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.
‘Spycops Inquiry Give Us Our Files’ banner at the notorious Stoke Newington police station where Colin Roach was killed. [Pic: David Mirzoeff & Artwork: Art Against Blacklisting Collective]
It heard evidence from two undercover officers who infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party, Troops Out Movement, the Right to Work campaign and Waltham Forest Anti-Nuclear Campaign in the late 1970s. Both were elected as treasurers of groups they spied on.
The reporting obtained by the Inquiry shows that Cooper’s initial involvement was with the Waltham Forest Anti-Nuclear Campaign (WFANC), before moving on to the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). With the latter organisation he focused on the Right to Work Campaign, becoming its national treasurer.
Cooper recalls that he joined the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) before October 1979 and spent time working in the back office before being deployed undercover.
The first report which can attributed to him with confidence dates to April 1980 [UCPI0000013893]. It notes, however, his election as treasurer at the inaugural meeting of WFANC in February 1980, which suggests he had been deployed for a period before this date. His deployment ended in January 1984.
PREVIOUS UNDERCOVER WORK
Before joining the SDS, Cooper had undertaken ‘a fair amount’ of undercover police work. This as part of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch’s ‘B’ Squad which covered ‘Irish matters’. This work included adopting a cover identity, aspects of which he utilised within his SDS deployment. His story was that he had grown up in Liverpool and had been in the Merchant Navy.
In advance of his SDS deployment, he recalls visiting Liverpool to build his ‘legend’. Cooper accepts that he is likely to have stolen a deceased child’s identity as it was the usual process at the time, although the Inquiry has not been able to identify the individual it was stolen from.
WALTHAM FOREST ANTI-NUCLEAR CAMPAIGN
Cooper adopted two positions of responsibility within the groups he reported on. The first, treasurer of the Waltham Forest Anti-Nuclear Campaign, was at the very start of his deployment. The second role, also as treasurer for the Right to Work Campaign, came later in January 1982.
It seems likely that through this, Cooper also became involved in the campaign opposing the construction of a nuclear power plant at Torness, Scotland, and probably attended the Torness Alliance conference in Oxford in July 1980 [UCPI0000014093].
Although he doubts that the reports on this subject are necessarily his, it seems likely that he attended a protest at the site in the course of his deployment.
RIGHT TO WORK CAMPAIGN
The first example of an SWP report which bears Cooper’s name is from October 1980 [UCPI0000014591]. He began reporting on the SWP-aligned Right to Work Campaign some months after the start of his deployment. He explains that the campaign:
‘was of interest to the SDS because it involved large numbers of people on marches lasting a number of days. Hundreds or thousands of local activists would join the march along the way, which included Marxists and anarchists…
‘it was important to provide intelligence to allow local constabularies to assess the risk of public disorder and ensure an appropriate police presence.’
A comprehensive report [UCPI0000014610] records the events of the 1980 march from Port Talbot in detail, culminating in a demonstration outside the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton in October, is likely to be attributable to other undercovers, ‘Vince Miller‘ (HN354, 1976-79) and ‘Colin Clark’ (HN80, 1977-82). Clark’s withdrawal appears to have coincided with the start of Cooper’s deployment, and his deployment may have been extended to ensure this overlap took place.
Right to Work march at the Conservative Party conference, Brighton, October 1980
Also of note is an April 1981 report from Cooper concerning a National Front counter-march [UCPI0000016599]. It mentions ‘Madeleine’ who had been targeted by Miller for a relationship and who gave testimony to the Inquiry earlier in the week.
From 1982 onwards, Cooper seems to be the only SDS officer involved in the Right to Work campaign. He became National Treasurer in January 1982, with control over the bank account [UCPI0000018091].
He was able to submit detailed reports on the arrangements for the intended 1982 march, which was latterly modified to become a picket of the Conservative Party Conference, which was attended by 400-500 people.
He managed to obtain private documents and correspondence with the organisers (one of whom was the serving MP Ernie Roberts) [UCPI0000017202], and the personal bank account details of those concerned.
AT THE HEART OF THE SWP
As ‘Colin Clark’ (HN80, 1977-82) had done before him, Cooper rapidly rose through the SWP ranks and gained access to the their headquarters. He provided a detailed floor-plan of the office, including the location of his desk as the Right to Work treasurer.
This also allowed Cooper to provide information to the Security Service (MI5) on the state of SWP membership records, and in 1982 they asked him to pass on any old cards should he get access to them made, [UCPI0000027448]. Similarly, he was able to respond to requests from MI5 for the technical details of the SWP computer and passed on membership details contained therein [UCPI0000016862, UCPI0000016946, UCPI0000020522].
Cooper was also able to provide intelligence on the personal lives and circumstances of members of the SWP Central Committee and those close to them.
He attended the SWP’s annual national delegate conference and rally at Skegness between 1981 and 1983 and provided detailed reports on each occasion. He attended alongside ‘Colin Clark’ in 1981, when both were listed as part of the conference administrative staff.
In 1982 and 1983, Cooper was trusted enough to gather the entrance money which provided him with an 18 page list of 1983 attendees, which he included in his report that was passed to MI5 [UCPI0000018180].
In respect of the 1983 report, it was noted by MI5 that ‘the SDS office [was] still groaning under the weight of Cooper’s report’ and it was subsequently considered to be of significant value to the Special Branch and MI5 alike [UCPI0000028728, MPS-0730009, MPS-0735901]. Cooper thinks he received one of two commendations for this work.
Towards the end of his deployment, in November 1983 Cooper appears to have submitted a report on a former member of the SWP Central Committee who had ‘obtained false employment references which he hopes will hide his political activities from prospective employers’ [UCPI0000020466].
REPORTING ON SCHOOL KIDS
Cooper may have submitted reporting on the National Union of School Students, and school-aged children more generally, in 1981 [UCPI0000016563].
He notes that the fact that this involved reporting on children ‘was not considered at the time, but probably would not have involved myself’. Spying on children appears to have been commonplace.
MI5 TASKINGS
In late 1981, several MI5 ‘notes for file’ record requests were made of SDS managers, asking for information to be acquired by SDS officers who had access to the SWP headquarters [UCPI0000027529, UCPI0000028837, UCPI0000027532, UCPI0000027533]. This is very likely to have been directed towards Cooper or Clark, and represents a clear trend at this time of MI5 requests made of SDS officers.
Similarly, by autumn 1982, Cooper was able to answer a detailed request for information from MI5 on SWP structure and branches.
DEPLOYMENT PROBLEMS
In a meeting with MI5 in July 1982, ‘Sean Lynch’ (HN68, undercover 1968-74 but by then an SDS manager) is recorded as expressing ‘serious doubts about the performance’ of Cooper. This relates to the officer’s failure to pay child maintenance, and an incident when he left his cover vehicle outside his real home address.
‘is still very worried because Cooper’s position within the Right to Work Movement gives him regular access to Ernie Roberts MP and meetings at the House of Commons’.
In contrast, Cooper himself does not recall any contact with Roberts, and considers any involvement must have been limited in nature.
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENTS
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].
We have already heard evidence in this phase of the Inquiry from Cooper’s fellow undercovers ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1975-79) and ‘Vince Miller‘ (HN354, 1976-79). Neither were complementary, with Coates specifically alleging that Cooper fiddled the expenses and Clark saying that he got into ‘all kind of scrapes’.
When it was put to them that Cooper had sex with an activist whilst undercover, they both said that this did not surprise them. Coates said that Cooper was a ‘very charming, easy-going, light-hearted individual’ who found it easy to strike up friendships, and probably would have had ‘small to no’ qualms when it came to ‘accepting an offer of sex’ while undercover.
CAR CRASH
During his deployment, Cooper was involved in a car accident. Documents obtained by the Inquiry suggest he reported this to the police using his cover identity.
In his defence, Cooper said he did so as the car was registered in his cover identity, while he can’t recall if any consideration were given to the lawfulness of this course of action.
FORCED OR PLANNED EXIT?
Cooper’s deployment came to an end at around the time of a telephone call in December 1983 between two members of the SWP [UCPI0000028712]. A transcript of this call says his cover was blown with the group, and that there had previously been suspicions regarding him.
Cooper disputes that this call led to his withdrawal, and claims that it was in fact his exit strategy that caused the conversation to take place. He also recalls some concern from senior managers regarding his possible compromise having an effect on future intelligence and their careers:
‘I felt that some of the senior officers were more concerned about losing intelligence and repercussions for their career rather than concern for my safety or welfare’.
He notes that they were ‘prone to panic when issues [such as this] occurred’, in contrast to his immediate managers and previous unit head ‘Sean Lynch’.
Cooper explains that he went through a divorce during his time in the SDS, and suggests that his deployment was a ‘significant contributory factor in this regard’.
The impact of his deployment does not appear to have ended with his withdrawal. He notes that:
‘The effects are quite deep-rooted and have probably made me more of an insular and secretive person’.
‘PLAYING THE SDS CARD’
Mike Chitty undercover in the 1980s
The Inquiry released a sixty page report from 1994 [MPS-0726956] written by SDS boss Bob Lambert (HN10, undercover 1984-89) concerning undercover officer Mike Chitty (HN11, 1983-87), several years after Cooper had left the Metropolitan Police.
As ‘Mike Blake’, Chitty had infiltrated animal rights groups. Two years after his deployment ended, he returned to the social scene around the animal rights group he’d infiltrated.
Suspended and subject to an investigation, Chitty resorted to threatening to expose the SDS and bring it down if he was disciplined. In his report, Lambert says that Cooper assisted Chitty.
Lambert’s report describes how Cooper himself had ‘played the SDS card’ in 1985 when he was facing dismissal from the police:
‘[Cooper]…was dismissed from the police service for assault. Immediately thereafter he wrote a letter to Commander Operations threatening to expose the SDS operation to the press if the decision was not overturned. Subsequently, the decision was reversed on appeal and [Cooper] left the service with an ill health pension’.
Lambert alleges that Cooper wrote to a Special Branch commander threatening to expose the SDS. Lambert describes this as:
‘the lowest point in the twenty-five-year history of the SDS.’
‘convinced his psychiatrist… that he was suffering from “Stockholm Syndrome”, rather than, say, merely calculated, selfish and devious behaviour.’
He goes on to describe Cooper as:
‘A disgraced former SDS officer who showed a willingness to jeopardize the safe running of the SDS operation… selfish, arrogant, disloyal both professionally and domestically.’
Bob Lambert, 2013
This is a parallel opinion to the SDS’ belief that any group supporting another must be secretly motivated by a selfish and devious takeover bid, rather than actual solidarity. It seems that, living in a world of duplicity, secrecy and power games, spycops and spooks cannot conceive of people acting outside of such urges. So it’s no surprise to see spycop Lambert feels fully confident in dismissing the professional opinion of a psychiatrist and instead imposing the motives that have ruled his own behaviour.
Lambert himself should not be considered a reliable witness in Cooper’s case. Both the letter and threats to expose the SDS are denied by Cooper, who says he never met Lambert, so the report cannot be based on any personal knowledge of him.
SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS
There remains a significant dispute of whether Cooper told the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s risk assessors that he engaged in sexual activity whilst he was deployed.
The Metropolitan Police employed them to assess the risk to former undercover officers if any aspect of their identity was revealed. The risk assessment prepared in late 2017 recorded that Cooper accepted 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 a sexual relationship within the context of his deployment.
WITNESSES: DAVID REID AND BRIAN LOCKIE (RISK ASSESSORS)
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 other undercover officers, including Cooper.
Questioned by the Inquiry, they gave highly technical accounts of the risk assessment process and of their interview of Cooper.
Both were asked to explain some alleged factual errors they made regarding their risk assessment for other officers. This seemed to aim at undermining the accuracy of their recollections of what Cooper said about the sexual encounters he had.
In essence, both Reid and Lockie’s testimony reaffirmed that what they had recorded Cooper saying was correct, although they conceded that they were ‘not infallible’.
Also of note was that it was learned that the risk assessment process had been an evolving one, with protocols and procedures changing as they went along to react from lessons learned.
It is unclear how this impacts on the earlier risk assessments, which were used to justify restriction orders over the publication of names of SDS undercovers.
‘Michael James‘ (HN96, 1978-83) infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party and Troops Out Movement. He occupied a senior role in the latter organisation in the early 1980s.
James’ evidence was a long and somewhat torturous process, often never quite addressing directly the questions being asked. Rather, he would repeat what the information was, but say he did not know the reason why it was done or recorded.
There was clear frustration as different points were covered and responded to with the same set of stock answers. To add to the annoyance, James often suggested to the Inquiry questions that he felt should be asked. So, while a lot of material was reviewed, insight and facts were often thin on the ground.
We do have to applaud Inquiry counsel Steven Gray for presenting the material in such a way that cut through James’ repeated shambling around answers, and exposed the rambling claims for the nonsense they were.
JOINING THE SDS
James did know of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) before he was asked to join, and applied by expressing interest to Chief Superintendent Geoff Craft, who oversaw the squad. He had an informal face to face interview with Craft, but did not hear anything for a while.
Rather, James discovered by accident that he had been accepted, when running into a colleague going to a police exam. It would be several months before he got the telephone call telling him to report for duty with the SDS. It is his understanding that he was informally checked out, with others in Special Branch being asked about him, including supervising officers:
‘I spoke to some of my colleagues there, who said, “Yes, we’d been asked what sort of chap you were”.’
A PREFERENCE FOR MARRIED MEN
As with almost all his SDS colleagues, James was married when he joined the Squad. The Inquiry was keen to probe the reasons for why the SDS managers preferred married officers as undercovers. James had said in his witness statement that:
‘One of the main dangers of the unit was over-involvement with the role. It was felt that if you had family at home, you would approach the job in a different way to a single man who had nothing other than work in their lives. The thinking was that having a personal life away from the job allowed you to retain an objective distance from your work and the group you were reporting on.’
He learned this from comments from his SDS managers – probably from Mike Ferguson, a former undercover himself.
There began a process which repeated throughout the Inquiry hearing, of long answers not directly addressing the point, and going into abstractions or tangents rather than giving clear factual answers.
For instance, if asked about what might have been management reasons, he would talk of his own approaches. When asked why management might have been interested in some details, he would deflect to his own understanding.
The Inquiry tried to unpick the phrases in the above quote with more specific questions, such as what was meant by ‘over-involvement’ and why single men would approach the job differently – would they’d be more prone to engaging in sexual relationships?
James said the risk was of an officer revealing themselves as an undercover. The preference for married officers as undercovers was rooted in the assumption that they would live a more balanced life and it was:
‘nothing to do with their sexual behaviour whilst doing that work.’
MANAGERS MEET HIS WIFE
James said he had thought it would be beneficial for his managers, Mike Ferguson and Angus McIntosh, to meet his wife. They thought this was a good idea and they met her before he was deployed into the field. It then became accepted practice after this.
They addressed concerns she had around the deployment, particularly in relation to communications. She wanted to be able to reach James when he was in the field, if need be, and was given a contact number.
That such had never been done before and came down to the fact no undercover had ever asked for it.
TRAINING
James appears to have been mentored in Socialist Workers Party infiltrations by another undercover ‘Geoff Wallace’ (HN296, 1975-78). James would catch up with him during the twice weekly meetings at the SDS safe-house to pick his brain and those of other officers.
He agreed that alcohol was occasionally consumed at these meetings; later there was a social as well as professional element to the gatherings.
James claimed there was an ‘unwritten rule’; no talking with other undercovers about their actual deployments. The Inquiry returned to this more than once, at one point referring to the recent testimony of ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1975-79) who painted a different picture of this. James insisted the rule included talking with the other undercover he shared a flat with, even though they were friends.
He was advised not to become too deeply involved in the groups he would infiltrate, not to become a leader, not to become someone who was required to be available a lot:
‘A willing worker rather than a leading light. That was some very sound advice I used the rest of my time.’
On personal relationships with targets, his mentor Wallace said be:
‘friendly and helpful, but not getting too close to members of the group.’
He does not recall conversations on the mechanics of the job and:
‘I was clearly drawing my own conclusions about what the objective of the job was.’
For example, he was not instructed what to put in reports but drew on previous Special Branch experience:
‘I knew how to put a report together. But exactly what was required, I think it was left to my own judgement, my own common sense.’
STOLEN IDENTITY AND A TRIP TO BLACKPOOL
James stole a deceased child’s identity to build his cover story. It was standard practice at that time, and he was given precise instructions on how to do it by senior management.
He never asked why it was considered necessary. He thought it might be to do with the Security Service (MI5) supplying cover documents for those undercover. It was good enough for him that other undercovers had done it before him, and that his bosses approved:
‘So 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.’
He visited Blackpool, the birthplace of the child he had chosen, to work on his cover story. To test the identity, he got assistance of local Special Branch and was assured that it would stand up to future attempts to investigate the cover background. The local colleagues also made discreet inquiries on his behalf into the whereabouts of the family and established they were no longer in the area.
PRETEND GIRLFRIEND
James prepared in advance a story of having a girlfriend, to have a reasonable excuse to rebuff advances. This was something he decided to do himself rather being suggested.
In the end, he rarely used the story. He did not divulge much about himself to targets and they were not very curious about him once accepted.
PRETEND HOME
James had several places to stay while undercover. The second one he had to move from as several activists lived nearby. He then looked around and found a suitable flat. As it was larger, he asked ‘Barry Tompkins’ (HN106, 1979-83), with whom he was already friendly, to move in with him. They both felt it would not be detrimental to their undercover work.
This novel idea was agreed to by management and was repeated in the later years of the SDS.
James was careful to prevent activists from visiting, and spent on average two nights a week there. It was not really a place to go and relax and unwind together.
The Inquiry was keen to know if living with Tompkins meant that they chatted. He was adamant that they rarely crossed paths and never discussed the relationships Tompkins had with women in his target groups.
This was somewhat in contradiction with his written statement, which says he had regularly discussed things with Tompkins. After going round the houses, he retreated to the line that the undercovers did not talk about their deployments with each other, adding that Tompkins never mentioned anything of significance in any case.
Evidence in the vintage documents released by the Inquiry suggests that Tompkins was thought to have a sexual relationship at the time. However, James insisted Tompkins:
‘was a professional officer who did his best to do the job he was being required to do – in the most professional way.’
Nevertheless, he is not surprised that Tompkins had such relationships.
REPORTING
James knew the SDS was set up to provide ‘background intelligence’ and information that assisted policing of large public order demonstrations. There was however:
‘no clear direction about what constitutes the information or intelligence that you might acquire.’
James relied on his own experience and assessment. In his witness statement he set out different ways in which information on individuals might be used. This included assisting Special Branch with the identification of people they would spot at an event or a demonstration:
‘Special Branch is an intelligence agency. It collated information about lots and lots and lots of organisations and individuals, much of which was filed and never used again.’
This was another strong theme of James’ throughout much of the rest of his evidence. Whether or not he was the source of intelligence in SDS reports, when pressed to justify various egregious bits of reporting, he fell back on the defence that it didn’t really matter. It was just information that mostly did not go anywhere. It was 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.
James is in no position to make that claim. Many of his reports were passed to the Security Service, and he can have no idea what was done with the information after that. All the files published by the Inquiry with a reference number beginning ‘UCPI000…’ are taken from the Security Service’s existing records.
James said his reporting was also used for vetting for government positions:
‘I was a Special Branch officer and that was the way that the system worked.’
As such, he asserted, the chances were that information retained on an individual might only have been:
‘looked at if that individual was applying for a post with some sort of security clearance’.
THE LIGHT OF DAY
The Inquiry showed February 1979 report [UCPI0000013171] profiling Socialist Workers Party (SWP) members, one of whom was a probation officer, and asked James what was the purpose of reporting their employment. James dodged straight to his ‘may never have seen the light of day’ argument.
Counsel to the Inquiry replied drily:
‘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?’
Pressed to explain, James brought out another of his evasive tropes:
‘I was just trying to paint a reasonable picture of these people. That what I perceived as being part of my job.’
Next up was report from June 1981 [UCPI0000015384], again detailing and SWP member, this time an inspector in the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS). James admitted the report was solely for noting an SWP member was working there. As far as James was concerned, it was for others to decide what to do with that information:
‘I was an individual who had no control what then happened to that information, apart from my understanding that it was in the records that Special Branch retained.’
It was either used or it wasn’t. There was no clear guidance on what to report, he used his common sense, and no, nobody ever took issue with any of the contents of his intelligence reports.
Though not raised in evidence, it is believed the DHSS inspector is the subject of another report, where it is noted that they did lose their job. In the early 1970s, and again in the 1980s, such information was collected by a secret government committee ‘Subversion in Public Life’.
LEAVE THEM KIDS ALONE
A May 1979 report [UCPI0000021293] gives personal details abouta member of Clapton SWP & Hackney Women’s Voice. It describes how she is divorced with a six year old child, and is living with another SWP activist. Why report on the marital stage, 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.’
For all he knew, she may well have been of interest to other parts of the police or Security Service – contradicting his claim that he knew what happened to information he reported. He added the chilling statement:
‘But I also knew that it would not be used in an aggressive or detrimental way if it was of no interest. It would just be filed.’
It was not James’ only instance of reporting on juveniles. 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 this, chuckling as he said:
‘Under the age of 18, no. If it was under the age of sort of 12, yes.’
The Inquiry discussed other examples of intrusive reporting and asked him about justification. As far as James was concerned, you never knew when you might need it in the future.
TARGET: SWP
Like most of the undercovers heard from at these hearings, James’ first target was the Socialist Workers Party, with management tasking him to look at its organisation in East London.
He went in ‘cold’, with no briefing on the group or what management wanted him to look for in particular. James was fine with that, as he was an experienced Special Branch officer able to draw his own conclusions and make his own decisions.
Part of the justification for targeting the SWP was that their demonstrations were able to attract large numbers. Asked if the SWP presented a threat to public order, he responded:
‘They had the potential to cause problems to the police.’
He said this was borne out by his experiences undercover, where he saw ‘plenty of scuffles with the police and a few fights with members of the National Front.’
The Inquiry drew attention to a report into a planned Stop the Cuts demonstration in autumn 1979 [UCPI0000013343], at which several hundred people were anticipated, although it would be ‘relatively quiet and peaceful.’ However, he warned that SWP elements could attend. This James agreed was a good summary of his experiences of such protests:
‘The SWP, they weren’t an organisation that went out looking for trouble, but trouble often followed them.’
The Inquiry wanted to know if James could have identified this risk in advance through his infiltration of the SWP. Sometimes yes, he said, if he was in the ‘right place at the right time to get a better view of what would take place.’ He agreed the SWP often cooperated with the police in any case.
The Inquiry pressed on the point, if the main body of the SWP was not the problem, how did his reporting help uniformed police? James retreated to his stock answer, that the SDS were just a cog in a big machine.
There was brief mention of Red Action, a group that did confront fascists physically, and had been expelled from the SWP for this. James reported what he heard about them from other SWP members and was familiar with some of the people in the group. He had no response to the point that the SWP actively distanced themselves from Red Action.
TAKING RESPONSIBILITY WITHIN THE SWP
As with other undercovers we have heard from at the Inquiry hearings, James became active in a local branch, this time Clapton SWP, where he took on looking after paper sales and chaired meetings. In September 1979 he was elected to the Hackney District Committee. This was nine months into his deployment.
Asked why he accepted that role in the face of advice not to take up positions of influence in a group, he danced around the issue. He said he had reluctantly accepted, either because he didn’t feel he had much option to say no, or because it gave him better access.
James repeatedly tried to down play his role and influence in the local party organisation, saying that the decisions he was involved in were minor.
The Inquiry did not raise the point that, in such a role, James would have been seen as a significant local figure by other SWP members, whose voice would carry weight of its own. As as a member of the District Committee he would have been reporting back on national decisions and policy.
However, James’ main concern was that his target group would want to be in contact with him more.
A meeting of Clapton SWP, chaired by James himself, discussed the killing of Blair Peach by police at an anti-fascist protest, and that local SWP members were encouraged to attend a picket of Stoke Newington police station and a demonstration at Hammersmith Coroners Court.
Like so many of his contemporaries, James claims he recalled no discussion of Blair Peach among SDS officers.
The Inquiry drew James’ attention to several reports on the Friends of Blair Peach Campaign. Why was it necessary to include a list of those attending a picket the Stoke Newington police station where the Peach inquest was taking place? [UCPI0000013505].
James saw no reason why he would not have done so and fell back on them being probably SWP members, and the information might be important in the future.
‘It would have been remiss of me not to have identified them.’
A second picket took place in April 1980, a year after Peach was killed, and again James reported a list of those attending [UCPI0000013935]. The Inquiry picked up on the point that there had been no disturbances at these pickets, so there was no real public order issue. Yet again James said that:
‘These are people that… have taken part in this particular picket, they may be of interest in the future.’
In James’ view, the reporting was always about public order, never the individuals themselves, unless they were committing criminal activities. It was also about reporting on the SWP as a whole given what it was doing, and ‘the potential that it had to cause police problems’.
FAMILY JUSTICE CAMPAIGNS
Even if James was not the author of various SDS reports on family justice campaigns of grieving people seeking the truth about what happened to their loved ones, the Inquiry wanted to know whether there was a police purpose to some of the information provided in them.
The Inquiry brought up a July 1980 report on a proposed national coalition between family justice campaigns that Friends of Blair Peach was trying to bring together, with amongst others, the Richard ‘Cartoon’ Campbell Campaign and the Jimmy Kelly campaign [UCPI0000014149]. According to James, he was just being helpful to police trying to build up a picture.
The Inquiry notes that the Blair Peach Commemorative Demonstration of April 1981 is given its own Registry File within Special Branch [MPS-0730184]. James was unable to help with the codes for it.
Colin Roach was a young black man killed in Stoke Newington police station in 1983 and became a major cause celebre. In February 1983, James reported that an SWP member had been a steward at a Roach Family Support Committee demonstration [UCPI0000018700]. Asked to explain, he repeated that it could be of interest in the future either to police or security services.
TROOPS OUT MOVEMENT
At the end of 1980, James was tasked to move from SWP into Troops Out Movement (TOM) as there was no coverage of the group by the SDS at the time. He retained some social contacts with the SWP, frequenting the Hackney trades union bar.
James said that Special Branch was interested in TOM for public order reasons, but also:
‘Though there was an element of concern about whether it was providing support for the Irish Republican groups, who may commit acts of terror.’
Asked to be more precise, he said this was because:
‘Activists who openly supported a Republican organisation that included the IRA could be persuaded at some point to provide logistic support to an active service unit.’
The Inquiry returned to this later, pointing out that TOM’s aims were democratic in nature, but that in a final report on the group James said elements would continue to support unconditionally the armed struggle in Ireland, although he agreed that no practical assistance was given.
The SDS spied on groups who simply supported basic rights in northern Ireland (eg no internment without trial, inquiries into British forces killing unarmed civilians) in case they secretly supported Republican violence. They did not spy on any of the far-right groups who openly supported Loyalist violence.
In May 1981, James took part in a protest at the TUC headquarters over its lack of support around hunger strikers in Ireland, in order to report on it, [UCPI0000015367]. It was a peaceful occupation of a room, draping a banner out a window and addressing the public by megaphone. His senior officers were aware he was present.
TOM MEMBERSHIP & AFFILIATION SECRETARY
At the time, TOM was in a state of flux as a national organisation. The East London branch, based around Hackney which James was in, became a leading and active group. In particular, it set up a steering committee for TOM which effectively acted on a national level.
Troops Out of Ireland poster, 1975
James was appointed TOM’s Membership and Affiliation Secretary. As with the SWP, he repeatedly tried to downplay the importance of his roleto the Inquiry.
However, as with other undercovers, he had placed himself to be the first point of contact for new people and have access to names and addresses of members, as well as an idea of which groups were supporting TOM, points he did not address at the hearing.
He says he would have normally shied way from such a position, but accepted it as it would have given ‘closer insight into the things TOM were doing’. Later he claimed he took the job on ‘not really understanding what it entailed’.
James tried to deny he sat on any kind of central committee for TOM, a point that floundered badly when the Inquiry took him to a May 1982 report [UCPI0000018080] that showed that this was effectively what the Steering Committee was. James was so ‘inactive’ that he ended up chairing meetings of the Committee [UCPI0000018365].
He then tried to say he was not very active ‘in any proper sense’ and though he retained the title:
‘I did very little to further the membership of the Troops Out Movement.’
The Inquiry unfortunately failed to raise that inaction also has effects, and that by ‘doing very little’, he was undermining the group organisation. They did point out that while, due to the intensity of the work, most people stayed on the Steering Committee for only six months, James stayed in power for eighteen months, as a September 1982 report shows [UCPI0000015779].
The Inquiry then turned to a TOM demonstration of 8 May 1982. James was treasurer for the organising committee. People’s family members were coming from Northern Ireland. A meeting report [UCPI0000018026] noted that the group wanted to negotiate a route with the police. James confirmed that TOM ordinarily engaged with the police when it came to significant public events.
James said his purpose in being part of a committee negotiating with police was to establish good intelligence on demonstrations:
‘I was in the right place at the right time to feed into the police service the proposed demonstration of this particular organisation.’
It didn’t seem to matter that there was unlikely to be trouble, or that his action wasn’t being done lawfully.
It has also heard officer Mike Scott describe how he assaulted TOM leader Géry Lawless for suspecting he was in fact a spycop and how, to this day, he doesn’t regard it as a crime because ‘it was acceptable to me’.
Self-justifying, abuse and crime comes naturally to the spycops. They give little reason beyond their self-defined remit. As Mike James so ably yet inadvertently explained, they are truly a law unto themselves.
The Undercover Policing Inquiry hearing of 12 May 2021 gave summaries of three officers from the latter part of the period currently under examination (1973-82), before spending most of the day questioning officer ‘Paul Gray’ who infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party and the Anti-Nazi League.
We Did Not Consent: Police Spies Out of Lives banner at Beachcroft Avenue, Southall, where police killed Blair Peach in 1979 [Pic: Police Spies Out of Lives]
Summary of evidence:
‘Colin Clark’ (HN80, 1977-82)
Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) officer ‘Colin Clark’ (HN80, 1977-82) infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and was also active in the ‘Right to Work’ marches.
He is still alive and, despite the Inquiry’s Chair Sir John Mitting having previously said Clark’s deployment was ‘of significance’, he is not being called to give live evidence in the Inquiry. He has provided a written witness statement.
Before joining the SDS, he worked in other parts of Special Branch, including its ‘C’ and ‘B’ Squads. He says several times that the spycops unit’s existence was secret, even within the Branch. However, he socially knew another undercover, Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76), who persuaded him to volunteer for the SDS.
He knew – from talking to Rick – that the work would be ‘demanding and required high standards of intelligence and initiative’.
He did not realise how much time he would be required to spend away from his wife and young child – something that varied over time.
He recalls Detective Inspector (DI) Geoff Craft telling him that for security reasons his cover name would be classified as secret, and never released into the public domain. He says he had lengthy conversations with Craft, and that his task was to:
‘gather the best information on extreme left-wing activists and groups that I could be involved with’
in order:
‘to protect the public in London, assist the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] to deal with demonstrations and the Security Service in its counter-subversion role. Those three objectives did not change during my deployment, although dealing with terrorism and terrorist supporters came into clearer focus as part of protecting the public.’
TRAINING & GUIDANCE
Clark started working in the SDS office in December 1976, and was then deployed into the field undercover in March 1977. He says he learnt a lot from seeing the documents that came in, but:
‘It was much more a process of familiarisation, both as to the types of information that were useful and how this might be obtained, as well as to the general issues concerning the left-wing.’
His training consisted only of a series of discussions with SDS managers. There was no formal guidance on how much he should become involved in the private lives of the individuals he spied on. He says there was no need for advice on intimate relationships – he was adamant he would never engage in such relationships, because of his ‘strong family values’, saying:
‘I prepared my back story to forestall any advances.’
Likewise, with being arrested:
‘The nature of the unit was such that we were not expected to go to court as police witnesses… no advice was given about attending as a witness in any other respect’.
He was not given advice on becoming privy to legally privileged information or the ethical implications which would apply to him as a police officer in this eventuality.
COVER IDENTITY
Clark’s cover name was chosen following long discussion with Mike Ferguson (HN135, a former undercover who became an SDS manager). It was agreed a nickname would be useful, so he chose ‘CC’ and says he extended this out into ‘Colin Clark’.
Unlike other officers from this period, he refused to steal an identity stolen from a dead child, as the idea of it distressed him, as did the idea of the family finding out. In order to ‘show willing’, he says he located a death certificate, from a ‘Paul Clark’. He insisted on using the cover name ‘Colin Clark’, and giving ‘Colin’ the same birth-date as his own real one. His managers went along with this.
Clark grew his hair and beard. Once he began living in his fake identity he dressed down. He invented a serious, long-term, long-distance relationship with an airline hostess in New Zealand. This gave him an excuse to reject advances, but also facilitated his exit strategy, while protecting his cover identity once he left the field:
‘people would be more willing to believe I was someone else if the Colin Clark they knew had emigrated.’
He said of his wider relationships with people in the groups he targeted:
‘I maintained a friendly distance as much as possible from all of the individuals with whom I had contact during my deployment. While it was not always an easy or comfortable balance to strike, I believe I would have been considered as an “able comrade” or as a friend. I was never anything more than this.’
EMPLOYMENT, ACCOMMODATION & VEHICLE
He initially had short-term cover employment, but that became problematic so he ‘went freelance doing vehicle repairs’.
Clark arranged a bedsit for himself in Muswell Hill. He chose the area as his managers said it would be a good location for making contact with leading left-wingers. Whenever ‘Colin Clark’ went away, he arranged accommodation for himself and avoided sharing with other campaigners.
He had a Morris 1100, and later a Ford Cortina, both provided by the police.
DEPLOYMENT
Clark says he was directed to focus his attentions on ‘the Left’ in Haringey, not any specific groups. He says that there were conversations with his pre-deployment managers – Craft, Ferguson, and Sean Lynch (HN68, 1968-74) – and he was told to use his initiative in order to:
‘find an effective way to get information on extreme left-wing and revolutionary activity.’
He took his time before targeting any groups, ending up gravitating towards the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), and establishing himself slowly.
He had significant discretion in how he operated:
‘the key aspect of this was that I had to act consistently with my cover identity and legend and not compromise my real role as a UCO [undercover officer].’
REPORTING
He naturally attended the events of groups associated with the SWP: the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) and Women’s Voice (WV). He says he had limited contact with the latter due to their radical feminism, but once gave a lecture to a WV group.
Clark says he also came into contact with Troops Out Movement, Labour Party members, assorted trade unionists and others on the left, and ‘Provisional IRA terrorist supporters in North London and the Kilburn area’.
He notes the absence of reports from the second half of his deployment when:
‘I know I was gathering information about links between the extreme left-wing in Britain and Irish terrorist organisations.’
The reports provided to him by the Inquiry do not reflect his memories of what he reported on (often by telephone). He notes that there are no reports at all from the period spanning November 1978 to July 1979.
Clark also reported on industrial disputes:
‘Industrial disputes have an intrinsic risk of public disorder, and so early reporting of these could be of assistance. As far as I was aware, there was no standing instruction to report industrial disputes unless there was potential for violence or disorder.’
He says that simply being able to list those who attended a meeting – not even the details of what was said – was considered ample justification for spying on it. He denies authorship of some of the reports attributed to him.
There is an SDS report from 1982 [UCPI0000017230], which includes a list of contacts (including details for Peter Hain and Celia Stubbs, two of the non-State core participants involved in this Inquiry) from somebody’s personal address book.
Clark says:
‘I never obtained or sought to use anybody’s personal documents for information purposes, such as the address book here. I was more than content, however, to report details contained within any organisational documents that I was given.’
SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY
He struck up conversation with SWP newspaper sellers and was invited to go to a meeting around May 1977. By that summer he had joined his local branch, Seven Sisters & Haringey, and was going to their meetings, paying subs, and generally making himself useful.
He started out selling the Socialist Worker newspaper, steadily becoming more involved at branch level, and then in the organisation’s work more widely. As many of his spycop colleagues, he took the role of treasurer in the organisation he was infiltrating, presumably because it would allow him access to membership details.
He says that he gave talks and yet somehow didn’t try to persuade anyone about any political ideas.
‘I did not push myself forward but I allowed other members to suggest that I take up the branch treasurer role. From there, I went on to be the treasurer for the Lea Valley district organisation… and this meant that I was then required to attend meetings of other branches within the district.
‘The SWP was highly organised and bureaucratic with frequent meetings, and a great deal of cross-over and support to other groups. As my deployment continued, I became involved in lecturing at their request… and also assisted other SWP groups within the region with running their affairs but only ever on a practical level. I never sought to direct their policy or activities.’
One example of this assistance was the help he gave to the Tottenham branch of the party after it ran into problems. He was involved in reforming it, and ended up chairing some of its business meetings on a temporary basis.
