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Dissertation for Royal Holloway PIR Department

Keeping the Peace:

The Kettle, its Functions and Effects in an Age of Consensus

Will Horner

Many thanks given to Nathan Widder and Doerthe Rosenow both for their insight and advice.

Image Jon Cartwright

5 Abstract: We must avoid looking at the kettle simply as an act of force. To write it off merely as an act of state violence or police brutality would only scratch at the surface of its uses, functions, effects and goals. We must instead understand the kettle as being embedded in the power relations that comprise modern society, which run between the state, the community, the protester and the police. The questions we should really be asking are: what is exceptional about certain protests that legitimise the utilisation of the kettle? What are the power effects of the kettle? What is the wider context in which recent protests and instances of kettling have occurred, and what might be their relation to the development of kettling as a police public order tactic? Drawing on both Foucault and Rancire I will argue that the modern condition of post-democracy monopolises the act of politics within the institutions of government because of the threat that it poses to consensus. As a result a narrow definition of protest is drawn that limits legitimate protest to that which does not disrupt consensus. In light of this anti-political state, kettling is the procedure applied to instances when a protest becomes political by disrupting consensual order. Therefore kettling is the very act of containing politics itself.

Introduction It is the perverse irony of the kettle, that to be in one is to feel free. To be precise, it is to be highly aware of your imprisonment within a cage of florescent yellow bars, but at the same time the effectual abandonment of the space by the agents of the law, the act of ceding, temporarily, a space for the eruption of politics engenders a feeling of autonomy as well as collective identity and power. To be in a kettle is to feel both free and not free. Its clear that traditional arguments that place emphasis on rights and law will be inadequate to truly understand the phenomena of the kettle. Instead we should look at it through a Foucauldian (1978) understanding of power relations, which see power as operating on both micro and macro levels in a multiplicity of directions, as well as with the insight of Rancires understanding of politics (1999, 2010): as a rupture that shatters disciplinary societys consensual order. As is implied this essay will combine Foucauldian understanding of disciplinary society (1977) and Rancires understanding of the order of the police into a coherent understanding of a society that seeks to reproduce the uneventful consensus. It is worth now outlining exactly what my object of analysis is. The kettle, or kettling, is the name of a police public order tactic more formally known as corralling or containment. The act is to enclose the majority of protesters within a tight (or absolute, to use a Metropolitan Police term) cordon, regulating who can and cannot enter, and often closing access all together for a number of hours. The use of this tactic is a relatively new phenomenon, and has been practically pioneered by London Metropolitan Police. It has gained considerable attention and controversy as a result of its use, particularly at the anti-cuts demonstrations of 2010/2011. The name is a metaphor, for the containment of heat within a domestic kettle. The meaning of the metaphor is open to interpretation; it can be seen as an attempt to contain heated situations of violent disorder; or as a process that boils the tempers of those contained within. This is in part the source of its controversy, because it could be seen as creating violent disorder. It also raises questions about the right to protest, and whether kettling is an infringement on that right. In choosing to focus theoretical insight into a particular mechanism of power in a concrete context, I am adopting an approach which owes much to the situated methodology of Coleman & Tuckers Disciplining Dissent project (2011). An approach

6 which utilises Foucaults notion of an ascending analysis of power (2003: 30), which seeks to study how power functions in localised instances and builds upwards. It will be argued that the phenomenon of the kettle is complex. The questions we should ask are: what is exceptional about certain protests that legitimate the utilisation of the kettle? What are the power effects of the kettle? What is the wider context in which recent protests and instances of kettling have occurred, and what might be their relation to the development of kettling as a police public order tactic? The answer I provide is that a Foucauldian and Rancirean understanding is necessary to comprehend the true nature of society. I will use the term (borrowed from Rancire) post-democracy1 (1995: 98) to describe society in a way that is both disciplinary and a-political.2 Post-democracy is an understanding that reconciles Foucaults understanding of disciplinary society with Rancires understanding of the order of the police. Creating a unified understanding of modern society that sees discipline and the order of the police as striving for the same goal: consensus. Moreover, post-democracy is apolitical, even anti-political, because consensus reduces politics to the management of competing interests, the job of politicians, something that occurs in parliaments. But this is a delusion, what post-democracy calls politics is simply an act of policing. It is anti-political as politics must be understood la Rancire, as a disruption in the order of consensus. Protest therefore is an act of politics, which creates aesthetic disagreements about the counting of the parts of society. Kettling is therefore understood as an attempt to literally contain politics, preventing or mitigating its effects. The essay will be structured as follows: in the following section I will a give an analytical account of Foucaults disciplinary institutions and society, grounded on his understanding of micro and macro-power. Next I will focus on why it is important to introduce Rancires understanding of politics to Foucaults disciplinary society, prior to providing an analytical account of Rancire. The third section will focus on this new understanding post-democracy the condition that creates the necessity of the kettle. The final section will apply my understanding of post-democracy to a situated study of kettling in the UK: from its premiere use in 2001 to the anti cuts protests of 2010/2011 arguing that the kettle serves to contain politics understood as an act of dissensus.

Foucault, Power and Disciplinary Society The best place to start with an analytical outlining of Foucaults oeuvre is to answer what is power? There are two parts to Foucaults answer to this question: power and resistance, and power as being divided into micro and macro power. It is worth also outlining what it is not, or what Foucault develops his conception of power against. In Society Must be Defended (2003) Foucault outlines two understandings of power, the first is the Juridical, or contract-oppression schema, the second is the war-repression schema (Ibid: 17). The first is an understanding of power that equates it with a commodity; a possession that can be acquired as with acquiring a political office, it can traded, abdicated and usurped. It is a conception that Foucault says is shared by both Liberalism and Marxism. The second is an equation of politics to the continuation of war; Clausewitzs axiom is reversed. Power is seen as domination, Power is essentially that which represses (Ibid: 15). This
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Exhibition in place of appearance, exhaustive counting in place of imparity, consensus in place of grievance such are the commanding features of the current correction of democracy, a correction which thinks of itself as the end of politics but which might better be called post-democracy (Rancire, 1995: 98). 2 Rancire uses the term to indicate what he also called the managerial state and consensus democracy. I use the term according to my own understanding, which does not reject Rancires understanding, but builds on it and which seeks to align it with Foucauldian disciplinary society.

