Hello everyone! We hope this finds you all well. Please feel free to read this as a pdf document.

Archiving is Activism!

Dear Friends,

We’ve been busy as ever, partly helping with the reestablishment of the Network of Radical Libraries and Archives (NORLA) and also hosting visiting researchers. Two came from a Leverhulme funded project: 'Ageing LGBTQ Lives in the UK and Italy: Criminalisations and Migrations'. We were really pleased at how much they found out about this subject in our books and archives and that it was worth travelling from Leicester and London.

Our New Lock-Up

We are more excited than we’d expected to be about taking possession of a new storage facility for materials we don’t have the space for at the Nest itself. At £2,000 per year plus insurance, it isn’t sustainable in the longer term, but it’s a clean and dry stop-gap and there is room for a small table for us to work. Most of what we’ll store there will be our digitised larger collections and posters. Getting to grips with posters will be one of our major projects this year.

Feb 2026 Document of the Month

This month we give you some materials from events associated with a period of ‘Spycops’ activity that directly targeted British activist input to global anti-capitalist protests. Whilst events on 30th November 1999 (N30) reached worldwide attention, notably due to media coverage of the Battle of Seattle, earlier in the year saw a precursor global action in financial centres, the June 18 Carnival Against Capital, which as we will see, the state had prepared for with by police infiltration and surveillance. 
Numerous J18 leaflets and other materials were produced to organise and then deal with the state’s reaction to large numbers of activists converging on London We digitised a few leaflets from two bundles for this newsletter. The first selected leaflet ‘Training for June 18th, shows that Nottingham’s Rainbow Centre (before it moved and became Sumac) was involved in helping prepare activists for the day. The second, ‘J18 Update’, shows how the anarchists’ Legal Defence and Monitoring Group was able to quickly respond to government online publication of police photos and video, and so help others. Our third offering ‘Guerilla Gardening’ gives a view of some of the more creative activities that were promoted by Reclaim the Streets and others during this period of anti-capitalist protest, giving a vital local flavour to a global movement. Also in our collection are leaflets from N30 and Mayday 2000, the latter an attempt by a growing anarchist movement to consolidate the gains from the anti-globalisation movement.

Spycop Jim Boyling

The Undercover Policing Inquiry was announced in 2014 by then Home Secretary Theresa May. Now, a decade later, it is finally reaching the late-90s. From Monday 9 to Wednesday 11 the former undercover officer Jim Boyling gave evidence to the inquiry. Boyling used the cover name Jim Sutton and is identified by the cipher HN14 in some inquiry documents. He was sent by the Met Police's Special Demonstration Squad to infiltrate animal rights groups, Reclaim the Streets and Earth First! between 1995 and 2000.

Boyling deceived at least three women into sexual relationships. Deceptive sexual relationships with female activists was a standard tactic of undercover officers, encouraged by senior officers. However, Boyling is the only officer in SDS who was disciplined for his actions while undercover. This was for his relationship with "Rosa" which continued after his deployment and only ended when she escaped with their two children to a women's refuge.

In 1999, Boyling was centrally involved in organising the J18 Carnival Against Capital. This took place in London on June 18 1999, part of a global day of action to coincide with the G8 summit in Cologne, Germany. There were various events on the day, but the central activity was a large march which split into separate streams and the reconverged on the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange for a street party. Boyling was one of 10 people who knew the plan for the day. He organised and paid for cars used to block the road and found people to drive them.

Documents from the time, released as part of the inquiry, bear messages which make it clear they are not to be shown to the City Police. This seems to suggest that the Met were using intelligence gathered by the SDS as part of a turf war with the City Police, who were at that time responsible for public order policing within the Square Mile.

For more on Boyling and other spycops, check out the brilliant Spy Cops Info podcast and the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance. For more on the women deceived into sexual relationships by spycops, see Police Spies Out of Lives.

New Rose ‘Women in Punk’ Event

See us next at this event on Friday March 6th at Rough Trade. There were spaces left when we asked, so you can still sign up this really exciting event. We’ll be there with a display of 1970s and 80s anarcho/a-punk fanzines, and we’ll probably be getting all nostalgic and over-excited in the audience.

We are completely self-funded, so please donate if you can.

Bank name: Unity Trust Bank
Recipient: The Sparrows Nest Library and Archive
Sort code: 60-83-01
Account: 20379287

Thank you once again for your support!