Joe Boyd - Fracking law for sale

The Green Wash authors continue to take a look at the blog of long-time anti-fracking campaigner Joe Boyd.

Part 3a - The tangled web of intrigue and deceit spreads

Joe Boyd being arrested at Barton Moss in the fight against IGas

The Green Wash's previous two blog posts investigating Joe's claims of nepotism and collusion as a means to silence anti-frackers and end all meaningful protest looked at the careers of Chief Superintendent Mark Roberts and Amanda Webster. However, as Joe points out, in 2014 there was no obvious direct connection linking Roberts and Webster to campaign groups protesting Cuadrilla Resources Limited's hydraulic fracturing ambitions for Lancashire. As time has passed, however Roberts and Webster's connection "to those at the top of the Frack Free Lancashire hierarchical structure for the ongoing Preston New Road (PNR) campaign" has become more evident.

On 15 November 2012 Councillor Clive Grunshaw became the first person to be elected, on a very low turnout of 15.5%, to the then newly created post of Lancashire's Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC). Responsible for hiring the chief constable, overseeing the police budget and setting the priorities for Lancashire Police, Grunshaw's salary in 2012 was £85,000 per annum, plus, of course, expenses, making him the highest paid councillor in the county!

Grunshaw, speaking in his new position as PCC, said it would be a "new era for policing" and a "huge opportunity to deliver proper policing to the people of Lancashire".

The Green Wash authors wonder what type of policing the people of Lancashire had been receiving in return for handing over their hard earned cash prior to Grunshaw's election as PCC!

Grunshaw, a former milkman and dock worker, gained two degrees from Lancaster University. Furthering his political ambitions in 1994 Grunshaw was elected as a Labour Party Councillor to the Wyre Borough Bailey Ward where he remained until 1999. As Pharos Ward Councillor for Wyre Council Grunshaw was leader of the minority Labour Group from May 2007 until resigning on 20 November 2012. He also held roles, including chief whip for the Labour Group, chair of Lancaster and Fleetwood Constituency Labour Party and represented the Labour Party on the County Council for Fleetwood Marine, now Fleetwood East, until resigning on 28 February 2013.

Julie Grunshaw, wife of Clive Grunshaw, representing the Park Ward for Labour, also announced her resignation on 28 February 2013.

Prior to the PCC role the overseeing of policing in Lancashire was carried out by the Lancashire Police Authority (LPA). One of 43 Police Authorities in England and Wales and composed of nine councillors and eight independent members, the LPA was the accountable body responsible for "securing an efficient and effective police force for Lancashire and holding the Chief Constable to account", assessing community policing needs and ensuring these needs were "reflected in local policing".

Grunshaw served as chair of resources on Lancashire's Police Authority for four years prior to it's being replaced with the role of Police Crime Commissioner.

On taking up the post Grunshaw appointed several members of staff to assist him. Amanda Webster, Mike Lock, Saima Afzal and Bruce Jassi were employed as assistant Police and Crime Commissioners on salaries of £20,000 per annum with Ibrahim Master appointed as deputy Commissioner earning £30,000 per annum.

In 2011 a report ordered by Cuadrilla concluded that two small earthquakes in the Blackpool area were, in all probability, due to shale gas exploration. The resulting publicity further raised awareness of the dangers of unconventional drilling and high volume hydraulic fracturing (fracking), both locally and nationally. With this raised awareness came on the one side protesters, activists and campaign groups intent on stopping fracking and on the other side a government determined to ensure fracking would take place, whatever the cost to communities, wildlife and the environment.

By 2011 the United States had equated any oppostion to fracking as an act of terrorism and a threat to national infrastructure. Private security firms, including The Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR), working alongside Homeland Security were involved in coordinated surveillance and information gathering which was then disseminated, via tri-weekly bulletins, to "local police chiefs, state, federal, and private intelligence agencies, and the security directors of the natural gas companies, as well as industry groups and PR firms". An inadvertently leaked e-mail stated “We want to continue providing this support to the Marcellus Shale Formation natural gas stakeholders while not feeding those groups fomenting dissent against those same companies.”

Mike German, an ex FBI special agent argued that any possibility of surveillance has the potential to handicap environmental groups’ ability to achieve their political goals. “You are painting the political opposition as supporters of terrorism to discredit them and cripple their ability to remain politically viable...” With Eveline Lubbers writing in her book Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark: Corporate and Police Spying on Activists "Because these business firms hire former spies and analysts from the ranks of government, the informal links with government intelligence increases."

