By Ministry of Defence - http://www.defenceimagery.mod.uk/, OGL
Introduction
This report details the findings of an exploratory research project funded by a Carnegie Trust research incentive grant and by the Russell Trust. The aim of the project was to examine how concerns about surveillance have impacted on activists in progressive-left causes in the UK. The project was originally inspired by a question which Jim Killock, Executive Director of Open Rights Group asked Adam Ramsay of openDemocracy – one of the co-authors of this report, about whether activists in the UK had changed their practices since the Snowden Revelations in 2013.
The research plan we developed envisaged an exploratory, mixed methods study based on a qualitative, inductive approach. Our study drew on three main sources of data, in addition to the available secondary literature. Between September and November 2015, using snowball sampling, we conducted 25 semi-structured interviews with political activists, all of whom had significant experience in forms of civil disobedience or direct action. In keeping with the increasing tendency for activists to move fluidly between congruent causes,[1] the interviewees had been involved in a broad cross section of different ‘progressive’ campaigns and movements, including climate change, anti-austerity and tax justice, radical Scottish independence, anti-nuclear, anti-arms trade, free Tibet and Palestine solidarity.
