Hampton is a US citizen who met Mark Kennedy whilst on holiday in Ireland in 2005. She subsequently went onto have a one year relationship with the man she knew as Mark Stone without any idea of his true identity.
Having substantially dragged out her case the police have, at last, run out of excuses, caved in and apologised. As with the other women, the Met compounded their abuse by subjecting Hampton to a gruelling legal battle to try to avoid accountability and then had the gall to pay tribute to her tenacity in their apology.
Sarah Hampton issued this statement:
Love is one of the most sacred things we have in our society and I fell in love with Mark Stone. He was supportive, attentive and generous, he behaved like he was in love with me. It tortures me knowing he was paid to be with me and because it was such a loving relationship, it was so devastating to find out it was all a lie.
I have wondered so many times if his superiors have kids; what would they think if their daughters were preyed upon like this? I have so much anger inside about this crime against me and it is only exacerbated by the fact that a government institution that is there to protect me is responsible. How do you trust men after this? How do you trust government?
Finding out that Mark was an undercover police officer brought about a deep depression that seemed impossible to navigate, there were times I almost gave up completely. The process of seeking justice on this case has felt at times belittling, intimidating and downright scary. I didn’t know how was I going to stand up to the Metropolitan Police Force. I felt I had been raped, I never consented to sleeping with a police officer.
I kept on fighting the case, using my life as an example of what should never happen to anyone.
No one should ever be under any circumstance coerced, invaded, violated and deceived by an undercover police officer through sexual relationships. Despite the apology I have many unanswered questions. I have not received the files the police have on me. I want to know to what extent my private life has been invaded by the UK police force and what justification is there for it?
Who gave permission for a British undercover officer to form and have
a relationship with a US national in Ireland, in the UK, in Scotland and in Spain?
The police have now apologised to me, saying that the relationship between Mark Kennedy and I was wrong, deceitful, manipulative and abusive, that it should never have happened. That it was an abuse of police power and a violation of my human rights
It is our responsibility now to make sure that this never happens again. We are continuing to fight for the truth to be revealed in the undercover policing inquiry, but it is currently only looking at events in England and Wales. My experience shows that the inquiry must be extended to include in Scotland, Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and other countries where we know Mark Kennedy and many other undercover police officers were active.
The Police and government are supposed to be here to serve the people and they need to be held responsible when negligent and violating human rights.
Dr Harry Halpin, graduating from the University of Edinburgh
A call for a proper spycops inquiry in Scotland has illustrated how the scandal also goes well beyond British shores.
Writing in The Scotsman, Chris Marshall reports that the Scottish government is ‘extremely disappointed’ events in its country are to be excluded from the public inquiry, and he has a blunt response.
If the UK government is to remain implacable about Scotland’s role in Pitchford, then the Scottish Government has no other option – it must set up its own inquiry.
The article points further afield. American citizen Dr Harry Halpin was spied upon by Mark Kennedy in Scotland.
This surveillance continued when they travelled to Denmark together for a meeting of climate activists ahead of a UN Climate Change Summit in 2009.
Harry Halpin was a student at Edinburgh University when he believes undercover police officers began spying on him. Mr Halpin, now a respected computer scientist, says he was badly beaten by Danish police after travelling to a 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen and placed on “domestic extremist watch list” in the UK.
Mark Kennedy’s injuries after being beaten by police, 2006
The first occasion was in 2006 when he refused to leave the care of activists after being beaten up by uniformed officers.
Kennedy had been a key organiser of the first Climate Camp, held at Drax power station in North Yorkshire, the UK’s largest single source of carbon emissions.
Amongst the activists, he was part of a group of people attempting to breach the perimeter fence. Somewhat ironically, the vast numbers of police were there due to information provided by Kennedy.
Kennedy’s machismo escalated the sitation and a group of officers set upon him.
They kicked and beat me. They had batons and pummelled my head. One officer repeatedly stamped on my back. I had my finger broken, a big cut on my head and a prolapsed disc.
The incident left him with numerous injuries and needing surgery for the prolapsed disc in his back.
ON WHOSE ORDERS?
The HMIC report says his second breach of orders came when
he defied instructions and worked outside the parameters set by his supervisors by accompanying a protestor abroad in 2009
The only known instance of Kennedy traveling abroad with anyone in 2009 was that trip to Denmark with Harry Halpin.
Disobeying orders was clearly a rare and serious decision. Did he do it to travel to Denmark on a whim? Or at the request of someone whose orders trumped those of his bosses? Could that have been the American authorities asking him to watch Harry Halpin? Was Halpin’s beating by Danish police at the behest of Kennedy? Or the Americans? Or just a coincidence?
To know the whole truth, we clearly have to look far beyond events in England and Wales. If the Pitchford Inquiry is to have a hope of achieving its stated aim, it must work with the governments of other countries affected by Britain’s political secret police.
Chris Marshall observes
While the activities of Kennedy et al may have taken place more than a decade ago in Scotland, they are continuing to be felt to this day by those who were targeted.
The HMIC report tells us Kennedy professionally visited 11 countries on more than 40 occasions, including 14 visits to Scotland. He was responsible for 49 wrongfulconvictions and had significant relationshipswithfivewomen who have taken legal action.
He is the just the best documented of the estimated 140 officers who worked for these units. If those he spied on hadn’t stumbled upon the truth all this would still be unknown, as is the case with 90% his colleagues.
Until we have the cover names of all the officers, and until the foreign authorities are allowed to contribute as fully as possbile, the Pitchford Inquiry will continue to appear to be merely firefighting revelations of victims.
Kate Wilson outside the Royal Courts of Justice, 3 October 2018
Wednesday 3 October was one of the most extraordinary days in the eight gruelling years of convoluted legal cases by spycops victims.
Kate Wilson, deceived into a long-term relationship by undercover police officer Mark Kennedy, finally secured proof that managers sanctioned it, and saw the court order police to substantively respond to her claim at long last.
As a group accustomed to police stonewalling ahead of a day in court, biased judges in the courtroom, and empty hands as we leave the building, it was a startling relief.
The public inquiry, which is supposed to be independent investigation into acknowledged police wrongdoing, has lost the faith of victims because it protects officers who committed perjury, sexually abused women and undermined democratic organisations.
And yet last week’s hearing at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal – special secret courts the adjudicate on matters of state surveillance – gave the Met short shrift and ordered them to produce witness statements responding to the facts of the case so that the Tribunal can establish what happened and who knew.
The myth of rogue police officers
The Met’s extensive self-investigation into spycops, Operation Herne, was unequivocal. In 2014 they issued a report telling us:
‘There are and never have been any circumstances where it would be appropriate for such covertly deployed officers to engage in intimate sexual relationships with those they are employed to infiltrate and target.
‘Such an activity can only be seen as an abject failure of the deployment, a gross abuse of their role and their position as a police officer and an individual and organisational failing.’
We now know this is not true.
Kate Wilson was given a 200 page sample of the 10,000 pages of documents containing her name that the Met admit to holding. They show Mark Kennedy’s managers were well aware of the extent of his relationship with her, right down to details of him cleaning her mum’s windows. They authorised payments – from the public purse – for him to buy her gifts.
It’s the latest U-turn in a long trail of police dodging disclosure and accountability. Wilson was one of eight women who brought a legal claim in 2011.
The Met initially suggested the women should instead sue the individual spycops in the relationships. They were rogue officers, the women were told.
‘It is absolutely not authorised… It is never acceptable under any circumstances… for them to engage in sex with any subject they come into contact with’ – Chief Constable Jon Murphy, spokesperson for the Association of Chief Police Officers which ran Mark Kennedy’s National Public Order Intelligence Unit.
But the patterns of the relationships with so many women over several decades were so similar it was patently clear that this was strategy and training. There is nothing Mark Kennedy did as a police officer that wasn’t done by dozens before him. Far from being rogue, he was textbook.
Unauthorised authorisations
The women noted the police’s contention that relationships weren’t authorised, and that it meant the case would be heard in open court, rather than the secretive Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) that deals with authorised state surveillance.
The police baulked at this and, less than a year after telling the court the relationships were unauthorised, the same Met lawyers were back in the same courtroom saying of course the relationships were authorised, and therefore the case should go to the secretive IPT where complainants are barred from court and don’t see the evidence against them.
The police lawyers pointed out that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 authorises ‘personal and other relationships’.
The word ‘other’ might imply non-personal, such as business relationships, but the dictionary definition encompasses literally all kinds of relationship. Because of this, the Met said that any relationship – even years spent as a co-habiting lifepartner integrated into a family – can be regarded as included and would therefore be authorised and legal.
This argument is why Kate Wilson has ended up at the IPT and not in a normal court.
What is the Investigatory Powers Tribunal?
The IPT was set up under the Regulatory of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA). The government realised that state surveillance could breach human rights, but didn’t want complaints dealt with in open court for reasons of security.
The IPT is a bizarre institution. Most of its hearings are held in secret. At these, the citizen complaining isn’t allowed to attend. Neither are their lawyers. They just get to effectively shove their papers under the door.
The state spies, however, are in court. The complainant doesn’t get to see what’s in the MI5/police papers, so they can make anything up about the complainant, or omit anything that is unhelpful to the security services’ case. The judges look at both sets of papers, talk to the spies, then make a judgment.
They only announce who has won. They do not explain their reasoning, nor even confirm that any spying ever took place. The complainant cannot appeal against the judgment.
We don’t know how many cases they hear, but looking at the annual reports of the
Interception of Communications Commissioner, between 2000 and 2011 there were at least 1,300. Of these, just 10 complaints – less than 1% – were upheld.
They have held Kate Wilson’s preliminary hearings in public, which bodes well for access to hearings in the rest of her case.
Police obstructing justice
The police, true to form, have tried to get out of disclosing documents with any argument that comes to hand. At the last hearing, they said that there’s no need to give Kate the 10,000 documents they have on her as they have already admitted that her human rights were breached.
They’ve previously used compensation to fob off similarly deceived women who would have preferred ‘less money and more truth‘. By the same token, this case is not about stopping at abstract admissions. It is about knowing the facts of what happened, how extensive the surveillance was, why it was authorised, who knew, and then holding those responsible accountable for their actions.
It’s a safe bet the other women abused by spycops were monitored and documented to the same degree. They too deserve real answers – all the women affected should be given their full, unredacted files so they can judge for themselves what went on rather than trusting the police who abused them to make redactions.
If had been found to be, say, a secret medical unit that had been abusing citizens for decades, it’s unthinkable that the doctors involved would be protected from scrutiny and prosecution. The exceptionalism expected by police – and too often granted to them – is utterly extraordinary.
An organisation interested in justice would want those who abuse power rooted out. Instead, the police commit a second injustice against the victims as they close ranks around miscreants, doing all they can to stymie efforts to get to the truth.
‘sexual relationships between undercover police officers and members of the public should not happen. The forming of a sexual relationship by an undercover officer would never be authorised in advance nor indeed used as a tactic of a deployment.’
The new release of 200 pages from her files demolishes that. As Wilson wrote in The Guardian:
‘I was lied to by the police in a public apology that was supposed to be reparation for their deceit and abuse.
‘Now I really want answers. I want to know how high up the police hierarchy knowledge of the abuses went. I want access to the 10,000 documents they claim to hold on me, and to know why at least eight police officers were sent to deceive me and spy on every area of my life.
‘I want the court to examine the institutional sexism and political prejudices that informed the decisions they made, and to look at the legality of the operations and the inadequate laws that are supposed to protect our human rights.’
Wilson’s IPT case asserts that the police breached a number of her rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.
The police have already conceded that they violated Articles 3 and 8.
Article 3 – the right to freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment – is a fundamental right; there are no circumstances in which it is acceptable to breach it. Since 2002, the constable’s oath taken by every new officer includes swearing to ‘uphold fundamental human rights’.
Article 8 – the right to a private and family life – is qualified. It may be breached for some reasons, for example for national security. The police have said this threshold was not reached in Wilson’s case. They admit that her activities were not a threat to the public and did not warrant such intrusion, which undermines the ‘eco terrorist domestic extremists’ line the police have been pushing to the Undercover Policing inquiry and elsewhere.
Taken together, these are already huge admissions with major implications for the efforts of other spycops’ victims seeking the truth about what was done to them.
She also claims they violated Article 10 (freedom of expression), Article 11 (freedom of association), and Article 14 (freedom from discrimination). The police still haven’t answered these.
What next for Kate Wilson’s case?
At a hearing a year ago the police were told to disclose their documents. They have failed to do this (again, this has been a standard delaying tactic over the last eight years).
The police told the court it would be expensive and Met funds are finite; these words came from the mouth of the fifth new lawyer for the police in the past six years, as the police have dragged out Wilson’s claim since 2011, seemingly having no problem finding funds for devious vexatious attempts to strike out the case and avoid accountability.
‘It’s expensive to comply with the law so we won’t’ isn’t a convincing argument from anyone, least of all those who are supposed to enforce it. The fact that it’s a big job makes it more important, not less. They systematically abused citizens for decades. The public deserve answers.
The Met told the court that they still regard Kennedy’s actions – which they admit breach the Human Rights Act – as properly granted and fully lawful.
They also argued that the Undercover Policing Inquiry could do the job of investigation. Even if we ignore the fact that it has turned into a secret public inquiry, gullibly believing the proven liars who are its subject whilst treating victims with suspicion and disdain, it is optimistically predicting that the public will see its report in 2024, six years away and 14 since Wilson discovered the truth about Kennedy.
The court was having none of it. It gave the police three months to provide witness statements with supporting evidence and a fully pleaded defence of their case. Then it went further, requesting that all relevant authorisations and the intelligence that led to those authorisation requests in the first place be explained and provided to the Tribunal, in order to assess whether the operations were lawful at all.
What the court does after that is uncertain. We have no guarantee that we will see any of the material. But if we were finally on the road to truth and justice, this is what it would look like.
We have a new video on our Youtube channel – Resisting Surveillance: Real Life Spycop Targets.
Three activists targeted by Mark Kennedy spoke at the Chaos Communication Camp in Germany last week.
‘Lily’ [update: she has subsequently waived her anonymity and publicly uses her name Kate Wilson] was an activist mobilising for the 2005 G8 summit in Scotland when she had a long term relationship with Kennedy. She is one of the women suing Kennedy’s bosses in the Police Spies Out of Lives case and recently co-wrote an article about the impact of these relationships for the Guardian.
Jason Kirkpatrick was a Berlin-based anti-G8 activist who kennedy used as a springboard into German activism. More recently he has been researching Britain’s political secret police and is making a documentary, Spied Upon.
Harry Halpin is a digital rights activist who was spied on by Kennedy in several countries.
The late Barbara Shaw, holding the death certificate of her son Rod Richardson whose identity was stolen by a spycop
The second day of the 2022 Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings concerning the management of the Special Demonstration Squad 1968-82 included opening statements from:
Catherine Brown (representing the Home Secretary) James Scobie QC (representing Lindsey German, ‘Mary’, & Richard Chessum) Fiona Murphy QC (representing ‘Category F’ core participants – families who discovered that the identities of their loved ones had been appropriated by the spycops to construct cover names) Charlotte Kilroy QC (representing ‘Category H’ core participants – women deceived into sexual relationships, as well as a child born as a result of one of those relationships, and one man deceived into a long term close friendship) Charlotte Kilroy QC (representing Diane Langford and ‘Madeleine’) Owen Greenhall (representing Lord Peter Hain, Ernest Rodker and Jonathan Rosenhead) Sam Jacobs (representing Celia Stubbs)
Catherine Brown (representing the Home Secretary)
A very brief appearance, just confirming that the current Home Secretary remains supportive of the Inquiry’s work.
James Scobie QC (representing Lindsey German, ‘Mary’, & Richard Chessum)
‘Mary’ – one of the women who was deceived into a relationship Richard Chessum – associated with Big Flame, Troops Out Movement and other campaigns Lindsey German – Socialist Workers Party / Stop the War campaigner.
Scobie argued that the material disclosed by the Inquiry demonstrates that:
• There was no justification for the spycops’ infiltrations on the grounds of preventing public disorder. The true purpose was political and economic. There was no legal justification and the Government knew this.
• The Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) was really part of a large data-harvesting scheme, run on behalf of MI5, targeting anyone with left-wing politics.
• ‘Public order’ was used as an excuse, to justify the unit’s ongoing existence.
• The Government was aware that these operations were targeting lawful, democratic activities.
• The intelligence gathered by the SDS was used to blacklist law-abiding members of the public and prevent them from being employed in a wide range of jobs.
He pointed out that the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has been mischaracterised in order to justify its being infiltrated (by over 24 SDS officers over the years). In fact, the ‘revolutionary change’ they advocated was democratic in nature, with the aim of creating equality for all. As he put it:
“The aims of revolutionary socialism are to transform society from within, re-addressing the balance of power away from the minority that holds it, to the majority that should. That process has to be democratic by definition.
“They campaigned on issues such as sexual discrimination, racism, low-pay, unsafe working conditions, unemployment and poverty. All of which needed transforming.
“They focused on building a mass movement and broad-based campaigns with the aim of helping to create a better society.”
According to ‘Colin Clark’ (officer HN80), who spent five years embedded within the SWP’s headquarters, the Party:
“were strongly opposed to government policy but were not seeking to subvert the institutions of the state.”
Scobie showed that although the unit had a purely public order remit when it was founded, by the mid-1970s this justification became increasingly contrived, as public disorder was on the decline. Instead, the unit moved towards serving ‘customers’ such as MI5, who “told them what to get and where to get it”. SDS management had regular meetings with the security services.
Between 1968 and 1971, there was an “exponential” increase in the number of SDS reports being produced, from a few hundred to tens of thousands. The vast majority contained personal details of left-wing sympathisers, rather than anything relating to public order. This is an accurate reflection of the true priorities of the spycops, not the ‘skewed’ picture the police now claim it to be. The content of the unit’s Annual Reports back up his assertion.
Right to Work march at the Conservative Party conference, Brighton, October 1980
Even the public order successes claimed by the SDS are misleading. Scobie was able to demonstrate how they did this, in Lindsay German’s experience of the Right to Work campaign.
The SDS exaggerated the potential threat of disorder and then claimed the credit for it not occurring, when in fact it was the campaigners themselves who ensured events were well-stewarded and passed off peacefully.
Scobie highlighted the Metropolitan Police’s refusal to acknowledge the racist nature of many acts of extreme violence, such as the murder in 1978 of Altab Ali. Racially motivated attacks were relatively common, yet those responsible were ignored by the SDS.
The real threats of public disorder and violence came from the far-right, yet Scobie noted that according to Detective Inspector Angus McIntosh (officer HN244), there was a deliberate policy decision, made at a high level, for the SDS not to infiltrate them.
“From the SWP side, it was mostly shouting. From the far right thing, it was mostly physical violence.”
Instead, two Special Branch officers were reportedly (in 1968) sent by their Chief Superintendent to take tea on the lawn of one well-known fascist (later imprisoned for inciting racial hatred), Lady Jane Birdwood, and “thank her” for the information she shared with them.
