As we train more and more we can continue to develop our imagery skills. Like any skill the more we use it the better we should get. Last year I took and passed my 4th Dan in Ju Jitsu, it was a massive test and a huge challenge, it was 8 years since I last graded. So whilst I had effectively been training for 8 years I had also been teaching more and more especially since I took over the club in 2014.
In April 2016 I crashed a motorcycle and sustained a long lasting injury to my right foot, just as that was clearing up I was injured, unintentionally by my training partner, and my right bicep was in a pretty bad way for a couple of months, then 3 weeks before the grading I picked up a pretty aggressive chest infection.
My training schedule was erratic to say the least but I did manage to train in a limited capacity. Thankfully our black belts rallied round and put in some extra shifts for me to throw them around. The trouble was as the grading approached I was not confident that what I was doing was of a high enough standard, yes I listened to and took advice, yes I tried and experimented with different defences to attacks, most of which were random. However, with a couple of weeks to go I was still unsettled and needed to think carefully about what I was doing. It felt too mechanical.
I needed to rationalize and deal with my inner doubts and I did some serious thinking. I came to the conclusion that my problem was that I was not trusting myself enough so I examined each defence and each technique using my imagery skills, well not each one individually because this is what happened.
I started to go through the attacks in my mind and imagined how I would respond, where and how I would move, how I would strike and throw. I closed my eyes and watched. I started doing this with one set of techniques and then modifying my physical response and things started to become smoother, they made more sense and I was seeing not remembering, the thing is I was seeing it as the attack came in, my body seemed to be getting its shit together fast. It was an interesting experience, I stopped worrying about my performance and just decided to trust that my body, governed by my subconscious mind and many years of practice, would make things work.
I knew the theory, I had been teaching others but it took the impending pressure of being examined by my peers to make me practice what I teach others to do.
Well, it worked pretty damn well, if I say so myself I put in a pretty good performance and was complemented by the examiners, including a 6th dan owner of another Ju Jitsu club, and Ukis, I even pulled off some stuff during the grading that I had not tried out in preparation, I surprised myself to be fair. It just happened, I went with the flow and it felt good, you know when it is working and you are expressing yourself well.
Developing imagery skills is good for the mind and body, my experience, and I am really keen to hear of other peoples, was that the practical application was possible during the act of training. Not just stopping the physical act and creating images in the mind but during the physical act, yes as the punch or kick is coming in. Seeing it immediately before application, well that is what it felt like. I am pretty convinced that this is in part due to the vast amount of hours spent on the mat and in preparation along with all the research and even reading and writing about martial arts, self defence, training and many other affiliated topics. Nevertheless, it was an interesting experience and a valuable one.
When you use mental imagery or visualization you produce vivid pictures or experiences in your mind and this is a useful skill for students to develop in order to enhance their practical effectiveness. Students can use mental imagery to practice skills and helps you to decide what to do in a given set of circumstances by having already thought about the options, “If he does that I will do this.”
You can practise techniques and responses in your mind as well as with your body. Practised properly you can see and feel yourself training. You can use imagery to learn new skills, practice old ones just as one imagines other situations in life such as that upcoming job interview or date. An inability to visualize can mean that we lack the ability to complete ideas. If we cannot create an accurate mental image of what we want to achieve, then it’s unlikely that we will achieve it. And without that certain insight it’s hard to make progress even if we are using appropriate training principles as the two concepts need to be employed in tandem. If we train our mind to analyse our current and potential performance in Ju Jitsu it will help us to perfect our technique and application.
It works because visualisation has a measurable, physiological effect on our body. When you visualise doing a movement, punch, kick, throw or kata, there is a measurable response by the specific muscles used in that activity in response to your imagined movements.
For instance, in order to do a half shoulder throw in reality, a specific ‘program’ of neuro-muscular circuits has to fire in order for that to happen. However, if I just vividly imagine doing a half shoulder throw, it’s been found that micro-muscular stimulation occurs in those same muscles used to do the throw in ‘reality’.
In fact, neurologically, your body can’t tell the difference between a ‘real’ experience, and a vividly imagined one. You consciously know one experience is real and the other is imagined, but at the cellular level, your body can’t tell the difference. Its like dreaming although in using imagery skills we consciously choose the subject and use it for a purpose. In a dream the things we experience are ‘real’ whilst we are in that state, perhaps you even jerked your arm up in the dream in response to the imagined events! It was only a dream, but your body still responds like it was real.
Because there is this muscular response to visualised activity, it makes it possible to ‘program in’ desired shots, strokes, plays, movements, behaviours, and even emotional responses prior to doing them. In other words you can begin to prepare your body at a cellular level, developing a ‘muscle memory’ of what you want your body to do.
Further, visualisation allows you to practice your techniques perfectly – without error, without risk of injury and without breaking sweat and so train the optimum neural pathway for future successful performance.
As it is winter here in England with short days, dark mornings and evenings, I have been dog walker in chief in the Smith household. This is not a moan, far from it, I love being outside walking, absolutely love it and we have had some fantastic days this year, good hard frosts and crisp clear skies. I particularly like walking in the dark of early evening when there is virtually nobody else around, it is nice and quiet then and it is surprising how quickly your night vision kicks id once away from streetlight.
Now we are mid February and it is warming up more. Recent rain has made some of the paths we use very muddy and you spend a lot of your time looking where to put your feet rather than looking around at the beautiful surroundings. We live on the edge of the city and access to beautiful walks is easy, we could stick to the tarmac covered paths in parks but getting out on the crags and paths through the fields is much nicer.
Apparently the Old English name for February was Solmonath (mud month), sounds right to me, I think I will start using it. Other countries and cultures have different names for February and most relate to the conditions and temperature they experience. The emergence of the mud from the previously, well mostly, frozen earth (this depends on the variations we experience as a temperate clime), is a sign that we are moving towards spring.
Heading towards is not there yet. However, as the mornings and evenings lightening and the mud squelches underfoot we know that spring is around the corner. I never bother with new year resolutions and the flood of I will get fitter false promises people make and do not carry through on. I do though, around now, start thinking about getting out and about more and starting the build up my fitness levels. I can imagine little more depressing than heading to the confines of a gym to workout in artificial light in an artificial atmosphere surrounded by many, not all, artificial people. It is not my scene, (exceptions allowed when on holiday).
I like my weights, I like my exercise bike a bit less, I love walking and cycling. A motorcycle crash in early April screwed my training regime last year, it was followed by a problem with my right bicep followed by a series of coughs and chest infections that I thought would never end. Then just before Christmas it all, almost, lifted so I decided a period of rest was needed.
I am still in that period of rest, I did train in preparation for my 4th dan in Ju Jitsu in November and sneaked the examination in between infections, I think the bruised ribs worsened the next chest infection though and I was close to pneumonia, but apart from that, I carried on teaching. I rested from the exercise not from being involved, how can I when I run the training?
Well a 2 week shut down lazing around in the sun, and wind, on Fuertaventura certainly recharged the batteries and on return I have kept on with the just teaching strategy with just a few dabbles here and there. Rest has done me good and I am now feeling ready to resume training, ready both physically and mentally. Many people do not, or worse still cannot rest, and this is very dangerous, in my opinion. The earth revolves and the seasons change, nature renews and restores itself. The human body needs periods of rest, each day we rise, engage in our waking lives and then retire to sleep again, we have 4 seasons in one day and our bodies need this. Regular sleep is good for us, our bodies repair the damage done throughout the day whilst we sleep. Poor sleep eventually wears you down as does a failure to take a break from our training.
