This is the rough transcript of Toby‘s talk at the solidarity event for anarchist prisoners on August 31st, 2025, at BASE social centre in Easton, Bristol, UK.
Hi everyone
Welcome to BASE social centre, I’m Toby Shone, I’m an anarchist ex-prisoner from the Forest of Dean. I was in the Operation Adream case, which was a co-ordinated international police operation which involved British, Dutch and German police, at least, we could say. I spent three years in various prisons in UK, mostly under 23 hour lockdown in conditions of solitary confinement. I also had 9 months in a secure bail hostel under anti-terrorist restrictions, and 3 months of bail conditions where I had to sign every day at a police station in the Forest.
I want to thank BASE for giving me this opportunity to talk. I’m not going to talk at length. And I want to properly thank all the comrades in Bristol who supported me during my imprisonment. The last time I was here for the International Week of Solidarity event, which was in 2023, I was out on license. As you probably know, the Counter-Terror Police South West had a surveillance team outside, and this event was a major reason cited by the National Security Division for my subsequent abduction back to prison. I have the surveillance report here from the police, so you can see the material on BASE, see the angle where the police took the surveillance photograph from, and see how the Counter-Terror Police South-West regard us. So it gives me great pleasure to be here with you all, to remember our prisoners and write them letters, to eat and exchange with everyone. It has a lot of meaning for me to be here and speak to you.
To recap my case for anyone unfamiliar with it: I was accused of Section 2., Distribution of Terrorist Publications, which relates to the administration of 325.nostate.net; Section 56, Possession of Information likely to be used for Terrorist purposes, which relates to two videos, one of which demonstrates ‘How to make a shaped explosive charge’, the other ‘How to set fire to a mobilephone transmitter’. And lastly Section 15, Funding Terrorism, which relates to the control of cryptocurrency donation wallets for prisoner solidarity and publications, as the police want to reframe this as terrorist financing. For this charge alone I was looking at a starting point of 9 years, since an aggravating factor is the use of cryptocurrencies, on account of their so-called “sophisticated” and “high-tech” means, according to their archaic sentencing guildlines.
I was also accused of being part of several direct actions, which included an incendiary attack against a police vehicle compound in Bristol, as part of the Phoenix Project, which was an international campaign of solidarity with anarchist prisoners, initiated by the Conspiracy of Cells of Fire in Greece. This action was claimed by the Rain Cell of the Informal Anarchist Federation, or FAI, to use it’s Italian acronym, which the organisation is known by.
I was also accused of carrying out an incendiary attack against a telecommunications transmitter in Bristol as part of the Earth Liberation Front, also within a cell of the FAI, and accused of Animal Liberation Front activity, for releasing pheasants in Gloucestershire.
So as you can see, the cops wanted to attribute a lot of unsolved accusations against me in the hope some of it stuck, hoping for a significant sentence, and social restrictions, basically for the rest of my adult life.
It’s important for comrades who are coming out of prison to be able to speak about their experience, if they wish, and since this week has been the International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners, we felt it appropriate that I say a few words after dinner.
When we try to understand what the comrades face in the prisons and in the revolutionary struggle, we start to prepare ourselves mentally. Like this, we learn from those who’ve already been there. Some of you may have been to prison already, or you will know those who are there now. If you are involved in protest or direct action, then you have to be prepared for prison. We have to get better at looking after our comrades who are taken hostage; the solidarity structures in the UK are not really capable currently of supporting more than a handful of prisoners. If we really want to take part in a revolution, we better know what that means. Prison is one more step on the path of the individual and social war, and it is a path that many of us face.
We’re here to remember all our anarchist comrades who are locked up behind bars. Not just for a week but for the entire year, our comrades will remain taken from their families, friends and loved ones, some of them with life sentences.
To name only a few of those missing but present here today; Comrades like Alfredo Cospito, Anna Beniamino and Juan Sorroche Fernandez in Italy. Monica Caballero and Francisco Solar in Chile. Amadeu Casellas in Spain. Mumia Abu-Jamal, Oso Blanco, Bill Dunne and Micheal Kimble in USA. Nikos Maziotis, Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis, Fotis Tziotzis, Christos Tsakalos, Christos Rodopoulos, Marianna M., Dimitra Z. and Nikos Romanos in Greece.
