2009-03-27
By Michael Seamark
The university professor masterminding mayhem at the G20 summit in London was suspended from his job yesterday.
The dramatic move came after anarchist Chris Knight threatened violence against the police in a series of inflammatory declarations.
The 66-year-old former member of Labour's extreme left-wing Militant Tendency warned that 'all hell will break loose' if demonstrators meet police aggression.
Knight, a lecturer in anthropology at the University of East London, confirmed that an effigy of disgraced former RBS boss Sir Fred Goodwin would be among those strung up at the protests and warned bankers to stay away.
He said of Sir Fred, whose house was attacked earlier this week: 'To be honest, if he winds us up any more I'm afraid there will be real bankers hanging from lampposts.'
Last night, his employers said in a statement: 'Professor Chris Knight has been suspended from his duties at the University of East London, pending investigation. In order not to prejudice this process we cannot make any further comment.'
In recent days, Knight has given media interviews warning of his plans to ignite a revolution in the capital to coincide with the G20 meeting.
He warned that if demonstrators met police aggression they would respond in kind.
'If they want violence, they'll get it,' says Knight.
'We intend to be peaceful but if they press their nuclear button, I'll press mine. It's called "mutually assured destruction".
'If Gordon Brown deploys his riot police, or sends in his agents provocateurs to start trouble as an excuse to attack us, all hell will break loose.'
Knight is part of the self-styled G20 Meltdown group planning a series of high-profile 'actions' across the capital.
The campaign is being plotted from his home in a suburban South London street known locally as ' Millionaire's Row,' where properties sell for up to £1.3million.
Camilla Power and Marina Pepper, a one-time page three girl and Playboy 'playmate of the month' who appeared at a recent protest with a placard reading: 'Eat the Bankers.'
They first met through Knight's Radical Anthropology Group and relaunched themselves last October as an anti-banker group called 'The Government of the Dead'.
It is inspired by his ' hunter-gatherer belief that our ancestral spirits should rule us rather than our obsession with money.'
Knight, who describes himself as a revolutionary communist, is one of five children of a man who gave up teaching to become a self-sufficient farmer in the West Country.
As a student - of Russian literature - the future professor spent a week in jail for trespassing on a U.S. airbase.
A veteran of 'reclaim the streets' actions and anti-capitalist protests, the unmarried father of three says he earns £35,000 a year but is not interested in money and rents his Lewisham home.
Knight believes the protests will be the start of a revolution that will turn Europe, and perhaps the world, into one country. By June, he claims ' there will be no borders. What we are about to witness is the world turned on its head.'