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Article Excerpt
Abstract
This paper is a detailed study of the group psychology of the population of London during the events of July 2005. The consideration includes analysis of the symbolic and functional roles of the security forces and governing authorities involved in these events. It concludes that the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes was a scapegoat killing. Rather than attribute this unjust killing to a failure of security, it is argued that the responsibility must be attributed to a political or appointed authority, who must be seen to be innocent of the crime. This leads us to conclude that Justice is a necessary illusion. The failure of the political and appointed authorities to accept the responsibility for the death of Menezes, indicates an unreasonable belief in the 'reasonableness' of the 'masses'. This argument is substantiated by a psychoanalytic interpretation of events in this particular case.
Keywords: trauma, anxiety, security, psychoanalysis, Justice, 2005 London Bombings The events of July 2005
On the morning of 7 July 2005, during peak hour (approximately 8:50a.m.), three bombs exploded within fifty seconds on three underground trains in the vicinities of Aldgate Station, Kings Cross and Edgware Road. Nearly an hour later, a fourth bomb exploded on a bus in Tavistock square. Fifty-two people were killed in the attacks, including the four bombers. About 700 were injured. The London Underground rail network was shut down for the remainder of the day. (1)
On 21 July 2005--two weeks later--four small explosions, later revealed to be attempted bomb attacks, disrupted the London transport system again. The first three explosions took place on trains at around 12:30p.m. within about 20 minutes--the stations attacked were: Shepherd's Bush, Warren Street and the Oval--the fourth explosion took place on a bus in the Hackney area at Bethnal Green about an hour later (1:30p.m.). The only casualty on this occasion resulted from an asthma attack. It was later discovered that in these attacks the explosive material had failed to ignite. The detonating devices were solely responsible for the explosions that did occur. (2)
The following day, on Friday 22 July just after 10a.m., a twenty-seven year-old Brazilian man, Jean Charles de Menezes, was shot and killed at Stockwell tube station by officers of the Metropolitan Police. The day after the shooting, the Metro Police publicly identified Menezes as the victim. They also revealed that he had not been carrying explosives, and was not in any way connected to the attempted bombings of the previous day. (3) Note, however, Menezes' status as an illegal resident. This detail has been integrated into the myth that has been constructed around these events. (4) The police spokesman expressed sincere regret and offered the family an apology. The Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, appeared on television the next day on 24 July to accept responsibility for the police error. He defended the 'shoot to kill' policy of the Metro police. By 25 July, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) had taken over investigation of the shooting, which until that time had been in the hands of Scotland Yard's, The Directorate of Professional Standards. Much of what follows in this paper is based on reports from that Commission's (the IPCC) investigation into the police killing. (5)
In this article I am going to suggest the assassination of Menezes was a necessary, rather than an accidental, consequence of the two groups of bomb attacks in London. (6) I am going argue against the logic that sees the Menezes killing as a case of mistaken identity, and as such, simply an unfortunate accident. I will argue on psychological grounds that accidents are not indeterminate events, but are conditioned by factors that can be articulated. This is a well established principle in psychoanalytic interpretation which posits that events which have typically been thought of as accidents such as slips of the tongue, instances of forgetting, dreams, etc. are produced by unconscious psychological causes. (7) I will posit that the unconscious causes of this killing can be found in the psychology of groups. But rather than apply the classical Freudian text on Group Psychology, I will make use of the psychoanalytic theory of the scapegoat, which has to date been only applied to family groups (see discussion below). (8) This psychoanalytic scapegoat theory derives from Freud's 1923 and 1926 publications on the ego and on anxiety which post-date the work on group psychology. (9) In the next section of my paper, I will portray some of the empirical data upon which my analysis is based. Following that, it will be the task of this paper to apply the analytic scapegoat thesis to the large group situation of the Menezes killing. Then we shall be in a position to examine the consequences of this psychological analysis for the political situation, especially with regard to security and justice.
The limits of reasoned intervention
The day after the 7 July bombing, the London underground was reopened and people were encouraged to get back on the trains and resume the normal course of their lives as soon as possible. What else could one do? I myself got on the underground, with extreme trepidation, on the morning of 8 July around 10a.m. What I felt within myself and perceived in many others was a state of persistent anxiety. And this was to be expected in a situation of an immanent danger (Freud 1926, App. B) . The danger was actual--that is to say, it was reasonable to expect follow-up terrorist attacks at that time. (10)
The immediate response of the instruments of government to the attacks intensified the sense of immanent danger. Police and ambulance sirens blared; tube stations were closed when random packages were left unattended; warnings were issued over public address systems to 'report any suspicious activity'; train lines were closed inexplicably; buildings were evacuated; city blocks were shut down; indeed entire cities were emptied, as was done in Birmingham on 9 July; and in the week after 7 July, suspicious packages were destroyed in controlled explosions in Brighton, Coventry and Edinburgh. Much of this activity remained unexplained and/or unjustified by the authorities. This had two contrary effects: accentuation of the feeling of immanent danger, as well as reassurance that something was being done.
The public on the whole remained calm. Gradually the situation of immanent danger waned, especially as police got a handle on the situation and were able to convey this to the public with solid facts. This was achieved by, for example, the release of the Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) footage of the perpetrators entering Luton railway station on the morning of the attacks. And, for example, revelation of the discovery of significant quantities of explosive material in West Yorkshire during a series of police raids on 12 July. Psychologically speaking, this knowledge enables the ego to explain away some of the ideas that create anxiety.
A psychological understanding of trauma
To what extent can we assert that a trauma has been experienced by the people of London? Firstly, we must recognise that an event which is called 'traumatic', is not necessarily so--from the psychological point of view. Trauma is a special kind of psychic response to some situation of extra-psychic or intra-psychic origin, and it is experienced by the ego, which mediates between external reality and psychic reality. Quite clearly, many of the 700 or so people injured in the first bomb attacks are likely to have suffered some kind of trauma directly because they were unprepared for the situation of dread that occurred. Yet how are we to consider the effect of the bomb attacks upon the people of London as a whole? The standard definition of trauma in psychoanalysis is that trauma occurs in response to a situation in which the organisation of the ego--or perhaps just its rational faculty--is overwhelmed. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud talked of an insufficient cathexis of the apperceptive apparatus of the ego, by which he meant that the ego is underprepared for either the absolute intensity, or the rate of...
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