If we neglect our prisoners, we neglect the revolutionary struggle. And the most important way to show solidarity to our prisoners is to continue the struggle for which they were imprisoned themselves. The surest way to free our prisoners is to destroy the system, so this is why events like this are important, because each part of the struggle is related to other aspects of our lives.
The letters we write, the connections we try to kindle through little sparks, are the tinder to the flame. When we are active on the streets, when we meet here together for dinners and discussions, we’re trying to immediately live the lives we want, and how we want to imagine the world.
There are so many anarchist prisoners around the world, and I think here in the UK we are going to see many more than resulted from Operation Adream, which was really a miserable failure for the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. We can be sure they will try again, since for them our anarchism is just so-called “extremism” and “terrorism”, because we anarchists do not disavow direct action, property destruction and revolutionary violence.
Anarchist action is political anti-violence and self-defense in the context of the attack against exploitation. Anarchists have nothing to justify to the regime nor to its judges, police and prosecutors.
During the first round of interrogations I was subjected to in November 2020 by the anti-terrorist police, the filthy detectives touched on the International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners. They accused the call out as being an “encouragement of terrorism”, that our prisoners were “criminal”, “terrorists”, it was “support for terrorism”.
In the language of state repression, “terrorism” seems to be any action, thoughts or speech that oppose their technocratic worldview. We can see this in the use of the terrorism laws against Palestine Action, Just Stop Oil and Kneecap.
What was the reason that the police decided to strike against those they thought were responsible for 325.nostate.net, and 325 magazine?
It was because anarchist and anti-capitalist counter-information initiatives have been proven to be useful to modern social insurgency. The world’s police want to cut off the flow of direct action communiques, analytics, news and letters from prisoners, which are forming the basis for a new anarchy that is alive in debate and action. A large part of that debate has concerned the role and nature of informal organisation, the new critique of post-industrialism, solidarity to our prisoners and explanations of the targeting decisions of the affinity groups themselves.
The latest technologies of social control, the so-called “convergence technologies”, such as artificial intelligence, nanotech & biotech, 3-D printing and robotics, are being pushed as drivers of a new Fourth Industrial Revolution. The tech companies are at the forefront of the new military-industrial nexus. Issue #12 of 325 magazine, which the police were trying to suppress the distribution of, precisely concerns these issues. Fighting the transhumanist singularity concept is part of our anti-civilisation perspectives. We are more than just parts and labour. There is something inside us which is unimaginable, untamable, wild. It burns like a fire and can set the world ablaze again. Propaganda by the Deed. We want to contribute to and take part in, the creation of situations which are beyond the control of anyone, even ourselves. Uncontrollable events that have the potential to wreck the existent reality. To turn the globe and the social order, upside down.
And it is in situations like this, that we can ask what is the role of anarchists, at the end of our world, at a time of genocide and ecological collapse? Well, there are many things we can choose. And I want to talk about one of them, this aspect of the new anarchy, which doesn’t rely on social activism for it’s primary reference, but rather the constant attack against heirarchy. These attacks are carried out by small affinity groups, acting in a decentralised, horizontal way, and with the ability to co-ordinate with others at a greater scale, internationally.
Operation Adream was preceeded by Operation Rhone, which was a policing operation designed to catch those who had carried out widespread anarchist property destruction in the South West. Operation Rhone was a failure, costing millions, and from that point a decision seemed to have been made by the national anti-terrorist police to concentrate their efforts on the counter-information sites that published the claims of responsibility for the anarchist actions, and then to map out any netwworks from there.
Yet, the police have failed to either lock us all up or cease the publication of 325 magazine, which we can find here today with a new issue, “#13 – Back to Basics”, which continues the critical analysis of technology, giving a platform for prisoner’s voices and reporting on the revolutionary struggle. After the server seizures, 325.nostate.net continues to exist as a web archive and you can check the darknights noblogs site or actforfreedomnow for current English language news.
We’re going to see a short film now, which is a bit of fun, it’s not too serious, it’s some agit-prop. The video cuts up some BBC news report about the anarchist actions in Bristol, to illustrate. According to the reports, the police were really unhappy about this – Fuck the police!
→ Video
← Video ends.
All these attacks which you’ve just seen referenced here in the video were accompanied by communiques which explained their actions and were dedicated to imprisoned comrades.
