As Kate Wilson’s epic case makes its way through the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, we delve in the legal arguments being made and their significance for everyone affected by the spycops scandal.

For the last ten years, Kate Wilson has been on a dogged fight for justice. Deceived into to a relationship by undercover police officer Mark Kennedy, she wanted answers.

Part of a group of eight women also deceived into relationships by spycops, she was granted an apology by the Metropolitan Police who sought to brush them off. However, where others were forced to settle, a single door was left open for Kate – the notoriously secretive Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT). It was a small chance, but she went for it anyway.

This week, her unique battle finally made it to court, coinciding with the second set of hearings in the Undercover Policing Inquiry, to which it provides a fascinating counterpoint. There has been some excellent media coverage of the case, highlighting evidence that has coming out, which we will not repeat here (The Guardian, Standard, Morning Star, The Canary) This article will explore Kate’s actual legal claim – and some of the surrounding context – in more depth.

TEN YEAR STRUGGLE

Kate has taking on the Metropolitan Police and exposing its institutional sexism. As anyone who has dealt with the police knows only too well, she was met with all the usual obstruction tactics. A full account of these is a tale in itself, and would take a book to recount properly. The short account is that this backfired on them, as it only made Kate more determined.

It is already common ground between all the parties that the relationships were unlawful and should never have happened. However it is the impact of the relationship that the Tribunal is, in part, being asked to address.

At first, the police claimed that because they had admitted that these relationships happened, the Tribunal did not need to consider any evidence about them; they could keep secret just who knew, and how they knew, about the various spycops’ sexual relationships. Kate successfully argued against that – the Tribunal could not possibly determine the extent to which her human rights were breached without looking at the evidence.

When that didn’t work, the police switched tactics – using outright denial, twisting and changing their story, ignoring court orders and abusing legal processes (for example, serving things late or chaotically). They admitted things but then withdrew their admissions, showing utter contempt for the court. As one observer put it, it was a ‘defence by malicious incompetence’.

That lengthy process took more than two years and priced Kate out of legal representation. Undeterred, she took on the case herself and continued fighting, later gaining a team of pro bono lawyers from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. It has culminated in this week’s hearing.

This case is about wider issues than just the relationships of one disgraced undercover. It is about challenging the culture that led to the undercovers abusing women in this way, while their bosses turned a blind eye – the institutional sexism at the heart of their system.

It is also emblematic of a wider disdain for the rights of people who engage in protest. These units viewed everyone politically active as extremists and this viewpoint allowed them to casually strip them of their privacy. The National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU, 1999-2011) and the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS, 1968-2008) defined extremism so broadly that the notion of ‘collateral intrusion’ on innocent people adjacent to true targets became meaningless – almost everyone was considered fair game in their world.

TAKING SPIES TO THE SECRET COURT

However, just as this is not a standard court case, this is not your standard court either. The case is being held in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) – a body created under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), which since 2000 has been the framework for undercover policing including the authorisation regime.

The IPT does not try cases as such, rather it looks at human rights claims arising under RIPA with a view to improving the regime. Importantly, however, it can make findings of fact.

The IPT is a secretive court, that makes its own rules, though it is clearly a judicial proceeding. The IPT is so secret that it won’t even say how many cases it hears, but it has numbered in the thousands and is only known to have ruled against the state once.

Although the IPT tries to follow established practice, if it wants, it can hold hearings entirely in secret, and a barrister is appointed to kind-of-represent the interests of the person bringing the claim. The person making the claim often never sees any of the evidence, and it is left entirely to the IPT’s discretion whether it even takes up a case.

The strength of Kate’s case – and her perseverance – allowed her to turn much of that on its head. The disclosure she has received is genuinely unique. The police have been forced by the IPT to turn over a great deal of evidence to her, including Kennedy’s own pocket notebooks and contact logs, and previously confidential NPOIU documents.

Days 1 and 2

The hearings opened with Charlotte Kilroy QC speaking on behalf of Kate Wilson. For two and half days she spoke solidly, taking the Tribunal through the evidence and multiple legal arguments.

Held at the Royal Courts of Justice and broadcast live online, the scene was striking, with boxes of evidence and arguments piled so high most could not see the faces of the three judges – Baron Boyd of Duncansby, Professor Graham Zellick and Lady Justice Natalie Lieven.

SO WHAT IS KATE ARGUING?

Under the terms of RIPA, the IPT looks at human rights violations by the likes of the police and Secret Service (MI5). Any claim must be framed in that context.

Her case has many angles. The most prominent one is that she was deceived into a relationship by Mark Kennedy and this was a gross breach of her rights. Even the police have accepted this – that the relationship was breach of her Article 3 human rights, her right not to be subject to inhumane and degrading treatment or torture. This is an absolute right that no circumstances can justify breaching.

With that also came a breach of her private life and that of her family and friends (Article 8). Kennedymade himself an integral part of her life for several years, furthering the abuse of her trust. Central to this is not the degree to which she and Kennedy had a relationship, but the degree to which this was encouraged and condoned by the unit that ran him – the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) – and their reasons for doing this.

However, Kate’s case is not just about Kennedy. Multiple undercovers intruded and reported on her over a decade of political activism. They too interfered in her private life, and also her right to protest.

She and her friends, and the other women deceived into relationships, were being targeted because they were exercising their rights to free speech and assembly (Articles 10 & 11). Once you look at the bigger picture, it becomes impossible to separate the relationship from the reason why Kennedy and the other undercovers were in her life in the first place.

This is where we get into the much wider aspects of the case, that the entire targeting of her was part and parcel of that abuse, and Kennedy’s spying has to be seen in the context of all those other undercovers. When you look at things this way, questions emerge not just about Kennedy’s operation but about all of the NPOIU’s activities.

STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS

Under the European Convention on Human Rights, most of these rights are ‘qualified rights’. There are no possible exceptions when it comes to Article 3 rights (freedom from torture etc) but there are some for Articles 8, 10 and 11. This means governments are allowed to interfere with those rights, but must provide some justification for doing so.

For that justification to be lawful, it must be shown to be both necessary and proportionate. Kate has challenged the police to provide evidence that these undercover operations were necessary and proportionate. She argues that if they cannot provide such evidence, these operations may not have been lawful at all. Thus Kate’s case includes the assertion that the authorisations of Kennedy’s deployment, and thus the entire operation, not just aspects of it, were unlawful.

And further, when you factor in the interference with so many rights, there emerges a case that the legislation under which those authorisations were made failed as a reliable legal framework protecting individual’s rights.

Finally, Kate has pointed out the institutional sexism that lies at the heart of the police. This is not the sole cause of her human rights being breached, but has certainly exacerbated them, for her and all the other women wrongfully targeted for relationships. She is arguing that the way abuses discriminated against women should be taken into account when considering the other breaches, and a finding made on it as well. (Article 14: protection from discrimination).

As part of this legal argument there is an important concept of ‘positive obligation’. A substantive part of the legal discussion at the hearings is the degree to which they police were required to be proactive in protecting Kate from these violations of her rights. How this plays out varies from right to right, but comes down to who knew and what was the regime in place to protect her – and that means looking at the evidence around training and guidance, and structures of oversight and supervision, including the degree to which there was an embedded culture of sexism within the units which turned accepted the acts of Kennedy and his colleagues.

WRINGING THE EVIDENCE OUT OF THE POLICE

There have already been some notable successes in this case. One of these was an acknowledgement that to understand the severity of the human rights breaches the facts needed to be known.

At first the police tried to control this narrative and keep hold of the material, rather than releasing it to Kate. They produced a statement (signed off by Assistant Commissioner Sir Stephen House) giving their interpretation, based on a limited review of material they had gathered.

The statement was readily debunked as ineffective and flawed. Kate kept up the pressure, saying it was not good enough, and the IPT agreed. Bit by bit she forced the the police to surrender material to her. First came contact and decision logs for Kennedy’s case and internal reviews of his operation. Then authorisations for the undercovers and NPOIU intelligence reports.

Even these small samples were damning and opened the door for further requests. Unsurprisingly, the police did their best to prevent this disclosure. They ignored Tribunal orders, or deliberately misinterpreted them.

Another tactic was to make concessions on the case, claiming that meant there was no need for evidence. When that did not work, they withdrew the concessions, trying to blame their previous lawyers for having made admissions. It was disruptive and frustrating, but they underestimated Kate’s tenacity.

She was able to show that it was not just Kennedy she needed answers about, as there was a pattern of intrusion and spying on her life. For instance, there was the question about how Kennedy’s undercover predecessor ‘Rod Richardson’ had spied on her. Or how much did Kennedy’s contemporaries ‘Marco Jacobs‘ and ‘Lynn Watson‘ know about his many relationships?

This brought more disclosure, about other undercovers, such as Jim Boyling and Rod Richardson, who had spied on her as early as 1999 – years before Kennedy was deployed.

From all the material, it was obvious the right to privacy meant nothing to them; Kennedy filtered nothing out and his bosses appear to have said nothing. It was also painfully clear from the logs that anyone reading them would have been well aware that Kennedy and Kate were in a relationship.

As Kate puts it:

Disclosed #spycops cover logs contain more than 30 references to Kennedy staying with me in my parents’ home, moving in together, and time alone, not protest, or campaigning or crime, just ordinary activities. Kennedy’s handler records that Kennedy gives my name as his “next of kin”.

The evidence, particularly the contact logs that document Kennedy’s continual reports to his ‘handler’ officer, are a goldmine of information about these operations. Although limited, and hampered by the fact that much material (particularly from the key period when Kennedy began the relationship) has apparently been lost or deliberately destroyed, they nonetheless give useful insight into the units.

WHO ELSE KNEW?

It has been possible to build up a bigger picture using Kate’s own memories and those of her fellow campaigners, and other women targeted by the spycops.

Kennedy had one cover officer, known by the cipher EN31, for the entirety of his deployment. The police have admitted that this cover officer must have known about Kennedy’s many relationships. However, EN31 denies this and has refused to cooperate with the police in this case.

It has become abundantly clear that there were multiple officers in close proximity to Kennedy, who were aware of his activities. Though there is no explicit mention of relationships in any of the documents disclosed, anyone reading them would have been immediately aware that something was going on.

As the picture built up, other players came into view: the heads of the NPOIU undercover units and their deputies; cover officers for other undercovers such as Lynn Watson; Nottinghamshire Special Branch.

According to Sir Stephen House, none of these people knew anything. But the contact logs and other material demonstrate otherwise. For instance, it was policy for these logs to be sent to the unit’s managers every week. They were written to be read by others – including messages left in the logs for the Senior Investigating Officer to read. This puts the lie to the police’s position that Kennedy was a ‘rogue’ operator – it is clear, as Kennedy himself told Parliament, that they knew what he was doing at all times.

Kate said:

The cover logs are damning. The Police try to claim senior officers didn’t read the logs. That is not borne out by the evidence – throughout the logs there are personal notes to the Senior Investigating Officer, including the problem of me wanting to meet MK’s mum.

Likewise, part of the police case has been that the undercover unit was a silo, kept discrete from even the rest of the NPOIU. But, again, this is demonstrably untrue.

And what of all the other material? The logs and intelligence reports show that campaigners’ relationships were regularly reported as a matter of course by the undercover and it was deemed important enough to be circulated onward? Yet not one of Kennedy or the other undercovers’ relationships appear in the material. The more one looks at that side of things, the more it is obvious something was amiss. It’s hard to be definitive, but it appears that any such material was being suppressed – ‘sanitised’, as they put it.

As Kate’s barrister, Charlotte Kilroy QC, argues there was a cultural practice of ignoring relationships deeply embedded in the unit, treating them as a given though not to be mentioned.

The police have relied heavily on there being a supposed prohibition on sexual relationships, but are unable to point to any concrete proof of this, other than general regulations against criminality and a duty to respect human rights. They claim that because they now accept sexual relationships are an abuse of Article 3, that means that must have always been the case. Plus, they argue, there are a some bits of circumstantial evidence in their favour, such as the denials of an undercover trainer, and a supposed role-playing exercise in the training given to undercovers.

Kilroy has ably unwound their dubious logic. For example, while there was an explicit prohibition on using drugs for the period in question, no equivalent guidance existed for sexual relationships (since the undercover policing scandal broke ten years ago, a more explicit prohibition on sexual relationships has been made police policy). And it didn’t appear to apply to the NPOIU’s sister unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, which spoke of ‘fleeting, disastrous relationships’ forming part of an undercover’s ‘tradecraft’.

Kate said:

The Tradecraft Manual shows that although it may have been suggested that #spycops sexual relationships should be “avoided” it was not said that they should never happen. Viewed alongside what happened in practice, relationships were not fleeting, although they were disastrous.

The importance of this was it showed there was no real prohibition on sexual relationships worth its salt within the undercover policing units.

CULTURAL PRACTICE

Kilroy also set out the cultural context around Kate’s case in two ways.

The first of these entailed exploring the obvious parallels with other undercovers’ deceitful relationships. Clearly both Lynn Watson and Marco Jacobs knew of Kennedy’s relationships, and Jacobs had his own. There seems to have been a culture of accepting these relationships, viewing them as unremarkable. Plus, there was a certain amount of cultural crossover between the Special Demonstration Squad and the NPOIU, the former unit clearly having a culture where relationships was permitted.

Kate said:

Police deny widespread indifference or encouragement for MK’s sexual relationships. But they also acknowledge that, by its very nature, a culture of sexism may not get written down. They have not investigated or presented any #spycops bosses as to be witnesses.

The second of Kilroy’s examinations of the culture concerned the ways in which the structures of these undercover policing units made them institutionally sexist. There were no proper monitoring systems. Training was inadequate, and supposedly relied on oral prohibitions, for which evidence is limited, to put it politely.

There was no acknowledgement that prolonged deployments increased the risk of such dishonest relationships occurring, as well as the likely impact on the women deceived in this way (for example, pregnancy, or lies about intentions). The spycops were content to manipulate these women, disregarding their dignity. The fact that these relationships were known about for many years in the SDS itself reveals a discriminatory attitude towards women and their rights.

AUTHORISATIONS DISMANTLED

Kilroy also criticised the regime under which undercover police operations were authorised. According to RIPA and related regulations, senior officers had to sign off the deployments. Deployments had to be justified, necessary and proportionate. Her line of attack was to ably demonstrate that the arguments for necessity in the authorisations simply were not met and inadequate.

The first authorisations made out for Mark Kennedy did not name specific individuals or organisations to target, as they should have. Instead, he was sent into Nottingham’s Sumac Centre, a community centre used by a wide variety of groups – it was a fishing trip to gather ‘pre-emptive intelligence’. A list of groups which used the centre is provided in in support, but is clearly spurious. It includes what is described as the ‘extreme left wing’ Stop the War Coalition.

Kilroy was able to demonstrate the excessive breadth of the authorisations, which essentially deemed everyone a potential target for spying.

Kate said:

Stop the War is listed, described as a “traditionally extreme left wing” movement. It then talks about the massive demonstrations in London attended by millions of people and peaceful demonstrations that took place in Nottingham. This is what #spycops target as “extreme”.

Once in place, the authorisations were self-perpetuating justifications – Mark collected intelligence and once that started that was deemed sufficient in itself. There were no objectives by which it could be measured, something the police’s own internal reports acknowledge. Mission-creep became a feature, his deployment extending to cover campaigns across Europe that had no bearing on the UK. Criminality was no longer the main reason given but replaced by purely policing resource arguments. Justifications move on to merely protecting his ‘legend’.

Within the authorisations, when it came to ‘collateral intrusion’ of spying on those around activists, anyone involved, however peripherally, in protest or campaigning was considered a legitimate target, and the focus is on privacy in the strictest, data protection sense. What it did not do was consider the kinds of friendships Kennedy was forming, and just how intrusive the operation would be for those whose lives he invaded and reported back on.

WITHOUT JUSTIFICATION, SPYING IS UNLAWFUL

As such, the important consideration of collateral intrusion (an Article 8 ‘right to private and family life’ consideration in itself) was brushed aside, because almost everyone Kennedy came into contact with could be regarded as a target. The authorisations were based on calling everyone an extremist rather than particularising. There was no proper assessment, as required for it to be a justified deployment. As one of the judges put it, in the standard authorisations form the section for considering on collateral intrusion became an Article 8 box-ticking exercise.

Many of the authorisations were misleading and some contained lies. For example, in one of them, Kate is described as being a main organiser of a housing cooperative which was named as a target. This was utterly false, and the NPOIU officers signing off on it would have known this. She is only included as a named target when she was living in Spain and Kennedy wanted to maintain contact with her.

The authorisations show no pressing social need, being about pre-emptive intelligence gathering without clear targets or goal. It was an operation for its own sake, and became increasingly so as time went on. No proper assessment was made about the levels of interference that were actually required or justifiable. This is something that an internal report from the Serious Organised Crime Agency (into Kennedy and the NPOIU) was critical of.

This leads to an important legal point: once it becomes an undercover deployment for its own sake, with no specific outcomes, how can it be capable of meeting the criteria of being ‘necessary’? The ‘necessity’ condition must be met for such operations to be lawful. Kate’s argument is that it can be shown these operations were not necessary and therefore none of the Mark Kennedy authorisations, and possibly other undercover deployments, were lawful.

Day 3

THE RIGHT TO PROTEST

We began by returning to look at Articles 10 and 11 (free speech, and assembly), at the request of the judges. This pair of rights are often combined in this context as a general ‘right to protest’.

Kate is arguing that the extensive targeting of her over a decade amounted to not just an engagement of those rights but, more seriously, an actual interference with them.

This part of the case is not just about Kennedy, although he played a significant role in what can be termed ‘interference’, but the degree to which she was under surveillance and the impact it had on her. The basic argument is the State had no business monitoring her because of her political views and activities. It does not matter whether or not she was aware of the exact details of this surveillance, it still had an impact on her.

Kate’s barrister, Charlotte Kilroy QC, pointed to European case law that supported this position, recognising that extensive police surveillance in itself has a ‘chilling effect’ on protest.

As one of the judges, Professor Zellick, put it:

‘You might say the state has no business spying on the legitimate political activities of its opponents.’

The evidence allowed Kate to go further. By comparing her own memories with the contact logs, she could identify moments were she was being deliberately manipulated to meet Kennedy’s agenda (and that of his bosses) . He persuaded her to go to events that she was not interested in, or talked her out of others. In this he was leaning heavily on the closeness of their relationship and the trust she had placed in him.

She is still left wondering now just how much his influence affected her:

It is unchallenged in my witness statement that MK did influence and change my political views. #spycops were deeply manipulative and we were very close and he may have influenced me in ways I don’t even know. How many of the decisions and beliefs I held back then were my own?

Then there is the impact that the discovery has had on Kate and her comrades. She has gone from being deeply committed to political organising, to struggling to engage with people and large gatherings. She has become cut off from some groups as a result of her anxieties, which Kennedy and his cover officer knew affected her, which have now grown. Other groups were destroyed under the weight of the Kennedy revelations.

Kate explained:

I now find it very hard to engage with politics that reminds me of MK. The impact of betrayal by MK and other #spycops was devastating for the political groups and communities. Even if I wanted to continue, many of those wonderful projects, groups and movements no longer exist.

At this point one of the judges asked about the fact that some of the movements Kate was involved in were aware of the dangers of state surveillance. Kilroy responded that a concern was one thing, but what Kennedy exposed was the sheer extent the police were willing to go to gather information on political views.

Things were far worse than what the campaigners feared – in effect, their paranoia was nothing compared to the actual reality. And because it only came to light accidentally, it means the police cannot be trusted to be honest, to root out misbehaviour in their units.

So having argued that their Articles 10 and 11 were engaged, and breached, the next step is again to consider whether the State could make the case that this was justified. The police have already conceded that the sexual relationship with Kennedy did in itself interfere with Kate’s Article 10 rights. However, she wants to make the point that this goes much wider than Kennedy, that all the spying on her amounted to an ‘interference’, and that the actions of all the other undercovers need to be taken into account.

As with Articles 3 and 8 (freedom from torture etc, right to private and family life), the interferences arose out of the same police desire to monitor and control protest. It was the reason Kennedy and the other undercovers were deployed, and even the police’s own internal reports acknowledge that when it came to peaceful protest, they overstepped the line. The scope and depth of the reporting that the NPOIU set out to do was not justified under the legal regime, as shown in the analysis of the authorisations.

A PROBLEM WITH RIPA

Since 2000, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) has governed how bodies use covert monitoring tactics, including undercovers and informers, and issues such as collateral intrusion, should be handled.

There is also an important bit of case law, Malone v UK (1985), which requires that the law must be sufficiently clear to give citizens adequate indication of the circumstances and conditions on which authorities are empowered to use to this secret and potentially dangerous interference with the right to respect for private life.

Kilroy took the Tribunal through a careful analysis of RIPA, showing that Malone v UK was not satisfied. She pointed out that the level of authorisation required for undercover police was actually quite low in comparison to, say, planting a listening device or bugging a phone. Likewise, the conditions are much more stringent.

Kate said:

Who’d have thought that UK law, where uniformed officers need a warrant from a judge to search your garden shed, that all it would need would be the OK from another police officer for them to send #spycops to live in your home and sleep in your bed for years?

Kilroy argued this means that while some intrusion could be foreseeable, on the face of RIPA the public could not reasonably deduce that undercover policing would be used in such an intrusive way.

The judges questioned her, saying that while the relationships are agreed to be unlawful due to their violation of fundamental human rights, RIPA was not at fault, it’s just that the police hadn’t adhered to it.

To this, Kilroy responded that a related case, that of AKJ v Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis, had since ruled that the definition of relationships in RIPA as pertaining to undercovers did in fact encompass sexual/ intimate relationships. The law itself was not as clear as it should have been, given the extent of intrusion it permitted.

Without a clear prohibition on sexual relationships, the appropriate legal safeguards supposedly in place to properly reflect the severity of the intrusion were not actually there. So part of the problem lies with RIPA itself, something even HM Inspectorate of Constabulary had flagged up in previous reports.

THE POLICE REPLY

The Metropolitan Police and National Police Chiefs Council, the Defendants in the case, were represented by David Perry QC. He began by claiming that the police were approaching the case with the least adversarial approach possible and seeking to disclose everything that could be, thereby raising not a few eyebrows.

He acknowledged that the operations were ‘tainted by illegality’ and their authorisations could be stigmatised as unlawful on the basis of the concessions already made by the police. These concessions were on the basis of Articles 3 and 8 (freedom from torture etc, right to private life), not on the grounds of the interference with the right to protest, other than where Kennedy’s sexual relationship with Kate Wilson had an impact on these.

This breach was further exacerbated by the fact that Kennedy’s cover officer, EN31, ought to have known of the relationship, a failure of the police’s ‘positive obligation’ under Articles 3 and 8. However, Perry takes EN31’s denial of any knowledge of sexual relationship at face value.

Perry didn’t want to detract from the admitted breaches, but did want to address their severity by interpreting the material as disclosed. This is a problem with much of this case – the lack of any real witness from the police side to adequately testify on their behalf. As a result, there is an awful lot of freestyle interpretation going on, with Perry putting it out there what he reckons the officers involved might have been thinking.

From the start it is clear that they are hanging Kennedy out to dry. Considerable time was spent on going through the regime, codes and training that officers received. We were told that they were instructed on the ethical and moral standards expected from them at all times. They say that Kennedy completely violated these. According to Perry, this was the starting point by which his fellow officers would treat and judge him, and he betrayed all of them, including EN31.