Clark reflected on his responsibility in terms of the democracy of those meetings:
‘All this would have entailed was having a vote at district meetings, and I tried to ensure that my vote always followed the majority, and that I never advocated anything which was contrary to good order.
‘As I have described above, my managers trusted me to act appropriately, so I do not believe I was even required to inform them of these developments, although they may have been discussed at some point.’
Having been encouraged to join in with the SWP’s sporting activities, he developed a friendship with leading party activist John Deason, so was able to report on him and his activities too.
INFILTRATING SWP HEADQUARTERS
Clark says that at one point he was asked to join the SWP’s Central Committee, but turned this down with the excuse that he was too busy. He was able to provide high-end intelligence to his managers as he had access to the SWP’s headquarters and a lot of information.
He explains that:
‘as a vehicle mechanic, I helped colleagues out if they had problems with their cars.’
This was extended to activists who who worked at the headquarters that he got to know, and led to him being asked to help the party out with administrative work:
‘because I was self-employed, I agreed. This was not something that I sought out actively but it very conveniently granted me access to the kinds of information that even a district treasurer would struggle to obtain. It was also a good opportunity to understand the dynamics of the organisation.’
This meant that he spent lots of time inside their main office building, around their secretariat.
He says:
‘My access to the SWP headquarters was ad hoc when I was asked to help out. I did not have a totally free run of the building but I was there with varying frequency from 1978 onwards, starting with the preparation for the national delegate conference that year. My managers would have been aware of my involvement at the headquarters from my reports.’
The documents he had access to included the SWP’s weekly internal bulletin, which contained a lot of details of the party’s paper sales, priorities and plans.
Clark was deployed until March 1982. He was not directly succeeded by another undercover, but is aware his deployment was extended to allow ‘Phil Cooper’ (HN155, 1979-83) to establish himself in the field.
He travelled outside of London for events, such as attending the SWP conference in Birmingham and giving a lecture in Liverpool.
He attended the SWP National Delegates Conferences between 1978 and 1981, and worked as a steward or administrator:
‘because of the ad hoc work I was doing around headquarters and because they already relied on me as a helpful and organised “comrade”.’
He received a Deputy Assistant Commissioner’s commendation for his report on the 1979 conference.
RIGHT TO WORK CAMPAIGN
Clark allowed himself to be put forward to help with the admin of the Cardiff-to-Brighton Right to Work (RTW) march:
‘My analysis was that I could just as easily provide relevant information if I was helping with the catering, driving and dealing with donations received en route.
‘I was not tasked to get involved in RTW by my managers. They would only have known about RTW once I became involved. I would have kept them updated once I was invited to assist.
‘My position as National Treasurer enabled me to have access to good quality information without getting involved in policy or organising events, which I felt was consistent with my role as a deployed UCO.
‘I attended the entirety of the 1980 RTW march and drove one of the support vehicles as well as cooking on the evenings that no other arrangements were possible.’
He received another official commendation his contribution to a comprehensive report on the RTW march in 1980 [UCPI0000014610]. Clark’s successor of sorts, ‘Phil Cooper’, also a drove a support vehicle on the 1980 RTW march.
Clark’s witness statement describes the RTW demonstrators being attacked, with Clark himself having to fight off his assailants:
‘I was successful at providing information to my managers before the event and along the route of the march, including detail that large numbers were planning to attend the final picket of the Conservative Party conference in Brighton at the conclusion of the RTW march. This picket turned violent and it was the one occasion that I was not able to stay on the sidelines.
‘As I recall it, the disorder started around me, during the course of which I was badly assaulted around the head and shoulders, receiving severe bruising. It was also the only occasion when I struck out, although only in self-defence.’
This quote is fascinating for the way it fails to attribute the violence. Disorder ‘started around me’ and ‘I was badly assaulted’, but by whom? It won’t have been his comrades, as they would be on his side (and he would surely have specified, SDS officers seem to love the chance to report disorder committed by their target groups). Conservative conference delegates seem a very unlikely option. It would appear that he must be talking about his uniformed colleagues.
Assuming this is the case, it is yet another instance of a spycop being assaulted by police while undercover.
ANTI-NAZI LEAGUE
Clark’s targeting of the Anti-Nazi League was done on his own analysis and initiative. There were many violent clashes between the ANL and fascists in East London. He says:
‘the key thing was to get information to the local police in a very timely fashion given the relatively poor communications compared with today’s.’
He says he avoided getting too involved with his local (Haringey and Enfield) ANL group, or organising anything, but would sometimes attend their events.
Following a question about the reporting of the 1978 ANL Carnival [UCPI0000021653] he states:
‘In my view, it was justifiable and proportionate to report on this organisation, on the basis that the ANL was known to use violence and seek out confrontation. It was important to know where its support came from and was likely to come from in future.’
As well as their back-office at New Scotland Yard, the SDS had two field offices, or safe-houses, in West and South London. The spycops attended meetings at these flats twice a week. This is when they submitted their reports, and expense claims.
Right to Work march outside the Conservative Party conference, Brighton, October 1980
Sometimes they would put together a report about an event, or look at photographs to identify people in them, or ‘de-conflict which officers would attend the bigger events’. These get-togethers also provided opportunities to bring up personal issues with the SDS managers.
Clark says he didn’t enjoy these gatherings, and reduced his attendance to once a week, with his managers’ agreement, as his undercover life got busier. He was concerned that the meetings represented a security risk, and a threat to his cover identity. He only occasionally met up socially with the other spycops, and says that when they did this, they never discussed the details of their deployments.
Clark would call the SDS office every weekday. If there was any emergency, he says he could reach managers at their homes.
OVERTIME
His pay increased significantly because of the huge amount of overtime he did – estimating that this would have added up to many thousands of hours over his five years in the unit. The spycops could be paid for any time they spent maintaining their cover as well as the time they actually spent with target groups. He recalls that there was some kind of upper ceiling on how many hours they could claim for.
A CLOSE CALL
On 7 June 1980 Clark was off-duty, shopping with his wife and child, when he was spotted by some SWP paper sellers. They recognised him, having seen him lecture, and came over to the family. Two of them took his wife aside and one of them:
‘found out my real surname and our home address. It was she who noticed my wife’s engagement and wedding rings on her left hand and told her “you must be married”. My wife confirmed this at the time.’
Worried that this woman would carry out her threat to visit them at home, he says he spent about three months living at his cover accommodation until they managed to move house. He says he sought permission from the Met to live outside the usual 20-mile limit, and was supported by his SDS managers in this, but his application was turned down.
EXIT
‘My exfiltration was planned with my managers but I was responsible for its execution. As mentioned… above, my back story included a long-term, long-distance relationship and I just let it be known that I was going out to New Zealand to spend more time with my partner and start a new life.’
The SWP held a leaving party for him, and John Deason drove him to the airport, having helped him dispose of his minimal possessions.
Clark was one of many spycops who have used a move to another country as part of their exit story.
Until the 2021 hearings started, the Inquiry had said that ‘Barry Tompkins’ (HN106, 1979-83) had infiltrated one main group – the Spartacist League of Britain (SLB) between 1979 and 1983.
While Tompkins did spend time with the SLB it seems groups such as the Revolutionary Communist Tendency, Revolutionary Marxist Tendency, and Workers Against Racism were as much, if not more, of a focus for him.
We are told that his health is deteriorating, and this is why he is not giving live evidence to the Inquiry. However, he did provide a witness statement.
JOINING THE MET – AND THE SDS
Tompkins joined the police in the early 1970s. He did plain clothes work in Special Branch for six months before joining the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). His recollection is that he was told there were vacancies within the SDS and so approached Mike Ferguson, then head of the unit.
Tompkins was asked if he was married, which he was. The SDS preferred to use married officers for this undercover work, thinking they were less likely to ‘go rogue’.
IDENTITY THEFT & BACK STORY
In order to construct his cover identity, he stole the name and date of birth of a deceased child, Lionel Barry Tompkins. Cover employment was as a delivery driver for a garden centre in Greater London. He also had a cover vehicle, which he occasionally used to transport activists.
Tompkins used several cover flats during his time undercover. Towards the end of his deployment he shared his Stoke Newington place with another undercover, Michael James (HN96, 1978-83) – who is giving evidence to the Inquiry on the 13 May.
INFILTRATE ANY GROUP (AS LONG AS IT’S LEFT-WING)
Like other undercovers, Tompkins was allowed considerable latitude about who he targeted.
He was not directed to infiltrate any group in particular, but told to focus on the ‘far left’, albeit with the proviso that major left-wing groups, such as the Socialist Workers’ Party, were already well covered by spycops.
FIRST REPORT: SPYING ON THE BLAIR PEACH CAMPAIGN
Deployed into the field in April 1979, the earliest report identified as being authored by Tompkins is dated 30 May 1979 [UCPI0000021297]. It includes a double-sided leaflet from the Friends of Blair Peach Committee, set up after Peach was killed by police at an anti-fascist demonstration. There are other intelligence reports linked to officer ‘HN109‘ on the subject of this justice campaign.
A report from May 1980 [UCPI0000013961] lists the names of people who attended a Friends of Blair Peach demo.
Another report [UCPI0000014149] mentions a new initiative; Peach’s partner Celia Stubbs and other members Friends of Blair Peach wanted to create a national network of groups campaigning about State brutality (such as the campaigns around Richard ‘Cartoon’ Campbell and Jimmy Kelly).
A July 1979 report [UCPI0000021047] lists some of the attendees at Peach’s – it is signed by SDS chief Mike Ferguson. Last week Celia Stubbs told the Inquiry how angry she felt about Special Branch monitoring her late partner’s funeral. Tompkins says that this was not his reporting, and it does seem likely that this list was compiled from information gathered from more than one spycop.
I‘M SPARTACUS!
Tompkins states that he came across the Spartacist League of Britain (SLB), which he describes as a revolutionary Trotskyist group, because they were active in the part of East London where he’d chosen to base himself.
Tompkins recalls speaking with some SLB members and thinking that they might be of interest to the SDS as they expressed pride at having thrown bricks at police officers during the Miners’ Strike pickets (which would have been seven years previously, in 1972).
He says the Spartacist League did not pose any significant challenge to public order. They were more intellectual than they were active. The Inquiry highlights some of the rhetoric of their weekly newspapers, but Tompkins thinks the only threat posed by the group was a theoretical one.
However, he believes their support for the Provisional IRA may have been of greater concern and thought:
‘The Spartacist League would have been capable of providing low-level support to the Provisional IRA.’
He did not provide further details as to what that might mean.
BUILDING UP CREDIBILITY
Tompkins thinks that he began buying the SLB newspaper and then began attending their meetings. He described his preparations, going to some general left-wing and Labour Party events and making sure to get a good grounding in Marxist/Trotskyist literature.
He feels the SLB were initially cautious, but gradually accepted him. Tompkins says he would not have been considered a member but instead as a relatively trusted supporter. The SLB is the main subject of intelligence reports attributed to him until mid-1980.
Actual offences committed are thin on the ground. Tompkins says that this did not go beyond low-level criminality such as spraying graffiti on Bow Bridge in London – where he acted as look-out so avoided active participation.
REVOLUTIONARY LABOUR LEAGUE
Tompkins’ reports from summer 1980 include some – [UCPI0000014134 & UCPI0000014148] – about the Revolutionary Labour League (RLL), a tiny group, whose members sometimes also attended Spartacist League meetings.
REVOLUTIONARY MARXIST TENDENCY
The Revolutionary Marxist Tendency (RMT) was ‘effectively a sister organisation’ to the SLB, and mentioned in some of Tompkins’ reports. It was allegedly formed by a merger between the RLL and some people who had left the Revolutionary Communist Tendency (RCT) in mid-1980. There is also mention of a ‘Leninist Tendency’ and lots of overlap between all of these groupings.
TOMPKINS’ OWN THREE-PERSON FACTION
Tompkins describes his own involvement in a brand-new activist group. He says that he – along with two disaffected individuals who he’d met through the SLB and/or RMT – started their own splinter group (whose name is unknown). He says these two people are the ones that he got closest to, and they would socialise together two or three times a week.
It is hard to imagine what the interest of Special Branch could be in a group consisting of three people – including Tompkins himself. Although this speaks to the sheer absurdity of SDS activity, it should not obscure just how out of control the unit was.
REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST TENDENCY
The majority of Tompkins’ reporting from 1980 onwards concerned the Revolutionary Communist Tendency (RCT) and Workers Against Racism (which was connected to it). The RCT changed its name in 1981, and was then known as the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) until 1996.
BARRY TOMPKINS & THE SOVIET ATTACHÉ
Given that the deployments that have been examined between 1973 and 1982 occurred at the height of the Cold War, there has been surprisingly little talk of connections between the infiltrated groups and ‘hostile’ foreign powers.
Tompkins’ deployment contains one, or possibly two, exceptions to this. He describes what he believes to have been an attempt by a Soviet embassy attaché to recruit him as a courier. He says he was told at a meeting in a Hackney pub that he would have to go to Russia for training. He told them that he needed time to think, and consulted his managers. However, they didn’t allow him to go, fearing that his cover identity wouldn’t stand up to the possible scrutiny.
Tompkins states that he had no further contact after telling this alleged KGB officer that he wasn’t seriously interested. He says that he saw a story in a newspaper later, suggesting that this officer was expelled for trying to recruit sailors in Plymouth.
His intelligence reports record this Russian as attending two RCP meetings in 1982 [UCPI0000018248]. The Inquiry has obtained contemporaneous documents from the Security Service (MI5) which largely corroborate his account [UCPI0000028784, UCPI0000028795].
Tompkins believes that he came into contact with another foreign security service. He says that he and his faction-of-three were in contact with an individual who was very keen to hear about any anti-apartheid activity, and paid them ‘money estimated to be in the hundreds in total’ in exchange for ‘little bits of information’.
This is not recorded in any of the intelligence reports and we are left to imagine what these little bits of information might have been.
WORKERS AGAINST RACISM & BLACK JUSTICE CAMPAIGNS
Many of the spycops focused on anti-racist campaigning – including that of Black family-led justice campaigns. Back in 2018, we compiled a list of these campaigns.
Workers Against Racism (WAR) was set up by the SBL/RCT/RCP, and attracted more supporters as you didn’t have to be a communist to join WAR, just against racism.
Through spying on East London Workers Against Racism (ELWAR), Tompkins came into contact with victims of racist violence and specific justice campaigns. One of his reports records a visit by a delegation of 17 ELWAR members to a housing estate in Walthamstow to garner ‘physical support’ from residents for a family who was being racially harassed [UCPI0000018095].
Tompkins justifies this reporting, with the amazing reasoning:
‘If I came into possession of information that people were being attacked and racially abused, I would have thought this should be passed on to the police.’
Tompkins was involved with ELWAR’s campaigning during the Greater London Council elections of May 1981. He recalls being tasked by his managers with assessing the accuracy of a Daily Mail article that year which suggested that ELWAR was a militant organisation.
Tompkins reported on an ELWAR meeting in April 1983 [UCPI0000019008] and included details of the group’s involvement in the case of a 13-year-old boy who had been beaten up and stabbed by police officers in Notting Hill, whose case had been turned down by a law firm. He was asked whether this incident would have the same ‘agitative effect’ as the case of Colin Roach, whose killing in a police station had led to a campaign for a public inquiry.
Tompkins also reported on the Hackney Legal Defence Committee and Newham 8 Defence Campaign [UCPI0000015892]. This report also names noted lawyer Gareth Peirce. His other reporting on justice campaigns included the New New Cross Massacre Action Committee [UCPI0000017186], and the Winston Rose Action Campaign [UCPI0000015540].
A November 1981 report [UCPI0000016706] summarises the contents of a WAR document entitled ‘Racist Violence and Police Harassment’, referring to a number of families in the Brixton area who have suffered ‘brutal treatment at the hands of police’ and of ‘racist attacks where the police have taken no action or obtained no result’.
Tompkins states that such campaigns were not a particular focus of the SDS – although the evidence suggests otherwise.
SENSITIVE INFORMATION
Tompkins said he reported all of the information available to him, and his reports bear this out. They include personal information about individuals, including addresses, telephone numbers, occupations, employer details and car descriptions together with registration numbers. The reports also contain more specific personal information, such as details of the subject’s partner and family, information about who group members live with, etc. One example is this report from September 1979 [UCPI0000013345].
REPORTING ON SEXUAL ACTIVITY & EVERYTHING ELSE
Even more intrusive is a report of September 1980 [UCPI0000014258]. It not only records that the subject of the report was ‘presently indulging in a sexual relationship’ but also contains the comment that:
‘Judging by the depressing regularity with which [redacted] suffers from attacks of cystitis, neither is permitting [redacted]’s tenuous position in the United Kingdom to interfere with more immediate needs.’
Another report from the same month [UCPI0000014543] details how an RMT member had been suspended by them for misappropriating party funds, and the theft was to pay off a sex worker. It also superfluously and cruelly adds that the person had a ‘physical deformity’.
Equally troubling is an April 1983 report [UCPI0000018782] which records that someone:
‘Recently had an abortion at a South London ‘day abortion’ clinic. Whilst the identity of the putative father is not certain it is known that [redacted] previously had a relationship with [redacted].’
In his written statement, Tompkins doubts that he authored many of these reports and/or included many of the personal details cited above.
SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS – NONE, ONE OR TWO?
Tompkins was interviewed by Operation Herne (the internal police investigation into the spycops scandal circa 2014) regarding a possible relationship with an activist.
Tompkins understands this was due to a Security Service document [UCPI0000027446] of July 1982. It says that Tompkins has been ‘warned off’ a [redacted group], as he has ‘probably bedded’ a woman – who presumably had a connection to the anonymised group.
Tompkins denies this accusation – and says he has no clear memory of who this person is – yet states that the only reason he remembers her is because she had a ‘party trick’ of lactating on demand and demonstrated this to activists on a couple of occasions.
However, Tompkins does concede that he developed a very close relationship with a different woman – an ex-partner of an activist whom he’d been spying on. Tompkins says he ‘bumped into’ her a few months after she had split up with this partner. He says a purely platonic friendship developed, and they would meet up for drinks, he would stay over at her house (but according to him, he would sleep in one of the children’s rooms and the children would share with her).
As a result, some activists began to refer to her as ‘Barry’s girlfriend’. Tompkins states that he did not correct them as it was helpful for his cover for people to think he had a girlfriend.
Trevor Butler, a manager in the SDS, asked to speak to him about an intercepted (bugged) telephone call that had mentioned ‘potentially storing items from Ireland at Barry’s girlfriend’s place’. Tompkins thinks Trevor Butler said something to him along the lines of:
‘You’re not going to get us into trouble are you?’
To which he replied:
‘No, it’s nothing like that.’
Tompkins wrote that he was ‘sad when he had to disappear’ from this woman’s life. What he does not explain is why he formed such a close relationship in his cover identity with someone who was not an activist – and by his own account was not a target of surveillance.
TOMPKINS INTELLIGENCE USED FOR DEPORTATION?
Tompkins describes how, about five years after he left the SDS, he was contacted by Tony Waite, who he believes was the Inspector in charge of the SDS at the time. He asked Tompkins about the accuracy of his reporting concerning a particular individual, which he confirmed. This was in connection with a possible deportation.
DEBRIEF
Unlike some of the earlier spycops we’ve heard from, Tompkins says he was fully debriefed following his deployment. There is a document [UCPI0000034280] from October 1983, which appears to have been created by MI5 to collate his intelligence about the RCP.
Tompkins has told the Inquiry that he never joined any trade unions whilst undercover, but this report says he joined the TGWU, at the behest of the RCP (who wanted him to go on to get involved in Trades Councils), and was a member for a while, until he allowed this to lapse.
The report offers an interesting insight into the party’s structure, rules, discipline and the standards/ level of commitment expected from members. It refers to the:
‘grindingly boring nature of average RCP activity.’
PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR
One issue which the Core Participants wanted the Inquiry to explore was whether undercovers took their knowledge and skills to the private sector after leaving the police. The Inquiry is only asking one very narrow question about this – specifically asking if they did any more undercover work after retiring from the police – rather than a broader question about them using their inside knowledge, ‘tradecraft’ or other expertise.
Tompkins says that for a period in the 1990s, he worked as a private investigator. He describes one occasion when he was asked to carry out a check for a company that was considering investing in a business proposition. To do so he pretended to be a potential investor, using a fake name.
Note: The Inquiry was intending to request a supplementary statement from Tompkins, to address new documents that have come out and other matters in his written statement, but has not done so due to his deteriorating health.
The Inquiry also states that photographs of Tompkins have been shown ‘privately’ to ‘civilian witnesses’. We do not know which civilian witnesses they have been shown to as no former members of the groups that Tompkins infiltrated have been granter Core Participant status at the Inquiry. One former member of SLB applied for such status and was refused.
‘Bill Biggs‘ (HN356/124, 1977-82) infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party in South East London and subsequently Brixton, from February 1978 to February 1981. He also reported on the Anti-Nazi League, the Right to Work Campaign, and the Greenwich and Bexley branches of the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism.
It’s likely that he additionally reported on the Brixton Defence Campaign, set up to support those arrested in the 1981 Brixton Riots. He is notable for the extent to which he reported on anti-racism work.
Biggs joined the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) in October 1977 and was married throughout his deployment.
He replaced Roger Harris (HN200, 1974-1977) and another unnamed undercover being deployed in SWP. This other officer is presumably one of the spycops for whom the Inquiry has chosen to restrict all details.
SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY
Biggs is one of many undercovers who targeted the SWP in London. He focused on the south east branches of Plumstead and Greenwich initially.
Like a number of his contemporaries in the SDS, such as Vince Miller (HN354, 1976-79), Biggs was active around the ‘Battle of Lewisham’ anti-fascist demonstration on 13 August 1977. However, this appears to be before he joined the SDS, so probably must have been present as a standard Special Branch plain clothes officer. If so, he is one of the eighteen Special Branch officers cited as being on duty that day.
One report [MPS-0733365] notes that Biggs telephoned Special Branch to say that at 14.55 on the day SWP ‘heavies’ would go to Church Street in Deptford, ready to attack the National Front marchers. This information was passed straight to the public order branch’s operations room.
It is around five months after Lewisham that we find the first report [UCPI0000011713] attributed to him as an SDS undercover. It is for a meeting of 24 January 1978 of the SWP’s South East District.
After this, Biggs regularly reported on the Plumstead branch meetings. Membership stood at seven people in March 1979, and attendance was often between five and ten people. In December 1978, Biggs chaired at least one meeting, his name given as ‘William Biggs’ [UCPI0000013021].
The Inquiry notes the tone of some of this reporting is dismissive, giving an extract from a February 1978 report as an example [UCPI0000011814]:
‘After a meaningless tirade on the exploitation of women, “gays” etc. and a brief discussion, the meeting was finally brought to a close.’
TREASURER & PAPER SALES ORGANISER
Biggs quickly rose to prominence in the organisations he infiltrated. He was elected treasurer of Plumstead branch of the SWP by April 1978 [UCPI0000011996] and in December 1978 became Branch Organiser for the Socialist Worker newspaper [UCPI0000013021] subsequently resigning as treasurer [UCPI0000013029].
In taking these positions, Biggs mirrors many of the other undercovers in the SWP from the era. Treasurer and membership secretary seem to have been common positions for spycops, presumably as they give access to the personal details of all members.
In September 1979, Plumstead merged with Greenwich branch [UCPI0000013398] but this was short-lived. Plumstead reformed in November 1979, as shown in a report with five people meeting at a private address, [UCPI0000013614]. This report notes that the Plumstead branch is also coming under criticism from the district organisation for being lax in its paper sales. The Inquiry noted that Biggs was paper sales organiser for almost year.
ANTI-RACISM CAMPAIGNS
On 12 December 1979, William Biggs of Plumstead was a guest speaker at the Greenwich SWP branch, giving a short speech on the political climate in apartheid South Africa. It is reported that he was able to speak of his ‘personal experiences regarding workings of apartheid’, which prompted a lengthy discussion [UCPI0000013688]. The Inquiry does not know if he did indeed have links or spent time in South Africa.
The Inquiry then draw attention to a report where he chaired a meeting of Greenwich SWP on 25 June 1980, which was addressed by the secretary of the Greenwich branch of the Indian Workers Association [UCPI0000014053]. The latter spoke on racism and fascism, and the oppression experienced by Asians in Woolwich and Greenwich.
In light of this, the Inquiry raised the point:
‘For the question is whether SDS officers, infiltrating the SWP, were tasked to use that position as a stepping stone to involvement with and infiltration of anti-racist groups.’
There are five reports on meetings of the South East London District of the SWP attributed to Biggs. They record financial and membership matters, union representation, newspaper sales, and liaison with SWP affiliated groups such as the Anti-Nazi League, Women’s Voice and Bexley Campaign Against Racism and Fascism.
MOVE TO BRIXTON AFTER THE RIOTS
Biggs’ reporting on the Plumstead SWP continued to at least March 1981, but by June 1981 he was infiltrating the Brixton branch. The Inquiry notes that this was not long after the Brixton Riots which had taken place in April that year.
Biggs was at the inaugural meeting of the Brixton SWP branch in June, attended by nine people. He was, true to form, elected treasurer of the branch [UCPI0000015441].
In October, Biggs was one of thirteen at an SWP meeting to discuss the Brixton Defence Campaign, which had been set up to support those arrested in the Brixton Riots [UCPI0000016622]. They agreed to organise pickets of courts in support.
WIDE-RANGING REPORTING
The Inquiry notes that Biggs’ reporting covers a variety of protests on different topics, from local policing, the Right to Work Campaign, harassment of SWP paper sellers by the National Front, support for Irish hunger strikers, and a picket of Eltham Police Station on second anniversary of death of Blair Peach, who had been killed by police at an anti-fascist demonstration in 1979.
There is also reference to a May 1980 march organised by local Trades Councils in south east London and the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers. Among those listed as attending is MP Guy Barnett [UCPI0000013983], which is another example of the SDS breaching the ‘Wilson Doctrine’, a rule that MPs should be informed if they are subjected to State surveillance.
As with other undercovers, Biggs reported on individuals as well as groups. An August 1979 report [UCPI0000011422] singles out someone who is an active shop steward in construction union UCATT who apparently boasts of contacts with the Provisional IRA. Another, in April 1978, states that a Plumstead SWP branch member was a porter and secretary of the hospital branch of the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) [UCPI0000011911].
In June 1981, Biggs reports on a gay member of Brixton SWP for whom a photograph is supplied [UCPI0000015431].
BEXLEY ANTI-NAZI LEAGUE & OTHER CAMPAIGNS
As interest in anti-racism campaigns among the left was growing, Biggs’ reporting repeatedly touched on the issue. This includes the SWP affiliated Anti-Nazi League (ANL) from 1978 to 1981 and, through his involvement with them, other issues too.
Anti Nazi League ‘Never Again’ poster, 1978
One report is of the September 1978 inaugural meeting of Bexley ANL, at which the Assistant General Secretary of NUPE is a speaker on anti-racist activities within trade unions [UCPI0000011472].
Biggs attended other Bexley ANL meetings, and reports on a picket they organised in aid of the Blair Peach Memorial [UCPI0000013500].
The Inquiry also pulled up a report of February 1981 [UCPI0000016486] when the ANL protested at Deptford Police Station to highlight police inaction in investigating the New Cross Massacre, when thirteen young black people died in a fire at a house party thought to be an act of arson.
Biggs also reported on both the Greenwich and Bexley Campaigns against Racism and Fascism (CARAF). He was at the inaugural meeting of Greenwich CARAF in March 1978 [UCPI0000011917] and recorded who attended a July 1978 event protesting against racist attacks in Lewisham [UCPI0000011330].
REQUESTS FROM MI5
Towards the end of his deployment there were requests for information from MI5 on SWP groups in south London, including on particular individuals. For instance, a 1981 memo [UCPI0000028839] notes the Security Service’s interest in:
‘[the SWP’s] future policy direction, particularly as regards blacks.’
The Inquiry says it will be investigating the degree to which the Security Service influenced SDS deployments.
QUESTIONABLE VALUE
The Inquiry notes three annual appraisals of Biggs by his managers for 1978 [MPS-0743908], 1979 [MPS-0743907], and 1980 [MPS-0743906], calling his work ‘useful’ and noting he is well regarded.
‘Although some of HN356’s reporting seems likely to have been of some use to the policing of public order, other reports, taken in isolation at least, appear to us to be of questionable policing value.’
Most of the day was taken up with evidence in person from ‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-82) who infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party and Anti-Nazi League.
Unlike the other former spycops we’ve heard from so far, Gray’s evidence was only audio-streamed to the live hearing room, so those who attended were not able to see his facial reactions (or, inexplicably, those of the Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting, and the lawyers).
What did come through the audio was his irritation and exasperation at being asked all these questions by the Counsel for the Inquiry. He failed to answer many of them, and often gave obtuse replies to straightforward questions. There were multiple discrepancies between what he’d put in his written statement, and what he said today (as recorded in the transcript).
There was a pattern to Gray’s questioning. He was taken back to his own witness statement to refresh his memory, and would then be shown a series of reports to illustrate or, more often, contradict what he had written.
He used a wide variety of defence mechanisms to fend off questions and avoid answering them, including one that we are very familiar with now: (selective) memory loss, ‘I can’t remember’, ‘I don’t recall’, ‘it’s 45 years ago’.
He interrupted the Counsel for the Inquiry with complaints that she had misread or misunderstood things, even when she hadn’t. He complained about being ‘confused’ by his own words, and came across as both evasive and pedantic, sometimes just responding with things like:
‘If I wrote that, it must have been what I thought at the time… If it says so in the report, that is what happened.’
Gray also denied accountability for or authorship of a number of reports, on the grounds that his signature wasn’t on it (although it had been signed by Chief Inspector Mike Ferguson, who was in charge of the SDS at the time), or that he wasn’t ostensibly a member of the target group on the date of the report.
His strangest excuse was that he wasn’t responsible for his own witness statement – saying several times things along the lines of:
‘I can’t remember writing this. You’ve got to remember that this was written for me, and not all of it is in my type of English.’
This confirms what has long been suspected – that the State’s lawyers ‘helped’ the former spycops to write their statements for the Inquiry.
Counsel for the Inquiry responded:
‘Alright, but this is a statement that you had a chance to review before signing it; is that right?’
We note that Gray had begun his testimony by confirming his written statement as ‘true and accurate to the best of my knowledge and belief’, shortly after making an oath on the Bible to tell the whole truth, so it’s surprising that he doesn’t appear to have read it closely at all.
Gray worked in the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch for nine years before joining the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). We know that he spent at least one of those years in ‘C Squad’, whose remit included gathering intelligence on left-wing groups.
According to his police service record, Gray was posted to its ‘Industrial section’. However, he now disputes this official record, claiming that he didn’t work on C Squad at all until after the SDS, when he joined it as a ‘senior officer’. He also seemed to deny having anything to do with the Industrial section.
He remained within the Branch for the rest of his career in the police. He described the Branch in his statement:
‘it was a small, collegiate work environment, everyone knew everyone else, and we all called one another by our first names.’
He says he was first invited to join the SDS by an undercover, who was a friend of his:
‘He said that I would be absolutely ideal for the job, and that I should join up.’
Gray explains that he didn’t take up the suggestion at that time, due to personal circumstances, but decided to join the spycops a few years later, in September 1977. By then, this friend had left the SDS and moved back to other Special Branch duties.
However, Gray says that he was familiar with the SDS supervisors of the time, as well as the senior officer (thought to be Ken Pryde, HN608) who formally offered him the job, after a short interview.
He says he remembers little of that half-hour interview, but is adamant that he was told his anonymity would always be protected.
MARITAL STATUS
Gray wasn’t asked about his marital status, going on to say:
‘Most of my colleagues, including those who were already in the office of the SDS, knew my home arrangements, and we all used to socialise together, with wives, many times. So yes, they did; they were aware.’
Asked why he’d said ‘I thought that you had to be married’, he explained that he’d assumed that all of the spycops were, until he was deployed and met one who wasn’t.
Having ‘a secure background, a secure home’ and ‘someone to come back to, after a long weekend or a long day’ was considered important, ‘so that you didn’t go round the bend, quite honestly.’
He doesn’t think that anyone spoke to his wife about the possible impact of this new role on her and his family life. He doesn’t recall what he was allowed to tell her, though she and other wives of undercovers did know the squad was nicknamed ‘the Hairies’.
A LETTER FROM HIS WIFE
The Inquiry then displayed an astonishing piece of evidence – a letter sent anonymously to then Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir David McNee, in 1980 [MPS-0726912]. It contained accusations about the sexual conduct of SDS officers, on police property, makes mention of the National Front, and is signed ‘an ex-friend of the Hairies’. The police opened an investigation into the letter.
By this time, Gray had met, and moved in with, a colleague from the Yard, and divorce proceedings were underway. The police suspected that his wife was responsible for the letter, so ‘discreetly obtained’ a sample of her handwriting to analyse. The report says it is ‘highly probable’ that she was the author, and describes a visit being paid to her home.
The Met’s main concern is avoiding her taking these allegations elsewhere, and revealing the existence of the secret spying unit, rather than their veracity or the impacts on her.
Gray says that following this, he offered to resign, but his senior officers (then Barry Moss and Ray Wilson) persuaded him not to. He says they were fully aware of his new relationship; they all knew the woman, and that he had moved in with her. He later married her.
Did he have any sexual relationships in his undercover identity?
‘Absolutely not… It was something I would never have done. And none of my colleagues at that time were expected to.’
STOLEN IDENTITY
Like other recruits to the SDS, Gray spent some months in the back-office before being deployed.
He got to know ‘Bill Biggs‘ (HN356/124, 1977-82), who was a few months ahead of him in the process, and learnt a lot from him. One of these things was the SDS’ preferred method of creating a false identity – locating the birth certificate of a child who had died at a young age.
Gray says he was instructed (by Chief Inspector Ken Pryde) to go to the government’s birth registry at St Catherine’s House and find a name to use, and Biggs was sent to help him. He chose to steal the name of ‘Paul Gray’, whose birth date was close to his own.
He does not remember any discussion about this practice, or being given any other options.
Gray explained:
‘We’d all watched “The Day of the Jackal” a couple of years earlier, when it came out, and that’s how the identity was done in that.’
Frederick Forsyth’s best-selling book including identity theft of dead children had come out in 1971, the film in 1973.
However, in his written statement, Gray suggested that this practice had been ‘thought up’ by the unit’s founder, Conrad Dixon.
Asked again about this at the end of the day, he said he’d looked up the film on Wikipedia and now assumed that was the source of this particular tradecraft.
All in all, he remains of the view that this practice was:
‘a sensible precaution, just in case someone decided to look you up.’
The undercover says that he didn’t do any research into the family of the real ‘Paul Gray’, and didn’t give much thought to the possibility that they might find out about his identity’s theft. Asked if he felt uncomfortable about it:
‘I don’t think it ever crossed my mind after it had all been okayed with the people in the office.’
Although he created a detailed back-story for ‘Paul Gray’, he says he never needed to use it:
‘I probably would have bluffed my way through the conversation had anyone asked about my background.’
He said nobody ever ‘tested’ his false identity.
EXPOSURE
Gray’s belief that identity theft was ‘sensible’ is at odds with the fact that it could fail spectacularly. Though it provided the spycop with a real birth certificate in case suspicious comrades checked, it also meant they had a death certificate that was just as easily found. And it happened.
Just before Gray’s deployment began, SDS officer Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76) was presented with a copy of the real Richard Gibson’s death certificate:
‘It was very much in all our minds when we joined the Squad.’
He said that he had heard rumours about why Rick had ‘come off in a hurry’, but was reassured by the SDS office staff:
‘That it would be okay; and there were other parts of his deployment that I would never have gone into, so in my mind it didn’t matter.’
It became clear that Gray had come to believe that it was the relationships Clark had had whilst undercover that caused him to be confronted.
However at the very end of the day, when asked to clarify this matter, Gray contradicted what he had said before. He now claimed that he only heard these rumours prior to joining the SDS, while he was working in the wider Special Branch. He went on to say that by the time he joined:
‘Everybody had forgotten about it at that time… we were all getting on with our postings and we were making sure we didn’t make the same mistake.’
The Inquiry asked how they were sure they were not making the same mistake unless everybody knew what had gone wrong, the only thing Gray had to say was:
‘We knew we should try and not have intercourse with somebody … who was one of the subject of ours undercover.’
He remains convinced that his contemporaries were all aware of the rumours, as many of them had been in the SDS with Clark.
TRAINING & GUIDANCE
During his time in the SDS back-office before going undercover, Gray read reports including those from deployed officers. He also attended the regular meetings at the SDS safe house (twice a week by that time), where he talked to them about their experiences and was given advice on what he should be doing once in the field.
‘After the meetings I would go and have a pint in a local pub with the officers who were undertaking deployments in groups similar to the one that I would be deployed into. If they did not drink, they would just have a chat with me at the end of the meeting at the SDS cover flat. They would give me advice on what I should be doing when I went into the field.’
