Since 2011, the Informal Anarchist Federation (IAF) ? a local division of a much wider,
global insurrectionary anarchist group: the Federazione Anarchia Informale ? has been
carrying out scores of attacks on private property across Bristol. Now the cops are out to
get them and Bristol's wider activist community is being caught up in the search. ----
Signalling cables of National Rail lines have been burnt down in order to "paralyze" the
local economy. Vehicles at a UK Border Agency crime team building have been torched. And a
minibus belonging to local cadets has been set on fire as a protest against NATO. Together
with two other insurrectionary groups ? the Earth Liberation Front and the Angry Foxes
Cell ? over 60 different attacks have been carried out since the Bristol riots.
Avon and Somerset Constabulary, meanwhile, have been on the IAF's case, desperately
searching for the culprits. After no real success and mounting pressure from one
particular MP, the local CID and special investigations team are stepping up their efforts.
A team of ten detectives working full-time under the name Operation Rhone has have been
set up and the police are searching particularly hard to find a man they consider to be at
the centre of the network: Huw Norfolk, otherwise known as the Badger.
The trouble is, nobody seems to know anything about him, the IAF or any of the recent
attacks ? not the police, nor the media, nor even local activist groups. The IAF is, after
all, an informal network (the clue is in the title). It's really little more than a banner
for those that execute insurrectionary acts, or who think within a certain ideological
framework to use and claim. And that makes them particularly difficult to find.
The vast majority of Bristol's anarchist community aren't like this. With their status as
queen-and-country-hating tabloid pariahs, few people would be aware of any difference
between different anarchist groups. But their methods, goals and targets differ radically.
Groups such as the Anarchist Federation (Afed) and Solidarity Federation (Solfed), which
constitute a majority of the scene in the UK are involved in open, public-facing
class-based community work ? handing out leaflets, helping workers who go on strike, that
kind of thing ? rather than acts of fly-by night vandalism.
But these distinctions don't seem to count for much as far as the police are concerned.
Over the past few months, activists from across the anarchist community say the police
have been targeting them arbitrarily and indiscriminately. They say individual activists
have been harassed, houses raided, work places visited and arrests made without charges.
The police maintain that they are searching for suspects linked to the IAF, but activists
say they are targeting anyone that publicly identifies as an anarchist. And they say it's
getting worse by the day. For the last week I've been talking to different members of the
anarchist scene in the West Country and the impression I've got is of a community under siege.
Two years ago Jon, a Bristol-based activist with Solfed, who asked to be identified only
by his first name, became one of the first targets of this police clampdown. One morning
he arrived at his workplace to an email from his boss asking for a meeting. When he turned
up, he was told the police had visited the office with a dossier of "evidence" citing him
as a domestic extremist, and someone that "might not be suitable to work with children".
As a person whose job involves helping young people with emotional difficulties, the
suggestion was that he should be fired.
"They said I was unsuited to my job because of my politics," he told me over the phone.
"The stuff they provided as evidence was articles I'd written anonymously, on whether
prison was an effective form of rehabilitation and whether underachievement in working
class communities was down to the education system. No connection between me and any group
was alleged or mentioned. It really seemed that their main concern was that I held
anarchist views."
A year later Jon was targeted again. One afternoon he received a phone-call out of the
blue from a police officer asking about underground anarchist groups. He told the officer
he had no idea and asked how his number had been found.
"The officer told me that my partner was being stalked and had put in a number of phone
calls to the police," he said. "They did nothing but saved the number because they knew
who I was and thought it would be useful. I'd question a lot of the ways they've gone
about finding information. I think they are using what's been happening as a pretext to
attack the wider anarchist community. A lot of this feels like an opportunity to drag the
movement through the mud and see if they can push a few people out of activism."
What Jon went through seems to have become much more widespread under Operation Rhone. At
a ramshackle bookstore called Hydra in Old Market, the scene of a famous riot in the
1930s, law enforcers have been turning up at on a fortnightly basis, asking questions and
grilling staff. It's a strange situation. Volunteers at the store say they do little more
than sell lefty literature. When I visited last week, a group of old locals were sat
happily on old sofas in a dimly lit room sounding off about the 1970s oil crisis. It
didn't seem all that extreme.
