Without warning, a new law is being rushed through parliament to allow police and other state agencies to self-authorise their agents to commit literally any crime. It would also prohibit civil claims by their victims.
Crimes would be permissable if they protect whatever is meant by ‘the economic wellbeing’ of the country. Authorisations would be given without limit or judicial oversight. The powers would extend well beyond the police and security services to include the likes of the Food Standards Agency, Competition & Markets Authority, and the Gambling Commission.
The pace of this law is breathtaking. It was published on 24th September, it had its second reading in the Commons on 5th October and will probably be in the House of Lords before the end of the month.
At the second reading, Labour and the SNP abstained, though about 20 Labour MPs rebelled to oppose it.
The third reading will be on Thursday 15th October, with amendments that would establish some safeguards to prohibit:
Some serious serious crimes such as murder, torture and rape;
Trade union infiltration and blacklisting;
Agents having sexual relationships whilst in their undercover persona
Labour leader Keir Starmer is reported to be planning to instruct Labour MPs to abstain on the third reading, even if the changes being put forward by the opposition are not adopted.
What You Can Do
Before the third reading on Thursday, please email your MP and ask them to support the amendments and oppose the Bill.
Unite the Union has made an online tool that makes it quick and easy to send the email.
Joint Statement
The general secretaries of 14 trade unions, 20 Labour MPs and a number of campaigning organisations including the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance, have signed a joint statement:
We the undersigned have grave concerns about the measures set out in the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill as introduced to the Commons at second reading (5 October 2020).
As many will be aware from the circumstances leading up to the setting up of the Mitting (formerly Pitchford) Inquiry into undercover policing, there has been a documented history of state surveillance of lawful trade union activity and justice campaigns in recent years, including apparent links with the criminal blacklisting of trade union members. We are also alarmed by the conduct of undercover police in pursuing surveillance of legitimate civil society organisations including anti-racist organisations, family justice campaigns and environmental groups.
Whilst the government has assured us that the bill will not apply retrospectively, we remain concerned that passing legislation with undue haste and insufficient scrutiny in Committee – pre-empting the findings of the Mitting Inquiry – risks compromising and undermining legal proceedings through which victims of previous criminal conduct by CHIS operatives are seeking justice.
Aside from the timing of the new licensing of criminal conduct by CHIS operatives, our specific concerns about the bill as it stands include:
The vague definition of “economic wellbeing” being susceptible to interpretations which would implicate aspects of legitimate trade union activity;
The failure to expressly rule out the authorisation of murder, torture or sexual violence by a CHIS;
The lack of any provision to compensate innocent victims of criminal conduct undertaken by a CHIS;
The unnecessarily broad range of agencies able to authorise unlawful conduct;
The reliance on the Human Rights Act as limiting the scope of what might be legally authorised, despite the government’s own previous reliance on a legal defence that the State cannot be held responsible under the terms of the European Convention on Human Rights for actions undertaken by individual agents, and;
The lack of prior judicial authorisation or even concurrent judicial oversight.
In light of these concerns, we would ask the government to withdraw the bill to allow for due consideration of the evidence and findings of the Mitting Review, or at the very least to make substantial amendments to the Bill to meet the concerns outlined above.
If sufficient amendments to ensure proper safeguarding in the legislation are not secured, the bill will remain unfit for purpose and cannot be allowed to proceed.
We urge all those who share our concerns to use the tool at this link to email their MP today, to ask them to support the amendments submitted by the Labour frontbench, and to oppose the bill at third reading if the amendments are unsuccessful and the government refuses to withdraw the bill.
Signatories:
Len McCluskey, general secretary, Unite the Union
Matt Wrack, general secretary, Fire Brigades Union (FBU)
Sarah Woolley, general Secretary, Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union (BFAWU)
Dave Ward, general secretary, Communication Workers Union (CWU)
Manuel Cortes, general secretary, Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association (TSSA)
Mick Whelan, general secretary, Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF)
Mick Cash, general secretary, Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT)
Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary, National Education Union (NEU)
Jo Grady, general secretary, University and College Union (UCU)
Mark Serwotka, general secretary, Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS)
Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary, National Union of Journalists (NUJ)
Steve Gillan, general secretary, Prison Officers Association (POA)
Ian Lawrence, general secretary, NAPO
Bob Monks, general secretary, United Road Transport Union
Kate Wilson has received startling admissions from the Metropolitan Police Service and the National Police Chiefs Council – at a hearing before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal at the Royal Courts of Justice being held this week.
These far-reaching admissions highlight the inadequacy of even the current legislation to provide protection to members of the public from dangerous abuses by agents and informers who are the Covert Human Intelligence Sources referred to in the current parliamentary CHIS Bill. This bill is shockingly set to significantly reduce existing levels of protection.
The police have admitted that they breached Kate’s Article 8 ECHR rights – to a private and family life – after conceding that her surveillance by at least six undercover officers over a sustained period, was neither proportionate nor justified. Previously they had only admitted that Article 8 was breached by the undercover officer Mark Kennedy when he deceived her into a long-term intimate and sexual relationship. Now they admit the intrusion was even greater.
Yet the police continue to claim that authorisations for surveillance of Kate and the environmental and social justice movements she was active in were lawful and legitimate; arguments particularly relevant right now with the worryingly hasty passage of the CHIS (Criminal Conduct) Bill through parliament. Kate fiercely contests this claim, and will ask that the court now examine the evidence and circumstances of the human rights breaches, as well as the lawfulness of the operations as a whole.
Kate says
“These admissions have wide reaching significance for the public at large. Over 30 women now know that they were deceived into intimate, sexual relationships with undercover officers. Many more people were subjected to similar infiltration by undercover officers. What happened to me was by no means unique, and hundreds of people will have had their rights violated in this way. These admissions mean it is simply not sustainable to say these operations were legitimate, proportionate, or lawful”
Of course, if the CHIS bill passes, new cases like Kate’s may no longer be able to be heard as the UK government are resistant to setting legal limits on any conduct that undercover operatives may consider to be justified. Other governments, such as Canada and the USA have written into security law that offences such as murder, torture, and sexual violence are not acceptable conduct for any reason.
Kate’s case should broadcast loudly to the public, and our legislators, that setting no limits on intrusions into the lives of citizens by security services and other undercover agents is profoundly dangerous for democracy.
Kate has fought this case for nine years. She has faced repeated attempts to shut down and delay her case, and fears this may be the start of another attempt to close the case down and avoid further scrutiny. The delays so far have been so severe that funding for legal counsel is exhausted and Kate is now a litigant in person – a huge undertaking against the vast resources of the police.
Many aspects of Kate’s case still need answers, such as whether her relationship with Kennedy was conducted with the knowledge and agreement of senior police officers, whether she suffered discrimination at the hands of the police because she was a woman, and whether Mark Kennedy and these other officers interfered with her right to freedom of expression, and freedom of association because of her political beliefs.
A Metropolitan Police investigation has upheld a complaint by a woman deceived into a relationship by former undercover officer Andy Coles.
The Met have found Jessica’s claims credible and ruled that Coles would face charges of gross misconduct if he were still a serving officer.
It’s a huge blow to Coles, who has consistently denied Jessica’s account of his abuse as he tries to shore up his crumbling credibility as a city councillor and public figure.
ANDY COLES: LYING THEN
Andy Coles was a member of the Metropolitan Police’s disgraced Special Demonstration Squad. In the 1990s he spent four years undercover as peace and animal rights activist ‘Andy Davey’. Like many other officers in Britain’s political secret police, Coles abused his role to deceive women into sexual relationships. The most significant of these was a woman known as ‘Jessica’.
Jessica was, as Coles knew, a vulnerable teenager at the time. He told her he was a 24 year old who shared her worldview and became her first proper boyfriend. In reality, he was 32 and married, paid to be sent into her life to betray the values she held dear.
The relationship lasted a year. Two other women, Emily and Joy, have also spoken about being the target of his unwanted sexual attentions during his deployment.
Coles went on to have a career in Special Branch, managing and training other officers for the same role as he’d held.