Next, we heard about the guidelines applied to Special Branch’s work, and therefore to the SDS, and the way ‘subversion’ was interpreted by them. Definitions were left deliberately vague, so that legitimate political and industrial activity could be treated as ‘subversive’ and therefore fair game for the spycops.
This may explain why senior managers (and the Home Office, according to material that’s now been released) were keen to ensure that the existence of the unit remained secret, and the public never found out that these officers had been given unchecked powers to “pry into political opinions and private conduct of law abiding citizens”, and to interfere with freedom of assembly and expression.
At least nine spycops are known to have assumed positions of responsibility within the SWP. These include ‘Colin Clark’ (officer HN80) and ‘Phil Cooper’ (officer HN155), who provided incredibly detailed reports and received commendations for their work. Their reports included a lot of information about trade union activity, an area neither MI5 or Special Branch was officially permitted to investigate. The SDS bent the rules to suit themselves.
The real reason for the systematic ‘hoovering up’ of hundreds of SWP members’ data was political and economic policing. SWP activists were at real risk of being refused work and blacklisted, and this is something Richard Chessum experienced himself. This document from 1975 refers to a ‘close and mutually profitable relationship’ between the police and employers.
Members of Parliament were concerned enough about this issue back in the 1970s to ask questions about trade unionists being targeted, but the police lied to them.
Fiona Murphy QC (representing ‘Category F’ core participants – families who discovered that the identities of their loved ones had been appropriated by the spycops to construct cover names)
NPOIU officer EN32/HN596, who stole Rod Richardson’s identity
Their earlier Opening Statements (in November 2020 and April 2021) described the devastation of losing their loved ones, and the horror they suffered upon learning that their identities had been used in this morally abhorrent way.
This stage of the Inquiry is of particular importance to them as they seek to learn how the practice of using the identities of dead children began and how it came to be normalised by the spycops.
Murphy took a moment to remember Barbara Shaw, who sadly passed away last year. She had been instrumental in pursuing justice for the families affected in this way for the past decade, since learning that her son’s name, Rod Richardson, has been stolen by one of the spycops.
In 2021, the Crown Prosecution Service concluded there was sufficient evidence to bring a criminal prosecution against officer EN32/HN596, but they nonethelss decided not to press charges. They feel it is ‘not in the public interest’ as the officer was only following his unlawful training. The fact that a conviction would be likely is surely enough to prosecute him, and his unlawful mentor – who we now know to be Andy Coles (officer HN2).
The CPS told Rod Richardson’s family of their decision last year, eight years after the truth was revealed, and two weeks after Barbara Shaw had died.
The delays of this Inquiry continue to cause significant distress to the remaining families, who ask that officers now “volunteer the full truth without any ambiguity and without any economy as to that truth”.
There is one family listed whose name has been redacted from the Statement. This is due to a Restriction Order granted by Mitting, awarding both real- and cover-name anonymity to the undercover who used the name of their deceased child. This means that they too are silenced, and cannot speak up in public, cannot seek support, and:
“Against a backdrop of unspeakable trauma, the family feel degraded, humiliated, debased and silenced both in the public domain and in their personal relations. The family have been shut out from the opportunity to scrutinise whether even the process that resulted in the imposition of the restriction took proper account of the ongoing gross interference with their rights.”
The families say that the evidence they heard last year ‘crystallised’ their views, that there was no need for this ghoulish practice to have been adopted in the first place, or maintained for so many years, and they question the need for the spycops operation’s very existence.
As Murphy put it:
“the Special Demonstration Squad (“SDS”) was a secret operation, operating in isolation from and far beyond the moral and legal norms of policing; and they had every confidence that its secrets, including the immorality and illegality at the core of its practices, would remain secret.”
Murphy then provided an overview of the practice, the many contradictions and how mangers sought to justify it.
In the early years of the SDS, only one officer (‘Mike Scott‘, officer HN298) stole the identity of a deceased child. He says he did so on his own initiative. Other undercovers in those years (1968-74) simply created fictitious identities, and this worked fine. They were able to obtain driving licences, library cards, etc, in their invented names, and no deployments were compromised as a result. Regional and National Crime Squad officers continued in this way until at least 1998, again without any problems.
However, we now know that many SDS officers (approximately half of those represented by the Designated Lawyers) chose this method of constructing an identity based on the real name of a deceased child, from 1974 onwards.
It’s been suggested that this became standard procedure due to deployments based on purely fictitious identities being compromised. However there is no evidence of this being the case.
There were spycops who raised concerns about this practice, and about the moral implications, and at least one who is known to have refused to adopt this method of creating a ‘legend’. ‘Colin Clark’ chose to use a fictitious name during his time undercover (1977-82), with a passport issued and no known problems.
When deployments were compromised, this was often due to the officers themselves making mistakes – for example, ‘Graham Coates‘ (officer HN304) accidentally gave his real name when stopped for drink driving.
Richard Clark (officer HN297) was confronted by Big Flame activists with a copy of a death certificate for the person he was pretending to be (‘Rick Gibson’) and had to be pulled out of the field immediately as a result.
Whether or not this tactic originated with The Day of the Jackal book, or the film of the same name, or the KGB (!) remains unknown.
Murphy went on to say that the SDS was “an entirely misguided enterprise”, blaming the unit’s managers for perpetuating this unethical and illegal practice and a “toxic culture” of secrecy. She cited the current temporary MPS Commissioner, who recently spoke out about failures of leadership resulting in institutional toxicity that could not be explained away as just a few ‘bad apples’.
Charlotte Kilroy QC (representing ‘Category H’ core participants – women deceived into sexual relationships, as well as a child born as a result of one of those relationships, and one man deceived into a long term close friendship)
Charlotte Kilroy QC
Kilroy began her oral statement with some very old case law – about the ransacking and seizure of property by the Earl of Halifax, in the home of John Entick, in 1762. The relevance to the Inquiry soon became apparent.
Entick went on to sue for trespass, and the resulting, 260-year old judgement Entick v Carrington is one of the most important pieces of British constitutional case law. It establishes that the state cannot issue “general warrants”, or any kind of speculative or non-specific invasion of private homes in search of evidence of crimes. This, together with the Common Law principles of personal security, liberty and property, underpins much of modern policing.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Fast forward two centuries, to 1968. Following unrest on the March 1968 Grosvenor Square demo, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) was set up by Special Branch and the Home Office, seemingly with any proper legal or political oversight. Very quickly, officers were creating false identities, being provided with accommodation and expenses and being deployed for years on end.
They routinely entered private homes, and were given very little direction about what to report or who to target. They gathered huge amounts of very private information and shared that with other agencies. This plainly conflicted with the bedrock of the law. However, they had a weapon the Earl of Halifax did not have: secrecy.
Charlotte then re-told the now familiar story of officer Mark Kennedy’s unmasking in 2010, which began the unravelling of the secrecy surrounding the SDS and Kennedy’s unit, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit.
It was revealed that they had entered the private homes of thousands of people and that Kennedy was one of dozens of officers who had deceived women into sexual relationships. Some even had children. All this was discovered by accident and it is only because of that accident that this Inquiry exists at all.
THE PROBLEM WITH SECRECY
“Secret surveillance powers characterise the police state and are a menace.”
This was the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in Klass & Others v Germany 1978. Secret surveillance poses a danger of undermining, even destroying democracy, while claiming to defend it. In all democracies governed by the rule of law, covert powers are confined to the most serious threats. Secrecy is always dangerous to democracy. It corrupts, and it encourages abuse.
Freedom of Expression is described as “the primary right” in a democracy, because “without it, an effective rule of law is not possible”. The right to hold and share opinions without interference and without being monitored and placed under surveillance is protected in both common and international law.
The sanctity of the home, the family, and possessions is zealously protected in common law and Article 8 of the Human Rights Act and is considered absolutely sacred, just as every person’s body is considered inviolate. Any interference is considered trespass, and the burden is on the police to justify their trespasses.
Mr Sanders, representing some of the former undercovers, yesterday suggested that everything a public authority does is considered lawful until ruled otherwise by a court. That is untrue. A statutory instrument is presumed lawful, but a trespass is not. Using deception and tricks to gain an invite to someone’s home is no justification, and even where a warrant exists, it is not lawful if it allows discretion as to who the target of the warrant is, or speculative searches for evidence of crime.
THE EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
The primary focus of Ms Kilroy’s submissions is UK Common Law, nevertheless, international law is also relevant. Yesterday the police suggested it was not applicable, and Mitting appeared to agree.
This is wrong for 3 reasons:
1. The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) was applicable law at the time, and the UK was committed to comply with it. Any failure to do that must be relevant to an assessment of the statutory regulation of undercover policing, which is part of the Inquiry’s task. How can the Inquiry conclude the statutory regulation of undercover policing was adequate, if it led to the UK breaking its international human rights commitments?
2. One of the great iniquities of secrecy is that it obstructs accountability. The UK twice changed domestic law in response to ECHR rulings during the 1980s and 90s. If people had been able to raise the practices of the SDS in Strasbourg it would very likely have led to changes in law.
3. The Inquiry is tasked with examining the effects of undercover policing on individuals and the public in general. The large scale breach of people’s Human Rights and the denial of redress due to secrecy is clearly a serious effect.
INVESTIGATORY POWERS TRIBUNAL RULING IN WILSON
This case from 2021 addresses all the rights outlined above in the context of undercover policing. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) ruled that the Met and National Police Chiefs Council had violated Wilson’s rights under Articles 3, 8, 10, 11 & 14. The ruling is summarised here.
The police lawyers yesterday sought to diminish the relevance of this case to the inquiry, by saying that it is based on the facts of that case. That is of course true, but the similarity between the facts and the impact on individuals spied on in that case, and those in Tranche 1 of this Inquiry, is impossible to ignore.
Specifically, the police’s argument – that allowing the police to make proportionate responses to demonstrations is a justification for undercover operations – was rejected by the IPT. Likewise, they cannot be considered to justify trespass.
The findings that the operations violated Wilson’s rights to freedoms of expression and association also have obvious implications for the actions of the SDS.
The IPT also ruled that two senior officers knew about the sexual relationship and others adopted a policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell”. A finding the inquiry must bear in mind when questioning managers in this tranche. The police accepted the judgment, and did not appeal any of the findings.
POLICING BY CONSENT
The whole concept of Policing by Consent is likely to be viewed by most CP;s and as fantasy of the liberal state. Some activist groups have recently declared their withdrawal of any consent.
However, the concept did provide Kilroy with some extra ammunition. For instance, Principle 5 of the Peelian Principles (1829) states that officers are injuncted at all times to uphold the historic tradition that “the police are the public and the public are the police”.
The police are only members of the public paid to give full time attention to duties that are incumbent on every member of the public. Lying and deceiving the public and trespassing on their privacy, property and intimate lives fundamentally undermines this principle.
THE 2005 INQUIRIES ACT
The police submissions yesterday sought to suggest that the applicable legal framework is not relevant to the Inquiry’s task, because Section 2 of the Inquiries Act says the Chair cannot determine individual liability. However that does not mean that the law is not relevant to the Terms of Reference in other ways.
CONCLUSIONS
Managers ought to have been well aware of the risks posed by their operations, yet in the Inquiry’s Tranche 1 period alone (1968-82), at least 6 officers engaged in deceitful relationships with numerous women.
It is a striking feature of all the evidence so far that the common law and human rights of the individuals and the impact of long-term undercover operations on those rights were rarely if ever considered:
• There was no guidance or training on privacy or relationships
• Tasking was broad brush and officers were given free rein to decide who to spy on
• There was no restriction on entering homes
• No guidance was given about what to record, and undercover officers were expected to hoover up as much information as possible
• Very little crime, disorder, or intelligence suggesting a risk to democracy was ever recorded. Usually reports showed an absence of such risks
In conclusion, Kilroy stated that it is the Category H position that these operations were incompatible with all standards of law. Scrutiny, when it finally came, came only by accident. Responsibility for that lies with the senior police officers and Home Office officials who maintained this secrecy for so long. The Police were corrupted by these practices. Their betrayal of the values of truth, integrity and honesty is made particularly clear by their willingness to lie to the courts, attacking the very institutions it was their duty to support.
Why did managers decide to abandon all the tenets of common law and the principles of policing, simply to find out how many officers to send to a demonstration, or whether people’s ideas were “subversive”? Answering this will be an important area of investigation for the inquiry.
Charlotte Kilroy QC (representing Diane Langford and ‘Madeleine’)
The experiences of these two women provide more evidence of the police overreaching their legal powers with open ended, ‘broad brush’ investigations that relied on the spycops’ discretion. Any tests of justification for targeting and reporting on them fail, something particularly egregious given the deception of Madeleine into a relationship.
Diane Langford, New York City, 1996
Diane Langford, a long time political activist, has never taken part in or been arrested for criminal activity. Despite this, at least six undercover officers infiltrated her life, and reported on her, and on private meetings held in her home. These reports contained personal information about her, often accompanied by inappropriate personal comments on her views and domestic arrangements.
Both ‘Sandra Davies’ (officer HN348) and ‘Dave Robertson’ (officer HN45) have admitted that they never witnessed any public disorder or criminal behaviour being committed by Diane or her comrades. It is difficult to see what justified the level of intrusion she suffered or the use of police resources.
Groups like the Women’s Liberation Front were targeted for no reason other than curiosity on the part of the police and/or security services. According to Sandra Davies, the undercovers were not provided with guidance or limits about entering private homes or collecting personal, private details of their targets. Robertson’s remit was likewise to gather as much intelligence as possible on his targets.
In Diane’s case, there is none of the evidence that would be required to justify an overt investigation, never mind a covert operation. This made the surveillance unlawful.
Diane now knows that the files relating to her have not all been disclosed, and requests that this happens so she can fully and properly assist the Inquiry.
Kilroy pointed out that Harvey was allowed to choose his own targets and use his personal judgement when deciding what to include in his reports. He took up positions of trust (such as Secretary and Treasurer) within SWP branches and used these as an opportunity to gather intelligence on party members and activities. He reported personal information expecting it to be of use to the Security Service.
Madeleine was involved in SWP activities which were entirely open and lawful, aiming to create a fairer society. Vince Harvey himself noted that their main interest was in building a working class movement, for all that there was rhetoric around ‘revolution’.
Madeleine’s evidence is confirmed by a new witness in the Inquiry, Julia Poynter, a former SWP member, who attests to both the nature of the local SWP groups and Madeleine’s relationship with Harvey.
Owen Greenhall (representing Lord Peter Hain, Ernest Rodker and Jonathan Rosenhead)
Owen Greenhall
Greenhall opened with the anti-apartheid protest at the Star and Garter Hotel in Richmond, almost 50 years ago today. Activists sought to delay the departure of the British Lions Rugby team on their tour to South Africa.
Among them was a man known as “Mike Scott” (officer HN298). Fourteen activists, including Scott himself were arrested that day and later convicted at trial. This has already been referred to the panel considering miscarriages of justice. It is an affront to justice that he deliberately deceived the defence, prosecution and court to as to his identity and the nature of his role.
There was no prior authorisation for him to participate in a demonstration leading to his arrest; he withheld key factual information that should have acquitted the defendants; the presence of an undercover officer was never disclosed to the arresting officers, the defence, the prosecution or the court; and he breached legal privilege, reporting and recording confidential conversations between defendants and their lawyers.
These concerns have already been articulated in previous statements, however we are now looking the role of SDS managers. It is clear from the evidence at the current Inquiry hearings that this was all done with the full knowledge and encouragement of SDS managers and senior officers in at all levels of the Metropolitan Police.
SDS manager Sergeant David Smith (officer HN103) was present at the first court appearance on 15th May 1972 and SDS managers monitored the case closely. Within days details had been communicated to the highest levels of Special Branch.
Anti-Apartheid Movement poster, early 1970s
Deputy Commissioner Ferguson Smith sent a memo confirming the Assistant Commissioner had been verbally briefed. Senior management were strongly supportive, saying HN298 had acted with “refreshing initiative” and that they should “take advantage of the situation”.
Discussions were had about assisting Scott in maintaining his deception, participating in criminal proceedings in a false identity, and even applying for legal aid. The only concern expressed was about the potential for embarrassment to the police if they ever got found out.
This apparently sent the tone and created a template for a policy of total secrecy, lack of disclosure and complete disregard for legal privilege and the integrity of the criminal justice system.
Like Scott, ‘Desmond/Barry Loader’ (officer HN13) was arrested a number of times, faced trial, and was even found guilty of public order offences. No disclosure was ever made, however the court was told he was “an informant” (not a police officer), and were asked to ensure he did not go to jail.
In both cases, SDS managers at all levels were quickly aware of and complicit in the lies, with Deputy and Assistant Commissioners and even the Commissioner himself involved in decisions to deceive the courts. There is no mention of any concern for the rights of co-defendants or the integrity of the criminal justice system.
The themes of lack of policy, training, guidance and oversight; an overriding need to preserve total secrecy of SDS and prevent reputational damage to the police; and lack of consideration for the rights of those spied upon are echoed in other areas of concern, such as the targeting of political groups, the indiscriminate collection of information and undercover officers taking active roles within political groups.
Greenhall went into some detail about the targeting of the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the Young Liberals and notes that the evidence paints a picture painted of targeting led by the undercover officers themselves, with SDS managers unable to exercise proper control.
He also cited deeply personal details recorded on his clients and their families by the SDS and passed on to the Security Services.
He concluded by citing similar concerns over the indiscriminate recording and retention of information by Special Branch as reflected in a Home Office Paper produced in 1980 which noted that some of the information collected “may not easily be justified”, reflecting that disproportionate data collection was directly related to the lack of clear management guidance and recommending independent oversight and supervision. Yet forty-two years later, here we are.
Celia Stubbs was the partner of Blair Peach, who was killed by a police officer striking a blow to his head during a protest against racism in Southall in April 1979.
The circumstances of the tragic death of Blair Peach and the sustained cover-up that followed it is told in Celia Stubbs’ statement, and was summarised for Part 2 of the Inquiry. Undercover officers reporting on her commenced in the 1970s, and continued at least into the 1990s.
Her statement today, read out by Sam Jacobs, focused on the question how she became a target of the SDS and why intelligence was gathered on her for decades. Importantly, she found out that the Metropolitan Police still withholds information on the death of Peach.
The managers who have given written evidence generally deny any knowledge of why the Blair Peach campaign was reported on. However, when it comes to explaining the reporting on the funeral of Blair Peach, Angus McIntosh says that he would not have known to what use such information would have been put, but his understanding is that it was “for the Security Service, and for vetting, and identification/tracing”.
More was revealed in the summaries of the closed hearings the Inquiry has held. Officer HN21 recalled“one of the management” asked him to attend Blair Peach’s funeral, and it “could have been Geoff Craft [officer HN34].”
Blair Peach’s funeral, June 1979
As to why it was that the SDS wanted to report on the funeral, HN21 describes that “part of the core business was to identify people, individuals who were connected to groups.” In the instance of attending Blair Peach’s funeral, the motive “was just that” and he had not thought that there was any possibility of disorder.
