that the EDL’s discourse is more complex than simply anti-Islam rhetoric. In doing so, this work will pair primary data from narrative interviews 7 and participant observation with key analytical concepts from Laclau’s theory of populism which is based upon his and Mouffe’s post structuralist discourse theory. By providing the most detailed analysis of the EDL’s discourse that has thus far been undertaken this thesis will seek to investigate the movement’s collective identity construction with reference to Laclau’s concepts of: demands, dislocation, equivalence, antagonism and the empty signifier. By pairing these concepts with first hand ethnographic research this thesis will provide a rich empirical account of the EDL as a movement whilst also remedying the lack of theoretical attention that has so far been paid to the EDL. In Chapter One the EDL will be positioned as a social movement and it will be argued that it is focused on identitarian issues. The literature on the EDL will also be critically examined and three problematic aspects will be highlighted. In Chapter Two Laclau’s theory will be explicated and three research aims developed based upon the critical review of the literature. Chapter Three will explain this work’s research approach. The research aims will utilise Laclau’s analytical tools. The three research aims that this study will address are: 1) Investigate the preconditions that led to the emergence of the EDL as a populist movement 2) Examine how the EDL discourse utilised equivalence and antagonism to construct the ‘other’ 3) (a) Identify the empty signifier that produced equivalence within the EDL identity and (b) identify what impact this empty signifier has on the EDL collective identity By addressing these research aims the thesis will show that the EDL was not an inevitable outcome of class based anger or simply an arena for young men to commit violence and the single-issue thesis will also be challenged. In Chapter Four it will be highlighted how a diverse range of unfulfilled demands led to a situation of social frustration against the institutional system and how the abuse of British soldiers by a small group of radical Islamists set the tone of the EDL as a movement that sought to ‘defend’ perceived ‘victims’ from dangerous ‘others’. Chapter Five will demonstrate that the EDL’s discourse is highly populist and use the concepts of equivalence and antagonism to show how the EDL constructed a broad base of support against a constructed ‘other’ which included 8 not just Muslims but also government, police and anti-fascist counter demonstrators.
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