Youth against Racism in Europe and Militant Labour targeted
The 'spycops' inquiry has finally opened, six years after Theresa May, then Tory home secretary, set it up.
May was forced into establishing the inquiry when one ex-police spy, Peter Francis, went public about his years-long infiltration of Youth against Racism in Europe (YRE) - a mass democratic, anti-racist youth organisation - and Militant Labour (now the Socialist Party).
The inquiry therefore had little choice but to accept Socialist Party members Lois Austin and Hannah Sell, then leaders of YRE, as 'core participants'.
Ex MP Dave Nellist on undercover political policing and the public inquiry
Dave Nellist was Labour MP for Coventry South East (1983-1992) & a Socialist Party member of Coventry City Council (1998-2012). He is one of 11 MPs confirmed as being spied on by Britain's political secret police, and is a core participant in the Undercover Policing Inquiry.
In this video, made on 29 October 2020, he details the spycops' targeting of MPs and trade unions. It happened over such a long period and on such a large scale that there can be no dismissal of it as an aberration by rogue officers, it can only have been done with the knowledge and approval of many senior police and politicians.
COPS is providing coverage of the public inquiry hearings, including live tweeting and daily reports.
6 June 2018
Socialists defend Lush ad campaign against spy cops
A banner outside the meeting, photo COPs campaign (Click to enlarge)
James Ivens
Soap shop Lush dropped a bath bomb on 31 May with storefront displays highlighting abuses by undercover police.
Tories and senior police officers have attacked Lush's #SpyCops 'paid to lie' ads. In response, socialists and other activists involved in the Mitting Inquiry into undercover policing have defended the firm's campaign.
Police spies infiltrated a number of campaign groups over decades. Some even entered into intimate relationships with women activists under false pretences.
Leaders of Youth Against Racism in Europe call for genuinely independent enquiry
Press release
The news that an undercover police officer was tasked with trying to find out any information that could discredit Stephen Lawrence's family is terrible and shocking, but unfortunately not surprising.
Last year's revelations of police attempts to discredit the victims of the Hillsborough disaster show that this was not an isolated incident.
The officer concerned, Peter Francis, infiltrated Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE) over several years and was known to us as Pete Daley.
Lois Austin, Socialist Party member and national chair of YRE at the time, stated:
"It took 18 years for the police to convict any of Stephen Lawrence's murderers. Meanwhile, time and money was being spent searching for 'dirt' on a bereaved family, and secretly infiltrating Youth Against Racism in Europe, a peaceful organisation of young people, which was organising mass protests against racism and the BNP.
As has been widely covered in the media,
the BNP lost 27 councillors in the 2010 local elections, only retaining
two that were up for re-election. Although they still have 19 councillors
nationally.
Their biggest drubbing came in Barking
and Dagenham where they lost all 12 seats after it had been widely
reported that they could take control of the council.
On the surface it would appear the BNP
have been beaten, or even at least severely wounded but this is the easy
way to look at it.
It
is New Labour who opened the door to the far-right, racist British
National Party’s success. The people who have benefited most under Labour
are big business and the super-rich. The rest of us have seen skilled jobs
replaced with part-time, low paid exploitation; privatisation destroying
the NHS, Royal Mail and other public services; council housing sold off so
virtually no one has access to it and private rents going through the
roof...
The Observer newspaper ran a
front page "expose" of the Metropolitan Police's "infiltration" of Youth
Against Racism in Europe during the battle to close the BNP's
headquarters in Welling in the 1990s. (14 March 2010, 'Undercover
policeman reveals how he infiltrated UK's violent activists' - see next
article below)
The Observer's video shows footage
of the YRE's campaign to remove the BNP from Brick Lane,
in Tower Hamlets, East London. It was this victory
by the local community against the BNP which motivated the Met Police to infiltrate the YRE,
according to the
video footage claim.
The only place the BNP had won a
council seat at that time was in Tower Hamlets, in 1993.
Youth against Racism in Europe
played an important part in defeating the BNP and driving them out
of Tower Hamlets at the time. While the situation we face is different
now, many of the ideas and methods that were used then are just as
appropriate and can be adapted to today's struggle.
This article explains the YRE's role in fighting
the BNP in Tower Hamlets during the 90s.
The disgraceful article in today's
Observer (Undercover policeman reveals how he infiltrated UK's violent
activists, 14 March 2010) claims to 'expose' how "an officer from a
secretive unit of the Metropolitan police" was "working undercover among
anti-racist groups in Britain, during which he routinely engaged in
violence against members of the public and uniformed police officers to
maintain his cover."
