tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84414392024-03-08T03:05:14.010+00:00Bristling BadgerUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger717125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-88658163210769144962015-09-28T20:30:00.000+01:002015-09-29T01:50:38.099+01:00Jeremy Corbyn and the New World Order<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZDnXAIsZ6LWhFgSoSe_FNfQFtdXXyBUTfxPRAhHcBKbel3Wc3oZBzJS4_c-Wze91-dCcjEnJf4MbiRcGfYBobx5jEablMMecv_U4rRZk6RC8ImZk3fVTOiDYPRstQhBD894vWzQ/s1600/corbyn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" height="199" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZDnXAIsZ6LWhFgSoSe_FNfQFtdXXyBUTfxPRAhHcBKbel3Wc3oZBzJS4_c-Wze91-dCcjEnJf4MbiRcGfYBobx5jEablMMecv_U4rRZk6RC8ImZk3fVTOiDYPRstQhBD894vWzQ/s320/corbyn.jpg" title="Jeremy Corbyn" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Careful what you wish for.<br />
<br />
On 15 July the Daily Telegraph ran <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11741861/How-you-can-help-Jeremy-Corbyn-win-and-destroy-the-Labour-Party.html">an article</a> headed<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>How you can help Jeremy Corbyn win - and destroy the Labour Party</b> <br />
<br />
Sign up today to make sure the bearded socialist voter-repellent becomes the next Labour leader - and dooms the party forever </blockquote>
<br />
They failed to explain why 'bearded' is derogatory. Perhaps it's an allusion to the fact that beards have long been understood as <a href="http://www.godhaven.org.uk/beards.html">tools of revolution</a>.<br />
<br />
Whatever, as Corbyn turned out to be genuinely popular - the Labour candidate most likely to win supporters from other parties including UKIP - the Telegraph changed tack with a range of increasingly silly stories.<br />
<br />
Just five weeks after publishing heir step by step guide to getting Corbyn in power they <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/11814767/Jeremy-Corbyns-plan-to-turn-Britain-into-Zimbabwe.html">told us</a> of<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to turn Britain into Zimbabwe</b></blockquote>
<br />
They matched that linguistic flatulence with <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/11892383/Jeremy-Corbyn-911-was-manipulated.html">this shocking news</a> earlier this week<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Jeremy Corbyn: 9/11 was 'manipulated'</b> <br />
<br />
In comments that will raise questions about his suitability to lead the Labour Party, Mr Corbyn appeared to blame George Bush and Tony Blair for using the September 11 attacks in New York to allow them to go to war </blockquote>
<br />
Whilst it's hilarious that a statement of bald fact can be seen as an indication of something deranged, there is a sinister undercurrent. It's an attempt to make Corbyn look like a conspiracist.<br />
<br />
They cite the 'he said Bin Laden's death was a tragedy' tripe again (even though he didn't, as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLb15UPqwxw">the clip of context</a> proves).<br />
<br />
They continue with<br />
<br br="" />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
he wrote a series of articles which appear to have endorsed the conspiracy theory about the “New World Order”. The “New World Order” conspiracy is frequently linked to theories about
the so-called “Illuminati” and claims about a “totalitarian world
government”. </blockquote>
<br />
This is worth looking at. Much of Corbyn's support comes from young people, many of them will not know that the phrase referred to something different to an older generation in the time when Corbyn said it.<br />
<br />
In 1991, the Soviet bloc had just collapsed. The Cold War world of two superpowers had ended, leaving one remaining. The American establishment saw that it could bestride the globe unchallenged. The phrase New World Order was used to describe the American-led post-Soviet neoliberal momentum. President Bush used it in <a href="https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Address_Before_a_Joint_Session_of_the_Congress_on_the_Persian_Gulf_Crisis_and_the_Federal_Budget_Deficit">a speech to Congress</a> in September 1990.<br />
<br />
Corbyn's 'series of articles' is actually two and a half uses of the phrase in 1991-1992. Firstly<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We now know that the Gulf War was a curtain-raiser for the New World
Order: the rich and powerful, white and western will be able to maintain
the present economic order with free use of all the weapons they wish
for.</blockquote>
<br />
Secondly,<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What is required now is a bold, democratic alternative to the New World
Order. The US veto at the Earth summit in Rio...shows just who calls the
shots in this New World Order and who will be asked to foot the bill</blockquote>
<br />
And finally, not even using the full phrase or capitals,<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The aim of the war machine of the United States is to maintain a world
order dominated by the banks and multinational companies of Europe and
North America.</blockquote>
<br />
None of this comes anywhere close to saying there is a cabal of Jewish
bankers and/or lizards who organised 9/11 as part of their plan for world
government.<br />
<br />
It is plain that Corbyn was using the commonplace, President Bush definition. In recent years, especially since 9/11, it has come to have the conspiracist meaning. The Telegraph seems unable to find Corbyn saying it since 1992, however.<br />
<br />
Their sleight of hand in implying he means the latter definition is blatantly dishonest, as daft as someone thinking their nan calling her happy mood 'gay' means she's suddenly embraced her inner lesbian.<br />
<br />
In case there's an residual doubt, Corbyn has <a href="http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/142656/jeremy-corbyn-responds-jc%E2%80%99s-seven-questions">specifically mentioned</a> conspiracy theories this year.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Mr Corbyn wholly rejects the conspiracy theory and ‘truther’ theories
about the terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001, which are
distressing to the families and friends of those lost and hurt on that
day and very often involve antisemitic views to which he has - and
always will be - opposed.</blockquote>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-90704414036352464482015-09-06T01:19:00.000+01:002015-09-06T15:41:43.076+01:00Important Information About TerrorismWhen is civil disobedience violent terrorism? Whenever the police want it to be.<br />
<br />
Not very funny is it? To be honest, it's even less funny than you might imagine.<br />
<br />
The police's Prevent strategy for spotting extremism before it starts has long been criticised as overzealous, bordering on creating thoughtcrime. At a recent meeting for over 100 teachers in West Yorkshire, the Prevent officer <a href="https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/police-tell-teachers-beware-green-activists-counter-terrorism-talk">cited environmental groups and named Caroline Lucas MP</a> as an example of extremism.<br />
<br />
Lucas was <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-23753750">arrested in August 2013</a> at the Balcombe fracking site. I was in the same group that day. It was peaceful and stationary, sat in the road outside the fracking site on a Sunday. Police came and picked Lucas and her son off and arrested them, the rest of us were left alone. It was totally political. She was charged with minor offences and later <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/17/caroline-lucas-cleared-anti-fracking-protest-charges">acquitted</a>.<br />
<br />
Asked to comment on this recasting of Lucas, the assistant chief commissioner at West Yorkshire Police,
Russ Foster, said:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The police acknowledge the right of people to protest in a lawful
manner. However, should an individual seek to use violence in
furtherance of their view, then Prevent would seek to engage with them.</blockquote>
<br />
Implication: To disobey a police officer is violence.<br />
<br />
More interestingly Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers teaching union, adds<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This
is obviously a training session where the presenter didn’t follow his
lesson plan properly, and was drawn into a very vague and ill-defined
discussion of various forms of extremism, which he didn’t handle very
well.</blockquote>
<br />
Sorry Mary, but this is the Prevent script. Across the Pennines, <a href="https://netpol.org/2015/04/09/prevent-fracking-extremism/">fracking activists and their parents have been visited</a> by Prevent officers saying they are 'involved with extremists'.<br />
<br />
Greater Manchester Police take the Prevent strategy into colleges, dishing out the <i>All Communities Together Now</i> workbook to students. Page 3 is headed Important Information About Terrorism. Seven examples are given.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrlvBDJ94GWqCFSM71aZ4NiuAx8mFw2gFI_MCFecfqRPf68eK5LwK7dzE0dC2Zg2YtnXpIdzmqG99QyRWuHCl9WbsypOgRcelxN4ub5jhUCF0SPcKCgFCIFdo43nN-TtIrRpskDw/s1600/prevent.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrlvBDJ94GWqCFSM71aZ4NiuAx8mFw2gFI_MCFecfqRPf68eK5LwK7dzE0dC2Zg2YtnXpIdzmqG99QyRWuHCl9WbsypOgRcelxN4ub5jhUCF0SPcKCgFCIFdo43nN-TtIrRpskDw/s320/prevent.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
<br />
<ul>
<li>Animal rights extremists planning to damage the house of a director of a laboratory which tests products on animals;</li>
<li>A right-wing extremist planting a bomb outside a pub used by the gay community;</li>
<li>Irish extremists planning to abduct a British soldier;</li>
<li>Left-wing extremist planning to assault a Neo-Nazi;</li>
<li>An environmentalist group disrupting air traffic control systems by blocking the runway at an airport;</li>
<li>An international terrorist group planning multiple co-ordinated attacks in crowded places;</li>
<li>A religious fanatic who is fed a distorted interpretation of an ideology over the internet and plans to attack government premises. </li>
</ul>
Occupying a runway is terrorism.<br />
<br />
The example is spiced up with 'disrupting air traffic control systems', which gives images of hacking computers and causing crashes. In real life, there are delays at airports all the time. Even <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/31908620/ba-flight-forced-to-land-early-because-of-smelly-poo">an especially smelly turd</a> can qualify for this definition of 'disrupting air traffic control systems'.<br />
<br />
When climate activists have occupied infrastucture they've done so with full regard for people's safety. The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jul/03/drax-coal-train-trial-guilty">Drax 29 stopped a coal train</a> with a textbook use of railway protocol, right down to the red flag.<br />
<br />
Among them was Mark Kennedy, a police spy whose <a href="http://bristlingbadger.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/sitting-in-spycops-priority-area.html">authorisation papers from the head of the political spy units</a>, barely two years after <a href="http://bristlingbadger.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/77-ten-years-on.html">7/7</a>, said<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This operation/deployment is focused on key areas of
Domestic Extremism which I can say sit in the ‘priority area’ of DE for England
and Wales</blockquote>
<br />
Yet a <a href="http://bristlingbadger.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/perpetrating-acts-of-serious-and.html">report into Kennedy and his unit said</a> their targets<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
were not individuals engaging in peaceful protest, or even people who
were found to be guilty of lesser public order offences. They were
individuals intent on perpetrating acts of a serious and violent nature
against citizens going about their everyday lives.</blockquote>
<br />
The Drax train action was was shortly after the Metropolitan Police had amalgamated their Special Branch - which ran the notorious Special Demonstration Squad - and their Anti-Terrorist Branch in 2006 to form Counter Terrorism Command. Within five years it had absorbed <a href="http://bristlingbadger.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/political-secret-police-units.html">all the political policing units</a>, creating a single unit for all forms of possible criminal dissent, whether you're sitting in a Suffolk lane or bombing a tube train.<br />
<br />
One of those old units was the National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit (NETCU). Founded in 2004, its aim was to advise organisations that were targeted by animal rights activists but, like all the political secret police, it rapidly developed mission-creep.<br />
<br />
The man who effectively ran it, Detective Chief Inspector Gordon Mills, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/08/police-colluded-blacklist-construction-workers-consulting-association-union-activists">gave briefings</a> to the illegal construction industry blacklisting firm the Consulting Association. Like so many others, this spycop was not a police officer upholding the law - he was breaking the law in order to uphold something more important. NETCU certainly regarded campaigners who threaten corporate profits as dangerous extremists. <br />
<br />
In 2012 Mills wrote <a href="http://psm.sagepub.com/content/15/1/30.abstract">a paper for the International Journal of Police Science and Management</a> on the difference between the two words at the heart of this.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
the word 'activist' would normally come within what society and the courts tolerate as a determined protestor for social change, who might engage in acts of civil disobedience which may lead them to commit minor offences.</blockquote>
<br />
Such as Caroline Lucas sitting in the gate way of a closed industrial site and getting charged then cleared of Obstruction of the Highway. It seems an officer must retire and be writing in a trade mag before you'll hear them say 'civil disobedience'.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In comparison, the word 'extremism' or 'extremist' carries much stronger connotations as it is commonly associated with those that attempt or carry out acts of extreme violence to achieve their ideological aims, especially witnessed within acts of terrorism.</blockquote>
<br />
Violence, which we've seen includes disobeying a police officer.<br />
<br />
Terrorism, which Prevent says includes occupying a runway.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There are continuing problems, however, in using such an emotive term when seeking to describe protest campaigns. Milne (2009) believes that, because no definition has been given to the term 'extremism' in the UK, it provides a much broader meaning than terrorism and therefore can be open to abuse by the state.</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-13043318243040222052015-08-21T01:54:00.002+01:002015-09-07T12:13:00.524+01:00Jeremymandering the Labour Leadership Election<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfcIBAVcF8_l0okCK5UVkvr6QBQL_H8uGieevhNPiYP4gw1Q4jEX5TNmBIAbc_aEjC01w3ePXeO5E1rqiqXxwK6YRvSuKdebhCnXqgt_8njhbDjZUkPl5NhFZHmSO12j0JEVbk5w/s1600/Trotsky_Portrait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfcIBAVcF8_l0okCK5UVkvr6QBQL_H8uGieevhNPiYP4gw1Q4jEX5TNmBIAbc_aEjC01w3ePXeO5E1rqiqXxwK6YRvSuKdebhCnXqgt_8njhbDjZUkPl5NhFZHmSO12j0JEVbk5w/s200/Trotsky_Portrait.jpg" width="145" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Leon Trotsky, Corbynite</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The Labour Party is celebrating the 75th anniversary of Stalin's assassination of Leon Trotsky by having a purge of the party. <br />
<br />
The whole Labour leadership election, especially the anti-Corbyn onslaught, has been fraught with contradictions.<br />
<br />
Jeremy Corbyn will be unelectable <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/16/gordon-brown-warning-against-jeremy-corbyn-labour-leadership">said Gordon Brown</a>, a prime minister who was never elected.<br />
<br />
Corbyn's policies are unpopular, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/12/even-if-hate-me-dont-take-labour-over-cliff-edge-tony-blair">says</a> Iraq-invading Tony Blair.<br />
<br />
Corbyn would be a throwback to 1983, say the people who want it to be 1997.<br />
<br />
Corbyn's too left wing to win, say supporters of Tony Blair, even though every Labour prime minister before Blair won with a greater share of the vote and more left wing manifesto. <br />
<br />
Corbyn
is dodgy for his links to Sinn Fein, say the same people who praised Mo Mowlam
for talking to the IRA in order to bring about the Good Friday
agreement.<br />
<br />
He is evil for his links to Hamas, say the New Labour stalwarts who spent their time in government using
public money to subsidise sending vast arsenals to Saudi Arabia.<br />
<br />
We need to be tough on benefits <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/andy-burnham-vows-tough-benefits-5786479">says Andy Burnham</a>, who claims <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/andy-burnham-claims-rent-for-flat-moments-away-from-another-he-already-owns-10273311.html">£17,000 of public money</a> a year to rent a flat whilst he owns one round the corner that he rents out.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZYiOb2e-dkm86vvgD19-G3gtX0nGFluoRjB6qPnPyK66DBukAxd2BXdI0azm4rixC2Z10XjvJlAUriMa5eRkkwnnMjVoLxLG4V2BTHhM1E1pgPfReIk8JeNOCR8QxCKk8TbBxww/s1600/burnham+cab.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZYiOb2e-dkm86vvgD19-G3gtX0nGFluoRjB6qPnPyK66DBukAxd2BXdI0azm4rixC2Z10XjvJlAUriMa5eRkkwnnMjVoLxLG4V2BTHhM1E1pgPfReIk8JeNOCR8QxCKk8TbBxww/s400/burnham+cab.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hillsborough justice campaigner Andy Burnham advertising The Sun</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
You can't join a party and alter its historic fundamental politics to suit you, say the people who came into Keir Hardie's socialist party and abolished <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/09/clause-iv-of-labour-party-constitution-what-is-all-the-fuss-about-reinstating-it">Clause IV</a>. <br />
<br />
We need to win over people who didn't vote for us in May, say the whole party as they purge anyone they suspect of recently supporting other parties. At least, if it's parties from the left. Quentin Davies beat Labour candidates in seven general elections during
his thirty years as a Tory MP. He <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6241928.stm">defected to Labour</a> and was eligible to
vote in both the last and current leadership elections. <br />
<br />
As Paul Bassett Davies <a href="https://twitter.com/thewritertype/status/634385608908013568">said</a>,<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“I wouldn’t want to belong to any Labour party that would have me as a member.”<br />
- Karl ‘Groucho’ Marx.</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>THROWING IT BACK IN OUR FACES </b><br />
<br />
I lose count of the number of times in the past when some Labour bod has seen my political enthusiasm and urged me to join the party. I have always replied that they don't reflect my ideas. Invariably, I was told that's exactly why I should join the party, to change it from the inside. <br />
<br />
Now that people are joining up, Labour don't want them. Twenty years ago the newly elected leader Tony Blair promised a million members. He peaked at about 400,000. Since Corbyn has been a serious challenger membership has soared to 600,000, its biggest spike <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/labour-party-membership-soaring-fastest-6207338">since 1951</a>. They got 150,000 of those - the size of the entire Tory membership - on <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11800233/Labour-leadership-Mainstream-candidates-should-unite-behind-single-figure-live.html">a single day last week</a>.<br />
<br />
Labour would have us believe that these are Trotskyite entryists. Half a million people in the UK will pay money to have a dictatorship of the proletariat. Who knew?<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZAmhB55_-k">Mhairi Black's maiden speech</a> went viral because it articulated so much of what people are consciously feeling, yet are not seeing in our elected representatives. She described growing up in a socialist Labour household but<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
we didn't leave the Labour Party, the Labour Party left us.</blockquote>
<br />
So many lifetime Labour people - either active supporters or 'lesser of the evils' voters - left because of the Iraq War, PFI, sticking to Tory spending plans, failure to build council homes, clampdowns on civil liberties and breaches of basic human rights like detention without trial (the Tories are worse, sure, but if Labour had won in 2010 we'd all be carrying ID cards by now).<br />
<br />
The mushy merging of parliamentary politics into the same ideas spun by the same kind of people means there's nothing to choose from. If Labour agree with the mainstream parties that the problems are immigration, the deficit and benefit claimants then it's no surprise that everyone votes for parties who will deal with these 'problems' properly. It's notable that three of the Labour contenders are from the cosseted Armaniworld career path of Oxbridge > special advisor > safe seat.<br />
<br />
The SNP, Greens and UKIP have benefited hugely from this, sharing six and a half million votes between them in May. With Corbyn polling as the Labour contender most likely to take votes from those parties, and his policies such as renationalisation of railways popular with the majority of voters of every party taken separately (even the Tories & UKIP), the idea that he is unelectable is yet another heehawing from the gullet of New Labour's <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doctor_Dolittle_characters#The_pushmi-pullyu">pushmi-pullyu</a>.<br />
<br />
Under our <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/politics-blog/11593854/Votes-Per-Seat-for-each-party.html">absurd electoral system</a>, adding more votes in Labour heartlands won't help Labour win more seats. But, irrespective of whatever they take back in Scotland, if they act in alliance with the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Greens (and the LibDems if they reject their neoliberalism and reclaim their position as a party that champions civil liberties) then a win in 2020 is more than feasible. More to the point, a win on a platform of social welfare and compassion.<br />
<br />
<b>LOOKING FURTHER AHEAD </b><br />
<br />
It's about more than poaching votes from other parties, though.
