Secret police show how rotten the state is

The revelation by former Met officer turned whistleblower Peter Francis that he was ordered to find dirt on the Stephen Lawrence family in the wake of their son’s murder is shocking in itself. But it’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the state within the state.

Behind the Special Branch which ran the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) of which Francis was a member, is the internal spy agency MI5 and its operatives who remain in the shadows. And there are undoubtedly other secret units we know nothing about whose job is to “defend the realm” – the ruling classes and their state institutions.

Politicians and senior policemen will disavow their more unsavoury activities, claiming they knew nothing about them, just as former Met commissioner Paul Condon did over the Francis allegations. The SDS made the Lawrence family a target when the regular police themselves were indifferent to catching his killers.

Former Labour home secretary Jack Straw protesteth too much about this particular incident. His regime oversaw secret “extraordinary rendition” – aka kidnapping – flights by way of UK airports, torture authorised by the external spy agency MI6, and a whole series of fabrications that suggested Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Francis revealed on Channel 4 Dispatches that he asked to find anything that could smear the Lawrence family to would weaken support for the family in the wider community. Ostensibly, the police wanted to prevent “public disorder” in the wake of the 1993 killing. In practice, as the Macpherson inquiry reported in 1999, the Met was institutionally racist and botched its investigation from the start. The SDS’s infamous smear attempt was kept away from the inquiry.

Police/MI5 infiltration is as old as the state itself. Before the SDS was created, Special Branch ran agents inside left-wing parties, trade unions, civil liberties groups and other campaigns like CND. Not only did they report their intelligence, they also acted as agents provocateurs.

This can involve suggesting actions that could be illegal, setting people against each other to encourage political division, subverting an organisation’s finances and much more. As recently as 2011, the trial of eco-activists who allegedly tried to break into Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station was abandoned when the role of secret policeman Mark Kennedy in the plans became known.

A number of women are taking action against the police for psychological damage caused by other members of the SDS who befriended them and had sexual relations. In one notorious case, an officer called Bob Lambert had a child with an activist before disappearing back to Special Branch. Another woman told Channel 4 she had been “raped by the state”.

In 2008, the work of the SDS was taken over by the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) which is part of the Special Operations directorate of the Metropolitan Police. 

Meanwhile, joke of jokes, the police are investigating the activities of their own undercover agents! The chances of this establishing the truth are less than zero. Nor would a public inquiry demanded by Francis – who himself was psychologically wrecked by his experience – get closer to the truth.

The fact is that the state will do whatever it takes to – as Channel 4 was told – to “prevent change from happening in the world”. That’s the priority. Anyone who thinks the police and other institutions are there to serve the public should put the idea out of their minds.

With the authority and legitimacy of the state increasingly questioned by people all round the world, the lurch towards total surveillance is gathering momentum. In Britain, the government spy station GCHQ in Cheltenham is teamed up with the National Security Agency in the US to track and monitor internet traffic on a global basis.

Ultimately, it won’t do them any good. We, the people, have had enough. Whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and Peter Francis are coming out of the state’s woodwork. The edifice is rotten and every day more and more people realise that. So whoever’s reading this on behalf of the state, the game is up. You'd be better off becoming a whilstleblower!

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Police provocateurs are par for the course

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Police has cancelled publication of a report into undercover operations initiated when spies in environmental campaigns, including Mark Kennedy, were exposed. No doubt they were planning the usual 'one rogue operation gone wrong' cover up.

But another operations has just come to light. Officer Jim Boyling, working undercover in Reclaim the Streets as Jim Sutton, was allowed to use his cover name in court. Police, prosecutors and others must have known. Lying about your name under oath? That's definitely against the law.

The convictions of twenty environmental campaigners were recently overturned in light of the Mark Kennedy revelations; lots of Reclaim the Streeters will be on the phone to their lawyers today.

The reality is that state does not hesitate to use violence, undercover agents, bugging, provocations, and other ruthless and illegal methods to enforce the rule of the few over the many and to selectively defend the laws of private property and state power as and when it chooses.

And the ongoing police-bailiff operation to evict travellers at the Dale Farm site in Essex also reveals the twisting of the law, the use of informers combined with brute force against anyone who resists the inhuman activities of bailiffs who are “only doing their job”.

Police say they came armed with tasers because intelligence from within the camp told them there were weapons hidden there. Of course there were no weapons, but who on the inside supplied police that provocative piece of disinformation?

