Under surveillance: how a man was recalled to prison after visiting a Bristol anarchist social centre

Toby Shone’s arrest by counter-terrorism police surveilling the BASE centre in Easton shows the state’s escalating clampdown on political dissent.

Features 20th August, 2024

Tom Anderson

Members of Easton-based anarchist social centre BASE recently discovered that they’re being monitored by counter-terrorist police, after a man was recalled to prison after attending one of its events.  

Toby Shone was initially arrested on terrorism and drugs charges in November 2020, as part of a wider police operation named Op Adream. Police believed Toby was the editor of the 325nostate.net anarchist website, which they said contained material that encouraged terrorism. 

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) also found psychedelic drugs during the raid on his home and charged Toby with terrorism and drugs offences. He denied all charges, and on the eve of Toby’s court case, the CPS indicated it was dropping the terrorism allegations against him. It offered no explanation for the sudden change of heart. 

Toby was convicted of possession and intent to supply Class A and B drugs, and sentenced to three years and nine months in prison. Despite not being convicted of any terror offences, Toby’s supporters say he was – and is being – treated like a terrorist in prison. When he was released, in December 2022, it was under heavy restrictions and monitoring by the multi-agency National Security Division (NSD), which manages terror cases.

Last September he was recalled to prison after being arrested by armed police acting on the orders of Counter Terrorism Policing South West (CTPSW). The grounds for the 46-year-old’s arrest were that he hadn’t complied with his probation licence conditions when he was released part way through his prison sentence. 

Police say he breached his conditions by attending a letter-writing event at BASE, and using a phone that wasn’t registered with his probation officer. Toby said he did not submit details of the phone he was using as many of his comrades had already been spied on by undercover police and didn’t want them to be subject to further surveillance.

Legal papers served to Toby showed BASE was under ongoing surveillance and monitoring by CTPSW, and that police officers had compiled ‘evidence’ about events being held at the Easton social centre.

BASE members, in a collective statement, said they were shocked to hear of Toby’s recall to prison and to find out that they were being monitored:

“There is a suggestion that there is some shadowy criminal anarchist group behind BASE so that the cops can expand their fantasy of ‘anarchist terror’ where a social centre is somewhere that people become groomed and radicalised and where glorification and funding of terrorism are rampant,” it said. 

“Back in the real world, BASE is a much-loved and long-standing autonomous social centre that hosts community dinners, bike workshops, [and] talks on a diverse range of topics from social justice and prisoner solidarity to environmental and cultural topics.”

BASE also ran a community mutual-aid project during the Covid pandemic.

Treated like a terrorist

Toby’s case is one of the only prosecutions of anarchists under modern terrorism legislation in the UK, and he’s been hounded by counter-terrorism police for over four years. How and why he was sent back to jail, at HMP Garth, 170 miles from his home, is a story campaigners say highlights the British state’s attempts to silence people with oppositional political views. 

The 325 website and publication publishes reports of direct action, discusses anarchist political thought, and makes calls for solidarity with anarchist prisoners, and the anarchist movement more broadly.

In an interview with a US-based anarchist radio station, Toby explained that the case against him hinged on the idea that 325 encouraged terrorism, and made a tenuous link between content on 325 and a Greek armed Marxist-Leninist group called November 17th, which is proscribed as a terrorist group here in the UK. This enabled them to utilise terrorism legislation. 

Toby’s supporters say he has been persistently treated like a terrorist in prison. He spent the first year on remand, before his court case, in Category A prisons in Wandsworth and Belmarsh. He was denied visits by his lawyers for the first six weeks of his imprisonment, and he wasn’t shown the evidence against him for many months.

Prior to his release, police tried to impose a Serious Crime Prevention Order (SCPO) on him. If granted, the SCPO would have imposed tight restrictions on his freedom for five years after his release, and could be renewed indefinitely. It would have restricted who he could meet, as well as his use of tech security tools like encrypted messaging and virtual private networks (VPNs). 

Toby’s lawyers, however, were able to successfully contest these restrictions at a court hearing in May 2022.

Prison authorities have, for a long time, been restricting Toby’s communication with the outside world. Letters and emails sent to and from prison are routinely censored. 

