Important Information About Terrorism

When is civil disobedience violent terrorism? Whenever the police want it to be.

Not very funny is it? To be honest, it's even less funny than you might imagine.

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 cited environmental groups and named Caroline Lucas MP as an example of extremism.

Lucas was arrested in August 2013 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 acquitted.

Asked to comment on this recasting of Lucas, the assistant chief commissioner at West Yorkshire Police, Russ Foster, said:

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.

Implication: To disobey a police officer is violence.

More interestingly Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers teaching union, adds

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.

Sorry Mary, but this is the Prevent script. Across the Pennines, fracking activists and their parents have been visited by Prevent officers saying they are 'involved with extremists'.

Greater Manchester Police take the Prevent strategy into colleges, dishing out the All Communities Together Now workbook to students. Page 3 is headed Important Information About Terrorism. Seven examples are given.

• Animal rights extremists planning to damage the house of a director of a laboratory which tests products on animals;
• A right-wing extremist planting a bomb outside a pub used by the gay community;
• Irish extremists planning to abduct a British soldier;
• Left-wing extremist planning to assault a Neo-Nazi;
• An environmentalist group disrupting air traffic control systems by blocking the runway at an airport;
• An international terrorist group planning multiple co-ordinated attacks in crowded places;
• A religious fanatic who is fed a distorted interpretation of an ideology over the internet and plans to attack government premises. 

Occupying a runway is terrorism.

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 an especially smelly turd can qualify for this definition of 'disrupting air traffic control systems'.

When climate activists have occupied infrastucture they've done so with full regard for people's safety. The Drax 29 stopped a coal train with a textbook use of railway protocol, right down to the red flag.

Among them was Mark Kennedy, a police spy whose authorisation papers from the head of the political spy units, barely two years after 7/7, said

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

Yet a report into Kennedy and his unit said their targets

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.

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 all the political policing units, creating a single unit for all forms of possible criminal dissent, whether you're sitting in a Suffolk lane or bombing a tube train.

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.

The man who effectively ran it, Detective Chief Inspector Gordon Mills, gave briefings 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.

In 2012 Mills wrote a paper for the International Journal of Police Science and Management on the difference between the two words at the heart of this.

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.

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'.

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.

Violence, which we've seen includes disobeying a police officer.

Terrorism, which Prevent says includes occupying a runway.

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.

Spycops Women Back in Court

I've started doing social media and blogging for the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance. It's an umbrella group campaigning for full disclosure for everyone who's been spied on by Britain's political secret police.

So, some of my posts on that issue and a lot of my tweets will be under the COPS banner.

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 COPS on Twitter. 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.

For the blogging I'll try to remember to put pointer link posts on here.

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 the post on the COPS site.

Another Visit from the Political Police

Further to yesterday's post about police visiting someone for tweeting rigorously annotated references to UKIP's policies and, despite having no power to do so, asking for them to be deleted, it seems a good time to remember another political police visit.

In 2008 a group of climate protesters stopped a coal train on its way to the largest single point of carbon emissions in the UK, Drax power station in North Yorkshire. After their arrest, most had their homes raided by police. Officers confiscated material that would indicate the protester's political views.

Despite their remit to take anything political, in an illuminating video shot by one of the protesters' parents we see police take 30 bags of War on Want promotional material, anti-G8 DVDs and copies of the New Statesman but leave a letter from an MP because it's 'not political'.

The footage has extra resonance as we now know the Drax 29 case was a police-engineered miscarriage of justice and earlier this year all 29 people had their convictions quashed.

Bailed Out - A Police Tactic to Stifle Dissent

Five of the antifascists arrested at last June's anti-BNP demo at the Cenotaph were acquitted by Westminster magistrates this morning. It's good news for them, but joy should not be unconfined.

Many arrests at protests are not intended to secure convictions, merely to stifle political dissent. After 286 antifascists were arrested at another demo three months later, I wrote about how the use of mass arrests is a way to control dissent.

By the same token, today's freshly acquitted protesters were given bail conditions that banned them from attending any further antifascist demonstrations. Breach of police bail can get you arrested again and brought before a court who may well decide to put a disobedient bail-breacher on remand in prison until your trial. As today's antifascists illustrate, that can easily be the best part of a year even for a relatively trivial offence. This makes bail conditions a very effective behavioural control tool irrespective of your alleged crime, let alone your actual guilt.

As David Cullen has documented, the recent anti-fracking protest at Barton Moss near Manchester got exactly this treatment. Protesters, myself included, were picked off on ludicrous pretexts. My favourite is the sober pedestrian who was arrested on suspicion of drink-driving.

We were all given bail conditions not to return to the camp. As soon as we could get the terms challenged in front of a magistrate they were, without exception, completely dropped. And yet the next lot of arrestees were given the same onerous conditions that, even as they typed them, the police knew would not stand up in the courts that the police are supposed to serve.

But by doing random arrests they discourage anyone from protesting who has a fear of risking a criminal record, and then the bail conditions take out the ones who don't mind being nicked. It's a concerted counter-democratic strategy to deprive the campaign of gathering momentum.

The range of groups targeted by Britain's political secret police shows that it's not the threat of violent disorder or even peaceful criminal activity that concerns the authorities. They spy on and disrupt any groups who are active outside the sliver of the political spectrum represented at Westminster. Open, public groups and actual political parties such as the Socialist Party, Green Party and Socialist Workers Party have been spied on.

Effectively, last June the police convicted those antifascists of acting outside permitted political norms and sentenced them to silence.

The Name Game

This clipping comes from the Newbury Weekly News, 22 February 1996. It was the height of the protest against the Newbury Bypass, hundreds of people were obstructing work to clear the route of 10,000 trees, living in treehouses, blockading bulldozers and much more.

There were dozens of camps along the nine miles, and around a thousand arrests were made of people defending the trees. So commonplace were arrests that court cases weren't taken seriously. Two people had similar ideas of how to make their point in court.

The forces of destruction wore different coloured hard hats to denote their role. If memory serves, white hats were the drone security guards, green hats were private detective evidence gatherers from Bray's Detective Agency hired by the Department of Transport, red hats were bailiffs and sheriff's officers and blue hats were police.

Referencing this, one arrested individual gave his name as Red Hats Green Hats White Hats And Police Hats Guard The Trolls Work Of The Chainsaw Gangs Doing Their Little Bit To Build A Wasteland Where Once Was Beauty Making Dirty Money Dirty Profits The Fat Controllers Sit Behind Their Piles Of Money Weaving Their Power Plays So In This Dinosaur They Like To Call Democracy Love And Power To The Tribe Of Eco-Warriors And Mother Earth.

At his initial hearing, Mr Earth was shown a piece of paper with his name and affirmed it was correct. When his case came for trial he was again shown a piece of paper but said that as he didn't have his glasses with him he couldn't read it to check it was correct. The clerk then apologised to the magistrate and read out the full thing.

