Decem­ber 6th, 2014

by Steven Mor­ris / The Guardian

It is the city of the sub­ver­sive street artist Banksy, a cen­tre for alter­na­tive lifestyles and under­ground pol­i­tics. Even the direct­ly elect­ed inde­pen­dent may­or, George Fer­gu­son, prais­es the anar­chic spir­it of Bris­tol.

But over the last four years the city and its envi­rons have been tar­get­ed by rad­i­cals who have not been sat­is­fied with non-vio­lent expres­sion and protest.

The police have revealed for the first time that they are link­ing more than 100 acts of van­dal­ism against police sta­tions, politi­cians, mil­i­tary bases, banks, multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies, car deal­er­ships, rail­way lines, mag­is­trates courts and church­es believed to have been car­ried out by anar­chists. They have put a £10,000 reward on the head of one sus­pect­ed offend­er, a 27-year-old activist called Huw “Bad­ger” Nor­folk.

A per­ma­nent team of 10 detec­tives, work­ing under the code­name Oper­a­tion Rhone, has been set up to try to trace the per­pe­tra­tors and police have warned that it can only be a mat­ter of time before some­body is seri­ous­ly hurt or killed in one of the attacks. “I’m real­ly sur­prised that nobody has been injured so far,” said DCI Andy Bevan, who is lead­ing the search.

But Bristol’s long-estab­lished anar­chist com­mu­ni­ty is not tak­ing the police oper­a­tion lying down. The minor­i­tyre­spon­si­ble for the vio­lence has vowed to con­tin­ue the attacks. Many of the vast major­i­ty not involved have hit back at what they see as attempts by the police to prop up the estab­lish­ment, sup­press rad­i­cal­ism and split the com­mu­ni­ty. They are organ­is­ing demon­stra­tions against the police.

“The feel­ing is that they are using these attacks as an excuse for tar­get­ing any­one with alter­na­tive ideas. It’s not going to work,” said one anar­chist, who asked not to be named. “It is a strong, sol­id com­mu­ni­ty. That’s why the police can’t find the peo­ple they are after.”

Avon and Som­er­set police took the unusu­al step this week of nam­ing Nor­folk in con­nec­tion with two inci­dents. One was a van­dal­ism attack on the offices of the Bris­tol Post in August 2011 at the time of protests around Britain fol­low­ing the shoot­ing of Mark Dug­gan in north Lon­don. Win­dows were smashed and paint splashed over the front of the build­ing. The oth­er was an arson attack on a phone mast in Jan­u­ary 2013 that cut off tele­vi­sion, radio and mobile phone sig­nals to thou­sands of homes and busi­ness­es.

Nor­folk is a well-known and large­ly pop­u­lar fig­ure with­in the UK anar­chy scene. He was born in the leafy Bris­tol sub­urb of West­bury-on-Trym to David Nor­folk and Gill Gar­rett.

The Cam­bridge-edu­cat­ed David Nor­folk, 65, runs a con­sul­tan­cy advis­ing the nuclear indus­try. Gar­rett, 64, is a retired lec­tur­er and author of med­ical text­books and a well-known local poet. Ear­li­er this year she wrote a poem about wait­ing for her son’s birth and wor­ry­ing that an ear­ly spring would pre­cip­i­tate his arrival: “Delay your debut until spring has tru­ly come.”

Their daugh­ter, who is two years old­er than Bad­ger, fol­lowed a con­ven­tion­al career route, attend­ing uni­ver­si­ty and found find­ing work in health and social care.

In con­trast, after leav­ing school Huw Nor­folk moved from squat to squat, main­ly in Bris­tol, but at one point was liv­ing in the near­by For­est of Dean. For a while he helped run anar­chist book fairs in Bris­tol and helped out at a com­mu­ni­ty kitchen. “He’s a gen­tle, love­ly guy but com­mit­ted to the cause,” said one friend.

At the time of the attack on the Bris­tol Post he was believed to be liv­ing in a squat on Park Row in the cen­tre of Bris­tol but when police raid­ed the premis­es look­ing for him he had gone. While on the run, he post­ed a defi­ant open let­ter on the anar­chist web­site 325.nostate spelling out his world view and extolling the virtues of “proud lives of rebel­lion and com­pas­sion, recla­ma­tion and antag­o­nism, poet­ry and fire”.

He said: “I am one of those who sim­ply can­not and will not stom­ach the social, eco­nom­ic, moral, psy­cho­log­i­cal, phys­i­cal con­di­tions not of our mak­ing that we are born into at this point of his­to­ry. I have nev­er sought to dec­o­rate the walls of my cell with exam cer­tifi­cates, job pro­mo­tions, sports prizes, sta­tus sym­bols bor­rowed from the wealthy by our labour.

“I curse those who sell them­selves so cheap­ly to buy such unimag­i­na­tive dreams at the expense of a pos­si­bil­i­ty of a free­dom tru­ly of their own mak­ing. Since an ear­ly age this unwill­ing­ness and refusal has put me in con­flict, like count­less oth­ers, with that real­i­ty. And our under­stand­ing is grow­ing along with our fury.”

He signed off the 800-word let­ter: “Action replaces tears. For sol­i­dar­i­ty and self-organ­i­sa­tion, Huw ‘Bad­ger’ Nor­folk – just anoth­er fugi­tive.”