He retired from the police in 2012, about a year after the spycops scandal broke. In Peterborough he became a Conservative member of the City Council for Fletton and Woodston ward, and was appointed to the post of Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Cambridgeshire.
When he was exposed in 2017, Coles resigned as Deputy PCC within hours without explanation. However, seemingly believing lower standards apply to councillors than Deputy PCCs, he did not step down as a councillor. Every council meeting since then has seen protests calling for his resignation. His seat will be up for re-election in May this year.
ANDY COLES: LYING NOW
A year later, in 2018, the Undercover Policing Inquiry confirmed that he had indeed been a Special Demonstration Squad officer. Coles released twoprepared statements to the press, which only confirmed what the Inquiry had said, and flatly denied what he called the ‘lurid allegations’ made by Jessica:
‘The allegation the ALF activist known as “Jessica” makes that I had a sexual relationship with her for over a year while undercover are [sic] completely untrue’.
The Undercover Policing Inquiry, which has access to secret police files, had already granted Jessica ‘core participant’ status in August 2017. They have only given that designation to around 200 of the most seriously affected victims of spycops. Clearly, they find her account credible too.
Through his lawyer, he told the media yesterday that he still denies having ‘an inappropriate relationship’ with Jessica.
Now that the relationship is officially regarded as credible, he is perhaps trying to insert some room for manoeuvre and suggests that even if he did have a relationship it was somehow ‘appropriate’. That quite plainly cannot be true, as has been repeatedly and unequivocally established by a range of senior officers and official investigations.
NEVER APPROPRIATE
Chief Constable Mick Creedon produced a series of reports on the political secret police under the aegis of Operation Herne, and in 2014 he was clear:
‘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.’
When the Metropolitan Police gave their landmark apology to women deceived into relationships in 2015, two years before Jessica found out the truth about Coles, they said:
‘some officers, acting undercover whilst seeking to infiltrate protest groups, entered into long-term intimate sexual relationships with women which were abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong… these relationships were a violation of the women’s human rights, an abuse of police power and caused significant trauma. 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’.
‘It is grossly unprofessional. It is a diversion from what they are there to do. It is morally wrong because people have been put there to do a particular task and people have got trust in them. It is never acceptable under any circumstances… for them to engage in sex with any subject they come into contact with.’
When his deployment ended in 1995, Andy Coles updated the Special Demonstration Squad’s Tradecraft Manual to incorporate his experience and methods, including tips on conducting the kinds of relationship he now denies having.
After this, he trained the first undercover officers in the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), a new sister unit to the Special Demonstration Squad, teaching them to steal the identities of dead children. He went on to become Head of Training for the NPOIU’s oversight body ACPO-TAM as they deployed a number of the most notorious spycops who committed the same kind of abuses, such as Mark Kennedy.
WHAT’S HE GOT TO HIDE?
During the Met’s investigation into Jessica’s complaint, Coles was interviewed twice under caution and both times he supplied a prepared statement. He refused to answer questions.
Why did he resign as Deputy PCC? Why did he refuse to answer questions put to him by his old colleagues at the Metropolitan Police? Why does he continually refuse to comment, except to confirm what’s officially concretely established and deny the rest?
These are not the actions of someone who believes they have done nothing wrong. They are more like the response of someone who is desperately trying to hide from the truth.
The fact that his old colleagues at the Met, not known for their bias against themselves, have found Jessica’s report of a relationship credible makes Coles’s desperate denials appear transparently false.
‘The Metropolitan Police has taken no further action against me’
That’s an extraordinary response to the Met upholding a complaint against him and announcing that they would bring the most serious disciplinary charges against him if only it were still in their power to do so.
Despite the Met’s investigators having spoken to many people who knew Coles and Jessica at the time, and seen documentary proof such as contemporaneous letters, Coles desperately repeats his lie:
‘I deny the accusations made completely. I denied them when they were first made, I deny them now’
While his current friends and colleagues on the council may forgive his abuse of a woman thirty years ago, if he admits it happened it means he has been lying to them since 2017. They would not look so benevolently on that. So he goes on, as the evidence piles up all around him, lying to his peers and compounding the damage he has done to Jessica.
STALLING AS HIS LIES ARE FALLING
Coles is still refusing to answer, merely saying through his lawyer that ‘it would not be appropriate to respond outside of the Inquiry’.
He talks as if the Inquiry is a court and he might prejudice a fair trial. It’s yet another deceit he is playing on the public. He knows full well that the inquiry process does not restrict him at all and that he is at liberty to say what he wants. Any number of former spycops have given interviews to television and press, made public appearances, one even hired a publicity agent.
Coles knows this is merely a way to kick the can down the road. Though the Inquiry is not a court of any kind, it is as slow as any process in the judicial system. Initiated six years ago and originally scheduled to conclude in summer 2018, it has yet to begin. There are no dates set for officers from Coles’ era to give evidence, and the whole thing is not expected to finish until 2025 at the earliest.
It leaves Coles continuing in his respected public role while Jessica – and the wider public – still wait for the truth about full extent of Britain’s counter-democratic secret police units.
‘I’m pleased the complaint was upheld however I am disappointed at the lack of accountability. Andy Coles was allowed to retire in 2013 at a time when the revelations about undercover officers having sexual relationships and even children with unsuspecting women had started to come out. I would like to know what his superior officers knew or ought to have known about our relationship. Was he properly supervised?
‘Kate Wilson is in court later this week fighting to find answers to what happened to her. Her relationship with an undercover police officer happened a decade after mine. This is not historic abuse. It’s systematic and institutionalised sexism in the police.’
Men who abuse their public roles to violate women should not be in positions of civic trust. This isn’t just about what he did 30 years ago, appalling as that was. This is also about his unrelenting deviousness and lack of integrity today.
And whether you can be at the protest or not, please sign and share the petition launched by one of Coles’ fellow councillors calling on him to resign.
Join us outside court on 27 February 2020 to support Kate Wilson in the next hearing of her landmark human rights case that could lay bare the inner workings and chain of command of Britain’s political secret police.
Kate was deceived into a long-term, intimate relationship with an undercover Metropolitan police officer, Mark Kennedy. She is bringing a case to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, Britain’s special court for human rights affected by state surveillance.
Even before the full case is heard, these preliminary hearings have brought significant victories. The Met said they concede Kate’s claim that they violated her fundamental right to freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment.
The Met also admitted that there are many thousands of relevant documents, and the sample seen shows the fine detail in which her relationship with Kenedy was recorded, detailing a dozen visits to stay with her parents, even describing gifts he bought for her. Kennedy’s ‘handler’ officer watched them together.
It’s demolished the Met’s wall of denial, built up over years claiming such relationships were the actions of rogue officers acting without management approval.
Kate is one of eight women whose legal case against the Met elicited the police’s historic apology of 2015 in which we were told:
‘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’
That came a year after another official report into the spycops scandal was equally unquivocal:
‘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 have proof that those statements are lies. If this comes from a 200 page sample of the 10,000 pages that mention Kate, imagine what there is in the rest.
The demo is outside Kate’s hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice on Thursday 27 February, 9.30am. Here’s an event listing for more details on that.
As for the basis of the case itself, here are the specifics:
Spycops Breaching Human Rights
Kate’s asserting that the Metropolitan Police breached five article of the European Convention of Human Rights:
Article 3
Article 3 prohibits torture and “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. This is an absolute right, there are no circumstances that make this treatment acceptable.
“I have experienced the psychological damage that these operations can cause. It is deep and it is long lasting, and I think that the intrusiveness and the psychological violence that is inherent in these tactics, and not just the sexual relationships, but the intimacy, the abuse of trust, which is completely inherent to any undercover policing operation could be seriously underestimated by anyone who has not been subjected to that tactic.”
– Kate Wilson
In their 2015 apology, the Metropolitan Police admitted the relationships were a “gross violation of personal dignity and integrity,” and said officers “preyed on the women’s good nature and had manipulated their emotions to a gratuitous extent.”