Another protester actually changed his surname legally to (spelled as one word but broken here to make it legible for you): Oddsocks McWeirdo el tuttifrutti farto hello hippopotamus bum.

He later changed it again to: Oddsocks Mcweirdo el tuttifrutti Mr farto hello hippopotamus bum I think we can all live in co-operation as free individuals without hurting our fellow sentient beings but we will have to work on it the world is for sharing.


 

Tony Benn

I saw Tony Benn speak a few times but beyond what he said to the mass audience I was even more struck by how he treated people individually afterwards. Every personal interaction I saw of Benn's was open minded and enthused, the exact opposite of what you'd expect from a famous, experienced and busy person. He didn't see naive idealism as a fault, rather as the first ingredient for every great historical achievement.

He saw his mission to educate and encourage, but never to lose that core of principle. Thus, whilst he dealt with many issues in detail, he could deal with others in a single short line. Asked about the proposed Graduate Tax, he simply said, 'you don't tax people because they're educated. you tax them because they're rich'. Nothing more to add.

Even it was on telly every night, MPs stayed glaringly quiet about the 1996 Newbury Bypass campaign. A rare exception was Tony Benn who didn't just speak out against the road, he backed the vilified direct action. He put us in the long tradition of English rebellion and said we would be remembered long after the bailiffs, police and spies sent to thwart us were forgotten.

His belief in the power of change outside the walls of parliament led him, even though he was still an MP, to make a formal illicit tribute to Emily Wilding Davison by putting up a plaque in the broom cupboard in which she dodged the 1911 census as part of the suffragettes' boycott campaign.

He believed in action to challenge power. He personally fought the Nazis, he backed so many struggles that have now been proven right. When he left parliament he turned the cliche about 'spending more time with family' around, saying he was retiring in order to devote more time to politics.

When the Labour Party he so adored has failed to support a single strike and the modern generation of professional politicians have never put themselves on the line for anything they believe in, it's easy to believe that they don't actually believe in anything. Tony Benn not only believed in humane principles, he believed in people and refused to fall prey to the weary cynicism of the seasoned campaigner.

Neither Truth Nor Justice

The public inquiry into policing must cover all the interlaced police spy units that did identical work, rather than being limited to one of them. But beyond the framing of the inquiry's remit, we face a bigger obstacle to the truth. The police themselves.

The current self-investigation, Operation Herne, managed to grind down some of the rubble of whatever credibility it had by publishing its Operation Trinity report last week. It looked at the allegations of the whistleblower officer Peter Francis, who was tasked to find 'dirt' with which to discredit Stephen Lawrence's family.

The Ellison report came out on the same day and said that the available evidence shows there was spying on the Lawrences and it is not reassured by the assortment of excuses, fob-offs and 'lost' files it encountered. Operation Herne - whose staff are 75% Metropolitan Police employees including serving officers - said everything's fine.

It went one better. This is an 84 page report that says nothing, to the extent that it

will not confirm or deny if Peter Francis was ever an undercover police officer.

To take the only whistleblower and, when he doesn't get intimidated by the threat of prosecution under the Official Secrets Act, rubbish him with such clammed-up absurdity is the final proof that Operation Herne is not fit for purpose, that it should be abandoned and the public inquiry brought forward.

More than that, it is another example of the 'Neither Confirm Nor Deny' (NCND) policy being used as farcical stonewalling. Last month activist John Jordan was in court to hear that his conviction would be quashed from a court case in which his co-defendant Jim Sutton was actually undercover officer Jim Boyling. However, the court could not tell him why it was quashed; the page of reasons was literally a blank sheet of paper.

Dafter still, they would not confirm Boyling's status as an officer. Jordan's barrister told the court

Everybody knows that Jim Boyling was Jim Sutton. Everybody knows that Jim Boyling was a police officer...  It is ludicrous to suggest that it's a mystery.

It's even more absurd considering the police confirmed it years ago. The Met chief Bernard Hogan-Howe openly admitted that the person known as Jim Sutton was a police officer to the Metropolitan Police Authority meeting on 27 October 2011 [PDF p22].

NEITHER CONFIRM NOR DENY - NEITHER TRUTH NOR JUSTICE

Hogan-Howe responded to the Ellison report by saying

The Metropolitan Police will not regain lost trust without honesty, openness and transparency.

But within a week of that, on Tuesday we will see NCND rolled out to obscure the truth once again. Eight women who had long-term life-partner relationships with undercover officers are back in court. The Met are trying to have the whole claim struck out. Their reasoning - brace yourself - is that because the police choose not to give details of their actions, they are denied a fair trial.

If I burgled Jim Boyling's house and refused to speak at my trial, could I too walk free on the grounds that the hearing was unfair to me?

In case you were wondering whether NCND is just a ploy to avoid accountability, the womens' campaign site notes

The women launched their legal action in December 2011, but it was not until June 2012 that the police first mentioned NCND in relation to the claim. You might think if there had been such a long standing policy this would have been highlighted in the first police response. 

The women had relationships with five officers. One of these is Mark Kennedy, admitted to be a police officer in several official reports, and of course a man who hired Max Clifford to sell his story to a Sunday tabloid. Another is Jim Boyling, also confirmed by police. A third one is Bob Lambert who has given interviews to the media about his undercover work and who was named in the Ellison report last week. The idea that they cannot be identified or confirmed is ridiculous when they've splashed themselves across the telly and police have already told tell us that they were officers.

In other words, NCND is a brazen ruse as transparent as it is galling. It is the sickening, familiar pattern of double injustice wrought by police. First there is what the police did to these people, then there are the devious tactics to avoid accountability, discredit their victims and deny justice.

An institution interested in justice would want to get corruption out into the open, distance themselves from it, examine it, learn from it. A police force that served the public would see abuses of power as a cancer to be removed. To instead close ranks around the foetid mess, absorbing it back into themselves, is the starkest evidence that the corruption is not a problem of anomalous individuals but something institutional.

IF THEY WON'T SPEAK, WE MUST SPEAK OUT

The two day hearing starts on Tuesday 18th March at the Royal Courts of Justice. The women have called for a picket 9-10am on the Tuesday (Royal Courts of Justice, The Strand, London, WC2 - Holborn or Temple tube - please bring placards and banners).

There's a PDF of the leaflet/poster for it here.

UPDATE 13 MARCH: Police have dropped their attempt to have the claim struck out, but it's unclear if the case is still going ahead on the same day with the police using NCND. Either way the picket is still going to happen. The police statement said:

"In light of the upcoming Public Inquiry into undercover policing, the most recent Operation Herne investigation report and the huge public interest in these issues, the Met has decided it would not be appropriate or proportionate to go ahead with the application to strike out the claims.

