In April last year, 114 activists were attacked by English police at the local school in Ratcliffe-on-Soar as they were preparing to disturb the local power plant. Twenty were sued for unauthorized access to the public headquarters; six have since been in prison on suspicion of attempting to break up the coal plant... until it was shown fifteen days ago that an infiltrator police officer was involved. The defense argued that the police had been trying to force the wrongful act to take place.

Mark Kennedy’s name will be cursed by activists involved in environmental and ecological conflicts. Those who want to know about the conflicts in the rich West, on the other hand, will find in the story of the corrupt pseudo-environmentalist the extremes of threads necessary to complete the analyses.

The Daily Telegraph summarized the news as follows: “The exposure of the eco-bug Mark Kennedy has exposed the lack of control of the infiltrators and raised suspicions among activists.”

When Kennedy was 30 years old and working in the capital’s police force, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) had an eye on him for undercover work. It is the NPOIU ei who is working to persecute “green activists” within the UK’s secret police. Kennedy left long chimes, was given a new surname Stone, made preparations for the infiltration and appeared in 2003 at a camp in the Yorkshire region, eager to get involved in the action.

The media has created frank literature at the expense of pajaro. That he was always ready to work, that he behaved more courageously than anyone else, that he was very generous with his money, that he moved in a big van that would be great for this kind of work... and that if all this was not enough, he was a beautiful man. In short, that he was an alpha male: a huge success with women.

He is said to have taken part in many British actions, including those organised at Gleneagles in 2005 on the occasion of the G8 meeting. He had also toured Europe, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Holland, Spain... The police chiefs had a bargain with this type of agent, an extraordinary source of information.

It happened in April 2009 in Rattcliffe-on-Soura that we mentioned, that a certain number of militants were abolished when they were going to sabotage a power station. One of those who escaped was Kennedy, who later paid burgeoning comrades a beer in a nearby pub. Kennedy soon quit his job as a police officer, not as a spy, but as a freelance whistleblower. The Daily Mail has published E.ON that it was paid for by the multinational energy company.

He fell in October when, legally speaking, he left his real passport on the document and saw the bride who was with him at the time. It is said that he bottomed out, confessed to what he had done and reported more copes disguised among environmentalists. As a penance, he offered to be a witness in favor of previously sold members.

Then he hid from England. When he's older, he's in the United States.

Paranoia and manipulation

The
activist Emily Apple, who knew the police infiltrator up close, explains her impatience in a letter to The Guardian: “We know that our movements are punctured over and over again; it’s not a question of whether it happens, it’s a question of who the whistleblower is.” In Apple’s
opinion, these types of bugs seek not only to inform police chiefs, but also to destabilize the movement. First, because paranoia by leaks causes great damage to the groups. But they can also influence their strategy and tactics.
Emily Apple has mentioned a case. A couple of years ago in the city of Bradford, direct action teams were arguing about what to do to ruin the meeting organized by the far-right English Defence League. Many militants wanted to show strength in the center of the city, but Kennedy proposed more blatant illegal actions, car wrecking. “Kennedy found a great way to boldly expose him in relation to the ratio, while retaining people away from the center.” Just what the police seemed to want.

Emily Apple encourages the website with others www.fitwatch.org, offering tips and information to entrepreneurs on police tactics and strategies. The name of another infiltrator, Lynn Watson, has just been revealed in Fitwatch, telling her story. “If the militants continue to strengthen themselves in the street, the police will want to puncture and confuse the most prominent groups, in one way or another. However, the Kennedy affair has shown that the solidarity network of activists is solid. We have been able to take care of those who have suffered damage and help them: if we hold on to it, we will remain strong.”

There's more to the disguised police lesson. Walter Oppenheimer, correspondent of El País de Madrid in London, emphasizes that the group to which Mark Kennedy passed the information, which tracks possible extremists, is the Association of Chiefs Police Officers (ACPO). “Despite its appearances, ACPO is a private organization made up of police officers from England, Wales and Northern Ireland, so it is not affected by the law that protects freedom of information and has no obligation to release internal documents.” In other words, like the army in the world, police work has been unconsciously privatized to the public.

In one of the blogs of the left-wing magazine
Red Pepper, activist Tilly Gifford has written extensively about the news. He is one of the promoters of the Plane Stupid movement, which seeks to combat the aviation industry and the expansion of airports.

Gifford denounces that recently on the BBC a police chief has confessed that in the beautiful tranquility they are infiltrated by environmental action groups, not only police, but also from private security companies. In fact, in addition to extracting information, to ruin these groups.

To control
Plane Stupid more closely, Gifford himself was approached by two men last March when they were trying to close Aberdeen Airport by offering him money. Realizing the trick, Gifford and the other members managed to film the two guys and spread their footage, but no one ever told them for whom they were looking for information.

“We need a full investigation, not by politicians or police officers, but conducted in front of a judge. Let’s take a look at the links between police and big financial interests: the environmental consequences of the businesses we attack are as dire as the piles of money they make with them.”