7 second understanding is also referred to as the inversion of Clausewitzs aphorism or Nietzsches hypothesis (Ibid: 16). It is also, Foucault says, an understanding of power that he initially applied, but, along with the juridical understanding is inadequate. Power is not something that is acquired, seized, or shared, something that one holds on to or allows to slip away (1978: 94), in this Foucault is rejecting the juridical, liberal and Marxist notions that see power as a commodity, power is exercised from innumerable points, in the inter-play of nonegalitarin and mobile relations (Ibid). Power is not a title, position, or domination, it is a multiplicity of force relations that are exercised between subjects; the object of ceaseless struggles and confrontations (Ibid: 92); it is the crystallization of power relations into strategies whose general embodiment is the state apparatus, in the formulation of law, in the various social hegemonies (Ibid: 93). Power is everywhere because it emanates from everything, not because it is all dominant, therefore resistance is not a space free from power, a vacuum of refusal, a position of exteriority (Ibid: 95). It is the adversary of power, the target of power. It is present wherever there is power because resistance exists as a multiplicity of knots in the power network. Each moment of resistance is unique and occupies a particularly localised place, a heterogeneous tapestry of insurrections that flash and burn up in the night. Evidently, as Foucault says, there is no single locus of great Refusal, no soul of revolt, source of all rebellions, or pure law of the revolutionary (Ibid: 95-96). Does this mean there are no great ruptures or massive overhauls? No, it is the strategic codification of these points of resistance that makes a revolution possible (Ibid: 96). Power has a double conditioning (Ibid: 99) effect in the sense that it operates in two levels. Also referred to as a micro-physics of power (1977: 26), Foucault divides the effect of power relations as being divided into microscopic and macroscopic levels. The two levels are immanent to one another but not homogenous. Microscopic relations operate at a constitutive level, they operate on the plane where individuals are constituted (Widder. 2004: 422). Macroscopic power relations are those that hold between precariously constituted subjects and it is on this level that power can be understood as a possession (Ibid: 423), as the right to exercise a power of over someone else. It is the grounding of micro-power that enables macro-power, the more obvious power, to enact itself. Macro-power is the ability of the judge, the police officer or the psychiatrist to exercise control over subordinates, but it rests on the context of meaning of their subject positions that is micro-power. The main drive of Foucaults work is to show the modes of objectification which transform human beings into subjects (1982: 208), this is largely then the study of micro-power, since micro-power relations are the study of the constitution of subjects though modes of objectification such as disciplinary practices, which as we shall look at in more detail further on, operate primarily at this constitutive level (Widder. 2004: 423). This view, which expands the active realm of power into omnipresence, leads to the linking of power and knowledge. Foucault understands discourses as power-knowledge relations (1977: 27). Foucault posits that in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organized and redistributed by a certain number of procedures (1984: 109). These procedures include prohibition and rejection on grounds of reason and madness, but also a third which is becoming more significant, and is gradually subsuming the other two, that is the will to truth. Not so much a concern with truth and falsity, the will to truth wills a certain kind of truth or perhaps better, it wills that the world conform to a certain image of truth (Widder. 2004: 419). In contrast to pre-platonic dialogue that truth was the speech of the powerful, the ability to inspire or dominate, post-platonic dialogue has developed historically contingent ideals of truth and falsehood that see truth as being that which is free of power, in a sense purified of power. The will to truths effects on discourse are to compel it to tell the truth independent of any attachment to power or to a powerful speaker (Ibid). The modern

8 will to truth, the procedure which controls discourse is therefore self-deceiving, because as Foucault says:
We should admit rather that power produces knowledge [...] that power and knowledge directly imply one another; that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations (1977: 27).

History therefore, and the development of any knowledge, are not without forces driving them. It is too easy to misunderstand history as a continuous process, a gradual development of universal origins and ideas. This Foucault says the idea of history as the concrete body of a development with its soul in the distant ideality of the origin (1984b: 80) is something only a metaphysician would seek. Genealogy is the tool Foucault borrows from Nietzsche, in order to understand the nature of power relations in society, by explaining the development of modern institutions with a feeling of historical sense the rationalities that hid behind them, the play of dominations that caused them to be. Genealogy as a part of Foucaults general project is focused on how we might formulate a general conception of the relations between the constitution of a knowledge ( savoir) and the exercise of a power (1991: 150), but it is methodologically tasked at doing this by studying these instances in their concrete forms (Ibid: 151). This explains the already mentioned concept of an ascending analysis of power which Foucault utilises to study concrete examples and how they are invested or annexed by global phenomena, and how more general powers or economic benefits can slip into the play of these technologies (2003: 30-31). Through such an approach Foucault (1977) develops his understanding of disciplinary society. The will to truth within modern procedures of subjugation seeks a particular kind of truth that is purity. Discipline is a particular modality of power that produces particular kinds of subjects through positing and enforcing optimal modes of individual conduct (Coleman & Tucker. 2011: 399). Subject binaries are created, with one side taking the form of normal and the other abnormal, thus the binary is hierarchical. The modern institutions of society exist to enforce these identities through disciplinary micro-power practices. Thus the prison operates to enforce criminal/law-abiding subjects, the mental hospital sane/insane etc. The irony of disciplinary practices however is their ultimate failure a normal individual is never found, instead new forms of delinquency and abnormality are revealed. However, considering the number of disciplinary institutions one individual will pass through, and the existence of criminal delinquents who have already passed through a myriad of institutions supposedly designed to correct them, how could it ever be said that power aimed to normalize individuals in the first place? (Widder. 2004: 421). The normalization of individuals never occurs, instead disciplinary practices seek to manage. rather than eradicate abnormality.
What is to be understood by the disciplining of societies in Europe since the eighteenth century is not, of course, that the individuals who are part of them become more and more obedient, nor that they set about assembling in barracks, schools, or prisons; rather that an increasingly better invigilated process of adjustment has been sought after more and more rational and economic (Foucault. 1982: 219).

Any collective revelation that disciplinary practices are failing to eradicate delinquency always brings with it the call for increased and stricter disciplinary practices, thus there is a constant expansion of disciplinary institutions into more sectors of life.

9 Rancire and the End of Politics Foucault when read politically can often appear as somewhat of an enigma. It is not a simple case of assigning Foucault to a particular political tradition indeed; he would consciously reject such an attempt. He has been treated with complete confusion when attempts have been made to contain his ideas within a political framework. As he puts it:
There have been Marxists who said I was a danger to Western Democracy that has been written; there was a socialist who wrote that the thinker who resembled me most closely was Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf. I have been considered by liberals as a technocrat, an agent of the Gaullist government; I have been considered by people on the right, Gaullists or otherwise, as a dangerous left-wing anarchist; there was an American professor who asked why a crypto-Marxist like me, manifestly a KGB agent, was invited to American universities; and so on (1984a: 376).

But this failure to assign a political label to Foucault is not the failure of his philosophy to be consistent or focussed enough. Foucault has self-consciously avoided linking his thought with any political ideology warning that there is a very tenuous analytic link between a philosophical conception and the concrete political attitude of someone who is appealing to it; the best theories do not constitute a very effective protection against disastrous political choices (Ibid: 374). Indeed, it would be wise to avoid the appropriation of Foucaults thought by any one political unit, lest actions be committed in his name that he would have opposed. The mislabelling that has occurred is, in a sense, the self-inflicted effect of his work resisting definition in a world that insists one must be definable. Foucault has always maintained that what interests me is much more morals than politics or, in any case, politics as an ethics (Ibid: 375). The goal of his work has been the exposure of power relations, shining a light on locations thought to be devoid of power, exposing institutions thought to be benign, revealing the insidiousness of power. The problem of power relations (Ibid: 378), as he puts it, is the target of his gaze, and while we must concede that he has done the most to expose it there is something missing in his analysis as to the precise character of these power relations. Rancire express it like this:
There is [...] a multiplicity of forms of power exerted in families, tribes, schools, playgrounds, teams, workshops, churches, offices, barracks, prisons, etc. There is a multiplicity of patterns of power borrowed from them that are used as instruments of state power. Now the question is: to what extent is state power the same thing as political power? (2009: 118).

