Victoria - police files: |
The series of articles in the Melbourne Age exposing Victorian Police surveillance on hundreds of activists and progressive organisations will help shatter people's illusions that the police are a benign force. The Victorian Police - like all police forces - defends the status quo. Frank Green, the Assistant Police Commissioner at the time concerned (1989-92), told the Age, 'why not (infiltrate) 3CR when you've got all these radicals ringing in about their plans?...is there anything wrong with all that?'
It is clear that the lists in the Age are not complete. The obvious targets for the secret police during those years - most of the BLF elements in the construction and the then Trotskyist-led leadership of the State Public Services Federation - are conspicuous by their absence.
The amount of taxpayers money wasted spying on groups as non-violent as JJJ radio station and the ABC can only be imagined. We know from Freedom of Information documents that Militant members helped squeeze out of the police via an Administration Appeals Tribunal case, that they spent over $400,000 on thirteen days of the Richmond Secondary College picket line in December 1993. This money financed the police bashing of peaceful protesters, leading to the upcoming civil action case against the Victorian Police.
The police work exposed in the Age articles must therefore add up to millions of dollars.
There is a large element of farce in the surveillance; police driving around in Holdens with dark windows and a team of police officers ready outside a meeting at a Uniting Church hall in case their comrade inside was bashed!
To some degree the heads of the Operations Intelligence Unit (now replaced by the Protective Security Intelligence Group) exaggerated the danger from progressive groups to justify their budget to their masters in Canberra. With the end of the Cold War, new enemies had to be created to maintain their share of the police budget. Even a Teddy Bears' picnic was considered a target by these would-be James Bonds.
Some infiltration seems to smack of criminality-notwithstanding the legal protection they get for most of their actions. How could it be legal for the Victorian Police to send operatives into the committee preparing the court case against police shootings? Do they attempt to influence the group's actions against the police?
Those activists who now realise that 'comrades' they worked with at 3CR or some other group during the 1989-92 period were actually police agents must feel cold to the bone. What a low act for any individual to carry out; falsely creating working relationships with community activists to steal information for the benefit of those who run and benefit from this rotten system we live under.
The groups under surveillance should be congratulated for their quick counter-attack, putting the police on the backfoot. This must be continued and stepped up. The worst response would be an inward-looking 'who's a cop, who's not a cop' witch-hunt that would only do what the police want us to do. At the same time, progressive organisations need to take security and intelligence issues as seriously as Militant does.
What is also important is that progressive groups don't swallow the line of sections of the establishment that it's OK to spy on trade unions and socialist groups, but the police merely went 'too far'. The Herald-Sun editorial (8-10-97) defended the police actions: 'Some of the people and organisations in the police intelligence files up to 1992 do not, on the face of it, appear to have posed a threat to society. But a disturbing trend has been the hijacking of moderate dissent groups by others bent on causing confrontation with authority, with anarchy as their agenda.'
'Defence analyst' Michael O'Connor wrote in the same paper on the same day, 'So, are there legitimate and illegitimate targets (for police surveillance)?...I manage a...small political group...Like most of its kind, however, it has no secrets. It operates openly and within the democratic process. Not all fringe groups are like that. In recent months, Victorians have seen the bashing of ordinary citizens by people who may or may not be members of a hostile political organisation...' Again the lies about the Dandenong Anti-One Nation demonstration in July are being wheeled out. What these comments reflect is the fear of the ruling class that the effects of economic rationalism are radicalising big layers of youth, workers and even the middle class, as seen at Albert Park. As the Labor Party rolls over to Kennett and Co, groups like Militant are getting more support as the only ones who want to fight the Right. No amount of witch-hunting, surveillance or warnings about entrism will stop this trend. Militant, in any case, always works in a bold and open style. We do not believe in secret interventions into broad campaigns. We wear our politics on our sleeve and this openness, and the quality of our ideas and methods, has got us our respect.
What is needed now is a broad coalition to be set-up to campaign for the disbandment of the Protective Security Intelligence Group and their physical wing used on demonstrations, the Force Response Unit. We should demand the opening of all the files on individuals and groups. We should investigate whether legal action is possible against the police and whether the keeping of political files after the Special Branch was closed down was an illegal act.
More than ever we need democratically-elected police committees on a local, State and Federal to ensure community control over policing.