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Police Spy Bob Lambert Confronted at St. Andrews

intersol32

Well-Known Member
(re-posted from Indymedia UK):

"On Thursday 9th February two animal rights activists disrupt a talk in St. Andrews by recently 'outed' police spy Bob Lambert.

Bob Lambert, who worked deep undercover in the London animal rights and environmental political scene, is one of many recently exposed undercover police in the UK radical political scene. Whilst serving in the Metropolitan police, Bob Lambert infiltrated London Greenpeace and animal rights groups with the intent of disrupting their activities. During his time undercover Bob Lambert also fathered a child with a fellow activist whilst withholding information about his true identity and intent. Two years after the child's birth Bob Lambert left the activist scene and returned to a conventional policing role.

Almost twenty years later Bob Lambert poses as a 'progressive academic' and sat on a panel at his home university, the University of St. Andrews, for a talk titled 'Overcoming Obstacles: Counter-Terrorism Police and Community Engagement.' Several activists leafleted the talk outside handing out leaflets that read:

''Do you think it's alright to…trick someone into a romantic relationship so that you can spy on them and their friends?…lie to them and everyone else about your identity in order to do so?…maintain this pretence of love and trust for more than a year? …have a child with your deceived 'partner' and then abandon the child for decades while concealing your identity from them?

Robert Lambert, the man speaking before you seems to think that this is acceptable behaviour for a public servant. He engaged in all of them during his years as an officer with the Metropolitan Police, sent to spy on peaceful environmental and animal rights campaigns. Perhaps this is Lambert's idea of 'community engagement.'

Is it yours?''

As soon as Bob Lambert started his talk two animal rights activists stormed out after shouting and pointing at Bob Lambert phrases like, 'shame!', 'where is your son, Bob?' and 'sex is not community engagement!.' Audience members reported him as startled and mumbled the first section of his speech.

We were thrilled.

We challenge the State's use of womyn's bodies; all animals are equal regardless of gender or species."
 
Good stuff, but ...
We challenge the State's use of womyn's bodies; all animals are equal regardless of gender or species."
Bit of a bugbear of mine. Female coppers also slept with male activists, but the stuff I've seen from the 'activist community' seems determined to ignore this.

Maybe the blokes don't want to speak out, or maybe this approach is encouraging them not to, I dunno. Would be interested to hear from anyone who knows why the overwhelming focus on female activists being abused here, if it's anything more that shite stereotypical assumptions about how the victims feel about it.
 
Good stuff, but ...
Bit of a bugbear of mine. Female coppers also slept with male activists, but the stuff I've seen from the 'activist community' seems determined to ignore this.

Maybe the blokes don't want to speak out, or maybe this approach is encouraging them not to, I dunno. Would be interested to hear from anyone who knows why the overwhelming focus on female activists being abused here, if it's anything more that shite stereotypical assumptions about how the victims feel about it.

True. You may remember in the 'McLibel' case in the 90's, where a female undercover officer slept with one of the male activists.
 
Good stuff, but ...
Bit of a bugbear of mine. Female coppers also slept with male activists, but the stuff I've seen from the 'activist community' seems determined to ignore this.

Maybe the blokes don't want to speak out, or maybe this approach is encouraging them not to, I dunno. Would be interested to hear from anyone who knows why the overwhelming focus on female activists being abused here, if it's anything more that shite stereotypical assumptions about how the victims feel about it.
If I slept with a copper, I'd at least want her to be in uniform... ;)

sorry
 
If I slept with a copper, I'd at least want her to be in uniform... ;)

sorry
Kind of illustrates my point. Making that joke in reference to the female activists who were tricked would probably not go down well, but blokes are just supposed to find it hilarious. Patriarchy and all that, but activists reinforcing that shit effectively denies the men who were abused any outlet. They're just ignored, or expected to be fine about it because men are just mindless sex machines, doncha know.
 
Kind of illustrates my point. Making that joke in reference to the female activists who were tricked would probably not go down well, but blokes are just supposed to find it hilarious. Patriarchy and all that, but activists reinforcing that shit effectively denies the men who were abused any outlet. They're just ignored, or expected to be fine about it because men are just mindless sex machines, doncha know.

It's not just the sex either. It's the fact that these state agents have betrayed the victims trust to such a level that they're intimately involved with the person. It's likely that the targets have shared a huge portion of their personal lives with them; introducing them to friends, maybe relatives etc. The psychological damage would be huge.

Then again, are we likely to ever believe that the State and its security agencies are anything but immoral fuckers? At the end of the day they're quite happy to allow things like rendition where people are spirited away to other countries so they can be tortured.....
 
