Index | Homepage | Good Links | Bad Links
Gandalf | CIA | BBC | Echelon | Censorship | Vetting | Freemasons | NewLabour | Advertising
Towards the end of 1997 three men were imprisoned in the UK for publishing upbeat reports about civil disobedience. They accurately reported the fact that many people get a feeling of empowerment, elation and justice from taking direct action to stop the cruelty to animals condoned by an anti-democratic state.
Whilst one may not agree with the views or methods of the jailed individuals their right to express their opinion is clear and must be upheld. It was the publishing of their opinions and resulting 'incitement' to cause criminal damage that they were convicted on. Does that mean writers must purge phrases like 'spray your name on the wall' from their mind?
One of the most contentious points around is whether damage to property is justifiable, the results of this trial suggest that violence against property is not just unjustifiable but cannot be argued for, in fact 'the jury' is still out on that one.
We cannot, as with the situation in Northern Ireland, have a real and open public discussion without all views being aired. If, as the police seem to think, these individuals have little public support then the opinions they have expressed in the various publications will only serve to discredit them.
How desperate is the old boy network to stifle public information and public debate?
The writers now in jail were reporting an unpalatable truth: The British people have insisted that animals are protected from depraved, cowardly, individuals who describe cruelty as a 'pleasurable sport' or an 'honest living'. When the democratic process is subverted by parliament the people of Britain will administer justice.
@-----Tony Gosling
Oneworld Green Anarchist Animal Liberation Front article
We are at a night of the Liberation tour, a sixteen-date national campaign for the release of the GAndALF three. Robin Webb, a silver-haired softly-spoken gent and animal rights activist, delivers the big joke of a black-humoured evening. Namely, the ludicrous criminal charge he and co-defendent Paul Rogers still face, and on which three men - contributors to the radical journal Green Anarchist - were thrown in jail.
First, they were found guilty of "conspiring to incite criminal damage". It's worth taking a pause here as we drift from reality, from the actual incident of, say, smashing a window. The GAndALF three are journalists reporting, say, the smashed window. The logic assumes that by writing about the smashed window, they are inciting more window-smashing. And that they are conspiring with others to do so, although the three maintain they didn't even know each other. What's more, the charge is for "unspecified criminal damage". There is no one smashed window, one crime. The people who have been incited are unnamed, they are "persons unkown". And the date of the incited crime? Well, they've narrowed that down to "unspecified dates" between 1991 and 1996. Ha, ha, ha. Comedian Mark Thomas joked that it was like blaming Martin Bell for the war in Bosnia.
But the biggest joke of all is that, despite the huge cost and resources, no-one is in jail. The GAndALF three, having served four and a half months of their sentence, were freed on bail in a shock move on March 27th. Steve Booth, 38, Noel Molland and Saxon Wood, both 24, walked out of their cells within hours of High Court Appeal Judge, Mr Justice Smedley, signing papers for their immediate release, effectively undermining the original ruling.
It was a highly unusual legal move, drawing comparisons with the Bridgewater Four or the Birmingham Six. On release Steve Booth said: "The guard said he'd never heard of this happening before. We'd heard a rumour that the reason we'd been let out was that Amnesty in the US were about to list us as political prisoners."
Other heavy-weight organisations began to back their cause. This clear case of denial of free speech was not lost on Index on Censorship, more used to reporting brutal censorship in far off regimes, which reprints samples of the 'offending' words on its website. The National Union of Journalists became involved, and Liberty called for the catch-all "conspiracy" laws to be abolished. Saxon Wood reckons "it had become too much of a hot potato". The release has led to the hope that their convictions may be quashed, but that will have to wait for the appeal and even a possible retrial.
The drive behind Operation Washington, launched by Hampshire Police, was to entrap the Animal Liberation Front press officer Robin Webb. The farce began when Robin Webb forwarded a press release he had been sent, to a regional paper reporting the deliberate contamination of eggs in Tescos. During 1995/96 alone there were 55 separate police raids.
When the trial eventually began on August 26th 1997 there were six defendants, including Simon Russell, editor of the ALF Supporters Group newsletter, who was eventually found not guilty. Paul Rogers was severed from proceedings when his barrister resigned rather than call a secret state witness, and the case against Robin Webb collapsed. That left the GAndALF three to face Judge Selwood, an ex-army Major General who described Green Anarchist as "the most contemptuous document I have ever seen in my entire career".
The desperation to get a conviction led to extreme measures, and questionable use of public resources. Sgt Gunner, one of the Operation Washington team, was sent on a week-long fact-finding trip to Italy because he believed that someone in Italy had received a letter from a defendant that was relevant to the investigation. Then one of the defendants was accused of the 'crime' of putting a report about the Justice Department (an animal rights group) on the internet. In fact, it was North American ALF SG co-ordinator Darren Thurston, and the court in Portsmouth agreed to fly him in from Vancouver, Canada. However, on arrival at Heathrow, he was immediately deported as an 'undesirable alien' on advice from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The awareness of the vastly under-reported case came originally from a hundred-strong pledge of solidarity from the first Alternative Media Gathering in Oxford during the three-month hearings.
