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197- When the UK police helps animal activists
99 Plays9 days ago
In our second history special this summer, Mark talks to Ant about the often bumbling and sometimes despicable acts of the UK Police when it came to interactions with animal rights activists. You have to hear it to believe it...
As ever, we love hearing your views on the topics under discussion (or anything else!) so do drop us your thoughts via enoughofthefalafel@gmail.com
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Enough of the Falafel is a community of people who love keeping on top of the latest news in the world of veganism & animal rights. With the Vegan Talk podcast, we aim to develop listeners' (& our own) thoughts around key issues affecting veganism & the animal rights movement; giving our opinions, whilst staying balanced; remaining true to our vegan ethics, whilst constantly seeking to grow & develop.
Each week we home in on one topic in particular and pick it apart in more detail. If you have a suggestion for a future show, do get in touch via enoughofthefalafel@gmail.com.
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Thanks everyone for listening; give us a rating and drop us a message to say "hi"; it'll make our day!
Ant & Mark
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Transcript
Introduction and Milestone Celebration
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello everyone and welcome to another Enough of the Falafel podcast. We've recorded over 200 of these shows now, all relating to veganism and animal rights.
00:00:14
Speaker
And because of all that hard work, each summer we give ourselves just a few weeks off recording. But don't fret, we're not leaving you in the lurch. You are still going to have twice weekly bits of brilliant content and shows to listen to.
00:00:29
Speaker
They're just going to be a bit different.
Upcoming Series Announcement
00:00:31
Speaker
Coming out on the next few Thursdays are going to be a special history series where Mark and myself look back at some of the lesser reported aspects of animal rights history. And each Monday, we're going to share with you one of our favourite episodes from the Enough of the Falafel Archive, an episode that we've gone back and listened to again and we thought you might enjoy having a second listen to as well or maybe you'll be coming across it for the first time.
00:01:02
Speaker
We really hope you enjoy these special shows that we've put together for you, that you're having a great time whatever you're up to this month while we're having a little bit of time off recording week to week and normal service will be resumed on the 1st of September.
00:01:18
Speaker
So sit back and enjoy this special episode from Enough of the Falafel. So I think vegans go looking for trouble even when they're not looking for trouble.
00:01:29
Speaker
That's not what butter's used for. Protein. Take your lab-grown meat elsewhere. We're not doing that in the state of Florida. What about your protein and what about your iron levels? Should I call the media and say, hi, sorry? They're arguing like, oh, poor woe is me.
00:01:44
Speaker
Hang on a minute. You always pick the...
00:01:52
Speaker
of social injustice has connection with another. That's just what people think vegans eat anyway. As long as you donna get the wee brunions with the horns you'll be alright. Does veganism give him superpowers?
00:02:08
Speaker
I cannot fly around the city. I don't have laser vision.
UK Police and Animal Rights Movement
00:02:12
Speaker
So Mark, in a couple of sentences, what are we going be hearing about today? Today we're going to discover the interplay between the police, particularly the United Kingdom police, and the animal rights movement.
00:02:25
Speaker
I've titled this with a few titles, With Enemies Like This Who Needs Friends, and There's Always a Policeman Around When You Don't Need One. I'm going to start this with an excerpt from my book, The Humanity Trigger, concerning this very subject. This bit is titled ah to Protest and Perv.
00:02:44
Speaker
Andy Davey, a.k.a. a Andy Coles, had been spying on the British House for four years the early nineteen ninety s and had struck up a relationship with considerably younger female activists.
00:02:56
Speaker
However, his generally unsavory behavior alienated him from those he was trying to ingratiate himself with. One what was in his mid-30s, significantly older than most of his targets, some of whom were still in their teens, including his girlfriend.
00:03:11
Speaker
He was described as sleazy and pervy, making unwanted advances and creeping people out. He wasn't coming up with the golden nuggets of information to the police because no one trusted liked him.
00:03:23
Speaker
This made its way back to his bosses at the Met and he was withdrawn early from active service. Typically, these guys serve about five years. Andy Coles lasted about a year or two before he was he was retired.
00:03:35
Speaker
This lacklustre at best performance did not stop him from being promoted to head of training for future spy cops. Coles left the police in 2012 as the sky spy cops scandal was breaking, but found a natural home in the Conservative Party.
00:03:50
Speaker
becoming a Tory councillor at Peterborough Council for several years. He also worked as the deputy police and crime commissioner for Cambridge and Peterborough. Not bad for someone whose resume consists mainly of being an underperforming spy.
00:04:04
Speaker
Quote, a weirdo outsider. Hearts would sink at the sight of him, but we also felt sorry for him. End quote. Shirley Brixton Hunsab describing top cop sleuth Andy Davey.
00:04:16
Speaker
And he might have got away with it enjoying his fat police pension plus his salaries as deputy crime commissioner and councillor. He might have got away with it if his brother hadn't written that damn book.
00:04:26
Speaker
but he did write it and people read it. And then they put two and two together. And in 2017, Andy Cole's career came crashing down around him. Cole's brother, Richard was none other than one half of pop duo, the Communards, a successful synth pop band from the I'm showing my age now.
00:04:45
Speaker
Champions of gay rights and all around disco loving lefties The Communards had a large gay following during their heyday. In 2017, Richard Coles, now an Anglican vicar, published his autobiography, Fathomless Riches, where he innocently describes his brother, Andy, thus, My older brother Andy brought his own drama with him.
