Police spies infiltrated UK leftwing groups for decades
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
However some of those groups actually are dangerous; not just Combat 18 but also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Huntingdon_Animal_Cruelty (surprising campaign of terror for which several were jailed)
There is also the question (as with some of the FBI anti-terrorist actions) as to how far the undercover agents were actually the driving conspirators.
Compare and contrast with the reports that the Electoral Commission have passed a file to the Metropolitan police about the conduct of various organisations in the Brexit referendum .. which the police are not yet investigating.
1. Combat 18 is a neo-Nazi terrorist organization associated with several murders, not a left-wing political campaigning group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_18
2. Undercover Police officers in related animal rights groups (the ALF, rather than SHAC) have been identified as suspects in fire-bombings, and accused of perjury during trials for terrorism offenses, for which those groups were blamed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lambert_(undercover_police...
... It's hard to know how much of the animal rights movement's reputation for terrorism was based on their actual actions rather than police agent provocateurs, because police cover-ups are still on-going. And this point also applies to SHAC: we know about the police undercover agents who have been exposed, but by definition we don't know about the ones whose identities remain secret — in particular, whether the Met/ACPO infiltrated SHAC and actively incited their more outrageous actions, as they did with other groups.
There was considerable debate about whether fire bombing was a non-violent action: the aim was not to harm people, but to cause massive water damage (from the sprinkler systems) to shops and their stock. Other people said you know violence when you see it, and burning down a building is a violent act.
[s] How do you expect them to do their job without instigating or perpetrating the very same acts they were supposed to guard against (indirectly), or deception that goes way beyond what they were mandated to do? [/s]
Your expectations are likely right:
> The database is incomplete as the full list of groups that were spied on has yet to be established.
I don't know about the UK but there are a lot of ties between police and right wing nationalism/extremism in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if it were similar over there.
Other comments here are stating that it is perfectly acceptable to stop groups that hope to undermine the government. Yet less focus is put on how much effort these governments have put into undermining other foreign democracies. If such powerful institutions can wreak havoc abroad and turn a blind eye to right wing injustices and other problems (poverty, public health etc.) at home, while not really providing a well-functioning system for changing itself (i.e. electoral party politics), perhaps they really should be challenged.
One way to put it is: You'd expect a well-functioning spy organisation to select its monitoring targets in an objective manner based on threat level. Are these targets then the result of objective evaluations? Can the apparent skew be explained that way? If not, it points to a dysfunctional spy organisation.
I personally don't think any state spy organization is funded or directed by people making objective decisions. They're not technocratic institutions, even if it feels nice to imagine they are.
It seems to me that the police in question have targeted those groups most likely to insight violent acts. The leftist groups are not innocent, and neither are the right. There are limited resources and those most significant threats need to be targeted first.
As a more libertarian minded person, I see a lot of those outspoken are often lumped in with the "right wing" groups you mention, and that broad brush you speak with does nothing to create progress or foster open discussion.
Which right wing groups are not advocating for things that actively harm working people and minorities? Which leftist groups are out to harm entire pluralities of people out of indifference (at best) or cruelty (at worst)?
I'm asking in good faith because I honestly don't know what groups are being referred to when people say "neither side is innocent". I don't see the dichotomy that is being constructed with this argument.
I would say the Libertarian Party is not advocating for things that actively harm working people and minorities. Libertarians are in favor of equality in opportunity.
For that matter, there's no clear consensus that what most left-wing groups propose doesn't advocate for things that actively harm working people and minorities. Beyond this, groups like ANTIFA typically target violence at those who are not promoting racism, segregation or discrimination on the basis of gender, race or religion. The most violent left-wing groups tend to be environmental and animal rights groups.
Not to mention, so often in recent years it's the left that seeks to silence, censor, shut down and drown out differing opinions in the face of intelligent discussion. One of the most prominent examples would be Ben Shapiro, who has never advocated for violence, and has been a significant target of both the ALT-Right movement as well as the left.
