Michael Barnholden, Reading the Riot Act: A Brief History of
Rioting in
Vancouver (Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2005)
Reviewed by Max Sartin
The Rain Review of Books
4:1 (Winter 2006): 6
Until Reading the Riot Act was published, the book containing
the most detailed information on riots in Vancouver was the local
police department’s autobiography, A Century of Service (1986),
which Michael Barnholden makes reference to in his own text. The
difference with Reading the Riot Act is its focus and
perspective, which presents riots as battles in the class war, as it
aims to cut through the media distortion around such events and
dispense with the “bad apple” theory of their cause. It makes for a
more engaging, accessible and believable read than the police
department’s book.
Barnholden begins with an excerpt from the British Parliament’s Riot
Act (1714), a law that was transplanted to Vancouver by the empire
and monarchy. The subsequent eight chapters of the book focus on the
anti-Asian riots of 1907 and rebellion by prisoners of Japanese descent
during the Second World War, the Industrial Workers of the World’s
“free speech” fight (1909/1911), the unemployed people’s movement of
the Great Depression, riots at the BC Penitentiary (1934-1976), the
Gastown and Rolling Stones riots of the early 1970s, sports riots
(1963, 1966 and 1994), protest clashes (1997-1998), and Vancouver’s
three most recent moments of unrest, involving a scuffle between cops
and anti-Liberal protesters at the Britannia school in East Vancouver
(2002), the Guns N’ Roses smash-up at General Motors Place (2002), and
a riotous punk rock house party (2004). Most of the chapters also
describe related, lesser-known riots. Photographs, illustrations, and
clippings from newspapers accompany Barnholden’s text, providing a
deeper insight into the social climate of the times in which the
battles occurred. Barnholden also does a fairly good job of providing
the social context to each of the riots, allowing the reader to picture
how rising tensions could explode into a public disturbance.
Barnholden defines a riot as a “police presence beyond the ordinary and
an attack on private property, real or imagined” (17). The Criminal
Code, he explains, simply describes riots as unlawful assemblies
that begin to disturb the peace tumultuously. His analysis of the
Britannia and Guns N’ Roses disturbances delves into the murky legality
around what actually constitutes a riot. The Riot Act was not
read at either event. Barnholden says that protesters referred to the
Britannia fracas as a “police riot” because they had a vested interest
in the legal definition of what took place. Looking at excerpts from
the judge’s statement in the case of some folks arrested at Britannia,
provided in Reading the Riot Act, we see that he defined the
event as an unlawful assembly rather than a riot because there was only
a present “fear” that the peace would begin to be disturbed
tumultuously. This fear flowed from the intent of the protesters to
interfere with the police, their contempt of the cops, statements such
as “kill the pigs”, and some acts of violence. Barnholden, in contrast,
suggests that the event may come to be called the Gordon Campbell Riot.
It was, after all, an attempted public appearance by the Premier and
the policies of his ruling Liberal Party that provoked the conflict to
begin with.
The Guns N’ Roses Riot, sparked by the cancellation of a concert at GM
Place, by all accounts was the real deal, and was spoken of as such by
the Vancouver Police Department and the Police Complaints Commissioner.
But on the Vancouver Police Department’s riot investigation web-page,
designed to allow people to identify rioters and snitch on them, the
cops say that suspects were committing acts of unlawful assembly and
mischief. The Riot Act was not read, so the criminal charges
don’t meet the standard definition of the event. The Police Complaints
Commissioner, in his report, says that the police were suppressing a
riot and points out the special Criminal Code protection for
police in riot situations, justifying as much force as a cop thinks
necessary to suppress such an disturbance. In practice, we find that
the legal definition of rioting is a mere technicality and that the
cops are given a wide arc of arbitrary authority.
All of the riots, from those characterized by racism to those
attributed to drunkenness at sporting events, are said by Barnholden to
have a connecting thread in the exploitation inherent to the capitalist
economy and the need of the ruling class to garner the consent of its
subjects when possible or their submission by force when necessary. The
legal definition of a riot and its presentation by the media are
functional to the interests of the ruling elite, at the expense of the
working class, including the unemployed and prisoners. Barnholden
frames the question in terms of human rights versus property rights,
damage to property taking precedence over harm to human beings. The
author’s concept of human rights isn’t defined in the book, leaving
open the question of whether such rights, or the very idea of rights
itself may be just another legal technicality, like the definition of a
riot, subject to the whims of those in power. Barnholden himself points
out that “a job is the only guarantee within capitalist society of the
basic human rights of food and shelter, and there is no right to that”.