According to him, this was the usual way for SDS officers to learn – from those who had already been deployed.
At this time, his managers included two former undercovers: Mike Ferguson and ‘HN68’ (who had used the cover name ‘Sean Lynch’ in his deployment).
There was no formal training, and he was not provided with any kind of manual or handbook. Indeed, Gray claimed he was surprised anyone might think there would be any formal training or rules to follow:
‘We were police officers. We were expected to use our common sense and judgement. You learnt on the job.’
The only guidance Gray can recall being given is to telephone the back-office if he was ever arrested. He wasn’t told avoid committing any crimes, and says he tried to avoid any violence at demonstrations.
He does not believe he ever saw the 1969 Home Office Circular, which prohibited undercover officers from being involved in legal cases, nor did he receive any formal guidance on other legal or ethical issues.
Despite going on to far more senior roles in the police, Gray said he had no understanding at all of the phrase ‘legal professional privilege’ – meaning confidentiality between lawyers and clients, which should not be spied on by police – and added that this didn’t exist in his day, which is untrue.
What about relationships (in the widest sense, including friendships) with those he spied on?
‘I was allowed to get close.’
Gray was explicit about the spycops being encouraged to socialise with those they spied on; it was recognised as an excellent way of gathering information.
He also talked of people getting lifts in his cover van and that he visited some people’s homes and being invited in for cups of tea, for example when dropping off copies of the ‘Socialist Worker’ newspaper.
‘I was never aware of anybody who worked at the same time as me having a sexual relationship.’
He wasn’t told not to though:
‘It was never mentioned that we were not able to have relationships, but there again, it was not expected… And I’m sure if I’d heard about anyone else who was having a relationship, I’m afraid I would have had reported it to the office.’
Gray cheerfully admitted to drink-driving while on duty, claiming that this was just ‘common sense’:
‘If you’re going to go to the pub after a meeting, or a lot of the meetings were held in pubs, you would have a couple of pints, and that you were going to drive home. You had to deliver all the people in your branch back to where they lived. So that’s as far as breaking the law was concerned.’
He went on to make excuses for this criminality on the grounds that the beer was very weak in those days. He then said he had his cover job as a driver as an excuse to leave the pub early if he wanted to.
Later on, Gray made a comment about how people tended to buy their own drinks in those days, rather than rounds, making it easy to hide how much or little one was drinking. However he didn’t say that he actually did this himself.
CLOSE & COSY WITH SENIOR MANAGERS
It also emerged that Gray had a particularly cosy relationship with the unit’s managers, in particular Mike Ferguson and ‘Sean Lynch’. In his statement he said they were:
‘absolutely brilliant, very experienced, they would always be there if you needed them.’
Speaking to the Inquiry, he clarified what he meant – they had experience of being undercover (rather than of being managers), which they passed on to him and the others – and called them ‘good all-round officers’.
He knew both men before joining the SDS. It sounds like he socialised and played squash with them regularly:
‘It is difficult to separate what I learnt from them on the squash court rather than in the office. I mean, we were big friends.’
Asked if the other undercovers had a similarly close and supportive relationship with the SDS management, he said:
‘I’d like to think so, but I don’t know.’
OTHER SPYCOPS – IGNORANCE IS BLISS
Gray attended the spycops’ weekly gatherings every week starting when he was working in the back office. Since the evidence of ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1976-79), who vividly described what amounted to a sexist culture at the SDS, the Inquiry has been asking other spycops about their experience with this kind of ‘jokes’ and ‘banter’.
Gray claimed he didn’t experience any of this offensive language, either at the safe-house or in the pub afterwards, saying:
‘I wouldn’t have approved of it and I quite honestly can’t imagine any of the colleagues that I knew doing anything of that sort.’
He also claims not to have known about anyone at that time indulging in sexual relationships. The Inquiry noted that he served alongside ‘Vince Miller’ (HN354, 1976-1979) who had admitted to at least four sexual encounters. Gray says he was surprised about this, and denied all knowledge:
‘I never knew what was going on, but then again, I wasn’t in his circle.’
He went on to claim that he didn’t even know that ‘Vince’ had infiltrated the same target group as himself, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
In his statement, Gray described the work of his fellow spycops in glowing terms, saying they did an ‘exemplary job.’ Asked if he considered this still to be the case, now that he’s learnt about ‘Vince’ and the way he abused his position, Gray said yes.
When questioned about a number of other undercovers who deployments overlapped with his, he denied ever hearing anything untoward. Rather, they didn’t talk about what they actually did in their deployments:
‘I hadn’t a clue what the other officers were doing… even the ones who were in the same group as me. It wasn’t something that was talked about a lot.’
Asked more about his contemporaries, and who he was closest with during that time, Gray recalled sometimes going out for curries together in a group:
‘We would try to carry on normal life as much as we could away from our undercover jobs. We would never talk about our undercover jobs when we met like that, unless you needed some advice from someone who had done it before. Generally, you would have absolutely no idea what the others were doing.’
HIS ROLE AT GRUNWICK
Another inconsistency emerged between Gray’s written and oral evidence when he spoke of the long-running Grunwick industrial dispute. According to his statement:
‘Several of my SDS colleagues attended and reported on the Grunwicks disputes.’
How did he know this, if they never spoke about what they were doing?
He kept ducking the question, causing the Counsel to ask it three times. He eventually conceded that it was possible that Grunwick had been discussed at the spycops’ get-togethers but insisted that he ‘didn’t see their reports’.
This strained his credibility, especially as he said:
‘One of the reasons that I was moved to that particular part of London was to replace an officer who had in the past reported on Grunwick. You have got to remember, Grunwick went on for two years, every day, and I don’t think I submitted any reports, because most of the work done with myself was going to the early morning pickets of the Grunwick factory and giving detail beforehand to the office of how how many people were likely to be on the streets, whether it was going to be a big one or a small one, and that was all done by telephone. That’s why probably I say I don’t recall submitting any reports.’
Police press back pickets as buses of strike breakers arrive, Grunwick dispute, London, July 1977
Gray kept saying that he didn’t write any reports about Grunwick himself as his reporting was all done by telephone.
He added:
‘I didn’t know what my colleagues were doing. You might see one of them. We’re talking about 7 o’clock in the morning when the Grunwick employees were being bussed in. On some days, it was a big punch up, on other days there were hardly any pickets there at all. But the pickets came from all over the country, and quite notable people were attending.’
VISITS FROM THE TOP BRASS
The spycops were visited in their safe-house by senior police officers, including a Deputy Assistant Commissioner (probably Robert Bryan), and on one occasion by an Assistant Commissioner for Crime.
Gray recalled that the latter:
‘was very shocked by seeing us and hadn’t a clue what we were doing. But we gave him lunch and he went away happy.’
He noted such visits were ‘always treated with a little bit of humour’ and explained:
‘Because if you’re working in a situation in Scotland Yard where everybody looks the same and they’re all doing their job, and you then come out, to a not-very-tidy flat in the middle of nowhere, and meet ten chaps who are smelly, hairy, not very nice, and you are told that they’re your officers, it was a bit of a shock, I think, and that happened on a couple of occasions.’
He assumed that the senior SDS office staff briefed these visitors.
Asked if the shocked Assistant Commissioner for Crime was Gilbert Kelland (1977 – 1984), he said the name of the visitor he remembered was Mastel. The latter was a contemporary Assistant Commissioner, but for A Division – not C – and that is peculiar as he was not in the line of command of the SDS.
THE REPORTING PROCESS
Gray has complained that many of his reports he remembers making are not in the bundle of evidence that the Inquiry has provided him with. If he had anything urgent to report – including information for the Met’s public order department (A8) – he tended to telephone it in.
However, he also submitted many written reports, and it is clear that many of them are missing:
‘There are a hell of a lot of bloody meetings that I reported on that are not in my bundle.’
He says that he would draft what he called ‘current reports’ and then give them to the office staff to finish off, and maybe collate with others. Earlier he said that Special Branch – beyond the Special Demonstration Squad – would sometimes consolidate intelligence from different spycops into single reports.
At the end of his deployment, Gray was asked to bring the files of various individuals up to date before he left the unit. He described this as ‘topping and tailing’ reports, by writing down everything that was known about the subject; where they lived, how much spare time they had, what they did with it, how often they had people over, how much involvement they had with campaigning, etc.
The Inquiry illustrated this May 1982 report on a member of Kilburn SWP and West Hampstead CND [UCPI0000018134].
Even the notion that people were politically inactive for years was seen as an important input to an ‘up-to-date’ report, and these files would be retained (for example [UCPI0000018131]).
Gray complained that the examples shown today were ‘not representative of an ordinary up-to-date report’, and Mitting promised to examine the others.
REGISTRY FILES
He explained the significance of the numbers that appear on the sides of these reports: these were Registry File reference numbers added by office staff, after they’d run a check on the names of any individuals and groups mentioned.
Gray also clarified that the police had a special photography unit, who took photos at demos and meetings. Sometimes an album of these photographs would be shown around at the safe-house, for anyone there to help with identifying the people in them.
‘SUBVERSION’ & THE SWP
Gray was sent to North West London, as another undercover had just left the area:
‘probably because at that time, we were having a lot of trouble with getting the right numbers of police officers on the streets in the mornings at Grunwick.’
He also stated:
‘I was not tasked beyond being told to infiltrate the SWP’
In his witness statement he said that the SWP:
‘was a revolutionary group which was involved in demonstrations. They were willing to achieve that by whatever means possible, and did not believe that the ballot box was the only way. They were dedicated to the downfall of the government at the time.’
He accused them not just of being ‘subversive’, but also of presenting a ‘challenge to public order’ and being ‘involved in criminal activities.’
The Inquiry sought to clarify what he meant by these assertions. How did he know they were ‘subversive’? Did he ever witness the SWP or its members doing anything to ‘bring down the system of government in this country’?
His answer was frankly bizarre; he began talking about their participation in anti-fascist demonstrations and the ensuing conflict in Brick Lane on Sundays, when members of the fascist National Front would confront SWP newspaper sellers, saying it was ‘quite violent’ and ‘very, very unpleasant’.
When asked if that had anything to do with subversion, he replied:
‘It could be. Whatever subversion is, I don’t know.’
We were shown a report from September 1979 [UCPI0000013385], of a meeting of the SWP’s NW London District Committee. According to this, the SWP was ‘at an all-time low’, with only 3800 members nationwide, to be suffering from apathy, and low circulation figures for the Socialist Worker newspaper. Gray said he did not remember this, nor any discussion with his managers about his continued deployment in the group.
In his statement, he says:
‘it was the role of Special Branch to report on subversive activity, but it was the role of the security services to deal with it, not the police. The main role of the SDS was intelligence gathering to assist with public order policing.’
He knew that the Security Service (MI5) was interested in the spycops’ work, pointing out that they were sent a copy ‘of everything that we produced’ and explaining the ‘Box 500’ stamp in the corner of the copies seen by the Inquiry indicates this.
We saw examples of ‘Box 500’ requesting information, including a document dated January 1980 [UCPI0000013713] which contains personal details about a member of the SWP’s Kilburn branch being treated in hospital following a car crash.
Did he ever think of the SDS – or the Met police more widely – as being subordinate to MI5?
‘It never crossed my mind.’
RACISTS & VIOLENCE
In his statement, Gray said that there was ‘always a sub-group’ who were looking for trouble, but that he chose to stick with the people who chose to avoid aggravation so, as a result, was never caught up in violence or injured at any demonstrations.
Asked if he ever considered confining his reporting to those who were getting involved in the violence, rather than the peaceful ones, he said he didn’t. Although he admits that many SWP members were entirely peaceful and law-abiding, his excuse was that he had to report on the group as a whole.
Later on in his written statement, he wrote:
‘I suspect that all of them had run-ins with the police’
However, he said he didn’t know if any of them were arrested. He defined ‘run-ins’ in an unusual way – describing groups of activists running at police lines to break though them – but denied taking part in this practice himself, saying that all he got involved in was:
‘linking arms and trying to stick together with my comrades.’
Why did he describe the SWP as ‘a leading group in the public order field?’
Gray said their newspaper sales were prolific, and still are. They were active, they went to a lot of demonstrations and pickets. There was disorder. In his written statement, he claimed that they were involved in criminality, and he frequently saw them engage in violence.
When questioned more about this, the only example he could provide was the violence he saw at Brick Lane in East London. He spoke about them throwing missiles – ‘bricks, rubbish bins, anything that was going’ at the National Front (NF).
Despite admitting that the NF deliberately chose that place to demonstrate because it was a predominantly Asian area, and the NF ‘wanted to get rid of them’, and ‘the Bangladeshi restaurants and shops would get smashed up’ by the NF. Yet he also insisted that the violence he saw ‘was provoked by both sides, and the police had to keep them apart.’
There are no reports on any violence of this kind in his entire deployment. Gray claimed this was because the spycops provided ‘pre-emptive intelligence’ so were able to prevent such violence from taking place.
In response to this, the Inquiry laid out some other examples of his reporting, which were not ‘pre-emptive’ at all, but about things which had already occurred.
One such report concerned a car being used by a local Anti Nazi League (ANL) group who went around painting over racist graffiti [UCPI0000011447]. Gray said the security services would have been ‘very interested’ in the details of the car and its owner.
In contrast, it appears that the police weren’t interested in taking action against the NF, and the SDS did not infiltrate them. This was confirmed by Gray, in his own words, when talking about that letter written by his wife, in which she mentions spycops infiltrating the extreme right wing, he said:
‘She didn’t get it from me, because we weren’t, in those days.’
UPWARD MOBILITY IN THE SWP
The Inquiry traced Gray’s journey through the SWP’s hierarchy, with the help of some more documents.
The first SWP meeting he attended and reported on seems to have been a meeting of the Cricklewood branch in February 1978 [UCPI0000011859]. He explained that this was the only branch of the party in the area at the time, but again failed to answer the Inquiry’s question: did the SDS view infiltrating the SWP as a ‘stepping stone’ to other groups?
The next report [UCPI0000011354] was from a much smaller meeting of the Cricklewood Branch Committee, in July 1978. This took place in someone’s home, and elections for the Committee took place. Gray was voted in as a committee member – he is listed as the ‘Socialist Worker Organiser’.
He now claims that he had no idea this election was due to take place, and that he was nominated from the floor, and had no way of excusing himself or contacting the office for authorisation before accepting it. He suggests that the reason for his nomination was that access to a vehicle was essential for the role of moving a lot of newspapers. In any case, he believes he was a trusted member of the group by then, and his managers were happy about this.
In January 1979 he was elected to the North West London District Committee [UCPI0000013111]. He is adamant that he did not volunteer for this either, but he knew in advance that he would be appointed, and says this:
‘It’s better not attract attention by putting up your hand.’
A week later, at a meeting of seven District Committee members [UCPI0000013123], Gray became the District Organiser responsible for newspaper distribution. He was tasked with organising regular meetings with Branch Organisers across the wider area. Partly, it seems, because he had a van.
He explained that he would turn up at their Branch meetings and talk to them about their paper sales. This meant he could gather a lot more intelligence, about a lot more people. Asked if this gave him more influence over Branch Organisers, he responded by talking about how hard it was to collect money for papers sold.
When asked if joining the District Committee could be considered a step up in the SWP hierarchy, Gray claimed he ‘never thought of it that way’ and repeatedly claimed that he had little influence over decisions, he just transported papers around.
We saw a few more reports about paper sales and party members being exhorted to sell more. A National Organiser came to the District Committee meeting in September 1979 [UCPI0000013435], and proclaimed that selling the ‘Socialist Worker’ was the most important duty of any party member, and told Gray he should be doing more to boost sales, including spot checks on the branches in his patch, causing an ‘embarrassed silence’ in the room. Gray himself did something similar in April 1979 [UCPI0000021170] just before the General Election.
After some discussion about the his position in the party structure and how it compared with others, for example that of Branch Secretary – during which Gray absurdly claimed that there weren’t ‘any hierarchies around’ in the SWP – we saw a report [UCPI0000014064] of him chairing a District Committee meeting in June 1980.
Paragraph 5 of this report makes interesting reading:
‘The meeting was informed that it was feared Acton SWP had been infiltrated by a “spy”… it was decided that he was too inefficient to be a member of the Special Branch, but was probably from the National Association for Freedom.’
Gray claims to have no recollection of attending this meeting at all. Not unreasonably, Counsel to the Inquiry asked:
‘Was it not memorable that you were present as an undercover officer from Special Branch at a meeting at which it was being speculated that somebody else might be an infiltrator from Special Branch?’
He insisted that he has no recollection, and told Counsel to ask the office people about this as well.
ANTI NAZI LEAGUE
According to Gray, all members of the SWP were expected to join the ANL. When asked if he was sent to target them, he snapped:
‘When I was first deployed, there was no ANL.’
This is untrue. The ANL was launched (at the House of Commons no less, thanks to some Labour MPs) in November 1977, just as Gray was being prepared for deployment.
He was shown a report [UCPI0000011970] about an ANL meeting that he attended on 23 March 1978, just one month after his first SWP meeting.
The ANL quickly mushroomed into a massive grass-roots movement, with 250+ groups across the country, which played a part in the eventual demise of the NF.
According to Gray though:
‘It was a recruiting tool for the SWP and it was very successful.’
He felt that spying on the ANL was completely justified for this reason, falsely claiming that ‘most of them had dual membership’. The ANL was a much larger, wider organisation, so joining it meant he came into contact with activists who weren’t SWP members.
Rock Against Racism (RAR) had already launched in 1976, and put on hundreds of gigs, bringing together punk, reggae and other types of music, with a strong anti-racist, political message. In 1978, they put on two huge RAR carnivals in London.
The first was held in the East End’s Victoria Park, at the end of April. The Tom Robinson Band reportedly stole the show in a line-up that included X-Ray Spex, Steel Pulse, the Ruts, Misty in Roots, the Clash and others.
The second was in Brixton’s Brockwell Park, in September 1978. The line-up there included Stiff Little Fingers from Belfast (a replacement for Sham 69, who felt forced to drop out after receiving death threats from right-wingers), Elvis Costello, and Aswad.
Both carnivals were preceded by marches from central London, which attracted 80,000 and 100,000 people respectively.
Further carnivals took place in other cities, and RAR went on to announce a 23-date ‘Militant Entertainment’ tour in 1979, before the General Election, ‘aimed at racialist candidates of whatever party’.
Local ANL groups, like the Kilburn & Queens Park branch, organised similar events, albeit on a much smaller scale.
We saw a July 1978 report [UCPI0000011301] about this branch’s organising committee meeting to plan a multi-racial music festival in Kilburn Grange park on 23 July.
‘Paul Gray’ from West Hampstead ANL is listed as attending this meeting. He claims no recollection of the meeting or anything to do with the organising of the music festival, or even membership of the West Hampstead branch.
The Inquiry respond by showing document [UCPI0000011497], a report of the West Hampstead ANL Organising Committee meeting from September 1978. Despite Paul Gray named as attending, he still refuses to admit membership of the ANL:
‘I don’t know. I can’t – can’t really say I was in the Anti-Nazi League. I can’t remember which – which branch it was.’
The next report was from the following month [UCPI0000012960]. There was discussion about merging two groups: West Hampstead ANL and a local branch of Camden Against Racism (CAR), to form ‘Camden Against Racism/ Anti Nazi League – West Hampstead and Hampstead Group’ – about which Gray chuckled, and made a comment referencing Monty Python.
Again, we see Gray’s name listed – he was elected as a delegate from the group at CAR Central Committee meetings. He nit-picked about the Inquiry’s choice of words when they mention him being elected, interrupting to say he was ‘delegated’. Counsel confirmed that he was elected to act as a delegate, and pointed out that he ended up on the committee of every single group he has spent time around.
Gray said, by way of explanation, that this meant he could do his job better. He would know even more about who was involved, and be able to gather information for both Special Branch and the Security Service. He says he avoided taking on any responsibility in these committee roles.
Before moving on, we note that the first three general meetings of this new amalgamated group were chaired by ‘Paul Gray’, who explained this is because it was made a rotating role, and he was first on the rota. He also chaired the group’s general meetings, for example one held in November 1978 [UCPI0000013002], when he reported back from a recent meeting at Brent Trade and Labour Hall.
According to another report [UCPI0000013135], meetings of the group were still being chaired by ‘Paul Gray’ in January 1979. This particular meeting agreed that Gray should accompany another member to the ANL’s NW London Coordinating Committee meetings in future to ‘assist’ her. Gray insisted that he didn’t think he would have influenced the ANL’s activities.
The Inquiry drew attention to Gray’s statement, were he described the ANL as ‘an anti-fascist group rather than than a subversive group’, that attended many of the same demos as other left-wing groups. And that both the SWP and ANL would ‘get involved in public disorder and violence, particularly when the NF turned up’. Asked about this, Gray confirmed that he regarded members of both groups as targets.
Attached to a report from August 1978 [UCPI0000011380] is a newsletter produced by West Hampstead ANL. This includes a piece describing the NF’s activities in and around Brick Lane in the East End, saying:
‘This area has been the scene of two brutal racial murders, frequent attacks on Bengali’s by gangs of NF thugs, and a regular presence by gangs of paper sellers pushing the most provocative and disgusting racist propaganda…
‘If we can peacefully occupy the area every Sunday morning between now and the general election, we can destroy their credibility amongst the elements that might be impressed by their success.’
Gray was sceptical about this:
‘I don’t know if they used the word ‘peaceful’.’
Counsel pointed out that it’s there in black and white, in the leaflet that Gray himself had included in the report.
‘Well, there you are, yeah.’
The last report in this section was another from August 1978 [UCPI0000011355]. This is about two members of the Kilburn & Queens Park ANL, who are living in a squat.
An article is attached, from ‘Women’s Voice’ – another SWP publication – entitled ‘Organise your street against the Nazis’. Why report on this? Because they were planning to hold meetings in Kilburn High Street – which, to Gray, is ‘all to do with public order. That’s what our remit was.’
He claimed to be trying to provide as full a picture of ‘Women’s Voice’ as possible for Special Branch’s C Squad (which spied on left wing activists) and MI5. He also says that organising against Nazis equates to them ‘sliding sideways’.
BLAIR PEACH
Blair Peach
The next report from the SWP NW London District in April 1979 [UCPI0000021193] lists counter-demonstrations organised to protest the NF’s election rallies. The Front had booked town halls as venues for these meetings, despite strong local opposition to their race-hate.
The community in Southall had tried to get the NF rally at their Town Hall cancelled, but when that failed they sent a call-out for anti-fascists, trade unionists and others to come to Southall on 23 April to protest outside the NF meeting.
ANL and SWP member Blair Peach was one of the thousands who responded to that call. He was killed when he was hit over the head with a weapon a member of the police’s Special Patrol Group that day.
Like so many of his colleagues, Gray claims he didn’t go to Southall that day:
‘I didn’t attend because I was either at the office meeting on a Monday, or I was at my employment.’
This seems implausible, as we’ve already heard that SDS officers would skip the safe-house meetings if something important was going on.
As for the possibility of him begin at his cover employment, Gray appears to have forgotten telling us in his written statement:
‘I never did any actual work for him.’
It would have been nice to see the Inquiry ask more about this sort of discrepancy.
According to him, there was no discussion of Southall at all amongst the spycops, and none of them were there that day:
‘all I heard about the death of Blair Peach was what I saw on the television news’
This was a major case of public disorder, with 200 arrests and many injured, so it seems vanishingly unlikely that a police unit dedicated to demonstrations and disorder wouldn’t talk about it.
Even more unbelievably, Gray claims that he didn’t hear this case being discussed within the ANL or SWP either, despite that fact that he wrote reports detailing exactly that [UCPI0000021218].
He claimed complete ignorance of the entire campaign for justice started by Peach’s partner and long-standing SWP member Celia Stubbs and the Friends of Blair Peach Committee, and even Stubbs herself (although he referred to her by first name only, which seems a little familiar). However, another of his reports, from June 1979 [UCPI0000021313], is all about the Committee.
Likewise, Gray denies joining the thousands of people who attended Blair Peach’s funeral in June 1979. Having been told it was a Wednesday, he didn’t use the excuse of the SDS meeting, but said:
‘I was probably at work.’
Again, the Inquiry did not ask him what other work he could possibly have been doing that day.
We saw some other reports, believed to be written by Gray, that refer to the door-to-door leafleting and peaceful vigils held outside Kilburn and Harlesden police stations on the eve of the first inquest into Peach’s death. Gray eventually admitted that he must have been present at these, in order to produce a list of names of those who attended [UCPI0000013435] and [UCPI0000013498].
Another report of Gray’s from October 1979 [UCPI0000013520] includes copies of a photo that was published in the ‘Kilburn Times’. It shows an activist attending the vigil at Kilburn police station. Why do this with a photo that’s freely available?
Gray’s tone became snappy in response:
‘It’s not freely available at Scotland Yard and at the Security Service’
He claimed that he was just a ‘conduit’ and the fact that they kept it on file for all these years somehow proves the value of his ‘intelligence’.
Another photo is shown, [UCPI0000013539], of a woman at the Peach funeral, and Gray confirmed that the SDS played a role in identifying people in photographs of this kind.
REPORTING ON SCHOOL KIDS
It was made clear from a series of documents that Gray reported extensively on children, and had quite a preoccupation with one of them.
There is a photograph of a schoolboy attached to a report dated 19 May 1978 [UCPI0000011275]. According to Gray, this child is a member of the Finchley & Barnet SWP branch and is just fifteen years old, but:
‘I remember that he had a lengthy criminal record for violence at demonstrations.’
He claimed the boy ‘often instigated violence’.
We are not supplied with any details of these alleged previous offences, but it seems likely that he was a victim of the Met’s institutional racism and the prejudice of its officers – he is also Black, six foot tall and ‘well built’.
The same ‘very active’ boy is mentioned in other intelligence reports, including one from 20 April [UCPI0000011970] highlighting his role as an ANL Organiser in NW London. Another report from 27 April [UCPI0000011997] describes him speaking at a meeting of School Kids Against the Nazis (SKAN).
The Inquiry pointed out that in the 20 April report, the words ‘no trace’ appear by his name, indicating that Special Branch has not already begun a Registry File on him.
In the 27 April report, the word ‘mentions’ appears by his name, and Gray explained how this system worked. A number of mentions would trigger a new file being created about that individual.
By 19 May, this boy had been assigned his own file number. Does this mean that Gray is responsible for a Special Branch file being opened on this school child? No, he squirmed. He says this would only have happened after a certain number of ‘mentions’, and other spycops must have mentioned him too.
Referring to the boy’s supposed list of crimes, Gray said:
‘I think he was quite proud of the fact he had a record.’
Asked about this ‘lengthy criminal record’ and whether this might have led to a Special Branch Registry File being opened, Gray said it wouldn’t as criminal records were stored on a separate system.
In November 1978 [UCPI0000012951], the boy was is arrested for obstructing a police officer outside an NF rally. Gray admits this was typical of what he’d have reported on the boy, however, it is not what he means when he said the teenager had a lengthy record for violent offences.
A further report from Gray concerning this boy was filed in June 1979 [UCPI0000021004]. According to this, the boy had left his family home:
‘after a long period of family unrest ending in a serious fist-fight with his brother… having been “thrown out” by his parents.’
Basically, it reports on a family row.
Gray eventually conceded that he never witnessed this boy committing any violence, but recalled ‘he was the first one out of the bus’ at Brick Lane and in the face of the National Front, ‘he had that sort of temperament’.
The final report we see of this enthusiastic teenaged anti-fascist’s activity, dated October 1979 [UCPI0000020068], mentions that he has booked a mini-bus to take a group of National Union of School Students members around schools to distribute leaflets about planned education cuts.
Asked how was this significant for public order, Gray responds that school students were ‘very unruly sort of people’ and claimed handing out these leaflets:
‘It would have been quite unpleasant for the schools who were being leafleted and for children trying to go in and come out. I have no evidence of this other than this was what he was boasting about.’
SCHOOL KIDS AGAINST THE NAZIS
One of the groups this teenager was involved with was School Kids Against the Nazis (SKAN). In his statement, Gray had alleged:
‘Although SKAN’s members were young they were just as violent as any other anti-fascist group.’
He later clarified that he meant the SWP and ANL. He considered reporting on them was entirely justifiable.
We saw some reports of SKAN events, including a meeting they held in Shepherds Bush in April 1978 [UCPI0000011997] – where they talked about what was going on in their schools, and planned to travel together to the upcoming Rock Against Racism Carnival. There is no indication that the group is planning any disorder, never mind violence.
Another schoolboy is the subject of an April 1978 report of Gray’s [UCPI0000011994]. He was a member of Finchley SKAN and the SWP.
Is this the sort of report he would send in? By this stage Gray was increasingly defensive, claiming that these kids were all SWP/ANL.
Next the Inquiry played him some film footage of SKAN from 1978, then asked if this was consistent with his memories of the group at the time.
Gray was forced to agree that the footage – featuring the group’s slogan: ‘We are black, we are white, we are dynamite’ – did not give the impression of a violent group, but to his defence suggested that this film was deliberately made to ‘bolster’ the group’s image:
‘I would say that the characters that I was aware of were a lot more violent than those youngsters there.’
Gray filed reports about the activities of other school-children, for example about a group of pupils at one school in Barnet going on ‘strike’, as a protest about girls having to wear skirts rather than trousers at school [UCPI0000021267]. He doesn’t understand why his reports are problematic, claiming that the strike would have made the national news (it didn’t) and so this made it ‘of interest to Special Branch’.
This same report focussed on a 15-year old boy who spoke about the strike at the SWP’s annual Easter rally in Skegness. The boy is described as having an ‘effeminate manner’.
The Inquiry asked why Gray thought this was an appropriate thing to include in a report. He could only respond by saying that none of his managers criticised this at the time, so he thought his reporting was fine.
OTHER TARGETS
Gray said that he didn’t join any trade unions during his time undercover, but may have attended a few SWP-supported pickets.
However, the Inquiry produced a number of his reports about trade unionists, including one from May 1978 [UCPI0000021645] details an individual who worked at General Motors and was active in his trade union, as well as the Troops Out Movement.
The next report was from August 1978 [UCPI0000011379] about the secretary of Barnet Trades Council, whose employment (as a lecturer at Hendon College of Technology) is detailed, along with his membership of the National Association of Teachers in Further & Higher Education.
A further report dated March 1979 [UCPI0000013201] is of an ambulance driver, who was also a NUPE (National Union of Public Employees) shop steward at his hospital.
Finally on the union spying, a December 1981 report [UCPI0000016795] was about a carpenter who worked on a building site, and was also a shop steward forconstruction union UCATT.
Gray was unable to help the Inquiry whether reporting on trade union activity fell within the SDS’s public order remit, or their subversion one. All four people reported on were members of the SWP, and he seems to insist that this alone may have been enough of a reason to report on them.
He claims to be not aware of anyone losing their jobs as a result of involvement in groups like the SWP, or in trade union activity. Neither has he heard of anyone being ‘blacklisted’, even though the Metropolitan Police now admit that Special Branch officers supplied information to illegal employment blacklists.
Gray claims that he was never specifically tasked with reporting on trade union activity, but would include such information to give his reports:
‘a full, rounded idea of what somebody was up to.’
A report dated November 1980 [UCPI0000015145] was about a member of the SWP’s Kilburn branch, who is also said to be:
‘a supporter of the Gay Liberation Movement and an avid reader of “Gay News”.’
It also includes his home address, details of his bank account and that he has a Northern Irish accent.
Gray says he’s not sure that this report was his, even though it is dated 1980, when he was spying on Kilburn SWP, but explains that recording the man’s sexual interest in men was:
‘something that would have… identified him in future.’
Other reports attributed to Gray include a highly-redacted one from August 1981 [UCPI0000015536], which contained details of an SWP member’s ‘private sexual activities’.
The final report [UCPI0000018100], was about a former SWP member suffering from schizophrenia. Gray disputed the authorship of this as it is dated 13 May 1982, after his deployment ended. The Inquiry pointed out this was only very shortly after he was withdrawn from the field. It is also around the time when he was in the SDS office writing post-deployment reports.
And so ended a long day for someone who clearly did not want to answer for his actions.
The first post focused on his joining the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad and his deceiving women into relationships.
This one covers the political activity he was involved in during his deployment, which centred on the Wlathamstow branch of the Socialist Workers Party.
THE BATTLE OF LEWISHAM
Battle of Lewisham plaque, erected on the corner of New Cross Road & Clifton Rise in 2017
The anti-fascist protest of 13th August 1977 known as the ‘Battle of Lewisham‘ has come up at the Inquiry several times already, but Miller’s material sheds more light on events.
The fascist National Front (NF) were planning another of their marches through areas with ethnically diverse populations, and a wide range of anti-racist groups were mobilising to stop it. As it turned out, the NF were stopped on the day, and it is now celebrated as a turning point that began their decline.
The Inquiry showed a ‘minute sheet’ [MPS-0733365] circulated two days before the protest.
This was attached to an internal Special Branch report about the tactics the police expected left-wing counter-demonstrators, including the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) that Miller infiltrated, to use in Lewisham.
The document says it:
‘shows that the SWP are determined to provoke a violent confrontation with the National Front.’
Miller agreed with this description of the SWP’s aims.
Inquiry counsel explained they think this report was sent from the Commander of Operations in Special Branch to the head of the Metropolitan Police’s Public Order division (‘A.8’). Miller wasn’t certain whether any of this intelligence came from him:
‘I can’t say definitely, but I would expect it would have contributed.’
Miller says that his SWP comrades had asked him to steward the anti-fascist demo, and so he was up late the night before. He does not remember if the SWP squatted a house in Clifton Rise or not, nor the names of the roads the march was due to move along.
According to the report, the SWP set up ‘protection squads’ (two from each branch) to keep an eye on railway stations and other key locations in the area. These were to be made up of six ‘heavies’, according to the report. Another, ‘specially selected’, squad would be mobile, on the look-out for fascist sympathisers to attack in the streets.
It says that the SWP’s plan was to:
‘attack, harass and intimidate the National Front, with the ultimate aim of creating a riot situation, and attempt to isolate the rear section of the NF column between Clifton Rise and Malpas Road SE4, using buildings and shoppers as protection against police action’.
There was talk of blocking the NF march with a vehicle if it tried going via Amersham Road, and of the anti-fascists regrouping near Lewisham station if the NF got past Malpas Road.
Miller remembers that everyone who opposed the NF agreed that the far-right had to be stopped from marching through New Cross, and that they all organised and planned to stop it. However, he doesn’t remember much of the detail involved in the various tactics listed above, though aspects were not unfamiliar.
Asked if this determination to stop the march was the result of the NF’s ‘swaggering’ (a descriptor that anti-racist campaigner Peter Hain used in his testimony) through the streets and their intimidation of local communities, he said the NF were ‘deliberately confrontational’, adding:
‘I don’t think these situations would be allowed to take place now.’
Miller recalled how the NF was headed by a ‘full colour party’ carrying Union flags and drums. There was ‘taunting and unpleasantness’ between the two groups.
He says he attended the stewards’ meeting the night before. There were probably a handful of others from his SWP branch there, perhaps half a dozen.
The Bishop of Southwark leads the ALCARAF banner, 13 August 1977
After the briefing, Miller went for a wander when he claims he saw ‘certain elements’ (none of whom he recognised) placing caches of bricks and other debris in gardens along the likely route, to be used as ammunition the next day.
Miller says he phoned this information into his police superiors, and would also have told them what he knew about the numbers expected from across London.
Some of the counter-protest was organised by the All Lewisham Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (ALCARAF), a broad coalition of local groups including local politicians, church groups and other organisations. Miller does not think he joined their rally in the morning as he was up very late the night before.
Rather, he believes he joined the main demo later on, in the afternoon. He wasn’t there when the police cleared the main road. Instead, when he arrived the NF demonstrators were trying to emerge from a side road. He described ‘missiles flying’ towards the NF’s flag-wavers, but said the group he was with didn’t throw any missiles.
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.
Miller said he was ‘too close for my own comfort’ to the confrontations, and that he avoided getting involved in any ‘direct physical violence’ himself. He got separated from his ‘comrades’ and made ‘my lonely way home’ at the end of the day.
Referring to a post-protest report submitted 13 August 1977 by a Chief Inspector [MPS-0733367], Miller says the events of that day caused a lot of ‘concern and investigation and review’ within the Metropolitan Police.
He said he imagines the intelligence he provided (about the bricks, etc) would have been included, but doesn’t seem to have read this report yet. The Inquiry pointed out that they have not found any reference to it, but this may be because it was written immediately after the clashes.
We learned from a report dated 23 August 1977 [MPS-0733369] that Special Branch held a special debriefing for eighteen of its officers. Miller says he was not one of them. He explained that it’s likely that the SDS’s views would have been represented 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. He believes this was the first time riot shields were used by police in Great Britain. Despite that, in the SDS Annual Report for 1977, the Lewisham event is described as a triumph for the unit.