Building in regular periods of relaxation into our training programme is good practice and a sign of dedication and not neglect. Whilst we may train twice or three times a week at the Dojo it is important, given all the other pressures of everyday life, to make sure we have a couple of nights a week set aside for relaxation. That does not mean that we must neglect our art completely on these nights, rather than push the body further we may take the opportunity to chill out but set aside a period for virtual training where as part of our relaxation we engage in imagining our kata and techniques.
Relaxation is the gateway to the renewal of both body and mind. By engaging in relaxation techniques one can quite quickly recover from the tiredness and stress of everyday life. Whilst there are many ways this can be done as there are ways to become tired and stressed it is important to find the method that suits you best. On the occasions I have to get up early I find I function better if I take a siesta in the afternoon. This leaves me refreshed and raring to go in the late afternoon and evening. For some a quiet period is enough or a period listening to whale songs. It does not matter what you do as long as it works for you and is relaxing.
Most evenings I indulge myself in a very hot bath with some nice bath oils to soak my muscles and completely switch off for a few minutes, often falling asleep. This has now become a ritual in my life and works for me, it is my retreat. I know some people who prefer a form of Spartan regime where rest is a sin, a sign of weakness and failure. Well each to their own it is not for me to judge. However, take a look around you, observe how things happen in nature, look at the process of how the earth regenerates itself and learn from it.
At the moment I am extending the length of time I walk and my stride. I am walking further and faster and the dog is a happy boy. As the weather improves this will continue and the mountain bike will come out too. Happy days ahead. The weights will come out to play and I will be joining in the training and not just teaching.
Right now I have a little dog to walk on an overcast Solmonath day, more fresh air and exercise and all for free. After that I have a little more admin work to do before teaching an early evening class, then there will be a nice hot soak and an early night, that is part of my training.
This work was drawn to my attention by Erik Kondo when we were discussing the open and closed nature of some groups attitude to learning. I see groups and tribes who interact with other groups and tribes and are prepared to grow from some of the things they learn from these interactions. Our ancient ancestors created vast trading networks in this way, their core cultures were changed by varying degrees by exposure to outside influences, it is how societies were formed and grown.
I had recently been reading Sapiens (see earlier review, as well as The Righteous Mind and when I got hold of Mindset it seemed to offer me a chance of finding the missing link in my thinking, pun intended. You see I am interested in how people think, how they act as well as the me they present compared to the I inside. I am a nailed on growth mindset person. I knew that, the excerpt of Dr Dweck’s book that Erik sent me confirmed it, I try new things, I have fun learning, I am not phased if the learning is hard, learning is itself a reward.
Thing is when I look around I see many people who did not get this, who’s mindsets were fixed, as members of a different and difficult to understand tribe. How could we have evolved as rapidly as a species unless we were a growth mindset species?
Of course I was well aware of the attitudinal differences and how this manifests itself in everyday life, lack of social mobility being one of the major ones. In 1988 was a window cleaner, I enrolled on an adult education course, my life has been a roller coaster ride ever since yet many of my peers from that date have not moved on at all. They were where they were because they were, a self fulfilling prophecy of going nowhere. The question of why we are of similar stock, similar background but see the world so differently has always been a puzzle, the old answers offered only partial answers. Dweck offered more.
In Mindset Dweck teases out the very subtle forces that influence how we see the world and our place within it, she looks at all different aspects of life and the pattern is there to see. Building on a lifetime of study and research this book, although repetitive at times, allows those with the will to learn, and even to change, to delve into the subtleties of human interaction and its consequences.
I really enjoyed it although not a fan of the style, I like my footnotes or references annotated so that I can go find them when I want them, not lumped together at the end of each chapter. It is a comprehensively researched book and well worth a read.
Failures in communication of one form or another are almost always the start of conflict, failure to establish meaningful communication in a conflict will result in conflict mismanagement. So with different codes operating between different social classes we have massive opportunities for conflict. Now introduce all the other social variables and you can begin multiplying outwards exponentially.
However, remember where this tale started, over in Benidorm back in September 2016. Well it did not start there but going there brought thoughts from my subconscious to the fore. Like many others I associate with people I like, people like me, yes I have family and friends who will happily tell me when they think I am wrong and we can agree to disagree on certain issues. Take the Brexit vote, all our kids wanted to remain in the European Union but my wife and I voted to leave, they expressed their surprise to us but nobody fell out. Yes we discussed it but not in any detail, we all just got on with life, apparently it has split other families asunder….. I like people like me funnily enough but I can see massive dangers as we move towards fractured communities, countries even, where different social groups inhabit their own cosy feeling echo chambers and I know Marc MacYoung is digging deeply into this at the moment. The thing is communicating across barriers is possible and we do not need pretty coloured beads anymore, but only if the barriers can be relaxed.
When we went to Benidorm we actually spent time with members of other tribes around us, it was for me a socio-anthropological experience, it was superb. Being in contact with other tribes helps you to bring your own practises into question. When you can compare how people talk, eat, move around, relate to each other and to others around them you can also compare how you behave as well. This is where I started to rediscover the concept of social reproduction, the way that different social groups are produced and reproduced.
Now putting to one side the whole education Vs environment debate, free will Vs conformism and the whole gamut of isms wrapped up as analysis there are things that go together like say, fish and chips. Because, and here is a controversial one, not only do different social classes, remember where Erik started this, speak different codes, as the continual process of social production and reproduction gathers pace they are beginning to look different.
Two thirds of British adults are overweight or obese and a growing number are becoming severely obese. It was easy to see that most of the people in our hotel who were how much you could get on your plate.
Well each to their own is how I try to see things but I often fail, the thing is when you are interested in eating healthily, not obsessively though, we all like a few chips, then when you see people effectively gorging huge platefuls of fried foods, platefuls of cakes and washing it down with lots of beers and/or cokes then you cannot help but notice it. As somebody who still actively trains and sees a clear link between what I put into my body and what I can then expect it to do, I just do not get how people can do this to themselves.
I try to make good choices most of the time but I am not a food fascist, I watched and listened as our family ate our food, discussed our food and enjoyed our food, lots of good choices, with a few nice naughty bits here and there. I watched our daughter guide our grandsons as we had her and that was fun too. My father has a saying, strength goes in at the mouth, I have always liked it, but weakness goes in at the mouth too is the reverse. Now let us throw a hand grenade into this piece of revelry.
“Severe obesity is associated with lower educational attainment, reduced employment prospects and lower socioeconomic status, although the directionality of this association is not known.” Health Survey for England https://www.noo.org.uk/NOO_about_obesity/severe_obesity#d6908)
BOOM!!! Well life is all about choices, or is it? Well the old free will versus determinism can take us around in circles but as Haidt (2014?) indicates most decisions are made as emotional reactions then we rationalise them afterwards. He uses the analogy of riding an elephant, according to this model; the rider is rational and can plan ahead, while the elephant is irrational and driven by emotion and instinct. This is where the differences emerge between those who choose to control their emotions, as best they can, and make more rational choices and those who’s emotions make the choices and then they rationalise the choices made.
So when we are presented with a huge array of choices at our all inclusive restaurant buffet choices have to be made but there are no rules, you can eat what you want in whatever quantities you like. So as we approach the buffet it will depend who is in charge, the rider or the elephant (no pun intended). So given that most of our behaviour is learned and that the primary agency of socialisation is the family, is it surprising that you could see tables of families and each had similar choices on their tables? Choices are informed by our knowledge and understanding, something Pierre Bourdieu (1986) calls cultural capital.