Perhaps the 5% Labour need isn't in the 24% who voted Tory, but the 34%
who didn't vote. The biggest group of non-voters are young people. The
biggest group of Corbyn supporters are young people. People who were 10 in 1997 are 28 today - Corbyn is the first time they've heard anything from a mainsteam party politician apart from oleaginous spin and focus-grouped management speak.<br />
<br />
There is also something stirring beyond the ballot box. A sense of anger at the rich taking from the poor, a fierce will to defend beloved public institutions like the NHS and BBC, a desire to engage and actively create justice. There is a thirst for compassion so profound that an unrevolutionary old-school Labour centrist (Corbyn's policies are no further left than Neil Kinnock's) can seem like a messiah. This bodes well for the potential of more radical change that is never found in any party's manifesto.<br />
<br />
A massive social movement millions strong is poised, asking Labour to lead it. The party is doing its best to fend it off. People whose only sin was to join the Greens for a few weeks in the run-up to the general election are being denied the chance to vote. The deregistering of people who have already voted Corbyn and the binning of their votes is blatant Jeremymandering.<br />
<br />
As the person who sent Trotsky's assassin <a href="http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/josephstal109571.html">said</a>,<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="st">The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.</span></blockquote>
<br />
= = = =<br />
<br />
If you have been knocked back in the purge, try calling the Labour party on 0845 0922299. They appear to be realising this is backfiring and say some people were sent the email 'by mistake'. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-61943241273450179262015-07-07T19:24:00.000+01:002015-07-28T12:42:34.653+01:007/7 - Ten Years On<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDzq7EXfOeTFIdvkFLSKBpJqKqNiTQCXiVpYgMu8mqARtoLh4AKk5UWNFAsY3L7hjPwUdpLL3_Ze5Ey4sIkturppNDByPSZK_0PEnnsbZZncB_DP-92pilJxzne9lfZRnvtENXHA/s1600/leeds-bomb-factory.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDzq7EXfOeTFIdvkFLSKBpJqKqNiTQCXiVpYgMu8mqARtoLh4AKk5UWNFAsY3L7hjPwUdpLL3_Ze5Ey4sIkturppNDByPSZK_0PEnnsbZZncB_DP-92pilJxzne9lfZRnvtENXHA/s320/leeds-bomb-factory.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">7/7 Bomb factory, 18 Alexandra Grove, Leeds</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Today is the tenth anniversary of the 7/7 bombings of London in which 52 random people and their four Islamist killers died. It's also Mark Kennedy's 46th birthday.<br />
<br />
On 7/7 I was at <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4654077.stm">the Horizone</a>, a camp near Stirling in Scotland of several thousand people protesting against the nearby G8 summit. Mark had been central in the organisation of it, responsible for all the transport. He usually left us to spend his birthday elsewhere, presumably with the wife and kids that none of us knew about. But in 2005 he was at the Stirling camp, a much less cake and candles party.<br />
<br />
The camp's model of direct democracy and minimising environmental impact were replicated for the following five years by the Camp for Climate Action. Mark was the transport guy for the first three. The policing escalated with each one. Initially they restricted themselves to searches under the Terrorism Act and riot police busting on site.<br />
<br />
<b>KINGSNORTH</b><br />
<br />
Then at Kingsnorth in 2008 there were riot cops coming to the perimeter every day at 5am, staying for half an hour while everyone got up and prepared for the worst, then they left. There were daily violent incursions, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7819539/Kingsnorth-protesters-compensated-for-unlawful-police-search.html">illegal stop-and-searches</a> of everyone going to and from the camp including children, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/mar/01/kingsnorth-power-station-climate-camp">confiscating</a> items such as toilet roll and vegetable oil, stories fed to the media about '<a href="http://bristlingbadger.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/eco-terrorist-death-toll.html">a cache of weapons</a>' (a padlock and chain, with a block of kitchen knives). It cost around a million pounds for every day of the camp.<br />
<br />
Remember that when Kennedy and his superiors give us that guff about him only being involved so they would know how to police a protest proportionately. This is intimidation of people whose ideas are politically unacceptable and in danger of becoming popular and effective.<br />
<br />
We were targeted like this for the extremist demand of not wanting a new coal power station at Kingsnorth (something that was agreed in 2010) and we wanted the old one shut down (it's being demolished the day after tomorrow).<br />
<br />
<b>LYNN WATSON</b><br />
<br />
Back at Stirling in 2005, the action medics team included <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jan/19/undercover-police-officer-lynn-watson">Lynn Watson</a>. She lived in Leeds and was treasurer of the city's new radical social centre, The Common Place. She was, like Kennedy, an undercover police officer from the National Public Order Intelligence Unit.<br />
<br />
When the Kennedy story hit the press he hired Max Clifford to hawk him round the tabloids. He <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1347478/Mark-Kennedy-Undercover-policeman-tells-story-8-years-eco-warriors.html">says</a> the G8 was one of the occasions when his superior told him his intelligence was being given directly to Tony Blair.<br />
<br />
The then-Prime Minister was hosting a conference of some of the most powerful people on earth. Did he really go "Sorry, I must take this call..... wow, Mark's hired some minibuses, great stuff..... anyway, what were you saying, Vladimir?".<br />
<br />
It's that, or Kennedy is a self-aggrandising narcissist. I leave it up to you to decide.<br />
<br />
<b>PRIORITIES</b><br />
<br />
The following year I was part of the group who swooped in the night to occupy land and set up the first Climate Camp, near the UK's largest point of carbon emissions, Drax power station in North Yorkshire. I've never been involved in anything with tighter security. Even people involved did not communicate about it to one another. The briefing was given to me in strictest secrecy by its co-ordinator, Lynn Watson.<br />
<br />
That was at her house in Ash Grove, Leeds. It was less than five minutes' walk from 18 Alexandra Grove, the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/feb/01/july7-uksecurity">7/7 bomb factory</a>. But neither Lynn, nor her colleagues, knew about that. They were too busy infiltrating us.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-75223970086846035922015-05-25T17:38:00.000+01:002015-05-25T18:15:47.374+01:00Equal Marriage is a Feminist Victory<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKWhZ7RYJmmpdQLndPoiRneWtN99Jzo-24QTvcInfWNlkojX6DJQjRmCsXnOl62ywqhJWQVRoW87Qsgs_TfQXriLRkLZ9FALN-wJfFIo6N5OE660zNTHTC18S_PIu7_e2zYdWjxw/s1600/equal.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKWhZ7RYJmmpdQLndPoiRneWtN99Jzo-24QTvcInfWNlkojX6DJQjRmCsXnOl62ywqhJWQVRoW87Qsgs_TfQXriLRkLZ9FALN-wJfFIo6N5OE660zNTHTC18S_PIu7_e2zYdWjxw/s320/equal.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
For those of us who remember the power of the Catholic Church in
Ireland before the last 20 years, the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32858501">Yes vote for equal marriage</a> can't be anything but
astonishing.<br />
<br />
In a secularising society accustomed to a slew of Church scandals,
it's hard to remember how unusual it was a generation ago for anyone Irish not to go to mass. The country was effectively a theocracy, with Church representatives
checking on you from the highest levels of government to your own
living room.<br />
<br />
Whereas now, the referendum emboldens
LGBTQ status in Ireland. It helps make homophobia the thing to be ashamed of rather than
homosexuality. In a generation's time, when most people have had out
LGBTQ people running their pubs, on their board of school governors or
whatever, people will be incredulous that it was ever criminalised.<br />
<br />
It's
a reaction already to be found among young adults in England, where homosexuality
was decriminalised a generation earlier. It was still criminal in Ireland until
1993, a mere 22 years before Friday's equal marriage vote. <br />
<br />
Complaints from the No
campaign that they lost because Yes was well funded are risible. You
guys have the backing of the Catholic fucking church. You are never in
need of a fiver until Friday. This wasn't about publicity campaigns. This is about a huge change in social values far beyond marriage.<br />
<br />
<b>MORE THAN MARRIAGE </b><br />
<br />
'We're getting married because we love each other' is a non-sequitur. What is romantic about
saying 'I want you to sign a contract with the state so if you ever
leave me it'll be an expensive process involving lawyers and stuff'? <br />
<br />
<br />
But
nonetheless, the institution of marriage continues to have great social
significance. To exclude any group is not just to ban them from
marriage, it demonstrates and entrenches the fact that they are not
allowed autonomy or equality. So, even for those who don't merely
choose not to get married but actively oppose it, the advent of equal marriage is something to be welcomed.<br />
<br />
I fucking hate Fleetwood Mac. Their mogadon music is a waste of ears.
But I wouldn't ban their gigs, and if there were laws preventing
non-whites from going to Fleetwood Mac gigs then, even though it reduced
the number of people hearing that execrable twaddle, we should oppose
such legislation. In the same way, even those who challenge marriage can support the Yes vote.<br />
<br /><b>HOMOPHOBIA IS SEXIST </b><br />
<br />
Musical comedian is a profession teeming with mediocrity. It is a real challenge to be anything more than a passing chuckle-raiser. Whilst Mitch Benn - perhaps best known for his songs on Radio 4's Now Show - is consistently worthwhile and puts social comment into his material, it's still nonetheless a largely superficial trade.<br />
<br />
But social media changes our understanding of public figures. For every Billy Bragg who disappoints with their conservatism, there is a Mitch Benn who's actually even better on Twitter than the stuff they get paid for. He's not only a savvy thinker but his comic training gives him the pithiness needed to make Twitter come alive.<br />
<br />
His series of <a href="https://twitter.com/MitchBenn/status/602111460614021122">tweets</a> on Saturday as Ireland counted its votes were frankly the most insightful thing I read all day.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">It's amazing just HOW much of the misery in the world, on every scale from personal to international, is all about men's need to OWN women.</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">When you unpack most religions, that's what you find; the codification and justification of the ownership by men of women.</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">It's no good blaming "religion" for everything; they're all human inventions. We created our gods in our own image. WE did it to ourselves.</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">Oppressive religious rules aren't the work of cruel gods; men wrote the rules and invented cruel gods to blame them on.</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">And it's not just religious cultures; every society finds ways to justify misogyny, whether it's women's "vulnerability" or "emotionality".</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">This is why feminism might actually be the most important movement ever; breaking that ONE bad idea would solve so many problems.</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">I think a lot of homophobia's tied up with misogyny; the idea that a man who has sex with a man is feminising - ie DEGRADING - himself.</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">Anyway, fuck all that today. Go Ireland!</span></blockquote>
<br />
This idea - that once you act on feminism then the patriarchal religions and associated values like homophobia inevitably start to crumble - is startling, huge, and rings true. It points to the victories we are heading towards, it acknowledges that the equal marriage referendum is a key milestone on that road, but also says that rather than letting this victory make us sit back, it should spur us onward.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-45657926815408619732015-05-11T14:52:00.001+01:002015-05-12T10:55:26.280+01:00Bringing Englishness to the English<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPxDJvTLC0hrBWhSjyTF8277QKgGkZoQWgNc3g7vXNhKC6c0IoRo59dcDSH0F1zkaziJIBwxgWOo5ywwaBqtAMkcGTNRxG68DlTnmGzbgLLrGIyQELIVAbBB2tJk4BGEwX0TGEYA/s1600/flag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPxDJvTLC0hrBWhSjyTF8277QKgGkZoQWgNc3g7vXNhKC6c0IoRo59dcDSH0F1zkaziJIBwxgWOo5ywwaBqtAMkcGTNRxG68DlTnmGzbgLLrGIyQELIVAbBB2tJk4BGEwX0TGEYA/s200/flag.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
I usually love Paul Mason's stuff, he's both radical and reasonable, credible enough to be given a job on Newsnight and, latterly, Channel 4 News.<br />
<br />
In the wake of the SNP's march on Westminster, he's <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/10/snp-english-national-identity-class-cultural-divide">written about the lack of an English identity</a> beyond the things that connect it to the wider world. His failure to see anything in English culture beyond 'public schools and the officers class... the tennis club belt around London' is frankly baffling.<br />
<br />
Billy Bragg <a href="https://twitter.com/billybragg/status/597533942078689280">picked him up on it</a> on Twitter and Mason <a href="https://twitter.com/paulmasonnews/status/597533217441378304">replied</a> that he felt<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
northern, British and proletarian [rather] than English. It has no resonance for me.</blockquote>
<br />
There's something of an irony there as he's from the Wigan area. The 'northern' he identifies with is northern England. If you look at Britain instead, as Mason says he does, that area is central.<br />
<br />
People in socially oppressed groups are forced to be conscious of that part of their identity. Those in the privileged groups often don't even see the existence of their group, let alone the myriad mechanisms of oppression it foists on the rest. To them, they inhabit an unbordered blank, normal space that lets them act as they wish. A lack of consciously seeing yourself as English is, in some ways, a very English trait.<br />
<br />
Someone may not think about, say, their cis-maleness and so would say it isn't part of their identity, but it has provided the norms that they embody, the behaviours they use every day. They are granted treatment and opportunities denied to people of other gender identity. They're playing the computer game on the easiest difficulty setting. <br />
<br />
The three things Mason cites aren't English, they're class based. He sees them as salient because he's from the lower classes who are disadvantaged. Those actually in the tennis club, public school officer class are as likely to think of themselves as 'just normal' as any other socially dominating group. Seems implausible from down here, doesn't it? But remember the time when <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/david-camerons-mask-slips-with-a-schoolgirl-329478">David Cameron said his wife was unusual</a> for not going to boarding school? That.<br />
<br />
The fact that English people tend not to see their cultural identity is a measure of its long-standing, unchallenged superior social position. As our immediate neighbours move towards terms of equality, we will start to see ourselves with the kind of depth that they have always had. We will begin to understand what we've been. And that's a lot more than public schools and tennis clubs.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-41471725621638482022015-05-10T19:15:00.000+01:002015-05-10T19:54:58.905+01:00Repealing Our Humanity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmCyV0NUEt6X6fsRk7pUjcDHRI_CTJijWMbQoxZUYM0ZQGHpwjnD-5OrilN0De60yIt1GEXi8isXprmmf84vuicHMuZCer3F1PVm9K1yCKICqyqqNi1ZmWIKY62JalnQ8EufVAYg/s1600/human+rights.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmCyV0NUEt6X6fsRk7pUjcDHRI_CTJijWMbQoxZUYM0ZQGHpwjnD-5OrilN0De60yIt1GEXi8isXprmmf84vuicHMuZCer3F1PVm9K1yCKICqyqqNi1ZmWIKY62JalnQ8EufVAYg/s400/human+rights.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Six months ago it would have been quite a funny joke - if the Tories get a majority they'll repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with a bill of rights drawn up by Michael Gove.<br />
<br />
As axeman Education Secretary, Gove tore through at such a pace that by the time the opposition had mobilised his plans were all inked and in train. We can expect the same style in his new role as Justice Secretary.
Already the Tories are <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/10/conservatives-to-push-forward-on-manifesto-and-scrap-human-rights-act">making loud noises</a> about prioritising their manifesto promise to repeal the Human Rights Act (<a href="http://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/scotland-exempt-from-tories-human-rights-act-axe-1-3559633">except in Scotland</a>) and having it in the forthcoming Queen's speech.<br />
<br />
The tabloid press hate human rights because they protect us from the kind of breaches of privacy that make stories that editors salivate over.<br />
<br />
Despite Tories, Ukippers and other right wingers using the blanket term 'Europe', the rights enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights are nothing to do with the EU. Leaving the EU wouldn't affect our human rights at all.<br />
<br />
It's part of being a member of the larger, older Council of Europe.
It was formed by the Treaty of London in 1949 as part of the rebuilding of Europe after the war and the effort to create stable structures that prevented such legal state horrors from being perpetrated again. <br />
<br />
Far from being something <a href="http://www.discoversociety.org/2014/11/04/turning-the-european-court-of-human-rights-into-a-folk-devil-the-uk-conservative-party-and-human-rights-2/">imposed on us from outside</a>, the UK was the first country to <a href="http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/print/ChercheSig.asp?NT=005&CM=&DF=&CL=ENG">ratify the ECHR</a> after years of enthusiastic input from <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/oct/04/human-rights-act-conservatives">someone</a> who features on Tory and UKIP leaflets to this day.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Then there is the question of human rights… We attach great importance to this… we hope that a European Court might be set up, before which cases of the violation of rights in our own body of twelve nations might be brought to the judgement of the civilized world. <br />
<br />
- Winston Churchill, Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, 17 August 1949</blockquote>
<br />
The court came ten years later, in Strasbourg. It cost a lot of money to bring a case there. But in 1998 Labour brought in the Human Rights Act, which made the Convention enforceable in UK courts (and obliged government to ensure new legislation is compatible with the ECHR).<br />
<br />
Repealing the Act doesn't actually remove our rights. It means that once again, you'll have to have the greater levels of time and money required to take a case to Strasbourg. So human rights will only effectively exist for the rich. The rest of us become not human, the rest of us become untermensch.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-28442077035504765452015-04-28T00:21:00.003+01:002015-04-28T01:04:29.591+01:00Sitting in the Spycops Priority AreaFurther to the <a href="http://bristlingbadger.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/its-not-just-activists.html">last post</a> about police authorisation documents for Mark Kennedy's deployment for the Drax coal train action in 2008, there is a page in that sheaf by Anton Setchell, who was then the National Co-ordinator for
Domestic Extremism (NCDE). <br />
<br />
This was the person with oversight of three political policing units -
Kennedy's National Public Order Intelligence Unit, the corporate
advisory <a href="http://www.corporatewatch.org/news/2014/aug/06/re-visiting-netcu-police-collaboration-industry">National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit</a>, and the National Domestic Extremism Team (if the tangle of units dizzies your brain, see <a href="http://bristlingbadger.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/political-secret-police-units.html">this post</a>).<br />
<br />
That
Setchell took the time to hand write a side of A4 just to be
supportive of the renewal of Kennedy's deployment is significant. When
they try to make out that Kennedy was some sort of rogue officer cut adrift, or lost in the murk of a shady unit
nobody knew about, remember this detailed level of knowledge, oversight and approval from
an Assistant Chief Constable.<br />
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have today been briefed by [redacted] on this operation
prior to it being forwarded to ACC Sampson [Assistant Chief Constable of West Yorkshire
Police John Sampson who gave authorisation for Kennedy’s deployment on the Drax
coal train protest].<br />
<br />
My role is not that of authorising officer, but as NCDE, to have the
opportunity to comment on this deployment prior to the AO [authorising officer] reviewing the
authority.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
This operation has now had an SIO [senior investigating officer] appointed to help oversee
it – [redacted]. The [redacted] aspect now has an investigative strategy
developed which will seek to exploit evidential opportunities when they arise
(amongst other things). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
[redacted] has reviewed this operation and some
recommendations in his report (to be distributed soon) will be considered by
[redacted], the SIO and the AO in due course.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This operation/deployment is focused on key areas of
Domestic Extremism which I can say sit in the ‘priority area’ of DE for England
and Wales and without this asset in place, our intelligence picture would be
significantly reduced and I would seek to replace this asset very quickly to
regain our understanding of the intentions of the DE groups that are listed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I recommend that the authority continues.<br />
<br />
Anton Setchell – National Co-ordinator DE</div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
The authorisation for Kennedy's deployment on the Drax coal train action says it may lead to<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
involving Source [Kennedy] in actions connected to Climate Camp where the
threat to the public is greater.
</blockquote>
<br />
Yet the <a href="http://bristlingbadger.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/mark-kennedy-hmic-report.html">first official report</a> into the spycops scandal was unequivocal about who Kennedy and his unit targeted. It said they<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
were not individuals engaging in peaceful protest, or even people who
were found to be guilty of lesser public order offences. They were
individuals intent on perpetrating acts of a serious and violent nature
against citizens going about their everyday lives.</blockquote>
<br />
This is, by any measure, complete fucking horseshit.<br />
<br />
Throw bricks or don't, it makes no odds as to whether your group is targeted as a threat by police. This could scarcely be more starkly illustrated by the Drax train action with its impeccable health
and safety considerations, and Climate Camp which, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t244-zEENSs">try as they may</a>,
police couldn't get a riot out of, nonetheless finding themselves in the 'priority area' for the
police's most intensive and intrusive infiltration. Meanwhile, a<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/sep/02/english-defence-league-muslims-police"> leaked email from Setchell's successor, Adrian Tudway</a>, says that the English Defence League are not even considered extremists.<br />
<br />
This is surprising not just because of the lack of threat to life and limb from Climate Camp, to some extent it's also what was represented politically. The primary target for
2007's Climate Camp had been Heathrow's proposed third runway, a plan
that was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/may/24/third-runway-heathrow-scrapped-baa">scrapped in May 2010</a>.<br />
<br />
The Climate Camps at
Drax and Kingsnorth were, like the Drax 29, trying to stop a new
generation of new coal fired power stations. This is something that also
became settled policy soon afterwards with the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/oct/20/kingsnorth-coal">dropping of plans for a new station at Kingsnorth</a> in October 2010, ending the age of new coal power in the UK.<br />
<br />
In a peculiar twist, the announcement of the Kingsnorth plans being
dropped came on 20 October 2010, the
very day that Mark Kennedy was confronted and <a href="https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/10/466477.html?c=on">exposed</a>. When that sort of thing is put in a film we think it's over contrived and wouldn't happen in real life.<br />
<br />
In
another, more predictable, turn of events Anton Setchell is now Head
of Global Security for Laing O' Rourke, one of the construction firms
involved in the illegal <a href="http://www.ucatt.org.uk/blacklisting">construction industry blacklist</a>, which was illegally <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/nov/08/police-colluded-blacklist-construction-workers-consulting-association-union-activists">assisted by National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit</a> when it was under Setchell's command.<br />
<br />
Rather than the terrifying 'threat to the public' that Kennedy's managers depicted, with the abandoning of airport expansion and new coal facilities Climate Camp can now be seen, by results, as heralds of the new orthodoxy.<br />
<br />
There was a lot more radical intent behind Climate Camp politically, of course. It was always explicitly anti-capitalist, a position that seemed wackier when it started in 2006 but, since the crash of 2008, is another position that's proven itself more level-headed than its opponents. Yet, as the police response to fracking protests shows, such groups still 'sit in the priority area'. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-16958246242268634732015-04-26T16:11:00.003+01:002015-04-26T20:51:22.027+01:00It's Not Just Activists In June 2008 a group of 29 climate activists <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/jun/13/activists.climatechange">stopped a coal train</a> bound for Britain's biggest source of carbon emissions, Drax power station. They were all <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jul/03/drax-coal-train-trial-guilty">convicted</a>, but it was a miscarriage of justice as evidence had been withheld from the defence - reports from one of the drivers, Mark Stone aka undercover police officer Mark Kennedy. The convictions were <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/21/drax-protesters-convictions-quashed-police-spy-mark-kennedy">quashed last year</a>.<br />
<br />
Quite how many other wrongful convictions are being left to stand - hundreds? thousands? - is unknown. It's worth noting that Mark Ellison QC's <a href="http://www.standard.co.uk/panewsfeeds/may-warns-of-wrongful-convictions-9172208.html">report into it</a> was projected to take a year and be published in March, yet we've <a href="http://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2015/01/23/report-into-spycops-wrongful-convictions-postponed/">still seen nothing</a>, implying that it's turned out to be a larger task than aniticipated.<br />
<br />
In the partially redacted papers that were disclosed in the overturning of the Drax 29's convictions we get an insight into the political secret police units' paranoia about political dissent and their cavalier attitude to citizens. with each authorisation they are forced to consider the 'collateral intrusion' into lives of those who aren't targeted, but in this instance it is blithely batted away.<br />
<br />
On 24 April 2008 they write:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It is very rare for collateral intrusion to occur because [Kennedy’s name redacted] spends the majority of their time with likeminded people engaged in
activism. [Kennedy’s name redacted] does have contact with ‘non activists’
(neighbours etc) which is unavoidable whilst appearing to live a ‘normal’ life
but no product from these contacts is reported or retained.