"The legal arguments involved in this case are novel, complicated and important and the ramifications of departing from NCND, during litigation, was likely to have far reaching implications. We are not prepared to discuss, at this stage, how we will proceed with defending these claims.

"We still maintain the principle of neither confirm nor deny, as we have a duty, as recognised by Mark Ellison QC in his report, to do all we can to protect those officers who served or currently work undercover.

"Today we have written to the Royal Courts of Justice and the claimants' solicitors to inform them of our decision."

As if the police didn't know the facts dug up by Ellison and Herne all along.

You can follow the womens' case on this page of their site, and follow their campaign on Twitter and Facebook.

Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance

The scandal of Britain's political secret police keeps widening, and those affected are banding together to maximise pressure for truth and justice. Last Thursday there was the launch meeting of the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance in London. It was oversubscribed (I'd guess about 150 people were in the room). For those who couldn't be there, I''ll summarise what was said by the main speakers.

A panel of six people spoke about their experiences, and hearing them in succession, talking about different groups and issues affected over such a long period of time, really hammered home the scale of what has been happening.

Liz Davies, chair of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers chaired the meeting. What was clear was that even full answers about what happened to one person or group is not enough. There needs to be a single, overarching, independent inquiry with the power to compel witnesses.

IMRAN KHAN - LAWYER FOR STEPHEN LAWRENCE'S FAMILY

Imran Khan, long-term lawyer for murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence's family who were spied on, spoke first. He read a statement of support from Stephen's mother Doreen and said that the current raft of police self-investigations aren't convincing anyone. Even if we maximise our benefit of the doubt and say they'll be objective and fair, they will still not be credible because they're not independent.

He spoke of the obvious first questions of accountability - Who was in charge of the secret police units? What was the chain of command? Did it go to the very top? Whistleblowing officer Peter Francis has recounted a personal visit and thanks from the Commissioner - complete with a gift of a bottle of whisky - for their work. How long were they deployed for? Who saw the information that was gathered? Who decided not to tell the supposedly air-clearing MacPherson Inquiry into policing around the Lawrence case?

We know that at least three officers including Peter Francis were deployed around the Lawrences and other black justice campaigns. Unfortunately, the brief of the secret police is not to gather evidence but intelligence. This means things were not meticulously logged for verification. Quite the opposite, information was sanitised to remove clues of its provenance before being passed on. So a look at the files will never be enough, we need the testimony of those involved.

Yet Chief Constable Mick Creedon, the man running the biggest investigation into the secret police, has threatened the one whistleblower with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. This is, of course, done to discourage others from coming forward.

Everyone deserves answers. Not just the Lawrences and the bereaved families put at risk when officers stole their dead child's identity, but all those involved including the people who were less likely to get unalloyed public sympathy such as the political activists and the lawyers.

DAVE SMITH - BLACKLISTED CONSTRUCTION WORKER

Dave Smith of the Blacklist Support Group got up to speak next, pointing out that as an old school trade unionist he stands to speak at meetings.

In the five years since the Information Commissioner's Office raided the Consulting Association - the company that ran the illegal construction industry blacklist - we've seen no prosecutions and no justice. 3,200 files were found. Smith's own was ten pages and included details of his family, his car registration, and ten years of his employment history.

The blacklist was used by many of the biggest names in construction - Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Costain, Kier, Laing O’Rourke, McAlpine, Skanska - and only employees at director level were invited to attend blacklisting meetings. Workers appear on it for trying to unionise, but also for raising health and safety concerns. Some people weren't even construction workers - one was a teacher who was listed because they had been involved in an anti-BNP campaign. Several hundred environmental campaigners (me included) were on it. It cost the companies about £2 per search, and invoices were found for £28,000 for one firm in one year.

There was information that can only have come from secret police. Indeed, late last year the Independent Police Complaints Commission confirmed that illegally supplying the information for this illegal work was a routine part of Special Branch work across the country. Another police unit that spied on protesters, the National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit, had meetings with the Consulting Association even though the CA's activities were wholly illegal.

It's not just the same units, it's the same officers. Peter Francis believes his intelligence was used for it. Yet again, the secret police show that corporate profit is more important than the law and that their remit was actively counter-democratic.

Mark Jenner - who was undercover as Mark Cassidy - told the partner he lived with for five years that he was a construction worker. He even turned up on pickets alongside Smith and chaired meetings. (In reality he spent his 'working' days with his wife and family or with police). He also infiltrated black justice campaigns and so, like Francis, is another crossover officer.

The blacklisting campaign started out as an industrial relations dispute, straightforward labour versus capital. But what has been revealed is far more than that. This is a conspiracy between big business, government and the secret services to trample fundamental human rights. Like the undermining of social justice activists, it is not over. Blacklisting was used on projects for the 2012 London Olympics.

Furthermore, if celebrities get a public inquiry for having their phones hacked then what possible excuse is there for not having such an inquiry for this far greater and graver invasion of lives?

I would also add a question - does anyone think construction is the only industry with a blacklist, or just the only one exposed?

HELEN STEEL - SOCIAL JUSTICE CAMPAIGNER

Helen Steel made the next contribution. A lifelong campaigner for environmental and social justice, she is perhaps best known as one of the McLibel Two who defended themselves in the longest trial in English history. Their group, London Greenpeace (nothing to do with the massive Greenpeace) distributed a leaflet called What's Wrong With McDonald's - co-written by a member who was in fact undercover police officer Bob Lambert.

She had a long-term relationship with an undercover officer called John Dines, who had stolen the identity of a dead child called John Barker, and is part of a group of women suing the police.

He had confided in her about the death of his mother, his isolation as an only child, and how he dreamed to have children one day. All of this was untrue - it was policy to only send in officers who were married with children - but he successfully manipulated her feelings over several years. She fell in love with him.

Shortly before the McLibel writ was served they began a relationship that lasted several years. During the last six months he appeared to have a breakdown, which was very stressful and draining for Steel to handle. He left and she received two letters from South Africa, saying once he sorted his head out they may get back together.

After years of searching, one day on the way home from court at McLibel she impulsively went into St Catherine's House and searched the death records, finding the real John Barker's, proving her partner had been someone else. All those years and shared experiences and plans, and she didn't even know his name. So began her uncovering of the truth. She travelled to New Zealand, but the police were aware of her search and had got there first, paying Dines to get out of the country to frustrate her enquiries.

Police have given conflicting responses, saying it is never acceptable to have these relationships yet also saying it is inevitable and even essential. They acknowledge deceit but say that other people lie to partners too. Firstly, police abuse cannot be justified with the line 'but other people do it'. Secondly, this isn't a lie. This is a false identity, false marital status, false job, false politics. If this happened to anyone - police officers included - they would feel violated and traumatised.

