Paul Rogers engages in some dangerous talk.

Paul Rogers on OpenDemocracy

The British government has in 2008-09 reacted with notable vigour to a series of non-violent public actions and peaceful demonstrations over climate change. The character of the policing of these events suggests a high degree of national coordination stemming from a deep concern that they could escalate to the point of having a major political impact. Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He has been writing a weekly column on global security on openDemocracy since 26 September 2001

There are many examples of the style of policing that is being applied. In August 2008, intensive and intimidating tactics - including the deployment of riot-squads from other regional forces - were used in policing a camp set up by climate-change protestors near a planned coal-fired power-station in Kent, southeast England. On 1 April 2009, a similarly peaceful climate-change camp in the City of London - close to but separate from the more widely publicised anti-G20 protests - was subject to repeated violence by heavily protected riot-police (see Chris Abbott, "Trapped and beaten by police in Climate Camp", 9 April 2009).

A few days later, a planned demonstration at another power-station near Nottingham in the English midlands on 13 April was halted before it could begin; in the early hours of the morning, 114 alleged activists were arrested, held at police stations overnight and then granted bail subject to stringent conditions. Moreover, many had their houses raided by police while in custody, and their computers, mobile-phones and other equipment impounded. This operation must have involved intensive intelligence-gathering by and coordination of police forces across the country; it was followed by reports of police having worked closely with power-companies, even providing them with intelligence from police sources.

What is striking here is that the authorities are responding with repeated tough action against climate groups that (unlike some other protestors) have a consistent record of peaceful protest - and indeed have in almost all cases an ethic of non-violence, even as they remain determined to raise what they believe is the world's most vital single issue. There appears to be a determined campaign, sanctioned from on high, to deter all but the most committed activists from having anything to do with climate protests.

A political challenge

Why is this? It may on the surface look like just one part of a policing attitude that increasingly regards public protests as a whole as not just troublesome but almost illegitimate. Much of the controversy over the policing of the G20 protests in London might support this view. But this would create a puzzle in that the government's climate-change minister Ed Miliband has argued the need for a vigorous civil-society response to climate change to galvanise officialdom into action.

But it seems more than likely that there is a very different political motive behind what is happening: that the British government led (since June 2007) by Gordon Brown has belatedly woken to the potential of non-violent direct action on the climate issue to damage its reputation and even its prospects for re-election in a contest that must take place by May 2010. In addition to his weekly openDemocracy column, Paul Rogers writes an international security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group; for details, click here

The political challenge posed by non-violent direct action on climate change has three aspects. The first is that the long tradition of peaceful protest in Britain - preceding even the landmark anti-nuclear mobilisations of the Committee of 100 in the 1960s - has focused mostly on opposition to military policy, but has the potential to influence wider public attitudes. The campaigns directed at military bases - such as the Faslane 365 campaign at Britain's main nuclear-missile base in western Scotland - have had an impact, in Scotland especially, but the authorities can still protect such military facilities from non-violent demonstrators with relatively little difficulty. It is harder, however, to contain the exemplary and symbolic impact of campaigns of this kind.

The second aspect is that this form of protest does have a potential to cause real disruption. The interruption of coal deliveries to Britain's largest power-station at Drax in north Yorkshire in June 2008 and the enforced closure of Stansted airport in December 2008 are involved climate-change activists targeting sites of excessive carbon-emissions. Such actions are significant in that airports, power-stations, the road network and other potential targets are dispersed across the country. Even a few hundred protestors can have a major impact, and greater numbers with the knowledge and analytical skills to identify the key weak points in Britain's economy (especially its energy-distribution systems) could create chaos through a programme of coordinated actions.

The third aspect is the experience of September 2000, when a dispute involving fuel-tanker drivers nearly brought the country to an effective standstill in a matter of days. This was a traumatic episode for the otherwise still relatively popular government of Tony Blair; it understood then that any modern industrial economy is subject to much greater vulnerabilities than had been appreciated.

A river of protest

These factors help explain the government's and the police's strong reaction to the eruption of climate-change protest. It is unlikely to be enough to curb the movement. For it is worth emphasising that non-violent direct action has in the post-1945 era acquired an extraordinary pedigree arising from numerous campaigns in much of the world (see "There are alternatives", 30 March 2006).

From the civil-rights movement in the United States through to "people power" in the Philippines and numerous civil-society initiatives across east-central Europe during the later decades of the cold war, civilian resistance has had the potential to unsettle governments (see April Carter, Howard Clark & Michael Randle, People Power and Protest Since 1945: a Bibliography of Nonviolent Action [Housmans, 2006 http://www.housmans.com/; Michael Randle, Civil Resistance [Fontana, 1991]; April Carter, Direct Action and Democracy Today [Polity, 2004]).

