[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Paranoia Squad

[Bill Totten]

A British police unit is demonising peaceful protesters to stay in business.

by George Monbiot

Guardian (December 23 2008)


When you hear the term "domestic extremist", whom do you picture? How
about someone like Dr Peter Harbour? He's a retired physicist and
university lecturer, who worked on the nuclear fusion reactor run by
European governments at Culham in Oxfordshire. He's seventy next year.
He has never been tried or convicted of an offence, except the odd
speeding ticket. He has never failed a security check. Not the sort of
person you had in mind? Then you don't work for the police.

Dr Harbour was one of the people who campaigned to save a local beauty
spot - Thrupp Lake - between the Oxfordshire villages of Radley and
Abingdon. They used to walk and swim and picnic there, and watch otters
and kingfishers. RWE npower, which owns Didcot power station, wanted to
empty the lake and fill it with pulverised fly ash {1}.

The villagers marched, demonstrated and sent in letters and petitions.
Some people tried to stop the company from cutting down trees by
standing in the way. Their campaign was entirely peaceful. But RWE
npower discovered that it was legally empowered to shut the protests down.

Using the Protection from Harrassment Act 1997, it obtained an
injunction against the villagers and anyone else who might protest. This
forbids them from "coming to, remaining on, trespassing or conducting
any demonstrations or protesting or other activities" on land near the
lake {2}. If anyone breaks this injunction they could spend five years
in prison.

The act, parliament was told, was meant to protect women from stalkers.
But as soon as it came onto the statute books, it was used to stop
peaceful protest. To obtain an injunction, a company needs to show only
that someone feels "alarmed or distressed" by the protesters, a
requirement so vague that it can mean almost anything. Was this an
accident of sloppy drafting? No. Timothy Lawson-Cruttenden, the
solicitor who specialises in using this law against protesters, boasts
that his company "assisted in the drafting of the ... Protection from
Harassment Act 1997" {3}. In 2005 parliament was duped again, when a new
clause, undebated in either chamber, was slipped into the Serious
Organised Crime and Police Act {4}. It peps up the 1997 act, which can
now be used to ban protest of any kind.

Mr Lawson-Cruttenden, who represented RWE npower, brags that the purpose
of obtaining injunctions under the act is "the criminalisation of civil
disobedience" {5}. One of the advantages of this approach is that very
low standards of proof are required: "hearsay evidence ... is admissable
in civil courts". The injunctions he obtains criminalise all further
activity, even though, as he admits, "any allegations made remain
untested and unproven". {6}

Last week, stung by bad publicity, npower backed down. The villagers had
just started to celebrate when they made a shocking discovery: they now
feature on an official list of domestic extremists.

The National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit (NETCU) is the police
team coordinating the fight against extremists. To illustrate the
threats it confronts, the NECTU site carries images of the people
marching with banners, of peace campaigners standing outside a military
base and of the Rebel Clown Army (whose members dress up as clowns to
show that they have peaceful intentions). It publishes press releases
about Greenpeace and the climate camp at Kingsnorth {7}. All this, the
site suggests, is domestic extremism.

NECTU publishes a manual for officers policing protests. To help them
identify dangerous elements, it directs them to a list of "High Court
Injunctions that relate to domestic extremism campaigns", published on
NECTU's website {8}. On the first page is the injunction obtained by
npower against the Radley villagers, which names Peter Harbour and
others. Dr Harbour wrote to the head of NETCU, Steve Pearl, to ask for
his name to be removed from the site. Mr Pearl refused. So Dr Harbour
remains a domestic extremist.

It was this Paranoia Squad which briefed the Observer last month about
"eco-terrorists". The article maintained that "a lone maverick
eco-extremist may attempt a terrorist attack aimed at killing large
numbers of Britons". {9} The only evidence it put forward was that
someone in Earth First! had stated that the world is overpopulated.
This, it claimed, meant that the movement might attempt a campaign of
mass annihilation. The same could be said about the United Nations, the
Optimum Population Trust and anyone else who has expressed concern about
population levels.

