All content from December 2016

Spycops & Stephen Lawrence

Stephen Lawrence

Stephen Lawrence

There is no issue more toxic to the Metropolitan Police than the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence.

After the teenager’s killing in 1993, the Met’s investigation was exposed as profoundly flawed, not because of individual errors but because of the dismissive attitude stemming from the police’s own ingrained racism.

There were also clear indicators of corruption. Clifford Norris, father of one of the killers David Norris, was a well-known drug and crime baron. It’s widely understood that he intimidated witnesses and had one of the officers investigating the murder, Detective Sergeant John Davidson, on his payroll. The five killers, named by dozens to police, remained at large.

The stoic campaign led by Doreen and Neville Lawrence kept the case going. In 1998 the new Labour government granted a full public inquiry, chaired by William MacPherson. It was a watershed moment for the Met who were forced to agree they were ‘institutionally racist’.

Just when it seemed the chain of cover-ups – and cover-ups of cover-ups – couldn’t get any longer, June 2013 brought a shocking new revelation. The Met had spied on the Lawrence family campaign. The ‘family liaison officer’ in their home had taken the details of all visitors and passed them to Special Branch whilst elite undercover officers were tasked to ‘find dirt’ with which to discredit the family.

Whistleblower officer Peter Francis, of secret deep-cover political policing unit the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), described combing through hours of footage of demonstrations looking for Duwayne Brooks – Lawrence’s friend and the chief witness to the murder – involved in anything that he could be arrested for. Brooks was charged with disorder offences but the case was thrown out by the judge who branded it ‘an abuse of process.’

The vendetta against Brooks persisted, with another bogus case being thrown out in 2000. His lawyer Jane Deighton said at the time;

‘This is the second time a prosecution against him has been stayed by a judge as an abuse of process. I know of no other individual to whom that has happened in my 20-year career as a defence lawyer.’

Francis also told how, at the time of the 1998 inquiry, he had asked for the SDS’ actions to be disclosed but had been overruled by management. Absolutely aghast, Doreen Lawrence told the Guardian:

‘of all the things I’ve found out over the years, this certainly has topped it.’

The revelations forced the government – which had been largely ignoring the spycops scandal – to order a credible inquiry. The natural choice was Mark Ellison QC, the prosecutor who had finally secured convictions for two of Lawrence’s killers– including David Norris – in January 2012.

THE ELLISON REPORT

When it came out in March 2014, the 303 pages of the Stephen Lawrence Independent Review dealt a further excoriating blow for the Met, laying bare a swathe of clear indications of corruption in the initial investigation.

Ellison could have gone further if he’d had opportunity to examine all the files, but he discovered that ‘a lorry load’ of documents from anti-corruption investigation Operation Othona had been inexplicably shredded in 2003. The quantity was so vast that it cannot have been done in error. Former officers told the BBC it was:

‘disturbing, bizarre and suspicious.’

Without any disclosure, this fact alone demonstrates the Met institutionally persisting in prioritising their own position over the needs of justice and accountability. It later emerged that Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Met’s Commissioner, had been briefed about spying on the Lawrences a year before Peter Francis came forward, but chose not to tell the Lawrence family, let alone the public.

Ellison spoke to Francis’ manager at the SDS, Bob Lambert. With the spycops revelations piling up, Lambert was the most senior SDS figure in the spotlight and keen to avoid taking all the blame. He told Ellison about a meeting he brokered at the time of the MacPherson Inquiry between Richard Walton, one of the senior team working on the Met’s response to the MacPherson Inquiry, and one of Lambert’s SDS officers who had been spying on the Lawrences, known only as N81.

This was five years after the murder. It was not the act of a flummoxed investigator or a panicked team. This was the considered, deliberate defence organised by Walton and his team of senior officers around the Commissioner. Faced with exposure, Walton gave Ellison conflicting accounts and was politely described as ‘unconvincing.’

Ellison is clear that:

‘N81 was, at the time, an MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] spy in the Lawrence family camp during the course of judicial proceedings in which the family was the primary party in opposition to the MPS.’