It gave me a great amount of strength when I was in jail, whenever I managed to hear about the international solidarity attacks which took place in my name. When I was held in HMP Wandsworth, before there was any real news circulating about my case in the anarchist media, a cell of FAI Indonesia carried out an incendiary attack against a police station in Jakarta, dedicating it to Monica Caballero, Fransisco Solar and I. The comrades did not need a signal or an explanation to act directly against power, and to remember us, the imprisoned comrades. This action made it into the prosecution file against me and at a time when I had a great amount of control on my communications. This piece of news fuelled my passions and my sense of self, which prison tries to annihilate. For a few moments I was not incarcerated, but my heart soared above the horizon, that’s how I felt. I felt very strong.
The reason that I spent years in prison was not just because I took responsibility for a large amount of LSD, DMT and Psilocybin, but it was state revenge for all the unsolved incendiary attacks and smashing of banks, the burning of telecommunications infrastructure and destruction of luxury, corporate or police vehicles. Not just in Bristol, but around the world. I was held hostage as a revolutionary prisoner, and I remain an enemy combatant.
I want to say one last thing on the subject of the action groups here in Bristol, the period which these groups were operating really exists between 2010 and 2016, and since then there has not been a concerted continuation of direct actions. I think we shouldn’t become too complacent about this, I think contemporary 21st century anarchism is expressed in practical terms, and that without that, the movement dies.
These actions come about by the certain choices and decisions of individuals, as well as their living situations and demands. We also cannot be idle about the possibility of infiltration, surveillance, and we know what the risks are. Property destruction, sabotage of electronic infrastructure, attacks against police and corporations, these will all be prosecuted under the anti-terrorist laws, as will the counter-information and solidarity structures, when the pigs are able to formulate and execute the cases.
Prison, or solitary confinement, which is what you’ll be put in, if you go to prison as a revolutionary, or a “political” “extremist”, is a meeting with isolation. A meeting with the alone. 23 hours a day in concrete, correspondence censored and recorded, visits noted. Prison has a damaging effect on the body and mind, if you fail to keep your sense of reality and self-responsibility.
We have to keep good routines, and I remember the maxim recorded by anarchist comrade Ihar Alinevich, currently imprisoned in Belarus, within his book, “On the Way to Magadan”.
1. Don’t fear – Everything the cops and prison guards do, you should consider a bluff, and if it isn’t, it’s the only way to know if you can withstand it.
2. Don’t beg – Every request must be a demand otherwise the psychological atmosphere of submission can reign without being acknowledged.
3. Don’t trust – Everything they say is a lie, and even if it isn’t, what they say can be withdrawn at any time.
If any of you go to prison for political actions, or in my case, unrelated drug crimes that can be used to justify your imprisonment, then there is a good chance you’ll be imposed with MAPPA supervision as well. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it stands for Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements. This is a panel of senior police, prison, probation and national government, such as the Home Secretary and Ministry of Justice, as well as forensic psychologists, National Health Service and benefits staff, if deemed necessary. The main “case management” you would be subjected to comes from decisions made by the filth of the National Security Division and Counter-Terror Police.
Despite not being convicted for any “terrorist” or even political offence, I was held under anti-terrorist conditions for my entire sentence, all justified by the fact of my anarchist ideas and actions, and that at one time I’d been charged but found “not-guilty”. I was not silent in the prison and I did not co-operate with the visits of the police detectives, the internal prison counter-terror unit, National Security Division probation workers or the so-called Prevent team and “forensic” psychologists.
I’m just going to reiterate the need to not give them any information about yourself or about other people, and to try to take a consistent and hostile approach in your interactions. They will engage you at times where you have no recourse to legal representation, nor supposed “right to silence”.
For example, I was compelled to attend two forced sessions a week with a National Security Division probation worker called Lewis Thomas during the period where I was detained at the secure bail hostel in Gloucester. This upper middle-class guy, in his late 30s, told me he still lived with his mom, and had been to private school, he was basically straight from university and still lived in his mom’s basement. He’d done a few criminology courses and worked in the probation service for a few years. Lewis identified with so-called “British values”, democracy, inclusivity, equal rights and probably considered himself progressive, since he read the Guardian. He was a miserable piece of shit with no life experience, just like all the other “professionals” of repression that I met. They only deserve contempt and hatred.
Lewis was particularly upset and threatened by the idea of an anarchist demo against the NSD regional headquarters in Cardiff, his workplace, so it gave me a large amount of pleasure as I sat in high-security to know one took place there. Probation workers, police, prison staff. These are our class enemies. We don’t co-operate with them, we’re organising towards a world where they will be eliminated forever.