Power is not by nature political. Power, even if it is in the hands of politicians, governments, revolutionaries or despots is not by its nature political. What is the character of power relations? This is where Rancire can enter. It is clear from what we understand thanks to Foucault that disciplinary power, which is not power itself, but a possible procedure of power (1984a: 380), has the aspired effect, through a process of totalizing and individualizing, of normalizing societies into definable groups, it is the case that normality is seldom found, but that nonetheless is the goal. Disciplinary society and the later totalizing conception biopower are power relations characterised by an attempt to create consensus and reproduce the uneventful. For example, in reference to the university Foucault says it stands for the institutional apparatus through which society ensures its uneventful reproduction (1977a: 224). This uneventful reproduction can be understood not simply as the task of the university, but of disciplinary society in general. That is the particular that Rancire can fill in. Because he is primarily concerned with elaborating how society is governed by a logic that seeks to order society consensually, suppressing what he sees as true politics. Foucault exposed the power

10 relations but Rancire explains how not all power relations are the same. For Rancire, the power relations emanating from the state, what Foucault would call disciplinary power, are referred to as the order of the police, and as I will go on to explain are anti-political. But it might be said at this point that Foucault was not so pessimistic when explaining power relations. He explained resistance as the necessary counter-power, presenting plenty of opportunities for it to disrupt any order. Power relations after all are not strictly one way, they are constantly in flux, and it only needs the slightest touch to flip them completely. This is certainly true. It is not my aim to criticise Foucault. However there needs to be more elaboration on the character of power relations. Disciplinary power is just one character, there certainly are others. What about the characteristics of the power of the protest? We have still yet to explain what is so threatening within certain protests to necessitate the intervention of the kettle. What is the characteristic of the power relation produced by the kettle? Protest cannot be understood simply as resistance in the Foucauldian sense, as a counter push within power relations. It has a political element to it, which causes it to be significant, which disrupts the order of consensus. Bear these things in mind now as we proceed through the key tenants of Rancires thought. We will begin by studying the understanding Rancire has of the contemporary notions of democracy, politics and the police. Before showing how society is characterised by an order of the police, which pursues consensus to the effect of excluding the social body from political activity. * * *

The democratic paradox, as Rancire calls it, is the foil for his own understanding of politics and democracy. As he puts it:
The contemporary way of stating the democratic paradox is thus: democracy as a form of government is threatened by democracy as a form of social and political life and so the former must repress the latter (2010a: 47).

In other words, democracy can be divided into social democracy the needs, aspirations and requests of citizens and democratic government the principles and procedures of good policy, authority, scientific expertise and pragmatic experience (Ibid). The former, democracy as a social activity is the idealistic view of government for and by the people, its an encroachment on the aspirations of democracy as government. It can lead to an excess of political action that becomes a hindrance to democratic government as it attempts to consider and include the opinions of all. Good governance therefore becomes the ability of democratic government to limit democratic social activity. As Rancire says, this notion may seem exceptionally cynical and paranoid, but it is perfectly consistent with a whole trend of thought which, for the last 20 years, has equated democracy with the reign of narcissistic mass individualism (Ibid: 48). The development of politicalphilosophy that has heralded both the end of politics and the return of politics exhibit a similar restriction of politics to government. The end of politics is simply a return to the normal state of things the non-existence of politics (2010: 43). The Fukuyama-Hegelian conception is the delusion that sees the goal of politics as being the end of dispute consensus. The return of politics (as Rancire calls it, the European Heidegerian-Situationist version (Ibid)) besides the obvious suggestion that it posits that there is a particular sector that is the proper locale of politics means also that the role of the social in political action is finished. The dual interpretations of the end and return of politics both produce the same effect: an effacing of the concept of politics itself (Ibid).

11 This buffoonery is a misinterpretation of the way in which the relation between the political relationship and the political subject gets interpreted; that is, in the assumption that there is a way of life that is specific to political existence (Ibid: 28). It is not however confined to these interpretations, it is a vicious circle that characterises political philosophy itself (Ibid). Whenever political-philosophy asks itself the question it was always there to ask: what is the most legitimate political organisation? it is immediately at fault. The radical notion that is a part of Rancires work is that the legitimate act of politics is that which has no legitimacy. In seeking an arkh (a theoretical principle for the distribution of capacities, positions and powers) on which the legitimate right to do politics should rest, it seeks those whose nature it is to rule. Politics, in a nutshell, comes to be seen as the accomplishment of the way of life proper to those who are destined to it (Ibid). Rancire spends time to show this notion in Aristotle.
Aristotle sees three: the wealth of the smallest number ( oligo), the virtue of excellence (aret) from which the best (aristo) derive their name, and the freedom (eleutheria) that belongs to the people (demos). Taken on their own, each of these attributes yields a particular regime, threatened by the sedition of others: the oligarchy of the rich, the aristocracy of the good, or the democracy of the people. On the other hand, the precise combination of their community entitlements procures the common good. But a secret imbalance spoils this pretty picture (1999: 6).

The question for all involved then becomes, what does the freedom of the people bring to the community? (Ibid: 7). Any attempt to seek and arkh for political action comes to this conclusion, that owing to certain characteristics, some have a right to rule and a particular regime suited to them. The second conclusion is that the demos, are only considered a group because what they share is that they have nothing in common, in other words they have no legitimacy to rule. The supposed purification of the political, freed from domestic and social necessity, is tantamount to the pure and simple reduction of the political to the state (2010: 28). Such a reduction of politics to the state is the exclusion of the demos, such an exclusion is the exclusion of politics itself. Political philosophy therefore is the attempt of philosophy to rid itself of politics. This may seem complex at first, it may even seem simple the exclusion of the demos is obviously anti-democratic. But in order to fully understand what Rancire means we must understand two key terms he uses: politics and police. The exclusion of the demos is not anti-democratic in the common sense, it is anti-political, the exclusion of the demos is the work of the police.
What can be thought of specifically as politics? To think through this specificity will force us to distinguish it from what normally goes by the name of politics and for which I propose to reserve the term policing (Rancire. 1999: xiii).

There is a common ground shared by the words policing and administration. Both words hint at a similar act and occupy a shared space in our minds that concerns words that refer to the maintenance, management, oversight, and continuation of a particularly configured system. It is with this shared meaning that Rancire uses the word policing to refer to what has hitherto been understood as politics. The assignment of roles, offices, powers, places; the organisation, distribution, ranking, hierarchization of power; the aggregation of consent, public opinion, contractual obligation; the institutions, town halls, council offices, parliaments of government. These are the things considered to define politics. But they are not concerned with development, progression, or alteration indeed it is not their function to be. They are more concerned with the perpetuation of the system in which they are embedded, thus they administer it, they police it. The police, as Rancire calls it, is not to be misunderstood as the institution of police officers, agents of law and order, the police is the term Rancire uses for a particular logic and the bodies of its enforcement. The police is in essence a