But if the increasing activism of climate-change protestors can be seen in this historical perspective, it must also cope with the well-resourced and nationally coordinated operation that has evolved to combat it - extending even to violent intimidation to ensure that many potential activists will be persuaded that the personal costs of involvement are just too great.

A generation's task

Will the counter-strategy work? A unique combination of timescales and generational difference suggest an answer: almost certainly not. The impact of climate change is likely to accelerate alarmingly within two decades, yet it requires transformational action within - at most - five years.

Before the economic recession the British government appeared at last to be recognising the scale of the problem. It was, for example, talking of cutting carbon-emissions by 2050 by as much as 80%. This was a clear improvement on previous targets, though still at least three decades too late. In any event, the recession has shifted investment away from low-carbon projects and renewables, just when the opportunity to have an immediate impact is there.

The core reality is that government action is proving to be inadequate to the scale of the problem to the point of wilful neglect. This is becoming steadily more apparent to a new generation of younger activists, many in their early 20s. They perceive that it is their future world that is going to be wrecked by the failure of governments and older generations to act; and they are becoming increasingly angry, frustrated and determined.

The nature of the movement that is evolving is not easy to define. There are various umbrella groups, but in terms of dedicated activists it may so far be numbered in the hundreds or the low thousands at most. A movement that size is, as argued above, sufficient to have an impact - but much more important is that it is certain to grow.

Each month, more evidence points to the accelerating nature of climate change and its potential for global trauma. The emerging evidence that some of the world's major river-systems are starting to dry up is but one example (see Suzanne Goldberg, "Climate change threatens Ganges, Niger, and other mighty rivers", "Threat to food and water as mighty rivers dry up", Guardian, 22 April 2009). In parallel with such evidence, the number of activists grows. In these circumstances, police violence may actually turn out to be counterproductive: it may deter some people but will make others much more unyielding and willing to act in the belief that their cause is right, whatever the personal cost.

The real worry for the British (and other) governments in these circumstances is how soon the protesters will realise just how vulnerable an advanced, integrated and highly organised state really is to intelligent non-violent disruption. The blunt truth is that it probably could not maintain control. Even aside from all the arguments that governments in countries such as Britain should be far more radical in their response to climate change, a political reality may be emerging here that civil action could well force the government to act. This might even be one of those rare occasions where everyday but resolute citizens have a lasting impact on the great issue of our time.

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Climate Camp In the City (2009 G20) Policing Report

The Climate Camp Legal Team (who are awesome!) have just released a report and associated video covering the latest climate camp--which took place in the city of london during the G20.

Full Report (PDF)

The associated video is already clocking up views thanks to it's publication by the Daily Mail, Times and the Guardian.

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Policing of the Kingsnorth Climate Camp: Preventing Disorder or Preventing Protest?

H/T to BRITCIT

This was released a little while back, so sorry for the delay!

Lib Dem MP David Howarth held a meeting in Westminster to present a highly disturbing and potentially explosive report on the way police in the UK are criminalising legitimate protest. The report, produced by the Climate Camp's legal support team and entitled Policing of the Kingsnorth Climate Camp: Preventing Disorder or Preventing Protest?, is devastating for the police.

It documents a concerted campaign by police to deter, smear, intimidate, harass, and criminalise UK citizens who did nothing more than attempt to exercise their right to peaceful protest in the name of an important cause.

Full Report (PDF)

There is a video associated with this report.

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Rampart Collective, "Life After the G20"

On the Thursday following the G20 protests, two squatted social centres in East London were raided by riot police, apparently looking for instigators of the attacks on the Royal Bank of Scotland. RampART Social Centre, which has existed for more than four years, and a newly opened Convergence Centre in Earl Street were both being used to house and feed protesters throughout the period of the G20 summit. In both cases, the police acted illegally but, other than a brief report in the Independent which referred to unwarranted violence, the raids remained largely unreported.

In both buildings, people were subjected to physical violence and verbal abuse and those that were arrested were later 'de-arrested' for lack of any supporting evidence. Our only 'crime', it seems, is that we are political activists and squatters and thus deemed to be suitable targets. If only we had kept our heads down and stayed away from these kinds of activities, the logic goes, we would not deserve what we had coming.

