All content from January 2018

Help Get Justice for Spycops Victims in Scotland

Tilly Gifford

Tilly Gifford

The Scottish establishment is inexplicably stalling investigations into political secret police in the country, but you can help.

Most of the known spycops were active in Scotland, including many who had deceived women they spied on into sexual relationships, something the police concede is an abuse of police power and a violation of human rights.

Despite such serious events being well known, the public inquiry into undercover policing is limited to events in England and Wales.

In December 2015 the Scottish government – supported by every party in the Scottish parliament – made a formal request for Scotland to be included in the Inquiry. The Home Office refused.

One would have thought the SNP government in Scotland would have seized on this – English officers committing gross violations of citizens in Scotland, and whilst English and Welsh victims get a full scale Inquiry their Scottish counterparts get nothing.

However, Scottish justice minister Michael Matheson merely commissioned HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland (HMICS) to conduct a review of the matter. As HMICS is effectively a satellite body of the police, we have no faith in its ability to deal with the issue in a credible way.

We met Michael Matheson in May 2017, and he told us he expected the report in September. He assured that that if the review showed serious issues, he would order a proper inquiry.

HMICS did indeed finish their report in September. After preparations, it was delivered to Matheson on 2nd November 2017. Nobody has heard anything about it since.

JUDICIAL REVIEW – WHEN IS A CASE NOT A CASE?

Meanwhile activist Tilly Gifford, who was targeted by spycops in Scotland, has sought to have a judicial review of the Home Office’s refusal to include Scotland in the public inquiry. The Scottish Legal Aid Board (SLAB) turned her down for funding, saying the case ‘did not have merits’.

This is at odds with a parallel case in Northern Ireland, where a judicial review is going ahead with public funding. Gifford crowdfunded her case and in September 2017 the Court of Session in Edinburgh accepted the merits of the case and granted permission to proceed to a full judicial review.

Gifford reapplied for legal aid but SLAB have moved the goalposts and now say they won’t fund the case unless it has ‘a good probability’ of winning.

This flat-out refusal with changing excuses is, on its own, enough to make one suspect political interference. Taken alongside the Scottish government’s reluctance to have a proper inquiry into spycops’ abuses, it is increasingly hard to come to any other conclusion (even before we consider other allegations of political interference in Scottish policing).

This is where you come in. We would like people to write to Scottish justice minister Michael Matheson to conduct an investigation into the decision to deny legal aid in this case, and to table a motion asking for the decision to be overturned.

As Gifford told Bella Caledonia this week:

‘I still don’t know how long I had been followed. I still don’t know who commissioned me as a target. I still don’t know what files are held on me. What I do know is that I was followed on the streets, that they had access to my home, that they could call me on my personal phone from untraceable numbers when they wanted…

‘communities in Wales and England who have suffered extreme abuses have the potential to have light shed on these sexual, emotional and physical violations carried out by the state. Yet, as it stands now, people in Scotland have no such recourse to truth or accountability. There are women who know they were targeted for sexual relationships by undercover operatives in Scotland.’

The Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers have provided an online form and suggested text for you.

Please take a few minutes to add your name to the call and help secure access to justice for Tilly Gifford, that she may then let the country know what counter-democratic abuses have been committed in their name.

 

More Spycops Revealed – More Secrecy Granted

Spraypain stencil of 3 British police in 'brass monkeys' pose

The public inquiry into Britain’s political secret police has announced that it’s considered the applications for anonymity for another nine officers from the Special Demonstration Squad.

Known by ‘HN’ code numbers, the new nine fall into three categories:

  1. real names given (no cover names existed)
  2. real and cover names withheld
  3. cover names given but real names withheld

1 – Real names will be published: HN59, HN268 and HN3378.

These three were not undercover officers, they were back office staff/managers and so did not have cover names.

2 – Inquiry intends to withhold their real and cover names: HN41, HN71 & HN125.

HN41 was deployed into two unspecified groups in the 1970s and 80s. The Inquiry says:

‘there would be a real, but unquantifiable, risk to the personal safety of HN41 if the real or cover name were to be published. It would be neither necessary nor proportionate to run that risk.’

Someone needs to buy the Inquiry a dictionary. If something cannot be quantified then its size cannot be compared in proportion to other things.

Once again, we are not only told nothing, but we are told that we can’t be told why we’re told nothing. We are expected to trust the disgraced specialist liar units of the police to have told the unalloyed truth in their unseen evidence.