12 particular distribution of the sensible whose principle is the absence of void and supplement (2010: 36). The distribution of the sensible is the generally implicit law (Ibid) that divides up the social order into those to be counted as parts of the social body. Rancires work is a systemization of a thinking of politics in terms of distribution of the sensible, of polemics about the visible and the sayable, about who sees and who does not see, who speaks and who makes noise, etc (2009: 115). It defines who can partake according to their inclusion within a count of the society. It can be referred to differently, as a partition (2010: 36) of the sensible, which has a double meaning: it can be understood, on the one hand, as that which separates and excludes; and on the other, as that which allows participation (Ibid). The police is a particular distribution of the sensible and its essence is to eradicate void and supplement and create a unitary understanding of the places, divisions and functions of the social body. In order to do this the police must posit groups tied to specific modes of doing (Ibid), but in this process no space is given to the demos, what can be their function other than to be free? It is this exclusion of what is not that constitutes the police-principle at the core of statist practices (Ibid). What is politics then if it is not what most consider it to be? Politics is a rupture in the symbolic order of the police. An event in which politics presents itself is an event when the totalising count of the police is disrupted by the presentation of a group that has not been counted: Politics exists when the natural order of domination is interrupted by the institution of a part of these who have no part (1999: 11). Politics exists simply because no social order is based on a nature, no divine law regulates human society (Ibid: 18), so it the absence of any arkh for ruling that creates political moments. Politics is the rejection of the legitimacy of any group claiming to be legitimate rulers, not because they are perceived as illegitimate but because there is no legitimacy on which to ground any rule. Thus, politics is the rejection any arkh. Democracy for Rancire is not a political regime [...] it is the very regime of politics itself (2010: 31), democracy is the institution of politics itself that ruptures the ordered consensus of the police: Democratic action is the form of action which carries out the disruption of any ultimate legitimacy of power, or, if you turn it on its positive side, the affirmation of the equal capacity of anybody (2000: 120). It is the shattering of the image of society as harmonious and inclusive, without void or absence which the police strives for that causes politics to happen. In this sense politics is an aesthetic moment as it creates persepctival disagreements surrounding the inclusiveness of society, as Rancire puts it: I speak of an aesthetic of the political, to indicate that politics is first of all a battle about perceptible/sensible material (2010: 11). In essence Politics is another way of interpreting what is sayable and who is visible:
Two ways of counting the parts of the community exist. The first counts real parts only actual groups defined by differences in birth, and by the different functions, places and interests that make up the social body to the exclusion of every supplements. The second, in addition to this, counts a part of those without part. I call the first the police and the second politics (2010: 36).

This in addition is important, because it helps us to understand the place of the demos; the demos always takes a supplementary role. It is the addition to the already counted parts of the social body that the police either overlook, conflate, suppress or ignore. It is the nature of politics to count those without part. For Rancire, the people are not a homogenous whole, they are divided by (miss)counts. It is impossible to form a unitary idea of the people because if the nature of politics is contestation and disagreement, then the people are always divided, either included or excluded, blessed or damned. Therefore Rancire puts his understanding of the people in opposition to Hardt & Negris understanding of the Multitude (2006), which is an attempt to form a homogenous, without divisions, understanding of the people in opposition to Empire (2001). Rancire says the people, for

13 me, is the name of a political subject, that is to say a supplement in relation to all logics of counting the population, its parts and its whole (2010b: 85). Politics is the act of bringing to light these various parts and that are excluded: What better way is there to express that the first and foremost at stake in politics are the lines of division defining inclusion and exclusions (Ibid: 90). The social body therefore is always riven with divisions. The Multitude is a concept that manifests a phobia of the negative, of any politics that defines itself against (Ibid), its attempt to create a unitary form of the people results in a fear of divisions that exists within any social body. * * *

The notions we began with that dealt with the end or return of the political are a facet of political philosophy that is relatively new. They embody the essence of consensus thinking, and obviously are the politico-theoretical fallout of the collapse of the Soviet Union. They perceive this historical moment as the resolution of a divided bi-polar world into a unified mono-polar. This moment presented the birth of consensus, the ultimate consensus. Thus, For Rancire, institutional governance, [...] in the last decades have been characterised by the implementation of consensus democracy and the implied end of politics in Western societies (Rosenow. 2011: 4). Rosenow uses Rancires term the managerial state to describe the nature of consensus statist practices to, firstly reduce[...] the people as political subject to the population, implying that the people is considered nothing but the sum of the parts of the social body, politics being reduced to the management of interests between these parts, and secondly the managerial state equates good democratic politics with a governing authority that is based on scientific expertise and pragmatic experience (Ibid). I maintain that this understanding of the modern state is correct, but use the term post-democracy to describe it. The term post-democracy Rancire uses himself to describe what he also calls the managerial state or consensus democracy. Yet I use it to indicate a combined understanding of disciplinary society, the managerial state and consensual police logic. This raises the questions: what common ground is there between Foucault and Rancire? For one thing they are both concerned with how systems of power limit what can and cannot be consider visible, or can be an actor, or a subject, or a true discourse. As Rancire says: The idea of the partition of the sensible is no doubt my own way of translating and appropriating for my own account the genealogical thought of Foucault his way of systematizing how things can be visible, utterable, and capable of being thought (2000: 13). For Foucault it takes the form of exposing the ways in which disciplinary modes of conduct come to develop, for Rancire it takes the form of exposing how the distribution of subject places is driven by the concept of consensus. In addition he says Foucault uses the term biopolitics to designate things that are situated in the space that I call the police (2010c: 93). Biopolitics is in part the study of the body as the target of power, its location within a system of totalization and individuation. The order of the police is the distribution of bodies in places and functions, thus there is a common ground shared by the two, namely the ordering of the social body as comprised of bodies. The point at which Rancire diverges from Foucault is on the question of politics. The point is that Foucault never developed the understanding of politics that saw it as different to the exercise of power. [Foucaults] conception of politics is constructed around the question of power, [...] he was never drawn theoretically to the question of political subjectivation (Ibid). Power was redefined in a way that extended its definition to included institutions and the subjects of power, as well as posing that power can function in multiple directions, and not simply from the top down. Foucault studies particular distributions of power relations, ways in which multiple power relations have congealed around a particular systemization, but politics, in the Rancirean sense, is the disruption of these

14 particular distributions of power relations. Foucaults understanding of resistance is useful to understand the way in which power relations work in two directions never simply from the top down but doesnt properly provide a conception that offers the possibility for the disruption of these power relations. Rancire does, which is of course politics.

The Present Condition: Post-Democracy So, this is where we have reached: (1) it is thanks to Foucault that we can perceive how modern society is disciplinary, driven by the desire of the will to truth for pure identities society attempts to regulate the behaviour by positing norms and deviations, through a myriad of institutions power relations enact processes of normalization through either reward or discipline; (2) Rancire shows us that what has hitherto been referred to as politics is in reality policing, administration of consensus, society is apolitical and when politics does occur it comes as an event that ruptures the police distribution of the sensible; (3) in light of Rancirean thought, Foucaults conception of disciplinary society can be seen to have common ground with the order of the police, it s striving for normality through disciplinary practices can be seen as an enforcing of consensus; (4) Resistance for Foucault, can be seen as Politics for Rancire, therefore it is not simply a counter power, but a rupture in the order of the police; (5) post-democracy designates the condition in which power relations within society function to maintain consensus. In order to fully explain the function of the kettle then we must understand the theoretical context that the kettle operates in Post-democracy. For Rancire post-democracy [...] does not designate a period of history after the end of democracy [...]; it designates the logic governing a set of discourses and practices which turn democracy into its contrary (2009: 116). Post-democracy is the condition that can explain the Kettle. There are six characteristics of post-democracy which explain why the kettle has developed. 1) Post-democracy is so because it presents an image of consensus, consensus however is at all times a fallacy, any consensus merely hides a dissensus. A person within the kettle at the G20 protest put it like this: Behind the screen of liberal freedom and democratic normality, a silent war was raging through the institutions and the codes of law (Policante. 2011: 458). As we know modern society is characterised by systems of power relations, but it was Foucaults project to expose them, as the notion that benign institutions such as the mental hospital, school, or workplace are places of dominating power relations is still a novel one today. Policante, one of the contributors to Coleman & Tuckers Disciplining Dissent project, uses a helpful term when understanding the nature of what can be characterised as systemic violence (Ibid); he calls it normality as catastrophe (Ibid: 463), as opposed to the consensual conception of normality as peace (Ibid). Normality as peace is in a definite sense the understanding of consensual post-democracy that sees the maintenance of everyday life as the maintenance of harmonious management of an ordered social body. Normality as peace and consensus both serve as a facade, which disguises the unequal ordering logic of the police. Normality as catastrophe and dissensus both understand society differently, as one ordered around systemic violence which disenfranchises the demos of their ability to present aesthetic disagreements, and therefore alter their environment. 2) Post-Democracy, owing to its consensual organisation, is at all times fragile, balancing at the edge of the precipice of its own disintegration. The order of the police is the particular distribution of the sensible which seeks to create an image of society without void. The arkh on which it rests is