But he also describes a paycheque as an element of coercion. Employment
under a manager is exploitive and oppressive, but it’s the only way to
achieve certain basic necessities of life, which as human beings we
supposedly have a right to access. But we have no right to employment
(which is also “wage slavery”) and so our most basic rights become
meaningless. How significant then are rights in practice for the
underclass living under capitalism? What about the special and superior
rights of police to use whatever amount of force they like against us?
The book doesn’t get into this matter.
Barnholden is equally vague on the question of democracy. He asks why
people riot in a democratic society. Why don’t they use the proper
channels of peacefully lobbying government, pandering to the media and
affecting public opinion, perhaps through protests? His answer is that
democracy is based on consensus and coercion, and that consensus breaks
down over time. “The riot is in itself not the breakdown of social
control, it is the penultimate event or crisis in a long drama followed
immediately by the re-imposition of state control” (18), he says. Bad
policies and class conflict lead to rioting. In a vibrant economy
oppression and repression become subtle, while in a poorly functioning
economy they “come to the fore with a vengeance”. The social welfare
system is a consensus-building institutionalization of poverty that was
a “direct response to the unrest of the 1930s and represents a major
compromise on the part of capital with workers” (21). Now the
capitalists are dismantling these “hard-won advances” of the past,
while entrenching new forms of inequality through the restructuring of
the workplace, including contracting-out and part-time employment.
After explaining all this, Barnholden quickly throws in the line that
“democracy and capitalism are not necessarily twin bedfellows” (25),
without further detail. Does democracy simply mean majority rule? Why
should a minority be subject to the will of a majority? The book
doesn’t get into it.
Riots are battles in the class war, says Barnholden, even when White
workers rampage through Chinatown. The anti-Asian riot of 1907 was an
example of capital manipulating labour once again. I would say it was a
democratic outburst: an instance of majority rule. But what about the
other riots in this city’s past that more clearly targeted institutions
of State and Capital, in response to imposed alienation and
exploitation? There are no votes taken and no official representatives
during such riots. Everyone can contribute in some way to the clash by
attacking the forces and institutions that attack them daily. Democracy
is a refined system of interplay between consensus and coercion. On the
other hand a riot can potentially be a moment of liberatory disruption
in which the participants have no need to dominate each other through
manipulation or force. As Barnholden says, the riot doesn’t herald the
revolution. But the riot can prefigure the structure of the revolution
in its contrast of equality to democracy and of freedom in practice to
the legal abstraction of human rights.
Rioters have often spoken of the increased sense of dignity they’ve
felt, having finally risen up after being beaten down for so long. The
riot can also broaden a perspective of solidarity among the exploited
and bring a clarity as to the nature of the class enemy, the function
of the police and the reality of war behind the democratic
façade of peace. Riots almost always burn out or get stomped
out, usually to flare up again later. For a riot to develop beyond this
would require the expansion of rebellious attitudes and actions across
a wider territory and the reclaiming of the time and space stolen from
us by the daily grind of life under capitalism. The offensive spirit of
the riot would have to combine with a self-conscious, creative and
determined project to struggle against domination. Actions such as the
squatting of the Woodwards building come to mind as an example of the
seizure of the space necessary to live and communicate with each other
outside of the usual routine. If the squatters had rioted rather than
passively resisted the multiple evictions of Woodwards (first by cops,
then by social workers), if they were able to expand their struggle and
break through their encirclement by government forces, and if others
had risen up in solidarity with the squatters, new revolutionary
possibilities would have been on the horizon.
Many people are curious about riots and will enjoy learning about the
place of such conflicts in Vancouver’s history in this short and very
readable book, which serves as good starting point for further study of
the class war in Vancouver, a subject that many of those who dominate
public debate, from politicians to protest leaders, have a vested
interest in avoiding when possible or distorting when necessary.
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