The police say they couldn’t possibly have foreseen what Kennedy would do. After all, before joining the NPOIU, Kennedy had been an experienced police officer (of ten years) which included low level undercover work as a Test Purchasing Officer buying illegal drugs. He’d gone through the training which, according to them, included prohibition of sexual relationships. His fellow officers could surely expect him to comply with the standards set out for all police officers, as well as for undercovers.

Kate highlighted:

Lieven J: Is there any evidence, and I mean evidence in the broadest possible sense, of any officer every being subjected to disciplinary action for having engaged in a sexual relationship whilst undercover?

Perry: No, there is not.

Perry pointed out that in having sexual relationships, Kennedy destroyed his own credibility as an undercover. Kennedy would have known had he witnessed any serious criminality, he could have been required to give evidence in court – but any such evidence would be hopelessly compromised by his personal relationships.

It is unclear if the barrister is aware of the significance of his words – the police have for a long time argued that the undercovers were guaranteed secrecy for life, and indeed we have seen the extent to which they will protect their identities. However, Perry was effectively conceding that the policing regime itself meant this could not be the case, that undercovers could not have such an unqualified expectation.

He then went on to argue that Kennedy was passing himself off as an honourable officer to his colleagues in the NPOIU while lying to them. Events such as him reporting a sexual advance by an activist demonstrated that he could be relied on to report such things honestly.

However, other evidence from the logs show that he was lying to them about his actions and reasons for doing things. For instance, on one occasion that he spent alone with ‘Lisa‘ (another woman he deceived into a relationship), his log entry claims to have included other people with whom he discussed political activity. Elsewhere he exaggerated to suit his own ends, and probably to justify his continued deployment.

Kate observed:

It seems the police point is MK did report a sexual advance by someone else. So #spycops Cover Officer could assume anything untoward that happened with anyone else (such as me) he would know. (Note: my relationship had been going on for 10 months by then)

EN31, was Kennedy’s Principal Cover Officer, someone he was in daily contact with and who had responsibility for his welfare and other issues. We know from the evidence that he would be physically close to Kennedy, and knew where he was at all times. He was in that position for the entire seven years of the deployment and clearly had a close bond with Kennedy.

It is accepted by the police that EN31, as Kennedy’s cover officer, should have been more intrusive and asked more questions. According to Perry, though, EN31 simply accepted Kennedy’s word in good faith and had no reason to believe otherwise. After all, Kennedy never reported that he was having sexual relationships. There were failings here, but the blame remains entirely with the undercover who deceived everyone, not just the women he targeted for relationships. Furthermore, the relationships were not for tactical purposes, they were for his own personal reasons and needs.

Significant to Perry’s case is that the contact logs did not record relationships per se. This was because Kennedy knew he’d be removed from the field if he did admit them.

Kate said:

The police go on to read a #spycops intelligence report 18/11/2003 “Katja” (that’s me) spent the night of the 17th November 2003 at Mark Stone’s flat in Marshall Street. Somehow this is supposed to support their case, because it doesn’t say we had sex. (We did)

It is also the police position that Kennedy’s own evidence about this, such as that given before the Home Affairs Select Committee, shows him to be an unreliable witness, angry with his seniors and seeking to blame them (when he said they must have known about his relationships). Even the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), which reviewed all Kennedy’s material in 2011, did not see a trace in the material of sexual relationships.

Kate noted the exchange:

Perry: “MK did not report any romantic or sexual advance by the claimant towards him whilst he was deployed.”

Judge: Mr Perry, is that really how you want that point to be recorded?

Apparently, yes, it is!

Overall, Perry is protective of EN31, presenting him as a trusting fella misled by Kennedy. He speculates on behalf of the cover officer as to what he was thinking and how he interpreted the the material, taking his statement very much at face value and focusing on the contact logs as if they gave the full picture. He did not explore the relationship between Kennedy and EN31, which appears from the logs to have been very close and matey.

Likewise, Perry has a very particular interpretation of the material in the logs on the grounds of viewing them through EN31’s eyes – as if they are the arbitrators of the facts themselves. Without going into detail, the Tribunal was presented with a weird interpretation of life among the campaigners targeted by Kennedy through this incomplete reporting. For instance, he spent some time on the fact that as they travelled around to events, campaigners would spend time at each others addresses. So mentions of this in the logs should not be taken as untoward or indicative of sexual relationships. Likewise, by the nature of the groups targeted, Kennedy would have to associate with people of both genders.

It was frankly weak stuff. It is a misleading reading of detailed contact logs which clearly infer Kennedy was conducting a relationship with Kate Wilson. At best, it is saying that in seven years, EN31 was so profoundly  incompetent that he suspected nothing and did nothing. Likewise, the various senior officers in the NPOIU who also read the logs. It also calls into to question the thoroughness of the SOCA report if they missed the obvious.

A TERRORIST AT THE HOME OFFICE?

Not long before the end of the day, there was an important exchange regarding an NPOIU intelligence report from the time Kate Wilson is recorded as having first stayed over at Kennedy’s house in Nottingham. Justice Lieven noted that it contained a reference to a family friend of Kate’s, describing him as a ‘South African terrorist working at the Home Office’ when he was in fact a Minister of State.

Perry was quick to distance the police from the outrageous comment, claiming it was an example of Kennedy’s inaccurate reporting, but Justice Lieven pointed out that Kennedy’s contact logs for that period are among the documents that have been ‘lost’, and that this report is authored by someone else in the NPOIU, not Kennedy, and that they clearly thought the information was of sufficient interest to send up the chain. Perry accepted that the information was derived from Kennedy, but that the report was written by someone else.

Lieven demanded that the police lawyers address the issue by producing something that would allow her to understand who authored, saw and commented on the reports. The police barrister said he would have to take instruction, and promised her something by Monday.

THE HEARINGS CONTINUE…

On Friday 23 April, the Tribunal sat in ‘closed session’. This is where evidence that was not shown to Kate was to be discussed. She was not allowed to be there, although the police will be. Instead her interests will be represented by the Counsel to The Tribunal, Sarah Hannett QC.

Monday 26 April will see the open hearings resume, with a continuation of the police case. This will be followed by a response from Kate’s lawyer, Charlotte Kilroy QC, to any new points. At which point the hearing finally ends. It is unknown when judgement will be handed down, but it may take several months.

Here’s the report of the rest of Kate Wilson’s hearing (Monday 26 & Tuesday 27 April 2021)

Tranche 1, Phase 2, Day 3

23 April 2021

Opening Statements from:

Heather Williams QC, representing Category F Core Participants: Relatives of Deceased Individuals
James Scobie QC, representing Richard Chessum and ‘Mary’
Rajiv Menon QC, representing Piers Corbyn
Kirsten Heaven, representing other Non-Police, Non-State Core Participants
Dave Morris

The current round of Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings covers the years 1973-82. This day was the last one of opening statements, from Monday 26th April there will be three weeks of taking evidence from witnesses of the era.

But first the Chair, Sir John Mitting, said a few words about Blair Peach and there was a minute’s silence.

Peach was a committed teacher, socialist and anti-fascist. Some 42 years ago to the day, on 23 April 1979, he was killed by police at an anti-racist demonstration in London. His partner, Celia Stubbs, has campaigned for justice for him ever since. That campaign was targeted by the Special Demonstration Squad.

We also now know that both Blair and Celia were spied on before that, though the Inquiry has not let them see any of the documents pertaining to the time before Blair’s death.

The Met’s own investigation at the time concluded Peach was killed by police, and identified Inspector Alan Murray as the likely culprit.

Yet Mitting could not bring himself to acknowledge these facts. Instead, he glossed over it, not mentioning the police and merely referring to Peach being killed by ‘a blow to the head’. In doing this, he insulted all victims of spycops and underlined his partisan nature that is draining the Inquiry of its potential to get to the truth.

Heather Williams QC
representing Category F Core Participants: Relatives of Deceased Individuals

Heather Williams QC spoke for relatives of dead people whose identities were stolen by Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) officers as the basis for their fake persona.

She is acting on behalf of:

Frank Bennett and Honor Robson, the bereaved brother and sister of Michael Hartley who died on 4 August 1968 at 18 years of age.

Faith Mason, the bereaved mother of Neil Robin Martin who died on 15 October 1969 at 6 years of age.

Liisa Crossland and Mark Crossland, the bereaved stepmother and brother of Kevin John Crossland who died on 1 September 1966 at 5 years of age.

Mr, Mrs and Ms Lewis, the bereaved father, mother and sister of Anthony Lewis who died on 31 July 1968 at 7 years of age.

Barbara Shaw, the bereaved mother of Rod Richardson who died on 7 January 1973 when he was two days old.

Williams said:

‘each of the clients experienced the death of a child; a life event among the most difficult it is possible to suffer. More recently, the families have also suffered the horror of learning that their loved one’s identity was used by an undercover police officer precisely because of their bereavement, because their son or daughter lost their life when a child. How did it start? At what level was it condoned? Were there no alternatives?’

They’ve been waiting for answers for years – Barbara Shaw found out about the theft of her baby son’s identity in 2013. She is now 80 years old, her health is failing, yet still she waits for answers.

NO SECURITY

Did the theft of identities serve any legitimate purpose? There appears no clear rationale, no justification for this repulsive practice. Earlier SDS officers, from 1968-72, simply made up names and none appeared vulnerable to exposure.

There seemed to be no change in circumstances to have made officers deviate from the practice of simply making-up identities. We have looked through the police documents released and there is no evidence for it.

The SDS annual report 1972 confirmed the advantages of using ‘a fictitious name’ that allows officers to return to their real identity at any time. The 1973 annual report talks of having had no ‘irretrievable exposure of any SDS officer’. There was no need to change the tactic to stealing real identities.

One officer was compromised in 1974 when someone who had known him as a uniformed officer recognised him in a meeting. His choice of fictitious identity, rather than a stolen one, played no part in his exposure.

Apart from ‘Michael Scott‘ (HN298, 1971-76) who stole the identity of a living person, it seems fictional identities were normal until a change of management in 1974. The rpactice continued into the late 1990s – the most recent known being ‘Rod Richardson’ (EN32/HN596, 1999-2003).

The 1990s SDS Tradecraft Manual cruelly talks of ‘finding a suitable ex person’ with a ‘natural or unspectacular death’ and the ‘respiratory status’ of the parents.

But from around 1974, undercovers used the identities of dead children and were instructed and/or expected to do so. Officers who queried this were told it was the usual process. They searched for people who had been born around the same time as the SDS officer, preferably with the same first name.

We have not been provided with any evidence that show why it happened, let alone any consideration of the damage to the families involved, and indeed police and policing. They seemed to assume they would never have to answer for it.

Police lawyers said some former officers were uncomfortable with stealing dead children’s identities but thought the families would never know. There is no evidence to show that it helped the officers in their deployments, even before we consider the ethical issues.

The National Crime Squad says none of the Regional Crime Squads they know of who had undercover officers stole dead people’s identities. So, why did the SDS feel it ‘had to’? The spycops say they were going into ‘more security conscious organisations’.

If that were true, why was there no increase in other measures to protect SDS officer’s security? One officer says his identity ‘was not particularly detailed’ as it was largely left to officers to invent it themselves, with little to no guidance. It hardly sounds like security was intense.

Another officer says ‘I made my legend’ up as I went along’ – and it was not tested by managers.

FACT MEETS FICTION

There was no imperative to steal the identity of a dead child. So where did it come from?

Frederick Forsyth’s novel The Day of the Jackal was published in 1971 and the film released in 1973, showing the practice of stealing dead children’s identities in just this way. So, rather than an official police document, was it instead a work of fiction that in fact inspired this ghoulish practice? Whistleblower SDS officer Peter Francis (1993-97) said that the process was known as ‘the jackal run’ among SDS officers.

In last year’s hearings, police lawyers spoke of the ‘essential operational imperative’ to steal real identities. While suspicious comrades might have doubts assuaged by finding a birth certificate, they would surely be alarmed to discover a matching death certificate.

There are plenty of reasons why a birth certificate might not be found (if someone was born abroad, or adopted). There are no reasons why a living person would have a death certificate.

And this is exactly what happened. Members of Big Flame became suspicious of their member ‘Rick Gibson’ (SDS officer Richard Clark, HN297), and found he was legally dead. They confronted him and he ended his deployment. (More detail on this in James Scobie’s section of this report, below).

Clark was one of the first infiltrators to steal a dead child’s identity, and it blew his cover. So why did the practice continue for over 20 years?

Fictitious identities actually offered better cover to spycops than stealing dead people’s identities. There was no justification to start the practice, and none to continue after Clark was exposed.

If security was so important, why did managers not properly prepare their officers and stop them from behaving in a way that compromised them? Why were they given so little direction and so much latitude to make up their own mission?

Very few former SDS officers seemed to have had any qualms of conscience about stealing dead children’s identities, let alone acting immorally in the dead person’s name, deceiving women into relationships, getting arrested and convicted.

One officer, ‘Colin Clark’ (HN80, 1977-82), said:

‘I knew that it would cause distress for the family if it was discovered’.

Did his managers who knew that stop to think? Did his colleagues discuss it? Were the undercovers given any choice?

Clark changed his identity using his own date of birth and a different forename. He went on to have a five year deployment without being discovered, probing that it was eminently possible to be undercover without a verifiable birth certificate.

NOT JUST THE NAME BUT THE PERSON

Another spycop ‘Michael James’ (HN96, 1978-83) instructed to visit Blackpool where the child whose identity he stole was born. The local Special Branch helped him ascertain if the family still lived there. It is hard to imagine this was a one-off. This obviously goes beyond simply stealing names.

‘Desmond/Barry Loader‘ (HN13, 1975-78) was convicted of public order offences in the name of a dead child. Was there any regard for the besmirching of good names, or the impacts on families who may find out?

The callous interference with bereaved families was consistent with the broader culture and practices of the SDS, with not a hint of consideration as to the proportionality of their actions, nor thoughts of consequences on others, and no review of efficacy or risk.
Stealing identities simply became an embedded practice in a unit that lacked accountability and effective supervision.

At the Undercover Policing Inquiry, we are seeing excessive redaction of the undercovers methods and told it is because it ‘may harm policing’. How can it do that if it is an abandoned practice from decades ago? It is the fact of the theft that harms policing. It looks a lot like yet another example of the police not wanting to admit the full awful truth of what they did to citizens and taking the Inquiry for a ride.

We want the Inquiry to check if the Met’s redactions of the evidence that damns them are actually justified, or if it is concealing for other reasons.

It also appears MI5 had helped with fictitious identities and helped with materials to support them. There is nothing to show why the SDS decided to move away from. The reason remains unexplained.

SHYING AWAY FROM THE TRUTH

Heather Williams finished her statement, but COPS adds a few additional comments about police shying away from the truth on this matter:

In 2013, Pat Gallan – then Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met and head of Operation Herne, the Met’s self-investigation into spycops – told the Home Affairs Select Committee they had only found one case of dead child identity theft.

She said the combined efforts of Herne’s 31 staff had failed to find any more in the subsequent five months. She refused repeated requests to give an apology for the practice.

The Home Affairs Select Committee report insisted on the truth being told about SDS infiltrators stealing dead children’s identities and demanded all affected families be told and given an apology by the end of 2013. The Met simply ignored their publications.

Later in 2013, Operation Herne reported that, contrary to Gallan’s claim of it being isolated and unauthorised, identity theft of dead children was pretty much mandatory in the SDS for 20 years.

The Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe then issued a generalised apology for stealing dead children’s identities, addressed to nobody in particular. That was in 2013. It has fallen to the Inquiry to contact families, years after they had been identified. The Met has still not provided any answers.

It’s also worth asking who else knew about it. Bob Lambert (‘Bob Robinson’ HN10, 1984-89) was a spycop in the 1980s who went on the run the SDS in the 1990s. He told Channel 4 News that the practice of stealing dead children’s identities was ‘well known at the highest levels of the Home Office’.

When the Inquiry was announced, six former Home Secretaries from the period concerned were still alive. The Inquiry has taken so long to get going that only four are still alive, the youngest of whom is now 79 years old. We are not aware of any plans for any of them to be called to give evidence to the Inquiry.

Full opening statement from Heather Williams QC, representing relatives of deceased individuals

James Scobie QC
representing Richard Chessum and ‘Mary’

Scobie did a great job piecing together the career of undercover officer Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76) rising through Troops Out Movement (TOM) seemingly in order to get access to Big Flame – and how he was eventually found out.

Based on SDS reports and the statements of two people he spied on, Richard Chessum and ‘Mary’, Scobie shows that Clark abused his friendship with Chessum and his sexual relationship with ‘Mary’ (and three other women) to reach that goal.

Clark manipulated a democratic organisation to achieve high office and destabilise it. With this, the SDS went far beyond its remit, and the mangers were fully aware of it.

Scobie also explored how Clark’s deployment served to direct subsequent officers to follow his example and take office in organisations they infiltrated.

ANATOMY OF AN INFILTRATION

In December 1974, Richard Chessum and Mary were students at Goldsmiths College in London, studying sociology and teacher training respectively, and they both were in the college’s Socialist Society.

Mary had come from South Africa and campaigned on anti-racist and civil liberties issues. Chessum had been a Methodist lay preacher, and was political officer for his local Labour Party. He protested against war and for civil liberties.

At this time, undercover officer Richard Clark – 29, married with children – was deployed into Goldsmith’s College. He stole the identity of a dead child, Richard Gibson. His target was the Troops Out Movement (TOM).

TOM was advocating self-determination for the people of Ireland and withdrawal of British troops from Ireland. Their methods were lobbying MPs, drafting alternative legislation, and raising awareness with the occasional low-key demonstration, doing talks and film screenings.

TOM had already been infiltrated, as recently as 1974, by ‘Michael Scott‘ (HN298, 1971-76) who concluded that:

‘It had no subversive objectives and as far as I am aware did not employ or approve the use of violence to achieve its objectives.’

So why were they targeted? Richard Clark is dead, so we have no opportunity to question him. But his reports show what he did.

STEP 1 – IDENTIFYING A TARGET ORGANISATION

Clark’s deployment was well planned. He wrote to TOM head office in advance asking for a local branch to join in December 1974, knowing there wasn’t one.

Chessum had been in the Anti-Internment League and so was known to some in the national office of TOM. He had not joined and had no plans to do so, because he was studying hard and had recently been ill. Nonetheless the national office put him in touch with Clark.

By February 1975, using the Socialist Society as a tool, Clark had succeeded in creating an entirely new branch of the Troops Out Movement. There were five founder members of that branch; Mary, Richard Chessum, his partner, another student, and the undercover officer.

Clark had completed Step 1. He was in the Troops Out Movement. But rather than infiltrating a branch, he had actively established one. He generated something to spy on. He encouraged and organised demonstrations, such as the picketing of the local Woolwich barracks and the homes of local MPs.

Neither Mary, Chessum nor his partner had Special Branch files on them until their involvement with Clark. Their lives were then reported to an extent that was both sinister and ridiculous. This information was passed to MI5. Their physical appearances, commentary on their body size, health issues, addresses, theatres visited, holiday destinations, right down to the brand of cigarettes they smoked.

They were no threat to anyone. They were targeted first for their politics, and secondly, because they were useful. And Clark used them.

STEP 2 – DEVELOPING AN IDENTITY & BUILDING TRUST

Clark had no back history. He had just appeared. He needed to develop a place in the social network of political activists. He did that by exploitation. ‘Mary’ is unequivocal: Clark used sexual advances to ingratiate himself.

Clark established a close friendship with Richard Chessum and initiated a sexual relationship with Mary, having been invited into her home. And he had relationships with at least three other activists to gain position and tactical advantage. The other women were Mary’s flatmate, and two activists from the group Big Flame, Clark’s ultimate target. (His story also shows that forming targeted sexual relationships started early in the SDS.)

STEP 3 – TAKING POSITIONS & MOVING UP THE HIERARCHY

As one of the founder members of the South East London branch of TOM, Clark gained access to the national movement, with an astonishing level of ruthlessness.

By March 1975, he had got himself elected as the Secretary – the top position in the branch. He and Richard Chessum were then elected as voting delegates to the TOM Liaison Committee conference.

That move gave Clark access to the national leadership, knowing he’d be accompanied by Richard Chessum, a man with a proven track record of genuine commitment. His cultivated friendship with Richard Chessum gave him credibility.

In April 1975, Clark got himself elected as a delegate to the London Co-ordinating Committee of the Movement and the All London meeting. He pointedly took an opportunity to, in his own words, ‘severely criticise’ another section of the Movement. It was a move that appeared to ensure that he was elected as the branch’s delegate to TOM’s National Co-ordinating Committee.

He saw members of Workers’ Fight coming into the branch and at the national level. This would endanger his access leadership of the Movement. Clark attended a private meeting of senior members of TOM, with leader Gerry Lawless, to discuss Workers Fight’s attempt to take over. There were only ten people at the meeting, all key in supporting Lawless’s position in the national Movement against what they saw as an attempt by Workers Fight and the Revolutionary Communist Group to take control of the organisation.

In his report, he noted Big Flame had also formed an ‘uneasy alliance’ with Lawless.

Mary’s flatmate was in Workers Fight (WF), and she had attended TOM pickets. She attended a large TOM branch meeting stacked with WF members. Clark saw his post under threat. A WF person was elected to go to a London conference that would elect national posts. Clark competed against his supposed friend Chessum for the second post and won by two votes. It’s believed one of them would have been from Mary’s flatmate with whom, conveniently, Clark had recently begun a sexual relationship.

STEP 4 – SECURE A NATIONAL POSITION

It worked – Clark got elected to the Organising Committee for London, a national position. So here we are: a spycop deprived the movement of Chessum, a decent man who supported the movement, and put himself in, with the help of the second woman he just happened to have started a relationship with.

In Oct 1975, Clark resigned as Branch Secretary as, holding national office, he no longer needed the position any more. He says in his report he made a scathing attack on WF, but Chessum said it was nothing of the sort.

Lawless then nominated Clark for a position on the National Secretariat and he got it – he was now one of seven people in charge of the whole of TOM.

He continued to attend meetings at Richard Chessum’s home and reported on him. He recorded that Richard Chessum had started a new job at the London Electricity Board – information that was passed to MI5, something that becomes relevant later. Mary and her flat-mate largely disappeared from Clark’s reporting, now that they had served their purpose.

Clark organised a national TOM rally, but failed to secure the appearance of any of the headline acts. He arranged speakers for meetings and organised steward protection from attacks from fascists. That was a legitimate protective measure against a common threat at the time. Yet we expect to see those from Youth Against Racism in Europe, Anti-Nazi League and the Socialist Workers’ Party, criticised for the same thing in a later part of the Inquiry.

Due to Lawless’s paternity leave, Clark became acting head of TOM for several months. In that time, he cancelled delegations to Ireland. He criticised certain members. At least one prominent organisation withdrew its affiliation. By the time Gerry Lawless returned, two members of the Secretariat had resigned. Remember this was a serving Metropolitan Police officer, working undercover, making day to day decisions for a campaigning organisation.

STEP 5 – SABOTAGE THE ORGANISATION

Clark then turned against Lawless. He held a meeting with Big Flame in his cover flat to organise opposition to Lawless’ leadership, decapitating the Troops Out Movement of its long-time head.

They planned a coup in the next conference. The new leadership proposed was five people including Clark himself. Was this about TOM, or getting in Big Flame’s good books?

Clark also embarked on sexual relationships with two female members of the Big Flame. For him, sexual relationships were a tried and tested tactic of getting exactly where he wanted to go.