I was constantly threatened with being sent back to prison if I did not comply with their demands. I used my conditional liberty to subvert their power and to use those moments to my advantage. I spoke at multiple anarchist gatherings, in person and online. I broke many, many of my conditions, willingly, knowingly. You must develop psychological resiliance and the ability to deal with soft power, passive aggression and continually increasing coercion. The only way to deal with this is determined refusal, subterfuge and resistance. Connecting with others who support your sense of narrative and reality is essential. When comrades come outside the prison and they are subjected to harsh restrictions, -since this is the future the authorities are planning for-, one in which we all can be under high levels of social controls, then our comrades need real support and solidarity. All this has material costs, it costs a large amount of money to support someone when they are in prison, but when they leave there are additional problems. Transport, housing, work, finances. For example, I am unable to get a bank account, since I am blacklisted now by the financial institutions on account of my anarchism.
This has repercussions, and without a strong community response, then the responsibility falls back only on the ex-prisoner and their immediate family and friends. These people are often targeted for secondary rounds of raids and repression, on account of their close proximity to those who have been kidnapped by the police already. This is made easier and easier by the technological prison state that we live in, where all of society has a digital mirror where everything can be tracked, and the use of new technologies enables new controls. This is an aim of the new prison expansion policy here in UK, where more of us will serve sentences “outside” the walls. And this is without speaking much of the horrific conditions within the overcrowded and brutal British prison system.
So repression is not only prison we can say, but it is entrenched in a hostile and socially reactionary prison-like society, which also must be destroyed.
In the final part of my talk, I want to speak about Alfredo Cospito, imprisoned for life sentence in the Operation Ardire and Scripta Manent cases in Italy. Alfredo is locked up in the notorious 41bis units. These are maximum isolation wings, with very harsh conditions designed at breaking one’s will and body. Alfredo was convicted for the shooting of the CEO of Ansaldo Nucleare, a nuclear energy division of an arms manufacturer, in Genoa, 2012, with anarchist comrade Nicola Gai, who is now paroled. The direct action was claimed as part of the Olga Cell of the FAI/IRF (International Revolutionary Front). Alfredo was also convicted of explosive attacks which did not actually injure anyone, but struck the ghoulish Italian State, for which he was charged with “massacre”.
Right now, Alfredo is denied all postal correspondence as part of the 41bis regime, so the comrades in Italy are asking people to send more letters to overwhelm the walls of the prison where Alfredo is held. Also, we must not forget Alfredo’s co-defendent and comrade, Anna, who is also imprisoned on a long sentence after Operation Scripta Manent, although she is not held in the 41bis regime.
Alfredo undertook a prolonged hunger strike three years ago that he made in protest against the 41bis. He has mainly recovered but the basic conditions in the isolation units are very poor. Several anarchist prisoners including myself underwent limited hunger strikes in solidarity with Alfredo and there were many attacks and demonstrations not only in Italy but around the world.
After this large wave of solidarity, the Italian State was humiliated because the discussion about 41bis, Alfredo Cospito and insurrectionary anarchism became wider across Europe, and not only, since there had been mobilisations as far away as Chile and Indonesia.
In certain countries and places, there was an overspill into the mainstream discourse about the purpose of mass incarceration, solitary confinement and Cospito’s case. Anarchism became spoken about openly again which was an embarrassment to Meloni’s far-right government. In the cities where there had been strong demos and campaigns for Alfredo’s freedom, the Italian State made arrests and raids of those accused of taking part and organising the demos.
This means that there are many comrades in Italy who are prosecuted for being part of protests for Alfredo. In Turin alone, there are over a dozen comrades being taken to trial, where they face long sentences for being at a demonstration where property destruction, looting and clashes took place.
OK, to end this small talk, since I think I spoke for long enough, I want to thank you for your energy and for coming here tonight for the International Week of Solidarity with Anarchist Prisoners, I’m glad to be able to be here. Please write letters to prisoners, donate and support the legal funds. We’ll take a solidarity photo later with banners if anyone wants to participate.
Are there are any questions? Or anyone wants to make any points for discussion in the small amount of time we have? It’s possible we could also break into smaller groups for writing letters and discussing, or both?
Thank you.
The questions were not recorded in the session.