"We Know All About You". Britain's surveillance police state.

 

Much of the publicity surrounding the spy cops (Mitting) inquiry has focused on women who were deceived into sexual relationships with undercover Special Branch Officers.

This is shocking enough, but what I think as received less attention, is the role these undercover police officers played as agent provocateurs. They tried to instigate people into committing criminal acts like arson and then shopped them.

It has been alleged that one undercover police officer carried out an arson attack on a Debenhams Store and tried to encourage others to do so. Another undercover police officer, tried to get other activists to fire bomb a shop that he claimed was the property of an Italian fascist.

Much of what we get told about the work of the British security services, tends to be about countering espionage. What they're less happy to talk about, is the role they play in spying on British citizens.

In his book, 'We know all about you: The Story of Surveillance in Britain', Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, writes there is a "Tendency in the UK for people to be put under government surveillance for political purposes which sometimes had little to do with national security."

In 1986, Duncan Campbell estimated that one citizen in five was the "subject of police local intelligence files." He drew attention to MI5's Joint Computer Bureau in Mayfair which had 20 million people in its system.  Yet some British people like to be under the thumb of authority. In a TNS poll in 2014, some 64% of respondents thought that the UK intelligence agencies should be able to monitor the communications of all citizens not just likely suspects.

There's little doubt that blacklisting in some British industries, wasn't just about identifying so-called "troublemakers" but was also about weakening and undermining the labour movement. Many workers became afraid to report hazards because they feared being put on a blacklist. 

Blacklisting was made illegal in the U.S. in 1935. The 1959 'Landrum Griffin Act', required firms to disclose to the U.S. Department of Labour, payments made to firms engaged in labour espionage and blacklisting. Despite this and the introduction of a Freedom of Information Act in 1966 and a Privacy Act in 1974, unions in the U.S. still complain of blacklisting. Union busting is still big business in America and many American workers fear joining a union because of blacklisting.