It is right and proper that the events leading up to the death of Ian Tomlinson should be the subject of a criminal investigation but the danger, as we see it, is that it will be seen as an isolated incident and will be dealt with simply by disciplining individual officers, only serving to further obscure the role of the police in perpetuating a climate of fear. Under the terms of the global surveillance state, citizenship has become an exercise in evading a charge of deviance. In fact, the proliferation of forms of deviance is the flip side of the supposed 'lifestyle choices' available under the terms of consumer citizenship. You can 'choose' to spend your money on home improvements, high fashion and high-tech gadgets and are applauded for making the 'right' choices. But if you choose to occupy an unused building for the purposes of providing space for political discussion, self-education and creative activities without the intrusion of CCTV cameras, health and safety monitoring or access restrictions, and particularly if you refuse to levy a charge which situates these activities in terms of market forces, then you effectively become outlaw.. And, if you choose to express your outrage at a system that produces inequalities and then condemns those that become unemployed and homeless, you become a target for repression. The differences between Tomlinson and the people who went to the Bank of England to demonstrate against the iniquitous excesses of neoliberal capitalism are marginal, despite attempts to distinguish between 'innocent' bystanders and 'guilty' protesters. Tomlinson was on his way home from work. The demonstrators were exercising their lawful right to protest. Both were exercising their right to the city as citizens of a supposed democracy

When RampART social centre was raided on the Thursday, members of the volunteer collective were sitting down to a cup of coffee and biscuits. Other members were elsewhere in the building speaking to some guests who had come to stay for the duration of the protests. We were aware of the massing of officers outside the building but were used to the presence of a Forward Intelligence Team, the police paparazzi,who had been frequent visitors to Rampart Street in the weeks leading up to the G20, photographing and scrutinising anyone entering the building. And so, for us, it was business as usual.

At the Convergence Centre, the police seemed to be employing a new tactic whereby people being searched before entering the building had their mobile phones confiscated and were threatened with arrest unless they could 'prove ownership'. Essentially, this amounted to an attempt to illegally secure personal details.

The raid itself was surreal. Or rather, it was hyperreal, in the sense that, as some of us commented later, it was like being on the wrong side of a 'first person shooter' video game. Some of us thought the men and women in balaclavas, padded uniforms, helmets and carrying riot shields were pointing toy guns at us. In fact, as we discovered later, they were tasers, which are designed to stun but are occasionally known to kill.

It's tempting to say that the violence that we experienced was out of all proportion to the level of resistance which was, in fact, zero. But to even speak of proportionality is a mistake, because it implies that there is something in our actions that warrants a violent response. One member of the collective was punched in the face, another was pushed downstairs, had his head smashed against the wall and was met with looks of disbelief when he pleaded with officers to protect his glasses. One of the residents of the building was punched and kicked, narrowly avoided taser fire and was arrested in his pyjamas.

We would stress again that this happened to people who, like Ian Tomlinson, were simply exercising their most basic civil rights: to congregate peacefully with friends and to walk the streets unmolested. Some might think that we are opportunistically linking what happened to us with Tomlinson, and would want to make a clear distinction. After all, he was a regular bloke in the wrong place at the wrong time, and we were deliberately taking part in political activism. But to continue in this vein is lose all semblance of what it means to live with even a modicum of freedom and self-respect.

The press reported that four (and, in some reports, six) arrests had been made during the raids on RampART and the Convergence Space. Two known to us personally were held in police cells for up to ten hours, had their clothes confiscated and were sent home in Guantanamo Bay style boiler suits. News of arrests functions to assuage anxiety and to justify the cost of police operations that amount to little more than exercises in public relations. The public can rest assured that the dangerous anarchists have been infiltrated and detained and that 'scroungers' and 'cheats' have been brought to book.

Comparisons have inevitably been made between Tomlinson's death and the death of Blair Peach during an Anti-Nazi League demonstration in April, 1979, widely speculated to be as a result of assault by the police. Although Peach's brother reached an out-of-court settlement with the Metropolitan Police in 1989, no officer was ever charged in connection with the death. Thirty years later, the same police force has been granted unprecedented powers in the name of 'security' and justified on the basis that London is under threat from elements in the population that threaten 'our' way of life. The result is the proliferation of deviant identities which function as a focus for collective anxiety and paranoia ('terrorists', 'anarchists', 'squatters', 'foreign workers' etc.).

Since the incidents on the 1st and 2nd of April, voices have been raised in condemnation of police actions, particularly the tactic of “kettling” which herds protesters like cattle and allows the police to punish those who attempt to escape. Back at RampART on the Wednesday evening we saw the resulting head injuries and beaten bodies If we are to avoid more deaths and injury, then we need to think seriously, not only about the powers granted to a police force that seems dangerously out of control but about the ideology that sanctions violence in the name of respectability. We need to think about what it means to be a citizen in 21st century global culture and about the treatment of those that effectively have their human rights revoked because they refuse, or are unable to conform to the dictates of consumer citizenship. We need, in short, to be aware that, as the global downturn deprives people of their homes and livelihoods, any one of us could end up on the wrong side of the divide that separates 'us' from 'them'. Any one of us could become a scapegoat for the unfocused anger which results when people relinquish responsibility for their own lives and then find themselves deprived of their freedom and dignity. Places like RampART exist because some of us believe that we can reclaim our freedoms but only if we work together in a spirit of mutual respect and toleration.

