Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

Sir Paul Condon personally thanked undercover cops for saving the BNP HQ

Anti-Gadget | 08.02.2013 00:47 | Anti-racism | Policing | Repression

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Condon personally thanked undercover Special Demonstration Squad officers for saving the BNP HQ in Welling, at a time when the BNP were at their most violent

Metropolitan Police Special Branch infiltrator speaking in this Guardian video report (slightly old news, but well worth flagging up - see link). In The Guardian video a former Met riot squad then Special Branch officer describes how, in 1993, the Met instructed him to infiltrate a group called Youth Against Racism in Europe, in order to protect a BNP newspaper pitch on London's Brick Lane. The original series of BNP attacks, in which anti-racists had been battered nearly to death with iron bars, baseball bats, bricks and concrete blocks, are glossed-over by The Guardian as simply "a shocking incident on Brick Lane" (video 2:20). Nonetheless, as described, when left-wing groups fought back, the Met response was to try to protect the BNP paper sale! Ironically, since the purpose of undercover policing was ostensibly to prevent more violence, the officer says "Do undercover officers use violence for the purposes of maintaining cover? The answer is - yes they do" (video 3:45).

Just three weeks later, and in the face of the Metropolitan Police's total mishandling of the racist murders of Stephen Lawrence, Rolan Adams and Rohit Duggal, an anti-racist demonstration mobilised to protect the community where the police had failed, by attempting to march on the BNP bookshop in nearby Welling – which was, long before the BNP tried to clean-up their image, being used as an HQ by some the most violent Nazis in Britain. The Guardian interviewer states the officer's actions during the Welling demo helped "prevent" what he calls "massive disorder", despite massive disorder happening anyway, and despite police failure in respect of racist murders. The officer then states that "Had the SDS intelligence not said that if you don't stop the protestors going up that very hill, then basically they're going to tear down the BNP bookshop, Sir Paul Condon himself came out, it was roughly about a week after the demonstration, he actually thanked us for the work we'd done" (video 5:30).

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/14/undercover-policeman-infiltrated-violent-activists

To understand the tone of The Guardian's reporting in context, obviously if a recalcitrant former plain-clothes offers The Guardian an exclusive interview, they're unlikely to reject the offer of a journalistic scoop; however, according to the book "Beating the Fascists" (page 321), immediately the Welling demo had been announced, The Guardian supported a rival demonstration called for the same day in central London, to draw angry Londoners away from taking-on the BNP – although, to be fair, The Guardian's motive may have been to try to prevent disorder which would be used by rival right-wing media to help discredit the anti-racist left.

To understand the motives of the police in context, "Beating the Fascists" describes (page 322) a police commander appearing on TV the night before the Welling demo, predicting exactly where the flash-point for the demo would occur, and tells how on the day undercovers prevented anti-fascist militants from leaving the area, and "more or less frog-marched us back to the march" (the book quotes The Evening Standard as saying that "rarely can a riot have been so perfectly forecast; both sides knew exactly what was going to happen, precisely where it would happen, and give or take ten minutes, at what time"). So, while the interview given by the former plain-clothes suggests that Sir Paul Condon thanked his spies for preventing the destruction of the BNP HQ, in terms of the role that what's now known as kettling plays in encouraging violence, other reports suggest the plain-clothes cops weren't there to prevent a riot.

Anti-Gadget

Comments

Display the following 4 comments

  1. richard everett — oldboy
  2. Reply to EDL troll — Erik
  3. your wrong — white victims
  4. It's Official - Casuals Disunited Officially Surrender — Laughing At Mister Jeffrey Marsh
Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech