(April 23, 2014)
Modern political policing began in Britain in the 1880s, with the establishment of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch, the cocoon from which sprung the undercover policing operations decades later. The Branch originally aimed to combat Irish Fenians — armed fighters seeking independence from Britain — but soon expanded to keep tabs on foreign anarchists, suffragettes, and anticolonial Indians.
At the end of the 1800s, an undercover Branch officer infiltrated the Legitimation League — which campaigned to de-stigmatize bastard children — and orchestrated the League’s collapse. This operation set the tone for what was to come: intense, deeply personal infiltration of any political group that challenged the status quo.
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From British Fascisti to the English Defence League, the UK’s security services have routinely refused to consider far-right groups subversive. Indeed, there is evidence, both here, in Europe, and across the Atlantic, of longstanding collaboration between elements of the security services and the far right.