In terms of covert police surveillance of civil society and its political participation, the New Zealand left often displays extremes of either naivety or paranoia, and unfortunately little in between. In the contemporary case of "leftwing activist" police informant Rob Gilchrist, the left appears to have been incredibly naive. [Read more below]
The state in New Zealand has always taken a strong interest in the surveillance of leftwing political activity. The Security Intelligence Service, in particular, has a long history of spying on leftwing activist groups and individuals. And in recent years the power of the SIS has been extended, with the help of MPs from Labour, National, the Maori Party etc. There has even sometimes been some slight 'innovations' to the spying configurations - with state owned corporations using private investigators to do the spying on political activists.
The latest revelation of state spying on political activity involves Christchurch man Rob Gilchrist (also known by other anarchist type codes such as Balaclava). Details of the expose can be read in the following links:
Police anti-terror squad spies on protest groups
Who the police were spying on
The activist who turned police informer
How Gilchrist was found out
No Right Turn's analysis
The Standard's analysis
But you have to wonder why it took so long for this all to unravel. Surely the signs were apparent well before now? Not all ex-Army personal are suspect, but this element of his background in conjunction with some other dodgy elements must surely have created cause for concern?
In fact, one leftwing activist raised alarm bells about Gilchrist three years. I received the following email that was sent to a number of people, suggesting that Gilchrist (known as Balaclava) was a 'nark'. The email was marked "NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION THANKS", but I assume that enough time and events have occurred since August 2005 when I received it, to make this of public interest:
Balaclava aka Rob (otherwise known to me as pavlova), is a complete tosser. He is an anarchist who also calls himself a property developer& businessman. He is a trust fund bludger whose father was a Coca-cola executive. He stayed at the Duxton hotel (a swanky zionist-owned hotel) for months while playing protestor with his other anarchist vegan mates up here in Auckland. He is mostly CHCH& WLG based though. He also claims to have a huge knowledge re surveillance that just comes from him being loaded and having all the toys! He is ex-army though so thinks he's boot camp leader for any new activists. However, he is a mallowpuff who pissed off after 1 day cause it rained when he visited the occupation against the prison at Ngawha, Northland. What a fraud!! The friend of mine, previously of CHCH, who he credits with bringing him to anarcho politics (is that a contridiction in terms?) & animal rights, said that she didn't trust him & many people thought he was a plant/nark/cop.?? I don't think I believe that, but he does seem to ingratiate himself into animal rights & maori radical activist circles. Sorry, more irrelevant information. Also during one visit to Auckland he chose to lead 2 people away from a protest with some false excuse before the police attacked - APEC (he had the scanner& was listening to the cops). He is dodgy, not to be trusted, and of course he doesn't support freedom of speech. He's an anarchist& a pavlova. 'Balaclava' indeed - bloody tosser!!
Prior to this, Gilchrist had been a police informer for seven years. During this time he joined a number of leftwing organisations, who seemed to have welcomed him aboard and let him have all the information he required. Even the Workers Party added Gilchrist to their internal strategic email discussion group - and Gilchrist forwarded the emails onto the police.
And then there's been all the long term relationships that Gilchrist has had with leftwing activists. It seems hard to believe that he was suspected or exposed well before now.
So, are we all too naive?