15 one that ties subjects to functions. Thus all the parts of society that are accounted are designated a particular place and function. Subjects are tied to places, partitions are drawn between the areas subjects can inhabit. Thus workers have only time for work; students are only to learn accepted knowledge and reproduce it, and; those whose nature is politics are designated to rule. The strict attachment of person to place forms a unified whole, something larger than the sum of its parts. Yet it is only on each part being in its correct place that it can function. Hence there is no room for the void of disagreement; in this we can understand it as consensus. But such a consensus is inherently fragile; the machine with a thousand piece is a hundred time more likely to break down than the machine with ten. Consensus by its very nature depends on each part being correct. Hence it is always teetering on the verge of collapse. Politics, the eruption of which is the disruption of the ordering logic of the police, risks at any moment destabilising post-democracy by presenting an image of the community in dissensus. As Rancire phrases it:
in making each person the reflection of the soul of the community of energies and rights, consensual logic sets everywhere the boundary between peace and war, the breaking point at which the community is exposed to a demonstration of its untruth. In other words, disintegration (1999: 115).

3) Post-democracy presents the paradoxical appropriation of politics by the state. Democracy has been switched from a system principally understood as the inclusion of the demos into one in which the demos is seen as the unnecessary supplement that should be isolated from politics.
Postdemocracy is the government practice and conceptual legitimization of a democracy after the demos, a democracy that has eliminated the appearance, miscount, and dispute of the people and is thereby reducible to the sole interplay of state mechanisms and combinations of social energies and interests. (Ibid: 102).

Post-democracy in its attempt to strive for consensus binds individuals and groups together in a fabric with no holes, no gap between names and things, rights and facts, individuals and subjects (Ibid: 115), thus the appearance of consensus is the end of true politics, because no space is left for the appearance of disagreement, of community in dispute (Ibid). The task of politics is in a sense monopolised by the state. Ed Miliband, in reference to Occupy London Stock Exchange stated in the Guardian that the protests present a challenge: to the church and to business and also to politics (2011). It is telling that Miliband doesnt think the occupation is itself a political act, instead it presents a challenge to real politics what he considers his career. Treating the issues at stake in the protest as matters of importance he states We cannot leave it to the protesters to lead this debate, the issues of politics are too important, and the order of consensus too fragile, to be left to anyone other than a professional politician, someone whose function is politics. He creates the distinction between protesters and politicians, asserting that the role of the protester is not politics, whereas The role of politicians is not to protest, but to find answers. Thus we can supplement Webers axiom: the state is the monopolisation of the act of politics, but in a paradoxical way in which real politics is terminated. 4) Man is not a zoon politikon, post-democracy is by its nature anti-political. As Deranty puts it Society is in essence a-political or even anti-political (2003: 6). Derantys interpretation of Rancire is not at all times congruent with Rancires own theories, but his assertion that Rancire sees post-democratic society as anti-political is supported by Rancires own writing. A political action, as Rancire states, is not common: in the final analysis, inequality is only possible through equality, this means the politics doesnt always happen it actually happens very little or rarely (1999: 17). Even though politics, the event that creates a rupture in the symbolic order, is rare any society based on consensus consists then, in the reduction of politics to the police (2010: 42), or in

16 other words its monopolisation. Again in another source Rancire states that Consensus mean[s] in fact the contrary of democracy and, by the same token, the erasure of politics itself (2009: 115). Postdemocracy can be termed anti-political because the fragility of its basis, and the threat of disintegration posed by the act of politics, makes the monopolization of politics a n ecessity. The appropriation of the act of politics doesnt mean that the utilization of it is increased in a controlled, regulated, state-centred way it is tantamount to the end of politics, the removal of politics through the exclusion of the demos. Post-democracy is therefore anti-political by expunging politics from the social body. 5) Post-democracy develops its own understanding of protests, in a way that regulates its use. Reflection again should be drawn from Coleman & Tuckers Disciplining Dissent project, in particular their use of the terms community of practice and grids of intelligibility (2011: 398), the later term borrowed from Foucault (2008: 3). The term community of practice indicates a particular protesting group that develops around a particular issue, the term grid of intelligibility is used to explain the dominant interpretive frameworks, vocabularies, and general politics of truth (Coleman & Tucker. 2011: 398) that communities of practice develop in order to understand the act of protesting. Furthermore, they conclude that each community of practice [develops] their own set of vocabularies, accepted approaches, and priorities (Ibid). Post-democracy has developed its own grid for understanding what constitutes dissent, in a way in which the role of protest is highly limited. Protest is viewed narrowly from within the logic of the managerial state as simply the management of competing interests by the state. This cannot be considered political protest, in the sense that politics presents a rupture in the distribution of the sensible, this form of protest stays well within the confines of consensus, never straying into dissensus. To elaborate consider how Rancire states that:
Consensus means that the only point of contest lies on what has to be done as a response to the given situation. Correspondingly, dissensus and disagreement don't only mean conflict of interests, ideas and so on. They mean that there is a debate on the sensible givens of a situations, a debate on that which you see and feel, on how it can be told and discussed, who is able to name it and argue about it (2003: 4).

So within post-democracy Before problems can be settled by well-behaved social partners, the rule of conduct of the dispute has to be settled, as a specific structure of community (Rancire. 1999: 108). Post-democracies understanding of protest is dictated by this rule of conduct which maintains that protest not disrupt the order of the police, bu challenging the sensible givens of a situation. 6) The role of the police is to police the political.3 In Omnes et Singulatim Foucault outlines an early conception of governmentality/biopower by studying how the role of the police originally developed. When studying the early theorist of the police he notes that the object of the police was man itself, his life, happiness or otherwise. Foucault says What the police sees to is a live, active, productive man. Turquet employs a remarkable expression: The polices true object is man. (1979: 248). Turquet, one of these early theorists, as well as the others of his sort, saw the police not simply as a body concerning crime, Its field comprises justice, finance, and the army (Ibid), the polices remit is total and one could say The police sees to living (Ibid: 250). This time focussing on a different police theorist Foucault says: The police, [Von Justi] says, is what enables the state to increase its power and exert its strength to the full (Ibid: 251), how? By keeping the citizens happy happiness being understood as survival, life, and improved living (Ibid: 251-252). The strength and
3

Its important to stress, in order to avoid confusion, that here I refer to the institution of the police. The agents of law and order, as opposed to the order of the police the term Rancire uses to mean the distribution of the sensible that is tied up with consensus democracy