Police also suggested that Mark Kennedy's relationships were the actions of a rogue officer. John Dines proves otherwise. Steel's legal action involves eight women who had relationships with five officers over 25 years. And there are others taking legal action, and still more that can't face the gruelling fight.

This was deliberate, repeated strategy. This is institutional sexism, derailing women's lives in order to shore up secret police operations with no oversight.

To search your home there needs to be a warrant, gained from a judge who has seen evidence of the need. Yet a secret police officer can live in your home for years with no scrutiny, nor any need for evidence against you. A suspect in custody is cautioned and may have a lawyer present, yet these officers question you without you even knowing. It's this depth of intimacy, of emotional entanglement, that causes the trauma rather than the sexual element that is the media's preoccupation.

The recent response - to 'neither confirm nor deny' anyone was an officer, the new 'tougher guidelines' that make no mention of sexual relationships - prove that they want to keep this as an option, that it is still going on.

HARRIET WISTRICH - LAWYER

Harriet Wistrich represents the eight women in Steel's case. Having all had their sense of trust shattered by their experiences, it's not been easy for them to work as a group and yet they have made great efforts to support one another. It's clear that what was done was textbook, the pattern of the relationships - the troubled early life, the devoted correspondence, through to the prolonged 'breakdown' when they're about to leave - is strikingly similar in all the cases.

Wistrich expected that, faced with such starkly immoral and operationally indefensible deeds, the police would have held their hands up and said it was wrong but have claimed to have learned lessons and moved on since then. It's been a surprise to see them defend it and obstruct justice. Their main tactic is 'neither confirm nor deny' (NCND), which they pretend is a long-held inviolate principle.

They are also trying to get cases struck out because 'this has no basis in law'. What happened to these women is very rare, and its exposure rarer still, so of course there is no list of similar historic cases.

The Metropolitan Police officers doing the self-investigations met with Mark Jenner/Cassidy's partner, asking for details, letters, photos, diaries. They were from the Professional Standards department, an internal body. Yet still they held the line that they would not confirm that Jenner was a police officer.

I'd also point out that the Met is defending legal action by Jenner's ex-partner, so there's a conflict of interest in them investigating on the one hand whilst trying to stifle investigations on the other.

The three women who had relationships with Mark Kennedy did so after the Human Rights Act came into force, so had a claim there. It has been thrown out of real court and sent to an Investigatory Powers Tribunal, a secret court where the women and their lawyers are barred from being there or seeing what evidence the police provide (or omit), then the judge makes a decision without giving any reasons and there is no right of appeal. Historically, all cases at IPTs find in favour of the state.

All the women have claims under common law for deceit, assault and misfeasance in public office. The police are trying to have these struck out, saying that as their refusal to give evidence about their officers means they won't get a fair trial.

I find thehe idea that someone caught committing a crime can say their own choice not to speak up in court is the denial of a fair trial an amazing, bold obstruction to justice. Try doing that if you're nicked for burglary, see how far you get.

ROBBIE GILLETT - CLIMATE CAMPAIGNER

Robbie Gillett was one of the Drax 29 who stopped a coal train going into Drax power station in 2008 and whose convictions were recently quashed because the prosecution had withheld evidence from the activists' driver, undercover officer Mark Kennedy.

He corrected the common phrase that the Director of Public Prosecutions "invited them to appeal" against their wrongful convictions. This was not benevolence from diligent investigators at the Crown Prosecution Service, it was giving in to pressure about an embarrassment that was ballooning. The 'invitation' came in July 2012, 18 months after the collapse of the Ratcliffe power station trial, also due to Kennedy's involvement. It is the exposure of the secret police and the work to keep it in the public eye that is yielding results.

Sir Christopher Rose's report said that the failings of police and prosecutors at Ratcliffe were 'individual, not systemic,' yet the Drax case had already happened with different police forces and prosecutors. Add to this John Jordan's prosecution a decade earlier alongside an officer who never broke cover, and undercover officer Bob Lambert's admission that he was prosecuted as activist Bob Robinson a decade before that, and systemic is the only word for these miscarriages of justice.

With such wide-ranging, long term infiltration using the maximum possible invasion of citizens' lives, it's easy to get acclimatised and stop being shocked at new revelations. We get normalised to police misconduct. But just because something is normal doesn't mean it is acceptable and we must maintain our outrage and our thirst for justice.

LOIS AUSTIN - SOCIALIST PARTY

Lois Austin is a trade unionist who works for the public services union PCS and is a member of the Socialist Party. She was a member of the Socialist Party's forerunner, Militant Labour, and was chair of its anti-racist campaign Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE) at the time they were infiltrated by Peter Francis.

When they used a bug detector to sweep the YRE office at the time it lit up like a beacon. People forget how controversial the now lauded anti-racist and anti-apartheid campaigns were in the 1980s and 1990s.

I'd note that the anti-apartheid campaign was focused on economic sanctions, and threats to corporate profit are one of the main targets of the secret police.

Many campaigners who'd never been arrested for anything were spied on and had extensive Special Branch files. Peter Francis says there were already files on around a hundred Militant and YRE members when he was deployed, and he opened 25 more. This is political policing to prevent protest, colluding with big business and state bodies, seemingly without any boundaries on the methods used. Illegal action, such as supplying the blacklist, perjury or being an agent provocatuer, were accepted practices for these officers of the law.

This is not a rogue officer or rogue unit overstepping their brief. These methods were so widespread, sustained and interlaced with other agencies that it can only be seen as the accepted, organised strategy. When we've heard Helen Steel's story, it makes you wonder what else there could be.

So this campaign needs to be broad. The initial central demand is an independent inquiry with testimony from all known victims and the power to compel witnesses. We especially welcome Doreen Lawrence's statement that she doesn't just regard her family's case as the boundary but as part of something much bigger. We've seen the recent Hillsborough Independent Panel and Bloody Sunday inquiries reveal much truth but stop short of fully attributing blame.

It is inconceivable that the Commissioner of the Met and the politicians above him didn't know about this. The police are on the back foot with this issue, hence the threatening and smearing of Peter Francis. Pretty much everyone has sympathy with some people who were targeted, so we need to build and popularise this campaign. There is a statement to get union branches and organisations to sign up to. Let's take this beyond the groups affected and out into wider society.

JUST THE BEGINNING

So, that was the six speakers. Even though I already knew much of what was said, hearing it from those affected one after another was intensely moving and made a very coherent picture come into focus. And, although there were people from so many disparate groups, this was by no means the full story. There was nobody there from the Hillsborough families who were spied on. There was no mention of the Muslim groups that were the focus of the final few years of pivotal undercover officer Bob Lambert's final few years in the police.

Beyond the list of known targets, we should remember that all this comes from the unmasking of about a dozen undercover officers. More than 90% of them remain totally unknown to us. How many more court cases were nobbled? How many more children were born to briefly bolster an officer's cover then abandoned? How many outrages were committed the like of which we haven't even thought of yet?

