Undercover under scrutiny
The authorities refuse to say exactly why they pulled the plug on the prosecution of six environmental activists today, but there must have been concern inside Scotland Yard that the case would result in undercover policing itself being put on trial: its methods exposed; its justification questioned.
From a short-back-and-sides police officer to a tattooed and pony-tailed eco-warrior, for seven years PC Mark Kennedy lived deep undercover at the heart of Britain's environmental protest movement. But as well as his appearance, his loyalties changed.
Today saw the collapse of a trial of six people accused of trying to shut down a Nottinghamshire power station after the officer who'd infiltrated their group offered to give evidence for the defence.
In a statement, prosecutors simply said the reason was that "previously unavailable information that significantly undermined the prosecution's case came to light" adding that the cause was "not the existence of an undercover officer".
The Met has been infiltrating protest groups since they were embarrassed in London's Grosvenor Square in 1968 when an anti-Vietnam rally unexpectedly turned violent. An elite covert unit was set up, nicknamed the hairies because undercover officers changed their appearance to blend in.
During the 70s and 80s the "special demonstration squad" penetrated organisations from the Troops Out movement to the Anti-Nazi league but the tactic was always controversial with accusations of entrapment and suggestions that police were undermining peaceful protest.
Peter Bleksley, a member of Scotland Yard's undercover unit in the mid-80s thinks today's case raises the same questions again.
"I think the cops have got to ask themselves the question about whether it was proportionate with what they were doing here? I mean I would rather undercover cops, who should be very highly trained and expensive resources, I think they'd be best put to use trying to catch the drug dealers, the gun runners and the murderers as opposed to others who might be seen, although not by me, but might be seen as a bunch of fluffy tree huggers."
It was a point echoed by Mike Schwartz, the solicitor representing the 113 activists who were arrested after what is presumed to have been a tip-off from Mark Kennedy.
"One expects there to be undercover police on serious operations to investigate serious crime. This was quite the opposite. This was civil disobedience which has a long history in this country and should be protected."
There are also questions as to whether the activities of PC Kennedy amount to entrapment.
Senior backbencher David Winnick, a Labour member of the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, said:
"The concern is not the fact that the Metropolitan Police, and possibly other police forces, use undercover agents. No-one is so naive as to believe that that hasn't been the case since time began.
My concern is the manner in which it has been alleged that Kennedy acted almost as an agent provocateur."
During his time undercover using the pseudonym Mark Stone, PC Kennedy chained himself to the gates of a nuclear power station and drove protestors to hijack a coal train delivering fuel. He climbed a tower at Didcot power station, assisted with planning and funding some protests as well as offering expert advice on how to break-in and climb.
According to the lawyer's bible "Blackstone's Criminal Practice 2010":
"Police conduct which brings about state-created crime is unacceptable and improper and to prosecute it in such circumstances would be an affront to the public conscience. However, if the accused already had the intent to commit a crime of the same or a similar kind and the police did no more than give him the opportunity to fulfil his existing intent, that is unobjectionable."
It is always going to be difficult for covert officers to maintain their cover story without appearing supportive of a protest group's aims. The question is whether they can do so without encouraging or stimulating criminal activities. Were they to find themselves having to, say, help fund an operation or see their cover blown, would an undercover operative be prepared to walk away?
Given the criticism Scotland Yard endured for poor intelligence after the violence associated with student protests a month ago, it would seem likely that a handful of undercover Scotland Yard officers are even now working to infiltrate extremist groups who may be planning to hijack anti-cuts demonstrations. Today's events, however, illustrate how difficult the tactic remains.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Civil disobedience is illegal. If you engage in it and are convicted there will be consequences. If you are honest and brave you will act according to your conscience and take the consequences. It can never be "protected" as the solicitor stated.
To pretend that because you strongly believe in something you should be above the law is neither honest nor brave.
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In the 1980's Mrs Thatcher defined subversive who were fair game for undercover organisations including MI5 as:
An individual who...is a member of a subversive group...whose aims are to undermine or overthrow parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means...is, or has recently been, sympathetic to or associated with members or sympathisers of such organisations or groups, in such a way as to raise reasonable doubts about his reliability...is susceptible to pressure from such organisations or groups". (parliamentary answer April 1985)
I don't suppose it has changed very much and what of the group in question?. At least they seem to have been successful in 'turning' the spy in their ranks.
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Did a police officer infiltrate the 'environmentalists' ....
... or did a crusty infiltrate the police?
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While the police have a duty to prevent disorder it appears the have an over emphasis, verging on obsession with the environmentalist movement.