He has been unable to receive several books and other publications through the post, despite the fact that the right for prisoners to be sent books has been hard fought for. In autumn 2022, anarchists held a noisy demonstration outside HMP Parc near Bridgend over the restrictions, and the prison moved Toby to a segregation cell as a result. 

We spoke to Sarah*, a friend of Toby’s, about the effects this censoring of mail and isolation is having on Toby and those close to him. 

She said prison authorities had even stopped a birthday card that Toby had sent to his elderly parents from getting out during his sentence. Sarah said the intention was to “demoralise him and disable Toby’s perception of support” from his family, friends, comrades and the anarchist movement in general. According to Sarah, “this is a stated goal in probation paperwork”. 

“This is a politically motivated decision that extends beyond Toby and reveals the authoritarian nature of the state we are living in at this time. His recall for attending an anarchist social centre makes it clear that somewhere like BASE is considered a threat to ‘national security’,” Sarah added.

Sarah has been stopped at UK borders under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act as part of the ongoing Operation Adream and interrogated about her ideas, relationships and personal life. She said the restrictions and surveillance on Toby’s communications mean she “censors her language, ideas and feelings” to avoid being removed from his agreed contact list and having her written communications censored by the prison authorities. She told us that everything she says to Toby is “being analysed, which feels intrusive and uncomfortable”.

Silencing dissent

Kat Hobbs is part of the Network for Police monitoring (Netpol), an organisation monitoring the escalation of police powers in the UK. She told the Cable the use of terror charges against Toby for holding anarchist beliefs could be a harbinger of things to come.

“In an era of ever-increasing state surveillance and a renewed crackdown on our right to protest, [Toby’s case shows] how far the state is willing to go to silence dissent,” she said.

The use of repressive charges against anarchists is nothing new. In 1997 three editors of Green Anarchist and two people linked to the Animal Liberation Front were prosecuted and jailed for three years for the publication allegedly having incited others to commit criminal damage. They were later released and their convictions overturned. In Toby’s case, prosecutors dialled things up significantly by making allegations of terrorism.

From the 2000s, prosecutors brought several political conspiracy cases against Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) and other animal rights campaigns, often employing charges of ‘conspiracy to blackmail’ to repress those who took action to pressure companies who were involved in the vivisection industry. Reports of campaign successes published on the SHAC website were key pieces of evidence in these cases.  Dozens of people were imprisoned, several for over a decade.

In 2017, another Bristolian named Joshua Walker, was prosecuted for a terrorism offence for being in possession of the Anarchist Cookbook, a manual which includes instructions for making weapons. The book was first published in the US in the early 1970s, in the context of militant resistance to the Vietnam war. Joshua had obtained a copy of the book before travelling to Northern Syria to join the Kurdish People’s Protection Units’ (YPG) fight against ISIS. He was eventually acquitted of all charges, after defence lawyers argued that the book was easily available in the UK.

In the state’s discourse anarchism falls into Left-Wing, Anarchist and Single-Issue Terrorism (LASIT). Anarchists are described as violent extremists in government guidance provided to schoolteachers in the UK.

“We have known for a long time that intrusive police surveillance targets left movements, and the ongoing ‘spy cops’ inquiry keeps exposing how far the police are willing to go,” said Kat. “BASE social centre will not be the only place under surveillance for sharing leaflets and serving vegan food. For someone to face prison time for joining a letter-writing session with friends is chilling. Netpol stands in solidarity with Toby Shone.”

BASE said Toby’s treatment shows that state repression of our movements will only increase, and that Toby is likely to not be the “last of us to be locked up for our politics. As long as places like BASE are used by people engaged in shared radical politics, they will continue to be sites of surveillance, repression and draconian policing. We stand with Toby not only for the sake of his freedom, but for the sake of all of ours as well!”

“Toby’s case shows us clearly that we in the UK do not have the right to freely organise with others”.

The Cable contacted the Ministry of Justice for comment on Toby’s case. A spokesperson said: “Offenders released on licence are kept under close supervision and will be recalled to prison if they break the rules”. They declined to comment on the disruption to Toby’s mail into and out of the prison. We also contacted CTPSW, but received no response. 

This lack of a substantial comment from either authority is indicative of a lack of transparency over the actions of the police and prison service.

Visit the BASE site to learn more about the centre, or for further information on Tony’s case and prisoner solidarity check out Brighton ABC or Bristol ABC.