There is absolutely no doubt the same tactics of information gathering, surveillance, infiltration, psychological operations (psy-ops) and demonisation as a means to divide protesters and end meaningful protest has also been used in the UK.

In 2009 it came to light that the British Police and the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (subsequently named the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills and, following a merger with the Department of Energy and Climate Change, now called the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) had shared information on Climate Camp protesters and their planned actions to E.ON Energy. Meanwhile E.ON had also been hiring private security firms to spy on protesters. Staffed by former intelligence agents it was revealed, after an e-mail was accidentally sent to the very activists it had been spying on, that Rebecca Todd's Kent based security firm, Vericola Ltd, had been targeting groups including Camp for Climate Action and London based Rising Tide. Activists reported Todd's regular attendance at their meetings between 2007 and 2008.

Rebecca Todd, owner of security firm Vericola Ltd

Information contained within the leaked documents showed Rebecca 'Becky' Todd coaching an agent on how to integrate with activists and instructing him to attend campaign meetings. Todd also signed up to campaign e-mail lists using multiple identities and employed a variety of people to pass quickly from group to group to gather information and report back to her.

During this time E.ON confirmed they had also been using the services of Global Open on an ad hoc basis.

Roderick Leeming, born February 1945, a former Special Branch Officer and head of the Animal Rights National Index until 1999 when he was appointed to lead the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), a department based within a private company and largely exempt from public scrutiny. Leeming became a Managing Director when he incorporated Global Open on the 1st February 2001. The private security company had monitored many organisations, including animal rights, environmental, anti-corporatism and anti-globalisation groups prior to being dissolved on 25 July 2017.

Undercover police infiltrator Mark Kennedy's links to Leeming were revealed during an interview when he stated he was employed as a consultant by Global Open after leaving the police force but prior to his cover being blown. Kennedy used the address of personal injury solicitor Heather Millgate in February 2010, one month before resigning from the force, to set up a company, Tokra Limited. Millgate is a former director of Global Open.

Kennedy infiltrated many protest groups between 2003 and 2010 including Climate Camp, Dissent, Earth First and the environmental group The Wombles.

In a 2011 broadcast for BBC's Newsnight Kennedy, on being questioned by an activist on the use of police infiltrators, stated "I'm not the only one by a long shot – it's like a hammer to crack a nut. It's spun in different ways but you know you start looking at the way the law is used and manipulated and well – fuck".

In 2007 Global Open came to public attention when it was implicated in the case of Paul Symington Mercer. During the proceedings Mercer was publicly exposed for his role in spying on anti-arms trade campaigners involved in the group Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT).

Mercer a graduate from the University of Nottingham in 1982 gained a Bachelor of Science Honours Degree in Production Engineering. On leaving university Mercer worked for the Adam Smith Institute and, between January 1990 and November 1997, as a researcher in the Conservative Research Department (CRD) alongside David Cameron, 1988-1993, and George Osborne, 1994, Head of Political Section.

Paul Symington Mercer

A freelance journalist, and, from 1982, a member of the National Union of Journalists, Mercer has written published articles appearing in, amongst other papers, the Observer, Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph and London Evening Standard. He also spent a period of time, November 1997 - November 1999, researching political organisations for the BBC. A published author, his works include Longman’s Directory of British Political Organisations (1994) which details 4,500 protest groups along with "personal information and contact details for people he’d met involved in Earth First! and other ecological direct action campaigns in the early ‘90s". Mercer was also the sole author of an anti Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) exposé called “Peace” of the Dead", (1986), the research for which had involved infiltration of the organisation. This was later confirmed when he was introduced at a 2011 Policy Exchange event.

The court case, brought by Campaign Against the Arms Trade, was to be centred on a judicial review of a controversial decision, which, following pressure from the Ministry of Defence, had led to the cancelling of a serious fraud investigation into BAE Systems' Saudi Arabia arms deals.

The involvement of Mercer came to light after BAE passed the information to its lawyers, Allen & Overy, who decided they had no option but to disclose it to the court. In spite of BAE resisting the request of Richard Stein, Leigh Day Solicitors, to disclose the identity of the "spy" who had passed privileged details of confidential legal advice against the company to the head of BAE's security department, Michael McGinty, a series of injunctions brought by Stein eventually forced BAE to reveal Mercer's identity.

In court statements Mercer claimed he had no knowledge of where the CD containing the information had come from but stated it had been left for him in a plain envelope. "The litigation revealed that Mr Mercer, who had a history of infiltrating peace groups such as CND, had disguised his dealings with BAE from his home in Loughborough."

