Dispatches: The Police's Dirty Little Secret.

Tonight the UK's Channel 4 will broadcast a special edition of it's current affairs program "Dispatches" entitled "The Police's Dirty Little Secret." Obviously I've not seen the program yet but from the pre-publicity I gather it will focus on London's Metropolitan Police's (the Met) use of covert surveillance against people who are not engaged in criminal activity and are therefore considered "law abiding." This has been something of a cause celebre for Britain's political left and environmental/left-wing groups across the European Union (EU) since it emerged that the Met had sent undercover police officers including Mark Kennedy/Stone to spy on the environmental campaigns/Climate Camp for decades at a time. Apart from engaging in multiple sexual relationships with protesters Kennedy went as far as to act as an agent provocateur helping to plan and organise an illegal protest against the Ratcliff-on-Soar  power station for which 114 people were arrested on charges of aggravated trespass and conspiracy to commit criminal damage.

The main headline grabbing allegation of the program which has already forced the Home Secretary/Interior Minister to make a statement to the House of Commons is that the Met used undercover officers to spy on the family of Stephen Lawrence. Stephen Lawrence was of course the victim of a racist murder in Eltham, London in 1993. Therefore the only purpose to putting his family under surveillance was to discover embarrassing but not illegal information about them in order to disrupt their campaign for justice that was highly critical of the Met. Although the alleged use of undercover officers is new the fact that the Met's handling of the Stephen Lawrence case was appalling is hardly news. After all it helped bring down the Conservative government, sparked a two year Judge led public Inquiry and led to the UK scrapping the legal principle of double jeopardy. In fact if people think the Met are bad now it's often because they don't remember how bad they were at the time of the Stephen Lawrence murder.

With me having a history with the environmental protest movement including Climate Camp and coming just four days before I'm scheduled to answer police bail on allegations relating to criminal damage this Dispatches program has some relevance to me. As all those accusing me are just as black as Stephen Lawrence and his family it could be interpreted as helping to portray them as victims and in doing so fuel the persecution/asylum debate by making it appear that the UK will be treating the poorly supported allegations as racially motivated. Although I'm only allowed one friend who happens to be white so I can't claim; "I have plenty of black friends" I think it's fair to say I have a pretty good record on race and Rihanna, Susan Rice or Barak Obama would make great character witnesses.

The other analysis of the Stephen Lawrence link comes from Rosalind Howells who did very well out of the campaign eventually ending up as Baroness Howells of Saint Davids a Labour Party member of the House of Lords. Baroness Howells is vaguely related to Paul Scoon who was the Governor General of Grenada in 1979 who was overthrown in a coup while my ex-Royal Marine grandfather just happened to be visiting. In fact it was through Baroness Howells presenting bravery awards following the Saint Andrews Church attack that I randomly ended up babysitting the MP for Hackney Diane Abbott's son. Therefore while it's a stretch either way it is arguable that I'm closer to the Lawrence family then my accusers. There is of course a suspicion that the Met have been using my accusers to spy on me. The police did initially and wrongly claim that I was arrested in a public place which indicates that they are somewhat confused about the legal realities of the situation. If they've been passing that information to my accusers wider network that would be a big problem for the police and sadly based on my discussion with Friday's (21/6/13) trespassers that seems to be exactly what has been going on.

Finally through things like the Woolwich murder which brought back memories of the August 2011 riots and a very sympathetic portrayal in the ITV1 drama "Life of Crime" the UK has been in experiencing something of a national campaign to make people be nicer to the police. By taking the opposite line through this Dispatches program Channel 4 is trying to cement it's reputation as the voice of opposition. After all bashing the police is surely the most subversive thing you can do in the UK(!)

11:40 on 24/6/13.

Edited at around 18:40 on 24/6/13 to add;

The Dispatches program still hasn't aired and it clashes with "The Gadget Show" so I can't promise I will watch it. However already today Stephen Lawrence's father Neville Lawrence has called for a Judge led Public Inquiry into the allegations. As the allegations relate to attempts to smear the Lawrence family this is quite difficult to respond to. However I think it is fair to say that Stephen Lawrence's mother Doreen has been the driving force behind the campaign. Doreen and Neville Lawrence are no longer married.