HN71 was deployed into two unspecified groups in the 1990s and 2000s. The Inquiry says that if HN71’s real name were known they would be at risk of serious violence from members of the groups. They fear the release of the cover name could lead to the real name being known, so the Inquiry will not risk it.

This misunderstands the function of a cover name; when that person disappears, there is no record left, no trail to follow. We have known about undercover officers like Rod Richardson and Lynn Watson for years, but we have no idea where they are because we only know their cover names.

HN125 infiltrated an unspecified left wing group in the 1980s. He suffers from a progressive medical condition and medical experts say the stress of participating in the Inquiry would make it worse.

3 – Inquiry intends to publish the cover names but grant anonymity for real names: HN12, HN19 & HN353.

These three officers have not asked for their cover names to be withheld.

HN12 was deployed into two unnamed left wing groups 1982-85. He admits he was arrested whilst undercover and had a sexual relationship with a woman he spied on. His deployment ended when his cover was compromised.

HN19 was deployed into two unnamed left wing groups 1981-85. He was arrested while undercover.

HN353 was deployed into two unnamed left wing groups 1974-78 (the groups names will be given at the same time as his cover name). The Inquiry says HN353 does not want media or other intrusion but notes:

‘Publication of his cover name will serve to prompt evidence from those whom he encountered while deployed, if they can remember him and have anything to say about his deployment.’

That, right there, is exactly why all the cover names should be published. We know that these units used inexcusable and unlawful tactics and methods. We know that the officers, like most wrongdoers, do not want to be held to account and will lie about what they did.

These particular miscreants have had expert training and years of practice at lying. If lying were an Olympic sport these people would be Team GB’s best hope for gold. It is not good enough for the Inquiry to take their word. We need those who witnessed their deployments to tell us what they saw. We need the cover names.

ANONYMITY = UNACCOUNTABILITY

Referring to HN19, the Inquiry says:

‘He has no concerns for his physical safety, but is concerned to avoid the intrusion into his and his wife’s private and family life which might result from publication of his real name. His concern is understandable.’

Leaving aside the rich irony of a desire for privacy from people who invaded the lives of others to the greatest possible degree, any kind of testimony or being held to account exposes a person to intrusion. If it doesn’t apply to the innumerable other officers who do it every day, why is it taken so seriously here? Specifically, why does it overrule the need for victims and the public to get answers and justice?

The fact that some officers don’t ask for their cover names to be kept secret undermines the police’s claim that publishing cover names puts officers at unacceptable levels of risk.

Furthermore, the Inquiry is happy to publish the real names of back office staff, which proves that they don’t believe the claim that naming officers from the spycops units means some evil anti-police terrorists will come and attack them on general principle. That being so, the Inquiry’s decision to hide so many real and cover names is based on falsehood. It leans too far towards the police’s desire for total secrecy. It is an unacceptable barrier to truth and justice.

Publish Spycops Names, Says Ex-Undercover Cop

Neil Woods

Neil Woods

Neil Woods went undercover in 1993. He spent 14 years as a drugs squad officer, and estimates he’s responsible for prison sentences totalling over 1,000 years. But he came to realise that his work wasn’t just hopeless, it was actually causing the problems it was supposed to solve.

Like many ex-undercover officers, he suffers from PTSD. He has written a book about his experiences – Good Cop Bad War – and is chair of LEAP UK (Law Enforcement Action Partnership, formerly Law Enforcement Against Prohibition).

It’s notable that he does not feel the need to hide his identity. If an officer responsible for jailing people who murder betrayers can make advertised public appearances, there is no excuse for the political secret police to have their names withheld.

Scarlet Palmer interviewed Neil Woods for the Sensi Seeds site, but as the conversation turned from drug policy to the Undercover Policing Inquiry, Palmer knew they were hearing something that COPS readers would want to know.

Woods began by explaining the dissociation essential to being undercover, and how it was protection from colleagues as much as anything else.

Neil Woods: I never had any sense of community in the work I used to do really, because I was separated even from my own ranks. I couldn’t tell any of my colleagues who weren’t involved and the people I worked for, well, when I was dropped into an undercover op, I was using a pseudonym to the cops I was working with. Even they weren’t allowed to know my real name, and they could be disciplined for asking me. They were told that on the first day of the job. Obviously, it was a protection against corruption.

POLICE PROTECTING CORPORATIONS

Scarlet Palmer: Mark Kennedy, who was undercover under the name Mark Stone, was originally deployed as an undercover ‘test purchase officer’ buying illegal drugs. Were you aware of the activities of the Special Demonstration Squad and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit? Do you see a difference between the political policing and the Drugs Squad policing?

