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Title: Green Anarchist Sentences Author: Anarchist Communist Federation Date: 1998 Language: en Topics: ALF, trial, Green Anarchist, Organise! Source: Retrieved on May 13, 2013 from https://web.archive.org/web/20130514040914/http://www.afed.org.uk/org/issue47/ga.html Notes: Published in Organise! Issue 47 ā Winter 1997/98.
The first results of the GANDALF (Green Anarchist and Animal Liberation
Front) trial are out and it was a big win for the forces of oppression.
Three editors of Green Anarchist, Steve Booth, Sax Wood, and Noel
Molland, have been convicted of conspiring to incite āPersons unknownā
to commit criminal damage by printing and distributing animal rights and
ecological info over a five year period. They have been sentenced to 3
years in prison for this. Another editor, Paul Rogers, has had his trial
postponed to next year. Simon Russell, editor of the Animal Liberation
Front newsletter, was acquitted.
Now the ACF has more than minor differences with the politics of Green
Anarchist , as has been seen abundantly in the pages of Organise! and
frankly find their tactical approach foolhardy and unhelpful to the
cause of liberation. Obviously we will continue to make these criticisms
of GA politics. But equally as obviously, we do not like what has
happened in the Gandalf trial. We will campaign against the sentences.
One theory put forward in the pages of The Big Issue is that the real
target of the police who zealously pursued prosecution, was Robin Webb,
press officer for the Animal Liberation Front. He was originally to join
the others in the dock, but the case against him was dismissed . In an
extraordinary move the Crown Prosecution Service intend to demand a
judicial review of the magistrateās decision.
But an equally valid theory would be that the police are testing the
water. They were able to carry out a number of raids, fishing
expeditions to gather information on British anarchism in general. Now
that the GA editors have been convicted the way is open for arrests of
class struggle anarchist activists. If there is a social explosion in
the coming years, riots, mass waves of wildcat strikes, a growing
revolutionary movement, then the State has a precedent and can more
easily prosecute anarchist publications. The implications of the verdict
are that anyone who reports on sympathetic reporting of any direct
action activity risks being prosecuted.
Far right activists have produced material far more capable of
prosecution. Only in a limited number of cases has the CPS decided to
act. The sentences dealt out against GA were heavier than far to any
previous sentencing in similar cases. Also note that the heavy 18 year
sentence handed out in December to Barry Horne, animal rights campaigner
convicted for a firebomb campaign is a much heavier sentence than that
given to many rapists and murderers. The judge, it should be noted, is
the only civilian judge with military rank, Major-General Selwood.