London Metropolitan Police admits role in blacklisting construction workers
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
While the UK police are generally not that corrupt, Special Branch enjoy secrecy and closeness to power, which they interpret as a license to commit crimes against leftwing groups they consider anti-government. There's a long history of this from complicity in murders in Northern Ireland to present day highly intrusive surveillance against demonstrators.
> Evidence given to Parliament suggested that one undercover officer who infiltrated Mr Smith's union was Mark "Cassidy" Jenner, a member of Scotland Yard's now disbanded Special Demonstration Squad (SDS).
That's the Mark Jenner who also spent years having a relationship with the environmental activists he was spying on, the subject of a separate set of court cases and inquiries.
See also Hillsborough and the Miner's Strike.
(Oh, and disrupting the possibility of effective union action has been a priority of the government since the days of Thatcher)
Yeah, but they operate in secret, which means there can't be any transparency, because that would reveal their operations and whatnot, and we wouldn't want that. Also, they're "just doing their jobs."
Literally what all short-sighted surveillance defenders always say in such cases.
No. This is an outrage and the British people will rightly be outraged. The effects of this will and should be felt in the next election and beyond. Your sophisticated world-weary cynicism is counterproductive.
It's been ""known"" for years that Special Branch helped murder people in Northern Ireland, and outside the republican community and the small subset of mainland "left" that pays attention, it makes no difference.
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/how...
(Far too many of the "british people" read rightwing press outlets which will minimise this and some other issue, probably Brexit, to rile up their readers to demand more not less authoritarianism)
"The government always wins the election" is a very typical British saying and quite true.
Almost nobody will give a shit.
Those that do won't remember come election time.
Any?
The option of "bonkers, but in a completely different way" politics is available in France, Belgium and Italy. You can also have "corrupt but extremely safe for the general public" in Singapore and Japan.
I object to the term 'cynicism'. Inductive reasoning, maybe. There's nothing inherent in the definition of a British person that necessarily includes apathy towards current affairs.
But most swans are white, there's nothing cynical about that, and similarly I say with no cynicism that most British people forgot about this five minutes after hearing/reading about it, if they heard or read about it at all.
Should? Yes. Will? No.
>Your sophisticated world-weary cynicism is counterproductive
Painfully naive idealism isn't any different. You have to work with reality, not deny it.
It reminds me of a story about, after the 2015 terrorist attacks in France, a police group was created to infiltrate and spy on racists and anti-muslims hate groups. In one occasion, all the members were the cops...
Were those cops also undercover agents or genuine members?
Long before that, but Mags is a popular person from recent memory to demonize, like her counterpart across the pond, Ron.
I don't have any trade union axe to grind, but I'm pretty shocked both by the security services behaviour, and by the lack of coverage this is getting.
Whatever your opinion on trade unions, it's a pretty fundamental threat to democracy when the security services monitor legal behaviour and can destroy someone's livelihood for behaviour they disapprove of.
And .. why isn't this on the BBC News front page all day? I get most of my news there, and now I worry how many other democracy-shaking stories I might have missed.
The first few results from search are pretty indicative: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24464286 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24486649 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-24454918/ex-gchq-chief-nobod...
I remember this clip of Trump boasting of oppressing someone[1] and wondered why the media didn't grab a stronger hold of it.
1-https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/07/513976112...
In my mind, the only worse thing he could have said was that he would have him quartered, drawn and hanged.
The next few years will show us one way or the other, with North Korea, with China, with Iran, with Mexico, with Israel/Palestinians whether a guy who doesn’t act “Presidential” can make big things happen for the USA.
The tax cuts were enormous. We’ll see how the tariffs work out but even Schumer is congratulating Trump for them. I think NK could work out pretty well too.
When Trump makes politically incorrect jokes to either get his point across, or to rattle his opponents, I think it only advances his agenda when media insist on taking a literal interpretation.
MET Police special forces infiltrate unions and blacklist workers is “real” news. Taking a joke Trump makes and quoting it like a serious statement of intention, like “Trump says we should try out China’s Xi-style ‘President for life’” is what we call fake news.
Just like Trump joking “maybe Russia can recover those 30,000 emails Hillary deleted” the people who vote for Trump laugh and get the point — the obvious crime that gets ignored - while Trump haters consider the statement an actual endorsement. It’s nothing more than a Rorschach test.
Take the whole Trump cheating on his wife with a porn star and now a Penthouse Pet of the year. His voter base has barely blinked.
Personally I think Trump knows exactly what he is doing when he says and does certain things that cause his political opponents to waste their time and energy being outraged.
He's controlling the news cycle and the media is playing right into it.
If the London metro police chief cheats on his wife that is one thing. If he plots to use his power granted to him by the public to oppress someone, anyone, that is very bad.
As for the UK, I have no idea how it can reform, or even if it can, its institutionalised propensity for corruption. The only way freedom and rights are wrestled out of the hands of the state is through willingness to die for it. Catalan is a great recent example, collectively there is a want for succession from the Spanish crown, but an unwillingness to die for it... and that is precisely why I don't think they will ever get it.
Similarly, I don't see the British public at large rising up... they are too placated and do not the means to do so. It might seem shocking but in the UK there is no right to freedom of speech.
Special Branch are the police arm of the UK domestic security services, not the kind of neighbourhood police implied by the name "Metropolitan Police"
Where 'neighbourhood' is the largest and capital city, and 'police' is the largest force in the country.
Fact is in a busy station on a morning even if you knew someone was a terrorist and could see him you couldn't actually shoot him without gunning down about 30 civilians between you and the bad guy. An MP5's on display is a show of force against the populace not a reassuring sign of protection.
The Met use the MP5SF (Single-fire) variant (routinely anyway - I'd imagine they have access to other weapons for specific situations), so it isn't necessarily accurate to refer to it as an SMG. It'd take serious misuse of such a weapon to end up gunning down 30 civilians.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/oct/28/met-armed-police-...
Nothing to imply the security services were involved or that there was a risk to our democracy, sounds more like they keep a list of people who do a bad job painting police stations.
I would go to the politics page if I wanted to follow the twists and turns of UK politics. I wouldn't expect to have to go there to find out something so serious.
I guess I'm going to have to look again at where I get my news. The Today programme is very good, but I can't scan it like I can a webpage, so I don't listen often.
I'd really encourage you to not stop there and discover for yourself, by your own words, the plethora of "democracy-shaking stories" you have indeed missed from the BBC.
Personally I use the British Brain-washing Corporation (and other news outlets) as a way of orientating what narratives are being spun to the public, and what narratives not to pay attention to.
This is what I think the average person doesn't understand about pervasive surveillance. This is the kind of shit that it causes. When the government has to know who you're sleeping with, where or whether you pray, who you associate with, etc., it always ends up with this kind of shit. Usually worse.
Aren't almost all construction workers organized?
The blacklist is a legacy of different times when this wasn't so.
The perfect epitaph for Western Civilization.