NW: Actually, someone tried to recruit me into that kind of work. Specifically for animal rights, and I said no, and they tried again. And they actually – (laughs) – they actually explained to me that “well, this is important for the nation because we could lose this massive percentage of GDP if those companies left the UK”.

And I thought, “hang on a minute, so we – so you – so we’re actually using the police to protect private corporations now?” So that was my attitude, and I had a very low opinion of that kind of work, so obviously I didn’t go into that. I was just horrified by the idea, really.

SP: It must have been a comparatively cushy number infiltrating London Greenpeace.

NW: Oh I know.

NO RISK IN NAMING SPYCOPS

SP: The Undercover Policing Inquiry is up and running, even if it hasn’t formally started. Do you think that the names of the undercover police who spied on activists should be released?

NW: I follow this very closely – the question of the Met refusing, and fighting in court, the efforts to publish the names of people. Well yes, of course they should be published. Only it should be reviewed by a separate committee to decide whether those people would genuinely be at risk.

That group of political infiltrators, I have to say, there are maybe three or four people out of all of them who infiltrated extreme organisations from the right, or terrorist organisations, who would genuinely be at risk. So no, you can’t publish their names. But they’re not the controversial ones. The controversial ones are the people who were infiltrating essentially pacifist organisations. So the idea that they would be at risk from that is ludicrous.

THE MET: IMMORAL & UNETHICAL

To emphasise that point, I draw attention to my own story. I have infiltrated people who casually rape, maim and murder people. And here I am, with my name on a book, I even tell people I live in Herefordshire, and you’re telling me it’s not safe to publish the details of someone who spent way too many years hanging round with a bunch of, for the most part, completely pacifist protestors against what they perceived to be social injustice? There is no comparison there. The idea that they are now at risk is utterly ludicrous.

And the Met are dragging their feet over this tactically, they are taking the piss out of the entire inquiry system and the process by the way that they’re doing it, they’re behaving completely immorally, completely unethically, and I find the whole situation infuriating.

THE DUTY TO COOPERATE

What I find really frustrating about the undercover inquiry is that there are really serious ethical issues about the way that policing happens in this country. Really serious. And the police have a duty to respond and cooperate fully with that, and they are not doing. What they’re doing is unethical. They’re playing for time and hoping it goes away.

I would personally want to open up the undercover inquiry to include the kind of work that I did, because that kind of work is still going on, and it is causing harm. I can evidence that it causes harm to people.

SURVEILLANCE IMPACTS THE WHOLE OF SOCIETY

So you’re talking about police surveillance; police surveillance has got out of control. If you look at the instructions to undercover police officers, they are breached. Human rights are breached. I breached human rights. And these kind of things need studying, this needs getting out and into the public domain and studying properly.

Surveillance on this scale impacts not just individual human rights, it impacts the whole fabric of society. We have an opportunity now to answer the demands of those people affected by undercover policing, to actually get it out in the open, and the Met are being absolutely unforgivable in their tactics to delay the process.


Neil Woods will be giving a talk on undercover policing in London on 7 February.

Don’t Talk to the Police!

Graphic of finger over lips: 'Shhh!' gesture

 

Statement about ongoing police investigations into undercover police operations

January 2018

There have been a number of incidences recently of the police contacting victims of spycops infiltration directly to ask them to co-operate with ongoing investigations related to their undercover operations.

Being contacted by the police can be intimidating and isolating, particularly for people affected by abuses of police power. We therefore want to make the following points clear for anyone who finds themselves in that situation:

You are under no obligation to talk to the police

You are not alone

We have no confidence in the police investigating their own wrongdoing. These operations, Herne and Nitrogen/Sparkler, are conducted by the Metropolitan Police who have a poor history of honestly investigating themselves.

Operation Herne was shown to be actively covering-up when it failed to report the spying on the Lawrence family, pretending nothing was amiss. The Ellison Independent Review, published on the same day clearly demonstrated otherwise.

Operation Herne also asked very invasive questions of the private lives of women targeted for relationships, yet refusing to confirm or deny whether the men involved were police officers or not. A collective decision was taken back in 2013 by many of the women involved not to cooperate with the investigation. (1)

It was the lack of trust in the police that lead for calls for a public Inquiry in the first place. Thus, we believe the appropriate places for the activities of the undercover units to be investigated are currently the Inquiry, for all its flaws, and the legal claims being brought against the police.

