Clippings Digest to May 31st. 1984

Clippings Digest to May 31st. 1984

Policing The Miners

Up to May 30th. These are only brief references to the major elements.

  • Magistrates setting restrictive bail conditions. Guardian 5th April
  • Police trying to buy NUM badges Guardian 19th May
  • Police changing their ID numbers for picket duty Tribune 25th May
  • Pickets charged with conspiracy for first time. Guardian 12th May
  • Police threat to arrest people accommodating pickets Guardian 19th May
  • Phone-tapping in Wales and Yorkshire. Guardian 7th April, 4th May
  • Miners arrested in pub told to ‘leave county’. Guardian 30th March
  • Registration numbers of cars taken Guardian 29th March
  • Pickets photographed individually and questioned as to political beliefs. Observer 8th April
  • Independent observers from Sheffield ‘Police Watch’, with letters of identification from Chief Constable of South Yorks, stopped and threatened with arrest if they tried to proceed to Nottinghamshire. Rights (NCCL) Summer 1984

Discussions of Legal Situation

  • Guardian 22nd March and 14th May
  • Rights (NCCL) Summer 1984
  • Policing London May/June 1984

ACPO

  • Profile of ACPO and its role in strike and connection to National Reporting Centre. Sunday Times 25th March
  • ACPO “wants to import Section 24 of the Northern Ireland Emergency Provisions into mainland UK. This gives police the power to disperse a crowd that is, or could be, violent or disorderly.” Sunday Times 8th May
  • Police “discussing a criminal law ban on demonstrations in support of pickets with penalties against participation and tough sanctions against organisers of mass pickets.” Sunday Times 13th May

Longer Accounts

A State of Siege

Susan Miller, Martin Walker.

Study of the first 6 weeks of the strike. A very good brief summary of events during that period, with lots of interview material from the pickets themselves, plus good background pieces on the ACPO, National Reporting Centre, the legal situation, background to the strike etc. It also carries reprints of some of the more significant news stories of the period. Pity, though, that the authors chose to include a piece from the WRP’s Newsline on the possible use of soldiers dressed as police, because it includes the following immortal lines of dialogue as father (picket) is said to meet son (soldier dressed as policeman):

Father “Good grief, what are you doing here, son?”

Son: “Well, dad, you know I am in the Army and we have to do what we are told.” With all those members in the acting profession, the WRP might have got some better lines done.

£2.50 (including post), State of Siege is nicely produced, 66pp A5 format pamphlet, and is available from Paul Holmes, Staffside Office, Basement, Borough Treasurer, Wellington Street, Woolwich, SE18. Make cheques payable to Susan Miller

Police and the Gay Community

    • Brief account of ‘pretty police’ – Notting Hill-based entrapment squad.
    • Observer 4th March
    • Long account of harassment of gay shops, organisations and people. Guardian 30th April (letters)
    • Gay clubs raided in Soho: “Staff in gay clubs nearby said police has (sic) been making daily raids.” Times 17th May
    • Agent provocateurs operating in 6 police authorities. Guardian 19th May (letters)

 

 

  • Detailed account of police raid on London gay bookshop in Rights (NCCL) Summer 1984 (See publications in this issue) And in a leaflet accompanying that issue, which claims that: raid had a code-name; shop was under surveillance for 18 months; mail had been opened. Leaflet from Gay’s The Word Campaign, 38 Mount Pleasant, London WC1X 0AP

Association of Chief Police Officers

  • With recent public prominence of ACPO, an account of its origins, structure and activities is in Ch.6 of The Police: Autonomy and Consent, Michael Brogden (London 1982)

Police In The Classroom

  • Survey of 14-16 year-olds in London showed that 52% had been stopped and questioned by police. (In one school 61%) Author comments “this experience had a strong negative influence on the attitudes to the police.” Really? Guardian 16th April

Towards UK death squads?

  • London police and British Rail police driving the homeless and drunks out of the centre of London and dumping them in Epping Forest etc. Guardian 13th March (letters)
  • Miner kidnapped, driven into the countryside, assaulted and dumped by two men, presumed police. Tribune 25th May

Surveillance

  • Police allowed to film London demo from roof of BBC’s Bush House. Guardian 5th April

Community Policing

  • “In order to prevent crime we have to build communities.”
    Met Commissioner Newman on Face The Press, 12th February

Neighbourhood Watch

  • Account of background to and formation of Neighbourhood Watch schemes in London in Working Paper No 1 from Libertarian Research and Education Trust. Pretty good but excruciatingly badly proof-read and/or typed. 50p from LRET, 9 Poland St, London W1.
  • Case study of one Neighbourhood Watch scheme in Policing London May/June 1984. See ‘publications’ for details.

