Part of the state series of articles.
The Social Working Group (SWG) is a clandestine informal association of civil servants, intelligence officers, military personnel, journalists and private citizens that is strongly associated with the Commonwealth. It has variously been described as a Sovereign Order, secret police, terrorist organisation, an extension of Noshem, and fraternal organisation. “Social Working Group” is an applied name that has since been adopted by several former associates of its work, but it is important to emphasise that the organisation, insofar as it exists as a coordinated body, has no central headquarters or founding document.
The SWG is primarily a network of international and stateless actors that are both strongly associated with and sheltered by the Commonwealth state. Its primary activities involve extrajudicial arrest, reprisals, targeted assassinations and sabotage for peripheralist or international-anarchist purposes, especially those concerning human rights and crimes against humanity. It is most active in Africa, and its membership primarily derives from Noshem’s Africa Bureau, but is effectively active worldwide. It has no legal recognition or protections, and its activities are conducted by individuals in a private capacity, which explains its presence in lawless and war-torn regions.
Peter Kelly, who was employed by AB/NI at stations in Central America, described the SWG as:
[…] a dirty organisation of loose fellows in RB/NI and the Federal Directorate, who sheltered and manipulated fanatics to hunt and kill. The Commonwealth has a lot of people coming and going from all over the world, and among them are sure to be a certain number of soldiers and anarchists and victims of war.
The Working Group’s original purpose, as far as I could tell, was to turn these people into terrorists, and equip their revenge. This was not the business of normal espionage and it was founded in a fanatic’s interpretation of the Constitution, applied to the entire world. It was effective at burying some bad people, but I hate to think of what it did in the process.
More generally, the SWG describes an ideological current within the permanent civil service that radicalises and equips direct action, usually with a moralistic basis. These beliefs are usually associated with the expertise of the sympathiser. For example, the Apartheid Ring of the SWG is probably the oldest, and emerged from RB/NI’s Anti-Apartheid Working Group in the 2040s to conduct assassinations (“blackwork”) and espionage.
Noshem, the intelligence service, is clearly aware of its existence and maintains an ambiguous posture towards it. It is clear that, at least in part, it considers the SWG useful for its deniability in matters of foreign outrage. It is unknown whether Noshem directly trains or finances SWG-aligned cells.
Not all parts of the SWG are associated with Noshem, however, and several Commonwealth Bureaux provide intelligence to it, primarily through the Parliament of State. Other known rings include the Children’s Ring, concerned with education, child soldiers and child trafficking, the Slavery Ring, concerned with sex trafficking, the Narcotics Ring, concerned with drug lords and drug trafficking, and the Atrocities Ring, which targets perpetrators of war crimes and state violence.
Although it is most famous for its direct action, the SWG is foremost a clandestine intelligence network that also feeds information back to the Commonwealth and international authorities, and acts as an intelligence system for Commonwealth civilian aid work, including in providing intelligence on disease and extreme poverty.