As was mentioned earlier today, SDS managers did not want undercover officers to attend the rally at Southall, as it was known that uniformed officers were planning to “clamp down on the demonstrations” and dangers were “more than normal”.
Undercover officer HN41 also described the “disastrous mistake” in public order planning of closing down part of Southall.
For Celia Stubbs,
“this offers a glimpse into the information likely within the report that may have been profoundly important in exposing the approach of the police to the rally, and the violence which resulted in the death of Blair Peach.”
Crucially, HN41 recalled he was “smuggled in” to Scotland Yard to give a statement as the “Murder Squad” had heard of his presence at Southall. This shows that the officers investigating Blair Peach’s death were well aware of the SDS presence and likely knowledge of events, knowledge that was never revealed in the inquest at the time.
The fact that this has only been dealt with in closed hearings raises concerns about the ability for Stubbs and others to participate effectively in the Inquiry, as without full access it is not possible to question the witnesses properly. As Jacobs emphatically stated:
“This evidence must be revisited by the Chair.”
These revelations only add to Stubbs grief about the ongoing refusal of the Metropolitan Police to be open and honest about its actions. It is painful that time and again, it is up to her to come up with new evidence of the police’s failure. And of the Inquiry’s for that matter.
Like Diane Langford who we heard earlier this week, Stubbs submitted a Subject Access Request and received her Special Branch Registry File and some further documents from the Metropolitan Police that were not disclosed by the Inquiry.
The documents include the first information on her, with a photo attached, her relationship to Peach, and an assault by two members of the National Front for wearing an Anti-Nazi League badges.
One file shows that Special Branch information was collated on all individuals who provided a statement in respect of the killing of Blair Peach. Why was that information collected and put on file?
The disclosed reports – while heavily redacted – reveal the disdain that the Metropolitan Police held towards those seeking to hold police to account. Though she never did achieve justice for Blair Peach, her campaigning was valiant and dignified. To Special Branch, however, she was a mere “propaganda tool” for the “left wing publicity machine.”
Stubbs hopes the Inquiry understands how traumatic discovering this has been:
“I have felt more distressed but also angry. To put it bluntly, police officers took my partner’s life and then concealed the truth. The concluding job of this Inquiry is to uncover the truth.”
Ahead of next week’s sessions of the public inquiry into Britain’s political secret police, here’s a roundup of what’s happened since last autumn’s hearings.
Campaigners continue to expose the scandal of five decades of secret infiltration of left wing and progressive campaign groups
Kate Wilson, deceived into a relationship by spycop Mark Kennedy, won a historic court victory which slammed all the Met’s political undercover policing as unlawful – not just the relationships, but the spying itself
Spycops managers from the 1970s due to give public evidence in May 2022 at the Undercover Policing Inquiry (May 9th to 20th)
Spycops victims condemn the continuing delays, secrecy and lack of disclosure during the Inquiry
Women deceived into relationship by spycops publish two shocking books
A growing scandal over ‘missing’ Met police reports into their killing of two anti-fascists, Kevin Gately and Blair Peach, on 1970s demonstrations
Head of the Met was forced to resign following public outrage over institutionalised sexism in the force
After the last round of public hearings of the Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, we learned that it was holding further secret hearings with spycops, from which victims and the wider public were excluded. Our condemnation of it was reported in the Guardian and the Morning Star.
COPS has found out that 43 UK police forces and three specialist police forces were involved in or collaborated with spycops.
The Spycops Info podcast – victims of spycops taking a deep look at the scandal – continue to cover many aspects of the scandal, interviewing people spied on, laying out the organisational structure, and promoting the ongoing campaign for truth and justice. The latest episode previews the upcoming round of public inquiry hearings.
The Undercover Research Group has finished summarising the documents from last year’s hearings and have now started summarising the evidence hearings. This is an enormous task. They will then prepare a report about what has been learned so far about spycops operations. They are in the process of setting up a new Undercover Research Portal site.
COPS held a successful online seminar about spycops as part of the COP26 Climate Coalition events in Glasgow in November 2021.
POLICE ‘LOSE’ FILES ON PEOPLE THEY KILLED
Few significant files or disclosures have been made public by the Inquiry, despite them saying that they would ‘trickle information out’ and promising the full Special Branch Annual Reports. Heavily cut versions of these for 1970-1983 have only recently been disclosed.
A large number of less important files have been published, and it’s plain to see the extraordinary level of detail recorded on activists. Undercover police officers took on formal roles in organisations they were spying on, and all manner of documents – right down to Socialist Workers Party branch babysitting rotas – were copied to MI5.
But the police and Inquiry are now claiming that crucial reports are ‘missing’, of the two anti-fascist demonstrations (Red Lion Square 1974, and Southall 1979) in which police violence killed Kevin Gately and Blair Peach. Officers deployed at the time are claiming they didn’t attend the demonstrations. This is a major scandal. COPS will continue to pressure for full and quick disclosure.
WOMEN DECEIVED BY SPYCOPS PUBLISH STORIES
Women deceived into relationships by spycops have told their own stories in two recent books.
It covers not only the deception, but how the women uncovered the truth. Each of their stories has unique features, but perhaps the most harrowing element is the similarity – these officers were clearly trained and guided in the abuse they inflicted. Far from the ‘rogue officer’ explanation the Met have tried to give, it is abundantly clear that this was all strategy and tactics, taught and honed over decades.
The composite picture exposes the institutional sexism and cynicism of the spycops units, and of the police who continue to cover up and defend them to this day.
SPYCOPS ARE UNLAWFUL, COURT RULES
Kate Wilson finally won her 10-year legal battle when her case went to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) in September 2021. Kate had been deceived into a long-term relationship by undercover officer Mark Kennedy, and her environmental and social justice activism had been spied on by at least five of Kennedy’s colleagues.
The IPT ruled that not only was Kennedy’s intimate abuse unlawful, but crucially the wider spying had no place in a democratic society. The damning judgement declared the entire undercover policing operation unlawful and a breach of five articles of human rights legislation, including violations of the right to protest, the right to a private and family life, and the right to freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Read more about Kate’s case and the IPT ruling on Police Spies Out of Lives, the campaign representing women deceived into relationships by spycops.
UNDERCOVER POLICING INQUIRY HEARINGS
The Undercover Policing Inquiry – the full-scale public inquiry into Britain’s political secret police, which has been dragging on sine 2014 with no end in sight – resumes in London for two weeks starting on Monday 9 May. These will be hearing evidence from managers of the Special Demonstration Squad 1968-82.
Core Participants – people the Inquiry deems profoundly involved in the spying, mostly the victims – will be making a number of powerful public Opening Statements from 9th to 11th May (after the official Inquiry and Police statements), which will be broadcast on the Inquiry’s YouTube channel.
Planning for attendance, events and publicity around the hearings are underway.
In a meeting with Core Participants and lawyers, the Inquiry said that it will not start Tranche 2 of the hearings (covering the years 1983-92) until 2024. It does not expect to conclude before 2026. Given the long record of delays – many deliberately imposed by the Met to avoid accountability – we think it is likely to be even later.
These delays are still a big issue for victims of spycops, especially given that many Core Participants are ageing and in ill-health, and are entitled to disclosure and answers now.
The PCS Bill is going through parliament and has now been knocked back to the House of Commons by the House of Lords. The Bill gives powers to police to outlaw a range of traditional protests, even individual protest.
Along with the CHIS Bill, it appears to be trying to make legal in the present everything illegal and unacceptable that the Undercover Police Inquiry is currently investigating from the past.
The House of Lords can only hold up the Bill, it cannot stop it. We need to continue to oppose the Bill and continue to protest.
This summary covers the final week of the four-week 2021 hearings of the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI), examining the activities of the Metropolitan Police’s secret political unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, from 1973-82.
The UCPI is an independent, judge-led inquiry into undercover policing in England and Wales. Its main focus is the activity of two units who deployed long-term undercover officers into a variety of political groups; the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS, 1968-2008) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU, 1999-2011). Spycops from these units lived as activists for years at a time, spying on more than 1,000 groups.
THE DECEIVED AND THE DECEIVER
The UCPI hearings on 10 May and 11 May were notable for the consecutive appearances of an activist who had been deceived into a sexual relationship with an undercover officer, and the actual spycop who had deceived her.
‘Madeleine’ was the only activist we heard from this week. State core participants giving evidence were spycops ‘Vince Miller’ (HN354, 1976-1979), ‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-82), and ‘Michael James‘ (HN96, 1978-83). Summaries of evidence were given for three other spycops, and documents introduced for a fourth, who is now dead.
Owing to the refusal of the Inquiry to release names or photographs of officers, there are many people who may never know if they were spied on. The Inquiry has also refused to call as many spycops as possible to give evidence, so we are unlikely to ever have an accurate picture of their activities.
CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS
Once again, everything we heard this week supported the emerging picture that we do have. People who were spied on gave clear, consistent, and detailed accounts of their actions, including the moral and ethical standpoints that led them to join the groups that were infiltrated.
Spycops gave conflicting accounts of what they did; whether they had intimate relationships with activists, what went on in safe-houses, what their managers were or were not aware of, and even whether or not their work was useful. They contradict each other, and sometimes contradict themselves, whether in different reports or even within the same session of giving evidence.
This was very clearly shown this week when comparing the evidence of undercover ‘Vince Miller’ (HN354, 1976-1979)who infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), and ‘Madeleine’, an SWP member who he deceived into a relationship. Madeleine gave evidence on 10 May, Miller on 11 May. Both took a whole day.
Miller was the first unmarried officer to be deployed by the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). He was in a relationship, however, and this was one of the first things his superiors asked him about.
He believes this was because being married was preferred, as having a wife meant some form of support whilst enduring the stress of an undercover deployment. All the other evidence from spycops this week (and beyond) echoes this statement: family ties would prevent them ‘going rogue’.
‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-1980), giving evidence on May 13, said he thought ‘you had to be married’ to join the squad, as:
‘It led to a secure background, a secure home… I suppose it was good to have somebody at home when you came back after a long weekend or a long day’
It appears that, despite this being a deliberate choice by the SDS, no thought was given to the impact it had on the officers’ wives. Contact phone numbers for their husbands were not given until 1978, when one wife asked for this.
Wives were expected to do everything to help their husbands, up to and including moving house at short notice if their cover was blown. Many of them were left acting as single parents for weeks at a time. They believed their husbands were doing work crucial to the security of the nation.
UNMENTIONED ONE-NIGHT STANDS
Madeleine is one of four women who Miller has admitted to having intimate sexual contact with. Two of the others were not activists, nor were they connected with his target group. He says he simply met them in the pub – whilst undercover and claiming expenses – and had what he describes as ‘one-night stands’ with them. This was very early on in his deployment, when he was still exploring the area he had to infiltrate.
Madeleine’s relationship with Miller described in a friend’s diary, January 1980
Since they were nothing to do with his deployment, Miller chose not to mention them in his ‘impact statement’ to the Inquiry. Even when his solicitor was sent a letter by the Inquiry specifically asking for details of all sexual relationships, Miller remained silent. It was not until a year later – in his witness statement – that he admitted to them.
This alone is enough to bring his overall credibility into question. Everything he says must now be examined through a lens of ‘is this the whole story?’ What would it serve Miller to omit from his evidence?
David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry, seemed to be aware of this as he questioned Miller. Barr kept the pressure on to an extent that made Miller literally sweat, as he contradicted himself repeatedly about matters of procedure and events in the SDS safe house. When questioned about his deception of Madeleine, Miller flushed red and was visibly deeply uncomfortable for the duration of that topic.
On the previous day, Madeleine herself was open and quietly compelling. Miller claims that he only had sex with her once, but she gave the Inquiry a detailed account of their months-long relationship. This is backed up by near-contemporaneous diaries detailing conversations about Miller’s refusal to stay the night after he’d had sex with her.
MANIPULATING PEOPLE BY LYING
Miller told Madeleine his refusal to stay over was psychological, that he didn’t feel safe unless he woke up in his own bed. He also told her he had grown up in a children’s home, and recently had a bad breakup from a toxic relationship. Giving evidence, Miller said it hadn’t occurred to him that his cover story of past pain and not wanting to be hurt again might evoke feelings of sympathy, intimacy and protectiveness.
This is astonishing, given that his entire job consisted of manipulating people by lying to them. Like all the spycops we’ve heard from so far, he says he received little training. However, the ability to gauge people’s reactions to what you tell them is surely a prerequisite for working undercover. For example, Miller was once asked what he was doing for Christmas. To end the topic, he replied that both his parents were dead.
Barricade on Cable Street, 4 October 1936 [Pic: Bishopsgate Institute]
Madeleine’s father had fought fascists all his life. He was at the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 when an alliance of antifascists stopped the British Union of Fascists marching through the Jewish area of London’s East End. He was decorated for his efforts against the Nazis in WWII. It is not inconceivable that there is also a Special Branch Registry File on him.
Madeleine was about 15 when she joined the International Socialists (IS), which later became the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). In 1970, when she was 16, a Special Branch Registry File on her was opened.
Parts of that file are redacted by the Inquiry, which she finds ‘really, really sinister’; what 50-year-old information about her does the Inquiry not want her to see?
AUTOMATIC TARGETS
Miller explained that it was not unusual for 15- and 16-year-olds to be spied on and have files, if they were ‘sufficiently active’. Additionally, it streamlined the paperwork to open a file on someone if they were ‘constantly being referred to in all sorts of practices’.
The inference is that if children were often mentioned in reports on their parents, it was easier for the SDS administration to open a file on them. This is backed up by the evidence of ‘Michael James‘ (HN96, 1978-83).
In a self-fulfilling manoeuvre, children and adults became automatic targets for the State simply because they had a file.
Madeleine had split up with her abusive husband in the autumn of 1978. By this time, she had known Miller as a member of the SWP for over a year. A flatmate’s diaries show he visited their flat in summer 1977. After the breakup, she increasingly regarded him as a friend.
This was the period during which Miller was infiltrating the Walthamstow branch of the SWP. He became treasurer, then district treasurer and social committee organiser for the Outer East London District Branch. Miller organised fund-raising gigs and other social events. As people dedicated to the same ideals, the SWP members’ lives were very enmeshed.
PUBLIC DISORDER PICNIC
The Queen’s Silver Jubilee in June 1977 saw one such social event. It had been declared a one-off bank holiday; in a gentle push-back against the imperial overtones of the occasion, Walthamstow SWP organised an anti-Jubilee family picnic in Epping Forest.
The Inquiry asked if the picnic was likely to involve any public disorder:
‘Absolutely not, no. It was just a picnic. With children, I might add.’
Given some of the things we are expected to believe from other State witness statements this week, the Inquiry not knowing what a picnic involves is the very least of it.
The direct actions of the Walthamstow SWP were not geared towards public disorder either. A report mentions them ‘occupying’ a Sainsbury’s supermarket, but this is untrue:
‘what they probably did was stand outside with banners, handing out leaflets and talking to shoppers… We felt supermarket prices were kept artificially high to extract profit for shareholders.’
It is hard to see why campaigning for lower prices at Sainsbury’s would be a threat to democracy. This explains why the spycops exaggerated in their report, something that happened throughout this period.
There is a paradox here. On the one hand, the undercovers talk about ‘hoovering up’ information indiscriminately for superiors to make use of, never filtering or questioning the value of the intelligence. On the other, the threat factor of small, peaceful groups is repeatedly made out to be far greater than it was.
On the third – because you need three hands to keep track of their contradictions – they describe the groups as harmless, then circle back round to the justification of information possibly being useful in the future. Or being ‘filed and never used again’, according to ‘Michael James‘ (HN96, 1978-83).
STEALING THE IDENTITY OF A DEAD CHILD…
James infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party and Troops Out Movement, occupying a senior role in the latter by the early 1980s. Like most of the spycops from this period, he was given precise instructions to steal the identity of a dead child and had no qualms about this:
‘I had no moral reservations about this at all… And I couldn’t see why it was a moral issue, because it didn’t involve anybody.’
Pressed on why he thought this:
‘No family were injured or caused any distress because of this practice.’
Later, when queried by the Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting, he added:
‘I dismiss what I see in the press about what they say about the stress given to families whose children have been used in the way. I don’t accept that. From my own knowledge that didn’t happen.’
‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-82) said in his written statement that it was the founder of the SDS, Conrad Dixon, who had instigated the use of dead children’s identities. Giving evidence on 13 May, he changed this to say that the practice was inspired by the film The Day of the Jackal.
When pressed by the Inquiry as to which it was, Gray decided on the latter as he had:
‘checked Wikipedia and the film had just come out when we started doing it.’
He was not alone among the spycops in having a cavalier attitude to the truth, but he was particularly blatant about how much being asked about it annoyed him. He often gave obtuse answers to straight-forward questions, and at times refused to answer them outright, despite having sworn to tell ‘the whole truth’ before giving evidence.
Interestingly enough, he took offence at what was said in what is presented as his own written witness statement:
‘I have not written that, not at all, this is not my kind of English. This was written for me.’
His words and attitude confirm something previously suspected – that the statements were worded for the spycops, not by them.
…TO SPY ON LIVING CHILDREN
Returning to Michael James, a May 1979 report he wrote [UCPI0000021293] gives personal details about a member of Clapton SWP and Hackney Women’s Voice. It describes her as divorced, with a six-year-old child. Why report on her marital state, the age of the child or even that she had a child?
‘All I can conclude is that I was trying to paint a picture of an individual that may have been used in the future.’
Would you have been concerned at all about reporting information on children?
‘Well, all I said was she had a daughter of six years. I mean, I’ve not gone into any more detail.’
In August 1979 he reported [UCPI0000013300] on an under-18-year-old SWP member, including the school they went to. He said he wasn’t concerned about having done this.
James gave evidence on 13 May, a long and somewhat torturous process that saw him evading giving answers and instead suggesting questions he thought should be asked. This left Inquiry counsel Steven Gray QC persistently cutting through James’ repeated shambling around answers, for which he is to be applauded.
The Inquiry discussed other examples of intrusive reporting. When pressed to justify various egregious sections in his files, James fell back on the defence that it didn’t really matter. It was just information that mostly went nowhere, kept on the off-chance it might actually be useful one day; but since that was in the future, who knew, so you reported everything.
INTRUSIVE REPORTING
Despite James’ claims that the information would, in his experience, ‘never see the light of day’, many of his reports were passed to the Security Service (MI5). All the files published by the Inquiry with a reference number beginning ‘UCPI000…’ are taken from the Security Service’s existing records.
As Steven Gray QC pointed out:
‘the fact that it wasn’t going to see the light of day again in your experience is not borne out by the fact that we’re looking at it now, is it?’
The theory that the reports would not be looked at until some time in the future could also explain the fictional tendencies of the spycops who wrote them. A practice familiar from SDS reports seen earlier in the hearings was to take the most extreme statement anyone made at a meeting and portray it as the whole group’s real basis. Realistically, most meetings, from business to Brownies, would suffer under that parameter.
