Do policemen dream?
Paradigm, n.: a cognitive model for explaining a set of data; a set of tacit assumptions and beliefs; a general agreement of belief about how the world works.
“The fact these are British-born Muslims changes the paradigm of terror. The crucial issue now is, can we engage with the community so they move from being close to denial about this into a situation in which they really engage with us?” – Ian Blair, 15th July 2005
“I do not think there can be any question that this changes the paradigm, the context of community safety.” – Ian Blair, 6th September 2005
“Since 7/7 it’s a new paradigm – it’s a new world.” – Ian Blair, Any Questions?, 23rd September 2005
When someone like Ian Blair starts talking in polysyllables, two questions suggest themselves. Firstly, what is he talking about?; secondly, how scared should I be? The first question alone is a conundrum of inscrutable potentialities. The paradigm of terror, the context of community safety, a new world – is that three separate paradigms or three different aspects of one big paradigm? If the former, how come they’ve all changed at once? If the latter, what on earth should we call it?
The authority to which Blair is tacitly appealing here is Thomas Kuhn, whose 1962 work The Structure of Scientific Revolutions gave us the concept of “paradigm shift”. A Kuhnian paradigm can be thought of (according to Wikipedia) as “the set of practices that define a scientific discipline during a particular period of time”. Kuhn characterised scientific work undertaken within the framework of assumptions given by the currently dominant paradigm as normal science, which he described as puzzle-solving. The note of disparagement here reflects Kuhn’s belief that genuinely original scientific work was incompatible with adherence to an existing paradigm. Since research projects aim to produce results within predetermined limits (limits ultimately determined by the current paradigm) any evidence which might point towards a new set of theoretical assumptions would be deliberately and systematically ignored – set aside as anomalies or failures. Only when the accumulation of anomalies brings an existing paradigm into crisis, Kuhn argued, does a scientific revolution make it possible to move to a new paradigm: this is a model of punctuated equilibrium rather than gradual progress. The canonical example of this process is the transition from the Ptolemaic geocentric model of the cosmos, based on an unmoving Earth, to the Copernican heliocentric model, in which the Earth is one planet among others.
So, Ian Blair has a paradigm shift in mind – and let’s assume, for simplicity, that we’re dealing with one paradigm rather than two or three. Since he’s not a scientist, presumably what he’s thinking about is a change in the parameters of normal policing: the basic, unchallenged repertoire of assumptions and practices which define police work in England and Wales. It’s a change that has something to do with terrorism, something to do with “community safety” and a lot to do with the nationality of the 7th July bombers.
The first thing to note about Ian Blair’s paradigm shift, before we even think about its content, is that it’s a change that’s already happened: by implication the London bombings were the last anomaly that broke the back of the old paradigm, making it impossible for the police to work with it any longer. We can assume that this is also – like the shift from geocentric to heliocentric models – a change that can be delayed but not halted: these maps may not suit you now, but you’ll all be using them soon. It follows from this, not only that resistance is futile, but that arguing with partisans of the old paradigm is a waste of time: they have nothing to tell us, by definition; any argument they put forward can only attest to their refusal to change. What is needed, at a time like this, is not dialogue but persuasion: the point is not to reach agreement but to induce them to agree with us. Or, in Ian Blair’s own words, we need to engage with the community so they move from being close to denial about this into a situation in which they really engage with us.
While the rhetorical function of Ian Blair’s new paradigm is clear enough, its content is harder to define. The closest I can get to it is to say that, previously, anti-terrorist policing and the maintenance of good relations with the Muslim community could be pursued separately, because it could be assumed that British Muslims were as law-abiding as anyone else and that terror was a foreign phenomenon. Now, however, neither of those assumptions hold, and these two distinct activities need to be combined. On one hand, the police’s best chance of getting leads on the bombers and their suppliers comes from cultivating contacts with responsible Muslim community leaders. On the other, relations with Muslim community leaders need to be set in the context of anti-terrorist policing operations, by letting them know that the definition of a responsible community leader is one who is willing to supply leads to the police. In short, the police should actively pursue a policy of dividing the Muslim community against itself: in one corner, those who are prepared to grass on suspected terrorist sympathisers; in the other, the suspected terrorist sympathisers.