These relationships caused serious long-term harm and psychological trauma to the victims and others close to them. This, and the nature of the deception involved, mean they were violations of Article 3. If this is upheld in court, a change in the law around the authorisation of intimate relationships by undercover officers might be forced.
“What happened to us has been akin to psychological torture”
– ‘Lisa’
“It turns your life upside down. Everything that you thought you knew suddenly becomes unreal; everything changes. You do not know who you can trust any more. It destroys everything.”
– Helen Steel
Article 8
Article 8 provides a right to respect for one’s private and family life, home and correspondence.
“I have been abused in by an undercover police officer who was sent into my life, into my home, into my parents’ home, and into my bed by the Metropolitan Police.”
– Kate Wilson
Intimate and sexual relationships by undercover officers concealing their real identity from the other person/s in the relationship/s represent a clear violation of the right to respect for private and family life. These relationships involved intrusion into people’s families, with some officers attending family funerals, and helping women through the grieving process. In their Apology, the Met Police admitted it was a “gross violation” of the women’s privacy.
“I met him when I was 29, and he disappeared about three months before I was 35. It was the time when I wanted to have children”
– ‘Alison’
Articles 10 & 11
Article 10 provides the right to freedom of expression, and Article 11 protects the right to freedom of assembly and association, including the right to form trade unions.
“I have been the subject of systematic surveillance and violations of my intimacy, my right to privacy, and my bodily integrity, for at least the last 18 years by police forces that are cooperating across European borders. Put simply it is a story of human rights abuse and persecution by secret political police because of my beliefs and political activities” – Kate Wilson
Women have been targeted because of their participation in social justice campaigns. Intimate and sexual relationships have been used as a tactic to infiltrate campaigning and political organisatons. These relationships resulted in real psychological harm, violating the right to freedom of expression, and the right to freedom of assembly and association.
Any “like-minded activist” was considered a valid target for infiltration, and further authorisation was not sought for their inclusion into the operation, regardless of their relevance to any investigation. This approach clearly interferes with the right to freedom of expression, and the right to freedom of assembly and association.
“There is probably more damage and violence that happens on a regular basis on a Friday night in town centres when people get drunk, but there is not a proposal to infiltrate every pub in the country on the off-chance that you are going to be able to prevent violence and damage. This is about political policing and trying to interfere with what is actually a recognised right to freedom of association and freedom of expression.”
– Helen Steel
“It has had a massive impact on my political activity…I suspected within about a month of his disappearance, and after about 18 months of different searches I came to believe it… I withdrew from political activity.”
– ‘Alison’
Article 14
Article 14 contains a prohibition of discrimination.
The relationships perpetrated by undercover police officers have overwhelomingly been men preying on women. It is institutional sexism. Undercover officers having sexual relationships with female activists plainly has a discriminatory effect on women being able to exercise their human rights under Articles 3, 8, 10 and 11.
“This highlights the sexist mindset that thought that it was acceptable for the police to abuse women, and derail our lives in order to shore up the fake identities of these undercover policemen so they could undermine political movements and campaign groups.”
– Helen Steel
Qualified Human Rights
Whilst Article 3 – the right to freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment – is an absolute right, Articlethe others in Kate’s claim are qualified rights that can be breached in certain circumstances. But interference is permissible only if there is a legal basis, the interference is necessary in a democratic society, or the interference is proportionate to what is sought to be achieved by carrying it out.
There is nothing in law which states that if a police officer suspects an individual of involvement with a political movement, that officer is entitled to have a sexual relationship with the person to try to find out.
Sexual and intimate relationships cannot be said to be necessary – there are a multitude of reasons why any individual might decline to become intimate with another person. Given the level of invasion of privacy and the serious psychological harm caused by such relationships they cannot be thought of as proportionate for getting information on political campaign groups.
‘Collateral Intrusion’ and Human Rights
“He is in my mother’s wedding photograph, and I and my current partner have to see him in that.”
– ‘Alison’
Intrusion into the lives of people associated with the targets of the undercover officers is termed by the police ‘Collateral Intrusion.’ Perversely, its authorisation appears to require less rigorous tests than intrusion into the lives of “suspects”
The depth of the intrusion into the claimants’ lives also meant a deep intrusion into the lives of family members and close friends. For example, undercover police officers “infiltrated” deeply emotional family gatherings such as funerals, weddings and birthday celebrations. The psychological harm inflicted, not only on the claimants, but on close members of our family – including infirm, elderly relatives, and forming significant bonds with children – cannot be justified.
“There is no justification for somebody coming to my father’s funeral with me. There was no justification for putting an undercover cop into my family’s life.”
– ‘Lisa’
Collateral Intrusion is, it seems, a euphemism for violating the fundamental human rights of people who are not even the specific subjects of surveillance, without any real consideration of the psychological damage that such deep deceptions might cause.
In the same way that it is not considered necessary and proportionate for undercover officers to form intimate sexual relationships, it is always wholly inappropriate for a police officer to insert themselves into extended families, in the way that being part of long-term relationships would necessitate.
Instead of being seen as ‘Collateral Intrusion’ that can be easily authorised, every individual whose Article 8 Human Rights may be breached by an operation should be afforded the respect of having the merits of that intrusion specifically considered and recorded, including the specific reasons why it is considered necessary and proportionate.
Join us outside court on 27 February 2020 to demand truth and justice for Kate Wilson and a nation whose political life has been corrupted by spycops.
The Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) is an independent, judge-led inquiry into undercover policing in England and Wales.
Its main focus is the activity of two undercover units who deployed long-term undercover officers into a variety of political groups: the Special Demonstration Squad (1968-2008) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (1999-2011).
Officers from these units lived as activists for years at a time. More than 1,000 groups were spied on, though the Inquiry has named less than 100. Activist researchers have produced a more complete list of those targeted.
Beyond collecting information personal details about people’s lives, officers often:
On 6 March 2014, after more than three years of escalating revelations, the Home Secretary announced in Parliament that there would be a full-scale public inquiry under the terms of the Inquiries Act 2005.
The process began on 28 July 2015, with opening remarks on the purpose, remit and intent from the Chair, Lord Pitchford.
Who will be giving evidence at the Undercover Policing Inquiry?
The witnesses will include officers and people that they spied on. The Inquiry will publish a draft list of witnesses giving evidence at least four weeks before the hearing.
In these first hearings, we’ll be hearing from officers deployed in the Special Demonstration Squad, their managers and some of the people they spied on, from the squad’s inception in 1968 until 1982.
We won’t get to see the files that are going to be cited and discussed in the hearings until the day they are mentioned.
How will the Undercover Policing Inquiry take evidence from witnesses?
The Inquiry tries to avoid being an adversarial format with witnesses feeling cross-examined by hostile lawyers. Instead, all the lawyers involved – representing police, victims and the inquiry itself – hand in questions the would like a witness to answer.
A witness is then questioned by one neutral lawyer, the Counsel to the inquiry. At the end of questioning, there is a short break while Counsel checks with the various lawyers if they feel anything has been missed or needs answering in more detail.
How will the Undercover Policing Inquiry organise its investigation?
The Inquiry’s investigations will be broken into three modules:
Module 1: Examination of the deployment of undercover officers in the past, their conduct, and the impact of their activities on themselves and others.
Module 2: Examination of the management and oversight of undercover officers, including their selection, training, supervision, care after deployments, and the legal and regulatory framework within which undercover policing was carried out.
Module 2a will involve managers and administrators from within undercover policing units.
Module 2b will involve senior managers higher in the chain of command as well as police personnel who handled intelligence provided by undercover police officers.
Module 2c will involve other government bodies with a connection to undercover policing, including the Home Office.
Module 3: Examination of current undercover policing practices and of how undercover policing should be conducted in future.
Module 1 has been broken down into six ‘tranches’.
Tranche 1 hearings will be taking evidence about the activities of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) from its formation in 1968 to 1982.
Tranche 1 has, in turn, been broken into three phases:
Phase 1 evidence covered 1968-72.
Phase 2 examines the SDS from 1973 to 1982.
In Phase 3, the Inquiry will hear from SDS managers 1968-1982.