So, if you are contacted by the police:

  • Know your rights (2)
  • Just say “no comment”
  • If you have a lawyer representing you, tell them to speak to your lawyer.
  • Please contact any of the groups listed below to let us know if you are being bothered by these police investigations, and for support, advice and help finding a lawyer if you need one.
  • For more background see Police Self-Investigators are Doorstepping Spycops Victims

In solidarity,

The Spycops Communications Group [e-mail SCG]

The Undercover Research Group [e-mail URG]

Police Spies Out Of Lives [e-mail PSOOL]

The Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance [contact COPS]

 


(1) Read the women’s statement

(2) Legal Defence and Monitoring Group guide to your rights: No Comment [PDF]

Police Self-Investigators are Doorstepping Spycop Victims

Firefighter in the wreckage of Debenhams Luton store after 1987 incendiary attack

Debenham’s Luton branch, July 1987

Once again, police self-investigations have been contacting activists who were spied on, asking for co-operation.

The latest activity centres around Operation Sparkler/Operation Nitrogen, which is examining evidence that undercover police officer Bob Lambert planted incendiary devices in the Harrow branch of Debenham’s in 1987.

Lambert was one of a group of three animal rights activists who were intent on damaging the stores in protest at their sale of fur. The branches were simultaneously attacked. Two of the activists, Geoff Shepherd and Andrew Clarke, were jailed. Lambert has been named as the third person. It is a charge he strenuously denies.

But if it wasn’t Lambert, who was it? Three people planted devices, so either there was a fourth person in the group whose existence has never been mentioned and who Lambert allowed to get away, or else Lambert is lying and he did it. There appears to be no third option.

Either way, it’s clear that Lambert’s evidence was withheld from the court at the original trial, which means Shepherd and Clarke’s convictions are unsafe in the same way that fifty now-quashed convictions of other spied-upon activists were.

MET FORCED TO INVESTIGATE THEMSELVES

Faced with such strong evidence against Lambert, in April 2016 the Met reopened their investigation.

In January last year it was revealed that over £250,000 had already been spent, nobody had been interviewed under caution, and Met lawyers thought the report would be finished in July 2017. We’re still waiting.

Bob Lambert whilst undercover

Bob Lambert whilst undercover

Officers have been travelling the country talking to people they think were around Lambert at the time.

Lambert’s unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, was praised by the highest ranks in the Met. When he was undercover, and later when he ran the SDS, Lambert was a hero to other spycops. He had Clarke and Shepherd sent down, but now they are appealing their convictions.

For the Met, defending their targeting of the other two, to be investigating Lambert at the same time is a conflict of interest – if he is to blame then the convictions of the other two must be overturned.

To send police officers to investigate other officers is ludicrously biased. They are marking their friend’s homework. Anything incriminating Lambert may be twisted or suppressed to help shore up the crumbling case against Clarke and Shepherd.

WE CAN’T TRUST THE LIARS

We got the public inquiry, flawed and biased towards the police as even that is, because we didn’t settle for the various self-investigations by police and their satellite bodies such as the Independent Police Complaints Commission and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary.

Our distrust has been vindicated by the buckets of whitewash delivered by these projects. The Met’s dedicated and overpriced investigation into spycops, Operation Herne, made claim after claim that was discredited as soon as it was uttered.

They originally said there was only evidence of one officer stealing a dead child’s identity; now we know half the officers did it and it was mandatory for decades. They released a report saying there was no evidence of spying on Stephen Lawrence’s family on the same day that Mark Ellison QC’s report was published which showed there was.

After more than seven years of victims giving the appalling detail of the deceit and abuse they’ve suffered, and the harsh, enduring personal damage that it has caused, it takes some gall for Met officers to expect to be respectfully taken as independent arbiters.

They have as little regard for the welfare of the victims as the officers who did the spying. One of those visited told us:

‘The first time was seven months ago a man and a woman came round, the second time was two men about three or four months ago.

‘They were trying to get me to say if I knew anyone who was active in that era or did I know anyone, almost did I do anything myself in that respect. They wanted me to make a statement about it, but of course I didn’t. I was active in the 80s and I was convicted of things. I knew a lot of people who were around at the time through SLAM and through London Greenpeace.

‘Then they gave my number and details to this other one, Operation Herne. Both times they came round my house uninvited, harassing me, trying to get me to make some statement, which I refused. The second ones said they were doing an investigation into undercover police officers, which I said was a joke, because how can police officers investigate themselves?