Again and again we see the police having to backpeddle after taking the policing of climate demonstrations too far, the vast majority who are peaceful find their ability to demonstrate curtailed and expensive cases repeatedly collapse.
Please spend the money on real criminals who actually damage our society rather than chasing those who are for the most part excersising their democratic rights.
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A very apt and pertinent question at 4.
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Difficult to add to Peter Bleksley's criticism. It is worrying that the Police can find the time to complain about resources and yet treat organised protesters as if they are a threat to national security.
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With terrorism on the rise, this was best use for an undercover officer and the attendent expense? You're more afraid of people who want to save the planet than those who want to kill fellow citizens? Wow.
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7. At 6:33pm on 10 Jan 2011, watriler wrote:
Difficult to add to Peter Bleksley's criticism. It is worrying that the Police can find the time to complain about resources and yet treat organised protesters as if they are a threat to national security.
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and thats where the problem is, civil organised protests against society can be constrewed as a threat to national security. Let the mob have its head and the sabres will rattle.
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Hi Mark, you probably will not want to print this, but a failure of the CPS case falls over because the evidence becomes the defence, smells of a double bluff on somebodies part. Theres more to this, than we can read or see. Its reminds me of cases where the culprit is in the dock and he is going down for a very long stretch but whoa and behold the little innocent naiva policeman in the dock spells out the culprits criminal record,,, and the case collapses......
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The numpties' lawyer/ spokesman seemed to think closing down a power staion illegally was not a criminal offence. In a helluvu lot of countries in this dear old world, it is, and the people trying it would have been on the wrong end of a machine gun.
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I think you will find that the demonstration referred to in Grosvenor Square in 1968 was an anti Vietnam war rally not an 'anti Vietnam rally.'
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This has been completely orchestrated to make the gullible climate numpties look like real protestors and to keep them out of jail. Undercover infiltration is a very common tactic. Having one of the officers change sides is unique and not at all credible unless it was planned that way.
Global warming is a 100% establishment, corporate cause. It will make trillions of carbon trading dollars for the City of London.
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If our leaders were able to implement the wishes of the majority there would be no need for secret police because there would be no need for demonstrations. Our recent governance has similarities with Pitt's administration at the dawn of the 19th century, when a series of bad choices including a stupid war - with the french that time, led to the banning of free speech and free assembly much as now, and nearly bankrupted the country. Then it was UK plc's profits from the slave trade that drove things along, now it is the city and our offshore mafia in the Caymans, Jersey, etc., that determine policy by funding HM Government's bloated budgets. The EU are curiously silent on this issue.
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Interesting to see the anti-capitalists coming out of court and admitting on camera that persons from their side had made contact with a witness in the crown court case against them. They said the contact was by email, therefore there are records of this.
Making contact with a witness? Did they encourage them to change their evidence?
Isn't that perverting the course of justice?
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We as a people have the right to protest, but consider it a duty.
Remember Poll Tax? without that protest, Poll Tax would not have been abolished.
Governments can easily push through legislation that the people don't want. Yes, we can all get in touch with our MPs and ask them to vote against, but in the end, they they will vote the way they choose or their party forces them to.
It's one of the areas that democracy fails, when the people are not represented.
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2 salient facts that the BBC fails to register:
1. 20 protestors admitted they were there to close down the power station...the consequences of which would be extremely serious and dangerous...makig them eco terrorists.
2. The police officer may not be an entirely believeable defense witness.....
'He managed to keep up the charade until October last year, when friends discovered a passport with his real name at his home. He wept as he admitted he had been leading a double life.
Kennedy is now reported to be living outside the country having quit the police, but is reported to be hoping to make amends for betraying his friends.'
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The only reason a conviction would fail is if it came to light that Stone / Kennedy instigated or encouraged activists to act outside the law. The whole idea of an undercover officer is to observe and gather evidence of law-breaking of conspiracy to commit crime. I fail to see some people's argument that he's unreliable because he's gone native.
The police AND the CPS would have been more than happy for someone without Stone / Kennedy's conscience (Let's, face it - that's what this is about) sitting in court pointing the finger at the people he'd fitted up.
Stone hasn't done that and lo and behold - the CPS's grasp on the case slips to such an extent it looks painfully obvious that their inside man wasn't a snitch or a snoop - he was an agent provocateur.
What the rest of you should be considering is how these circumstances developed. Consider the targets of police infiltration in the past;
Football hooligans, paedophiles, anarchists, homegrown terrorists. Could you ever imagine an undercover policeman harbouring sympathies for people intent on killing or harming individuals? Any conflicting thoughts in thier minds as they get ready to testify against them?