“Cultural capital: forms of knowledge, skills, education, and advantages that a person has, which give them a higher status in society. Parents provide their children with cultural capital by transmitting the attitudes and knowledge needed to succeed in the current educational system.”
So the restaurant in our holiday hotel in Benidorm brought into the same room social groups with different levels of cultural capital. If severe obesity is associated with lower educational attainment and lower socio economic status, amongst other thing, then it is likely that lower levels of cultural capital will be present too. Conversely as Bourdieu demonstrated those who possessed higher levels of cultural capital had far better levels of educational attainment and socio economic status.
Obesity is present in all social groups but evidence from Public Health England it is much more prevalent in lower income households and socio economic groups. The correlation between levels of cultural capital and its transfer through social reproduction is clear, poorer, less educated families are more likely to be obese. http://www.noo.org.uk/securefiles/161004_1308//AdultSocioeconomic_Aug2014_v2.pdf
Social reproduction refers to the emphasis on the structures and activities that transmit social inequality from one generation to the next. Much of what we know of human behaviour shows that throughout the long evolution of our species learned behaviours are passed from generation to generation.
This includes the social construction of the worlds we inhabit, they differ by ethnicity, class, gender, name your own variable, we all believe, or would like to that our body of knowledge, our culture, the way we do things, is the right way. We belong, as did our ancestors, to tribes, each tribe can have its own shared customs, values and belief system, we operate best in tribes of around 30 to 40 members, just like our ancestors. If we become separated from our tribe we will look for others like them/us and seek their company, like attracts like. We do this because tribes all have their own style of dress, adornments and/or markings. Youth cultures and sub-cultures are the most obvious examples.
Take a moment here to think about your tribal identity, take your time, look at your hair, your clothes and look at yourself as if looking at a stranger, adopt the position of anthropological strangeness. Do you wear jewellery? If so what does it say about you? Then work outwards from the self to the artefacts you possess, what do they say about you and your tribe?
I am concluding this article on yet another holiday this time on the island of Fuerteventura, the Canary Islands. We are in yet another al inclusive hotel but this one cost quite a bit more and this is reflected in the social make up of the guests. However, right back to the march Issue of Conflict Manager and Erik’s article. A person’s social class is rarely chosen, most of us are born to it and inculcated into it before we have any choice. Social class itself is a complex series of interacting variables and influences far too complex for us to do it justice here, in this 3 part article I have merely tried to begin expanding how we think of social class, pardon yet another pun. Social class is worthy of consideration in considering potential causes of conflict, especially as power is distributed unequally in society. The process of social reproduction ensures that the uneven distribution of cultural capital remains relatively constant and self reinforcing. We speak in codes and live in tribes, we are generally physically identifiable by how we speak, act and look.
Erik was correct, social class matters, but understanding the process of how classes are created and recreated over generations matters too. Now is anyone ready for a discussion on social mobility?
‘Human Universe’ by Professor Brian Cox reviewed by Garry Smith.
If like me you are not a watcher of TV, except for the rugby, then you may want to get hold of a copy of this pronto and read it, not that it is about to disappear into some black hole but because it is such a great read. As a self defence instructor and martial arts instructor I read extensively on my subject that is I read about life in all its guises.
For those whose choice it is to live in the closed insular world of the community of their choosing, (insert areas of choice here_______________), where they will not be challenged by ideas other than those they share the same values and beliefs, then stop reading now, yours is a closed world, an echo chamber of your own making. Those who linger here are usually of a fixed mindset where the status quo is the anchor they attach. Questions and knowledge outside the group threaten the solidity of the group and as such are shunned, here lies tribalism.
For those open to challenge, new ideas, new questions and potentially unsettling new knowledge, step right in, yours is an open world where new knowledge opens up new possibilities. This is the mindset that welcomes growth, however difficult and challenging the path may be. Those who inhabit this mindset may well belong to tribes but are not tribal in their thinking; they are open minded and prepared to listen to and discuss values and beliefs different to their own.
As a member of the latter group I was not sure what exactly to expect from Human Universe and as I said I missed this completely on TV, so it was something of an onslaught upon my poor brain as I grappled right from the start with some pretty mindboggling facts and figures let alone scientific concepts I had barely heard of before. However, perseverance proved worth it as this turned out to be one of the most interesting books I have read in recent years and I have read some damn good stuff. Prof. Cox takes the universe and strips it bare for us and introduces us to some of the conceptual tools developed by generation after generation of philosophers, astronomers, cosmologists and scientists to explain the amazing thing that is the universe, but it does not stop there.
By the end of the book we have stripped time back to the Big Bang and fast forwarded to an ever expanding multiverse, (read it and see). It is a journey of epic proportions and I for one can see why Prof. Cox has become something of an icon in popular culture, he really is bringing science to the masses. Great, but why is this relevant to a practitioner of self defence or martial arts? Well for me the answer is simple.
The universe is an incredibly complex thing, in order to understand what is happening to it in the present we have had to develop extraordinarily sophisticated tools with which to analyse it. Incredible minds have laboured for lifetimes to unravel its mysteries, complex mathematical formula have had to be discovered and tested to destruction in order to maintain scientific rigour and accuracy and a millions of hypothesis have been disproved along the way and more than a few proved too. Reading this book I kept thinking back to how we at the Conflict Research Group International reject the term expert when discussing or writing about violence. It is because our universe in miniature, the world of violence reflects the complexity of the multiverse.
One of the fascinating sections of the book concerns the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI); again go read the book, as part of this Prof. Cox introduces the Drake Equation which was the outcome of conference at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia.
The Drake Equation was developed by Frank Drake in 1961 as a way to focus on the factors which determine how many intelligent, communicating civilizations there are in may be in our galaxy. The Drake Equation is:
N = R* fp ne fl fi fc L
The equation can really be looked at as a number of questions:
N* represents the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy
Question: How many stars are in the Milky Way Galaxy?
Answer: Current estimates are 100 billion.
fp is the fraction of stars that have planets around them
Question: What percentage of stars have planetary systems?
Answer: Current estimates range from 20% to 50%.
ne is the number of planets per star that are capable of sustaining life
Question: For each star that does have a planetary system, how many planets are capable of sustaining life?
Answer: Current estimates range from 1 to 5.
fl is the fraction of planets in ne where life evolves
Question: On what percentage of the planets that are capable of sustaining life does life actually evolve?
Answer: Current estimates range from 100% (where life can evolve it will) down to close to 0%.
fi is the fraction of fl where intelligent life evolves
Question: On the planets where life does evolve, what percentage evolves intelligent life?
Answer: Estimates range from 100% (intelligence is such a survival advantage that it will certainly evolve) down to near 0%.
fc is the fraction of fi that communicate
Question: What percentage of intelligent races have the means and the desire to communicate?
Answer: 10% to 20%
fL is fraction of the planet’s life during which the communicating civilizations live
Question: For each civilization that does communicate, for what fraction of the planet’s life does the civilization survive?
Answer: This is the toughest of the questions. If we take Earth as an example, the expected lifetime of our Sun and the Earth is roughly 10 billion years. So far we’ve been communicating with radio waves for less than 100 years. How long will our civilization survive? Will we destroy ourselves in a few years like some predict or will we overcome our problems and survive for millennia? If we were destroyed tomorrow the answer to this question would be 1/100,000,000th. If we survive for 10,000 years the answer will be 1/1,000,000th.
When all of these variables are multiplied together when come up with:
N, the number of communicating civilizations in the galaxy.