‘I said if I got any more harassment from them I might take legal action against them, either individually or collectively. I said I wasn’t happy with people just turning up on my doorstep, I found it very disturbing.

‘They’re the lowest of the low, these people. It makes me feel ill to think I was in touch with one of them.’

Brandon Spivey was visited out of the blue, in a place that he doesn’t often visit, which he found unsettling in itself. Once faced with the officers, he let them know what he thought of them.

That fact they had travelled 200 miles from London made it clear this was an irregular situation, more about intimidation.

‘The coppers must have known I was going to be there, which was a bit of a shock. It wasn’t my regular address. I spend a lot of time out of the country. I flew in Sunday night, I saw my mum Monday morning and went for a drive with her, and that’s where the coppers had come to ‘doorstep me’. There was no prior warning at all.

‘It was plain clothes officers, the two who’d been visiting everybody else, apparently. They were nervous. I fronted them out, asking them both their names and to see their identification, which I wrote down in front of them . I made them stand in my mum’s shop, so there’s about half a dozen people on my side looking at them. They said “do you want to speak of this outside?” I said if you want, so we stood outside in the street.

‘They only presented me with the letter when we were stood outside. They made no attempt to explain anything, no “I’m sorry this might be a bit of a shock but…”. It was plain and simple, really quite hostile, them trying to be intimidating. The letter they gave me said it was Operation Sparkler.

‘They said “we want to ask you about something that happened thirty years ago. Do you know anything about incendiary devices at Debenham’s?” I said yeah, I know all about it.

‘They said “can you give us some names?” I said yes, I’ll give you some names; John Dines and Bob Lambert.

‘I said, “I know why you’re here, you know why you’re here, now do me a favour and fuck off”. The two of them walked off in opposite directions, they were so flustered and made no attempt to even reply to my very clear attitude towards them and their bogus visit.’

Others have had advance warning, even if they didn’t know why, as another person told us.

‘They wrote to me in May at my current home address, a letter from Operation Sparkler/Nitrogen saying they believed I might have information about the ALF and people involved in the 1987 Debenham’s attacks, that could help them identify other perpetrators.

‘I was completely mystified. I’ve had no contact with the ALF or animal rights movements at all. I was involved in anarchist circles from 1979 to 1986, and I knew Dave Morris and people through London Workers’ Group. But by 1987 I was politically inactive. Probably the last time I was arrested was at Wapping [strike Jan 1986-Feb 1987], I was cautioned – it wasn’t even a formal caution, they just told me to bugger off.

‘I called them and said I have no idea why you think I might be able to help you, I don’t know anything about it. They said they would like to talk to me anyway and asked where I would like to meet. I said Bethnal Green police station. They said “I don’t want to talk to you in a police station, can’t we have a coffee somewhere?” I wasn’t having that.

‘I googled the Debenham’s attacks, followed my nose to the Undercover Policing Inquiry and, having seen a list of core participants and who was representing them, phoned Mike Schwarz at Bindmans for advice. He said “that’s a coincidence because I was just about to ring you”.

‘Weirdly, he couldn’t tell me why, because it was in connection with a document that he was not able to share – or even describe – because of a confidentiality commitment. However, the inference is that my name is on some kind of list.

‘My hunch is that somewhere along the line some lazy underemployed police spy decided to invent a bunch of shit and plucked my name out of an old spycop file, to fill in a gap in their story.’

It seems to be common for political police to think every group is as hierarchical as the police. If they can’t see a group’s command structure with officers, platoon leaders, quartermasters and whatnot then they presume it must be hidden. Then they start superimposing it on unstructured organisations or groups of people who are just friends.

Undercover officer Mark Kennedy took a key role in Climate Camp and was in the extended two-day meetings every month with details worked out by protracted consensus decision making processes, yet still his bosses gave him a shortlist of imagined commanders to keep tabs on.

LYING ABOUT US, LYING ABOUT THEMSELVES

It raises questions about who has been spied on, and what incorrect information is till on our files. It also has wider implications. The spycops’ files about our activities and any supposed danger we pose is being used to decide whether it’s safe to release the names of those same officers who spied on us.

Helen Steel, who was spied on by Lambert and deceived into a two-year relationship by John Dines, told a preliminary hearing of the public inquiry in November 2017 that not only were her files inaccurate – listing her as involved in campaigns she left twenty years ago- but nothing the spycops say can be taken at face value:

‘I think it is important that you know that from my perspective and the perspective of many of the women, we have seen the lies that these undercover officers are capable of, and just how convincing they are. They are professional liars. And I think that it is really important to bear that in mind when taking into account statements that they may make to you in letters or things that they may say to psychiatrists.’

