Re: 'Hairies'

["Richard Fidler" <rfidler@xxxxxxxxxx>]

>> Inside job

They were the 'hairies' - undercover cops who created false identities
to infiltrate radical protest groups during the 60s, 70s and 80s. Until
now their existence has been secret. Now for the first time, they are
talking. Peter Taylor reports.

Wednesday October 23, 2002

The Guardian <<


What a waste of public funds that was. The "Trotskyite" groups, and most of
the other groups on the far left, were all aware of the need not to
compromise their legal status unnecessarily. Which is why none of the
"hairies" can point to any illegal action - actual or potential - by any of
these groups.

Tariq Ali's comment is spot on: "The state is defending itself against its
own democratic citizenry. In order to do so, it has to disregard some of the
democratic values it believes in."

And disregard its own legality, in many instances. These cops were not just
observers or harmless rank and file militants; they were agents provocateurs
in many instances. Too bad the Guardian article doesn't make an attempt to
describe some of these police undercover activities.

The most sinister aspect of these activities (and they are common in all
"democratic" countries) is that they tend to focus on militants who for one
reason or another are particularly vulnerable to police and state
harassment, such as immigrants, gays, people with difficult family
situations as a result of credit problems, arrest for political causes, etc.
One of the major activities of undercover cops is to find these people,
intimidate them and attempt to "turn" them through blackmail.

There is of course an extensive literature on police tactics in the
revolutionary movement. When the Bolsheviks came to power, literally
millions of Okhrana police "intelligence" files fell into their hands.
Victor Serge wrote a fascinating pamphlet in 1921 based on these materials,
"Ce que tout révolutionnaire doit savoir de la répression" (reissued by
Maspero, 1970) - What every revolutionary should know about repression (I
think it may be in English as well). It was a handbook for militants on how
the police operate and how they can be countered. Serge makes the point,
inter alia, that "the more proletarian the revolutionary movement, the more
clearly, energetically communist, the less dangerous will be the agents
provocateurs.... Nothing is more contrary to adventurism... than the broad,
serious, profound, methodical action of a great Marxist revolutionary party,
even an illegal one."

He cites the notorious case of Malinovsky, a member of the Bolshevik Central
Committee, Bolshevik deputy in the Duma and head of its deputation in 1913.
He was an Okhrana agent commencing in 1907, turned by the police as a result
of three convictions for theft when a teen-ager. In the Duma, Malinovsky
defended the Bolshevik positions; some of his speeches were written for him
by Lenin. When his police record became known, Lenin wryly remarked that the
movement had probably got more out of him than the police did.

Ironically, Malinovsky remained sympathetic to the revolution. After October
1917, he returned from exile and asked: "Shoot me." The Soviet government
obliged.

Richard Fidler



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