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EON's Dirty Coal Plans Continue to Focus Attention of Activists

EON's plans top build the first new coal plant in over 30 years continue to focus the minds of climate change activists throughout the country.

The latest from Indymedia on a protest (with a suspected direct action element)


"114 activists were arrested in a 2am raid on a community centre in Sneinton Dale, Nottingham early on Easter Monday, 13th April 2009. It is believed that a protest was planned at the Eon powerstation at Ratcliffe-on-Soar and Eon has released a statement confirming this. The Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station is the 3rd largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in the UK and has been previously targeted by activists. Similar to past police actions, some of the homes of those arrested have been raided while they were held in custody. It has been confirmed that 5 properties have already been raided in Nottingham and the SUMAC Centre and personal paperwork and computers have been seized. Activists are now being released on bail, to appear in court on 14th July, with no other conditions. More raids are expected.

This police action is reminiscent of the arrests of climate change activists in April 2007 when they were on their way to protest against the M1 widening. While the protestors were held in custody their homes were raided and computers were taken. A year after the arrests the M1 case was thrown out of court."

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Response to Policing of Climate Camp

A few interesting pieces of writing about the the way the police dealt with the climate camp:

1. A letter to The Times

Sir, Last week a parliamentary report recognised that police tactics against dissent have become “heavy-handed in recent years”. This week the police provide another example of an approach towards protest that is primarily about repression and not about public order (report, April 3).

The Joint Committee on Human Rights suggests that “the deployment of riot police can unnecessarily raise the temperature at protests”. On Wednesday riot police were sent into peaceful crowds, hitting people with truncheons and riot shields. Aggressive dogs were used to intimidate. The report is concerned about the “improper use” of Section 76 of the Counter Terrorism Act 2008 to prevent photographing or filming police. When the police broke up the climate camp, people were forced to delete images and film that showed the police in action.

The report states that “inconvenience or disruption alone are not sufficient reasons for preventing a protest from taking place”, and that the police need more human rights training. Claiming that indiscriminate tactics, such as “kettles” to contain and break up protests, were employed in order to deal with “a small number of people” is an admission that the rights of others to protest can go to the wall. Parliamentarians have yet to address the legality of the police database in which information on thousands of protestors is held. On April 1 climate campers were unable to leave unless they gave names and addresses and had their photos taken. The database has just got much bigger.

Emma Sangster

London E5

2. A piece in the Independant

The (very) heavy hand of the law

It was clear from early on, in the City of London on Wednesday, that two very different protests were being staged. One, centred on the Bank of England, sheltered masked agents provocateurs, who were intent on clashing with the police. They succeeded in their aims.

But the other, the Climate Camp on Bishopsgate, harboured no such elements, and continued peacefully all day. Yet the 800 people at this street party were still attacked by riot police very suddenly in the evening. Footage has been posted on the internet showing officers repeatedly hitting unarmed civilians

The attack on the camp by the police is being described as "unprovoked" by protesters. This is not, strictly speaking, the case. It is provocative, of course, to block a road without permission, and the aim of the protest was to block that section of Bishopsgate for 24 hours.

What is downright sinister, however, is that all those who were visiting the Climate Camp at that time were violently attacked and then trapped for many hours by the police. They were not allowed to leave between 7pm and midnight, even if they had been injured. Even a woman in a wheelchair was held.

If the concern of the police was to clear the road for traffic, then their action was certainly counterproductive. They succeeded, after all, in blocking the road to pedestrians as well as vehicles for five hours. The tactics of the police smack of collective punishment for everyone.

It is possible that had a warning of an impending shutdown been given to the campers, the news may have attracted more aggressive visitors. It's true also that had the police put in place a policy whereby people were allowed to leave but not to enter, there was no guarantee that those leaving would quietly disperse.

Yet these factors only make it difficult to understand why the police became so confrontational so early. Why could the police not just keep the protest under observation, while they concentrated on quelling the violent skirmishes in other parts of town?

Their claim is that they corral groups of protesters so that they can isolate the anti-social elements. But by the time they mounted their attacks, the police had had nearly seven hours to assess whether any such element had ever been present. The fact that the Climate Camp protesters mounted no violence in response to that meted out to them suggests that their intentions of mounting a peaceful protest had been successful.

