Are you old enough to remember when it was hippies........................hippies everywhere?

Remember those cops dressed as clowns who were kicking about a few years ago? Well it turns out apparently that one of them was….a cop! More details emerge every day in relation to “Lynn Watson,” an undercover cop who infiltrated the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army. It comes hot on the heels of the tale of Mark “Stone” Kennedy, another state plant paid to spy on activists.

Let’s be clear. SSY has no gripe with people who want to dress stupidly and/or take direct action against capitalism - particularly given our own penchant for such things. The Clowns occasionally managed to use their incredible irksome behaviour to outsmart the cops and should be admired for that. We did however know that there would be coppers in their midst. No doubt they did too – given that many of them are seasoned activists. There have been a multitude of stories in the press but nothing we don’t all know anyway. But its worth fleshing out some of what has been revealed for the hell of it.

Most of it centres around the actions of Mark “Stone” Kennedy. Mark spent 7 years undercover, spying on environmental, anarchist and left-wing activists. He recorded their meetings using a modified watch containing a micro-chip which were then downloaded onto Inspector Gadgies PCs. Based on information obtained by Kennedy, 114 people were arrested and many put on trial, having done nothing other than talk about occupying the Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station. 20 were convicted of various nonsensical charges while the trial of 6 others descended into farce. The trial collapsed because the police withheld tapes that would have cleared the activists and the role of Kennedy was also crucial. It was claimed that Kennedy was prepared to give evidence in favour of the activists thus exposing the state plot to plot against the state. The collapse of the trial has led to no less than 3 totally “independent inquiries” by the Association of Cunto Polis Oligarchs (ACPO), the Independent Piggy Confectionary Convention (IPCC) and Serious & Organised Clown Army (SOCA). No doubt the police will decide that the police are bad and need to be abolished. We won’t hold our breathe.

Kennedy’s revelations in the press since being exposed have including the fact that he was basically paid by taxpayers to have sex with activists – a tactic apparently sanctioned as an acceptable form of “intelligence gathering” by his seniors. This week there was a demonstration in support of women from Reclaim the Streets , a group of London activists, among others who were conned into having sex with cops they thought were friends. The former member of the Special Demonstration Squad stated this week that promiscuity helped them to “blend in” because – you guessed it – we’re all fucking. I’d like to point out before we move on that tricking people into fucking you is not OK and in my insanely monogamous experience crazy lefties are no more or less likely to fuck around than anyone else. Obvious exception aside.

Kennedy confirmed this week that he was far from alone and that there were a network of undercover officers paid for with our dosh to check what we are doing. And more importantly, to first provoke and then fuck up any opposition to the political and economic elite. “Lynn Watson” was an activist outed by Mark Kennedy as a spy. She kicked about the Leeds area spying for a bit. She was involved in the Camp for Climate Action as late as 2008 having previously been involved in Aldermaston Women’s Peace Camp not to mention an being an Action Medic and of course, a clown. Various tit-bits from her bank details to a video of her in Clown make-up dicking around are coming out every day. But again, nothing we wouldn’t have guessed. She basically came in, made a mess and left like thousands before her.

Every state monitors and disrupts its enemies. That is in fact the PURPOSE of a state. The Black Panthers were destroyed by the CIA flooding the group with drugs, cops and paranoia. The Democratic Socialist Party in Australia counts among its members a former informant who eventually realised that the people she was spying on made more sense than they people she was spying for (I think it was a woman but my googling fails me). The façade of democracy is destroyed when the state acts to disrupt the forces who fight for a more democratic future. I can only imagine the epic boredom state plants must endure to get sketchy details of the half baked plans made by the left. We must avoid the temptation of spending all day asking where the spy is. In the end crippling paranoia is just as dangerous as the actions of the state. But it confirms that the state does watch us and maybe we should be rather more careful at times rather than blabbering our plans all over facebook or even, quite frankly via phone or email. On a positive note it makes you think that maybe, just maybe we are a threat to those we seek to overthrow. We all know they are watching…except them

In a hilarious twist, the UK’s most senior public order police officer, Bob Broadhurst, told Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee in 2009 in relation to the G20 protest in London that:

“The only officers we deploy for intelligence purposes at public order are forward intelligence team officers who are wearing full police uniforms with a yellow jacket with blue shoulders. There were no plain-clothes officers deployed at all.”

This week he scurried back to apologise to MPs for misleading them insisting he…didn’t know. I knew there were undercover cops in London at the G20 and I was sitting behind my desk in Glasgow refreshing the BBC News page at work. The claim that the polis didn’t know where the bacon was is laughable.