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
[Kennedy’s name redacted] is an experienced UCO [undercover officer]
well aware of their unique situation in the lives of members of the public and
remains entirely focused on the objectives and subjects of the authority.</div>
</blockquote>
<br />
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<br />
Kennedy's notebook describes dropping some of the Drax 29 on the protest and then glosses over 'a gathering' that he spends the next two days at. The word is 'gathering' common among grassroots activist groups that don't have hierarchical structure.
<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Friday 13th June 2008
</b><br />
<br />
I drove a van with a number of people in the back to a
holding point for 0600 hours. A number of spotters were positioned along the
train’s route to call in when a coal train was spotted. <br />
<br />
At 0755 I drove to Gowdall
level crossing. I pulled up and people got out the back of the van. I saw them
walk up the track. I saw people in bright orange uniforms with a red flag walk
along the track towards the Aire River rail bridge. I also saw a person using
the telephone box linked to the signal box to warn the signal man that people
were on the line at Gowdall and called C/O [probably ‘cover officer’ – Kennedy’s
handler and link with the wider structure of the police].
<br />
<br />
I returned to Nottingham where I collected a number of
marquees belonging to the ATC which were destined for a gathering in the Hope
Valley. I travelled to the Hope Valley and co-ordinated the setting up of the
marquees.
<br />
<br />
<b>Sunday 15th June 2008</b>
<br />
<br />
I co-ordinated the taking
down of the marquees and returned them to the ATC in Nottingham store.
</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC1m8RisD7tGcBaimqw6I1usEyZ73_IzQBZI5s4ti_caC5_c37d8uoWtPJGtd3WIzZDBnKuRRHw_g8GoWCia33syxfAx-aKhw-AdA2kZieSc4XLhtxEVzy2kQo_Zx_LLHcKfDTbg/s1600/kennedy+notes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC1m8RisD7tGcBaimqw6I1usEyZ73_IzQBZI5s4ti_caC5_c37d8uoWtPJGtd3WIzZDBnKuRRHw_g8GoWCia33syxfAx-aKhw-AdA2kZieSc4XLhtxEVzy2kQo_Zx_LLHcKfDTbg/s1600/kennedy+notes.jpg" height="400" width="176" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
The 'gathering' was actually a wedding. Kennedy was the long standing friend of both partners, the following year he had a joint birthday party with one of them. There were many people there - children, partners, friends and relatives - who were not activists, and a number of them knew Kennedy well and had already formed significant friendships with him. He will forever be in the wedding pictures.<br />
<br />
Did Kennedy tell his cover officer, with whom he was in contact numerous
times a day, what was going on? Or are we expected to believe he made
stuff up about it being a two day gathering of political discussion and
planning? Essentially, was it approval or negligence by his managers? <br />
<br />
He and his superiors were 'well aware of their unique situation in the lives of members of the public' and had no compunction about abusing it. There was no need for him to be at the wedding, apart from clocking up overtime. If this does not qualify as 'collateral intrusion' then nothing does.<br />
<br />
As we <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/oct/23/undercover-police-animal-liberation-front">already knew</a>, you don't need to be an activist to have your life intruded upon by the political secret police.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-2006188537712566472015-03-15T13:49:00.003+00:002015-03-15T14:47:54.234+00:00Hillsborough: Why The Lie?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqFwDy7AvZn6JXOdRPnu76tFVPH0L7X_bX3YDgDdMy1KZA0V86soZr5E6bpsQu38GEuGZflOrzLI4mZCOlCL42EHQY9WwZB_4o69F8v0EKlm-_qVK0p5Su6__NPMIsncqfO_9jtw/s1600/duckenfield.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqFwDy7AvZn6JXOdRPnu76tFVPH0L7X_bX3YDgDdMy1KZA0V86soZr5E6bpsQu38GEuGZflOrzLI4mZCOlCL42EHQY9WwZB_4o69F8v0EKlm-_qVK0p5Su6__NPMIsncqfO_9jtw/s1600/duckenfield.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Former Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It's been an extraordinary week at the Hillsborough Inquests. The police officer in charge on the day of the disaster, David Duckenfield, gave evidence for four days.<br />
<br />
Duckenfield was woefully inexperienced in 1989. With a poorly organised flow of fans arriving, there was a late build up of people outside the ground. Duckenfield ordered an exit gate open to give them access and that, combined with poor signage inside, led to the crush that killed 96 people.<br />
<br />
Even as the disaster was unfolding, Duckenfield started lying. With their view from the press box down on to the terrace, Graham Kelly of the Football Association asked him what had gone wrong. Duckenfield said fans had forced the exit gate open.<br />
<br />
In the hours that followed, he did not correct that. In the days after, he was part of the South Yorkshire Police's narrative that drunken, ticketless fans had caused the crush, an assertion that has since been comprehensively disproven. <br />
<br />
There was a concerted effort to protect Duckenfield and the other senior officers. Officers were <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-29993214">told</a> not to write in their official pocketbooks and not to have clear memories before writing notes. Hundreds of police witness statements were <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-24051314">altered</a> to remove phrasing critical of the police.<br />
<br />
When West Midlands Police were brought in to examine the South Yorkshire investigation, they <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25947994">harassed and threatened</a> fans into retracting criticisms of the police. One fan who persisted had an officer <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2012/nov/18/hillsborough-police-witness-threats">question</a> if he'd even been at Hillsborough, saying he could have got his bruised ribs anywhere.<br />
<br />
All this stood for 24 years until the <a href="http://hillsborough.independent.gov.uk/">Hillsborough Independent Panel</a>'s report established a clear picture in 2012. There was no drunken mob of ticketless fans - the size of the crowd matched the number of tickets issued. The original inquests' assertion that everyone was dead of traumatic asphyxia by 3.15pm (thus preventing examination of anything that happened after that time) was nonsense. Many fans could have been saved. <br />
<br />
<b>THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH? </b><br />
<br />
The Panel's titanic work is not the end of the story. The new inquests are part of the ongoing process of uncovering the truth. To the surprise of many, this week David Duckenfield <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/hillsboroughinquest-david-duckenfield-admits-he-lied-about-opening-gate-10101758.html">gave</a> an unreserved apology to the families of those who died. Michael Mansfield QC, representing 75 families whose
relatives were killed, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/13/david-duckenfield-why-i-lied-about-hillsborough">asked</a> why he had remained silent for 26 years.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">Duckenfield said that he had been prompted to finally tell the whole
truth after the publication of the report by the Hillsborough
Independent Panel in 2012 and a television programme he had seen about
the disaster’s effect on the families. </span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">He said he had post traumatic stress disorder, and “hid myself away
and could not bear the word Hillsborough” after the report was
published, but then said he had begun to face the truth two years ago,
with the help of doctors.</span></blockquote>
<br />
Whilst we must reserve our strongest sympathy for the victims and their families, whose pain has been prolonged by Duckenfield's silence, nonetheless it's obvious that anyone in his position would be highly traumatised and cannot be blamed for the impulse to hide from their actions.<br />
<br />
But if he accepts responsibility he lays himself open to prosecution. So even now, after his appeal for sympathy and declaration that he's ready to tell the truth, he is <a href="http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/hillsborough-inquests-david-duckenfield-denied-8830578">avoiding</a> basic admissions.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">Coroner Sir John Goldring asked: “You are saying, are you, that a
reasonably competent match commander would have foreseen where fans
should go?</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">Mr Duckenfield said: “Yes.”</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">The coroner asked: “You are saying that a reasonably competent match commander would have closed the tunnel?”</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">Mr Duckenfield said yes.</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">The coroner asked: “Does it therefore follow - tell me if I have
misunderstood - that on the day you did not act as a reasonably
competent match commander?”</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">Mr Duckenfield said yes.</span></blockquote>
<br />
From this bald admission Rajiv Menon, lawyer for 75 families, <a href="http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/recap-david-duckenfield-evidence-hillsborough-8831240">tried</a> to get an admission of gross negligence. Duckenfield, aware of his legal position, prefers trivialising terms for the 96 deaths that he is primarily responsible for.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">Sir, my view is, it was an oversight, a mistake. I
don't view it as negligence, and certainly never gross negligence. </span></blockquote>
<br />
<br />
An oversight. A mistake.<br />
<br />
<b>PERPETUATING THE LIES </b><br />
<br />
He went on to <a href="http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/hillsborough-inquests-david-duckenfield-denied-8830578">explain</a> that fans were partly to blame for their own deaths. What evidence does he have?<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">I cannot say from first hand evidence that drunken and ticketless fans attended at the stadium. What I can say is I have heard various stories and I have picked up
things as things have gone along, but my first hand experience is, I did
not see any drunken ticketless fans... I hold the view that football fans played a part.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<br />
This unquoted, unattributed, unspecified assertion of stories and 'picked up things' is apparently enough to convince him that he's not to blame. It is a slap in the face for the people to whom he has said he will speak frankly and honestly. He still can't tell the truth.<br />
<br />
Going back to the start of this, why did he lie on the day of the disaster? He <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-31821211">told</a> the inquests<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">I said something rather hurriedly, without considering the position, without thinking of the consequences </span></blockquote>
<br />
We all say wrong things in moments of panic. But that's not what Duckenfield did. He lied, then he <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/mar/11/hillsborough-top-police-officer-says-he-is-blank-about-two-hours">repeated</a> the lie.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">After lying to Kelly, Duckenfield acknowledged he went to the boardroom at Hillsborough, where Tony Ensor, Liverpool football club’s solicitor at the time, has testified Duckenfield told him and others that Liverpool fans “forced open a gate”.</span><br />
<span style="color: #20124d;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #20124d;">Duckenfield said he could not recall saying that, but agreed with [counsel to the inquests Christina] Lambert that he missed a “golden opportunity” at that meeting to correct the lie he had told Kelly. He said it was “a terrible fall from the standards that one would expect”. </span></blockquote>
<br />
<br />
But instead of any climb back up to decent standards, he chose to
accelerate the fall. He actively, persistently wove the lie into a narrative that blamed his
victims.<br />
<br />
Last week he <a href="http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/12040/9754229/hillsborough-chief-admits-lying-and-apologises-to-families">said</a><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">I’m an honest person, I don’t lie, I set high standards. Nobody can understand my behaviour least of all me.</span></blockquote>
<br /><br />
<b>AUTOMATIC LIES </b><br />
<br />
Many of us really <i>can </i>understand his behaviour. The more power we hold, the more we have to lose. The first job of authorised power is to protect its position. There are few places that illustrate it more starkly than the police.<br />
<br />
Even without Duckenfield's distraction from honesty and civic duty due to his personal position and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/dec/17/hillsborough-disaster-police-masonic-conspiracy">loyalties</a> (he was <a href="http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/david-duckenfield-admits-not-act-8830456">promoted</a> to the masonic position of Worshipful Master the year after Hillsborough), this deflection of blame is second nature to police. We see it in routinely colluded statements that all give the same false story of an event, that exaggerate the threats they face.<br />
<br />
Ian Tomlinson was killed by a police baton strike whilst standing in as unthreatening a position as humanly possible, yet the <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/19/Evening_Standard_headline_about_Ian_Tomlinson,_April_2_2009.JPG">immediate police story</a> was a complete lie claiming he had a heart attack whilst brave bobbies tried to save him under a hail of bricks and bottles.<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
Even after the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HECMVdl-9SQ">footage</a> came out showing the lethal attack, police refused to admit responsibility or even basic facts. The officer leading the investigation, Detective Superintendent Anthony Crampton, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jul/19/ian-tomlinson-two-contradictory-verdicts">suggested</a> to Tomlinson's family that the assailant was an anti-capitalist protester in a stolen police uniform. The Independent Police Complaints Commission said the idea was credible.<br />
<br />
Imagine the gall, the overconfidence and the level of personal denial it takes to do that. Imagine how marrow-deep they must be. This isn't a family liaison numpty saying something off the top of their head. This is a high ranking officer with machinery and accomplices around him to fortify the lies that armour his - and, by extension, the police's - near-impregnable power.<br />
<br />
It's exactly the same as Duckenfield and the officers of all ranks who collaborated in the lies, intimidation and <a href="http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/cctv-technician-tells-hillsborough-inquests-8064902">destruction of evidence</a> that formed the Hillsborough cover-up.<br />
<br />
This is the inevitable result of a default tendency in the power of authority. Until that is consciously understood and addressed, automatic lies will continue. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-58865650926518344322015-02-09T18:54:00.000+00:002015-02-27T08:53:10.935+00:00Bob Lambert Controversy Intensifies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: none;">
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Despite the colossal <a href="http://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2015/01/21/university-tries-to-defend-bob-lambert/">array of corrupt misdeeds</a> committed by Bob Lambert and his disgraced political secret police unit the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a professional associate in his new academic career, Stefano Bonino, has been moved to <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comment/opinion/why-a-controversial-undercover-cop-should-keep-his-academic-post/2018046.article">write in his defence</a> in Times Higher Education.<br />
<br />
Somewhat melodramatically it starts with a reminder of the recent politically motivated killings in France and then says<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
the SDS maintained a central and defining focus on political violence –
most notably street violence conducted by and between far-Left and
far-Right groups – and helped to save lives</blockquote>
<br />
A central and defining focus should leave plenty of evidence behind it. Yet among the exposed spycops is a central focus on groups who presented little or no threat to life.<br />
<br />
As well as targeting trade unionists brandishing lethal leaflets and environmental groups with their deadly sitting in roads, the SDS spied on a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jul/23/undercover-police-spied-on-families-de-menezes-groce-reel">swathe of justice campaigns</a>, perhaps the most well known being the Stephen Lawrence campaign. This is now regarded as one of the
most shameful acts in the history of the Metropolitan Police.<br />
<br />
<b>SPYING ON THE LAWRENCES </b><br />
<br />
Lambert <a href="http://www.channel4.com/news/stephen-lawrence-bob-lambert-smear-metropolitan-police">said</a> in 2013 - just 18 months ago, well into his academic career, when he's supposedly seen the light and come clean about his past - that <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
at
no time in my tenure as an SDS manager - which is from November 1993
until when I left in 1998, which was roundabout the time of the Stephen
Lawrence Inquiry - at no time was the Special Demonstration Squad
concerned in smearing their family or their campaign.</blockquote>
<br />
It appears that he carefully phased it to imply denial of allegations that his unit targeted the Lawrence family, and indeed the piece was headlined<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
'We did not target Stephen's family', says undercover boss</blockquote>
<br />
However, the findings of last year's comprehensive <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/287031/stephen_lawrence_review_volume_1.pdf">report by Mark Ellison QC</a> are quite clear. They did target Stephen's family. Bob Lambert was overseeing spying on the Lawrences, with <a href="http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/369945/Report-shows-nine-cops-used-as-spies-in-Stephen-Lawrence-case">nine officers</a>
gathering intelligence on the family.<br />
<br />
If that wasn't unethical enough in itself, Ellison says<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The
reality was that [officer deployed by Lambert codenamed] N81 was, at the time, an MPS [Metropolitan
Police Service] spy in the Lawrence
family camp during the course of judicial proceedings in which the
family was the primary party in opposition to the MPS</blockquote>
<br />
The time they are talking about is not the immediate aftermath of Stephen Lawrence's murder. It is five years later, as the Met was preparing for final submissions to the MacPherson Inquiry into the killing and the police response. <br />
<br />
Lambert brokered a meeting between his Lawrence spy N81 and the team formulating the Met commissioner's public response. The Ellison report's findings were
pretty blunt about Lambert's actions.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We find the opening of such a channel of communication at that time to have been ‘wrongheaded’and inappropriate... a
completely improper use of the knowledge the MPS had gained by the
deployment of this officer</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
Bonino talks of<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
potentially violent protest groups that were attempting to attach themselves to the Stephen Lawrence campaign</blockquote>
<br />
Take a moment to think about the phrase 'potentially violent'. Consider how it is being used, and how it could be used to justify spying on absolutely anyone and everyone.<br />
<br />
But even before we need to address such blanket policing, Bonino's assertion - that the concern wasn't the Lawrence family themselves - has been discredited since the Ellison report's revelation of the meeting Lambert organised. Why else would that meeting take place, except to undermine the position of the family and their campaign? Where exactly was the public order threat, five years after the murder, from the family's submission to the MacPherson Inquiry?<br />
<br />
<b>WHEN IS A SPY UNIT NOT A SPY UNIT?</b><br />
<br />
Bonino has no choice but to concede that much of what Lambert did for years is indefensible, but then mentions the final phase of his police career. <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
If his progressive calls for more participatory and transparent
approaches to counterterrorism appear largely inconsistent with the
activities of the SDS, the achievements of the Muslim Contact Unit are
unquestioned.</blockquote>
<br />
Really? The Muslim Contact Unit has an untarnished reputation, as you would
expect from an organisation run by a secret unit and which has never been critically examined. We
should remember that Lambert's animal rights work sounded fine from <a href="http://www.spinwatch.org/index.php/blog/item/270-bob-lambert-replies-to-spinwatch">his own account</a>, but <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/13/caroline-lucas-undercover-policeman-bob-lambert-firebombing_n_1592661.html">subsequent revelations</a> indicate that it was something
else entirely.<br />
<br />
The Muslim Contact Unit was set up by Lambert and his favoured protege Jim Boyling after the 9/11 attacks. It was ostensibly an outreach unit to foster good links between police and Muslim communities, and to acknowledge that devout Islam is not a threat to the wider society. And maybe that's all it was. I have no evidence to the contrary.<br />
<br />
But one has to wonder why Special Branch, the secret intelligence gathering wing of the police, would fund a unit if it wasn't there to gather intelligence. If you're not spying why use your most skilled spies who have little experience of anything else?<br />
<br />
<b>ACADEMIA COMES OUT OF THE IVORY TOWER</b><br />
<br />
With all this, it's east to see why there's a furore about Lambert lecturing in criminology to tomorrow's police managers. Bonino grasps for a philosophical assault on the criticism, saying<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
the <a href="https://islingtonagainstpolicespies.wordpress.com/">campaign urging Lambert’s dismissal</a> is undermined by its own hubris.
Not only does it fail to differentiate between academic expertise and
morality (are all lecturers made fully accountable for their
non-academic past?), it also elevates morality to an absolute virtue
floating outside the realm of a complex political world. </blockquote>
<br />
A <a href="http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comment/letters/who-will-police-the-police/2018357.article">group of academics have responded</a> to Bonino in this week's Times Higher Education, saying<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The growing clamour from politicians, opinion formers and the wider public for Lambert to be sacked comes precisely because morality is not divorced from the political world.
