undercover oversight

As the undercover policing scandal rolls on - with the tenacious Guardian journalists about to publish their book and have the accompanying documentary screened by Channel 4 on Monday - the government has announced tighter rules for future operations.

All long-term undercover policing operations will be independently authorised

Well that sounds reassuring. But which outside body will be scrutinising the police's desires?

the Office for Surveillance Commissioners (OSC) will be notified at the start of all undercover police deployments – and must approve any lasting beyond 12 months.

NO CHANGE THERE, THEN

We've come across these people before. They already had the ultimate sign-off on undercover deployment. Hiring a bunch of judges and asking them to question the motives of police, well, no need to guess how well that went and why we've had decades of unjustifiable invasion into political groups and outrageous abuse of the individuals therein.

We've even had Surveillance Commissioners look at this specific issue after everyone knew it had gone wrong. In the wake of the exposure of Mark Kennedy and the revelation that witholding his evidence had led to a miscarriage of justice that saw 20 people wrongfully convicted, Sir Christopher Rose produced a report looking into whether the Crown Prosecution Service had colluded with the police.

Rose was a former judge and a Surveillance Commissioner. Just like the way police had initially tried to make out Kennedy was one rogue officer, Rose's report scapegoated one CPS official, Ian Cunningham. He specifically said there was no conspiracy.

Nothing I have seen or heard suggests that, at any stage of this prosecution, there was deliberate, still less dishonest, withholding of information which the holder believed was disclosable

It takes a hell of a lot of front to say that, given that months earlier emails had been leaked showing Cunningham and a more senior CPS official discussing the 'sensitive disclosure issues' around the 'participating informant' Kennedy. If you have two people involved in a cover-up it is, by definition, a conspiracy. If they document it then it is, by dint of plain evidence, not an oversight.

Rose said that although there were transcripts of Kennedy's recordings of the activists' planning meeting, nobody at the CPS thought they might have important information in regarding what happened in the meeting and so didn't look at them or think to give copies to the defence.

These are the people who will be checking the police's motivations and need for future deployment of undercover officers. Just like the "Independent" Police Complaints Commission, they're a rubber-stamp body made up of people who spend their professional and personal lives trusting police officers.

SELF REGULATION IS NO REGULATION

Police enjoy self-regulation and, if anything goes wrong, what amounts to self-investigation, often without the pretence of an independent body.

After it was revealed that undercover police used the identities of dead children - a practice that is not only ghoulish but puts bereaved families in real danger - the investigation into undercover officers was taken away from the force that did it, the Metropolitan Police, and put in the hands of, oh... a different Chief Constable.

After 24 years of campaigning the Hillsborough families have proven there was a cover up (pertinently, it also went beyond police into the judiciary) and the original inquest verdicts have been quashed. Last week we learned that the new inquiry, to prove itself free of any bias towards the police who have been so thoroughly discredited, will be relying on a report from, oh... a former Chief Constable.

What other body can be so indisputably shown to have acted so deplorably and ruined so many lives yet still be given self-investigation as a response? If a Manchester United player commits an extreme offence on camera, it's not investigated by Manchester United officials. Furthermore, responding to pressure by getting Manchester United's reserves team manager to look into it instead does not qualify as an independent investigation.

The proposals once again say undercover officers will be used for "terrorism and for serious organised crime". But this is the line they've always spun as they target non-terrorists who are merely politically undesirable, people with ideas that challenge the status quo and are in danger of catching on. We've seen undercover officers like Bob Lambert MBE say that he had to go through less dangerous groups to establish credibility before moving on to actual terrorists (in his case, people who did not threaten anybody's life but did property damage). Like Kennedy he was an agent provocateur, becoming a successful firebomber.

Even this stepping-stone argument seems to be largely bollocks as many officers, such as Kennedy, spent years with the fluffier groups without ever graduating to any bomb-weilders. These protest groups are often the end target in themselves.

The use of the term 'domestic extremist' to mean anyone who would break a law for a political reason (and that's everyone, by the way) shows that the authorities are trying to conflate civil disobedience with terrorism. The deliberate lies spun about climate activists  - they want to commit serious violence against citizens, they want to hurt your granny - is a stark underlining of that point.

WHAT THEY'RE NOT SAYING

But the most important thing about the new proposals for undercover officers is what is omitted. The scandal broke because Kennedy was caught by his partner of six years. Since then we have learned of a dozen officers, almost all of whom had long-term, committed life-partner relationships with activists they targeted. A quarter of them fathered children. It is the most shocking and controversial aspect of the whole scandal. And yet the new proposals on making undercover operations fair and accountable contain nothing, not a single word, about the most intrusive act that the state performs on a person.

The officer is sent into someone's life to be their partner - their most trusted confidante, their lover, in numerous cases to co-habit and co-parent - all the while having it monitored, analysed and presumably directed by an unseen group back at Scotland Yard. The person targeted doesn't know it is going on so they do not hold back in the way that others, such as people imprisoned, retain some privacy and personal identity from the state agents ranged against them.

Last year Home Office minister Nick Herbert was glove-puppeted to say officers must be allowed to have sex with the people they spy upon.

to ban such actions would provide a ready-made test for the targeted criminal group to find out whether an undercover officer was deployed among them.