A January 1979 report [UCPI0000013063] from Miller also mentions children. School Kids Against the Nazis (SKAN) had been formed when the National Front held a demo outside a school in multicultural East London. About 200 pupils had opposed it, with 15 arrests – all but one of them Black kids.
SCHOOL KIDS AGAINST NAZIS
‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-1980) also reported on SKAN, and seemed preoccupied with one Black boy in particular. Gray reported on his family life, that he spoke at a SKAN meeting, and leafletted schools in a campaign against education cuts, among other things.
Gray claimed this reporting was justifiable from a public order point of view, but then denied that the reports were his [UCPI0000011997], [UCPI0000011380].
Shown a report detailing minor criminal offending of a minor schoolboy, [UCPI0000011994], he was asked if this was the sort of information he would have reported on SKAN?
‘Although SKAN’s members were young, they were just as violent as any other anti-fascist group.’
The Inquiry then showed a short video of SKAN Hackney – an endearing bit of footage with schoolkids, black and white, explaining they were friends and colour did not play a role, and that they were against the NF stirring up tension.
Gray agreed that this was the impression that he had of SKAN at the time, but claimed:
‘the characters that I was aware of were a lot more violent.’
Asked specifically about the child prominently featured in his reports, Gray conceded he had never seen him committing violence at demonstrations, but ‘he was always the first out of the bus at Brick Lane’. It is also notable that he described the boy as having an ‘effeminate manner’. He says he never thought about whether this was appropriate or not.
SUGGESTIONS OF INSURRECTION
Gray said that in fact, the legitimacy of reporting on SKAN at all was never discussed with him by superiors. It was not talked about at the weekly meetings. Nor was the reporting on girls protesting because they were not allowed to wear trousers to school [UCPI0000021267].
Returning to the 1979 report from Miller, this said SKAN:
‘can, with short notice, get large numbers of school students on to the streets, should the need arise.’
The Inquiry asked Madeleine if SKAN were indeed able to suddenly create a mob ready for street violence. Yet again, she had to deflate suggestions of insurrection. SKAN was a self-organising group of kids responding to the upsurge of racism around them:
‘The idea that we would have somehow had to have planted these ideas in their heads is a bit ludicrous really. It was their own experience.’
Madeleine notes other reports are deliberately facetious, and often selectively quote a few individuals’ opinions rather than the general view, even just picking up on comments made by members of the public. She elegantly described it:
‘There’s a little bit of embroidery going on in many of the reports. There would have been people there who would have expressed opinions that we wouldn’t necessarily agree with, but we would discuss and debate and argue with them.’
MADELEINE BELIEVED HERSELF SAFE
In the summer of 1979, Madeleine was 25 and slowly coming out of her shell after years of her husband’s possessive behaviour and abuse. At a house party in Ilford, mainly attended by SWP members, she was happy when her SWP comrade of three years, Vince Miller, pulled her into his lap, and when he later put his arms around her. She was not looking for a relationship, but believed herself safe with him:
‘I thought he was lovely. A really nice guy. I thought he was a genuine, lovely, easy going person, I thought he was sensitive, he had this story of heartbreak and all the rest of it. I felt he was looking for genuine relationships with people.’
After the party, he took her back to her flat and they began a sexual relationship. It was the only time that he stayed the entire night with her, leaving in the morning.
ABSOLUTE BETRAYAL
Asked how she would have felt to discover Miller’s true identity at the time, she said it would have been devastating. She was young and naïve, and would have been profoundly shocked and distraught:
‘I’d made myself very vulnerable to him and I trusted him, and to me it would have been an absolute betrayal… I would have regarded it, as I do regard it now, as rape.’
Miller claims Madeleine invited him up to her room. Questioning Miller, David Barr QC bluntly asked if he went because he wanted sex – despite the fact that he was a serving police officer on duty?
‘I think I’d have to say yes.’
Asked if he thought Madeleine would have had sex with him if she knew who he really was, Miller admitted:
‘if she knew that I was a police officer then almost certainly not… But I’m both a police officer and a person, so she might have seen the person, not the police officer.’
Had she seen the person, she would have also seen that he was in a committed relationship. What she saw instead was a single comrade she’d known for years, who had become a trusted friend, and then lover.
The Inquiry attempted to downplay the impact the relationship would have had if Madeleine hadn’t latterly found out the truth about spycops. This gives no consideration to the reality of the situation as she experienced it at the time.
THE FOCUS OF HER AFFECTIONS
Madeleine hoped that they would become a couple. She didn’t see anyone else, and her feelings for him grew. They met about once a week; always at her house, never his. She was very keen for the relationship to continue, as she was ‘never looking for a one-night stand or casual sex with anyone’, and ‘he seemed very keen on me’.
Their regular dates continued for a couple of months. He was, she says, the focus of her affections. However, towards the end, things changed:
‘He became increasingly distant, and I began to become disappointed that it didn’t seem to be going the way I wanted it to go. And, yeah, I kind of became a bit upset about it.’
Madeleine found herself wondering if it was her fault that Miller was withdrawing his affection. The last time she saw him was at a friend’s house. She hadn’t seen him for about a week. He was sitting on the other side of the room with a woman, and she sensed from their body language that there was something between the two of them. Madeleine now thinks this is the other SWP member that he has admitted deceiving into a relationship.
FEIGNING EMOTIONAL DISTRESS
Miller ignored Madeleine. When he left, she followed him to ask why he was being so distant. He said that he’d already told her that he couldn’t get too involved and that he didn’t want to get hurt again.
She remembers his departure damaging her self-esteem, leaving her feeling upset, disappointed and rejected. She saw it as part of a pattern with her marriage and thought:
‘God, have I made another mistake?’
He said he was going to go to California to ‘find himself’. This is yet another early example of what became standard practice – spycops would cover the end of their deployment by feigning emotional distress and say they were going abroad to sort themselves out.
The emotional turmoil created by some of the later officers had huge impacts on those who loved them. More than one desperate woman deceived into a relationship went searching in the country where her partner was supposedly living, not knowing he was actually back at a desk job in Scotland Yard.
FURTHER TALES OF VINCE
This was not a relationship that had ‘very little impact’, and it was caused by the spycops whether Madeleine knew of them or not. The revelation that the man she knew never really existed has caused more recent impact, undoing the peace that Madeleine eventually made with the end of the relationship.
‘To discover that I didn’t know him at all and that he was a fiction, that’s been quite difficult to get my head around. He doesn’t actually exist, it was all an act, wearing a mask… it’s really chilling and sinister… I just don’t know how people can behave like that.’
It is indeed abhorrent that Miller chose to have sex with a young woman who had no idea of his true identity, and who he knew was emotionally vulnerable. Perhaps even more so that he claims it didn’t cross his mind that she might feel pressured, after being in a relationship with a controlling man.
When asked by the Inquiry about pregnancy concerns, Miller put all the responsibility on Madeleine:
Q. Did you use contraception?
A. Not that I recall.
Q. Did you give any thought to the consequences of fathering a child when you were in fact an undercover police officer?
A. No, I didn’t. I think my perception was that as a full feminist socialist supporter, then if there was any need for protection, then she would have mentioned it. I didn’t see her as some kind of shrinking violet, or something like that. This was a member of the women’s movement, and women had the same right to ask for things and to insist on things as a man. And I would have supported that then. I incidentally still do. So she would have had the right – absolute right to insist, if it was necessary.
Q. But in the absence of any insistence?
A. Then I assumed everything was safe. In contraceptive terms.
Miller’s account of their relationship differs so wildly from Madeleine’s that even the Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting, butted in to question him on it.
AN ESSENTIALLY TRUTHFUL PERSON
Miller repeatedly stated that he had little or no memory of many events during this time. Madeleine has clear recollections of the last time she saw him. Miller said he has no memory of saying goodbye to her before he ended his deployment. However, he maintains that he only had sex with her once, which he now describes as:
‘inappropriate and unprofessional.’
Mitting stressed that Madeleine had impressed him when giving evidence:
‘As a sincere and essentially truthful person, trying to tell me, as best as she could remember, what happened between you and her.’
Their relationship was not the only topic where Miller delivered a different version of the truth.
August 1977 saw a key moment in the fight against fascism in Britain. The National Front (NF) were organising a march in Lewisham, and there was a huge counter-demonstration. The collision of the two became known as the ‘Battle of Lewisham‘.
Miller says Walthamstow SWP members checked out the route the night before, and deposited piles of bricks that could be used as weapons the next day. He also claimed they were armed during the march.
Madeleine utterly denies all of this. There is no evidence that anybody ever planted any bricks at all.
BATTLE OF LEWISHAM
This confrontation is now commemorated with a plaque in Lewisham. It was the turning point in the rise of the right wing, and the beginning of the end of the NF.
Miller remembers that everyone who opposed the NF agreed that the far-right had to be stopped from marching through New Cross, a very multicultural area, and that they all organised and planned to stop it.
Miller was an SWP steward for the march. He described the NF as ‘deliberately confrontational’, adding:
‘I don’t think these situations would be allowed to take place now.’
Despite the Met deploying 4,000 uniformed officers, Miller explained that ‘following the march’ was impossible; ‘it was chaos’. The police had no protective gear in those days. In his words:
‘the mounted branch took a complete hammering.’
There were running confrontations all over the area for the rest of the day. Miller described how, after the march was over, members of the far-right were poised to attack the protestors.
Battle of Lewisham plaque, erected on the corner of New Cross Road & Clifton Rise in 2017
Miller said he was ‘too close for my own comfort’ to the confrontations, but that he avoided getting involved in any ‘direct physical violence’ himself.
He remembers phoning up other spycops after the event, to check they had got home safely. A number of them were present that day, because they were infiltrating many of the other groups who attended, not just the SWP. They definitely discussed the event in the safe-house, he confirmed.
We learned from a report dated 23 August 1977 [MPS-0733369] that Special Branch held a debriefing for eighteen of its officers who were present. Miller says he was not one of them, and explained that other Special Branch plain clothes officers would have gone to the march, and that it’s likely that the SDS’s views would have been represented at the meeting by one or two officers, ‘at a high level’.
He notes the SDS undercovers were disappointed that their pre-intelligence had been ignored, resulting in severe violence. Despite that, in the SDS Annual Report for 1977, the Lewisham event is described as a triumph for the unit.
THE DEATH OF BLAIR PEACH
Blair Peach
By way of contrast, we have been told that only one spycop was present at the April 1979 anti-fascist demonstration in Southall where police killed Blair Peach, and he left early because it had turned violent.
The anti-fascist protest was a reaction to a General Election rally held by the National Front in a very multi-cultural area of London. This deliberate baiting by fascists was exactly the kind of event that the SDS should have been reporting on.
Gray said his branch made arrangements for the demo, [UCPI0000021193], but he did not attend, saying he probably had an SDS office meeting if it was on a Monday (which it was not) or had to go to work in his cover deployment (despite stating earlier that he never did any work there).
OBVIOUS LIES
Celia Stubbs, 2021
Gray claimed that he did not hear about what had happened to Blair Peach, apart from what was on the news. Like many of his colleagues, he claims there was never any discussion about it at meetings of the SDS.
This is an obvious lie, not just because it was a fairly significant public order event, but because it was, naturally, discussed at his SWP branch [UCPI0000021218].
Gray also denied knowing Blair Peach’s partner Celia Stubbs (who gave evidence on 6 May 2021), despite having reported on her activities and referring to her as ‘Celia’ during the hearing.
He states he could not remember going to pickets outside Harlesden Court where the inquest into Peach’s death was held, although he reported on it:
‘If there is a report, then I must have gone.’
There were two reports, [UCPI0000013435] and [UCPI0000013498] that show Gray was organising the selling of Socialist Working papers at the event.
Despite a general call-out from the SWP to attend to Blair Peach’s funeral, Gray says he didn’t go. However, photos were taken at the funeral by a separate Special Branch unit. These were collected in an album brought to the office meetings of the SDS for the spycops to identify the people present. It was then used by Gray in standard reporting [UCPI0000013539]. He still says the killing was not discussed.
THE KILLING WAS NOT DISCUSSED
Vince Miller said that demonstrations were discussed during meetings at the safe houses, and there was:
‘informal exchange of information, but also a release so that you could actually talk about things somewhere.’
He too claims that Peach’s death was never talked about.
There are multiple reports from spycops about the 1977 Lewisham and Wood Green demonstrations, both of which featured clashes between fascists, anti-fascists, and the police. There are hardly any about Southall. Every spycop asked about this demonstration has clammed up, even ones who have been quite forthcoming about their other activities.
It is insulting to be expected to believe that neither reports, which were written on the minutiae of people’s lives, nor memories of an event where a member of the public was killed by police, remain within the SDS.
OFFICERS HOLDING OFFICE
There is some contention as to whether spycops were supposed to hold office of any kind, or take influential roles, within the organisations they infiltrated. What is certain is that most of them did.
One of the officers in this era was Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76). He set up a branch of the Troops Out Movement as part of a long-term climb through the ranks to the very top of the organisation, where he then sabotaged it – as we reported earlier.
In the period under examination, from Clark onwards, every single undercover officer took a role in the organisations they infiltrated, except for ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1976-79) who was infiltrating anarchists without hierarchy or official roles.
In some case officers took national leading roles. What resulted from this was not just information, but also the opportunity to have a say in the direction of the organisation, and ultimately the ability to derail that organisation.
This week alone we’ve heard from:
‘Vince Miller’ (HN354, 1976-79)
Treasurer, SWP Walthamstow branch
Treasurer, SWP Outer East London District
Social Committee, SWP Outer East London District
‘Colin Clark’ (HN80, 1977-82)
Treasurer, SWP Seven Sisters & Haringey branch
Treasurer, SWP Lea Valley District
National Treasurer, Right to Work Campaign
Offered a place on SWP Central Committee; turned it down, but did do admin at HQ.
‘Paul Gray‘ (HN126, 1977-82)
Newspaper organiser, SWP Cricklewood branch
Newspaper organiser, SWP North West London District
Acting Chairman, Coordinating Committee, Anti-Nazi League West Hampstead branch (later Camden Against Racism/Anti-Nazi League -West Hampstead & Hampstead Group)
‘Michael James‘ (HN96, 1978-83)
Newspaper organiser, SWP Clapton branch
SWP Hackney District Committee
Membership & Affiliation Secretary, Troops Out Movement
Chair of Steering Committee, Troops Out Movement
‘Phil Cooper’ (HN155, 1979-83)
Treasurer, Waltham Forest Anti-Nuclear Campaign
National Treasurer, Right to Work Campaign
In 1982 and 1983, Cooper was trusted enough to gather the entrance money for the SWP’s annual national delegate conference in Skegness. This provided him with a list of 1,983 attendees, which he included in his report that was passed to MI5 [UCPI0000018180].
It was noted by MI5 that ‘the SDS office [was] still groaning under the weight of Cooper’s report’, which was subsequently considered to be of significant value to the Special Branch and MI5 alike [UCPI0000028728, MPS-0730009, MPS-0735901].
UNRELIABLE WITNESS
Cooper is not being called to give oral evidence due to his current state of health. However, he has previously provided an updated and amended written statement.
A big question is whether Cooper told the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s risk assessors that he engaged in sexual activity whilst he was deployed.
The assessors were employed by the Metropolitan Police to determine the risk to former undercover officers if any aspect of their identity was revealed. Their report from late 2017 recorded Cooper accepting that he had had two or three encounters with women, and the circumstances in which they took place [MPS-0746710].
Both the author, David Reid, and the second risk assessor, Brian Lockie, were left with the impression that Cooper was describing his own experiences whilst deployed [UCPI0000034397].
In contrast, Cooper suggests both misinterpreted his comments, saying that he:
‘was not as clear as I should have been about the dividing line between the specific, factual details of my particular deployment and more hypothetical comments about such deployments more generally.’
Cooper now denies engaging in any sexual relationships while undercover.
The psychological assessors who spoke to Cooper ahead of the Inquiry say that he is not a reliable witness due to being both highly suggestible, and wanting to avoid subjects that would mean revisiting traumatic experiences [UCPI0000034361], [UCPI0000034360].
CHANGING PARAMETERS
The last witnesses to appear at the Tranche 1 Phase 2 hearings of the Inquiry were the two risk assessors in question, David Reid [MPS-0746378] and Brian Lockie [MPS-0747533]. They were called by lawyers representing a number of undercover officers, including Cooper.
Both were asked to explain some alleged factual errors in their risk assessments for other officers. This line of questioning seemed to aim at undermining the accuracy of their recollections of Cooper’s testimony about his sexual encounters.
Both Reid and Lockie reaffirmed that what they recorded Cooper saying was correct, although they conceded that they were ‘not infallible’.
We also learned that the risk assessment process had been an evolving one. The assessors have been learning as they went, and changing their protocols and procedures accordingly.
It is unclear what this means for the earlier risk assessments, which were used to justify secrecy around the names of SDS undercovers.
WHAT NEXT?
May 13 concluded this round of hearings. The next hearings – ‘Tranche 1 Phase 3’, examining SDS managers 1968-82 – are scheduled for some time in the first half of 2022, but there will be no certainty of the dates for some time.
During the first set of hearings in November 2020, the Inquiry disclosed another 126 names of groups that were spied on in 1969-1975. An updated list, with groups named during the current set of hearings, is being put together by the Undercover Research Group (URG) at the moment.
We also hope to receive the verdict in the case of Kate Wilson before the end of this year. Kate was deceived into a relationship by undercover officer Mark Kennedy. Her ten-year legal battle for answers recently culminated in a hearing at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, at which police admitted their spying breached a number of her human rights, including her fundamental right to freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Regardless of the verdict, however, this landmark case and the disclosure resulting from it is bound to have consequences for the Undercover Policing Inquiry, as it reveals details that the police have been trying hard to keep concealed. Watch this space.
This is the second of our weekly reports on the current round of Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings examining the actions of the Metropolitan Police’s undercover political unit, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), from 1973-82.
These hearings are scheduled to run for four weeks before taking a break for about a year. Subsequent hearings will look at the unit’s later years.
This report summarises the main points of the second week of this set of hearings. For more details, see our daily reports linked from our Inquiry page. For background information on the Inquiry, see our UCPI FAQ.
WHAT’S NEW THIS WEEK
Following last week’s opening statements, the focus this week was on witnesses from both the undercover unit the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) and the ‘non-state core participants’ (ie the people spied on) in the era in question.
Many of the same themes emerged as during the first round of hearings in November 2020, which looked at the SDS from its foundation in 1968 until 1972. Further evidence has done nothing to contradict the impression of the SDS as a secret and secretive unit with a remit to report every detail of the lives of the people they spied on.
‘BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY’
Spycops picked their own targets, or were assigned them by the Security Service (aka MI5). Miscarriages of justice would be authorised in order to prevent the unit being exposed. The foundations laid in the early days of the SDS were rapidly built upon during 1973–82, eventually resulting in the credo revealed by whistle-blower officer Peter Francis – ‘by any means necessary’.
And yet, the information obtained by those means was characterised by some spycops this week as being of little use; the groups they went to such lengths to infiltrate as basically harmless. Other undercovers fell back on the refrain that they reported everything and left it to their superiors to filter out what was useful. Both spycops were simply pulled out without strategy.