However, Clark overplayed his hand and Big Flame rumbled him. We don’t know quite how. Telling different stories to different women and them comparing? Was he seen as Machiavellian? Or was it simply a lack or political authenticity?

It was not unusual for Big Flame to investigate new people who wanted to join if they did not trust them entirely. Members of Big Flame went to the government’s birth and death records archive at Somerset House and they found Rick Gibson’s birth certificate. Then they found his death certificate.

They confronted Clark with both. Richard Chessum tells of how he heard about this confrontation from his friends in Big Flame. How Clark went white and nearly started to cry. His ambitious plot to unseat Gerry Lawless was over.

Clark took flight and disappeared from the political scene altogether. Richard Chessum later saw a dossier that Big Flame had prepared, that included a letter from Clark written to one of the female activists, saying that he ‘had to go away’.

There was no retribution against Clark after his exposure. It stands out that none of the groups infiltrated were interested in violence unless in self defence. This shows the Met’s applications for anonymity for spycops at the Undercover Policing Inquiry inquiry on safety grounds are highly questionable.

HOW HIGH DID IT GO?

Clark’s taking of high office was known to his superiors, all the way up to the Commander of the Metropolitan Police Service. It completely abandons the early principle of the Special Demonstration Squad:

‘members of the squad should be told, in no uncertain terms, that they must not take office in a group, chair meetings, draft leaflets, speak in public or initiate activity’

Equally, the fact that he engaged in sexual relationships with activists was no secret either. Two officers, to date, have been honest enough to disclose that they knew of Clark’s behaviour. One of those officers, ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1976-79), has gone further and admitted that sexual relationships were talked about at the weekly officer meetings and that his supervising officers would have been aware because they were present.

Senior officers knew of Clark’s history of sexual abuse, yet he left the police with a special medal, a Detective Inspector’s pension, and his conduct certified as ‘exemplary’.

There is only one explanation for this. His conduct was deemed acceptable. It continued for years, and dozens, probably hundreds, of women were sexually abused at the hands of these officers.

NOT JUST CLARK

Following Clark’s deployment, spycops taking of positions of responsibility and trust in infiltrated organisations was commonplace. ‘Michael James’ (HN96, 1978-83), started his deployment in the Socialist Workers Party where he was elected to a position on the Hackney District Committee. After two years he moved on into the Troops Out Movement, where Clark had been four years before in top positions.

James is an interesting officer because he gives different accounts of the position he reached. In his Inquiry impact statement – a document arguing the case for him being granted anonymity – he stressed his seniority, saying he was National Secretary of TOM, ie the top role. Once his anonymity was secure, he shifted, and tried to downplay and minimise the importance of his position.

The fact is was the National Membership and Affiliation Secretary of TOM for a good 18 months. He now seems to suggest he just happened to fall into his roles rather than actively pursuing them. But he was on the top level of the organisation, the National Steering Committee, which he occasionally chaired. He was one of nine people with a direct influence over the direction of the movement.

In this era, from Clark onwards, every single spycop took a role in the organisation they infiltrated, except for Graham Coates 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.

Scobie then listed twelve more spycops who held office in the organisations they spied on in the 1970s. See Scobie’s written Opening Statement for the details.

‘Vince Miller‘ (HN354, 1976-79) was elected District Treasurer and on the social committee of the Outer East London District branch of Socialist Workers Party. He resigned from his position to mark the ‘disorder and ineffectiveness’ within the branch. Resignation combined with strong criticism is deliberately de-stabilising to the organisation.

‘Sandra Davies’ (HN348, 1971-73) has already said that she did not remember being elected to the Executive Committee of the Women’s Liberation Front – the group founded by Diane Langford who also did a strong opening statement yesterday. The undercover officer claimed she did not remember voting to oust the founding leader and create a completely new group, the Revolutionary Women’s Union.

Scobie warned the Inquiry that most undercover officers tend to ‘have forgotten’ the roles they had, or claimed they don’t know how they landed there. Alternatively, they say that the role was not really a position of trust at all. The institutionalised dishonesty creeps into every aspect of their evidence.

LYING ABOUT POINTLESS SPYING

While many spycops accurately described the Socialist Workers Party as not encouraging violence – indeed, expelling violent members – one officer who infiltrated them, ‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-82), has told the Inquiry there was a lot of violence (officers tend to say this to show they’d be at risk if they aren’t granted anonymity). Gray’s claims are undermined by his own reports, which show nothing of the kind. He is lying.

He says his time undercover had no impact whatsoever on his welfare but that answering questions for this Inquiry is impacting on his welfare. That is because he now has to justify the fact that in reality, he busied himself with pointless and personally intrusive reporting.

Gray reported on more children than any other officer. Recording the minutiae of their lives and sending them on to MI5. Almost all of these reports have photographs of the children attached. These children were either the children of Socialist Workers Party members or children who were engaged enough with their society to be part of the School Kids Against the Nazis.

During the course of Gray’s deployment, fascist group Column 88 were threatening to burn down the homes of SWP members. The National Front were attacking Bengalis in Brick Lane, smashing up reggae record shops and vandalising mosques. There was firebombing and murder. Instead of investigating the racist firebombing that killed 13 young black people in New Cross, the Special Demonstration Squad were reporting on school children and providing MI5 with copies of Socialist Workers Party babysitting rotas.

GOVERNMENT & CABINET KNOWLEDGE

Several of the spycops in the era now being examined, 1973-82, refer to visits to the SDS safe-house by the Commissioner of the Met. (This tallies with similar memories of officers both before and after the period).

One refers to congratulatory messages straight from 10 Downing Street. Another, who himself went on to become a Detective Chief Inspector, was told:

‘the continuation of the unit was one of the first decisions that a new Home Secretary had to make’.

The 1976 authorisation for the Special Demonstration Squad’s continued existence was signed off by Robert Armstrong, later Baron Armstrong of Ilminster. He was Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service. It is difficult to imagine a more highly placed civil servant.

MI5’s ‘Witness Z,’ has told the Inquiry:

‘the pressure to investigate these organisations often came from the Prime Minister and Whitehall’.

Put simply, the existence and functioning of the SDS was known of, and authorised, at the very top.

Every annual application for funding refers to the officers fully recognising ‘the political sensitivity’ of the unit’s existence. Authorisation is only ever granted ‘in view of the assurances about security’. In other words, as long as you can promise us we will not get caught, you can carry on.

The Met were protecting the Government from what they referred to in the 1977 Annual Report as ’embarrassment’. There is nothing embarrassing about preventing crime. But the destabilising of democratic movements, the wholesale and widespread intrusion on citizens, and their exploitation for political advantage? That is worth keeping secret.

Scobie ended with a plea:

‘This Inquiry has been set a challenge – to get to the truth. This means asking difficult questions, again and again, to uncover the truth.

‘Ordinary people have been involved in campaigns for a better society, for social equality, anti racism, anti-fascism, against apartheid and for trade union rights. The best of reasons, and the best of traditions.

‘We hope the Inquiry is ready, willing and equipped to meet that challenge. The Inquiry must be fearless and unflinching in the pursuit of the truth. The people of this country expect nothing less.’

Full opening statment from James Scobie QC, representing Richard Chessum & ‘Mary’

Rajiv Menon QC
representing Piers Corbyn

Piers Corbyn is now 74, but has not given up his lifelong activism. He was one of the first people to apply to be a Core Participant in the Inquiry, five years ago. He will give evidence via video next week.

But Rajiv Menon started his opening statement with some more general concerns, making seven points about undercover policing and the material disclosed for the new hearings (Tranche 1 Phase 2, covering 1973-82), and about the Inquiry’s approach to witnesses, redactions, and disclosure.

Firstly. What screams out of the pages is the fact that the SDS was never about protecting parliamentary democracy nor maintaining public order. It was to spy on people and organisations because of their ideas and politics.

The limited public disorder that some spycops describe was largely minor, and certainly did not justify the spying on an industrial scale that was unleashed on the British public in the 1970s or the consequent cost to the public purse.

Just to give two examples. There is a 21 page report on an International Marxist Group (IMG) conference in 1972, and 55 pages on another in 1976. These describe different currents and tendencies within the IMG and summarise debates, as well as details of attendees. What the reports do not include is anything touching upon the protection of parliamentary democracy or the prevention of public disorder.

In short, the SDS was engaged in secret political policing and pure intelligence gathering against the Left, at times Orwellian, at times more Monty Python. Several SDS officers admit gathering as much information as possible, however personal or trivial, because it was for others to decide what was relevant.

Secondly, the most significant document in the current bundle, we believe, is the statement of Witness Z on behalf of the Security Service, MI5, that confirms that the SDS has always been subordinate to MI5.

However, Witness Z is not being called to give evidence, and we cannot understand why this is. Their statement shows they have so much vital knowledge about the roles of the SDS and MI5, and their cooperation. About about MI5’s 1972 definition of subversion as ‘activities threatening the safety or well-being of the State and intended to undermine or overthrow Parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means’, and how most if not all of those spied on by the SDS could not possibly be described as subversive according to this definition.

Thirdly, there are, on our count, 18 SDS officers who were deployed during the relevant period whose cover names have been disclosed and who are alive. But the Inquiry is only calling eight of them to give evidence. The 1970s was a critical period in the history of the SDS, the Inquiry should be hearing from as many spycops as possible.

Fourthly, we are also dismayed that the evidence of seven SDS officers whose real names and cover names have been restricted is not being disclosed. Instead it is redacted, edited and amalgamated into an eight page ‘gist’. We cannot say which officer did what. We need to know what they did individually if their information is any use to anyone at all.

Fifthly, many if not most of the SDS intelligence reports have been destroyed at some stage by the Met. Many of the disclosed reports that have survived are only in existence because copies had been retained by MI5. Interestingly, whilst MI5 is apparently happy to disclose copies of police documents, they are rather more circumspect in disclosing any of their own documents that might reveal the nature and extent of their own spying operations on political activists and others.

Sixthly, redactions. Most frustrating is the redaction of the names of many groups spied on and infiltrated by the SDS between 1969 and 1984. None of this is justifiable. We are looking at 35-50 years ago so what’s the problem? What are they hiding?

The Undercover Research Group compiled a first list of groups spied on according to the Inquiry in 2019. After the first set of hearings of the Inquiry in November 2020, more than 100 groups were added.

The SDS Annual Reports on the years 1969-84 have 130 group names redacted. Why must these remain secret forever, at the insistence of those who did the spying? It’s a betrayal of the purpose of the Inquiry.

Seventh and finally, disclosure. We are not being given enough time to read and digest material by the Inquiry. We were meant to get documents in mid March, but another 2000+ pages have been added in April. Nobody can go through all that in a matter of a couple of weeks.

PIERS CORBYN

Piers Corbyn had no idea of the extent of the spying on him. He has always been open about his politics and has nothing to hide, in contrast with the anonymous spycops who spied on him. Despite having been a Core Participant at the Inquiry for over 5 years, he knew little until recently.

He had only been provided with 53 Special Branch intelligence reports (most of which were relatively unrevealing) and no witness statements from any of the undercover police officers who had spied on him, still less any photographs of those officers to help him recollect these events that took place between 40 and 50 years ago.

Why was Piers Corbyn of interest? Special Branch opened a file on him over 50 years ago, in 1969, and he still can’t see it.

He was President of the Imperial College Union. He attended rallies against the Vietnam War. He joined the International Marxist Group (IMG). He supported Irish civil rights, anti racism, and trade union rights.

He was very active in London squatting in the 1970s. In 1982, he left the IMG and joined the Labour Party. In the 1980s, he was active in the ‘Fare Fight’ campaign to keep down the cost of public transport. In 1986, he became a Labour councillor in Southwark, a position he held for four years.

Piers Corbyn barely learned anything about the spying on him from the new documents disclosed by the Inquiry. He is mentioned in passing in a one report and in the witness statement of two others, who will not be giving evidence. The Inquiry has shown him pictures of some spycops but not the ones who spied on him!

Piers Corbyn was granted Core Participant status by the Inquiry for being one of the main organisers of squatting groups in London between 1972 and 1982, but this barely features in the intelligence reports in which he is named. In short, what is revealed by the disclosure is a damp squib.

What would tell us far more about the secret state’s interest in Piers Corbyn is his Special Branch Registry File. But nobody ever gets to see their Registry File, not even during a public inquiry into undercover policing.

We want to see is his file to see the full nature of why he was spied on. Why won’t they let him see it? Why can’t the Inquiry compel the police to do it? Is it because it’s so tedious and unnecessary that it will embarrass them? Or something else?

Whilst secrecy continues to trump openness, the Inquiry will only scratch the surface, however interesting and revealing some of the documents it is disclosing may be.

The victims of spycops are dismayed at the new delays to the Inquiry. This benefits those who want delay. More documents will be lost and destroyed, more witnesses will die. Justice delayed is justice denied.

Full opening statement from Rajiv Menon QC, representing Piers Corbyn

Kirsten Heaven
representing other Non-Police, Non-State Core Participants

Kirsten Heaven began by expressing the disappointment and anger felt by core participants last week, when they learnt that the next set of hearings, scheduled to take place in October 2021, would be delayed until sometime in the first half of 2022.

The Chair, Sir John Mitting, interrupted her with his reason for this delay – the excuse that the Inquiry want to disclose evidence to a new core participant from the Socialist Workers Party and then collect her witness statement, and says there is so much SWP material that it cannot be done between now and October.

Heaven went on to say that core participants had also just learnt for the first time – in the Counsel to the Inquiry’s Opening Statement two days ago – that the Tranche 2 hearings (covering the years 1983-1992) would no longer be heard in 2022, and would be delayed until at least 2023.

Waiting for another two years is not acceptable for the core participants who have already suffered from many years of delay. She reminded Mitting that his predecessor (Lord Pitchford, the original Chair of this Inquiry) had intended to conclude in 2018.

We are losing crucial evidence with every year that passes, as both officers and witnesses get older. We heard yesterday that, despite being in contact with spycops ‘Alan Bond‘ (HN67, 1981-86) for at least three years, the Inquiry has failed to take a witness statement from him and he is now said to be too ill to provide any evidence.

Heaven recommended that the Inquiry make it an urgent priority to collect statements from all former officers and managers. And that they provide the group with a full list of all Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) managers from the years 1968-82 who are due to give evidence in Phase 3, along with regular updates on their state of health.

The main cause of delay in this Inquiry has been the excessive demands for redactions made by the police and State bodies.

WHO WAS SPIED ON?

Heaven then moved on to analyse some of the facts in the documents recently released by the Inquiry covering the years 1973-82.

It is clear from looking at the newly disclosed evidence just how widespread this political policing was, and the wide range of left-wing groups which were infiltrated and spied upon. This included justice campaigns and defence campaigns, and even their lawyers. Trade unions & mainstream political parties were spied on. There was excessive surveillance of many sections of society, including children and young people. Spycops were involved in criminality, miscarriages of justice, and illegal blacklisting. They had begun stealing the identities of deceased children.

Information – including people’s details – was routinely copied to MI5, meaning the security service. There was deep collaboration between them and the spycops.

She described the SDS’ ‘oblique approach’ – unashamedly described by the unit’s founder Conrad Dixon as “the infiltration of relatively innocuous organisations” as a stepping stone to others.

The women’s liberation movement were targeted, with reports detailing such subversive events as jumble sales & a children’s Christmas party. The youth wing of the Liberal Party was targeted by ‘Michael Scott‘ (HN298, 1971-76) in order to gather intelligence about anti-apartheid activist Peter Hain. The spycops cynically targeted all sorts of non-radical groups, displaying an utter contempt for civil society.

According to a 1973 report from officer HN294, the International Socialists & International Marxist Group made for ‘disappointing’ targets as they did not do anything warranting police interest. It is clear that many of the spycops quickly realised that the groups they’d joined were not a serious threat to public order, or violent in any way. It is also clear that no meaningful risk or threat assessment seems to have been carried out, so how did the SDS know who should be targeted?

We now have a witness statement from ‘Witness Z’ made on behalf of the security services. It contains an admission that subversive organisations were not actually considered a high threat at this time, but that pressure to spy on them often came from the Prime Minister/ Whitehall. No stone should be left unturned in investigating this.

TARGETING JUSTICE

We see the continuation of reporting on lawyers & material that may be subject to legal privilege, often around justice campaigns following police misconduct.

An early example was ‘Alex Sloan‘ (HN347, 1971 reporting on the justice campaign that sprang up in 1971 after the death of teenager Stephen McCarthy (following his arrest and alleged assault by police). Sloan is also known to have taken part in a visit to an asylum seeker being held in Holloway Prison – why was the SDS interested in her case?

Heaven listed a selection of the groups and individuals whose names have appeared in Special Branch’s files or in the latest disclosure:

• Shrewsbury Two Defence Committee
• Roach Family Support Committee
• Stoke Newington and Hackney Defence Campaign
• Persons Unknown Defence Campaign
• Murray Defence Campaign
• Deptford Action Massacre Committee
• Friends of Blair Peach Committee
• Celia Stubbs (partner of Blair Peach and now a Core Participant)
• Graham Smith (another Core Participant)
• Justice for David Ewen Campaign July 1995
• Deborah Coles (Director of INQUEST, set up to monitor deaths in custody and support bereaved families)

It is clear that these justice campaigns were directly targeted by the spycops, despite the denials of police lawyers at the Inquiry.

Another development in this period was that the spycops reporting included children. One report, signed off by very senior officers and copied to MI5, included details about someone’s brother and his wife, and contained a line about the couple having a ‘Mongol child’.

The police’s lawyers say there is no need for concern because reporting on children ‘did not cause any harm’. But it was a gross invasion of privacy and family, and harmful to society.

‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-82) reported extensively on young people (and their teachers), and would send descriptions, details and even photographs of children off to his bosses (and MI5). One of the groups he targeted was School Kids Against the Nazis (SKAN) but none of them are here to speak for themselves, and we have no idea if the Inquiry has tried to contact any of them or not.

Heaven showed the Inquiry a short archival film from 1979 featuring the kids of Hackney SKAN handing out leaflets at schools and talking about racist scapegoating and the need to drive the National Front out.

DIVERSITY OF TARGETS

The next list of groups read out demonstrates the extent to which the SDS’s interests had grown since the unit started:

• Christian Aid
• Fellowship Party (No Racism No Violence say yes to Fellowship)
• Numerous branches of the Labour Party
• Orpington Young Liberals
• Lewisham Humanists
• 6 London Trade Union Councils
• National Union of Students
• Teachers’ unions
• Transport & General Workers Union Legal Workers Branch

There are many examples of intrusive reporting of women:

• Women’s Voice
• Spare Rib Collective
• Women Workers League
• Brixton Black Womens Group
• Greenham Common Women’s Support Group
• Lambeth Women For Peace

One report attributed to ‘Barry Tompkins‘ (HN106, 1979-83), includes details of a woman activist who had an abortion, and speculation about ‘the putative father’. This kind of invasion of privacy cannot be justified.

According to the police’s lawyers, the spycops were politically neutral and did not favour or target one group over another. However this is patently not true. Hundreds of groups and individuals perceived to be on ‘the left’ were targeted, while the rising far-right, who created fear through their use of violence, were not policed in the same way.

The SDS’s annual reports consistently downplayed the threat posed by the far-right.
An earlier statement by the police’s lawyers suggested that there was no need to infiltrate groups like the National Front because they tended to cooperate’ with Special Branch. There appears to be no evidence to support this.

Neither is there any evidence that the police were able (or willing?) to pre-empt or prevent National Front violence and racist public disorder during this period.

This makes for a stark comparison with the lengths the SDS went to in order to infiltrate the left. Heaven referenced one example: ‘Gary Roberts’ (HN353, 1974-78) was enrolled on a degree course as part of his cover. He attended classes four days a week for several years, and got involved in student politics (becoming an NUS vice-president).

BLACKLISTING

Many eyebrows were raised by the police lawyers’ insistence in their November Opening Statement that the SDS did not infiltrate trade unions and were not involved in blacklisting.

The SDS’s own report from 1972 contains references to trade union activity and strikes (the miners, the dockers and building workers), as well as the union-initiated Shrewsbury Two campaign.

‘David Hughes’ (HN299/342, 1971-76) joined the TGWU and attended their meetings. It appears that many of his reports (including those on the Claimants Union) are missing, but the Inquiry has decided that we do not need to hear more from him.

The Blacklisting Support Group are outraged by the police lawyers reference this week to “so-called blacklisting organisations”. There is no doubt that blacklisting occurred and any attempt to belittle it is deeply offensive to its many victims and their families.

Heaven reminded the Inquiry that it was Operation Reuben, the Met’s own investigation, that found:

‘police, including Special Branches and the security services, supplied information to the blacklist funded by the country’s major construction firms, the Consulting Association and other agencies.’

SPYCOPS – FOOTSOLDIERS OF MI5?

The SDS seem to have infiltrated all sorts of groups, even those which posed no threat to law and order, at the behest of MI5, harvesting photographs, bank account details, membership lists, phone numbers etc.

We are told by police lawyers that the SDS was ‘neither an agent nor a servant of MI5’, but at the same time they tell us the SDS was not in a position to challenge MI5 in any way. Which is true? It can’t be both.

It’s the job of this Inquiry to work out who really controlled the SDS, and answer more questions about this relationship.

The Home Office did provide some official guidance to Special Branch in 1967, 1970 and 1984, but these documents do not answer all of the pertinent questions. The SDS and Special Branch were specifically cautioned in 1984 to seek advice from the security services before targeting any alleged ‘subversives’, and warned against undermining ‘the legitimate expression of ideas’ or ‘interfering in the exercise of political and civil liberties’.

INEQUALITY OF INFORMATION

Before finishing her submissions, Heaven moved on to summarise some procedural points.

At the last hearings, the problems around disclosure and only having a live transcript rather than a proper live stream meant many core participants couldn’t participate fully.

Disclosure of documents has been little better this time, but a large number of documents were missing from what was initially disclosed and a month later it seemed that the volume made available to us fell far short of what had been promised.

This reinforces the unfairness and inequality embedded in this Inquiry.

We can see that there was significant cooperation between the spycops and the security services and, once again, we demand disclosure of all Special Branch ‘registry files’ and other information being held about core participants.

We ask for explanation of the file reference numbering systems so we can understand what the files were.

The Inquiry must be more proactive in encouraging members of the public to come forward with evidence. Publishing the cover names used by officers and photographs of them would be helpful.

We ask again for the full list of groups reported on to be published, and for groups’ names not to be redacted from evidence.

We are still extremely concerned about the withholding of some spycops’ cover names.

Are secret ‘closed’ hearings really required for certain officers? At least one of these men appeared in the BBC’s True Spies documentary talking about his career so it is unclear why he cannot give public evidence to the Inquiry.

MORE OFFICERS, MORE EVIDENCE

Out of the eighteen officers from 1973-82 who are still alive, the Inquiry only plans to call eight to give evidence at these hearings.

‘Gary Roberts’ (HN353, 1974-78) initially supplied a statement in 2019. He has left the UK since then, so the Inquiry has decided to only provide a summary of his evidence. He was present at the 1974 Red Lion Square anti-fascist protest when Kevin Gately was killed, and at the Battle of Lewisham, but his reports seem to be missing.

Being abroad is no excuse to exclude him, he could still give evidence via Zoom like the other witnesses are in the UK.

Another officer who is not being called to give evidence or answer questions is ‘David Hughes’ (HN299/342, 1971-76). One of his reports was described on Wednesday by Counsel to the Inquiry as ‘the most disturbing document that we have found’. This referred to one person interrupting a reading group to talk about how TWO million people would be killed ‘when the socialist revolution took place’. The Inquiry needs to be able to better discern rhetoric and overstatement from actual threats.