<br />
<br />
Ethics must be integral to teaching, and nowhere more so than in the tutoring of those who will have privileged power over the lives of citizens and the political movements essential to democratic society. </blockquote>
<br />
<br />
Should lecturers made accountable for their
non-academic past? Yes, if it is a profoundly unethical past that seriously undermines their suitability for the academic post. If lecturer in medicine were revealed to have performed secret, grossly unprofessional experiments on citizens, including sexual deception, that led to record compensation payouts to their victims, they could not expect to retain their post.<br />
<br />
Likewise, when a criminology lecturer devoted decades to abuse of citizens and the counter-democratic undermining of campaigns for seemingly no reason other than they threaten established power, it demolishes their credibility and legitimacy.<br />
<br />
<b>DID THE LIAR LIE?</b><br />
<br />
Bonino says <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The campaigners disregard the authority and competence of universities to assess and monitor the fitness of their employees.</blockquote>
<br />
One
of two things happened: <br />
<br />
1) Lambert disclosed the full detail of his
relevant past when he applied for the job - information that official
reports have spent years ferreting out and are still not at the bottom
of, matters that Lambert has flatly refused to answer questions about,
details that he says he even kept secret from his wife and family - and
the institution gave him the nod nonetheless; or <br />
<br />
2) Lambert failed to
disclose a swathe of information relevant to his post that is now
embarrassing the universities and damaging their standing, deceiving
them as he deceived the campaigners he infiltrated and the women he
abused.<br />
<br />
Either way, the universities that employ him have questions to answer. But it doesn't stretch credulity to imagine a state-trained liar with decades of experience being able to deceive a university's recruitment staff.<br />
<br />
Bonino thinks the campaign against Lambert<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
ignores the specific context in which Lambert acted and the morass of moral ambiguities inherent in covert policing.</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
Even in that world, Lambert and the SDS were exceptionally corrupt and depraved. The way he and his charges behaved was, in the words of people with a
higher level of policing authority than Lambert ever achieved, '<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jan/19/protest-groups-undercover-mark-kennedy">grossly unprofessional</a>' and an '<a href="http://www.derbyshire.police.uk/Documents/About-Us/Herne/Operation-Herne---Report-2---Allegations-of-Peter-Francis.pdf">abject failure</a>'.<br />
<br />
He did not merely make a personal mistake but developed a methodology using tactics that have shocked the public and been unequivocally slammed by senior police officers. Under his management, that methodology was emulated by those he was in charge of.<br />
<br />
This is neither intrinsic to covert policing as Bonino
asserts, nor is it the 'extremely rich experience in professional
practice' that London Metropolitan University's <a href="http://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2015/01/21/university-tries-to-defend-bob-lambert/">spokesperson claims</a>.<br />
<br />
<b>WHAT MORE DO YOU NEED? IT MAY BE COMING SOON</b><br />
<br />
The question should really be approached from the other side - if all this is not enough to render him unfit to teach in this field, what is?<br />
<br />
Unlike someone contrite, he has not readily admitted his wrongdoings until they have been revealed by others. This is the measure of the man today.<br />
<br />
Even after he was exposed he did not make contact with his activist ex-partner and their son despite knowing of the risk to the child's health from a genetic condition. Instead she found out the truth by seeing it in a newspaper in 2012. She has <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/the-spy-who-loved-me-2">said</a> that, had she not done so, Lambert would have taken the secret to his grave.<br />
<br />
So one wonders what else the range of ongoing official inquiries, criminal investigations and court cases will add to the already appalling list.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-34051948388913797792015-02-05T00:03:00.000+00:002015-12-30T13:38:27.490+00:00Political Secret Police UnitsDon't let the police self-investigations like <a href="http://www.derbyshire.police.uk/About-us/Operation-Herne/Operation-Herne.aspx">Operation Herne</a> fool you with their focus on the disbanded Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) - this is not a historic problem. The political secret police are still with us.<br />
<br />
The shifting names and different units leave us awash in acronyms. Here, as far as I'm able to tell, is what's what (corrections welcome!). It's an alphabet soup that swirls before the eyes, so thanks to Jane Lawson for designing the diagram to make it easier to grasp (click to enlarge; right click and open in new tab to have it alongside as you read the post).<br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
<b>IN THE BEGINNING </b><br />
<br />
The SDS was a secret unit within the Metropolitan Police Special Branch from 1968 to 2008. Formed as the Special Operations Squad after an demonstration against the Vietnam War kicked off in March 1968, its temporary infiltration was decided to be useful and made permanent at the end of the year. Somewhere in late 1972 or early 1973 it was renamed the Special Demonstration Squad, a moniker it kept until 1997 when it was renamed the Special Duties Section.<br />
<br />
There were other units who amassed and collated intelligence from the SDS and other sources.<br />
<br />
The Animal Rights National Index (ARNI),
had been set up in 1985 as 'the ALF squad' before changing its name a year later. It seems that it may have expanded to
include activists from other movements. From the early 1990s the Southern Intelligence
Unit (SIU) was based in Wiltshire and, with its Cumbrian sister team the Northern Intelligence Unit (NIU), ran a database of eco protesters,
ravers, travellers and free party types. There is some indication
of a third unit that focused on hunt saboteurs. These units had no 'operational role' of fake-identity spies in the field, they just gathered
information and advised police forces.<br />
<br />
Now comes the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). Sounds
like a cosy staff body, and indeed it was more like that when it was formed in 1948. But in 1997 it
became a private company and got itself funding to flog police
information. Then it took on running the spy stuff by establishing
the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU).<br />
<br />
<b>NATIONAL PUBLIC ORDER INTELLIGENCE UNIT (NPOIU) </b><br />
<br />
Established in March 1999 the NPOIU was, along with the Terrorism Act 2000, ID
cards and detention without trial, part of a raft of New Labour
attacks on civil liberties (those who think of state repression as being a right wing tendency should note that the SDS was also founded by a Labour government). <a href="http://www.derbyshire.police.uk/About-us/Operation-Herne/Operation-Herne.aspx">Operation Herne</a>, the police's self-investigation into secret political policing, <a href="http://www.derbyshire.police.uk/Documents/About-Us/Herne/Operation-Herne---Report-1---Covert-Identities.pdf">says</a> that the NPOIU was formed as a reaction to the large 1995 protests against the export of live animals from Shoreham in Sussex. <br />
<br />
The running of the NPOIU was given the the Met, and so it was, to all intents and puposes, a unit within the Met's Special Branch. Although it used serving Met officers for
NPOIU spies, because ACPO was (and still is) a private company it was exempt from Freedom of
Information (FoI) legislation and so protected even further from public scrutiny.<br />
<br />
Like the SDS, the NPOIU was directly funded by the Home Office, which hints at an answer to the big question - who ordered all this spying and authorised its methods?<br />
<br />
The NPOIU absorbed SIU/NIU and effectively replaced ARNI running a database of political activists. It also had an 'operational role,' that is to say they deployed undercover agents in target groups under the aegis of its Confidential Intelligence Unit (CIU). Whilst the SDS was London-based, the CIU officers from the NPOIU went national. The NPOIU was granted a huge budget and began by
putting an officer using the stolen identity '<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/feb/06/rod-richardson-protester-never-was">Rod Richardson</a>' into a group of anti-capitalist activists in Nottingham.<br />
<br />
Within a couple of months of Richardson's departure in 2003, those activists
were joined by Mark Kennedy, aka Mark Stone. It was his exposure by activists in late 2010 that alerted the world to the existence of the political secret police.<br />
<br />
For Operation Herne and other inquiries to focus on the long-defunct SDS but leave
out the most notorious undercover officer of them all shows how
incomplete an SDS-only picture is. Some managers worked for
both the SDS and NPOIU, and officers from both units knowingly
overlapped in deployments. Whilst SDS and NPOIU officers knew each other, nonetheless there
may well have been some rivalry. As the case of 'Rod Richardson' shows, the NPOIU wasn't
initially warned against using the woefully anachronistic practice of stealing the identities of dead children. <br />
<br />
As an aside, in 2001 the former ARNI boss Rod Leeming left Special Branch to set up a
private spy firm <a href="http://www.globalopen-uk.com/">Global Open</a>. In early 2010 he <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jan/12/mark-kennedy-policeman-corporate-spy">head-hunted Mark Kennedy</a> before
his police contract had even finished. This indicates that that it's a fairly standard career path, and suggests such firms are tipped off about officers who are
leaving and cold-call them. It seems unlikely that Kennedy was the
first one they got. With virtually no oversight or firm rules, private spies can
stay in the field indefinitely. Indeed, had Kennedy been smart enough
to change his name by deed poll to Mark Stone, he'd have had ID in the right name and would probably still be spying today.<br />
<br />
<b>THE UNHOLY TRINITY - NPOIU, NETCU and NDET</b><br />
<br />
In 2004 ACPO created a new post, the National Co-ordinator Domestic Extremism, which oversaw both the NPOIU and a new unit, the <a href="http://www.corporatewatch.org/news/2014/aug/06/re-visiting-netcu-police-collaboration-industry">National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit</a> (NETCU). NETCU was established during the drafting of the 2005 amendment Serious Organised Crime and Police Act which made it illegal
to 'interfere with the contractual relations of an animal research
organisation' or to 'intimidate' employees of an animal research
organisation. Run from Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire, NETCU's remit
was defined as 'prevention' and it was tasked with helping companies such as Huntingdon Life Sciences frustrate
campaigns waged against them by animal rights activists.<br />
<br />
NETCU didn't just advise corporations about threats to their profits from campaigns, it took a proactive political role in discrediting and undermining those campaigns. Its
website linked to the pro-vivisection Research Defence Society, and the unit
issued several press releases boasting of activists being prevented from
doing street collections.<br />
<br />
NETCU's 'mission-creep' saw it
move to encompass environmental and climate activists. It also helped the
illegal construction blacklisting company the Consulting Association (as documentation from a November 2008 meeting between NETCU and the Consulting Association obtained through an <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/12/police-blacklist-construction-workers-watchdog">FoI request confirms</a>). Additionally, the Independent Police Complaints Commission <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/12/police-blacklist-construction-workers-watchdog">says it was likely</a> that every constabulary's Special Branch will have supplied information about citizens to the construction blacklist.<br />
<br />
A third ACPO unit, the National Domestic Extremism Team, was set up
in 2005. It was intended to provide an investigatory function, drawing on intelligence gathered through NPOIU spies as well as <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/mar/06/police-surveillance-database-activists-intelligence">Forward Intelligence Teams and Evidence Gatherers</a>, for use by forces across the country. All three ACPO units - the NPOIU, NETCU and the NDET - were overseen by the National Co-ordinator Domestic Extremism, or NCDE. Around the same time, direct management of the NPOIU (and presumably the two allied units) passed to ACPO.<br />
<br />
<b>GOODBY SDS, HELLO NDEU</b><br />
<br />
In 2006 the Metropolitan Police's merged its intelligence-oriented Special Branch (aka SO12) with the investigatory Anti-Terrorist Branch (SO13) to form Counter Terrorism Command (known as
SO15). <br />
<br />
SO15 is currently headed by Richard Walton. He was moved from his post following <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/mar/07/met-counter-terrorism-chief-moved-lawrence-scandal">revelations about his key role</a> in the SDS' spying on Stephen Lawrence's family in the Ellison report last year. He was quietly <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/oct/31/stephen-lawrence-commander-richard-walton-ipcc-police">reinstated</a> in December even though he is still under investigation.<br />
<br />
With Special Branch, the SDS' parent unit, now part of Counter Terrorism Command and much of the SDS's work superseded by the NPOIU, the SDS faded. It has been suggested that when Counter Terrorism Command officers took over the SDS they were alarmed at its targets and methods and moved to close it down. The <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jul/24/undercover-police-unit-collected-information-family-campaigners">unit is described</a> as 'having lost its moral compass' by the time of its closure in 2008 - as if it ever had one in the first place.<br />
<br />
The three ACPO units (the NPOIU, NETCU and the
NDET) were merged into the National Domestic Extremism Unit (NDEU)
in early 2011. At that time they had <a href="https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/national_domestic_extremism_unit">a combined budget of around £9m per year</a>.<br />
<br />
At the same time as the name change, management of the unit was then passed from the FoI scrutiny-shielded
‘private company’ ACPO to the (not exactly accountable themselves) Metropolitan Police under
the ‘lead force’ model. There had been several reviews pushing for this, including Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary's report 'Counter Terrorism Value For Money'.<br />
<br />
Certainly, it will have taken a lot of discussion and planning so it seems very unlikely that the exposure of Kennedy in October 2010 played a part. This didn't stop government ministers <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jan/18/covert-policing-cleanup-acpo">trying to portray it as a response</a> a mere week after the Kennedy story hit the media. <br />
<br />
The NDEU was brought to operate under the umbrella
of the Met's Counter Terrorism Command. <br />
<br />
As happened when they were three separate units, all the ACPO political police operations under the NDEU were overseen by the National
Co-ordinator Domestic Extremism, though the rank for the post was <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8131131/Did-police-cutbacks-allow-extremists-to-hijack-student-demonstrations.html">downgraded</a> from Assistant Chief Constable to Chief Superintendent, the first holder of the post being Detective Chief Superintendent <a href="http://www.civilliberty.org.uk/newsdetail.php?newsid=1123">Adrian Tudway</a>.<br />
<br />
Despite the budget for
political spy units being public when they were run by ACPO, in 2012 <a href="https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/national_domestic_extremism_unit?unfold=1">the Met refused to follow suit</a>, and with its gift for exaggerated flourishes it cited text from an Al-Qaeda training manual by way of a reason.<br />
<br />
<b>MODERN TIMES: MERGERS AND YET ANOTHER ACRONYM</b><br />
<br />
TheNDEU's remit changed at the
same time as its restructure and it no longer carries out undercover
operations. It has taken on the 'prevention and detection' tracks
previously associated with NETCU and NDET, maintaining a database of
activists and working with companies and organisations that activists
campaign against. Kennedy-style deployments of undercover
officers are now run either by the Special Project Team
(SPT) of the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command, or one
of the regional SPTs run by North West, North East and
West Midlands Counter Terrorism Units.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.hmic.gov.uk/media/national-police-units-which-provide-intelligence-on-criminality-associated-with-protest-progress-review.pdf">Official reports</a>
say that this change is, indeed, a result of the exposure of undercover
officers as the established anti-terrorism units were felt to have
'more robust procedures for the deployment of undercover officers' than
their NPOIU/SDS-derived police equivalents.<br />
<br />
In April 2011 Tudway sent <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/sep/02/english-defence-league-muslims-police">a private email confirming</a> that the English Defence League were not domestic extremists.
Organising racist violence on the streets is fine because it's
understood and safe, whereas fluffy but explicitly anti-capitalist
things like Climate Camp get multiple officers like Mark Kennedy and
Lynn Watson. This isn't key to the story, it just illustrates the fact that it's not threat of political public disorder, damage to property or violence to citizens that concerns the secret police - it's threats to the present parliamentary political norm and police credibility.<br />
<br />
In 2012 the NDEU split its work into two subunits. The Protest and Disorder Intelligence Unit (PDIU) collates and provides strategic analysis relating to protest and disorder across the UK, whilst the Domestic Extremism Intelligence Unit (DEIU) provides strategic analysis of domestic extremism intelligence within the UK and overseas.<br />
<br />
Quite how they define 'protesters' as separate from 'domestic extremists' isn't clear. Given their very wide and loose use of 'domestic extremism' in the past, it is worrying that they feel the need to spy on even less dangerous campaigners. But it was ever thus. As Merlyn Rees, Home Secretary in the Labour government 1976-79, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jul/24/special-demonstration-squad-undercover-unit-analysis">said</a>, the role of Special Branch is "to collect information on
those who I think cause problems for the state". Although the two subunits are physically separate, they share an
intelligence database, the National Special Branch Intelligence System
(NSBIS), implying that there is no clear boundary between protesters and domestic extremists. <br />
<br />
As if in an attempt to close the book on an embarrassing subject, in May 2013 the NDEU was renamed the National Domestic Extremism and
Disorder Intelligence Unit (NDEDIU). <br />
<br />
But there is no reason to believe that the outrages perpetrated by the SDS, NPOIU and associated units have stopped, despite the musical chairs and name changes. When political campaigns are counter-democratically undermined by the state, and participants subjected to sustained psychological and sexual abuse, changing the acronym doesn't change the immorality and injustice.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-46605809962634372352014-12-28T22:29:00.000+00:002015-03-26T16:36:29.435+00:00Book Review: One Blood by Chris Penhaligon<div class="MsoNormal">
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This is one of those books that once you put it down it’s
hard to pick up again.<br />
<br />
Going under the name Chris Penhaligon, the author tells
of being a uniformed copper in the 1980s and 90s who then became a private
detective/paid informer. <br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It reads like a first draft of something by someone who’s
never really written before, which is exactly what it is. It’s <a href="http://bookstore.authorhouse.com/Products/SKU-000371040/One-Blood.aspx">published by Author House</a>, Random House’s print on demand imprint. That is to say, you send
them a PDF and pay them a bit of money, they knock up a cover, give it an ISBN
and put it on Amazon.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even the interesting stories are missing hooks and told arse
about face. Pretty much everything that could make a piece of writing grasp
your imagination is absent, and the actual point of the book is largely
missing. If you don’t know why the main character is doing anything, you cannot
have any connection or sympathy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
At least it’s fairly short. I’ve done the heavy lifting for
you and got to the end. I hope to save others from a similar fate.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>CAREER OPPORTUNITIES</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The book was published in July 2010, four months before <a href="http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/10/466705.html">Mark Kennedy was outed</a>, and indeed in the week after Kennedy’s story detonated in the press in
January 2011 Penhaligon wrote <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jan/11/survival-undercover-cop">a piece for the Guardian</a>.<br />
<br />
What is interesting– presuming Penhaligon is telling the
truth – is that the Met's Special Branch pay long-term private infiltrators to go
into political groups autonomously with no oversight. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He writes of being in some politically iconic
circumstances. He says that as a squaddie he was so close to a 1977 Belfast car
bomb that he never fully recovered his hearing. He then guarded Hitler’s deputy
fuhrer Rudolf Hess in Spandau prison. In the police he was posted at the
notorious Stoke Newington police station at the height of its controversy for
racism, brutality and corruption. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a VIP protection officer he guarded
General Pinochet. He worked alongside President Mubarak’s secret police. As a
private security contractor he worked for Greenpeace protecting them from
Amazon loggers’ death squads, then as an informer paid by Special Branch he spied
on Greenpeace. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He may be puffing himself up a bit. Certainly his claim of
the car bomb being the first such remote controlled device in Northern Ireland
is contradicted by documented cases <a href="http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/chron/1972.html">as early as 1972</a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>DON’T LOOK INSIDE</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Beyond the precise truth, there’s a bigger question. How
does he feel about those events, what do they mean to him and other people?<br />
<br />
We
have no idea because it seems that he has no idea either. There is a dearth of
self-analysis or even self-awareness, no clue as to his motivation and you’re
left with the distinct impression that there simply is no underlying
philosophy. The space where most of us put morality and ethics is occupied by a
subconscious evaluation of who’s got the most money and power, coupled to
automatic presumption that those people are right and good. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He makes comments such as ‘I felt it was time for a change,’
or ‘he was one of the best detective sergeants on the squad,’ without any
indication why. There is no questioning of authority’s power or motivations,
only of its reliability and efficiency in exercising that power.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Like many children of police and military families, he has
disdain for politics yet strong allegiance to an ill defined idea of queen and
country. Obedience is felt to be a virtue, even though it’s obeying the top
brass they complain about and say they have little respect for. State
authorisation – the enactment of the politics they dismiss – makes it all feel
justified, so they can then get on with the personal satisfaction of excitement.
It also helps alienated people such as army kids feel wanted and useful.
Personal alienation is key to the effectiveness of the undercover officer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There is simply no questioning of the morality of his work.
His aim is just to climb a ladder that he imagines exists, to be working for the most
powerful people possible. So when Greenpeace offer a job, he takes it. But
Special Branch are more powerful than Greenpeace so he switches sides – working
as a double agent and presumably paid by both sides – with no compunction.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He cringingly prefaces the book with a poem in block
capitals telling us<br />
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
MORTAL SHADOWS WORK IN WAYS YOU’LL NEVER KNOW<br />
SO SLEEP EASY AT NIGHT FOR THEY WORK AGAINST THE FOE</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But who is this deadly foe that he protects people from?