00:05:06
Speaker
He looked like he had just walked out of the woods, his hair all long and shaggy, with a scraggly beard, his ears rattling with piercings.
Richard Coles' Revelation
00:05:15
Speaker
But his disarray was not like mine, an outward sign of internal distress.
00:05:20
Speaker
But suffered in the line of duty. He had joined special branch and was an undercover, living a double life, infiltrated into some sinister organization while his wife and baby daughter made do with unpredictable visits." end quote So this was the paragraph that Richard wrote in his autobiography describing his brother. It was a throwaway paragraph.
00:05:40
Speaker
That's the only time he mentions him. But Richard Coles, the gay vicar, had just outed his brother without even knowing it. God indeed works in mysterious ways. This book sold well and it wasn't long till some synth pop loving animal rights activists stumbled across the incriminating paragraph.
00:05:58
Speaker
The Guardian and the undercover research group were both tipped off and after more investigations went public with the news. Within two hours of the news going public, Coles had resigned his position as deputy policing crime commissioner.
00:06:12
Speaker
He clung on to his position as a city councillor until 2022's elections when he was dropped as a candidate by his party. Even the Tories, when given the choice, seemed to prefer their candidates with a less publicly pervy and dysfunctional past.
00:06:27
Speaker
And I'll leave it at that in terms of the story from the book. It sounds completely hapless. when Can we like exactly pinpoint when the undercut of a stuff was happening? So it sounds like it was sort of pre-2010s?
00:06:41
Speaker
twenty tens or about Yes. you mean So when Coles himself was was undercover in the Brixton Hunsabs, it was during the, I think it was the early 2000s or something. Right. I've lost the book now, but the the Spy Cop scandal broke.
00:06:58
Speaker
we We always knew we were being spied on. If someone had... Sidled up to me in the Cowley Club down in Brighton some Friday night, drunk, and told me all about what we later found out to be true, who who said to me, those guys like that guy over in Bristol who was married to this person who's had a kid as a spy and so on, and explained what actually turned out to be the case.
00:07:21
Speaker
Everyone would have thought that person to be a paranoid freak. okay So we never, we, i when I say we, I mean the animal rights movement, particularly in the UK, maybe the the anarchist anti-globalization movement as well.
00:07:33
Speaker
We were doing our best, but on a shoestring budget with too few members, we never assumed we were a threat, an actual threat to the state. Certainly never to the point where there would be sending in a continuous series of spies, multiple spies at a time,
00:07:51
Speaker
throughout the country, going into the same groups, actually decades, producing hardly any arrests at all. We never thought that we would be subject to... We never thought the state took us that seriously.
00:08:04
Speaker
Let me put it that way. Yeah, they did. Well, it ah it surprises me to hear it, really, because you kind of, I don't know, unless there's a ah context that I'm not aware of, you you just think that there'd be, ah to use a non-vegan phrase, bigger fish to fry, really.
00:08:21
Speaker
Absolutely. and And throughout the 80s and most of the 90s, there were, there was the IRA, there was the UVF and the UDA, ah yeah real serious threats to state and life and so on. But the the state is concerned about any perceived threats.
00:08:38
Speaker
If there's one, there's two, if there's three, there they will spend time on those perceived threats. Now, I have seen accounts written by former spies, and not in the UK, but and I would assume they have the same reasoning behind their spying and infiltration.
00:08:55
Speaker
It's not necessarily to produce arrests. As I say, there was hardly any arrests and that came about because of the ah the information produced by us. There were some arrests, for sure. ah Most of them, ah in a lot of cases, the charges were dropped or they were very petty charges to begin with.
00:09:11
Speaker
Some people did serious time as a result of undercover
Impact of Undercover Police on Activism
00:09:15
Speaker
of police. But really, for for the time for the length of time they were in there, for the amount of money, and so for every individual spy that was in whatever group,
00:09:24
Speaker
in and around London and Manchester and Bristol and Brighton and other places, they had one or two handlers who were within you know a few minutes from them. If things came on top, like for instance, Mark Stone, who was the the linchpin in the whole story coming apart and his story unraveled in 2010, he had been underground in all the anarcho milieu of Europe and UK during the two thousand He was uncovered by his girlfriend at the time who thought he was an activist. um She saw his passport, saw his his real surname, Kennedy.
00:09:59
Speaker
and His police officer was listed on his pass his job description, this on his passport which I find unusual. up there but Maybe all cops do that. But she came across his passport while while he was out having a piss.
00:10:11
Speaker
out of the van as they were driving around Europe. She just stumbled across his passport in the glove compartment, had a look in it. Hey, his name isn't Stone. Hey, it's Kennedy. He's a police officer. And it's all unraveled from there.
00:10:23
Speaker
The reason they were spending so much time on us was because they they were building up a lot of background information, wallpaper information. Who's involved? What are they like? Where do they live? What do they think?
00:10:35
Speaker
Who they go out with? Who are they friends with? What their objectives? What drives them? In case it it went over over a certain line and then they would know where to go. So they were prepared to to put people in for decades, for people to have ah four separate spies had babies with activists.
00:10:55
Speaker
Four. One got married to an activist. They were marrying their targets, having babies with their targets, certainly having sex with their targets, taking drugs with their targets.