During the proceedings it was also revealed that Mercer was paid £2,500 a month for his work spying, through infiltration, on CAAT. In a further twist to the case Mercer, after being warned by McGinty he was to be named, closed the email account he had been using to correspond with McGinty with the result all documents attached to the account were deleted.

Court proceedings detailing BAE's undercover methods to infiltrate protest groups and gather information exposed how the operation had been run via Global Open Ltd who had contracted Mercer who was, at that time, calling himself LigneDeux Associates.

Further links to the Conservative Party were also revealed when it became public knowledge during the case that Mercer was a friend of former Shadow Defence Minister Julian Lewis. Although Lewis denied having any knowledge of Mercer's spying on CAAT for BAE their history can be traced back to 1990 when Lewis was appointed joint Deputy Director of the Conservative Research Department where he remained in post until 1996.

Lewis, a hard line right winger, first came to political prominence in the 1970's when he infiltrated the Labour Party by joining the Newham North-East constituency in an attempt to de-select Reg Prentice. Following the failed attempt to "rescue Labour from the left" Lewis co-founded the Coalition for Peace Through Security. In its heyday the group harassed CND, flying banners over its demonstrations and filming marches and protest. Rumours of Lewis's involvement with The 61 and Le Cercle have also circulated. The 61, a private international agency, was "created and funded to bypass the official intelligence services" and oppose CND while the geo-political influence group Le Cercle, originally set up as a Franco-German alliance, is a smaller and considerably more secretive group than Bilderberg. A deep state milieu Le Cercle provides an environment in which powerful figures can secretly meet.

Lewis has held a variety of posts within Conservative Governments sitting on several select committees including the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, September 2010 - March 2015, the Defence Committee and the National Security Strategy (Joint Committee) November 2015 - May 2017.

In 2017 a Guardian article, headlined "Cabinet minister accepted donation from corporate spy", revealed Nicky Morgan MP had accepted a £3,220 donation from Mercer. Amongst other posts Morgan sat on the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and was Economic Secretary (HM Treasury) October 2013 - April 2014. She has also been a former chair of the Commons Treasury Select Committee. Currently the Culture Secretary the BBC has described Morgan as "one of the most powerful and influential female politicians in Parliament".

Mercer is currently a Conservative Party Councillor for Loughborough Southfields and the Cabinet Lead Member for Housing. Listing himself as a director for the company Papea Ltd on the Charnwood Borough Council Register of Members' Interests, Notification of Disclosable Pecuniary Interests, a disclaimer, "part of this interest has been confirmed as a sensitive interest and withheld under S32(2) of the Localism Act 2011", has been included in his submission, this addition is not normal practice.

Papea Ltd was first incorporated in 2007 by a former MI6 employee under the name of The Welund Report. Despite changing the name on 24 September 2010 the contact web page for the company remains as The Welund Report.

Little is known about Welund with it's subscription only website, http://www.welund.com/, only accessible if you are a fully vetted and paid up member. The company does however, proudly advertise itself as "the market-leader in monitoring and identifying politically-based threats to businesses, offering client-focused intelligence and advising companies on the appropriate response". Amongst it's clients are "numerous Fortune 500 companies, from a wide range of industries including, banking, energy, retail, aviation, pharmaceuticals, construction and law enforcement in Europe and North America". The services Welund offer it's controversial clients include a live archive of original content that "contains 80,000 articles analysing threats to companies" with approximately 230 new articles added every week and operational and business risk reports "provided on a daily, weekly or monthly basis" with "clients able to commission specific reports analysing areas of potential risk".

In 2016 Welund established an office in North America and appointed Travis Moran as its vice president of operations. Moran, a former US Justice Department special agent, previously worked at Dominion Energy, one of the largest suppliers of electricity and natural gas in the United States.

Moran, speaking at a Houston Conference, described activists as travelling "professionals" with more experience than the companies they are campaigning against. "We keep track of them" Moran said.

In 2009, police chiefs, following the damaging revelations of undercover police officers operating in protest movements, claimed there were more corporate spies than officers.

In 2017 the private security sector, according to Forbes, had an estimated 20 million workers world wide with a net worth of approximately £148 billion and an expected growth by 2020 to beyond £198 billion.

A grainy picture of Paul Mercer infiltrating a protest against Esso

Paul Mercer at an M11 Road Protest

Amongst other protests and campaigns Mercer was also heavily involved in spying on road protesters.

Coming soon, part 3b - The tangled web of intrigue and deceit spreads