The Post Bag: Letters To Squall

A Green Anorakist Writes

Squall 12, Spring 1996, pp. 60-61.

Dear Squall,

It seems that Ally Fogg (The Mother, The Bill and the Bookshops in Squall 11 pp 22-23) has rushed in where angels fear to tread. As far as we’re concerned, his article could have done with a bit more research than scanning the national press and then ringing Frontline and a police press officer.

Police reaction to the Mother is hardly unprecedented - where was Ally when the free festival circuit was being suppressed in the 1980’s? - but Hampshire cops are right to insist their harassment of Green Anarchist (GA) had nothing to do with that of the Mother.

The Met arrested ALF press officer (no ‘alleged’ about it!) Robin Webb in late 1994 after planting a sawn-off shotgun in the boot of his car. This attempt to silence him, probably for making public statements about the Justice Department, failed when he was not remanded, no doubt because the court found the Met’s set-up too transparent. Hampshire Constabulary then had their crack, arguing that passing on a Poultry Liberation Organisation press release to the media made Robin party to a battery egg contamination conspiracy. On this technicality, Robin was remanded but still not silenced, as his contributions to the ALF Supporters Group Newsletter and Arkangel demonstrate.

Hampshire’s raids on GA have to be seen in this context. They maintain copies of the ALF DIY manual “Into the 1990s With The ALF” were found when they invaded Robin’s home and that he and GA are linked by some sinister conspiracy theory to distribute it. This was probably just an excuse to harass and gather information on GA, unpopular with them because we said Robin was being framed and because we still carry listings of ALF actions and news on militant eco-defence groups like Earth Liberation Front too. Harassment was certainly significant, possibly amounting to an attempt to shut GA down - all our records and equipment was taken “as evidence”, banks holding our money were urged to close accounts used by us “terrorists”, and even some poor sod who’d ordered something from us by mail order was raided pour discourager les autres!

ALF listings aren’t carried in SG and Arkangel after police jailed their then editors for ‘inciting criminal damage’ by publishing them. After some 25 raids against alleged animal libbers and green anarchists - the first four months before the Mother festival - six of us were arrested for ‘conspiracy to produce materials inciting criminal damage by fire’ and only one of us has been released from police bail as they’d obviously got the wrong man in his case. Hampshire tell the press the specific instance justifying their Gestapo tactics was a Justice Department arson wave on the Isle of Wight, but this is bullshit.

Liberator’s editors have been subjected to repeated stop ‘n’ searches and are now on the same indefinite police bail as us green anarchists for possession of a sinister chocolate cake - nothing to do with the Isle of Wight, but their zine carries ALF listings like GA, something Hampshire evidently sees as a licence to harass.

Because Ally obviously lives in a nice fluffy world where he and his mates aren’t yet subject to the sort of tactics illustrated above (they will be - currently they’re just raking through your bins on the quiet...), he thinks secret state intervention in the protest culture is all “rumours” and “paranoia”.

The Scotland Yard centred national database, the Animal Rights National Index (ARNI), has been going since 1984. In 1993, Hampshire Special Branch were key in getting eco-warriors (aren’t you embarrassed calling yourselves that?) added to ARNI as legitimate targets of surveillance, mainly because of their working relationship with Brays Detective Agency and the Home Office during Twyford.

It was argued there was a significant cross-over between ALF and ELF in terms of personnel, tactics and ideology but this was around the time MI5 took over anti-Irish operations on the UK mainland from the Branch, so there’s an element of job creation in this too. Much ‘spookier’ stuff was going on with MI5 at the time, asserts Tim Hepple and Stuart McCulloch both trying to present themselves as ELF-inked in classic provocateur style, but we don’t see inter-agency rivalry as too relevant to the Robin Webb situation beyond Special Branch wanting to be seen as ‘getting results’.

By early 1995, ARNI ceased to be just a database. It became a national police squad and busily set about briefing journalists about the “Environmental Liberation Front” (sic) and its supposed atrocities. Maybe Ally should try talking to us and not them in future if he wants an idea of what’s really going on.

To clear up a few ‘incidentals’:

Frontline were raided because Scumbusters are listed as our anti-fascist/anti-racist editors. ARNI were working their way through our listed columns but try as they might, they never got them, or our sexual politix editor either. Frontline was last raided over GA in 1990 when we printed a DIY shotgun article. We came out a lot worse from that than they did: while Frontline doubled sales of GA, we got Tim Hepple on our case.

The Guardian’s David Ward covered the Frontline raid because he says a friend of his was in the bookshop when it happened. He didn’t hesitate to pass information given in confidence on to the Observer’s Mike Durham for the ‘damage limitation’ story the latter published the weekend after. This story was so poor that the Observer had to print (edited) apologies two weeks following, and Durham’s role as an outfall of State disinformation via Special Branch and his colleague David Rose is now established. New arrivals to the protest movement are shockingly naive about the media’s links to the secret state.

We know of someone in London’s Freedom Network that refused to review Larry O’Hara’s “Turning up the Heat: MI5 After the Cold War” - which lists guilty journalists - without even reading it, on the word of their colleagues who predictably enough insisted O’Hara’s allegations were unfounded!

Robin Webb is no longer “currently on remand in Winchester Prison”. The PLO contamination conspiracy case against Gillian Peachey collapsed so Robin was left as a ‘conspiracy of one’ to have passed on a press release, too ridiculous to justify his continuing imprisonment without trial. Because this charge represented Hampshire Special Branch’s interest in Robin, that interest has now ended and so have the raids in connection with it.

In conclusion, I’d note that currently Special Branch have no great interest in the festie scene - MI5 have, but that’s another story. Ally makes oblique reference to Operation Slingshot (surely Operation Snapshot - ed) national anti-traveller surveillance and databasing, but that’s an offshoot of CountryWatch, uniform stuff. A more interesting case is the Ministry of Defence’s police raid on Greenpeace HQ in retaliation for the AWE action. Their membership discs seized and returned a week later - you reckon ARNI haven’t got copies? How much were the raids on GA used as a lever to justify the raid on Greenpeace? When ARNI first formed in late 1984, they used the arrest of a few sabs on spurious but spectacular charges to raid BUAV, returning their membership list a week later. Half a dozen names don’t make work like thousands. You’re probably down as an enemy of the State right now - so start acting like one!

Yours for people’s power and personal autonomy,

Arthur Mix
Editor
Green Anarchist

Ally Fogg Replies:

Thanks for the info. I’m very aware of the sickening police state tactics used against the likes of GA and the ALF, but I was investigating similar tactics being used against everyone from party organisers to radical bookshops. I set out to write a piece about harassment of bookshops and the role of Hampshire police. Hampshire cops started to crop up in some unusual places, notably at the Mother arrests. I still haven’t found a satisfactory answer to my central question: “Why Hampshire?”

And where was I during the ’80s festivals? In school you old git!