{"id":57180,"date":"2021-03-19T07:23:58","date_gmt":"2021-03-19T12:23:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57180"},"modified":"2021-03-19T08:28:15","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T13:28:15","slug":"britains-secret-political-police","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57180","title":{"rendered":"Britain\u2019s Secret Political Police"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Britain\u2019s Secret Political Police<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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A who\u2019s who of the U.K. radical left over the past half century was\u00a0<\/strong>infiltrated by \u201cspycops,\u201d reports\u00a0Asa Winstanley, who has personal involvement with this story.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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New Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service, the territorial police force responsible for policing most of London. (Can Pac Swire, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I<\/strong>n December 2018 I received a text message that changed my life.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you know anyone involved in [the] UK group of [the] International Solidarity Movement?\u201d\u00a0 it read. A public\u00a0inquiry<\/a>\u00a0had released the name of \u201can undercover officer who apparently infiltrated them \u2013 Rob Harrison.\u201d<\/p>\n

Long buried memories slowly began to surface. I knew that name.<\/p>\n

In my mid-20s I had indeed been involved with the International Solidarity Movement, known as ISM, first as\u00a0a\u00a0volunteer<\/a>\u00a0in Palestine and later with their U.K. chapter, ISM London. Rob had been a friend \u2013 or so I\u2019d thought. We\u2019d drunk in the same pubs, I\u2019d danced to the records he\u2019d spun as a DJ at fundraisers and we\u2019d endured the same interminable meetings together.<\/p>\n

But all along he\u2019d secretly been an undercover British police officer, leading a double life and reporting who-knows-what to the authorities.<\/p>\n

I swiftly turned to my old emails and found dozens from \u201cRobert Harrison.\u201d He\u2019d even offered to drive me to the airport on one trip to Palestine. Luckily, I had declined.<\/p>\n

There was no doubt \u2013 it was the\u00a0same man<\/a>. The man we\u2019d thought had been our friend had actually been a spy for the state all along.<\/p>\n

Looking back at that text message now, I think I was in shock and experienced some sort of trauma. I processed all this by snapping into professional mode \u2013 it would make a great story. And I was well placed to tell it. I called around some of my old comrades.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Britain\u2019s Secret Political Police A who\u2019s who of the U.K. radical left over the past half century was\u00a0infiltrated by \u201cspycops,\u201d reports\u00a0Asa Winstanley, who has personal involvement with this story.\u00a0 New Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Service, the territorial police force responsible for policing most of London. (Can Pac Swire, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[31057,93,6963,31058,17503],"class_list":["post-57180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-asa-winstanley","tag-britain","tag-consortium-news","tag-international-solidarity-movement","tag-secret-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57180"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57188,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57180\/revisions\/57188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}