9 ms·

Police spies infiltrated UK leftwing groups for decades

94 points by crunchiebones 8y ago

chrisseaton 8y ago
Some of these groups have a publicly stated goal of overthrowing British democracy - doesn't seem unreasonable for them to be monitored by the police and security services.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Also, the alleged spying goes back to the 1960s. It's not like they could just sit in their air conditioned offices and look at all your metadata and see whether or not you're talking to some sketchy guys in Yemen and buying fertilizer in bulk back then. They had to do Real Police Work(TM), like infiltrating the organizations in question, to figure these things out (I wish it was still that way).
- comice 8y ago
  how many of them have that goal? what do you think of the monitoring of the rest of them?
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    Well, if you're the police, how do you find out whether a group has that goal? Listen to their public pronouncements? That seems rather naive. No, you pretty much have to infiltrate in order to find out whether or not they're trying to violently overthrow the government. 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.)
    - geezerjay 8y ago
      > No, you pretty much have to infiltrate in order to find out whether or not they're trying to violently overthrow the government. 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.
- 113 8y ago
  Why? As long as they're not doing it violently.
  - chrisseaton 8y ago
    They say they want to 'seize control' of the government institutions using 'mass action' instead of voting. They aren't talking about asking nicely are they, come on.
    - throwaway8689 8y ago
      Mass action is a form of democracy, if the mass is large enough. It doesn't have to mean violence.
      - chrisseaton 8y ago
        > Mass action is a form of democracy, if the mass is large enough. 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.
        kiliantics 8y ago
        Actions by governments are actions by a minority and most governments are voted for by a minority
        chrisseaton 8y ago
        Well ok another way to break it down would be that they want to do something without using the consensus system we have. 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?
- clubm8 8y ago
  >Some of these groups have a publicly stated goal of overthrowing British democracy 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.
pjc50 8y ago
Disappointed, but not surprised. I'd have expected the numbers to be higher. See also the murder of Pat Finucane: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/mi5-can-authorise-agents-to-commit-crimes-tribunal-told-1.3651806#.W7cihCcrJj0.twitter https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/mi5-can-a... However some of those groups actually are dangerous; not just Combat 18 but also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Huntingdon_Animal_Cruelty 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.
- kiliantics 8y ago
  The annoying thing about these investigations is that they disproportionately target laft wing groups while leaving right wing groups to organise more successfully. And we wonder why right wing populism is on the rise. 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.
  - olau 8y ago
    > The annoying thing about these investigations is that they disproportionately target left wing groups while leaving right wing groups to organise more successfully. 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.
amarant 8y ago
this seemed a lot worse until the paragraf describing one of the infiltrated parties as "a Trotskyite party of a few thousand members that advocates the abolition of capitalism through revolutionary means" 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.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  That's a handful of openly revolutionary groups vs hundreds of others whose only interest was legitimate protest. And the "romance" was deliberate misrepresentation of sexual interest for political purposes.
- vidarh 8y ago
  They've infiltrated the SWP for nearly 40 years and yet have found no evidence of the organisation itself pushing violence or other crimes. 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.
  - Joeboy 8y ago
    Actually though, the SWP isn't a tiny ineffectual fringe group. They (or their satellite organizations) been key organizers of pretty much every big lefty demo for the last 2-3 decades. Back when I was more involved with this sort of thing, we used to find the SWP's enthusiasm for appropriating other people's issues quite annoying. This is why I find the extent of police involvement in the SWP rather startling.
    - 8y ago
awongh 8y ago
the new yorker did a long piece on one specific case: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/the-spy-who-loved-me-2 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/the-spy-who-lo... quite interesting and sad
throwaway8689 8y ago
There was quite lot of politically motivated property destruction over that period. Often by people in tight groups that would be hard to infiltrate. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/pounds-15m-hawk-attack-women-freed-1331285.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/pounds-15m-hawk-attack-wo...
forapurpose 8y ago
Do they also infiltrate similarly dangerous right-wing groups? I meant that as a serious question, not as a Socratic way to make a point. I don't recall that being reported but maybe it's due to my poor memory, or maybe it just hasn't been discovered.
- Joeboy 8y ago
  Yes (eg. C18 and the BNP), but going by this (incomplete and possibly misleading) list, not to nearly the same extent as left-wing groups. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2018/oct/15/uk-political-groups-spied-on-undercover-police-list 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.
  - wmil 8y ago
    There are a far fewer far right groups, so you can't really compare compare them by counting the number of infiltrated orgs. 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.
    - forapurpose 8y ago
      > There are a far fewer far right groups Do you know of some empirical basis for that? Also, what about numbers of members?
      - tracker1 8y ago
        At varying levels there are government agents at any level of criminal activity undercover. My dad was an undercover narcotics police officer for several years (while I went through middle-high school) embedded in the biker gangs in the Southwest US in the late 80's and early 90's. A lot of it is/was BS and a lot wasn't. 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.
mindcrash 8y ago
Left wing and right wing groups I might add. The police and/or intelligence agencies spy on everything and everyone considered to be a threat to the State. Including possibly you, right now, reading this comment using those mass surveillance laws used to combat "terrorism". 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.