The subsequent tranches will examine:
Tranche 2 – Special Demonstration Squad officers and managers and those affected by deployments (1983-1992)
Tranche 3 – Special Demonstration Squad officers and managers and those affected by deployments (1993-2007)
Tranche 4 – National Public Order Intelligence Unit officers and managers and those affected by deployments
Tranche 5 – Other undercover policing officers and managers and those affected by deployments
Tranche 6 – Management and oversight (including of intelligence dissemination) by mid and senior rank officers, other agencies and government departments
What are the dates for the Undercover Policing Inquiry?
The first hearings of Tranche 1 took place between 2 and 19 November 2020.
Tranche 1 (Special Demonstration Squad 1968-82):
Phase 1, 1968-72. These hearings took place in November 2020.
Phase 2 1973-82. These hearings took place in April & May 2021.
In Phase 3, the Inquiry will hear from SDS managers 1968-1982. Dates for phase 3 are expected to be in the first half of 2022.
Tranche 2 (SDS 1983-1992) hearings are expected in the first half of 2023.
Tranche 3 (SDS 1993-2007) hearings are expected in the first half of 2024.
There is no timetable for the later tranches as yet.
Why are there such large gaps between hearings at the Undercover Policing Inquiry?
The Inquiry is handling hundreds of thousands of vintage files, collated from police, Security Service and other sources. It takes a long time to analyse these formulate lines of enquiry, and decide which people to call as witnesses. The witnesses then have to have the documents to be discussed. Everyone’s lawyers have to feed into the process of producing questions for witnesses.
Then, after the hearings, the evidence gathered has to be analysed and considered so the Inquiry can draw conclusions in their own right, as well as contributing to the approach of the next round of hearings.
How much will the Undercover Policing Inquiry cost?
Up to the end of 2020, the Inquiry had already cost £36,219,100. This will increase substantially as time goes on.
How long will the Undercover Policing Inquiry last?
The Inquiry was originally expected to publish its final report in summer 2018.
After a huge amount of deliberate delay from the police, the schedule was drastically revised. In May 2018, the Inquiry announced an ‘ambitious’ timeline that planned to deliver the final report to the Home Secretary in late 2023. A redacted version would have been expected to be published some time in 2024.
The Inquiry had already fallen a year behind this schedule before the Covid-19 pandemic. That postponed the initial hearings by five months. Additional delays have set it back a further seven months, putting it two years behind the ‘ambitious timeline’ of 2024.
When we’ll see the final report is anyone’s guess, but 2026 or 2027 seems plausible.
Where will the Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings be held?
Preliminary hearings were held at the Royal Courts of Justice. The evidential hearings were due to be held at 18 Pocock Street, London.
However, due to Covid restrictions, the hearings will be held in a virtual format for the foreseeable future. While there are these virtual hearings, the Inquiry is providing a live-screening venue in London, with space for around 50 people who pre-register.
Will the Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings be live streamed?
The first part of tranche 1, seven days in which those involved are giving opening statements to the Inquiry, will be live-streamed. After that, because the Inquiry is wary of releasing anything that might breach secrecy rules or the privacy of those involved, there will only be a live-transcription that has a ten-minute time delay. Additionally, the Inquiry will upload transcripts and audio files soon after the hearings.
At the preliminary hearings, the Inquiry published a transcript within a day or two. It’s been in weirdly formatted PDFs that are not that easy to read, but at least they’re there. It’s expected that the same will happen with the evidential hearings.
Where will I find out what’s going on?
We will be live tweeting on the COPS Twitter account, and publishing daily reports and weekly summaries on our blog, Facebook and email list (which you can join at the bottom of the sidebar on this page). Tom Fowler, an activist who was spied on by undercover officer Marco Jacobs, usually does opinionated live-tweeting too.
We also expect coverage from our friends at Police Spies Out of Lives (who represent women deceived into relationships by spycops) and the Undercover Research Group, with incisive comment and analysis.
In the mainstream media, Rob Evans and Paul Lewis at the Guardian, who have covered the scandal since it began and co-wrote the Undercover book, are highly likely to be doing quality reporting too.
The booklet, Safeguarding Young People and Adults from Ideological Extremism, had been circulated by Counter Terrorism Policing South East in the south-east of England to a range of ‘statutory partners’.
In the aftermath of negative media coverage, counter-terrorism officials at a national level rapidly conceded that XR were not extremist, and this mistaken publication by local police was being withdrawn. This didn’t stop Home Secretary Priti Patel from continuing to defend the decision that the police had now admitted was wrong.
IT WASN’T A ONE-OFF ERROR
But last week we learned of a 2019 briefing issued by Counter Terrorism Policing across the whole of England listing signs and symbols of extremists. Alongside white supremacists (whose page of logos get a disclaimer explaining that not all symbols are of counter-terrorism interest, and things like runes may be law-abiding paganism), were many symbols of left wing, anti-war, anti-fascist and environmental causes – including XR. These outnumber the far-right symbols 2:1.
Liking or disliking a swastika is extremism, say counter-terrorism police
The swastika and the sign of a swastika crossed out are both listed as symbols of extremism. Caring about fascism at all, whether for or against, is classed as extremist.
Groups that are not only wholly non-violent but whose sole purpose is to decrease violence – such as Campaign Against the Arms Trade, Animal Aid and Stop the Arms Fair – were included.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’s symbol is featured even though it has long been a mainstream sign for peace. It can be found as unpolitical print on clothing and consumer items, used in a similar way to the taijitu yin-yang symbol or yellow smiley.
Perhaps the most pertinent inclusion is the clenched fist logo. It has been used by groups as diverse as Kach (an Israeli ultra-nationalist party banned from elections due to racism), Librarians Against DRM (US librarians opposing electronic copyright controls on e-books) and the Tom Robinson Band (late 1970s UK rock band best known for 2468 Motorway).
Left to right: Symbols for Kach, Librarians Against DRM, and the Tom Robinson Band
The clenched fist isn’t indicative of any specific ideology or tactic. It is a salute of solidarity and unity used in many circumstances. It has no fixed meaning beyond the defiance of established power. And it is precisely that which the political secret police regard as the common thread binding all those it brands as extremists.
‘there is no legal definition of what “domestic extremism” even means, leaving the police with complete discretion in deciding what it covers. “Extremism” and “domestic extremism” are used interchangeably by the police to differentiate from terrorism. The current criteria is so broad and ambiguous that David Anderson, a former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, has described it as “manifestly deficient” and last summer, the Home Office finally confirmed it had stopped using such terms. The police, as we have seen, have not.’
IT WASN’T ANYTHING NEW
The recent revelations aren’t news to those familiar with the forerunners of counter-terrorism policing, the political undercover units the Special Demonstration Squad (1968-2008) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (1999-2011).
These units, so beyond the pale that they’re the subject of a full-scale public inquiry set to begin in earnest in the summer, targeted exactly these sorts of ideas and activities. The Undercover Policing Inquiry has admitted that more than 1,000 groups were spied on over the 50 years. Put simply, there aren’t that many groups who can be a threat to public safety and national security.
The Inquiry refuses to publish the full list, and has only named 83 – less than half a group per officer deployed. Even with this paltry figure, it’s clear that – as with the counter-terrorism briefings – they share the same priorities. More officers have been deployed into antifascist groups than fascist (and for long periods).
Anton Setchell, National Co-ordinator Domestic Extremism, approves officer Mark Kennedy’s authorisation, 2008
In the face of stonewalling from the public inquiry that’s supposed to reveal the truth about spycops, the Undercover Research Group compiled a list of groups known to have been spied on by officers from those two units. They include organisations large and small, from open democratic trade unions to local animal welfare groups.
Leaked documents show that in 2008 the head of the spycops units, Anton Setchell, endorsed officer Mark Kennedy’s infiltrations of Climate Camp which was ‘sitting in the priority area for domestic extremism’. Meanwhile in 2011, a leaked email from Adrian Tudway, Setchell’s successor as chief of the political police, explains that the English Defence League are not considered extremists.