Another spycop, ‘Bob Stubbs’ (HN301, 1971-76) was also at Red Lion Square, where he was punched in the face by a uniformed officer. We have not been supplied with all of the evidence about this day, the advance intelligence or any debriefing. The lack of them suggests they have been destroyed, making oral evidence all the more important.

‘Barry Tompkins‘ (HN106, 1979-83) denies reports of deceiving a woman into a relationship. We are now told that he will not be giving evidence due to ill health. However we have not seen any evidence that his condition has been properly verified by the Inquiry. There needs to be more transparency about such medical evidence.

RELEASE THE FILES

There was widespread, systematic contempt for the rights of those on the left of the political spectrum, whose common law rights and human rights have both been breached by the actions of the spycops. Any assurances from SDS & MI5 cannot be trusted.

Those who were spied upon must be shown their files so they can appraise what was done and correct the false information they undoubtedly contain. The whole purpose of this Inquiry was to learn from the mistakes of the past, so such human rights abuses would not be repeated in the future.

Heaven ended her submissions by suggesting that the sheer scale of the spycops scandal, the huge number of people spied upon, the apparent lack of accountability, exaggeration of risk, and the obvious political biases of the police all contribute to the belief that these undercover operations were unjustified and illegitimate. Instead they constituted an unlawful enterprise, conducted for political purposes and motivated by a desire to protect the Establishment rather than the wider public interest.

Full opening statement from Kirsten Heaven representing other Non-Police, Non-State Core Participants

Dave Morris

This was Dave Morris’ second opening statement to the Undercover Policing Inquiry, having already made a fuller statement at the November hearings. This one was mainly made in regard to the recently disclosed documents about undercover officer ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1976-79) who used his association with Morris to gain access to the anarchist milieu in London during the mid to late 1970s.

Coates has been said by the Counsel to the Inquiry to have infiltrated the International Socialists/Socialist Workers Party and the collectives who ran Anarchy and Zero Magazines, as well as the ‘Persons Unknown’ defendants solidarity group. He also used a dead child’s identity and visited the area where he was born. We have also been told that in his written statement, he refers to SDS officers jokingly discussing sexual relationships with activists and that management were aware of the practice.

Morris started by reiterating his previous statement, and endorsing Kirsten Heaven’s description of the spycops activity:

‘an unlawful enterprise conducted for political purposes and motivated by the desire to preserve the power of the establishment rather than protect the wider public interest.’

ORIGINS

Morris told how had had come across anarchist/libertarian ideas through a BBC documentary series ‘Open Doors’. In early 1975 he attended Freedom Newspaper collective meetings, and then went to Anarchy Magazine, discussing housing, poverty, feminism, exploitation at meetings of the friendly, sociable, advertised and open group.

He said that printed articles representing a wide range of views, inevitably including some he disagreed with. He was also a postal worker and was local branch secretary of the Union of Postal Workers.

By the end of the 1970s, Morris had begun to get involved with environmental campaigns such as London Greenpeace and, with fellow London Greenpeace member Helen Steel, was one of two defendants in the famous McLibel trial.

A life-long community activist, Morris is currently Secretary of the Haringey Federation of Residents Associations, and Chair of the National Federation of Parks and Green Spaces.

He explained the common thread running through his activism:

‘The essence of my personal motivation and political beliefs has remained constant throughout the last 50 years or so – the desire to tackle injustice, to seek improvements in society in the public interest, and to encourage and empower people to have as much control over their lives as possible.’

TARGETED

Turning to the early spying he’s just been told about, Morris said:

‘Looking back on the surveillance and infiltration of groups I was involved within in the 1970s… and how I was personally targeted, I feel disgust at this cynical and blatant breach of trust. Not just for me but also for the other victims I knew and know – such as the family with young children whose home was where the Anarchy Collective held meetings. Of course, I am outraged not just by the tactics used but also by the very existence and purpose of the whole spying operation. This Stasi-like behaviour is totally unacceptable.’

All of Morris’ activity was standard campaigning activism, albeit at the left of the spectrum. Organising public meetings, social events, protests, defence for people whose rights were infringed. These are rights enshrined in international law and should have the highest protection.

Indeed, a lot of his work has been about upholding rights and the law.

The McLibel trial – the longest running court case in English history – helped defeat McDonald’s attempt to silence critics. Corporations haven’t tried that sort of thing again.

The McLibel 2 then won an additional victory against the UK government at the European Court of Human Rights because the McLibel trial had been unfair.

After the Climate Camp in 2008, Morris won a case against the police and showed that mass stop and search of campaigners was in fact illegal. In both of these legal cases, he rolled back infringements on the rights of people to voice their dissent against oppressive powers.

The spycop Coates has said:

‘anarchists I reported on posed a minimal challenge to public order… didn’t even discuss activities that could be a public order threat… I do not not think any information I provided was significant’.

Coates reported many personal details, naming the area Morris was brought up in, what A levels he did and more – and got all those details are wrong! What less subjective stuff in their reports were they also wrong about? Some spycop reports are written a month after the event described & may have been embellished by officers who weren’t even there.

A spycop report says Morris suggested that the Anarchy Collective should be involved in fire-raising activity on government building in support of a firefighters strike. But he remembers the group deciding to produce stickers and join local picket lines. It’s possible someone may have made an offhand joke, but the police should be able to discern between that and genuine beliefs or intent.

THE REAL THREAT

Morris also said that while the coverage of left-wing activists seemed to be very thorough, those on the far-right of the political system have had little attention.

Morris said that a proper risk assessment of threats to society at the time would have set its sights on other dangers.

London Greenpeace’s opposition to McDonald’s was wide ranging – not just the harm caused in the manufacture of the food, but its workers rights, its subversion of the parent-child relationship and more. Why was this subversion not targeted by the SDS?

Beyond that were fossil fuel companies, tobacco companies, tax havens, car companies, the military intervention in Northern Ireland, and major construction companies who ran an industry blacklist (that both Morris and Helen Steel were added to!). Why didn’t the police, who nominally exist to protect the public, target people organising these serious threats?

He concluded by saying:

‘It was a gross breach of peoples’ trust and human rights, which maybe could have raised an arguable case if targeting active gangs of mass killers but has no shred of legitimacy when it was actually being used to protect those who control society’s wealth and power from the real needs of the public.’

Full opening statement from Dave Morris

Tranche 1, Phase 2, Day 2

22 April 2021

Opening Statements from:

Diane Langford
‘Madeleine’
Phillippa Kaufmann QC, representing Core Participants who had relationships with undercover officers
Matthew Ryder QC, representing three anti apartheid activists (Ernest Rodker, Professor Jonathan Rosenhead & Lord Peter Hain) & Celia Stubbs

The second day of Tranche 1 Phase 2 of the Undercover Policing Inquiry, being the 28th anniversary of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, began with the Chair, Sir John Mitting, reading out a statement from Neville & Doreen Lawrence about their son.

He spoke of the police failings, of the suspects not being charged, and that the Macpherson report from the public inquiry was a landmark in showing the police’s racist faults. But Stephen’s legacy is ultimately one of hope, reminding us change is much needed, but also possible.

There was a minute’s silence for Stephen.

Diane Langford

The first speaker today was Diane Langford, an activist in groups who were infiltrated by undercover officers in the era that the current hearings are examining (1973-82). She will also give evidence on the afternoon of Monday 26 April.

The contrast between the opening statements of yesterday’s legal representatives of the police, spycops and the establishment compared to the emotional, direct and articulate submission of Diane Langford could not be more marked.

Her statement cut to the heart of everything that is wrong with the Undercover Policing Inquiry. This summary hardly does justice to her powerful speech, which is worth reading in full, or watch on YouTube.

POOR TREATMENT BY THE INQUIRY

Diane Langford has only recently become a Core Participant at the Inquiry. In 2018, the Undercover Research Group (URG) found her story of the exposure of spycop ‘Dave Robertson’ (HN45). Later, URG discovered that the group she had set up, the Women’s Liberation Front, was infiltrated by ‘Sandra Davies’ (HN348), and had let her know.

Her name appeared unredacted in many reports of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) disclosed at the previous Inquiry hearings last November, but it turned out the Inquiry had only reached out to her just beforehand.

‘When I was given copies they ironically came with a legal warning not to show them to anyone else.’

The Inquiry failed to ask her to give evidence, or tell her that she could seek legal representation.

By the time she knew Sandra Davies was giving evidence to the Inquiry it was too late to book a place at the limited screening venue.

Despite the poor treatment she has received from the Inquiry, Diane Langford is grateful to the Chair for, belatedly, granting her Core Participant status. She was perplexed however that, despite her 50 year history of activism, in his ruling, the Inquiry chair, Sir John Mitting, introduced her as ‘the widow of the late Abhimanyu Manchanda’ as if she was merely an appendage. Yet another example of the institutionalised sexism being present in the Inquiry as it was in the spycops.

Langford identified six undercover officers who spied on her:

• ‘Sandra Davies’ (HN348)
• ‘Dave Robertson‘ (HN45)
• ‘Dick Epps‘ (HN336)
• Mike Ferguson (HN135)
• ‘Peter Fredericks‘ (HN345)
• Jill Mosdell (HN346)

Langford expressed solidarity with others targeted by spycops, especially those no longer here to tell their story and push for justice, asking:

‘how many others who were spied on are completely unaware that their names appear in these files?’

‘I’ll never know what career opportunities were denied to me, or what other barriers have been placed in front of me during my life, as a result of the machinations of the Special Demonstration Squad. I’ll never know whether unpleasant incidents – for example, being denied credit or visas, or break-ins at my home – were connected to the surveillance I was being subjected to.’

WITNESS OF INJUSTICE

As a young person Langford saw injustice in Aotearoa/New Zealand where she grew up, including racism, sexism and class discrimination. Her brothers got an education, but she left school at the age of 15. Coming to London at 22, ironically to support her brother who had won a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, opened her eyes. Going to movies, and reading De Beauvoir and Sartre, Barthes, Kristeva, and the Autobiography of Malcolm X after he was killed, opened the way into political activism. She was very much influenced by the events of 1968.

Talking about being part of the women’s liberation movement, Diane Langford said that, as with many others, her commitment was based on personal experience, recognised as political. She gave the example of how, when she was in her early twenties, her flatmate died of an illegal back street abortion, aged nineteen.

‘The memory of her death remains vivid for me still, at the age of 79.’

That the basic goals of the movement remain unachieved and resisted confirms their profound nature.

Langford began her involvement in the Women’s Liberation Front, which believed that patriarchal, racialised capitalism cannot, and will not, meet those goals.

She listed three dramatic events that spring to mind when recalling the period under scrutiny:

– Dave Robertson threatened my friend with violence when she outed him as an undercover.
– Banner Books was burned down by fascists while undercover officers had surveilled and had access, and I believe a man died. This needs investigating.
– Robertson ignored an allegation of attempted rape at a meeting, instead focusing on my domestic arrangements and ridiculing my partner.

WHAT IS THE POINT OF THE INQUIRY NOW?

Langford then connected the spying in the past to the new Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill rushed through Parliament just before the November hearings in 2020, which allows police to self-authorise to commit all crime, which undermines much of the point of the spycops Inquiry.

In January 2020 the current counter-terrorism spycops unit listed peace protesters as extremists. One of them was the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign seeking to uphold international law and to promote peace, yet it is targeted as a problem to be undermined.

In Langford’s activist life, women’s liberation has always been entwined with the Palestinian struggle – there is no liberation for women under the apartheid regime in Palestine. She asked:

‘If I was under surveillance in 1970 as a member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, am I still under surveillance now? I became a busier activist in the 2000s, more than in the 1970s that police have admitted. Where are the files?’

INCAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING

‘Sandra Davies’ (HN348) spied on 77 meetings, of which 55 were related to the women’s liberation movement.

‘Sounds like more than I did! Why is the women’s movement not a focus of the Inquiry? The Inquiry is colluding with the state to limit the search for evidence…

‘To read these reports is to see some of the greatest ideas of our time crushed into the narrow confines of a mentality absolutely lacking in the capacity to comprehend them…

‘We see the callous use of women’s bodies by misogynous male officers who see such abuse as a perk of the job, and, a confluence of the sexist behaviour and patriarchal attitudes of so-called left wing men in socialist groups and that of those spying on them.’

THE REFUGE OF POOR MEMORY

‘This Inquiry reiterates the intrusive processes of surveillance, requiring the victims of spying to explain and justify themselves, when it is the perpetrators of surveillance who should be interrogated and held accountable.

‘Remarkably we witnesses are again being subjected to intrusion into our personal and political lives, as if some retroactive justification could be thereby found for utterly dishonourable and indefensible police actions, whereas the perpetrators of abuse are granted impunity, anonymity or the refuge of poor memory.’

The SDS reports of the 1970s show sexist and racist ideas were endemic.

This was illustrated time and again by HN45 and HN348. For example, a report from August 1, 1972:

‘so-and-so is a member of the Revolutionary Women’s Union. She lives in a council flat at ADDRESS GIVEN with her two children aged 6-and-a-half years and three years and her mother so-and-so. She is a divorced woman and is in receipt of £8.50 per week Social Security. She attends Revolutionary Women’s Union meetings regularly and is particularly interested in agitating for 24-hour nurseries. This woman is on very friendly terms with so-and-so. Her description is: Aged about 23 years, very thin build, medium length fair hair, blue eyes, very pale complexion, poorly clothed but neat and tidy, wears black rimmed glasses, cockney accent.’

The internationally celebrated artist David Medalla, who passed away in January, is described by HN348 like this:

‘Asian features and colouring, dirty appearance, very poorly clad. He is very opposed to the current Government in the Philippines.’

That government was the notorious Marcos dictatorship – just to provide historical context.

Browsing the disclosure provided by the Inquiry, Langford found other disgusting examples of racism and sexism: On 1 June 1978, a report about the Federation of London Anarchist Groups informs the Special Branch that a subject had cut his beard off ‘to reveal that he has a long face, large Jewish nose and full lips.’

A report signed off by Angus McIntosh, about the Women’s Organiser of the International Socialists, dated 22 October 1976, states she has :

‘typically Jewish lilt to her … and rather prominent nose, always scruffily dressed in blue jeans and T-shirt (without a bra).’

‘A negress was in the audience’ according to a July 1976 report of a meeting of Hackney International Socialists that discussed self-defence strategies for victims of physical attacks by the National Front.

What did 1970s undercover officers do to stop the National Front attacking people of colour? They were spying on anti-fascists.

‘These patronising violations of people’s personal space, of suppressing a child’s right to demonstrate against state-sanctioned physical abuse, the racist, anti-Semitic, sexist and judgemental descriptions of people’s personal appearance that filled the notebooks of the secret police may not amount to much in the eyes of the Inquiry. It’s the accretion of them that are the stuff of authoritarian regimes, hence the expression “petty apartheid”.’

ABHIMANYU MANCHANDA

Diane Langford was also very critical of the portrayal of her late former partner, Abhimanyu Manchanda (‘Manu’):

‘HN45 displays a vindictive hatred of Manu and a peculiar obsession with our personal relationship and child-care arrangements. He sent detailed reports to the Special Branch about what he apparently saw as transgressive behaviour – a man looking after his own child – and expressing horror that I was “sent out to work.” He informs his superiors of Manu’s “insufferable anecdotes” about our baby.’

In her Witness Statement, she dealt with the Inquiry’s inappropriate Rule 9 written questions about my personal relationship with Manu – in fact repeating this behaviour.

There is nothing in the reports about them overthrowing the state. Nevertheless, HN45 portrayed Manu as a danger, saying he only went on demos to cause violence. Which is rubbish, he knew you can’t tackle the state head on.

Why is Manu referred to in reports by his surname while others get their full names? That too smacks of imperialism.

FROM NAPALM TO BUNNY GIRLS

‘What did the Inquiry have in mind when they asked me about Dow Chemicals? Is the implication that Dow Chemicals, whose inhuman war crimes have never been accounted for, was under the protection of the British State? It may help the Inquiry to know that Dow Chemicals was the manufacturer of Napalm, a firebomb fuel/gel mixture used by the American military against Vietnamese civilians…

‘The continuum I spoke of earlier, can be perceived in UK state protection being accorded to Israeli arms manufacturers, in particular Elbit, who boast that their equipment is “battle tested” on Palestinians, despite widespread public disgust at the brutal treatment meted out to Palestinian civilians.’

What was behind the Inquiry’s question about picketing the Playboy Club? Does the Inquiry regard The Playboy Club, whose employees are referred to as ‘Bunny Girls,’ as an institution worthy of special protection by the secret police?

HN348 referred to the 1970 Miss World protest as an event that was organised by the Women’s Liberation Front, prior to her deployment. They actually didn’t organise it, but Langford did attended the demonstration.

‘It was a magnificent disruption of an exploitative commercial event degrading to women. It was not a threat to public order or security.’

THERE’S NEVER JUST ONE COCKROACH

Inquiries since the Macpherson Inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence have been devalued by the manner in which they’ve determinedly obstructed genuine ‘inquiry.’

For example, Priti Patel set up an inquiry into the atrocious police violence against women at Clapham Common, an incident that she herself set in train.

‘While the Inquiry is heavily weighted in favour of the State, how are we going to find out when the abuse started? I hope the Inquiry will not be deflected by the myth of “a few rotten apples.”

‘The cynical attitudes of the UCOs as evidenced by their misogynist reporting in the past and current lack of remorse makes it inevitable that any opportunity to take advantage of women would have been taken. There’s never just one cockroach.’

‘Where are these files kept? Who has access to them? Dozens of people, whose names recur in the files I’ve had sight of, have absolutely no idea that the secret police came into their homes under false pretences and spied on them. At the bare minimum anyone whose private space was violated, resulting in them being named in these files, should be informed and invited to be part of the inquiry.’

We need to see the faces of undercover officers, if only to stop suspecting our innocent old comrades of being cops. Why are the officers not compelled to supply contemporaneous photos themselves?

A request for a contemporaneous photograph of HN348 was declined by the Inquiry as they were not holding one in their files. Why not ask HN348 to supply one, as Langford’s legal representative suggested?

‘it bears out the idea that, as Audre Lorde put it, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. It is clear that women, People of Colour and others working for a better world will need to continue with our grassroots campaigning on behalf of ourselves and one another.

‘However, my hope is that this Inquiry will, in fact, prove useful to us in such struggles for justice, human rights and freedom.’

For more, see Diana Langford’s blog and her political memoirs

Full opening statement from Diane Langford

‘Madeleine’

‘Madeleine’ was deceived into a relationship by ‘Vince Miller‘ (HN354) towards the end of his infiltration of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) while undercover from 1976 to 1979.

She had known him for three years by the time the relationship began. The relationship lasted for a short period of time over the summer and early autumn of 1979 until he suddenly disappeared.

Miller has admitted to a total of four sexual relationships during his deployment but insists they were all one-night stands. Despite him admitting that, the Inquiry had previously referred to his deployment as ‘unremarkable’ and granted him anonymity.

Madeleine not only describes a relationship lasting several months, as verified by her diaries, she also emphatically condemns Miller’s account of how they initiated their relationship.

‘the implications of some of the disclosures made by Vince Miller are also deeply offensive and revelatory. Describing the night we first got together he has stated that I “unexpectedly invited him to my bedroom” after we had both been drinking.

‘What exactly is he trying to say? That I was drunk and looking for a random man to have sex with? This is a deliberately untrue misrepresentation of the events of that evening.’

Since Madeleine has come forward to challenge such claims, Mitting has now agreed to release Miller’s real name to Madeleine. But she asserted:

‘HN354 shouldn’t have had his identity protected in the first place. HN354 lost the right to privacy due to his abusive acts and no legitimate reasons have been given for withholding his real name’.

POLITICAL ORIGINS

Madeleine described how her politics stemmed from her family background. She grew up in a large poor working-class family. Her father was a lifelong socialist and an active trade unionist, and both her parents were anti-racists.

Her father was part of the anti-fascist protests at Olympia in 1934 and at Cable Street in 1936 where he joined thousands of East Enders who fought to stop Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists marching into a largely Jewish area to intimidate and attack the community.

Madeleine’s dad went on to join the International Brigades fighting fascists in the Spanish Civil War. He was at Guernica when the Nazis destroyed the city. He came back to the UK and volunteered to join the British Army at the start of the Second World War to continue his fight against fascism.

Madeleine wonders whether her father, a double war hero, would also have been considered a ‘subversive’ and a ‘dangerous extremist’.

The spycops reports just released by the UCPI and branding political activists as ‘subversives’, ‘dangerous extremists’, and ‘troublemakers’ paint a picture of people unrecognisable to Madeleine’s experience as an activist. To find out that the words were written by Miller, someone she trusted and cared about, is doubly painful.

She described the bigger picture, with the stilll-unfolding spycops scandal needing ‘to be understood and framed as the logical expression of the actions of a state and security apparatus wedded to the interests of the ruling class.’

TEENAGE ACTIVISM

Madeleine moved on to her youthful activism with the Socialist Workers Party. She recalled organising branch and public meetings, and endless discussion and debate. The SWP was open and welcoming, and had nothing to hide. It was public, selling the weekly Socialist Worker newspaper and leafleting on the High Street, on housing estates, pickets and demonstrations.

Madeleine said that Miller embedded himself deeply into the life of the SWP branch for three years. He described the branch as a ‘social and inclusive bunch’ – a fact that which he took full advantage of. He became treasurer (which seems to have been a common role for spycops taking office in groups), and was also on the social committee and in the industrial group.

She has found out that:

‘17 spycops were embedded in our party and yet in truth, the biggest threat to democracy in the UK at this time was not from the left but from the reinvigoration of fascism which once more began to emerge from the shadows and reveal its ugly face.’

THE GROWING THREAT OF FASCISM IN THE 1970S

Madeleine spoke about the political and economic backdrop in the UK during this period, which would prove a fertile breeding ground for fascism. Fascists attacked the left with increasing violence, attacking paper sellers, and committing arson against bookshops. In May 1978 a young Asian man, Altab Ali, was stabbed to death in Whitechapel. So where was the monitoring of the far-right by our security services?

The area around The Bladebone pub at the top of Brick Lane in London’s East End was a well-known haunt of the National Front (NF). After repeated attacks on the diverse community, protection was organised and the SWP were part of it. Miller describes the area as ‘heavily policed’ but Madeleine says she only saw that happen when there was active left wing presence. The protection that the community received was from activists like herself, not the police. Miller depicted the confrontations as a mere territorial dispute between the Swp and NF.

Miller’s analysis in his witness statement, describing the SWP and the NF as similar is very telling. Madeleine mentioned that a police report on a speech given by fascist John Tyndall at the NF ‘Battle of Lewisham’ march, describing him speaking in his ‘usual forceful manner’, but his exhortations to violence went unrecorded by spycops.

Madeleine gave another more personal example of police bias towards the far right:

‘I recall one Saturday selling papers at Barking Station in the week following a violent sledgehammer attack on a young female SWP member by a fascist who broke her pelvis. Jeering NF members watched as a tall man who had previously approached us in a friendly manner to buy a paper came up behind me and snatched my papers calling me a ‘red bitch’ and telling me to go away. He then walked over to the police who had witnessed his act and proceeded to laugh and joke with them. When I asked the police if they had seen what he’d done they smirked and told me to go home’

THE BATTLE OF LEWISHAM

On 13 August 1977, 500 NF supporters planned to march from New Cross to Lewisham. There was a huge mobilisation against it. At an anti-racist rally beforehand, a crowd of thousands was addressed by those notorious subversives the Mayor of Lewisham and the Bishop of Southwark.