17 legitimacy of the state therefore is founded in part by the police seeing to the lives of citizens, ensuring their means to survival. Within a capitalist state ensuring the improved living of citizens can only mean one thing, ensuring their productiveness as workers. In this role of the police we see two parts of what we have already discussed namely the managerial state. Firstly, the attempt of any consensus to create a community without void by tying subjects to subject place and functions, in this instance, the linking of citizens to workplaces society here is made up of groups tied to specific modes of doing, to places in which these occupations are exercised, and to modes of being corresponding to these occupations and these places (Rancire. 2010: 36). Secondly, the divide between the social and the political the social is seen as a realm of enterprising life, and the political (more accurately: policing) as the management of this space. Thus the role of the police is in part the enforcement of the managerial state. We can understand it as Rancire puts it, as police management of the relations between the state and the social groups and interests (1999: 108). In part this task must take the form of enforcing a state of anti-politics, which comes hand in hand with enforcing the distribution of the sensible that ties subjects to their places, since it ties the act of government to particular subjects and not the demos. So the police serve to police the political, ensuring its monopolisation is maintained. For Rancire this act takes a particular form and can be characterised by the expression Move along! Theres nothing to see here! The police is that which says that here, on this street, theres nothing to see and so nothing to do but move along (2010: 37). Rancire uses a good expression to understand dissensus the presence of two worlds in one (Ibid). Politics is that which suggests a new understanding of the world in a world in which its sensible understanding is apparently already a given. Thus police interventions in public spaces consist primarily not in interpellating demonstrators, but in breaking up demonstrations (Ibid); they consist in concealing this second world; removing its presence as soon as possible, in saying It does not exist! There is nothing but consensus, there is no politics here! Thus why do police march alongside protests? Their presence is never a surprise, it seems normal, far from out of the ordinary. I hold that the police are never at a protest to facilitate the right to protest, the police serve to maintain public order, in other words, consensus. The police are present at protests in the event that it might become political.

The Kettle in Action In a recent review published by Her Majestys Inspectorate of Constabularies (HMIC) of police tactics surrounding the G20 protest on 1 April 2009, one that saw two significant uses of Kettling as a tactic, it was stated that; The tactics used [...] such as cordons and containment [...] are endorsed by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and are contained in the ACPO manual Keeping the Peace (HMIC. 2009: 7). The report continues; It is recognised by some senior ACPO officers that the tactics in this manual were formulated in a different era of protest. Finally, it is stated that;
The ACPO Keeping the Peace manual gives very limited attention to policing protest. It is inadequate for the world the police are now operating in. Peaceful protest covers a wide spectrum of protest activity. At its most straightforward, it is notified, discussed with police in advance, stewarded and controlled and organised on the day with the interests of the wider public in mind. At its most complex, it is not notified or discussed with police in advance, has no organisers or stewards controlling it and is disruptive. In these instances, the police are left to arbitrate and deal with the consequences [...]. It requires preparation for and delivery of a proportionate response (Ibid).

18 What is being hinted at by this report? Some form of perceived change has occurred in recent times. As the report states, the outdated manual is inadequate for the world the police are now operating in. The comments that containment in particular belongs to a different era of policing, a bygone era, are false however. Indeed such an opinion is not commonly expressed; it appears false when we consider that containment in Britain was first used in 2001, then saw a lull until significant use at almost every major demonstration from 2009 to 2011; it is actually the case that containment is a very new method of policing. This is supported by the fact that in light of the comments made by the HMIC, the ACPO report Keeping the Peace was reviewed and updated in 2010. Prior to its most utilised period the student protests of winter 2010 containment was retained as a police tactic. Its use was clarified and refined, and certainly not confined to a section at the back of the report for outdated tactics. Instead it was placed squarely in the centre of the primary tactics police commanders may call upon in the event of public disorder. In official discourse Containment is used because police have a duty to maintain public order and the courts have agreed that it can be used if it is the only way to prevent an imminent breach of the peace or one that is already occurring (Gomm. 2011). Similarly the revised Keeping the Peace manual calls it Contingency tactic to be used when alternative tactics to prevent serious disorder, serious injury or loss of life have failed or are expected to fail (ACPO. 2010: 110). It can be considered as a police approach to maintaining law and order; preventing acts of mass violence (as compared to an individual violent act) such as rioting, or; preventing a breach of the peace. It is obviously deployed selectively, not as an everyday practice of keeping the peace, but it is applied in exceptional circumstance, to particular temporal events. Such events are those that pose the threat of an imminent breach of the peace. Thus it serves officially to stop an event happening that would otherwise occur, or events that are already in the process of disrupting order, thus in these incidences it brings the perpetration of disorder to a halt. There have been many arguments levelled at the official understanding of how kettling functions. Firstly, it is argued that the containment of protesters in cold conditions, for long periods of time, without amenities such as food, water or toilets serves intentionally to create an unpleasant situation, the purpose of which is to discourage people from protests altogether, because of the possibility that containment might be used again. This negative reinforcement argument I reject. Its not that I argue that the Police are the benign servants of the people, who always do what is best for them certainly as Ive already argued they are the part of post-democracy that along with the juridical system serves to enforce the inequalities of the order of the police. Its my point that this argument works on a miss-understanding, because it sees power in the repressive form that Foucault rejected. A degree of conspiracy is present in the theory, seeing all power as acting from the state and its arms down onto the people, power in reality acts in all directions. Other arguments against Kettling are that it is a self-fulfilling prophecy, a vicious circle, a tactic that perpetuates the behaviour that it tries to stamp out. Im of course referring to acts of violence. These arguments assert that contrary to official discourse that states that the Kettle prevents imminent breaches of peace, or cools the ones that are already occurring, it in fact creates them by trapping protesters in pressurised situations, devoid of amenities, which serve to increase anger and frustration which turns to violence. This argument might have some truth to it. For example take the containment on 9 December in Parliament Square. After the containment of the protest is authorised the logs of the police commander in charge show how the use of the tactic is regularly reviewed but determined to still be necessary in light of continued violence.
1550Review containment. To Continue. The level of violence continues [...]

19
1725Review of containment. There is little change from when I last reviewed the circumstances of the containment [...]. 1842Authority to deploy into Parliament Square to arrest offenders [...]; Rationale: The level of violence has not desisted over the last 4 hours [...]. 1957Containment reviewedno change in circumstances at this time [...]. 2059Authorise the clearance of Parliament Square into Bridge Street. Rationale: The Breaches of the Peace and Criminal Acts continue (Allison. 2011: 6).

Yet it isnt considered by the commander in any of his logs that the imposition of the kettle could be to blame for the continued violence. It almost seems as if he is surprised that the kettle hasnt calmed people down. This adds some weight to the argument that the Kettle is a self-fulfilling prophecy. But I do not intend to criticise the tactic from this viewpoint either. Its valid, but not sufficient. I argue that the Kettle is considerably more complex and serves the condition of post-democracy perfectly by containing acts of politics. It is my argument that the kettle is the very act of containing political ruptures themselves. Far from being at a protest to facilitate the rights of the protesters, the police serve to maintain order understood as forcefully maintaining consensus. If it is the case that the order of the police is a state of anti-politics; a fragile state that is threatened by displays of dissensus; the state of which the sole goal of politics is to disrupt, then the kettle is nothing more than the attempt to physically contain politics. Treated as a harmful disease it is quarantined behind the body of the police as an institution, to prevent its contagious spread to the body politic. Post-democracy itself regulates legitimate protest by positing rules of conduct for protests to adhere to. These rules define the boundary between legitimate (consensual) protest and illegitimate (political) protest. Thus it is only one particular type of protest that is kettled, the political one. It might well be said that kettling is a response to violence, not politics; all the instances of kettling were applied to protests that were characterised by violence. In response I will say that Im not denying that violence perpetrate d by protesters occurs in the kettle or prior to the kettle. But this is inconsequential, because in order to be treated as a political threat to consensus one doesnt necessarily need be violent. In fact there are incidents which I will describe in which non-violent protesters are also treated by the police as threats to consensus. * * *

