The sound was unmistakeable; the front door had just come off the hinges. Up the stairs came full grown men in British Army uniforms, their faces blacked with boot polish. They carried SLR’s or self loading rifles. This was Belfast, 1978, and I was 7 years old, my sister was just 8. The soldiers behaviour towards us was horrific, we had guns pointed at us and were ordered about.
My home and many others were a training ground for the British Army. Those skills they perfected are now used in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
It wasn’t long after this experience that I had my first PTSD induced nightmare….
‘The soldier zapped my mother with his futuristic ray gun, she disappeared. I ran from room to room, crying and pulling up the cushions on the sofa, looking under the bed. She wasn’t there.’
I awoke crying and made my way to my Mum’s bedroom, there she was, I can’t express in words the sense of relief. At 5, the concept of death and finality were very real for me. At that age I had already seen men in coffins, attending wakes of IRA men who has been killed by the SAS. I had already overheard my Mother and neighbour talking about the Shankill Butchers.
It’s taken me over 36 years to tell someone about the nightmare that began my journey living with Post Traumatic Stress disorder. It wasn’t my only experience. I have seen people killed and many other experiences I can’t talk about here. It has not been until I told a psychologist, and broke down crying that I realised the hold this had on me. I told her I didn’t like crying, she asked why; I said I didn’t like to be vulnerable.
This only became possible after a long wait for specialised treatment; I was seen recently by those who know best about PTSD. I thought someone had told them about me. They seemed to know everything. I thought it was weird that I slept with a hammer under my bed. Until, they told me of combatants sleeping with guns under theirs.
She explained to me, that my emotions were similar to those of a soldier in the battle field, I needed to be alert, watching television, reading a book or many things like this are almost impossible. Who wants to read a book in the middle of a gun fight?
Many people mistake PTSD for a mental illness, it’s not. Its trauma trapped in the body, mind and soul. For some, it will never completely go. I may be one of those as this was pointed out recently by a psychologist.
People may ask why I expose myself like this on a public blog, I feel it’s vitally important that a clear picture of the long term effect of conflict are known. I feel that both the British and American societies are oblivious to the hurt and injury being caused by those who wage illegal wars in their name. Like the German people after WWII who were walked past the bodies of murdered Jews, we need to keep the picture of conflict firmly in the eyes of those who support such barbaric acts.
Throughout the world for many years, the British and now the US are leaving whole families and communities traumatised. Innocent people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Somalia, may never fully recover for what has been inflicted on them.
This week NATO murdered more children, when will you speak out?
Pack a first aid kit for your group. Very easy to put a first aid kit together, most people have lying around the house such things as bandages, plasters; paper stitches etc etc,
Make sure your mobile phone is charged, have a back up battery or spare phone.
Spare clothes or a group shelter in case of kettling.
Water; when the plastic bottle or container is empty you can use it for going to the toilet.
A hot drink in a flask, I prefer orange juice warmed up.
A packet of nuts or boiled sweets.
If you are worried about being under surveillance from Forward Intelligence Teams, consider a full change of clothes, even shoes,
Cover up your rucksack, FIT Teams are known to record rucksacks and shoes. Be aware
Consider your own hash-tag on twitter should you get lost from your group, ie #TheLondonDemoCollective
I decided to write this letter to you so that a number of ongoing issues can be addressed. In October 2011 you were spreading rumours or in my view black propaganda about me, this information you received from Mike Raddie. You will rightly remember that I challenged both you and Camilla about this in a number of emails. Thankfully, I have kept those emails, in recent weeks I have been hearing on the grapevine that you have been telling people I threatened to kill you. This is a deliberate attempt to distort the truth and portray yourself as the victim. On no occasion did I ever threaten to kill you. Should I have to, I will publish those emails.
In fact this smacks of the kind of spin that Mike Raddie engaged in when he made statements to the police about me and when he sent emails to the Democracy Village mailing list. It seems he had a good mentor on this Chris, as after all he was your adjutant.
A few weeks ago a message was left on Indymedia attacking me and my family, signed by the name of ‘Flopsy Knight. At no time, has either you or Camilla attempted to distance yourself from this attack. I am aware it was not you as Mike Raddie was behind it, however you were not to know that, additionally, a few days ago he tried to fake the identity of James Newham on my blog, and after cross referencing with another piece of software I was able to establish that in fact it was Mike and not James. Now why did Mike do that? Because he was aware that James did not turn up at the trial of three activists including me to give evidence, evidence that could have seen the Occupy Oil activists found NOT guilty. He had been gotten to by Mike and Alison, there were all very willing to drop three activists in it with the courts just to have a go at me, makes you wonder what motives people like this to get into activism in the first place.