He was unequivocal in his condemnation of this ‘completely improper use of the knowledge the MPS had gained by the deployment of this officer,’ adding;

‘Nobody seems to have considered how [it] would be viewed by the inquiry or the public, if it became known… There was no conceivable “public order” justification for this meeting. Nor was there any other discernible public benefit, and certainly none that could possibly outweigh the justifiable public outrage that would follow if the fact of the meeting had been made public when the Inquiry resumed in September 1998. In our opinion, serious public disorder of the very kind so feared by the MPS might well have followed’.

EFFECTS

Public Inquiry

Ellison was certain that there was much more in the murky world of spycops than his limited access to the even more limited extant files could uncover. Despite this, it was obvious that the SDS’ actions – indeed its very purpose – was corrupt.

With such an indisputable and damning result the Home Secretary immediately ordered a public inquiry into political undercover policing. Chaired by Lord Justice Pitchford, it relies upon the police themselves as archivists. The Met get to decide which self-incriminating documents they pass to the inquiry. Nonetheless, hundreds of thousands of pages have already been handed over. Woefully understaffed, it is delayed before it has even begun.

IPCC Report and resignations

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) investigated the meeting between Bob Lambert, Richard Walton and officer N81. In the intervening years, Walton had climbed the ranks to become head of the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, a unit formed from the merger of Special Branch and the Anti-Terrorist Unit. Having subsumed all previous units, Counter Terrorism Command deploy today’s spycops.

The IPCC report found that Walton and Lambert would have cases to answer for misconduct but Walton controversially dodged any hearing by being allowed to resign as the report was being completed. Lambert had left the police years before, collecting an MBE for services to policing as he did so, but he resigned both his academic posts at the same time that Walton quit the Met.

Miscarriages of Justice report

The Home Secretary also tasked Ellison to produce a second review on possible miscarriages of justice. Though not as impactful as the Lawrence Review, it was nonetheless startling. SDS officers had been through court cases under their false activist identities. They had been in lawyer-client meetings, submitted witness statements and withheld information knowing it would exonerate people who went on to be convicted. They had acted as secret judge and jury.

Ellison identified 83 cases where there was enough documentary evidence to warrant a review. This is likely to be a tiny fraction of the true total, due to the lack of record keeping and enthusiastic shredding by the spycops units.

There is an additional problem in passing questionable cases to the Crown Prosecution Service. The CPS actively colluded with the police to withhold evidence and secure 20 wrongful convictions in the Ratcliffe Power Station trial in 2010. This was unlikely to have been an isolated incident.

LIFTING THE LID

The police have characterised spycops as a problem of ‘rogue officers’, but it is just one facet of a police culture whose top priority is to protect its position. The Met’s press office has three times the staff of the Pitchford inquiry.

Beyond that, the IPCC is largely staffed by ex-police. Bodies like the CPS act as satellites to the police. This creates power with impunity, which encourages abuse and corruption.

The Lawrence case is iconic not for its rarity but because it forced us all to acknowledge oppressive policing culture. The unearthing of the SDS has forced the Met to admit spying on at least seventeen other similarly grieving families. The police are still refusing to give those families the details, showing an arrogance unchanged since Doreen Lawrence said:

‘their attitude can only be described as white masters during slavery’.

Ellison himself repeatedly emphasised that he was prevented from getting to the truth by police incompetence and corruption. But the threads he grasped are important for what they show of the greater hidden fabric they were torn from.

We cannot expect the full truth, let alone justice, from subsequent proceedings like the Pitchford inquiry. Nonetheless, it must be engaged with and encouraged because such things illustrate state power, they lift the mask and let the public see the rotten countenance beneath so that it can no longer fool us into thinking the mask is the true face.

Originally published by Real Media, 21 December 2016

Helen Steel Responds to Spycop Confirmation

Helen Steel at the Royal Courts of JusticeThe Pitchford Inquiry into undercover policing has just confirmed that John Dines was an undercover police officer known as John Barker.

The announcement follows recent admissions that several other officers – Carlo Neri, Marco Jacobs and Rod Richardson – were also spycops. However, it still leaves the majority of exposed officers, and the 100+ unknown officers, unconfirmed.

Dines was unmasked by his former partner, Helen Steel. She has issued this statement in response to today’s news.