Amazonian loggers? Greenpeace opposing the Amazonian loggers? His double
paycheques say it’s both. The only conclusion is; the foe is whoever the most
powerful person prepared to pay you says it is.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When MI5 approach him to sort of get close to some Russian
people with the implication of some sort of dodgy connections – though we’re
never told what – well, that trumps Special Branch. He has no moral judgement
at all beyond the instinct that the British state and its agents are always
politically right.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This may be because, like Kennedy and other undercover
officers such as <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/covert-police-officer-after-12-years-undercover-i-was-a-broken-biscuit-2185729.html">Liam Thomas</a>, Penhaligon has never known a life outside those
institutions. Like Kennedy, his dad was a police officer, like Thomas he had a
military career before joining the police. Like the police officers who, as a
matter of policy, all had spouses and families (bosses felt this reduced the
risk of them ‘going native’), Penhaligon says has a family that he is absent
from much of the time. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These men were of a generation who saw The Sweeney on telly
when they were too young to realise Jack Regan is an anti-hero, not a role
model.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Signing up to protect Greenpeace and then spend years
betraying them doesn’t bother him in the least. Again this is reminiscent of
Kennedy, hiring Max Clifford to sell his story to the Mail on Sunday, complete
with the first public naming of his traumatised son, stabbing any back within
reach if there’s money in it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>LEARNING THE TRADE</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Born in early 1958, he grew up in Lambeth. Joining the army
at 16, he served with 2 Para in Northern Ireland. In mid 1979 he left the army
to join Thames Valley Police. Soon after, he signed up for the Territorial Army
and swiftly felt greater commitment to the latter.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the mid 1980s he left the police to be a ‘security
consultant’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and approached<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
a South
London based PI company run by a load of typical ex Flying Squad wide
boys…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>looking for an undercover operative
to into a scenario long term. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They were investigating thefts from a food company and
Penhaligon got a job to see if he could find out which workers were
responsible, supervised by the Regional Crime Squad. The crossover of an
ex-police private company working in conjunction with the police is noteworthy.<br />
<br />
Penhaligon steals some donuts and fish fingers and gets arrested as part of his
pre-authorised further theft. He is released without charge to be met and
congratulated by the manager of the private firm alongside at least one
Regional Crime Squad officer. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This mix of public and private investigation – ex-cops
deploying other ex-cops in conjunction with actual cops who grant immunity from
prosecution to the private spies – shows how well used the revolving door
between police and private spies is. It’s a crossover dealt with in forensic detail in <a href="http://secretmanoeuvresinthedark.wordpress.com/">Eveline Lubbers</a>’ compelling and essential book <a href="http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745331850&,%20http://www.plutobooks.com/display.asp?K=9780745331850&&osa=sync&os9sync=C33EU96988293X989ZWMQC&os9iam=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.plutobooks.com%2Fdisplay.asp%3FK%3D9780745331850%26">Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark</a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>THE COPPER RETURNS</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Penhaligon rejoined the police in 1990, attending the
Metropolitan Police’s Hendon training college. Eight months after qualifying he
went to the notoriously brutal Tactical Support Group (TSG). He talks of their
‘old-style’ approach saying, ‘there were limits, if only morally’. Not so much
legally, then. He served in the TSG riot squad for the Notting Hill Carnival in
August 1994.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On 10 October 1992 he arrived at the TSG’s headquarters,
Paddington Green Police Station, which also housed high-security units for
terrorist suspects. He was caught in the blast from an IRA bomb in a phone box
outside the station.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After a brief secondment to Essex police, he returned to the
Met to what he refers to as the ‘infamous Stoke Newington’ station. The base
for police renowned for profound corruption and racism, in January 1983 Colin Roach
had been shot dead in the entrance. Despite the inquest jury following the
coroner’s direction to record a verdict of suicide, Roach had not entered the
station with a gun and the crime scene was comprehensively inconsistent with
suicide. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/the-wrong-side-of-the-law-the-people-of-stoke-newington-in-the-london-borough-of-hackney--the-poorest-in-england--have-lost-faith-in-their-police-allegations-of-fabricating-evidence-gratuitous-violence-and-drugdealing-have-blurred-the-line-between-lawenforcers-and-lawbreakers-1505753.html">long
litany</a> of wrongdoing at Stoke Newington - drug trafficking, perjury,
racketeering, brutality and racism - is not mentioned by Penhaligon beyond that
initial use of ‘infamous,’ then a later complaint that ‘good hardworking officers’
got confronted with ‘offhanded attitudes and allegations of being a bent copper
from Stoke Newington, the place where people were murdered and abused and
fitted up’.<br />
<br />
I suppose that’s one of the unpleasant side effects of being part
of a team from a place where people are murdered and abused and fitted up.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Around 1994 he tried to join the Met’s covert operations
group SO10 – the one that would later be responsible for the shooting of Jean
Charles de Menezes - but was refused as he was felt to be too old at 36. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He sought to capitalise on the intertwined worlds of police
and private spying, saying,<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I had accumulated a seriously strong core
skill-base with a high amount of courses under my belt that were not obtainable
outside of government circles. If I could transfer those skills outside of the
police, I would.</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But before he could do that, he had a successful application
to join SO16, the diplomatic protection group. He says he became interested in
General Pinochet’s house arrest at Wentworth so managed to get deployed there.
We have no clue why he was interested, nor do we get any information about
Pinochet apart from him being tall and well built, and that the alleged ill
health that was used to fight his extradition may or may not have been true.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In October 2000 he left the police. In 2002 he’s chief
instructor at a military base near Nasr in Egypt. It was run by the brother of
a senior officer in President Mubarak’s secret police. He says he became good
friends with this man and spent time at their base learning about ‘counter
terrorism’. Again, no further detail or analysis.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>THE GREENPEACE MISSION</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
An ‘ex-SBS officer’ working for a private security firm recruits Penhaligon. It's not clear what he means as, in classic copper style, he loves using acronyms without explanation. The SBS is the Special Boat Service, like the SAS Special Air Service but they didn't get the Iranian Embassy gig so didn't get the publicity. However it seems more likely that it's a typo for either SB - Special Branch - or perhaps the SDS, the Met’s secret Special Demonstration Squad of political infiltrators.<br />
<br />
Whatever, Penhaligon says he was hired to provide specialist
driving training. Such firms certainly exist, such as Global Open, set up by Rod Leeming, the Special Branch officer who ran the Animal Rights National Index, and who inked a contract with Mark Kennedy before he'd even finished with the police.<br />
<br />
His first client was a Greenpeace official – for some reason,
he is amazed that it was a woman of slight build. They were working in Manaus against
Amazonian deforestation and had received death threats from the loggers. Before
he goes, Special Branch officers hire him to spy on Greenpeace. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For most of us, this would provide a stark moral dilemma;
one role works to support Greenpeace, the other to undermine them. Penhaligon
has no qualms of any kind, appears to be unaware that there could even be a
conflict.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On return to the UK, Greenpeace recruited him to their
Actions Unit. As anti-fascist direct action group Antifa found with Mark
Kennedy, having a small, centralised group of activists means that it only
takes one mole to get a clear overview of what is going on.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Special Branch are pleased with this new role and, at last,
we have a passing mention of the conflict. It was ‘weird’ to be training people
to do what he was doing against them. And that’s it. The fact that Greenpeace
‘caused many headaches with their antics within government circles’ is all we
need to know that stifling them is vital work.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He reports on a brainstorm-meeting idea to<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
identify and
embarrass players from Chelsea football club, some of whom were known to use
Range Rovers, and obviously carbon emissions were on GP’s agenda and so became
a target. From a legal point of view I had an obligation and a duty of care to
protect life, and so SB were informed of the attentions of GP against Chelsea.</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Quite how embarrassing a Range Rover driver is a threat to
life isn’t clear. As with the secret police themselves, Penhaligon seems unable
to distinguish between a threat to life and a threat to the reputation of the
powerful. Regarding a non-plan to do something harmless as life-threatening is bizarre.<br />
<br />
Perhaps it’s relevant
that, of the 14 Special Branch political undercover officers exposed, we know the football allegiance
of four, three of whom – Mark Kennedy, Jim Boyling and Bob Lambert<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>– are Chelsea fans.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then in November 2005 comes his part in what his grandiose
back cover blurb calls ‘an attack on Downing Street’. He drives a truck of coal
that is to be <a href="http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/downing-street-blocked-with-tonnes-of-coal">tipped</a>
at the end of the road. Interestingly for a private operator, he says Special Branch gave
him a signed document giving him immunity from prosecution as long as he
doesn’t act as agent provocateur.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On a subsequent action he is annoyed at the limited immunity
he’s offered and says he felt it was<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
a system of “use and burn” – in simple
terms, they want you on the job for everything they can get, yet would leave
you open to anything, and they wouldn’t give a toss if you got nicked or your
business was ruined.</blockquote>
<br />
Ah, the glamorous life of the copper’s nark.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Soon after he had a falling out with a senior Greenpeace
official and bitterly says Greenpeace UK have never employed him since. Yet he
claims that within weeks he was hired by Greenpeace International to go to
Turkey to train Greenpeacers from around the world.<br />
<br />
Rather like the way that
post-police Mark Kennedy stayed with the activists he knew as a private spy and
ran a training session on dealing with infiltration at the 2010 Earth First
summer gathering, Penhaligon teaches ‘research, intelligence and
investigation’. He describes his hacking of Greenpeace computers providing
material not only for UK police but Interpol and foreign police forces too.<br />
<br />
The camp was infiltrated by journalists who he spots and exposes.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Here I was
working for SB against Greenpeace, and then working for Greenpeace against the
international press, what a situation – it was win-win all the way for me, I
couldn’t lose!</blockquote>
<br />
I can’t help but wonder what he’s winning apart from money. Certainly,
he’s not winning friends, integrity or any advances in coherent philosophy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And here, having unmasked the journalist, 89 pages in, we
have a mention of self-doubt, albeit instantly dismissed with an attempt at
humour.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I resorted back to my original task of getting intelligence for SB,
and not GP. People have asked me if I have identity crises, to which I simply
reply, “only at weekends, when my name’s Veronica”.</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Savour it, people. It’s not only the extent of his wit but
also as deep as he goes for political analysis or personal beliefs in the
career he’s devoted his life to. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>CROSSED WIRES AND CONTRADICTIONS</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After 130 pages he justifies the deceit, saying,<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
all these
roles are only what a terrorist has done before and may do in future, so what
government agencies do in response is not out of perspective at all.</blockquote>
<br />
As if
‘they do it too’ justifies anything. As if we’re supposed to believe his main focus,
Greenpeace, put deep cover spies into BP or national governments. As if
Greenpeace and their ilk qualify as terrorist.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He talks of Greenpeace parties where<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
the use of cannabis
was rife, leaving the air thick and acrid with the possibility of absorbing the
drug through passive means. This was a dangerous factor to me as an operative
and left me vulnerable, so I faked being asleep in the corner.</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This comes half a page after describing drinking ‘cases of
beer’ at the same events that presumably left him sober and of sound judgement.
Like many of the undercover police officers - Kennedy, Lynn Watson, Rod
Richardson – here’s someone who eschews illegal drugs but is a big drinker. He
later says ‘I personally have a zero tolerance [sic] of drug abuse in any
form,’ without irony.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In June 2005 Penhaligon accepts an offer of personal
protection work for a wealthy American attorney in Russia and Ukraine. The
client was ‘clearly a man of great wealth who had earned this by sheer hard
work and not through an inheritance,’ as if there are no other ways to acquire
money.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On return to the UK he briefs Special Branch and British
security services on his work. This is a private spy volunteering information
got from a private contract with an American lawyer to British government
officials. Again, he has no inkling that anyone might have ethical quandaries
about such duplicity, let alone legal qualms.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>FROM RUSSIA WITH VAGUENESS</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The book moves into its final, frankly bizarre, act. UK
secret services want him to make contacts with some Russian people. It’s
strongly intimated they are mafia, though they may be secret services, it’s
never really made clear. What they are planning is never even hinted at. He
spends a long time meeting and remeeting someone called Ludmilla. Eventually
she takes him to meet some men who have a circumspect conversation about his
skills. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She comes to the UK so he rents a flat and they spend a week
together. They have superficial chats, they go sightseeing. They don’t form a
close personal bond, nor have any offers of any shady work. He spends a lot of
time shopping. What he looks for and what he thinks about it aren’t disclosed.
Maybe I’m not consumerist enough but using the single word ‘shopping’ to write
off hours at a throw, time after time, is staggeringly vague. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He calls himself ‘an important cog in the machinery of
political murders and espionage,’ which is somewhat overstating his position as
a minor informer who isn’t even directly employed. His repeated complaints of
being left unsupported by MI5 hardly seems like the treatment of vital agent
would receive. This mission is ‘the pinnacle of my efforts,’ but you’re left
wondering ‘efforts to do what?’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>SOUND AND FURY SIGNIFYING
NOTHING</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Where does this all leave him?<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Undercover work is much a
game of minds and bluffs, but the risk you run with that is someone can come to
believe what they have been rehearsing is actually true. The human body does
not allow for complete alienation from emotions and feelings, and, at first, in
some cases, that switch cannot fully be switched off or on.</blockquote>
<br />
It’s the first
genuinely interesting thing he says. What does he do to unpick this tangle and
maintain a balanced life of clarity? All we get is advice to take a day to get
into character.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He later positions himself as Britain’s hope for Olympic
gold in the men’s freestyle vagueness event by explaining<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
if you don’t
recognise or read a situation coming, you are likely to be embroiled in a heap
load of crap and in a situation you cannot get out of no matter how hard you
try.</blockquote>
<br />
Well, thanks for that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As with interviews by exposed undercover police officers
Mark Kennedy – whose use of language is strikingly similar - and Bob Lambert,
the cagey lack of bean-spilling leaves you with the feeling that you haven’t
actually been told anything, just heard an indistinct hubbub.<br />
<br />
Even when he is
detailed, Penhaligon’s inability to make a clear point or be able to pace a
story leaves you just as bewildered as those hush-hush half-told anecdotes. Put
together, they make for a frustrating, tedious and largely pointless book.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>NO POP, NO STYLE - THE GRAMMAR NAZI PROCLAIMS</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The title itself, One Blood, is hollow, oblique and
irritating. Nothing in the book explains or alludes to it, and given the vision
of a riven society, it makes no sense at all.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It could be used by the editors’ union as evidence of the
need for their role. Occasional typos and grammatical errors are what happen
when writing goes unchecked. This blog, like every other, undoubtedly has many.
But when 184 pages drip with them it gives a stuttering flicker to your reading
that wears you down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The writing is a
self-sabotaging obstacle to understanding, rather than its vehicle. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A full stop in mid sentence breaks the flow, especially when
you’re bored already.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The lack of a
comma changes meaning, as in, ‘they were in black overalls, both had tashes
five foot eight inches tall’. That really is a hell of a tash. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The malapropisms and homonyms also trip you up. Your South
London locale is a manor, not a manner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Metaphors are mixed – ‘remaining firmly on the fence as a safety net’ is
an especially choice image - and the whole thing is desiccated by an absence of
adjectives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hopefully he’s sold enough
copies to save up and buy himself a bag of paragraph breaks, because two pages
without one is a hefty ask of the reader.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He further alienates with unexplained jargon and that
particular copperspeak that gives everyone dry personal identifiers such as
‘the female approached me and...’. This, in turn, leads to unwitting racism
when he only notes ethnicity of people who deviate from the norm of being
white. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With trademark clumsiness he explains<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
the techniques used
in the art of undercover work or surveillance is not an exact science, mainly
due to the fact that these operations are human orientated and of course
involves humans at some point.</blockquote>
<br />
Quite when they don’t involve humans isn’t
explained. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
His arrogance grates too, deceiving people and then ‘I
smiled to myself and had a laugh at their expense’, or ‘laughing your socks off
inside thinking what an idiot they are’ for simply not knowing that they’d been
lied to.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
His sexism hardly endears him to you either, talking of
‘woman type chores’ and how 'East European women are well endowed in the looks
department’.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Copperspeak also includes extraneous and/or overuse of
Latin-rooted words. You or I might walk down the road but a copper proceeds upon the highway in an orderly manner.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I have been accused many times of either analysing people
or talking to them like a police officer. That part of it, I am glad to say,
does not in any way form part of my personality now,</blockquote>
<br />
he says,
self-underminingly.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<br />
<b>AND THERE'S MORE </b><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In doing the googling for links in this post I discovered that a
new book appeared in February with the same stories entitled <a href="http://www.johnblakepublishing.co.uk/e-store/True-Lies-PB.html">True Lies: The incredible true story of the man who infiltrated Greenpeace</a>, with a <a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/inside-greenpeace-ross-slater-reveals-3221823">summary article</a> in the Mirror in March.<br />
<br />
This time the protagonist is named
as Ross Slater. Published by John Blake who specialise in ghost written
material such as Jordan’s “autobiography”, it credits a co-author, Douglas
Wight.<br />
<br />
Oh fuck, do I have to wade through that one too?</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-79595033114031024762014-10-25T19:49:00.002+01:002014-10-25T19:49:34.848+01:00My Upcoming Public Things on Spycops<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAa-kLOv9L914b6AgR_QhDST9JJ2CtkpksHHWPEsV4jTQOy6Rehb9eO6oNJQ-1LgAMUZ0iS5IACNaOpIY8Zc6Ze99Va3VL2ANO6EWWooHmFuCu6zeJIOEipRZeZ05GyJFnkFlRbQ/s1600/we+do+not+consent+banner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAa-kLOv9L914b6AgR_QhDST9JJ2CtkpksHHWPEsV4jTQOy6Rehb9eO6oNJQ-1LgAMUZ0iS5IACNaOpIY8Zc6Ze99Va3VL2ANO6EWWooHmFuCu6zeJIOEipRZeZ05GyJFnkFlRbQ/s1600/we+do+not+consent+banner.jpg" height="123" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I dunno, you wait ages for a speaking engagement then three come along at once.<br />
<br />
I'm talking about Britain's political secret police three times in mid November.<br />
<br />
First up is a <a href="http://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2014/10/25/cops-public-meeting/">Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance public meeting</a> on Wednesday 12 November at 6pm at London Metropolitan University, hosted by LMU's Unison branch. Also on the panel will be Helen Steel (<a href="http://policespiesoutoflives.org.uk/">Police Spies Out of Lives</a> and <a href="http://www.mcspotlight.org/case/">McLibel</a> defendant) and <a href="http://www.building.co.uk/interview-dave-smith-blacklist-support-group/5059437.article">Dave Smith</a> (<a href="http://www.hazards.org/blacklistblog/">Blacklist Support Group</a>). It's free entry and the general public are welcome.<br />
<br />
Then on Saturday 15 November I'm speaking at <a href="https://orgcon.openrightsgroup.org/2014/programme">ORGCon 2014</a>. It's mostly about digital rights but I'm speaking in a session about surveillance called Nothing To Hide, Nothing To Fear. Alongside me will be Erin Saltman (<a href="http://www.quilliamfoundation.org/">Quilliam Foundation</a>), Güneş Tavmen (Turkish Internet rights expert) and Eleanor Saitta (nomadic hacker, artist and designer). <br />
<br />
Next day it's <a href="http://www.defendtherighttoprotest.org/national-conference/">We Do Not Consent</a>, Defend the Right to Protest's national conference. This is the biggest gathering of people spied upon so far. I'm on a panel with Rob Evans (Guardian investigative journalist and author of <a href="http://bookshop.theguardian.com/undercover-7.html">Undercover</a>), Dave Smith (again) and <a href="http://greenparty.org.uk/people/jenny-jones.html">Jenny Jones</a> (member of GLA and its scrutiny committee the Metropolitan Police Authority). In other sessions there are dozens of voices worth hearing; Carole Duggan, Kevin Blowe, Marcia Rigg, Ewa Jasiewicz, Owen Jones and many more. Tickets are only £5 (£3 unwaged, £10 'solidarity price')Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-79070766761676192122014-09-22T22:59:00.002+01:002014-09-22T22:59:54.091+01:00Why Use Dead Children?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKvyIvPuDks2rNRPBRxXAxDAg3lMNS5gTdKrs_A0YU0EqqB_mlErdJHFN-5PgtXYSu_VbILKanJSnRK2-UOiOjZl3P9JmiW9xM8ABND2ZoCBZuUVHrhVfXSilBzHAXUoJ9Wj6QTg/s1600/Rod-Richardson-006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKvyIvPuDks2rNRPBRxXAxDAg3lMNS5gTdKrs_A0YU0EqqB_mlErdJHFN-5PgtXYSu_VbILKanJSnRK2-UOiOjZl3P9JmiW9xM8ABND2ZoCBZuUVHrhVfXSilBzHAXUoJ9Wj6QTg/s1600/Rod-Richardson-006.jpg" height="240" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The British police officer who used Rod Richardson's identity at a riot at the G8 summit in Genoa, July 2001</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Beyond whether it's distasteful or dangerous for <a href="http://bristlingbadger.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/spycops-using-dead-children.html">police to steal the identity of dead children</a>, there is another question. Why would they do it?<br />
<br />
Police self-investigation <a href="http://www.derbyshire.police.uk/Documents/About-Us/Herne/Operation-Herne---Report-1---Covert-Identities.pdf">Operation Herne</a> looked at political secret police unit the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) and reported that<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">As outlined in the SDS Trade Craft Manual, the practice of using a genuine deceased identity was developed to create a plausible covert identity that was capable of frustrating enquiries by activists</span></blockquote>
<br />
It later reiterates <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">the subject chosen had to have an 'existence' to show up in case of basic research by suspicious activists</span></blockquote>
<br />
How many times have you looked up a friend's birth certificate because you thought they were actually someone else? It is the rare act of someone with a deep distrust. A real birth certificate woulldn't allay the reasons for that suspicion. More than that, if an activist is suspicious enough to look for a birth certificate, they can find a death certificate too.<br />
<br />
There are many reasons why someone might not have a British birth certificate. They may have been born abroad, they may have been adopted. There is, however, no reason for someone who comes round to your house to have a death certificate.<br />
<br />
Far from making a plausible, robust cover story, using dead children's identity leaves absolute proof that it's fake waiting to be discovered in documents that are just as easily found as the birth certificate.<br />
<br />
In the furore after the tactic was revealed, Met police chief Bernard Hogan-Howe <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23324783">said</a><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">At the time this method of creating identities was in use, officers felt this was the safest option.</span></blockquote>
<br />
Yet Herne quotes the SDS Trade Craft Manual describing the practice as 'unsafe'. Conversely, what was unsafe about inventing a fictitious name? By 2014, it seems most officers doing this work have used made-up names yet have not been rumbled.<br />
<br />
SDS officers started doing the 'Jackal Run' - stealing a dead child's identity as popularised in the Day of the Jackal - around 1971, the year the book was published. In 1973 it was made into a hit
movie, complete with assassin 'the Jackal' walking down the Strand going to get a dead person's certificate, just as these officers did. It put the concept into the public
mind. If it ever had been a good idea for covert identity, it was now too
well known.<br />
<br />
Having found Rod Richardson's birth certificate, the next thing I did
was search for and find his death certificate and I immediately knew my
friend had in fact been a fraud. After Helen Steel <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/29/helen-steel-relationship-undercover-police-feel-violated">found</a> her partner John Barker's birth certificate, she found his death certificate. It confirmed to us that these men were police spies.<br />
<br />
Yet the SDS did it for decades. In their book <a href="http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9780571302178">Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police</a>, Rob Evans and Paul Lewis describe whistleblower officer Peter Francis' choice of identity. Taking a child whose father had been a Royal Marine serving abroad, Lewis and Evans describe how<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">the birth certificate was therefore kept in a more obscure overseas registry and would have been almost impossible to find. [Francis said,] 'I made it so hard - I could only just about find it myself afterwards'.</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #4c1130;">Choosing a child who had died overseas was the kind of ruse SDS officers liked to use. Undercover officers never wanted the birth certificates of the dead children to be too easily located.</span></blockquote>
<br />
Yet we've been repeatedly told that the whole point of using a real identity was precisely because it <i>could</i> be easily located. A real certificate in an unfindable registry would be the same as having no certificate at all.<br />
<br />
Less than half a page later Francis explains that by the time someone begins looking for the officer's certificate their cover is irreparably damaged, irrespective of whether they find a certificate or not.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">If someone has checked you out that much, you need to go anyway, your time is up</span>. </blockquote>
<br />
This flat contradiction is acknowledged by Operation Herne, telling us that <br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">the SDS practice of using deceased children's to construct their covert identities was phased out starting in November 1994... This was not only good for ethical reasons, but it also reduced the risk of compromise, particularly where an officer might be confronted with 'their' own death certificate</span></blockquote>
<br />
<br />
We may confidently disregard 'ethical reasons' as a motivation for the SDS. So why did they move away from it?<br />
<br />
Herne quotes an officer - probably Roger Pearce - who was an SDS undercover officer from 1978-80 and then Head of Special Branch from 2000-04.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">This was long term political infiltration which was seen as justified. It was for Queen and country and peace and democracy. It was the way it was done. A registered birth was the strongest foundation; other methods were not available at the time.</span></blockquote>
<br />
We've already established it's really not a strong foundation for identity. But that last bit is interesting - there were no other methods of creating a fake identity.<br />
<br />
Herne asserts that<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">A
genuine identity of a deceased person was needed, as there was no
viable means of inserting a fictitious entry into the records of
births.</span></blockquote>
<br />
This suggests that, since they've
given up the practice, such fake entries can now be made. However, it's
interesting to note that Mark Kennedy didn't have one when we looked,
some nine months after he left the police.<br />
<br />
But back to the initial reason for stealing identity, Herne says the Trade Craft Manual talks of a birth certificate 'giving access to a range of necessary documentation in support of the covert identity'.<br />
<br />
It continues<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">Before the transition to computer based records, although a birth certificate was never intended to be an identification document they were regularly used to apply for other documents, such as driving licenses or passports.
