AAA White Paper The political economy of informal events, 2030 | Page 120

Crowds, Le Bon held, ‘do not admit doubt or uncertainty, and
always go to extremes – their sentiments always excessive’. They were
guilty of intolerance and dictatorial positions, reasoning that was
‘always of a very inferior order’, and thoughts that ran as a series of
disconnected images. They were primitive, even animal; they were
fickle and destructive, and too easily impressed by the marvellous.
They placed themselves ‘instinctively’ under leaders, who in turn
were often ‘half-deranged’. Their ‘mental unity’ was for Le Bon a law.
They tended to attract criminals. As a factor, the race or nationality of a
crowd had, Le Bon wrote, to be ‘placed in the first rank, for in itself it
far surpasses in importance all the other factors’.
Today Le Bon’s ideas would meet with ridicule. Yet it took two
world wars and the Holocaust for them really to pass out of fashion.
Only in 1962 did they really come in for severe attack, when George
Rudé published a widely acclaimed rehabilitation of crowds, The crowd
in history: a study of popular disturbances in France and England, 1730-1848.
In 2019, crowds are still never entirely composed of angels. Yet,
should debate about crowds grow weightier in the run-up to 2030,
let’s remember just how easy it is – and how facile it can be – to make
sweeping generalisations about crowd behaviour.
APPENDIX B: IN PRAISE OF BIG FESTIVALS AND CROWDS
GONE BY
Previous generations of the British were somewhat divided over the
merits and demerits of large displays likely to draw large crowds.
However, on two seminal occasions, the ‘can do’ attitude properly
and politely prevailed against doubters.
1. The 1851 Great Exhibition: objections crushed
The Great Exhibition was ‘of the Works of Industry of all Nations’.
Conceived, planned and built by Prince Albert and Henry Cole, less
than two years in the making, it opened, to huge acclaim. The three-
volume illustrated catalogue of the show begins with the boast:
‘ It may be said without presumption, that an event like this Exhibition could
not have taken place at any earlier period, and perhaps not among any other
people than ourselves. The friendly confidence reposed by other nations in
our institutions; the perfect security for property; the commercial freedom,
and the facility of transport, which England pre-eminently possesses, may all
be brought forward as causes... ’
(Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue, Great Exhibition of the
Works of Industry of all Nations, 1851, p1).
120