Netpol secures funds until 2018 to campaign to change anti-fracking protest policing
Protesters outside the Oil and Gas Summit in Manchester in July 2016. PHOTO: Netpol
Netpol receives new two-year funding from October 2016
We are delighted to announce that Netpol has secured additional funding from the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd to address the pressing need to change the way the police continue to respond to anti-fracking protests.
From October 2016, our ‘Protecting the Anti-Fracking Protectors’ campaign will seek:
- a political consensus locally and nationally that policing operations at future protests are genuinely less aggressive in their size and tactics and more transparent in their dealings with industry and the media.
- Lobby Police & Crime Commissioners to publish their expectations of policing strategies towards anti-fracking protests and to effectively scrutinise the human rights compliance of policing operations in their areas.
- an end to intensive surveillance and intelligence-gathering against anti-fracking protesters.
- greater awareness among first time anti-fracking campaigners about their fundamental legal rights,
Alongside our lobbying work, we intend to develop new tools to illustrate how campaigners can most effectively assert their rights to assembly and freedom of expression. We are also setting up a ‘whistle-blowing’ website offering individual campaigners who feel they are unfairly targeted the reassurance they can share information with us securely (including, for example, on inappropriate referrals to the government’s ‘Prevent’ anti-radicalisation programme or evidence of the unfair labelling of activists as ‘extremists’).
Since we began working with the anti-fracking movement in 2014, Netpol has uncovered significant evidence of close ties between police forces and the onshore oil and gas industry and shown how public order training for senior police officers is focused specifically on anti-fracking protest, which undermine attempts by police to portray themselves as ‘neutral’.
Netpol’s Activist Legal Action Fund “crucial” to UKOG legal challenge
PHOTO: Netpol
A sweeping injunction sought by shale oil and gas company UKOG against campaigners in south-east England looks like it has run into difficulties since it was challenged in court in March
The draft orders, originally made against “persons unknown”, attempted to prohibit a wide range of actions, including “combining together using lawful means” if that was intended to interfere with the company’s “economic interests”. The threat of expensive legal action against local campaigners if they breached such a sweeping order is a potentially significant threat to their rights to oppose and protest against the company’s plans.
A preliminary hearing on 19 March at the High Court in London was adjourned for six weeks, however, after five campaigners came forward to challenge the injunction. This was possible because initial advice from the solicitors’ firm Bhatt Murphy and Stephanie Harrison QC from Garden Court Chambers was paid for by Netpol’s Activist Legal Action Fund. Read more
WATCH: Alex S Vitale on “The End of Policing”
A discussion on “The End of Policing” in London, March 2018
Alex Vitale, Professor of Sociology and coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College in New York, was in London on 15 March to talk about his book “The End of Policing” with the Executive Director of INQUEST, Deborah Coles, at a sold-out event organised by Netpol and CCJS.
As space was limited and so many people were, therefore, unable to attend, the discussion was filmed (by Gathering Place Films) and is now available online.
This book aims to spark a public debate on the origins and history of modern policing that have shaped it into a tool of coercive social control. Drawing on research from around the world and covering the increasingly broad areas of social issues that have become “law enforcement issues”, it sets out to demonstrate now policing has come to exacerbate the very problems it is supposed to solve.
It shows how the expansion of police authority – and the demand for more and more police officers – is inconsistent with community empowerment, social justice, or even crime reduction.
Netpol reviewed Alex’s book in September 2107 – you can read what we thought of it here.
Victory for campaigners as police chiefs concede on anti-fracking protest consultation
PHOTO: Netpol
In an important win for anti-fracking campaigners, the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) has backed down and agreed to a public consultation on changes to its guidance on the policing of anti-fracking protests.
Netpol has monitored these protests since 2014 and in our most recent report, ‘Protecting the Planet is Not a Crime’, we documented numerous concerns about the way the police have responded to opposition to fracking at sites around England. Testimony from campaigners included evidence of police officers pushing people into hedges and even knocking them unconscious, violently dragging older people across the road and shoving others into speeding traffic.
Last Friday, Netpol delivered a petition signed by over 1200 people from around the country, which called on police chiefs to listen to and meaningfully consult with the anti-fracking movement on the way future protests are policed.
In an accompanying email to the NPCC, which represents the UK’s senior police officers, Netpol emphasised that at the very least, any meaningful consultation process required a clear remit, questions publicised on the NPCC website, a reasonable deadline and a single point of contact for submissions.