Further down in the report is a section entitled ‘hooliganism’, saying that while parts of the borough were left unpoliced:
‘a large number of coloured hooligans were enjoying the chance to indulge themselves’
Later on he suggested that the SDS were less likely to use words like ‘coloured’ in their reports by this time, and would use other words, eg ‘locals’. He refused to be drawn on what exactly was said in the safe-house about ‘locals, coming out and joining in the general chaos and mayhem’.
With the typical police dismissal of genuine political motivations on the part of demonstrators, Miller commented about how there are young people ‘who enjoy the violence’ and ‘there is an element of youth that enjoyed getting involved in confrontation’.
Police detain a man, Lewisham, 13 August1977
He remembers phoning up other spycops after the event, to check they had got home safely. A large number of them were present that day, because they were infiltrating many of the other groups who attended that day, not just the SWP.
They definitely discussed it in the safe-house, he confirmed. He recalled that they were ‘amazed’ that their recommendations – for example, changing the route of the march, to bypass and minimise some of the planned confrontation – were ‘completely ignored’ by the uniformed police.
Once again, it’s notable that police infiltrating the groups at an anti-fascist counter-protest admit they were there in numbers and discussed it. This makes it all the more clear that they are lying when they claim that they were absent from the April 1979 demonstration where police killed Blair Peach, and that none of them remember discussing it afterwards.
According to a report of a meeting at The Crown pub on 17 August 1977 authored by Miller [UCPI0000011196], some members of his SWP group talked about arming themselves with catapults and ball bearings for self-defence. They were preparing ‘for the backlash’ in the aftermath of Lewisham. He does not remember anyone actually doing this, and dismisses it as another example of ‘rhetoric’ that wasn’t necessarily followed up with action.
NATIONAL FRONT ATTACKS
The Inquiry next moved to look at ongoing attacks by the National Front on minority groups and also the SWP. They asked if the Anti-Nazi League’s defence work against racist activity – flyposting, removing racist graffiti, recruiting anti-racists – ever spilled over into vigilantism
‘No, I think that would be a shade too far.’
Miller noted the depth of fear that people had if the NF gained any greater power, and were prepared to oppose them. The Inquiry pressed: do you think your reporting on the SWP protected the public from attacks by the far right?
His answer was that, in the broad sense, his work in the SWP did achieve that – even though he was only doing that work to undermine the group:
‘not, I suppose, if you’re talking about random attacks on individual people… but I suppose, to some degree, my involvement… would have generated more enthusiasm for the general combating the extreme right.’
POSITIONS OF RESPONSIBILITY
Miller was treasurer for the Walthamstow branch of the SWP, and also district treasurer. This gave him access to the membership list, home addresses, contact phone numbers and a few bank accounts.
‘And of course it gave you justification on knocking on a door at any time to talk to anyone if you wanted to find anything out.’
Being district treasurer as opposed to just branch gave him justification for going further afield. He visited about three quarters of the Leyton / Leytonstone branch addresses. This included helping to recruit new members and reporting if they were disaffected members from other groups.
Why would all this information be wanted? According to Miller, knowing the size of the group was critical, it indicated the ‘virility’ of the organisation.
‘We were at the rawest end of just grabbing information and things like that. When it got entered into the machine… that turned around and gave it some assessment. We were just harvesting whatever we could and letting others analyse.’
Later he agrees that the Security Service (MI5) was interested in the sort of material he could provide, such as the lists of names of SWP members.
He resigned as district treasurer because there were internal issues in the group. Miller appears to have aligned with a faction in the SWP, though it is unclear what the political issue was, even to him at the time:
‘I resigned on the grounds that whoever it was resigned with me told me that I was going to have to resign because we were forming a different view.’
He wasn’t upset about losing his position because it was good to move on and because a ‘pretty fair picture had been gained.’
Miller was also on the social committee of the SWP’s Outer East London District, though he says that apparently involved ‘virtually nothing’ and he never arranged anything.
He also chaired branch meetings but claims this did not amount to much as so much of the agenda was centrally controlled. His managers were relaxed about him assuming these positions of responsibility. They didn’t directly instruct to do it, but said it was a good thing to do if he had the opportunity and thought it would work. Generally, he paints a picture of managers not being too fussed how he did the job as long as they got the information.
Miller accepts that he had some influence as a result of these positions, but says it was not huge and he could not have changed their perspectives on issues.
REVOLUTION
Asked about the SWP’s aim to have revolutionary change to create a socialist society, Miller said that nobody expected it to be any time soon.
‘They were far more interested in building the working class movement, in order to generate an attitude whereby a new society could be formed.’
He said, while there was talk of violence being likely in some eventual mass overthrowing of the current system, individual acts of violence were discouraged by the SWP.
As with other undercover officers, personal details were reported by Miller simply because they were available. The longer term view was that things like personal bank details may serve a policing purpose further down the line.
‘These individuals had been identified by Security Services as people who were worthy of watching and therefore “worthy of watching” means knowing where they are and how to get hold of them.’
Miller reported on a woman in the SWP, Madeleine, who he later deceived into a realtionship, initially updating the file which had already been opened on her.
SPYING ON CHILDREN
Some of Miller’s reports refer to children. There was no prohibition on this; it was ‘just more colour to the picture of the main target’. Asked if he would initiate opening a file on a child, Miller replied:
‘It depends on the age of the child… Certainly when you’re getting to 15 and 16-year olds, some of those would be considered if they were being sufficiently active to be worthy of a bit more attention.’
Pressed on this issue, he conceded that giving a child ‘a bit more attention’ did indeed mean opening a Special Branch file on them. Despite having just told us that people were watched because they’d been watched in the past, he tried to brush off spying on children as a harmless activity that was only done due to the inefficiencies of the filing system:
‘this was a hugely paper-driven system, and the fact that you opened a file actually reduced hugely the amount of paperwork that was involved. I mean, I won’t go into the huge filing processes, but it actually made everything a lot quicker and structures and that. So if somebody was constantly being referred to in all sorts of purposes, then they’d probably get a file number, purely and simply because it structured everything better.’
SUPPORT FROM MANAGEMENT
Miller is of the view that more professional advice could have been available to him. However, he recognises that he would have been determined to go his own path, and did not take advantage of what might have been available in any case.
After the deployment Miller left Special Branch to go into other forms of policing.
ALAN BOND – ANOTHER CHILD?
At the very end of the day’s questioning, Miller was asked about another officer, ‘Alan Bond‘ (HN67, 1981-86) and whether he had heard if Bond had relationships while undercover.
Miller and Bond’s wives were friends but it is only recently that Miller came to know that Bond had admitted to his wife he had a relationship while undercover. Miller did not confirm whether a child had been fathered out of this.
Miller has submitted two written statements, one written on 18 November 2018 and a second (supplementary and consolidated) statement written on 10 March 2021.
During his deployment, he had sexual relations with four women that we know of, including ‘Madeleine’ (a member of the Walthamstow branch of the SWP) whose compelling evidence we heard yesterday. Madeleine’s written statement is also available.
Miller disputes some of Madeleine’s account of their relationship.
Miller was questioned by David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry, whose performance was notably focused and sustained, keeping the pressure on highly significant issues. Though we have been critical in the past, it is just as important to note when he shows himself the right person for the job.
The day was particularly long by Inquiry standards and covered a vast amount of ground; so much so that this report will focus on the earlier part about his joining the Special Demonstration Squad and abuse of women. We will publish part two, covering the political activity he was involved in and end of his deployment, separately.
TESTIMONY BEGINS
Asked whether he was interviewed before joining the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), Miller it was nothing more formal than a casual discussion about what would be involved.
He remembered that one of the first things they asked about was his marital status. Miller explained he was the first unmarried undercover to be deployed. He was in a relationship at the time, but not cohabiting. He thought being married was preferred, because having a wife meant some form of support whilst enduring the stress of an undercover deployment.
BACK OFFICE & REPORT WRITING
There were only a certain number of officers in the field at a time, so he worked in the unit’s back office until there was a ‘vacancy’.
He would take calls from undercovers and pass on messages. He said that reading undercovers’ reports provided him with ‘snapshots’ of information, and the content and style expected in the SDS.
Miller provided some new insights into the reporting process. As SDS reports were based on intelligence from undercover, they were given a higher security classification than standard Special Branch ones. He said the Registry File references which appear in the reports attached to names and groups were added by back office staff like himself. Sometimes information from various officers would be merged into one report, or split; this was done by management, who would also check the reports.
A document [UCPI0000010718] from July 1976 refers to a photograph of a Revolutionary Communist Group member being shown to informants at the request of the Security Service (MI5), and the individual being ‘positively identified’ as a result.
Miller added:
‘I would say that almost every report that was submitted on the groups we were working with would be copied across to the Security Service.’
He says that Superintendent Derek Kneale would visit the SDS back office every hour, and sometimes visit to the safe house. Kneale knew the squad ‘very well’.
LEARNING THE TRADECRAFT
Asked how he learned his tradecraft, Miller said the spycops shared tips amongst themselves, such as what vehicle to get. He came to know all his contemporaries during his time in the squad.
Together, they attended meetings at the safe houses twice a week. Occasionally, officers would talk to the managers in private – ‘managers always made themselves available’.
However, they also gave the deployed officers leeway, as there was no communication once in the field.
SWEATING
The next question was a crucial one: whether he received any guidance on personal relationships with activists. Miller says he cannot remember any discussion about this.
Barr then read from the ‘gisted’ (summarised and censored) statement that Miller had previously submitted to the Inquiry [UCPI0000034356], which noted an individual was keen to start a relationship with him.
It said:
‘[Miller] did not reciprocate for the very reason that this was contrary to SDS directions, morally questionable and could have compromised his deployment.’
Contradicting what he had said earlier, this was just the first of various inconsistencies in Miller’s testimony. It was from this point that his demeanour changed from the relatively relaxed to more nervous. Eventually, he could be seen sweating.
Miller said this woman’s approach to him was half way into his deployment and confirmed she was not one of the four he admits having sex with. He says he had no physical sexual relationship with this woman, but she ‘very much gave the impression’ of wanting one.
He also confirmed a private conversation between him and the SDS head, CI Geoff Craft (HN34), about it:
‘I said I thought it was becoming an issue, and… asked what his opinion would be if such situations developed. He then said that he didn’t think it was a very good idea.’
He clarified that this advice referred to both a relationship and sex. He also admitted it was good advice, which he should have followed.
Barr probed what Miller had meant by ‘morally questionable’:
‘Because we were not being totally honest with the other persons involved in the relationship.’
Barr steadily drew Miller out through his questioning, and got him to admit:
‘If it’s sexual extending over a long period of time, I’d have definitely said that was wrong, yes.’
And whether a one-night stand in his cover name was also morally questionable?
‘I now have to accept that was an incorrect act.’
COMMITTING CRIME
Miller was asked about guidance on undercover officers committing crime. He said that they were told to avoid carrying heavy wooden banner poles at demos in case ‘an enthusiastic police officer’ thought they constituted offensive weapons.
He also admitted to drink-driving during his deployment, explaining it was:
‘considerably more common then than now.’
On ‘legal professional privilege’ – confidnetiality between lawyer and client, which was breached by officers who were arrested when undercover – Miller said he was aware of the concept but not the term.
SUBVERSION – IT’S WHAT MI5 SAYS IT IS!
Ask about his understanding of ‘subversion’, Miller said that ‘to be brutally honest’, he was not ‘really concerned’ about the definition of it – it was whatever the Security Service defined it to be. If they said an organisation was subversive, it was good enough for him.
Pressed further he said:
‘I think the subversive would seek to change things without going through the parliamentary system.’
Although asked if there was any guidance on what he should and shouldn’t report, he instead gave an answer on who was and wasn’t to be reported on. He said that MPs shouldn’t be and ‘you had to be very careful with reporting journalists’.
Miller made the point he ‘was essentially a foot soldier’, and if some information seemed sensitive would seek authority or permission from his managers.
IDENTITY THEFT
He was also asked more about how he created his false identity, ‘Vince Miller’. It was standard practice for SDS officers to steal the identity of a dead child as the basis for their undercover persona. He thought it unlikely that the deceased children’s family would find out, so did not worry about this. Nor had he given consideration as to how they might feel if the identity theft ever came to light.
Asked how he felt, upon reflection, so many years later, his response was neither to apologise or express regret. Instead he spoke of how current technology has made the practice obsolete.
This is another theme of Miller’s evidence; despite clearly being distressed by some of his actions, or at least being made to acknowledge their consequences, he never steps up to take this opportunity to make amends, nor offer any apparently genuine contrition.
Miller did several things to make it harder for anyone to delve into his identity, for instance choosing a child with no father listed. He also picked a different first name to use, ‘Vincent’ being neither his or the dead child’s real first name.
He had a fake job with a firm installing Portakabins, partitions and suspended ceilings. This was a real firm, and he set things up with them so if anyone called for him, they would say was out and about, the job supposedly taking him to different work sites. This was, he said:
‘a good buffer to keep the communications under some kind of control’.
FEAR OF BEING FOUND OUT
Though there was ‘constant concern’ about being identified as a police officer, Miller had no contingency plan. Officers were told to contact the SDS office immediately if anything happened.
Miller relates how he was once recognised by a uniformed officer at a demonstration. To his good fortune, the officer didn’t approach him at the time, but he did report Miller’s involvement in this activist group to New Scotland Yard.
He seems to have made up some elements of his ‘legend’ on the spur of the moment to deal with questions as they arose. Some stand out as they have been used by various other spycops. In response to a question about what he was doing at Christmas, he said his parents had died, effectively ending that line of conversation.
He made up a story about a previous ‘toxic’ relationship to explain his lack of a record collection and other belongings. He says it was ‘purely and simply to explain the circumstances under which I was living’, adding that his bedsit was the sort of place that nobody would want to stay for long.
Despite these similarities to the cover stories of colleagues, Miller says he has no idea what other spycops officers’ legends were. Rather, he was able to draw on his personal experience of a break-up to inspire his cover story.
WALTHAMSTOW SWP
He was told to find a group in Walthamstow to spy on. He chose the local branch of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
Asked why they were a suitable target, he said the SWP were:
‘defined as subversive by those who are more expert in that field’
He added that the Waltham Forest branch ‘was an active group’.
Miller says the Walthamstow SWP was the only group he joined. In another of his inconsistencies, he then played the need to target the Socialist Workers, saying the SDS regarded the party as a ‘feeder organisation’ from which they could move to other groups:
‘One from which you could be disaffected and join a less populist, more idealistic line.’
Rock Against Racism carnival poster, 30 April 1978
Later he said he used his position in the SWP to meet more people, to cast his net wider, though little evidence of that has been provided in terms of his reporting.
It was easy to infiltrate the group – he just approached local paper sellers and they invited him to their public meetings at the local pub, the Rose and Crown.
Asked whether he influenced the direction of the group, Miller says he deliberately chose not to read up on left-wing theory before joining the party. Instead he presented as ‘politically naïve’, waiting for the party to educate him about politics.
Once Miller joined, he attended pickets and other demos, as well as birthday parties, socials and fundraisers. He was even on the social committee of the Outer East London District.
However, he only remembers attending one music event – the Anti Nazi League’s large Rock Against Racism concert in Hackney on 30 April 1978.
He would also help members of the group move house, and go to the pub with them during and after meetings and other events. He would go back to their houses, where drinking would continue.
OFFICIAL: NAZIS ARE NOT SUBVERSIVE
Barr asked Miller if he considered infiltrating the far right, to which Miller gave the curious reply:
‘I don’t think I should talk about the far-right deployments at this stage.’
Throughout the hearings, it is clear that the SDS had a political bias against the left and were seemingly wilfully ignorant (at best) of the dangers the far-right posed.
Miller followed this line no uncertain terms:
‘I’m not sure at that time [the far right] was classified as subversive, and therefore would not have been within our remit.’
He did not mention the public order part of their remit, or the general policing requirement to stop murders, violent assaults, arson, harassment and property damage being perpetrated against Black and minority communities.
BOOZY AFTERNOONS AT SDS SAFE HOUSES
The meetings at the SDS safe houses were attended by the undercovers, the managers, office staff, any new recruits, and occasionally more senior officers. The safe house he recalled was a large flat, with two or three bedrooms, and a living room where the group met.
Miller would submit his diaries and written reports – usually hand-written, although he thinks typewriters were issued later. They would sometimes get feedback if these reports were not at the desired standard. He had several corrections on compliance with Special Branch’s house style.
Asked about the topic of conversations at the safe house, he said they would discuss likely attendance numbers at demonstrations. They would work together to identify individuals (e.g., from an album of photos which was passed around).
Miller went on to explain the value of the peer support – there was nobody else these officers could discuss issues with, as they could not talk to their families about their work:
‘And of course, because this was a rolling group, there was almost every likelihood that what you were finding difficult as a new field officer had been met by somebody else, who had said, “look, I tried this and it did work,” or, “it didn’t work”. It was very much a laid-back thing as the afternoon went on. Which is where you’d got a sort of informal exchange of information, but also a release so that you could actually talk about things somewhere.’
He said these afternoons were ‘relaxed’ and ‘laid back’, and suggested that they got more so, especially if the spycops were drinking. The managers would leave at some point and the undercovers stayed until it was time to go to their political meetings in the evening.
‘We were doing a job that not many people could or would do, and it was valuable’
He says that there were always opportunities for SDS officers to discuss welfare issues with their managers, but:
‘we’d probably have turned it down even if we needed their help.’
Such discussions also included the demands of being deployed in the different groups. For instance, those spying on the Maoists complained about how much reading they had to do.
However, Miller noted they couldn’t just ‘sit on the outside and take the Mickey’ out of their targets – they had to take them seriously and have some respect for their political beliefs in order to be effective.
‘I think police officers have to deal with what they have to deal with, and you just have to accept that people have strange views and our views that don’t chime with yours, and cope with that.’
NO BANTER
Asked about the kind of ‘jokes’ that were told, Miller spoke of the need for ‘stress relief’. However, he claimed they were more likely to joke about other police officers than about their targets.
Unlike the account in the witness statement of his colleague, ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1975-79), he does not recall any banter about individual undercovers or any ‘sexual jokes’:
‘It was not like the stereotypical rugby club atmosphere after the match type atmosphere.’
In particular, he denied hearing any banter like, ‘he’ll have made her bite the blankets again last night’ (a cringingly unforgettable piece of evidence from Coates’ evidence a few days previously).
Asked if any of the jokes might have been considered offensive by feminists at the time he said:
‘Someone may well say “did you hear the Jim Davidson joke of last night?” His humour would no longer be acceptable, but that might be going round and you’d be told that.’
Later he insisted he didn’t remember any racist joking or opinions, ever, by anyone, and says he is ‘absolutely certain’ of this. He added that he was only referring to the SDS, not the entire police service, when he said this.
Did the managers join in with banter? His response to this question was about people ‘having different personalities and ways of interacting’.
REPUTATIONS OF OTHER SPYCOPS
Next, Barr turned to asking questions about other SDS officers’ reputations with women.
He began with Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76), who had sexual relationships with four women including an activist called Mary. Miller confirmed Gibson’s reputation as a ‘ladies man’, but says he only knew of this after the officer had moved on from the SDS. They remained friends after their deployments.
Miller said that Pickford never spoke to him about sexual relationships, or about falling in love (not just with activists but with anyone):
‘I think I heard stories when he was getting married for the second or third time.’
Next, he was asked about ‘Barry Tompkins’ (HN106, 1979-83). He said that that officer was ‘somebody who enjoyed the company of women’, but that he didn’t try to seduce any in Miller’s presence.
Miller says his deployment didn’t overlap with that of ‘Phil Cooper’ (HN155, 1979-83) but recalled that he ‘got into all sorts of scrapes’ – mentioning ‘women, drinks and all sorts of things’. He doesn’t remember any rumours about Cooper having sex while undercover, but:
‘I wouldn’t put it past him.’
BANTER?
Barr tested the consistency of the day’s witness evidence, by returning to ask again about the jokes and banter – did he hear any on the subject of the spycops having sexual relationships?
Miller insisted that it:
‘was never a subject of banter in my presence.’
Barr then followed up on evidence from previous days about manager turning a blind eye. Miller said he isn’t sure if they were even aware of the relationships:
‘It was certainly never openly said, “yeah, get on with it” or anything like that.’
Last week we heard ‘Graham Coates’ describe how he was granted permission to transfer his attention from the SWP to anarchists, at his own request (because he says he personally found anarchism more ‘fascinating’).
How important was officer retention to the unit’s managers? Did this mean that undercovers’ requests were accommodated wherever possible?
‘They were generally tolerant of our requests. I don’t know if there’s a particular line here, but yes, they were very supportive and understood that you would make requests at certain times.’
HEAVY DRINKER
Asked about his alcohol consumption, Miller said he would drink every day and would have, on average, three pints, while the other SWP members sipped on a half a pint.
In her evidence, Madeleine said he was ‘always first to the bar’. Miller quickly agreed with this, seemingly proud of his reputation as a heavy drinker. Pausing for thought, he then said this was part of his tradecraft.
In particular, he claimed, he got into the habit of going into the pub ahead of the others in order to check who else was there, and ensure there was nobody who would recognise him in his real identity. He says even nowadays he still does this, and tends to position himself with his back to the wall in pubs.
BACK TO WALTHAMSTOW SWP
Miller says he got to know Wlathamstow SWP branch members well, however, wasn’t ‘an expert on their private lives’. He didn’t spend as much time with the married members of the branch, who had their own personal and professional lives going on.
However, he kept a distance between himself and the activists generally, and kept communication under control. He didn’t invite them round to his cover flat, he didn’t make himself easily available. He chose when to spend time with them.
Barr asked about him spending time at SWP members’ homes. He recalled the house-share where ‘Madeleine’ and other members lived. What did he know about her?
‘I believe I knew that she had been married and was no longer with her husband, and pretty much that was it.’
He was reminded that he filed a report in July 1978 [UCPI0000011289] about Madeleine’s wedding, which had taken place in 1976. Was this usual practice?
His excuse is that there was already a Special Branch file open on Madeleine, and he was simply making sure it was kept up to date. He says he didn’t attend the wedding, and doesn’t remember meeting Madeleine’s husband (also a SWP member).
However Madeleine’s evidence contradicts this – she says he visited the couple’s flat.
WHITE SHIRT
There followed an unusual line of questioning – about whether he wore a white shirt during his deployment. In his statement, Miller denied doing so. However Madeleine has provided the Inquiry with photographs taken of him back in those days, and he can clearly be seen in what looks like a white shirt.
Miller quibbled about the photograph – how could they tell what colour the shirt was, given it was a black and white image? When pressed, he did concede he wore white shirts on occasion, but couldn’t quite bring himself to admit that his original statement was, as Barr charitably put it, ‘mistaken’.
Though these sort of exchanges appear trivial or odd, there are generally solid legal reasons to this strategy, which was particularly highlighted by the evidence of both Madeleine and Miller. In this there was a dispute of fact around the relationships, so in asking these questions Barr was starting to test the veracity of Miller’s account.
It is a problem that it is not being done properly by the Inquiry in other cases, such as when undercover ‘Dave Robertson‘ (HN45, 1970-73) disputed Diane Langford’s account of his exposure. However, it is heartening to see the Inquiry do it properly in this particular instance.
RELATIONSHIP WITH MADELEINE
After the lunch break, David Barr QC zoomed in on Miller’s relationship with Madeleine, in what became the most intense set of questioning at the Inquiry to date.
Unlike other sessions, Barr did not let incomplete answers simply stand and move on. If he wasn’t satisfied with the answer he would rephrase the question, and then once again if he thought it necessary.
Barr also compared what Miller said now, to what he had said in his first witness statement three years ago, and in his supplementary statement of this year, and inquired what had caused him to change his mind or brought back memories. Barr additionally picked up on when Miller said something different to what he had stated earlier.
What did not come over in the transcript was Barr’s use of pauses. Miller would often take time before answering, and Barr would let the response linger a bit before moving to the next question. This added to the tension, you could hear the proverbial pin drop in the hearing room as people collectively waited for the next move. Sometimes the questions were just devastating.
Miller squirmed, his quite red face flushing as his body language gave him away. He seemed to want to disappear under the table, looking down, becoming smaller. Only when the topic of Madeleine was finished did he straighten up again.
It’s difficult to capture that tension in this report without having to include too many extensive quotes.
THE RELATIONSHIP BEGINS
Barr started a question to introduce the topic of Miller’s relationship with Madeleine, asking him what Madeleine’s attitude to the police was.
Miller claimed not to remember, but said SWP members generally distrusted the police, as they were more likely to be right-wing. They believed the State would not hesitate to tap their telephones or intercept their mail. The police would often protect the fascists’ demonstrations, and were seen as the ‘repressive arm of the State’.
Miller said his relationship with Madeleine was ‘quite marginal’ before it became sexual in late summer of 1979. They would have met at the weekly meetings, and socially, but always as part of a larger group of people.
He says he has no memory at all of the location when they first got together. Madeleine told us it was a house party in Ilford, and he has no reason to doubt her memory on that.
Indeed, whilst he was wary of admitting much, Miller did not dispute much of Madeleine’s detailed recollection of the start of their relationship; that he was in a chair and she sat on his lap, that they spent the evening chatting and flirting, that neither of them had an excessive amount to drink, and that he drove them back to Madeleine’s flat. What he did question was whether he actually pulled her on his lap.
In his first witness statement he had sought to excuse the four sexual encounters with his consumption of alcohol. Now Miller was clear that he was not blaming it on alcohol, nor on Madeleine:
‘Whoever made the invitation, I could have declined. It is therefore my responsibility.’
Miller said that back at her place, they sat in the lounge chatting with her house mates, when she invited him up to her room. He claimed he was surprised that she would say this with others present.
Barr noted that, as a serving police officer on duty, this would have been the time to say no. He asked Miller for his reasons to decide otherwise. The answer was sobering:
‘I think the prospect of not driving home and spending a pleasant evening continued and overcame my hesitation.’
Barr bluntly asked him; did you go into the bedroom because you wanted sex – despite the fact you were a serving police officer on duty?
‘I think I’d have to say yes.’
ON TAKING PRECAUTIONS
Miller gave no consideration to what would have happened if Madeleine had got pregnant.
In fact he said that, as she was a feminist, it was her responsibility:
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.
Despite knowing she was recently out of an abusive relationship, Miller presumes she would never have felt pressured by him.
He remembers using the bad-breakup story as part of his ‘legend’, but while Madeleine recalls talking about it in bed, Miller has no recollection of sharing more with her about this previous ‘toxic’ relationship. Nor does he remember telling her, or anyone else, that he had been grown up in a children’s home.
Miller is not denying her account of this, he just can’t remember it. This was one of the occasions where Miller seemed really close to admitting more. We can only assume that listening to Madeleine’s account the day before had caused him to shift on what he had been prepared to acknowledge in his own evidence.
‘MORALLY QUESTIONABLE’
Barr returned to the passage from Miller’s gisted witness statement and honed in on the phase ‘morally questionable’.
He asked Miller if he thought it was morally questionable to have a sexual relationship over a period of time. Miller responded:
‘I’d have definitely said that was wrong, yes’.
And what about a one-night stand, was that morally questionable?
‘On reflection, I would say it was.’
And at the time?
‘Well, obviously there was an occasion when my worries about such things were overcome. I have to accept that [it] was an incorrect act.’
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 amongst those he told it to.
BETRAYAL
Asked if he thought Madeleine would have had sex with him if she knew who he really was, Miller wavered:
‘Difficult to say. If she knew who I really was then possibly she would have liked me, if she knew that I was a police officer then almost certainly not… But I’m both a police office and a person, so she might have seen the person not the police officer. And therefore I can’t really answer that.’
Despite admitting it was wrong that he had manipulated trust built up over several years of knowing Madeleine, Miller objected to it being described as a betrayal:
‘That’s a very strong word… “betrayal” seems to me a little over the top’
It was in this context that Miller said:
‘I think I would reflect on the fact that my field name was out in the public domain for some time and didn’t generate any reaction. So, I think my feeling was that she wasn’t overly concerned by the situation.’
VINCE THE VAMPIRE
Miller claims that his social contact with Madeleine didn’t increase at all after this – he doesn’t remember sitting at tables with her, or having sex with her at least once a week subsequently, as she remembers.
Instead, he pointed out that they were now in different branches of the SWP so didn’t necessarily meet up regularly.
He says they weren’t a couple:
‘we just bumped into each other, as you would, without arrangement.’
Barr kept pressing, saying ‘but you did sleep with her more than once, didn’t you?’
Miller responded:
‘I slept with her on the first occasion is the only one I remember.’
Madeleine’s relationship with Miller described in a friend’s diary, January 1980
The Inquiry showed an extract of a diary entry from 9 January 1980 [UCPI0000034310], written by a friend of Madeleine’s, describing Miller’s habit of leaving her bed in the dead of night and never staying over until morning. It memorably described him as an ‘over-sexed vampire’.
As Miller agrees he stayed over the first night, this must refer to a number of subsequent occasions, Barr noted.
Miller avoided the point by saying arguing it was not a contemporary document as Barr claimed.
Barr replied unwaveringly: ‘I said near-contemporary..
Miller apologised for being aggressive and, with that, managed to avoid answering the question, though he did not challenge the accuracy of the document.
A RELATIONSHIP
Ask more about Madeleine’s memories of the time, Miller said he didn’t think it was necessarily obvious that she was fond of him, and wanted more of a relationship with him.
He says they remained on friendly terms. He repeatedly stated that he had little or no memory of many events in this time. Particularly, while Madeleine has clear recollections of the last time she saw him – at his leaving do, when he was with another woman – Miller said he has no memory of saying goodbye to her before he ended his deployment.
Asked if having a sexual relationship with Madeleine would enhance his cover, Miller gave an excuse heard from other spycops:
‘If you’ve been out in the field for some time and not had any relationships, people are inclined to wonder why.’
This is flimsy at best. Many people go for long periods without being romantically involved with others. Indeed, the reason officers like Miller tell stories of historic heartbreak is precisely because it is a credible reason to be emotionally distant.
Given a final opportunity by Barr, asked if he had anything to add about Madeleine that had not been covered yet, Miller squirmed:
‘I think with the benefit of more maturity and hindsight, and less stress, then I will say that the night we spent together was inappropriate and unprofessional. There was no intention – sorry, can I say that again?
She was not targeted in any way; it was not any part of any kind of system; it was not something either expected by the management, or indeed expected by my peer group, to show you are one of the boys. It was in fact something that happened at a convivial evening.
And that’s how it happened, how I reviewed it… I never discussed it with anybody, until these events [the Inquiry], where I felt that total openness and honesty would be what was required.’
This is when the Chair, Sir John Mitting, came in with a question of his own.
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.’
Mitting said he could accept people remembering things differently, but could Miller explain:
‘Is it a case, as can happen in life, of two people remembering a series of events differently? Or is it something more than that?
‘My understanding is that you do not say that she is consciously or unconsciously making this up, you accept that her evidence is genuine; your recollection remains different. I’m simply seeking to ask if there is any reason why your accounts are, in significant respects, different. If you could help me, I’d be grateful.’
Miller responded in couched terms, effectively saying that she could be making it up to make spycops look bad, even though he knows it’s not credible to suggest:
‘It would be inappropriate, I think, for me to suggest there was any other motive for her in trying to diminish the reputation of undercover officers, but that thought would cross my mind… I’m sure you’ll correct me, that if there was any other explanation, that’s the only one I could furnish.’
THE SECOND SWP WOMAN
Barr next asked Miller about another SWP member he reported having sex with. The former undercover described her as being less involved in the Party than other members.
He got together with her at the very end of his deployment, after he’d announced his impending move to the USA. They drank together, and he said he spent one night with her, then met her at a few other party events including his leaving meal.
He agreed that she was unlikely to have had sex with him if she’d known he was an undercover police officer.
Again, he didn’t give any thought to that at the time:
‘It just seemed a happy way of finishing the evening.’
Again, he did not use contraception or consider the risk of pregnancy.
Miller says he never told anyone at the SDS about these relationships.
THE OTHER TWO WOMEN
Miller was then asked about two other women he deceived into relationships which he also recalls as one-night stands. Both incidents were in the early days of his deployment.
He claims there were no links between these two women and the SWP, he just met them in the pub when he was getting to know the environment he had to infiltrate.
Since they were not related in any way to his target group, he had not thought it necessary to mention them in his ‘impact statement’ to the Inquiry. Nor did he come clean when his solicitor was sent a letter by the Inquiry specifically asking for details of all sexual relationships.
He says the circumstances around both were similar, but cannot he recall much else other than that neither woman wanted to continue the relationship.
A point not particularly drawn out was that this was while he was undercover and claiming expenses.
Barr then moved to the issue of how this could have been prevented. If Miller had had stricter guidance from the SDS, does he think he would’ve avoided having these sexual encounters, or it would have just ensured he kept quiet about them?
Miller said he would have made ‘different decisions’ if there had been a ‘stricter regime’:
‘We were completely alone out there, making our own decisions; there was no way of getting support or guidance like that… For me, I guess I’d have needed firmer and more rigorous questions about my activities.
Barr picked up on Miller’s earlier statement of official guidance ‘falling on deaf ears’ so, if there had been any extra guidance, would it have been treated seriously by him or fellow spycops?
Miller changed tactics:
‘it may well be a case of the personality saying it – more than the actual message, that may have had the effect.’
He was asked if there were any qualities which would make someone unsuitable for this kind of undercover work?
Besides the need of a ‘strong personality’, Miller jumped back to saying, ‘I would not consider myself an active womaniser’, before adding that there were some people who would be indeed unsuitable for spycops work.
With that, the questioning on Madeleine and Miller’s other relationships came to an end. For the last quarter of the day, the Inquiry moved on to protests and other activities, including his role as a SWP steward at the August 1977 confrontation between fascists and anti-fascists at the ‘Battle of Lewisham’.
We will cover Miller’s illuminating testimony on those things in a separate report.
She is the first person to give live testimony on her experience of the relationship and undergo questioning on it (another woman, ‘Mary’, had her statement read out by a lawyer last week). She gave a powerful account of her own activism and and time as a political campaigner with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Despite questions from the Inquiry that crossed the line, she gave an open and quietly compelling description of how she was deceived by Miller.
Miller is claiming it was only a one night stand, but Madeleine steadily demolished that, with a detailed account of the night they got together and their subsequent relationship. She went into the conversations where he emotionally manipulating her feelings, then suddenly withdrew as his time in the field came to an end. This included pointing to records of conversations she had with others at the time.
Miller is giving evidence tomorrow, 11 May.
It was forty years before she learned the truth, in 2018, and was able to deal with the knowledge, but the empathy that guided her activism was clearly now extending to all the other women affected – noting how much damage her younger self would have experienced if she had learned of it at the time.
Madeleine provided a witness statement to the Inquiry in February 2021 but, as Inquiry delays meant she had to produce it in a hurry, it didn’t include everything she has to contribute.
BACKGROUND TO AN ACTIVIST
Barricade on Cable Street, 4 October 1936 [Pic: Bishopsgate Institute]
Madeleine comes from a working class background, one that was deeply politicised by experiences of poverty and war.
Her father was a committed anti-fascist, 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 then served in the International Brigades fighting fascists in the Spanish Civil War, and after he returned he joined the British Army simply to fight the Nazis.
Madeleine was about 15 when she joined the International Socialists (IS), which later became the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
She had a break from activism when she was a student, but rejoined the IS Walthamstow branch in about 1973, and became an active trade unionist. This is the branch spied on by Miller throughout his deployment.
REVOLUTION, VIOLENCE & PLAIN OLD PAPER SELLING
Like with other non-state witnesses, the Inquiry are keen to find out just what was meant by the politics of the SWP, revolutionary politics and talk of violence. And again, like other such witnesses, she calmly dismantled the many (deliberate) misconceptions the police held of the group.
The SWP wanted an end to the constant class conflict of capitalism, seeking a fair and just socialist society, she explained. She rejected the Inquiry’s characterisation of the SWP as trying to overthrow parliamentary democracy:
‘We basically believed that extra-parliamentary activity was essential because we wanted to increase democracy, we felt that people should be active at all levels, not just voting once every five years. Our belief was in broadening participation in democracy…
‘We were not a terrorist group, we were not a violent group, we basically wanted to build a mass movement.’
Madeleine took issue with another mischaracterisation, disputing the implication that SWP members ‘infiltrated’ trade unions, rather they were trade unionists themselves and sought to support others.
They sold their Socialist Worker newspaper, held public meetings, and went on demonstrations:
‘Perfectly legal and legitimate methods.’
In the 1970s the far right were in the ascent with neo-fascists openly attacking minority communities and murdering Black and Asian men. Though the SWP, Madeleine was involved in the movement opposing fascism.
