The governments hand in social unrest

The 1960's saw a step change in social movements in opposition to the controlling forces that had been prevalent in the preceding decades. The austerity of the post war years, and the civic spirit that had been a feature of the War were behind us and there was an air of ambition and growth. Alongside this was a rise in peoples awareness of inequality and social issues particularly around race, gender and sexuality. At the same time there were increasing issues around US and UK foreign policy over the wars in Vietnam and Korea, the increasing tension over the Cold War and fears over Cuba and South America. There were protests across University campuses and amongst trade unions, all aimed at changing the policies of the political elites. This created an issue for politicians, who were under threat and pressure from a new source of power. How governments reacted to this threat is still a hidden issue today, never fully exposed, but long suspected.

The answer was to turn the problem over to the intelligence community, the CIA in the US and MI6 in the UK. These organisations set about to gather intelligence on the social movements in two ways, firstly by utilising paid informants within the movements often gained by making arrests for minor offences and thereby gaining blackmail positions, and secondly by infiltrating agents into the movements in order ostensibly to monitor activity, but there is some evidence that this was not all that they did. It became clear fairly quickly that simply monitoring groups would not be enough. It had already been established that in order to maintain cover, embedded agents would have to engage in any illegal activities of the movement to maintain cover. The decision was taken that these cover operatives would actively steer actions of the groups that they were hidden within, essentially acting as agent provocateurs, stirring activity and creating the very tension that they were supposed to be monitoring.

These processes led to the breakup of several anti-establishment movements and led to the ability of governments to legislate further against freedoms. The intelligence agents have been responsible for criminal activities up to and including inciting and organising rioting and looting, and the consequences are severe. What is interesting is that this is still an ongoing situation, particularly within local environmental groups, and protest groups against roads and airport expansion. Recently in the UK a small local protest group against a new runway for Heathrow airport was infiltrated in this way, but the plan backfired as the group was entirely anti-lawbreaking and when pushed by the infiltrator, rather than act illegally, they expelled the agent, still unaware that that was what she was. It seems that no group, no matter how peaceful, no matter how benign or how valid their point, the government will brook no dissent. Control must be absolute and we must all know our place within the corporate dominated political world that we are forced to occupy.