In the tradition of genealogy that Foucault used, we can see that historical developments are not simply chance events but the result of power structures shifting, altering and appropriating changes in society. In the same vein then it is the modern development of post-democracy, the paranoid adherence to consensus that rejects disagreement, which is the rationale behind the development of kettling. In regards to protest there has been considerable discourse on its nature of late, with much of the present discussion being on how it has changed, developed, been augmented by technology. Discussion of network based protest groups, organisations without leaders or rhizomatic activist groups have become clich. This is not to say that these things are false, that protest isnt changing, but we must understand any changing nature of protest either as the effect of the rules of conduct dictated by post-democracy or as an adaptation to these rules in order to bypass them and make easier the emergence of politics. The world the police are now operating in as the HMIC report puts it is one in which protest can either be stewarded and controlled or disruptive. The development of post-democracy can be understood as the rationale behind the development of Kettling as a tactic. It is the shift from a world understood as divided to one in which the end of politics has heralded the

20 purification of politics and consensus which motivated the movement from a vision that accepted protests was a political display of dissensus to one in which it needs to be contained. We have discussed already the regulation of protest by the rules of conduct that must be formulated before the event. The direction, size and route of the protest must be pre-ordained and lead by stewards in high visibility jackets, and all this must be passed on to the police. We might use the Foucauldian term here grid of intelligibility to understand the way in which post-democracy sees legitimate protest. The post-democratic grid understands protest as that which the police call an Organised Declared Protest (HMIC. 2009: 21), Advance written notification of public processions is required (Ibid), its flow must be regulated and stewarded. Its nature as an accepted part of post democracy can best be symbolised by the fact that in most cases it takes the form of a march from a start location to the centre, hub, power-base, or seat of government a parliament, a government office, a head of states residence. At which point the protesters communicate their opinions in the form of chants or speeches directed at the politicians themselves. No other image better symbolizes a vision of the managerial state, of politics treated as the governments management of the citizens conflicting interests, for such a protest says clearly We come to you with our problems, so that you may resolve them. Now it is often the case that the protest organisers must meet with the police and plan it in conjunction with them, something Camp for Climate Action were invited to do after the kettle of the Climate Camp at the G20 protests (Van der Zee. 2009). It is part of a drive for more communication between the police and protesters that has been one of the main recommendations since the HMIC report. For example the ACPO report states that in reference to the planning and command of public order incidents the police should use Engagement and dialogue [...] whenever possible, to demonstrate a no surprises approach (2010: 11); and Links with communities, groups, event organisers [...] should be established (Ibid). We must interpret this drive as an enforcement of the rules of legitimate protest. The more planning and organisation that occurs before the event means the possibility that an unwelcomed disruption of the consensus might occur decreases this is what we should take from the phrase a no surprises approach. The HMIC report displays this logic well:
Seek to improve dialogue with protest groups in advance where possible, to gain a better understanding of the intent of the protesters and the nature of the protest activity; to agree how best to facilitate the protest and to ensure a proportionate policing response. When protesters are not forthcoming to the police, the police should consider informing and warning the protesters and the public that this may result in some additional disruption, that restrictions may be placed on protesters and that particular tactics may be employed to reduce disruption and the threat of disorder. (2009: 47)

Thus police planning does a lot to prevent the emergence of unplanned politics, but it can be the case that a protest, whether spontaneous or planned, might yet present the emergence of politics. In such a situation it is called on the kettle to contain it. It is the protest that challenges the givens of a distribution of the sensible, that poses the image of two worlds in one, that is political and thus it is also the protest that Kettling is targeted at. The first use of Kettling in a proper sense4 was on 1May 2001 at the May Day Protests in central London. The mass protest - a loose alliance of anti-capitalists, environmental campaigners and animal rights protesters - was contained in the centre of London by a huge police operation (BBC.
4

There is discussion of earlier occurrences in the UK, for example on the 30th November 1999 at an Anti-World Trade Organisation protest in London. But the scale of the event makes it hard to compare to the large scale Kettling operations of the last decade. Also a lack of reliable sources on it made looking at it in detail difficult.

21 2001). The protest was also part of the Anti-Globalisation movement an umbrella term for a group of different protest causes, including, environmentalism, third world debt, animal rights, child labour, anarchism, and anti-capitalism and opposition to multinationals (BBC. 2001a). The significance of the protest was the challenge it posed to the consensus. The mix of anti-capitalist/anti-globalisation protesters presented politics in the sense that they challenged the givens of post-democratic order. The kettle on the 1st May can be considered a proto-type. The term kettle or containment were not used (as far as Im aware) to describe the operation. It wouldnt be until 2009 when containment as a specific function of post-democracy would begin to emerge. The G20 Meltdown protest and the Climate Camp in the City protest were two instances of an international period of demonstrations in the build up to the G20 meeting on the 2nd April 2009. They occurred the day before in the centre of London and were significant for provoking a public debate on the ability of the Metropolitan Police to deal with protests. The G20 Meltdown protest was the convergence of four marches from different locations. Each was to symbolise the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, the red horse of war, the green horse against climate chaos, the silver horse against financial crimes and the black horse against land enclosures (Policante. 2011). The operation to contain the protest began at 12:30 and lasted until 19:00, after which dispersal of protesters began (HMIC. 2009: 23). As Policante, present at the protest, says referring to the symbols of the four horseman they embodied the different ocular parallaxes from which to unveil the systemic violence that, in different ways and in different places, makes us subjects, but also unites us in a single warlike matrix (2011: 458). The protest, a large association of anti-capitalist, alter-globalisation, environmentalist activist, presented the ultimate image of a community in disagreement. In the ensuing fallout of the financial crisis, the effect of climate change and the continuation of foreign wars the activists presented a clear image, on the foot-steps of the central bank of the UK, of two worlds in one. The world presented by the meeting of the leaders of the twenty riches nations gave the message of harmony and order. But the highly symbolic image of the protest was one of failing financial institutions, global poverty, environmental damage and war. A consensus shattering image. On the same day the Climate Camp in the City protest occurred outside the European Climate Exchange. The protest, along with other protests organised by Camp for Climate Action, used the occupation of space a form of protest. The protest saw tents, market stalls, banners and bunting set up outside the carbon-trading body (BBC. 2009) with the intention of remaining in the space for twentyfour hours. Despite no incidences of violence the protest was kettled at 17:00 until 19:00 at which point the eviction of the protest began. Similarly Climate Camp presented a physical act of politics by challenging the efforts made to tackle climate change. After the event a case was brought before the High Court by the protesters, arguing that the kettling operation had been illegal. A similar legal attempt had been brought against the Metropolitan police in 2002, surrounding the containment of protesters on 1st May. The case was rejected by the courts, finding the operation was not arbitrary as it served to maintain peace (Austin v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. 2009). The case at the G20 protester was initially successful. As the guardian reported the court heard that officers used punches to the face, slaps and shields against demonstrators who police chiefs accept had nothing to do with violence (Dodd, 2011), and the report stated that there never was a reasonable apprehension of imminent breaches of the peace at the Climate Camp (Moos and McClure v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. 2011: 40). However this decision was later over-ruled by an appeal launched by the police, arguing that the containment was legal because a breach of the peace was possible if Climate Camp protesters mixed with the G20 Meltdown protesters, who had already been violent (The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis v McClure and Moos. 2011).