Accountability

Enhancing The Role of Police Committees

  • D.E.Regan in Public Administration Vol. 61 1983
    Explains the powers of Police Committees under 1964 Police Act and lists existing powers that could be used to bring the police under greater control.

Political Control or Community Liaison?

  • S.P. Savage Political Quarterly January 1984
    Interesting piece which argues that current demands on the left for greater accountability of police to Police Committees may be less effective (even if implemented) than police/community liaison. Suggests Home Officer Circular 54/82 (post Toxteth) proposals are “potentially more radical and effective than the formal concept of police accountability.. they hold out the possibility of a real extension of accountability that could be more successful in coming to grips with policing on the ground.”‘ Should be read alongside:

Community Policing: Towards The Local Police State

  • Paul Gordon, Critical Social Policy Summer 1984
    Excellent summary of the development of so-called ‘community policing’ from its origins in Juvenile Liaison Bureaux through to Alderson’s theorising. Against Savage’s optimistic ideas of grass roots control, Gordon notes that with ‘community policing’, police “have access to areas, communities and information which would otherwise not be available to them. They often control money and the allocation of resources and they inevitably come into close contact with other agencies, statutory and voluntary. This inter-agency relationship is never one of equality, for, as the police themselves emphasise, the police are in a unique position to provide leadership and initiative and generally act as a focal point for joint work. They are therefore in a position to determine priorities, to control the direction of activities and to isolate and marginalise those who disagree or criticise … At the pivot of such inter-agency work stand the police who can not only direct, but can draw on other agencies for their own ends of social control … community policing is an attempt at the surveillance and control of communities by the police, an attempt which operates under the guise of the police offering advice and assistance, and which is all the more dangerous because it not only merges with the activities of different agencies of the state, but does so under the control and direction of the police.”
  • A similar analysis is in Lee Bridges’ Policing the Urban Wasteland in Race and Class, Autumn 1983.

Police and Computers

  • Letter from John George, Chair, Merseyside Computer Sub Committee, explaining Merseyside’s position re refusal of police computer. Computing April 5th 1984
  • Detailed account of North Yorks Police use of ‘incident logging’ computer. Includes this: “In 1982 … Nottinghamshire was able to establish an on-line link with Yorkshire’s system.” Computing April 5th 1984

Ministry of Defence Police

  • Origins, powers, operations – the little that appears to be known. Rights (NCCL) Summer 1984

Phone-tapping

  • Claim that CND members in vicinity of Greenham had their phones interfered with on night of first Cruise convoy. Tribune 30th March (letter)
  • Long account of phone-tapping in UK, running through the legal situation re the Malone case and giving examples of unauthorised tapping. Labour Research April 1984
  • Bristol Labour Party Agent phonetapped by Special Branch. Tribune 27th April
  • Post Office Engineers Union (POEU) stirrings on phone-tapping snuffed out when British Telecom management ‘reminded’ them that, as civil servants, their silence was required under Official Secrets Act. But after privatisation…? Guardian 19th May

Various allegations of tapping during miner’s strike – see miners and police in this issue.

MI5

Two pieces by Duncan Campbell and Steve Connor on MI5’s new nationwide 200 terminal computer net. New Statesman 2nd March, New Scientist 1st March 1984. Pieces are similar but not identical.

  • Jurors for Bettaney trial vetted by MI5 Sunday Times 4th March

    “All post to and from the Eastern Bloc monitored by the UK intelligence services. Incoming mail from the USSR is … opened, sanitised (?) and the recipient’s name and address taken and passed on to MI5”. Computer Talk 5th March

  • Three major pieces on MI5, spoiled somewhat by decision not to name the names it could, in Guardian 17/18/19th April. Essential.

Paranoia gripping the ‘strong state’

  • Changes in Queen’s regulations re service personnel and political activities. New rules extend to include participation in ‘movements’. Guardian 8th March ‘
  • CND clearly in mind. Leaked Ministry of Defence document suggests establishing a register of civil servants’ political beliefs if they are thought to oppose the government. Times 16th May (Isn’t that what MI5 does anyway?)

