An alliance of people spied on by Britain's political secret police
Join us in Cambridge for a talk on state surveillance, monitoring, and infiltration, and repression of activist movements.
The panel includes: Aziz Choudry (editor of Activists & The Surveillance State), Eveline Lubbers of the Undercover Research Group, and ‘Jessica‘, an activist who was deceived into a relationship by an undercover police officer.
The use of secret police, security agencies and informers to spy on, disrupt and undermine opposition to the dominant political and economic order has a long history.
This panel will reflect on the surveillance, harassment and infiltration that pervades the lives of activists, organisations and movements that are labelled as ‘threats to national security’.
Jessica will talk in detail about her experience. As a teenage animal rights activist in the 1990s, she had a year-long relationship with her first boyfriend, Andy Davey. In 2017 she discovered he had actually been Special Demonstration Squad officer Andy Coles.
When the truth was exposed Coles resigned as Cambridgeshire’s Deputy Police and Crim Commissioner. He is currently a Peterborough city councillor and school governor. Jessica is actively involved in campaigning to have him removed from other positions of public trust.
Together, the panel will not only describe what has happened in the past, but how this knowledge can inform the political dissent of tomorrow.
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Hosted by the Critical Theory & Practice Seminar Series, and Preventing Prevent at Cambridge University.