An activist reports:
Islington Against Police Spies: Sack Bob Lambert
A Successful Picket – So What’s Next?
Thanks to everyone who joined us on Friday 28th November at
our picket of London Metropolitan University to demand the sacking of Bob
Lambert. Former police spy, Special Branch manipulator, abuser of women, agent
provocateur, Lambert is now lecturing at London Met on policing and
criminology. (If you don’t know who Bob Lambert is, check out the PDF leaflet.Which you can also spread as wide as possible… )
THE PICKET: 30 people came, we brought some provocative placards,
friends brought a sound system down, which racked up the noise some… we handed
out some 800 leaflets, mainly to London Met students and staff. We also had a
lot of conversations; mostly people, when they hear even a part of Bob’s back
story, are shocked and angry – more than one thought we were making it all up,
because some of it is so outrageous, it sounds like a paranoid’s conspiracy
trip. Local press came and asked us questions – we will have to see if and how
they report the picket.
So all in all, as an opening of a campaign, not bad.
But what we want is to see Bob Lambert leave London Met. Preferably
under a cloud, forced out, either sacked, or brought to the point where he has
to resign. Realistically we know this CAN be done.
It’s not necessarily going to be easy – but we think we are capable of
making enough bad publicity for our local university that they think twice
about employing him. Looking at it this way, this demo is only a beginning.
So we are planning further actions. We hope to keep up a regular
program of events until Bob Lambert goes. Hopefully this campaign will get
stronger until it’s irresistible.
Further events are being discussed; obviously with it being the run-up
to Xmas many things shut down. So you’ll have to watch this space for what we
do next.
However – this campaign is also yours; your ideas, flashes of
inspiration, suggestions and offers to get involved are of course more than welcome.
In the meantime: please do protest to London Met.
[Contact details available from the campaign]
Email us: islingtonagainstpolicespies@gmail.com
Please be aware: we created this email address at half an hour’s notice
in order to print our first leaflet. However we have already experienced what
we shall call technical problems related to our use of gmail. So we may well
change our email address soon (though we will continue to monitor this gmail
address.)
For
more info on undercover police spies see: campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com; @copscampaign http://policespiesoutoflives.org.uk/
Message from an activist:
ReplyDeleteIslington Against Police Spies are raising awareness of the dark past of Dr Robert Lambert, the former undercover police spy who infiltrated grassroots campaigning groups, now employed as a lecturer by London Metropolitan University.
We have already held one loud picket of London Met in November, and are holding another on January 30th.
We hope you can come and support this event, or if not, will spread the word about this event as widely as possible. Please forward this email, paste it up on your Facebook pages, blogs and other such newfangled social media.
This campaign is attracting some publicity; as you may have seen, the Guardian covered it last week,
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/undercover-with-paul-lewis-and-rob-evans/2015/jan/06/university-under-pressure-to-sack-controversial-former-undercover-spy-bob-lambert
"University under pressure to sack controversial former undercover spy Bob Lambert"
and it is likely there will be an item on local BBC TV news program London Tonight in the next week (we will keep you posted).
Pass it on! Police are rarely accountable - but we can force them onto the defensive. This shifty ex-spy should not be in this position of responsibility.