Guy Taylor, a 45-year-old activist working for the group Globalise Resistance, requested his police file under the Data Protection Act and discovered that police had identified his presence at 27 different protests – including one entry that stated “Globalise Resistance had a campaigns stall at the Glastonbury festival" in 2009 and that "this stall was selling political publications and merchandise of a XLW anti-capitalist nature.”

 

Police had also obtained information from festival organisers that Taylor was the one who had applied for permission to set up the stall.

 

Taylor said: “I can't understand what use information about what I did at Glastonbury has for the Metropolitan police.

 

“If they need to know the plans and schemes of anti-capitalists, the worst place to look is Glastonbury as we were rarely in a fit state to plan the downfall of a parish council let alone the world financial system as we know it.”

 

The database also holds details of John Catt, an 87-year-old activist with no police record. The file says that he has attended more than 55 demonstrations in four years, even mentioning that he has his sketchbook and draws pictures of the events.

 

The police gained this information by having undercover officers in the activist groups, and have been infiltrating them for more than forty years.

 

The Metropolitan police said it was not prepared to “discuss individual cases nor the provenance of information held on police databases.”