Since then police have found no trace of Nor­folk. They have linked him to the attack on the com­mu­ni­ca­tions mast in Jan­u­ary last year but now believe he may be lying low some­where else in Britain – or could be abroad.

They have pub­lished details of his appear­ance, includ­ing dis­tinc­tive tat­toos, but said he was known to change his appear­ance and use oth­er names.

Although the police have only iden­ti­fied the two inci­dents they want to speak to Nor­folk about, there are many more that the police have not linked to him. By far the most spec­tac­u­lar was an arson attack on a new police firearms cen­tre close to the Avon and Somerset’s force head­quar­ters in August 2013, which caused £16m of dam­age.

The spec­tac­u­lar arson attack on a new police firearms cen­tre in 2013
caused £16m of dam­age. Pho­to­graph: BBC

A group call­ing itself Angry Fox­es Cell claimed on 325.nostate that it had car­ried out the attack. “We left it with flames lick­ing high … It put smiles on our faces to realise how easy it was to enter their gun club and leave a fuck you sig­na­ture right in the bel­ly of the beast, with a curi­ous fox as our only wit­ness.”

The post claimed the attack was “also our way of mark­ing two years that Bris­tol anar­chist Bad­ger has evad­ed cap­ture” and added: “Stay free, keep fight­ing!”

There is no sign of the attacks stop­ping. Just before the Nato sum­mit took place in New­port, south Wales, in Sep­tem­ber this year a group call­ing itself “Ran­dom Anar­chists” set fire to an Air Cadet minibus in Bris­tol to high­light “the ways in which mil­i­tari­sa­tion works its way into the fab­ric of dai­ly life”.

The lat­est took place at the end of last month when five cars were torched in Long Ash­ton on the edge of the city. Four of the cars were parked on dri­ve­ways and police said they could eas­i­ly have put sleep­ing house­hold­ers at risk.

On the 325.nostate site the attack was claimed by “FAI Torch­es in the Night/Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front”. It said two of the cars had been linked to a multi­na­tion­al pow­er com­pa­ny and a provider of secu­ri­ty equip­ment; the oth­er three were high-end cars tar­get­ed to high­light the “green wash­ing” cha­rade of Bristol’s sta­tus as Euro­pean green cap­i­tal next year.

The police have stepped up their search for the attack­ers in recent months, anger­ing many with­in Bristol’s non-vio­lent alter­na­tive com­mu­ni­ty. One activist, Al, an office work­er in his 20s, who said his house was raid­ed by an “army” of Oper­a­tion Rhone offi­cers, dis­missed the police jus­ti­fi­ca­tion that they were try­ing to pre­vent any­one dying.

Arson attacks in Long Ash­ton last month destroyed five cars.
Pho­to from The Guardian

He argued that nobody had been hurt in the attacks – while peo­ple were dying in police cus­tody all the time. “If the police want to pre­vent deaths, they should leave us alone and start arrest­ing each oth­er,” he told the Guardian.

Al said: “I think that the police’s actions are an attempt to make it look like they’re doing some­thing. They care more about their image in the press than about the wel­fare of ordi­nary peo­ple. Their choice of who to tar­get is also polit­i­cal and feels like harass­ment polic­ing – mak­ing it clear that they know where we live and work, and that they can come into our homes and take what they want, when­ev­er they like.

“This hasn’t worked – I knew already that police are here to keep the rich in pow­er and keep us down. Since the raid, I also know that peo­ple in my com­mu­ni­ty will stand by me and sup­port me, what­ev­er the police try to do. I hope that they stop harass­ing peo­ple, but if they do not then they should know that it will only make us more unit­ed, and more angry.”

Last month a group of about 20 anar­chists turned up at the head­quar­ters of Avon and Som­er­set police’s CID and spe­cial oper­a­tions unit and made a nui­sance of them­selves as offi­cers arrived for work.

A let­ter was pub­lished on web­sites includ­ing that of the Bris­tol Anar­chist Fed­er­a­tion and Bris­tol Defen­dant Sol­i­dar­i­ty, signed by more than a dozen groups accus­ing the police of resort­ing to “des­per­ate” tac­tics to try to hunt down those behind the attacks.

It claimed the police had launched a “con­cert­ed effort to intim­i­date and divide us all,” adding: “A big part of their plan is to scare peo­ple into inac­tion and to cre­ate divi­sions between us. They hope to get us blam­ing each oth­er for increased sur­veil­lance to the point where some­one falls for their lies and starts talk­ing to the bad guys.”

Bevan said he believed only a small group of anar­chists was behind the attacks, argu­ing that if the group was a big one, some­one would have bro­ken ranks. He said the attacks were well planned and skil­ful­ly exe­cut­ed, sug­gest­ing the per­pe­tra­tors were organ­ised and intel­li­gent.

He was keen to empha­sise that the finan­cial impact was just one ele­ment, claim­ing that as well as putting human lives at risk, some of the inci­dents had caused envi­ron­men­tal dam­age.

Bevan insist­ed that the force was not try­ing to clamp down on Bristol’s counter-cul­ture or harass­ing peo­ple with alter­na­tive lifestyles. “That’s a fan­tas­tic part of the city. Avon and Som­er­set police sup­ports peace­ful protest. These attacks are some­thing quite dif­fer­ent.”