So with that, and the absence of anything in the new proposals, we know that they intend to continue as before. Lives will be ruined, women will be violated and left rearing children single handed.

More, there is no justification for it to ever happen. To anybody at all, under any circumstances, ever. The 'ready made test' argument is absolute unmitigated bullshit. Are undercover officers infiltrating paedophile gangs are authorised to rape children? Otherwise the group concerned have a ready-made test.

Even presuming that political activists warrant infiltration to defend society and it's not just the powerful protecting their political interests, what is it that can be got from activists by this means that cannot be got other ways? The fact that two officers - Lynn Watson and Rod Richardson - were deployed without having relationships and weren't rumbled shows that it is not necessary. The police just prefer it.

So this new announcement isn't about genuine oversight or a change from the wanton abuse of citizens. It's the police trying to make a few of the right noises to protect their existing methods and power.

police using dead children : common practice

Phone hacking warranted a major full public inquiry yet the undercover policing scandal, which involves a far larger invasion of lives over a longer period, has triggered a ragbag of piecemeal reports and inquiries. Most of them are the police investigating themselves. Each of them has a limited remit, preventing any overview of it as a system. Some of them are not even going to publish their findings.

Operation Herne was established in October 2011 for the Metropolitan Police to self-investigate the Special Demonstration Squad, an undercover unit set up in 1968 to infiltrate political activists. It should be noted this does not include the Met's similar National Public Order Intelligence Unit, set up in 1999 and who deployed Mark Kennedy among others.

In early February the Home Affairs Select Committee - a cross party group of MPs - held a hearing on the undercover issue (subsequent interim report as a PDF is here). They heard from women activists who had long term relationships with officers; their lawyers; Guardian journalist Paul Lewis who's been covering the issue; and ex-undercover officer Mark Kennedy whose exposure unleashed the scandal. The police were not going to send anyone.

However, two days beforehand came the revelation that officers had stolen the identities of dead children to create their fake activist personae. In the outrage that followed Patricia Gallan, the Met's Deputy Assistant Commissioner, was obliged to turn up to the Select Committee and give evidence.

Between times, the police had spun the line that it was a practice mainly in the 1970s and 80s. But one of the officers uncovered, who used the identity Rod Richardson, was active in the 2000s.

Trying to avoid any liability for what her force has done to people, Gallan stoutly refused to apologise for any of it. On the matter of dead children's identity being used, she said unequivocally that it was

not sanctioned within the Metropolitan Police or any other police force

The Guardian had estimated that around 80 officers had done it. Gallan disparaged this, saying she had learned of only one incidence, eleven months into the investigation, back in September 2012. In the five months following she claimed that neither she nor the 31 staff on Operation Herne had uncovered any more until the Rod Richardson case was published by activists and media.

I do not know if the figure that has been quoted about the number of identities of dead children used is accurate. I have seen the evidence of one case, and we very recently received a complaint of a second case and that is now being investigated.

A week after Gallan's testimony an officer from outside the Met, Mick Creedon, was appointed to take over Operation Herne. This week he admitted to the Select Committee that identity theft of dead children was actually 'common practice'.

Once again the facts have to be arduously dragged out of the authorities. Like many others before them, those affected by the undercover scandal find themselves victims of a double injustice. There is what the authorities did to them, then there is the obstruction and lying to try to prevent the truth coming to light.

In behaving this way the police add a cruel new layer upon the suffering of those they abused. It discourages some of their victims from coming forward if they haven't got the stomach for a gruelling fight. It makes a glaringly indisputable and vicious mockery of any claim to be interested in justice.

undercover relationships were approved: the evidence

A year ago Mark Kennedy said

I lived undercover for eight years and if I hadn’t had sex, I would have blown my cover... It was essential for me to have relationships in order to do my job.

Last November the head of the Metropolitan Police, Bernard Hogan-Howe, said  it was 'almost inevitable' that such relationships happened, though they 'shouldn't be part of the strategy'.

This tallies with the earlier claim by police who, glove-puppeting the policing minister Nick Herbert, said that such relationships were completely legal under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and therefore the case of women involved should be heard in a Bullshit Stalinist Tribunal rather than an actual court.

Herbert went further, adding

Moreover, to ban such actions would provide a ready-made test for the targeted criminal group to find out whether an undercover officer was deployed among them. Specifically forbidding the action would put the issue in the public domain and such groups would know that it could be tested.

So, almost all undercovers had sex with their targets because there's no way to infiltrate activists without having relationships with them. This week's revelations about the officer known as Rod Richardson tells us that is not true.

HOW TO NOT HAVE SEX WITH ACTIVISTS

Rod* lived among activists in Nottingham, sharing a house with them, for nearly three years from 2000-2003. He left a couple of months before Mark Kennedy arrived in the same community, indicating that he was Kennedy's predecessor. The difference in the men's behaviour is illuminating.

Rod did not have any sexual relationships with activists, and he was not suspected of being a spy. He said he had a long-term partner, 'Jo', who lived elsewhere in the country. Most crucially, Jo turned up with him at several social occasions (and his friends wondered why he was seeing someone who had such a different nature and was, well, rather like a cop).

