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The Free Range electrohippies Project – The 'Research Papers' (Q) Series
Q2. Britain's Secretive Police Force
Version 1, April 2009. Produced by the Free Range electrohippies Project
web: http://www.fraw.org.uk/ehippies/ email: ehippies@fraw.org.uk
Summary
This report documents a process of incremental change within the political and security apparatus of the British State, and the approach that it takes towards protest – especially environmental protest. The content of the report, especially its concentration on economic trends, may not appear relevant to a discussion about the policing of protest and extremism, but in order to understand the arguments we will later present, we must first investigate the background to that argument. Whilst much of the discussion over the G20 protests has focussed on the manner in which protest is now policed, there has been little attempt to discover what motivates this change in attitude – in our view the economic argument is a critical dimension.
Outside of the forum of democratic debate and accountability, and using a perceived fear of a terrorist threat, the State is slowly tightening the legal framework within the UK to criminalise many forms of activity and expression that were previously permitted as "normal" within a free society. Moving on from the original purpose of limiting anti-social behaviour, we now see the government and police forces trying to redefine the term "extremism" to reflect many forms of non-violent civil action as both dangerous and threatening to society. We can view this trend in the "politicisation" of the policing of protest against the background of the more general crisis in the representative political system within Western states. As mainstream politics has coalesced around the "liberal economic consensus", under which large parts of the debate over economic and social policy are, through omission, obfuscation or silence, off-limits to public involvement or debate, any other dissenting opinion within politics, through the media and in wider society, has been marginalised.
The problem we face today is that the objective reality of our situation, both within UK society and as a global community, is not reflect in the public dialogue we see in mainstream politics and the media. There are a number of serious issues, related to the values that form the heart of the present political and economic consensus, that portend a major shift in society. Be it climate change, resource depletion, or the growing disparity between rich and poor, there are a whole range of issues where mainstream politics cannot fully engage in a dialogue because it would invalidate their own present ideological position. For this reason suppression of the debate becomes the least damaging option within official policy. Consequently this means that to be an extremist you don't have to do anything, you just have to disagree with the views of those in authority. Within the terms of new anti-terrorism laws action is not even required – you merely need to publicly believe what you say. Therefore the purpose of these policies is skewed toward not so much the physical well-being of the public, but specifically protecting the present political and economic consensus which they represent.
Over a period of five years before the terrorist attack on "11/9", the British government passed a series of laws which began a creeping process of criminalisation of protest and dissent by the public. The problem is that these laws use a number of very broad and vague terms which are rarely defined in detail. This allows innocent activities, such as non-violent protest, to be categorised as something more serious. One of the more problematic aspects of the new framework has been the effect upon our abilities to act collectively in public. Under the new legal framework the role of the police has shifted from facilitating the use of public spaces, in order to allow protests to take place, to actively using the law to curtail or deter protest. This is because the action of policing protest, as with other aspects of community policing since the advent of the "anti-social behaviour" agenda, has been shifted from that of facilitating the rights of the citizen to have free movement in public space to preventing "crime and disorder".
Repressive laws, and the intimidation of the public through their application, cannot operate in public; they need covert agencies to enforce them. Try as they might, repressive states cannot operate when they have some form of independent public oversight. In order to have a truly repressive state it must operate outside of the public eye; behind a veil of secrecy that can protect its files, notes, minutes, and of course its excesses. However, a "secretive police force", under the control of the publicly unaccountable Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), is precisely the type of role that NETCU, WECTU and NPOIU are beginning to adopt in Britain today.
NETCU is not a public body or a formal police service – it's a private organisation that (like WECTU and NPOIU) is a functional subsidiary of ACPO. As a private company ACPO is not subject to a defined system of legislative oversight like that usually applied to organisations discharging public functions on behalf of the Government. The "secretive" role of NETCU was demonstrated by the event that brought it to the attention of the wider public – the fiasco that followed the off-the-record briefing by a NETCU "senior source" to The Observer newspaper. The problem with this off-the-record briefing, for The Observer at least, was that there was absolutely no evidence to back up the claims of environmental extremism made in the article.
WECTU is the Welsh equivalent to NETCU, and it liaises between police forces and the Welsh Assembly Government. The anti-protester bias in WECTU was illustrated in April 2009. In the Dyfed-Powys police authority's 'local policing summary', sent to all council tax payers in Carmarthenshire, under the title of combating "domestic extremism" a very similar picture to NETCU's statements was made – one of the threats it talked of was "campaigners". Clearly this was far worse than The Observer story; instead of off-the-record claims we have actual people and documented evidence that can demonstrate the "paranoia" of the police/WECTU's approach. It would appear that WECTU take the view that all protests, from any quarter, are threatening. The obvious outcome of this viewpoint is that any public demonstration must be policed in a manner that reduces the threat to society from the "message" that such extremism promotes. This approach would seem to arise not from any kind of case-by-case risk assessment, but rather from a more deep seated prejudice against campaigners in general.