No one could fail to feel a chill at the statement by Essex County leader Tony Ball. Ball, who could easily serve as Minister of Truth in the coalition, when he stated: "I hope that there are no repeats of yesterday's scenes of premeditated violence and disorder from the protestors on the site, and that we can get on with the job of upholding the law, and clearing the site in a safe, professional and dignified way." Yes, professional beatings, “dignified” taserings, and illegal upholdings of some laws.

Police came armed with tasers, which they used, it isn't clear yet how often but more than once. They beat people. There have been at least two serious head injuries. They smashed in the sides of people's vans, making them unusable, and the electricity has been cut off on a freezing cold night. Generator fuel ran out in the early hours of this morning. Helicopters circle continuously. Now the Bailiffs have moved in behind police.

As traveller Mary Sheridan said: "The only premeditated violence has come from the police - they knew exactly what they were doing when they started beating and tazering people. This is not how a community should be treated by its own Council. It’s illegal for us to travel, but illegal for us to settle down here. We’re getting hit by the police but we’ve got nowhere else to go.”

Another Dale Farm resident Kathleen McCarthy said: "The way in which the police are acting has shocked and outraged everyone here. We hope the world is watching.” We are, Kathleen: from Cairo, to New York, to London, to Madrid to Athens, we are watching and learning.

As the occupation outside St Paul’s, Dale Farm, the death of newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson and the anti-cuts protests have all shown – a key role of police operations has been to instigate violence, not prevent it and, secretly, to set others up for arrest.

Mass action is needed to abolish the laws that enforce the rights of private property and profit over all other human and social rights, including the right to travel and to have a place to stay. Organised in a network of People's Assemblies across the globe, we will develop a democratic framework of rights and rule of law. This will involve a Charter of Rights under a new constitution.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

The dirty hand of the state exposed

But for the exposure of police agent Mark Kennedy, there is every likelihood that six climate activists would shortly be staring at long prison sentences, framed on conspiracy charges by the state. You can be sure that no one at Scotland Yard would have given a damn.

Kennedy, known as Stone to activists, cost the state an estimated £2.25 million over nine years, most of which was spent infiltrating the climate change movement and passing information back to his masters within the sinister Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).

No one will know how many people were victims of Kennedy’s duplicity but what is clear is that he actively encouraged activists to plan a shut-down of the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottingham in 2009. More than 100 people were arrested before the action in a pre-emptive raid and have appeared in court recently charged with various offences.

That Kennedy acted as an agent provocateur during this whole episode is proved by the fact that the trial of the six collapsed charged with conspiracy collapsed yesterday when he indicated that he would give evidence for the defence.

Kennedy worked for the National Public Order Intelligence unit which was set up in late 1990s to spy on “domestic activists”. It now one of three groups run by the National Co-Ordinator Domestic Extremism, which has an £8 million budget. This allowed Kennedy to visit more than 20 countries on a false passport and to fund transport and other resources used by climate activists.

At the heart of the operation is ACPO, which has the status of a private company with a board of directors. There are presently 349 members of ACPO from police forces around the UK. In what are deemed times of “national need”, ACPO co-ordinates a countrywide, strategic response. During the 1984-5 miners’ strike, it was a law unto itself, setting up road blocks and organising mass arrests of strikers.

It was the alertness of those who had worked with Kennedy in Nottingham that revealed his true identity and the defence barristers’ demand for information that led to the dropping of the case – after 20 months. It’s a great thing that he has been exposed.

The state is clearly prepared to pay over the odds, and even finance activities in order to frame and arrest activists. This is also the case in anti-terror operations where people have been entrapped and sent to jail as a result of the work of agents provocateurs.

The state’s target are the leaders and those organising things so it is vital to get information from the inside. Technology cannot replace agents. But this causes moral and psychological problems – as shown by Kennedy’s breaking down after being confronted by his ex-comrades.

Does Kennedy’s “going native” indicate the existence of “conscience” in the police? No it doesn’t. The moral high ground may indeed belong to eco-campaigners, but for every one exposed, dozens if not hundreds are likely to in place as informers and provocateurs.

No organisation or group challenging corporate power and the state’s agencies can consider itself immune. The present state exists to defend the status quo and will act independently of elected politicians where necessary. It is definitely not for turning.

“Domestic terrorism” units undoubtedly operate today amongst students, eco-campaigners, anti-cuts activists, left-wing organisations and other groups small and large. What are the best means of undermining them and their aims? By organising to involve the maximum number of people in a strategy to reconstruct the state along democratic lines.

The police and their secret agencies should be exposed, disbanded and replaced with bodies accountable and under the control of communities and elected bodies like People’s Assemblies. A charter of democratic rights would guarantee the freedom to organise without the fear of state infiltration and provocation.

Corinna Lotz
Paul Feldman