Most worrying of all, when legal observers advised people who had been hit by the police, or who had been witnesses to it, to take down the numbers of their assailants, the line of police all covered their badges. It is much more terrifying that the police are hiding their identities as they take part in violence, than that the self-styled "anarchists" we have heard so much about are doing so.

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States create the violence used to justify there existance.

It seems that that old Anarchist saying still holds true.

Quote from David Howarth MP (LD) who attended Climate Camp in the City:

"How did the police end up in a situation where they used the same degree of force on the most peaceful demonstration as they did for a violent protest at the Bank of England? They seem to only have one trick."

The Guardian has this quote in a story called "Baton charges and kettling: police's G20 crowd control tactics under fire". It's somewhat ironic that the Guardian is reporting on this now, when it had absolutely no issue with talking up planned protests as some sort of mass riot in the run-up to the g20. I think they should take a close look at there role in allowing this to happen. it's easy to police asif there is a riot if all the public are expecting one!

Nasty policing in action after people have already been kettled (illigally?) for hours.


Climate Camp in the City from Tina Tunning on Vimeo.

UPDATE: WHITNESSES MAKE STATEMENTS IMPLICATING POLICE IN DEATH OF BYSTANDER (STORY)

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Parliamentary scrutiny of political policing (via indymedia)

(H/T Indymedia)

Mike Schwartz, a partner at London law firm Bindmans, said:

"The police have adopted mission creep. One of the symptoms is their misuse of the power of stop and search under the Terrorism Act. It is being misused because the police have the power to impose a blanket area, where any police officer can search anyone without reason for suspicion on the basis that a senior police officer has thought that there might be terrorist activity or terrorists operating in the area."

Also under the spotlight was Police intimidation and monitoring of journalists, refusal to recognizing press cards, and accusations of obstruction and assault. The committee said it was unacceptable that journalists had to resort to taking court action against officers interfering with their work.

London's Metropolitan Police Service excused their wide-ranging misuse of power by saying,

"We will always facilitate lawful protest and are committed to doing so but do have to minimize the disruption caused to others going about their lawful business".

The criticism follows a report was made to parliament last week into the abuse of police powers during the climate camp protests at Kingsnorth in 2008. The report and accompanying video documented systemic abuses of power including blanket stop and searches, arbitrary seizure of property, and a campaign of psychological intimidation which included sleep deprivation through helicopter overflying late into the night, mock night and dawn raids by tooled up riot police, and the infamous 'Flight of the Valkyries' incident.

David Howarth, Liberal Democrat Shadow Justice Secretary said,

“What happened at the Climate Camp was deeply disturbing and part of what seems to be a disturbing national trend. Political agendas have no place in policing."

Defending Kent police's handling of the Kingsnorth protest, Home Office minister Vernon Croaker had claimed that seventy officers had sustained injuries in clashes with protestors. However a Freedom of Information act request proved that the police chiefs had misled parliament as no officers had really been injured in clashes at all.

Lib Dem MP David Taylor told the Commons:

"We were told that [the police behavior] was justified because dozens of injuries were incurred. We have now found that those injuries were of a more prosaic origin—they were due to things such as insect stings and sunstroke. Unless the protesters are to be held responsible for wasps and the weather, are we not to conclude that the justification used at the time was wholly bogus and vacuous?"

Attempting some damage control after the damning report, the Kent Police chiefs have now voluntarily referred complaints about the actions of it's officers to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Even before the these two reports in Parliament, the extent of political policing had been further exposed by the Guardian article revealing that the police have been building up a database of thousands of political activists as well as harassing sympathetic journalists.

Meanwhile however, the police propaganda department has launched it's annual offensive against mass protester. They've flooded the mainstream media with pieces on the much hyped 'summer of rage' in which they began to lay the foundations to justify heavy handed suppression over the coming months.
Download the report and read the details for yourself: Committee Website

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Police 'over the top' at climate camp.

More than 2,000 'potentially harmful' items were confiscated from protesters by officers - including balloons, crayons and a clown's outfit

Tracy McVeigh

The Observer, Sunday 1 March 2009 (link)

Police have been accused of setting a "dangerous precedent" when they confiscated hundreds of items of property - including children's crayons, a clown's outfit and a pensioner's walking stick - from people attending an environmental protest camp at Kingsnorth power station.

A list of more than 2,000 possessions taken from protesters, who were repeatedly searched going to and from the camp last August, has been obtained through a freedom of information request by Liberal Democrat justice spokesman David Howarth.

