DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
They're only 'rogue' or a 'force within a force' when they're factions on the losing side of an internal dispute.
Lambert's post-SDS career at the Muslim Contact Unit as the cuddly copper who engaged with (potential) jihadis was at odds with the PREVENT strategy, and he paid the price with numerous critiques of his work (pre-spycop exposure), sourced indubitably from those within the prevailing PREVENT current of the police and/or Home Office, which characterised him as variously as naïve, blinkered or in thrall to terrorists.
Yet this was a political battle (for funding, operational control, personal prestige, whatever) within SB/Home Office, between competing tactical or strategic views, as might happen between proponents of sensitive community policing and zero tolerance lockdowns - almost routine.
The objective essentially remains the same, even if the operational paths to achieve it head in different directions. And who sets the objectives, who monitors progress, who determines whether milestones have been met satisfactorily?
In Lambert we can see a man who has seemingly been on both the winning and losing side of a near-ideological debate within Special Branch.
As both a successful field operative, and later as a more senior officer responsible for sending others underground, buoyed by his own experiences, his own well-honed tradecraft, his own advice; far more than - say - the junior Kennedy, with his need to ingratiate himself, Lambert is the nearest we have currently to a key to understanding the spycops.
Lambert, both pupil and teacher.
Lambert's post-SDS career at the Muslim Contact Unit as the cuddly copper who engaged with (potential) jihadis was at odds with the PREVENT strategy, and he paid the price with numerous critiques of his work (pre-spycop exposure), sourced indubitably from those within the prevailing PREVENT current of the police and/or Home Office, which characterised him as variously as naïve, blinkered or in thrall to terrorists.
Yet this was a political battle (for funding, operational control, personal prestige, whatever) within SB/Home Office, between competing tactical or strategic views, as might happen between proponents of sensitive community policing and zero tolerance lockdowns - almost routine.
The objective essentially remains the same, even if the operational paths to achieve it head in different directions. And who sets the objectives, who monitors progress, who determines whether milestones have been met satisfactorily?
In Lambert we can see a man who has seemingly been on both the winning and losing side of a near-ideological debate within Special Branch.
As both a successful field operative, and later as a more senior officer responsible for sending others underground, buoyed by his own experiences, his own well-honed tradecraft, his own advice; far more than - say - the junior Kennedy, with his need to ingratiate himself, Lambert is the nearest we have currently to a key to understanding the spycops.
Lambert, both pupil and teacher.