The real value of the Drake Equation is not in the potential answer itself, but the questions that are prompted when attempting to come up with an answer are useful to us. Obviously there is a tremendous amount of guess work involved when filling in the variables, there can never be any way of knowing if they are anywhere near correct. The Drake Equation was never going to provide a neat answer, and despite the massive technological and scientific gains since then we are still no nearer, because the more we learn we realise the less we know. With probes and advanced telescopes discovering new planets and their orbits on a regular basis with incredible accuracy we still remain at the level of guessing the numbers.
As we learn more from astronomy, biology, and other sciences, we’ll be able to better estimate the answers to the above questions but they will remain guesses for years to come, Prof. Cox makes that clear repeatedly in the book, but the equation was a starting point for calculation and exploration alike, from my perspective it was the forming of the questions that was the breakthrough. Prof. Cox writes with great humour about our fascination with alien invaders, complete with anal probes, stalking the earth and comes to the conclusion that, despite what the speculation may be, we are currently alone in our universe and the known, observable universe, probably. So for now we can dispense with the tin foil hats and chastity trousers.
It struck me as I read this that the unpredictability of any form of life existing out there in space, let alone intelligent life, was dependent on an incredible number of factors and chance. What I found of interest was the construction of the equation and a group of wise men sitting down and based on their collective experience and knowledge, agreeing the relative questions.
As I read all this it provoked thoughts, good reading should. Thoughts about whether there was some way we could arrive at a similar set of questions that would help us to predict the likely-hood of our being involved in a violent encounter. I do not for one minute think it would be mathematically accurate as there would be many questions and many guesses involved, too many variables, but would the process help us think about the questions?
This is where I am out of my depth, I can see it but the picture is blurred if you get me. I know what I mean but not, at the moment how to progress this. I can see a usefulness to develop this as a theoretical too but not as a divine indicator.
I suppose dear reader this is where you come in, can we build a CRGI equation along the lines of the Drake equation, one that allows us to move beyond the various models currently out there, the OODA Loop, Colour Codes etc and no disrespect to them but maybe we need to push the frontiers a little, or maybe a lot, just a thought.
Maybe the value, as with the Drake equation is forming the right questions, maybe no, that in itself is a formidable task. Drake’s formula did not emerge from a void it was the cumulative effort of many minds over millennia. One of the beauties of Human Universe is that is it is a perfect example of that oft used metaphor, standing on the shoulders of giants. Its most familiar expression in English is by Isaac Newton in 1676: “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
In my continued observations of the discussions in and around the martial arts/self defence world I see many people who are trapped in the confines of our equivalent of a solar system, not to mention the flat earthers, there are many who are looking to the stars in wonder, many are seeking answers but have not yet framed the appropriate questions because the subject studied is too vast. It is the task of those with enquiring minds to begin to frame the appropriate questions and then the search for credible, reliable data can be continued. It has begun, we have our giants, they are amongst us, we need to heed them and climb onto their shoulders in order to see further still.
Read Human Universe, it is incredibly interesting, read widely, live in an open world, have an ever expanding mind.
For now I leave you with a rejoinder if asked who you are, your answer is “up quarks, down quarks and electrons”.
The most powerful agency is the family, it is our earliest exposure to others and for most the bond is strong. Social reproduction takes place primarily within the family, here language, verbal and non verbal is learned and practised, behaviour observed and copied, attitudes and opinions formed and experimented with and all of these subject to positive and/or negative reinforcement from those who hold the power. In the family or tribe stepping outside shared values, norms and beliefs is a risky business.
We are no different than other families, I witnessed traits in my grandsons that I recognised from my granddad, little behaviours that have passed down through the generations. Perhaps the best bit of our holiday was the time we sat at table to eat, when our kids were at home we always had meals at the big family table, same here. Coming together to eat and talk is quality bonding time and it was wonderful to see our eldest grandson’s excellent table manners and the way he converses with confidence. Sustaining conversation needs a large vocabulary and the skills to use it.
How we talk, what we say and how we say it is usually a good clue to our personality and level of education. In his classic work, Class, Codes and Control 1971, 1973 & 1974, Basil Bernstein pointed out how linguistic differences work. He set out how different social groups use different modes of speech which he called codes; he divided language use into elaborate and restricted codes. I loved his work when I discovered it as an adult student in further and higher education, particularly as I could speak both codes. I felt my world expanding as I was exposed to ideas and knowledge that had hitherto been hidden from me. A couple of years ago I was asked on our local BBC radio to explain my love of Shakespeare as a working class man, Shakespeare being the cultural property of the educated chattering classes, I did so. A women who came on after me claimed I could not be working class because I was too articulate. Get that, an articulate member of the working class is not possible because my working class Sheffield accent was not expected to have a wide vocabulary and the ability to use it elaborately. The middle classes can be quick to shut down something they are not familiar with.
Bernstein was a pioneer in the work of sociolinguistics; he examined the relationship between social class and children’s acquisition and use of language in the family and school. He defined the restricted code of the working class and the elaborated code of the middle classes. Yes he stoked up a political shit-storm and was vilified by many more because he upset their beliefs and emotions and their political leanings. Well I loved his work, it explained my emerging bilingualism, as my wife said early in our relationship, you write middle class and talk working class, I still do, my friend Rory Miller has commented that I hide behind my working class accent or dialect as I prefer.
Most debate on the two codes gets bogged down in the detail and the political arguments, for me I am interested in how language, and the way it is learned and used, continue to produce and reproduce our social identities and the power structures this maintains. I follow where Bernstein led.
For clarity the two codes are both sophisticated, the myth that this is a deficit model has been countered, at the time of publication the identification of two codes and their cultural, social and political roots was a regressive step as seen by the left but as I stated earlier more for political and emotional reasons. Restricted code is particularistic in that it relies heavily on shared understanding between group members, much is not said, it does not have to be. A complex and subtle myriad of shared understandings underpin the use of restricted code. Partial sentences, often very short are all that are needed for participants to communicate fully and effectively.
Elaborated code is universalistic in that it is explicit and comprehensive, full not partial sentences are used so that hearer’s can quickly understand the speaker’s intentions. No opportunity for misunderstanding is allowed, explanations are included where necessary and clarifications of understanding obtained verbally.
Users of elaborated code listening to a user of restricted code will likely not understand what is being said as they do not possess the required shared meaning that underpins it, it is common they will perceive the user of restricted code as having a lower educational ability. Likewise a user of restricted code will likely not understand the speaker of elaborated code, it is possible they will perceive the user of elaborate code as having a higher educational ability.
Bernstein explains how this is brought about by the complex process of socialisation.
“Two general types of codes can be distinguished: elaborated and restricted … In the case of an elaborated code, the speaker will select from a relatively extensive range of alternatives … In the case of a restricted code the number of these alternatives is often severely limited … On a psychological level the codes may be distinguished by the extent to which each facilitates (elaborated code) or inhibits (restricted code) an orientation to symbolize intent in a verbally explicit form.
[W]e can expect … to find … elaborated code within the middle class … In the lower working class we could expect to find a high proportion of families limited to a restricted code” Bernstein 1971.
This was written in 1971 but still describes many communities in contemporary Britain. So as humans we are produced and reproduced in the social groups we are born into, we inculcate the values, norms and beliefs of those closest to us, for most of us this is our parents, we literally soak up our culture, beliefs, emotions and all like a sponge. We inherit our feelings, emotions and a huge raft of scripts for dealing with everyday life. These scripts and the underlying emotions that trigger them guide our actions.