22 The student demonstrations of winter 2010 presented a significant rupture in the order of consensus. The presentation given by the student and broader anti-austerity protests was one of ultimate inequality. Cuts were being inflicted upon educational institutions, social-services and the public sector. The poorest were being selected to foot the bill for the financial failings of the rich. The thrust of the protests was a message that said it was the poorest who would suffer the most. Contrast this with the governments slogan Were all in this together and we can see a truly evident displayal of two worlds in one. The world of order, equality, peace and consensus, and the order of inequality, silent-war and dissensus. The challenge of politics that the protests presented was swiftly met by three large scale kettling operations. The first incident was the 10 November march. It began in high compliance with the rules of legitimate protest in following an A to B route march. But a breakaway attempt to occupy the premises of the Conservative Party in Millbank Tower lead to scenes disruption. No kettling took place, largely because the police did not predict anything other than a consensual march, and as a result were caught off guard (Lewis. 2010). Following this protests were organised for the 24 November, 30 November and 9 December, all were kettled almost immediately. In all these subsequent kettling operations we see a common distinction being drawn between the good protester and the bad protester. This distinction refers of course to the rules of conduct already mentioned and to the characterisation that the good protesters are peaceful and the bad ones are violent. Policante (2011) spends time displaying in how during the G20 kettle the images of violence served to obscure the political discourse of the protesters, instead presenting an image of exceptional violence. The panopticon like effect of the kettle is to produce an infinite amount of image of acts of violence committed by both police and protesters. These I argue have the effect of reducing any act of politics, by ignoring it as a political discourse and writing it off as a lesser expression of anger. Rancire (1999) explains how in Aristotle the distinction between phon and logos is the boundary he draws between man and animal. Phon is sound, simply noise used to expressed pleasure or pain, satisfaction or dissatisfaction, whereas logos is the ability to express statements, political notions, ideas. Thus it is the possession of phon that makes man a political animal. The discourse of images that emerge from the kettle implies that within is politics, outside is consensus; that politics is chaos, consensus is order. This is achieved by forming a division between the legitimate and illegitimate protesters. The legitimate are those who follow the rules of conduct and stay within the boundaries of consensus. The illegitimate protesters are those who break with the rules of conduct. This second category contains the protesters who resort to violence, but also those who express politics.
If there is someone you do not wish to recognise as a political being, you begin by not seeing him as the bearer of signs of politicity, by not understanding what he says, by not hearing what issues from his mouth as discourse (Rancire. 2010: 38).

With the inclusion of the political protester in a category with those whom the state can easily condemn (the violent) the effect is to ignore the discourse of the political protester, to suppress the speech of the activist. Firstly consider the case of Jody McIntyre, a disabled protester within the Parliament Square kettle on 9 December 2010. McIntyre was dragged from his wheelchair by a police officer during the protester. In a subsequent interview with the BBC (BBC. 2010) the interviewer seems unable to disassociate McIntyres self-described aim of seeking to build a revolutionary movement [that] can only happen by direct action on the streets with an intention to cause violence and harm to the police. For example the interviewer asks firstly that theres a suggestion that you were rolling towards the police in your wheelchair, is that true? Despite McIntyres insistence that as a sufferer of Cerebral Palsy, he posed a threat to no one, the interviewer continues were you throwing anything at the police? [...] shout anything provocative [...] that would have induced the police to do

23 that to you? Again McIntyre denies being violent or threatening, to which the interviewer again insists but you do say youre a revolutionary! We can also take the case of the arrest of forty activists at an occupation of Fortnum & Masons, during the 26 March 2011 demonstration (Malik. 2011). The method of the activists, non-violent occupation and civil-disobedience, falls outside the definition of the ordered march dictated by the rules of conduct outlined by post -democracy. Therefore, we can see their mass arrest as being, not a result of violent activities but the activity of politics. We might also consider the Climate Camp in the City protest, which, as already mentioned was not violent yet was still subject to the imposition of a kettle and a forceful and violent eviction.

Conclusions The feeling that accompanies the act of being within a Kettle is the excitement of partaking in a true act of politics. To rupture the order of the police and expose, no matter how temporarily, the dissensus that hides behind consensus is liberating. But I have endeavoured to show that, in post-democratic society, such moments of political rupture are often met with the intervention of the order of the police, in the form of the institution of the police, through the deployment of a kettle. We began by explaining Foucauldian Disciplinary Society, in order that we may perceive the functioning of power relations in modern society. This enabled us to understand the ways in which power can create systems of domination that go well beyond simple force and coercion, but that bind the subject in grids of optimal behaviour, that is regulated through a multiplicity of institutions such as the school, the university, the workplace, the police force and the courts. However the question was then posed: what is the characteristic of these power relations? What do they attempt to achieve other than normalization? The answer given was as consensus. Reflecting on Rancires assertion that power relations arent necessarily political relations, I argued that the characteristic of Foucauldian disciplinary society was an attempt to reproduce the uneventful in other words, consensus. Later I argued that the characteristic of any consensus is an attempt to prevent the eruption of politics. Beforehand however, it was important to detail Rancirean theory. Beginning with the notions of the end and return of politics, I went on to explain how for Rancire what is commonly referred to as politics is instead know as policing, or the order of the police, and that actual politics is the act that disrupts the consensual ordering logic of the police, which is the nature of modern society, and is referred to as the managerial state, consensus democracy or postdemocracy. My own understanding of post-democracy was one that understood society to be both disciplinary and consensual. Foucault provides the understanding of society as full of disciplinary power relations, but Rancires understanding of consensus enables us to see that such a society is the enemy of politics, and his definition of politics provided the knowledge to comprehend how protest is threatening to the consensus of post-democracy, and must be kettled. I outlined six characteristics of post-democracy that explain why kettling is used. (1) That any consensus merely hides dissensus; (2) post-democracy is inherently fragile as it attempts to creates a community without void; (3) in a condition of post-democracy the act of politics is monopolised by the government in a paradoxical way that means it is never utilised; (4) this means that the monopolisation that post-democracy presents is the anti-political attempt to end politics; (5) therefore protests, long understood as an act of politics, is regulated and redefined according to rules of conduct which dictate it not disturb consensual-order; (6) the police then serve to police the political, by being present at protest and

24 enforcing rules of conduct. Should a protest break these rules it is the kettle that is used to bring the political act to an end. The May Day protests in 2001, the G20 protests, and the Student Demonstrations in the winter of 2010 all presented moments when the consensual order of the police was challenged by a protest that turned political. Thus the use of the kettle during these incidences can be understood as an attempt to contain politics. In response to claims that violence is the real target of the police, we can see the Climate Camp in the City kettle, the treatment of Jody McIntyre and the arrest of the Fortnum and Masons Forty as instances that reject this assertion. The reason being that these were instances of non-violence that nonetheless challenged consensus and as such were treated by the intervention of the police. The presence of the police at a protest is to enforce the order of the police. Always on standby should the protest attempt to become political. Should such a thing occur, and the protesters attempt to transgress the monopoly on the right to do politics possessed by politicians, than the Kettle is often deployed to contain the political rupture and discipline the protest. In modern consensual democracy the Kettle is the confrontation between politics and the order of the police.

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