One of the bookstore's volunteers, who gave his name at Mat and identified as neither an
anarchist nor an activist, told me he's been the subject of extensive police surveillance.
One day last year he received a phone call from administrators of Hydra Book's server,
notifying him that local police had been reading the content of his emails. The only
reason given, he says, is that he had ? a few years earlier ? helped set up Bristol
Indymedia, an open-source independent news website, which the IAF has, on occasion, used
to publish communiques about its attacks.
"I'm not involved in any of this," he told me, serving drinks to customers and sounding
simultaneously baffled and irate. "I make coffee and occasionally I sell the odd book.
I've got no links to international anarchist organisations and despite having no
involvement with the website any more either, the police have been reading my emails. It's
terrifying and I've spent a long time being very worried about it. I now don't put
personal thoughts in emails in case I get asked about it in an interview at a police station."
One group that has been actively chronicling the police clampdown over the last few months
is Bristol Defendant Solidarity (BDS), a defendant support group set up after the riots in
2011 to help those that had been arrested with a range of legal services. I went to meet
two of their activists ? Jim and Alan who both asked to be identified only by their first
name ? at Kebele Community Centre, a well known anarchist hub in Easton.
As well as collecting information on Operation Rhone, and talking to those that have been
arrested, Alan has himself been targeted by the police. Last July, at seven in the morning
his house was raided and a friend that was temporarily staying over arrested.
"I woke up and found my house full of police," he told me from a small library room in the
20-year-old centre. "And when I say full I mean literally ? it was hard to move around.
They took away a friend that was staying at my house and went through all the communal
areas for hours. As well as taking electronic stuff like a hard drive and laptop, they
seemed to be bagging anything that looked political. The arrested guy came back two hours
later released without charge on police bail. They had no evidence at all. The whole point
was to intimidate people and build up a sense that you are being watched the whole time."
BDS has chronicled a string of even stranger incidents. I was told about three different
people that have been arrested and accused of being the Badger, one on two separate
occasions. I heard about members of a band that Huw Norfolk was once briefly in, being
visited by the police. Even the bassist ? who wasn't in the band when Norfolk was ? has,
allegedly, been visited at his home and his work.
"The cops don't have a clue just like 99.9 percent of the anarchist movement in Bristol,"
Jim told me. "The people getting knocks on doors are all involved in public, open groups
that do protests and campaigns. They aren't the children of the night. The police just
don't understand the modus operandi of these people."
Perhaps it's understandable. Insurrectionary anarchism may have a rich history on the
continent but the IAF seem oddly out of place in a relatively docile modern Britain. For a
brief period of time in the early 1970s, the London-based Angry Brigade frightened Edward
Heath's government with a series of bomb attacks on embassies, politicians and military
barracks. But they remain the only homegrown insurrectionary group that has ever really
existed in the UK and maybe the cops just aren't prepared.
Avon and Somerset police certainly dispute the account Bristol's anarchist community have
been describing. They are yet to answer my specific questions, but in an interview with
the BBC, Chief Superintendent Julian Moss described their tactics in a more positive light.
"We have been round to places of work to discuss anarchism and to understand the community
better," he said. "I think that is legitimate. If anybody has a complaint to make, it's
important they come and talk to us and we would be happy to listen. We have given that
offer and so far nobody's taken that up."
For the anarchist movement, which has been growing in Bristol since 2005, the crackdown
won't be putting them off. Two months ago, 20 local activists visited the CID and Special
Investigations building in Bristol to protest. A few weeks earlier a number of the same
groups clubbed together to publish a statement* outlining their experiences.
"The message is we're not going to be intimidated," Jon from Solfed told me. "We're still
here for everyone to see, and we're not going to driven underground."
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-police-are-cracking-down-on-bristols-anarchists-833
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* Statement against Police Harassment
Police in Bristol appear to be stepping up their so far fruitless efforts to find
individual anarchists and those that they think are responsible for property destruction
actions over the last few years in Bristol. One year after their firearms training centre
at Portishead was burnt down, they have turned to desperate measures to try and get any
scrap of useful information.