“Language skills are a critical factor in social disadvantage and in the intergenerational cycles that perpetuate poverty. Poor language skills are the key reason why, by the age of 22 months, a more able child from a low income home will begin to be overtaken in their developmental levels by an initially less able child from a high-income home – and why by the age of five, the gap has widened still more.
On average a toddler from a family on welfare will hear around 600 words per hour, with a ratio of two prohibitions (‘stop that’, ‘get down off there’) to one encouraging comment. A child from a professional family will hear over 2000 words per hour, with a ratio of six encouraging comments to one negative (Hart and Risley, 2003).
Low income children lag their high income counterparts at school entry by sixteen months in vocabulary. The gap in language is very much larger than gaps in other cognitive skills (Waldfogel and Washbrook, 2010).
More than half of children starting nursery school in socially disadvantaged areas of England have delayed language – while their general cognitive abilities are in the average range for their age, their language skills are well behind (Locke et al, 2002)
A survey of two hundred young people in an inner city secondary school found that 75% of them had speech, language and communication problems that hampered relationships, behaviour and learning (Sage, 1998)
Vocabulary at age 5 has been found to be the best predictor (from a range of measures at age 5 and 10) of whether children who experienced social deprivation in childhood were able to ‘buck the trend’ and escape poverty in later adult life (Blanden, 2006).
Researchers have found that, after controlling for a range of other factors that might have played a part (mother’s educational level, overcrowding, low birth weight, parent a poor reader, etc), children who had normal non-verbal skills but a poor vocabulary at age 5 were at age 34 one and a half times more likely to be poor readers or have mental health problems and more than twice as likely to be unemployed as children who had normally developing language at age 5 (Law et al., 2010).”
Jean Gross, Communication Champion, September 2011, www.thecommunicationtrust.org.uk/
Over 20 years ago I used to teach a class in adult education called ‘Aspects of Social Inequality’. The root causes of inequality are multilayered and inter-related, they result in the continuation of virtuous and viscous circles of social reproduction. Erik pointed this out and then we have all the other issues around gender, race/ethnicity etc. However, the thrust of his article was how this leads to miscommunication and conflict mismanagement.
This article is seeking to tease out some of the intricacies and theoretical explanations to what are effectively tectonic plates of miscommunication that continue to rub up against each other causing continual friction and occasionally massive eruptions of conflict.
This article will be completed in the New Year, and on that note a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all.
In his article in the March issue of Conflict Manager ‘When it Comes to the Rules, Social Classes Matter’, Erik Kondo wrote about the conflict between people from different social classes. I fully agree with the thrust of the article but wanted to take it a little further as it chimed so much with my own curious journey, so far, through life. We are not born into a void; we are born into families who are parts of communities that are part of ever bigger groupings like a set of Russian Dolls.
Where you are born and who you are born to is indicative of how you will turn out, not 100% determined but early influences will have a massive impact upon your future identity. Social class is the most used variable when we examine social life; Erik acknowledges race, gender and other variables and these all interact with each other to create a complex social dish that can have a myriad of permutations. There is no one set recipe, the world is a curious place and Sapiens a highly differentiated species.
So in order to dig a little deeper into some conflicts between groups can be interpretated in different ways I will take you on a little journey if that is OK.
A couple of months ago I was sitting outside our lodge in the mountains above Benidorm in the Spanish Playa Blanca region. It was a balmy warm mid September morning, the grandsons had just woken up and my daughter was feeding the little one. Soon we would be off to breakfast and then off to the adjacent zoo, adventure playground first and yes I covered every inch of this many times over, with another look at the tigers, lions, rhinos, monkeys etc then off to next doors water-park for more, swimming, monkey bars, flume and slide activity, yes I went on the one called KAMIKAZE!!! all interspersed with periods of rest, food and drink. Everything was included in the package and it was superb. I arrived home a tired but happy man.
It was 31 years since I went to Benidorm for a winter break, its reputation for sun, sand sangria and sex has not diminished. To be fair the place has grown and grown into something resembling a mini Manhattan, skyscrapers dominate and the place is crowded even in low season. Benidorm has become a parody of the cheap holiday in the sun even spawning it own hit comedy working on the stereotypical British holiday makers in the Costas (not the coffee shop). Take a look.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJIBZDMtG0k
I started as a great comedy but outran itself after a few series as it became more and more bizarre. We British love to poke fun at ourselves, it in our dna. Benidorm, the place with its cheap booze, full English breakfasts and fish and chips, in any order, was Britain in the sun for many. No need to speak Spanish, ‘they’, all speak English, result. So it attracted those who, often on limited budgets, the working class, whilst the middle classes headed off to their Gites in France or a villa in Tuscany and the wines and cheeses of rural France and Italy.
Let me tell you, nothing has changed. We went into Benidorm for less than half a day, it was half a day too much, and in my opinion it has no redeeming features at all. It is a cess pit with live sex shows a plenty, cheap booze and washed up pub entertainers on offer for those who like that sort of thing, judging by the numbers of bars offering these services plenty still do.
The fat man in the vest with the knotted hanky standing in the sea edge with his trousers rolled up to just below the knee, paddling in the sea edge, has disappeared and was mostly a caricature anyway. However, the modern replacement is no less comical, or frightening, depending on your viewpoint. Obesity is very common, with some families hugely overweight. Heavy tattooing is common, women of all ages as well as men, and I quite like tattoos BUT some, most of the ones on show here, were cheap and nasty. Smoking and vaping is proliferate and in the dining room access to the salad bar is really easy as the fried foods get mopped up pretty quickly.
Upon our later arrival at our hotel we checked in, dropped our bags in our lodge and went to eat, just a snack and a quick drink. There were a few people around and like anyone else we were checking them out, a few were drunk, happily drunk, most were merry, families making their way off to bed mostly, quite a mixed bunch but not the kind of people that stay at the hotels we normally book, let me explain.
My wife and I were looking for a half board hotel in the Austrian Alps, clean air, cool beer brewed under the German purity laws, excellent cuisine and everything spotlessly clean and full of middle age, middle class couples who like to walk the many trails in the mountains enjoying magnificent scenery, crystal clear rivers, pine scented woodlands and crisp, clean air. It is what we like best. We discovered this a few years ago and have been back every year since. We do not over indulge, usually meet nice people, mainly professional people, and it is really relaxing. We are amongst people not unlike ourselves. The walking class as we call it, complete with our walking clothing we are easy to identify, health conscious individuals who love exercise.
With just over a week to go our daughter decided to come with us with her two sons aged 6 and one who would be one the day after our return, this changed what we were looking for and after a lot of searching we found the Magic Natura Animal Water-Park and Polynesian Lodges 4 star all inclusive resort in the mountains outside Benidorm, yes the name says it all really. Basically a hotel with all the food and drink provided next door to a zoo and water-park and we had unlimited entry to both during our stay. We checked the reviews on Tripadviser and they were excellent, I must say retrospectively we agreed 100%, the kids loved it, excellent food etc. very different from what we would have done otherwise but fantastic family time together.
Before I go further, my wife and I have firm working class roots, non negotiable. I have worked in some of the toughest, roughest communities in Sheffield, I was no angel back in the day, my wife is a senior criminal lawyer, she deals with murderers, rapists, paedophiles, drug addicts and wife beaters on a daily basis. We have seen plenty of the underbellies of social life if we have not seen it all. We deal with it constantly; it is why we love to go to Austria, up in the Tyrol, to get a break from our daily reality.