94 points by crunchiebones 8y ago

Some of these groups have a publicly stated goal of overthrowing British democracy - doesn't seem unreasonable for them to be monitored by the police and security services.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
Also, the alleged spying goes back to the 1960s. It's not like they could just sit in their air conditioned offices and look at all your metadata and see whether or not you're talking to some sketchy guys in Yemen and buying fertilizer in bulk back then. They had to do Real Police Work(TM), like infiltrating the organizations in question, to figure these things out (I wish it was still that way).
comice 8y ago
how many of them have that goal? what do you think of the monitoring of the rest of them?
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Well, if you're the police, how do you find out whether a group has that goal? Listen to their public pronouncements? That seems rather naive. No, you pretty much have to infiltrate in order to find out whether or not they're trying to violently overthrow the government. 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.)
  - geezerjay 8y ago
    > No, you pretty much have to infiltrate in order to find out whether or not they're trying to violently overthrow the government. 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.
113 8y ago
Why? As long as they're not doing it violently.
- chrisseaton 8y ago
  They say they want to 'seize control' of the government institutions using 'mass action' instead of voting. They aren't talking about asking nicely are they, come on.
  - throwaway8689 8y ago
    Mass action is a form of democracy, if the mass is large enough. It doesn't have to mean violence.
    - chrisseaton 8y ago
      > Mass action is a form of democracy, if the mass is large enough. 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.
      - kiliantics 8y ago
        Actions by governments are actions by a minority and most governments are voted for by a minority
        chrisseaton 8y ago
        Well ok another way to break it down would be that they want to do something without using the consensus system we have. 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?
clubm8 8y ago
>Some of these groups have a publicly stated goal of overthrowing British democracy 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.

pjc50 8y ago

Disappointed, but not surprised. I'd have expected the numbers to be higher. See also the murder of Pat Finucane: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/mi5-can-authorise-agents-to-commit-crimes-tribunal-told-1.3651806#.W7cihCcrJj0.twitter https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/mi5-can-a... However some of those groups actually are dangerous; not just Combat 18 but also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Huntingdon_Animal_Cruelty 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.

kiliantics 8y ago
The annoying thing about these investigations is that they disproportionately target laft wing groups while leaving right wing groups to organise more successfully. And we wonder why right wing populism is on the rise. 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.
- olau 8y ago
  > The annoying thing about these investigations is that they disproportionately target left wing groups while leaving right wing groups to organise more successfully. 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.

amarant 8y ago

this seemed a lot worse until the paragraf describing one of the infiltrated parties as "a Trotskyite party of a few thousand members that advocates the abolition of capitalism through revolutionary means" 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.

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
That's a handful of openly revolutionary groups vs hundreds of others whose only interest was legitimate protest. And the "romance" was deliberate misrepresentation of sexual interest for political purposes.
vidarh 8y ago
They've infiltrated the SWP for nearly 40 years and yet have found no evidence of the organisation itself pushing violence or other crimes. 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.
- Joeboy 8y ago
  Actually though, the SWP isn't a tiny ineffectual fringe group. They (or their satellite organizations) been key organizers of pretty much every big lefty demo for the last 2-3 decades. Back when I was more involved with this sort of thing, we used to find the SWP's enthusiasm for appropriating other people's issues quite annoying. This is why I find the extent of police involvement in the SWP rather startling.
  - 8y ago

awongh 8y ago

the new yorker did a long piece on one specific case: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/the-spy-who-loved-me-2 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/25/the-spy-who-lo... quite interesting and sad

throwaway8689 8y ago

There was quite lot of politically motivated property destruction over that period. Often by people in tight groups that would be hard to infiltrate. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/pounds-15m-hawk-attack-women-freed-1331285.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/pounds-15m-hawk-attack-wo...

forapurpose 8y ago

Do they also infiltrate similarly dangerous right-wing groups? I meant that as a serious question, not as a Socratic way to make a point. I don't recall that being reported but maybe it's due to my poor memory, or maybe it just hasn't been discovered.

Joeboy 8y ago
Yes (eg. C18 and the BNP), but going by this (incomplete and possibly misleading) list, not to nearly the same extent as left-wing groups. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2018/oct/15/uk-political-groups-spied-on-undercover-police-list 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.
- wmil 8y ago
  There are a far fewer far right groups, so you can't really compare compare them by counting the number of infiltrated orgs. 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.
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    > There are a far fewer far right groups Do you know of some empirical basis for that? Also, what about numbers of members?
    - tracker1 8y ago
      At varying levels there are government agents at any level of criminal activity undercover. My dad was an undercover narcotics police officer for several years (while I went through middle-high school) embedded in the biker gangs in the Southwest US in the late 80's and early 90's. A lot of it is/was BS and a lot wasn't. 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.

mindcrash 8y ago

Left wing and right wing groups I might add. The police and/or intelligence agencies spy on everything and everyone considered to be a threat to the State. Including possibly you, right now, reading this comment using those mass surveillance laws used to combat "terrorism". 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.