It shows that officers took packets of balloon, tents, a clown's outfit, camping equipment, cycle helmets and bike locks, plastic buckets, bin bags, blankets, soap, banners and leaflets, books, party poppers and nail clippers. A toy plastic gun, life-jackets, inflatable dinghies, paddles and foot pumps were also confiscated, police say, to stop protesters taking to the river around the Hoo peninsula in Kent. Much of the property has yet to be returned.

It is the latest attack on what has been criticised as over-the-top policing of the Climate Camp near the site where the government is planning to allow the construction of a £1bn coal-fired power station by the energy firm E.on. The project is seen by activists as damaging to the environment and a key obstacle to the UK achieving carbon reduction targets.

Kent police were embarrassed over the event last year when, after ministers had justified what they called the "proportionate" £5.9m cost of the security operation by pointing out that 70 officers had been injured at the event, they then had to admit that the injuries reported by officers included heat exhaustion, toothache, insect bites and headaches.

Howarth said:

"It is not the police's job to confiscate protesters' banners, pensioners'
walking sticks and children's crayons.

"The police admit that almost all the items seized had a legitimate purpose. The
idea that it is appropriate to seize ordinary people's property on the
off-chance that it might be used to commit a crime is a dangerous precedent.

"Almost anything can be invested with sinister intent with enough
imagination. I even heard of one case where police confiscated a camper's soap
on the basis that it could be used to make them slippery and evade capture by
police. This is simply farcical.

"This kind of pre-emptive policing is
out of all proportion to the threat posed by environmental direct action and
should not be acceptable in a democratic society."

Sarah Perkins, a member of the Climate Camp's legal team, said their main concern was that they believed police misused "stop and search" legislation.

"It certainly was disproportionate policing and a real sea change in the
way police are using their powers. Absolutely everyone was searched, many people
several times over, and then police raided the camp and searched yet again."

Green party MEP Caroline Lucas, who attended the week-long event, said at the time that she had witnessed police confiscating disabled access ramps, board games and fire safety equipment.
Kent's assistant chief constable, Allyn Thomas, defended the actions, saying the aim was always to enable a lawful and peaceful protest to take place. "This included our objective to prevent unlawful incursion of the power station," he said. "Had the station been shut down, there would have been a possible loss of power to over 300,000 homes.

"There was also the need to protect protesters who trespassed on the site as Kingsnorth is very hazardous for people without the appropriate training and safety equipment.

"While the majority of people were law abiding," he added, "it was clear from the first day of the camp setting up that a number of people were intent on causing trouble.

"By seizing items which could be used to commit a crime, we were able to ensure criminal acts were not carried out and more importantly no one was injured by some of the items which potentially could have been used to harm others. Arrests were prevented and many of the items have now been returned.

"We hope that anyone who attends a similar event in future accepts their responsibility to do so lawfully and in a legal manner."

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Kevin Smith on Climate Camp and carbon trading.

The police are maintaining there war of words against the Climate Camp. A recent police stopry was covored widely in the press--across ideological lines--from the Guardian to the Daily Mail. This story told of a fiorthcoming 'summer of rage' and went on to conflate general economic tensions relating to the financial crisis with the motives of climate change activists who dont believe in carbon trading. It is an interesting conflation, and one that we wish the public where generally more willing to make; if the neoliberal economic model has hit crisis point then do we really want to apply that same model of trading--this time in carbon certificates--to the problem of climate change? Wouldnt we be better with an approach that we know will work such as simply replacing fossil fuel plants with renewable generation, or increasing the energy eficiency of transport?

On cap and trade Kevin says:

This is a policy option that has been aggressively promoted not because of its
track record in reducing pollution (because it hasn't got one) but because of
its compatibility with the market-obsessed economic agenda of recent decades.
The concept of the omnipotence of markets has had an enormous crisis of
legitimacy in the wake of the financial crisis but the UK government is still
making futile attempts to apply the same failed market logic to the problem of
climate change.

But while the climate camp strives to think the unthinkable; environmental protection not based on markets...the police are trying to persuade the public to accept the unacceptable. Protest is not just protest it is highly disruptive 'social unrest' which requires far more strident policing.

The climate camp's plans to target the carbon markets on 1 April is one of the
protests that were described in the Guardian by Superintendent David Hartshorn
as kick-starting a "summer of rage". Using the threat of social unrest provoked
by the recession could be interpreted as an attempt to justify increasingly
draconian policing of protest. However there's a great deal of evidence to
suggest that this policing trend had started long before the recession began.

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NEW! Documentary on Climate Camp.

In a liberal democracy freedom of the press is sacrisanct...



Part 2...



God i love citizen journalists! Independent media is the only way to go, we need to improve it, but it is the only game in town if we want to change our society for the better.

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Weapons and Violence: at climate camp?

