omigod! it could be HIM! it could be HER! it could be ME! (no, hang on, i wasn't at newbury). let's all stop resisting the system and instead generally panic and point fingers at each other and get paralysed by paranoia like those nice people at the bbc would like us to.

with the anti roads movement regrouping looks to me like the paranoia propoganda is being wheeled out again......
they must be getting twitchy.

Mature social movements can and should develop strategies and tactics to quietly evaluate and deal sensibly with possible provocateurs and suchlike.

Read Ward Churchill's work and Brian Glick's for some history of this kind of police interference - in the US. I think Glick even outlines sensible strategies. Larry O'Hara is one of the only people who undertakes such research in the UK (looking at such things as the infiltration of Green Anarchist/Green Party by agent provocateur Tim Hepple, on behalf of Searchlight, and perhaps others)

I consider it dangerous nonsense to say that any attempts to analyse and limit the activities of such disruptive - often very violent - individuals is paranoia and panic.

With the strategies that have been developed - especially in the US - paranoia and panic is exactly what can be avoided.

A google search on "Cointelpro" might lead you to details about such strategies.

OK, maybe I am much too 'paranoid' : a year or two back I tried to investigate what happened with the RTS protest at Euston and the conveniently forgotten old unmarked policee van that got burned, and the Mayday attack on a McDonalds that the police forgot to protect - though they didn't forget to flood Parliament Sq to drive people up Whitehall past that McDonalds, nor did they forget to ring McDonalds with unobtrusive video cameras to catch the action for the news.

I feared that both these events were not mistakes by the police but deliberate - and part of their (publically admitted) project to destroy (public support for) RTS. It even had a name, something along the lines of Operation Honeytrap.

RTS (and Indymedia) as a whole appeared to have no wish to think about any of this and I'd hear comments like 'grassy knoll' from leading activists when I dared mention my research (though a fair number of individuals did help).

In the end the resources it took to follow up the leads and check out what really happened were too much for me to do on my own.

Matthew