An officer calling herself Lynn Watson infiltrated the same activists, living among them in Leeds from 2004-2008. She too had no sexual relationships - bar a single one-night stand - and she also said she had a long-term partner living elsewhere. As with Rod, Lynn had 'Paul' accompany her on a social occasion. And, again, Lynn's comrades wondered why she couldn't do better for herself and said amongst themselves that this guy seemed almost like a cop.

It seems clear that superior officers had set-up the undercover officers with a pretend partner to strengthen their claim to having a long-term relationship elsewhere. They not only knew of the risk of relationships, they had an effective strategy of ensuring it didn't happen.

WE KNEW BUT WE DIDN'T KNOW

Several officers - both undercovers and seniors - say that though sexual relationships may happen it's never overtly talked about, implying it is done with a nod and a wink.

But this is contradicted by the evidence of Jim Boyling. He infiltrated Reclaim The Streets and anti-capitalist groups in the late 1990s and 2000s. He not only had a relationship with one of the activists he targeted, he married her, had children, confided in her and introduced her to other undercover officers. He also

told her a ruling from seniors that undercover operatives should not have sex with targets was unrealistic, and developing relationships with activists was "a necessary tool in maintaining cover".

Given when Boyling was deployed, starting before Rod but overlapping with him, it seems likely that Rod's abstinence was because of that directive.

And yet Kennedy came after Rod. So they had a proven effective tactic for avoiding relationships without garnering suspicion yet they chose not to use it for Kennedy. The most likely explanation, then, is that they preferred Kennedy to have his relationships.

THE INEVITABLE BECOMES THE IMMORAL, AGAIN

At last week's Home Affairs Select Committee hearing, Patricia Gallan, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police repeatedly said that undercover officers' sexual relationships are not authorised and are morally wrong.

This flies in the face of the statements of them being inevitable, providing a ready-made test, and the very basis of the police's case to go to the Bullshit Stalinist Tribunal. Unless, that is, she's trying to do some very fancy footwork and say that though they're not authorised and are reprehensible, nonetheless they are legally intended and provided for.

It seems those in charge know there is no position they can take that will get them out of this and so they're flailing between stances to see if anything is better than the untenable place they're currently in.

But let's be as generous as we can and say that, despite paying other officers to be pretend partners, seniors really didn't know that undercovers had relationships. Let's say that, all along, the top brass did not authorise them, thought them morally wrong and said so.

Lynn Watson not only moved among the same groups, she was often at the same events as Kennedy. If his quasi-marital relationship with an activist was so far beyond the pale then surely she would have reported on it. Yet it was allowed to continue for a further four years to the end of his deployment and beyond.

THEY KNEW AND APPROVED

Between Lynn Watson's witnessing, the two uses of the pretend partners, and the fact that the tactic pre-dates Kennedy's deployment, it is clear that Kennedy's relationships were known about and approved of by his superior officers.

The startling similarity of the relationships, and the fact that those who'd engaged in them were later in charge of deploying officers who did the same, is are strong enough indicators that this has always been the way. But the evidence we now have means that, for Kennedy's case at least, there is no longer any shred of plausible denial.


=========


*It may seem overly familiar to refer to him as just Rod, but out of respect for the real Richardson family whose dead baby's identity was used by the officer, I'm not comfortable calling him 'Richardson'.

police lying about undercovers. again.

On Tuesday the MPs from the Home Affairs Select Committee held a session about the undercover policing scandal. As well as hearing from lawyers acting for women who had relationships with officers and a Guardian investigative journalist who's been covering the issue, they had Patricia Gallan, Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

It was the day after the Guardian revealed that officers from the Special Demonstration Squad had used stolen identities of dead children, and it had happened in around eighty cases. As the Guardian's live blog of the hearing reported, Gallen cast doubt on the figure.

She says she does not know if the figure of 80 children's identities being used is accurate. She knows of two cases....It has been confined to the SDS and the NPOIU (National Public Order Intelligence Unit).

The admission it was the NPOIU is interesting. The police had tried to spin that the cases were in the 1970s and 1980s, yet the NPOIU was only formed in 1999.

But hang on a minute. If she knows of two, and of it happening in two units, then that's one per unit.

Details came out this week of the presumed NPOIU officer, who used the identity of Rod Richardson. There's an Indymedia post with photos and list of his activities by activists who knew him, and a Guardian piece that interviews the dead baby's mother.

So that leaves the Special Demonstration Squad officer. Except we have John Dines, who posed as John Barker from 1987-1992, and also the officer known as Pete Black who stole that name in 1993, as he explains in this video.

So Gallan can't count the three already exposed, yet we're supposed to have faith in her helming yet another secret self-investigation into the dozens of cases.

Asked why she hadn't told the parents or apologised she explained that

It would be inappropriate to rush to make statements in haste

That's a broad definition of haste. She conceded that she found out about the dead children's stolen identities five months ago.

WHY SHE REFUSES TO COUNT TO THREE

Asked by the Committee's chair Keith Vaz whether the parents of the dead children should be informed, she dodged, saying

it's important to find out all the circumstances and whether they are accurate... ethical and legal issues also need to be considered.