The NPOIU is the most difficult of the three groups outlined in this report to find any clear evidence about. This is because of its historical origins; whilst NETCU and WECTU have evolved from the support of civilian policing responsibilities, the functions of the NPOIU emerged from the rationalisation of the political and counter-espionage functions of the police force – the former "industrial" and "subversion" duties of the Special Branch. NPOIU was set up by ACPO in 1999, and again, it is outside of the ordinary legislative oversight that such a body would be subject to if operating within the mainstream police force. In the announcement of its formation ACPO specifically targeted the threat from campaigners, and one report stated that –
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Among the people to be targeted are campaigners against road
building and live animal exports, protesters at industrial
disputes, hunt saboteurs and far-right groups. The unit will also
draw up action plans that chief constables can introduce to head
off potential disorder. The move follows growing concern among
police chiefs that so called eco-warriors are becoming
increasingly organised and creating an ever growing threat to
public order.
ACPO did not set up NETCU, WECTU and NPOIU in a vacuum – they did so in response to a growing dependence upon the "public order agenda" to justify politicians' enactment of restrictive laws. However, when we look at the actual reality of what these policies mean then no such justification applies. We are merely left with the fact that increasingly politicians feel compelled to support their actions by playing upon the public's fears, and use public order policy as a means to support that view. If we look at the security agenda, and in particular the attitude of certain senior police officers, then we can see that there exists the possibility for a "coalescence of views" (as the case of Sir Ian Blair, former head of the Metropolitan Police, demonstrated) between the political establishment and ACPO to initiate policies which could restrict our freedoms.
But we must return to the issue of motivations: Why should the present economic and political consensus be so afraid of the challenge posed to its dominance by environmental protesters?
Current trends indicate that the economic well-being of our society could possibly come to an end within the next twenty to thirty years. Not the end of human society, but rather the end of consumer culture as we know it today – although today these might be portrayed as one and the same thing. There are various people advocating the thesis that consumer culture and the "Western" way of living will effectively end due to the convergence of different trends in human society, some time between now and 2030. The three most significant factors that will govern our future well-being are resource depletion, climate change, and population growth. These are all environmental factors; they represent the limits of human ecology and the growth of the human economy. Of all the groups in society advocating change today the group whose message most closely conforms to both the nature of these problems, and the direction of change that these trends dictate, are environmentalists.
The UK faces a severe energy-induced economic crisis, far greater than the much publicised "electricity gap" that has been in the media recently, because we're running out of indigenous energy sources – both oil, gas and coal. Over the next decade we are moving to a position where not only will we be importing the majority of our energy resources, but for a variety of reasons we'll also be importing the majority of our material resources too. Quite apart from the trends that are happening at the global scale, this inevitable future renders the operation of the economic paradigm that underpins British State wholly unsustainable. This change will not take place over a very long period of time; it's almost certain to occur within the next ten to fifteen years.
We cannot rely on the rest of the world to supply our energy either. As documented at length in this report, the whole globe faces a prolonged energy drought as both oil, then gas, then coal and uranium all reach a peak of production over the next few decades then go into a long decline. The most controversial aspect of these studies of the peak production of the world's major energy sources is the attempt to combine them, giving a view of what's come to be known as "peak everything". The obvious implication of such studies is that, from the 2030s onwards, the "modern" human species will have to undergo a contraction of activity because there will be physically less energy to support its present mode of existence. Of course the issue of "peak everything" is a complete anathema to the strictures of neo-classical economics, but it is the failure of the present economic and political system to consider these trends, because it represents a challenge to their present orthodoxy, that represents a far greater problem than the peaking of energy production itself – and it is in fact the greater challenge that we face. This transition is manageable, but only if we begin adaptation as soon as possible. If our political and business institutions try to maintain their delusion that continued growth is possible then we will be in a far worse position when "peak everything" finally comes.
We face major challenges to the future existence of our species. Climate change is only one of them, but if we act as if it is the primary challenge then we will collectively fail. To promote a more positive future we must find a solution that solves the climate, energy and resource issues simultaneously. Presently there is only one concept that can pull the present trends in a direction that addresses these problems – a managed contraction of the economy, and as a result a significant reduction in personal consumption.
There is no way that the current level of demand can be sustained in the near future, and to ignore this point defies the current weight of evidence that supports this conclusion. With a contracting energy base, for one person to have the same another must have less – justice requires that we undergo this change together. Once we have a confirmation of a global peak in oil production then the global economy will stagnate because oil and gas are not just energy sources. The finance produced by their production, taxation and sale fuels the global financial economy. The imminent peak of global oil production, and then gas, coal and uranium production, and the economic difficulties that this will create, and set against a background of climate change and the problems that this will create for global agriculture, cannot be avoided. Unless we radically change the values at the heart of the world's economic policies these trends are inevitable – it's a matter of when, not if.
For the organisations and groups who support the ideology of the "Western" economic consensus, as this inevitable crisis develops the nightmare scenario is that a contrary point of view will gather support and supplant the present consensus. This will not take place by a revolution or force of arms, but instead, within a democratic society, it only requires enough people to stop believing that the present economic consensus represents their best interests.