She said the SWP were opposed to active violence as counter-productive, and even expelled Red Action from the party.
WALTHAMSTOW SWP
With a membership of more than 40 people, the Walthamstow branch of the SWP was comparatively large, so split in two in 1977 – one covering Walthamstow & one covering Leyton/ Leystonstone.
This was the period when Miller was infiltrating. He became Walthamstow branch treasurer, and later district treasurer and social committee organiser for the Outer East London District Branch. This latter role would have entailedorganisingfundraising gigs and other socials.
The branches held regular meetings, as well as moresocial events. As people dedicated to the same ideals, their lives were very enmeshed:
‘We had a message to spread; we had a world to build’
All members were involved in selling papers, every week. They had regular pitches in the markets on Saturdays, and on weekdays would often sell papers outside factories, door to door on estates, and of course at any demos.
There were lots of demonstrations, about all sorts of issues, taking place most weekends.
The group were also active fly-posting and leafleting, to let people know about the speaker meetings they organised.
Madeleine lived in a large flat-share, with a huge living room and kitchen, four bedrooms. It was close to two popular pubs, so it was common for friends to come back after the pub closed.
Miller referred to it as ‘a drop in centre for SWP activity’ which Madeleine dismissed as sounding formal and functional, rather than domestic and sociable
BRANCH ACTIVITY – ‘A LITTLE BIT OF EMBROIDERY’
The Inquiry showed some reports on the branch’s activity. At one branch meeting in June 1977, 25 people listened to a talk on revolutionary feminism by a speaker from the SWP’s Newham Teachers Branch [UCPI0000017456].
Madeleine noted the women’s liberation movement was having a big impact on people’s thinking at the time. Women were not just oppressed as workers, but as women too. In essence they had two jobs – one at work to make ends meet and the other domestically:
‘We saw that the personal was very much political.‘
June 1977 saw the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, marked with a one-off Bank holiday. Not enamoured of the deference and imperial overtones of the occasion, Walthamstow SWP organised a family anti-Jubilee 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.’
The branch was also involved in protests at Sainsbury’s, with the Inquiry focusing on a report where mention was made of ‘occupying’ its supermarkets:
‘We felt supermarket prices were kept artificially high to extract profit for shareholders.’
Madeleine’s motivations andher politics shone through, as she spoke of the ongoing need to campaign about povertyin this country, illustrated by the existence of food banks, the estimated four million children living in poverty right now, and the recent campaigning of Marcus Rashford around school meals:
‘And now I’m thinking to myself, we were so right.’
Once again, she had to correct the Inquiry’s exaggerated ideas of their activity, explaining that they didn’t ‘occupy Sainsbury’s at all:what they probably did was stand outside with banners, handing out leaflets and talking to shoppers.
‘I believe that food, like clean water, fresh air, shelter, etc, are basic human rights.’
A July 1977 report [UCPI0000017571] of a meeting of 30 people describes their intention to produce bulletins for particular workplaces. Asked if this was done with the ultimate aim of recruiting, she once again rejected the suggestion of a hidden agenda, saying the aim was to get workers to:
‘build the movement, not necessarily get them to join SWP… we weren’t a secret sect – we were very much community based.’
Other reports showed cooperation with other groups – for instance, Women’s Voice involved a lot of SWP members, but also women who were not.
The July 1977 report claimed that the branch:
‘Restated its support for the Provisional IRA but remained critical of that organisation’s policy of random bombing of working class people.’
Again, Madeleine contradicted the characterisation:
‘We did not support bombing at all. Absolutely not. We supported a united Ireland, and we felt that Irish people had a right to self determination, and we saw British army as basically an occupying force’
Her witness statement refers to support for self-defence against the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary. She explained that attacks by those institutions are well documented, and defence doesn’t mean physical violence, but non-cooperation in the form of things like rent strikes, workplace strikes.
She highlighted a practice familiar from spycop reports seen earlier in the hearings, of taking the most extreme or hyperbolic statement at a meeting and portraying it as the whole group’s real basis:
‘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.’
REFUGEES FROM TORTURE
An August 1977 report [UCPI0000011129] describes a branch meeting addressed by a refugee from the Chilean dictatorship that had overthrown the democratically elected socialist government in 1973.
He told the meeting that he felt that if the Allende government had armed those prepared to defend it, they may have stood a chance. The report says there was a great deal of discussion about the need to arm the workers in the UK, which Madeleine dismissed out of hand:
‘That’s absolute nonsense. Absolute nonsense.’
But could the SWP envisage a situation where they’d like workers to be armed?
‘We foresaw, as I’ve said, a new society where the vast majority basically organised themselves, took action, and decided things would change…. We weren’t the Red Brigades, or anything like that; we didn’t support that type of activity. We basically believed… the working class would bring about this change, not us.’
Not content with this, the Inquiry highlighted the Chilean speaker’s observation that no people’s militia could directly oppose a trained army, so the only way to defeat it would be infiltration. So, the Inquiry asked, did this mean that the SWP considered infiltrating the Army?
Madeleine scoffed at the suggestion. Walthamstow SWP was selling newspapers and not even occupying Sainsbury’s.
The Inquiry failed to note that the whole issue was about the fascist overthrow of the democratically elected Allende government by the murderous General Pinochet. The refugee was actually speaking about counter-subversion, which was supposedly the SDS’s remit.
The report concluded with a mocking description of a branch member crying, and:
‘Someone threw an epileptic fit which ended my observations.’
Madeleine explained that they knew Chilean refugees who had been tortured in Chile, electrocuted and threatened with death. As compassionate people, they found that emotionally moving. That the spycop found it funny beggars belief.
FASCISTS ON THE RISE
John Tyndall (holding record), National Socialist Movement HQ
Calling the National Front fascist is no exaggeration. Madeleine supplied a photograph [UCPI0000034395] of future NF leader John Tyndall in Nazi uniform in front of a framed portrait of Hitler.
Madeleine described how her generation was dealing with parents traumatised from the Second World War, and yet these avowedly Nazi groups were allowed to organise and demonstrate, seemingly with the approval of the State and the protection of the police. The SDS was not monitoring them at all.
August 1977 saw a key moment in the fight against fascism in Britain. The National Front 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‘.
Spycop Vince Miller says Walthamstow SWP members went to check out the route of the march the night before, and deposited piles of bricks that could be used the next day. He also claimed they took weapons with them in bags on the day.
Madeleine utterly denies all of this. There is no evidence that anybody ever planted any bricks at all.
Madeleine attended the demonstration of 13 August with comrades from her branch.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The Inquiry asked Madeleine about the All Lewisham Campaign Against Racism And Fascism (ALCARAF), which it described as a coalition of the SWP, International Marxist Group and Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist).
National Front ‘Stop the Muggers’ banner, 1977
She explained it was much wider than that, bringing in trade unions, faith groups and church leaders. It’s extraordinary that churches has noticed fascist violence on the streets and took action, yet the SDS officers say there was no problem they were aware of.
Madeleine explained ALCARAF been formed in January 1977 in response to National Front violence and open police racism. This is vital context to understand the Lewisham protests.
Instead of doing anything about the NF’s ongoing street violence in the area (the Sikh Gurdwara had been attacked, as had shops and individuals in the area), police launched an ‘anti-mugging’ crackdown – ‘muggers’ being a racist trope at the time, as evidenced by the NF’s ‘Stop The Muggers’ banner.
In one large operation local police had conducted house raids, smashing in doors, arresting mostly Black people. Madeleine recounted how a white woman arrested in a raid was strip searched by police and subjected to vile comments about how she was catching diseases from living with Black people.
60 people were arrested, 21 were charged. The Lewisham 21 Defence Committee was set up to support them. They held a march that was attacked by the NF. Acid was thrown on a young girl, one person’s jaw was broken, another knocked unconscious. This alone is more public disorder than the SDS has managed to pin on the SWP, and yet nothing was done.
Just before the Lewisham demonstration, the NF’s National Activities Organiser, Martin Webster, held a press conference and announced:
‘We intend to destroy race relations here in Lewisham.’
As an aside, Madeleine noted that Durham Police had invited Martin Webster to give a talk on law and order in December 1977.
She asked the Inquiry to show a photograph of the NF on the day [UCPI0000034396], in which one of them could be seen armed with a stick. Madeleine said:
‘We could see where their philosophy ends. My husband Is Jewish, his family have the yellow star of his great grandfather…. Part of the family tree ends in the 1940s at Auschwitz.’
THE BATTLE OF LEWISHAM
The Bishop of Southwark leads the ALCARAF banner, 13 August 1977
Against this backdrop of racism from both police and the NF, the August 1977 Lewisham counter-demonstration was always going to be full of outrage.
Police allowed the fascist march to go ahead, while changing the route of the anti-fascist one at short notice. Madeleine found herself trapped in a ‘kettle’ by Clifton Rise in New Cross. People climbed up the corrugated iron hoardings to escape the crush. There was a line of police blocking one end of the street.
People from the overlooking houses told them that the fascists were frightened by the sheer size of the crowd. The next thing she recounted was police horses charging down the street, right through the crowd of demonstrators.
The police led out the NF’s flag-waving contingent, but the rest of the fascists behind had almost no police protection even though many officers were available. ‘All hell broke loose,’ Madeleine remembered, describing missiles coming overhead from behind her.
She and her comrades wanted to get out of the situation. They were not involved in throwing things. She noted that the majority of people on marches were usually white, but this day saw a large proportion of Black people on the streets, and the police responded with aggression.
She felt that the police ‘just lost control and went wild’ in an outburst of rage vented against the local community. She recalled police vehicles driven into the crowd, indiscriminate arrests, and severe police violence, as they escaped and walked to a train station some distance away in an attempt to make it home safely.
MORE MEETINGS
The Inquiry showed some more reports on the SWP meetings. One from November 1977 [UCPI0000011513] held at a public library, was on the life and works of William Morris, a Victorian son of Walthamstow, known for both his wallpaper/ textile pattern designs and socialist beliefs.
The meeting was addressed by a speaker who ‘delivered a well prepared speech which he illustrated with photographs and slides’. The meeting was apparently that told Morris was a ‘pioneer of English socialism,’ even if his ideas were not entirely consistent with the SWP.’
Morris was pretty mainstream in thought and indeed in wallpaper design. Once again, the SDS was reporting on things that were in no way subversive or a threat to public order, and the documents were copied to MI5 where they are still held nearly 50 years later.
A report of a meeting in July 1978 [UCPI0000011337] shows Miller was involved in the branch’s Industrial Group, which organised sales of Socialist Worker at factories, picket lines and similar settings.
A January 1979 report [UCPI0000013063] says sales of Socialist Worker are going well on a local industrial estate, though they must avoid places with a predominantly Asian workforce as workers say they would be subjected to violence or the sack if they showed support.
Madeleine wonders if Miller had contact information for sympathetic workers at these factories, and if their details were passed on to industrial blacklists.
The report also mentioned School Kids Against the Nazis (SKAN) and says it ‘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 able to suddenly create a mob ready for street violence.
Yet again, she had to deflate suggestions of insurrection. She explained that SKAN had been formed when the NF 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.
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.’
SELF DEFENCE IS NO OFFENCE
In her statement, 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 – such as arming themselves with catapults [UCPI0000011196].
Madeleine said this suggestion was more likely made by a member of the public, and would have been ineffective given that a young woman selling the Socialist Worker had her pelvis broken by NF thugs with a sledgehammer. Rather:
‘the collective focus was was on how to stay safe by remaining in groups and avoiding situations where we might come under attack.’
The Inquiry did not address the above in the live evidence, but it did turn to another instance of SWP members protecting themselves against vicious racist violence.
A November 1978 report [UCPI0000012924] of an SWP meeting (of 22 people) details the compiling of a rota of members who would stay at the house of a Black woman with a Jewish boyfriend who needed protection from attacks by the National Front.
The report said that Dagenham police confirmed that bricks had been thrown through the windows at the house, one with an extreme right wing leaflet around it, the other bearing the letters DAK. The report said DAK stood for ‘Dagenham Axe Clan’.
The transliteration of ‘K’ standing for ‘Clan’ is unsettling. It seems like the police were attempting to deflect from the use of the word Klan, and the direct violent racism implied by it.
Again, these attacks are each worse than anything Miller has managed to conclusively attribute to the SWP. It disproves the claims that the SDS didn’t know about any threats from right-wing groups. And yet, there appears to be no record of the DAK being of interest to the SDS.
DISBAND THE POLITICAL POLICE
After SWP member and anti-fascist Blair Peach was killed by police at a demonstration against the NF in April 1979, there was a wave of outrage across the country. There were calls for a public inquiry into his killing, and for the notorious unit responsible, the Special Patrol Group (SPG), to be disbanded.
A July 1979 SDS report [UCPI0000021044] describes a Waltham forest District SWP meeting entitled ‘Police are the Murderers: Disband the Special Patrol Group’.
Madeleine reminded us of the unauthorised weapons and Nazi regalia found in the lockers and homes of SPG officers after they had killed Peach.
The report quotes a speaker as saying dissolution of the SPG is a necessary step on the path to socialist revolution. Madeleine broadly agreed – the SPG were effectively a repressive, paramilitary political unit, the opposite of policing in response to actual community need.
Although the meeting had not been advertised, two strangers arrived, separately, and were presumed to be police. The manner of their dress, their reluctance to divulge any details about themselves, and their leaving early gave them away.
The Inquiry asked if the meeting was private because it was doing something sinister. However, Madeleine explained that, as SWP meetings were being subject to fascist attacks, the party had simply become more security conscious.
PERSONAL DETAILS
The Inquiry then showed a report from November 1977 [UCPI0000011550] detailing Madeleine’s employment at a school, including her salary, start date, and a physical description of her. Another report from 1979 [UCPI0000021299] records her new job working on buses. Why did the spycops record this kind of personal info about her (and others)?
‘I’m outraged really. I find that a gross invasion of my privacy… Why did they need a detailed physical description of me? To what end? What was that used for?… I got a job in a school because I loved kids… and liked working with children very much.’
Even more disturbing was a report on Madeleine’s wedding [UCPI000011289]. She noted that, from her Special Branch Registry File number in the report, her file was opened in 1970, when she was only 16. Part of the details with that report are redacted:
‘I find that really, really sinister’
She demanded that the Inquiry reveal what’s been blacked out, and explain why they don’t want her to see information about herself from 50 years ago.
WELCOMING THE SPYCOP
It appears that Miller joined the Walthamstow branch of the SWP in early 1977. He made contact via a Socialist Worker seller at Walthamstow Market.
The branch was always keen to welcome new members. Madeleine recalls him seeming an ordinary working class guy, in contrast with the largely white-collar membership.
He became very active in the group, selling newspapers papers, fly-posting, joining pickets at the Grunwick strike. In all these things, his ownership of a van made him invaluable. Being the one with the reliable vehicle had rapidly became standard tradecraft for spycops since the early 1970s. It meant they were told of any action that needed transport, they got to chat to people while driving, and drop them home which provided opportunity to get their addresses.
Madeleine remembers Miller as a sociable person, always first to the bar after a meeting, well liked by all:
‘He was very enmeshed in the group, socially and politically.’
An old flatmate of Madeleine’s has located diaries from that time. They show that Miller visited their home as early as May or June 1977.
When Madeleine first knew Miller, she was married, and thinks she was probably less socially active and less friendly with him then, but increasingly regarded him as a friend after her marriage broke up in the autumn of 1978.
ROMANTIC DECEIT
In the summer of 1979 Madeleine was 25 and newly single. She was not actively seeking a relationship after the end of her marriage. She described how shy and quiet she used to be; her husband had been extremely possessive and abusive so it was only after she left him that she felt more confident socialising and talking to other men. She was still feeling vulnerable when she got together with Vince but believed she could trust 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.’
Madeleine was asked for her account of the house party in Ilford where they became romantically involved. She recalled 40 or 50 people, mostly young people connected with the SWP, there, drinking and dancing.
Miller turned up late and sat down. Madeleine went to try to get him to come and dance, but:
‘He pulled me onto his lap and that’s where I stayed for the rest of the night.’
He said how hard it had been to get to know her, which surprised her as he hadn’t indicated any romantic interest before. She trusted him and was happy to stay there, chatting and flirting.
Some friends came to get her to dance, but Miller put his arms around her and said ‘ ‘no, she’s quite happy here’. She found this funny and laughed.
Later, when the friends were leaving, Miller assured them he would get Madeleine home. He took her back to her flat and they began a sexual relationship. He stayed the night.
‘I was very keen on him. I thought he was lovely, a really attractive guy. I was very keen for it to continue, I was never looking for a one night stand or casual sex with anyone.’
Madeleine says that they saw each other about once a week for a couple of months. They always met at her house, she never visited his.
CYNICAL SYMPATHY
He told her a backstory, of having been in a long-term committed relationship that went toxic in some way, and how he’d had to leave all his possessions behind. The loss of this alleged relationship with someone he’d thought would be a life partner left him devastated and heartbroken, and he said he was too wary of get close to anyone as a result.
He also spoke of a troubled childhood that had damaged his ability to trust, and how he’d always had to rely on himself.
His cynical tale of woe is another piece of spycop tradecraft, one that other women deceived by spycops will recognise all too readily. By telling a story of a damaged upbringing, the officers gave themselves cover for not wanting to tell a full life story. More than that, it made the listener feel that they had been trusted, and so would be likely to reciprocate that trust.
Miller never stayed over after that first night. At some point in the early hours he would suddenly say he had to go home, saying ‘I have to wake up in my own bed because that’s where I feel safe’.
Madeleine accepted that explanation, and hoped it would change. She didn’t consider herself as part of a couple, but she hoped it would become that, and she didn’t see anyone else:
‘He was the focus of my affections, as it were.’
Her feelings for him grew, as he surely knew:
‘I think in the beginning he seemed very keen on me. 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.’
Her flatmates knew about her relationship. She has a very strong recollection of one asking in the morning ‘is Vince still in bed?’ and commenting on his bad manners in not staying all night.
THE LAST TIME
The last time she saw ‘Vince Miller’ was at a friend’s house. She hadn’t seen him for about a week and saw him sitting on the other side of the room. He was with another woman, and she sensed from their body language that there was something between the two of them. She now thinks this is the other SWP woman he has admitted deceiving into a relationship.
He ignored Madeleine and, when he left, she followed him into the street to ask him 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.
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 depth of emotional turmoil conveyed by some of the later officers had huge impacts on those who loved them. More than one desperately 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.
Madeleine and Miller hugged for a long time and parted ways.
THAT’S NOT WHAT HE SAYS
Madeleine’s relationship with Miller described in a friend’s diary, January 1980
In his statement to the Inquiry, Miller describes his relationship with Madeleine as a ‘one night stand’ with no hard feelings and said that the pair remained on good terms thereafter.
In his version, he uses being drunk as an excuse for starting the relationship with her, and for his other ‘one night stands’.
She says that, on the night they got together, he didn’t seem drunk and she certainly wasn’t.
Madeleine then cited a close friend’s diary entry dated 9 January 1980 [UCPI00000034310]
The friend describes Miller as Madeleine’s ‘ex-lover’ and, noting his persistent leaving before dawn, suggests that he may be some kind of vampire who needs to be back in his coffin before sunrise.
Madeleine remembers Miller’s 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?’
IF SHE KNEW THEN
The Inquiry said that despite everything, the whole affair would have had little impact on her life if she hadn’t latterly found out the truth about spycops.
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.’
As it is, she had some fond memories of him, and used to sometimes think about him, hoping he’d come to terms with his troubles and had a happy life. But now:
‘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.’
Despite promises by the Inquiry to reveal the real names of undercovers to the women deceived into relationships, it has not provided Madeleine his name though she has requested it. The Inquiry are effectively providing cover for a serial sexual abuser – who has admitted to deceiving four women.
‘Like the other officers who deceived women into relationships during their deployments, Vince Miller has lost the right to have his identity protected on privacy grounds. And, like the other women who were deceived into relationships, I should be entitled to know his real name.’
This summary covers the third week of the four-week 2021 hearings of the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI), examining the Metropolitan Police’s secret undercover political policing unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, from 1973-82.
Witnesses from the police and the ‘non-State core participants’ gave evidence, and some witness statements from police who were unable, unwilling, or not called upon to appear personally were summarised. This follows the format of last week’s hearings, and many of the same topics were covered.
Rather than unfolding like a fictional courtroom drama, with revelations that suddenly turn the course of the narrative, the hearings of the UCPI are turning the wheel on a microscope to reveal more details about the events it is examining. We already have the big picture: the abusive activities of spycops in England and Wales 1973-–82. This week gave us many more details of those activities.
POLICE ARE ABOVE THE LAW
‘Mike Scott’ (HN298, deployed 1971-1976) gave one of the clearest statements yet that Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) undercovers considered themselves exempt from the laws they were supposed to uphold. In 1972, Scott was accused of being a police officer by Géry Lawless, an activist in several organisations focused on Northern Ireland issues which Scott had infiltrated.
Scott laughingly related how later that day, while driving around randomly, he somehow chanced upon Lawless when the latter was alone in a phone box. He cornered him there and after an exchange of words punched him so hard in the face that Scott chipped a bone in his hand.
When asked to justify his violent crime against a member of the public, Scott replied:
‘It was acceptable to me and I was the one that made the decision. I was the one that was there, and the person that was the so-called victim was Géry Lawless’.
The implication of ‘you deserve what you get because I say so’ is more text than subtext here.
POLITICIANS ARE NOT ABOVE THE LAW
Scott attended the Young Liberals’ 1972 annual conference in his capacity of Membership Secretary for their Putney branch. He reported on the presence of MP David Steel, directly contravening the ‘Wilson Doctrine’, which said that MPs should be told if they are subject to state surveillance.
According to Scott, ‘MPs are not above the law’. Spycops are apparently another matter, especially when punching people in the face.
Although Scott didn’t pick up a criminal record for his assault on Géry Lawless, he did for his actions during the Stop The Seventy Tour anti-apartheid campaign. He was convicted of obstructing a public highway under his fake identity, which was stolen from a living person.
SPYCOPS AUTHORISED TO LIE UNDER OATH
Scott’s lying under oath was authorised by his superiors, and he never gave a thought to whether the real Michael Scott now has a criminal record. In fact, he doesn’t even consider it in those terms:
‘What happened to me was not exactly a criminal record, it was really of no consequence, actually.’
In fact, he said, the identity theft, used to set up a bank account, might have been beneficial to the real Michael Scott because ‘my credit record was good.’
The unshakable conviction that whatever he chose to do was the best course of action simply because he chose to do it wass astonishingly clear. The Inquiry is now investigating whether the real Michael Peter Scott has a criminal record for this conviction.
Scott was not alone in being arrested, charged and convicted under a false identity. ‘Barry / Desmond Loader‘ (HN13, 1975-78) infiltrated the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) and was arrested twice while undercover. The first occasion, in late 1977, was for ‘insulting or threatening behaviour’ following a clash with the fascist National Front (NF) outside Barking police station.
Just three days after his court appearance for that, Loader was arrested a second time, again for clashing with the NF. Police records [MPS-0526784] reveal that Superintendent Ken Pryde established contact with a court official during the proceedings, giving them Loader’s cover name and his status as:
‘a valuable informant in the public order field whom we would wish to safeguard from a prison sentence should the occasion arise.’
Loader was found guilty, fined, and given a one-year bind-over of £100. It is noted in an SDS ‘Minute Sheet’ that this sentence was considered ‘very useful’ as it would allow Loader to keep a low profile for the remainder of his deployment [MPS-0526784].
LAWYER-CLIENT PRIVILEGE DIDN’T APPLY TO SPYCOPS
Naturally, the arrests and trials of spycops meant that the undercovers took part in meetings between the genuine activists and their lawyers. ‘Mike Scott’ was one of 14 people arrested in May 1972 for blockading a coach carrying the British Lions rugby team as they were leaving to play in apartheid South Africa.
Scott’s reports include comments from the activists’ lawyers. These have been redacted by the Inquiry as even now, 50 years later, they are subject to legal privilege. And yet, they were put in a report to the prosecution side from a spy among the defendants!
‘Geoff Wallace’ (HN296, 1975-78) infiltrated the International Socialists (IS). In April 1976, during their Right to Work Campaign, the IS newspaper Socialist Worker hired solicitors to represent those arrested while campaigning. Wallace reported [UCPI0000012323] on their meetings, likewise ignoring lawyer-client privilege.
This right, long protected in common law, is recognised by the European Convention on Human Rights, and can only be waived by the client. It is also recognised as absolute, in the sense that once privilege is established, it may not be weighed against any other countervailing public interest.
THE SDS MUST BE KEPT SECRET
Apparently, it’s a right that can be easily overridden by secret and secretive police units eager to avoid exposure and embarrassment. Discussion in the above mentioned Special Branch Minute Sheets reveals that Loader’s senior officers prioritised keeping his identity secret over any other consideration. Scott’s superiors did the same thing.
In 1979, spycop ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1975-79) made ‘an error of judgement’ when, during a traffic stop, he gave a uniformed officer his real name but showed the driving license in his cover identity.
SDS boss Mike Ferguson (a former undercover himself) was ‘incandescent’, not just at Coates’ own indiscretion but at the potential revelation of the unit and its methods. Coates was withdrawn from the field on the spot.
In previous years, senior officers attempted to pass off incidents of criminal activity by spycops as ‘a few bad apples’ or used the ever-popular ‘rogue officer’ defence. Now, however, evidence continues to mount up of complete awareness by very senior officers. There was clearly a two-way flow of information between the SDS and MI5 – not only of requests to spy on people and the resulting reports, but also the criminal activity of the officers themselves.
THE MET COMMISSIONER KNEW
Sir Robert Mark, March 1977
Graham Coates, ‘Bob Stubbs’ (HN301, 1971-76), ‘Roger Harris’ (HN200, 1974-77), and other spycops described visits to the SDS ‘safe house’ from various Metropolitan Police Commissioners (the highest officer), Assistant Commissioners, Deputy Assistant Commissioners, and the Commander of Special Branch.
Coates recalls managers demanding ‘maximum attendance’ from all deployed spycops for a visit from then-Commissioner Sir Robert Mark – ironically renowned for his drives against police corruption.
This tallies with similar reports by spycops from the 1960s and 1990s. These visits seem an established part of the Met Commissioner’s role; at the very least, they show full awareness of the unit.
Coates also remembered a remark suggesting spycops’ expenses accounts were thoroughly examined by the Commissioner (even if reports might not have been). This shows an astonishing level of attention to detail for individual officers’ activities. Generally though, the purpose of these visits was to praise the undercovers and occasionally present them with bottles of whisky.
NOTHING WAS EVER DISCUSSED
When not entertaining senior police officials, the safe houses were used for meetings between spycops and their managers once or twice weekly. Two very different pictures of activities there emerged this week.
One is of a ‘social’ environment that somehow fails to include any discussion of what the people there spent most of their time doing. According to Scott, the twelve or so spycops never talked about their undercover work, the groups they infiltrated (even between spycops in the same group!), the activists they spied on, or the tactics used to get close to them.
This is the period during which the practice of stealing dead children’s identities as the basis for undercover personae begins and solidifies as required practice. There was some reluctance from a handful of spycops, but the idea, seemingly initially used by Scott, became management policy and was effectively enforced.
Other tradecraft also took shape in this era. Enough spycops have reported a lack of formal training, hands-off management, and the absence of a manual or even guidelines, making it unclear how tradecraft was developed and passed on if the undercovers themselves did not talk about it either.
In this picture presented by amnesiac officers, there were no spycops with (memorable) reputations as womanisers. Likewise, there was supposedly no way that management could have been aware of spycops having intimate relationships with female activists because this was never mentioned. In the hundreds of meetings that Scott attended, he has no memory of these things ever being spoken of. (He does remember chatting about toy soldiers though.)
SAFE HOUSE ‘BANTER’
The alternative picture is of a group of men letting off steam, comparing notes and exchanging ‘banter’. Coates and Harris both described officers who spoke so frequently and crudely about the women they had calculatedly deceived that managers would have been in no doubt about the nature of those relationships. Rather than being unaware of what was being discussed, managers participated in the ‘low-level communal humour’ that characterised the conversations.
Coates states that Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76) had a reputation for having sexual relationships. He also recalls that ‘Jim Pickford‘ (HN300, 1974-76) was widely known as a philanderer. This matches what’s known of these officers’ activities. A third officer, whose details he did not recall, also behaved in this way.
Asked about the kind of things being said, Coates reluctantly shared one example:
‘he’ll have made her bite the blankets again last night.’
The Inquiry also asked him an anecdote about a female activist who could lactate on demand. Although Coates has no recollection of this, the fact the Inquiry raised it also shows the type of conversation known to have taken place.
WHY THE LEFT BUT NOT THE RIGHT?
The spycops did not choose targets randomly. In the period under examination in the current Inquiry hearings, 1973-82, all groups spied on were left-wing. Officers were allowed to switch groups if they wanted to (Coates left the International Socialists because he was getting bored and thought the anarchist movement might bring more spark to his life). So why didn’t they do so when it became obvious the groups were mostly harmless?
This week’s evidence only consolidates the emerging picture of spycops infiltrating small groups with either completely peaceful and democratic methods and aims, or no capacity to carry out any really disruptive or violent action – even if it was suggested.
Again and again, the spycops demonstrate the ability to believe they reported nothing of real use from spying on groups that were harmless, whilst simultaneously also believing they contributed significantly to preserving the safety of the realm, that the money enabling them to do so well-spent and their actions were completely justified. It’s a positive symphony of cognitive dissonance.
As mentioned in our previous weekly report, during this period the right wing were on the rise. Openly fascist and racist groups were using tactics such as firebombing, burning down businesses owned by Black and Asian people, and holding meetings in diverse areas to deliberately bait the residents. Yet these groups were never – with one exception – infiltrated.
That exception came about by accident. The Workers Revolutionary Party was so concerned about the National Front that they asked one of their members to infiltrate it. Ironically, that member was SDS undercover ‘Peter Collins’ (HN303, 1973-77).
Had the NF realised that they had been deceived, it is likely that they would have responded with violence; the question of whether being exposed as a spycop or being exposed as an activist would be more dangerous is an interesting one.
UNDERMINING GROUPS WORKING FOR EQUALITY
Although the left-wing were very aware of the problems caused by the right-wing, which was a genuine threat to public order with subversive intentions, the police were apparently oblivious.
Scott claims that:
‘There weren’t any right-wing groups who were demonstrating, or causing any problems as far as I can recall, at the time.’
He and almost all of his colleagues infiltrated anti-fascist groups – why were these so prolific if right-wing groups were not a problem?
They clearly were, and the spycops unquestionably had the freedom and the remit – preserving public order – to infiltrate them, if they chose to. The fact that they didn’t indicates that the SDS was a unit dedicated to undermining and spying on groups working for a more, rather than less, equal society.
We know there was systemic sexism permeating the SDS, which, according to Coates, viewed the women’s liberation movement as:
‘a bunch of angry women that could be ignored.’
It is not much of a stretch to speculate that systemic racism went along with it. It is very disturbing that these attitudes are still present today.
Worryingly, an isolated incident of International Socialists reported as attacking people at the NF offices with stones and bricks was seized upon by the Inquiry:
‘We note that, if the report is accurate, this was an occasion on which the violence was started by left-wing activists from the infiltrated group.’
This is not the first time that the Inquiry has used reports of ‘violent’ anti-fascist protests as a justification for many of the deployments.
In contrast, an SDS report dated 7 March 1977 [UCPI0000017776] describes a single coach of members of the Socialist Workers Party (as the International Socialists had become) being attacked by five coaches of National Front supporters at Watford Gap Service station.
For some reason, the Inquiry glosses this incident in neutral terms:
‘The SWP contingent from NW London and West Middlesex districts appears to have been involved in an encounter with the National Front in a service station en route to Birmingham’
This gives a misleading impression of this serious and unprovoked attack by the NF on SWP members.
UNWILLINGNESS TO ACCEPT CULPABILITY
Blair Peach
A deeply upsetting example of State unwillingness to accept culpability for its role on the wrong side of history came directly from the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting.
During the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s hearing on 23 April 2021, which was the 42nd anniversary of Blair Peach’s death at the hands of police as established by the Met’s own report, a minute’s silence was held for the murdered teacher. In his introductory remarks for the Mitting referred merely to Peach being killed by ‘a blow to the head’. He did not mention the police at all.
Celia Stubbs, who was Blair Peach’s partner at the time of his death, spelled out how the rise of the right wing was a growing problem during the years covered by this phase of the Inquiry. She and Peach were members of the Anti-Nazi League from its formation in 1977. Two years later, when a call went out from the multicultural community of Southall for support against the NF, they responded.
The NF were ‘campaigning’ in Southall in April 1979 in the run-up to the general election, despite their candidate not living there. Holding rallies in areas with large Black and Asian populations was a common NF tactic. They were met with counter-demonstrations by exactly the kind of groups – including undercovers – that the SDS had been focused on infiltrating for the last decade.
For example, at one such event in 1977, which became known as the Battle of Lewisham, at least 18 spycops were present and over 50 pages of reports were produced. Nobody died at the Battle of Lewisham. In contrast, the 1979 counter-demonstration that Blair Peach was killed at in Southall was supposedly only attended by one spycop.
A BLENDED, ‘GISTED’ DOCUMENT
Celia Stubbs knows that one of the spycops attended the demo in Southall that day. The Inquiry has taken evidence in secret from officers who it does not want to identify. It has then blended their testimony into a single ‘gisted’ document. In it, an officer says they were at the demonstration in Southall, saw violence and being horrified left before Peach was killed.
Celia Stubbs, 2021
Stubbs is offended by all of this. Firstly, the total secrecy around the officer – we aren’t given their name, cover name, or any other details at all. Secondly, the idea that there was only one spycop at the demo is ridiculous.
There was a large presence from the Socialist Workers Party, the most infiltrated group in the history of the SDS. Following the call-out from Southall residents, it is unthinkable that spycops eager to maintain their cover would not have been there in large numbers.
Not only that, but the demonstration was a left-wing response to obvious baiting by the right-wing NF. It was blatantly going to turn into a public order issue. This was finally something that legitimately fell within the remit of the SDS. Yet they maintain that only one officer was present, and he left early – precisely because there was public disorder!
The killing of Blair Peach is heart-breaking, and also terrifying in that it could happen to anyone, on any demonstration, not just against fascism. His final hours, the cover-up of the cause of death, and the subsequent fight for justice, are covered in more detail elsewhere.
Celia Stubbs talked calmly, but with obvious strong emotion, about Blair’s death and the events that followed, including the banding-together of groups campaigning for justice for those killed by police.
Simultaneously, it was the beginning of spying on those groups. The solidarity of grieving families was considered a subversive act.
Stubbs said:
‘It’s obvious that when someone is killed, the police don’t want to be associated with it. This looks like yet another cover-up. It makes us feel like we’re not being heard…
‘I mean, Blair was killed by police officers and our feelings and campaigns were criminalised. The police, I think, wanted to keep ahead of our campaign so that Blair’s killers… we were never able to hold them to account.’
Stubbs said that, despite having seen so many secret police reports, she is left with as many questions as she had before. One of these reports [MPS-0001219] was from decades later. It was written in the summer of 1998, regarding plans to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Blair Peach’s killing.
Stubbs told the Inquiry that an officer referred to in the report was Mark Jenner (‘Mark Cassidy’ HN15, 1995-2000) who infiltrated the Hackney Community Defence Association and the Colin Roach Centre (also in Hackney). Whilst undercover he deceived an activist, ‘Alison‘, into a long-term relationship.
Cassidy reported that:
‘local trade unions are organising a large rally and demonstration, which will be presented with a strong anti-racist/anti-police flavour… the event will inevitably attract a large left wing presence with particular accent on anti-police type groups and the potential for disorder will be significant.’
Stubbs was indignant at this:
‘we’d had remembrance demonstrations after five years, after ten years, and this was twenty years. There’d never been any disorder. I don’t know why he put that. I think it’s pretty unpleasant.’
This continues a long-running tradition of spycops exaggerating the potential for disorder when making reports on groups and why they had to be reported on.
NO THREAT TOO SMALL, NO GROUP TOO HARMLESS
The spycops were trusted to use their intelligence to discern threat levels, yet were apparently unable to tell the difference between fanciful ideas (e.g. the Workers Revolutionary Party finding enough people to infiltrate and subvert every single branch of the Labour Party Young Socialists) and genuinely executable plans (like having a skip delivered to a hotel).
An SDS report dated 26 May 1977 [UCPI0000017437] describes a member of the SWP announcing that he was mobilising local trades union branches to support an anti-Jubilee demonstration during the visit of Princess Anne to Kensington Town Hall on 31 May, and of 1,500 expected demonstrators, 1,000 of whom were likely to be trade unionists ‘violently opposed’ to Jubilee celebrations. This seems wildly and obviously far-fetched.