Indeed there are. I'm sure they want to consider legal issues and prevaricate, hoping the clamour for families to be told will dissipate. The Richardson family are already suing. The brother of John Barker, an eight year old who died of leukaemia whose idenetity was used by John Dines, points out the seriousness of such claims and the danger police put citizens in.

In our case, we now discover, there was a girlfriend who was left behind when the policeman pretending to be my brother disappeared from the scene. Apparently she was so worried about him that she tracked him down to the house we had moved out of a few years earlier.

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.

Eighty-odd cases - and with the NPOIU added in that could be over a hundred - would be hugely humiliating and expensive for the police. So, as is their habit, they are playing down their wrongdoing and trying to avoid us knowing the truth; the opposite of what a body concerned with justice would do.

THE TRUTH? YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH

A few years ago a Freedom of Information request was lodged asking for Special Branch records on people with alleged affiliations to London Greenpeace, a group we know was heavily infiltrated.

The police information manager responded in October 2006, readily admitting that records existed and it "would contribute to the quality and accuracy of public debate" to release them. However they refused to do it as it was not in the public interest.

They explained – and get ready to have to read this twice to believe it - "The Public Interest is not what interests the public, but what will be of greater good if released to the community as a whole." Disclosure is therefore not in the public interest because it could "undermine their goodwill and confidence in the Metropolitan Police and could result in a lack of engagement with the MPS" and may "endanger the health and safety of our officers".

In other words, if you really knew what we did to you, you'd lynch us.

equal marriage

I've never understood marriage, unless it's for tax or citizenship reasons. Maybe I'm just not romantic, but I've never been moved to say, "I love you so much that I want to make a contract with the state to ensure that leaving me is an expensive process involving lawyers".

Though I don't want it for me, that's my choice. Ringfencing it, or anything, exclusively for heterosexuality is an injustice to be fought. I think less people should eat at McDonald's but if they had a whites-only policy I'd join the fight against it.

At a time when 'gay' is still a common term to mean pathetic or inept, it is clear we have not reached a point of equality. So the overwhelming parliamentary vote in favour of gay marriage seems almost bizarre to me. I find it hard to take in such colossal progressive support from so reactionary an institution as the House of Commons. But it's also about the pace of change. It's dizzying, confusing and gratifying to realise I'm just not up to speed.

The country I was born into had men in jail simply for being gay. In the early 1970s people would be stopped in the street by police and forced to remove their 'glad to be gay' badges. Those who came out would be called 'self-confessed gays', like murderers or rapists. Around this time the UK had its first Pride marches. They were not the corporate-branded extravaganzas of today, but a few hundred people being jeered by the excessive number of police sent to escort them.

In the 1980s the official response to AIDS was to ignore it and let gay people die, until it appeared to be a threat to the rest of the population. Then the homophobia went into overdrive. Tabloids routinely referred to it as 'the gay plague'. The government passed laws to prevent teachers from depicting gay relationships as equal to straight. Libraries withdrew gay books. Gay newspapers had their offices firebombed and it was defended in parliament with a Tory MP saying, 'it is quite right that there should be an intolerance of evil'. As late as 1989 the Sun said that it was impossible to get AIDS through heterosexual sex and anything else was 'homosexual propaganda'.

A world in which a major rugby player would be out and able to get married to another man was ludicrously unthinkable. So far, so fast.

SING IF YOU'RE GLAD TO BE GAY

In the mid 1970s a then-unknown gay activist called Tom Robinson wrote a song called Glad To Be Gay. Two years later, and by then the first out and proud rock star, he released it as a single. Despite radio stations refusing to play it, it got in the top 20. Over the years Robinson rewrote the lyrics to keep them current. It was the protest that mattered to him, not the art.

I thought that was an interesting creative challenge. But these days the various versions of the song have a historic job to do as well. They are a snapshot from every couple of years through a period of extraordinary social change on the issue.

As a generation come of age who struggle with the idea that homosexuality was ever illegal, who have never heard of Clause 28 or the Spanner trial, it is important to remember what was done. It is not just about gay rights, it is also a stark lesson that society at every level can discriminate against whole groups but it doesn't make it right. So I did a website of all the versions of Glad To Be Gay, explaining the references.

The very first version of the song talked of Peter Wells, a man who, in 1974, was 26 but his boyfriend was 18. The age of sexual consent was 16 for straights but 21 for gay men. Had Wells fallen for a woman it would have been socially lauded and they would have been able to marry. But it was another man, so he got two and a half years in jail. There he was beaten and abused by inmates and guards alike, even before his conviction. He spent the last year of incarceration in solitary confinement.

But whilst inside he launched a case at the European Court of Human Rights, saying that the different age of consent was discrimination. He did not win but, as with so many political campaigns that fail, it laid the foundations for those who came after to succeed. In the late 1990s a young man called Euan Sutherland brought another case, citing Wells' work. He won and the UK was forced to equalise the age of consent.

Peter Wells did not live to see it. He died in violent circumstances in 1979, aged 31. Brought up in borstal institutions, imprisoned for being gay, he was the victim of a swathe of brutality and alienation that we have succeeded in rolling back. I've researched and written a biography of him that will be published soon.