00:11:07
Speaker
one One of the most dramatic... Okay, let me just see my notes here. I don't want to ramble too much. But look, one of the most... Okay, there's many interesting points around this. And let me start with one of the first ones is that the modern-day Metropolitan Police Force in London was modeled on the RSPCA. Okay, it took its...
00:11:25
Speaker
rank structure, its uniform design, and its it's it's modus operandi from the RSPCA, the very first police force to exist, please because as we as we understand them today, ah to exist on the planet was the RSPCA, who were set up to enforce one law, which was the 1822 Cruelty to Catillact, passed by Galway man Richard Martin MP,
00:11:48
Speaker
who pushed the act through and then paid for the establishment of the RSPCA, paid for its inspectors who would wander around Smithfield's meat market, now closed, looking for transgressions of the cruelty to cattle act, then arresting those people, putting them in jail and bringing putting them in front of the courts.
00:12:06
Speaker
And Richard Martin MP, also a lawyer, would defend the RSPCA's law pro bono, And who was doing this for years. So he was a real, he drove that. So the the police are based on the RSPCA.
RSPCA and Metropolitan Police Connection
00:12:20
Speaker
In a sense, the police force, at least formally, at least on paper, do a similar job to some of the extremist animal rights groups or what they would describe as extremist animal rights activists.
00:12:32
Speaker
do. Okay, so the Huntsaboteurs Association enforced public opinion, which has always been against fox hunting. They enforced a law that should be there, that wasn't there until 2004. Now they're helping, in fact, they are the ones that really heavily enforce this law by gathering the evidence whether police want or not.
00:12:48
Speaker
So these so-called extremist groups of the Animal Liberation Front, the Huntsab, Sea Shepherd, Paul Watson Foundation, they are actually doing... in a sense, the job that the police should be doing in a more fair and just world.
00:13:03
Speaker
So it's it's just an angle i I thought of that they're actually quite similar, at least on paper, at least formally. I think what drives a lot of people to join the police force isn't a concern for other people. For some people it is.
00:13:16
Speaker
What drives every animal rights activist is a concern so ah for other lives. So there there are differences. I'm not saying there're they're mirrors of each other, but They're trying to do the same thing, which is control egregious human behavior and punish it where appropriate, in a sense.
00:13:31
Speaker
So, you know, they're not they're not that unlike each other. And the the Metropolitan Police have the RSPCA to thank for their uniform and rank structure. So you would have thought they'd have been a bit more grateful and not spied on us so heavily a century later, you know.
00:13:45
Speaker
But um yeah, so written down here, police and enforce state laws, the hunt saboteurs enforce public opinion on matters like fox hunting, stepping in where the state refuses to. So really, you know, it's about policing for the animals, I guess, in a sense, if if you wanted to describe it like that.
00:14:01
Speaker
So really, throughout the up until really the 1984 Mars bar poisoning hoax, the police attention on the animal rights movements were sporadic and not joined up.
00:14:14
Speaker
When the ALF pretended to poison Mars bars throughout the UK in 1984, it cost Mars Corporation three million. They had to employ a thousand staff who took weeks removing every single Mars bar.
00:14:30
Speaker
from every single shop in the UK, brought them back, they were tested, deemed to be okay, and then put back on the shelves again. Cost them millions, okay? Three million doesn't sound so much now. It probably wasn't that much then, but it was enough to put the heebie-jeebies up in the state. They were thinking, right, these guys are getting really organized. We've been sort of ignoring it for a while, and it's it's becoming more and more prominent.
00:14:53
Speaker
So they employed a guy called Bob Lambert to become the first s spy cop of the modern era, as we are. Not the first, but the first so in the animal rights movement. it He wasn't the first. it it was It was going back to the ah the end of the 60s. But in terms of the animal rights movement, i think he was one of the first in there.
00:15:10
Speaker
He actually wrote the book on spying, the craft manual on spying on these sorts of groups after he retired. He was undercover for 10 years.
00:15:21
Speaker
He had a child with an unsuspecting animal rights activist. His child and his ex-partner, the mother of the child, both sued him for half a million pounds. They were granted a half million pounds each about a year ago.
00:15:35
Speaker
His child is now in his 20s and he took his dad to court and the mother and child took the father to court, Bob Lambert, and sued him for sueed the Metropolitan Police and won massive damages for psychological damage caused by Bob Lambert.
00:15:51
Speaker
being in her life for two years, helping her through the pregnancy and delivery of the baby. And the ah first sort of year or so of the baby's life then disappears because the police tell him, right, he's he his operation's over now.
00:16:04
Speaker
He leaves a note on the breakfast table and one one morning saying, I think the police are on to me, I've got to go to Spain and disappears back up the road into his uniform as a cop.
00:16:17
Speaker
Okay, so... I mean, ah ah it's it's it the mind boggles, doesn't it? I mean, of course, like, financial compensation can never, never truly, you know, repair damage that has been done. But kind of, in yeah, in terms of the impact on that activist and and that child, like...
00:16:39
Speaker
that's That's never going away, is it? That's never going away. And it's that the mind boggles as to what people thought, what the the police thought was going to be that worthwhile, that that was justified, even if you have a utilitarian system.
00:16:58
Speaker
mindset, what could make that worthwhile?
