FBI informer at heart of fight for US civil rights

January 4th, 2013

New research by an American historian at The University of Nottingham could rewrite the history books on the US civil rights movement during the 1960s after revealing that a key racial equality official was also an FBI informer.

Herbert Hill was the highly respected national labor secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for more than two decades and is traditionally remembered as a major force in the fight to eliminate racial discrimination within the American trade union movement.

The shocking revelation that at the height of the civil rights movement in the 1960s Hill informed on socialists he knew in his youth has come to light during Dr Christopher Phelps’ analysis of Freedom of Information Act releases now digitally archived and publically available on the FBI website.

The research, just published in the journal Labor History, focuses attention on memoranda in the FBI’s COINTELPRO, or Counter-Intelligence Program, to disrupt and neutralize the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), which the federal government had classified as “subversive.” Hill belonged to the SWP during the Second World War and after, resigning in 1949.

In May 1962, WC Sullivan, head of domestic intelligence for the FBI, wrote to another high-ranking FBI official that an “SWP member during the period 1943-1949 who is currently employed by the NAACP as a labor relations official” had been “contacted on several occasions by New York Agents and has been cooperative”.

Dr Phelps, Associate Professor in the Department of American and Canadian Studies, said that while Hill’s name was redacted in the documents, every indication points to him alone as the cooperative informant referred to by top FBI officials.

Dr Phelps conducted tape-recorded interviews with Hill, who died in 2004, before the FBI connection was known, in which Hill supplied corroborating information used by Dr Phelps to draw the connection.

Dr Phelps explained: “That a key official of the mainline civil rights organisation in the United States was assisting the FBI in pinpointing political radicals is a significant revelation that shows how extensive was the federal government’s monitoring of social movements, including within the civil rights movement — so often taken to be a shining example of American democracy.

“It is laden with irony that an official dedicated to civil rights for racial equality could simultaneously provide assistance in naming names that would contract political and civil liberties.”

Dr Phelps observed that political dissenters in the 1950s and 1960s often lost their jobs, faced deportation, or experienced other reprisals when identified by the FBI as radicals, so many chose to refuse to cooperate with its investigations.

In addition to informing on socialists, documents show that Hill was unwittingly used by the FBI in a 1962 attempt to obstruct a suspected fraternisation between the moderate NAACP and the more militant Committee to Aid the Monroe Defendants (CAMD), an organisation initiated by SWP members in support of the controversial black advocate of armed self-defence Robert F Williams and the movement he led in Monroe, North Carolina.

The FBI feared that the CAMD, a group formed to help Williams and other black defendants in a complicated racial riot and kidnapping case, would gain legitimacy and power through support of the NAACP.

The Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the New York FBI office advised his fiercely anti-Communist FBI boss, J Edgar Hoover, in 1962, that an anonymous telephone call should be placed to Hill complaining about the SWP’s involvement with the CAMD: “It is felt that as a disruptive tactic, considerable damage could be done to the SWP by having the NAACP aware of the controlling influence over the CAMD.”

Dr Phelps said: “The FBI’s attempts to make use of Herbert Hill supply a vivid example of the FBI’s general practice under J Edgar Hoover of actively but covertly opposing the civil rights movement and of sowing dissension within it, especially between black militants and moderates.”

This revelation comes in the wake of controversy in the United States over a journalist’s claim that a Japanese-American member of the Black Panther Party (an African-American socialist revolutionary party advocating black armed self-defence), Richard Aoki, was a paid FBI informer.

A video interview with Dr Phelps is available. Visit: http://tiny.cc/YouTubeFBI.

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Hidden impact of cyber bullying

January 4th, 2013

Cyber bullying — using modern communications such as e-mails, texts or web-postings — is as common in the workplace as ‘conventional’ bullying. Yet, the way cyber bullying influences both the victim and witnesses is more hidden in the workplace.

These are the findings of Punched from the Screen, new research into workplace bullying carried out by occupational psychologists at The University of Nottingham and the University of Sheffield.

Dr Iain Coyne, from Nottingham’s Institute of Work, Health and Organisations, said: “The study shines a light on this relatively new phenomenon. We believe our research is likely to have implications for the way that employers formulate policies and guidelines relating to cyber bullying and the seminar was an opportunity for us to discuss our findings and learn about the experiences of other employers.”

The study was carried out by Dr Coyne and Dr Christine Sprigg, Dr Carolyn Axtell and Sam Farley, from the University of Sheffield. Of the 320 people who responded to the survey, around eight out of ten had experienced bullying behaviour on at least one occasion in the previous six months.

Until now the impact of cyber bullying has mainly focused on younger people, in environments such as schools, rather than adult workers. The research suggests on how employers should tackle and prevent cyber bullying. This will become more important as communication technologies evolve.

The study included three separate surveys among employees in several UK universities. It asked people about their experiences of cyber bullying and examined the impact of cyber bullying on workers’ mental strain and wellbeing. The researchers gave them a list of what can be classed as bullying, such as being humiliated, ignored or gossiped about and asked if they had faced such behaviour online and how often.

Dr Coyne said: “The results also showed 14-20% of the people who responded had experienced one of these on at least a weekly basis — a similar rate to conventional bullying. Overall, those who had experienced cyber bullying tended to have higher mental strain and lower job satisfaction. In one of our surveys this effect was shown to be worse for cyber bullying than for conventional bullying.”

The research team also found that the impact of witnessing cyber bullying was different than that seen for conventional bullying.

Dr Coyne said: “In the research literature, people who witness conventional bullying also show evidence of reduced wellbeing.

“However, in our research this does not appear to be the case for the online environment. Witnesses are much less affected. This might be because of the remote nature of cyberspace — perhaps people empathise less with the victims. This could affect the witness’s reaction to the bullying and potentially whether to report it or otherwise intervene.”

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