It's what they do.

No one is very outraged or even particularly surprised at the Observer revelations about Special Branch infiltration of Trotskyist groups. It's what they do. Or at least it's what they try to do. There's an interesting response from the Socialist Party over at A Very Public Sociologist. Personally I would have thought sitting through all those meetings only marginally more interesting than directing traffic. Like so much security and police work it sounds like yet another feeble attempt to justify budgets. That also is what they do.