So why the guilt or sympathy or whatever you might assume it to be with Stone / Kennedy?
Because these people weren't intent on hurting people? Weren't intent on killing, maiming or otherwise attacking weak, unsuspecting individuals?
Maybe. Or maybe collecting evidence against that type of "state enemy" requires the police to do more than just watch and wait.
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Agents provocateurs have been a hazard faced by protest campaigns for many years. Insider individuals who wish to drive the campaign towards extreme and violent acts are often a campaign's worst enemy. It would be astonishing if they were not deliberately encouraged or planted by the powerful vested interest groups that feel threatened by the protesters and campaigners.
In this case it would be interesting to know what the ultimate aim was - just to entrap a few protestors, or, by driving them to extremes, to discredit the environmental movement generally.
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No surprise here. As part of raping our civil liberties, Labour also gave us Mark Kennedy. Blighty wake up and smell the coffee with its Stalinesque flavour!
Whatever happened to Mr Clegg's promise of "the biggest shake-up of our democracy since 1832"? (19 May 2010) - it's long overdue!
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In was inviolved in a simple march against unemployment from Liverpool to London in 1976 when I was targeted by a plain clothes officer who screamed hysterically at the uniforms of the SPG to arrest me. They knew all about my military history even before I reached Paddington Green Police Station.
I was tried in a farce that would have done Gilbert and Sullivan proud as the prosecution did not even question me properly and I was released,not guilty.
My Barrister, Lord Tony Gifford was as confused as I was and actually questioned me later as to my true identity. I still don't know who the police thought I was, but police incompetence, or the intention of discrediting me among the,others in the movement may have been their intention.
I think that with the Metropolitan Police it was the former. I believe that they may even train their officers in the art of incompetence.
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"The authorities refuse to say exactly why they pulled the plug on the prosecution of six environmental activists today, but there must have been concern inside Scotland Yard that the case would result in undercover policing itself being put on trial: its methods exposed; its justification questioned."
If the case was dropped due to Scotland Yard being worried their methods would be scrutinised, that's an error of impunity imv.
Two wrongs don't make a right, well, not often ;-)
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It seems that the Police's definition of "Terrorist" has expanded. While I have no truck with this group's views or methods I find the methods used by the Police in this case to have been disproportionate.
Perhaps the senior officers in command should be charged with wasting police time (and money)?
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Can we have someone from The BBC to infiltrate the Met to find out whether they've been covering up or supporting the News of the World phone hacking scandal please?
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`The Met has been infiltrating protest groups since they were embarrassed in London's Grosvenor Square in 1968 when an anti-Vietnam rally unexpectedly turned violent.'
I suggest you go back to your source on this one, Mark. You have been fed a large chunk of bovine biological solids. Anti-establishment groups had experienced police infiltration years before that. It was well-known that in the short period before the successful occupation of the Greek Embassy in 1968 that certain individuals within the milieu of the people arranging the event were not told anything to ensure the police never found out until afterwards.
As for that demonstration in 1968 `unexpectedly' turning violent go and pull the other one. As a member of one of the organising committees for that march I exhausted myself on the day stopping masses of people from running off to the embassy just to pick a fight with Mr. Plod as the demo was never routed to go to Grosvenor Square. The country had been abuzz with rumour and speculation, largely from the media, that it would turn nasty so there was no real surprise when it did. So much for the dignified peaceful protest the organisers tried to arrange!
In those days we knew officers from Special Branch by name and rank and often shared a drink with them. We also knew a number of uniformed officers whom we had met whilst organising demonstrations and had an open and frank relationship with them. There was no real need for anyone to infiltrate anything.
Having said that though we also knew the police had their informers who were usually recruited by detectives other than Special Branch when that individual had been caught doing something criminal rather than political. Those police needed evidence of crime and so encouraged their informants to embellish rumour and gossip. The real problem with such informers is that they are usually purveyors of fiction.
The problem with deep undercover operations is that by nature they distort reality. The undercover officer has to provide information and even evidence whilst at the same time as keeping on the right side of the people he is infiltrating. This is not a deceit that is sustainable for any lengthy period and will either end in self-deceit or a breakdown as seems to have been the case here. You cannot associate with the same people for years without becoming one with them.
The climate change and the anti-globalisation people are not a conspiracy against the state; although they might like to think they are. They are largely open organisations comprising mainly decent people who occasionally perform a spectacular act of conscience in order to maintain their profile. However, this is usually containable within the bounds of standard policing and intelligence which can be achieved by watching them from a distance. I think the problem is that senior police officers don't like surprises as it distorts their budgets.
