The environmental and animal rights groups in the UK became a major target of the Security Services and Special Branch after the Good Friday Agreement. Essenti

The environmental and animal rights groups in the UK became a major target of the Security Services and Special Branch after the Good Friday Agreement. Essentially you had lots of surveillance teams and analysts who had nothing more to do, because the Irish terrorist threat had pretty much evaporated over night. They kept watching the Russians and some internal SOCA type targets (organised crime), but mostly there were lots of people twiddling their thumbs. Alongside this, the animal rights campaigners had done things that were vaguely "terroristic" in nature. Since the target of the animal rights campaigners were often the elite who hunted foxes, the hunt group lobbied to make sure these groups got Special Branch's attention. Special Branch like paid overtime, hence they got someone new to focus on. The hunt campaigners won however and hunting with hounds got banned. Though it must be pointed out that a large number of the public in general favoured the ban by 2004: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunting_Act_2004#Public_opinion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunting_Act_2004#Public_opinio... Now nearly everyone is working on the Islamic desks. Some Russian stuff still and maybe 1% on the Irish to keep an eye on them, but the large Irish informant network will have been left to rot. As a side note, the Security Services have traditionally had difficulties building informant networks inside the Islamic targets (inside the UK). The Irish responded well to payment in cash and drugs and "look the other way whilst we continue our Mafia-like activities", since for the most part, they were a well armed and well funded crime syndicate with a religious hard-core. Islamic fundamentalists haven't responded so well to offers of cash for information. Also in terms of putting officers inside these groups, the UK has a very small minority of officers that could actually blend in undercover, although the trend is increasing. Total minority ethnic police officers made up 5.5% of all officers on 31 March 2015. There were 6,715 Minority Ethnic police officers in the 43 police forces on 31 March 2014. This represents 5.2 per cent of the police officer total. Only a handful of officers become Special Branch officers and they are hand picked (I believe unofficially). The chances of a having a Muslim minority Special Branch officer, prepared to spy of other Muslims is therefore rather slight. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-workforce-england-and-wales-31-march-2015/police-workforce-england-and-wales-31-march-2015 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/police-workforce-...