</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000;">In the absence of any other documentary proof, birth certificates were used as effective identification. Indeed before modern developments they might be the only proxy identity document that most members of the public would possess</span></blockquote>
<br />
In other words, it looks like they were used by police to fraudulently apply for bank accounts, passports and the like. If so, that's a few more crimes to add to their list.<br />
<br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-83678429665751989012014-09-21T22:58:00.000+01:002014-09-24T00:28:09.591+01:00Spycops Using Dead Children<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_HPEOFiFcqVABvPeu-yBb8_Z9M6SRfCw89ov6sd3hBvNDpMRbkaXx4sG2WyICEKFzP2d4gsOI2BPECON1O8LXAdAOHIATF43aMZVa0dXb3C86QnUNCvCa4fJa9SYAy1glPHd9fw/s1600/barbara-shaw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_HPEOFiFcqVABvPeu-yBb8_Z9M6SRfCw89ov6sd3hBvNDpMRbkaXx4sG2WyICEKFzP2d4gsOI2BPECON1O8LXAdAOHIATF43aMZVa0dXb3C86QnUNCvCa4fJa9SYAy1glPHd9fw/s1600/barbara-shaw.jpg" height="192" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Barbara Shaw with the death certificate of her son Rod Richardson</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
One aspect of the undercover policing scandal that has waned from public attention is the use of the identities of dead children by undercover officers. It wants looking at because the police's stated reasons for doing it don't bear scrutiny and in fact contradict one another. I'll explain more about that in <a href="http://bristlingbadger.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/why-use-dead-children.html">tomorrow's post</a>, but for now let's go over what happened.<br />
<br />
In the earlier days of the political secret police unit the Special Demonstration Squad - from the late 1960s to the 1990s - officers would go on 'the Jackal Run'. Named after a technique made famous in Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal, they'd trawl the registers of deaths looking for someone who had a similar birth date who had died young.<br />
<br />
They also needed the child to have the same first name in order to preserve their cover, as there's an instinctive way you respond when called out to by name. They'd look for a surname that wasn't unusual but wasn't too common
either, such as Robinson, Daley or Barker.<br />
<br />
Offiicers didn't just use the name, they resurrected the identity. They would visit the town and home of the child to familiarise themselves and so help build a backstory full of genuine details. It gave their stories an authenticity that would be crucial if they ever happened to meet someone from their supposed home town.<br />
<br />
<b>ENDANGERING THE BEREAVED </b><br />
<br />
This isn't merely distasteful and ghoulish. As Anthony Barker - whose brother John Barker died aged 8 of leukaemia aged 8 before his identity was stolen by police officer John Dines - <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/feb/06/brother-boy-identity-police-spies">pointed out</a>, it puts bereaved families at risk. After Dines ended his deployment and disappeared, his worried and bereft activist partner Helen Steel <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/29/helen-steel-relationship-undercover-police-feel-violated">traced John Barker</a> and went to the house listed on the birth certificate.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">Now, imagine that policeman had infiltrated a violent gang or made
friends with a volatile person, then disappeared, just like this man
did. Someone wanting revenge would have tracked us down to our
front door – but they wouldn't have wanted a cup of tea and a chat, like
this woman says she did.</span></blockquote>
<br />
One of my former activist mates was Rod Richardson. After we exposed Mark Kennedy, we realised Rod fitted the same mould. I went looking and found his birth certificate. Unlike Kennedy, it was in his real name. For a second I had a flash of guilt that he was real, that we'd suspected a genuine comrade of betraying us. Then I looked him up in the death register. Rod Richardson had died aged two days.<br />
<br />
Our friend was actually a police officer. The night we'd celebrated his birthday with tequila and sledging over black ice on a tea tray to the karaoke in the pub wasn't his birthday at all. It will have been a very sombre night indeed for the real Richardsons.<br />
<br />
<b>ONE ROGUE OFFICER?</b> <br />
<br />
The police know this identity theft is morally indefensible. A few days after <a href="http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2013/02/506316.html">we published details of Rod</a>, Pat Gallan - Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met and, at that point, head of the police's profligate arse-covering self-investigation <a href="http://www.derbyshire.police.uk/About-us/Operation-Herne/Operation-Herne.aspx">Operation Herne</a> - gave <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmhaff/uc837-ii/uc83701.htm">evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee</a>.<br />
<br />
Gallan said that they had found a solitary case of dead child ID theft but the combined efforts of Herne's 31 staff had failed to find any more in the subsequent five months until we came forward with the evidence of Rod.<br />
<br />
Gobsmacking incompetence or reluctance to admit the embarrassing truth? You decide. Either way, she was <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-21417375">removed from Operation Herne four days later</a>.<br />
<br />
<b>NO, AT LEAST 42 OBEYING PROTOCOL</b><br />
<br />
Showing what Operation Herne can actually do with that sort of time period, five months after Gallan's brassnecked performance, in July last year, Herne published a report on the topic of dead children's identity theft [<a href="http://www.derbyshire.police.uk/Documents/About-Us/Herne/Operation-Herne---Report-1---Covert-Identities.pdf">PDF here</a>].<br />
<br />
Of the 106 fake identities used by SDS officers, it had found that 42 were of dead children, 45 were fictitious and 19 were unknown. It said that identities were stolen from the early 1970s and used for more or less every officer until November 1994, with instructions given in detail in the SDS Trade Craft Manual.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">It is absolutely clear that the use of identities of deceased children was an established practice that new officers were ‘taught’. It was what was expected of them, and was the means by which they could establish a cover identity before they were deployed. </span></blockquote>
<br />
So much for Pat Gallan's one isolated case, then.<br />
<br />
The SDS apparently phased it out in the mid 1990s. But it seems that when the new National Public Order Intelligence Unit was set up to do similar work in 1999, they initially used this anachronistic tactic. As he was deployed the same year the NPOIU was set up, the officer who stole Rod Richardson's identity must have been one the first NPOIU officers, if not the very first.<br />
<br />
<b>ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY FOR POLICE STONEWALLING </b><br />
<br />
The real Rod Richardson's mother, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/feb/06/rod-richardson-protester-never-was">Barbara Shaw</a>, made a complaint to the police. It was referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission in February 2013 and they handed it back to the police but said it would be a 'supervised investigation'. It was then downgraded to a straightforward police self-investigation known as Operation Riverwood.<br />
<br />
When it was completed the police announced that no action would be taken against any officer. They are still refusing to publish the investigation's report.<br />
<br />
Barbara Shaw's lawyer Jules Carey <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23324783">said</a><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">The families of the dead children whose identities have been stolen by the undercover officers deserve better than this. They deserve an explanation, a personal apology and, if
appropriate, a warning of the potential risk they face, in the
exceptional circumstances, that their dead child's identity was used to
infiltrate serious criminal organisations.</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #4c1130;">The harvesting of dead children's identities was only one
manifestation of the rot at the heart of these undercover units which
had officers lie on oath, conduct smear campaigns and use sexual
relationships as an evidence-gathering tool. Ms Shaw has told me that she feels her complaint
has been swept under the carpet.</span> </blockquote>
<br />
<br />
In March 2013 <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmhaff/837/83709.htm">the Home Affairs Select Committee declared</a><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #274e13;">Families need to hear the truth and they must receive an apology. Once families have been identified they should be notified immediately. We would expect the investigation to be concluded by the end of 2013 at the latest.</span></blockquote>
<br />
The police have ignored it.<br />
<br />
A number of bereaved families contacted police to ask if their child's identity had been used. Police refused to answer. A Freedom of Information request was made asking for the ages of the dead children, not even the exact dates or their sexes. At least with that barest detail, many worried families would be able to rule out their children if there wasn't a match. The police refused to do even that.<br />
<br />
Last month the Information Commissioners Office declared that the <a href="http://informationrightsandwrongs.com/2014/08/21/jackals-among-the-tombs/">police must release the list of ages</a>. It is not yet known if the police will appeal that decision. But, as they've shown in the legal battle with <a href="http://policespiesoutoflives.org.uk/">the women</a> who were subjected to prolonged psychological and sexual abuse by the secret police units, they will take any opportunity to withhold information, avoid accountability and deny justice.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-48179345200743937372014-09-18T09:08:00.001+01:002014-09-18T09:10:07.872+01:00Independence Day<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjahdM2qswUUCqizpBnRcs3q8qK3BMkeADbsx_Q15R8geZkujiLCulI-ykrR3RtHlRlAxhFmXQ2WKdYY6PPFs0I8TSeoI6Y-TPSr0daCTdtDlh6LgA1v8g4BQwVab-jUqciK4-QA/s1600/scottish+pirate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjahdM2qswUUCqizpBnRcs3q8qK3BMkeADbsx_Q15R8geZkujiLCulI-ykrR3RtHlRlAxhFmXQ2WKdYY6PPFs0I8TSeoI6Y-TPSr0daCTdtDlh6LgA1v8g4BQwVab-jUqciK4-QA/s1600/scottish+pirate.jpg" height="215" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">With any argument against Scottish independence, the simple test is to apply it to Ireland. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">Did Irish independence betray the internationalist ideal? Did Ireland manage OK with shared currency? Would it be better for Ireland if they'd stayed in the UK? Did we '<a href="http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/nick-cohen/2014/09/scottish-nationalism-turning-neighbours-into-foreigners/">turn neighbours into foreigners</a>'? Even UKIP don't mind Irish immigrants, <a href="http://www.thejournal.ie/ukip-irish-immigrants-1427852-Apr2014/">calling</a> them 'our kith and kin' earlier this year.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">So it's a rich irony having an Irish UK resident like Bob Geldof calling for a No vote. In fact it's weird that Obama is too, unless both go back to their home countries and advocate rejoining Britain.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">A Yes vote won't create a new border. That border is already there for many issues. It will increase its strength, but that isn't exclusionary. A country where, backed by a significant proportion of the population, the leader openly calls for greater immigration is not a place with those issues. Compare that with the main UK parties.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">If we want to consider xenophobia and exclusion, imagine this: the Tories lose the next election, Cameron's out and they install a Eurosceptic. A deal is struck not to compete with UKIP. This coalition wins in 2020. Even without this nightmare scenario, if the tories win we're promised an in-out referendum on the EU. It's quite possible that in five or ten years the UK could be out of the EU whilst an independent Scotland is in. </span><br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"></span><br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="userContent">The Labour Party talking about how Scottish
independence is a bad thing because it puts up borders between people.
That's the same Labour Party whose <a href="http://www2.labour.org.uk/uploads/TheLabourPartyManifesto-2010.pdf">2010 manifesto</a> had a 'Crime &
Immigration' section, like the two things belong together. The same
Labour Party who <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/726478.stm">sent a Home Secretary</a> to help out nicking stowaway
immigrants at Dover to show how tough they are on foreigners.</span></span><br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"></span><br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">Gordon
Brown says voting No is the only way to save the NHS. This is the same
Gordon Brown, chancellor who presided over the marketisation of the NHS
and the introduction of Private Finance Initiative where we pay private
companies several times the cost of a school or hospital before we're
allowed to pay any staff. PFI is credit spree timebomb, getting new
buildings today by promising tomorrow's budgets. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">The
Labour Party, who only survive by saying "vote for us to keep the Tories
out", are telling people in Scotland to vote against permanently
keeping the Tories out.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">A Yes vote is a vote for Scottish nationalism, but a No vote is for British nationalism. I know which one I'm more uncomfortable with. As <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/16/scottish-nationalism-british-westminster-class">Billy Bragg said on Tuesday</a><span class="userContent"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">the most frustrating aspect of the debate on Scottish independence has
been the failure of the English left to recognise that there is more
than one type of nationalism. People who can explain in minute detail
the many forms of socialism on offer at any demo or conference seem
incapable of differentiating when it comes to nationalists </span></blockquote>
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"></span><br />
<br />
<span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}">It's not just that both votes are nationalists, but of different kinds. It's that one of them is imperialist. Not only do most No arguments apply to Ireland, a large proportion apply to any country going independent from the British Empire. It's
no surprise that a country that's consistently voted against Tories yet
been ruled by them most of my lifetime feels like it's under imperial
rule. </span><span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><span class="userContent" data-ft="{"tn":"K"}"><br /><br />Imagine if you could have one vote on one day and banish Tory rule forever (and no, <a href="http://commonslibraryblog.com/2014/01/30/general-elections-without-scotland-part-1-1945-2010/">it won't mean the rUK gets permanent Tories</a>). Anyone with compassion could only give one possible answer.</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-49551412502308047052014-07-02T21:21:00.003+01:002014-07-03T12:48:21.543+01:00Glastonbury 2014<div class="MsoNormal">
Just back from Glastonbury. Well, been back two days
now but it does take a while to get over. Other festivals have ‘goers’ or ‘punters’.
Glastonbury has survivors. There’s something about the way it’s bigger
- geographically, with more variety, 24/7, and of course longer - that wrings out
all the fun you can have.<br />
<br />
This write-up comes with the disclaimer that, like the telly
coverage, it focuses on the big stages and things that are that’s easy to name and describe
rather than the million little moments you find everywhere, the levity,
camaraderie
and absurdity. Like a toddler who plays with a box as much as the
present it
contained, over and over again you see people delight in the spontaneous
and
daft things as much as the resource-intensive prepared spectacle. The
people carrying a table round site and getting people to do <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5NdptS4KlQ">table wrestling</a> always had a big enthusiastic supply of competitors and a bigger crowd of encouragers. Entertained by a table! </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3TZd0CNjL1UFD6jMaZ1Egzi3DulLsQWIqDe0K7tay0oKzSecUAT8GZc7PrT_hvZ2z3RGcRJHdfx3oiwpIgC-0XFl2fjHaHTUbkk_oVqohlXYvyXg48iggoqVdqv5SbYcCORSFjw/s1600/jess+danny+bar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3TZd0CNjL1UFD6jMaZ1Egzi3DulLsQWIqDe0K7tay0oKzSecUAT8GZc7PrT_hvZ2z3RGcRJHdfx3oiwpIgC-0XFl2fjHaHTUbkk_oVqohlXYvyXg48iggoqVdqv5SbYcCORSFjw/s1600/jess+danny+bar.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
There was definitely a lot more going on during Wednesday
and Thursday this year. The Green Fields stages, particularly, were busy.<br />
<br />
There
is also a noticeable growth of the twisted dystopian aesthetic. Since Lost
Vagueness was swapped for Shangri-La, and then the Unfair Ground and Block 9
were added, it’s taken root. But the huge spectacle of Arcadia – whose 20 foot
mechanical spider that shoots fire draws people in from afar – has moved to the
opposite side of the site, and with <a href="http://joerush.com/Mutoid-Waste-Co">Mutoid Waste</a> being separated too it feel
like this uneasy oddness is spreading out into the whole festival. Like the Green
Fields stuff, Glastonbury devotes more space to this weirdness than most
festivals have for their whole event. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But having Wednesday’s tequila-tipped
overload negate much of Thursday, it was on to the main event. <b>Blondie </b>opened the big stages on Friday, a wonderful piece of billing. A few years back
they stuck Bjorn Again on first at the Pyramid which, when you’ve had cider for
breakfast, seemed equally inspired; open with a packed field singing along to
songs every single person adores. <br />
<br />
Saw<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itd255eRtYc"> Blondie on the Pyramid Stage in 1999</a>
expecting that singalong thing and got so much more, the arcing cry in her
voice was so familiar but up that loud and after all these years was
unexpectedly moving. <br />
<br />
Coming on stage last Friday in all black with some sort of full torso
white strapped bondage harness with a pentagram in the middle certainly gives
us all a model of post-menopausal life to aspire to. Sadly, her voice really
can’t fly like it used to. But failing ability is no excuse for failing
attitude, and rocking <a href="http://youtu.be/17udDNlRNB8?t=33m39s">covers of Fight For Your Right To Party</a> and <a href="http://youtu.be/17udDNlRNB8?t=24m31s">the Misfits’ Hollywood Babylon</a> gave it enough oomph to carry the day effortlessly,
which was clearly a real treat for people like <a href="http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/Gklastonbury-Festival-review-Blondie-Stage-Friday/story-21300114-detail/story.html">this
teenager</a> who got to see someone so legendary. Bringing the sunshine out
helped too. And being able to belt out an hour of stormers and have us leaving the field listing ones they never played - Dreaming, Sunday Girl, Tide Is High, Union City Blue - is the mark of a rare repertoire indeed.<br />
<br />
<b>EARNING MY KEEP </b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Had to miss De La Soul to do a political performance poetry
tag team at Toad Hall with the great <b><a href="http://adaisythroughconcrete.blogspot.co.uk/">Danny Chivers</a></b> who I’ve done that with a
bunch of times and <b><a href="http://www.monicahunken.com/Home.html">Monica Hunken</a></b> who Danny vouched for but I only met that day.