ALF Tactics and Police Involvement
00:17:01
Speaker
they they're They're actually on the on the tail of two or three ALF activists who had developed an ignition device that would fit inside a packet of box of 20 cigarettes.
00:17:13
Speaker
you know In the old days, you'd get those 20 major and you'd, better than hedges whatever, and they were able to fit a device inside those boxes that would, a timing device that would at at a set time burst into a ball of flame for about ten fifteen seconds and what they would do with these devices is they would go into department stores that had a fur section in their store multi-level department stores harrods debonhams dingles and in their plymouth ah they would go to the generally to the top floor or thereabouts of the um department store
00:17:52
Speaker
sort of near closing time. And they would they side one of these boxes of cigarettes down the side of, say, a sofa or behind some curtains or something flammable. It would be it would be it be time to go off maybe six hours later around midnight.
00:18:05
Speaker
And the the tactic was was that the thing would burst into flame. It would start a little fire because it's beside a pair of curtains or something. That fire, the smoke from that would be detected by the water sprinkler system, which they all had in them at the time.
00:18:20
Speaker
That would set off the water sprinkler system and the water would drench down onto the top floor, going down through all the floors of the department store, drenching everything, ruining all the stock. from the water saturation.
00:18:32
Speaker
So the idea wasn't to start a fire. It was to produce some fire, to do some smoke, set up the sprinkler system to produce all this water. The water would do the damage, right? Now, what happens if the fire sprinkler isn't working that night?
00:18:44
Speaker
Well, you can imagine what happens that night. So one one evening, i think it was in June in probably 1987 or something, In London, ah Bob Lambert under under the an alias of ah Bob something, or i forget his, what surname he was using, ah dressed as a sort of a 80s green anarchist sort of type with his army jacket and his long hair.
00:19:07
Speaker
He meets up with two other activists who have a load of these devices. They each take one and they're each given Debenhams department store to go to. and plant their their device in.
00:19:19
Speaker
And each of these devices go off. and they And with Bob Lambert's one, it does the water damage. With one of the other ones, it burns the department store to the ground.
00:19:29
Speaker
So these guys were starting some of the biggest fires ever seen seen since the Luftwaffe were flying over in the 1940s. Huge big fires were being started by these devices in department stores that didn't have proper sprinkler systems, or they weren't working that night, or they were faulty, whatever.
00:19:46
Speaker
So Bob ah Lambert has been accused by Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, ex-Green MP, in the House of Commons of setting that fire in, it was in Harrow, in in ah and the Debenhams there, and causing £300,000 at the time's worth of stock damage.
00:20:03
Speaker
He denies it all, but it can't have been anyone else. But he was going after them. That's what made it worthwhile. So you ask what why they were doing this. They were going after these specific guys and they got them. Now, Bob Lambert got promotion for setting a fire in the Devon Hems.
00:20:17
Speaker
The two activists that were with him that that did the same thing got five years in prison each. and So it's funny how the law works. you know So he he was he was he felt confident enough to to do this. he's He's also allegedly implicated in setting fire to Dingle's department store in Portsmouth in 1989 by a local Portsmouth newspaper. They're saying this was probably his work as well.
00:20:40
Speaker
So This guy, Lambert, could have set fire to a number of department stores. He was trusted intensely by his ALF comrades, so who he then handed over to the to to the state.
00:20:51
Speaker
ah He also co-rolled... the What's Wrong With McDonald's leaflet, you know that one that sparked the MacLibble trial? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was cool co-written by Bob Lambert, the undercover cop.
00:21:02
Speaker
I mean, is there any sense that that but perhaps there could be sympathies for for what is is going on in the movement at the time from from people who've kind of started off there as as part of an assignment, but then started to see the sense of it. I mean, ah not in the same way at all, but I've had folk live with me for a couple of weeks um well you know during during my days of being vegan.
00:21:30
Speaker
and Sorry, I'm making it sound like I'm not anymore. um Definitely am. um But they've not had any vegan um inclination at all. But by the end of a couple of weeks, um or or I've had folk that have worked very closely with me. So we've had a very close working relationship, 40, 50 hours a week, you know maybe just the two of us working.
00:21:51
Speaker
Again, not vegan. And in a sense, I've not been trying to foist it on them, but kind of a few weeks in or whatever, they start to see the sense of it. They start to say the same phrases and and things like that. I i just wonder, because it in a sense, it does appeal to ah human sense of compassion and empathy, which probably doesn't have much of an outlet, the Metropolitan Police or whatever. But actually, we we could argue it's it is in everybody. It's a human condition.
00:22:27
Speaker
When I was saying earlier on that the police and the Huntslabs and ALF have a lot in common, I was careful to say that with some police this is the case, with so some it isn't. With Bob Lambert, I've seen lots of interviews with him. They're all on YouTube with with Channel 4 and BBC. He doesn't get, no no, I would say he doesn't come across as having any inkling or real sympathy with the motivations of the people he's spying on.
00:22:50
Speaker
He does seem to be very caught up about the emotional entanglements he had with you know lovers and friends of 10 years he was submerged in the ALS, all that 10 years, judge generally it's five maximum because it's very psychologically intense and damaging to these people as
Psychological Traits of Undercover Officers
00:23:07
Speaker
well.