The chief thrust of COPS is to push for a judge-led inquiry. Whilst, as Lois Austin pointed out, it has led to a fuller public understanding of things like Hillsborough and Bloody Sunday - though no convictions - we do also need to be cautious about seeing that as a final goal. Bloody Sunday had an initial judge-led inquiry that was a whitewash, and the Taylor report into Hillsborough, though sympathetic to victims and critical of police, was also unable to marshal all the facts or address the cover-up. It was only after decades of sustained campaigning that the more recent, more accurate judge-led inquiries were held into those events.

With Hillsborough we saw a new model of inquiry, a panel outside of arms of the state, trusted by all sides. It succeeded where judges failed. Enforcers of state power are not the best placed people to objectively investigate large scale abuses of state power.

But, as the Lawrence and Hillsborough campaigns have shown, no single inquiry will provide the complete answer. We must go for what will bring forth the next nugget of truth, and once we've got that out into the light, go for the one beyond it. The case for a proper independent inquiry is so strong, and will be supported by such a broad spectrum of society, that it is the obvious next step.

COPS has been founded to make that happen. They're also on Facebook if you want to give them a Like and stay up to date that way.

Fracking - We Are Winning

Barton Moss near Manchester has been the front line of the anti-fracking campaign in the UK. Police have shown a predictable level of impartiality.

They arrived one rainy day saying that a flare had been fired at a police helicopter two days earlier, cordoned off the tents and undertook searches that involved pulling out everyone's clothes and bedding and leaving it in the rain. Had there actually been any such flare fired the police would not have left it two days to come and investigate.

Older protesters are taken away from the site by the police using a favourite pretext for action with no legal basis, 'for your own safety'.

They have arrested people on a range of trumped up charges. Perhaps the most extraordinary is the incident of a non-protesting Lawful Observer, Dr Steven Peers, who was shooed away from filming an arrest and then arrested for drink-driving even though he was a sober pedestrian. Top tip; don't fit up a person whose role is to film things until you've checked their camera is switched off.



Prosecutors dropped the case as soon as it got to court and he is now suing the police for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment.

Most of the arrests have been whilst walking in front of the delivery trucks. Enclosed in a moving kettle of officers who tread on their heels and kick their ankles, people walk slowly down the access road ahead of the convoy as it arrives in the morning and leaves in the evening. Around fifty people, myself included, have been arrested. Like many of those nicked, I wasn't doing anything that the others weren't, but they tend to pick off the new arrivals or the veterans of other protest camps.

The access road isn't a normal road. It's a private road and a public footpath. The police dug up and nicked the public footpath sign in December, but this does nothing to the legal status of the place.

They were told repeatedly, every day, including just before arresting me, that it was a public footpath and Obstruction of The Highway doesn't apply and such arrests were unlawful.

Yesterday a judge at Manchester Magistrates Court confirmed this. So today people sat in front of the trucks and stopped them for eight hours until the convoy turned around and went away.

The police will now have to fall back on their slurs of protesters turning up for a ruck with the police and what a great job the police are doing of resisting such rabid provocation. That imaginative press release is  believed to be tipped for the Man Booker shortlist, though it will face stiff competition from my strikingly creative arresting officer's statement.

I have never seen a UK environmental campaign that looks so likely to win as the one against fracking. It has the vulnerable fledgling industry element that made the GM campaign successful. Then there is the robust mix of locals, direct activists and NGOs all doing what they do best and working in concert that made the roads campaigns so successful. It has the climate imperative underneath and the sense that drastic looking measures are the only ones that square up to the problem, elements that made the climate camps capture the imagination and move the grounds of debate.

Cuadrilla, the company that had the fracking operation in Balcombe last year, announced a fortnight ago that they were pulling out of all their Lancashire sites. A couple of days later climate denying fuckweasel Environment Secretary Owen Paterson admitted that the protesters are winning the argument, though he didn't say it was due to having better values, science and facts. He attributed it to us having 'exciting clothes'. Last week BP ruled out any fracking in the UK, plainly saying it was because of the protests it would attract. Each new poll shows public opposition to fracking increasing.

We are winning.

Where's The Justice?

Another 29 convictions quashed because undercover cop Mark Kennedy's evidence was withheld from the court by police and prosecutors. It happened in an earlier case too.

In April 2009, 114 people were pre-emptively arrested whilst planning to shut down Ratcliffe on soar coal fired power station. Between their planned protest at Ratcliffe on soar power station and the subsequent trial they found out that one of them, Mark Stone, was in fact police officer Mark Kennedy.

Twenty of the Ratcliffe protesters had already been convicted, but the defendants in the separate trial of six more said he must have made some sort of report. As the prosecution have a duty to disclose any evidence that may help the defence, they asked to see it. Rather than do this, the state withdrew the charges (specifically saying it was new evidence and nothing to do with the cop, honest guv) and the trial dramatically collapsed. Two resulting official reports, when sifted in tandem, show that the police and prosecutors had colluded to hide Kennedy's involvement from both trials.

The twenty earlier convictions were quashed. This led the Drax 29 - who'd been driven by Kennedy on their mission to stop a train of coal en route to Drax power station in 2008 - to appeal as well. Earlier today the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas, overturned the convictions saying there was "a complete and total failure" to disclose evidence that would have been fundamental to the activists' defence. He said reasons for the failure remained unclear. Seems pretty clear from where I'm sitting. As with the Ratcliffe trail, they withheld evidence that would exonerate the defendants in order to secure convictions.

In October a conviction was ready to be overturned because, again, one of those arrested but not prosecuted was a police officer, this time Jim Boyling. But, bizarrely, the state has refused to say why it will let the appeal win. Next week several media outlets are going to court trying to force disclosure in the public interest.

...AND JUSTICE FOR THOUSANDS

We can be confident Kennedy and Boyling are not the only ones. But most undercover officers haven't been revealed. There will be dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of miscarriages of justice but the people wrongly convicted won't appeal because they don't know one of their comrades was a cop.

With the Ratcliffe 20, plus the additional Ratcliffe 6, that's 55 wrongful prosecutions and convictions from Kennedy alone. Taken as an average for these officers, that's around 8000 since the secret police started targeting activists this way in 1968. Even if it's just one per officer per year, there are around 600 miscarriages of justice being left to stand.

The Director of Public Prosecutions said they will investigate any cases brought to them, but they won't go searching. Thing is, we can't bring cases if we don't know who the cops were. It's a bit like me getting burgled, but the cops ask me to find a fingerprint and put a name to it before they investigate. It's *they* who hold the only records that can identify culprits and, given we all know these crimes happened, their refusal to investigate amounts to a cover-up.