She’s from NYC and works with <a href="http://www.revbilly.com/">Reverend Billy and The Church of Stop Shopping</a>. As
might be expected then, she combines political nouse with sparky creativity and
a seam of effortless theatrical skill, mixing songs and transfixing
storytelling that made me feel like such a tailcoat-rider.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Brief pause before Danny did his new one person show Arrest
That Poet!, documenting his political awakening, motivation and the weird
places it’s put him. He was one of <a href="http://newint.org/features/web-exclusive/2011/01/12/undercover-and-over-the-top-collapse-of-ratcliffe-trial/">the Ratcliffe 6</a> whose trial collapsed due to
Mark Kennedy’s involvement; he was one of the 146 people nicked in Fortnum & Mason on an protest against the tax dodgers and was one of the tiny number convicted, in his case for <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/pete-speller/the-most-intimidating-poe_b_1344238.html">a poem he performed in the posh shop</a>; he was<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/05/no-dash-for-gas-protesters-interview"> up the chimney at West Burton power station</a> for a week; and he was also <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dmf5-7fgrE">on Richard and Judy</a> just before a segment about dancing dogs.</div>
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As he started thunder rolled in, giving uncannily timed dramatic
sound effects top enhance the performance. Then the rain came, like a spray of thousands
of high velocity cricket balls on the taut canvas of the marquee, drowning out in terms of noise as well as fluid. Then the
overhead lightning that meant every stage on site had to shut down. He
redefined ‘trouper’ by gathering the audience around him campfire style and
carrying on. <br />
<br />
To add a final challenge, the awesome <a href="http://www.newyorkbrassband.co.uk/Home.html">New York Brass Band</a> kicked in
with Jungle Boogie and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15cyycW3sds">Seven Nation Army</a> in the tent next door yet still he
held them rapt to the end. Yep, I’m deffo the coat-tail rider of the trio.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Weirdly ended up seeing only a handful of bands, mostly on
the massive stages and in fact the whole five days kind of zipped by. Was with
a crew of mates who dragged me to <b>Elbow</b>. The only other time I’ve seen
them I was dragged along too, the legendary Duchess of York in Leeds about
1999. I’ve never seen an unknown band who were so obviously going to make it
big. Not especially the sort of thing that I want to listen to all day at home,
but they had real undeniable class to them.<br />
<br />
And so now, on the Pyramid Stage, the sweeping
anthemic element suited the golden sunshine and festival vibe – most obviously
in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWAIu98lS0A">One Day Like This</a> - and the band's almost comical unrockstarness provided an
opportunity for a distinctive connection with the audience.</div>
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<br />
<b>SATURDAY</b><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Saturday brought a talk in the Speakers Forum with me and
Green Party bod Jenny Jones about Britain’s secret police, well attended and
with thoughtful, intelligent questions. It was especially good to make it clear
that, despite the shorthand often used, this isn’t about environmentalists but
a swathe of political groups, essentially anyone who’s active in politics
outside the sliver of the spectrum represented in the House of Commons. This was underlined by the attendance of <a href="http://www.building.co.uk/interview-dave-smith-blacklist-support-group/5059437.article">the tireless Dave Smith</a> from the Blacklist Support Group who are demanding justice for the thousands of construction workers who - with <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/12/police-blacklist-construction-workers-watchdog">the routine help of Special Branch</a> - were illegally denied a living for their political or safety concerns.</div>
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<b>Robert Plant</b> was something truly special. He’s steadfastly
refused the megabucks for a Led Zeppelin reunion yet his set had a ton of
Zeppelin songs in it. It might seem like a contradiction, but in doing it this
way he isn’t playing to overvast audiences who just want to hear the hits but
to people who’ll take what he wants to do. Crucially - and this is where he leaves modern blues bores like The Black Keys standing in their tepid puddle of tedium - he gets to do much more
interesting arrangements. He’s shed the cock rock but still hits you with his
powerful British blues yawp and folky roots, mixed with a swirl of textural
subtlety and shimmering dynamics. He is visibly awed by his band members. And with the weaving of this
spell he’s forgiven for picking the more ornate, dappled Zeppelin songs like
Going To California.<br />
<br />
But, at the end of the day, who has ever held a Les Paul
and not wanted to whack out Whole Lotta Love at a thousand squigawatts? Who
knows the track and wouldn’t want to be on the business end of that same
multisquigawatt onslaught? Yeeeeah. That was a proper Moment. Didn't stop him getting the audience to clap Bo Diddley rhythm whilst he sang a verse of the genius pure evil lyrics of Diddley's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAGoqMZRLB4">Who Do You Love</a>, then put Whole Lotta Love's words over the same beat, then took it back into the ultimate riff itself.</div>
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Legged it round for the <b>Manics</b> who came on with Motorcycle
Emptiness, making the crowd hit the sky and stay there for a hits-heavy set. If You Tolerate This was hugely emotional, with Nicky Wire saying aftewards<br /><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">We've got no fireworks. We've got no glitter. We've got no floor tom at
the front of the stage for me to fucking bang. But we've just sung a
song together about fighting fascists in Spain. A number one record
with deep-rooted politics - it can be done! And now for some dumb punk fun</span></blockquote>
<br />And off they ripped into You Love Us. The soaring, melancholic grandeur of their sound propelled the sunset upwards, a fine prelude to
<b>Pixies</b> who just hammered us with classic after classic, their sound undimmed by
time, like being sprayed with serrated knives.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The borg of friends herded me to the second half of
<b>Metallica</b> whose sheer heaviness might’ve rocked, but in an empathogenically
enhanced state it turned my chest cavity into a sagging bag of saturated cotton
wool and I sharply sloped off to regather my brain. <br />
<br />
The South East corner – full of that the
dystopian stuff – gets rammed after the main stages finish so it was a great
opportunity to have a gawping bimble whilst everyone else waited for Enter
Sandman.</div>
<br />
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<b>DOLLY PARTON</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span class="usercontent">Sunday morning wake up text from my
friend Tom recommending a further Pyramid Stage act for breakfast, <b>Toumani and
Sidiki Diabate</b>. Tom’s in <a href="http://vesselsband.com/">the unfathomably brilliant Vessels</a>, so his taste
should be trusted without question, and indeed he wasn’t wrong. The Diabates are a father and
son Malian cora duet, 71st and 72nd generation of their family to play the gorgeous
West African harp.</span> Here they are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8nyjsDj-Is">playing in the BBC treehouse</a> up in The Park.<br />
<br />
<span class="usercontent">But everyone I’d spoken to all weekend, friend and
randomer alike, had said they were</span><span class="textexposedshow"> going to
<b>Dolly Parton</b>. And sure enough, on Sunday afternoon she</span> drew a bigger
crowd than any headliner. All the way to the back of the field. Not only that
but the clapalong and armwaving normally dissipates as it gets further from the stage
whereas this was total participation right the way back. </div>
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<br /></div>
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She knows you love it
for the music and for the kitsch at the same time. Her cultivated folksy
persona belies a huge talent for sweeping an audience up. An absolute giant of
country music, she was witty, energetic and yet still managed to stay true to
the core of country, that cleverly articulated, unflinching unhurried
examination of heartache depicted in ordinary settings that everyone can identify with. <br />
<br />
But, as she was
<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-28080039">savvy enough to
realise</a>, ‘I can't do a bunch of sad, slow songs, because everyone's drunk
and high’. Levity is one thing, but nothing prepared us for her <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsRZrdMevzE">doing the Benny Hill theme on a rhinestone encrusted sax, followed by a specially written song about being in the mud</a>. Fuck the <a href="http://www.brideywatson.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/London-Underground_Photo-credit-Block9-1000x692.jpg">tube train smashed into a five
storey block of flats</a> in Block 9 or any of that stuff, THIS was the great unlikely thing to see at Glastonbury.
It made Ritchie Sambora’s guest appearance a few minutes later seem workaday. The sense of uplift across the field was amazing, with
people bobbing out like they had clouds on their boots. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was disappointing to see the usually excellent Graham
Linehan <a href="https://twitter.com/Glinner/status/483271258575233024">attack</a> her for ‘mutilation’ of herself and deride feminists who like
her. Firstly, a man criticising an individual woman because of her
appearance is rarely the basis for a solid feminist position. Especially when
it detracts from the fact that she is a woman whose talent and intelligence
have been proven and respected over decades, irrespective of her appearance. It
can’t help but have some little whiff of being threatened by powerful women – I
don’t remember him criticising men who work out in order to fit in with male standards
of muscularity. <br />
<br />
Yes, Parton actively complies with norms about standards of female beauty. Attacking
those norms is one thing but, as someone who’ll never face society’s sanctions
for women who don’t comply, he should hold off with the personal criticism. </div>
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Additionally, she has carved out her own space in culture so
well that she has something of a unique position. There’s a character she’s
created and she’s living it, self-defined and clever and in control. As she said, ‘it
takes a lot of money to look this cheap’.</div>
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Up to The Park for an even older legend who nobody could accuse of conforming to anything, <b>Yoko Ono</b>. Backed by
Yo La Tengo she hammered out a run of the proper noisy tracks with her
distinctive challenging wauling. To me it’s like Pixies but from 20 years
earlier. Utterly uncompromising, unashamedly poetic and discordant at the same
time, no quarter to pop sensibilities yet with a rock basis somehow, a truly original artist. Frankly the
shortish set was a blessing though, two hours of it would be like trying to
down a bottle of whisky in one chug.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After days of mudwalking the prospect of legging it across
to Brian Jonestown Massacre was a bit much, time for cider and a restorative stodge
before the impeccably scheduled <b>Massive Attack</b> closed the festival, enveloping,
smart and serious. </div>
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</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<b>WHAT A LOAD OF RUBBISH</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the way home I read carping on social media from people who didn’t go
about how it was no good, and from older folks about how it was different back
in the day. Well yes, it was coming from a different society. Certainly, it used
to have more of a radical political focus and it did something else politically
valuable too – it got activists in a space where they networked without the
distraction of it being a proper political gathering or conference. That ended at the turn of the century. That
was, in part, because the uberfence went up and stopped people bunking in,
which most of the activisty folks had done. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But it also coincided with the decline in the dole culture
of the 80s and 90s that the protest movements had sprung from. The online age
allows for a harassment of the unemployed that was impossible in earlier times.
So three or four million people can be humiliated playing an unending game of musical
chairs for half a million jobs now, whereas a generation ago people were left
alone for a fortnight between signing-on days that left them free to find
themselves and useful activities. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nonetheless, Glastonbury still devotes a huge amount of
space to political campaigns amidst and even bigger square footage for other
uncommercial elements that, taken together, is bigger than many entire festivals.
And even though it's on a dairy farm, that includes animal liberation and vegan
stuff. Additionally, there’s nowhere else I know where randomers can turn up
and, say, challenge the director of Greenpeace in a Q&A, let alone do it in
the buff and get taken seriously. Which may actually not be a positive
endorsement, so I’ll move on.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Huffington Post <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/06/30/glastonbury-clean-up_n_5543331.html">did a piece on the rubbish left behind</a>,
which looks like a lot, because it is. However, I’ve also been to other major
festivals and seen what they’re like at the end and believe me, Glastonbury is
comparatively tidy. <br />
<br />
Loads of people leave their tents and stuff, but this isn’t about a culture
change at Glastonbury. Like the doley activists, it’s a reflection of wider
change. We’ve been Argosified, conditioned into unthinking disposability on a
stunning scale. When you can get a two person tent, two sleeping bags and two roll
mats for 30 quid – manufactured so shitly that they’re not really fit to reuse
many times – of course people treat them as use-once items. Some festivals have
done deals to buy that crap online and collect at the festival.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I took this photo on the Tuesday after Leeds Festival last year,
24 hours after salvage teams moved in to take away good quality stuff. This is the leftover junk in an empty field.</div>
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5OUr_48gkn5VRALBgfSWLqhooSZ-ID5CGqObMJiAnn4BKXOO1C8S0cyRO8bS8NKrtVLQKIT3nm_jaCVKQJmSBgLgyKNllSmBfUZsRLeYM2veFuBsGFjMPn37VpoWECzTOETNbOA/s1600/leedsfest.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5OUr_48gkn5VRALBgfSWLqhooSZ-ID5CGqObMJiAnn4BKXOO1C8S0cyRO8bS8NKrtVLQKIT3nm_jaCVKQJmSBgLgyKNllSmBfUZsRLeYM2veFuBsGFjMPn37VpoWECzTOETNbOA/s320/leedsfest.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a>
<br />
<br />
I estimate about a third of tents had been left up, of which about half were
blatantly brand new. Every one of them I checked had usable stuff in; clothes, bedding,
beer, food, camping gear. But the need to clear the site means after two days
the bulldozers move in and it gets taken to landfill. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Glastonbury, for all its apocalyptic look, is comparatively
responsible and tidy.
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another way to look at it would be to go to a city of
comparable size like Newcastle or Portsmouth and put all its thrown away material for five days into a
field to see what it looks like. The streets of our permanent cities are clean
in the same way that a spotless house is clean – because all the mess has been
moved elsewhere. At the end of a festival they’re laying bare some of what we
do all the time everywhere we go.<br />
<br />
<b>IN A FIELD OF ITS OWN </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The other thing is how uncommercial Glastonbury is compared to
other major festivals. They tweak it with noticeable improvements every year. Not only do they give loads of money away to the major beneficiaries Greenpeace, Oxfam and Water Aid, but they were the first festival to insist that food stalls only use compostable cutlery. This year <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/glastonbury-2014-worthy-farm-says-goodbye-to-the-stinky-portable-loo-9566039.html">they did away with portaloos</a> and put up more compost ones. <br />
<br />
Of course, there is much more that could be done, as
demonstrated by the zero-advertising Beautiful Days, or Shambala’s ban on
bottled water and principled avoidance of sponsorship (the psychic peace of a
weekend with thousands of people yet no corporate logos is a true balm for the
soul). <br />
<br />
But still, as I walked around Glastonbury I couldn’t help but think that at T
In The Park or V or Reading those flags and hanging baskets would be beer
placards, those open spaces to chill would be food stalls, and those food
stalls would be generic burger flippers rather than anything interesting. In so many senses, there
is simply nowhere else like Glastonbury. It's not about the bands - hence tickets selling out long before the line up is announced. It's Britain's cultural barometer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As Joe Muggs’ <a href="http://www.factmag.com/2014/07/01/glastonbury-is-a-rabid-filthy-depraved-hypercapitalist-clusterfuck-and-an-absolutely-staggering-achievement/">wonderfully vibrant, evocative, point-getting
article concludes</a>, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #20124d;">Glastonbury as an institution – as a giddy, fuck-witted,
nonsensical temporary city of 200,000 people – is not built on competitive
cultural indulgence, it is genuinely built on hanging out. No more, no less.
The fact that it’s there at all is a monument to human excessiveness, but also
to our fundamental social nature, to the ties that bind. That doesn’t make it a
utopia, because it’s still a rabid, filthy, depraved hypercapitalist
clusterfuck. But it does make it an absolutely staggering achievement, and some
of the best fun it’s possible to have anywhere in the world.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibVFUcokzV_Sdc0N3PFgePrMgnXU9Z1cIZTSKFF-CZehCQLDYzpsq3dDKWn4BVKWyf4BzbIj1rEtxdLQqnLiuL34SF4cr5S5MmUqBol2Wm6-1QNhouuH1A5baBNRVNskk5aSU7kA/s1600/monday.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibVFUcokzV_Sdc0N3PFgePrMgnXU9Z1cIZTSKFF-CZehCQLDYzpsq3dDKWn4BVKWyf4BzbIj1rEtxdLQqnLiuL34SF4cr5S5MmUqBol2Wm6-1QNhouuH1A5baBNRVNskk5aSU7kA/s1600/monday.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stone Circle field, Monday 9am</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-5204775432258047192014-06-21T16:19:00.002+01:002014-06-21T16:35:18.918+01:00Bye Bye Blunkett<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: none;">
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<br />
Five years since <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8089498.stm">a cow tried</a> to end David Blunkett's political career, the longtime ex-socialist has decided to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27952873">do it himself</a>.<br />
<br />
The media has plenty of guff about how respected he is, with the only frequently mentioned blemish being his resignation when he got caught fast tracking his lover's nanny's passport application.<br />
<br />
Fellow pro-war New Labour schmuck <a href="https://twitter.com/hilarybennmp/statuses/480269898846048256">Hilary Benn said</a><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">His passion for justice and his determination to fight for it define his politics.</span></blockquote>
<br />
Blunkett was the Home Secretary who introduced detention without trial, which pretty much defines injustice. He <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/nov/12/uk.september11">dismissed</a> the 'airy fairy' vision of people who objected.<br />
<br />
He was the main instigator of the plan for compulsory ID cards. People forget how close we came - Blunkett had it put in the 2003 Queen's Speech and this led to the Identity Cards Act 2006. The voluntary cards were issued, contracts with incompetent IT firms were signed and a timetable was set for making them compulsory. One of the few benefits of the Tory victory in 2010 was the scrapping of that plan, their <a href="http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2037068/compensation-cost-scrapping-id-cards-revealed">£2m compensation for cancelled contracts</a> was loose change compared to the billions the scheme would have cost. <br />
<br />
His belief that civil liberties are 'airy fairy' may go some way to explaining him voting against the equal age of gay consent. His prudish prejudice extended to <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1334116/A-distasteful-spectacle.html">criticising</a> the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcU7FaEEzNU">Paedogeddon episode of Brass Eye</a> without actually watching it.<br />
<br />
So remember him well. Open your wallet, be thankful that it doesn't contain an ID card, and wish him good fucking riddance.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-87182429689850921532014-06-18T21:16:00.001+01:002014-06-18T21:45:50.206+01:00Arise, Sir Bullshitter<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbipaVEpuRHp5gZcr8eYAQkty_vqzIuGw5-RgPWzJT3nYVdKyVuBbE989pRUpAEVninK3cAoSqwDvP61X8_JpixjDZrefj-_FYsKyfjAANdiyAoxHmLPGIPZ6vpOxe1ILzDmkn3Q/s1600/murphy.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbipaVEpuRHp5gZcr8eYAQkty_vqzIuGw5-RgPWzJT3nYVdKyVuBbE989pRUpAEVninK3cAoSqwDvP61X8_JpixjDZrefj-_FYsKyfjAANdiyAoxHmLPGIPZ6vpOxe1ILzDmkn3Q/s400/murphy.jpg" /></a><br />
<br />
When the scandal of Britain's secret police broke, those in charge still thought they could pin it all on 'rogue agent' Mark Kennedy. Just one officer, far off his given mission. <br />
<br />
Kennedy worked for the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, run by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). Back then, in January 2011, ACPO's spokesperson <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jan/19/protest-groups-undercover-mark-kennedy">Jon Murphy wanted us to know </a>Kennedy was a solitary wrong 'un and all the other officers and their remits were just dandy.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">We are left to regulate it ourselves, and we think we do a good job of it</span></blockquote>
<br />
Asked about the sexual relations with people they spy on, Murphy was expansive and unequivocal.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">It is absolutely not authorised. It is never acceptable for an undercover officer to behave in that way.. It is grossly unprofessional. It is a diversion from what they are
there to do. It is morally wrong because people have been put there to
do a particular task and people have got trust in them. It is never
acceptable under any circumstances ... for them to engage in sex with
any subject they come into contact with.</span></blockquote>
<br />
Since then, details of a further thirteen undercover officers have come to light. Twelve of them had sexual relations with people they spied on, most having long-term, committed life-partner relationships. Either the 'good job' of regulation was a complete shambles or else sexual relationships are an authorised tactic and Murphy is lying. Either way, he could scarcely be more wrong.<br />
<br />
<b>SAVE THE GRANNIES</b><br />
<br />
The Kennedy case had just come to public attention after it caused the collapse of the trial of climate activits who'd intended to shut down Ratcliffe on Soar coal fired power station. Murphy <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12238445">said</a> undercover policing was needed to stop people who were intent on<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">disabling parts of the national critical infrastructure. That has the
potential to deny utilities to hospitals, schools, businesses and your
granny.</span></blockquote>
<br />
He really did say 'your granny'.<br />
<br />
As had been made clear two months earlier at the trial of another group from the same protest, if the activists had succeeded in shutting down the power station not one light bulb would have gone out. The National Grid is, well, a grid. Power stations come off and online again all the time to meet changes in demand or through faults. It's also worth noting that vulnerable places like large hospitals have their own back-up generators.<br />
<br />
The protesters knew Ratcliffe's output would be replaced by a gas power station (these are quicker to switch on and off, so make up the slack in the system), which would result in lower carbon emissions than Ratcliffe's coal. This was the whole basis of their defence. They risked nobody's safety, except perhaps their own. <br />
<br />
In sentencing them, Judge Jonathan Teare <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/cif-green/2011/jan/17/ratcliffe-police">said</a><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">It is right to emphasise that this the planned action would have had no
practical effect on the electricity supply ... It was your intention
that this invasion would have been peaceable and safe. Violence was to
be avoided, and the safety of the workers at the power station was
paramount. You were fully equipped to carry out your roles safely.</span></blockquote>
<br />
Murphy, responsible for national security, either did not have the most basic grasp on how the National Grid works and had failed to pay any attention to the protesters he was talking about, or he was lying to exaggerate the threat and thereby deflect scrutiny and blame from himself and the others in charge of the spying. Either way, he could scarcely be less credible.<br />
<br />
Murphy's predecessor luminaries as Chief Constable of Merseyside, Bernard Hogan-Howe and Norman Bettison, had a career path that saw them take that job, get a knighthood, then become mired in scandal. Last week Jon Murphy was <a href="http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/liverpool-policemen-recognised-queens-birthday-7267892">was knighted</a> for services to policing.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-88526869081377745362014-06-17T13:19:00.001+01:002014-06-17T13:57:10.186+01:00A Nation of Obscene PublishersNot like me to be writing in defence of a police officer, admittedly, but it's justice I'm interested in, not bigotry.<br />
<br />
PC James Addison from the Diplomatic Protection Group shared 'extreme porn' with colleagues via Whatsapp on his phone, and last month he was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/14/police-officer-fined-extreme-porn-mobile-duty">convicted</a> under the Obscene Publications Act and fined £6,000. He's also bound to lose his job.<br />
<br />
The images<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">included bizarre sex acts and scenes showing defecation</span></blockquote>
<br />
<br />
Thing is, it appears to be another case of using this law to prosecute people for sharing pictures and footage of acts that are not in themselves illegal. District Judge Howard Riddle told Addison<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">The situation would be very different indeed if this involved children
and similarly if there had been involvement of animals. I sentence you
on the basis that there were no obviously unwilling participants in the
films.</span></blockquote>
<br />
The images may not be to your taste. You may find them objectionable, you might even think they're morally questionable. But to treat them as illegal is another matter. If
an image is of something foul but legal, it is nonsense to make it
illegal - surely any judgement is about what's going on. We
should be judging the picture rather than blaming the person who makes a
frame for it.<br />
<br />
<b>THE GHOSTS OF THE PRE-ONLINE </b><br />
<br />
The very concept of obscenity in the 1959 Act is anachronistic. It defines its target as material whose effect<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #660000;">if taken as a whole, such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who
are likely, having regard to all relevant circumstances, to read, see or
hear the matter contained or embodied in it.</span></blockquote>
<br />
The internet has familiarised us all with unusual sexual practices. Many of us have found new things we really like to see and do. Most of us have discovered that, after a flicker of novelty evaporates, we find the majority of niche sexuality pretty boring. Whichever way we jump, if knowledge of this stuff was going to deprave and corrupt us, it would have done so by now.<br />
<br />
Additionally, in 1959 'publication' meant something rather different to sharing something with someone individually via phone. In 1950s terms, what Addison
did is more akin to showing you a picture in a magazine than publishing and selling
it. But the Act allows for a single instance of sending an item to one person to count, without any commercial element. A solitary text could get you up to five years in prison and a spell on the Sex Offenders Register.<br />
<br />
We've run into this technological rejigging of definitions on social media time and again. If it's said on Twitter, it's no different to shouting it in the street. As such, it's right that racist tweeters get bollocked. But Addison's sending things to a few friends, all of whom had given him their phone number and none of whom appear to have complained, is not the same thing.<br />
<br />
Also, verbal or printed racist abuse is a crime so it follows that it is still a crime sent by text or tweet. Whereas consensual sex acts between adults, even if unusual, are not a crime so it is bizarre to make depiction and knowledge of them illegal. If you went through everyone's phone and computer, a significant proportion of people would be ripe for similar charges. So why pick on James Addison?<br />
<br />
<b>WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?</b><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #20124d;">The images were found on his phone during the investigation into the
Plebgate affair involving former government chief whip Andrew Mitchell
and DPG officers at the gates of Downing Street, the court heard. </span></blockquote>
<br />
Aha. The government have been happy to blithely bat away outcries over a slew of indefensible police actions in recent years, as long as the victim is a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/seven-mistakes-that-cost-de-menezes-his-life-1064466.html">Brazilian immigrant</a> or a <a href="http://www.iantomlinsonfamilycampaign.org.uk/">Millwall-supporting newspaper vendor</a>. But at <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24548645">Plebgate</a> they got a personal taste of what police do to people they don't like, and the government came out fighting.<br />
<br />
A week after Addison was convicted, the Home Secretary <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/may/21/theresa-may-police-federation-power">stunned the Police Federation conference</a> saying that if they didn't accept a list of dozens of reforms that cut back the body's power, then it would be forced on them by Parliament.<br />
<br />
Could this same intense desire to take down the police around Plebgate be behind the decision to charge Addison?<br />
<br />
<b>HAVEN'T WE HAD ENOUGH ALREADY? </b><br />
<br />
The Obscene Publications Act should have keeled over and died in 1960 after Penguin Books were acquitted in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Penguin_Books_Ltd.">Lady Chatterley trial</a>. It certainly should've been binned off two years ago when Michael Peacock walked free from court.<br />
<br />
Peacock made made DVDs of legal, consensual sex and sold them. Personally, I don't want to see someone having their inflated scrotum pummelled, but if you do then as long as the pummellee is a willing participant, go right ahead.<br />
<br />
As <a href="http://anarchish.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/xxx-factor.html">Johnnie Marbles said at the time</a>,<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #4c1130;">Michael Peacock has been severely punished for not committing a crime. The vagaries of the process itself – the soul-churning moment of arrest, the months of worry that followed, the endless meetings with lawyers... These are standard ways the process punishes people, but in Peacock’s case they were coupled with revelations about his private life which must have been excruciating. Even the most vanilla of you probably wouldn’t want your mum hearing every detail of what you do in bed, particularly not if you were telling her from the dock. </span> </blockquote>
<br />
But Peacock made a stand. He was the first person charged for this sort of material to plead not guilty. He argued that his DVDs were sought out by adults wanting exactly that material. The jury agreed and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/libertycentral/2012/jan/06/michael-peacock-obscenity-trial">acquitted him</a>. That really should've been the end of a law whose purpose isn't to deal with any damage caused, merely to pass moral judgement.<br />
<br />
The legislation that made homosexuality illegal prior to 1967, and kept it decriminalised but not fully legal until 2003, was nicknamed 'the blackmailers charter'. It took otherwise law-abiding citizens and criminalised them for something that did no harm to others but would nonetheless ruin the lives of all concerned if made public. It not only led to blackmail but also to police making 'soft arrests'; raiding a gay venue and nicking punters knowing that they'll all plead guilty to avoid the publicity of a trial.<br />
<br />
By the same token, the Obscene Publications Act threatens us with unwanted exposure. In an age where we all count as publishers, the Obscene Publications Act is a vengeant dirty tricksters' charter. <br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-30392989256368906262014-06-13T09:16:00.000+01:002014-06-13T09:43:26.755+01:00Vicky Pollard in a Police Uniform<br />
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<br />
Last week the High Court hosted a hearing where women who had long-term relationships with undercover police challenged 'Neither Confirm Nor Deny' (NCND), the police's stonewalling tactic of refusing to say whether anybody was ever an undercover police officer. <br />
<br />
It's a transparent ploy to avoid accountability, as was <a href="http://bristle.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/neither-confirm-nor-deny-except-when-it-suits-them/">made clear by BristleKRS</a> and <a href="http://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/partners-of-undercover-officers-back-in-court/">as I said on the COPS blog</a> too.<br />
<br />
The excellent <a href="https://lawiswar.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/spycops-victims-seek-end-to-polices-ncnd-wall-of-silence/">report of the hearing on Law Is War</a> further expands on the many exceptions to the NCND rule.