Today, Peter would be five weeks into his retirement. Those of us who celebrate last night's progressive landmark owe him, and so many others like him, thanks. As Owen Jones reminds us, we must remember that this hasn't come about through government benevolence but through the persistent campaigning of brave people.

dead children in uniforms

Undercover police officers infiltrating protest groups stole the identities of dead children to create their fake identity. They would comb registries looking for someone with the same first name. They would visit the dead child's house and locality to get the details for the backstory. On the dead child's birthday, as the family would have been in sombre reflection on their tragedy, they would take activist comrades out to celebrate.

It's thought around 80 bereaved families are affected. The police say they're looking into it - another self-investigation, another bucket of whitewash - but they are distancing themselves by saying it was mainly in the 70s and 80s.

Firstly, that does not alter the morality one iota. Secondly, it is untrue. Whilst the children themselves were born in those years, the identity theft came later. One officer, known as Pete Black, did it in the 90s. He infiltrated anti-racist groups before moving on to campaigns for justice for black people who died in custody or whose death had been under-investigated. Another case was an officer from the 2000s.

WHY DO IT AT ALL?

We're told

The idea was that if activists ever researched a police spy's background to check out whether they were who they claimed to be, they would come across the birth record of a real child.

But the obvious problem is that there is also a death certificate waiting to be found. Did they really think people suspicious enough to look for birth certificates would not go further? The case of John Dines proves that, as you'd expect, they would and they did.

Later spies who simply made up a name - Mark Kennedy appears to be one, using his real date of birth to be 'Mark Stone' - had no such flaw. They didn't have a birth certificate, but there are numerous plausible reasons for that, such as being adopted or born abroad. These would also fit with undercover officers' prediliction for stories of a disturbed childhood.

Peter Blexley, a former undercover officer for a different unit investigating serious crime, told the [Radio 4 Today] programme: "I cannot for the life of me comprehend why anyone would want to adopt an identity, rather than create one."

The only plausible reason I can think of is the same one that anybody wants a birth certificate for - to prove an identity to authorities. In an era when the state was dealing with the Cold War and Northern Ireland, perhaps the government thought infiltration of lefty parties, peace activists and trade unionists was unworthy of equipping with the full gamut of false identity documents. Could it be that the undercover officers weren't issued with stuff like fake passports and bank accounts, and resorted to fraudulently applying for them?

Another officer who used a dead child's identity says it was done for 'the greater good' but neglects to tell us what that good is and why it couldn't be achieved by other means.

THE BIG QUESTION

The identity theft of dead children is ghoulish and is further evidence of the institutionalised callousness and arrogance with which the police treat the public they supposedly serve, as if that wasn't already amply illustrated by the way they intrude upon the living.

Presumably they thought that, like the women with whom they had long-term relationships and fathered children, the people they were abusing would never find the full details and catch up with them.

As Pete Black says himself, to search your house they have to get a warrant. To bug your house or tap your phone they have to have approval from the Home Secretary. But to live in your house, hear all your calls, integrate into your family, be your quasi-marital partner, have a child that they know they'll leave you to bring up alone from pre-school age onwards, that just requires the police to decide they want to do it. But that is not the issue.

The big question in the political policing scandal is: who ordered it? Do the police make up these missions for themselves or are they given ideas, directions and commands from political sources? If so, is that the government of the day? An international mix of governments and security services?

The phone hacking scandal caused a storm with politicians clamouring for a public inquiry. There is no way in which the spycops scandal is not a greater invasion of lives and yet politicians (outside the Green Party) are staying deafeningly silent. If you want to know who was complicit and culpable, you should usually look for who is turning away, whistling, hoping not to be noticed.

THE JUSTICE TO COME

The people whose lives have been affected - the women abused for years at a time, the political campaigns undermined and now the grieving families of dead children - have suffered a double injustice.

Firstly there was what was done to them and then there's the wilful obstruction of justice by the police. Amongst the self-investigations is one by the Department of Professional Standards. They are contacting people who were spied on and asking for their assistance whilst simultaneously saying they 'neither confirm nor deny' that the spy was a police officer.

Why would an internal police body be asking about someone who wasn't a police officer? It is an insult to the intelligence of their victims and a crude legal trick to avoid accountability. We all know what went on but if you can't prove that they were a cop, how can you sue police chiefs for doing it? We still don't even have real names for half of the exposed officers.

The increasing likelihood of a public enquiry is good, though that would not be the end. There were two of those for Hillsborough and they failed.

PERSIST AND PREVAIL

This is a justice campaign. People who suffered far worse double injustices - such as the Hillsborough families or the Lawrence family - also got tired at times, and people outside stopped being interested.

But they held on to their outrage, and each new avenue, each attempted assault on the castle would bring a new smidgen of information. And whilst nothing can undo what was done, there can be justice. Truth can be told, those responsible can be brought to account, and future deeds of the same ilk can be prevented.

The peculiar thing about justice campaigns is that if they persist they tend to win. Maybe the authorities give up when there's no careers on the line any more because all those responsible are retired or dead. Or maybe the irritation builds up into a serious discrediting and the continuation of that is worse than letting the truth be told.

Either way, the lesson seems clear. This will not be over soon, and just because the facts become familiar does not make them less of an outrage.