When the Camp for Climate Action rolled into Kingsnorth this year even veterans where suprised by the over the top policing. Being searched--often illigally-two or three times before getting onto site was quite common. This despite the history of the camp as a place of education, sustainable living which eschews physical violence...and our open meeting with our minutes online. It was quite clear that political policing to clamp down on the energy of a growing social movement was what we where seeing.

Despite this many in the media had no problem with reporting police claims of a weapons stash--it turns out that at the end of the operation no weapons where recorded in the list of confiscatred materials.

Now it turns out that the '70 injuries' being reported by the police do not exist, and those injuries that did occur where due to mosquito bites and toothache! You cant make this stuff up. The Lib Dems brought this to light using a freedom of information request.

The Home Office has now admitted that the protesters had not been responsible for any injuries. In a three-line written answer to a parliamentary question, the Home Office minister Vernon Coaker wrote to the Lib Dem justice spokesman, David Howarth, saying: “Kent police have informed the Home Office that there were no recorded injuries sustained as a result of direct contact with the protesters.”

Only four of the 12 reportable injuries involved any contact with protesters at all and all were at the lowest level of seriousness with no further action taken.

I am increasingly impressed by the Lib Dem line on climate change. It seems that if there is any climate change event the Lib Dems are likely to be representing and certainly seem to be making it a key priority for the party.

Norman Baker, the Lib Dem MP for Lewes, who had called previously for an investigation of police tactics, said: “I personally witnessed unnecessarily aggressive policing, unprovoked violence against peaceful protesters, an extraordinary number of police on site, and tactics such as confiscating toilet rolls, board games and clown costumes from what I saw to be peaceful demonstrators.”

Lib Dem justice spokesman made it clear why he thought the policing was so heavy:

Howarth said: “That the minister could defend as ‘proportionate’ a £5.9m policing operation in which there was not a single injury to police officers caused by the protesters beggars belief. The threat posed by environmental direct action is being systematically overblown by both the government and the police.

“I hope the government and the police will now stop trying to portray peaceful protesters as somehow equivalent to terrorists or violent extremists. In light of this new evidence, one has to ask, were climate campers so heavily policed because they posed any genuine threat of violence, or because they posed a challenge to government policy?”

Nick Thorpe, a spokesman for the climate camp, said: “Policing of peaceful protest has become increasingly heavy-handed. We saw thousands of officers swarming around a legal camp in a colossal waste of public money. The police and the government claimed there was a ‘violent minority’ of protesters but this Home Office admission reveals this as a complete fiction.”

From The :

• Guardian
• Telegraph

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EON (EOA.DE) Plans New Coal In UK: We Plan To Stop Them

EON is going around trying to recruit students with the message:

"tackling climate change isnt something tacked onto our agenda it's at the heart of our business"

They are being met by a concerted campaign (Imperial College--video, Kings College, Liverpool, Bristol, Manchester, Nottingham, and others have had careers fairs crashed)

I recently wrote about what eon are up against on 'itsgettinghotinhere'.

Now there is a shiny new website dedicated to the struggle. E-ON F-OFF.

It is also note worthy that the police have started putting out scare stories about the potential for a lone 'eco-extremist' to carry out some kind of terrotist attack. Needless to say this is worrying, such marginalisation and de-legitimization may be used to open a gap for even more ruthless policing than what we saw at the climate camp. But the breadth of support we enjoy makes such attempts extremely difficult to pull off. The times they are a chaning, and nothing, not even political policing can alter that fact.

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Police and Climate Campaigners

The Ecologist's film unit has produced a short video that takes viewers on a guided tour of police tactics being used against environmental campaigners. This was facinating viewing for me as i have had a few interesting encounters with the police, hopefully it will also interest you if you believe in that crazy idea of democracy that some of us are so keen on. A great video, well worth a few minutes.

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The net they've cast is simply MASSIVE

To follow up on my previous marathon post about the NZ arrests under terror laws is the following, from somone who has been arrested and has a gagging order on them.

Its still all very murky, but what is clear is that the cops have used it as an excuse to harrass and raid as many different activist spaces & activist's houses as they can possibly think of. The net they've cast is simply MASSIVE.

I would like to thank that person for getting back to me, and i would like to wish them and all of the people caught in that massive net swift justice. 

Why is it that anti terror laws are always abused?

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Terrorist arrests or state repression in New Zealand.

I received an email about arrests that have occured all over New Zealand on October 15th.

The mainstream media (BBC, AP, TV3) have all reported this as a significant anti-terror plot being foiled.

