'Keeping the Peace': Social Identity, Procedural Justice and the Policing of Football Crowds

This paper explores the relevance of the Elaborated Social Identity Model of Crowd Behaviour andProcedural Justice Theory to an understanding of both the presence and absence of collective conflictduring football (soccer) crowd events. It provides an analysis of data gathered during longitudinalethnographic study of fans of Cardiff City Football Club€”a group of supporters with a notorioushistory of involvement in €˜hooliganism€™ within the English domestic Football Leagues. The analysissuggests that the perceived legitimacy among fans of the way they were policed affected the internaldynamics, patterns of collective action and overall levels of €˜compliance€™ among the fan group. Onthis basis, we contend that these processes mediated both a long-term decline but also the sporadic reemergenceof collective conflict during crowd events involving the fans. The paper concludes byexploring the implications of our analysis for informing policy, practice and theory, particularlywith respect to the importance of policing with consent as a route to conflict reduction in domesticfootball.