This paper explores the relevance of the Elaborated Social Identity Model of Crowd Behaviour and Procedural Justice Theory to an understanding of both the presence and absence of collective conflict during football (soccer) crowd events. It provides an analysis of data gathered during longitudinal ethnographic study of fans of Cardiff City Football Club-a group of supporters with a notorious history of involvement in 'hooliganism' within the English domestic Football Leagues. The analysis suggests that the perceived legitimacy among fans of the way they were policed affected the internal dynamics, patterns of collective action and overall levels of 'compliance' among the fan group. On this basis, we contend that these processes mediated both a long-term decline but also the sporadic reemergence of collective conflict during crowd events involving the fans. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of our analysis for informing policy, practice and theory, particularly with respect to the importance of policing with consent as a route to conflict reduction in domestic football.

The police service in England and Wales has developed a new approach to police leadership where individuals from outside of the police service can now enter directly to leadership ranks. Previous research identified that officers place great value on being led by someone who has experience of being a police officer. Adopting a social identity perspective, the current paper reports on quantitative and qualitative data about police officer views on direct entry and existing police leadership captured as part of a wider national survey (N = 12,549) of police officers in England and Wales. The paper identifies the importance that shared identity and credibility play in police follower/leadership relationships. It argues that direct-entry police leaders face credibility issues linked to their lack of shared police identity but also that serving officers perceive existing leaders to be poor because they believe they have forgotten what it is like to be a police officer. This paper develops a new theoretical and empirical approach to police leadership utilizing social and organizational psychology theory and research. The paper suggests that if police leaders understand police identity, then they can create propitious conditions within which police officers will follow their leaders.

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There have been important developments in psychological theory of crowd dynamics (Reicher 2001). When this body of knowledge has been combined with operational policing it has been associated with conflict reduction in the context of high risk football matches with an international dimension (e.g., Stott et al. 2007). This paper extends this body of work by reporting upon a longitudinal observational study of policing within the environment of domestic football in England and Wales. This paper focuses upon the potential impact policing has upon crowd dynamics and 'disorder'. On the basis of the analysis recommendations are developed with regard to understandings of 'risk' to public order, strategy and tactics, operational structure, role and function of officers and multiagency cooperation. This paper concludes by exploring the relevance of psychological theory for models of good practice, policy making and training in the arena of the policing of domestic football in England and Wales.

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