Freedom of Information Campaign

  • Leaders of First Division Association (professional body representing higher grade civil servants) endorse the need for some kind of FOI legislation. Guardian 2nd May
  • Sir Douglas Wass (ex joint Head of Home Civil Service) joins FOI campaign as advisor. Guardian 5th March

GCHQ Miscellany

  • ‘How Cheltenham Entered America’s Back Door.’
    Steve Connor New Scientist 5th April 1984
    Potted history of GCHQ and a sketch of some of its functions and bases, plus brief account of Platform, a computer network run by NSA, of which GCHQ is to become a part. Connor suggests this latter event is the main reason behind US pressure for polygraphs and union ban, as being computerised, Platform will be more vulnerable to union action.
  • Claim that CIA fear of unions at GCHQ the main reason for union ban. Mail On Sunday 8th April
  • GCHQ member (one of the union hold-outs) claims polygraph forced on UK government by US pressure. Guardian 30th April
  • GCHQ newsletter Warning Signal says polygraph introduced after US threat to refuse information sharing. Observer 13th May
    Account of four mysterious deaths of GCHQ personnel. A rash of ‘suicides’. Sunday Times 15th April

MI6

  • P.M. believed to have agreed to legislation that would make naming any member of MI6 a criminal offence. A statute “being drafted in Whitehall” will also make it a criminal offence to allege that any individual is a member of MI6. Guardian 12th March

A Stake In The Grass

  • Interesting at an anecdotal level, but ultimately not too informative account of the life and (high) times of MI6 agent and dope dealer Howard Marks.
    Tatler March 1984
  • ‘Nigel West’ (Rupert Allason) puts his foot in his mouth over Anthony Verrier’s ‘Through The Looking Glass’ (reviewed Lobster 3). ‘West’ lumps it in with Bloch and Fitzgerald’s British Intelligence and Covert Action: “both books contained the names of active members of the Secret Intelligence Service and caused disquiet on the sixth floor of Century House.” (Times 19th March)
  • West thus demonstrates that he probably didn’t read Verrier – which conspicuously doesn’t do that, and which was read through by MI6 before publication, as Verrier points out in a letter. Times 24th March.

CIA

CIA Admits Spying On British Firms

  • Sunday Times 29th April
    All part of current US attempts to restrict hi-tech exports to the Soviet bloc, which are, despite their ideological top-dressing, merely the CIA doing its traditional thing of working on behalf of US multinationals.
  • Paddy Ashdown MP alleges CIA getting their information (re above) from Ministry of Defence. Guardian 14th April
  • In Sunday Times piece (above) link said to be ‘US liaison staff at MOD’.

Castro Enteritis

  • Mike Osbourne in Undercurrents Feb/March 1984
    Valuable 3pp summary of US (mainly CIA) attempts to wreak eco-war on Cuba’s crops, animals, weather, people.
    Undercurrents available from 27 Clerkenwell Close, London EC1R OAT. 65p plus postage.

CIA Mischief in Hawaii

  • Gavin Esler in The Listener 15th March
    Account of rise and fall of CIA proprietary (front) company involved in Philippines, Japan and Taiwan. There is also a brief account in International Herald Tribune 17th April.

The Bulgarian Connection

  • Bulgarian state selling arms to South Africa through Kintex, Bulgarian state trading group linked to Bulgarian intelligence. Observer 29th April, Times 30th April.
  • Two women – one the mistress of Bulgarian President’s son-in-law – identified as intermediaries in guns deal. One linked to Horst Grillmyer, Viennese gun dealer who was part of the chain of owners of 9mm Browning used by Agca. Observer 6th May

Agca and the Shooting of Ipekci

  • Some details of trial in Istanbul of 11 people accused of murdering newspaper editor Ipekci. (Agca already sentenced to death in absentia for his part in it). Central figure is mafia leader Ugurlu, with connections to Agca and the Bulgarian state. Article suggests there are two possible reasons for the Ipekci murder: 1) Ipekci was planning to expose some of the mafia’s activities; 2) mafia wanted to buy the paper and Ipekci was in the way. (The latter sounds more plausible. Why should this mafia care about newspaper exposure?)Trial began in April and is expected to last many months. The author has little expectation of clarity in the shooting.In Briefing “Weekly inside perspective on Turkish political, economic and business affairs.” Published in Ankara, 26th March

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