Alison, who was deceived into a relationship by Mark Jenner, has described how officers from the Met’s Department of Professional Standards met up with her and asked for personal photos and home videos, yet wouldn’t even admit that Jenner was a police officer.

Even now, five years since Jenner’s cover name, real name, photo and profile were made public, and two years since they apologised to Alison, there has still been no official confirmation that he was a police officer.

That is not impartial. It is protecting one side whilst exposing the other. It is also failing to see this as a perpetrator/victim situation. The Operation Sparkler/Nitrogen doorsteppings are more of the same.

The swathe of earlier reports are proof, if it were needed, that police self-investigations must not be trusted. Their persistence and intrusion shows that they do not acknowledge their wrongdoing, nor respect the citizens they abused.

COPS is one of several groups who will be publishing a joint statement warning of these visits, advising those affected not to interact with these agents of our abusers.

New Spycops to Be Named But Still Hidden

Table of 12 undercover officers with 'HN' numbers, rfleleased by Inquiry 15 January 2017

The public inquiry into Britain’s political secret police has issued brief notes on applications for anonymity by another cluster of officers. As usual, these former spycops who invaded people’s lives want to have their true identities kept from their victims.

The Inquiry intends to release the cover names of most of them. After last week’s announcement concerning five officers whose real and cover names the Inquiry intends to keep secret, this is a bit of improvement. However there are still some fundamental flaws that undermine the Inquiry’s stated desire of uncovering the truth.

Known by their HN-numbers, there are 12 ex-spycops in the new list. The Inquiry is still looking into officers HN9 and HN66. Officers HN61 and HN819 are backroom staff, so there are no cover names involved, and presumably we will get their real and cover names.

As for the other eight, the Inquiry does not intend to release any of their real names, but wants to release the cover names of seven. They are all men. Here’s the rundown:

NEW NAMES COMING

HN13 is now dead. He was deployed 1974-78, thought to be infiltrating the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) though the name of the group may be wrong. He was prosecuted twice under his false name, one of these leading to conviction. His widow wants her husband’s memory left in peace. However, the police risk assessor thinks there is no chance of the cover name leading to the real name, so the Inquiry intends to release that.

HN109 is a mystery. Neither the real nor cover name will be made public and we cannot be told why. We just have to trust the veracity of what the police told the Inquiry.

The Undercover Research Group have done a characteristically meticulous job of cross-referencing the new information with what’s already known, and have found that HN109 was around the spying on Stephen Lawrence’s family.

The Inquiry’s Chair, John Mitting, has said getting definitive answers about spying on the Lawrences ‘is one of the central issues which the Inquiry must investigate’, yet he intends to keep this officer completely hidden.

HN296 infiltrated an unnamed left wing group from 1975-75.

HN304 infiltrated ‘a number of non-violent groups’ from 1976-79.

HN339 infiltrated two unspecified groups between 1970 and 1974.

HN340 was deployed against an unnamed group from 1969-72, and reported on others.

HN354 infiltrated an unspecified group 1976-79 and admits to ‘two fleeting relationships’ with women he spied on.

HN356/124. This one was accidentally given two numbers. Now dead, he infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party from 1977-81. He was on the April 1979 anti-racist demonstration in Southall where Blair Peach was killed by police.

NO NAMES, NO TRUTH

Time and again in the new list, the Inquiry says that publication of these officers’ cover names

‘may serve a purpose: to prompt former members of the group against which he was deployed to provide information about his deployment.’

Indeed, it is the only way those who were spied upon can be prompted to come forward. Without a cover name, an officer remains in the dark forever. This is why we are so insistent that all cover names be released.

We have no faith in the self-reporting of officers about their abuses, nor in their ex-colleagues who are carrying out the risk assessments on behalf of the police for the Inquiry. Any public servant should be publicly accountable, let alone one from a covert institution guilty of so many serious abuses that it needed a public inquiry into its misdeeds.

Even those who still find the Met a trustworthy body must accept that the spycops units have no credibility left. Since the scandal broke we have been subjected to a flurry of desperate lies from everyone involved, from the officers themselves right to the top ranks. As one lie gets exposed, they change their story until that, too, falls under the weight of new evidence. So the more they want to hide an officer, the more suspicious the public becomes.

POLICE PERJURY

The Inquiry has said that people who were deceived into sexual relationships by officers deserve the fullest answers, and it will be seen as a reason to release an officer’s real name as well as the cover name. They appear to take a less stringent approach to officers who deceived the judicial system and orchestrated miscarriages of justice.