However, this time that was not to be. We had read in the reviews that from the pools and Jacuzzi you look out over elephants, gazelles etc in the zoo below, we were looking forward to that. The first morning we made our way to breakfast and it was akin to sitting above the plains of the Serengeti observing the herds of different species as they grazed. There were all shapes and sizes of people but many were morbidly obese, many more just obese and most fat. The dress code was CHAV, a backronym standing for Council House and Violent, (to be fair there was not a hint of violence during our stay) but people were what we would describe a rough, on the whole, on occasion it felt as if there were primates in the zoo next door with more intelligence and manners than some of our fellow guests.
You could see the few middle class families looking around realising they were not amongst their own. I love people watching and listening to different conversations, here with my shaved head and earrings and my working class Sheffield accent I blended in perfectly. Hiding in plain sight. Whilst busy virtually all the time, playing with the family, it was interesting just watching and listening to people around me. It reminded me of George Orwell’s 1984 when he describes the proles.
“So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern…Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.” Orwell (1949).
So the modern day proles supped their beer, smoked their fags and loaded up on fried food and enjoyed themselves. The bar opened at 10am and the drinking began. I witnessed morbidly obese people demolish huge platefuls of food washed down with coke after coke between meals. We ate well, I ate very well, there was plenty of seafood, lots of fresh fruit, beautiful salads and yes I had 2 full English breakfasts, on different days, plus a couple of portions of chips. The food choice was wide and delicious was our most commonly used adjective.
Well in my opinion most things are ok within limits, ultimately each individual will make their choice. Each individual will live with the consequences. The thing is most people do not choose, most are socialised into the way of their tribe, primary socialisation taking place within the family, secondary socialisation from other members of their tribe and then external agencies like education (the state) after that.
The most powerful agency is the family, it is our earliest exposure to others and for most the bond is strong. Social reproduction takes place primarily within the family, here language, verbal and non verbal is learned and practised, behaviour observed and copied, attitudes and opinions formed and experimented with and all of these subject to positive and/or negative reinforcement from those who hold the power. In the family or tribe stepping outside shared values, norms and beliefs is a risky business.
In my previous article ‘Shitters, Nearly Men and Inwegos’ I introduced three broad types in the career of a football incident and alluded to a fourth type. The Journey from Shitter to Nearly Man is not compulsory, people can start at any point but generally, for the majority of football hooligans it is a journey, an apprenticeship served. These people are involved in social violence and are jostling for positions in the belonging area of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Securing a position within the mob is the first priority, however lowly a shitter you may be, if you are in you are in and will begin to self identify. Once in it is about bonding with the group and acquiring then increasing status within the group. Let’s take those in order. Bonding is key, we have seen how the group, made up of different types works as a whole, it is more than the sum of its parts. The anonymity and contagion described by Le Bon, (See book review in Conflict Manager February 2016), help to lower thresholds of what society in general regards as acceptable behaviour so that individuals can regress and settle into monkey brain thinking and behaviour. So acting and thinking exactly like those around you successfully integrates you, the rhythmic chanting and aggressive territorial group monkey dancing rapidly reinforces the in group feeling. This together with dehumanised and emasculating songs and chants directed towards the enemy helps to other them increasing the intensity of the bond. Now we have a tribe.
If it sounds a bit textbook that is because it is, exceedingly so, Go back and watch the Chelsea Cardiff video again with the sound off. By being a part of the mob, by sharing the intensity of the experience then young men bond together, it is centuries, millennia old process that is constantly being recreated by our so called modern brains. Things we would never do as an individual are now possible when the monkey brain liberates you from the restraining frontal cortex. Once bonded increasing the intensity of your behaviour and gradually moving closer to the action can increase your status especially if repeated over a period of time, you see there are shitters and shitters and location is the key. At the back is ready to run, at the front and you can still run but you are getting closer to the fire as it were, beware Icarus. As progression takes you into the role of Nearly Man you step away from the Shitters, this is a testing middle ground but an increase In status until you pluck up the courage and Inwego.
The Inwego is the top status in this group but remember the Inwego is also the Outwecome. In the clash in question there are many hooligans and at first very few police, if they wanted to they could seriously go for it but they do not, there is no sustained fighting of anything more than a couple of seconds and much of that is sniping shots and wild swinging, trying to hit and not be hit and here is where the usefulness of that video ends for me although not the typology.
The fourth type of hooligan, and these can be further subdivided later, are the Businessmen, (the Sheffield United hooligan element, my lawyer wife has represented several generations of them are called the BBC, Blades Business Crew, sweet name and to the point, they do the business. Myself and my peers predated these guys by a few years and were simply known as the Lansdownethe name of the pub we drank in). There are some wild and whacky names out there, such as Arsenal – Gooners, The Herd, Aston Villa – Steamers, C-Crew, Villa Hardcore, Villa Youth, Birmingham City- Zulus, Zulu’s Warriors, Zulu’s Army, The Zulu, Derby County -Derby Lunatic Fringe Chelsea – Headhunters, Everton – County Road Cutters, – Liverpool The Urchins, Leeds United – Leeds Service Crew, Middlesbrough – Middlesbrough Frontline), Newcastle United- Gremlins, Newcastle Mainline Express NME, -Nottingham Forest – Forest Executive Crew, Manchester Unitde – Red Army, Sheffield United – Blades Business Crew, Shrewsbury Town – E.B.F – English Border Front, Tottenham Hotspur – Yid Army, Wolverhampton Wanderers – Subway Army and most famously West Ham United’s – Inter City Firm.
What characterises these groups is they were not mass mobs. These were close knit firms where entry is based on ability.
I choose Businessmen as the name for this group of individuals as all the ritualistic behaviours associated, indeed central, to that displayed in the Chelsea Cardiff clash, and the location it took place in are superfluous to them. It is ability to do the business that matters not shouting, chanting and dancing in the street, but fighting.
The businessman has graduated from or in some cases bypassed all that and simply wants to fight, many are just psychopaths want to hurt others, the football is irrelevant, to do the business in the most efficient manner. That is not to say that there will be no monkey dancing, there will, but it is kept to a minimum, pre fight intimidation will involve the monkey for sure but this is usually short lived, here the fists and boots do the talking. All the noise and theatre of the big clash like Chelsea Cardiff is a hindrance, it will attract the attention of undesirables, the police.
The type of unit found here is much closer knit and usually by invite only, size can vary but you have to have earned the right to be there. Staying there means regularly reproducing what got you there which means going toe to toe and not quitting, you fight until you win or until it’s unwinnable, No chanting, no colours, small groups of men called firms hunting one another or steaming into the bigger mob with its different layers and running them. A small committed unit can do that, been there done it, Sometimes we travelled away 25 strong in the back of a panel van, (avoiding police detection), and parked in the home team’s territory deliberately so it could go off right in the middle of them, sometimes we travelled with as few as four, me and three brothers, nobody ran if the fighting started even though on one occasion one of the brothers went to prison for 3 months, we were chasing a much bigger group of home fans who picked a fight with us then did not like it when we got stuck in, doing the business, and they ran, we got jumped by some guys in a car, so fought them, unfortunately they were plainclothes police, again a tale for another day. You see the bonding amongst young men who hunt and spill blood, and risk spilling blood, is very strong.
The businessmen are different from the Inwegos in that the latter have reached their high point, they excel in social violence, they have reached their pinnacle and are happy there as belonging and status are achieved, they have reached the highpoint of their career. For the former something different is happening, these individuals have achieved the highest point on Maslow’s pyramid, all the previous layers are accounted for, they are above the game and are able to self actualise, violence, often brutal and extreme violence is what they are good at, to them engaging in a violent encounter is their version of playing a solo violin concerto. I can vividly recall some of the prolonged violent exchanges I have been involved in as if they were seared into my brain. I can also remember, and sometimes crave for, the exultation that came from standing tall if bruised at the end.