Kind of illustrates my point. Making that joke in reference to the female activists who were tricked would probably not go down well, but blokes are just supposed to find it hilarious. Patriarchy and all that, but activists reinforcing that shit effectively denies the men who were abused any outlet. They're just ignored, or expected to be fine about it because men are just mindless sex machines, doncha know.
all true, and it's a valid point to query why it's only the women involved in this, but I don't think it's necessarily a problem as AFAIK there were far less women undercovers involved (I can personally only think of 1 who's been outed), and probably only a very few male activists who had relationships with / slept with her/them. These male activists would be well within their rights to not want to waste any more time or go through more emotional trauma dragging this through the courts for several years, which seems as likely a scenario to me as them never having been asked to get involved by any of the women involved.

FWIW, in my activist years I was at various times introduced to at least 3-4 of the more recent undercovers, definitely socialised on a couple of occasions with 2 of them including the woman (post dissent meetings etc), and would certainly have featured in their spying reports, so am not entirely divorced from this situation, though I'm not really in much contact with most of the rest of the people involved from back then.

eta - I do tend to work on the basis though that if we can't take the piss to some extent, and must instead always express our righteous anger and bitterness about the situation when asked, then they've already won.
 
all true, and it's a valid point to query why it's only the women involved in this, but I don't think it's necessarily a problem as AFAIK there were far less women undercovers involved (I can personally only think of 1 who's been outed), and probably only a very few male activists who had relationships with / slept with her/them. These male activists would be well within their rights to not want to waste any more time or go through more emotional trauma dragging this through the courts for several years, which seems as likely a scenario to me as them never having been asked to get involved by any of the women involved.

FWIW, in my activist years I was at various times introduced to at least 3-4 of the more recent undercovers, definitely socialised on a couple of occasions with 2 of them including the woman (post dissent meetings etc), and would certainly have featured in their spying reports, so am not entirely divorced from this situation, though I'm not really in much contact with most of the rest of the people involved from back then.

eta - I do tend to work on the basis though that if we can't take the piss to some extent, and must instead always express our righteous anger and bitterness about the situation when asked, then they've already won.
Of course you can take the piss! I wasn't having a go.

It's not about which individuals are named in the action*. It's the prevalence of references specifically to 'women' and 'female activists' in the materials.You don't need to have named male activists come forward in order to make the campaign truthful. Completely ignoring the fact that there were male 'victims' too suggests an underlying assumption that men don't mind being used sexually so there's no need to make a fuss about it. It's insulting nonsense. I expect it of the media - they have the same double standard when it comes to teachers seducing their students - but I expect better of activists.

*although I do think that more of the men might be willing to come forward if this shitty sexist attitude wasn't the fucking norm
 
ok, but in their defence, probably 95%+ of the people affected in this way are female, and 100% of the people who've had kids as a result are female, so focusing on the impact on the women involved doesn't strike me as completely unjustified.

At the end of the day, a large part of the aim of these actions must be to keep the subject in the headlines, and as anyone with any PR experience will know, carefully nuanced press releases covering all the angles in such a way that nobody could possible criticise them generally get filed in the round filing cabinet in the corner, which does nobody any good.

Besides, this action was aimed squarely at Bob Lambert himself, and unless you're suggesting he was also involved in gay relationships with male activists, I don't really see the relevance of your point at all on this particular thread / action.
 
Yeah, ok.

Do those people really believe that shit though or is it just a cliché that gets wheeled out for occasions like this?
IIRC lambert infiltrated animal rights activists, so it's not that surprising to find this sort of thing creeping in to stuff written by people who're challenging him on his actions back then.

It does grate though.
 
Besides, this action was aimed squarely at Bob Lambert himself, and unless you're suggesting he was also involved in gay relationships with male activists, I don't really see the relevance of your point at all on this particular thread / action.
I was referring to a number of actions since the Mark Kennedy revelations, all of which seem to have focused exclusively on the poor abused women. But I did come in on this point because of a shitty line in the indymedia report on the Bob Lambert action:

We challenge the State's use of womyn's bodies; all animals are equal regardless of gender or species.
 
There seem to be another dozen of these wankers every week. Have any every been positively ID'd on here?*

*not that it's really a hotbed of radicalism, but it did receive that label in the media at one point.
 
Lambert has a new article on the 'open democracy' website. Police spy and rapist: the very definition of democracy.
 
Did any of the female undercovers conduct long term relationships with blokes?
Yes (not sure about long-term, but I'm not sure I see the relevance of how long the relationships lasted). One case is mentioned above, but at least one female undercover exposed via Kennedy was also shagging activists.

But it doesn't matter because blokes are all mindless penises who are happy to be taken advantage of by any passing female. Apparently.
 
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