The one in the new list, HN13, was far from the only spycop to be arrested. The five spycops the Inquiry spoke of two weeks ago – and whose real and cover identities the Inquiry intends to withhold – included two who admit being arrested whilst undercover, one of whom was prosecuted under their false identity. 

There is plenty of evidence that this was common practice throughout the era of the spycops units. When they were arrested alongside people who were convicted, it means their evidence was withheld from the court and the conviction is unsafe.

Undercover officer Mark Kennedy was arrested and involved in cases that led to 49 wrongful convictions that have now been quashed due to his exposure by activists. The detail of his actions also made it clear that the police and Crown Prosecution Service colluded to orchestrate these miscarriages of justice.

Mark Ellison QC’s 2015 report into the issue found many more among the Special Demonstration Squad’s remaining records.

‘Using the SDS Annual Reports it has now been possible to identify 26 SDS officers who were arrested on a total of 53 occasions.’

That’s just what can be deduced from the SDS annual reports. The true total is likely to be higher. It’s notable that Mark Kennedy was from another unit entirely, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, and other officers there, such as as Rod Richardson and Lynn Watson, were repeatedly arrested as well.

All of this contravened strict instructions from the Home Office that officers should be withdrawn if they risked misleading a court.

In 1969, the year after the Special Demonstration Squad was set up, the Home Office issued Circular 97/1969, and it was clear and unequivocal.

‘The police must never commit themselves to a course which, whether to protect an informant or otherwise, will constrain them to mislead a court in subsequent proceedings. This must always be regarded as a prime consideration when deciding whether, and in what manner, an informant may be used and how far, if at all, he is allowed to take part in an offence.

‘If his use in the way envisaged will, or is likely to result in its being impossible to protect him without subsequently misleading the court, that must be regarded as a decisive reason for his not being so used or not being protected.’

The officers cannot feign ignorance. They knew the gravity of the situation and they chose to lie.

Either courts were told it was an agent – meaning it was an unfair trial for other defendants – or else this was perverting the course of justice and perjury. The Inquiry and the wider public should treat this as a negation of police duty and an affront to justice.

Protecting Abusers from Embarrassment

Excerpt from officer HN23’s risk assessment

The Undercover Policing Inquiry has announced five new applications for anonymity from former undercover police officers. The police want the real and cover names to be withheld in all five cases, and the Inquiry intends to comply.

The officers’ risk assessments, published in heavily redacted form, cover a number of elements of their deployment. 

The controversial use of dead children’s identities for cover names is addressed, and none of the officers say they did it (one says they didn’t even have a cover name). They are all asked if they had relationships with people they spied on, and none of them admit to this either.

PROFESSIONAL LIARS

The problem is that we’ve seen this before. Officer HN297‘s risk assessment said he didn’t have any known relationships.  His cover name, Rick Gibson, was brought to the attention of the Undercover Research Group by people from the groups he infiltrated. Their subsequent joint investigation found that he had sexual relationships with at least four women that he spied on.

Exceprt from HN297 risk assessmentWithout us knowing the cover names, we cannot check the veracity of their claims. It is the key prerequisite of us being able to get to the truth of what these trained liars did yet, despite proof of lying, the Inquiry is believing them and keeping cover names from us.

Once again we see inexcusable exceptionalism being granted to police. No other group of proven miscreants gets their answers taken at face value, in secret, then used as the basis for whether their victims get told the truth.

No other institution is allowed to be the custodian and archivist of the files that incriminate them. The Met are asked by a public inquiry to do searches and provide the results. It would be unacceptable even if there wasn’t, as in this case, a history of them destroying the files to avoid culpability.

But with the police we not only take their word, the Inquiry seeks to protect them from feeling upset at being caught. This trait is startlingly clear in the statement of officer N348. In a searing dissection, The Canary described it as ‘already a contender for the most ridiculous thing you’ll read in 2018’.

PROTECTION FROM EMBARRASSMENT

Deployed in 1972-73, N348 is now in her 70s. She says she cannot remember the cover name she used, but is confident it had the first name of Sandra.

She infiltrated the Women’s Liberation Front (affiliated to the Women’s Liberation Movement). A group of no more than 12 people, they met at a member’s house in North London to discuss women’s rights and Maoist ideas.

It seems the infiltration of these groups may have been prompted by an incident mentioned repeatedly in the paperwork, the direct action taken against the 1970 Miss World contest when it was broadcast live from the Royal Albert Hall.