This doesn’t explain why some reports contained passing remarks made by individual activists that had been deliberately exaggerated, or even invented, so that the groups would seem dangerous or in favour of violence.
In this report we highlight some of the week’s events as examples of recurring themes, and look at the infiltration of various anti-apartheid campaigns. Full coverage can be found in our daily reports.
LITTLE TO NO TRAINING
‘Dave Robertson‘ (HN45, 1970-73) and ‘Alex Sloan‘ (HN347, 1971) – who both gave evidence on 27 April – spoke of having little to no training for their roles, and being expected to pick it up – or just make it up – as they went along.
It seems that the higher-ups were doing the same thing. A statement from spycop ‘David Hughes’ (HN299/342, 1971-76) details how SDS management did not really know what to do when another officer was suspected of, or in the case of Robertson, identified as being undercover by the people they were spying on.
Alex Sloan explained that he was not given any guidance about what to do if his cover was blown. He was never instructed on what to do if offered a responsible position like treasurer or secretary in a target group (but thought he should accept it). He was not told about ‘legal professional privilege’, a long-established legal convention prohibiting his presence at discussions between lawyers and their clients. This last point came up more than once this week.
In most cases, the spycops themselves chose which people to spy on and which groups to infiltrate. David Hughes attended public meetings advertised in then-radical magazine Time Out. As we saw last week, none of these groups (bar one) was right-wing.
Special Branch’s remit, and by extension the remit of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), was to deal with ‘subversion’ (opposition to the UK’s parliamentary democracy), and threats to public order. From the evidence this week, the spycops were not given clear criteria on how to assess what was subversive.
Robertson could not recall guidance about what might constitute ‘extremism’ or ‘subversion’. He said vaguely ‘it was just part and parcel of the whole’. Alex Sloan, when asked if he knew what was subversive, replied that it wasn’t for him to judge – another recurring standpoint of the spycops.
Rajiv Menon QC, representing Piers Corbyn, defined it as activity that:
‘threatened the safety or well-being of the State and was intended to undermine or overthrow parliament by political or industrial means’.
Two justifications for spying on non-subversive, non-violent, law-abiding groups emerged: a) they might lead to violent groups b) it was useful to confirm that they were indeed what they seemed to be. Neither of these justifications seem to have been borne out by the results of decades of spying.
It is now clear that both Special Branch and the SDS spycops have always had a broader remit, which extended to threats to police credibility, corporate profit, and the convenience of the government of the day.
The campaigns infiltrated were all what we would now describe as social justice groups. The one exception – as mentioned before – was when a spycop was asked to infiltrate a right-wing group by the left-wing group he was spying on.
LITTLE TO NO USE
Once the spycops were embedded in these groups, their initiative appears to have deserted them.
Another repeating theme is the spycops themselves reporting that the groups were no real threat, and / or giving evidence now that the intelligence they gathered was basically useless. Descriptions given in evidence included:
‘Mickey Mouse’, ‘never scary at all’, not causing ‘aggravation to anyone’, (Alex Sloan on the Irish National Liberation Solidarity Front);
‘The majority of people I encountered during my deployment were not that extreme’ (David Hughes)
‘I do not think my work really yielded any good intelligence’ (Sandra Davies)
And yet, rather than withdrawing and trying to find a group that was bent on public disorder (such as Column 88, Nazis who were using firebombs), they continued to report on the peaceful groups working for positive social change.
UNFILTERED ‘INTELLIGENCE’
Nor were they directed to filter what ‘intelligence’ they gathered – every detail went into the reports, from activists’ body types to cigarette brands. Robertson said that ‘everything was fair game for reporting’, including details of flowers given to speakers. It was someone else’s job to decide what to do with the intelligence he collected.
The spycops reported highly personal information, such as the condition of Ernest Rodker’s health and the birth of his child. Some would give their own slant to their reports. Hughes stated:
‘Sometimes my personal views crept into my reporting. The SDS office never told me this was inappropriate or not permitted.’
They reported ideas from activists that were what executives now would define as ‘blue-skying’, involving fireworks, ticker-tape, and weather balloons, as though they were serious plans – despite the groups having no history of such actions.
Christabel Gurney
They reported on Christmas parties. One held as a fundraiser for the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the home of Christabel Gurney was 75p a ticket, 12p for drinks, and attended by a spycop. Sandra Davies seems to think that festive cakes and sweets made by the Women’s Liberation Front at the request of the Black Unity and Freedom Party were a ruse to ‘get their philosophy across’ to children.
Many of the reports went to MI5. Some fifty years later, MI5 still has them. Dave Robertson talked about not typing up his own reports after writing them, but knowing they were routinely copied to MI5. He said it was ‘obviously pretty routine’ that MI5 would request details about someone and the SDS would supply them.
This week Piers Corbyn, Diane Langford, and Ernest Rodker all specifically asked that their files be withdrawn and handed over to them. They are by no means the only activists who want this. It has always been one of the core demands of COPS.
A CULTURE OF DUBIOUS PRACTICES
We heard from various spycops this week, some in person and some via written statement. Despite – or because of – some convenient bouts of amnesia, their reports are consistently similar, and not just for this period (1973 – 82). They clearly indicate a culture of dubious practices that began with the very start of the undercover units and intensified, fostered by a climate of complicity, as the years passed.
All of their statements uphold the fact that knowledge of SDS activity went all the way to the top of the command chain. Hughes recalled the then-Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Robert Mark, visiting the unit:
‘It was obvious to me that he had concerns about the SDS. I remember words to the effect that “you realise that you could cause me tremendous problems under certain circumstances”.’
The motivation for the miscarriages of justice resulting from spycops violating lawyer-client privilege and standing trial under cover names, as demonstrated this week by ‘Michael Scott’ (HN298, 1971-76), was clear from the very beginning.
Scott was arrested as part of an anti-apartheid action. To avoid revealing the existence of the SDS, he was instructed to stand trial under his cover identity, including deliberately lying from the moment he took the witness stand. He was to attend meetings with genuine activists and their lawyer – violating lawyer-client privilege; and to withhold evidence that would have exonerated the activists (the protest took place on private land – a pub car park – and did not, as claimed, block a public highway).
Scott received a conviction – or rather, as he had chosen to steal the identity of a living person, the real Michael Scott did. The police reports show no concern at all about deceiving the court and orchestrating a miscarriage of justice, purely to avoid any ‘potential embarrassment to police’ if it became known that a spycop was involved.
Rodker sees this as part of a repeating pattern:
‘The failure to view activists as individuals with their own legitimate rights and interests, and the decision to place those second to the unfettered gathering of information on them may be a precursor to some of the more gross abuses of activists that, I note, happened in later periods of undercover policing of campaigners.’
Judge Mitting has said he will turn this matter over to the Inquiry’s panel that is due to review likely miscarriages of justice. The Inquiry has known about these miscarriages for years now, and in light of the age and health of the activists whose convictions may now need overturned, it is shocking that this Panel has still not been set up by Mitting.
IN CONTEXT
During the first week of the hearings, the police lawyers stressed the importance of looking at the activities of spycops in context, rather than through a modern lens. It was a different time with different values. A time when it was apparently fine to include in reports that: an activist couple had ‘a Mongol child’; ‘large Jewish nose[s]’, or the fact that a woman activist didn’t wear a bra, as merely objective descriptions.
It is true that the activism under discussion should be fully understood in the context of what it was trying to achieve. To properly assess the impact on the groups they infiltrated, one must know what causes the spycops were undermining.
WOMEN’S RIGHTS
Diane Langford co-founded the Women’s Liberation Front in 1970. At this time women could not get a mortgage, credit card or loan without a male co-guarantor. They did not have the right to equal pay or maternity leave, and could be fired for becoming pregnant. They had no legal recourse against discrimination in employment, education, and training. Contraception was not available on the NHS; there were no rape crisis centres. It is indefensible to say that this is a status quo that should have been maintained.
‘Women’s liberation was viewed as a worrying trend at the time.’.
The aims of the WLF – equal rights for women and a society free from all forms of discrimination – were clearly and publicly stated in the application for membership, which Sandra Davis would have signed when she infiltrated the group in 1971. Their methods were also clear and public: demonstrations, open meetings, street theatre, film screenings, boycotts, and other collaborative actions. Diane Langford stressed the importance placed on collective action over individuals ‘indulg[ing] in macho posturing’.
Diane Langford, New York City, 1996
‘Dave Robertson‘ (HN45, 1970-73) reported on the WLF, and several other groups that Langford belonged to, including the Revolutionary Marxist-Leninist League (RMLL) which she formed with her late husband and fellow activist Abhimanyu Manchanda. A small group focused on studying deep political theory, the RMLL aimed to guide and advise the WLF and other groups campaigning against oppression.
When the RMLL eventually suspended Manchanda, splitting that group and destabilising two others, Robertson would play a part or even had a vote in that decision. When the WLF ousted Langford, leading it to change its name and then fall apart, Sandra Davis voted against her (and was elected treasurer shortly after).
As with Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76) last week, we see spycops deliberately taking positions of influence within the groups they infiltrated and then using this to weaken them – and bring about their demise.
There is a deeply unfunny irony in that Sandra Davis was working to delay equal rights for women on 10% less pay than her male colleagues. It is also worth noting that despite police lawyer David Perry QC (in Kate Wilson’s case) attempting to deny a culture of sexism in the SDS, this is the era in which the unit developed and consolidated the methods and practices that it would use for the next thirty years.
ANTI-APARTHEID CAMPAIGNS
Not content with preserving sexism, the SDS was also deeply suspicious of any group that sought to end racism. Again, to look at their operations in the context of the times is to see violent right-wing and fascist groups on the rise in the UK, and a government cheerfully doing business with South Africa’s apartheid regime.
Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 until the early 1990s. It categorised people into a hierarchy of racial groups, with whites at the top.
‘Beach and sea whites only’ sign, apartheid South Africa
The laws segregated all areas of life, reserving the best for whites. It affected everything from education, employment and housing to which bench people could sit on or which beach they could visit. Most of the population was denied the right to vote. Sexual relationships and marriages between people of different racial groups were illegal.
The Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) was set up to unite as many people as possible with the same goal: bringing equality and democracy to South Africa. As a UK group, they focused on the UK institutions and companies that were trading with and supporting the South African government, and attempted to stop these practices.
Anti-Apartheid Movement demonstration, London, 15 July 1973
Central to the AAM’s approach was to try and avoid doing anything that would distract the press from the real issue – the violence of the South African apartheid regime. As such it eschewed violence or heated confrontation. Rather, it concerned itself which included common campaign tactics such as organising petitions, public meetings, pickets, vigils, cultural events, and mass rallies.
In 1970, the AAM President was the Rt Rev Ambrose Reeves, an Anglican bishop. Vice presidents were Sir Dingle Foot QC MP; Rt Rev Trevor Huddleston, another Anglican bishop and Rt Hon Jeremy Thorpe MP. Also on the board was the then-leader of the Liberal Party Basil Davidson, an historian who had worked for MI6 behind enemy lines in the Second World War and been awarded the Military Cross.
This is hardly a group of radical subversives; far from overthrowing parliamentary democracy, the AAM’s sole aim was to extend it to southern African nations that were subjected to racist rule of colonial white minorities.
Despite this, the AAM was infiltrated by the SDS.
STOP THE SEVENTY TOUR
While the AAM resorted to mainstream methods, younger people wanted to do more. This is how the Stop The Seventy Tour (STST) was born, its immediate and principal aim was to stop the white-only South African cricket team from touring in the UK in the summer of 1970. More broadly, its aim was to make a very strong political point that people representing apartheid were not welcome in the UK.
STST used all classic forms of non-violent direct action (NVDA), pitch invasions being the most prominent. They sought to follow the well known principles of civil disobedience learned from recent history such as the struggles for Indian independence by Mahatma Gandhi and for black civil rights by Dr Martin Luther King.
They would run on to cricket pitches and sit down. Painting slogans on the walls outside Lords cricket ground, and even these were things like ‘stop the tour’ and ‘go home’ rather than anything more profane or aggressive.
According to Prof Jonathan Rosenhead (non-state core participant):
‘Stop The Seventy Tour was a nice floppy liberal alternative organisation, which many people could join. There was no party line and no ‘militancy’ as such, and the only thing everyone agreed on was the need to end apartheid.’
Yet the STST was infiltrated by the SDS.
SPECIAL ACTION GROUP
A small group of anti-apartheid activists believed in direct action and organised in private to add an extra layer to the campaign – calling themselves the Special Action Group (SAG). Rosenhead, who took part in the SAG, refuted the suggestion of the Inquiry calling them ‘the covert arm’ of the Stop the Seventy Tour, saying they just wanted the element of surprise.
For instance, one of them would check into the hotel where the rugby team stayed, overhearing their room numbers to either glue their locks, or write a message on their bathroom mirror with shaving cream At a certain point the team just wanted to go home.
The SAG was infiltrated as well.
DAMBUSTERS MOBILISING COMMITTEE
The Dambusters Mobilising Committee (DMC) was a coalition of groups including the AAM, that opposed the construction of the vast Cabora Bassa dam project in Mozambique.
The dam was a collaboration between South Africa, Rhodesia and Mozambique’s colonial ruler Portugal. It displaced local people without compensation in order to supply electricity to apartheid South Africa, and undermined United Nations sanctions.
The DMC campaigned to dissuade British (and other European) companies from financing or otherwise becoming involved in the Cabora Bassa project.
DMC meetings were small, attended only by representatives of the organisations in the coalition. They spent a lot of time researching companies involved in the dam. Some campaigners bought shares so they could attend Annual General Meetings of various companies, such as that of Barclay’s Bank who were guarantors of some of the dam’s financing, and pose pertinent questions to the meeting.
Even this Coalition was reported on.
MCCARTHYIST QUESTIONING
There was something both incongruous as well as slightly offensive in the line of questioning pursued by the inquiry throughout the week, repeatedly pushing to imply STST activists were violent and attempting to demonise their actions.
This is especially galling given the murderous racist violence of the South African apartheid regime they were protesting against. Adding to this, that within the UK it was STST protesters who were routinely assaulted by the police, stewards and some rugby supporters.
Peter Hain at a press conference called by the Stop the Seventy Tour (STST) campaign, 7 March 1970. Left to right: Jeff Crawford (Secretary of the West Indian Standing Conference) England cricketer Mike Brearley, STST member Mike Craft, & STST Chair Peter Hain.
On the final day of the week, the Undercover Policing Inquiry was devoted to hearing evidence from just one person, Lord Peter Hain. He had a rich career as an activist, and hence a thick secret police file that include decades of reports from undercover officers of the SDS
Hain founded and chaired the STST campaign, from its launch in September 1969 until it was disbanded in late May 1970.
Hain refused to be put in a position where, as an activist, he had to defend his campaigning, telling the Inquiry this attitude put both them and the police at the wrong side of history.
Like earlier in the week, the Inquiry opted for a line of questioning reminiscent of the McCarthy Un-American Hearings of the 1950s, in which guilt by association with radical groups or ideas is seemingly used to justify the State’s spying.
Their first question was whether Peter Hain’s parents, who had fled South Africa, were ‘communists’, when it is well known they were active members of the Liberal Party.
WASTE OF POLICE MONEY
Asked if it was understandable that police ‘faced with these novel, rather effective tactics’ should seek to gather all the information they could on campaigners’ secret plans, Hain cut in:
‘I know what you’re trying to insinuate, but… we were transparently public, some might say unwisely honest, about what our intentions were, which was to stop the tour by non-violent direct action.’
Hain made the point that the Anti-Apartheid Movement suffered extreme violence from agents of the South African State in London. This included the bombing and arson attacks on their offices, letter bombs being sent to their homes. Hain himself was sent one – it was opened by his teenage sister, and the matter was never fully investigated by the police. Hain demanded to know why this was.
Hain put it to the Inquiry that the SDS was a completely disproportionate waste of police resources: ‘
Why were they not targeting the agents of apartheid bombing and killing and acting illegally and violently in London at the time?’
In response to the Inquiry’s repeated suggestions that the STST took risks with their actions, that could have led to violence, Hain insisted that the main violence came from the other side. He described the brutal response to a pitch invasion at the Springboks’ match in Swansea in November 1969:
‘They ran on, they sat down, they interrupted play for, as I recall, over ten minutes, as it was intended. They were then carried off by the police and thrown to rugby stewards, rugby vigilantes, if you like, recruited for these purposes, and thoroughly beaten up. A friend of mine had his jaw broken, a young woman demonstrator nearly lost an eye…
‘They could have been carried out of St Helens, but there was clearly a pre-planned attempt to beat the hell out of the protesters, and that’s what happened.’
‘SOUTH AFRICAN TERRORIST’
The mindset and political framework of the undercover policing units seems not to have changed over the years.
A police report from 1993 – as the apartheid regime was collapsing and Nelson Mandela, three years out of prison, was poised to become president – refers to the Anti -Apartheid Movement as ‘Stalinist-controlled’. If that is the type of thinking of these units, Hain said:
‘we have a particular ideology of undercover policing which frankly cannot be defended.’
He has also learned recently, from a document revealed last month in Kate Wilson’s case in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, that in November 2003 he was described as a ‘South African terrorist’ by undercover police officer Mark Kennedy.
Kennedy was in the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, a parallel unit to the SDS, and deceived Kate (and other environmental campaigners) into a relationship.
At the time this spycop was calling him a terrorist, Hain was was a member of the British Cabinet, Secretary of State for Wales, the leader of the House of Commons and the Lord Privy Seal.
Hain retorted with a with a question that summarises the hearings of this week effectively:
‘What is it in the DNA of undercover policing that allows its officers to get such a biased and reactionary view of the world, that they make these kind of biased and completely unrepresentative and libellous and defamatory statements?’
Our report from the second and final week of Kate Wilson‘s landmark case, the culmination of ten years’ legal action challenging Britain’s political secret police. As an activist, Kate was spied on by at least six spycops.
Kate Wilson (front, third from left) & her legal team, Royal Courts of Justice, 27 April 2021
Last week saw the opening of Kate Wilson’s case in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. Kate, represented by Charlotte Kilroy, QC, put forward how her human rights were interfered with by multiple undercover police officers, particularly Mark Kennedy who deceived her into a relationship. We covered much of that in part one of this article.
Day 4 (Monday 26 April 2021)
This day was given over to the police to make their arguments, resuming from where they had left off last week. David Perry QC spoke for the entire day.
He was frequently interrupted by the three judges on the Tribunal panel. They were clearly uncertain about positions he was taking in relation to the law, and at times told him they considered his analysis illogical.
MARK KENNEDY TO BLAME
Perry maintained the position that Mark Kennedy was to blame for everything, and that the other officers were unwitting dupes of his lies. This included not being properly open with his principal cover officer, known only by the cipher EN31. It’s the police’s position that the evidence they’d been forced to disclose, such as the contact logs, needed to be read through this lens, given the lack of substantive witnesses.