The Observer withdrew the article after NETCU failed to provide any
justification for its claims {10}. NETCU now tells me that the report
"wasn't an accurate reflection of our views" {11}. But the article
contained a clue as to why the police might wish to spread such stories.
"The rise of eco-extremism coincides with the fall of the animal rights
activist movement. Police said the animal rights movement was in
disarray" and that "its critical mass of hardcore extremists was
sufficiently depleted to have halted its effectiveness". {12} If, as the
police maintain, animal rights extremism is no longer dangerous, it is
hard for NETCU to justify its existence: unless it can demonstrate that
domestic extremism exists elsewhere. A better headline for the article
might have been "Keep funding us, say police, or civilisation collapses".

NETCU claims that domestic extremism "is most often associated with
single-issue protests, such as animal rights, anti-war,
anti-globalisation and anti-GM crops". {13} With the exception of animal
rights protests, these campaigns in the UK have been overwhelmingly
peaceful. As the writer and activist Merrick Godhaven points out, the
groups whose tactics come closest to those of violent animal rights
activists are anti-abortion campaigns {14}. The UK Life League, for
example, has published the names and addresses of people involved in
abortion and family planning {15, 16}. Two of its members have been
convicted of sending pictures of mutilated foetuses to doctors and
pharmacies {17}. Anti-abortionists in the US have murdered doctors,
nurses and receptionists. Yet there is no mention of the UK Life League
or anti-abortion campaigning on the NETCU site. This looks to me like
partisan policing.

Just as the misleading claims of the security services were used to
launch an illegal and unnecessary war against Iraq, NETCU's
exaggerations will be used to justify the heavy-handed treatment of
peaceful protesters. In both cases police and spies are distracted from
dealing with genuine threats of terrorism and violence.

For how much longer will the government permit the police forces to drum
up business like this? And at what point do we decide that this country
is beginning to look like a police state?

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://www.saveradleylakes.org.uk/

2. The High Court of Justice. Order arising from Case HQ07X00505. para
6.4 http://www.netcu.org.uk/downloads/injunctions/rwe_npoweplc.pdf

3. http://www.lawson-cruttenden.co.uk/, viewed 22nd December 2008.

4. Sections 125-127.
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2005/ukpga_20050015_en_12#pt4-pb1-l1g125

5. Timothy Lawson-Cruttenden, 2007. Injunctive Relief Against Harassment
and trespass. Case Commentaries, page 194. Environmental Liability.
http://www.lawson-cruttenden.co.uk/articles/157_070601_environmentalliabilitiy.pdf

6. ibid.

7. http://www.netcu.org.uk

8. NETCU, November 2007. Policing Protest: pocket legislation guide,
page 51. It can be viewed here:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2008/08/405435.pdf

9. Mark Townsend and Nick Denning, 9th November 2008. Police warn of
growing threat from eco-terrorists. The Observer.

10. Stephen Pritchard, 23rd November 2008. Anonymous sources and claims
of eco-terrorism. The Observer.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/23/readers-editor-climate-change

11. NETCU, pers comm, 22nd December 2008.

12. Mark Townsend and Nick Denning, ibid.

13. http://www.netcu.org.uk/about/domesticextremism.jsp

14. Merrick Godhaven, 15th November 2008. Civil Disobedience is a
Terrorist Threat. UK Watch.
http://www.ukwatch.net/blog/merrick_godhaven/civil_disobedience_is_a_terrorist_threat

15. Leading article, 12th March 2006. Email campaigns. The Observer.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/mar/12/observerpolitics

16. Linda Harrison, 9th July 2001. Anti abortion activists step up UK
Net campaign.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/07/09/anti_abortion_activists_step_up/

17. Jeremy Laurance, 8th May 2006. Anti-abortionist jailed for photo
protest.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/antiabortionist-jailed-for-photo-protest-477279.html

Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/12/23/the-paranoia-squad/


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