Police tired to guide the NF marchers but thousands of people blocked them, and there were extended disturbances on the streets. It quickly became known as the Battle of Lewisham.

Madeleine emphatically refutes a claim made by Miller – and repeated in the SDS Annual Report that year – that bricks were stockpiled at various locations by the SWP along the planned NF route and that members of the SWP carried weapons to the march in bags.

‘I was at the demo on the day and can state categorically that no one that I knew had weapons or would have done such a thing. It is an easy assertion for HN354 to make – where is his evidence? Where are the names? Or should this be seen as an attempt to blacken the name of the SWP?’

The police were in reality undermining the efforts to fight fascism and combat racism by the only forces mobilising to protect communities and defeat those evils.

Madeleine continued:

‘The Battle of Lewisham is now rightly considered a watershed moment like Cable Street in the fight against fascism in this country. Unable to control the streets, the NF went into decline and the event is now proudly remembered as the moment when the far right was again defeated. It is now commemorated by the local council and seen as a symbol of a community coming together to say yes to black and white unity and no to the forces of hate.’

A KNOCK AT THE DOOR

All that was over 40 years ago.

Early one Saturday morning at the end of February 2020 Madeleine received an unexpected visit. Like anyone door-stepped early on a Saturday morning by someone with a hand-delivered an official-looking letter, she felt a wave of anxiety and stress.

‘What was I about to be told? Was I about to be given some terrible and tragic news?’

It was a solicitor from the Undercover Policing Inquiry. Madeleine received the news that ‘Vince Miller’ was not a boyfriend and comrade.

She couldn’t think of the man she’d known as a devious abuser. She remembered him as someone who seemed emotionally vulnerable – as she was herself at the time, having just left an abusive partner. This targeting and use of trauma as a means of getting close to surveillance targets is emerging as one of the most common themes within SDS deployments.

‘I now know that the Vince Miller I thought I knew doesn’t actually exist. He is a wholly constructed fiction, a fake identity used as a tool for the purposes of political surveillance sanctioned by the state which infiltrated the most intimate parts of my body and my life…

‘The initial revelation of the true identity of a man with whom I had enjoyed an intimate sexual relationship and shared thoughts and feelings of a deeply private nature left me feeling nauseous and revolted. I felt degraded and abused and continue to feel a real sense of violation. I feel that both my trust and my values have been betrayed by an agent of the state.’

THE TRUTH IS SECRET

Madeleine was told that there were a substantial number of intelligence reports on her and her friends which she could only see if she signed a secrecy agreement not to even discuss the contents with anyone else apart from her lawyer.

‘The knowledge that the state holds secret files on me filled me with anxiety and a sense of paranoia. I wanted to know. What is in those files? What information is held? What details of a personal nature do they contain? And how personal and intrusive are those details?’

For Madeleine, not being able to share this with her husband was especially hard. It cuts off a source of support for both of them as they deal with the impact of the truth.

All the Inquiry’s core participants have been in this position, not being able to share it or discuss it with anyone – even others who’ve been given the same documents.

She condemned the cruelty of the police and Inquiry refusing to hand over documents until just before the Inquiry hearings will discuss them. There are women who have known their partner was a spycop for many years, and who are not due to receive the reports on them for many more years.

Later, at the end of Madeleine’s testimony, Mitting said that he would ask the Inquiry lawyers to see that her husband could see the documents. This is too little too late.

When another core participant had earlier asked whether she could share her disclosure with one other trusted person it was refused. Not being able to discuss these matters with anyone else other than your legal representative adds another layer of trauma and stress for those affected by the actions of the state.

‘The files that I have seen contain information of a very intrusive and personal nature. They reveal detailed physical descriptions of myself and my flatmates and information about my employment, my wages, my address, and the precise time, date, and registry office location of my first marriage which happened before Miller’s deployment but appears in a report written by him.’

CRADLE TO GRAVE SURVEILLANCE?

‘I have also discovered, to my horror, that MI5 has had files on me since 1970 when I was aged 16 more than 6 years before HN354s deployment. This is shameful. Most people would consider a 16-year-old little more than a child and the Inquiry now knows that other children have been spied on too. I was incredibly young when I first became politically active in left-wing groups. We know the SDS was formed in 1968 and that extensive spying was happening at that time. I therefore wonder if I was spied on as early as 13 when I was a schoolgirl?

‘Miller has even reported on the pregnancy of a woman in our branch and the name her baby was to be given. This went straight to MI5. Was this unborn baby given a security service’s file? Was my child given a registry file too? I find it outrageous and deeply offensive to realise that we have been treated as “targets” regarded as “subversive and dangerous extremists” and that relationships have been used as a tool for state surveillance via the invasion of our lives and bodies.’

WHAT’S CHANGED?

Madeleine questions how much has changed in police culture. Did Miller contribute to the prevailing culture within the Metropolitan Police at that time and since, as he later became a senior officer?

She asked for all reports on her to be removed from the archives and destroyed. The SDS has shown us that secret policing, by its unscrutinised nature, is liable to abuse citizens. There is no telling how the information on file may be used against its subjects in future.

We’ve already seen Miller downplay the harm he did to others, and he is far from alone among the spycops in this regard. Madeleine said spycops should be given no leeway for their behaviour because any allowances made to them because of their position or role in society will be exploited by them in order to cover themselves.

As well as today’s opening statement, Madeleine will giving evidence to the Inquiry on Monday 10th May.

Full opening statement from ‘Madeleine’.

 

Phillippa Kaufmann QC
representing Core Participants who had relationships with undercover officers

Kaufmann began by saying it is now clear that in the era being examined by the current UCPI hearings, 1973-82, numerous spycops had sexual relationships with women while using their undercover identities.

Some of these women were the targets of their spying operations, others came into contact with the spycops socially.

We were told in the past that these deceitful relationships only rarely occurred, but the evidence now being published provides a different picture.

It has now been confirmed that at least eight officers entered into such relationships over a five year period. Of these, ‘Jim Pickford‘ (HN300, 1974-76) and perhaps ‘Alan Bond‘ (HN67, 1981-86) had children with women they’d spied on.

The practices and culture established in this period led to what came later. It shows the long running sexism which infected the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS).

WHY WEREN’T WE TOLD?

It’s not just the SDS that’s at fault. The Inquiry only contacted Madeleine in February 2020, and got a lawyer late in the year, yet she was known about when the Inquiry first dealt with the spycop who abused her, ‘Vince Miller‘ (HN354, 1976-79), in 2017.

Why wasn’t she contacted earlier? Why were we assured a woman would be sent to tell her the awful truth, but instead a man went to her home?

Why wasn’t Madeleine put in touch with Police Spies Out of Lives – which represents and supports women deceived into relationships by spycops – as the Inquiry had promised?

In 2017, Miller gave the Inquiry the name of the other Socialist Workers Party member he had sex with. Why did the Inquiry also wait three years before starting to try to to find her?

The Inquiry accepted his version at face value, called his deployment ‘unremarkable’, and ruled that his real name would not be published because he deserved privacy.

The order to protect his name will now be revoked. Why has this changed, apart from the fact that Madeleine is now actively involved in the Inquiry? Why should that make the difference, given his acts remain unchanged? Why was he ever seen as deserving of anonymity?

NOT JUST ACTIVISTS

Miller also admitted to having sex with two other women (who he says he wasn’t sent to spy on) during his deployment. Why didn’t the Inquiry tell us about that straight away?

Those other two women were also deceived by a paid State character who was the opposite of what he claimed to be. This isn’t a private matter for the officer, it’s as relevant to the Inquiry and the public as a relationship with an activist. We have no idea how many other spycops the Inquiry knows about who have also already admitted they had sex with non-activist women while undercover.

The Inquiry must already be well aware that spycops are liable to lie about this subject. Jim Boyling told the Met that Rosa, with whom he ended up having two children, had nothing to do with his target group. It was a bare-faced complete lie. Any instance of a spycop using their identity to deceive women into sex is an abuse of power and a violation of the women. It always needs investigating.

The Counsel to the Inquiry told us yesterday they won’t investigate every relationship, which is one thing. But why isn’t it telling us about ones they know about, and whether it is trying to find the women involved?

Trust is a major issue for these deceived women. The lack of transparency from the inquiry generates gratuitous anxiety, distrust and fear.

Any spycop who deceives someone into sex forfeits their right to anonymity. It was not necessary to their deployment. This practice was gratuitous and a grossly intrusive invasion of private citizens’ lives.

HN21 also admitted, in 2019, that he had sex with 2 women while undercover, yet still has anonymity for both his real and cover names. Why?

SPYCOPS SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS 1973-82

In the era 1973-82, which the Inquiry is currently examining, eight officers are known to have deceived women into sexual relationships.

HN302 (cover name restricted, 1970s), whose deployment began in 1973,admits one sexual encounter with a woman from another group rather than the one he spied on. He said ‘circumstances presented themselves’. He says it wasn’t necessary to his deployment and he didn’t think it important.

Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76) had relationships with ‘Mary‘ and her flatmate in 1975, and two women in Big Flame. He told his cover officer that this had caused his cover to be compromised, which implies that he told these women different stories and they realised.

Big Flame found the birth and death certificates of the child whose identity he’d stolen. Mary and Richard Chessum’s statement to the Inquiry on Friday will give more detail.

‘Jim Pickford‘ (HN300, 1974-76) fell in love and wanted to tell the woman the truth about himself. Another officer helped him tell the SDS managers. His wife found out and their marriage ended. He married the new woman and had a child with her, though that marriage didn’t last and she can’t be found today.

HN21 (cover name restricted, late 1970s-early 1980s) admits to occasional sexual encounters with women he knew from ‘an evening class’ (we don’t know what kind of class that was).

‘Barry Tompkins‘ (HN106, 1979-83) is mentioned in a security liaison note as having a relationship, though he denies it. The Inquiry hasn’t called him to give evidence, so we may never find out more about this.

‘Vince Miller‘ (HN354, 1976-79) deceived Madeleine and three other women into relationships. He’s blamed it on having been drunk every time. He lied to the Inquiry about it. He is adamant that his sexual relationship with Madeleine was a one-off event, but she is very clear that they had an ongoing relationship, for months. She still has a diary showing the dates they spent together, but it is notable that he never stayed overnight.

‘Phil Cooper‘ (HN155, 1979-83) told the Inquiry’s risk assessors he had several relationships, but now denies having said it. The officials he spoke to will be giving evidence.

‘Alan Bond‘ (HN67, 1981-86) lived with Vince Miller before Miller was deployed. He may have had a child while undercover. Despite this, he was promoted, and went on to be second in command of the SDS in the 1990s. This means that he oversaw many of the officers who we know also deceived women into relationships, including John Dines, Matt Rayner, Bobby Lewis and Andy Coles. His attitude to this issue must be explored.

‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-82) was alleged to have had an affair with a fellow officer, in a letter received by his managers that is thought to be from his wife. His managers found allegations ‘were not totally accurate’. Does that mean the affair was with someone he was spying on, rather than a colleague? None of this is actually mentioned in HN126’s witness statement.

We now know that during those five years, a third of the officers in the unit engaged in sexual relationships while undercover. There may be more. But the Inquiry is only calling one, Vince Miller, for evidence.

The issue of sexual relationships is one of the main reasons for the inquiry’s existence and must be prioritised. At the November hearings, we were provided with extracts from each individual officer’s witness statement (with their cipher number attached).

However, it appears that this time, the Inquiry intends to only supply a short ‘gist’, blending the officers’ accounts together, rather than directly quoting any extracts, or identifying which officers are addressing which points. This makes it impossible to ask any meaningful questions of these officers, and makes the gist almost worthless. There’s no good reason why the inquiry cannot provide individually identifiable extracts like last time.

When these spycops give evidence in secret ‘closed hearings’ we will be demanding that as much of this evidence as possible is published afterwards and only the minimum details necessary are kept confidential..

NOT JUST ACTIVISTS

Sexism was endemic in the SDS – reports rate women’s attractiveness and comment on the size of breasts. No account was taken of the impact of the officers’ behaviour on their wives and families. When Paul Gray’s wife alleged an affair the managers’ only concern was protecting the unit’s secrecy; there was no concern for her welfare.

‘Sandra Davies’ (HN348, 1971-73) the first female SDS officer, had her welfare totally disregarded. She was just a tool, used to spy on women’s groups that were closed to men.

Spycops gave no thought to the dignity of women, to their right to choose who they had sex with, the risk of harm if they found out the truth, or what would happen if they got pregnant. Most officers involved readily admit there was no necessity for these relationships.

Numerous women’s organisations were spied on, despite posing no threat at all to public order. It was just a deep hostility to women’s equality.

With at least a third of officers having sex with women while undercover, management cannot claim ignorance. By 1971 they knew deployments were going to be long, about four years. It was clear spycops were becoming important activists and socialising. Deploying married officers clearly didn’t prevent them deceiving women into sexual relationships.

‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1976-79) reports officers making joke references to sexual relationships in front of managers, who were ‘deliberately blind’. Jim Pickford and Rick Gibson had reputations for chasing women.

Why would Coates be lying? We’ve confirmed the officers Coates names did in fact have such relationships. His account is clearly credible. If he is telling the truth, the other ‘amnesiac’ officers must be lying.

QUESTIONS FOR BOSSES

It appears Rick Gibson may have deliberately targeted women in order to reach an influential position in the group he was infiltrating. This is hugely significant for the management.

The SDS’ 1974 annual report say security is top priority, and the frequent meetings of all spycops keep close tabs on what officers are doing and feeling. Later reports reiterate that there is constant contact with supervisors and very close monitoring of every spycop.

There’s no question that supervisors would have listened carefully to what spycops reported. Officers must be hiding the truth from the Inquiry. We can’t take their word at face value.

We know Pickford and Gibson’s relationships were disclosed to managers, and that they suspected Tompkins of having one. They absolutely knew that this went on, and they did nothing. The message to the spycops was therefore that there’s nothing wrong with the practice Doing nothing to safeguard the women is the result of the police’s institutional sexism.

From the early days, the SDS had a culture of spycops using the bodies of women as a perk of their jobs. A state institution that exists to serve the public they’re abusive. It is deeply misogynistic. And it appears to have become part of the armoury of tactics.

If Alan Bond fathered a child while undercover, this has major implications. But he won’t give evidence to the Inquiry due to ill health. The Inquiry has known of his condition for three years yet has not taken a statement from him.

After all this misogyny in the 1970s, a 1981 Special Branch memo refers to an early spycop named Miss Pelling, who infiltrated the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1921. She remembers colleagues as gentlemen who never took liberties.

The memo says:

‘This, naturally, is as true of the present Branch’s treatment of the fairer sex as it was in Miss Pelling’s day’

WE NEED EACH OTHER’S KNOWLEDGE

The Inquiry needs the help of those who were spied on. They must not just be contacted but given full disclosure of documents relevant to them with plenty of time to read and respond so they can expose the lies.

‘Alison‘, deceived into a relationship by spycop Mark Jenner in the 1990s, has highlighted lies in the reports about her. Jenner’s reports don’t identify her even when she was at events. He appears to have deliberately written both himself and her out of reports. But Alison can shed light and show the lies, and the real impact Jenner had.

There are so many Alisons who could do the same for this phase of the Inquiry but who won’t get a chance to, because the Inquiry is keeping the facts secret.

Spycop Mark Kennedy told the Home Affairs Select Committee that the ‘two’ women he had sex with (real number: at least 11) ‘provided no intelligence at all’.

Yet at this moment, one of those women, Kate Wilson, is at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal abundantly proving she was a main target of Kennedy’s deployment.

Spycops lie, the women they abused can prove this and help to uncover the truth.

The new extra delays to the Inquiry are simply cruel to the people waiting for answers. Women deceived into relationships by spycops should be given their files, and any documents that mention them immediately. The Met have said they’re happy to do this, if the Inquiry decrees it.

The Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting, responded that delays are inevitable, and that ‘perhaps the request cannot be fulfilled’. He gave no reason at all as to why this might be.

Full opening statement from Category H Core Participants (Individuals in Relationships with Undercover Officers)

Matthew Ryder QC
representing three anti-apartheid activists (Ernest Rodker, Professor Jonathan Rosenhead & Lord Peter Hain), & Celia Stubbs

Finally today, an opening statement from Matthew Ryder QC. He represents anti-apartheid activists Ernest Rodker, Professor Jonathan Rosenhead and Lord Peter Hain, as well as Blair Peach’s partner Celia Stubbs.

From the 1960s there was a large, global, anti-apartheid movement. They were right, and their opponents were wrong. The British government appeased and supported a regime it should have opposed.

Ryder stated that It should be a matter of deep regret that spycops targeted anti-apartheid campaigners. The real threat to democracy was the apartheid regime itself.

The Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) was formed in 1959 and was not affiliated with any political party. Peter Hain was part of the ‘Stop The Seventy Tour’ (STST) which campaigned against tours by South African sporting teams.

The Dambusters Mobilising Committee opposed the sanctions-busting Cahora Bassa Dam project in Mozambique, which would directly benefit South Africa’s apartheid system. DMC was also targeted by spycops.

The spycops were partisan; they spied on anti-apartheid groups well into the 1970s, long after the Stop The Seventy Tour, while ignoring the growth of far-right groups. The right-wing intimidation and violence suffered by anti-apartheid groups were seen as regrettable but understandable by the spycops. Those promoting racial equality were seen as the problem, rather than the racists.

The bias was so pronounced that the first spycops infiltration of the far-right National Front came about by accident when an officer infiltrating the Workers Revolutionary Party was asked by his unwitting targets to spy on the NF!

Spycops suffered from ‘mission creep’, spying on not just the ‘ultra-left’ but anyone on the broad left, irrespective of whether they had anything to do with disorder. Spying on any group could be excused as a stepping-stone to a group that was more of interest to the police. This was apparent in the deployment of Doug Edwards (HN326, 1968-70)who infiltrated the (law-abiding) Independent Labour Party.

MURDER IN LONDON

The South African State’s security service was active in London in the 1970s, targeting the African National Congress and Anti-Apartheid Movement. Peter Hain had a letter bomb delivered in 1972, opened by his 14-year-old sister. The incident remains uninvestigated.

Bombings and murders were committed against anti-apartheid campaigners. Military materials were used. Few charges were ever brought. Some of these attacks were later admitted to by South African agents.

The spycops seem to have been wholly uninterested in pro-apartheid violence. Instead, they obsessively collected information on a wide range of left-wing groups who opposed it.

The police lawyers told us yesterday that we needed historical context to understand the spycops. Well, here it is.

Yesterday the police told the Inquiry said they would have behaved identically if a racist campaign had opposed a black sports team touring England. But supporting racism is different from opposing it. Equivocation between the motivations and actions of the left and far-right was apparent in the witness testimony of Madeleine earlier.

This sounds a lot like the police 23 years ago, telling the Macpherson Inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence that it had a colour-blind approach. It is as if they have learned nothing.

It is also a lie, given that there were active violent racist campaigners at the time and the undercovers left them alone. That now, today, they cannot see why this is wrong is highly regrettable.

The SDS officers recorded extraordinary and gross levels of detail. The birth of Ernest Rodker’s son and a note saying that Ernest himself had been admitted to hospital were reported and copied to MI5, as were reports about who was at Peter Hain’s family home including his younger siblings.

This is what a totalitarian regime would do with dissidents. Parents are now having the chilling experience of reading secret police reports on their children.

A 1975 report on Ernest Rodker names elected councillors and their choice of reading material. It was also copied to MI5. The Labour Party conference was reported on by spycops. Peter Hain asks if the Liberal and Conservative conferences were ever spied upon?

If, as is plausible, this information was passed by MI5 to their South African counterparts, it is the very opposite of protecting the public.

The Stop The Seventy Tour was not ‘subversive’. SDS officer Mike Ferguson (HN135) had a key organisational role in the group. He then went on to hold senior positions in the spycops unit, recruiting and advising new officers. It seems his work was perversely viewed as a good example.

WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS

The excuses for targeting anti-apartheid groups need debunking. Contrary to the police version, violence was never an aim or method. Contemporaneous documentation proves it. It was not secret or revolutionary, it simply opposed the cruel and racist South African regime. Mike Ferguson’s reports do not suggest any violence at any time. Officer Dick Epps says at one demo people were told to attack police. This was emphatically denied as a lie by all of the activists involved.

The arrest and prosecution of spycops officer ‘Michael Scott‘ (HN298, 1971-76) at the ‘Star and Garter demonstration’ is a powerful example of how spycops deliberately abused their power and eroded the judicial process.

On 12 May 1972, in the car park of the Star and Garter Pub in Richmond, activists blockaded a coach of rugby players on their way to the airport, about to embark on a tour of South Africa. One of those arrested and convicted was undercover officer ‘Mike Scott’.

As mentioned in yesterday’s hearing, Scott was using the stolen identity of a man who was still alive. Scott spied on privileged legal conversations between lawyers and defendants. He did not correct the police ‘s claim in court that the protesters were on the road, when in fact they were on private land: the car park. Senior officers endorsed his going to court to lie about this.

This is an early example of spycops creating miscarriages of justice.

Home Office guidance in 1969 is unequivocal – undercover agents should avoid misleading courts at all costs. The spycops unit simply ignored this .The SDS tradecraft manual of the 1990s specifically told spycops that they could disregard the usual rules about not lying to courts.

If we conservatively estimate that there was one wrongful conviction per officer per year of service, it means the spycops caused about 600 wrongful convictions. It is a huge scandal that is going relatively unremarked upon.

Another example was the prosecution of ‘Desmond/Barry Loader‘ (HN13, 1975-78) in 1977. He and others were tried for public order offences. Barry’s charges were dismissed while the others were convicted of public order offences. He was arrested again shortly after this, leading to a conviction. However he was only given a small fine and ‘bound over’. Neither the defence nor prosecution was told that he was an undercover officer. It appears that the only disclosure was to ‘a court official’ (name redacted so we have no idea who this was) who fixed the results.

The 2015 Ellison Review of Potential Miscarriages of Justice said that spycops must have withheld evidence from court, including evidence that would have exonerated the defendants.

In 1974, infiltrating the Troops Out Movement, spycop Mike Scott was accused of being a spycop officer by Gerry Lawless. Some spycops chose to accuse genuine activists of being spies to distract attention from themselves. Scott, however,chose a different tactic – of punching Lawless in the face, so hard that he broke a finger. These officers considered themselves to be above the law in many ways.

Mike Ferguson, who infiltrated the Anti-Apartheid Movement, is – uniquely – known by his real name, but his cover name is restricted. This means those he spied on cannot know he was a spy and cannot come forward. This has led to another Mike, a real campaigner called Mike Craft, being accused of being the spycop. Craft’s comrades here emphasise that he was wholly innocent. This is also a reminder to all activists to never accuse comrades of being a police spy without any hard evidence.

Even by the standards of the day, the SDS’ targeting anti-apartheid campaigners was an unjustified, disproportionate, and erroneous political choice. The Inquiry should confirm that as a matter of historical record.

CELIA STUBBS

Ryder then moved on to talk about Celia Stubbs. She is a Core Participant because of her relationship with Blair Peach and led the campaign about his murder by police in 1979. Stubbs recently spoke movingly about it, and spycops, to Channel 4 News.