‘Perry then goes back over his case from last week, stressing MK was selective and untrustworthy in the information he gave. MK portrayed me to be an influential activist in the UK and overseas, but that must be treated with caution because we now know that MK lied.’
Senior officers can’t have known, Perry argued, as otherwise they would have taken immediate action. Plus, all the senior officers in close proximity to Kennedy deny knowledge of his behaviour.
What followed was essentially a rehash of this point from different angles. All the blame lay with Kennedy, not EN31 or anyone higher up. For instance, it was Kennedy who set out the intelligence case for explicitly citing Kate as a target, namely that she was an influential activist both in the UK and overseas. He justified time spent with Kate and her family to EN31 by referring to chance events which were unavoidable or unwelcome.
‘Sir Stephen House (who knows nothing about the case) notes MK sometimes explains time spent with me as a “chance” event, and sometimes included political intelligence to what were entirely social and/or romantic events. Again, odd, they seem to think this is a defence.’
Perry relied on the witness statement from Lisa (another of the women Kennedy deceived into a relationship). She had shown that the contact logs held misleading information about him spending time with her and why it was required.
A particularly harsh example of this was the reasons given for Kennedy attending the funeral of Lisa’s father, which in a rare moment EN31 actually questioned. In Perry’s interpretation of the contact logs, Kennedy engineered an excuse as to why he had to be there, pressing on with the intrusion all the same, despite his cover officer’s concerns.
‘MK is authorised in 2006 to attend a deeply personal event – Lisa’s father’s funeral. Somehow police lawyers seem to think MK’s claim he delivered “sympathy cards” means his handlers were duped into letting him attend. Frankly this is insensitive nonsense from Perry QC.’
The next day, Charlotte Kilroy challenged this line of argument on the basis that Kennedy’s reasons were a distraction. The fact is, that the ‘reasons’ were a later detail provided by Kennedy after he had already told EN31 he was attending the funeral.
Furthermore, the cover officer didn’t ask why he had been invited (underlining the point that EN31 was not being intrusive because he already knew of the relationship).
Another occasion Perry relies upon as proof of Kennedy deceiving his managers, was when the undercover was recorded as off-duty but was in fact in Spain with Kate – something Kate was able to evidence with photos from the visit. Similarly, on other rest days in 2008 he was in fact in Scotland with Lisa.
SENIOR OFFICERS KNEW NOTHING
The authorisations for Kennedy’s deployments were based on Kennedy’s own intelligence. Senior officers had no reason to doubt his honesty as an officer, Perry argues, as at that point they did not know his credibility had been hopelessly compromised by his relationship with Kate and other women.
Of course, EN31 could have done a better job by being more diligent instead of placing so much trust in Kennedy. Especially as EN31 knew, and had spent time with, Kennedy’s family. However, it wasn’t really his fault; he was being misled as well. And who are we to doubt EN31 when, according to his statement, he had made it clear to Kennedy that any impropriety – such as sexual relationships – would be the end of his deployment?
‘Sir Stephen House himself accepts that there are multiple indications in the documents suggesting that EN31 knew or ought to have known. All he says about the other spycops officers is that there are “less indications” that they knew.’
The police barrister was treading risky ground. Kate’s case makes a strong argument that EN31 clearly did know of Kennedy’s sexual relationships, in which case EN31 was part of deceiving Kennedy’s family.
‘The police say we should think like officers at the time – there was (“rightly or wrongly”) operational benefit to MK to developing the relationship, and officers receiving evidence of a developing relationship would have seen it in that context. Erm… that is my case.’
Perry did accept that in situations where Kennedy might be called to give evidence, even if his sexual relationships had no direct bearing on the case, the very fact of them would damage his credibility all the same. He had breached police regulations and lied to get authorisations in place, so could not be put forward as a truthful witness.
Again, this was evidence in Perry’s eyes that the senior officers were ignorant. One such officer, O-24, who headed the National Public Order Intelligence Unit’s undercover unit which deployed Kennedy, apparently concurred, saying the policing and evidential purposes of the operation would have been affected by the relationships.
MARK KENNEDY ACTED AS AN AGENT PROVOCATEUR
For instance, the collapse of the Ratcliffe on Soar case in 2011 related not only to the discovery that Kennedy was a spycop, but also to evidence that he acted as an agent provocateur.
Undercover officer Lynn Watson, deployed at the same time as Kennedy, knew of his relationships
Curiously, Perry also relied on the claim that in any prosecution, the defendants would have to be told that Kennedy was an undercover; something that rarely happens. Other cases involving spycops indicate that police collapsed trials outright rather than letting an officer go to trial under their cover name.
Perry argued that other spycops deployed in proximity to Kennedy did not raise concerns over his relationships. He saw two possible explanations. Either they were unaware that the relationships were sexual, or they were aware, knew that it was wrong, and kept quiet. For Perry, both explanations were supportive of more senior officers not being in a position to have that knowledge.
This point was later challenged on the grounds that Perry was ignoring a third option: that it was an accepted cultural practice. Two of the undercovers closest to Kennedy – Lynn Watson and Marco Jacobs – both had their own intimate relationships with activists. Without question, Watson knew of Kennedy’s relationships. It was clear that there was complicity among the spycops, and a deliberate turning of a blind eye to this behaviour.
‘Another point is that spycops Lynn Watson and Marco Jacobs knew about MKs relationships. Perry says that the fact they didn’t raise concerns shows ‘They knew it was wrong and decided not to draw attention to it’. Again, he thinks that is a point in the defence the police.’
Perry did accept that in relation to Article 8 (the right to private and family life), senior managers had not done enough to supervise the operation and so protect Kate from excessive intrusion. However, he maintained the argument that management had little reason to express concern over Kennedy’s conduct at the time of the relationship.
Two important reports relied on by both sides came from the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC). Both examined the Mark Kennedy scandal in its immediate aftermath; SOCA in 2011, though it remained private, while a public version of the HMIC report was released in 2012 as ‘A review of national police units which provide intelligence on criminality associated with protest’.
Spycop Mark Kennedy under arrest, Nottingham, April 2009
DRAX CLIMATE CAMP ARREST
Perry addressed the point made in these reports that Kennedy was resistant to management instructions on two occasions. One was his arrest at Drax Climate Camp in 2006. The other was a trip abroad in 2009 with an unnamed woman, defying parameters set by management. Here he was met by officers and ordered to return to the UK.
The question Perry sought to raise, was whether proper action was taken by Kennedy’s managers.
After Drax, Kennedy was suspended and not re-deployed until later in the year. It is clear though that he remained in the field, as during that time a car he was in with other activists was stopped by a police officer who recalled him from the Drax arrest.
Following his arrest at Ratcliffe in April 2009 he was effectively no longer operational. The contact log was suspended so there is little evidence from that time. His managers began working on an exit strategy for some time in 2010.
The unauthorised trip abroad in 2009, however, accelerated the decision to withdraw him from the field completely. His deployment was ended on 23 September 2009. Kilroy later drew the Tribunal’s attention to the fact that during this period the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) continued to produce reports based on Kennedy’s communications.
‘Perry is paying a lot of attention to the fact that MK was pulled out of his spycops role in late 2009. That is SIX YEARS after he first started having sex with women he was spying on. Shutting the door after the horse had bolted does not really cover it.’
Following this line of argument Justice Lieven remarked to Perry that, despite repeated breaches of his deployment and instructions, no disciplinary action was taken.
Lord Boyd commented that the unit seemed unaware of where Kennedy was when he was not operational, and this was a welfare issue since it was clearly not easy to switch the cover persona on and off. He asked if they did know his whereabouts, and were they checking on his welfare, particularly if he was having to maintain his cover for being redeployed. Perry answered that contact was maintained on rest days by EN31, but accepts there should have been more oversight.
INSTITUTIONAL SEXISM IN UNDERCOVER UNITS
A part of Kate Wilson’s case is that the deployments of Kennedy and his fellow spycops expose institutional sexism within the undercover units. This breaches Article 14 (freedom from discrimination).
Perry noted there are direct and indirect aspects to that claim. In his view, the Tribunal didn’t need to deal with the direct aspect as the policy and guidance of the time was gender-neutral.
Kate Wilson and Mark Kennedy
As to indirect discrimination against women, Perry claimed there wasn’t a case to answer as one would have to establish that female undercovers faced different risks from male undercovers.
Justice Lieven was clearly not having it and took his arguments apart. She noted that one had to look at the actual outcomes, not the hypothetical ones advanced by Perry. Far more women were deceived across both main spycop units, the Special Demonstration Squad and National Public Order Intelligence Unit, so there was clearly a disproportionate impact.
Perry retreated to pleading against making stereotypical assumptions or generalisations about men and women. This still did not wash with Lieven – the factual evidence was against Perry. Lord Boyd also noted Charlotte Kilroy’s arguments on behalf of Kate Wilson around issues such as pregnancy creating a difference and having significant impact. Any analysis would have to take this into account as well – biological difference was not the same as stereotyping.
The judges also pointed out that indirect discrimination does not have to stem from issues in policy, training, or guidance, as Perry had suggested. Discrimination can also come from a pattern of behaviour. As the Equalities Act makes clear, it is the outcome that matters.
As typical when advancing an insubstantial argument or facing one crumble, Perry’s final response was that he’d raised the issue out of duty to the court, and it was in the Tribunal’s hands to make any final determination.
‘In summary the Metropolitan Police’s case seems to be that sexist discrimination by spycops is not important and the Tribunal should decline to make a ruling on [it]. Perry makes it clear that if the Tribunal does decide to make a ruling, he has no justification to offer for why it took place.’
‘IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAW’
Perry next addressed the case, made by Kilroy on Kate Wilson’s behalf, that the undercover operations were essentially unlawful on the grounds that they did not meet the test of necessity. This opened a very technical dive into the law, examining how the European Court at Strasbourg used and viewed necessity and proportionality as incorporated through the Convention on Human Rights. Likewise, whether the UK legislative regime covering undercovers adequately met those conditions.
Kate Wilson and Mark Kennedy at Kate’s nan’s 90th birthday, January 2005
The arguments advanced and subsequent discussion are beyond the scope of what we can address in this report. To summarise, the Convention requires safeguards ‘in accordance with the law’. Perry appears to have been saying that because the UK had set up a legislative regime with other statutes, this fulfilled those requirements. He pointed to case law which seemed to say that Strasbourg was generally okay with the UK arrangements, albeit for other kinds of surveillance that had tighter controls.
Lieven immediately pointed out that what little safeguards, such as against sexual relations, might be present in law, were not there in practice or in the relevant codes of practice. Similarly, there were next to no safeguards against collateral intrusion in particular as had happened under these particular units.
‘Judge: In a case like this where the state puts spycops into someone’s life every day, almost every hour of the day, [it] is an intrusion far more serious than phone tapping, it is a profound intervention in someone’s life, based on legislation that does not prevent this.’
Perry answered that the failure was not in the law, but because there was no proper monitoring or supervision.
It was clear that Perry’s objective was to defend the undercover operations as meeting the ‘as necessary in a democratic society’ condition. Necessity meant, in the context of the undercover policing operations, that simply the possibility of a crime, however minor, was sufficient to meet the test. One could move from there straight to proportionality, the next stage in the process.
FAILURES
In the scheme he outlines for the police, the failures happened after the necessity stage of the process. It was clear that he wanted proportionality to carry the principle burden and was prepared to concede that was where the failures in the case could be found. He relied on findings in the SOCA review of the Mark Kennedy operation that he says indicated this.
At this point the technicality of the legal argument went up another notch, examining Strasbourg jurisprudence around necessity. Perry’s main point seemed to be that given Parliament had defined necessity as meeting a pressing social need, such as national security or public disorder, that was sufficient.
However, it was clear that the judges were unhappy with how Perry was setting out the distinctions between necessity and proportionality. They made the point that the Strasbourg courts took a more integrated approach rather than making proportionality subservient to necessity.
Perry’s final(ish) point on this issue was that the need to detect crime, or act in the interest of public safety, was sufficient to meet necessity. How this is done is the proportionality aspect.
‘Judge: So, in your argument, what is the role of the court then?
Perry: to assess proportionality, not necessity.
Judge: It would be extremely rare to find a case where a police officer had no belief at all that they were doing the right thing.’
AUTHORISATIONS
Having sought to argue that the authorisations of spycops were lawful in that they met the grounds of necessity, Perry then moved on to whether they were proportional. He effectively conceded that they were not, but his motivation at this point seemed to be about protecting those senior managers who had signed it all off.
He argued that the authorising officers were sincere in their belief that the tests of necessity and proportionality had been met. At this point Perry’s reasoning became circular again – this sincere belief arose from trust in Kennedy’s intelligence.
Perry wants the Tribunal to find that the initial authorisation of Kennedy was lawful, but subsequent ones failed because they were not proportional. With the first, they didn’t know enough about the Sumac Centre (where he was deployed) so they could not be more specific.
‘They also claim MK’s deployment at the Sumac needed to be wide reaching at the start, and the only error was not to have made it more specific later on. That is nonsense, there were other spycops (Rod Richardson) at the Sumac before MK.
‘The issues raised go beyond surveillance of me. The police cite many political events, including the death of Carlo Giuliani at the Italian G8 in 2001. But the police have presented no underlying evidence to support why that justified a spycops operation at the Sumac.’
The following day, Kilroy noted a total failure to acknowledge that authorising officers did know about the Sumac Centre as they’d already sent in a previous undercover, Rod Richardson, who had helped refurbish it.
She also noted there had been other spycops, such as Jason Bishop and Jim Boyling, who had reported on Kate Wilson earlier, as Kate pointed out:
‘In fact, the disclosure suggests that spycops had been gathering information specifically on me since my involvement in Reclaim the Streets and support for Immigration Detainees in 1999.’
Furthermore, the police were trying to have it both ways – either Kennedy was reliable or he wasn’t. A number of the officers involved in drawing up and signing parts of the authorisations would have known there was a clear falsehood – when NPOIU managers named Kate as a specific target on a basis that included the easily disprovable lie that she was as a principal organiser with a Leeds housing cooperative.
AN OBLIQUE THREAT TO THE TRIBUNAL
Perry’s next argument seemed to be a subtle attempt at sending a warning shot across the bows of the Tribunal. He asked the judges to consider the impact of making findings around Articles 10 and 11 (rights of free speech and assembly) in this case, as they would potentially opening the ‘floodgates’ of challenges to authorisations. Namely, in other criminal cases brought on the basis of undercover work, those going to court will seek to challenge authorisations of undercovers to have evidence thrown out.
Spycop ‘Rod Richardson’, refurbishing the Sumac Centre building, Nottingham, c.2001
If all this sounds like torturous nonsense, it’s because that’s how it came across in court. If anything, it shows the desperate lengths to which the police will go to defend necessity. They are clinging to the wide latitude they perceive they have in law as to who they can target, particularly political campaigners.
Another such situation emerged in Perry’s arguments shortly after, when he considered whether Kate had a case for interference with her Article 10 and 11 rights. It has been conceded that Kennedy interfered with her Article 10 rights (freedom of thought and speech) through the relationship, but the same is not said of her Article 11 rights (freedom of assembly).
Perry tried to argue that 10 and 11 were effectively a distraction from the real issues, the breaches of Articles 3 and 8 (freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, and the right to private and family life).
Lieven responded that the police had effectively shot themselves in the foot by making the concession on Article 10 with regards to the sexual relationship.
This led to a remarkable moment where Perry tried to back-pedal, saying the law should not depend on what counsel say – in effect the Tribunal should ignore their admission and focus only on the interference with Articles 3 and 8.
CLEAR EVIDENCE FROM KATE WILSON
Lieven then remarked that the evidence from Kate was clear: Kennedy had exercised control and influence over her rights in relation to freedom of expression and assembly. Though not coercive, it was a degree of control which did interfere, and as such had all the implications that went with the sexual relationship.
Perry continued to resist, saying the facts only went to Articles 3 and 8. However, Lieven replied that this didn’t preclude them going to 10 and 11 as well.
Another of the Tribunal judges, Professor Graham Zellick, also weighed in, saying that there was a freedom to hold opinions without interference by public authority. This is a situation where Kate’s freedom to hold her opinions attracted interference by public authority through undercover police intruding into her life in all its aspects.
As Charlotte Kilroy had noted, Article 8 (right to family and private life) didn’t tell the whole story; the reason Kate was targeted was her political activities, and to do justice to this complaint the Tribunal needed to make a finding under Articles 10 and 11.
Perry responded that if the scheme of authorisations under RIPA was to work, then going down the route that every authorisation had to meet Article 10 as well as 8 would become ‘slightly problematic’.
‘Crazy, I thought investigations should have to comply with the whole Human Rights Act, but apparently David Perry QC thinks that would be ‘problematic”’ for the police and security services.’
Though not really picked up on in the hearing, this is tantamount to saying that respecting people’s Article 10 rights would seriously impact on whether the undercover authorisations targeting protestors could be granted. In other words, they want the freedom to freely interfere with Article 10 rights and there is a risk that all the authorisations breach this particular right.
MYTHICAL DOCUMENTS
The question of who knew what has been a significant theme in the hearings. The vital issue of whether management were aware, or acted appropriately, hinges on this point. Kate is arguing that the contact logs are key evidence showing there should have been awareness of Kennedy’s relationships.
Discussion developed as to whether management had seen the logs. There is evidence in them that messages were left for management to read, and decision logs note that material was meant to be sent to senior managers to read. EN31 even effectively said as much, noting that entries marked red were suggested policy entries – matters for the senior investigation officer.
In the absence of anything else, the indications are that the contact logs were passed on. Perry tried to introduce doubt on this by speculating that what was sent to the managers was some other material that drew on the logs. Otherwise, EN31’s bosses were being asked to read a lot of unnecessary information.
As Lieven noted:
‘If there had been some separate document, we don’t have the slightest trace of it ever existing. Bit of a leap to ask us to accept that.’
Perry retreated to relying on O-24’s statement. He was a senior officer overseeing the undercover unit, and had claimed that given the amount of work on his plate, he had only been able to give 5% of his time to Kennedy’s deployment.
LACK OF WITNESSES
Perry was asked why the police had not put forward witnesses of fact, able to provide information on what had happened because they were there, such as with information flow. This would have avoided the need for Perry to speculate. He responded by saying the Tribunal should not seek to rely on witnesses, but rather focus on the available primary sources such as the contact logs, decisions logs, or NPOIU intelligence report as being reliable, contemporary evidence.
‘There has never been anything produced in this case about why so many relevant documents have gone missing. Not just one or two documents, but a substantial amount of missing material from the most crucial period.”
‘The police have never inquired at any stage how the #spycops unit worked in practice and David Perry could not answer a single question about how the unit operated in practice.’
Perry also argued it was unusual for witness statements like that to be served in proceedings such as the Tribunal, which mirrors the Judicial Review process. If there were statements they would usually be by someone senior, such as (in this case) Sir Stephen House, Deputy Commissioner. House had provided six witness statements discussing the evidence but was not himself a witness of facts in the case. In any case, officers such as EN31 declined to provide information.