The situation with Mike Raddie is like many other problems you have been part of in the activist world, you put your head in the sand and hope that it will go away. Never taking responsibility for your part in anything, the arrest in the squats is a perfect example of that, in all those raids the police were looking for maggots, the maggots you said you were going to throw at the Royal Couple, yet you never said this at the time, preferring others to take the fall for you behaviour.
However, this situation is way beyond your usual irresponsible behaviour, as a lot of people are being attacked and hurt.
I am led to believe that after Camilla’s name was used on Indymedia Mike Raddie was in contact with both you and Camilla, I can only take from this that you both support the sort of behaviour that he and Alison Banville has engaged in the last two years. Now what is that behaviour, let’s look at some of the facts,
Both Mike and Alison claimed that Neil Jackson and I had placed an IED, also known as an Improvised Explosive Device, outside the flat in Bovingdon Close, Mike Raddie claimed to police that I took part in an arsonist attack on a commercial premises back in Ireland, this alone could have resulted in me going to prison for a very long time.
Over the last number of weeks, I have established that Alison Banville is behind blocblac account on twitter. Pictures of my children were posted online with vile messages attached; this was done by Mike Raddie. It was reported to the police and no action was taken, a camera belonging to a legal observer was stolen from me by Alison Banville and Mike Raddie, they turned up at a police station and handed in the camera, they were not interviewed under caution, despite the fact the camera had been reported stolen. 30 minutes after my arrest in Oct last year, your iPad was used from an IP address in Woking to leave abusive messages on my blog; I believe this to be Alison Banville.
Last year I remembered that Mike Raddie had given me a phone as a backup when the police took mine, it had set in storage for over a year as I did not use it, we explored the phone for information that may shed some light on Mike. I was in shock to what I discovered on that phone. This was Mike’s phone during Democracy Village; we discovered he was very much living double life. It appears that Mike was extracted from Democracy Village by what appears to be a high level call girl named ‘Laura’, he then cycled out of London with her before travelling onto Zurich, given she only met him a few days earlier it seemed strange when we seen that she booked him and the three other men he was travelling with a 4 star Hotel in Zurich which included a Champagne breakfast. They seemed very much in love, however a few weeks later we hear nothing more of ‘Laura’
Mike thanked her for booking the hotel and in some of the text messages she says that Mike and his fellow companions needed pampered. Why did they need pampered Chris? Had they just came to the end of an operation or tour? Both you and Camilla were close friends, but you knew nothing of this trip, why is that? Why did Mike hide this from everyone? By the way, should you have any doubts about this we can even provide with the flight number and name of the hotel. It has all been cross referenced.
We also discovered that the pet name given to him by ‘Laura’, when I say pet name, what I really mean is code name, it was ‘008’. Again a number of activists have seen copies of these texts messages and they have identified some of their own text messages on the phone.
In the course of looking at that phone, we also noticed that Mike was giving shelter, food and money to the homeless people in Democracy Village. While those of us who were trying to dissuade them from being there were getting more and more exhausted and in some cases being assaulted or threatened.
They on the other hand were coming back to the camp having spent days in Mike’s flat were they were able to charge their batteries and come back to the camp to take drugs bought with the money provided to them by Mike Raddie and steal property and generally disrupt the movement from protesting against the war in Afghanistan to dealing with issues of drug taking, violence on activists and general disruption, this was a very well known tactic used against the occupy movement in the US.
It is my view and strong belief that Mike Raddie is in the pay of some sort of agency, I will continue to hold that belief and stand over all the evidence to date that I have uncovered. We now know for example that the operation against you was named ‘Operation Adjutant’.
“On 28/4/2011 as part of Operation Adjutant Police officers from Specialist
Crime & Operations together with Police officers from the Territorial
Support Group attended Wickham Road. This was based on open source
information and Police intelligence”
Let’s open that up a bit, The operation was based on open source information and police intelligence, Now the open source information is no doubt facebook, twitter and other forms of social media.