None of this makes very much sense. The idea that home-grown British terrorism was unknown before the 7th of July is idiotic; the idea that we should not now assume that British Muslims are law-abiding is repulsive. The idea that the police – or the government – can end terrorism by marginalising its supporters is demonstrably absurd. But Ian Blair’s new paradigm has one key feature which will probably assure its survival: it gives the police a much larger and more active role in society, turning them from mere keepers of the peace to fighters in the war against terror. Under the old paradigm, the police would be meeting the imam one day and doing anti-terrorist detective work the next. The new paradigm, combining the two, enables them to go out into the Muslim community – pre-emptively defined as a pool of potential terrorist supporters – and actively identify their enemy. Best of all, the enemy can be identified as a terrorist – which effectively gives the police as much leeway as a soldier in the field, if not more. (In due course, I believe we need a document similar to the military rules of engagement but time does not permit its creation at the present time.)
Ian Blair dreams of setting the terms of public debate; he dreams of making new laws and setting aside existing laws; he dreams of ending terrorism by turning everyone who’s not a terrorist into an informer. Most of all, he dreams of giving the police greater powers, more freedom to use them and less accountability.
Most police officers have had that dream, at one time or another. That doesn’t mean that it has to come true.
Great post, Phil. And not just your Blair, the other one too (via), from his conference speech last week:
The whole of our system starts from the proposition that its duty is to protect the innocent from being wrongly convicted. Don’t misunderstand me: that must be the duty of any criminal justice system. But surely our primary duty should be to allow law-abiding people to live in safety.It means a complete change of thinking.
Scary.
But I veer from you when it comes to the “Muslim community”. Absolutely, not every British Muslim (in fact a minuscule fraction of the whole) is a terrorist. But all terrorists aiming to kill on a mass scale in London are Muslim, at this point in time. So, as you’ve written in a previous post, the “Muslim community” is to a degree stuck with them.
Further, I’d argue the solution, if one exists, will lie within that community. Not because they should “inform” any more than anyone else who discovered a nascent terrorist plot but because it’s Muslims who are in a position to get hold of that information. They have a comparative advantage in helping wider society.
A (slightly wonky) analogy: it’s equally incumbent on all of us to rescue a drowning child if we can do so without unreasonable risk to ourselves. However, if I walk past a lake and see that child, and nobody else is around, it’s no longer incumbent on all of us equally to save the child. That duty falls on me alone. I don’t know if that’s how Blair looks at the “Muslim comunity’s” duty to fight terrorism, but that’s how I see it. So, crudely, for me a responsible community leader is one who is prepared to snitch on terrorists before they get the chance to kill.
I agree, great post. (I hate saying that in comments; the point is to disagree in an interesting way.)
Blair reads to me like a literal-minded plodding student trying to make an essay on something he doesn’t understand by the generous use of buzz-words “paradigm”, “denial”, “community” like currants in a Christmas cake.
Of course, a lot of people think Kuhn is not worth a great deal. FWIW, I think there’s something in it, but he’s over-rated. But “any evidence which might point towards a new set of theoretical assumptions would be deliberately and systematically ignored” reads more like a description of the Michelson-Morley result than anything in Copernicus’ time. And I’m sure Kuhn was thinking of the Einsteinian revolution, anyway.
Paradigm was the in vacuous word during the dot.com nonsense of the late 90s. I had a friend who went to dot.com press conferences and would always ask the CEO if his or her company had a new “para-dig-m”. It was priceless stuff watching the CEO trying to work out if they were having the piss taken out of them, or if it was just an ignorant hack who didn’t know how to pronounce the word.
It’s a bollocks word and one that usually betrays a terrible paucity of thought.
That loathsome wee twat is really rather dim, isn’t he? How about:- “Our primary duty should be to allow law-abiding people to live in safety and THEREFORE we protect the innocent from being wrongly convicted”?