While I welcome the official admission that my former partner John Dines was an undercover policeman in the Special Demonstration Squad, it is a travesty that the police have been allowed to take this long to confirm what I and others exposed years ago.

Even after they issued a public apology for serious human rights abuses to myself and six other women who had been deceived into relationships with undercover policemen, the police still argued they could not confirm the identity of my abuser. To date, despite that apology, they have also refused to confirm the identity of Mark Jenner who deceived ‘Alison’ into a five year relationship.

We and other women similarly deceived have had no disclosure at all about how these abusive relationships were allowed to happen, instead we have been subjected to intrusive demands for evidence of the effects of the abuse.  None of those responsible for this abuse have been held to account – even those still employed by the police have kept their jobs.

It is an insult to the many victims of political undercover policing that the police who are responsible for serious human rights abuses have been allowed to cover up the truth and withhold information from those they abused.  The public inquiry should release as a matter of urgency the cover names of all these political police and also the files they compiled on campaigners, so that those spied on are able to understand what happened and give relevant evidence to the inquiry.

We know that over a thousand campaign groups have been spied upon by these political undercover policing units.  This represents a significant interference with the right to political freedom of thought and the right to protest. Ultimately it is a means for those who hold power to preserve the status quo and prevent social change.  For this reason it is in the public interest for the cover names of all the political undercover police to be released, along with the files they compiled so that those who have abused their power can be held to account, the public learns the true extent of this political spying in this country and further human rights abuses by such units can be prevented.

Official: Rod Richardson was a Spycop

NPOIU officer known as Rod Richardson

NPOIU officer known as Rod Richardson

It’s official – Rod Richardson was an undercover police officer. His real name is still unknown – he stole the identity of a boy who died as a baby – but it’s no longer disputed that he was with the National Public Order Intelligence Unit.

He was one of the unit’s first officers, infiltrating anti-capitalist, anti-fascist and environmental groups in London and Nottigham from 1999 to 2003, when he was replaced by Mark Kennedy.

The Pitchford inquiry into undercover policing announced today that there will be no application to withhold his cover identity from their forthcoming proceedings, though he will be applying for anonymity for his real identity.

This comes less than a month after the Inquiry confirmed the officers known as Marco Jacobs and Carlo Neri were spycops.

Whilst this is not a bad thing, it is not to be celebrated. It is merely telling us what we already know. Richardson was unmasked by activists he spied on nearly four years ago.

Furthermore, the only reason we know these men were spycops is because their targets investigated and exposed them – a practice criticised by the inquiry and thunderously condemned by the Metropolitan Police.

We should remember that the state have now confirmed a clutch of officers who were discovered by chance. It might just have easily been any of the other 100+ other spycops who were exposed, and conversely the known officers may well have gone undetected. If that had happened then presumably the Inquiry would be confirming those other identities while the Met claimed that it was vital for the safety of the unknown Neri, Richardson and co not to be exposed.

The fact that officers and their bosses feel that it’s fine for the public to know the cover names absolutely shreds the Met’s waffle about security. It shows that it is safe to release all the cover names, as most of the Inquiry’s core participants have demanded.

The only reason that we are meeting such resistance is because the police don’t want to face the outrage that would erupt if the public knew the true scale of what was done.

Barbara Shaw, holding the death certificate of her son Rod Richardson

Barbara Shaw, holding the death certificate of her son Rod Richardson

These new confirmations also expose the cruelty of the Met hiding behind ‘neither confirm nor deny’, refusing to tell Barbara Shaw, mother of the real Rod Richardson, anything about the state’s theft of her dead son’s identity.

It also makes a mockery of the refusal to confirm the other exposed officers. Several, including John Dines and Mark Jenner, have an even greater body of information in the public domain including their real names. It is insulting and farcical for the police to refuse to admit what everyone has known for years.

As we have amply demonstrated, the ‘policy’ of Neither Confirm Nor Deny is merely a tactic used when it suits their desire to avoid accountability. It’s past time for it to end.

Today’s admission does not give us any satisfaction. Instead, it galvanises our anger at years of stonewalling by the police, compounding their damage with a gruelling second injustice against people they abused.