Green Party peer Jenny Jones had an extensive file that began after she was elected to the Greater London Assembly in 2000 and continued while she was on a police scrutiny panel, the Metropolitan Police Authority. She was later told that her file had been wiped along with a lot of unnecessary ones but when she checked, a whistleblower reports that the majority of her retained file was hurriedly shredded and a sanitised version presented to her.
It’s not surprising that right wing Conservative Priti Patel defends the political police’s attitudes, it seems most parties left of the Conservatives and right of UKIP have been spied on. The confirmed list includes the Labour Party, Liberal Party, Green Party, Socialist Party, Socialist Workers Party, Independent Labour Party, Workers Revolutionary Party, and the British National Party.
ANYONE CAN BE AN EXTREMIST
Around 750,000 UK citizens are members of spied-upon parties. Another 4.5 million are in the kind of environmental groups that are targeted. Any one of these people could become the target for the invasion of their personal life, fitting up with a wrongful conviction, terminating their employment and/or harassment by uniformed police.
As 90 year old peace campaigner John Catt found out, you don’t need a criminal record to be singled out, and he had to endure a nine-year legal battle to get his file deleted.
Belinda Harvey wasn’t even a member of a political organisation but was still one of the women targeted for a relationship by a spycop, something the Metropolitan Police themselves admit is a ‘gross violation that causes significant trauma’.
The family of Stephen Lawrence only wanted the truth about their son’s murder yet they’re one of many groups of grieving loved ones who were left wanting. Police resources that should have been spent catching killers were instead used to secretly obstruct justice in order to protect the police’s reputation.
Page from 2012 Greater Manchester Police briefing conflating activism with terrorism
DISSENT = EXTREMISM = TERRORISM
Despite the uproar surrounding the exposure of spycops, there has been no serious change in political policing. It has actually been made worse. The police’s political and anti-terrorist units have been amalgamated and been rebadged. The same work carries on but with a more active conflation of political dissent with terrorism.
Even this month’s revelations about the counter-terrorism Prevent programme demonising climate protesters only confirms what was already known, rather than revealing anything new.
In 2012, Greater Manchester Police’s Prevent officer circulated a document describing examples of terrorism. The list included, and effectively equated, a neo-Nazi planting nail-bombs and climate protesters blockading an airport runway.
REPRESSION IS THE PURPOSE
The Safeguarding Young People and Adults from Ideological Extremism briefing says ‘adopting health-conscious and environmentally sustainable lifestyles’ can be an indicator of extremism. Counter-terrorism police say it’s extreme to try to ensure other people are able to have the basic essentials of life. Only by living unsustainably can you avoid being extremist. How has it come to this?
The political police exist to prevent and quell organised threats to the current power structures. They don’t differentiate between a threat to life and limb, a threat to the political status quo, a threat to corporate profit, and a threat to police credibility. They hold no regard for democracy or legality. Groups are targeted irrespective of whether they’re open or clandestine, their methods violent or peaceful, legal or illegal.
By the same token, the political police do not care whether their work is legal and democratic or not. They have orchestrated large numbers of miscarriages of justice over a long period. They have psychologically and sexually abused women they spied on. They have illegally supplied information on politically active people to an equally illegal construction industry blacklist to prevent those people from getting work.
They have no regard for whether the groups and people targeted are trying to make a better world not. They do this because they represent the vested interests threatened by activism. Though their repression is an outrage, it mustn’t be a discouragement. They see our power, even when we can’t see it ourselves. To defend democracy, we must end political policing.
The public inquiry into Britain’s political secret police is publishing more names of undercover officers. Despite this, their list of known spycops is incomplete.
Is this is a catalogue of innocent incompetence despite spending £17m? Or deliberate obfuscation to protect the wrongdoers whose deeds the Inquiry exists to expose?
Whichever, it adds to the list of obstructions that have been the hallmark of this Inquiry.
TOO LITTLE TOO LATE
Last week the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) named the officer previously known as HN78. ‘Anthony “Bobby” Lewis’ is the only known black officer in the history of Britain’s political secret police. He spied on Stephen Lawrence’s family campaign as part of his infiltration of the Socialist Workers Party and Anti-Nazi League between 1991 and 1995.
There are known to have been at least 139 undercover officers in the 50 year history of the spycops units the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) & National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). Lewis is the 26th to have infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party, which means – even ignoring all as-yet unnamed officers – nearly 20% of all spycops targeted that one organisation. It is, by far, the most targeted group, attracting far more attention than the entirety of the far right.
The Inquiry was announced by the Home Secretary more than five years ago and was originally expected to have finished in summer 2018. Last week the Inquiry said it is hoping to start properly in summer 2020. We expect the final report to be published around 2025.
UCPI tweet announcing the cover name of undercover police officer ‘Anthony “Bobby” Lewis’
The release of Lewis’ fake name comes more than a year after the Inquiry decided to do it. With their new natty graphics on Twitter, the casual observer might think the Inquiry was starting to become more communicative with the public whose funds it so ravenously consumes.
However, they still haven’t even published a complete list of the officer names that they’ve agreed to publish. Their incomplete list that does exist doesn’t link to any further information on the officers (not even the stuff the Inquiry has published elsewhere on the same site). It is given in order of the officers’ fake surnames, and is not interactive, so you can’t order it by year of deployment, group infiltrated, or even just first name.
THE TRUTH, NOT THE WHOLE TRUTH
Additionally, the list of groups for each officer is incomplete. For example, for ‘Andy Davey’ – the undercover identity of officer Andy Coles – it only lists animal rights groups, but his brief as given in an internal SDS document was ‘Anarcho/ Animal rights/ Environmentalist & Pacifist’.
Coles spent a lot of time infiltrating various environmental and peace groups and going on their demos. However, if people from those organisations word-search the Inquiry site for their group’s name, they’ll draw a blank and the Inquiry will never hear their testimony.
Andy Coles (second from left) as ‘Andy Davey’, marching with peace group ARROW at 16 March 1991 protest at RAF Fairford. Photo: Noor Admani. Copyright: Peace News
Most of the spycops on the Inquiry website have only a limited amount of groups behind their name, or some none at all (just ‘anarchist groups’ for instance).
Also, because of the organic and intertwined way many of the groups were/are organised, targeting one group meant lots of information was gathered on closely linked groups and people as well.
Organisations like the Socialist Workers Party (and their forerunner International Socialists) were specifically targeted over the years because of their involvement in a wide variety of then-current campaigns.
For a spycop, a position next to a key organiser who knew a lot of people was a goldmine, they would get insights into how things were set up and who were the key players. Chumming up with such organisers also meant that the undercover officer could ask their buddy about people of interest, instead of having to approach that person directly with questions that could raise suspicion.
FILLING THE GAPS
The Undercover Research Group and the Guardian made a list of the groups targeted by spycops but, lacking the Inquiry’s access to police files, it cannot be a comprehensive list.
We keep our post How Many Spycops Have There Been? updated as new names are revealed. It currently stands at 75 named officers out of the total of 139.
Beyond our simple list, the Undercover Research Group have collated the Inquiry’s documents that use code numbers with ‘N’ prefixes for officers. They’ve collated the information along with that of independent researchers produced a more complete rundown of the N-numbered officers.
They have also made an interactive spycops timeline that shows which officers were deployed when and into what political movements. Just imagine what a thorough job the URG could do with a decent fraction of the millions that the Inquiry has wasted. If you’d like to help them, you can donate.
The Inquiry list contains the names used by 68 officers. Fifty of the others have already been granted total anonymity, so the Inquiry will not even publish their fake name. The Inquiry is going to withhold almost all officers’ real names. This means that, even if their deeds become known, they will not be held to account.
Victims of spycops, and the wider public, deserve the truth about what was done to them. The Inquiry is more concerned with protecting abusive officers from suffering any consequences of their abuses. We should all be given the fullest information.
These four officers may be among those identified by the Inquiry’s anonymising N-numbers, but there aren’t enough details given for researchers to be able to identify them. If this is deliberate then, given that their names have long been in the public domain, it is ludicrous.