The opportunity for rational discussion is lost when ideologues are so closed minded as to not even be able to listen or consider that they may be wrong. One must ALWAYS consider that you, yourself are wrong as a possibility when trying to push an agenda that would affect everyone.
Since you predictably brought up loosely organized anti-fascist groups taking direct action to de-platform explicitly white supremacist demonstrations, I'll point out that their actions are in defense of minorities from fascist groups who go well out of their way to make the elimination of people of color a topic of popular debate. Advocating for the elimination of a plurality of people is explicitly violence.
If this isn't a rational response to specific points you've made, you've already made up your mind about _first principles_. First principles are not up for debate.
The point is that the police clearly serve the state and not the people.
Of course, that's true of every organization. How do you know that the Kensington Garden Club isn't plotting the violent overthrow of the British government? But there's some level of plausibility where you should investigate. (Note well: I am not claiming that the British police drew the line in the right place.)
I would add that enterism is a real thing with quite a few notable cases of a minor fringe group within a moderate party serving as a spearhead to takeover the reigns and leverage its goodwill to advance extremist ideals. This sort of thing is only caught by insiders keeping tabs on the organization's inner workings.
Britain doesn't have a democracy, it has a monarchy. The queen "consents" legislation, PMs, etc. They also have an entire "house of lords" which is literally a forum for the aristocrats to counter the democratically elected parliament.
One could argue they spy to avoid democracy, not protect it.
As long as they're not doing it violently.
An interesting issue. Mass action that demonstrates voter interest is a form of democracy. Mass action that threatens physical harm to people and property is not, it's anarchy and mob violence.
Let us also consider the ideas of structural violence in this discussion. It is often missed because the perpetrator is an entire structure, an abstraction.
Just to note, it's interesting to me how your post has lumped "people and property" together so easily, as if one cannot talk about a person without talking about their property too.
As much as this is an interesting issue as you say, your post comes across as much more of an endorsement of the prevailing ideologies; the only form of collective action is voting action, and if your goals cannot be reached within those confines then your action must be condemned. As others here have pointed out, doesn't this restrict the capabilities for change significantly in almost every qualitative aspect?
Taking the UK by example specifically, the parliament operates a website in which you can submit a petition, and if your petition gathers some specified number of votes (10k? I can't remember) then they will debate the issue. Not a single petition has succeeded to my knowledge. Most petitions are returned with non-answers and restatements of the current position, as if the right course of action is determined by positions rather than knowledge.
These people who talk about "mass action" believe (rightly or wrongly) that the current system is compromised, and structurally so. To say that they should sit down and simply vote, perhaps hold up some signs outside of parliament is not only not engaging with their grievances (and possibly correcting them), it's remaining ignorant of the issues they present. It is missing the point.
Yes, quite obviously yes.
For starters, violence is obviously a form of oppression and goes agains the rule of law as well as a very long list of rights.
It's always amusing how these terrorist organizations actually believed that violence is justified when they see themselves as the ones dishing the beatings instead of taking them.
The definition of violence does not speak of the law. In fact, to say that the law can't be violent assumes that the law is good. But I'm sure we can both name states and laws which are unjust. If someone unjustly harms you, is that not a form of violence? If violence is oppression, does it not follow that the current state of affairs with widespread structural violence is oppressive, and oppression must be opposed by any means necessary?
Again, I'm no advocate of violence, but the idea that it is never justified is only nearly just as ignorant as the idea that it is justified only so long as the state exercises it.
Nonsense, and that argument is alarmingly pathetic. For starters, it makes absolutely no sense to insinuate that the same majority that outlaws violence would, somehow, contradict themselves and do the exact opposite.
And this sort of reasoning is even more pathetic when it's patently obvious that this argument is uses to try to put a thin veil of legitimacy on violent actions performed by extremist groups with absolutely no support in free and democratic societies.
My intention isn't to defend those who use violence, it's to say that the state having a monopoly on violence does not make this monopoly just, and furthermore that the state's use of violence is in many instances unjust, and finally that revolutions happen with violence whether you or I like it or not, they occur when a population is so pushed to that extreme, as happened in the monarchy of France, the founding of the U.S. and imperial Russia.