They have made a number of arrests, detained people at airports, and raided people?s
homes. The majority of people targeted have not even been charged with a crime, and we do
not know of anyone who has been successfully prosecuted. Further, officers from CID have
recently visited people at their homes under the pretext of having ?a friendly chat?. Not
surprisingly, they have been met with a resounding wall of silence with no cups of tea
involved, as most good people understand the importance of not getting drawn into
conversations with the police. Even if any one of the people recently harassed by these
visits knew anything about these actions or the people involved, we are confident that
common sense and solidarity would prevail and the police would get the sum total of zero
information. Anything else would be working for the police.
These home visits, arrests, searches and requests to snitch are not just about information
and evidence gathering. They have as much to do with a concerted effort to intimidate and
divide us all. A big part of their plan is to scare people into inaction and to create
divisions between us. They hope to get us blaming each other for increased surveillance to
the point where someone falls for their lies and starts talking to the bad guys. These are
tactics that have been used against social movements in countless places and times.
But they won?t work here in Bristol. None of us will ever co-operate with those whose job
it is, all in the name of ?security? and ?safety?, to defend the rich and powerful while
keeping us down.
We know that we are not the only people who face repression from the police ? in no way do
we want to compare what is happening to us to the things they are doing to others, for
example their systematic use of anti-terrorism powers against people they see as Muslim.
We oppose all police brutality and harassment, whoever they do it to. We also understand
the need to stick together in the face of state control and repression. Anarchists and
others targeted by the police have a wide range of opinions and preferred tactics, but we
know who our comrades are and recognise the enemies at our front doors.
Signed:
Bristol Defendant Solidarity
Bristol Anarchist Black Cross
South Wales Anarchists
Bristol Solidarity Network
Bristol Legal Observer Network
Bristol SolFed
Kebele Social Centre
Riot Ska Records
Rising Tide
Spanner
Bristol Hunt Saboteurs
Empty Cages Collective
Bristol AFed
Bristol Animal Rights Collective
Here is some useful information on dealing with the police, both on the street and at your
front door?.
There are no friendly chats with the police! If police try to talk to you, we recommend
you refuse to answer anything ? answer ?no comment? or ?I am not obliged to answer that?
to all questions. This isn?t just about protecting others ? any other response will be
taken by them as a sign of weakness, and they may hassle you more as a result. The ONLY
time you legally have to tell them anything other than your name and address is if you are
stopped at an airport under ?Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act?. Even then, you do NOT have
to answer questions about others, and they can ONLY ask you questions related to
terrorism. If this happens to you, request a solicitor.
If police come to your door, do not let them in unless you have to. The only times they
can force entry are when they have a warrant, when someone who lives at your house has
been arrested, or in order to prevent a crime from happening. If you live in a shared
house and someone is arrested, they can ONLY search communal areas and the room of the
person arrested.
Dealing with police can be upsetting and intimidating, so it?s important that we support
each other. Counselling For Social Change may be able to help if you need to talk through
anything that?s happened www.counsellingforsocialchange.org.uk. Activist Trauma Support
has a list of resources to help understand and deal with trauma ? www.activist-trauma.net.
The most important thing is to give each other space to talk without being given advice,
and not to be left to deal with things alone.
Bristol Defendant Solidarity is a group of local people committed to putting principles of
solidarity into practice and standing alongside anyone facing trouble from the authorities
for involvement in radical politics. Anyone approached and harassed by the police to give
information about people involved in struggle, here in Bristol or elsewhere, can contact
BDS for support. We are also compiling a list of arrests, home visits and interviews at
airports so far to get a clear picture of their lines of questioning, to track their
operations and to use in any future court cases that people may want to bring against them.
Contact:
bristoldefendantsolidarity@riseup.net
07746741104
We have compiled a more extensive guide to police powers and your rights if they target
you, which you can read here: bristolabc.wordpress.com/defendant-solidarity/police-harassment
https://bristolabc.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/statement-against-police-harassment/
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» Britain, Alt. Media - Bristol's Anarchists Are Being Caught Up in a Police Crack Down by Philip Kleinfeld