Let’s take facebook as an example. Many of the people who use Democracy Village facebook page will remember that Mike Raddie was posting information regarding the protests during the Royal Wedding, giving people the impression that he was a key part of the organisation. He was posting picture of the guillotine during its construction. He was helping produce flyers and leaflets for the event at Soho Sq and administrating the website. Yet he wasn’t arrested, so you tell me Chris, during the Counter Terrorism Command briefing before the arrest operation against you, who made the decision not to arrest Mike Raddie and why? Patrick the mock executioner was arrested for wearing a costume, yet here we have Mike Raddie, helping build the props, make leaflets and drive the van and he is not arrested. Not only was he not arrested during that Operation, the next day in Soho Sq, while others were being arrested the police still don’t touch him. Who is protecting him and why?
I would also like to know why both you and Camilla shielded this man for so long. I am aware of the first contact you had with him. Basically, Chris you were honey trapped; now I am not going to go into the details of that in this letter as obviously there may be legal ramifications. Following your honey trap you elevated Mike into activism in London. It was then that he begins to volunteer for everything that needed to be done in the led up to the Democracy Village action. He then became known for agreeing to do things and not completing them, a tactic he used during the planning of ‘Retake Parliament Square’ He also was the person who ran all the social media and the contact with the mainstream media; one would wonder how someone with no background in activism got into such a powerful position.
Despite this, Mike always seemed to be in background, while managing to influence a broad range of activists that is something else we established via the phone text messages, again I will not go into details as there are elements of those communications that we are still trying to disseminate.
To conclude about Democracy Village, the behaviour of Mike and others, helped move the issues from the war in Afghanistan to one of homelessness and give the main stream media the ammunition to discredit the camp.
Let me start to wrap up now, on a number of occasions, I have offered to Mike the opportunity to respond, saying that I would delete my twitter account and my blog and walk away from activism, if he would respond to the evidence I presented to him.
So how did he respond? He responded like any spook would respond, he has engaged in covert attacks on me, he has tried to fit me up on very serious charges. He has continued to evade being arrested. He has attacked other collectives, including Occupy Oil, intensifying these attacks in the run up to the trial last month, is this the behaviour of an innocent ‘Network Systems Analyst’ as he described himself in the police statements against me, in three months of being on bail, neither I nor my solicitor received a copy of that statement which is usually standard practice. Surprise! Surprise! The case was dropped, and no statement was forth coming, however as I never get interviewed without the presence of a solicitor, those accusations were recorded in hand written notes and typed up.
Lastly I want to look at the issue of people supporting these attacks on me, I believe your silence has been enabling this behaviour and also aware that you were approached by Mike Raddie to sign a joint statement against me, I am also aware of the others involved. I will deal with them in due course.
Chris do you not think that as a fellow activist you should have warned me that Mike Raddie, Alison Banville and others were conspiring to set me up on charges of arson?
Despite all this Chris, my door is still open when you are ready to take responsibility for your passive support and encouragement for the attacks launched on me and my family. Not only were you passively supporting this, you were actively engaged in discrediting me, by passing on black propaganda that was coming from Mike Raddie. I don’t believe that I need to point out to you that the resources being used to launch these attacks, i.e. the iPad and Mac Book pro all belong to you.
#DLA #DPAC everyday people are being driven into activism, read one citizens experience #ATOS and their jackboots, soon those unfit to work in Labour camps, will be forced to wear ‘Blacktriangles’ and have the initials IDS tattoed on their arms.
Dear Janet,
As part of local Labour campaigning I was asked what my concerns were. I
would like to bring something to your attention. This is the activities of
our local ATOS (the French company who do the Work Capability Assessments
for welfare benefits).
I attended an interview (Elthorne Rd) in order to
support a friend, and I came away so so alarmed that I have been galvanised
into activism almost overnight. ATOS as an institution and ATOS staff are
persecuting intimidating and devastating large numbers of very ordinary
citizens.
I am not using rhetoric when I tell you that the behaviour I
witnessed IS a REPLICATION HERE and NOW of what happened during the rise of
the Nazi’s. The treatment we received went far far beyond more usual levels
of dismal degrading jobcentre bureaucracy. Please take this letter
seriously; I am trying to raise the alarm.
There is now abundant evidence that the police are using terrorism powers to stop and question activists on their political activities when they pass through UK ports. It is undoubtedly very helpful to the police that the draconian powers introduced by Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 provide no right to silence – a refusal to answer questions can lead to a criminal conviction.
STATEMENT BY ED MOLONEY ON THE DE SILVA REPORT - Dec 12th 2012
In his report on the murder of Pat Finucane, Sir Desmond de Silva has this to say in relation to the RUC’s role in encouraging the UDA to target the solicitor (Par 73):
"The critical issue, in my view, was to determine whether RUC officers had been involved in inciting loyalists in custody to attack Patrick Finucane.