Additionally, the small groups most often spied on usually didn’t manage to carry off their most outrageous genuine plans, such as painting lines on small roads to show the path of a new motorway.
Some groups, such as the Workers Revolutionary Party and the Socialist Workers Party, regarded by the SDS as ‘subversive’ – that is, wanting to overthrow parliamentary democracy – entered candidates in elections. If they were seeking to overturn Parliament, then legitimately being elected to it is surely the least subversive way of doing so.
Many of the groups had democratic internal processes, something that the spycops were blatantly aware of given how many of them were democratically elected to positions of influence within those groups.
ACCESS TO PERSONAL DETAILS
The spycops’ stories vary as to whether or not they were given guidance on whether or not to take formal posts in organisations they infiltrated. Enough of them did so, with full knowledge of their managers, that it was obviously accepted.
Positions such as treasurer and recruitment officer gave them access to personal details of all group members. Often, they were part of the vetting process and point of first contact for people interested in joining. This gave them influence over the actual makeup and structure of the groups, and to some degree taking on these tasks would have also compensated for their lack of genuine activism.
As is notable from the accusation that caused Mike Scott to assault Géry Lawless, some groups were suspicious that newcomers might be undercover cops.
After Rick Gibson’s exposure by Big Flame, some members talked about how he had badly messed up his turn to give a talk on activism. Lack of background, political awareness, and genuine interest in activism were sufficient red flags that some spycops compensated for by deceiving activists into sexual relationships. To form a relationship with an established, trusted member of a group encourages members to extend their trust to the spycop.
This would almost certainly have been seen as easier than researching the philosophies of the groups and differences from other groups on the left. Coates had to give a 20-minute talk on the history of the Labour Party to the IS group he was infiltrating, so this was not unique to Big Flame. The spycops were trained to ‘mirror’ their targets, but it’s impossible to do so if you’re the only one talking.
NOT JUST INFLUENCING, BUT CREATING GROUPS
Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76) was the spycop responsible for the formation of the South East London branch of the Troops Out Movement. His rise through the ranks to the top of the organisation, and eventual bid to join Big Flame, was achieved by deceiving four women activists into sexual relationships, and manipulating and betraying the members of both groups.
Chessum knew about Gibson’s sexual relationships, and says it was general knowledge at the time. Did Gibson accidentally tell different women different things, and they then compared notes and spotted the discrepancies in his cover story? ‘Mary’ said he didn’t share any contact details with her, was often very hard to reach, and she knew very little about his background.
Having thoroughly investigated Gibson, Big Flame took action. They invited him to meet them in a pub and then spread out all the evidence they had gathered. ‘He looked as though he was going to cry’, said Chessum, who was told about it at the time.
Gibson came up with one last story and gave them a phone number of the office where his brother was supposed to work. It was another lie. When they went to check his flat, they found it empty, Gibson having had done a midnight flit.
After this, Chessum met with Mary and her flatmate, and told them what he had seen. He says they were shocked but not surprised. They had already discussed the possibility of Gibson being some kind of police officer. They had noticed his habit of never staying overnight, and wondered if this was because he had a wife to go back to.
BREAKING APART FAMILIES
Because, of course, the spycops did have wives to go back to. ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1975-79), who spoke for all of the 7 May hearing of the Inquiry, said that on joining the SDS he was specifically asked if he was married or in a stable relationship:
‘It was explained… in very general terms that they felt that an officer in a stable relationship or a stable married relationship would be a more stable character, given the likely exposure to stresses and strains of the likely work involved.’
There appears to have been no thought whatsoever given to the stresses and strains on the families themselves. Once again, women were exploited for the benefit of the SDS.
‘Jimmy Pickford‘ (HN300, 1974-77) infiltrated a number of groups, including anarchist ones, like the South London branches of the Anarchist Workers Association and the Federation of London Anarchist Groups.
His widow provided a statement describing how she was given no support during his absences, and had to take great pains to protect his cover whilst trying to raise their two small children, effectively as a single parent. There was no going to joint social gatherings or having friends round to their home. This left her extremely isolated, as she had no family in the UK and so was reliant for support on close friends.
In fact, the majority of the marriages relied upon by management to keep the spycops stable disintegrated soon after their deployment ended. Despite there having been ample opportunity since the unit was set up, there was no kind of post-undercover care in place for the families and the spycops themselves.
The spycops seem to have been as oblivious to the damage they were doing to the people and causes they spied on as they were to the damage they were doing to their own families.
Evidence from witness: ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1975-79)
The Undercover Policing Inquiry hearing on 7 May 2021 was entirely devoted to evidence from one witness, former officer ‘Graham Coates’, who certainly has a lot to say about the Special Demonstration Squad.
It appears that ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1975-79) joined the SDS in late 1975, having spent time working in various parts of Special Branch.
Coates says he was asked to attend a political meeting and report back by Detective Inspector Creamer. Shortly afterwards he was invited to join the secret unit. In his written witness statement, he recalls ‘an element of pride at having been asked’.
He was initially deployed to spy on the Hackney branch of the International Socialists (IS) – later renamed the Socialist Workers Party – in the summer of 1976. From 1977, he turned his attention to anarchist groups, including the Zero Collective and Anarchy Collective.
He also spied on the group Persons Unknown (‘PUNK’) and the Croydon branch of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
JOINING THE SPYCOPS
Coates first knew about the existence of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) when in Metropolitan Police Special Branch’s C Squad, which monitored left wing political groups. At some point he realised that he was looking at intelligence which had been collected by the SDS.
Having apparently passed that assignment, Coates was asked to present himself at ‘Room 1818’. At that time, the SDS was part of S Squad, and its office was on the top floor of New Scotland Yard. When he got there, he remembers the suggestion that he join the SDS.
He was asked if he was married or in a stable relationship. On being questioned why they wanted to know this, he replied:
‘It was explained… in very general terms that they felt that an officer in a stable relationship or a stable married relationship would be a more stable character, given the likely exposure to stresses and strains of the likely work involved.’
He was told that his undercover deployment would last for four years.
Like all SDS undercovers we have heard from to date, he received no formal training for the role. Instead, he spent five months in the SDS back office, accompanying managers to the regular weekly meetings of undercovers at the unit’s safe house.
Who typed up the reports in those days? He says there was a dedicated typing pool – he definitely didn’t type them himself.
The Inquiry drew his attention to the Registry File numbers and asked who obtained the numbers for incorporation into these reports? Coates confirmed that this was the sort of administrative work he was tasked with during his time in the back office.
Coates has stated that the undercovers were asked for their opinions of these new recruits. Asked what managers were looking for, he replied:
‘I imagine that they were looking out for somebody who would not stand out in any way as obviously being a serving officer.’
SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS : ‘BE CAREFUL’
In Coates’ written statement, he says the advice on sexual relationships, if any, was to ‘be incredibly careful’ if you were going to get involved in people’s private lives, especially if you were going to engage in a sexual relationship.
The Inquiry asked specifically what being ‘very careful’ meant.
His explanation:
‘really and truly this is not something that we advise, but if you have to, take every precaution of all kinds that you can imagine necessary.’
Coates clarified that by ‘precautions’ he meant contraception but also the:
‘common sense preservation of an identity of an individual, of a group of individuals and of the risk that would be entailed if the whole system became exposed, if that relationship became exposed.’
However it was left to individual officers to decide whether to take this advice or not and, as we heard later, many of them ignored it.
He says that he avoided sexual relationships when undercover:
‘I found the whole business of operating as an undercover officer stressful enough.’
Asked if he had any moral views on this, he said that his views had taken ‘more definite shape’ over the years, but he did feel it was wrong for an undercover officer to have a relationship of this kind with a member of the public who didn’t know who they really were.
DEFINING SUBVERSION & LACK OF TRAINING
He defined ‘subversion’ as something:
‘likely to cause disruption to an established system of government.’
Was this the system of parliamentary democracy, or the government of the day?
‘I think it was probably both.’
He talked about aims and means – and said that Special Branch would take an interest in any group with subversive aims, even if they did not have the means to make anything happen.
Asked if he felt properly prepared for his undercover role, Coates gave an emphatic ‘no.’
He went on to say that he:
‘just had a feeling that the management of the day really expected potential officers… to fully understand all of the ramifications of such a posting’
He now wishes that he had asked more questions but was not actively encouraged to do so. He thinks more formal training would have helped.
IDENTITY THEFT
Like many other undercover officers, Coates was instructed to visit the government’s birth records registry at Somerset House and to locate the identity of a dead child for his cover name. He was advised that the ‘person should not have died incredibly old’ because an older child would have ‘much more history that could be checked’.
He stole the identity of a child called ‘Graham Coates’ to form the basis of his false persona. As part of his ‘legend building’, he visited the real Graham Coates’ place of birth – something he said he did of his own volition.
The Inquiry asked if he had carried out any kind of risk assessment (even just in his head) about the possibility of being compromised or confronted with a death certificate for Graham Coates. He answered he may have considered that ‘fleetingly’ but quickly discounted it as extremely unlikely.
Coates candidly admits to not having any qualms at the time about stealing a dead child’s identity. He doesn’t know if his fellow SDS colleagues had reservations about this practice, but also said that they did not really discuss it.
His managers did not test his cover identity in any way – they trusted the undercovers’ ability to create a solid enough story. Coates says he was not warned that activists might try to test his identity, or told of any contingency plans for such a situation.
TRADECRAFT
He wasn’t able to grow as full a beard as other undercover ‘hairies’, but altered his appearance by wearing thick heavy-framed glasses. He habitually smoked a pipe:
‘I also developed the habit of always having a hole in the knee of my jeans. This was part of my general scruffiness.’
He had a driving licence in the name of ‘Graham Coates’, a rent book and maybe a library card. His cover accommodation was in North London, and he told people he was self-employed as a window cleaner.
As part of this cover, he drove a blue Mini van with a roof-rack, and carried step-ladders and other window-cleaning equipment around:
‘The job fitted the lackadaisical lifestyle I wanted as I could make my own hours.’
Coates said that he ‘chose not to be prominent’ within the groups he infiltrated. Rather, how he presented himself was connected to how he felt it might affect his safety, saying that he unconsciously ‘probably kept what I’d now regard as a Covid 19 distance from them’.
The Inquiry returned to the issue of the SDS safe houses. Were there always two during his deployment? Coates confirmed that there were, explaining that one of them changed during this time, but there were always two. He described one as a ‘large flat’.
According to his written statement, undercover officers could go into another room for a private chat with managers. He said this was something he did ‘seldom, if ever’.
He kept a standard police diary. It was used to:
‘convey in the broadest strokes the daily activities of the UCO, commencing from phoning in to start work… meeting informants at such and such a hostelry… until the early hours of the morning when you finished work.’
These diaries were submitted at the meetings. The spycops were paid for their ‘overtime’ and expenses.
CONVERSATIONS AT THE SAFE HOUSE
Coates was able to shed light on the regular meetings at the flat. There was no formal agenda. ‘It was a fairly light-hearted gathering over tea and coffee’ followed by a ‘long and moist lunch’ at a pub.
Coates was rather vague about what was discussed at these meetings but remembered them including, for example, what was defined as on- and off- duty.
The Inquiry asked why this distinction was discussed, and he said the main reason was the spycops’ claims for overtime. His were never challenged, so he assumes they ‘fell within acceptable limits’. However, he did say that in ‘one or two cases, eyebrows were raised’.
The undercovers sometimes discussed the demonstrations they attended – the discrepancies (eg in reported numbers of people attending) as well as who attended and spoke, and how the uniformed police behaved.
Were the politics of the groups being spied on discussed in the safe house? He says he had the feeling that their politics were ‘not disregarded but belittled’, and this belittling was not deliberate, it is ‘just what happened’.
He describes his relationship with his fellow undercover officers as a ‘working friendship’. He could relax with them. The group contained a wide range of personalities. They would joke together, and he remembers banter, which the managers would join in with.
‘BANTER’
In his written statement, he described ‘informal banter’ at the undercover officers’ safe house about women these officers had encountered while undercover, and ‘jokey remarks’ about sexual encounters made in the presence of managers. This behaviour was never challenged.
He also recalls that ‘Jim Pickford‘ (HN300, 1974-76) had a reputation for chasing after women and was widely known as a philanderer. A third officer, whose details he did not recall, also behaved in this way.
In his statement, he says the unit’s managers:
‘must have known it was almost bound to happen with certain individuals who had a predilection for chasing women before during and after their time with the SDS. Indeed, single men were generally not admitted to the SDS and I understood this was partly about avoiding relationships.’
Asked whether the kind of ‘banter’ would have gone down well with 1970s feminists he went much further and said that it probably would have been considered offensive by most people, even back then.
RICK GIBSON – RISK OF COMPROMISE
Asked about Richard Clark, who used the cover name ‘Rick Gibson’, he said his clearest recollection was while Coates was still working in the back office before his deployment began, when he became aware that unit’s managers were worried about Clark’s identity being compromised.
How concerned were the managers about this situation? Coates suspects the managers were more concerned about the safety of Clark’s role and function as a supplier of covert information, rather than the officer’s personal safety, adding pointedly:
‘although they would deny that, wouldn’t they?’
He thought the SDS managers didn’t want to lose this valuable source of intelligence, adding:
‘if one brick falls out of the building, maybe others will become unstable, or will be discovered to be unstable.’
They were very keen to keep the unit out of the public eye. How security-conscious were they? ‘Apparently quite,’ Coates replied drily.
MANAGEMENT KNOWLEDGE OF RELATIONSHIPS
Ever since the spycops scandal broke, a central question has been whether or not senior officers knew about the undercovers’ abusive intimate relationships.
Speaking about Clark’s sexual relationships, Coates was clear:
‘What I heard left me in no doubt that the management were aware of that officer’s behaviour.’
Senior officers:
‘could not have failed to have drawn the obvious conclusions from the comments that were being made’.
Coates explained that the sexual comments being made in conversation in the SDS safe houses were ‘of a gross nature’ have left nobody in any doubt the nature of the Clark’s relationships:
‘It was made quite plain with jokes and banter.’
Coates is extremely clear and very emphatic that there is no way anyone working in the wider SDS office at the time could have been unaware of Clark’s exploits.
At this time, the unit was run by Chief Inspector Derek Kneale. Detective Inspector Geoff Craft (and possibly DI Angus McIntosh), who would certainly have known, as would have Sergeant ‘HN368’, if they were in the unit at that time.
Pressed for details of a ‘gross comment’ of the kind he’d mentioned earlier, he reluctantly shared one example:
‘he’ll have made her bite the blankets again last night.’
Coates reiterated that the managers never openly criticised or expressed disapproval of the unit’s ‘banter’. They actually took part in what he called a ‘low level of communal humour’.
Coates accuses the managers of being ‘deliberately blind in some areas’, including these sexual relationships.
Did the spycops discuss the Women’s Liberation Movement in their safe house? As Coates remembers, their attitude and thinking was similar to many other men at the time – feminists were ‘a bunch of angry women that could be ignored’.
The Inquiry then asked Coates more about specific officers accused of sexual misconduct in this era.
JIM PICKFORD (HN300)
According to Coates, Pickford was widely known as a ‘philanderer’:
‘anybody who knew that officer, at any stage of his service, would very quickly have known what his propensities and proclivities were in that regard… he really didn’t keep anything very secret… It was common knowledge, within and outside of ‘S Squad’ [the SDS parent unit], that he could not be in the presence of a woman without trying it on.’
Coates says he witnessed this for himself. He’d have been surprised if Pickford hadn’t talked about the women in his target group.
He didn’t think Pickford did falling in love, but knew that he’d formed a relationship with a woman he met while undercover. He says he didn’t know that Jim later married such a woman.
Again, as it was the subject of safe house banter, Coates does not see how the managers could have been unaware of Pickford’s sexual relationships.
BARRY TOMPKINS (HN106)
Turning to ‘Barry Tompkins’ (HN106, 1979-83), Coates said he couldn’t recall anything about this man’s reputation with women, or any gossip about his indulging in sexual relationships. The Inquiry asked him if he could recall an anecdote circulating in the safe house about an activist woman who could lactate on demand, but Coates said he didn’t.
Documents being published by the Inquiry suggest that Barry Tompkins did indeed have a relationship whilst undercover.
PHIL COOPER (HN155)
Coates said the banter about ‘Phil Cooper’ (HN155, 1979-83) tended to be about financial matters, such as the size of his expense claims. He doesn’t remember any sexual relationships but says he would not be surprised to hear that Cooper had a ‘reputation with women’.
Asked why he wouldn’t be surprised, he went on to explain that Cooper was a ‘very charming, easy-going, light-hearted individual’ who found it easy to strike up friendships, and probably would have had ‘small to no’ qualms when it came to ‘accepting an offer of sex’ while undercover.
VINCE MILLER (HN354)
Although he couldn’t recall who ‘Vince Miller‘ (HN354, 1976-79) was when he wrote his statement, Coates now remembers him. Despite them being deployed at the same time, near each other, he says he didn’t know Miller all that well.
Coates says he wasn’t aware of his ‘reputation with women’ and knows nothing about any sexual relationships that this officer might have had.
Miller admits having relationships with four women while undercover.
Coates does not believe that the spycops gave any consideration to how these women might feel about being deceived.
TESTING FOR POTENTIAL ABUSERS?
With hindsight, Coates thinks that there should have been much stricter guidance in terms of the potential damage of such relationships to individuals and families, and that intimate relationships should have been discouraged. In particular, he suggested today that:
‘prospective UCOs [undercover officers] should be schooled for far longer, and in greater breadth, for all considerations of the work.’
When asked if he thought the men should also have been screened, so that those with a predilection for chasing women were excluded, Coates talked about why it suited the managers to ignore these sexual relationships due to the intelligence being obtained.
Coates was also asked if sexual relationships had been clearly prohibited, and if this issue been covered in training, would it have prevented them happening?
Coates replied that, in his opinion, some of the undercovers he knew would have had them anyway:
‘I don’t think it would have had any effect’.
Later in the day, Coates said he was unsurprised to hear about the high number of sexual relationships between spycops and their targets after the story became public in 2011, saying there was ‘almost a sense of inevitability’ about such things occurring.
REPORTING
Coates understood that his role was to gather information, and that:
‘no scrap of information was ever rejected as irrelevant.’
According to his statement, undercover officers were expected to ‘take information in through the skin’.
You can’t ignore things, no matter how trivial they seem – they might turn out, years later, to be ‘the missing piece of the jigsaw’ he explained. He said it was normal within Special Branch for senior officers to decide what was included in final reports, saying ‘it’s not for us’ (the reporting officers) to make such assessments.
However, he admitted to doing some filtering himself, saying he would use his own judgement and relied on his conscience as well as his experience to do so. He said that he would not report personal information – although many Special Branch reports are littered with such material.
He is not sure how complete the reporting that has been provided to him is – he says he is surprised there is not more.
PHOTOGRAPHERS
Special Branch employed covert photographers. He was often shown these pictures and asked to identify people in them. He did not photograph any activists himself.
One document shown by the Inquiry [UCPI0000011265] is a heavily censored image of an ‘anarcha-feminist’– he is asked if this is a typical example of such photos?
He agreed that it was, and explained the significance of the cropping of the image – it looks like it was a photograph that that been taken and processed by Special Branch itself.
HACKNEY INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISTS
At the start of his deployment, Coates was tasked to infiltrate the Hackney International Socialists (IS) by DCI Derek Kneale. He found it easy to infiltrate them – he hung around Dalston and got into conversation with some of its members from which they recruited him to help sell papers and invited him to meetings.
Reports attributed to Coates go back to a meeting of the Tower Hamlets branch of IS in May 1976. There are more reports from him that hot summer – many of the meetings he spied on took place at Centerprise – a cross-cultural community hub in Dalston that combined a bookshop and coffee bar, providing advice and resources, and meeting space for all kinds of groups.
These included one meeting of the North East London Workers’ Action Support Group in July 1976 [UCPI000009764], and regular members-only meetings of the Hackney IS group.
Since the Hackney IS meetings were very small, Coates was asked how much impact his presence had on the decisions made in these meetings.
He said that he retained his sense of caution throughout, and tried not to raise any suspicions. He would minimise how often he voted and abstained as often as he judged he could.
A report dated 24 August 1976 [UCPI0000010831], concerns an educational meeting organised by Hackney IS. ‘Graham Coates’ is not only listed as one of the five attendees but is named as giving a 20 minute talk on the history of the Labour Party.
Coates believes he was asked to give this talk as a way of establishing his knowledge, as a recent recruit to the IS group, and that it would have helped his credentials.
His report [UCPI0000010756] of an August 1976 meeting at Earlsmead School mentions that Paul Foot ‘spoke on the spectre of racism’.
In February 1977, Coates filed a report [UCPI0000017759] of a meeting which discussed the case of the ‘Islington 18‘ – a group of Black defendants who were arrested in North London on spurious grounds of conspiracy.
The Inquiry asked whether the SDS reported on such justice campaigns as part of their ‘any info is fair game’ approach or did they take a particular interest? Coates says the former.
BLAIR PEACH
Blair Peach
Coates says he was not made aware of any need for sensitivity around spying on those kinds of family justice campaign groups. He was asked what he knew about Celia Stubbs, who was a member of Hackney IS at the same time as him, or her partner Blair Peach. He said that he recalled seeing Stubbs at meetings, but never met Peach.
Did he remember attending a demo in Southall on 23rd April 1979? Coates asked if this was a reference to the Grunwick dispute. He had to be reminded that this was the antifascist protest at which Blair Peach was killed by police.
In contrast with his openness in answering questions about the SDS’ misogynist culture, Coates clammed up and seemed tense – he claimed not to remember any discussion of this case, or the subsequent campaigning for justice.
CLASHES BETWEEN LEFT & RIGHT
We returned once more to the subject of public disorder caused by fascist agitation, attacks, and intimidation, which has featured throughout the evidence.
In contrast to other instances, three reports from 1976-77 [UCPI0000010769] [UCPI0000011139] [UCPI0000011244] were used to show that the National Front (NF) frequently turned up at their opponents’ events and sought to intimidate and physically attack people.
A report by Coates from July 1976 [UCPI0000010659] includes a reference to a ‘negress’ in the audience talking about the West Indian Defence Committee in Brixton, who were engaged with knives and coshes ready to meet physical racialism with physical attacks.
It’s noteworthy that, throughout this period, although the NF and other right-wing groups were extremely violent, they were not being spied on by the SDS in the way that anti-fascists routinely were.
We went back to a report from June 1976 [UCPI0000009764] on a meeting of North East London Workers Action Support Group. Somebody who spoke at this meeting is reported to have said:
‘the only reason that the anti-fascist demonstrations appeared to attack the police and not the NF was because the police actively supported and protected the NF and therefore any such confrontation was an anti-fascist action… that would always be mischaracterised by the capitalist press.’
Coates explained that the view that the police always sided with the right-wing groups was prevalent. Unfortunately the Inquiry idn’t ask the obvious follow-up question – did Coates think there was any truth in this?
Coates’ October 1975 report [UCPI0000021460] about Brent Trades Council organising a picket at an NF meeting being held in Burnt Oak Library in Edgware was, he agreed typical of the reports that he and other undercover officers submitted.
GRUNWICK STRIKE
Coates was asked about his memories of the Grunwick dispute. This was a long-running strike at a north London photo processing works in the late 1970s over unfair working practices which attracted widespread support and involved mass pickets.
Coates recalled it was something to do with the discrimination faced by Asian women workers, but didn’t think he went there.
However, in his written statement, he describes his attendance with IS in some detail, and the fact that it sticks in his mind because:
‘The Grunwicks demonstrations were the only significant public order disturbance I witnessed.’
After being reminded of this, he said he thought he had gone there on one occasion.
The Inquiry highlighted part of his witness statement’s comments about violence:
‘I never witnessed any violence close-hand, but heard afterwards from other activists that people had been hit by the police. I think there were many arrests at Grunwicks for public order offences, such as obstructing the highway, offensive or abusive words or behaviour, and possibly resisting arrest.’
He then added:
‘Of course, there was always an element of a badge of honour to it – if, as an activist, you could claim that you had been hit by the police, because it just proved how rotten they were.’
SOCIALIST WORKER STRATEGIES
The Inquiry showed a report [UCPI0000010956] from September 1977, in which a member of the SWP described Grunwick as a ‘good training ground in the use of tactics on the picket line’. They added the Party should get involved in industrial disputes at an earlier stage and recommended forming ‘cells’ in factories that could persuade people to join picket lines. To this end, he suggested, there should be a list of unemployed SWP members who could join a workplace at short notice if it was thought a dispute was in the offing.
The speaker said Grunwick showed that at least a thousand comrades would be needed to attack or block the factory gates, and the plan would need to be enacted swiftly and forcefully to avoid it being stopped by police. The SWP have the ability to take such action, he said, but not the capacity to organise it.
Coates was asked if this tallied with what he knew of SWP strategy. He said that the Party was ‘moderately OK in handling small pickets’ but lacked the ‘joined-up thinking and foresight’ to do anything on something as large scale as the Grunwick dispute.
Asked if the SWP was cooperative with the police in planning demonstrations, Coates was unsure but imagines they were.
This question has been asked of multiple witnesses now. The Inquiry seems to be implying a lack of cooperation somehow goes to justifying the deployment of undercover police – without looking at the fact that the right to free speech and assembly are protected under the European Convention on Human Rights. The Convention is clear that any interference with those rights has to be both necessary and proportionate.
As if it was somehow illegal and subversive to simply hold a demonstration without prior state approval.
The SWP was only ever minimally involved in any criminal activity, and even that tended to be maverick and spontaneous rather than planned and approved by leaders. As the SWP sought revolutionary change, how far had they got when Coates infiltrated them?
Coates retorted, ‘no further than they are now, and added that at the time of his infiltration the prospect seemed remote.
Coates’ last report on the SWP [UCPI0000017375] was dated 11 May 1977.
ANARCHY IN THE UK
At around this time, in the spring of 1977, Coates moved into the ‘anarchist field’, as he was finding the IS tedious:
‘I basically found them boring, for want of a better word, and not very active… they were always just happy to just talk about the party the party, the party, the party. But they didn’t actually do anything very much, from my point of view, to make my life interesting or more sparky,’
Rather, he had developed:
‘a fascination within me about the subject of anarchism.’
He said SDS managers were keen to accommodate the wishes of spycops, so the change was approved. A contemporary, ‘Jimmy Pickford‘ (HN300, 1974-77), had been infiltrating anarchist groups and was leaving his deployment, but Coates says he didn’t discuss his new focus with Pickford.
How did Coates prepare himself for anarchism?
‘I made myself thoroughly disreputable looking, for a start.’
In his written statement he said that he thinks he was:
‘drawn to the anarchists as I felt their unstructured and disorganised lifestyle might match my own lifestyle at that time.’
Coates described that infiltrating anarchists was, ‘to a great extent’, based on forming personal relationships with individuals.
He targeted Dave Morris:
‘because he was very cagey as an individual, but he was very approachable at the same time in lots of ways, and I knew a little about him, that he was a key mover in the area at the time.’
Coates describes the two as being ‘close but not huggingly close’ for around 12-18 months.
A report [UCPI0000017641] of a Federation of London Anarchist Groups meeting in December 1976, described how Dave Morris spoke at the start, and then the meeting split into groups to discuss housing, claimants, law and education.
Coates was unequivocally clear that Morris was not a violent man. Yet, Coates filed a report [UCPI0000011003] in September 1977 where Morris had apparently said to close friends he was being ‘inextricably drawn’ towards political violence and it being ‘inevitable’ that he will resort to it. Coates conceded that, to his knowledge, Morris had never resorted to violence.
Coates also deliberately sought out esteemed anarchist Albert Meltzer in order to seem part of the scene. He met him twice at Freedom Bookshop.
In his written statement, Coates explained:
‘I suppose you might call it a little vanity project, but it was very important for me to set myself little targets like this as I found the day-to-day life undercover very monotonous.’
Coates wrote articles for several anarchist publications during his deployment. He says he used his cover name (but this is more likely to mean his fake initials, ‘GC’). He doubts that he would have flagged this activity up to his managers. He suggests that they would have known, as he probably submitted copies of the publications with his reports, but this assumes that they bothered reading them.
He had written articles for IS, but found that harder as he did not share their politics. There, he asked for topics to cover and wrote what he thought people in the group would want to hear. However, with anarchists it came readily as he was:
‘expounding upon my feelings on the subject – my own personal feelings on the subject.’
He remembered writing an article about the difference between true work and exploitative work. We note this is a feat of compartmentalising, to be analysing such a subject and setting out his position, but as an act of paid work for an agency that wants to undermine the beliefs that he’s expressing.
The Inquiry described him as ‘a police officer with anarchist leanings’ – Coates did not correct this assertion. There was a sense among some of those watching his evidence that he quite liked it being put this way.
ANARCHIST GROUPS
Coates infiltrated a number of anarchist groups. He was not surprised to learn that, as an active anarchist, ‘Graham Coates’ has a Special Branch Registry File.
The Zero Collective produced a newsletter of the same name in the 1970s. The group was very small, commonly just three or four people in the meetings. The group didn’t commit any criminal offences or public disorder that Coates is aware of.
Likewise, another target, the Anarchy Collective produced Anarchy magazine. It was also a small group, with meetings often of only three to five people, held in private homes. Coates said that they were tenuously connected with the Angry Brigade, a far-left group responsible for 25 bombings in England between 1970 and 1972.
This connection, Coates recalled on being pressed, turned out to be that someone knew Scottish anarchist Stuart Christie, who had once been caught in Spain trying to assassinate fascist leader General Franco, and had later been acquitted at an Angry Brigade trial.
As for the Anarchy Collective itself, again, he said that they were not involved in any crime or disorder. He bluntly said they had not effected any change to the political system and, in his opinion, had no prospects of doing so.
Persons Unknown (known as PUNK) was a support group for three of the defendants in a legal case, and also campaigned against increased police powers. Again, he says he has no knowledge of them committing crimes or any public disorder.
He had previously said that he may have reported on another group, the East London Libertarians:
‘I don’t think they posed any more threat than any other small rag-tag organisation of any political persuasion.’
Finally, he spoke about anarcho-syndicalists like the London Workers Group. They were more linked to trade unionists and probably more effective at calling out support.
He got to know the Freedom Collective, anarchist publishers who he describes as ‘largely an organisation of wishful thinkers’.
After the Angry Brigade bombings a few years earlier, Special Branch was worried about further such campaigns. Coates saw nothing to suggest that was ever a risk. He was aware of ‘The Anarchist Cookbook’ which contained information about explosives, but said it was not widely circulated and he only once saw a copy (at the home of an Anarchy Collective member).
For someone who left IS because he felt it was all talk and no action, Coates’ choice of targets show a marked focus on publishers rather than action. It seems that he just personally preferred anarchism to socialism.
He said:
‘if every undercover officer told the truth, they would have to admit that at some point during their deployment they had some sympathy for the ideas and tenets of the group or groups that they were involved with.’
Coates is adamant that without spycops the police would not have been able to find out so much about these anarchist groups.
POINTLESS REPORTS
Coates reported [UCPI0000010997] on a September 1977 meeting of 23 anarchists to discuss ‘how should we react to racialism and anti-fascist demonstrations?’
It came in the wake of disturbances at counter-demonstrations against fascist street marches at Wood Green in April and Lewisham in August that year. This was time of a large and growing number of racist attacks in London.
The report describes the meeting as being split between pacifists who wanted public meetings and others who:
‘could hardly restrain themselves from rushing out to assault the nearest fascist/racialist.’
He readily conceded that the group was not actually overtaken by the latter faction. He was not asked what he thought the correct and proportionate response was to fascist throngs on the streets. He could not remember his colleagues ever discussing the far right.
Coates denied that report [UCPI0000021703] was his work. It concerned an anarchist meeting at the London School of Economics on 1 May 1978. It said that a speaker from the Paedophile Information Exchange had been invited, and this info leaked to the fascist National Front in the hope that they would come along to attack it so that the anarchists could provide physical resistance.
The report claimed there were about 65 people, including some up on the roof with things to throw down at any fascists who might arrive.
The Inquiry asked:
‘was the deliberate ambush of political opponents a tactic you came across?’
Coates said it was the kind of thing people might talk about but he never saw it happen.
Flame, the SWP’s Black workers newspaper, Sept 1977
After that odd report, the next one [UCPI0000021710] was frankly bizarre. It said that a speaker, having agreed that a previous suggestion to burn prison gates was unworkable, suggested attacking a school.
The purpose would be to point out to pupils the uselessness of academic education. This would be done by locking pupils and staff either in or out of the building, beating up the teachers ‘with a reputation’, distributing leaflets, and doing it all within 15 minutes before leaving so as to avoid capture by police.
Coates said this was not his report and he knew nothing about such an idea. Not for the first time, it seems that Special Branch did not want to distinguish between hyperbole and actual plans. As with all the other reports mentioned, this one had been copied to the Security Service (MI5).
Despite reporting no intelligence that would build a picture of concern, managers didn’t question his continued deployment until more than a year later when he was told to switch to infiltrating Croydon SWP:
‘I think that was because they felt that my output… had become insufficient.’
He did this for a few months and, again, is not aware of the group being involved in any criminality or disorder. More than that, Coates says he never took part in any crime while undercover, and neither did the groups he infiltrated.
FRATERNISING WITH THE ENEMY
The Inquiry asked Coates about socialising with those he spied on. He said that he went to the pub with IS as a group after meetings, but not to people’s houses.
He socialised more with the anarchists because he felt more ‘at home’ among them.
His mangers never asked him about this aspect of his deployment, but would have expected it. Drinking ran a risk of Coates accidentally saying things he shouldn’t, but he still drank extensively anyway.
PREJUDICE
The Inquiry then highlighted some prejudiced language and attitudes in Coates’ reports.
A report in June 1978 [UCPI0000021776] said that following police raids elsewhere, Dave Morris had seen fit to alter his appearance quite dramatically by shaving off his beard and having his hair cut short:
‘This has revealed he has a long thin face, large Jewish nose and full lips.’
An August 1976 meeting titled ‘Women: The Fight for Equality’ was reported on [UCPI0000010823].
It describes an IS party member and school teacher, speaking to an IS meeting for the first time:
‘in addition to being attractive, she was both eloquent and forceful.’
Coates denied authorship of the report, but conceded that either way there was no need to rate the woman’s physical appearance as ‘attractive’.
The Inquiry listed a number of other objectionable observations in reports attributed to Coates. There was a reference to activists having ‘a mongol child’, a derogatory term for someone with Down’s syndrome. Another child was noted as ‘exact parenthood unknown’. Sexual orientation was commented upon, and affairs were recorded.
Coates not only tried to shrug it off as the culture of the time, he sought to justify it:
‘I can only tell you it was accepted, it was not queried… on the grounds that you never know when it might come in useful, who it might lead to, where it might lead’
RIGHT TO THE TOP
Coates recounted that the head of the Metropolitan Police, Commissioner Sir Robert Mark, visited the SDS safe house to personally congratulate the officers on their work. He remembers managers insisting on maximum attendance from all deployed undercovers that day.
Unexpectedly, he recalled that Mark made a comment when he was introduced to ‘Phil Cooper‘ (HN155, 1979-83):
‘when introduced to him, he said words to the effect of, “Ah, yes, your name should be Gold”.’
This was allegedly a reference to the size of Cooper’s expenses claims. This is a strong indication that the ‘top brass’ paid close attention to everyday details of the spycops unit. It demonstrates the importance of proper cross-examination at the Inquiry.
The Commander of Special Branch also visited to cast a favourable eye over the unit.
END OF DEPLOYMENT
Coates said that he had found the undercover life became more and more stressful as time went on. By 1979 his home life was also difficult.
‘I made an error of judgement on a particular day which resulted in my immediate withdrawal and posting back to Scotland Yard.’
This was obliquely referred to as ‘a traffic matter’ in which he told a uniformed officer from another constabulary his real name.
SDS boss Mike Ferguson (a former undercover himself) was ‘incandescent’, not just at Coates’ own indiscretion but for the potential revelation of the unit and its methods. Coates was withdrawn from the field on the spot.
This account is somewhat curious when one notes the various other indiscretions of undercovers, especially ‘Stewart Goodman’ (HN339, 1970-71) crashing his car while drunk and telling police on the scene officer he was undercover.
OFFICER WELFARE
Coates pointed out that by the time he joined the SDS, the unit had had plenty of time to set up systems to look after the spycops welfare, but it had not done so.
He said that it would have been useful for potential recruits to be given a ‘much broader, fuller, longer period of immersion’ before entering the field.
He had no debriefing or period of rest after being withdrawn from his undercover life.. He doesn’t remember being told about any support on offer.
Nobody really checked up on his welfare after his deployment ended. He says now that at the time he seemed to be coping OK, but nobody knows how they’ll react to stress in the short- and long-term. He says the managers should have been more proactive and asked. He went on to complain that he was left feeling bereft:
‘I’ve gone through all of this and now it’s as if I don’t exist’.