There is one group in society that has been forecasting the convergence of these trends for the last forty years – environmentalists. This is why environmentalism is a threat; not because it represents a risk of violence or revolution, or because in some way it will create an insurrection against the state. The problem for the liberal economic consensus is that the arguments of environmentalism have proven to be "correct" – the trends of human ecological overshoot and collapse that environmentalists have been discussing since the 1960s are now coming to pass. The difficulty, and therefore the threat, that environmentalism represents to the present consensus is that the solutions which environmentalists promote are antithetical to the concentration of economic and political power, and wealth, that characterise the Western model of society today.
This is the reason why the State, both from the political point of view and from the security stance of groups such as ACPO, has shifted its position and now opposes the idea of non-representative protests (i.e., outside of "the usual channels"). Environmental protest represents a threat because the criticisms of environmentalism might receive a wider audience and greater appeal. The greatest threat to the consensus is that people will finally understand that the concept of "the market" and "growth" – that we can continue to consume without consequence – is a "great lie" that has no basis in reality. Mainstream politics today seeks to shield the people from the political and economic consequences of that lie, but resource depletion, peak oil and the impacts of climate change threaten the continuation of this deception. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress any dissent that might expose the greater truth of our present position.
In our appreciation of these issues we believe that environmentalists must take a wholly opposite position to that of the present economic consensus: We have to stop being "reasonable" in our actions and instead challenge the "reason" of those who advocate perpetuating the current economic growth paradigm, in any form (green or otherwise), for it has no basis in reality. The problem we face in this process is that you cannot have a reasonable, consensus-based approach to change when the government and the economic lobby will not negotiate on the fundamental trend that's driving the environmental crisis – growth. We must work directly for the policies we know must be adopted if we are to avoid the inevitable outcome of the present economic and political policy of growth and consumption.
In this report we have sought to trace a thread of activity that represents the gradual politicisation of the police force against environmentalism, not directly through the individual public police services, but through the private and independent offices of the Association of Chief Police Officers. The bodies that they have set up in recent years – NECTU, WECTU and the NPOIU – under the guise of supporting work on "terrorism" and "extremism", in fact represent a slow, creeping change in attitude towards the public's rights to protest against national and international governmental policies. This has enabled a coalescence of views on the "problems" of protest and dissent within the modern management of public perception by party politics. At the same time the exploitation of the issues of "terrorism" and "anti-social behaviour" by the police services has permitted a more authoritarian approach towards the rights of the public to collectively exercise pressure in society.
As explained in Section 1, when we look at the various laws and guidelines applied by the State, within the the debate about the policing of extremism, "extreme" is not a matter of the mode of action of the protesters but rather the point they are trying to highlight. For example, the 2008 Climate Camp raised unpleasant questions in the debate over the permitting of a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent, and the wider ramifications of this debate in relation to the growth economy and carbon emissions. Hence it's the point that the protests are seeking to make that represents the challenge to the political consensus, not so much the act itself. In fact, if you look at some protest or action theory it is the symbolic nature of the action is intended to highlight the issue of concern rather than of itself creating change. However, from the State's point of view, this door can swing both ways; in the way that the media portrays the protest action to the public, tackling the protestors as "extremist" creates an association in the public's mind that the issue itself is also "extreme". Through the repeated association with negative imagery the protester's progressive symbolism becomes inverted.
It might be possible for us to believe that at some level ACPO (as they claim) are working "in the public interest", and we can probably believe that the individual members of ACPO consider that they themselves are working in the public interest. However, such considerations are beside the point. In an open and democratic society anyone holding positions of power, with the ability to influence and dictate public policy, should be open to a transparent external auditing and accountability process. Whilst that process need not necessarily be directly accountable to individual members of the public, such organisations should at the very least be answerable to those whom the public do hold accountable through the process of election. In relation to the operation of ACPO, no such transparency or accountability mechanisms exist. For this reason, the policy and policing support functions that ACPO administers are also operating outside of public accountability, and by their nature cannot be in the public's interest.
It is inconceivable that the British government has not considered – in private, if not in public – the risks these trends present. As outlined in section 4 of this report, those with an interest in the well-being of the state and the economy have conducted a number of studies on the impacts of peak oil (and resource depletion in general) and have found the results very challenging to our present ideas of "normality". If the Government has truly not considered these issues then this fact alone should invalidate any claim that they might have to "leadership" since, given the weight of evidence, any reasonable person could not ignore the potential hazards of these trends to society.
However if, as we believe, the Government is seeking to deflect any debate or criticism on these issues, and ensuring that "non-representative" means of dissent are also closed through limiting the rights of the public to protest, then they are endangering our fundamental freedoms and curtailing our ability to collectively address the challenges facing us. There is a fine line between the current "secretive" role of ACPO, NETCU, WECTU and NPOIU, and the truly "secret" role of a Stasi-style police force that we see in repressive states. Seeking to avoid any debate of these vital problems will not make them go away; in fact it exacerbates the problem. Instead what we need is an open debate, and if the State does not wish this, then public protest will be our only guarantee that we can, as a society and as individuals, meet these challenges and find a way past the difficulties they will create for us.
Go back to the Introductory Section or goto to Section 1. 'The Background'
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© 2009 Paul Mobbs/The Free Range Network. This document has been released under
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