“RC”
‘RC’ was involved in animal rights campaigns around Oxford 2002-06. Like so many spycops, he was an active organiser who used his vehicle to help out, and would occasionally denounce others as spies. He was exposed in February 2016. Although researchers find it overwhelmingly likely he was a spycop, the sliver of doubt means they have withheld his full name and picture.
‘Gary R’ appears to have been the successor to ‘RC’ in Oxford. He was joined for some of the time by a partner, ‘Abigail L’. They were exposed in July 2016. As with ‘RC’, researchers are withholding full names in case of the unlikely event that they’ve misidentified them.
These three officers are likely to have been from the National Public Order Intelligence Unit. Though they worked in parallel with the SDS performing the same function, and indeed some personnel moved between the two, the Inquiry has been much more secretive about this unit. There is no significant information on the NPOIU from the Inquiry that wasn’t already uncovered by activists and researchers.
“Mike Ferguson”
This SDS officer infiltrated the Anti Apartheid Movement in 1969-70, and was actively involved in the Stop The Seventy Tour campaign against South African sporting teams touring Britain.
Peter Hain, 1970
The campaign was chaired by Peter Hain, later to become a Labour MP and afterwards a member of the House of Lords. ‘Ferguson’ rose to become Hain’s deputy.
After a plan to throw smoke bombs and metal tacks onto a pitch got rumbled by police, Hain realised there was a spy and ejected a member – it wasn’t ‘Ferguson’, who stayed on to continue his espionage.
‘Ferguson’ was exposed in True Spies, a 2002 BBC documentary series on the SDS [transcript, video]. Hain is one of 200 significantly affected people who have been made core participants at the Inquiry. They acknowledged ‘Ferguson’ when granting Hain this status, yet have not mentioned him anywhere else before or since.
In 2015, ‘Ferguson’s daughter wrote an article for the Guardian about growing up with a spycop for a father – including identifying details about him – and described the impact of discovering the truth years later whilst watching True Spies. But for the Inquiry, the fact that he was outed on national TV nearly 20 years ago by his own police handler doesn’t seem to count for anything.
CONFIRMED BY INQUIRY BUT MISSING FROM THEIR LIST
The Inquiry’s list only covers undercover officers of the SDS. In their most recent Update Note, the Inquiry said it will publish a table of NPOIU officers ‘in due course’. The following four officers from the NPOIU have already been officially confirmed by the Inquiry, but they are not included in the cover names list.
Mark Kennedy aka “Mark Stone”
Mark Kennedy (right) under arrest during a climate change protest in 2009
The NPOIU officer whose unmasking in 2010 caused the whole spycops scandal to erupt. Deployed from 2003-09 into environmental, anti-capitalist and anti-fascist groups, Kennedy deceived several women he spied on into long-term intimate relationships (four of whom – Lisa, Kate, Naomi & Sarah – have taken legal action against the Metropolitan Police and received apologies).
Kennedy worked in at least 11 countries beyond the Inquiry’s remit of England and Wales. He was arrested several times during his time undercover, and caused at least 49 people to be wrongfully convicted.
After he left the police, he continued spying on the same activist community for corporate paymasters until he was caught by suspicious comrades.
“Rod Richardson” HN 596
(Inquiry also refer to him as EN 36)
NPOIU officer ‘Rod Richardson’
‘Rod Richardson’ infiltrated environmental, anarchist and animal rights groups from 2000-2003, as Mark Kennedy’s predecessor. He is one of – if not the very – first officers in the NPOIU. He was trained by Andy Coles, the SDS officer who’d updated that unit’s Tradecraft Manual after his own deployment ended in 1995.
Coles instructed him to use a technique that was, by then, anachronistic; stealing the identity of a dead child as the basis of a fake persona. In the online age, this became hugely risky, and it was a websearch of death certificates that led to the spycop ‘Richardson’ being unmasked in 2013.
The Met refused to confirm or deny it, much to the distress of the mother of the real Rod Richardson who had died as a baby.
In December 2016, the Inquiry confirmed that ‘Rod Richardson’ was an undercover officer of the NPOIU. His name, photo and details have been published in the mainstream media for six years, and the Inquiry has made quite a few references to him, yet because he is an NPOIU officer he does not appear in the Inquiry’s current list of names.
Based in Leeds from 2002-06, ‘Lynn Watson’ infiltrated environmental, anti-capitalist and peace groups, and was treasurer of The Common Place, a political social centre in the city.
She was especially active in the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, and there is video of her in a clown outfit arsing around in the car park of Hilary Benn MP’s office.
As well as being arrested on a couple of climate change protests, she also committed an offence under the Companies Act 2006 by filing the Common Place’s accounts under a false identity.
Despite all this public knowledge, it wasn’t until 30 October 2018 the Inquiry confirmed her identity by name as it granted her core participant status. The Inquiry will not be publishing her real name.
‘Marco’ began his deployment in Brighton in 2004, but after failing to fit in he was redeployed to Cardiff. There, he involved himself in a range of anti-war, anarchist and other causes.
In a dramatic court hearing in 2015 – presided over by Sir John Mitting who would later become Chair of the public inquiry – police conceded they wouldn’t contest the assertion that ‘Jacobs’ was a spycop. Just like his NPOIU contemporary Mark Kennedy, ‘Jacobs’ not only had multiple relationships with women he spied on but actually accompanied one of them to the funeral of her father.
As with ‘Lynn Watson’, ‘Jacobs’ had his cover name, photo and story published in the mainstream media in January 2011 and had a detailed section in the Undercover book. The Inquiry eventually confirmed his identity when making him a core participant in November 2016.
This SDS officer infiltrated the far-right in the 1990s. He is now dead. No application has been made by the family to withhold the real name or the cover name. The Inquiry said in November 2017 that it was intending to publish both.
The last two officers to be named by the Inquiry were Paul Gray and Bobby Lewis – both over a year after the Inquiry had announced its decision to do so. How much longer we’ll have to wait for HN 89 is anyone’s guess. We know that waiting for the full truth will take a lot longer, and it will not be something delivered by the Inquiry.
We’re pleased to
announce our Trade Union Conference on Saturday November 16th in
London.
The one-day event will increase understanding of the impact of political policing on trade unions and movements for social change since 1968.
Over three thousand workers were blacklisted, over one thousand organisations were spied on by undercover police, and tens of thousands of citizens have files held on them by Special Branch.
Bringing together trade unionists, activists and other campaigners, this conference will strengthen our campaign to ensure the forthcoming public inquiry is not a cover-up but exposes the truth of Britain’s political secret police. It will strengthen our struggle for justice and the protection of human rights.
CONSOLIDATING KNOWLEDGE
This conference will be an opportunity to consolidate knowledge and understanding about the political secret police units and the lessons learned for political and trade union activism today, as well as building support for the campaign opposing political policing and those still fighting for justice.
Due to ongoing delays and police obfuscation, the public inquiry into undercover policing is not due to report until at least 2023, and is realistically expected to be much later. We want the conference to lead to greater involvement by trade unions in applying pressure to make the public inquiry as open and democratic as possible.
INTERLOCKING IMPACTS
Another key element of this conference will be exploring the different and interlocking ways in which political policing and surveillance has adversely and disproportionately impacted on trade unions, women, and working class and diverse communities.
For example, several of the officers who deceived women into relationships and spied on anti-racist organisations are known to have infiltrated trade unions, and their intelligence reports were passed onto the companies involved in blacklisting.
The public inquiry
into undercover policing will – hopefully – begin hearing evidence
in June 2020, so our conference in November 2019 will offer an
excellent opportunity for trade unionists to review its progress to
date and become involved with campaigning on this issue.
By sharing and documenting these experiences and building on the recommendations from the ‘People’s Inquiry’ of July 2018, the conference will increase understanding of institutional sexism and racism in the police and call for action to support those still fighting for justice.
The conference will be jointly hosted by:
Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance (COPS), an umbrella organisation campaigning on behalf of many of those spied upon by Britain’s political secret police.
Police Spies Out of Lives (PSOOL) a campaign and support group for women affected by abusive relationships with undercover police officers.