A problem raised was that the officers proximate to Kennedy had been told they would not be called to give evidence. Again Perry tried to fudge this, saying the reason they’d been told this was to ensure they cooperated. He made the point that they had been offered immunity from prosecution for evidence given to the Public Inquiry, but no such undertakings were available here.
Evidently, this is not an encouraging excuse to offer the Tribunal as to why police officers have not been asked to be witnesses, so he added that although the emails from the officers were not sent under oath, if these officers had sought to mislead in their responses, it would still be a criminal offence. His submission was that the police were clearly trying to present a fair and balanced view of the evidence in their statements by Sir Stephen House.
Kilroy replied the following day that waiting to be offered immunity in the UCPI before giving evidence was ‘not a heartening reason’ as it suggested that what they might say could lead them to be prosecuted. This was reflected in Stephen House’s admission that any denials made in the few responses available from officers were not necessarily reliable.
Day 5 (Tuesday 27 April)
This was the final day of the hearings, with Charlotte Kilroy responding to some of the points raised by David Perry, then tidying up final administrative issues.
Kilroy had a number of points to make. One was the lack of witness statements and the fact that where the police did question officers in their investigations, crucial issues were not covered.
Mark Kennedy showing injuries after a beating by uniformed police, Climate Camp 2006
The police have asserted that many documents are missing. What they have not done is make inquiries as to just why they are missing. There was a lack of serious investigation by the police into how the NPOIU worked. This left them all in the dark.
MISSING CONTACT LOGS
For example, they had not addressed how the NPOIU operated as a team, nor dealt with Kilroy’s previous observation that the contact logs were only a snapshot of the overall picture. This was particularly important given the material covering when Kennedy entered into a relationship with Kate was missing.
Perry, she said, was drawing inferences from the evidence that were not actually substantiated by the documents he relied on. In fact, the material submitted was confusing the issue rather than shedding any light. The real problem lay with the police failing to investigate adequately in the first place. All they could offer was a tendentious lawyers’ interpretation, when the more powerful one is in fact provided by Kate Wilson.
Pointing out their failures, Kilroy addressed the intelligence flow within the NPOIU. She called up a document from disclosure setting out how the unit supposedly worked from 2007 onwards. This was a diagram which set out the various parts of the NPOIU and how intelligence came into the unit and passed out again, including through informers and undercovers. It showed that there were apparently firewalls in place to prevent the rest of the unit effectively knowing about the undercovers.
Perry suggested the diagram reflected how the unit worked prior to 2007. Kilroy drew the Tribunal’s attention to the very next bit of disclosure – an internal contemporary email from someone in the NPOIU attached to the same intelligence flow diagram.
A CLEAR TWO-WAY PROCESS
Damningly, the email, written by O-137, an NPOIU officer, said the intelligence flow diagram was ‘dishonest’ and undercover units were not in fact distinct and firewalled from the rest of the unit. Rather, there was a clear two-way process which included the undercovers and that if the NPOIU tried to impose such a firewalled approach the entire process would break down:
‘Are we saying we should not really be doing this and so are trying to hide it…If the rules prevent this then they are clearly wrong and need changing’
Kilroy used this to illustrate the point that one could not rely solely on the documents, as Perry was asking of the Tribunal. Documents such as this could be misleading in themselves – the wider picture was necessary to get to the truth.
She pointed out that Perry had advanced the case that management were entitled to place their trust in Kennedy as an experienced police officer who they were unaware was having intimate relationships. However, this was in fact the first time police had ever made such arguments in Kate’s case.
Previous defences had not suggested EN31 and others were entitled to trust Kennedy on this basis. Instead the police lawyers had accepted the contradictory position, that those managing Kennedy should have been more intrusive into his life as an undercover.
It also was difficult for Perry to rely on the police Code of Conduct requiring Kennedy to be honest and maintain integrity. This conflicted with RIPA itself, which permitted dishonest relationships through undercover policing.
Kilroy then moved on to rebutting the point that Kennedy would be expected to be called as a witness. It was quite clear that this was not the case. Both HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and the Serious Organised Crime Agency said it was not an evidence-based operation, but solely focused on intelligence gathering.
THE ROSE REPORT
To illustrate, she drew attention to the report by Sir Christopher Rose into Kennedy’s role in the collapse of the prosecution of activists who had attempted a protest at the Ratcliffe on Soar power station.
‘The Christopher Rose report is clear that it was always the primary intention that MK’s identity should be protected over and above any prosecution. The only reason the Ratcliffe miscarriage of justice even came to light was because Lisa discovered MK’s true identity.’
Instead, the Rose Report showed the NPOIU had sought to protect Kennedy’s role as a spycop and this had trumped the rights of the activists being prosecuted. In fact, the Ratcliffe on Soar case only collapsed because he had been outed as an undercover and agent provocateur.
She was able to point to the fact that the Head of the NPOIU had provided Rose with a statement asserting that the undercover’s identity must be protected and he would not be allowed to enter the evidence chain. This undermined Perry’s point that having a relationship would have compromised Kennedy because he couldn’t have given evidence. It is clear the intention was that he would never be allowed to give evidence in the first place.
Kilroy went further, pointing out it was not until 2016 that the police formally accepted that undercovers having sexual relationships was intrinsically unlawful. There are widespread examples of undercovers engaging in the practice over many years. The defendants had not looked at the culture of the units. In support of this, she also noted that the Special Demonstration Squad’s Tradecraft Manual, which did speak of ‘fleeting relationships’, was never countermanded by any senior officer – a point which also went to the police meeting their positive obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Rose Report also highlighted another issue touched on the previous day – Perry’s request that the Tribunal favour the conclusions of the SOCA report over that of HMIC. By using remarks from Rose, Kilroy was able to show that the SOCA report had been conducted under the aegis of HMIC, and fed into it. In fact, the SOCA report was an annex to the HMIC one. Rather than being structurally separate, as Perry had claimed, they were inextricably linked – which meant his points about placing greater weight on SOCA than HMIC fell flat.
RIGHTS IN THEMSELVES
Having dealt with the above issues, Kilroy returned to Articles 10 and 11 (rights of free speech, and assembly). She made the point that they are rights in themselves. Although in this case they are often connected to the sexual relationship, they need protecting on their own merits. They are part and parcel of a democratic society.
A final substantive was whether the Tribunal could rely on Kennedy’s evidence as given to the Home Affairs Select Committee, or whether it was inadmissible for legal reasons to do with Parliament. In particular, the police attempting to impugn his evidence might be in contempt of Parliament. The issue was considered as ‘vexing’ and the Tribunal invited written submissions on resolving it.
With that, the main hearings came to an end. Judgment will be handed down in a couple of months, after which the judges will look at remedies. Lord Boyd then gave a fulsome thanks to Kate for all her efforts. An emotional ending to an exhausting process.
Peter Hain at a press conference called by the Stop the Seventy Tour (STST) campaign, 7 March 1970. Left to right: Jeff Crawford (Secretary of the West Indian Standing Conference), cricketer Mike Brearley, STST member Mike Craft, & STST Chair Peter Hain.
On Friday 30 April, the Undercover Policing Inquiry was devoted to hearing evidence from just one person, Peter Hain. Hain had a rich career as an activist, and hence a thick secret police file that include decades of reports from undercover officers of the Special Demonstration Squad.
His long experience as a public speaker and a politician made him a strong witness. Not only did he challenge the line of questioning the Inquiry had chosen, he also made a strong case for non-violent direct action.
Hain refused to be put in the position where, as an activist, he had to defend his campaigning, telling the Inquiry this attitude put them and the police at the wrong side of history. Time and again, Hain used the questions as an opportunity to say what he had to say. In doing so, this day of testimony resulted in an interesting lecture on social history.
FROM ACTIVIST TO PEER OF THE REALM
As well as his involvement in the Anti-Apartheid Movement campaigning against the racist apartheid regime in South Africa, Hain was in the Young Liberals – a more radical and progressive group than the main Liberal Party. He served as a member of its National Executive between 1973-75, and then as President from 1975-77.
Hain chaired the Stop The Seventy Tour (STST) campaign, which opposed a planned cricket tour of England by an all-white South African team, from its launch in September 1969 until it was disbanded in late May 1970.
He was also active in the Action Committee Against Racialism 1970-73 and a founder member and press officer for the Anti-Nazi League (ANL). He joined the Labour Party in September 1977 and was then elected as an MP in 1991. He was then a government minister for five years and Cabinet minister for seven years.
This meant that he signed off ‘on work of utmost sensitivity’. He signed warrants for surveillance and interception, and saw intelligence reports produced by the police, Security Service (MI5), MI6 and GCHQ. Hain has been a Privy Councillor since 2001, and a member of the House of Lords since 2015.
APARTHEID
‘For use by white persons’ sign, apartheid South Africa
Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 until the early 1990s. It categorised people into a hierarchy of racial groups, with whites at the top.
The laws segregated all areas of life, reserving the best for whites. It applied to everything from education, employment and housing to which bench to sit on or which beach people could visit. Most of the population was denied the right to vote. Sexual relationships and marriages between people of different racial groups were illegal.
Asked about the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), Hain explained that, though apartheid is universally regarded as immoral today, it wasn’t so in the past:
‘For 50 years or so it was a bitter long hard struggle, and people take it for granted that everybody was against apartheid, because it was such a detestable institution of racism like the world has never seen… You have quite correctly depicted it as a movement that was in a minority, albeit with a large reservoir of public sympathy’
The South African apartheid state presented itself as a bulwark against communism, and it suited its purposes to be seen as part of the ‘democratic West’. Of course, it went against all the principles of democracy as the vast majority of the population was denied the right to vote. It was one of the most vicious tyrannies that the world has ever seen where a minority, less than 10% of the population, oppressed the great majority on grounds of race.
‘We were on the side of justice and equality and human rights, and the apartheid regime was on the wrong side of all those issues.’
The Western governments supported the regime by supplying it with arms, continuing to invest in and trade with it, opposing sanctions, and more.
SOUTH AFRICAN EXILE
Hain had grown up in apartheid South Africa. His parents were from conventional white South African families but ‘very unusually took a stand against the apartheid system’ and were forced into exile as a result. They moved to Britain in 1966 and lived in Putney, south London.
In documents produced by the Metropolitan police, his parents are described as communists. Hain says this is not true, his parents were members of the South African Liberal Party, never the Communist Party.
Hain said the Met files on his family contain details that could only have come from South African sources. Dismissing opponents of apartheid as communists was standard practice for them, and this distortion is typical of both the South African security services and the Met’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) reports.
Basil D’Oliveira
Hain recalled the case of South African-born ‘cape-coloured’ cricketer Basil D’Oliveira. As he was ‘Cape Coloured’ (a South African ethnic group with diverse ancestral heritage), he was not allowed to play in his own country, but started playing for the England team while living here in exile. He was then excluded from taking part in the England team’s 1968 tour of South Africa to appease the apartheid regime.
Just before the team was to leave, however, he was asked to replace another player who was injured, prompting accusations from then Prime Minister Vorster and other South African politicians that the selection was politically motivated. Attempts to find a compromise followed, but these led nowhere. The English subsequently cancelled the tour.
This had made it clear to young Hain that the English cricket authorities were on the side of apartheid, and supported the racist form of cricket operating in South Africa.
The Inquiry moved on to discuss the ‘Wilf Isaacs Eleven tour’. Isaacs was a businessman – and South African Army officer – who sponsored a cricket tour of Britain in 1969. Such sporting tours by all-white teams were regarded as promotion of apartheid, and they also provided a tangible target for anti-apartheid campaigners in Britain.
Hain was 19 at the time. He said he is proud to recall the pitch invasion he organised in Basildon on 5 July 1969. As far as he knows, this was the first non-violent direct action that took place against a South African cricket team.
STOP THE SEVENTY TOUR
This led to advance planning for similar future tours. They formed Stop The Seventy Tour (STST) to oppose a planned visit from the South African cricket team in 1970. In the run up to that, the campaign started protesting against the South African Springboks rugby team in the winter of 1969/70.
The Hain family’s small flat became the headquarters for the STST campaign. Meetings were held there, their phone number became the national campaign contact, and his mother the group’s unofficial secretary.
Hain explained:
‘this was a campaign which came out of nowhere – it suddenly became massive; it was spontaneous and decentralised, with autonomous groups in different places.’
The Inquiry put it to Hain that there was a ‘potential for violence’ in the STST campaign because emotions must have been ‘running high on both sides’.
Hain refuted this, reconnecting various incidents where he and others used purely non-violent tactics.
‘Don’t scrum with a racist bum’ became a much-loved slogan following protests at the Springboks’ arrival at Heathrow Airport in October 1969. The team’s first training session, which they found out took place near the Hain family home, became the target of protest by STST. The AAM organised a demo at the South African embassy, where the team was due to attend an evening reception.
Stop The Seventy Tour protest, Lords cricket ground, London, 1970
STST’s Ad Hoc Committee met at the Hain family’s flat on 5 December 1969. Hain recollects that it consisted of ‘people I trusted’, planning the upcoming protests at the Springboks’ match at Twickenham. He believes that this group was never infiltrated.
However, there is a detailed report of this meeting [UCPI0000008656], which records six people attending, signed by the SDS’ Sergeant Mike Ferguson (HN135).
In their suggestive line of questioning, the Inquiry stated that there was an element of deliberately misleading fellow activists by suggesting that all their protests would be outside the cricket ground, when in fact the main event – the pitch invasion – was inside. Hain said that there was a good reason for not mentioning it, to keep it secret from the police; had the police known about the pitch plan, it would have scuppered chances of success.
Hain told the story of one activist dressed in a suit, who managed to drive the team’s coach for a short time, until he was forced to a halt by members of the rugby team and assaulted by them.
Asked about tin tacks sprinkled on a pitch at a protest in Bristol, Hain made it clear that he was opposed to this tactic, and that it was a one-off action by one person.
He said that claims in reports by SDS officer Mike Ferguson that this was to be an ongoing tactic, and that STST would supply the tacks, are outright lies. And, indeed, they were just part of a pattern of lies and exaggerations in the reports.
At the previous day’s Inquiry hearing, Hain’s fellow anti-apartheid campaigner Jonathan Rosenhead had also noted the ‘creative’ tendencies’ in Ferguson’s reporting. This might be a special concern as Ferguson went in to head the SDS in 1978.
Hain was emphatic, and turned the question from one asking him to justify his actions, to the spycops justifying theirs:
‘I don’t remember any instance of a planned violent act, although obviously this tin tacks one could have led to that. But if you’re making the point that this was a massive movement and there were lots of people organising spontaneously, yes, there were.
‘But does that justify Mike Ferguson deploying special, extraordinary police resources to take part in meetings in my living room or my parents’ living room? And in Young Liberal meetings, another undercover officer going by the name of ‘Mike Scott’, who I again don’t recognise?…
‘Why were they not targeting the agents of apartheid bombing and killing and acting illegally and violently in London at the time?…
‘I mean, this was a completely disproportionate waste of police resources, and it was on the wrong side of history. What the Mike Fergusons and the Mike Scotts actually should have been doing was helping bring down the apartheid system and deploying British security and policing resources to track down apartheid agents acting illegally in London. Instead of that they were spying on us.’
INSINUATIONS OF VIOLENCE
Asked if it was understandable that police ‘faced with these novel, rather effective tactics’ should seek to gather all the information on secret plans, Hain cut in:
‘I know what you’re trying to insinuate, but… we were transparently public, some might say unwisely honest, about what our intentions were, which was to stop the tour by non-violent direct action.
‘And that leads me to where I think you’re taking me. Why was an undercover officer in virtually every meeting that I attended when they could have found out what I was planning to do by what I’d publicly stated?’
Hain set his actions among the noble company of campaigns that were also vilified at the time, but are now celebrated:
‘I see non-violent direct action of the kind that I advocated and participated in through the Stop the Seventy Tour campaign, as having a long lineage going back to the Suffragettes, to early trade unionists, to the Chartists protesting for the vote, to Mahatma Gandhi in India protesting against British colonial rule for Indian independence. It’s in a long line of non-violent direct action that’s also carried out by Extinction Rebellion and other environmental protests today.’
They were not even doing anything unlawful, he said, pointing out that trespassing on the pitch was not even a criminal offence:
‘I’m still proud that I did non-violent direct action to change the course of history, and we did change the course of history.
‘That Stop The Seventy Tour campaign was fundamental, as Nelson Mandela subsequently told me, having seen it or heard about it from [the prison on] Robben Island where he was at the time, it was fundamental in changing the nature of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, in galvanizing it and in ultimately bringing about the downfall of apartheid’.
ARE YOU, OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN, A COMMUNIST?
As during the interrogations of Jonathan Rosenhead and Christabel Gurney earlier in the week, the Inquiry opted for a line of questioning reminiscent of the McCarthy Un-American Hearings of the 1950s, in which guilt by association with radical groups or ideas is seemingly used to justify the State’s spying.
Hain was asked about the various radical groups listed as affiliated to the STST; the AAM, the National Union of Students, the National League of Young Liberals, the Student Christian Movement, the International Socialists and the Young Communist League. Hain made a point of adding the United Nations Youth Student Association to this list, and explained that his philosophy:
‘has always been – you bring in the broadest spectrum of opinion that you can that share in common a single objective… who can rally together, even though they may disagree about everything else.’
The Inquiry quoted from another SDS report by Mike Ferguson [UCPI0000008606] on an STST National Committee meeting held towards the end of the group’s activities in May 1970, which read:
‘There could be no doubt that the next two weeks would be crucial as far as getting the tour cancelled was concerned, and the trump cards which STST had to play in connection with the Commonwealth Games and racial disorder which would occur in the event of the tour taking place’
The Inquiry asked:
‘Was racial disorder one of your trump cards, Lord Hain?’
Hain refuted the insinuation that STST would somehow incite and organise racial disorder, explaining that the disorder mentioned was from the potential of pro-tour and pro-apartheid groups banding with the National Front and other racists. He had meant that this might get the tour cancelled if other methods failed.
RUGBY TOUR
Turning to the South African Springboks’ rugby tour of 1969, the Inquiry read a passage from Hain’s memoir, Outside In:
‘Suddenly the campaign exploded into action and into prominence. It was announced on 23 October that weedkiller had been sprayed on Oxford University’s rugby ground just a week before the team was due to arrive. The words “Oxford rejects apartheid” appeared in five-foot letters on the pitch.
‘The next day the university rugby club officials called off the match. They said that they had taken this decision after consultations with the Thames Valley Police “because of the risk of violence”.’
Asked if this was a fair summary of the events, Hain once again deftly cut down the implications of the question:
‘What doesn’t summarise it fairly is the risk of violence. The Oxford anti-apartheid group, which organised this quite independently of me, I might add, though with my general approval, though I was never a fan of spraying weedkiller anywhere.
‘But the Oxford Anti-Apartheid Movement was not intending violence; it was intending to adopt the same non-violent direct action tactics that it had adopted during the Wilf Isaacs tour, except on a much, much bigger scale, and that was why the game was cancelled and the venue was transferred.’