The groups that need to be infiltrated are the truly violent but they are hardened cadres who suspect everyone even themselves of being the enemy. But with those you need a shrink more than a copper.
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12. At 7:21pm on 10 Jan 2011, AnAntiChrist wrote:
I think you will find that the demonstration referred to in Grosvenor Square in 1968 was an anti Vietnam war rally not an 'anti Vietnam rally.'
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Right,
as I was with the rally on the day, I can assure you that the protest was against the WAR.
Some were FOR HO, Ho, Ho Chi Min,
some were against America,
some were trying to ensure the UK Government stayed out of the war,
some were there to have a fight with the police (it is ever thus).
I know that this rally got more press coverage than the more recent rally against WMD/Iraq.
Why do you think that was the case???
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I feel that there is one type of environmental group that warrants (eg) infiltration. Thee are the Animal Rights cells that are prepared to kill, maim or threaten scientists, etc, and their families.
In the same way that the anti-abortionist in the US, and the anti-blasphemists in Pakistan, have moved themselves beyond the pale by *killing people* in their cause, I believe that the Animal Rights extremists have put themselves outside civilised society and should be hunted down by any and all police tactics.
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alstod wrote @ 17: "20 protestors admitted they were there to close down the power station...the consequences of which would be extremely serious and dangerous...making them eco-terrorists."
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During the Thatcher-era miner's strike, and on my way to an environmental conference, the Midlands police (actually Met. on overtime) consistently re-directed me and my car away from strategic centres.
I was wearing my 'flat 'at', as I did in those days (my Yorkshire upbringing) to keep the sun out of my eyes. The police saw me as a miner because of my cap.
Around Nottingham, and passing a 'strategic' power station, a gang of miners armed with posters and static braziers, themselves saw me in my cap and flagged me down, directing me into the power station frontage with the congratulation "you got through, Brother, the picket line 's this way!"
The perception is conditioned by the appearence. Both parties were wrong and both assumed.
However, the 20 miners closed down access to the power station temporarily, and would be called economic terrorists (by analogy with the above poster 'alstod' and his eco-terrorists).
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Re: ECO-TERRORIST
I think it is the right time, in THIS day and age, to become less cavalier with the word TERRORIST.
When IRA/'Freedom Fighters' blow up hundreds of ordinary people in Northern Ireland; or in Iraq, or in New York, or in Israel, or in Cairo, or in Bali, or in Pakistan, etc, etc, we have a contemporary and precise special-definition of the word TERRORIST.
Active protesters/protectors of our environment are a totally positive indication that we live in a participatory democracy that allows for public pressure being placed on our representatives in government, etc.
The key constraint in all protest is activities that move massively beyond the law and the principles of common humanity - eg. killing other human beings.
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It is such a great opportunity missed that, rather than messing with "protest groups" the Metropolitan Police hadn't put some undercover officers in the stocks, shares, capital, exchanges and banking industries from the mid eighties until now. I would have though the chances of CPS pulling out of any number of fraud cases would have been zero. And the officers involved wouldn't have needed to grow ponytails although they may have been corrupted rather easily quite early on....
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Surly the need to infiltrate a group of whatever name, one needs to become invisible, in other words one of them.If not then you have not infiltrated. I truly feel that there is a double standard here. If the police had played the game in the correct fashion then they would have gone ahead with the court case
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The problem with "going undercover" is that if you do it with serious criminals you either have to be prepared to be involved in their actions or be found out by them and face those consequences. So any undercover police that find they are in a group which isn't a danger to society often end up sympathising with them - as in this case. Those under cover in more sinister groups face risking discovery if they do protect the public.
People have to be prepared to make protests outside the law because otherwise it's too easy for governments to ignore what the population are telling them. We've seen this over the last fifteen years or so - giving the rise of utterly pointless bureaucrats as politicians in parties which have much the same policies.
I agree totally with point 2 - that civil disobedience requires the protesters to be willing to face the consequences of their actions. If this ends up in shaming the authorities to correct the laws then they end up as heroes - as the civil rights campaigners in the 1960s. If it doesn't then it's probably a sign that the general population aren't with them so they wasted their time. That's how we force those pulling the strings to get back into line with humanity. In the end public opinion is what wins the battle in any democracy. The problem is that everyone knows this is the case and those with the power to do so cannot resist manipulating that very public opinion via lobby groups and the media. It's just something we have to put up with, providing people realise that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance against those who try to compromise it.
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