Peach and Stubbs were both members of the SWP as well as active anti-racist campaigners. Stubbs has campaigned all her life, always to strengthen civil society, and was targeted by the undercovers as a result. Both Stubbs and Peach had spycops files kept on them, opened in 1974 and 1978, long before Peach was killed. We have not seen any of the documents involved that pre-date Peach’s death.

On 23 April 1979, there was a plan to march and sit down at Southall Town Hall protesting at a National Front meeting. Special Patrol Group (SPG) officers piled out of a van and one struck Blair killing him.

All six SPG officers refused to cooperate with the investigation that followed.

Commander Cass’ report at the time confirmed a police officer had killed Peach and identified Inspector Alan Murray as the person most likely to be responsible. Illegal weapons and Nazi regalia were found in the lockers and homes of the SPG officers. Cass’ report was not published until more than 30 years later.

No officer was ever brought to justice for due to a major police cover-up. Officers refused to cooperate with investigations.

The Met told their lawyers to give a knowingly false version of events at Blair Peach’s inquest. They will have seen the Cass report that contained the truth, but still, they lied. The corruption extended beyond the police.

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.

An SDS annual report to the Home Office cites the death of Peach and the ensuing campaign for justice as a key focus for the unit. This is not about subversion or disorder. The Home Office’s response was to renew the SDS’s funding.

The SDS reported on the campaign for promoting actions like writing to MPs and local newspapers, and phoning in to radio shows. Again, this is not public disorder or subversive activity. A number of spycops even attended Blair’s funeral, while police evidence gatherers photographed the attendees for later identification by the SDS.

Combined with the cover-up, it is clear that the infiltration of the Blair Peach campaign was about preventing guilty police officers from being held to account.

THE SPYING HASN’T STOPPED

The spycops units have continued to take an active interest in the Blair Peach campaign ever since. A commemorative event was organised for the twentieth anniversary of his death in 1999, and this was targeted by spycops, with the excuse that such campaigns were ‘anti-police’. Justice campaigns were routinely portrayed as some sort of risk to public order even when they plainly weren’t.

Campaigners for police accountability in cases where the police played a part were a major target for the SDS, and this continued for decades. Police admit undercover officers spied on at least 18 family and justice campaigns, and the true total is likely to be much higher. On our website we name thirteen examples that we are sure of and summarise these cases of police incompetence, arrogance and murder.

Police lawyers told the Inquiry last November that the SDS and NPIOU never directly targeted justice campaigns. But the documents we see in these hearings prove that is untrue. Officers were tasked to spy on the Peach campaign.

Why would the SDS highlight the Peach campaign to the Home Office if it were not a direct focus? Why are some reports only about the Peach campaign? Why were so many other campaigns targeted later? The denials of the police lawyers are simply not plausible. Their statement should be publicly corrected and withdrawn.

The 1979 SDS annual report describes the Peach campaign as a main focus, yet the Inquiry has disclosed suspiciously few documents relating to this.

It is striking that there is so little evidence relating to either the 1979 Southall demonstration where Peach was killed, not the 1974 Red Lion Square anti-racist protest at which Kevin Gately was killed. There is a real concern that reports may have been destroyed by the police in order to cover up the facts around both fatalities.

Earlier in this Inquiry, there were references made to a report about the Southall demonstration at which Peach was killed, This report – key evidence about an extremely important and relevant historical event – has still not been disclosed to us, and we are left wondering if it has been deliberately withheld from the Inquiry, or just not shared with us?

For Stubbs, this conspicuous lack of evidence is just one more obstruction to truth and accountability.

TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH

Celia Stubbs was also involved in the Hackney Community Defence Campaign and Colin Roach Centre, both of which were targeted by spycops. She is extremely disturbed about the fact that her lawyers were put under police surveillance, and Special Branch files were opened on them.

This Inquiry has had police material for years, yet only passes it to witnesses shortly before the hearings, giving us little time to properly analyse and respond. The extremely limited opportunity for victims to question witnesses limits the Inquiry’s ability to get the truth.

Celia Stubbs and Blair Peach sought to bring people together and make a fairer world. They were spied upon. She wants answers and accountability. She does not have to prove her innocence; the state must show why it spied on her.

There is nothing in the police documents disclosed by the UCPI that justifies spying on Celia Stubbs.

Bringing the hearing to an end, Mitting reminded us that tomorrow is the 42nd anniversary of Blair Peach’s death. The Inquiry will resume at 10 am with Mitting speaking briefly about Blair Peach and then there will be a minute’s silence.

Full opening statement from Ernest Rodker, Professor Jonathan Rosenhead and Lord Peter Hain
Full opening statement from Celia Stubbs

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Tranche 1, Phase 2, Day 1

21 April 2021

Opening Statements from:

David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry
Peter Skelton QC, representing the Metropolitan Police Commissioner
Oliver Sanders QC, representing 114 spycops

On 21 April 2021, Tranche 1, Phase 2 of the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) got underway. It will examine the ac tions of the Special Demonstration Squad, 1973-82.

David Barr QC

Counsel to the Inquiry

The first session was taken up by an opening statement by David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry.

The Counsel to the Inquiry questions witnesses (this stops it being like a trial with different lawyers pressurising witnesses from different directions).

In the previous set of hearings last November, Barr’s questioning of undercover officers became notorious for its lack of intent.

As with the opening day of the November hearings, some previously unmentioned groups were named as having been spied upon.

Clear knowledge of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS)’s operations – not only within the Metropolitan Police but at the highest level of the Home Office – was also discussed and confirmed.

A RECAP OF THE EARLY YEARS

However, Barr began with a brief review of what had been presented in terms of the SDS’ first three years (1968-1971), as covered in November’s ‘Phase 1’ hearings.

The SDS was set up in 1968, initially to counter anti-Vietnam War protests.

Barr said that experienced Special Branch officers were recruited for the new unit, and many of the first deployments only lasted a few weeks or months. . Officers began to inveigle themselves into the social lives of activists and, from 1971 onward, deployments tended to last around four years.

Despite the next anti-Vietnam War demo passing without clashes, the police and Home Office jointly decided to keep the new unit, even though the Home Office was anxious to ensure that the public didn’t find out about this deceitful and anti-democratic form of policing.

It was confirmed in November’s inquiry hearings that the SDS enjoyed a close relationship with MI5 – early spycops’ seemingly inconsequential reports were routinely copied to MI5. It seems clear that the Met and Home Office agreed that SDS officers would assist MI5 with ‘counter-subversion’. Officers were increasingly deployed for longer, and into more diverse groups. They targeted some campaigns now considered mainstream, such as anti-racism, and women’s rights.

SDS officers infiltrated groups, not based on any imminent threat, but in case there were any ongoing matters of interest to MI5, with extraordinarily little criminality reported. Despite this, ex-spycops think their intelligence was important and useful, and prevented public disorder.

Highly personal details were recorded of group members. Officers were given a significant degree of latitude, sometimes including the choice of which groups to infiltrate. They reported on events and people on the rather vague premise that they might be of use at some point in the future.

WHAT THE NEW HEARINGS WILL EXAMINE

Phase 2 of the Undercover Policing Inquiry is examining evidence from 29 SDS officers spanning the 10 years between 1973 and 1982. Of these, seven officers have both their real and cover names withheld, and so the Inquiry is limited as to what evidence about them can be made public. ‘Gists’ of their evidence – which, if the last hearings are anything to go by, will consist of extremely brief and non-illuminating summaries – will be published.

Barr said that all but one of the other 22 SDS officers from the era in question have their real names withheld. Officer Richard Clark (HN297), is the only one whose name will be given.

Of the 22 ‘open officers’ whose cover names are public, four are dead, seven provided witness statements and three did not provide any statements. The other eight will give oral evidence in these hearings and documents relating to their deployments will also be published.

During this period, deployments usually lasted for 3-5 years, unless the officer asked to leave, or his identity was compromised. (Unlike the first few years, there were no women spycops throughout this time).

Barr said that the hearings for this period will feature the earliest confirmed cases of spycops deceiving women they spied on into sexual relationships, and the theft of dead children’s identities, and potential miscarriages of justice.

SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS

Undercover officers’ sexual relationships had life-altering impacts on the women they targeted. Barr acknowledges that the Met have apologised for this. This has not stopped them contesting the legal cases brought by such women, many of which have dragged on for years.

The era we will be looking at – 1973-82 – includes the first definite cases of officers deceiving women into relationships. At least five officers this during this period, with at least 12 women, though this is likely to be a dramatic underestimate of the true number.

Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76) is now deceased. He infiltrated Big Flame and the Troops Out Movement, becoming active and influential in both groups. He was sexually intimate with ‘Mary’ and her flatmate, and at least two other women.

Big Flame’s members became suspicious of Clark and discovered that he was using a fake identity, at which point his deployment was ended. It is mentioned in the 1976 SDS report, and Big Flame is labelled ‘sinister’ even though there is no suggestion of criminality.

‘Jim Pickford‘ (HN300, 1974-76) infiltrated anarchists. His second wife, to whom he was married at the time, says he met a woman while undercover and went on to marry her. They had a child, but the relationship did not last long.

‘Vince Miller‘ (HN354, 1976-79) infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). He said he had four one-night stands, and did not tell his managers about them. However, one of the women he had a relationship with, ‘Madeleine’, says it lasted for a couple of months. She also says that she had split up with her husband the year before, and was devastated by that, and describes herself as:

‘very shy and reserved. I was also quite vulnerable as a result of my marriage ending…. I now think Vince probably saw me as easy pickings’

‘Vince Miller’ disappeared soon after, leaving Madeleine distraught. He has now seen her witness statement but is sticking to his story. Madeleine will be make an opening statement on Thursday 22nd April and give evidence on Monday 10th May.

‘Barry Tompkins‘ (HN106, 1979-83) denies any sexual relationships, but an MI5 document says his managers thought differently, with activists being heard to refer to ‘Barry’s girlfriend’. He will not give evidence due to ill health.

‘Phil Cooper‘ (HN155, 1979-83) also denies sexual interactions, but the risk assessors said he told them he had a few. The issue will be examined by the Inquiry.

Two of the fully anonymous officers, HN302 (who served in the 1970s) and HN21 (who served in the late 1970s and early 1980s), have stated that they had sexual contact with women whilst in their cover identities. HN302 described a ‘brief encounter with one woman’ when, he says, ‘circumstances presented themselves’. He said it was not important to deployment. HN21 describes sexual encounters with two women from an evening class he attended, who were not part of the group he infiltrated. Both officers will give oral evidence in secret hearings of the Inquiry.

The Inquiry will not differentiate between brief and long relationships in a way that dismisses the former, they are all significant. That said, the Inquiry says it does not need to document every instance of sexual contact between spycops and civilians. Some women may not want to participate, and Barr says that on some occasions the need to ‘protect’ a former officer outweighs the need to contact any women he deceived.

The Inquiry has found no documents from this era (1973-82) that instruct spycops officers either to have nor to abstain from sexual relationships. But there was a mention from ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1976-79) that he overheard comments and jokes about relationships from officers, in the presence of spycops managers.

During this time, all of the spycops (and their managers) were male. The SDS went 10 years without any women officers , which may well have had an influence of the unit’s culture. The vast majority of these men were married, and marital status was noted at the time of recruitment, It was perhaps thought that this would help to deter the undercovers from getting too close to their targets, but clearly it didn’t prevent them going so far as to initiate sexual relationships.

STOLEN IDENTITIES

Identity theft (the theft of dead children’s identities in particular) as practiced by many of the spycops in creating their ‘legends’ or cover stories was one of the reasons why this Inquiry was instigated.

Barr seems to suggest that officers started doing this in 1971 and by 1974 all officers were using the technique. No documents exist about this though, except for the Tradecraft Manual which was written in the 1990s.

The 2015 Operation Herne investigation reported that it was:

‘clear that the use of this tactic was sanctioned at the highest level, was deemed as operationally necessary and was one that newly appointed undercover officers were trained in.‘

To add insult to injury, a few spycops visited the place where the dead child whose identity they stole had lived. ‘Michael James’ says he was instructed to do so and was assisted by the local Special Branch to ensure the child’s family had moved away.

A new revelation was that one officer used the identity of a living person, Michael Scott, and committed a criminal offence in his name.

MISCARRIAGES OF JUSTICE

One of the main themes in these hearings is the question of miscarriages of justice. Did undercover officers function as agents provocateurs, withhold evidence, mislead or deceive courts?

In a criminal trial, the defence has a right to see all evidence that may be helpful to them. The police have a duty to ensure that any involvement of undercover officers in events which lead to criminal prosecutions is properly disclosed. There is a real risk of a miscarriage of justice occurring otherwise.

We will be hearing evidence from four people convicted after their involvement in an anti-apartheid demo in the early 1970s.

The Inquiry has anticipated that there will be evidence of miscarriages of justice. A panel has now been set up to examine any suspected miscarriages, with the possibility of then referring these cases on to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. The problem is that this panel is comprised solely of senior members of the police and the Crown Prosecution Service – the kind of people who have a history of deliberately creating these kinds of wrongful convictions in the first place.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The events of 1973-82 are the context for the hearings. Barr took us through a whirlwind tour of the major political events of the period.

The Vietnam War ended in 1975, with no more demonstrations against it involving significant violence after 1968. But the Cold War left a lot of the same tensions. The British Government feared the Soviet bloc sought to foment unrest in the UK, so Special Branch assisted MI5 in ‘counter subversion’. One officer, Barry Tompkins, reported an approach from the KGB Soviet secret police, but this was unique.

Two SDS officers specifically infiltrated Maoist groups. Diane Langford, who was in some of these groups, will make an opening statement on the morning of Thursday 22nd April , and give evidence on the afternoon of Monday 26th.

Special Branch’s interest in groups campaigning about Irish nationalist and civil rights issues is a consistent theme of this era. SDS officer ‘Alex Sloan‘ (HN347, 1971) targeted the Irish National Liberation Solidarity Front, and we will hear evidence from two members.

FASCISTS VS ANTI-FASCISTS

Racism was also a huge issue in the era, and reporting on anti-racist groups was very common indeed. The far-right was on the rise in England, opposed by the left. There were violent confrontations. SDS officers were involved in the fascist protest and anti-fascist counter-protest, known as the ‘Battle of Lewisham’, in August 1977.

Both a BBC film and an Associated Press report were shown from the ‘Battle of Lewisham’. It should be noted that the SDS’ annual report for that year suggested that this was a triumph of SDS intelligence, minimising the clashes and violence.

Even just this film clip, and the fact that the demo is now known as the ‘Battle of Lewisham’, makes this claim in the annual report laughable and casts doubt about the accuracy of the information in these annual reports. It was mentioned that one SDS officer complained that the intelligence supplied in the run-up was ignored by police planning for the demo.

On 23 April 1979, the National Front held a meeting in Southall Town Hall, West London. In the counter-demo Blair Peach – anti-fascist and Socialist Workers Party (SWP) member – was killed by a Metropolitan Police officer belonging to the notoriously violent Special Patrol Group.

The ensuing campaign for justice for Peach was infiltrated by SDS officers. Celia Stubbs, Peach’s partner, will be giving evidence to the Inquiry next week.

In the early 1980s, East London Workers Against Racism – a subgroup of the Revolutionary Communist Party, which supported victims of racist attacks and patrolled areas with racial violence – was infiltrated by SDS officer ‘Barry Tompkins’ (previously, we had been told by the Inquiry that Barry Tompkins infiltrated just one group – the Spartacist League of Britain). This meant that Tompkins reported on the victims of racist violence, apparently explaining this away as accidental or incidental.

Spying on victims of racist violence and the groups supporting them is a pattern that endured and is something we will see when we look at the 1990s and the spying on the family of Stephen Lawrence, Ricky Reel, and many others.

INDUSTRIAL UNREST

Barr said that the late 1970s saw high inflation, mass unemployment and industrial unrest. The Workers Revolutionary Party, International Socialists and Shrewsbury pickets campaign were all spied on.

Trade unions, and references to union membership, are common among SDS officers reporting. ‘David Hughes’ (HN299/342, 1971-76) and ‘Barry Tompkins’ (HN106, 1979-83) both reported being members of the Transport & General Workers Union
This is interpreted as being ‘incidental’, rather than a deliberate targeting of unions, which seems a rather dubious distinction.

The two-year Grunwick Strike of the 1970s was a cause celebre which was extensively reported on by spycops. The Inquiry also showed a news report of a picket and the bussing in of scab labour.

RECRUITMENT

All SDS officers in the era 1973-82 were recruited from Special Branch and all but one was of Detective Constable rank. Two said they had done more than usual ‘plain clothes in meetings’ infiltrations before joining the SDS. There was no formal recruitment process, and no formal training for the job.

By the mid-1970s, it seems to have become established practice that new recruits would spend some time – up to 6 months – in the SDS back office before being deployed themselves. Few record receiving any advice about getting involved in criminal activity (or legal cases) or sexual relationships.

WHO WAS TARGETED

Barr quoted the 1975 SDS annual report, and the claim that officers:

‘concentrated on gathering intelligence about the activities of those extremists whose political views are to the left of the Communist Party of Great Britain’

It is unclear how you could be to the left of the Communist Party of Great Britain – we can only surmise that the police perhaps meant groups who were likely to cause them more trouble than the CPGB? However, given that they also targeted members of groups such as the Liberal Party’s youth wing, this claim is undermined no matter how you interpret it.

The SDS specifically said that schisms among the left were something the police could take advantage of; they did not want these groups to sink their differences and unite, and potentially cause trouble for the State. Having a large number of small separate groups to surveill and spy on meant more work for undercover officers. The SDS annual report of 1975 says though the political disorder is on the wane, they should keep spying on people just in case anything changes.

SDS annual reports always included a list of groups targeted during the year. Apart from one officer spying on the far right (and only because the left-wing group he had been sent to infiltrate then sent him to do this), all the groups are on what can broadly be seen as the left: communist, socialist, anti-nuclear, Irish liberation, women’s rights.

The 1976 SDS annual report said anarchists are a continuing nuisance on demonstrations, and the surveillance is justified by rumours of an Angry Brigade type group emerging.

In 1982, the annual report said SDS information had led to the anarchist Freedom Collective being raided. They say their uniformed colleagues found ‘pamphlets dealing with the manufacture of explosive devices, home-made guns, assassination techniques and booby-traps,’ yet mysteriously there were no arrests.

The 1982 SDS report also mentions the SWP organising a picket of the Tory party conference. Sussex police praised the SDS’s intelligence, although it is unclear what extra preparation the police would need to manage a picket – surely something that they would be able to comfortably manage?

USING THE DEATH OF BLAIR PEACH

A particularly offensive SDS interpretation of political activist’s motivations is made regarding the Blair Peach justice campaign which states:

‘The focal point of much of the extremist activity in 1979 was the General Election held in May with the extreme Left contriving to take advantage of the National Front’s election campaign to provoke hostile confrontation whenever possible. The culmination of the virulent anti-fascist demonstrations was the death of the Anti-Nazi League supporter Blair Peach and the subsequent campaign against the Police.’

This biased interpretation – as unable to conceive of integrity and genuinely held left-wing and anti-fascist beliefs as it is incapable of admitting the police can be in the wrong – is repeated later in the same report:

‘The SWP contrived to make use of all public meetings arranged by the NF to arouse anti-fascist feeling; the death of Blair Peach, an active supporter of the Anti-Nazi League, which was a consequence of a violent anti-fascist demonstration in Southall, provided the extreme left wing with an opportunity to mount a sustained campaign to discredit and criticise the Police.’

Barr at least noted that the reports are defensive about the Blair Peach campaign, seeing it as anti-police.

Notably, the now-published Metropolitan Police report from 1979, though it concedes Peach was killed by a police officer, places the blame for the situation on the protesters.

ONLY INFILTRATING THE RIGHT BECAUSE THE LEFT SAID TO

The officers deployed 1973-82 only infiltrated left-wing organisations. The main group targeted in this era was the International Socialists/ Socialist Workers Party.

One officer, ‘Peter Collins‘ (HN303, 1973-77), infiltrated the Workers Revolutionary Party. Not knowing he was a spy, they asked him, in turn, to infiltrate the National Front.

This infiltration of the National Front is bragged about in the 1974 SDS report, showing a total lack of awareness that the fact that their only foray into infiltrating the far-right was instigated by a left-wing group and done to maintain cover.

It mentions that other areas of Special Branch were spying on right-wing groups.

WHO ELSE APART FROM THE POLICE?

Barr stated that although MI5 is not a subject of investigation for this Inquiry, its relationship with the spycops is. Barr also praised MI5 for helping provide a great quantity of documents and providing a witness statement.

Just nine activists targeted by spycops during this decade will give oral evidence, and three more have given statements. This means that we’ll hear from fewer than one activist per year of these operations.

Barr added that we will see statements from the families of two former undercover officers.

Further, written evidence will be heard from two risk assessors who interviewed ex spycops ahead of the Inquiry, as there’s a dispute of fact about the testimony of officer ‘Phil Cooper’ (HN155) and whether he admitted sexual activity with women he spied on.

OVERSIGHT AND KNOWLEDGE OF THE SDS WENT TO THE TOP

The 1975 SDS annual report emphasises the paramount importance of secrecy about the unit’s existence to avoid ‘an embarrassment for the Commissioner’ as well as maintaining officer security.

Documents were frequently seen, discussed and approved by a Deputy Assistant Commissioner. We have yet another officer – ‘Michael James’ (HN96, 1978-83) – reporting that the Commissioner himself visited the SDS safe house. We’ve previously had this activity confirmed by ‘Doug Edwards’ (HN326, 1968-71) and Peter Francis (1993-97) who both added that their Commissioners presented them with bottles of whisky.

From 1983, there is a programme and briefing pack prepared for a visit to the SDS by Sir Kenneth Newman, the then Met Commissioner. The briefing pack includes a brief profile of each member of the SDS at the time, and was prepared for him ahead of an extended buffet lunch with the SDS officers at what is described as an ‘in-field location’.

It would be nice if the inquiry would question Sir Kenneth about his knowledge of the SDS but he is one of three old ex Commissioners who have died since the Inquiry was announced seven years ago.

But there can be no doubt that this phase of the Inquiry will put the nails in the coffin of senior officers’ claims that the SDS was a rogue unit, totally secret and unknown even to the rest of the Met.

SELF-APPROVAL TO CONTINUE

A 1976 document shows that the SDS set up a group to make the case for continued Home Office funding.

This group looked at whether the spycops unit was still needed or not, and if the intelligence it provided was still useful to MI5/ and uniformed police. It is no surprise that this set of SDS officers unanimously felt that they were still needed, extremely useful to MI5, and these operations must be allowed to continue.

They admitted that political disorder and violence had declined, but apparently subversive issues like ‘abortion, trespass, unemployment, and civil liberties’ had not. This meant there were more groups organising demonstrations, all potentially needing surveillance. Also, the manifold splinter groups would not, for some reason, cooperate with the police.

The annual reports were passed up the chain of command within the Met. They record praise and support coming in from senior officers.

REALLY THOUGH, SHOULD THEY CONTINUE?

The issue of the spycops’ relevance was re-examined in the mid-1980s, when a Home Office civil servant wondered if the unit was still needed for dealing with modern problems as opposed to being a hangover from the situations which arose many years earlier.
The Home Office authorisation for the unit’s 1985funds shows that these discussions had taken place.

Despite these discussions, and the fact that the Home Office directly funded the spycops renewing this funding annually for 20 years, a search of all Home Office archives failed to find a single document. Luckily the police & MI5 haven’t been quite so careless. Barr flagged up that there are more Home Office documents being published by the Inquiry today.

