Spooks on our Tails

What have the following organisations have in common?

·         Campaign Against Arms Trade

·         Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

·         Communist Party of Britain

·         Extinction Rebellion

·         Greenpeace

·         Palestine Solidarity Campaign

·         Socialist Workers Party

·         Stop the War

·         and many others

According to Counter Terrorism Policing (CTP) they are all subversive organisations, bracketed together with openly violent far right organisations. CTP feels it has the right to keep an eye on them (us) and infiltrate them. Liberty, the civil rights organisation, correctly calls this out as, “One of the greatest threats to free speech in the UK.”

The CTP blacklist is linked with the sinister activities of the so-called Prevent programme. Supposedly set up to counter terrorism, Prevent has extended its remit to demand that teachers spy on and report the activities of their pupils. That is not the proper activity of a teacher.

Moreover the listed organisations are entirely peaceful, and the right to express one’s opinions freely and argue for them is the essential bloodstream of a democratic society. Kate Hudson, General Secretary of CND, states that her organisation has an “Open democratic structure and policy process...This is a massive state overreach and threatens our right to political engagement and peaceful protest.” She is right.

Lobby group Policy Exchange also claims Extinction Rebellion is led by dangerous “extremists”. Unlike CND and most of the other organisations on the ‘subversive’ list, Policy Exchange is shy about where its money comes from. Investigative journalists have discovered it is financed by Drax, Energy UK, E.ON and Cadent. Well, well.

These are the real subversives, outfits like the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith institute, whose funding is opaque but whose policy recommendations strangely always accord with the interests of big business. This is the work of dark money, striving to undermine democracy in the UK. Are they on the CTP list of dodgy outfits? Don’t be silly.

 Marxists like Marx and Engels claimed that the state is an organised instrument of power in the hands of the ruling class. Apparently by exercising our right to protest and to argue for what is right we threaten their rule. Did the Marxists get it so wrong?