Support the fortnight of action 27 June - 10 July 2009
Joint statement by YRE and Youth Fight for Jobs:
The BNP have won two seats in the European Parliament with 943,000
votes across the country. Many people will be outraged and disgusted that
this far right, racist group has another platform to air their views.
Despite attempts to appear respectable in front of the media the real
nature of the BNP leadership keeps being exposed. Eddy O'Sullivan, a
candidate in the North West, was discovered with vile racist comments on
his facebook profile.
In London a black nurse was subject to a torrent of
racist abuse from a BNP activist when she complained about getting a BNP
leaflet through her door. The BNP and their views are opposed by the vast
majority of people. The election of two BNP MEPs needs to be met with a
wave of protest to make our opposition clear.
In a series of recent reverses, the BNP have shown their weakness in
cities like Manchester and Salford, while in opinion polls the BNP remain
below the percentage needed to win a seat. With one day until the
Euro-elections and some local elections, it is still possible to prevent
the racist right winning seats.
The strike of
construction workers which began last week is continuing and looks as if
it is spreading throughout the country with Sellafield and Heysham nuclear
plants out. Workers at other plants, according to the BBC, have also
decided to stay out, these include Grangemouth and Longannon in Scotland.
Warrington and Staythope in Newark are also out as well. The strikes are
spreading from fiddlers ferry in Warrington to the Drax power station in
Yorkshire.
The media are saying that the strikes are
against foreign labour, while the government attacks striking workers for
wanting protectionism.
But as Keith
Gibson, one of the unofficial strike committee at the Lindsey Oil Refinery
(speaking in a personal capacity) said: “The workers of LOR, Conoco and
Easington did not take strike action against immigrant workers. Our action
is rightly aimed against company bosses who attempt to play off one
nationality of worker against the other and undermine the NAECI [National
Agreement for the Engineering and Construction Industry] agreement…
Despite the huge amounts of media coverage the British
National Party has received over the years, the publication of their list
of members, ex-members and others makes it clear that the BNP is a
relatively small party. In fact the very publication of the list by a
disgruntled member reflects the divisions and splits the BNP regularly
faces.
Two peaceful demonstrators leaving Saturday’s Unite
Against Fascism demonstration in Blackpool required hospital treatment for
injuries received in an unprovoked attack from a politically-motivated
thug.
The campaign against the far-right, racist British
National Party's 'Red, White and Blue festival' in Derbyshire is gaining
support. Many local residents are unhappy about the BNP trying to use
their area as a recruiting ground and have objected to the ‘Festival’...
Assemble: 12 noon, Tooley Street, London SE1 (behind Greater London
Assembly building, nr Tower Bridge)
Stop the BNP summer camp!
The BNP’s annual 'Red, White and Blue' festival is planned for
mid-August. We call on anti-BNP campaigners to join the protests against
this on Sat 16 August in Derbyshire.
Attack on British "scroungers" does nothing to help
migrants
-- we need a living wage
and rights at work for all!
letter to The Independent, 24 August 2006
It's sad that in championing the rights of
migrants Yasmin Alibhai Brown feels that it is acceptable to attack the
existing population of Britain with the prejudices and assumptions often
directed against migrants: "too lazy or expensive",
"indolent...scroungers" (God bless the 'foreigners' willing to do our
dirty work, 23/8/06).
THE FAR-right British National Party (BNP) achieved significant
advances in the May 2006 local elections, where they won 33 more
councillors bringing their total to 55 nationally. Their gain of eleven
councillors in Barking and Dagenham hit the headlines most but this was
not an isolated development.
In May
2005, four neofascist European groups (NPD from Germany, Forza Nueva from
Italy, Falanx from Spain and Chrisi Avgi from Greece) announced that they
would organize their first European Youth Camp on the 16 - 18 September in
Greece, without specifying the exact location.
End world poverty & racism - make capitalism history
As hundreds of thousands gather to protest against world
poverty and environmental destruction outside the G8 (group of eight
richest nations in the world) summit in Gleneagles, YRE looks at the
hypocrisy of Western leaders like Gordon Brown & Tony Blair posing as
the "saviours" of Africa and how refugees from around the world
are treated in Britain.
We also look at how workers in South Africa are showing a
better way to fight against unemployment and poverty, with a report on the
powerful general strike there on 27 June:
"I escaped and came to England on
the 26th of November 2002, but instead of finding refuge here I have been
drowning in problems; since I came to this country and presented myself to
immigration as an asylum-seeker, I have suffered the evils that I was
trying to forget yet again. I have been held in detention since the 29th
August 2003.
Friday
1st September
The
threat of fascism