This is not about myself but it is impossible not to recall what it felt like, how the buzz felt as that cocktail of drugs raced around the body, despite the hurt that often came later, and how long it lasted, it felt like days. Moving to doing the business from being an Inwego is a big step, some do not take it, I had friends who were very violent psychopaths, we used to co-opt them into our firm for ‘special’ occasions as did all the other firms, they only came along to inflict pain on someone, if you are an Inwego or a Nearly Man these people will eat you up for breakfast.
On a personal note when I finally discovered martial arts I thought it was cute, it still is, but however rough we make it, I like ten guys on 2 msq mat gloves and gumshields in and free punching, it’s still not going in on someone who will put you in hospital if they can with the intent on doing the same. It is why I glibly say Ju Jitsu is like methadone to me.
I no longer attend football matches, I am too busy and the football was woeful. I rarely look at the scores even and have lost contact with those I used to associate with, back in the day they were like brothers to me, we built and held reputations. Now I see one or two of them, some are dead, some old men, one walking with a stick, they once walked tall.
I have read much of what academia has produced as analysis of football hooliganism as well as the writing of former hooligans. Much of the former is flawed and occasionally distorted, I actually wrote to one author who published his PhD as a book, I pointed out how he was totally incorrect on 2 examples in his book, major errors, I know I was there and I started one event and I knew the person convicted of the second who he said was never caught, despite being all over the front page of a newspaper he quotes multiple times.
The latter are OK but no rigour and are often boastful. For the third time I will make it clear this is not an academic essay, it is something between academia and personal recall. Shitters, nearly men and inwegos exist, and so do the businessmen.
So I hope I have created a typology of those involved in football hooliganism. You can take this model and apply it to most models where group violence occurs, these groups will have different reasons for being there but the types will be present, think Ferguson, think the recent protests against migrant rape gangs in Europe, think Black Lives Matter, turn on the news, they are there.
The majority will be Shitters, then some Nearly Men, some Inwegos and lurking somewhere in the back streets beyond the fringes are the Businessmen.
You should be reading this after watching the short video of the clash between Chelsea (the Headhunters) and Cardiff (the Soul Crew) hooligans on the Kings Road, London in 2010. This article seeks to identify what actually happens when two football mobs actually meet. However, this is not an academic paper, it is a recollection based analysis from someone who did this shit, me.
Loved it, lived for it and got as high as a kite from getting stuck into the fighting. Saturday afternoon and the occasional Tuesday night were the highlights of my week during the football season. The three types of participants I identify from the video are useful, in my opinion as a model, nothing more, they allow us to break down the mob into workable types. These are the shitters, nearly men and inwegos (as in we go).
This was the career path I followed. I remember as a boy my grandad took me to watch Sheffield Wednesday every so often ( now known as child abuse), we sat in the South Stand near to the Spion Kop, and Kop as we called it, named after the tragic defence of said hilltop by the British Army in the Boer War. Needless to say this was home turf, to be defended, with no segregation gangs from opposing clubs would get onto the Kop and claim it, if the away fans got control it was called taking it, it was purely tribal behaviours, invading the others territory coming and letting everyone know, this is the group monkey dance par excellence involving hundreds and often thousands of participants on each side. It can be achieved by a walk on that is uncontested, infiltration and attacking from within or just full frontal attack, do not underestimate the ferocity sometimes involved in this kind of action. As a boy I saw the crowd surges and the fists and boots fly and was hypnotised.
It was scary, bodies flew everywhere, people got crushed against barriers, chasms opened up between fighting groups and closed again as more fists flew, it was more exciting than the football for sure, especially to an impressionable nine year old. Therein lies the hook that drew many a boy towards the action.
So fast forward a three years and I began going to watch Sheffield United with my friends, just a group of 12 year old unsupervised boys, what could go wrong, kids off to the football on their own, it took a lot of persuasion to get me there but on that first visit, with a 35,000+ attendance, United secured promotion, cue pitch invasions, celebrations and I became a Blade.
So the next season wearing our scarves it was every home match playing all the big teams in English Football and the big teams brought big mobs sometimes 10,000 plus and there were big clashes in and around the ground especially on the Kop as visiting fans tried to take it, from the opposite end of the ground, yes we had had to cut a deal with our parents and curiously they deemed us being on the visitors and safer, we watched the fighting from the far end of the pitch.
Well before this becomes a biography let me tell you a year or so in and we started to go on the Kop,we were drawn there but near the front, not the back where the hard stuff happened and the big boys and men rolled in from the pub to compete for the sacred territory. But, we gradually found reasons to get nearer, we learned all the songs and chants designed to intimidate/emasculate the enemy complete with all the exciting swear words, (my first arrest of many to come was at 15 years old for threatening behaviour, I received a Police Caution), we learned to let the monkey loose, we hated them, they hated us, this was fucking war. The fact that they were exactly the same as us but from 20 or whatever miles up the road was lost on us, we had our colours, they had theirs, we had territory to hold they wanted to take, pride was at stake, honour even.
So we eventually began to tag along with the main Kop crowd as it left the ground at the end and participated in the clashes with opposing mob. Running them, them running us, avoiding the police, throwing the odd missile from the back, we were too small and scared to be in the action but we were watching, learning, feeling what it was like, what it would be like. Of course we would be the first to run if the other mob broke through our front, that is why I now name this group the shitters. They want to wear the clothes, talk the talk, walk the walk, damage property, swell the ranks but they are low level participants of little use when the fighting started. In fact they often get in the way.
You may think I am othering the shitters but I am not, they all have their roles to play when big groups clash but they are of no use to a small determined firm. They are like the peasants bulking up the Anglo Saxon Fyrd defending their Shire, bulking up the mob is nothing new. We can use the three types to describe a career path in football hooliganism, most start as shitters, I did, of course they do not see themselves as shitters but as aspiring hooligans.
Shitting it is a phrase we used of those afraid to do something, especially fighting. It is a derogatory term but shitters had their uses. This was what I call the great wave phase of English football hooliganism, The big mob ruled, this was not about tight, well organised firms of committed individuals, but hordes. The bigger the visiting horde that descended the more likely the trouble. All the psychological and sociological analysis I have read largely missed the mark, this was young men let loose on a Saturday, uniting in numbers and as such gaining the power to do what they liked and if what they wanted to do was to rampage down the high street of another town chanting and fighting any opposition they would do it, we did it, I did it, it was incredibly exhilarating especially when we add in alcohol. Raw power in the hands of those who do not know how to handle it.
To be fair we could be talking Anglo Saxon clashes with the Vikings here the analogy is so clear and whilst victory at the shieldwall needed vicious brave warriors, often pissed out of their heads, to wield the axes and swords at the front, they also needed the weight of as many others at their backs to stop the shieldwall collapsing and to push back the enemy shieldwall.
I am not romanticising football thuggery, only drawing a parallel that our so called modern brains function to long ago programmed behavioural patterns, much of what we know of conflict communications is played out before our eyes in the Chelsea Cardiff clip. It is better to be a shitter in the mob than to not be in the mob, by becoming a shitter you may one day become an inwego, after you learn the trade. So we began our climb to becoming nearly men, we got closer and closer to the action, we learned to monkey dance better and better, for us it was about putting on the big display, becoming the big I am and as you get closer and closer the more you learned. The socialisation of us as football hooligans progressed and we were more than willing participants.