Like a large proportion of spycops, his marriage foundered and he separated from his wife shortly after his deployment ended.
Coates sticks by the sentiment from his witness statement, that the SDS generally did not actually protect the public from danger, but that it was nonetheless worthwhile:
‘If the SDS had never existed, I do not think disaster would have befallen the streets of the capital apart from maybe on a very small number of occasions when there were very large demonstrations. But I think the work of the SDS helped to make sure police resources were not being wasted on small demonstrations, and that larger demonstrations were properly policed.’
Today’s hearing of the Undercover Policing Inquiry started with the reading of witness statements of undercover officers that could not or did not want to appear in person.
‘Jimmy Pickford’ (HN300, 1974-77)
‘Jimmy Pickford‘ (HN300, 1974-77) infiltrated a number of groups, including anarchist ones, like the South London branches of the Anarchist Workers Association (AWA) and the Federation of London Anarchist Groups (FLAG).
He spent a year in Special Branch – including ‘C Squad’, the left-wing surveillance section – before joining the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) in the summer of 1974. He started off in the back-room, and by October was ready to be sent in to the ‘field’.
His first reports show that he targeted radical newspapers (including ‘Freedom’, ‘Lower Down’, ‘Up Against the Law’ and ‘Pavement’) as well as local, grass-roots groups around Battersea and Wandsworth in South West London.
These included the Battersea Park Action Group (BPAG), the Battersea Redevelopment Action Group (BRAG), and the Battersea & Wandsworth Trades Council Anti-Fascist Committee.
Pickford met an (unnamed) woman during his deployment (in his cover identity), with whom he had a sexual relationship. His expressed desire to tell her his real identity led to his withdrawal from active deployment in 1976. He has since died, so will not be giving evidence.
The family are concerned that publicity from the Inquiry will interfere with their right to a private life, so have asked for his real name to be restricted.
They are concerned about ‘unscrupulous individuals’ who were around him in later life, who might try to ‘cash in’ on this association by selling (untrue) stories to the press. They are also concerned about the possibility of other police officers making connections due to his undercover work, and sharing details of his deployments.
They say that before becoming an undercover officer, ‘Pickford’ was supplied with assurances that his true identity would never be disclosed, to ensure the safety of both him and his family:
‘This was of paramount importance to him and he mentioned this to us many times’
He taught his children to be vigilant, not divulge information, and to be suspicious of anyone seeking information, no matter how innocuous it seemed. He talked about other police work, but never his undercover deployment. After this ended, he took public-facing roles. His family believe this is because he felt his identity was secure.
They believe he infiltrated at least two groups that represented high levels of risk and danger. One of these groups remains active now, in another form. They are worried that people from these groups will try to target the family, physically or via the media/ online. They believe they could easily be tracked down.
UNDERCOVER
Pickford radically changed his appearance when undercover, growing his hair and a voluminous beard.
The family say that he would disappear for long periods of time, with no way of being contacted. No emergency contact details were provided to his wife, and no support was given during his absences.
IMPACT ON FAMILY LIFE
He parked his cover vehicle away from the family home, to which he returned during the evening and night – there would only be occasional contact prior to his arrival. This caused considerable disruption to the family routine, especially given his children were very young at the time. They feel they have made enough sacrifices as a family for his work, which he saw as protection of the country.
To avoid compromising his cover, there was no going to joint social gatherings or having friends round to their home. This left his wife extremely isolated while trying to raise her children, as she had no family in the UK and so was reliant for support on close friends.
Because socialising, even with fellow police officers, was minimal, she was effectively a single parent, socially vulnerable and alone. There was no support from Special Branch.
RELATIONSHIPS
While undercover, he began a relationship with another woman. This, along with the strains that had been put on the family (by the demands of his deployment), led to their divorce, within a year of Pickford leaving the field.
He went on to marry the other woman and have a child with her. This marriage also ended in divorce, some years later. She has not been traced, having remarried.
The Inquiry has confirmed that another, unnamed undercover officer has now provided an account of being tearfully told by Pickford that he had fallen in love with a woman associated with his targets and wanted to tell her the truth. This officer says that they offered to act as a conduit between him and the SDS managers [UCPI0000034307].
Pickford’s wife and children did meet this other woman, and the children joined them on holidays. They noted that she sometimes called him ‘Jimmy’. This indicates she had met him in his undercover identity.
The Inquiry has caused the family distress and anxiety, causing them to re-live unhappy times. This is exacerbated by needing to keep it from other family and friends. Having kept their obligations of confidentiality about Pickford’s work, they now feel betrayed at the thought of this information being released, especially as it led to the collapse of the marriage.
THE INQUIRY’S ACCOUNT OF REPORTS
Pickford’s time undercover has been set out by the Inquiry. He focused on anarchist and community groups in the Battersea/ Wandsworth area. He came across a number of other people who are now core participants at the Inquiry, including Dave Morris in 1976 [UCPI0000021496, UCPI0000017641].
He was particularly interested in Ernest Rodker, who he reported on throughout his deployment, providing many personal details including legal proceedings and birth of his son. It would appear that Rodker was the key focus of his deployment.
The early part of the deployment in 1975 focused on publications such as ‘Freedom’, ‘Lower Down’, ‘Up Against The Law’ and ‘Pavement’ [UCPI0000007125]. He also reported on small local left-leaning groups which held meetings and lobbied politicians – such as BPAG and BRAG (which Rodker was also active in).
ANARCHIST WORKERS ASSOCIATION
Having joined the Kingston branch of the Anarchist Workers Association (AWA), he helped set up the Wandsworth branch in July 1975 (later it became the South London AWA) [UCPI0000006950, UCPI0000012805].
He was elected treasurer of Wandsworth AWA in July 1975 [UCPI0000012685], remaining in that role until the end of his deployment.
He was highly active in the AWA, particularly at branch level where he was responsible for much of the local organising. This included arranging public events and writing articles for the AWA paper. He was the Wandsworth branch’s delegate to the Federation of London Anarchist Groups.
The Inquiry notes the high degree of activity, in comparison to the small numbers at the meetings, and asks whether it was it in fact him who essentially kept the Wandsworth branch functioning: would it have survived without him?
He also gave him access to the larger AWA network. He attended delegate conferences as well as AWA’s national conference.
The Inquiry notes that there are various reports from Pickford indicating his targets were alive to the possibility of police infiltration. There are also times when he cites some AWA members as having a willingness for violence to advance their aims, but it is all very rhetorical and about future revolutionary moments.
There is little in the reports to suggest any criminality or violence; the most tangible threat is a September 1975 report of some members thinking about disrupting a Royal Navy recruitment event with stink bombs and smoke pellets [UCPI0000007604].
Two local, community-oriented papers, ‘Pavement’ and ‘Lower Down’, are reported on. Even the collective members’ personal relationships and living arrangements are recorded [UCPI0000014967].
‘Up Against the Law’ (UPAL) was another publication, put out by a campaign group that assisted people trying to overturn wrongful criminal convictions.
It is believed – but unconfirmed – that Pickford acted as a distributor for the paper. He certainly reported on them – for example this November 1974 report details a dispute between UPAL and their printers [UCPI0000015096]. As with many Special Branch reports, it hard to imagine the relevance of this information to the police.
Like almost all undercovers from this period, Pickford also spied upon anti-fascist campaigners – in his case an umbrella group called Wandsworth Anti-Fascist and Anti-Racist Committee [UCPI0000021581].
‘Barry / Desmond Loader’ (HN13, 1975-78)
‘Barry / Desmond Loader‘ (HN13, 1975-78) was deployed into the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) from 1975 to 1978. He is deceased.
His widow confirmed in a very brief statement [MPS-0740967], that he stole his cover surname from a deceased child from Wiltshire, and that he had told her of the surname during his deployment.
The Inquiry says that Loader’s affiliation with the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) provided entry to several associated organisations, including the Communist Unity Association (Marxist-Leninist), the East London Peoples Front, the Progressive Cultural Association, and the Outer East London Anti-Fascist Anti-Racist Committee.
EARLY REPORTING
The first report held by the Inquiry believed to be attributable to Loader dates from February 1975. These include intelligence on the Marxist-Leninist Organisation of Britain [UCPI0000012145], the Free Desmond Trotter Campaign [UCPI0000007024], and the West London Campaign against Racism and Fascism [UCPI0000007632].
COMMUNIST PARTY OF ENGLAND (MARXIST-LENINIST)
Loader’s reporting from 1977 onward focuses largely on the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) (CPEM-L), in particular the East London Branch. Loader was also an active member of the Party’s cutural activities offshoot, the Progressive Cultural Association.
Like many of the undercover officers we have heard from in these hearings, Loader reported on people involved in actions against the National Front (NF), such as the organisation of demonstrations, pickets, and leafletting as well as a willingness to confront the NF directly.
Loader attended the counter-NF demonstration that became known as the Battle of Lewisham on 13 August 1977. He was injured during the event, receiving a blow to the head – the first of the two times he was assaulted by uniformed police.
A report on a meeting of the CPEM-L in the aftermath of the Lewisham demonstration states that the Party were reviewing tactics to ‘attack’ the NF [UCPI0000011180]. Loader also notes in the same report:
‘it is generally agreed amongst members that, with the advent of the police shield, more sophisticated ‘weaponry’ is required in the riot situation.’
Internal Special Branch documents show that Loader met with Deputy Assistant Commissioner (‘A’ Ops) along with Peter Collins (HN303), DCI Pryde and DI Willingale following the Lewisham demonstration.
They wanted to convey his experience and provide recommendations for future policing in similar circumstances [MPS-0732885]. This meeting ultimately resulted in a note authored by DI Willingale aimed to assist with methods of policing future demonstrations [MPS-0732886].
ARRESTED TWICE & ‘BATTERED’ BY POLICE AGAIN
Loader was arrested twice while in his cover identity. The first occasion, in late 1977, was for ‘insulting or threatening behaviour’ following a clash with the NF outside Barking police station. Chief Inspector Craft of the SDS recorded that Loader was ‘somewhat battered by police prior to his arrest’ [MPS-0722618].
Seven other individuals from Loader’s group were also arrested. Superintendent Pryde maintained contact with a court official during the proceedings in April 1978. He informed them that one of the defendants was a police informant who they would be ‘anxious to safeguard from any prison sentence’ [MPS-0526784].
Ultimately, the charges against Loader were dismissed. Three of the other seven individuals were found guilty and fined on 12 April 1978 [UCPI0000011984].
These convictions were the subject of a 2014 report to the Crown Prosecution Service drafted as part of Operation Shay [MPS-0722618], examining miscarriages of justice stemming from undercover deployments.
Discussion in Special Branch Minute Sheets reveals that Loader’s senior officers prioritised keeping Loader’s identity secret over any other consideration.
SECOND ARREST
Just three days after his court appearance, Loader was arrested a second time during trouble at a National Front meeting held at Loughborough School, Brixton on 15 April 1978.
He was again charged with threatening behaviour under s.5 of the Public Order Act 1936, along with three others [UCPI0000011356].
At the hearing, an application was made to hear all the defendants’ cases together. However, the Magistrates decided to hear Loader’s case alone. This was, allegedly, because Loader had been involved in a separate incident to the other defendants, who had infiltrated an NF meeting while Loader stayed outside.
In fact, records reveal that Superintendent Pryde established contact with a court official during the proceedings and told them that one of the defendants was:
‘a valuable informant in the public order field whom we would wish to safeguard from a prison sentence should the occasion arise’.
Unlike the previous arrest, however, it is noted that Loader’s cover name was specifically given to the official [MPS-0526784].
All the defendants, in this case, were found guilty, with Loader being fined and given a one-year bind-over of £100. It is noted in the Minute Sheet that this sentence was considered ‘very useful’ as it would allow Loader to keep a low profile for the remainder of his deployment [MPS-0526784].
The Inquiry said that there is no evidence to suggest that this officer engaged in any sexual relationships in his cover identity.
A note made of a meeting with Commander Buchanan in 2013 suggests that Loader had difficulty reintegrating with the police following his deployment [MPS-0738057].
Loader is recalled by former CPEM-L party members with little detail, although they confirm he was known as ‘Barry’ rather than ‘Desmond’.
One member of the Party applied for Core Participant status at the Inquiry but was refused, despite obviously being in a good position to help the Inquiry with Loader’s evidence.
‘Geoff Wallace’ (HN296, 1975-78)
Summary of Evidence
‘Geoff Wallace’ (HN296, 1975-78) does not reside in the United Kingdom and the pandemic has prevented him from coming over, but he will eventually provide a witness statement.
To introduce him now, the Inquiry cites the account he gave to the Metropolitan Police risk assessor a couple of years ago. At the time he had not had access to the vintage reports attributed to him.
Wallace was a member of the Hammersmith branch of the International Socialists (IS) from summer 1975 to autumn 1978; IS became the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) during his deployment. He stole the identity of a dead child as the basis for his undercover persona.
SPYING ON SCHOOL CHILDREN
We heard earlier in the Inquiry that Paul Gray (HN126) spied upon a group called ‘School Kids Against Nazis’. Wallace also spied on school children.
The first report on the Hammersmith branch of IS signed by him [UCPI000009576] is dated 29 January 1976 and refers to students at Chiswick Comprehensive School’s intention to organise a Right to Work Campaign meeting for school leavers.
SPYING ON LAWYERS
In the course of the Right to Work Campaign, in April 1976 the IS magazine Socialist Worker hired solicitors to represent those arrested during the activities. Wallace reported [UCPI0000012323] on their complaints about police conduct, probably breaching legal privilege.
Wallace’s reporting contains many references to pickets and protests, some upcoming, some containing a list of those involved. In particular, he reports on a number of campaigns to protest the closure of local hospitals, such one [UCPI0000012378] on an April 1976 meeting of the Save Acton Hospital Campaign.
SPYING ON TRADE UNIONS
Wallace seems to be the undercover officer reporting in March 1977 [UCPI0000017818] on the Trade Union Committee Against Prevention of Terrorism Act. This was a Hammersmith group formed in April 1976 by local members of IS, the Troops Out Movement, Camden, Hackney and Hammersmith Trades Councils and various trades unions. Its aim was to provide a solicitor for anyone arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act which conferred emergency powers on police forces whenever terrorism was suspected.
According to a report from Wallace in April 1976 [UCPI0000012373] the Committee was suspected of having an underlying political goal; self-determination for the Irish people. In reality, they were actively campaigning for repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act by staffing pickets outside police stations holding people detained under the Act.
When the police raided the home of one of the activists in January 1978 [UCPI0000017917] they found a note amongst the seized paperwork that said: ‘In the event of no transport, phone Geoff Wallace’. Having a van available remained a key point in the tradecraft of generations of spycops afterwards.
YET ANOTHER TREASURER
Wallace held a series of positions of authority within his target group. The October 1976 report [UCPI0000021481] of a branch meeting of Hammersmith IS indicates that, as of 6 May 1976, Wallace was branch treasurer. Numerous other spycops of the era held the same post in groups they infiltrated.
By July 1976, it would appear Wallace had become the branch’s Socialist Worker newspaper organiser [UCPI0000017922].
SPYING ON ELECTION CANDIDATES
In a report on 5 August 1976 [UCPI0000011981] Wallace reported on a discussion at a meeting of the Hammersmith and Kensington branch of IS about standing in the Walsall by-election. In March 1978 the SWP talked about standing a candidate in the forthcoming general election in Hammersmith North. As these activities are within the parliamentary system, it is difficult to see how they fall under the counter-subversion remit of SDS.
NOTTING HILL CARNIVAL ‘RIOT’ 1976
The Notting Hill Carnival in August 1976 ended in a protest of young people of colour, harassed by an antagonising large police presence, and defending themselves against arbitrary police arrests. IS encouraged their members to join pickets outside the Magistrates Court where those arrested would appear. In September 1976 the branch also proposed [UCPI0000021361] that IS join the defence committee set up by the Black Liberation Front and Grass Roots and contribute to its funds.
YET MORE REPORTING ON ANTI-FASCIST ACTIVITY
In February 1976, the Coventry and Chrysler Right to Work Committee organised a march, supported by the IS, to counter-protest at a demonstration held by the National Front under the slogans ‘A Right to Work for Whites Only’ and ‘ Stop Immigration’.
According to the report [UCPI0000012230] that the Inquiry attributes to Wallace, after a peaceful march some IS members made their way to the location of the National Front election offices and attacked people with stones and bricks. At least one person was taken to the hospital.
Then, according to the same report, IS members then marched to a shopping precinct to chase away members of the National Party. This breakaway faction of the NF was led by fascist and Holocaust denier John Kingsley Read, who built a reputation for having said, after the murder of a young Sikh man in a racist attack, ‘One down, a million to go’. Read later joined the Conservative Party.
The Inquiry looks to this incident to perhaps justify this undercover deployment:
‘We note that, if the report is accurate, this was an occasion on which the violence was started by left-wing activists from the infiltrated group.’
This is not the first time that the Inquiry has used reports of ‘violent’ anti-fascist protests as a justification for many of the deployments.
ANTI-FASCISM IN BIRMINGHAM
Wallace may very well have have been one of the SDS deployed officers who attended a counter-protest march against the National Front in Birmingham. On 24 February 1977, London branches of the SWP and the IMG sent coachloads of their members to join the march.
An SDS report dated 7 March 1977 [UCPI0000017776] describes a single coach of SWP members being attacked by ‘five coaches’ of National Front supporters at Watford Gap Service station.
For some reason, the Inquiry glosses this incident in neutral terms:
‘The SWP contingent from NW London and West Middlesex districts appears to have been involved in an encounter with the National Front in a service station en route to Birmingham…’
This gives a misleading impression of this serious unprovoked attack by the NF on SWP members.
DS Richard Walker (HN368), representing the SDS management, was also dispatched to Birmingham by DI Geoffrey Craft (HN34) to ‘look after our interests’ as is remarked in a note in February 1977 [MPS-0730703].
BATTLE OF LEWISHAM & ANTI-JUBILEE PROTEST
A member of SWP who announced that he was mobilising local trades union branches to support an anti-Jubilee demonstration during the visit of HRH Princess Anne to Kensington Town Hall on 31 May, ended up in a report dated 26 May 1977 [UCPI0000017437].
Wallace also notes that of the 1,500 demonstrators expected, 1,000 were likely to be trade unionists who were ‘violently opposed’ to Jubilee celebrations, if such a thing were possible.
At the same meeting, branch members were urged to assist in staffing picket lines for the strike at the Grunwick photo processing factory. Again, in the Inquiry’s statement ‘intelligence’ on the Grunwick strike is offered as a supposed justification for the covert policing.
A report dated 21 July 1977 [UCPI0000011055] refers to the intention of the Hammersmith and Kensington SWP to send two mini-vans of people to an anti-fascist demonstration in Lewisham on 23 July 1977 ‘in order that the National Front could take a real ‘hammering’.
Celia Stubbs
Celia Stubbs
Celia Stubbs is a Core Participant at the Inquiry because of her relationship with Blair Peach and the campaign that followed his being killed by police in 1979, and the police cover-up that continues to this day.
As Stubbs’ lawyer Matthew Ryder QC told the Inquiry two weeks ago, the killing of Blair Peach remains one of the most notorious events in British police history, a national disgrace, and a permanent stain on the Met.
Stubbs believes the spycops reported on her to prevent other police officers from facing justice.
MEETING BLAIR
Stubbs began by telling how she’d first met Peach in his native New Zealand around 1962 when she was there with her then-husband who was teaching there.
Peach visited London after she had separated from her husband, and they became a couple. They lived together from 1971 onwards. Peach took an active role as step-father to her two daughters
Stubbs has campaigned since Peach was killed, seeking greater police accountability and supporting miscarriage of justice cases, and other bereaved family campaigns. She was a founding member of Inquest, and involved in Hackney Community Defence Association.
POLITICAL BACKGROUND
Blair Peach
In 1972, Stubbs joined the Hackney branch of International Socialists (IS), who later became the Socialist Workers Party. Peach joined later, around 1977.
She has recently learnt that Special Branch held ‘Registry Files‘ on both her and Peach – hers began in 1974/5, Peach’s in 1978 – but she hasn’t been shown any of the content of these. She feels that it would be useful to see these files.
Peach was a teacher, and ‘a very fervent trade unionist’ according to Stubbs, active in the National Union of Teachers in Tower Hamlets and Hackney.
IS put a lot of emphasis on building the class struggle, and Stubbs sold the ‘Socialist Worker’ newspaper in many places. She attended the group’s meetings, both public and private, as well as demonstrations and events supporting striking workers.
NATIONAL FRONT
One area of particular concern was a groundswell of far-right sentiment, especially the active presence on the streets of the National Front (NF). Stubbs and her comrades sold the Socialist Worker in the multicultural area of Brick Lane in East London, and regularly came into conflict with racist NF paper-sellers there. Peach and Stubbs joined the Anti Nazi League (ANL) when it was formed in 1977.
There was organised anti-fascist resistance to the NF, and usually a large police presence too. Stubbs recalled talking to people, lots of shouting at the fascists, banners and of course paper-selling.
The Inquiry showed a Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) report [UCPI0000010769] about the first public meeting of Hackney Community Relations Council, which took place at Stoke Newington Town Hall on 22 July 1976. It was attended by 250 people, significantly more than was normal for political meetings at the time.
The officer describes an NF member being ‘ejected from the assembly room amid a shower of fists and invective’, and that as people left they were taunted by NF members but did not physically confront them.
Asked if this was typical, Stubbs said she only remembered even that relatively low level of disturbance at one other meeting. She highlighted the fact that the anti-fascists had not risen to the goading of the fascists, adding:
‘I do remember unprovoked attacks and, you know, of course members of the left were often arrested. We certainly didn’t go out to do that, you know? We didn’t go to provoke’
The next report [UCPI0000021207] is from a meeting in a pub in North West London which took place on 24 April 1979, the day after Peach had been killed.
Persisting with the Inquiry’s habit of emphasising the violence of activists they read out the report’s summary of a speech made by SWP founder Tony Cliff.
Cliff is described as comparing the Southall anti-fascist demonstration with one two days earlier in Leicester, saying the vital difference was preparation, planning and organisation by the ANL. He is reported as saying ANL had provided Leicester stewards with maps of the area leading to:
‘a successful attack here on the police by about 200 demonstrators, high police injuries and a small number of arrests. On the other hand, at Southall, due to the lack of organisation and inadequate ANL stewarding, a lot of police had been injured, many demonstrators had been arrested and, more importantly, many demonstrators had been badly injured, with one death’
The bias of the reporting officer is apparent in the next paragraph which said:
‘many of the contributors from the floor then recounted their adventure during the demonstrations in Leicester and Southall and discussed instances of “extreme police brutality”.’
Stubbs said Tony Cliff was ‘absolutely wrong to compare Leicester and Southall’ or claim Southall just needed better organisation by the ANL in future. She explained that Southall was a very tight-knit community, ethnically diverse, a strong industrial base with factories around Heathrow, and well-organised, by the likes of the Indian Workers Association.
THE FATAL DAY
The NF’s meeting at Southall Town Hall on 23 April 1979 was part of their campaigning in the run-up to the general election two weeks later. Their candidate didn’t even live in Southall, but they were targeting constituencies with large Black and Asian populations.
Mounted police intimidate protesters, Southall, 23 April 1979 [Pic: John Sturrock]
She told how the local community called for anti-racists from all over London to come to Southall to support them. She heard about it from her trade union. There wasn’t an IS branch in Southall at the time.
Stubbs and Peach travelled separately to the demo – he was on school holiday, whereas she came after work with some colleagues. She had never been there before.
When she arrived, Stubbs found it very crowded. She recounted finding herself near Southall Park where police were chasing people on horses, and on foot with truncheons, hitting people.
5,000 local residents had signed a petition against the NF being allowed to meet. Stubbs described factories shutting down in protest, and how it had started out as a large peaceful sit-down demonstration. But at 1.30pm, more than 3000 police moved in and it was ‘a town under siege’. Police shut all four of the roads that converged by the Town Hall, creating chaos, and started dragging protesters out.
Stubbs said:
‘it was almost as if the police punished the people of Southall… with the 700 people who were arrested, and then there were 348 people actually charged with offences.’
She made her way back to the station at about 7pm, and got the train back to Hackney without having seen Peach. She only learnt that he had been hurt later that evening when, at around 10pm, she received a phone call from a friend who was at Ealing Hospital.
SPYCOPS IN SOUTHALL
She knows that one of the spycops attended the demo in Southall that day. The Inquiry has taken evidence in secret from officers who it does not want to identify. It has then blended their testimony into a single ‘gisted’ document. In it, an officer says they were at the demonstration in Southall, saw violence and were horrified, and left before Peach was killed.
Stubbs is offended at this. Firstly, the total secrecy around the officer – we aren’t given their name, cover name, or any other details at all. Secondly, the idea that there was only one spycop at the demo is ridiculous.
Stubbs said it looks very much like the officer was distancing themselves as far as they could from the killing of Blair Peach. In this, it reminded her of the statements of the officers from the team responsible for his death, who said their van had actually stopped well away from Peach, that other police were present, and other things that were simply lies.
SPYCOPS AT THE FUNERAL
Blair Peach’s funeral, 13 June 1979
Blair Peach’s funeral was held on 13 June 1979. Members of Peach’s family came all the way from New Zealand for it, and 10,000 people came to pay their respects. Undercover police officers took photos of them for later identification.
Spycop ‘Barry Tompkins’ (HN106, 1979-83) says he attended the funeral in case there would be a risk of public disorder, something dismissed by Stubbs as ‘absolutely ludicrous’. 71 mourners are listed by name in Tompkins’ report.
The Inquiry showed several SDS reports [UCPI0000021218, UCPI0000021270] on meetings and protests that showed that the campaign for the truth about Peach’s death was a prominent topic among many sectors of the left at the time.
CAMPAIGNING FOR THE TRUTH
The Inquiry showed a report [UCPI0000021297] which included a leaflet produced by the Friends of Blair Peach. The report, seemingly unable to accept that the police were responsible for his death refers to injuries ‘it is alleged’ caused Peach’s death.
The SDS’ Annual Report for 1979 [MPS-0728963] outrageously suggests that it was the protesters’ fault that he died, saying that his death was the result:
‘of the virulent anti-fascist demonstrations.’
The campaign ideas on the leaflet are what one might expect: writing newspapers, phoning local radio stations, organising collections of money in workplaces, visiting MPs and circulating a petition to push for a public inquiry, putting forward motions at trade union branch meetings, encouraging affiliation to the ANL, and supporting calls for the Met’s notoriously violent Special Patrol Group, whose officers had killed Peach, to be disbanded.
These are traditional democratic campaigning practices, a long way from the SDS’ alleged remit of subversion and public order problems.
BURYING THE FACTS
The Met’s internal report, by Commander John Cass, found that it was ‘almost certain’ that a police officer from the Special Patrol Group killed Peach with a blow to the head.
A search of the officers’ lockers found numerous unauthorised weapons. One officer’s home had Nazi memorabilia and more unauthorised weapons. This information was leaked to the campaign and made public in June 1979.
Stubbs’ solicitor saw the weapons. One was a long cosh with metal at one end, which fits description of weapon that killed Peach.
The Cass report was published on 12 July 1979, then updated on 14 September, but it was not made public. Indeed, Stubbs had to wait more than 30 years before the Met would allow her to see it.
THE INQUEST
An October 1979 report [UCPI0000013435], detailed pickets being planned at Kilburn and Harlesden police stations, to coincide with door-to-door leafleting nearby on the eve of the opening of the first inquest into Peach’s death.
Stubbs explained that over 100 police stations were picketed in this way:
‘people were so angry about it.’
The coroner, John Burton, refused to sit with a jury. He also refused to allow the Cass report to be considered. Campaigners went for a judicial review, stopping the first inquest on that first day.
The Director of Public Prosecutions agreed that there was ‘no case to answer’ and so no police officer would be charged in relation to Peach’s death.
The inquest started again in April 1980, with a jury. The coroner, despite having seen the Cass report, did not accept that established version of events to be taken into account. The inquest concluded in May, the verdict: ‘death by misadventure’
LICENSE TO KILL
One of Peach’s friends and teaching colleagues, David Ransom, wrote a booklet called License to Kill about the killing of Peach and the Special Patrol Group. The chapter on the Special Patrol Group (SPG) is being published by the Inquiry along with the Cass report [UCPI0000034077].
License to Kill cited the Met’s attempts to defy the facts and portray the SPG as an elite, disciplined unit. They told the press that the SPG was the only specialist unit within the force and around 50% of applicants failed the vetting. Those who qualified did a ‘full tour’ of three years. The Met said it had no room for the ‘headstrong type or those who are liable to over-react to any difficult situation’.
This was all nonsense. The Met had a number of specialist units including, as we’re seeing, Special Branch and the SDS.
The purported ‘rigorous controls’ described by the Met had never existed at any time. At least seven of the officers who gave evidence to the Peach inquest had been in the SPG for longer than four years. One of them had been in the SPG for eight years, and two others had been part of the unit since it was founded, 14 years earlier. One of these was PC White, driver of the vehicle that delivered the killer to Peach.
SELF-INCRIMINATION
On 1 June 1980, the Sunday Times published an interview with the SPG’s Inspector Alan Murray. He is now widely believed to be the officer who killed Blair Peach.
Murray had just left the police and appeared to be trying to use the interview to cast his role, and that of his erstwhile unit, in a good light.
He spoke of how ‘the loony left’ were expected to behave in Southall that day, and that it promised to be ‘a tasty one’. He talked of the ‘elan’ (which Wilkinson said she took to mean ‘enthusiasm’) in the unit, and said they were proud to be known as ‘The Cowboys’. He recounted how they played the ‘Dambusters’ soundtrack as they arrived on duty.
‘When I was out with my unit I was my own boss to a large extent. Before acting I didn’t have to ring up and say “Guvnor, do you think this is right?” I followed my own experience to do what was expected.’
PC ‘Chalkie’ White, who had been suspended, was reinstated, not just as a police officer, but back into the SPG. Murray went on to become a lecturer in corporate social responsibility.
ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATIONS
On the first anniversary of Peach’s death, SWP and ANL groups organised pickets at police stations all over London, as described in a report [UCPI0000020094] 18 April 1980.
Blue plaques on Southall Town Hall commemorating Gurdip Singh Chaggar & Blair Peach, 2019
Another report from the same day [UCPI0000013891] lists 16 police stations at which vigils were planned.
In 1981, on the second anniversary, public feeling was still high. A report [UCPI0000016434] mentions the South London Right to Work group’s plans to picket Eltham police station on the day.
The next report [MPS-0001219] was from decades later. It was written in the summer of 1998, regarding the plans to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Blair Peach’s killing on 23 April 1999.
The Inquiry wanted to avoid doubt and said that the line ‘Intelligence: Touchy Subject’ refers to the code-name used by the officer who filed the report, and is not some kind of comment on Stubbs or the Peach case.
Stubbs leapt at the opportunity to illuminate this topic. She told the Inquiry that the officer referred to was Mark Jenner (‘Mark Cassidy’ HN15, 1995-2000) who infiltrated the Hackney Community Defence Association and the Colin Roach Centre (also in Hackney). Whilst undercover he deceived an activist, ‘Alison‘, into a long-term relationship.
Cassidy reported that:
‘local trade unions are organising a large rally and demonstration, which will be presented with a strong anti-racist/anti-police flavour… the event will inevitably attract a large left wing presence with particular accent on anti-police type groups and the potential for disorder will be significant.’
Stubbs was indignant at this:
‘we’d had remembrance demonstrations after five years, after ten years, and this was twenty years. There’d never been any disorder. I don’t know why he put that. I think it’s pretty unpleasant.’
In 2019, for the 40th anniversary, a blue plaque for Peach was unveiled at Southall Town Hall, the Inquiry said. Stubbs added that there was also one for Gurdip Singh Chaggar, a teenager killed by white racists in Southall in 1976.
A year later, in June 2020, the plaques were stolen. It is not known if the culprits were supporters of the police, or of the National Front, or someone else.
BANDING TOGETHER
Returning to the aftermath of Peach’s death, the next report [UCPI0000014149] was from July 1980, concerning the formation of a new network of justice campaigns for cases of police brutality.
Stubbs was visibly emotional as she recounted the details of some of these, including:
Jimmy Kelly, who had been severely beaten by Liverpool police on his way home from a pub in 1979 and taken into custody where he died within the hour.
Richard Campbell, a 19 year old Black Rastafarian who was in Ashford prison, charged with breaking a shop window which he denied, who was force fed and died alone.
Liddle Towers, a 39 year old electrician who died after being beaten in custody by eight officers in 1976. His first inquest ruled ‘justifiable homicide’. After campaigning, a second inquest ruled it was misadventure.
Matthew O’Hara who was remanded to Pentonville prison for withholding his name at a hearing for rate arrears in March 1980. Though he had diabetes, the prison did not administer insulin. He was kicked in the stomach by a prison officer. After four days without insulin he was rushed to hospital and later died.
Stubbs explained that they wanted to get together with these other justice campaigns so they could support each other through the official processes such as inquests, as well as share information and push for reform of the inquest process. She does not see any valid reason to spy on these activities.
We were next shown a report from 1999 [MPS-0001707]. The Macpherson inquiry into the 1993 racist murder of teenager Stephen Lawrence Inquiry had been concluded in 1998, and plans were afoot to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Peach’s killing.
This report mentions many of the family justice campaigners who were active at this time, as well as the Lawrence family themselves.
As with Mark Cassidy’s report, the author feels compelled to make false claims about the likelihood of disorder:
‘Suresh GROVER, who is the organiser of this event, will positively contribute to ensuring that the day passes off without disorder. However, given the large number of groups and individuals who are likely to attend this march, the potential for disorder is high.’
The Met’s own annual report of 1979 described the Southall protest as its ‘most significant event of the year’ yet we don’t see any spycops statement, apart from the single one summarised and blended into the gisted document.
Kevin Gately in Red Lion Square, London, 15 June1974
Stubbs noted there were also scant spycops reports from the 1974 anti-fascist demonstration at Red Lion Square when protester Kevin Gately was killed. ‘Bob Stubbs’ (HN301, 1971-76) told the Inquiry he was at that demonstration but said he could not remember anything about it and only vaguely remembered Gately’s name.
Nothing from the SDS was presented to the public inquiry into the Red Lion Square protest. It’s simply not credible to say so few officers were involved and no significant reports were made.
Contrast these two anti-fascist protests – at which people were killed – with others in the same era where nobody died. Records show at least 18 undercover officers were present at the 1977 ‘Battle of Lewisham’ and we have more than 50 pages of reports.
It’s obvious that when someone is killed, the police don’t want to be associated with it. This looks like yet another cover-up. It makes us feel like we’re not being heard.
EAGER DENIAL
She wonders why spycop ‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-82) has been flagged up to her:
‘I was told that his statement was pertinent to my being spied upon. In fact, there’s absolutely nothing in his statement that involves me, except when, on 12 June 1979, he said he went with the SWP members of the branch he’d infiltrated to view Blair laid in state at the Dominion cinema in Southall.
‘He said he only went because it would have looked bad for him if he hadn’t and might have disturbed his undercover, but he then, immediately after that, said in his statement, “I never had anything to do with the family or Friends of Blair Peach”.
‘Why did he make that remark? It seems as though he quickly wanted to distance himself from. There must be something.’
Stubbs said that, having seen so many secret police reports, is left with as many questions as she had before.
‘I mean, Blair was killed by police officers and our feelings and campaigns were criminalised. The police, I think, wanted to keep ahead of our campaign so that Blair’s killers: we were never able to hold them to account.’
Speaking of how she and other Core Participants at the Inquiry feel violated, she concluded:
‘Core participants are fighting injustice in a climate where they are vilified by authority and we’ve been targeted. We don’t know why we’ve been targeted. I just hope this Inquiry, you know, will protect core participants, and that when you come to write your report, this will be foremost in your mind.’
The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, thanked her for her evidence, though it’s unclear how much weight he will give it.
Before the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s hearing on 23 April 2021, the 42nd anniversary of the killing of Blair Peach, there was a minute’s silence in his memory. In his introductory words, Mitting referred merely to Peach being killed by ‘a blow to the head’. He did not mention the police at all. It seems the Inquiry is unwilling to fully admit even the facts established by Commander Cass decades ago.
Neither is giving any evidence in person. This goes against the wishes of non-state core participants, who believe all undercovers should give live evidence and have their evidence examined by Counsel.
‘Gary Roberts’ (HN353, 1974-1978)
This officer’s cover identity was stolen from a deceased child.
INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISTS & INTERNATIONAL MARXIST GROUP
Roberts was deployed undercover in the spring of 1974, targeting first the Finsbury Park branch of the International Socialists (IS). He then switched to the South East London branch of the International Marxist Group (IMG). Within the IMG, Roberts had another pseudonym – a so-called ‘party name’ of ‘Gary Shopland’.
