As will already have been suspected by those in activist circles, police have been infiltrating left-wing organisations for years, in defence of the capitalist class interests they exist to protect.
It has recently been confirmed by the Guardian that 24 police officers are known to have been actively spying on and infiltrating over 124 political groups between 1968-2007.
It was reported that the overwhelming majority of the groups infiltrated were left-wing. In regards to right-wing groups, the police only infiltrated three fascist organisations. Furthermore, in addition to the cases reported by the Guardian, both the police and MI5 infiltrated the Marxists in the Labour Party during the 1980s.
Within these left-wing organisations, many officers (who took their undercover names from dead children) engaged in psychological and emotional manipulation, even inciting arson in one case.
At least four of these undercover police had intimate relationships with female members. One of these officers even had a child with one of his victims (all while he had a wife and two kids in his “normal” life) and then claimed to have had a suicidal breakdown as an excuse to disappear from the organisation he was infiltrating when his time was up.
Same old story
The police’s infiltration of left-wing groups shows clearly where the interests of the state really lie: in the defence of private property. The police don’t care about the fascist organisations because they pose no real threat to the state or the capitalist system (in fact, fascist organisations are quite useful to the police). It is groups that challenge the status quo and the existing order that pose a real threat to the British state.
The disgusting manipulative tactics used by the police only highlight the depths that the British state is willing to go to. Notably, the records that have been released so far have only revealed police infiltration up to 2007 – however, it is highly unlikely that this activity has been stopped!
An inquiry led by Sir John Mitting was set up to look into this activity back in 2014. The findings were to be released this year, but this has now been postponed to 2023. The results of this inquiry, if they are ever released, will be inconclusive at best.
This is the same old tactic we have seen been repeated again and again by the establishment. It was the same over Hillsborough, where information was only released when those who were responsible were no longer in positions of power or could no longer be affected by the findings of the inquiry. The same can be said for Orgreave, and for every other tragedy that had the hands of the state involved.
Yet all this is consistently portrayed by the media as the result of it being ‘a different time back then’. ‘Oh it was the ‘80s’; ‘the police acted differently back then, not as they do now!’ Yet this is not the case at all, as is show by this report. These undercover police were psychologically manipulating people all the way up to the mid-to-late 2000s – and this continues to this day.
Protecting their class
This isn’t an old phenomenon, as is shown by the recent arrest of two journalists in Northern Ireland who sought to undercover the truth about the Loughinisland Massacre.
The state will always protect its own when its interests – and the interests of the class it defends – are threatened. And they will use whatever means are necessary to do so, whether that means deception, hiding the truth, demonising victims, fabrications, or destroying evidence.
British capitalism and its state apparatus are thoroughly decrepit. What is needed in society is precisely what the police had been looking for, but couldn’t find: a genuine revolutionary party that is capable of sweeping aside their rotten system (and them with it!).
Only in this way can we create a democratically run society that works for the many, instead of protecting the narrow interests of the few.