Paul Rogers explained that the tactic of isolating Green Anarchist from the movement, and therefore the general public, back-fired at this point. Instead of intimidating the alternative press into silence, it galvanised them into a stronger defiant focus. The pledge stated that: "Environmental degradation, animal cruelty, economic injustice and poverty, attacks on personal freedoms, wars, the arms trade, nuclear weapons - these, among many others, are the real inciting factors, not the reporting of direct action protests. The best way to fight for our freedoms is to exercise them." Yet, as Judith Vidal Hall, deputy editor of Index On Censorship, pointed out: "Their imprisonment was disgraceful and I find it very curious that it passes without comment from the mainstream media."
Neither professional journalists organisations, nor the majority of organisations dedicated to free expression and the defence of civil liberties have chosen to take up the case ... YOU CAN. Cut and paste these back issues onto your own webspace and pass the message on.
We don't want Justice, we want Revolution!
CONSPIRACY: People who have never met, people who attended the same rally but never spoke, someone who received a 9 second phone call, who bought an ALF T shirt, people who never knew of each others' existence are all linked. It is not what you said in that innocent letter, but the fact that you wrote it at all. The whole concept of conspiracy depends upon guilt by association. Welcome to the police state suckers!
INCITEMENT: GA is not responsible for the fact that people take @ction. Animal abuse itself is the reason ALF actions take place. When we report on road protests, our reports are not the cause, the destruction of the countryside by roadbuilders is. Nothing we say forces people into activity. No-one is compelled to buy Green Anarchist. 'Anarchism is about thinking for yourselves' as it said on the GA blurb.
THIS AFFECTS YOU: It is inevitable that techniques and legal shit used in 'Operation Washington Phase 2' will be used against other radical publications or groups. Eventually, if that carries on, all the radical media channels will be rolled up. If you have any interest in freedom, you'd better start protesting against this now! Today Green Anarchist, tomorrow it could be you...
THE ONLY CURE FOR THE STATE: The whole point of the Gandalf prosecution is to intimidate the movement into inactivity. Protesters who do nothing are no threat to the system. So it is important that we refuse to be frightened. They want to silence alternative news so that the only way you can find things out is through their state-controlled media, if at all. The answer here is to carry on reporting the facts. The truth is no offence!
In the end it doesn't matter what happens to GA. There will be other publications, better theories, better analysis. A zine is just a zine but the revolution is for keeps. Keep on kicking, and together we'll smash civilization yet!
Channel Islands: Jersey - Activist climbs on top of Jersey Zoo visitors centre, covers the roof in petrol and sets it alight. £332, 000 damage. A few days later the same activist throws a smokebomb inside the artificial insemination Centre at Howard Davis farm. £6000 damage.
Lewes - Kitten liberated from Fur, Feather 'n' Fins exotic pet store.
New Zealand: Christchurch - ALF spraypaint Cancer Society HQ one week before their Daffodil Day. On Daffodil Day the HQ is hit again. The night before ALF target 8 branches of National Bank. 5 are spraypainted, 3 have locks glued. National Bank sponsors Daffodil Day. National Bank billboard redecorated with anti-vivisection slogans
Australia: Victoria - 12 sick hens rescued from Happy Hens Egg World by Animal Liberation investigation Unit.
Germany: Koppen - Autonomous Animal Protectors destroy six hunting platforms.
Germany: Bad Soden - Hunting platforms trashed on Earth Night destroyed again!
Germany: Offenback - Autonomous Liberation Front glue and etch several fur and butchers shops.
Hampshire - ALF torch two barns at Hursley and hambleton hunt kennels. The hunt's cheese and wine party is also evacuated after a bomb threat.
Hampshire - Justice Department leave hoax bombs at Hursley and Hambleton kennels and pub.
Hampshire - Justice Department: Anti Cartmell/Dowsett Campaign incendiaries destroy APT owner David Walker's and Wickham Labs manager Paddy Edwards' cars.
Stoneaton: Whitechurch farm - Tom Osbourne of Mendip Farmers Hunt Club hospitalised after being hit with a spiked club and acid sprayed in face. Elsewhere nine Hunt Retribution Squad activists trash the 8th Earl of Yarborough's Merc as he was driving to a hunt meet.
Sweden: Umea - K1,000,000 damage as three meat trucks torched.
East Sussex - Justice Department post mousetrap-based booby traps to Shamrock Farm employees L Ford and T Welburn. Razor in envelope sent to Shamrock vet Paul West.
Finland: Kuopio - University vivisection lab spraypainted.
Germany: Hamburg - Autonomous Animal Protectors attack hunting organisation offices and vehicle with stinkbombs and slash tyres.
Hampshire - Justice Department post mousetrap-based booby traps to Bucks Head (Hunt pub), hunter/poulterer P Humphreys, hunter D Hunt, Wickham Lab's C Bishop, Simon Day of Torsby Farms, P Phillips Froxfield Farms vivisection breeder, and K Coker hunter.
Technocracy is Tyranny: You may look to your lifestyles of convenience and luxury when technology is questioned, but don't forget techno-industrial civilization is only possible because of intense division of labour and pillaging of global resources. Our everyday lives are at the mercy of unaccountable experts and systems beyond our control - if technology is not questioned, they will determine our future instead of us. It's not about replacing one set of experts with another either - tyranny is inherent in the logic of the techno-industrial society. It must be destroyed if Anarchy is to live!
Disclaimer; This zine and all items sold through GA Mail Order are produced for entertainment purposes only. No material in it is intended to incite any action liable to lead to criminal or civil charges. Can't you take a joke?