El éxtasis del ajuste operatorio a un vehículo

Several unsynchronised and diverse drivers at the cusp of the new Millennium meant that any attempts by the authorities to control either the access to information or the flow of information became unsustainable. The Need-to-Know paradigm of secrecy was gradually replaced by a new crisis paradigm where ideas and initiatives mushroomed and spread as websites and the internet replaced traditional ministerial letters, confidential memoranda, circulars to chief executives and Green/White Papers, so that now politicians, policy analysts, journalists, academics and interested citizens all had opportunities to review and debate the material. Because it happened over a period of years one cannot put a date on this sea-change nor assign any events to mark it.

However, there is no doubt that the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were a global paradigm shift in keeping with Kuhn (1962) even though other countries, including the UK, had previously suffered similar levels of casualties, for instance the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland (McKittrick & McVea 2001). The newly created Cabinet Office Civil Contingencies Secretariat was without a website and initially

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49 had to direct the public to the website of the Australian Emergency Management Agency for advice.

A combination of technology miniaturisation which replaced shoulder mounted video tape cameras with handheld digital cameras linked to satellite telephones, globalisation of the media, competition for audiences and the birth of citizen journalism (Bowman &

Willis 2003) not forgetting the need for governments to justify expenditure to taxpayers, meant that for the first time in history ordinary people could watch events unfold in real time. The terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York in 2001 were seen in their full horror in real time by a global audience alongside subsequent cruise missile targets in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraqi in 2003.

The Asian Tsunami of 26 December 2004 was filmed by tourists, often using mobile phones, as were scenes from the explosions in the London Underground in July 2005.

Not only could the media entertain and be used for real time public safety information, it could also expose failings by the authorities. For instance, during the London Bombings 2005 the media were “aware of the explosions on the Underground within minutes of them taking place” (London Assembly 2006: para 6.18) well before the police issued advice to the public. Later that year the world saw the ineptitude of the US handling of the impact of Hurricane Katrina as very quickly the media had teams on the ground in New Orleans. For instance, SkyNews/ITV presented their programmes from the flooded city immediately the storm had passed, a broadcasting technique which is used routinely now for every major event and puts early pressure on the crisis leadership. The March 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami were also played out in real time continuously throughout the day by all the international news channels, in contrast for instance to the secrecy that had surrounded the 1986 Chernobyl, Ukraine nuclear accident (Harman-Stokes 1995; Porfiriev 1998).

The resilient citizen

The involvement of the public in counter-terrorism evolved in the UK in response to the private sector’s desire to play a part, as discussed in a booklet The Unlikely Counter-Terrorists (Briggs 2002). In the context of surveillance Vaughan-Williams (2008) revisited the concept of the citizen-detective, quoting Benjamin (1938/2003: 21) that “In times of terror, when everyone is something of a conspirator, everybody will be in the position of having to play detective” and then the 2006 public information pamphlet of

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50 the EC that “The battle against terrorism requires the mobilisation of all citizens to guarantee freedom and security for all” (p70). The citizen-detective concept is more sympathetic to the revolutionary history of continental Europe than the UK but has been taken further by Malcolm (2013) in a more convincing argument in which he introduces the resilient citizen.

Some counter terrorism initiatives now run joint police-public-business events with the aim of improving resilience e.g. Project Kraken for maritime leisure and business, Project Pegasus for aviation, and Project Argus for general business and crowded areas such as shopping centres with many civilians given additional training and security information (NCTSO 2014). Malcolm (2013) has taken the citizen-detective concept forward to the resilient citizen, the latter “… considered a more privileged” (p318) citizen because of the up-to-date unclassified threat information, planning checklists and CPD certificates that those in Project Argus etc. receive. He summarises the resilient citizen as “capturing a bargain that is struck between state and citizen – greater knowledge for greater responsibility” (p319). Witnessing an Argus training seminar, he observed how the resilient citizen can feedback knowledge about their specific areas to the authorities. The importance of this is that the local citizen can distinguish risks, for instance spotting unusual transport movements or distinguishing between the activities of devout Muslims and those that could be radicalised, and thereby influence the authorities towards a more sensitive and accurate response. This is an organised example of the spontaneous pro-social behaviour observed in natural disasters (Dynes

& Quarantelli 1977; Rodriguez, Trainor & Quarantelli 2006; Voorhees 2008).

5. CONCLUSION

I began this chapter by outlining Thomas Kuhn’s (1962) paradigm theory and discussing how I would use this as inspiration for my research into the crisis phenomenon. This was more gestalt in the manner of Ritzer (1979) than in Kuhn’s original natural science context. I went on to construct two paradigms in UK crisis practice, beginning with the post-World War II first and last use of nuclear weapons, a period marked by a paternalistic and secretive state protected by the Need-to-Know? culture. This was succeeded by a paradigm where almost unlimited information became available to all and responsibility was transferred from the state to the individual or at least their socio-economic groups with the “pervasive idiom” (Walker & Cooper 2011:144) of the Resilience doctrine. The two paradigms were separated by an untidy and ill-defined

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51 hiatus rather than a boundary and as far as practice goes resilience, as a concept or rather as a doctrine, continues to be promoted. One of the two policy strands of the 2015-17 Conservative government, largely unchanged from the Coalition government of 2010-15, seeks to achieve a resilient society by “providing opportunities to share news, ideas and good practice, publications and practical guides” (Cabinet Office 2013b;

2015b).

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