Within a matter of hours, in a significant retreat from their previous position, the NPCC’s Lead on Shale Gas and Oil Exploration, Lancashire Assistant Chief Constable Terry Woods, told Netpol that “having had time to reflect”, he had decided to undertake wider public consultation. Read more
One week to go to demand police chiefs listen to anti-fracking protesters
One week to go – add your name by 16 March
There is just one week left to join hundreds of people in a call for police chiefs to listen to and meaningfully consult with anti-fracking campaigners on the way protests are policed in the future.
Our petition launched last week has already gained over 800 signatures from the anti-fracking movement. We plan to deliver it to the National Police Chiefs Council, the body representing the UK’s senior police officers, next Friday (16 March).
Please add your name – and share as widely as possible.
Let’s consign the police’s “Domestic Extremist” label to history
The label “domestic extremist” exists to justify intrusive police surveillance on political campaigners
The glacially paced Undercover Policing Inquiry, set up in 2015 and still wading through demands by former police officers for anonymity, recently released a limited number of new cover names of members of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) who spied on campaigners during the late 1960s and the 1970s.
Many ex-SDS officers are now deceased, whilst few of the groups they targeted in this period and who are linked to the latest batch of cover names have existed for decades.
Although Mark Kennedy, the undercover officer whose exposure triggered the public inquiry, was active as recently as 2010, the continuous obstruction by the Metropolitan Police and a desire by the inquiry to obtain evidence before more elderly former officers die too has undoubtedly had an impact on public perceptions of this long-running scandal.
It has helped create the impression that political policing, surveillance operations and the disruption of campaigns were unfortunate methods from some distant past, the world of TV series like ‘Life on Mars’ when the police were notorious for corruption, fitting up suspects and endemic racism
We know, however, that police intelligence-gathering on the activities of protest movements in the UK continues to this day. We know too that he label of “domestic extremist” remains a critical justification for this surveillance, even though a credible definition robust enough to withstand legal scrutiny has proven elusive.
This is why, on Monday 5 February, we are marking the fifth annual “Domestic Extremist Awareness Day” with a call for a complete end to the application of this meaningless but sinister label against all legitimate political dissent.
In previous years, we demanded the abolition of the secretive national unit responsible for mass surveillance on political campaigns. Its existence has proven an increasing embarrassment to the Metropolitan Police and it was eventually consigned to history, although its functions were largely absorbed into the police’s national counter-terrorism structures.
The smearing of individuals and campaigns has, however, endured unabated: a regular feature of Prevent ‘counter-radicalisation’ workshops where causes that have no association with terrorism are portrayed in the most negative light.
The revelations that led to the Undercover Policing Inquiry demonstrated how unaccountable political policing has a tendency to elevate the hunt for so-called ‘extremists’ to the point of obsession.
Netpol argues that the police have no business conducting surveillance based solely on people’s political beliefs – and as a first step, we must consign “domestic extremism”, a term that has absolutely no legal basis, to history too.
Take Action
Taking to the streets and expressing our dissent is a right we can take enormous pride in exercising. On Monday 5 February, we are therefore holding a pre-work protest outside the Metropolitan Police’s new headquarters on Victoria Embankment between 8am and 9am. It is close to Westminster tube station (see map).
We are then heading to the Royal Courts of Justice for the latest hearing of the he Undercover Policing Inquiry, starting at 10am.
Why not come and join us? For further details, see this Facebook event
If you cannot make it, we are asking campaigners to share photos of their protests, actions and assemblies on social media – making it clear the police must stop spying on us – with the hashtag #DomesticExtremist.
What Netpol’s new report says about the policing of anti-fracking protests in 2017
PHOTO: Netpol
‘Protecting the Planet is Not a Crime’ – Netpol’s new report on the policing of anti-fracking protests during 2017 – was launched on Monday outside the gates of Cuadrilla’s site on Preston New Road in Lancashire.
The launch highlighted one conclusion of our report – the overwhelming case for an external review of the way the policing operation in Lancashire has been conducted. It received considerable media coverage in the north west including BBC and ITV, That’s Lancashire TV, the Blackpool Gazette, Rock FM News and more widely on LBC, Heart FM and in the Morning Star, Drill or Drop, Left Foot Forward, Evolve Politics, DeSmogUK and the Salford Star.
Keith Taylor MEP speaking at the launch of Netpol’s report.
