More fallout from the British undercover police spying scandal: an undercover police officer may have organised one of the UK's worst riots:
Last week, the activist John Jordan was told his conviction (for occupying the offices of London Transport) would be overturned. The Crown Prosecution Service refuses to reveal why, but it doubtless has something to do with the fact that one of Jordan's co-defendants turns out to have been Jim Boyling, a secret policeman working for the Met, who allegedly used his false identity in court.
Jordan has now made a further claim. He alleges that the same man helped organise a street party that went wrong and turned into the worst riot in London since the poll tax demonstrations. The J18 Carnival Against Global Capitalism on 18 June 1999 went well beyond non-violent protest. According to the police, 42 people were injured and over £1m of damage was done. One building was singled out: the London International Financial Futures Exchange (Liffe), where derivatives were traded. Though protesters entered the building at 1.40pm, the police did not arrive until 4.15pm.
[...]
Jordan was a member of "the logistics group that organised the tactics for J18. There were about 10 of us in the group and we met weekly for over six months." Among the other members, he says, was Boyling. "The 10 of us … were the only people who knew the whole plan before the day itself and who had decided that the main target would be Liffe." Boyling, he alleges, drove one of the two cars that were used to block the road to the building.
[Link added]
And yet, according to the subsequent inquiry, the police had no information about the protester's plans and the riot was "unforeseen". Was the information deliberately not passed on, or are the British police a complete bunch of muppets?