But if you've been following the case, what catches the eye is this description of<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
a tense moment after the Judge repeatedly asked whether the Defendant would in fact view long-term sexual relationships in this case as appropriate or not. After a phonecall it was finally conceded by the Met that this would be inappropriate.</blockquote>
<br />
This is the same Metropolitan Police whose lawyers were in the same building 18 months ago. On <a href="http://bristlingbadger.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/judgement-day.html">that occasion</a> they were trying to ensure that the human rights aspect of the womens' case was not held in court but was instead sent to a bullshit Stalinist tribunal that doesn't allow the womens' representatives to even be present for the hearing and always finds in favour of the government.<br />
<br />
In order to win that, the police had to show that the offending relationships were covered under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act - in other words, that they were, in fact, authorised.<br />
<br />
Paragraph 37 of <a href="http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2013/32.html">that judgement</a> has the solicitor for the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police's angle.<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
Authorisation was granted for Mark Kennedy's deployment as a … CHIS [Covert Human Intelligence Source; undercover cop], as defined in s.26(8) of RIPA. He established and maintained 'a personal or other relationship' with your clients which he covertly used to obtain information and he covertly disclosed information obtained 'by the use of such a relationship' </blockquote>
<br />
Once again it seems that the sexual <a href="http://bristlingbadger.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/undercover-police-no-sex-after-all.html">relationships are authorised</a> when it helps the police refuse accountability, and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jan/19/protest-groups-undercover-mark-kennedy">not authorised</a> when their position needs them to be ignorant. In the same way, as the women showed at last week's hearing, NCND is an absolute rule when the police want to keep quiet and a mere idea when they want to big themselves up.<br />
<br />
They have flip-flopped on both aspects so many times that everyone can see what's going on. By not even admitting their abuse, police extend and intensify the damage and injustice they've wrought. They stand there like Vicky Pollard in a uniform,
spluttering 'yeah but no but yeah but no,' then blurt the latest implausbile excuse followed by an irrelevant decoy that insults the intelligence of everyone who hears it.<br />
<br />
Perhaps a tad more generous, the Guardian's <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/undercover-with-paul-lewis-and-rob-evans/2014/jun/12/undercover-police-and-policing-metropolitan-police">Rob Evans said yesterday</a> that they have air of Canute about them, becoming ever more isolated and absurd as they command the inexorable rising tide of truth and justice to turn back. <br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-48541207715990485442014-06-10T01:31:00.000+01:002014-06-10T01:31:01.116+01:00Rik MayallThe passing of Rik Mayall is to be mourned. He was in so many great things and, given that we're now ruled by a bunch of Alan B'Stards, his talent certainly hasn't lost its relevance. But it is the more slapstick element of his work that deservedly gets remembered best.<br />
<br />
It's
hard to convey just how genuinely anarchic the Young Ones was at the
time. We still lived in a land where telly was saturated with that
accent - surely the only one on Earth not based on geography - that you
only really hear on the Queen these days. It was years before the likes
of Viz appeared. Even the cutting edge, bubble-popping satire like Not
The Nine O Clock News seemed like it was talking about the right values
but in that same cosy way as everything else. No use to you if you were growing up in a
northern town nobody had ever heard of.<br />
<br />
The Young Ones didn't
politely ask for anything, they took a space and fizzed with a wild
energy that was at once intelligent and puerile. It wasn't just funny,
it was recognisable. It was the only thing apart from music that was allowed on
telly that said 'don't let them fool you into being boring, you really
can stay yourself'.<br />
<br />
This gag about the people's poet being dead has an extra resonance on this sad day. But it
also tells us an eternal truth - every joke should end with the teller
vigorously shitting themselves.<br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/6q0CkeuSqxk" width="420"></iframe>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-11667568787372848752014-06-03T23:33:00.001+01:002014-06-03T23:33:31.234+01:00Spycops Women Back in CourtI've started doing social media and blogging for the <a href="https://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.wordpress.com/">Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance</a>. It's an umbrella group campaigning for full disclosure for everyone who's been spied on by Britain's political secret police. <br /><br />So, some of my posts on that issue and a lot of my tweets will be under the COPS banner.<br /><br />That said, as a group effort it has to be a bit drier and more factual, so the more ranty and speculative stuff will still appear on my personal Twitter and this blog. But anyway, if it's an issue that interests you then follow <a href="https://twitter.com/copscampaign">COPS on Twitter</a>. By the way, I do find it weird when people put 'I do this formally but my tweets here are in a personal capacity' - if you put your job in a Twitter bio you've just stopped it being personal. Anyway.<br /><br />For the blogging I'll try to remember to put pointer link posts on here.<br />
<br />
Which leads me to this - the women who had long term relationships with undercover officers are back in court in London this week, challenging the latest police obstruction to justice. They've called for a demo outside the Royal Courts of Justice on Thursday morning. For more info on it, see<a href="https://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/partners-of-undercover-officers-back-in-court/"> the post on the COPS site</a>.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8441439.post-34977670509393761662014-05-19T17:03:00.001+01:002014-05-20T12:24:43.436+01:00Police Convicted of ManslaughterIt's notoriously difficult to get police officers who kill convicted. The astonishing 2001 film <a href="http://www.injusticefilm.co.uk/">Injustice</a> documents a swathe of deaths in British police custody without officers being held to account.<br />
<br />
Two years ago, a Greater Manchester police officer shot and killed unarmed Anthony Grainger. The Crown Prosecution Service found that there were 'serious deficiencies' in the police operation and laws were broken. They are <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-25759909">prosecuting</a> the Chief Constable for health and safety breaches. They are not prosecuting the officer concerned as there is not a realistic chance that a jury would convict a police officer.<br />
<br />
Newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson died in 2009, police told us, of a heart attack as brave bobbies tried to save him <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Evening_Standard_headline_about_Ian_Tomlinson,_April_2_2009.JPG">under a hail of missiles</a> thrown by G20 protesters. Then the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HECMVdl-9SQ">footage</a> came out that showed police attack him as he stood in as unthreatening a pose as humanly possible.<br />
<br />
Ian Tomlinson's inquest jury <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13268633">said he was unlawfully killed</a> by PC Simon
Harwood's baton strike. Harwood's trial jury<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jul/19/simon-harwood-not-guilty-ian-tomlinson"> said he wasn't</a>. They both
work to the same standard of proof, yet they reached opposing conclusions.
One of them is simply wrong. <br />
<br />
After Simon Harwood's manslaughter acquittal his wife Helen <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2388946/My-husband-branded-killer-says-wife-officer-hit-newspaper-salesman-G20-protest-cleared-crime.html">complained</a> that 'my husband has been branded a killer,' as if that wasn't one of the predictable side effects of killing someone.<br />
<br />
At the same time, The Times and Radio 4's Today programme said no police officer has been convicted of the manslaughter of someone in custody since the early 1970s. They're wrong.<br />
<br />
The most recent case I know of took place in 1986. Online, it currently gets a passing half-sentence mention in a solitary <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jul/19/ian-tomlinson-two-contradictory-verdicts">Guardian article</a>, but that's about it. It deserves more. So I've researched the story of Sergeant Alwyn Sawyer's killing of Henry Foley in the hope that it can be googled into in future and a bit of historical accuracy restored.<br />
<br />
<b>THE KILLING OF HENRY FOLEY</b><br />
<br />
On Monday 11 February 1985 Henry Foley, a 67 year old retired bus driver and widower from Pitt Street, Southport, had been playing dominoes and drinking at the town's Railway Club with his long standing friend Frederick Rigby. Describing Foley's state on leaving, Rigby said, 'he was merry. It was not my view that he was drunk'.<br />
<br />
But outside the club Foley was arrested for being drunk and incapable and taken to the police station at the top of Lord Street shortly after midnight. Police went to release him shortly before 6am but he refused to mop up some urine in his cell, so it was decided to detain him further.<br />
<br />
At 7am Sergeant Ivor Richardson took over as bridewell sergeant, celebrating his 25th anniversary as a police officer. At 7.40am he went to release Foley and was subjected to a sustained attack. Foley hit him in the face and he fell over, banging his head, with Foley continuing to punch and kick him. Sergeant Richardson crawled into the corridor shouting for help. Other officers rushed in, overpowered Foley, cuffed his hands behind his back and returned him to the cell.<br />
<br />
Richardson was taken to hospital, and his duties were taken by Sergeant Alwyn Sawyer. Serving in Southport for nearly 24 years, 45 year old Sawyer had received a commendation for plain clothes work, as well as a Royal Humane Society medal for saving five men from a fire in 1978.<br />
<br />
On the morning of 12 February 1985 Alwyn Sawyer went into Henry Foley's cell and gave him what is, by any standards, a horrific beating. <br />
<br />
Foley was on the floor with his hands cuffed behind his back. Sergeant Sawyer left him bruised on the head and chest, but it was the kicks and stamps on his abdomen that killed him. He suffered a damaged spleen, a complete rupture of the small bowel and his left kidney had entirely detached.<br />
<br />
Two detectives later found Foley complaining of stomach pain and asking for a doctor. A police surgeon examined him around noon and sent him to hospital where his injuries brought on a massive heart attack and he died at 7.45pm. <br />
<br />
Meanwhile, Sawyer visited Sergeant Ivor Richardson in hospital, telling his colleague, 'you are well covered and well out of it'. Two days later Richardson spoke to Sawyer on the phone, asking 'did you give Foley a good wellying?' Sawyer simply said, 'you have nothing to worry about'.<br />
<br />
<b>THE TRIAL </b><br />
<br />
Cumbrian police were brought into investigate. Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Stainton interviewed Alwyn Sawyer 12 days after Henry Foley died. Asked if he had ever punched, kicked, stood on, stamped on or kneeled on Foley in any way, Sawyer said, 'no, to each part of the question - I didn't go into the cell'. He had no explanation for how Foley sustained the injuries, but repeatedly denied having caused any of them.<br />
<br />
Foley's shirt had a footprint on the abdomen. Forensic examinations showed the only one at the station it could match was Alwyn Sawyer's left boot. He was charged with murder.<br />
<br />
In April 1986, less than three months since teenager Ray Moran died in Southport police custody sparking disorder in the town, Sawyer stood trial at Manchester Crown Court. He pleaded not guilty, but did not take the witness box to offer any explanation of what happened to Henry Foley nor his part in it. No witnesses were called for the defence.<br />
<br />
On Friday 18 April the jury took just over four hours to reach a verdict of Not Guilty of murder but Guilty of manslaughter. Mr Justice MacPherson sentenced him to seven years saying, 'This is, of course, a tragic day for you, but this was a gross act'.<br />
<br />
Henry Foley's daughter Collette Major praised the investigating officers from Cumbria police. Citing family members who were police officers, she said, 'the enquiry was the sort of policing you are brought up to believe in when you are a little child'.<br />
<br />
<b>WHAT IF AND WHAT ELSE?</b><br />
<br />
I have to wonder, if Sawyer was so ready to unleash such a terrible attack on a defenceless prisoner, is this likely to have been the first time he assaulted a someone in custody? Which other officers also knew of the attack and/or others like it?<br />
<br />
More than that, I wonder, if I tied a pensioner's hands behind his back and kicked
him to death with such fury that I detached a kidney, then denied it
until faced with irrefutable proof, then still didn't actually admit it,
what would happen? Would I only get seven years? Would the judge pass
sentence with words of pity for me rather than my victim?<br />
<br />
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = <br />
<br />
<b>SOURCES</b><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBKCcFXmua2SjEXDUNRA8bvqcvgJF6hSbA5h35XsOZp7ep16tltZNy5K9YLXbZfqSufQZOXnq1OJzbncDIOKauhZ5OZWoDLtUbFgk4XKTDr3KyXotojBpZ1yiblp1N3gsVrLjSFQ/s1600/Visiter+11+april+1986.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBKCcFXmua2SjEXDUNRA8bvqcvgJF6hSbA5h35XsOZp7ep16tltZNy5K9YLXbZfqSufQZOXnq1OJzbncDIOKauhZ5OZWoDLtUbFgk4XKTDr3KyXotojBpZ1yiblp1N3gsVrLjSFQ/s1600/Visiter+11+april+1986.jpg" height="200" width="153" /></a>
<br />
<i>Boot Print on Dead Man's Shirt</i>,<br />
Southport Visiter, 11 April 1986<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU3cIk1RT5_SEF7Wl47A_6DgTCmjiuqaOLlvZa7Dcf9uTKS6YIvVvTXsEgYPAfOagUMrykNsTzjrL3en_A0PkE30zsRG3gt5VLschOndNRFYeJPtR9k0qFT1yQFyqql4Dl7lQ1Gw/s1600/Alwyn-Sawyer1-001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU3cIk1RT5_SEF7Wl47A_6DgTCmjiuqaOLlvZa7Dcf9uTKS6YIvVvTXsEgYPAfOagUMrykNsTzjrL3en_A0PkE30zsRG3gt5VLschOndNRFYeJPtR9k0qFT1yQFyqql4Dl7lQ1Gw/s1600/Alwyn-Sawyer1-001.jpg" height="200" width="176" /></a>
<br />
<i>Pensioner Died After 'Brutal Police Assault'</i>,<br />
The Guardian, 10 April 1986 <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1VrZpFH-98mMpBhl5o36q5Cu_sApNrEObWAIr5YYHkWbqI1EifDC7arS1G0Ozw33-j4xai99wIDGBx6VzgRapiQKVQp_BzFl34Ns046aC7kbxauUzYdIr8H4vQYDxNzYASlnF4w/s1600/visiter+18+april+1986.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1VrZpFH-98mMpBhl5o36q5Cu_sApNrEObWAIr5YYHkWbqI1EifDC7arS1G0Ozw33-j4xai99wIDGBx6VzgRapiQKVQp_BzFl34Ns046aC7kbxauUzYdIr8H4vQYDxNzYASlnF4w/s320/visiter+18+april+1986.jpg" height="182" width="200" /></a>
<br />
<i>Accused Sergeant: Verdict is Near</i>,<br />
Southport Visiter, 18 April 1986<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXTNXZlld8iunw5xPNEDseg4xvu1gBokGUSopbo7hQtEx4UaI5kC099mWqt324v3EBM7VQPHeaflnXt7WKyBjTaXpcCsPEBSDbfDpwy-D3V9iEtSLV5WEIncbNAHjGpBy5GG2CUw/s1600/Alwyn-Sawyer-2-001.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXTNXZlld8iunw5xPNEDseg4xvu1gBokGUSopbo7hQtEx4UaI5kC099mWqt324v3EBM7VQPHeaflnXt7WKyBjTaXpcCsPEBSDbfDpwy-D3V9iEtSLV5WEIncbNAHjGpBy5GG2CUw/s320/Alwyn-Sawyer-2-001.jpg" height="320" width="140" /></a>
<br />
<i>Police Sergeant is Gaoled for Killing Prisoner</i>,<br />
The Guardian, 19 April 1986<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidcyvhsT0_VwxKLBOI-M1qg8QpcNnzJlh1wyeLIPSJNevAZ3SVkC3AQZN59J_Z3cF8Q0NFRZshpHgP_SEUp3rT1OtbamQJ3kRZE50_qOJy2X0yde1sx3mX-XGSNBGXIIcPx0YuiQ/s1600/midweek+visiter+23+april+1986.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidcyvhsT0_VwxKLBOI-M1qg8QpcNnzJlh1wyeLIPSJNevAZ3SVkC3AQZN59J_Z3cF8Q0NFRZshpHgP_SEUp3rT1OtbamQJ3kRZE50_qOJy2X0yde1sx3mX-XGSNBGXIIcPx0YuiQ/s320/midweek+visiter+23+april+1986.jpg" height="105" width="200" /></a><br />
<i>Seven Years for Killing Prisoner</i>,<br />
Midweek Visiter, 23 April 1986<br />
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