However, indymedia shows a quite different picture with a number of social centers being raided. When i read about environmental actavists and native new zealenders being arrested by hundereds of arrmed police i tend to think first of state repression and latter about the possibility of the charges being substantiated. The corporate media, seem to have gone with the police statement, which paints a picture of an extreme group ready to start an armed struggle.

In fact, there was an interesting case of police infiltration of Maori actavists, dismissed as ludicris by the govornment only to be revealed as a reality.

There is also an anti-coal mining campaign that has been targeted, one of its members houses have been raided. Possibly the police are using some real armed Maori nationalists as an excuse to arrest some politically inconvenient campaigners...nothing is clear. It is also possible that the whole thing is being cooked up: it is true that one of the Maori guys arresed had worked as a security guard for high wealth businessmen, hence a need for arms...although not molitov cocktails that have been roumoured!

One of the social centers raided is called 'A Space Inside'. New on one of their conferences here.


The blogs of two people under supression orders:

Anarchia and Capitalism Bad:Tree Pretty

Some commentary by someone in NZ, who seems to (i have just realised) take the same view that is evolving in my mind. Namely, that something may have happened that involved an armed group, but that this has been used as a cover.

The most comprehensive coverage of this story, by a blogger, who i`m not to keen on, but who seems interested in the truth can be found here. On that bit about truth...i mean elements of truth, there is a lot about communists etc., and i`m not sure about that stuff, it largely incidental anyway. Ok, just found out that there is corroboration that Tame Iti has communist connections, also he once shot a gun at a NZ flag and went through a lengthy trial. He's a scary looking guy but his previous hardly suggests a terrorist. From Stuff.nz:

With his heavily tattooed face and a tendency toward the melodramatic, Tame Iti is the country's best known Maori rights campaigners.

One of the people arrested and chared with arms offences is Tame Iti.

Tame Iti has been THE face of maori radicalism for more than a decade.

Some details on the people arrested, and the organisations that they belong to can be found here. It is important to note that there where arrests all over NZ, and in many cases the connections between these individuals are not obvious. It is perhaps not unlikely that there where not connections of any substance, but you can dig for yourself on that one. The mainstream media story, is however, suspect to say the least. For one, i dont believe anyone would arm themselves at a social centre, you would have to be nuts! You would do that covertly, at home, or even better at a secret and non public location.

According to the Australian socialist party:

The raids were carried out under the Suppression of Terrorism Act and the Firearms Act. More than 300 police were involved in the operation. The early morning raids were carried out at several addresses including the ‘A Space Inside’ anarchist social centre in Auckland and an activist community centre in Wellington. The raids were the first use of the country’s Terrorism Suppression Act.

The raids came after months of work by anti-terror police, with evidence gathered from hundreds of hours of recordings from bugged conversations, video surveillance, and tapped mobile phone calls and text messages. Police Commissioner Howard Broad alleged that those arrested had used firearms and other weapons at military-style training camps.

One article, that i did find, and that is distrubing is an Anarchist arguing that violence can be justified. A very odd argument for an anarchist to make, and probably more likely to remain theory than to have been an explination for the police raids but i thought it was worth sharing. More local anarchists writings. In my view there politically inconvenient activities are far more likely to be relavent to there arrests than a radical tendency gone violent.

From indymedia:

Prominent Tino Rangatiratanga activist Tame Iti was among the first arrested at his home at 4am Monday morning. At 6am raids were carried out at A Space Inside anarchist social centre in Auckland [ Search Warrant ] and the 128 activist Community Centre in Wellington [ Video of police raid ]. In Tuhoe Country, the town of Ruatoki was blockaded by armed police for several hours, with no cars allowed in and many searched, including a school bus full of children.

It stinks to me. My only question is have they fabricated the whole thing, or have they just exploited something and used wide ranging laws to broaden there scope and go after people who are campaigning against coal mining, battery hens, trade agreements...and everything else.

[UPDATE]

The person above whose house was raided and who works for the Save Happy Valley campaign against coal is supporting a very productive campaign part of the time. And i`d put money on it that not destroying such work by joining in a 'Terror Plot' would be a high priority! The groups youtube account is here. Funny that he works against a state owned coal company and is being arrested...



[UPDATE 2] 21:59 BST

It's starting to look more likely that this is a politically motivated event, enabled by broad ranging terror laws...and quite likely based on a small number of people having fire arms without licence. I think talk of molotov cocktails etc has grown out of claims by the police that these where suspected...careful wording by the media hides the fact that this was only a suspicion, the fact that it was not claimed by the police in there offical statement gives it deniability. Also, there is some anti-terror legislation comming up soon. Not that that is related...

[UPDATE 3] 22:32 BST

There is now a protest planned to highlight what is calimed to be supression of protest. An odd thing for a terror cell to do!

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