Hain made the point that the Anti-Apartheid Movement suffered extreme violence from agents of the South African State. This included the bombing and arson attacks on their offices, letter bombs being sent to their homes. Hain himself was sent one – it was opened by his teenage sister, and the matter was never fully investigated by the police. Hain demanded to know why this was.
He described the brutal response to a pitch invasion at the Springboks’ match in Swansea in November 1969.
‘They ran on, they sat down, they interrupted play for, as I recall, over ten minutes, as it was intended. They were then carried off by the police and thrown to rugby stewards, rugby vigilantes, if you like, recruited for these purposes, and thoroughly beaten up. A friend of mine had his jaw broken, a young woman demonstrator nearly lost an eye…
‘They could have been carried out of St Helens, but there was clearly a pre-planned attempt to beat the hell out of the protesters, and that’s what happened.’
After outrage in the mainstream media and a delegation, led by Hain, to the Home Office, such policing did not recur.
Hain described the protests that followed the Springboks to Dublin. 10,000 people marched, led by Bernadette Devlin MP (whose name appears in many Special Branch reports). This was the biggest demo of the entire tour, organised by two South African exiles, and the largest demonstration of any kind in Dublin for decades.
TRUE SPIES – OR TRUE LIES?
In 2002, the BBC broadcast a three-part series called True Spies that, for the first time, revealed the SDS to a wide audience.
In what was clearly an effort to paint the secret police in a positive light, journalist Peter Taylor interviewed several spycops and their cover officers, and introduced former Special Branch officer, Wilf Knight, the handler of the late Mike Ferguson.
Because Ferguson was identified in True Spies, it made no sense for the Inquiry to restrict his real name, but it did indeed grant anonymity for his cover name (for most former spycops this is the other way round, either that or both their real and cover name are restricted).
Today we learned that the Inquiry has told Hain the cover name in case it jogged his memory, but it did not. It is frankly bizarre for the Inquiry to be protecting the fake name used 50 years ago by a spycop who is now dead.
The Inquiry quoted a section from the True Spies transcript (page 12), where Knight proudly says:
‘I don’t think Peter Hain ever realised that he had a police officer as his number two.’
Hain refuted this, saying he never had a ‘number two’ at all. He thinks the undercovers routinely lied in their reports.
In True Spies, Knight described how Mike Ferguson’s SDS reports helped thwart the protestors plans:
‘The intention was for demonstrators, just prior to half time, to throw flare bombs, smoke bombs and metal tacks onto the pitch. Mike passed that information on, it was passed on to the uniform, and at the appointed time officers were there with sand buckets and metal magnets and although they threw as many as they could onto the pitch they were snuffed out, taken away and the players didn’t know that it had taken place and when they came out after half time the game carried on.’
Hain said it was:
‘a very clear example of a lie by Mike, a straight lie’
There was no throwing of tacks at Twickenham, let alone police clearing them with magnets. Asked by Counsel to the Inquiry, David Barr QC, if it was possible that Wilf Knight wasn’t lying, merely suffering from some confusion 30 years after the events he described, Hain said:
’“Some confusion” would be a very charitable description of it, if I may say so, Mr Barr, because it was typical of the behaviour of undercover officers, as I’ve seen in the documentation provided to me by the Inquiry, that they very rarely told the truth about what was going on.’
The Inquiry then cited another section from True Spies – the story of how Mike Ferguson diverted attention away from himself by accusing a genuine member of the group of being an infiltrator, who Hain then threw out of the meeting. Hain is pretty sure this is yet another fabrication. He remembers one person being disinvited from attending meetings of the group, but not in the way described.
The Inquiry turned to an SDS report [UCPI0000008660], the STST National Conference in March 1970. Mike Brearley, a British first-class cricketer speaking at the conference, asked STST activists to refrain from violence.
Hain said he applauded Brearley for this, and added that he was a courageous man, the only cricketer to make a public stand in support of the STST campaign. John Taylor was the only rugby international player to do the same.
THE ‘C’ WORD
The report also quoted Hain as saying that, after the Springboks’ tour, STST supporters should move to oppose the broader underlying issues of racism and the capitalist system that nurtures it.
Questioned on whether this meant there was an ulterior motive to the campaign, Hain retorted that the undercovers were trying to push a false narrative about a secretive second strand of the campaign – who wanted to use more violent tactics – which just did not exist.
As for opposing capitalism, he met that point head on:
‘I think that capitalism run in its more extreme way is designed to create a rich elite at the top and great impoverishment down below, instead of to spread wealth and ownership more widely and to allow people to participate more equitably in the running of their economy.
‘So I want a fairer, more just economic system, and I make no bones about that. I was a socialist at the time I was in the Young Liberals and I remain one, and if that’s the discussion we want to have, I’m very happy to have it.
‘But the point I was making at the time was that the British capitalist system was more interested in profits and in trade, than in decency and human rights and justice and non-racism because, actually, its trade of arms and its supplying of arms was perpetuating apartheid, entrenching it and strengthening it.’
SUCCESS
Hain mentioned his belief that South African intelligence operatives infiltrated and secretly recorded meetings, and that they collaborated with the Met’s Special Branch.
Nevertheless, eventually the 1970 cricket tour was called off, just weeks before it was due to start. The STST campaign had been successful. Asked if the planned protests would have gone ahead if it hadn’t been cancelled, Hain enthusiastically confirmed they would. He gave examples of the kinds of exciting tactics the activists had come up with.
Hain emphasised that it came at a crucial time for the campaign against apartheid. Within South Africa the resistance was suffering severe repression, the leaders imprisoned, campaigners who were driven into exile were attacked, arrested and tortured.
‘So this campaign came at a time and achieved a victory which was very, very important for the momentum of the international anti-apartheid movement.’
YOUNG LIBERALS
Moving on to Hain’s involvement with the Young Liberals, the Inquiry noted that it was unusual for the youth wing of a mainstream political party to be prepared to commit minor criminal acts in order to advance its aims.
Hain asked for clarification on what type of minor crime was being invoked:
‘You mean like occurred at the Sarah Everard demonstration at Clapham Common? Would you describe that as a minor…’
He was interrupted and told that he wasn’t there to ask questions.
Hain was presented with the example of his sitting down on a zebra crossing. Hain was happy to admit that he had done this:
‘it did cause a lot of tension within the Liberal Party, though I don’t think that that’s the focus of this Inquiry’
It was pointed out that, according to the SDS reports, the Young Liberals were discussing issues such as pensions, pollution, and homelessness. But did they also discuss non-violent direct action?
Hain pulled the insinuation up into the light:
‘But what’s wrong with it? What is wrong with non-violent direct action?’
He was told there was no specific objection, to which he pointed out they’d labelled it ‘criminal’ and, when pressed, downgraded that to ‘minor criminal’.
‘What I object to about this line of questioning, is when it comes to progressive radical movements, whether it’s environmentalists today, whether it’s anti-racists, Black Lives Matter, whether it’s Greenpeace or Extinction Rebellion or the Anti-Apartheid Movement of its era, we are all presented as somehow subversive or semi-criminal or objectionable or disrupting England’s green and pleasant land.
‘Actually, that pejorative prism through which radical politics is presented is, in my view, completely unacceptable, reprehensible and partisan. That is the sort of perspective of undercover policing and ideology that was driving it. That’s my major concern, and I think, you know, I’m not accusing you personally, but I think you’re reflecting that state of mind’
Hain then talked about how this undercover political policing got to the point where instead of catching the racists responsible for Stephen Lawrence’s death, they infiltrated the Stephen Lawrence campaign that was seeking justice.
REPORTING ON HAIN’S FAMILY
Attention turned to a January 1972 SDS report [UCPI 0000008240] on a Putney Young Liberals, meeting at Hain’s family home. According to the report, spycop ‘Michael Scott’ (HN298, 1971-76) was elected as Membership Secretary. Hain does not recall this person, so thinks he may have operated under another name then.
The report mentions Hain’s sisters, 15 year old Jo-Ann, and 13 year old Sally. Hain condemned the ‘disproportionate, politically biased policing’, adding:
‘I really don’t understand why “Mike Scott” was in this meeting at all, how it could be justified by his superiors and what he was doing with particularly two young women teenagers.’
Whether or not we agree with the aims of campaign groups, why should the police be sent to spy on them? Hain noted that ‘Sandra Davies’ (HN348) told the Inquiry in November that she could have been doing much more valuable things with her time.
The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting intervened, explaining to Hain that some of the questions he’s been asked would have been the result of input from the various police lawyers. Although this was meant to reassure Hain that the line of questioning around the legitimacy of his campaigning was not the Inquiry’s viewpoint, it did reveal that the police, nearly 50 years, later are still seeking to justify their actions.
TELEPHONE TAPPED?
Hain was asked if his family’s phone number was used by other groups, and he confirmed that it was. They suspected that their telephone was tapped, so were cautious about what they said on the phone. Hain’s mother had experienced surveillance in South Africa, so was particularly security-conscious.
In his witness statement [UCPI0000034091], Hain refers to a phone call between his mother and undercover officer ‘Mike Scott‘. In his report, ‘Scott’ claimed that she told him to go to a private meeting at Ernest Rodker’s house. Hain rejected this:
‘I find that so unlikely as to be inconceivable. My mother was incredibly careful about what she said on the phone, and since both my parents and us as a family had lived under apartheid and under constant surveillance by the apartheid police, with Special Branch cars parked at the bottom of our drive following us wherever we went, including me to school, occasionally, on my bike, she was ultra careful, to the point of almost being too careful.’
Hain wondered what this undercover is concealing and why he is not telling the truth here.
INDEFENSIBLE
Hain highlighted three more points about the anti-apartheid campaign.
A police report from 1993 – as the apartheid regime was collapsing and Nelson Mandela, three years out of prison, was poised to become president – refers to the Anti -Apartheid Movement as ‘Stalinist-controlled’.
If that is the type of thinking of these units, Hain said:
‘we have a particular ideology of undercover policing which frankly cannot be defended.’
He has also learnt recently, from a document revealed in Kate Wilson’s case in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, that in November 2003 he was described as a ‘South African terrorist’ by undercover police officer Mark Kennedy. Kennedy was in the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, a parallel unit to the SDS, and deceived Kate (and other environmental campaigners) into a relationship.
At the time this spycop was calling Hain a terrorist, Hain was was a member of the British Cabinet, Secretary of State for Wales, the leader of the House of Commons and the Lord Privy Seal.
‘What is it in the DNA of undercover policing that allows its officers to get such a biased and reactionary view of the world, that they make these kind of biased and completely unrepresentative and libellous and defamatory statements?’
ANTI-NAZI LEAGUE
After the racist National Front (NF) had overtaken the Liberal Party in the Greater London Council elections of May 1970, there was a great deal of concern amongst those opposed to fascism and racism about the rise in racist attacks. People felt the need to tackle the problem, and the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) was formed in 1977.
Hain told the Inquiry about the kind of violence that the far-right used. They physically attacked, and sometimes killed, people. He describes them as ‘swaggering’ through predominantly Black areas, threatening and committing violence. The NF attacked Jewish, Muslim and Black citizens. The ANL sought to stand in their way and block this violence.
Hain did not understand why the police protected these racist thugs, a group ‘whose avowed purpose is to stir up and promote racial hatred’. He notes that such behaviour was criminalised by a later Labour government (that he served in).
He repeated that the ANL was set up as part of a deliberate strategy to do things differently.
There were local groups – no central membership list – and lots of groups based in specific communities and professions such as ‘Nurses Against the Nazis’, ‘Skateboarders Against the Nazis’ etc. The ANL put out leaflets, and campaigned against the NF’s electioneering. They mobilised to stop them openly demonstrating in the street.
Rock Against Racism organised music festivals, so the public could hear anti-racist messages from a range of punk and reggae bands.
He calls it an ‘innovative campaign’ and went on to explain the concern about the far-right influencing youth culture, especially skinhead culture. Punk bands were invited to play at Rock Against Racism. Hain is proud of a formerly racist skinhead who said he had had been convinced by the arguments of the ANL.
Hain was questioned about physical resistance being used by anti-fascists. He responded with some questions of his own:
‘What should be done? Should the National Front just be allowed to continue to march unchecked or should somebody try to do something about it, as we did, and was done in 1936? Now, in 1936, Mosley’s Blackshirts were attacking Jewish communities very predominant in that part of East London. In the modern age, it’s been Black or Muslim communities that the National Front have targeted. Who else was protecting them?’
When it was suggested that these demonstrations and counter-demonstrations caused a ‘public order challenge’ for the police, Hain was unequivocal about the police’s public safety remit:
‘Their purpose should have been combatting racism and Nazism and its menacing rise at that time’.
A report from 1978 [UCPI0000011673] shows that the ANL was aware of NF’s plans to hold at rally at Islington Town Hall on 27 April. The report says the group, including Hain, were ‘drawing up plans for disruption’. Hain disagrees with their aims being mischaracterised in this way – they actually wanted the event not to take place at all:
‘It’s seen through a prism where we are the bad guys, and the racist and Nazis are not. The NF targeted areas with Black/ Muslim/ Jewish populations for their demos. They attacked mosques and synagogues. I think the police should have been on our side in opposing them’
The Inquiry was shown an SDS report [UCPI 0000016579] of the ANL’s national conference March 1981. A section headed ‘Violence’ was read out, which makes it clear that the ANL explicitly opposed the use of ‘tit for tat’ violence, and did promote a wide range of ways of non-violently supporting the victims of racist violence. Hain said he is grateful that the Inquiry has included these documents.
The next SDS report [MPS-0726913] was about Rock Against Racism, which – as mentioned above – held a giant carnival in Victoria Park in East London, in 1978.
Many thousands of people (the police report says more than 30,000) marched to the park from central London that day to see a host of punk and reggae bands, including Tom Robinson Band, X-Ray Spex, Steel Pulse, Misty in Roots and the Clash.
Asked if he would accept that there is a value in the police collecting such intelligence, Hain replied that the spycops could just have asked them, or the Met officers who were liaising with the organisers of such an open, non-confrontational event, what their intentions were.
From the report it becomes clear that the police were mainly worried about the amount of people that would stay over in London, and how that would affect police protection of a planned NF march the next day.
The BBC’s True Spies documentary featured an anecdote from a spycop called ‘Geoff‘ (HN21) about people ‘sitting on sacks of money’. Hain remembers that occasion, it was simply that the money had been collected in donations from people who attended the gig in the park.
Jumping forward nearly 20 years, the Inquiry produced an SDS report [MPS-0742234] on a large ANL meeting that took place at the Camden Centre on 11 June 1994. It was attended by 320 delegates from over 200 separate organisations. By then, as well as being on the ANL Steering Committee, he was a Labour MP.
Hain cited the ‘Wilson doctrine’, an established principle that there must be disclosure of any surveillance of MPs, and said:
‘I think it’s wholly wrong, and I suspect close to being illegal, that undercover officers were reporting on me.’
BACK TO THE EIGHTIES
The Inquiry then produced an SDS report from March 1980 [UCPI0000013868] about a meeting at Westminster Central Hall. This debate, entitled ‘The crisis and the future of the Left’, was chaired by Hain. Tariq Ali and Paul Foot spoke, alongside three MPs; Audrey Wise, Stuart Holland and Tony Benn.
‘For the life of me, I don’t know why they were there except that they were obsessed with spying on left wing events, and it comes back to my concern that the progressive radical side of British politics seemed to be their targets.
‘And when I look back over the years, 50-plus years in politics and bring it up to date, it seems that the constant targeting of progressive radicals of various descriptions, from those explicitly on the left or on the so-called far left, or those on the centre-left, seems to be the focus of attention rather than the right and the far-right’
Hain was told the Inquiry will be hearing about the infiltration of the far-right too. But due to the supposed ‘risks’ to those spycops who were deployed against these groups, this evidence may be heard in secret.
In 2018, The Guardian together with the Undercover Research Group, published a list of groups known to be targeted – as disclosed by the Inquiry – predominantly left wing groups. In stark contrast, the far-right was barely infiltrated by the spycops at all.
As we heard earlier in the week, in the period currently being examined by the Inquiry, they only had one officer infiltrating a far right group and that was by accident. ‘Peter Collins‘ (HN303, 1973-77), infiltrated the Workers Revolutionary Party. Not knowing he was a spy, they asked him, in turn, to infiltrate a breakaway group of the far-right National Front.
The Inquiry was shown several SDS reports from innocuous meetings that Hain is named as attending. One from June 1980 [UCPI0000014020] covered a special conference of the Labour Party at the Wembley Conference Centre.
From July 1980 we saw a report [UCPI0000014080] on British withdrawal from Northern Ireland.
In February 1982 Hain and others spoke at a meeting at Borough Community Centre, about the Right to Work march against unemployment. For reasons that are unclear, the SDS reported on it [UCPI 0000017175].
As well as the pointlessness from a public safety or national security standpoint, Hain was concerned not just about how long these files are retained, but about what they indicate about MI5. He said the Director General of MI5 came to him in July 2000 and said the Security Service files on him had been destroyed. It is obvious that they have not, as these were retrieved from somewhere. The SDS files released by the Inquiry that start with a ‘UCPI00000…’ reference numbers are largely copies from MI5 archives.
Hain became a Minister in 1997, and would have been security-vetted at this time, before being privy to sensitive intelligence.
TAKING SIDES
He said that he is no ‘starry eyed romantic’, that he supports the rule of law and wants to see effective policing. He believes that there is legitimate undercover policing as well as illegitimate undercover policing. He knows that some undercover officers have done important anti-terrorist work, for example. However he would like to see proper boundaries drawn for undercover operations.
He pointed out that if the police adopt an approach of spying on everyone in the hope that this throws up useful intelligence, that leads to the kind of approach that encourages spying on the entire Muslim communities:
‘In case you might catch the odd Jihadi, who are in a tiny minority… a lot of this went wrong from the very beginning. There seemed to be open season on progressive or left wing ideas and movements’
Hain ended with a clear message to the Inquiry about what he thinks they need to do. Referring again to the Stephen Lawrence family being spied on, he would like the Inquiry to address the issue of proportionality and right and wrong:
‘I’d like also you to address what was right and wrong about history. Was it right to infiltrate women’s rights groups in the early 1970s? Was it correct to infiltrate the Anti-Apartheid Movement, which had the objective of stopping apartheid? I know it’s not the Inquiry’s purposes to get involved in politics, but you can’t avoid making a choice here.’
That said he hopes that the Chair’s final recommendations will help to ensure that this kind of intrusion does not happen again.
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After the last round of public hearings of the Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, we learned that it was holding further secret hearings with spycops, from which victims and the wider public were excluded. 
Women deceived into relationships by spycops have told their own stories in two recent books.
‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-1980) also reported on SKAN, and seemed preoccupied with one Black boy in particular. Gray reported on his family life, that he spoke at a SKAN meeting, and leafletted schools in a campaign against education cuts, among other things.
This is the second of our weekly reports on the current round of Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings examining the actions of the Metropolitan Police’s undercover political unit, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), from 1973-82.
While the AAM resorted to mainstream methods, younger people wanted to do more. This is how the 