21st century slavery in the uk

None of us like to think of ourselves as slave owners. It has become unsavoury to have house slaves so we squirrel them away out of sight in places like East Asian sweatshops. With the advent of workfare, it has come a step closer to home.

Unemployed people are forced to work for private companies to get work experience. Except that they are given the most basic unskilled work with no chance of an actual job. When their placement is up they are simply replaced.

Major retailers like Argos and Tesco didn't need to take on Christmas staff, the government simply sent them free workers. In return, the government gets to lower the unemployment figures as these jobless people do not count as unemployed. On many of the schemes, benefit claimants who refuse to participate get 'sanctioned' -  they have their benefits stopped for months, even years.

Whilst many of the deprivations that the government are subjecting its electorate to are Tory inventions, others are not. Workfare is a Labour initiative, and if you're one of the 90%+ of people who voted Tory, Labour, LibDem or UKIP, you gave it the mandate.

The negative connotations on the words 'forced labour' are shied away from. When it was announced in 2008 the Telegraph reported

the unemployed will be forced to undertake voluntary work including picking up litter and cleaning graffiti

Quite how anyone can be compelled to do a voluntary activity is not so much a matter for journalists and politicians, it's more a koan for zen masters. But this idea is persisting.

The government petitions website has produced several interesting results. The 100,000 signature threshold that triggers parliamentary debate has helped advance justice for Hillsborough. At 10,000 signatures the government has to respond. Their comments on the petition to end workfare are perplexing, yet illuminating.

We do not have Work for Your Benefit or Workfare schemes in this country. Workfare is an American term used to describe employment programmes which force all jobseekers to work at a certain point of their claim in order to continue to receive benefit...

Mandatory Work Activity gives extra support to a small number of Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants who would benefit from a short period of activity.

The minimum sanction period for someone refusing Mandatory Work Activity is three months, a 'third offence' gets three years. They hold your family hostage threatening to starve them if you don't comply.

The clue is in the name. If it is not forced labour, how is it Mandatory Work Activity? In denying what we are doing to the impoverished we signal our inner squeamishness. If we don't think forced labour is tolerable as an idea, we shouldn't try to mask it with a false name. Instead we should exclaim the outrage that our consciences know it to be.

we live in a turnip republic

A senior United Nations official has slammed UK policing of protest, with especially scathing condemnation of the undercover police scandal.

The UN commissions human rights experts called Special Rapporteurs to investigate how countries comply with their human rights obligations. Maina Kiai, the Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, has been in the UK for a week.

Having met government officials, human rights organisations and those concerned with protest, yesterday he presented his preliminary findings, pending a full report in May.

He reserved his strongest words for the undercover police scandal - both the infiltration and the subsequent efforts by those responsible to avoid accountability and smother justice.

Speaking of the "trail of victims and survivors in its wake", and making a sideswipe at the judgement last week that took guidance from James Bond, he said

This is not a James Bond-type movie issue. I therefore call on the authorities to undertake a judge-led public inquiry into the Mark Kennedy matter, and other related cases, with a view to giving voice to victims, especially women, who were deliberately deceived by their own Government, and paving the way for reparations.

Kiai, a global expert on human rights, spoke unequivocally about the breaches involved.

It is a clear violation of basic rights protected under the Human Rights Act, and more generally under international law, such as the right to privacy.

But he is clear that this is not just about those directly affected. It is a grave matter of justice.

This is a national issue and I think it's important to the United Kingdom. Because of the trauma, because of the chilling effect that this has on association and freedom of assembly, that this be done publicly, in a public judge-led enquiry.

The state has, instead, been setting up a raft of tiny limited enquiries where the police pick one small aspect of the affair and investigate themselves. It is an approach widely derided by the victims, as activist/researcher Eveline Lubbers made plain in her open letter response to the police this week. Kiai is clear that such tactics are a whitewash and are an insult to those who want the truth, most especially those directly targeted.

There's been absolutely no regard, no attention given for the victims of this, and the victims are a lot of people. People have formed relationships, friendships, and I think that when the state is perpetuating that it's a public matter. I think that we should remember that there are victims in this, it is not a victimless issue... children were born, relationships happened. The British government has to take on their responsibilities.

The Home Office limply responded with their standard line.

The use of undercover officers remains an important investigative tool for the police in preventing and detecting serious and violent crime.

"Serious and violent crime"? Kiai's prepared statement did make the curious - well, clearly untrue - assertion that

The case of Mark Kennedy and other undercover officers is shocking as the groups in question were not engaged in criminal activities.

But answering questions at the press conference he clarified

Every police force needs a way of gathering intelligence, however that is reserved, and should be reserved, for serious criminal activities such as drug trafficking, anti-terror work. When you target a group that are involved in peaceful actions, many of which are lawful, and you do it as Mark Kennedy did, then there's a problem, as potentially the state is paying to infiltrate you for simply doing what you should be doing.

He pointed out that the government decided the phone hacking scandal warranted a full public inquiry, yet refuses to consider doing the same for this scandal that is of - at least - similar proportions. It is, as Jonathan Freedland said this week, the hacking of people's lives.

Kiai then moved on to compare the police's approach to dealing with other organisations that contain some criminal plotters.

