communication technologies, the police were now able to operate as a national force under the direction of an un-elected body, ACPO, which pressured for each of these pieces of legislation to assist in tackling crime they said. However, all measures continue to be used to deal with dissent. The Battle of the Beanfield near Stonehenge was the watershed for my own community. The year after the miners’ strike finished in 1985. The news section of Police Review, published seven days after the Beanfield, stated: “The Police operation had been planned for several months and lessons in rapid deployment learned from the miners’ strike were implemented”.4 The violence deliberately orchestrated by the police to frighten the blue blazes out of us; and those that may have wished to have associated with us. This of course, resulted in the complete collapse of our economy. Surveillance of the ‘alternative’ increased.
Security Services Act etc … In the mid 1990’s Michael Howard Home Secretary in the Tory government brought the operation of the Security Services, normally tasked to look into terrorism, security of the state etc. into police operations, without however, equivalent accountability. Much to the annoyance of the police themselves, they felt that their ‘turf’, was being invaded! Oh! There is some accountability, a commission to oversee the investigation of complaints about surveillance by these services. Should a complaint to this tribunal be made, an individual would not be told whether or not they have actually been the target of MI5 surveillance. Under current procedure, they are only told if the tribunal considers MI5 to have acted wrongly. In effect, filling in one of these complaints forms available from most police stations simply alerts the security services to the fact that the individual suspects they are being watched (and perhaps, therefore, should be!!!). At that time John Wadham of Liberty pointed out that: “A little noticed clause in the Intelligence Services Act 1994, 5 allows information obtained from bugging and surveillance by MI5 and MI6 to be used in court. This very important amendment demonstrates a crucial change in direction for these services. In future we will see more and more agents giving evidence from behind screens in ordinary criminal trials”.
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