MI5 AND SUBVERSION

Another documents being published is a letter from MI5 to Chief Constables to remind them of Special Branch guidance on the distinction between subversion and mere militancy.

A witness from MI5, known as Witness Z, explained that subversion threatens the safety or well-being of the state whereas militancy is just the use of direct action with aim of, for example, achieving better working conditions. It’s militant to oppose the government, but only subversive if you seek to overthrow representative democracy itself.

A variety of government agencies and ministers did not seem to share this distinction, as demonstrated by the blacklisting scandal. According to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, all Special Branches routinely gave details of politically active people to the construction industry blacklist.

MI5 was extremely interested in subversive groups trying to infiltrate non-subversive groups such as trade unions.
As an illustration of a non-criminal group with subversive elements, Barr cited a 1974 SDS report from ‘David Hughes’ (HN299/342) on a Marxist discussion group. An attendee said that come the English revolution, the two million people who presented a permanent threat to its success would have to be killed (including senior police officers, all big businessmen and members of the Conservative Party). Even the report notes that most people present did not share this person’s opinion.

MI5 occasionally asked the SDS to obtain specific information, and occasionally helped protect the spycops’ security, but they had no significant control over the SDS’s choice of targets.

Some MI5 documents suggest a feeling that the SDS’s tactics enjoyed some advantages over MI5’s usual informants – as the spycops were frequently met and briefed and ‘all options are open’.

AFTER THIS

Barr ended by saying that immediately after these three weeks of hearings, the Inquiry will be conducting secret, ‘closed’ hearings for officers from this era whose identities are protected.

After that will come ‘Tranche 1 Phase 3’, dealing with the unit’s early managers (up till1982). These were scheduled to take place in October but have now been put back to some time in the first half of 2022.

We have also now been told that the Inquiry no longer expects to look at ‘Tranche 2’ (covering the years 1983-1992) next year – this means it is likely to be dealt with in 2023 instead.

Does mean we’ll have to wait until 2024 for Tranche 3 (covering the SDS in 1993-2007), and then even longer for Tranche 4 evidence to come out? (Tranche 4 looks at the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, aka the NPOIU, which deployed the likes of Mark Kennedy).

Peter Skelton QC

representing the Metropolitan Police Commissioner

Skelton began by saying his speech would be short. The first Met opening statement at the Inquiry last year looked at what went wrong in general, and what the value there is in undercover policing. This one is just about the topic in hand, SDS officers 1973-82.

He warned the inquiry to be wary of how it assesses the work of the SDS. We must judge by the standards of the time, not those of today. We don’t have all the reports from the time, nor fresh memories, so cannot have a full picture. Also, remember some the intelligence gathered was intended for MI5, who have secret uses that mere mortals can only imagine but must presume to be wholesome and necessary (I paraphrase slightly).

In the era under examination, 1973-82, the SDS’ work was in response to what government and public thought important – the need to preserve public order & state security, he said.

Skelton then mentioned events of the time with a very broad range of connection to the SDS. Angry Brigade firebombings, Bloody Sunday, IRA bombings in England, the 1972 miners and dockers strikes resulting in a state of emergency. He continued a summing up of strikes, a one-day near-general strike in 1973, the two-year Grunwick strike, and in 1978, the Ford industrial action leading to the ‘Winter of Discontent’ of multiple strikes and other industrial action. Then there were clashes between the National Front & antifascists, including the deaths of Kevin Gately & Blair Peach.

Skelton’s citing of these two killings is quite upsetting. The Met should not refer to the deaths of people killed by them as if they were events that they had no influence on, let alone use it to justify any and all forms of policing.

Skelton said the Inquiry must properly understand all the social context and explain it, otherwise it risks making unfair judgments. Evidence from people involved may be selective and biased, so the Inquiry should rely on expert historical evidence. Such evidence would need to be scrupulously neutral and factual with no contentious assertions. He claimed was done in the Litvinenko inquiry & Birmingham bombings inquests. The Met think it would be of even more use here.

In the era considered, the SDS had 9-12 undercover officer to infiltrate Trotskyists, Maoists/Marxist-Leninists, anarchists, anti-fascists, anti-nuclear and Irish nationalist support groups.

As well as the SDS annual reports glorifying the work of the unit, the Inquiry found documents that show that the unit’s management appraised the continued value of the unit. They concluded that it should continue (as if they might have voted to end their own jobs, because they in fact considered the work of no value at all). These documents also emphasise the importance of ‘negative intelligence’, that knowing an event won’t take place or a group isn’t dangerous is valuable, and that MI5 agreed. This sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which a world without intelligence gathering is unimaginable.

SDS contact with MI5 was frequent and productive, Skelton said. The unit saw the Secret Service as a customer which exercised some influence over the placement of spycops.

STEALING FROM THE DEAD

The SDS stole the identities of dead children to build cover stories for the undercover officers (and ‘Michael Scott’ HN298 stole the identity of a living person in 1971). Skelton kept referring to ‘using’ identities, but by any definition this is identity theft.

Earlier deployments, he explained, had been shorter, perhaps just a few months. But it was soon extended as it seems the quality of information gathered improved with longer deployments. As such, fake identities needed to be able to withstand more scrutiny. It became standard practice for officers to have a flat rented and have specially bought cars.

The police couldn’t insert a fake birth register entry, so they stole real ones. The Met apologises to families of people whose dead relatives’ identity was ‘relied upon in this way’.

SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS, WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS & BLACKLISTING

Spycops should never have had sexual relationships while in undercover persona, no matter how brief. It was not justified in the era being examined and the Met apologises unreservedly. We need to find what managers knew.

Officers had interactions with the criminal justice system. ‘Michael Scott‘ (HN298, 1971-76) was arrested and convicted – using the identity of someone who was still alive – on an anti-apartheid protest. But what the managers knew can’t be decided until we hear from them in the Tranche 1 Phase 3 hearings – which have just been delayed until next year.

Skelton tried to fend off the fact that SDS officers illegally supplied personal details of activists to employment blacklists. He claimed that police got material from far beyond the spycops, so we can’t be sure that what he called ‘so-called blacklisting’ involved information from SDS officers.

Stating this, Skelton seems to ignore that the Information Commissioners Office seized a blacklist of more than 3,200 people at the offices of The Consulting Association, maintained for the construction industry, in 2009.

In 2012 the Information Commissioners Office’s investigations manager David Clancy confirmed that there was information in the files that ‘could only be supplied by the police or the security services’.

In 2013, SDS whistleblower officer Peter Francis said that he believed information he’d reported when undercover in the 1990s had ended up in blacklist files.

Turning to the 1979 killing of Blair Peach by police, and the SDS’ spying on the campaign for justice, including attending the funeral, Skelton reminded the Inquiry that the Crown Prosecution Service said no further investigation is possible, and it is not the Inquiry’s job to investigate the killing.

Skelton conceded that SDS reporting has a lot of personal info on people spied on, some of which might not have been justified to record (eg social events & family members). He tried to wiggle out of taking responsibility for this saying such information was often asked for by Special Branch and MI5, as if that makes it alright.

The Met acknowledges that it might be ‘more detail than necessary’, but then again, you just never know. Some seemingly innocuous information can be connected to useful things later. In the era under examination, the concept of ‘collateral intrusion’ on family members wouldn’t have been considered.

The Met notes that outdated language shouldn’t be judged if it was uncontroversial at the time, unless it was discriminatory, or gratuitously insulting, or with no purpose.

The Met, Skelton concluded, engages with the Inquiry with ‘a willingness to learn and to improve’.

Those of us who fought for ten years to get the Inquiry and drag the Met into it despite all their obstructions, smears, shredding of paperwork and delays will take some persuading on this point.

The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, then asked Skelton about miscarriages of justice. Mitting said that we may see such things described in these hearings. If there are grounds to believe it, Mitting said he will refer these cases to the review panel set up for it, instead of waiting for the witness hearings of managers which have just been delayed to next year.

The conviction Mitting has in mind was 49 years ago, the people involved are now old and deserve their answer as soon as possible, rather than waiting until after the end of the Inquiry. The clearing of their names should start as soon as possible. Something we can agree on.

Oliver Sanders QC,

Representing 114 spycops

Oliver Sanders QC spoke last, representing 114 spycops.

His opening statement at the first Inquiry hearings in November 2020 was shocking, rowing back on matters of fact and responsibility the Met have long admitted and accepted.

A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE

Sanders reiterated Skelton’s point that without complete evidence there cannot be fully informed findings. Some officers remember reports and events that have no surviving documents. Instead, the Inquiry is heavily reliant on what MI5 retained and have supplied.

Of the fraction of material that survives, a fraction of that, in turn, is to be released to the public, and even then it is redacted (thanks, in part, to the Met lobbying for the greatest possible secrecy), so people will inevitably form the wrong idea about what went on.

The secrecy means the public especially misses some especially important dangerous activities the public can’t be told about, and therefore receive an even more distorted picture.

DANGER LURKS BELOW

Spied-on groups had a spectrum of members, so just because one member testifies to the Inquiry that they were no threat it does not mean that others were not dangerous, or that the group couldn’t be hijacked by dangerous people.

The SWP had a lot of teachers, social workers, etc at the branch level who were moderate and law-abiding, but others were interested in violence and disorder, spoke to the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and wanted to take over other campaigns.

Some people targeted by spycops have extreme anti-police views. Police are seen as the embodiment of the establishment, so it is in some groups’ interests to promote an anti-police narrative.

There are ‘contentious incidents’ such as the deaths of Blair Peach and Kevin Gately (who were both killed by police). We need to be sure we deal with facts, not hearsay.

Police will talk of a threat to public order, but civilian witnesses will dispute it. The spycops say the Inquiry needs to get more contextual evidence rather than simply choose one side to believe.

For example, officer ‘Dick Epps’ (HN336, 1969-70) remembers anti-apartheid activists damaging cricket grounds. No media coverage was found to support that, so the Inquiry suggested that he was confusing it with something else, but in fact, there was a documented event with details as described by Epps (the Chair, Sir John Mitting, really took this point to task at the end).

There are the SDS annual reports prepared for the Commissioner, and there are reports for Special Branch that have now been found and are currently being redacted. Beyond that, we can look at contemporaneous Hansard and media (as if the media are not briefed by police with stories of ‘rentamob’)

Sanders had not only agreed a line of argument with Skelton but drifted into paraphrasing him. Skelton treated the Inquiry to a reiteration of the need for historians to testify to the Inquiry.

WRITE YOUR OWN ANSWERS

Skelton also said the Inquiry should look at contemporaneous publications by the groups that spycops targeted. This sounds fair, but bear in mind that throughout the existence of spycops, officers had written material for the campaigns they infiltrated.

From John Graham writing about the anti-Vietnam War protest in a 1969 edition of Red Camden to Mark Kennedy’s Indymedia posts, via Roger Pearce writing for Freedom, Bob Lambert cowriting the McLibel leaflet and John Dines’ anti-police section of the Poll Tax Riot booklet, it’s been very common practice. To judge the validity of their infiltration on their writings for the groups would be the police marking their own homework.

Skelton refuted the idea that spycops were a waste of police resources. He pointed out that the SDS was only a handful of officers among thousands of Met staff, so it is not like it’d have made much odds to redeploy them into something more useful to the public (such as catching the killers of people whose justice campaigns they spied on and undermined).

Some evidence puts emphasis on the cause being just, such as anti-racist and anti-apartheid campaigns. This is irrelevant to public order policing – order must be maintained no matter the politics of those who threaten it. It does not matter if the police agree or not.

DON’T KNOW RIGHT FROM WRONG

Police cannot be expected to decide which causes were just or will be thought just in the fullness of time. So, them spying on anti-apartheid campaigners Stop The Seventy Tour would have been the same if it were a far-right group (Skelton ignores the fact that spycops barely touched the far right).

Public order is not just an absence of violence – intimidation and obstruction are disorder and liable to escalate. With large events, there’s crowd psychology that can be hijacked by dangerous people. So, a protest being harmless may only be due to the police’s successful handling of it.

It is obvious that if the South African cricket tour had gone ahead, the Stop The Seventy Tour campaign would have had a big impact, so it’s right that they were targeted by spycops. The activists themselves describe how rugby fans hated them for disrupting games. With drinking involved, it is a powder keg waiting for just such a spark.

UNKNOWN RELEVANCE

As for the personal details and irrelevance of much of the information gathered, Skelton explained that every spycop hoovered up all info they could and reported it unfiltered, it was not up to them to discern. Besides, the kind of stuff they reported appears in other Special Branch reports, whether it is from the SDS or others (as if the rest of Special Branch is a beacon of integrity). Plus, MI5 used it and we do not know what was useful to them.

Any reporting on members of groups would inevitably include personal information. It identifies them, and it might be useful to either Special Branch or MI5. Yes, it included details about children, but it does not hurt them really, he explained.

In fact, some activists had children and used that to influence other children. There is a National Union of School Students pamphlet encouraging strikes and disruption. Gotta clamp down hard on that, right?

It is not the spycops’ fault they reported irrelevant things. Why did MI5 retain the seemingly trivial stuff for so long? MI5’s Witness Z should explain.

With that final deflection, Sanders ended his statement. But Mitting was not done with him.

ADMIT WHEN YOU’RE WRONG

Mitting now returns to the claim about the Stop The Seventy Tour ‘attacking cricket grounds’. The spycop concerned, Dick Epps, refers to digging up Lord’s pitch and pouring oil. But Mitting has checked and this never happened.

Mitting suggests Epps confused it with the Third Test at Headingley in 1975, a ‘George Davis is Innocent’ protest. Mitting spoke to Epps a while ago about it, and Epps accepted he may be misremembering.

Mitting sternly told Sanders that if he thinks the Inquiry has something wrong, then re-examine it, but otherwise, do not make such assertions without checking.

Sanders says there was another cricket pitch attack, but still a different place, a different time and with weedkiller rather than oil. So why didn’t Mitting suggest that to the officer instead of the Headingley event? Mitting, like the rest of us, appeared unable to see why saying Epps was wrong made any sort of defence for saying he was right.

And with that, the hearing concluded for the day.

---

The Undercover Policing Inquiry resumes at 10am on Thursday 22 April.

It will hear opening statements from:
Diane Langford (activist)
“Madeleine”(deceived into a relationship)
Phillippa Kaufmann QC, representing people in relationships with spycops
Matthew Ryder QC, representing Stop the Seventy Tour anti-apartheid activists, and Blair Peach’s partner Celia Stubbs.

The UCPI will also pause at 11am for a minute’s silence on Thursday and Friday, the anniversaries of the deaths of Stephen Lawrence and Blair Peach, whose loved ones’ campaigns for justice were targeted by SDS and NPIOU officers.

<<Previous UCPI Daily Report (19 Nov 2020)<<

>>Next UCPI Daily Report (22 Apr 2021)>>

Today, the Undercover Policing Inquiry announced that the third set of evidence hearings will be postponed for many months.

These hearings, looking at the managers of the spycops units from 1968-1982, were due to take place in October 2021.

The only reason provided for the change is that is that a single new core participant in the Inquiry is going to require too much additional work. The new date given is ‘the first half of 2022’.

DELAYS UPON DELAYS

The Inquiry was announced in March 2014, and was originally scheduled to publish its report in mid 2018. After a huge amount of deliberate delay from the police, the plan was drastically revised.

In May 2018, the Inquiry announced an ‘ambitious’ timeline that planned to deliver the final report to the Home Secretary in late 2023. A redacted version would have been expected to be published some time in 2024.

The Inquiry had already fallen a year behind this schedule before the Covid pandemic added further delays.

Non-State Core Participants in the Inquiry, people who were targeted by the disgraced undercover units, are outraged by yet another delay.

‘Jessica’, one of the women deceived into a relationship by an undercover officer, said:

‘This farcical reason is another slap in the face. Yet again we have a high handed decision that impacts all of us, but they don’t care; this mismanagement just prolongs all our pain. Just what have they been doing the last six years? They need to stop messing around and release the files to us.’

The announcement comes on the back of recent news that the Inquiry has cost the public £36 million so far, and that the final bill may be over £100 million.

Significantly, the delayed set of hearings about management would explore who made the decisions about who was targeted for this intrusive abusive political policing, who knew about the sexual relationships of the undercover officers and who knew about the theft of identities of dead children.

JUSTICE DELAYED… AGAIN

The Non-State Core Participants have expressed their exhaustion at how long this has been drawn out. They fear it may take another five years or more before the final report is published.

Helen Steel, Core Participant, points at police demands for persuasive secrecy as exacerbating the delays:

‘It is now more than 10 years since campaigners and whistleblowers exposed the oppressive, sexist and racist actions of these undercover political policing units.

‘This Public Inquiry was supposed to open to public scrutiny the full extent of secret political policing in the UK, but instead the police have sought secrecy at every turn, and the Inquiry has colluded with this.

‘The huge cost and delays to the Inquiry so far are all a result of an obsessive culture of secrecy. Every document is being scrutinised by at least eight pairs of police or state eyes before it can be released to the public. It doesn’t take eight
pairs of eyes and endless argument to redact names for privacy. These documents relate to events 40-50 years ago, there is no need for this level of secrecy – this is a cover up to reduce political embarrassment for the police and the government.

‘The real cost is to those spied upon and to the public’s right to know the truth about these political spying operations.’

Tom Fowler, Core Participant, adds:

‘The one area in which the Inquiry has truly excelled has been at delay. Even the most casual observer will recognise this as just another cynical manoeuvre by an establishment institution who are well aware that justice delayed is justice denied. Campaigners believe that spurious grounds of national security are being used to protect the police from public scrutiny over unacceptable behaviour.’

 

–ENDS–

Notes
1. The Inquiry announcement may be found at:
https://www.ucpi.org.uk/2021/04/20/ucpi-t1-p2-hearings-start-wednesday/
The next hearings will begin on Monday 26th April at the Amba Hotel, Marble Arch, London, lasting until 14th May, with live evidence being given by undercover police and those they targeted. Topics expected to be covered will include many of the
significant events of the 1970s protest movement such as the death of Blair Peach, and the Anti-Nazi League.

As with previous hearings, COPS will be live tweeting the hearings and posting daily summary reports on our website.

Follow the COPS for more details and announcements:
Twitter: @copscampaign
Facebook: campaignopposingpolicesurveillance
Instagram: copscampaign

The Undercover Policing Inquiry is holding its second round of hearings (Tranche 1, Phase 2) between 21 April and 14 May 2021.

At these hearings, the Inquiry will hear from undercover officers and non-state witnesses about the Special Demonstration Squad between 1973 and 1982.

The first three days (21-23 April) will hear opening statements from involved parties. These will be livestreamed on the Inquiry’s YouTube channel.

After this, from Monday 26 April the Inquiry will be hearing evidence from witnesses. These hearings will not be livestreamed, but there will be a live transcript with a ten minute delay.

HOW CAN I FOLLOW THE SPYCOPS INQUIRY HEARINGS?

You can follow the evidence hearings in three different ways:

1. Through a rolling transcript with a 10-minute delay on YouTube
2. Through an audio stream with a 10-minute delay on Zoom (this is likely to be restricted to England & Wales)
3. Through a real-time audio-visual stream screened at the Amba Hotel in central London

Information on registering for the Zoom webinar and attending the Amba Hotel can be found on the Inquiry’s hearing pages.

There will also be live tweeting every day from COPS and Tom Fowler, using the hashtag #SpyCopsInquiry.

Additionally, as with the last round of hearings, COPS will be producing a daily report of the hearings. These will be posted on the UCPI – Public Inquiry section of the COPS site, and links to these reports will be posted on our Facebook and Twitter.

We will also do a weekly update on the blog. These will also be posted on our site with links from our social media, or you can get them direct by subscribing to our email newsletter in the box at the bottom of the sidebar on our home page.

Though the hearings are scheduled to run from 21 April to 14 May, no witnesses are currently scheduled for 14 May (though that may well change if earlier ones overrun), and Monday 3 May is a bank holiday so there will be no hearings that day.

We’ll post the full schedule here when the Inquiry publishes it.

HOW ARE THE SPYCOPS INQUIRY HEARINGS ORGANISED?

The first ‘tranche’ of hearings is taking evidence about the activities of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) from its formation in 1968 to 1982. The tranche has, in turn, been broken into three phases.

Phase 1 evidence hearings were in November 2020, covering 1968-72.

Phase 2 will examine the SDS from 1973 to 1982. These evidence hearings due to start on 21 April 2021.

In Phase 3, the Inquiry will hear from SDS managers 1968-1982. Dates for phase 3 haven’t been confirmed yet.

The subsequent tranches will examine:

• 2 – Special Demonstration Squad officers and managers and those affected by deployments (1983-1992)

• 3 – Special Demonstration Squad officers and managers and those affected by deployments (1993-2007)

• 4 – National Public Order Intelligence Unit officers and managers and those affected by deployments

• 5 – Other undercover policing officers and managers and those affected by deployments

• 6 – Management and oversight (including of intelligence dissemination) by mid and senior rank officers, other agencies and government departments

For more information about the Undercover Policing Inquiry, see our UCPI FAQ.

A group of climate activists are calling on Labour leader Keir Starmer to give evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry, alleging he may have been involved in a cover-up of police and prosecutors orchestrating wrongful convictions.

The 18 activists were part of a group of 114 arrested while planning a protest against Nottinghamshire’s Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station in April 2009.

Some of them were prosecuted and convicted of conspiracy.

A further six were in a group prosecuted separately, whose trial dramatically collapsed after they discovered one of the protesters was undercover police officer Mark Kennedy.

When they asked to see Kennedy’s secret evidence, rather than disclose it the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped the charges. When the defendants were given transcripts of Kennedy’s secret recordings of the protest planning meetings, they did indeed exonerate the six. The 20 activists convicted at the earlier trial have now had their convictions quashed.

Two reports were commissioned into the withholding of evidence from the court, one by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, another commissioned by the then-head of the CPS, Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer, who appointed Sir Christopher Rose to inquire.

The Rose report concluded that ‘the failures were individual, not systemic’. But when making a timeline of the facts as given in the two reports, it is clear that police and prosecutors knew full well about the involvement of undercover police, and went to great lengths to keep it secret.

The pivotal CPS figure was prosecutor Nick Paul, the CPS National Co-ordinator for Domestic Extremism (an extraordinary role, given that the term ‘domestic extremism’ has no meaning in law). Paul – who, due to Kennedy’s information, was aware of the Ratcliffe protest before it happened, indeed before many of the activists involved – and was already coordinating with police.

The Guardian published extracts of an email exchange between him and more junior CPS official, Nick Cunningham, discussing the risk of the truth coming out. The Rose report attributed the failings to Cunningham rather than Paul.

Nick Paul had previously been the CPS’ prosecutor in another case setting up climate activists with wrongful convictions, the Drax 29. This surely makes it a systemic issue. The Rose report includes a list of people interviewed; despite his central role in the case, Nick Paul is not mentioned.

By the time the Rose report was published in December 2011, we had learned that Jim Boyling another – wholly unrelated – undercover officer had similarly been involved in a court case in 1997 without the defence being given relevant evidence.

As DPP, Starmer handled the media on the Rose report personally, insisting that we must accept its finding that there’s no systemic problem, despite journalists pointing out to him that this was untrue.

Nick Paul left the CPS immediately after the Ratcliffe case collapsed, returning to be a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, where he Starmer had previously been colleagues before they worked for the CPS. Starmer rejoined him after his tenure as DPP ended 18 months later.