In short, the entire saga brings new (although hardly shocking) light on the amount of money and time being spent monitoring what we do. Don’t be paranoid – Don’t be disheartened. I distinctly remember my last encounter with the Clown Army, at Gleneagles at the G8 when they shouting “booo…miserable socialists” at us as they passed by. An older man behind me mumbled “we’re only miserable coz we’re surrounded by cops.” Just remember there are infinitely more clowns in the cops than cops in the Clowns.

Naismith stoops to head home and complete a great move

3-2. Another game, another glorious failure for Scotland’s national football team. Losing bravely seems to be what we do best. Well, some of the time at least. The less said about the recent dismal defeat in Prague, the better.

Of course there is no shame in losing by such a narrow margin to the reigning European and World champions. Before the match, Scotland manager Craig Levein had described this Spanish side as “the toughest opponents we’ve ever faced” in Scotland’s history. It would be silly of me to mention the much tougher historical battles and wars fought against English invaders, because he was obviously just talking about football.

No-one apart from the most deluded of optimists could really have expected much more from the game. At kick-off, I had decided I was going to remain emotionally detached and just try to enjoy watching masters such as David Villa and Andrés Iniesta at work. You can compare and contrast my mood then compared with the moment when Gerard Piqué put through his own net to level the scores at 2-2. I was absolutely elated. It’s a real shame that we were unable to hold out for a draw, but the performance will be more important than the result, by restoring some belief and hopefully encouraging Levein to confine his 4-6-0 formation to the dustbin of history.

Prior to the match, I joined with several other members of the Basque Solidarity Campaign to help raise awareness of the dark side of the Spanish state. We also had the objective of building support for the Basque independence movement in general and the plight of political prisoners in particular. We were able to hand out hundreds of leaflets and engage with many members of the public. Hopefully this activity will be the launchpad for a continuous program of solidarity actions throughout the year.

This is really important because, at a time when sporting triumphs have brought Spain international attention, many people in Europe are seemingly unaware of the situation in Euskal Herria (the Basque-language name for their 7-province homeland). While there has been a concerted effort to promote the concept of a New Spain – where all the constituent regions and nations are able to celebrate their identity and enjoy equality under the rojigualda – the Francoist policies of internment, torture and extraordinary rendition remain in place.

Scottish-Basque solidarity

Despite ETA’s ceasefire announcement, which declared an end to armed struggle and commitment to peaceful methods (confirming in words what has been happening in practice for a good while now), the Spanish PSOE government continues to use a false terrorist threat as an excuse for arresting pro-independence activists, often detaining them in the south of Spain or even North Africa. Their ‘crime’ is to campaign for an independent socialist republic. The punishment is often long periods in jail, under conditions which have changed little since Spain’s transition from fascism to democracy.

Sporting events can sometimes be difficult places to raise awareness of international problems. A lot of fans don’t want to be distracted from simply supporting their team and enjoying the occasion with friends and family. Despite this, we received some really positive responses. Many people seemed supportive or interested. When I said “stop Spanish oppression against the Basques”, there was a lot of “quite right” and “aye mate, definitely”. One guy, sticking his thumb up, shouted back at me “…and the Catalans!” There was a crowd of young Celtic fans hanging around the ground (I suspect they were looking for a way to sneak in!) who all happily took leaflets from us and seemed to have some prior knowledge of the Basque liberation struggle.

However, to leave it there would not tell the full story. Apart from the standard number of people who aren’t interested in any politics, there seemed to be a significant amount of people who just did not know what we were referring to. I think some people deemed us misguided for printing pictures of Spanish police wielding huge coshes, masked up in balaclavas. After all, surely democratic EU-member states don’t do that kind of thing. But this one does. “The Basques?” some asked, apparently genuinely not knowing that these people even existed.

Freedom for the Basque people!

For this, I do not blame the fans. The Spanish state propaganda machine has been at pains to suppress information getting out about their repressive practices, and to stop people from knowing about the mass struggle for an independent Basque homeland. They have cynically taken advantage of the post-9/11 ‘War On Terror’ to ratchet up repression against the pro-independence Left. For such practices, they have even been critcised by Amnesty International, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at the media in Spain or allied states such as France (which currently controls 3 of the Basque provinces) and Britain. With our media collaborating in covering-up the crimes of the Spanish state, it becomes all the more important for those of us in Scotland who are for human rights, peace, independence and socialism to break the media embargo and let people know what’s going on.

Watch this space for further updates on what’s happening over there and what we’re doing over here. Meanwhile, I hope we can build on our recent success in establishing deeper links between the movements for self-determination and socialism in Euskal Herria and Scotland. Let’s not be divided just because it was a Basque striker who killed our hopes last night!