The uncovering by the Guardian of police surveillance of ‘domestic extremists’ who turn out to be protesting over climate change or the Iraq War is the latest revelation of just how far the suppression of fundamental civil liberties has reached in the increasingly authoritarian British State of the last three decades. It is chilling that the main police unit involved, The National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), now holds a central database which lists thousands of what it calls ‘domestic extremists’ simply on the grounds that they may have attended meetings of peaceful direct action or civil disobedience. NPOIU’s language says it all: anti-war campaigners are “extreme leftwing” protest groups, while “environmental extremism” includes campaigns such as the Climate Camp and Plane Stupid. None of these campaigners may have criminal records, yet it is errily reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984 when Anton Setchell, ACPO’s national co-ordinator for domestic extremism, defends the targeting of people and the building up of dossiers on the grounds that “everyone who has got a criminal record did not have one once”. In other words, peaceful protesters are assumed to be guilty until proved otherwise.

What is most disturbing about all this is that laws and procedures developed in the past to counter genuine threats of violent activity – for example some animal rights activists – are now being applied with a much broader brush to ensnare a much wider and more innocent category of protester than was ever originally envisaged or intended. Those who may have attended a peaceful demonstration against war or climate change then find themselves, having got on to a police database, subject to regular stop and search on the streets. Injunctions allowed under a 1997 Private Member’s Bill against stalkers may now be extended to stop protesters reaching a meeting point where the protest is due to take place.
The question then arises: who are the extremists? Is it those who are peacably exercising the traditional right to protest or the police using over-the-top powers to suppress what is a fundamental democratic right? We have already seen excessive police violence in the G20 protests, the use of kettling to pen innocent bystanders for hours in a confined space, and the retention for years of DNA specimens taken from persons who have committed no crime and not been convicted. We need constantly to be on our guard against the Establishment which all too readily sees any protest against its policies as the enemy within and all too easily gives the police excessive powers to snuff out even the slightest hints of dissent.

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