NO TRUST, NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE

If the smaller, less intrusive, less serious phone hacking scandal warrants a public inquiry, what possible excuse is there to deny one for the secret police scandal? This is one of the biggest nobblings of the judicial system ever. Where's the justice?

At the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking, the police were happy to let a few lowlings go down in flames but when it started to implicate a very senior officer the Met held on to their evidence until it was too late to use, and even then handed it in with a gagging order so it couldn't even be referred to in Leveson's conclusions.

If they'll do that to a public inquiry, what chance is there with Operation Herne, the investigation into the secret police scandal headed by a chief constable where most of the personnel are Met staff including serving police officers with an eye on their future career?

They are already obstructing justice in this as much as they can. When women ex-partners of undercover cops had a hearing a couple of months ago trying to get their human rights claim heard in open court, the police were refusing to even admit Mark Kennedy was a police officer. (The court decided that the human rights claim will be heard in a secret tribunal where only the police and judge are present and the women's lawyers don't get to see what evidence the police present or omit.)

DONE, AND SEEN TO BE DONE 

This isn't just about fitting up hundreds of political activists and ruining lives with wrongful criminal records. It's also about spying on Stephen Lawrence's family and other black justice campaigns to undermine them. It's about the dozens of women who were psychologically and sexually abused by undercover officers, some left with children to raise alone. It's about the bereaved families whose dead childrens' identities were stolen by officers, putting the family at risk of retribution from criminals who thought they had twigged who the mole in their operation was. It's about the blacklisting of thousands of trade unionists on an illegal database with information supplied by police officers.

Beyond all that, it's about whatever was done by the other 90% of these officers who we don't yet know about.

Self-investigations will say 'mistakes were made, nothing systemic or malicious, lessons learned, move along, nothing to see'. There needs to be an open public inquiry conducted in a manner that is trusted by all sides. It needs to deliver justice commensurate with the wrongdoing that it investigates. The Hillsborough Independent Panel showed that such a thing is possible. Anything less is either a failure to understand the enormity of what was done, or else a deliberate obstruction to conceal the truth and stifle justice, yet again.

We Are More Possible Than You Can Powerfully Imagine

The problem with working for social change is that you never know if you're wasting your time. Only hindsight, and almost always a considerable quantity of it, can give you clues.

Every successful campaign - indeed, most historical events - gets tainted by our perspective that includes the time between then and now. It makes it look as if what happened was fated and inevitable. Conversely, things that failed appear as if they were always doomed and those involved were daft to have even tried.

When you read what the contemporaneous mainstream voices invested in the status quo said about, say, the Suffragettes or the civil rights movement, you get a very different view. Likewise,when we get to peer into the minds and deeds of the winners we find that they didn't see themselves with certainty either.

Cabinet papers from the 1984 Miners' Strike released today show the government was readying itself to declare a State of Emergency and, against stated government policy, use troops to move coal. Even with that on the table they weren't entirely confident.

Minutes of the secret cabinet committee, Misc 101, reveal Thatcher and her closest ministers were unsure of what to do: "It was not clear how far a declaration of a state of emergency would be interpreted as a sign of determination by the government or a sign of weakness, nor to what extent to which it would increase docker support for the miners' strike."

In 1952 the government built itself a bolthole in case of nuclear attack. These days it's a weird tourist attraction, which has given rise to hilarious roadsigns.

A guide book to bizarre days out, Bollocks To Alton Towers, explains.

The Secret Nuclear Bunker at Kelvedon Hatch easily qualifies as The World's Most Terrifying Bungalow. It's a place made all the more extraordinary for its very ordinary setting, on a country lane between Chipping Ongar, once the furthest outpost of the Central Line, and Brentwood, infamously crowned The Most Boring Town In Britain.

At first sight an unremarkable 1950s farm cottage, this bungalow is in fact the tip of a government iceberg - a huge three-storey bunker with 10ft thick concrete walls reaching 100ft underground. The local villagers knew nothing of its purpose, being the sort of people who could, back in 1952, remain unfazed by 40,000 tons of cement trundling up the road to Parrish Farm. Even the contractors weren't told what they were building.

When it was sold in 1992 the new owners

found the floors polished to within an inch of their lives and grass clipped to nail-scissor perfection. The four bored guards who had been stationed there had made the place nice and tidy and nicer and tidier...

In four decades of active service, at a cost of £3m a year, Kelvedon Bunker was never at red alert status. It was, only once, cranked up to amber. Not, as you might think, during the Cuban Missile Crisis (which apparently happened too quickly), or the occupation of the Palestinian territories, or the invasion of Afghanistan. Kelvedon was readied for action during the 1984-85 miners' strike, when the government was concerned that the country might be on the brink of civil war.

They really though they might have misjudged it, that the unionised workforce might band together to stem the tide of neoliberal regression that now laps around our necks in 2013. It was in no way a done deal.

So this is why we keep fighting for the change we know is needed. Not because we think we are fated to win, but because there are things worth fighting for. Because even if we fail, we may have laid the foundations of inspiration and experience that others will build upon and succeed. But, most of all, because we cannot foretell the future nor know all that is going on today. As a banner at the Newbury bypass campaign said, we are more possible than you can powerfully imagine.

Last Chance for Human Rights

Some of the women survivors of long-term relationships with undercover police are back in court next week. Although very similar things happened to them all over a long period of time - hence suing the bosses for the strategy of psychological and sexual abuse, rather than the individual officers - only incidents that occurred after the Human Rights Act have a human rights claim in UK courts. So this case just involves three women who had long term relationships with Mark Kennedy.

The rest of the claimants do have the same human rights regarding privacy and freedom from degrading and inhumane treatment, but would need to have the money to take a case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Remember that next time you hear Tory clamour - now a manifesto pledge for 2015 - to repeal the Human Rights Act. It wouldn't be withdrawing human rights, just ensuring that they're only enforcable for the rich. (Although as of last month they are talking about withdrawing from the European Convention on Human Rights entirely.)

When the Human Rights Act was introduced, the government spotted that state espionage will often breach human rights, and relevant cases under the Act might involve very sensitive, even life threatening information. To deal with this, they set up Investigatory Powers Tribunals. These are bullshit Stalinist secret courts that the claimant is not allowed into. The state presents its evidence, the claimants don't see what the state has said to see if its true (or see what is true but ahs been omitted). The claimants are not there to cross-examine anyone. The judge then makes up their mind and says who has won, without giving any reasons for their decision. There is no right of appeal.

In cases of genuine secrecy with lives on the line you can imagine how such measure might appear necessary. But in the case of environmental activists it's nonsense. More, the case of Mark Kennedy, who hired Max Clifford to repeatedly sell his stories to the Daily Mail, could scarcely be less secret. Yet in January a judge decided that the womens' human rights claim should go to a Bullshit Stalinist Tribunal.