We learned the monkey dance and that was our role, to make the group monkey dance as big as possible, the shitters participation rarely extends beyond threat display unless their mob massively outnumbers the opposition. Looking hard, big and making lots of noise, gesturing to the enemy and throwing things is their main preoccupation.
From there the next step is when they start to actually start to move towards the action instead of shitting it at the back. Getting nearer the action is riskier, they are getting closer to getting involved in the actual contact, that is why I call these people the nearly men. It is like a moth fluttering around a flame, drawn towards the danger but just managing to keep out of it. By now you may want to go watch the video again as you will see what I mean. Picking out the shitters and the nearly men is not hard.
I have no ratios but we can picture it as a pyramid with a few hundred shitters, a few dozen nearly men and a small hardcore inwegos. As I said this is a model, it does not intend to deal with specifics or scale, I am trying to paint a picture for you, from there we can look at different aspects of hooligan behaviour later.
Now for the nearly men, for the inwegos to have around them what look like inwegoss helps them intimidate those they are facing up to, dopplegangers have there uses. These are not the peasants in their sackcloth holding a scythe, but something resembling an armoured fighter, possibly holding a blunt sword but hard to tell until engaged in the fight. These guys will be wearing the right clothes, they have the monkey dance off to a tee and look the real deal, they nearly are. The nearly men will fight if pushed, usually if they get caught but it will be fighting on the retreat, to create an escape when the lizard brain takes over, but they may equally run, the pace of their transition from shitter to inwego and the situation will combine to trigger whatever response.
I remember one occasion when we overran the police protecting several hundred away fans and they backed rapidly into a garage forecourt with no exits, as the roar went up from us they simply huddled in a mass and tried to cover up, no fighters, all front, shitters and nearly men, we simply steamed in and battered them until the police regrouped and forced us off using horses, dogs and truncheons. Happy days!
The nearly men are/were mostly late teen early adults but this is a broad generalisation, I was drifting in and out of the actual fighting from age 15 (remember I also got my first police caution at this age too and it made me a celebrity at school), a nearly man or nearly boy even. There is no fixed age but there is a right of passage as you move from each stage, some get here and never move on so the nearly man can be a lifelong thing. In the clip we can see middle aged nearly men, possibly ex inwegos who have come back from retirement for the big occasion doing their duty to club and firm, dancing in and around the action. The thing is for me and my friends it was a stepping stone to becoming inwegos.
In the Chelsea Cardiff encounter you see a lot of people getting very close to those exchanging punches without actually getting contact themselves, this involves a lot of situational awareness in a chaotic situation, the nearly men fill the gap between the shitters and the inwegos. Allowing the shitters to stay close enough to be a threat but still with enough space to run if the opposition breaks through. Shitters are in full on monkey brain, if the situation goes against those in front then their lizard brain will kick in and they will run, they will, shit it, shed their tail and run like hell until a safe distance then turn around and monkey dance again to prevent them being humiliated.
So we turn to the inwegos, there is plenty of monkey behaviour there too, remember the learned/innate behaviour practised for years before. In my first draft I called them fighters but felt uneasy with that term right from the start, this is not fighting as I understand it, not full on toe to toe stuff anyway, what we see in the video are swift attacks, often from out of view, from behind and the side, taking advantage of the chaos, taking advantage of being able to hit and move to avoid being hit themselves. These guys see an opportunity and ‘in we go’, but just as quickly it’s ‘out we come’.
Now it takes some pluck to go in and have a go, it’s as exciting as hell and it sure means that these guys milk the self esteem they create by moving to the front and engaging, by becoming an inwego you show that you are a risk taker prepared to trade blows for the group, the reputations won here are priceless to the participants and stay with you for years. I remember my dad telling me that a friend of his, his own age, having witnessed an evenly matched brawl between 40 or so Sheffield Wednesday fans and ourselves, that if my dad had seen me in action he would have been proud of me. This was despite me being a 34 year old college lecturer at the time, one of the old boys coming out of retirement to meet the old enemy.
The inwegos are out front, their monkey dance is subtly different to the nearly men, the latter need to be seen to look hard and up for it, the former are and try to mask this, an effective monkey dance will drive back an opponent, for the nearly man this is desirable for the inwego it is not, distance equals comfort for the nearly men but denies the opportunity to raid for the inwego.
Violence here is intimate, it is up close and guess what, the inwegos on the other side hit back too, going in has risks and rewards, if you fear humiliation you will not go in and the monkey fears this more than anything, that is the shitters for definite and the nearly men for sure, for the inwegos it is a gamble, a managed risk in an unpredictable environment. Status in these groups depends on performance in the clash, in the fight, I was a sucker for this, I craved status and I earned it, crashing in first. As my career developed I liked infiltrating their mob as it went away from the ground and attacking from within them, this caused untold mayhem as it was unexpected, one minute you are chanting their team’s name then the next you are punching anything that moves in a target rich environment, we had a whole box of tactics and trick but they are for another article. The thing to remember is that the inwegos have mastered the monkey dancing and the singing, the threatening and the gesturing, like any addict that is no longer enough, a harder drug is required.
That is being in the fight, we were a very tight group as we got older having shed all the extras we simply gathered the fighters, honed down the numbers and went straight to the business, but football violence changes and stays the same, it’s a conundrum that baffles the academics. For the inwego it is not just getting stuck in, although that is the best part, it is being seen to get stuck in, this is what grows a reputation and that needs to be created and recreated over time.
Some inwegos come and go, some are a flash in the pan, sometimes for big clashes like this one all the old boys come back for a pop, tribal loyalties are strong. In this group are a rarer breed the fighters, the ones who can suppress the monkey emotions and function in chaos, it could be that they function in that rare human lizard sphere Rory mentions in ConCom, I can only guess, I remember intense fights with good numbers of committed fighters on both sides in slow motion detail. Mostly I remember the latter days when the big clash was seen as a waste of time, we stripped down the numbers, ditched those who wanted to dance, this was by invite only, this was for those who wanted to fight. There was no time for display, that attracted the wrong kind of attention, police attention. This was hunting, seeking out the enemy and steaming in.
The thing is my past clouds my interpretation, I make no secret of that, and I said at the beginning this was not an academic paper but a recollection based analysis of one event. My past colours how I see this clash, I have been in many such as this, I thrived on being in there exchanging the punches and kicks, it is what I did for fun. But trying to see what is happening using the lizard, monkey, human brain model as a lens helps us to break down the ritualised behaviours nicely in my opinion. This whole scene of carnage to the comfortable middle class in England, who saw us as the devil’s instruments, or viewed with total miscomprehension from behind the picket fences of middle America, was well established around the world by the time of this clash.
The English disease has spread abroad and to other sports because people imitate, the contagion has spread. More than this it is because the behaviours we see in this clip are underpinned by the very evolution of the human brain, its architecture and the environments and socio-economic conditions it has evolved through. Violence is the oldest form of communication, the primal manifestations we see in the clash Between Chelsea and Cardiff allow us to play the anthropologist and to see the monkeys dance played out in all its glory by the group as a whole and by different subgroups within it.
One last thing. For now I have focused on the individual types in the whole as I see them, so go back and watch it again, see how clearly you can pick them out, share it with your peers, your students and also look for one more thing, the effectiveness of the group monkey dance, because none of these individuals is truly that in this encounter, they become a part of the whole, absorbed into the whole emotional monkey atmosphere because once the monkey appears he infects all those around until they are all infecting one another, then it’s time to do business and thresholds get crossed.
The vast majority of those in this example are amateurs, shitters, nearly men and inwegos. Next month I will introduce you to the businessmen, a different deal altogether.
