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Britain's Secretive Police Force: Politicising the Policing of Public Expression

Paul Mobbs/The Free Range Network | 26.04.2009 00:40 | G20 London Summit | Energy Crisis | Globalisation | Repression | World

What's the relationship between the recent 'authoritarian' crack-down on "protesters" in Britain, the current economic crisis, the debate on growth, the economy, climate change and resource depletion? Perhaps not that obvious?... A new report from the Free Range Network ties these issues together to try and find a deeper motivation behind the recent authoritarian shift against protest and dissent in Britain -- yes, the threads are there if you look for them!

NETCU, WECTU and NPOIU: Britain's Secretive Police Force

"Politicising the Policing of Public Expression in an Era of Economic Change"

The Free Range electrohippies Project, April 26th 2009
 http://www.fraw.org.uk/download/ehippies/q02/index.shtml


The report looks at:

# the recent enactment of repressive laws on protest and dissent, even BEFORE "11/9";

# the role of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) in their implementation and the intelligence agenda on "domestic extremism"; and

# the events surrounding G20 (although this report was in preparation a few weeks before G20) that illustrate how this process is working.

In particular we examine the role of ACPO, it's secretive and private investigative organisations (NECTU, WECTU and NPOIU), and the way in which these groups are leading a politicised agenda against any form of non-representative (i.e., anything beyond voting, petitions and letter writing!) public pressure in Britain.

Why is this? Well, on its own the "threat of terrorism" just doesn't encompass the scale and depth of the changes that we see. However, when you look at the wider implication of present economic trends, and then factor them into present policy changes, the reasons become more obvious. It's not a "plot" or a "conspiracy", but rather a "coalescence of views" between those parts of the State involved in this process.

From Herbert Marcuse to Ian Blair, from energy efficiency to peak oil and renewable energy, and from Athelstan Popkess to the Stasi, in this report we try and make clear the complex trends that are shaping Britain today and why, in the coming era of incredible economic change the State is osmotically developing an ad-hoc agenda to restrict our freedoms to complain about it.

The report is 68 pages long, contains 215 references, and nearly all of those references are "clickable" so that you can investigate the background information on which the report is based. The report is also released under a non-commercial open license, so feel free to copy, distribute, extract, quote, etc. (for non-commercial purpose -- if not, just send us an email).


Finally, as part of this report we've also created a facsimile version of NETCU's infamous booklet for police officers, "Policing Protest: Pocket Legislation Guide" as we discuss it in the report --
 http://www.fraw.org.uk/download/ehippies/netcu/index.shtml

Paul Mobbs/The Free Range Network
- e-mail: mobbsey@fraw.org.uk
- Homepage: http://www.fraw.org.uk/download/ehippies/q02/index.shtml

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