His involvement with the IMG began in late 1975, and he remained a member of the group until his deployment ended circa June 1978. Roberts thinks that he may have been tasked with infiltrating the IMG as a replacement for HN338.
STUDENT AT THAMES POLYTECHNIC
To further his cover story, Roberts became a student on a degree course at Thames Polytechnic attending classes and taking exams over the years. He became Vice President of the Student Union there. The course was paid for by the Metropolitan Police, although he never completed the degree.
MISSING REPORTS
Battle of Lewisham plaque, erected on New Cross Road, 2017
It is likely that of the reports relating to IMG meetings and members in South East London, some were written by HN338 and others by Roberts. There is some dispute about this.
Roberts has pointed out that he has not been shown any reports filed by him for the period December 1977- June 1978. He attended many large demonstrations, and reported on public order situations, but these reports seem to be missing. He says he witnessed public disorder at clashes between right- and left-wing groups.
In particular, he recalled the counter-demos mounted by anti-fascists against National Front marches in both Wood Green and Lewisham in 1977. He also recalled being charged by mounted police at a demonstration.
There is a report of him attending one demo during the summer of 1975 – a small National Abortion Campaign protest [UCPI0000012738]. This included a speech by Labour MP John Fraser which was also reported. He does not recall any property damage.
COUNTER PROTESTS AGAINST FASCISTS
He claims in his statement that IMG members, having learned of the location of the Wood Green march in 1977, scouted the route to find good places to throw missiles at the fascists.
Also in his witness statement, he recalls his attendance at the counter-demonstration thinking that the police had left too great a gap between officers as they escorted the National Front demonstrators. This had enabled the IMG to confront the marchers, resulting in violence.
Somewhat surprisingly, not mentioned in summary evidence read out by the Inquiry, in January 1977 it seems Roberts may have attended the initial meeting of the All-Lewisham Campaign Against Racialism and Fascism in his capacity as vice president of Thames Polytechnic Students Union. The group contained representatives from the IMG, the Anglican Church Council, the Labour Party, the Communist Party, and Black and Asian groups [UCPI0000017686].
‘HOOVER’
Of his reporting style, he said:
‘I would hoover up everything.’
This included the political content of meetings, as he knew the Security Service (MI5) found this interesting.
This is borne out by his reporting on the 1976 IMG National Conference [UCPI0000021343]which almost exclusively focuses on the debates between different ideological groups within the IMG. The value of this report is indicated by the fact he received a telephone message from MI5 and a Deputy Assistant Commissioner’s commendation.
Roberts assessing the potential for subversion on the IMG says they:
‘were strong in words, but in hindsight, I think they were not really likely to act on them.’
On other witnesses in the Inquiry, he does recall ‘Mary’, who appeared in several of his reports, as well as Richard Chessum [UCPI0000008223].
Piers Corbyn is also mentioned, including in relation to his election campaign for the Greater London Council, which is an example of spycops targeting the democratic process [UCPI0000008229].
Roberts says that he did not engage in any criminal activity, did not have any intimate or sexual relationships with activists, and did not join a trade union, although there he did make one report on Greenwich Trades Council [UCPI0000009380].
Special Demonstration Squad officer HN353 used the name ‘Jeff Slater’ or ‘Geoff Slater’ to infiltrate the Tottenham branch of the International Socialists (IS) for under a year (1974-75).
His fake identity was stolen from a deceased child.
Before his deployment he spent time in the SDS back office but was given no formal training or any specific guidance about what information to collect.
He had cover employment at a car dealership, and a cover address which he occasionally visited but did not stay overnight at. Slater was also provided with a cover vehicle and documentation.
The first known report from Slater is dated August 1974 [UCPI0000007918] and the last is March 1975 [UCPI0000006971].
Slater does not remember enough to comment on these reports. He says he did not type them up himself. Nor does not recognise any of the reporting he has been shown and does not believe that he was the author of any of them, except two.
UNSPECIFIED VIOLENCE
Slater says he attended various demonstrations to initiate contact with activists. He recalls that IS were viewed as a ‘subversive’ group who were:
‘organising to bring about the fall of the State and they would use any means available to achieve this, including violence.’
He alleges that IS members used violence, though says he never took part in any himself. He also claims to have witnessed many incidents of major public disorder, which included police officers being assaulted. However, he does not cite any specific instances to support his claim.
A report from November 1974 mentioned IS becoming involved in industrial action [UCPI0000015056]. However, Slater denies that he became involved with any trade unions during his deployment.
According to one report, dated January 1975, he became the official Socialist Worker Organiser of the Tottenham branch, [UCPI0000012014].
Some of the groups he spied on were campaigning for racial and sexual equality [UCPI0000014964]. His reports also cover global political issues, the Irish situation, plans for protests and educational classes, and personal information about group members.
Slater also stated in his witness statement, whilst having no recollection of the contents of reports (including [UCPI0000014961]), with regard to Irish matters he states that he was:
‘instructed to report on any matter relating to the IRA and Irish Troubles more generally which were of relevance to Special Branch at the time.’
He says he did not get particularly close to any of the activists or form any sexual relationships during his relatively short deployment.
BABYSITTER & BIRTHDAY PARTY SPY?
The babysitting rota of the North London District of IS was shared in a report dated 8 January 1975 [UCPI0000012021]. This list shows ‘Geoff Slater’ as volunteering for this. It is unknown if Slater ever took his turn on the rota, but it would obviously be a concern to any parent to discover that they left their child with an imposter.
Another report attributed to Slater (wrongly, in his view) was on an IS member’s birthday party [UCPI0000006850].
EXIT
Slater’s deployment ended in the spring of 1975. This was at his request, as he found the work to be ‘debilitating and exhausting, both mentally and physically,’ and did not think he was suitable for it. He spent some time working in the SDS back office after this doing clerical work.
The inquiry mentioned that it was releasing documents relating to undercover officers ‘Jim Pickford‘ (HN300, 1974-76) and ‘Desmond/Barry Loader‘ (HN13, 1975-78). However, as Thursday’s hearing will include summaries of statements from both men’s widows, the COPS daily reports will deal with their respective material in one go then.
Clark spied on this hearing’s next witness, Richard Chessum, and ‘Mary‘, among others.
He was deployed into Goldsmiths College in December 1974 by the Special Demonstration Squad.
He was 29 years old, married with children, and had been a police officer for five years. He stole the identity of a deceased child, Richard Gibson, as the basis for his undercover identity. He enrolled at the Goldsmiths College on a Portuguese language course.
Clark’s target was the Troops Out Movement. It’s an interesting target from the perspective of this Inquiry,because it did not fit with the stated aims of the SDS. The Movement posed no public order risk at all.
Its aims were publicly stated and straightforward:
i. Self-determination for the people of Ireland and
ii. the withdrawal of British troops from Northern Ireland
Their methods included lobbying Members of Parliament, drafting alternative legislation and raising awareness, with occasional low-key demonstrations, talks and film-screenings.
Clark is also known to have reported on the Free Desmond Trotter campaign in May 1975.
His deployment ended in late 1976. By December, he had been posted to another area of Special Branch, ‘S Squad’.
Clark was promoted in 1986, to the rank of Detective Inspector. He received other medals and awards before finally retiring from the police in 1998.
He has since died, so we will not be hearing any evidence from him, only from those who he spied on, and some of his erstwhile colleagues.
The Inquiry’s next witness was a non-State core participant, Richard Chessum, who was part of the Troops Out Movement (TOM). He was spied on by a number of spycops, including Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76). Clark is now deceased.
The overarching aim of Chessum’s political activity over a lifetime has been to contribute to a better world. He was a Methodist lay preacher, involved in the Labour Party and in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) before he moved to London in 1968 and got involved in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) and then the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM).
Stop The Seventy Tour protest, Lords cricket ground, 1970
He joined in with the anti-apartheid Stop The Seventy Tour (STST) action at Oval cricket ground in 1969 – a pitch invasion carried out with the intention of creating an opportunity for dialogue with the all-white South African team.
He enrolled at Goldsmith’s College in 1970 and, because there was no Socialist Society there, he set one up. He recalled people’s disillusionment with the Labour government of the time. The Socialist Society held open weekly meetings, and advertised its activities to both students and staff. Among the people he recruited from his stall was the woman who later became his wife.
Chessum also joined the Anti Internment League, which opposed the internment without trial of republican prisoners in Northern Ireland. In 1972, he organised a demonstration after ‘Bloody Sunday’, when British troops killed 14 people on a civil rights march in Derry. He got more active about the situation in Ireland due to an Irish house-mate at the time prompting him to do so.
He eventually joined the International Marxist Group (IMG) in 1972, having deliberately avoided joining any of the left-wing groups that existed up till that point. He left within a year, preferring ‘to be on the open sea’ rather than stuck in a small ‘political goldfish bowl’.
Though his membership of the Labour Party had lapsed when he moved to London, he later re-joined. He says he felt very ‘at home’ within the Labour Committee on Ireland, and became its press officer.
Chessum is still politically active now, with a local group set up to assist asylum seekers and refugees, offering company and an opportunity to learn English. This group has fought against both destitution and racism. It now has over 300 volunteers and has become, in his words, ‘a substantial presence in the city of Sheffield’.
SPYCOP ENTERS THE SCENE
In 1974, Chessum was elected to the Students Council at Goldsmith’s. He had been a member of the Anti Internment League (AIL) in the past, and he supported the aims of the Troops Out Movement (TOM).
TOM was formed in West London in September 1973 by Irish solidarity activists, trade unionists, socialists and Irish people living in Britain. It was a campaigning organisation committed to bringing an end to British rule in the north of Ireland.
TOM had two stated aims. First, it campaigned for the withdrawal of British troops from Ireland. Second, it campaigned for self-determination for the Irish people.
TOM also campaigned around related issued including justice, policing, equality, demilitarisation, employment discrimination, cultural rights and the Irish language.
Chessum explained how he came to meet the spycop ‘Rick Gibson’. He was contacted by the national TOM office, who told him a Goldsmith’s student had been in touch asking if there was a TOM branch in South East London.
Chessum decided to set one up at Goldsmith’s, and met with ‘Gibson’ in the student union bar to discuss this plan. He thinks this meeting would have taken place in December 1974, just before the holidays.
The Inquiry has found a Special Branch report of a Socialist Society meeting which took place at Goldsmith’s in January 1975 [UCPI0000012122]. Titled ‘Why a Troops Out Movement?’, it was attended by 45 people.
STARTING A GROUP TO SPY ON
The main speaker was a former paratrooper named McConnell, from the North London branch of the TOM. Chessum proposed the formation of a SE London TOM branch and an informal meeting was planned for the following week.
That informal meeting in Februaty 1975 was the subject of the next report [MPS-0728678] we saw. There was a very low turn-out, with only two people (presumably Chessum and Gibson) present at the start. They were later joined by three IMG members (who only came along because their own class had been cancelled that night). One of them was ‘Mary’. He knows that Mary remembers meeting ‘Gibson’ for the first time at a political stall.
This next Special Branch report [MPS-0728205] is all about Richard Chessum, detailing his personal life and political activity, and even his sister’s move to York.
The Inquiry then took Chessum through a series of reports that, for the most part, demonstrate just how small the group’s meetings were, and how quickly the undercover officer made his way up through the ranks of the TOM.
These included a report [MPS-0728701] about the inaugural meeting of the SE London branch on 12 March 1975. Numbers were disappointingly low at this meeting too. Lots of left-wing groups and trade unions had been invited to come, but most hadn’t. Chessum chaired the meeting. The only invited speaker was a senior figure in TOM, Géry Lawless.
The group met again a week later, on 18 March, as detailed in the next report [MPS-0728710]. This meeting was attended by just 11 people. Elections were held, with Rick Gibson being elected Secretary of the new branch. It was also agreed that he and Chessum would be sent as delegates to the ‘Liason Committee Conference’ that weekend.
Chessum explained that, at the time, he and others were coming up to their final exams, so they didn’t put themselves forward for the role of Secretary as they knew that it would require quite a lot of work. However Gibson volunteered himself, and the use of his car.
From the perspective of intelligence gathering, it was an interesting position. It gave Gibson access to the personal details of every member.
Prospective members would contact the TOM Secretary in the first instance, giving Gibson a chance to assess them as they joined the group, and quite possibly influence the process. At first, the group met at Chessum’s home. Later they met at Charlton House.
The group organised events like a picket outside the house of local MP (and Under Secretary of State for Northern Ireland) Roland Moyle. Chessum recalls being invited in for tea and biscuits. At the time he assumed people present were colleagues of the MP, but now he wonders if they were part of the State, as they did ask the group lots of questions about their personal political views.
However, Gibson’s report differs from Chessum’s memory, stating that Moyle was present that day but refused to speak to the demonstrators, and that nobody was invited inside the house at all.
A meeting at Charlton House on 21 May 1975 was probably the first public meeting of the new TOM branch outside of Goldsmith’s. The report [MPS-0728681] says it was a success, with about 45 people attending thanks to ‘good local publicity’, and credit for this outreach is given to Chessum and Gibson.
Gibson is one of the few officers who, in his reports, wrote about his own activities as if he is one of the members of the group. He had a habit of including himself on the list of attendees, with his Special Branch registry file number added.
We are left with the impression that Gibson put a lot of effort into getting people to come to these meetings, and then when they did, he would report their attendance to Special Branch.
The next report [MPS-0728668] is of South East London TOM members attending a Labour Party meeting at Alderwood School in June 1975, and questioning the Labour candidate about his views on the Irish situation:
Chessum explained that there was no public disorder:
‘The objective would have been to try and persuade people in Labour to support us’
Unsurprisingly, the Inquiry asked Chessum about the legality of TOM’s actions, despite the reports showing that the group supported parliamentary democracy to such an extent that they lobbied MPs to try to get them onside.
Chessum was unquivocal; TOM did not carry out or promote illegal acts. There was certainly no direct relationship between TOM and the Provisional IRA. He suspects that a September 1975 report about a visit to Northern Ireland [UCPI0000007665] was inaccurate – members of the TOM may well have met with Sinn Fein, the political party, but not with the IRA, which was a highly secretive organisation.
FRIENDSHIP
Chessum developed a friendship with Gibson. The two men spent time together, not just in the pub after meetings, but they also attended some Charlton Athletic football matches together. Chessum also recalled meeting up on the Woolwich free ferry at lunchtimes after Gibson had begun (he said) working near him in that part of London.
He thought that they bonded over their distaste for sectarianism, and found it relaxing to discuss things freely with someone who wasn’t a zealous member of any particular group. This is a practice known as ‘mirroring’, reflecting back someone’s perspective in order to create a closeness. Other spycops have said they were trained to do this.
There are a number of reports on the TOM, including meetings of its London Coordinating Committee and its national secretariat, and their plans to hold a demonstration and rally about Bloody Sunday, which was commemorated every year.
The next report [MPS-0728777] is about one such meeting, which took place in January 1976. The group had planned for a rally on 1 February, and booked the Hammersmith Palais for it, but this booking had just been cancelled on them at fairly short notice. Chessum recounted how the police at the time used to go round pubs encouraging landlords not to allow political meetings on their premises.
Another report from January 1976 [MPS-0728774] shows TOM’s press officer being criticised for inactivity, and the group deciding to replace him with a Press Committee. Three people, including Gibson, were then elected to this new committee. The committee’s first task was to prepare a statement about the Hammersmith Palais cancellation and the State’s repression.
In hindsight, Chessum is concerned that an undercover officer got involved in this kind of task, as the wellbeing of the TOM was clearly not his priority.
PLOTTING AND SCHEMING
During this era, sectarian groups, like Workers Fight and the Revolutionary Communist Group, were often disruptive at TOM meetings.
Chessum recalled that to counter the influence of these groups, an informal alliance had formed between Géry Lawless, other ‘independents’ within TOM, and members of Big Flame.
Gibson went on to higher positions within TOM nationally. We can see him being described as a ‘London Organiser’ and a member of the national Secretariat in this report from early 1976 [MPS-0728777].
Chessum says he was approached by Lawless and by a member of Big Flame about becoming a London Organiser himself, but in the end it was Gibson who filled that role.
TOM’s South East London branch elected two delegates for the Coordinating Committee. Both Gibson and Chessum stood for these delegate positions. Workers Fight and the Revolutionary Communist Group both turned up en masse to the meeting where this election took place.
The sectarians were on one side, Rick and Richard on the other. They felt sure that the votes would go one of two ways – but what happened was that Gibson and one of the sectarians were narrowly voted in to these two positions. Chessum reckons this must be because Gibson voted for himself, but not for Chessum.
Having now reached the national level of the TOM, Gibson would have had access to a great deal of information about their plans, members and about any legal advice they ever received – for instance about the Hammersmith Palais cancellation.
Some serious, internal, personal criticisms are revealed in a report from a Blackpool fringe meeting from May 1976 [UCPI0000009684]. Chessum explained:
‘I understand that one of the people attacked was someone called Sean McKavanagh [founder and leader of Workers Fight], a bitter enemy of Lawless.’
He went on to suggest that Gibson may well have done this in order to curry favour with Lawless. It is obvious that Gibson was now trusted by Lawless and others, and given a lot of responsibility.
BIG FLAME
Big Flame had been described as ‘libertarian Marxists’ and the Inquiry asked Chessum to explain what that meant. He said they differed from the more authoritarian, dogmatic groups found on the left – they didn’t have a strict ‘party line’ and were more open to discussing different viewpoints.
There were ‘lots of feminist women’ in Big Flame, and Chessum said he thought they probably felt more comfortable in this more egalitarian, less sectarian environment.
Chessum began attending reading nights organised by Big Flame, and as soon as Rick Gibson found out about that, he asked if he could come along.
He recalled one incident where Gibson was due to ‘take a turn’ addressing the group on a topic of his choice, but performed badly. His notes were of no help, and he completely clammed up. Chessum now thinks this should maybe have been an indication that Rick wasn’t really a committed person’.
In the meantime, Gibson appeared to have become convinced that Géry Lawless was too powerful within TOM. Gibson convened a meeting at his undercover flat to with some members of Big Flame to organise an internal coup to put an end to Gery Lawless and his ‘leadership clique’, as detailed in his Special Demonstration Squad reports of August [UCPI0000010775] and September 1976 [UCPI0000021388].
Chessum remembers that he found it strange to hear that Big Flame felt able to ‘take over’ TOM at that time. Seeing that Gibson was heavily involved in this internal situation, he can’t help but wonder if Gibson was deliberately responsible for the breakdown of the alliance.
SPYCOP SUSPECTED
Chessum knew Gibson had sexual relationships, first with his friend ‘Mary’ and then with her flatmate, and says that was general knowledge at the time. He only found out later he had also got intimately involved with at least two Big Flame women, one of whom he had a more long-term relationship with.
When Gibson applied to become a member of Big Flame, the group carried out some background checks on him; they were suspicious of his motives and his over-eagerness. He told some people that he planned to move to Liverpool, a city with a very active Big Flame group, as well as a large, well-connected, Irish community.
We don’t know exactly what else raised their suspicions, but Chessum recalls that when Gibson first turned up and got involved with TOM, activists had wondered why he was so invested in campaigning about Ireland as he had no obvious personal connection or Irish background. They even discussed the possibility of him being some kind of spy right at the start, but decided he wasn’t one.
Did he accidentally tell different women different things, and they then compared notes and spotted the discrepancies in his cover story? ‘Mary’ said he didn’t share any contact details with her, was often very hard to reach, and she knew very little about his background. There was also the failed presentation at the reading night that exposed a lack of political insight.
Richard Chessum got married in July of 1976 and so was away on honeymoon in Cornwall. By the time he returned to London, Gibson had been exposed, and had disappeared.
SPYCOP UNMASKED
Big Flame had told Gibson that they always carried out background checks on prospective members, and gone to work on him. They had got hold of his supposed date of birth and checked for the birth certificate at the government registry at Somerset House. They then went to the local records office where Rick Gibson had been born, where they discovered his death certificate.
Now they knew he was not really Rick Gibson, but had no idea who he really was. They thought he might be working for Special Branch or MI5. He had mentioned being employed at a campsite, so Big Flame folk went to visit it. Upon discovering it was run by an ex-army guy, they wondered if their spy had military connections.
Many of the details he provided for his ‘relatives’ were for people living in port towns, so this made them wonder if there was a link to Special Branch. They even wondered if he was a fascist of some kind.
They told Gibson that they needed to know more about his background, but none of the details he gave of family members or the school he went to checked out. He kept inventing new stories to explain it away, but he failed to convince the group.
This intense process didn’t deter Gibson from wanting to join, so Big Flame took more drastic action. They invited him to meet them in a pub and then spread out all the evidence they had gathered. ‘He looked as though he was going to cry’, Chessum was told about this incident.
He came up with one last story and gave them a phone number of the office where his brother was supposed to work. It was another lie. When they went to check his flat, they found that he had done a midnight flit, and it was empty.
Chessum was told about all this by someone from Big Flame. He was shown the dossier of evidence that had been compiled. This was later sealed and hidden away by the group. It included the birth and death certificates, and a letter Gibson had left behind for the woman he had the more serious relationship with. Chessum was told to keep the story secret, and he did, for many years.
After this, he met with Mary and her flatmate, and told them what he had seen. He says they were shocked but not surprised. They had already discussed the possibility of him being some kind of police officer. They had noticed his habit of never staying overnight, and wondered if this was because he had a wife to go back to.
LEGACY OF DECEIT
Chessum now wonders to what extent Gibson was sent to target him personally. He worked in Woolwich in those days. Gibson suddenly found a job nearby, and they would sometimes meet up in their lunch breaks. Gibson’s supposed workplace was nearby, and he and talked about an office behind a bank.
Chessum remembers visiting him there at least once, and seeing other people at work, and files in the rooms. After Gibson’s disappearance, we went to take a look, and found the office completely empty, with no traces of Gibson or anyone else.
Workers at the bank gave him a phone number to try. He was put on hold for a very long time, and then told that Gibson no longer worked there.
Chessum was not surprised that the spycops were interested in the political activity he was involved in, but he was surprised by the sheer volume of personal information being recorded and retained about him and others:
‘I find it sinister, actually’
Afterwards, he found it hard to find employment, not just in his academic area of expertise but even at a postal sorting office, and suspects that he was ‘blacklisted’ in some way due to his political activity, especially due to the connection with Northern Ireland.
The Inquiry’s Chair,, Sir John Mitting, thanked Chessum for providing such quality evidence, and for putting him right about his earlier assumptions. Mitting has previously described Gibson’s deployment as ‘unremarkable’ but now sees that this was not the case at all.
Let’s hope that Mitting continues to learn from the evidence of non-State core participants and witnesses, and everyone who was spied on by these disgraced spycops units rather than trusting the police to provide answers.
Roger Harris (HN200, 1974-1977)
The Inquiry’s next witness was Special Demonstration Squad officer ‘Roger Harris’ (HN200) who was deployed between April 1974 and October 1977 to infiltrate the Twickenham branch of International Socialists (IS).
IS later became the Socialist Workers Party, but before that the Twickenham branch was suspended from IS – during Harris’ deployment – and most of its members went on to join the Workers League.
Harris joined the Metropolitan Police in the 1960s and was based in central London. This meant he spent considerable time policing demonstrations.
He thinks demonstrations presented a lot of public order problems for the police in the 1960s, and much less in the 1970s. He is convinced that this was due to the work of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), noting that it was set up in 1968.
He transferred from uniformed duties to Special Branch, working in ‘C Squad’ which gathered intelligence on left-wing groups. As part of this work, he grew a beard and longer hair in order to fit in at meetings.
Harris became aware that the SDS existed – though not by name – when he recognised Special Branch officers among activists. All the same, he says the SDS was not an ‘open secret’ in Special Branch.
He was recruited into the SDS by officer Detective Chief Inspector HN294, who had been undercover 1968-69, and was running the unit by the time Harris joined.
TARGETING INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISTS
Seemingly trying to illustrate the benefit of SDS tactics, the Inquiry showed a Special Branch report of Harris’ [MPS-0739315] from October 1971, before he was in the SDS.
It describes a meeting of the Hackney & Islington branch of the IS. This took place in the Rose & Crown pub in Stoke Newington. The report lists 21 people as attending, to discuss matters arising from a recent conference in Skegness.
It may sound unworthy of police attention, but the report shows Harris was among a total of nine Special Branch officers observing the meeting from the bar, having failed to gain entry to the back room it was held in. The police collected details and descriptions of those who attended, including their car registrations. The SDS would have been able to get more information than that, we were told. Though why they’d need to is another question – one the Inquiry did not ask.
In his witness statement, Harris said he felt fortunate being sent to infiltrate the IS, as if he had been sent into a Marxist group he would probably have quit. In person, he elaborated:
‘IS was similar to a lot of my friends, I like to have a sort of light-hearted attitude to life, and from what I heard these Marxist groups were very serious’
Harris found many of the views held by IS were reasonable positions that a police officer could agree with. This is somewhat refreshing, given how many other undercovers have sought to exaggerate the supposedly dangerous or subversive nature of the group.
TRAINING
Harris was not provided with any formal training when he joined the SDS in 1974, though was an experienced Special Branch officer. He spent six months in the SDS back office, and picked up more about the work of the unit as he went along. This included attending SDS safe house meetings prior to being deployed, to help prepare for what he was likely to face and to familiarise himself with the way the unit worked.
STEALING AN IDENTITY
The Inquiry has treated us to a number of euphemisms for spycops stealing a dead child’s identity – ‘adopting’, ‘using’, and ‘relying on’ it. It was straightforward identity theft. Just because it was police doing it doesn’t mean we should downplay it with softer language than anyone else would get for doing the same thing.
Harris stole the identity of a deceased child as the basis of his undercover identity, as this was standard practice, taught by his superiors.
‘I was a bit upset and I actually said “why is that necessary?”… it wasn’t something that sat comfortably with me. The reason I was given was that we needed to have a birth certificate to obtain subsequent documentation for myself, such as obtaining car insurance, and that sort of stuff.’
He was not told that this was a relatively new technique, and that it hadn’t always been used by all officers in the unit.
He went to the birth registry at Somerset House with a colleague. He chose the name of a teenager rather than a baby, as he thought the birth and death certificates would be further apart in the records and less easy for someone from IS to find if they were checking up on him.
Did he ever consider the possibility that the family of the dead child might find out?
‘that was why I was not happy with it in the first place’
POLICE CRIMINALITY
Unlike most of his colleagues who have been asked, Harris says he did see the Home Office Circular [MPS-0727104] that expressly forbids undercover officers from participating in serious crime, or from being involved in anything that is likely to lead to a court being deceived. It’s notable that the officers who did lie to courts have no memory of ever hearing the unequivocal instructions of this document.
Harris specifically remembered that he and his colleagues were given a special phone number so if they were arrested and taken into custody they could give that to someone at the police station and be released. He doesn’t recall anyone ever using it.
PREPARING FOR INFILTRATION
Harris was tasked to infiltrate IS by DCI Derek Kneale. Harris was replacing ‘John Clinton’ (HN343, 1971-73) in the organisation, and the two met to discuss the handover.
Like most of his colleagues, Harris doesn’t think he had any training or guidance on the limits of intrusion into personal lives, nor on the prospect of sexual relationships with people he spied on.
WHY SPY?
Asked to define subversion, Harris declared:
‘if you have an established system like we have in this country, we’re a democracy, and somebody tries to interfere with that by surreptitious means, I call that subversive’
Having said IS had subversive objectives, he conceded they were more seeking to interfere with or disrupt, rather than fully overthrow the system.
Asked how they sought to do it, he replied:
‘I can’t recall a particular incident’
Harris said he did not see any violence while undercover. Though he qualified it slightly with an anecdote that did not actually describe anything violent:
‘there was only one that nearly got violent, and that was the closest we came… it never actually came to violence. We came to a face to face – two cordons, one of police officers, one of the IS, but it didn’t erupt into anything more than that.’
He said that being in IS was great cover for spying on other groups, as everyone expected IS newspaper sellers to turn up at every event and let them be. However, he seems to have done very little reporting on organisations beyond those he was actively infiltrating.
Challenging his deployment due to its pointlessness wasn’t something that even occurred to him:
‘I wouldn’t have thought of doing that [challenging it] anyway because I was happy to go in areas that they were short of officers in.’
Asked if he remembered any demonstrations against the fascist National Front turning violent, Harris drew a blank.
DEATH IN RED LION SQUARE
Nevertheless, early in his deployment, on 15 June 1974, Harris attended a counter-demonstration against the National Front at Red Lion Square, London.
Police charged the crowd, with officers on horses using batons to strike protesters’ heads. Following one such charge, protester Kevin Gately was left unconscious from a blow to the head, from which he later died.
It was the first time anyone had been killed at a demonstration in Great Britain for decades. As with all the other spycops who have been asked, Harris claimed not to remember the event, let alone any discussion among his colleagues. He vaguely admitted to remembering Gately’s name ‘now you mention it’.
There were surely many reports written about this demonstration, but the Inquiry has been unable to find very much at all.
PART OF THE GROUP
Harris was part of the Twickenham branch of IS. Meetings averaged about 15 people, sometimes as many as 25, though these were not all members as most meetings were open – undermining his earlier talk of needing to be deep undercover to access these meetings.
He was appointed as the branch’s Contact Secretary. He says this meant he had a notebook full of members’ contact details:
‘obviously, every time there was a new contact it would come through me, so that could be useful, depending on who they were’
However, Harris denies having too much influence over the direction of the group. He claims to remember being told early in his deployment that his role was reactive, rather than pro-active, and that he shouldn’t lead the action in any way, nor take up senior official roles that could steer a group’s direction. He was not questioned further on the obvious disconnect: if he was the first point of contact for new members, and the public face of the group, he had a great deal of influence.
He did not deny voting at meetings, but said he just voted with the majority, so his vote didn’t really matter.
But what would you do if it did matter?
‘It depends’
The Inquiry did not pursue the point. This fact highlighted the problem of the Inquiry asking questions supplied by lawyers as a check-list exercise, without knowing what point they’re trying to elicit nor how to press an issue. See the comments at the end of the report for more on this.
Harris recorded trade union membership in reports. A January 1975 report [UCPI0000012060] of a meeting of the West Middlesex District of the IS refers to two recent strikes. However, Harris says this is the only time he remembers any discussion about IS getting involved with industrial action.
SCHISM AND THE WORKERS LEAGUE
The Twickenham branch of IS had a schism with the national leadership, which led to the branch being suspended and becoming a branch of the Workers League (WL).
The WL was a small organisation having a total national membership of only 143. As to whether they were subversive, Harris mused:
‘Not particularly, no’
Were they a threat to public order in any way, then?
‘It was never discussed at the early meetings, the ones which I went to’
He kept spying on them anyway.
Harris recorded which IS branch each Workers League member had belonged to, as well as details of their trade union membership. He also reported details of theiremployment – for example, a December 1976 report [UCPI0000017609] notes that a member works for the London Borough of Ealing.
Asked why this was worth reporting, Harris explained:
‘if they were employed in a position like that in a council, or also if they were employed in a college or something like that, it would be normal to put it in’
Harris wasn’t asked why these institutions were ones that would be ‘normal’ to report on, let alone if it was believed to contribute to public sector blacklisting. It’s already established that every constabulary’s Special Branch routinely supplied a construction industry blacklist with personal details of politically active people. It seems unlikely that was the only sector.
SAFE HOUSE MEETINGS
Harris went to SDS meetings at the unit’s safe houses twice a week, once at each of two locations. The majority of the active spycops attended these, unless there was a specific reason they couldn’t.
Reports were submitted on Mondays, with the spycops aggregating and formalising notes from that weekend’s demonstrations.
Sometimes there would be some group discussion, which he described as relaxed and open:
‘They were normally fairly light hearted… It was just basically an open forum that people could throw anything in, and obviously some of that affected other people and they might have experienced something similar’
He would spend around four hours at the safe house with his fellow spycops on Mondays.
He estimated that the meetings on Thursdays went on for longer – maybe six hours – as these were more social occasions. Sometimes they cooked lunch, and they would talk about problems and share experiences:
‘It was time to get away from all the undercover stuff and get, you know, back to normal a bit’
Harris recalled two occasions when the highest officer in the Met, the Commissioner, visited the SDS at their safe house. Harris remembers Robert Mark and, later, his successor, David McNee, both visiting during his deployment.
This tallies with similar reports by spycops from the 1960s and 1990s. This suggests it was an established part of the Commissioner’s role, or at least the existence of the unit was something brought to the attention of every Commissioner.
Harris said that, at some safe-house meetings, they were asked for suggestions about ways to infiltrate more extreme groups or events.
All this seems plausible for a group who would meet hundreds of times with the only other people who could possibly understand their lives. And yet, it is in direct contradiction to the tight-lipped responses from the majority of other undercover officers who have given evidence.
Just 24 hours earlier the Inquiry was being told by Harris’ contemporary ‘Mike Scott’ (HN298, 1971-1976) that spycops at the meetings didn’t discuss politics or anything else that affected their work, not even if they were likely to be at the same upcoming event.
SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS
Harris was friends with the late Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76). The pair had known each other before the SDS, and would do so long after as well. Clark deceived four women into relationships while undercover.
Harris claims they never really discussed details of their undercover work. He knew that Clark had infiltrated the IS, but says he only learnt today that he also reported on the Troops Out Movement.
The Inquiry asked Harris if he recalled Richard Clark having a reputation of being a ‘ladies man’, as has been alleged by another officer, or whether he remembers Clark being teased about this reputation within the unit?
Asked if he remembered ‘Jim Pickford‘ (HN300, 1974-76) having a similar reputation, he replied:
‘I think the answer to that would be yes’
They inquiry did not follow up on this straight away, but after the a break to allow core participant lawyers to make representations, Counsel returned and did press the point.
He seemed at pains to say he knew this without admitting it was ever discussed among spycops. Instead, he said he was aware of the reputation because:
‘I was in hospital and he came to visit me, and I didn’t see him for the visit. But when he went, my nurse came and said “oh your friend’s very nice,” and he’d been talking to her all the time instead of visiting me.’
The questioning of Harris by one of the Inquiry’s Counsel, in this case Rebekah Hummerstone, threw into stark relief an issue that has dogged the Inquiry throughout these hearings and also the previous ones in November 2020.
Whilst the Inquiry’s use of a ‘neutral’ Counsel to ask the questions steers it away from having an ‘adversarial’ format, it also leaves key questions unanswered, and points set out but not responded to properly – because this Counsel has simply moved on to the next thing on their list rather than unpacked an answer or pressed a point that the witness is avoiding.
This is particularly true where the question comes from the ‘non-State core participant’ victims of spycops. Too often merely asking a question is deemed sufficient. This is problematic when it is asked in a different way from what has been submitted.
Another problem is that those asking the questions don’t always take the time to understand the reasoning behind asking the question in the first place. This means that they often do not see the relevance of the answer or know how to deal with it. This causes some hair tearing, when having elicited a significant response, there is no follow-up and the moment is squandered.
This not only undermines the point of asking the question, it defies the purpose of having a witness appear in person at all.
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‘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.
!['Spycops Inquiry Give Us Our Files' banner at the notorious Stoke Newington police station where Colin Roach was killed. [Pic: David Mirzoeff & Artwork: Art Against Blacklisting Collective]](http://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/stoke_newington_police_station_02-680x453.jpg)
![We Did Not Consent: Police Spies Out of Lives banner at Beechcroft Avenue, where police killed Blair Peach in 1979 [Pic: Police Spies Out of Lives]](http://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/beechcroft-ave-680x454.jpeg)
The second was in Brixton’s Brockwell Park, in September 1978. The line-up there included Stiff Little Fingers from Belfast (a replacement for Sham 69, who felt forced to drop out after receiving death threats from right-wingers), Elvis Costello, and Aswad.![Anti-racist protesters, Lewisham, 13 August 1977 [Pic: Syd Shelton]](http://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Anti-racist-protesters-Lewisham-13-August-1977-680x441.jpg)
More details can be found in last week’s reports, and in 
The speaker said Grunwick showed that at least a thousand comrades would be needed to attack or block the factory gates, and the plan would need to be enacted swiftly and forcefully to avoid it being stopped by police. The SWP have the ability to take such action, he said, but not the capacity to organise it.
The 
One of Peach’s friends and teaching colleagues, David Ransom, wrote a booklet called License to Kill about the killing of Peach and the Special Patrol Group. The chapter on the Special Patrol Group (SPG) is being published by the Inquiry along with the Cass report [
Chessum recalled that to counter the influence of these groups, an informal alliance had formed between Géry Lawless, other ‘independents’ within TOM, and members of Big Flame.
Big Flame had been described as ‘libertarian Marxists’ and the Inquiry asked Chessum to explain what that meant. He said they differed from the more authoritarian, dogmatic groups found on the left – they didn’t have a strict ‘party line’ and were more open to discussing different viewpoints.