‘N348 described the faction as vocal but aspirational only and taking part in demonstrations with placards and banners. She witnessed no violence displayed by the group’

N348 says she would be ’embarrassed’ if one of the group she spied on found out she was a spycop. Her current work worries her, too.

‘It makes my heart sink to think of my colleagues there knowing.’

The risk assessor concludes that there is no concrete threat from anyone in the Women’s Liberation Front in any way.

‘The risk would likely be confined to harassment and/or intrusion, but would be effective enough to potentially adversely affect her employment status and standing in the community; both would affect her income.’

Why would it affect her employment, unless she is in a job that her employer would think is unsuitable for someone with her history? Why would the community think less of her, unless she has done something wrong?

The risk assessor doesn’t think police can justify what N348 did.

‘It could be argued that the deployment of N348 into such a non-violent group was disproportionate and may feed a media angle.’

N348 says

‘I think we live in a time of an intrusive media… I worry about not being in control of this situation.’

The media attention they fear is the justified interest in the actions of a public servant. Her wish to be shielded from that is not a valid reason to hide her identity.

The risk assessor concedes that if her true identity were disclosed there would be no risk of physical threat and a low risk of interference with her family and personal life, yet they still want her name to be withheld. This is all a further example of spycops seeking freedom from accountability.

There is no human right to protection from embarrassment, yet N348 is effectively being granted one.

PROTECTION FROM PRIDE

Conversely, HN23 says

‘I am very proud of the work that I did and acted with integrity throughout my career. I believe that the work I did had a significant positive impact and I did it knowing that it was not something I could boast about or reveal.’

At last your chance has come to step up and receive the acclaim you so rightly deserve for your flawless and exemplary work, HN23. Let your friends and family see the glory of your true life and share in your pride.

‘I am worried that they will not understand the reasons for this and will see it as a betrayal which will affect both friendships and relationships with family.’

That’s the opposite of HN348’s embarrassment, yet arguing for the exact same secrecy.

POLICE RIGHTS BEAT HUMAN RIGHTS

The police applications for anonymity include a cut & paste paragraph saying that releasing an officer’s name would ‘amount to a disproportionate interference with his/her right to a private and family life,’ and even in one instance adding ‘risk of loss of life or torture, or inhuman or degrading treatment’.

These are the same two human rights the Met admitted were breached by spycops themselves in these deployments.

The police who invaded the lives, homes and families of active citizens are seeking anonymity to avoid intrusion into their own lives and families. They are saying ‘it would breach my right to a private life to be known as the person who breached your right to a private life’. If the arrogance is gobsmacking, the hypocrisy is sickening.

The Met go further, saying it is not only for the benefit of their officers but ‘in the public interest’. The state infiltrating political groups who pose no threat to public safety is not just abuse of the citizens that were spied on. It is a counter-democratic attack on freedom of association and expression. It is plainly against the public interest.

Naming anyone for anything obviously increases the chance of press interest and vigilante action, yet the media (often supplied by police) give out people’s details every day. It is not seen as a breach of the right to a private life.

TIME TO ANSWER

Officers from secret police units around the world have been reluctant to come clean. None imagined having to face the people they undermined and betrayed.

But their desire for comfort pales beside their victims’ right to the truth and the public’s right to justice. They did this in our name. We all deserve answers.

It’s been a long time coming and the officers of the Special Demonstration Squad know that better than anyone. Though it was never on the scale of the Stasi, Britain’s political secret police’s purpose and methods were startlingly similar to their East German counterparts.

As Paul Lewis & Rob Evans described in Undercover: The True Story of Britain’s Secret Police

‘A team of undercover police officers had spent the evening drinking and chatting in the London apartment. It was late one night in 1994.

‘They turned on the television to catch a news report from Germany. Tens of thousands of Germans were trawling through secret files compiled on them before the Berlin Wall came down… The TV report showed the distraught face fo a woman in Berlin who had discovered the man she had loved for years was a spy.

‘There was a silence in the lounge. Then one of the undercover police officers said what the others must have been thinking. “You do realise, this is going to happen to us one day,” he said.’

The Undercover Policing Inquiry is not here to extend the abusers’ belief that they would never get caught. It exists to reveal the truth. Police officers act as public servants and should be publicly accountable.

A cloak of anonymity for the officers would also fall across the facts and justice itself. It’s absurd for them to ask for such secrecy, and outrageous that the Inquiry wants to grant it.