No, in fact, the fact that they are closely associated is one of the classic arguments against, or for only carefully limited versions of, democracy.
That cannot be what they are referring to - if the mass was a majority then they could use voting. They say they can't use voting, which implies to me they're planning some kind of minority undemocratic action.
In a system with perfect proportionality rather having systematic misrepresentation, sure; actual representative democracies tend to have structural biases favoring particular interests which means opposition to those interests often cannot succeed through voting merely with majority support, while the favored interest can remain dominant with a sufficient minority of support.
See, e.g., the US government, where this was dramatically demonstrated in the 2016 Presidential election, but has a more consistent impact in the federal legislature, particularly the Senate, and in the de facto “Constitutional legislature”—the body that can amend the Constitution—where, as in the Sense, voting is by State.
As such, a mere majority in the US favoring certain positions cannot succeed by voting alone.
In other words, small parties with little to no support can't just dictate their will onto the majority.
That's a feature, not a bug.
No, exactly the opposite: a minority that is structurally favored by the biases in the system of representation, can dictate their will over the objections of the majority.
Nonsense. In democratic republics, which are the norm in the West, the people pick their representatives and both the legislative and executive branches are determined by that vote.
It makes no sense to try to turn around the facts to pretend that democratic governments are not voted in by the majority but instead by a minority. That's absurd and has no bearing in reality.
And in real, rather than idealized, democratic republics, there are often systematic distortions in representation favoring certain identifiable interests, allowing those interests to attain controlling power with a minority of the vote.
As stated above, the US federal government provides a good example of this.
> It makes no sense to try to turn around the facts to pretend that democratic governments are not voted in by the majority but instead by a minority.
Both the current President of the US and the current Senate majority were voted in by outright minorities. The House majority was voted in by a plurality, but still the majority faction is substantially overepresented even if you consider only the ratio of major party votes.
> That's absurd and has no bearing in reality.
The current US government may be absurd, but it is absolutely reality, and not unique among democratic republics in history in being elected despite not commanding majority support in the electorate.
Denying reality isn't productive.
This is usually the basis for most revolutionary organisations. However, there is a major split between those groups that believe the way to deal with that is to participate in elections, try to win, and "just" be prepared when the establishment refuses to hand over power, vs. groups like the SWP that believes that there's no point in contesting elections at all.
The latter is a lot more dangerous, because like the Bolsheviks they may at some point delude themselves into thinking they have enough support without any evidence. But for a group like the SWP to actually become dangerous they'd first need to become magnitudes bigger than it ever was, and they just never got much traction.
I don't think anyone would suggest the police shouldn't have kept an eye on them, though. Nor do I believe they'd expect the police to ignore them.
The more relevant reason to question the effort that went into surveillance of them was that initial surveillance and ongoing evidence should have made it clear to the police, as it's done to anyone paying attention to them, that they were/are nothing more than yet another fringe group that are much better at talking than doing.
In the end, as it turns out, the SWP was so bad at doing and talking that they managed to tear themselves apart through their own internal idiocies than what the police ever would have hoped for, in the form of the crisis of their completely ludicrously offensive handling of a rape accusation [1] a few years ago.
[1] https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/05/comrades-war-d...
They could use our consensus system to propose a new consensus system, but they aren't planning to do that.
You could argue that our consensus system is wrong and that they shouldn't have to use it, and it's oppressive to apply it to them, but at that point I'm not sure what to say apart from the majority of people I know think the current consensus system is the best we know.
How can you find out what the consensus is on our consensus system if you don't trust the current consensus system?
Ok, dropping the affected text-accent, I've definitely been in the room when people talk about how there'll be a black bloc coming to an event for "direct action", where we all know damn well that black blocs come to, you know, break stuff and beat up cops and fascists.
That said, I wish that the cops, the state, and opposition parties would all stop pretending that their violence isn't violence, because we all know it is, and just spend the rhetorical effort on justifying what they're choosing to do anyway.
I take it that the group that's in the room is collectively too scared to kick them out or to stop their violence.
