Class War | The 7 August issue of the New Statesman has a lengthy piece by Stephan Armstrong on “The New Spies”.
Amongst an analysis of the private security industry targeting protesters at events like the Kent climate camp, Armstrong makes the curious claim that Class War was run by the security services in the 1990s. News to us.
Below is a reply from a member of London Class War to the New Statesman:
As a member of Class War since 1992, I was staggered to read a line in Stephen Armstrong’s article (the New Statesman 7 August 2008) on “The New Spies”. Your reporter writes:
“Like the state security services, which ended up running Class War in the 1990s after a hugely successful penetration……”
Can you back that claim up with facts, or is any old rubbish acceptable when it comes to Anarchist organisations?
We do hope you have not been taken in by 9/11 ‘truth’ activists (and ex-MI5 officers) Annie Machon and David Shayler, who have both come out with conflicting claims about attempted state inflitration of Class War in the early 1990s.
Shayler withdrew his (contradictory) claims about Class War at a public debate with Notes From the Borderland magazine at Conway Hall in 2005. He now makes a living claiming to be the messiah.
As for his former partner Annie Machon (freely quoted in your piece) the New Statesman should treat with caution a woman who has pushed red baiting pieces about Tony Benn, Jack Jones and the KGB in the Mail on Sunday, and who has worked alongside some extremely dubious characters in the nuttier fringes of the 9/11 ‘truth’ movement.
As a revolutionary organisation, Class War is bound to be targeted – on occasion – by the police and security services. Such is life – especially in a society with seemingly never ending funds for public order policing and the secret state.
That situation will not be improved as long as we have ‘experts’ with the limited or biased knowledge of Stephan Armstrong, Annie Machon and David Shayler. It will certainly continue until we have the sort of radical change this society needs.