00:23:07
Speaker
And I would say they go into it a bit psychologically damaged. They're they are a particular breed of people who are able, it's the ideal job for psychopath, cold, clinical, easy easy to lie, easy to manipulate, super superficially charming, superficially friendly. He's there when You need him. He knows these, there were experts at being the worst types of people you could imagine.
00:23:30
Speaker
Now, some of them did have regret. that There was, a there was, there was out of the, 150 spies that had been identified from, ah by the, um,
00:23:42
Speaker
animal rights community as ah being spies and who are involved in the undercover police inquiry at the moment. Three of them were women. I think all three were involved in animal rights and Christine Green, actually met her a few times. Green wasn't ah christine wasn't her real green wasn't her real name. Christine Green was how we knew her.
00:24:01
Speaker
Back in the 90s, the children huntsabs who used to sub with used to often team up with the West London or various London-based huntsabs and go out around Essex and Hertfordshire sabotaging hunts. And Christine Green used to be there a lot, and she was...
00:24:16
Speaker
She was known as being really fiesty, aggressive ah took towards the hunt, a really good driver because she was police trained. and And she was undercover with the ah the West London Slabs for about three or four years, then sort of disappeared out of sight and went to France.
00:24:32
Speaker
And her handlers in the Met came out publicly, ah to the Guardian and said that she had been a spy and sort of outed her themselves because they were really pissed off that she had disappeared without telling them. Then she reappeared on the West London Huntsab scene and hooked up with a renowned and very well-respected Huntsab, Tom, and ah has been going out with him for years and took part in the biggest ALF raid in the UK.
00:24:58
Speaker
in terms of liberation, they helped set free 6,000 mink once, i think it was in Wiltshire, and she took part on that. And then she came out and rebuted the the police's description of her and said that the Huntsap people were some of the best friends that she had ever met and who put their lives on the on on the line for her. And she ah she she went native, essentially. She started to disappear. I think she's in Scotland now somewhere, i think, with with with this activist, Tom.
00:25:27
Speaker
Yeah, so she essentially went native. Another ah one was the there was the the Grand National was sabotaged by, what was his name? Matt Rayner.
00:25:37
Speaker
In 1993, guy called Matt Rainer drove seven seven animal rights activists to the Grand National horse race at Aintree in his van. It was a police van fitted out with you know things to pick up it to record voices and all that. So essentially, the police drove seven animal rights activists in a police vehicle to the Grand National.
00:25:57
Speaker
helped them with the ladder ah to get over onto the Grand National Racecourse. And these activists, they they formed a human blockade across the ah the the course. um This caused absolute chaos. They were thrown out.
00:26:11
Speaker
They immediately broke back in with Matt Rayner, the cop's help, who was holding the ladder for them as they were climbing over. And they did it again, and they were thrown out again, and they did it again, were thrown again.
00:26:22
Speaker
And then there was so many false starts, the whole thing was called off. And the betting industry lost £70 million pound in returned bets. This is the biggest single financial impact that an animal rights to our action has ever had.
00:26:34
Speaker
And it was aided and abetted by the police. They didn't even ask for money for petrol from from the activists for the transport in the van. So basically the police drove ah up and held a ladder for a lot of activists who then shut down the Cranston Nationals. So completely but um unwittingly that they helped sort of and with these, you know, quite quite big full on sorts of raids and stuff, you know? So yeah, it is an amazing story, but obviously it pales in comparison to the amount of damage that they caused really in terms of trust in the state and trust in the police amongst the activist community and the way they relentedly relentlessly spied on activists, but never really spied on the opposition ever.
00:27:15
Speaker
there was There was never any spies sent into various hunts or into an abattoir or into a lab. You know, it's always been activists. The police never, ever do this.
00:27:26
Speaker
They will send in dozens into the people who are caring about animals, you know? And I suppose there's there's a bit of a naivety there in that if you suspect...
00:27:38
Speaker
illegal activity in a lab or on a farm or in an abattoir, i.e. breaking legislation that is there intended to protect animals.
00:27:49
Speaker
The way that we sanction, ah no, not sanction, but the way that we try to prevent that or that we try to highlight it is generally through a pre-announced or maybe an unannounced inspection.
00:28:03
Speaker
That's the way that it happens, isn't it? It's like, right, someone ah you know with a clipboard or a lanyard, is going to come into your institution and is going to check that everything is above board.
00:28:15
Speaker
Obviously, that is not done with an organization like the ALF or a Huntsab or whatever. it's it's It sounds obvious to say, well, of course, we're not just going to go in there and say, are you doing anything that's breaking the law?
00:28:28
Speaker
Because everyone will say no. but but But actually, well, why why would you say anything different if you worked in a lab and you were doing, you know, and in our news show that we do every week, we will regularly report on on horrible stuff that is going on.
00:28:43
Speaker
in labs that's that breaking the very tame laws that there are with regards to animal abuse. They could be sticking to those laws and, of course, still oppressing animals.
00:28:55
Speaker
but But it seems like a a ridiculously naive way of of going about investigating the the the the major stuff that is going on towards animals. I suppose, is it is it that organisations like the ALF or Huntsabs, there was a concern that humans were being affected by animals?
00:29:20
Speaker
by potential law-breaking. So that warranted the spying activity, whereas um you know animal cruelty on a farm is generally not affecting a human.