That said, I wish that the cops, the state, and opposition parties would all stop pretending that their violence isn't violence
It is violence. That's how sovereignty works. The state has the monopoly on violence. The cops are acting on behalf of the state. All others who break it are either illegal instigators, or exercising the right of self defense.
Principled non-violent protest is the mark of a true activist. Violence is the mark of those who merely want power for themselves.
It's true that one particularly useful definition of a state is whatever entity exercises a monopoly on legitimate (a key qualifier) violence in a particular territory. But that is not an inherent property of whatever entity calls itself a state, and failures of legitimacy can cause a state to fail and be replaced; that a thing is called (and even moreso that it calls itself) the state has little bearing here. The definition provides a test for whether something actually is the state, not whether it may engage in violence.
Clearly, in the eyes of any group deploying violent direct action, the legitimacy of the State has been compromised if not entirely lost.
> Principled non-violent protest is the mark of a true activist.
It's the mark of an adherent to a particular ideology of activism, whose effectiveness (without some other group deploying or credibly threatening violence against the same target that they oppose) and morality in the face of extreme abuses have both been seriously questioned.
Or, in the words of CGP Grey: "Bigger Army Diplomacy." So, the implication, and the content of international law, is that if you have the power to enforce your will in a territory, you have the sovereignty. Someone who advocates for that approach to "activism" is advocating for a violent uprising by force. Someone who advocates for that from within a democratic republic, simply doesn't want to play by the rules anymore.
It's the mark of an adherent to a particular ideology of activism, whose effectiveness (without some other group deploying or credibly threatening violence against the same target that they oppose) and morality in the face of extreme abuses have both been seriously questioned.
Such was remarked about Ghandi's position that non-violence could oppose Fascism. So sure, if you're making an equivalency between the current US government and Fascism. However, that would be a prime example of false equivalency. There's more equivalency between white hooded KKK members and Antifa black bloc running around vandalizing and intimidating than there is between WWII Italy/Germany and 2018's USA.
A lot of modern states aspire to this. Many don't. It is not a current or historical requirement of "sovereignty".
Those are all things the state has the sole right to do, and not a random citizen who just felt like it.
No, the group that's in the room supports them, but also considers them strategically unreliable and a bit mentally unstable. Yes, your average urban socialist group does sometimes co-organize with Antifa or anarchist black blocs, to some extent.
>It is violence. That's how sovereignty works. The state has the monopoly on violence. The cops are acting on behalf of the state. All others who break it are either illegal instigators, or exercising the right of self defense.
Which makes it amazing how often the cops downright falsify their reason for hitting or shooting someone!
So then they are fine with crimes and violations of human rights done in their name. That clarifies their true ethical positions and that they are not principled in their "activism."
Which makes it amazing how often the cops downright falsify their reason for hitting or shooting someone!
The judiciary well knows that there is a temptation to lie when violence has entered the picture. The way to fight this is to be the side that is above lies and deception. Antifa and anarchist black blocs have demonstrated that they aren't above immoral acts, as those who know the history and sometimes co-organize with them.
That's literally what “direct action” means—action which, as opposed to indirectly dealing with the problem by convincing people to stop doing bad things, directly deals with the problem by interfering with the flow of required inputs to the act of doing the bad things, or by awwreducing the ability of people to do bad things by destroying or incapacitating either the instruments used in doing the bad things or the people who would otherwise do the bad things.
Like in Norway, where extensive illegal spying on the left was "revealed" in the mid 90's ("revealed" because many subjects of the spying had reported it for decades and been laughed at), a large part of the disturbing aspect of the scope is how little they found given the resources they kept putting into it for decades on end, and how clearly a lot of the resources were put in more to intimidate than to carry out surveillance. I used to know a guy that had been followed to and from work for years - he was a trade union rep and communist party member, and the only reason he had for why they might have done that was that his route went past the Soviet embassy; of course if he'd actually been a spy, he wouldn't have been dumb enough to meet them there, and presumably the police knew that as well as he did; his impression was that they wanted him to know.
I don't know if this affected their work in other areas in the UK (but note that they monitored a huge number of left wing groups and 3 far right groups), but in Norway their obsession with the left led to them largely overlooking the rise of the neo-nazis in the 70's and 80's despite increasing levels of violence including several terrorist attacks (fire bombs thrown at May 1st parades and the like). Instead of taking them seriously, police took advantage of a firebomb thrown into the book store of a tiny maoist group to illegally secure copies of their membership register for example, and went on to suggest they'd thrown the fire bomb themselves. It was first towards the end of the 80's that escalating neo-nazi violence forced the policy to refocus their attention on the far right.
To me that is a bigger concern than their monitoring of the left - any such group with something to hide would expect to be infiltrated anyway; most of them had nothing to hide. But when their myopic focus on one set of group makes them ignore other threats, then it because a risk to society.
quite interesting and sad
And why they don't take any action against these groups you might ask? That's because some of these are _very_ useful in regard to controlling the populus (e.g. threat of violence leading to self-censorship) and enabling the removal of more and more liberties.
You might think that people managed to learn how ruthless, vile cretins like Hitler and Stalin actually got to their positions of power, and how they expanded them. But nope. We are just waiting for, and in some cases actively enabling, all that shit to happen all over again.
It is almost like human civilization keeps going round and round in a perpetuation of hate, abuse, vileness and misery. And it's so sad given the fact that we actually _have_ EVERYTHING we need to destroy this cycle once and for all.
Do you believe no policeman was ever a card carrying member of a communist/socialist organization?
If they exist I haven't met them.
I have met far more who have certain ideas on race, religion, and distrust of socialist. They aren't afraid to share with you how things were dealt with "back then."
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2018/oct/...
Edit: "Similarly dangerous" is a bit subjective (some people are terrified of socialism), but in terms of danger of actual violence perpetrated by members of the groups, I'd say the BNP and especially C18 were on a very different level from the left-wing groups on the list that I'm familiar with. But then I've personally received death threats from C18 so maybe I'm biased.
In general righties aren't big fans of decentralized organizations.
At least in the US far right groups are infiltrated like crazy since FBI agents / informers don't look out of place in a room full of straight white males.
Do you know of some empirical basis for that? Also, what about numbers of members?
I can't speak to specific numbers, but there are a lot of organizations out there with varying levels of operational complexity. It wouldn't surprise me that there are a great number out there. Also, it's not like there aren't people in many of these organizations who are actively engaging in violent and terrorist acts.
Some of the most violent and vocal are actually left wing groups. That isn't to say there aren't right wing groups that aren't a problem. It also doesn't help that people tend to lump them all together.
I see a lot of those who are Libertarian or conservative speakers that get violently protested and lumped in with the extremists. It's really hard to have pragmatic and practical discussions these days when the majority are so closed minded on one side or another.
It doesn't seem entirely out of place for the police to infiltrate a group that openly instigates revolution.
The article also goes into repeated occurrences of romance between undercover agents and members of the infiltrated organizations. sounds like pretty awkward family reunions.
It doesn't seem entirely out of place to keep an eye on them. It does seem a bit odd to consider there to be a need to infiltrate them continuously for ~40 years when neither your infiltration or their actions shows evidence they're a threat. You'd think after a couple of years they'd scale things back. Keep an eye, maybe check in on them if they see worrying signs.
It's the amount of resources put into tiny, mostly ineffectual, fringe groups that is most staggering. I mean, in a way these groups should be flattered that they were taken so much more seriously than their activity would suggest.
Should the police also infiltrate the Labour party? The Republican party in the United States? Just to, you know, make sure that they aren't doing anything improper. Keep an eye on them.
Note that what I would consider an appropriate level of keeping eye on them would be to pay attention to their pamphlets, occasionally send someone to a meeting, reading up on who is who to make sure you know if something is changing.
I think infiltrating them for decades was just a ridiculously over the top.
If not, then filling them with fifth columnists hardly seems proper.
How do we know that they haven't found evidence?
EDIT: I should have RTFA more carefully.
And the "romance" was deliberate misrepresentation of sexual interest for political purposes.