The Blacklist Support Group (BSG), a justice campaign and support network for anyone caught up in UK construction industry blacklisting scandal.
CONFERENCE DETAILS
WHEN:Saturday November 16th, 10:00 – 17:00
WHERE: University of Greenwich Stephen Lawrence Building, Old Naval College, 30 Park Row, London SE10 9LS
COST: The conference is free, and food will be provided.
REGISTRATION: If you wish to attend, please register here.
An explosive new report on spycops in Scotland proves the need for a proper inquiry into their activity. The Scottish government is refusing to address the issue, so victims are launching a legal case to force them to act.
Officers from Britain’s political secret police worked all over the UK and beyond. They undermined campaigns, invaded families and violated the fundamental human rights that police are sworn to uphold. Everyone affected deserves answers, but people in Scotland are being shut out.
HALF AN INQUIRY
In March 2014 the Home Secretary announced there would be a full-scale public inquiry into political undercover policing. It came as a shock when, a year later, the Inquiry’s terms of reference said it would be limited to events in England and Wales.
SDS officer John Dines, undercover on the Scottish island of Barra
Many of the known spycops were active in Scotland, over a period of decades. Every known active officer was at the 2005 protests against the G8 meeting in Gleneagles.
A number of officers initiated and furthered intimate relationships with women they were spying on whilst in Scotland. Some of them took the women on special trips to Scotland purely to cement and deepen the relationships.
‘these relationships were a violation of the women’s human rights, an abuse of police power and caused significant trauma.’
All these visits to Scotland should have been sanctioned by the local police forces. Either Scottish police were complicit, or else they weren’t told, which would be a serious breach of protocol. Either way, it warrants investigation.
The matter has been twicedebated in the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Justice Minister met with victims of spycops in Scotland. The Scottish government, supported by every party in the parliament, made repeated official requests to be included in the public inquiry. The Home Office refused.
POLICE ASKED TO EXONERATE THEMSELVES
The Scottish government’s response to the rebuff was as baffling as it was insulting to victims. They hired HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland (HMICS) – a body of career police officers – to conduct a review.
HMICS decided to put the task in the hands of Stephen Whitelock, who had worked in and alongside the posts that deployed undercover officers, including authorising Strathclyde’s deployments of the very Met officers his review examines. It was a corrupt self-investigation. Victims protested to no avail, and so it went ahead without actually speaking to anyone who was subjected to the abuses.
It got worse. When the Strategic Review of Undercover Policing in Scotland was published in February 2018, it went beyond the anticipated whitewash. Much of its content was given over to other kinds of undercover policing, information that was utterly irrelevant to the political infiltrations. It didn’t even mention officers having relationships with women they spied on, let alone what happened and who was responsible.
The Scottish government accepted this vacuous decoy of a review and said there was no need for a further inquiry.
THE TRUTH ABOUT SPYCOPS IN SCOTLAND
Earlier this year, the Scottish Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance published Political Undercover Policing in Scotland: The facts about spycops in Scotland & the questions that remain unanswered [PDF].
Written by academic Dr Eveline Lubbers, it focuses on the two main spycops units, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU).
There are extensive details on the activity of nine officers in Scotland, their relationships, and the groups they targeted. It also covers Scottish issues affected by political policing (as opposed to officers visiting the country as part of UK or international issues) including anti-nuclear, anti-war, climate and trade union campaigns.
Additionally, the SCOPS report profiles a number of senior Scottish officers seconded to one of the Met’s spycops units. One of them, Phil Gormley, went on to become Chief Constable of Scotland.
‘Our research found that Scottish officers had crucial leading management roles in both the NPOIU and the overseeing body ACPO TAM, and were as such involved in setting the agenda for the secret undercover units. Our findings confirm that the NPOIU acted on a national level, and that Scotland was within its remit.’
The SCOPS report vaporises any credibility that the HMICS report may have had. SCOPS has delivered a copy of the report to every MSP, including Justice Minister Humza Yousaf. Mr Yousaf has yet to respond.
You can download the report for free, or order a paper copy to be delivered, at the bottome of the SCOPS page.
JUSTICE FOR ALL
The spycops committed crimes, some of them serious. They were agents provocateur, lied in court and set people up for wrongful convictions. They are known to have orchestrated dozens of miscarriages of justice, and the true figure may be in the thousands. They systematically sexually and psychologically abused women they spied on. They stole the identities of dead children from bereaved families.
Every instance of these abuses should be exposed wherever it happened. Every officer should be held accountable. Everyone targeted by these officers and tactics deserves the truth, and the state should give victims all the support and opportunity for redress that they need. They, and the public, must have answers.
‘As a victim of political policing in Scotland, I seek the truth as to why I was spied upon and why my life and the lives of my family were so cruelly disrupted. I want to know who was responsible for (Soracchi’s) activities in Scotland and which of his handlers secretly travelled with us.’
It cannot be right that people violated by unlawful and unethical political policing in England and Wales have a judge-led inquiry, whilst those in Scotland get nothing at all.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
Tilly Gifford, an activist targeted by political secret police in Scotland, is bringing a legal case to compel the Scottish government into having a credible inquiry into spycops in Scotland.
She has launched a crowdfund appeal for the costs. Please share the link and, if you can afford it, contribute.
On 25th March, the Undercover Policing Inquiry will hold its second hearing into how it is affected by the General Data Protection Regulations – GDPR.
It’s more than five years since the Inquiry was announced and we are still quibbling over legal points that require specialist barristers to be brought in. The evidence-hearing phase, arguably the most import section, has been put back yet again, probably to 2020.
From the beginning, those spied on have consistently demanded to see their Special Branch files. Only then would it be possible to understand how the undercovers infiltrated their personal lives, and in too many cases, people’s beds, or destroyed their ability to get jobs.
Sir John Mitting, the Chair of the Undercover Policing Inquiry, has replied, saying it would be too much work and would delay the inquiry further. It’s a slap in the face to all who have waited through years of wilful police delays, which Mitting has readily acquiesced to. Indeed, many find it grimly ironic that he is now talking about wasting resources given the amount squandered on police anonymity orders.
The
Non-Police/State Core Participants (NPSCPs), the victims in all this,
are treated as second class people. They object to police and
ex-police being given access to their files while not knowing what
personal content is in there, or how accurate it may be. They object
to the Inquiry deciding what is and what is not important in those
files and thus what the victims will get to see.
Challenging the Secrecy
From the few released Special Branch files it’s clear that political undercover police misinterpret events, they exaggerate, and they lie. People’s lives are ruined on the basis of biased or false information.
What the Inquiry proposes, is that the people whose files are at the centre of things will be the last to see that material, and even then only part of it – that is, only those bits the Inquiry decides is relevant to its work. The NPSCPs only get a say over how some of it is made public, and even then only after everyone else has had a go first. From the NPSCPs’ point of view, what Mitting is proposing will only increase the emotional stress many of them are already currently subject to.
So, last year, the NPSCPs raised the point that under the new GDPR regulations they did actually have rights over their data in the hands of the Inquiry, and such rights were over all such data, not just what the Inquiry decided was important. What matters is not what the Inquiry wishes but what are the rights protected in law.
The
Inquiry clearly realised there was an issue as they quickly
ordered a hearing. That took place at the end
of January, and it was a bit of a shambles.
Only the NPSCPs’ lawyers effectively grasped the issues,
necessitating a second
hearing to address the legal points that had
been raised.
The rest of this article sets out the legal points which will be discussed (links to all submission documents are here). Hopefully, it will assist anyone seeking to follow the arguments on the day and give a quick reference to the various paragraphs and articles which will be cited.
Welcome to the GDPR
The
GDPR has a number of articles which set out conditions for processing
data, rights over that data and what exceptions to those rights and
conditions which may exist. The Data Protection Act 2018 codes all
this into UK law, updating previous acts. The regime is tougher and
more comprehensive than previous legislation; it is also relatively
new, which means interpretation of the finer points still have to be
worked out in the courts. Some reliance can be placed on previous
case law arising from the 1998 Data Protection Act, but it does not
always apply.