00:29:31
Speaker
I wonder whether that's why the sort of the need for undercover activity in in the ALF or hunt SABS was seen as necessary. Yeah, I think that that you touched on two points, I think. So even so the the current laws and regulations allow so much cruelty and violence in a way that there is so much that can go on that is wrong in a lab or an abattoir or a farm that is legally sanctioned.
00:29:59
Speaker
It is really disgusting. But any time that we have mentioned an expose of something on Vegan Week, It's always been an undercover activist or an employee who's surreptitiously taken footage and secreted it out.
00:30:15
Speaker
It's never the state. Now, given the amount, the the ubiquity, especially in the UK, of CCTV, the UK is behind China only. in the amount physically of cameras there are on the streets and everywhere else.
00:30:31
Speaker
Okay. they They're a second on only to China. Okay. Only China has more CCTV in the UK. None of them are pointing in the right direction or hardly any them. They should be pointing inside abattoirs, right?
00:30:42
Speaker
How about pointing, just turn around and put them inside abattoirs on on the killing floors and ah look for and prosecute transgressions of the limited laws there are there. Even that alone would be a a bit of a game changer in terms of how it would change the behavior, at least to an extent, of the workers and the operations inside these places, because they know that they're being watched.
00:31:05
Speaker
Right now, they are not being watched. So unfortunately, it is left to elements of civil society doing this off their own bat, on their own dime, at their own risk. And it shouldn't be like that. The the state have proven themselves to be very capable of spying on people if they want to spy on them.
00:31:23
Speaker
They'll have sex with them. They'll have babies with them to get the information they want. Okay. they They're prepared to go to that extent to stop us doing what we're trying to do. So 10% of that focused on the opposition would be a game changer.
Critique of Animal Protection Laws
00:31:38
Speaker
and There's a reason that the state won't do it. There is a reason that they have this current very weak legislation with the guy giving a forewarned yearly visit to a farm or to ah or to an abattoir, easily corrupted easily kept away from the sort the bad parts the whole operation. Very easily done.
00:31:55
Speaker
And that adds a veneer of respectability to what they're doing. It's the shield that they need. It's there for a reason. it's And the reason isn't to protect animals. it's It's to protect them from people who would accuse them of having no regulations.
00:32:08
Speaker
So the regulations they have are so weak and ineffective, but they're there. And people just think the consumer at the back of their mind thinks, right, this has been... The RSPCA approved quality meat and all the rest of it. That gives the consumer the soft impression that this is all okay.
00:32:25
Speaker
Someone else has looked at this and decided it's okay, therefore it's okay. And it's just a shield. you know It's a sham. So um I know there's a lot there was a lot more spying going on and there is a really good book ah done by two of the Guardian journalists called Undercover.
00:32:40
Speaker
And there is, or there was, not sure if it's on anymore, but a really good podcast called Undercover as well, I think, or the the s Spy Cops Inquiry. This Black Ops inquiry is going on now as we speak. It's been going on for ah the last year or more. It's going to take another year or so.
00:32:57
Speaker
ah Bob Lambert himself was in the doc a few weeks back, but I haven't heard what he was saying because the new podcasts haven't been released yet around that. But there there is so much more to to ah to discover and to find out about these guys. They they sort of made the Stasi in East Germany look like ah peeping Toms, really. They were so willing to like the Stasi were phone tappers and ah letter readers. They weren't marrying you or having sex with you. know ah So UK's secret state took it 10 steps further than the Stasi in some ways, you know a complete intrusion.
00:33:34
Speaker
you know so I guess like to your point of of of keeping up to date with with stuff that's going on now, there's always going to be a lag with these things, isn't there? Because of the the secretive nature of things, that the whole point is that we don't know about it when it's happening. So even when stuff is uncovered, we're always months, years, possibly even decades behind when stuff is happening. And I was i was thinking to myself, well, or how does this all relate to nowadays? And actually, i mean, as we record now in 2025,
00:34:12
Speaker
it wasn't that long ago that protest laws were were changed. I want to say it was the Tory government. So I think it was about 18 months ago that in the UK, our protest laws were changed. But obviously in you know in North America, we've got ag-gag laws and things like that.
00:34:31
Speaker
there's There's lots of legislation that is is going through. And i think i think the nature of protest, I mean, only this week as we record in April, Just Stop Oil have said that they're going to stop their public campaign.
00:34:49
Speaker
But i I think campaigns and how viral they can get with social media have been seen as a bigger threat by the state and by, but you know, everyday folk going about their business who'd rather not be told of the inconvenient truths that that campaign groups want to highlight.
00:35:10
Speaker
So i I don't know whether it would be right to say that there there might be a resurgence of that sort of thing. I think the the cases that you've raised, they're in terms of clearly, grossly unethical policies.
00:35:25
Speaker
behavior on a human scale from from those going undercover um in terms of how entwined and the the trauma that they cause to their targets' lives. um You would hope, naively perhaps, that the protocols might change, but the whole thing of of kind of going undercover and ingratiating yourself, I mean, that's got to still be happening, hasn't it? I mean, you know when I hear stuff about Animal Rising these days. We've got ah a couple of folk involved in the enough of the falafel community who I know have participated in those meetings.
00:35:59
Speaker
It doesn't sound too difficult to gain access. ah you know ah In fact, do I remember rightly that an ITV journalist broke a story that Animal Rising were going to target the Grand National two years ago?