The unconvincing excuses are running out. Everyone who was targeted by these disgraced counter-democratic secret police has a right to know. Every family whose dead child’s identity was stolen by them has a right to know. They always have had. The time has come.

 

Spying Victims Demand Access to Gardai Files

Ireland Satellite ImageOf the thousands of people targeted by Britain’s political secret police, around 180 were known to be so significantly impacted that they have been granted ‘core participant’ status at the forthcoming Pitchford inquiry.

Most of the known spycops worked abroad, but the terms Theresa May dictated to Pitchford force the inquiry to disregard anything outside England and Wales.

Several spycops officers were in the Irish republic. Five years ago the police there produced a report on Mark Kennedy’s visits but refused to release it. As the fuss has not died down, the gardai are producing another one but won’t say if it will be published. Either way, it will fall far short of looking at the overall picture of British spycops in Ireland. Like the Scottish inquiry, it’s police investigating into police.

As reported in The Times last week, a group of Pitchford core participants who were also spied on in Ireland have demanded the Irish government undertake a thorough, credible and public investigation so that people abused there get the same level of justice as those in England and Wales.

 


6 December 2016

Spying victims demand access to gardai files

Witnesses in a British inquiry into an undercover policing scandal have urged the Irish government to force the gardai to release any files it has on the spies.

By Ellen Coyne

The Metropolitan police in London formally apologised last year after it was revealed that undercover officers had sexual relationships with members of protest groups they had infiltrated. At least one officer, Mark Kennedy, is known to have been in the Republic of Ireland, while several others were in Northern Ireland.

The Times revealed that the gardai were aware that Mr Kennedy was in the Republic on a number of occasions between 2004 and 2006 but refused to tell ministers whether it knew that he was working as a spy, even though he infiltrated protests in Ireland using his alias.

Theresa May announced an inquiry into undercover policing while she was home secretary and Lord Justice Pitchford’s investigation will examine cases in England and Wales since 1968. It will not include incidents in Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Alice Cutler, Helen Steel, Jason Kirkpatrick, Kate Wilson, Kim Bryan, Sarah Hampton and “Lisa Jones”, not her real name, have all asked to have access to files with information about them, which they believe the gardai hold.

Ms Jones, Ms Wilson and Ms Hampton had relationships with Mr Kennedy without any knowledge that he was a policeman. All three visited Ireland with him.

Ms Bryan went to Belfast in 2005 on a trip organised by Mr Kennedy. Mr Kirkpatrick also travelled to Belfast with Mr Kennedy running anti-globalisation events.

Ms Steel had been in a relationship with John Dines, an undercover officer using the alias John Barker. They had visited Northern Ireland and the Republic together [correction: they were only in the Republic]. All seven visited Ireland with officers who were using undercover identities.

The group said:

‘We have all been personally chosen as core participants because we were significantly targeted by officers in England and Wales. We were also all spied upon in Ireland. We cannot have faith in the ability of the inquiry to deliver an opportunity for truth and justice when it is prevented from fully establishing what happened to us.

‘The Metropolitan police has acknowledged that aspects of the officers’ actions were an abuse of police power and a breach of human rights. These deeds are just as serious wherever they were committed. We request that the Irish government work further to ensure Ireland is included in the inquiry. If this is not forthcoming, the Irish government should set up its own investigation.’

In June the PSNI said that undercover officers had been operating in Northern Ireland during the 1990s without its knowledge. Mark Hamilton, the assistant chief constable at the PSNI, told the Northern Ireland policing board that his force had been “completely blind” to the presence of undercover Metropolitan police officers.

Last month The Times revealed that Frances Fitzgerald, the tanaiste, had asked the garda commissioner for a new report on Mr Kennedy. She will not confirm if the report will be made public.

In 2011 President Michael D Higgins, who was a Labour TD at the time, and Dermot Ahern, the justice minister, asked the commissioner to report on Mr Kennedy’s actions in Ireland. The report was never published.

Last Thursday, a spokesman for the Department of Justice told The Times:

‘The tanaiste has also made clear that she will consider this report fully when it is available, including the question of what information might be put into the public domain.’

Last night the department said it was not offering any further comment.

A spokesman for the gardai said that it does not comment on matters of security.