The Commissioner of the Met has responded by announcing that the force to do everything in it's power to "reassure Stephen Lawrence's father." This along with the news that police in Guilford, Surrey (where my sister lives) have arrested the brother of Saad al-Hilli the Iraqi born man who was killed in the French Alps in September 2012 in what the police now believe to be a feud over a family inheritance is a reference to my brother and father's role in my grandmother's death.

If I was to use the lawful excuse defence to allegations of criminal damage I would have to demonstrate an honest belief that my actions would prevent a greater crime. There are a variety of greater crimes I can choose from ranging from conspiracy to burgle through to conspiracy to murder. However the big one would be a crime against humanity by way of an unlawful medical experiment. As my father was the one who ultimately ordered my grandmother's medical mistreatment this puts him on legally shaky ground. However the full allegation would be that my father suffers from a form of Autism and rather than diagnosing him Croydon Primary Care Trust instead chose to observe him within a controlled environment in order to learn more about this poorly understood condition. To a lot of people's mind that would make my father a victim of the crime meaning that it would not be in the public interest to prosecute. Also an element of high functioning Autism is that it's sufferers are often unable to tell when they are being lied to. That along with the fact my father was clearly under a degree of duress would allow him to argue diminished responsibility that would certainly count as mitigation in sentencing if not a defence in itself.

Edited again at around 19:40 on 24/6/13 to add;

I'm about 45 minutes into this 1 hour Dispatches documentary and it strikes me as an exercise in misdirection high on sensationalism and very low on detail.

The first 30 minutes focused on interviews with Peter Francis who infiltrated the Stephen Lawrence campaign as a member of the Met's Special Demonstrations Squad (SDS). Although disbanded when Special Branch was merged into SO15 in around 2003 the SDS still exist and are charged with gathering intelligence to prevent large scale public disorder (i.e Riots). This is where I feel the program lacked detail by not putting the Stephen Lawrence campaign in its proper political context. The Stephen Lawrence murder took place just a year after the Los Angeles riots that were sparked by the Rodney King case. Also throughout the late 1980's MI5 and the Thatcher government had been deliberately building up the racist National Front (NF) and the anti-Racist Anti-Nazi League (ANL) in a deliberate attempt to divide opposition to government policy. Therefore there was a legitimate risk that the Stephen Lawrence murder could have provoked a full blown race war that pitted black against white. As the main objection to the Stephen Lawrence murder was racism within society this doesn't strike me as a particularly productive response. Therefore it would be reasonable for the police to gather intelligence on the campaign (but not the family) in case a need arose for public support for the campaign to be undermined to prevent it getting out of control.

Although the program did mention it I think that nowhere near enough attention was given to the role of the Met's Family Liaison Officers (FLO). Officially FLO's are there to help support the families of victims of crime through the investigation and prosecution. However in the Lawrence case it appears that the FLO's were reporting back directly to Special Branch. As they were essentially living with the Lawrence family along with their friends and neighbours the FLO's would have been much better placed to gather embarrassing information on the Lawrence family and even go so far as to identify weaknesses within the family relationships that could be exploited to well destroy those relationships and undermine support networks. This makes the SDS' role small and almost irrelevant by comparison and I can think of no excuse for what seems to be a clear example of political policing.

The second 30 minutes focused on the actions of another SDS officer who is alleged to have had long term sexual relationships with three women during his time undercover in the 1980's. He went so far as to father a child with one of these women. To me this seems like an attempt by the program makers to discourage women from engaging in political activism and make life more difficult for those already involved in activism. Firstly these sort of allegations cause activists to become paranoid about their interpersonal relationships and secondly it promotes all sorts of arguments about rape and gender politics which are still something of an obsession of the British left.

Edited at around 23:20 on 24/6/13 for hopefully the final time;

The MacPhearson report into the Stephen Lawrence murder was published in February 1999. About six weeks later a guy called David Copeland who was linked to the extreme neo-Nazi group Combat 18 planted a series of nail bombs in the Brixton, Brick Lane and Soho districts of London in order to kill blacks, Pakistanis and homosexuals. Inspired by the "Turner Diaries" his intention was to provoke a race war. Against that sort of political backdrop it is very difficult to argue that the SDS had no cause to investigate the Stephen Lawrence campaign especially as they had no direct contact with the Lawrence family. The FLO involvement - now that's a different question.

(Originally Posted on 24/6/13)