Green MEP Keith Taylor, who wrote a foreword to the report and spoke at the launch, also praised it in a piece for Politics UK. Most importantly for Netpol, it was been well received by campaigners on the ground in Lancashire.
Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron speaking on Monday. PHOTO: Netpol
Keith Taylor MEP with campaigners at Maple Farm
After the media had left the launch on Monday, Lancashire Police managed to reinforce one of the points in our report about disproportionate levels of policing at Preston New Road.
As if to reinforce one of the points in our report about disproportionate policing at Preston New Road in Lancashire, some photos from after the media had left our launch yesterday pic.twitter.com/E5iOALd72B
— Netpol (@policemonitor) November 21, 2017
The full report is available to download here [
,8 Mb].
However, the following is taken from the report and sets out in more detail the conclusions it reaches. Read more
“Something has to change” – new Netpol report calls for immediate review of policing of fracking protests
PHOTO: Netpol
New report calls for “comprehensive review of national policy” on the policing of opposition to the onshore oil and gas industry
Outside shale gas company Cuadrilla’s site on Preston New Road near Blackpool, Netpol is today launching its new report, ‘Protecting the Planet is Not a Crime’, which documents our many concerns about the way the police have responded to opposition to fracking at sites around England.
Much of the report focuses on protests in Lancashire, where there have been over 300 arrests since January. Throughout 2017, Netpol has heard testimony from campaigners and seen evidence of police officers pushing people into hedges and even knocking them unconscious, violently dragging older people across the road and shoving others into speeding traffic.
We had also heard about the targeting of disabled protesters (including repeatedly tipping a wheelchair user from his chair) and officers using painful pressure point restraint techniques. Campaigners have repeatedly accused Lancashire police of ignoring violent and unlawful actions by private security employed by Cuadrilla.
However, during a visit last week to Kirby Misperton in north Yorkshire, where protests only began on 19 September, Netpol spoke to campaigners who are already echoing many of the same complaints made by their counterparts in Lancashire. Read more
New report calls for independent review of the policing of Lancashire anti-fracking protests
PRESS RELEASE
“A long-term legacy of resentment and distrust” – new report calls for an independent review of the policing of Lancashire anti-fracking protests
On Monday 20 November, the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) is launching its latest report on the policing of anti-fracking protests, which focuses in large part on events in Lancashire.
The launch will take place at the site of months of continued opposition to the shale gas company Cuadrilla at Preston New Road near Blackpool. Read more
Review: The End of Policing
‘The End of Policing’ by Alex S Vitale, published by Verso, October 2017
During the 2017 UK general election, the Police Federation ran an extremely successful campaign, eventually taken up for different motivations by both the Labour Party’s left-wing leadership and the right-wing press, arguing a direct link between falling police numbers and rising levels of crime.
Since then, only Rebecca Roberts from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) has been able to offer any challenge to this idea within the mainstream media. Police numbers have undoubtedly reduced since 2010 but still remain at historically high levels after years of growth. Nevertheless, this explanation for an increase in some types of crime has become an accepted truth: questioning the need for more police officers is seen as straying far outside the Overton window of political acceptability.
‘The End of Policing’, a new book by Brooklyn associate professor Alex S Vitale, goes much further, however, by posing questions that seem almost unthinkable in the US (its main focus) or here in the UK.
What if we really need significantly fewer police officers and more attention to alternatives that are less coercive? What if the police are wholly unsuited to solving many of the problems the state asks them to deal with? Read more
Netpol launches legal fund to support anti-fracking groups
Substantial donation kick-starts new project providing financial support for resisting civil legal threats to anti-fracking groups.
A new civil legal action fund supporting anti-fracking groups launches today, as a number of campaigners opposed an interim injunction obtained by the shale gas company INEOS at a hearing this morning at the high court in London.
Aggressive legal tactics by the company have raised widespread concerns about what effect the court order it was granted at the end of July may have, if left unchallenged, on freedom of assembly and the right to protest.
This case is unusual as previous injunctions involving fracking sites have been on a far smaller scale and have normally focused on a single location. The INEOS injunction covers a wide area of the country and seeks to prevent a broad range of protest activities. including “slow-walking” of deliveries to its sites.
Most civil cases are less dramatic. This does not mean, however, that the sudden receipt of legal threats or a ‘service of order’ notice in any circumstance, particularly when oil and gas company lawyers attempt to send them via Facebook or Twitter, will not cause considerable alarm. This is invariably exacerbated by the obstacles to seeking expert legal advice. Read more