00:36:18
Speaker
I think, because they just got access to this meeting because, well, of course they did, because
Exposing Vulnerabilities in Activist Groups
00:36:25
Speaker
it's it's easy. You just say, yeah, I'll come along to that. So it's still happening for sure.
00:36:29
Speaker
do Do you mean the ah journalist broke it before it happened it would have been busted? No, no, no. It still happened. still happened. Yeah, I do remember seeing it on the Atelier, actually. And again, they they were using a ladder. It's a bit it's amazing if you can get away with Okay, so in terms of what the secret said are up to now. Okay, so when all this came out, it all it all began to crack around 2010 when Mark Kennedy was uncovered.
00:36:53
Speaker
And that just led to a drip feed of ah individual after individual being uncovered as as having spied on women's rights groups, that the minors, and the anti-Vietnam War, you know going right back from the anti-Vietnam War process in 1968, right up to then, they were uncovering tons of of ah spies who were these really dodgy, that they they were stealing the ah the names of ah children who had died and taking their identities.
00:37:25
Speaker
because they had lived and died. They were no longer around. So they would they would take they would take their identities and pretend to be those people. And it was just awfully transgressive and anti-social and anti-democratic. It was police state behavior.
00:37:39
Speaker
Okay. It wasn't you know the police. in a democratic society's behavior. it was This is police state stuff. Everything that the UK government decries and denounces you know when when it's happening over in Russia or whatever, and rightly so, but is as guilty of itself. you know and maybe then some. Those organizations that these guys came from were dissolved in a sort of a hailstorm of negative publicity.
00:38:08
Speaker
The police apologized to the women who had been um wronged and spied upon, gave them loads of compensation, changed the laws around this, and all of that.
00:38:19
Speaker
Of course, it's still going on. ah the ah National Public Order Unit and the Special Demonstration Squad, which produced these spies and trained these spies, ah are now dissolved. And there's there's a there are different organisations that we don't know the names of yet that will come out in time the way those guys came out in time when they get uncovered.
00:38:39
Speaker
They are very invested in spying on what they consider to be the opposition. In fact, British and English and British Empire history uh, is filled with the success of their spies in handing them victory. Um, the UK, Britain is a small island with a limited population that has managed to very much punch above its weight historically.
00:39:07
Speaker
And that has been not so much through face on warfare. It's been through spying and the information gleaned from spying. Um, and the ira know that only all too well okay so they're experts at that the secret state in britain is is experts at infiltration and information gathering and using that to defeat the opposition rather than say russia which just throws soldiers at the problem you know so um yeah very a very astute institution
00:39:41
Speaker
Yeah, and and you you don't have to scroll through Netflix for very long before you've found you know reams of reams and reams of of of films that that kind of glorify. And I mean, you know I have to say, I'll enjoy a World War II spy film.
00:40:01
Speaker
or something like that. And and and there we've you know we've we've grown up um with the history that kind of informs our knowledge of like, oh, well, you know they were the baddies, so of course they deserve to be spied on sort of thing. it's very It's a very interesting thought experiment to put yourself on on on the perspective of of those who are being spied upon.
00:40:22
Speaker
Again, to relate it to the to the current times, I'm wondering whether, we've we've discussed on on various shows before, how in a sense 20, 40 years ago, there may been more overlap between animal rights activists and other political or social justice causes in terms of the work that they might be doing that might be perceived to be a threat to the state. So so I could understand the motives of a government saying, right, if you spy on the ALF, then you might actually find out some stuff about other stuff going on at the time. In fact, in another one of these discussions we've had, we've talked about how you know vegetarian cafe and um in Ireland
00:41:17
Speaker
is actually the the hub of all sorts of um activity going on. And I wonder whether that's less the case now. So actually, yes, there are arguably fewer human victims, I suppose, to to to what might be going on now. and ah you know Sure, it's disrupting everyday life if there is a protest that blocks a street or whatever, but no one's getting killed.
00:41:43
Speaker
But also, if you if you get in with you know one of the leaders of Animal Rising, what are the chances that they're also doing stuff with things that might also be seen a threat? I mean, they might be involved in some free Palestine stuff. They might be involved in just a boy like I expect.
00:42:03
Speaker
But I don't know, somehow I kind of think it's less likely. But maybe that's just... Yeah, I think with the with the attention paid to the Hunts Saboteurs Association in particular, I think the state... Because the Hunts Saboteurs themselves weren't going to do anything more than go out into the countryside on a given Saturday, blow horns, make noise, and help save the folks, okay? And then they would go home.
00:42:26
Speaker
There might be a fight, there might be this or that, but it wouldn't go beyond that. So... Hardly, you know, the Bolsheviks, you know, hardly, you know, the communist threat or whatever they were. So ah so why they were, I think, the only reason so the state wasn't particularly bothered about that so much, although that that was a concern mainly because a lot of rich people enjoy fox s hunting. So they would the the powers that be would be involved in this are no people personally involved in this. So there might be a bit of a,
00:42:54
Speaker
ah sort of driver there to try and uh clamp down on these oics who were are coming out from the from the cities every weekend and spoiling these guys funds but there might have been that might have been part of it i think the other part of it was that they thought that you you can't spy on the alf because they don't have meetings or an organization as such it's an idea in some people's heads that's that's what it is and it's and it's a tactic But you can spy on the Hunsabs. They do have a P.O. Box address. They do have meetings. They do have an open invite to people to come along. So I think their thinking was was that whilst not every Hunsab is in the ALF, every ALF activist is probably a Hunsab.