Civil society exercising their rights must not be treated differently simply for doing so. Marks and Spencer or BAE don't have police spies sent in to look for white-collar crimes.

The police he met had engaged in open and frank discussions on all issues except this one, where he said he was confronted with "a wall of silence". He is plainly outraged at the reaction, and continued

You simply can't go ahead and pay people to go off and have relationships and families with people and then disappear. That to me is unacceptable - completely. That is what you see in a banana republic.

One case doesn't define the character of a nation's ruling culture. But given that the same tactics have been used to undermine a wide variety of campaigns, unions and pressure groups for decades, allied to the even wider response of state obstruction of justice familiar to us from Hillsborough, phone hacking, Stephen Lawrence and any other number of scandals, it doesn't feel like an exaggeration. Though in northern Europe we might more bioregionally be defined as a turnip republic.

AND ANOTHER THING

The "indiscriminate and disproportionate nature" of kettling was singled out as an assault on the right to protest, and despite the UK courts finding the practice is legal, on this too he was unequivocal.

I think there's absolutely no justification for kettling. If you need to keep people away, there are ways in which you can put people aside and move them out. Holding people for as long as we've seen here is wrong, and I think is a contravention of human rights law.

Kiai also - on the day the No Dash For Gas protesters who occupied a power station were charged with it - singled out the crime of Aggravated Trespass as "very problematic", criticised the use of anti-stalking injunctions being used by corporations to prevent protest, and attacked not just the practice of union blacklisting but the paltry sentences given to its perpetrators. A construction industry blacklister was given a £5000 fine whilst the clients - including most of the major firms - were let off with a warning.

I was appalled to hear about the existence of a blacklist of union members in the construction industry, with no sanctions allegedly taken against those who benefited from the list. It is crucial that strong actions be taken against the making and using of such lists as a deterrence.

His full report is due out in May. It will be interesting to see not only what it contains, but how the state defends itself against so august a critic.

judgement day

A judge has ruled that a group of women suing the police for sending undercover police officers to deceive them into committed long term relationships will not have their human rights case heard in open court.

It will instead be heard in a Bullshit Stalinist Tribunal. The police can make up whatever evidence they like (and omit whatever incriminates them). The complainants do not get to see the evidence, do not get to be in the court, do not get given the reasons for the verdict, and have no right of appeal.

Whilst Twitter lit up with outrage that the case had been thrown out, The Guardian saw it as a 50/50 thing with a subheader saying

Judge rules half of the women's cases can be heard in open court but half must be first heard by secret tribunal

Neither is true. I'll try to explain what, to the best of my understanding, today's judgement is, and also what it isn't.

Firstly, it's not just about one group of women, and not just one neat case. There are two main elements to the claims.

1 - Human rights. The right to privacy and the right to freedom from degrading and inhumane treatment have been ours since the European Convention on Human Rights was signed in the early 1950s. Enforcing them, however, was another matter. It took a long and expensive case at a court in Strasbourg. In 1998 the Human Rights Act made them enforcable in UK law. The guff against the Act in the Tory press is a decoy; it granted no new rights, just extended their effectiveness so that rights weren't just for the rich.

Though the dozen people suing the police had similar experiences, only the six people whose relationships occurred after the Human Rights Act 1998 came into force have a human rights claim in the UK courts. The other six were not part of today's judgement.

2 - Common law. There is quite a list of these claims including assault, deceit, negligence and misfeasance in public office. All the claimants are suing for these. Those cases will (hopefully) be heard in the High Court at a later date.

First bit clear? Right.

When the Human Rights Act came into force the government invented Investigatory Powers Tribunals. These were designed to hear any cases involving surveillance and espionage. They realised that spying intrudes into people's lives, and that revealing details of spy missions and methods may jeopardise future work of that kind and possibly place those involved in serious danger.

The police argued that the entire undercover cop case should be struck out, and if not then it should be entirely heard in such a Bullshit Stalinist Tribunal. The idea that these activists may unleash deadly carnage if they find out the details of what happened to them is laughable. But even that is not quite as absurd as the idea that the police need to protect their secrecy in case we find out that Mark Kennedy, Marco Jacobs and all the others were undercover officers.

The claimants say that the relationships were unlawful, and that the proper place to hear the evidence and weigh it up would be in a place where all evidence can be heard by both sides, such as the High Court.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act has clear rules about authorising most aspects of surveillance, yet says nothing about authorising long-term intimate relationships. Where do we turn for legal instructions?

Displaying all the grasp of reality you'd expect from someone at the unquestioned top of a hierarchy, today's judge, Mr Justice Tugendhat, decided that fiction should guide us in deciding whether events in real life are normal and justified.

James Bond is the most famous fictional example of a member of the intelligence services who used relationships with women to obtain information, or access to persons or property. Since he was writing a light entertainment, Ian Fleming did not dwell on the extent to which his hero used deception, still less upon the psychological harm he might have done to the women concerned.

But fictional accounts (and there are others) lend credence to the view that the intelligence and police services have for many years deployed both men and women officers to form personal relationships of an intimate sexual nature (whether or not they were physical relationships) in order to obtain information or access.

Presumably this means the complainants should watch Mission Impossible to find out what happens next in their case. Perhaps when Marsellus Wallace's boys get medieval on that cop's ass it is, by virtue of its fictional depiction, giving us permission to do the same with other police officers. Or perhaps Star Wars lends credence to the view that a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away justice was meted out with light sabres.

Anyway, among such ramblings the judge made three important rulings today.

1 - The common law claims should not be heard in a Bullshit Stalinist Tribunal, they should be heard at the High Court. This is good.

2 - The human rights aspects of the claim should be heard in the Bullshit Stalinist Tribunal.

3 - Crucially, the Bullshit Stalinist Tribunal goes first. It alone gets to rule on whether relationships breached the claimants' human rights, and they will also decide whether the relationships were lawful or not.

Even though it's just a court-shaped glove puppet on the police's hand, the Bullshit Stalinist Tribunal's verdict could well influence the High Court's decision on the remainder of the case. It may even persuade them to strike out the case entirely.

As the adage says, justice must not merely be done, it must be seen to be done. The fact that a Bullshit Stalinist Tribunal can make a decision for reasons that claimants don't even get told, let alone get to question or confront, means what it delivers cannot be justice. It has no place in the pantheon of the judiciary.

What it decides will cast a shadow over the rest of the case. So, contrary to what the Guardian suggest, it's not half and half. And contrary to what Meatloaf asserts, two out of three actually are bad. The playing field just got tilted today and it remains to be seen how many of the players roll to one end.

new lang syne

The MPs expenses scandal is still with us. George Osborne is a Chelsea fan (who else?). He just happens to have a meeting arranged with German official that lets him be in Munich to see Chelsea win the Champions League and witness John Terry's thuggish racist little hands hoist the trophy. That way Osborne had the trip paid for by the taxpayer instead of out of his inherited millions.

He also flogged his second home that we paid for and made a personal profit of £450,000. Items on expenses must be 'wholly, necessarily and exclusively' used in the job. Why is it 'necessary' to have a house worth a million pounds? With a fucking paddock for horses?

If the Tories really want to end the 'something for nothing culture' then let's have a 100% Inheritance Tax and administer it retroactively so it removes the fortunes that Osborne, Cameron, and Iain Duncan Smith are living off.

They aggressively portray benefit claimants as scroungers who get that 'something for nothing' at the expense of 'hard working families'. Iain Duncan Smith said that benefits have risen faster than private sector wages. Well yes, they have as long as you do some nimble footwork and only start measuring wages from where they slump in the credit crunch and recession.

But more to the point, it's not about competing with private sector wages. It's about ensuring that nobody goes hungry, cold or homeless. With food prices rising faster than either benefits or wages, and fuel costs rising faster still, the level of benefits has effectively plummeted. Families are choosing between food and warmth. People are, entirely predictably, being made homeless.

The millionaire government and the millionaire-owned media have flooded us with stories of the feckless poor. And it has worked. A YouGov poll found this week that on average people think that 41 per cent of the entire welfare budget goes on benefits to unemployed people, while the true figure is 3 per cent. They also found that, on average, people think that 27 per cent of the welfare budget is claimed fraudulently, while the government's own figure is 0.7 per cent.

Of the people polled, those with the least accurate picture of what the benefit regime is actually like were the ones with the most anti-claimant view.

The fact is that the jobless outnumber vacancies by more than 5:1. There are over two million people for whom there is no job. The demonisation of the jobless is a problem in itself. But having successfully done that, the government then turns on the same 'hard working families' with swingeing cuts to Housing Benefit (where 93% of new claimants are in work) and Tax Credits (100% in work). That time Iain Duncan Smith didn't even cherry pick his figures, he simply made them up.

The pared down Housing Benefit comes into effect in April on the same day that there's a tax cut for those earning over £150,000 a year. We can't afford housing for the poor and disabled they say, whilst ruling out a Mansion Tax. The Daily Mail hailed that as helping 'hard-pressed middle-class families'. Owning a property worth over £2,000,000? What the fuck is that the 'middle' of? The Tory front bench?

THERE IS ANOTHER WAY

In Scotland, they consistently vote against the Tories. As the UK suffers an accelerating runaway Tory train of devastation, forcing people into poverty and on to the streets, in Scotland they've extended the rights of homeless people to be housed.

Whilst the Tories strip the NHS, in Scotland - like Wales and Northern Ireland - they extend it with free prescriptions for all.

As the Tories hand out UK public services to corrupt profiteers and slash workers rights, in Scotland there's a law on the table to ban construction firms from getting public contracts if they've been involved in blacklisting workers (a widespread illegal practice to keep unions out).

As the increasing spectre of student debt forces young people from poorer families to opt out of university, in Scotland they have reinstated free higher education. Labour have criticised the move as 'regressive'. Mind you, Labour's response to attacks on the unemployed is to propose their own punitive regime. That's unsurprising given that the comprehensively derided workfare scheme was actually designed by the last Labour government.

Whilst the Tories resurrect zombie road schemes triggering a new rash of 90s-style road protests, and start a new generation of fossil burning that will shatter our carbon reduction targets, the Scots generate 35% of their electricity renewably, well ahead of their target to get them to the equivalent of 100% renewable by 2020.

Come independence, I think I'll be seeking political asylum there.