It is not about the interests of national security. It is plainly an obstacle being used by the guilty to avoid accountability. Yet again we see state powers enacting a double injustice - committing a gross offence against citizens, then when it is caught it tries every trick available to deny them justice.

Next week the Court of Appeal will hear the appeal against the decision to go to the Bullshit Stalinist Tribunal. It is the last chance to ensure press and public scrutiny of Mark Kennedy’s police commanders over Human Rights Act abuses.

The support group for some of the women, Police Spies Out Of Lives, has called for a picket on the opening day:

- Royal Courts of Justice, The Strand, London, WC2 (Holborn or Temple tube)
- Tuesday 15 October, 9am-10am

There is more info and explanation about the hearing in their press release.

The 'Where We Stand' statement by the eight women in the Police Spies Out of Lives case is an absolute must-read.

The group finally set up social media this week, so you can keep up to date with the cases by following them on Twitter @out_of_lives or liking them on Facebook at facebook.com/policespiesoutoflives.

Spied Upon Film UK Screenings

I've been following the undercover policing scandal closely since it began and, as longer term readers may suspect, I've got a personal interest in it. I was close to Mark Kennedy for many years in his Mark Stone guise, and I was one of the people who did the investigation that unmasked him.

I've not gone into it much before in public. That has, in part, been to do with the integrity of the writing; I want the commentary to stand on its own merits, to be based on facts and reasoning that anyone could arrive at, rather than based on any emotional drive or undisclosed information. But it's also partly it's personal; having had your life and the lives of those around you so horrendously intruded upon, there was a powerful initial need not to exacerbate that feeling. Additionally, I didn't want to look like a self-publicist or do anything to overshadow the court cases being brought by women who'd had long term relationships with these officers.

As time's gone on the personal shock has waned but the scale of what we know has grown. Everything we know about Kennedy is still true, yet his actions have become just a tiny part of the greatest scandal in British policing history. It's a story of huge abuse of power and resources, dozens of psychologically and sexually abused women, abandoned children, rigged court cases and the probability of hundreds, even thousands of wrongful convictions.

There is a growing band of us who suffered this stuff who are co-ordinating and agitiating for justice. Jason Kirkpatrick is an anti-capitalist activist based in Berlin. He was also friends with Kennedy for years. Since discovering who his friend really was he's been travelling around with a camera, tallking to other targeted activists, academics and politicians, trying to find the truth and get some answers.

He's coming to the UK next week for 'sneak preview' screenings of his forthcoming film, Spied Upon, and I'm speaking with him. He'll be showing about 40 minutes of the material he's got so far, talking about the film and having a discussion with the audience after.

This isn't a mainsteam media endeavour. It's an activist filmmaker, portraying the activist perspective. This also means it's got no funding, so if you'd like to see the film finished and have a few quid, he's just launched a crowdfunding appeal.

You can see clips from the film on the Spied Upon site. 

The screenings:

Wednesday 9 October, 7.15-9pm
Vibe Bar, 91 Brick Lane, London, E1 6QL
£3-8 (sliding scale) at the door. No one turned away for lack of funds.
London Facebook event

Friday 11 October, 7.15-9pm
Broadway Cinema Studio, 14-18 Broad St., Nottingham, NG1 3AL
£3-6 (sliding scale) at the Studio door, no presale tickets
NOTE: This is a “Private” event, and thus not under Broadway Cinema listings
Nottingham Facebook event

Sunday 13 October 2013, 2.15-4pm
Hyde Park Picture House, 73 Brudenell Road, Leeds, LS6 1JD
£6, £3 unwaged
Leeds Facebook event

Tuesday 15 October 2013, 7.30-9pm
Forest Cafe, 141 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh, EH3 9JN
Free event, no tickets required 
Edinburgh Facebook event

Wednesday 16 October 2013, 7.30pm
St Andrews School 6, St Salvators Quad, St Andrews, Fife
Free event, no tickets required
St Andrews Facebook event

five year old eco warrior

 This week I got a Facebook message from an old friend about their five year old.

Today J heard the term 'Eco Warrior'. Discussions ensued and you came up.
Here are our questions:

Are you an Eco Warrior?
Why were you living in the trees near Newbury?
Have you got any pictures of it?
Were you scared?
What happened in the end?
How can a 5 year old be an 'Eco Warrior'?

I replied off the top of my head, but people have said nice things about it so I thought I'd post it here too.

= = = = = = = = =

Hi J,

First up, be glad you've got such interesting parents. Most people's are a lot more boring.

Are you an Eco Warrior?

Yes, I think most people would say I was. But I don't like the phrase 'eco warrior' myself, it makes it sound as if people have some magic power or are special in some way, when really it's just ordinary people who care a lot about saving the trees and who have the time to do something about it.

It's sort of like if your dad was very famous for his music, people would call him a rock star but it would seem like he was showing off if he said it about himself. And, worse for him, it would make him seem a bit special and so remote from other people.

I do like the term 'warrior' for the way that it describes a war that is going on, but I don't feel I'm a warrior in that war; the war is between the endlessly greedy people and the one ecosystem that we all need to stay alive.

But in the end, I accept that "eco warrior" is a quick way for people to describe those of us who do that sort of stuff.

Why were you living in the trees near Newbury?

They were going to cut thousands of trees down to build a big new road. We realised that if we went and built treehouses and stayed up in them, they couldn't cut the trees down. At least, not until they'd climbed up and taken us out one by one, which we knew would take them a lot of time.

By making it more of an effort, it meant people planning to do the same thing elsewhere decided not to bother. It also made people ask us what we were doing and we got them to understand our view.

We got them to see that making more roads means cutting down trees and it encourages people to use their cars more, which is very pollluting. Cars are very useful, but we knew there were other, less damaging ways to move people and things around, such as buses and trains.

Have you got any pictures of it?

Yes I have. Have a look in my Facebook pictures at an album called 'Get A Job You Bunch Of Hippy Scum'.

Were you scared?

Sometimes, but not often. I'm a bit of a wuss at being high up, so learning to climb trees didn't come readily. But I knew it would be worth it and I had my friends to encourage me. I expect you've had something similar when climbing up high or going fast, or doing something new and difficult. But you know it'll be worth it afterwards, and that it will be easier next time. It was like that.

Some people might tell you they never get scared; they're lying. Pretending that you have no fear will get you in all sorts of bother, it's much better to realise you're scared and then decide if it's going to be worth doing something anyway. If you know you're not really in danger then you can make yourself get over it.

Having to charge through lines of police and guards to get to trees was scary sometimes, but I knew they wouldn't really hurt me, and much more than that we knew we were right and they were wrong, so that made us all do it anyway, and I'm glad it did.

What happened in the end?

The road got built and thousands of trees were lost, it was too late to stop that. But we convinced lots of people we were right, and most of the other big roads that were planned never got built. There are beautiful places, such as the water meadows near Salisbury, that you can see today only because our work at Newbury made them decide not to build there.