00:43:36
Speaker
or has been a Hunsab. So we'll we'll get it we'll get into the Hunsabs and see where we can go from there. There's bound to be someone in that group in Brixton, particularly, or one of the West London groups or something like this, who knows someone or maybe they themselves are involved in something a little bit edgier than the Hunsabs. And maybe follow them for a while and then maybe they know someone involved in something. So it would be a trail oh ah intensity in terms of actions.
00:44:07
Speaker
So they got the people that they were looking for, which were the arsonists and the guys breaking into labs. I think they were the the biggest threats to sections of industry, to captains of industry and more than anything else.
00:44:20
Speaker
And the Metropolitan Police were given orders by... the captains of industry to go after financial threats and the animal rights community were considered to be one of the threats as I say particularly around the food poisoning hoaxes a number of which happened around the same time some of which have had a huge impact on poultry and Morris bars as I mentioned earlier And I think that was the sort of the starting point where they said, right, we're going to get involved in this and shut these guys down. And to an extent, they did.
00:44:53
Speaker
But um the ALF and groups like that petered out in the last 10 or 15 years because the upcoming generation wasn't particularly...
00:45:06
Speaker
keen on taking up that mantle really, and um for various reasons. um And it's changed and morphed into Animal Rising and Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Boyle. They are the cutting edge of the modern day environmental animal rights movements.
Evolution of Animal Rights Movements
00:45:21
Speaker
and The ALF have sort of I would say they've had their had their time, not because of police attention necessarily, but because of shifting tactics, changing society. They'd done their thing, I think.
00:45:36
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And whilst we definitely don't need more um sort of trauma to individuals from from being spied on undercover, that like you say, perhaps a few undercover police officers could you know could help boost things in terms of stopping Grand Nationals and and things like that. yeah Perhaps that's what the movement needs, a few more police officers holding ladders and things like that. Yeah, the sort of keystone cops to come in.
00:46:06
Speaker
undercover and against all sort of efforts actually help us to do not an awful lot, you know. So who knows, who knows, but but no doubt Ant 10, 12 years time, you and I will be talking about the next batch of spies who have been undercovered in the last four or five, six years and their names and their stories and that all the despicable things that they've done. It shouldn't be forgotten that these people It's one thing to be undercover in World War II to help defeat the Nazis. That's fantastic.
00:46:37
Speaker
It's another thing to be a spy ah helping to defeat the planet and its future, you know which which these guys were
Ethical Implications of Police Surveillance
00:46:45
Speaker
essentially doing. So ah it's probably not unfair to say they they are traitors to their own species.
00:46:52
Speaker
They're selling all of us out. And there were some of them were highly effective in what they did for all the wrong reasons. And it shouldn't be forgotten or forgiven, I think, what they did. Yeah, certainly, certainly a point worth reflecting on.
00:47:05
Speaker
Well, that's, that's been absolutely fascinating, Mark. Thank you again. This is a fabulous series that we're all getting treated to. So thank you for the, not just the time that you've given us now, but all the goodness, all the hours, days, weeks, months, and years of research that's, that's gone into all of this.
00:47:23
Speaker
and not just for our benefit, I appreciate, but um we have, you know, we're not necessarily releasing these episodes in the order that we've recorded them, but I'm i'm party to what we've already discussed. So we've we've already recorded an episode talking about um a series of cafes, ah vegetarian cafes.
00:47:45
Speaker
oh gosh. 100 years ago, I want to say, that we're at the cutting edge and we're a hub of not just um animal rights activity. Could you give us a little titillation of other discussions like this that we might be having as part of this series that listeners can
Teaser: Nazis and Animal Rights
00:48:02
Speaker
catch up on?
00:48:02
Speaker
I want to explore a little bit about the relationship that the Nazis had with animal rights. It's interesting, if disturbing. And also, I'd like to talk about maybe some of the offshoots of the Hunt Saboteurs Association.
00:48:17
Speaker
It had a few informal offshoots. Hunt Retribution Squad, and there was another group as well. And they had a very, it wasn't short-lived, but a very dynamic, colourful, ah career, these two groups, and they were a response to massive amounts of violence that the Hunsaker was experiencing ah during the 80s and ninety s So that would be something I would touch on as well.
00:48:39
Speaker
I have a list, but it's not in front of me. So yeah, there is more things. more thing Absolutely. And listeners that are sort of listening as these come out, you will just have to wait and see what order they come out. But if you are listening any time after summer 2025, you'll just be able to come to your podcast feed and they'll all be in the same little section so you can listen through. But yeah, thank you again, Mark. Top job.
00:49:05
Speaker
Thank you. And thank you everyone for listening.
00:49:12
Speaker
This has been an Enough of the Falafel production. We're just a normal bunch of everyday vegans putting our voices out there. The show is hosted by Zencaster. We use music and special effects by zapsflap.com.
00:49:27
Speaker
And sometimes if you're lucky at the end of an episode, you'll hear a poem by Mr. Dominic Berry. Thanks all for listening and see you next time.
00:49:53
Speaker
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00:50:14
Speaker
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00:50:28
Speaker
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