Walsall Anarchists & West Midlands Police

A personal experience of using the “Freedom of Information Act”

to research anarchist history

by Christopher Draper

IN 1892 four Walsall anarchists were imprisoned for a bomb plot orchestrated by Auguste Coulon, a police agent-provocateur. Although the police and trial judge conspired to conceal Coulon’s role he subsequently boasted of his involvement to reporters. For over a century the Metropolitan Police refused to disclose details of its part in securing conviction until in 2001 there was a breakthrough. Despite claims that all relevant documents had either been lost or destroyed a serving police officer seeking early retirement and academic respectability was granted access to hitherto hidden Special Branch files to complete his PhD: "Three “Special Account” books, each measuring 160mm by 200mm, and printed into five columns per page.  They detail, among other items, what appears to be the cash amounts paid out to individual informants.  In all, approximately six thousand individual entries span a total of the twenty four years from 1888 to 1912”.

 

These files revealed Coulon was paid almost £1,000 by the Metropolitan Police (and incidentally also revealed the previously unsuspected involvement of a second police agent in a separate high-profile “anarchist-terrorist conspiracy"). This initiative prompted me to wonder whether the Walsall anarchists’ local police force might similarly be sitting on undisclosed evidence, so in September 2017 I made a formal FOI request to West Midlands Police (WMP) for copies of documents relating to this 1892 case. It has taken almost 1½ years for that simple enquiry to be concluded and in the hope that it might amuse, enlighten and encourage fellow researchers I’ve recorded details of my quest.

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