The few trees I was living in weren't in the exact line of the new road, they were next to it. The builders told us that if we saved them the trouble of coming up to get us then they'd let the trees live.

So those four trees, which are a lot older than me and will hopefully outlive us all, are still there because me and my friends lived in them for a few weeks a long time ago.

And on a personal level, doing good things means you meet good people. At Newbury and other camps like it I made some of the best friends I'll ever have.

How can a 5 year old be an 'Eco Warrior'?

There are many places where this stuff is still going on. At the moment a new industry called fracking, where they get polluting gases out of the ground and poison water, is trying to get started, and people are protesting and blocking it just like at Newbury. Some of the old road schemes have been brought back, and people have been in camps at them too.

It's not really possible for you to go and live in the trees but whenever there's a camp they love people coming and visiting for the day, so maybe your mum and dad would take you to one. Knowing that they have the support of so many people who would like to be there but can't - because of jobs or school or whatever - is what makes people in the camps feel like it's really worth it.

But there is a lot you can do that does a lot of the same job - not using too much stuff, respecting nature - in your day to day life. I think spending time in the garden, growing some of your own food (but making sure there's always a little wild corner for the plants and birds and insects to have to themselves) can give you the right spirit that makes you an eco-warrior at heart whether you're living in the trees or not.

It makes us see that there are things we can do to interact with the natural world in a good way, that make us feel like we're making it better but still let us know that we're not in charge, we are part of things much bigger than us that provide us with what we need.

controlling dissent with mass arrests

On Saturday thousands of people took to the London streets in a counter-demonstration to a march by 500 racist knuckle-draggers of the English Defence League (not to be confused with the real EDL). Sections of the mass rally went outside of the police's designated area. They were kettled (ie surrounded by police and not allowed to leave) for seven hours, then arrested. The police had already hired numerous buses to cart them away.

The police said there had been about 150 arrests. Filling five buses to capacity and driving them away is clearly more than that. Like their habitual underestimation of the size of demonstrations, it's a childish way to discredit the dissent, and yet the media happily parrot it.

On Sunday they finally revised the figure upwards to 286, a figure that tallied with estimates given all along by eyewitnesses. They had been bussed out to Surrey, held for hours, and then all of them released without charge but with police bail conditions

WE'VE SEEN THIS COMING

Mass arrest is a tactic that has been developed to stifle protest that is deemed politically undesirable.

In April 2009 Nottinghamshire police arrested all 114 climate activists at a meeting planning to shut down Ratcliffe on Soar coal fired power station. They weren't intending to prosecute a large proportion of them. Only 26 came to court.

Fortunately for the defendants, between their arrest and trial they discovered that one of their number was in fact undercover police officer Mark Kennedy. They asked to see what reports he'd made, as the defence have a right to see evidence that may be helpful to them. Rather than do this, the state dropped the trial of six people, and the earlier convictions of the other 20 were quashed.

In Saturday's context, I can't help wondering if we would even have fascists marching on our streets if the BNP and EDL's rise hadn't been so ably assisted by sending Mark Kennedy and other undercover police officers in to disrupt effective anti-fascist work over the last decade.

But whatever, the Ratcliffe arrests heralded the modern use of mass arrests of dissenting activists. Two years later the Metropolitan Police made a their record mass arrest of an even larger number. Then a year later they broke their record. And now a year after that, on Saturday, they've broken it again.

FORTNUM AND MASON 2011

In March 2011 anti-cuts protesters occupied tax-dodgers Fortnum and Mason. As the video shows, Chief Inspector Clare Clarke was there and told them they were 'sensible and non-violent' and that they would be free to go. Her officers then released them into a pre-arranged kettle outside where an officer said, 'yes, you're free to leave – to the police station. You're going to be arrested.'

All 145 were then arrested and taken away. Many were held for 18 hours and had their phones, clothes and shoes confiscated.

They were the vast majority of those arrested on the entire day's protests, and the Home Secretary told parliament it was a 'message to those who carry out violence'. Between them, the Fortnum's 145 had been responsible for minor damage to an Easter egg.

The police are not distinguishing between protesters on grounds of their propensity for violence, but on their propensity for autonomy and disobedience. If you're active outside of the controlled system of grey politics, and especially if - as with the likes of UK Uncut or Climate Camp - you're really catching on, then you will be clamped down on and mass arrested. Meanwhile, of Saturday's easily corralled fascists, only 14 were arrested.

The 145 Fortnum protesters were given charges, but these were later dropped against the vast majority and only a handful were convicted.

CRITICAL MASS 2012

On the evening of last year's Olympics opening ceremony 182 Critical Mass cyclists were pushed off their bikes and kettled by the Met. As this comprehensive eyewitness account with video shows, it was done in a needlessly aggressive manner.

Held for hours in handcuffs - some on buses, some in a windowless bare concrete police garage - until being put in police stations during the night, all but four were released without charge, yet they had their bikes confiscated and, of course, all had bail conditions. Only nine were charged and five convicted. Again, this is not about court cases, it's about stifling protest.

On Saturday 286 people were kettled for hours, arrested for longer, then given restrictive bail conditions, yet none of them have been charged with anything at all.

AND DON'T COME BACK

The Met are taking their 'total policing' slogan very seriously indeed. This is total political policing, pure and simple. It makes anyone who was there reluctant to come back for future protests if they're not up for a night in the cells and finding their way home from another county. It makes their mates hear the story and think it all sounds a bit much to get involved in.

Irrespective of whether you come back, it means the police have already collected names, addresses, fingerprints, DNA, and anything else they can wheedle out of you. Again, this sounds daunting to those you tell it to, and it also allows the police to build their databases and target their surveillance.

Saturday's counter-demo was addressed by Max Levitas, veteran of the Battle of Cable Street 77 years ago. Then as now, fascists were marching on the East end of London. Levitas and his comrades took to the streets to stop them. It was a defining moment in stopping the rise of the far right in the 1930s. They succeeded precisely because they did not not comply with the wishes of the government and police. It's to their proven vision and methods we should turn for inspiration and guidance.

britain's secret police

Open Democracy have just published an article I've written about Britain's secret police, an overview of the various elements, the issues and questions it raises, all in one easy to swallow 2000 word chunk.

It's here.

And while you're there, check out this powerful piece about the Independent Police Complaints Commission, a watchpoodle body of ex-cops, who rubber-stamp police versions of even the most extreme police behaviour. Placed alongside this piece by Ian Tomlinson's family's lawyer Jules Carey that recunts the shocking details of the cover-up there, the case for self-investigations to be stopped is utterly overpowering.

Yet the only significant investigation into the 45 years of the secret police is being undertaken by the same Metropolitan Police who ran the operations.