There
is also the issue of what sort of body the Undercover Policing
Inquiry is. It is not a court but is in fact established by a piece
of stand-alone legislation, the 2005 Inquiries Act. It may seem like
semantics, which for the most part such discussions are, but in this
case it is an important question.
So,
the GDPR Articles of most relevance for the hearing of 25th
March are:
13: Information to be provided where personal data are collected from the data subject.
14: Information to be provided where personal data have not been obtained from the data subject.
15: Right of access by the data subject.
Several
others which might play a role are Articles 16 (the right to
correct), 17 (the right to be forgotten) and 18 (the right to
restrict processing). These are not likely to be a focus of attention
as it is accepted by core participants that to get to the truth, the
Inquiry and those involved need to have access to the information
gathered by the police as it was, in order to understand the abuses
that went on.
A
particular complication is how to share documents where more than one
person is named. In some cases – such as a small, tight group where
everyone knew everyone else – this is not likely to be that much an
issue. However, quite a few documents name multiple people, not all
of whom will know each other. In the jargon, this is called ‘third
party rights’, and can be used to restrict material, for example
where giving you your data may cause a third party’s data to be
revealed. In this case, you both lose out.
This
becomes more focused when looking at what is called ‘special
category’ data. This is material considered sensitive and of a
highly personal nature – family life, addresses, sexuality and so
on. Even political opinions are caught here. It is a balancing
exercise, but NPSCPs are aware such material is in police documents,
and the prospect of further sharing of them without a chance to check
over it is compounding their violation and pain. For this reason, the
Inquiry is becoming part of the problem.
Exemptions from Disclosure
The
files, whether personal files, intelligence reports, or others, all
fall under Article 14 as the Inquiry is processing data it got from
the police. Under normal conditions the Inquiry would be required to
give the data subjects notice and what data it holds before it can
process it, such as passing it on to retired police officers.
However, there are exceptions, two of which the Inquiry seems keen to
rely on.
Clause
5(b) of Article 14, ‘the paragraph 5
exemption’, says that the data controller (in this Inquiry,
Mitting) is exempt from his obligations if ‘the provision of such
information proves impossible or would involve a disproportionate
effort’. However, it is still required to protect the data rights
of the individuals.
The
second is known as ‘paragraph
7(2)’, and comes from the Data Protection Act
2018. The Act states the data controller can claim an exemption from
complying with the data rights where complying would ‘prejudice the
proper discharge’ of the function the data is being processed for.
Provided that function is ‘designed to protect members of the
public against dishonesty, malpractice or other seriously improper
conduct’ and is ‘of a public nature, and is exercised in the
public interest’.
The
extent to which the Inquiry can rely on these two exemptions are
central points for the Inquiry’s hearing on March 25th.
Both
the Inquiry and, unsurprisingly, the police say they can rely on
them, and furthermore they are ‘blanket exemptions’ which cover
all cases. So if and when the Inquiry decides they are available to
it to use, then it’s effectively game over. The Information
Commissioner’s submissions say that the Inquiry can rely on them,
but they are not blanket exemptions.
Victims Claim Their Rights
The NPSCPs say it is far more nuanced than that, and even where the exemptions apply, it is only on a case-by-case basis, and does not excuse the Inquiry from all its rights. There are measures it can and should be taking which will alert people to the fact that they may be named in documents – for example through their presence at a certain meeting, or role in a group.
The NPSCPs are also emphatic that they should be seeing their information much earlier on in the process so that they can make representation over sensitive material that might be in the files (and finally get to see what has been said about them).
The
Inquiry is arguing that NPSCPs should only see their files only after
all the other redactions have been made in terms of national
security, protection of police tactics and so on, and that early
disclosure to the NPSCPs will delay getting statements back from the
undercovers and their managers. This is where it is supposedly
disproportionate and would cause delays.
NPSCPs
say this is not good enough; it is the Inquiry’s fault for letting
the police cause delays for the last three years and now this is
being thrown back in in the victim’s faces. It is granting
privileges to the police that it doesn’t give to those who were
inappropriately spied upon, and implies the latter can be treated
with less concern for their rights.
The
NPSCPs also do not accept that the work that will have to be done in
providing disclosure to them first is disproportionate. Looking at
the greater volume of material handled by other public inquiries
which also require extensive redactions, it is clear the Inquiry is
overstating the impact. Nor does the Undercover Policing Inquiry make
the effort to actually justify its claims. The Inquiry simply relies
on broad statements with very little supporting material.
The
NPSCPs want the Inquiry to succeed, so they accept compromises have
to be made; but they want to be respected also. To this end they have
accepted a curtailment of their rights and put forward pragmatic
proposals that would have some impact on the Inquiry, but bring them
into it in a way that will help the Inquiry in the long run. The core
of what they propose is a re-arrangement of the order of things, not
anything new.
The
Judicial Exemption
There
is a second route where the Inquiry can argue it is given an
exemption from complying with its obligations under the GDPR. If it
can successfully be argued that the Chair is not acting in a
“judicial capacity” in ’judicial proceedings” then the
Inquiry can say it is exempt. Simple, eh?
Well,
this is where the lawyers earn their money and it all goes down the
technical hill from there. It’s not that straightforward as
“judicial proceedings” is not explicitly defined and the meaning
of the term itself relies on a lot of case law rather than legal
statute. Nor does the Inquiries Act make it clear what the case is.
So,
while on the surface the Chair does appear to be acting in a judicial
capacity, there are various problems. For instance, an Inquiry is not
necessarily judge-led, and unlike other tribunals, it only makes
recommendations and deliberately doesn’t have the power to consider
liabilities. The key point is that while the Chair will report to the
Home Secretary (and may make referrals to other bodies), he does not
have the power to make binding decisions and has no powers of
enforcement.
Any
Rulings are made under the Inquiries Act and are not necessarily
court derived, even though they can be judicially reviewed. But then,
many decisions not just court ones can be judicially reviewed. And so
on.
The
good news is that the Information Commissioner agrees with the NPSCPs
on this and they have put that in their submissions (see below).
The Submissions to the Inquiry
With
the exception of one or two, most of the police / state submissions
for the new hearing continue the bare-bones approach that lead to the
January debacle. Despite the many thousands of pounds being spent on
this, it is clear that barristers are prepared to rely on
broad-stroke assertions that make little effort to unpick the
arguments. Naturally such an approach suits the police who want to
ensure as little as possible reaches light of day.
All brush any sense of nuance under the carpet; their willingness to trust it all to Mitting is indicative of how on side their they clearly consider him to be. Thus there is no attempt to actually consider the non-blanket approach, to reason through the wider obligations presented by the GDPR, which the law requires.
Even where there are exemptions allowed, data rights do not vanish like that; they still exist and so have to be properly considered. That means paying attention to the nuance to develop a working framework that meets everyone’s needs, not just the side of the abusers.
And
let us remember, it was the Metropolitan Police who admitted that its
officers were engaged in human rights abuses.
Victimising the Victims
The
NPSCPs accept the situation is far from ideal but are willing to work
with the Inquiry to find a way forward. In not asserting their rights
entirely, there needs to be a quid pro quo. Unfortunately, the
Inquiry is more determined than ever to keep the victims at arm’s
length from the process, treating them as an irritant with little to
contribute.
The
NPSCPs argument is that it should be the opposite, that the Inquiry
is causing itself these problems by this attitude. If instead, it
sought to work properly with NPSCPs it could have avoided reaching
this point in the first place.
As
once core participant told us:
“We have practical and pragmatic solutions that would prevent further pain and contribute to the process, while recognising our legal rights. In sticking to the hypocritical mantra that it would only delay the process, that the police have absolute right to see everything but we only get scraps, Mitting places himself firmly on the side of the police. His farce is our pain”.
If you can, please support the crowdjustice fundraiser for women targeted by spycops to take their cases to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal and the UN.
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Without warning, a new law is being rushed through parliament to allow police and other state agencies to self-authorise their agents to commit literally any crime. It would also prohibit civil claims by their victims.