The Undercover Research Group‘s report into the Ratcliffe case, Operation Aeroscope – A Re-examination, makes clear that there are still many serious questions unanswered.

The group of activists arrested at Ratcliffe-on Soar in 2009 are now asking for the relevant CPS officials to be called to give evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry.

The Inquiry’s terms of reference specify that it will examine such miscarriages of justice. It is already clear that, over decades, undercover officers from Britain’s political secret police were often arrested and went through the judicial system in their fake persona, lying to courts and withholding evidence. The problem was clearly systemic, and the public deserve answers.

Full text of the statement from the group of people arrested with Mark Kennedy at Ratcliffe-on-Soar:

Call Keir Starmer to give evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry

A decade ago this month the world learnt that Mark Kennedy was a Metropolitan Police officer spying on environmentalists. This information led to the collapse of a trial where six environmental campaigners were accused of conspiring to occupy a coal-fired power station. In the court building on the morning of January 10th 2010 as the trial collapsed was the then Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and head of the Crown Prosecution Service, Keir Starmer.

Subsequently, the convictions of 20 campaigners for conspiring to occupy the same coal-fired power station were quashed by the Court of Appeal, because the prosecution failed to disclose information about Mark Kennedy’s involvement that would have helped their defence.

Further appeals relating to convictions involving Mark Kennedy and the CPS under the then leadership of Keir Starmer followed. In one ruling, in January 2014, Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas said:

‘There was a complete and total failure, for reasons which remain unclear, to make a disclosure fundamental to the defence.’

The Lord Chief Justice added, that is was ‘either the fault of the police or someone at the CPS or possible counsel involved,’ and said each of those interviewed had ‘given a different account’.

That the police and CPS gave different accounts to the Lord Chief Justice, four years after the initial problems had been identified, leaves many questions unanswered.

A 2015 report by Mark Ellison QC into undercover officers and miscarriages of justice, commissioned by the government, showed there is evidence that undercover police units were, for many years, systematically concealing evidence from trials of protesters over the years and therefore cause them to be unjustly convicted.

This evidence contradicts the finding in a report into the failure to disclose evidence at the Ratcliffe trial, commissioned by Keir Starmer, and conducted by Sir Christopher Rose, which claimed there was no systemic problem at the CPS with failing to disclose evidence relating to trials involving undercover officers. The evidence known now is counter to the statements of Keir Starmer, for example in an interview with Channel 4 News, when he was DPP.

We demand that the public inquiry into undercover policing call the CPS, and former CPS staff, to get to the truth about non-disclosure, prosecutions and miscarriages of justice that involved undercover police officers. Specifically, the inquiry needs to call Keir Starmer as DPP at the time of the Ratcliffe trials, Nick Paul, his lead CPS prosecutor and CPS coordinator of ‘Domestic Extremism’ who liaised with the policing units being investigated by the public inquiry, and the prosecution counsel for the Ratcliffe trial, Felicity Gerry.

This is particularly important as the investigation into miscarriages of justice as part of the Undercover Policing Inquiry appears to be dormant. To our knowledge the CPS has only assessed potential miscarriages of justice that have been brought to them by the media and campaigners. Only the undercover policing public inquiry can get to the truth now.

This matter now takes an even greater urgency, following the provisions for spying on the public in a new bill before parliament, the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill 2019-21.

Specific questions include:

On 10 January 2010, why did the CPS release a press statement claiming that the Ratcliffe trial collapsed because “Previously unavailable information that significantly undermined the prosecution’s case came to light,” when the evidence in a number of subsequent official reports suggests that this statement is untrue. Did Keir Starmer approve the press statement?

Why was Keir Starmer in Nottingham Crown Court on the morning of 10 January 2010?

Why did the Sir Christopher Rose report come to the wrong conclusion that the problems of non-disclosure in the Ratcliffe trials did not apply elsewhere? Did Keir Starmer define the terms of reference for the Rose report to be so narrow that the wrong conclusion, of only individual failings of a single regional prosecutor, was always likely to be found?

Why did the commissioned report by Sir Christopher Rose not interview the most important CPS member of staff involved in the Ratcliffe trials, Nick Paul, the CPS liaison for so-called ‘domestic extremism’ under which Mark Kennedy’s deployment was based. Nick Paul, for example, was informed by police that the Ratcliffe protesters would be arrested before the arrests even happened.
In light of new evidence on the systematic failings at the CPS relating to undercover officers, was the regional prosecutor, Ian Cunningham unfairly blamed for the failure to disclose in the Ratcliffe trial?

Why did Keir Starmer ask for three reviews into CPS failings relating to undercover policing that were kept from public view, before commissioning the Rose report?

What action was taken by Keir Starmer after the Rose report was shown to be wrong, to uncover other miscarriages of justice?
Did the CPS investigate all trials involving the CPS National Coordinator for Domestic Extremism (Nick Paul and his predecessors), for possible problems with non-disclosure?

How did a report Commissioned by Teresa May, the then Home Secretary, by Mark Ellison QC into possible miscarriages of justice identify 83 activists who were convicted in trials involving an undercover officer, over three decades, while the CPS inquiry, has to date discovered nobody who the media and campaigners had not already identified?

Signed by Non-State Non-Police Core Participants in the public inquiry into undercover policing, arrested with Mark Kennedy in 2009, or arrested and charged with conspiracy, or arrested, charged and wrongfully convicted of conspiracy, by the CPS:

1. Olaf Bayer
2. Danny Chivers
3. Shane Collins
4. Spencer Cooke
5. Merrick Cork
6. Leila Deen
7. Nāgakuśala Hiromi Dharmacharin
8. Roger Geffen
9. Patrick Gillet
10. Dan Glass
11. Alice Jelinek
12. Oliver Knowles
13. Ben Leamy
14. Simon Lewis
15. Tomas Remiarz
16. Sarah Shoraka
17. Ben Stewart
18. Kirsty Wright

31 January 2021

A report from the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s hearing of 26 January 2021, discussing how future hearings involving witnesses will be organised.

The Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) was established in 2015 in response to multiple scandals where undercover police had abused their power over a fifty-year period. Officers infiltrated political groups for years at a time, living as one of the activists. They frequently stole identities, orchestrated wrongful convictions, and formed intimate relationships with women they spied on.

After five years of preliminary process, it was only in November 2020 that the Undercover Policing Inquiry first began hearing evidence. It was a worrying time for many of the victims of spycops who have been designated as ‘non-police/state core participants’ (NPSCPs) in the Inquiry, who had spent the intervening years explaining why the Inquiry’s approach was problematic.

For them, the UCPI had focused far too much of its attention on meeting the police’s preferences, while excluding the NPSCPs from effective participation. There was a sense of exhaustion in those who were subjected to the spying who felt that they were consistently being considered last, as if they were an irritant rather than a group of victims who should be at the heart of the process.

Multiple times they had argued they should be more fully centred, given the wealth of experience and knowledge they brought with them. Instead, they were made to wait as the police delayed matters, filing an excessive number of applications for anonymity, regaling the Inquiry with fanciful fears of media intrusion, and worries about what the neighbours would think. These were undercovers and managers who had destroyed lives and careers, violated fundamental human rights, and engaged in state-sanctioned rape. Yet, it was their needs which were constantly being put first, the Inquiry granting them their wishes and all the time they needed to do it.

We have said all this many times, and nothing has changed. Yet it remains the context in which last week’s hearing took place.

A CHANCE TO LEARN AND IMPROVE

The hearing held on Tuesday 26 January was a chance to learn from the many mistakes of the November 2020 hearings. It was welcomed by many NPSCPs as an opportunity to feed in their thoughts on what went wrong and how things could be improved.

The next set of evidence hearings (Tranche 1, Phases 2 and 3, covering the Special Demonstration Squad activities 1973-82) are currently set to be heard in April and July, so it is important these issues are resolved now.

Throughout the day we heard from both police and NPSCPs’ representatives. Numerous submissions had been made in writing, and an extensive note from Counsel to The Inquiry was able to resolve a number of these so they did not need to form part of the discussion.

Much of the focus was procedural or legal in nature, focusing on the conduct of particular aspects of the hearings, or the underlying points of law which different parties were relying on to argue their point. At times it became quite technical, but we will try to give an overview of the main issues discussed below.

However, in amongst it, various bits of important information emerged. In particular, we learned that the majority of the pre-1995 files did not come from Metropolitan Police Service’s Special Branch (which had overseen the Special Demonstration Squad). Rather they were obtained from elsewhere – which the begs the question whether they came from MI5. And if not them, where?

Perhaps less surprising was the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, commenting that he had seen little mention in the formal reports of relationships that undercovers had deceived their targets into. Heather Williams QC, representing many of those women, made the salient point that this was precisely why the women deserved full access to their files, as only they could give the nuanced interpretation needed to show where it was hidden.

HOSTILITY TO VICTIMS

A powerful moment came when Matthew Ryder QC, representing a number of NPSCPs, spoke on behalf of Celia Stubbs. Celia, a long time campaigner, was the partner of Blair Peach, who was murdered by police in 1979 at an anti-racist demonstration. Hers was among the first such family justice campaigns spied upon. The murderers were never brought to justice.

Now in her 80s, and despite the risk of Covid, she attended the November hearings, keen to witness them. The measured words of her barrister conveyed her anger and strength of feeling at the betrayal she felt, the importance of the public having confidence in the Inquiry, and how it was failing in that.

Ryder said:

‘she asked us to make clear that she felt disillusioned and unhappy at the hearings. She felt that the structure of how she was able to be involved and the way the Inquiry was carried out was unsympathetic and to some extent, she sometimes felt, hostile to her concerns and her interests as a core participant.’

Ryder then made the powerful conclusion:

‘There is little to be gained from an Inquiry that… doesn’t end up with the confidence of those it was set up to benefit, and only has the confidence of the State Participants it was set up to scrutinise. Therefore the confidence of those core participants is something that is valuable, is very important, we know, to the functioning of the Inquiry and to the end result of the Inquiry, and therefore we do hope that through part 2 and following parts, we can be in a situation where the core participants do feel confident, do feel engaged.’

Though it came towards the end of the proceedings, it was one of those moments that brought the hearing back to earth, grounded in the reality of what had happened to people. Those of us who were at the hearings in November with her are all in awe of her determination to partake, to not give up seeking answers. Forty years on, she deserves justice.

All the above points impacted on the different topics of discussion and we will go into them further. First point on the agenda though was the bruised egos of the police.

BRUISED EGOS AND THIN SKINS

Mitting opened proceedings with reference to a recent letter sent by the Metropolitan Police, who were feeling stung by the criticism that they had been obstructive to the Inquiry. They wanted to challenge this and, although he is the Chair, Mitting spoke up for them.

It was at this point that he noted that much of the pre-1995 material had come from sources other than the Metropolitan Police, and the form in which the Inquiry had obtained it had proved challenging to handle. Mitting said that it contained information which would be damaging to the public interest if it entered the public domain, and the Metropolitan Police had been diligently working to prevent this happening. The irony of that was lost on both Inquiry and police.

Mitting was concerned that we might be suffering from a misperception, that the police were not being forthcoming and candid with this Inquiry. What he didn’t factor in is that we’ve all had enough experience of the police behaving in precisely the opposite way in other inquiries and inquests, and little to date has done anything to change our minds.

Many of the women deceived into relationships by spycops took legal action and were met with a refusal to respond, claims that it was impossible to release any information, the assertion that the relationships weren’t authorised so they were nothing to do with the police as an institution, and many other tricks of dishonest delay. Cases took years to settle and indeed Kate Wilson’s, filed at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in 2011, is still not finished. It is a pattern familiar to victims of State abuses, a double injustice as they face not only the wrongdoing, but also the attempts to avoid accountability and obstruct justice.

Indeed, the reason that it’s taken so long for the Undercover Policing Inquiry to reach this stage is that the police have dragged it out – by filing as many applications for anonymity as they could get away with – for the past three years, and the Inquiry has not stopped them from doing so.

Throughout the day of the hearing, lawyers for the undercovers relied on how fragile the former undercovers and managers were. Steps towards greater participation were countered by how it would impact on these former officers. They would, apparently, become more anxious and less candid in giving their evidence, so the Inquiry itself would lose out. At points it felt like a threat being held over the Inquiry. The police’s position was they liked things as they had been and opposed any relaxation in favour of greater openness.

Their sensitivity was also raised in written submissions with complaints that the word ‘scum’ had been used in relation to spycops on Twitter. A search showed that, up until this point, it has actually happened a handful of times, and even then in response to descriptions of reprehensible behaviour that would make any ordinary person feel angry. This is hardly the basis for making a formal submission to the Inquiry.

The hearing was treated to a full display of the thin skin of police officers in response to any form of criticism rather than acknowledging their gross abuses of power.

ACCESS TO FILES

The NPSCPs have consistently demanded access to the full files held on them. Mitting said that the Inquiry does not have access to the Special Branch’s ‘Registry Files’ on individuals. However, he also implied that he was aware of the ‘Personal Files’ – MI5’s equivalent. He has seen some of them and noted that they contain material from a wide variety of sources, many of which fall outside of the Inquiry’s terms of reference. As such, he said they are too much to deal with and the Inquiry needs to examine other material first.

This was angrily rejected by Dave Smith of the Blacklist Support Group on Twitter, who noted that this was the sort of material that was being passed along to businesses to blacklist workers, and included information gathered and supplied by the undercover police.

Heather Williams, speaking on behalf of the women affected, also made much of this. As observed above, she noted that the nuance needed to accurately interpret files could only come from their subjects, the women themselves. She cited a case where a mention of a wedding in the gathered intelligence was enough to trigger a memory of a woman targeted for a relation attending that wedding with the undercover, even though that was not mentioned in the files.

Williams made the point that the women were in a unique position and had particular interest in seeing the files. Not least in understanding how they’d been set up to be targeted by the undercovers, particularly in developing the ‘false air of commonality’ used in so many cases to prepare the ground for the relationship. She argued this point was totally within the terms of the Inquiry.

Mitting’s counter was to say that he had not seen anything to suggest that undercovers had read the files of those they were interacting with, or had gone back to see the files of those they were in relationships with. According to him, deceitful relationships being mentioned in documents are only mentioned afterwards, when managers have discovered the relationships. This knowledge emerged with hindsight, not in what their predecessors knew in hindsight.

Nonetheless, he did say that requests for information made to police and former undercovers did take such issues on board. It was not his intention that the Inquiry would routinely obtain such personal files. However, a small amount of material in them was of relevance and were being processed so as they could be made available. He also noted that the personal files were the property of MI5 and he has no legitimate justification to compel them to do more than what they’ve already done to assist the Inquiry.

Access to the personal files on individuals has been a fundamental demand of the NPSCPs from the outset. The spying on them was plainly wrong and everyone subjected to it deserves to know the truth. That cannot happen without them seeing what intelligence was gathered on them, unfiltered by police censors. For Mitting to bluntly say it is not going to happen is a huge obstacle in the path to the truth. It undermines the purpose of the Inquiry and takes away a lot of the point of why many NPSCPs were involved in the first place.

ACCESS TO ‘BUNDLES’ OF EVIDENCE FOR HEARINGS

A theme echoed by a number of those involved has been insufficient time given to access the ‘hearing bundles’ of evidence released prior to relevant hearings. For the November 2020 hearings, it was over 6,000 pages delivered four weeks before the hearings began. The NPSCPs have contended they’ve not been given enough time to process such a large amount of material and have been arguing for more people to be able to see the it, and to be given it much sooner.

The lack of access pre-1995 has also impacted on the lawyers for the undercovers. Those deployed before 1995 have not had sight of the material the Inquiry has been relying on. Thus, their lawyers are under the same time pressure to process it.

The Inquiry responded that it was looking at improving the processes, though constrained by issues around what could be released into the public domain. Some material could be released sooner, such as the Special Demonstration Squad’s Annual Reports.

While the police were also concerned about widening access, Mitting did take on board various points from the media and NPSCPs, and agreed to widen the scope of who had advanced sight of the hearing bundle evidence. This should ease the burden on the lawyers and NPSCPs and have positive impacts on the ability to prepare in advance for future evidence hearings.

AUDIO, LIVESTREAMING, PRIVACY, AND THE EQUALITIES ACT

The hearing then turned to a tangle of inter-related issues whose arguments fed into each other. The basic point though was the NPSCPs arguing there should be greater access for the public to the hearings, and particularly in light of the pandemic. Specifically, they argued that there should be full online live-streaming (audio-visual) of the hearings to the public as the basic starting point, and deviations from this need to be justified.

Although many similar inquiries, such as Grenfell, are live-streaming their hearings, for the November 2020 Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, witness evidence was only live-streamed to one 60-person venue in Covid-stricken London. Online access was limited to a live transcript of what was being said.

The police representatives were very much opposed to any form of streaming of hearings, claiming (but without providing evidence) that this would be a security risk. The importance of seeing and hearing witnesses as they gave evidence was acknowledged by Mitting and the NPSCPs.

The police argued for a very restrictive view, saying any live-streaming would undermine the anonymity orders granted to police witnesses. They took the position that if a form of live-streaming was to happen, it should be only be audio, and it should be made subject to various security restrictions – individually watermarked, requiring registration to access it, that it should not go beyond the jurisdiction of England and Wales. At times this became quite technical in nature as to what was or was not possible.

Some of the NPSCPs took a very different approach. Rajiv Menon QC, representing the clients of Jane Deighton (in particular, the family of Rolan Adams, and Ken Livingstone), put forward the case that in restricting live-streaming the Inquiry was breaching its duties under the Equalities Act. Those at greater risk from Covid were being indirectly discriminated against, for example people of certain ethnic minority backgrounds, and elderly people.

Mitting responded by taking the discussion down another the path of legal technicalities, as to whether or not the Inquiry could claim to be exempt from the obligations of the Equalities Act. Menon pointed out that up until now, the Inquiry has acted as if it is covered by the Equalities Act, and that its operations are not exempt.

The decision about providing live-streaming is an operational one, about the services the Inquiry provides, rather than a judicial one. Menon also pointed out that nobody has yet supplied a clear legal authority on this matter (which only became an issue with the release of the Counsel to the Inquiry’s Note the day before) and more time should be allowed for research before a final answer is given by Mitting.

Mitting agreed to allow all parties another seven days to provide written statements about this issue.

PROTECTING SPYCOPS’ ANONYMITY

Owen Greenhall, also acting for the NPSCPs, added that the ‘restriction orders’ granting anonymity to spycops were granted some years ago. Most of these former officers were awarded them on the grounds of privacy, rather than security concerns. The situation has completely changed since then, and they really should be revisited. He noted that for the upcoming hearings (in April) this should not be too onerous a task, as there are only ten former officers due to give evidence then.

Mitting pushed back hard on this, saying it would involve far too much work and add to the delay. Representatives for the police asserted that changing the restriction orders now might upset the former undercovers and impact on their evidence. In one technical point, Mitting said he considered visual live-streaming was not possible because the existing anonymity orders prohibited the release of images.

Mitting’s final position on these matters is yet to be determined. He accepted that improvements on last November’s arrangements were needed, and that some measures could be taken. His starting position seems to be that access to the Inquiry should, as closely as possible, resemble a courtroom under normal conditions. In light of the ongoing pandemic, this means sticking closely to the model of the November hearings, where live-streaming of the officers giving evidence in real time was restricted to a maximum of 60 pre-registered people who were willing and able to attend a hotel in central London.

The online rolling transcript seems set to continue with its ten minute delay, though hopefully with better functionality. Mitting also seemed to accept the need for some kind of audio feed, but it is not clear how restricted access to this might be.

Another point of concern is that registration for attendance at the November hearing was done for the purposes of test and trace, but Mitting saw it equally as a security measure in case of a restriction order being breached. NPSCPs raised the natural concern that they did not want this data being passed on to the police as a matter of course.

ADVERSARIAL VS INQUISITORIAL

Before we address the remaining discussions of the day we need to cover a technical legal point: the difference between adversarial and inquisitorial hearings. Most hearings we encounter are the former, the normal day-to-day life of court cases where evidence and witnesses are examined, cross-examined and challenged in an effort to get to the truth. There is an implicit assumption that someone might be lying to justify their actions.

Despite the name, inquisitorial hearings are meant to be different, taking the approach that everyone is cooperating with the proceedings. A public inquiry such as the UCPI is meant to be of this kind. There is no aspect of punishment, merely helping the State to learn, and giving the non-State parties confidence that the learning has been comprehensive and open. Mitting himself has repeatedly said his aim is simply to get to the truth.

Sadly, regardless of the Metropolitan Police’s correspondence, the NPSCPs often feel this memo has passed the police by.

Rajiv Menon, responding to the recent letter from the Metropolitan Police (mentioned above) made the following observation:

‘Specific complaint is made in the letter of what was said in our opening statement, namely that: “The police have used every weapon in their arsenal and spared no expense to obfuscate, obstruct, undermine and delay an open, transparent and fearless public inquiry into undercover policing.”

You [Mitting] have address this letter this morning, sir, in your introductory remarks, and have effectively confirmed what the Metropolitan Police Service have asked you to do, namely that there is no basis for the allegation that the Inquiry’s work has been or is being obstructed by the Metropolitan Police Service….

[The lawyers for police core participants] continue to suggest that it is the Non-State Core Participants who are responsible for the Inquiry not being as inquisitorial as it should be. We say nothing is further from the truth is in fact the correct position.

If the Non-State Core Participants are marginalised, as we say they have been, and prevented, through their lawyers, from participating effectively and meaningfully in the Inquiry, if the State’s obsession with secrecy is permitted to have a foothold in this Inquiry at the expense of openness and transparency, then it can hardly come as a surprise that there is, at times, an adversarial air to the proceedings.

It should never be forgotten, in our submission, that it is the Non-State Core Participants who are the victims in this Inquiry of abuses of power by the State, in some circumstances with the most devastating of consequences.

The former undercover police officers, with respect, are not victims and should never be treated as such.’

This set the tone for the debate as to how the Inquiry should approach questioning of witnesses. This falls into two related categories – ‘Rule 10’ questions and cross-examination.

QUESTIONING WITNESSES : RULE 10

The Inquiries Act 2005 sets out the ways in which evidence should be explored in an Inquiry of this ‘inquisitorial’ nature. Usually, one person – the Counsel To the Inquiry – is appointed by the Inquiry to ask all the questions of witnesses. Cross-examination is not especially encouraged; the emphasis is on witnesses voluntarily cooperating with the Inquiry.

The Inquiries Act does allow lawyers who represent core participants to submit questions seven days in advance, and ask the Counsel to the Inquiry to then put the questions to the witnesses. These are called “Rule 10 Questions”. However, the Inquiry is not obliged to act on these requests.

Rule 10 Questions were submitted at the November hearings, and some of the NPSCPs’ questions were asked. Both Owen Greenhall and Rajiv Menon addressed this issue, and noted that the process was beset by a number of problems, including:

• too much material to process in too little time;
• difficulties in communicating with the Inquiry team in the time available;
• a lack of feedback about the questions submitted – which ones had been accepted and would be asked, and which ones wouldn’t;
• a lack of follow-up on points of significance raised by the witnesses answers when the questioning was performed by the Inquiry’s Counsel rather than the NPSCPs’ own lawyers.

Overall, it had been frustrating and exhausting, and illustrated the advantages of making the evidence (the ‘hearing bundle’) available to NPSCPs and their legal teams much earlier.

It was generally recognised there was room for improvement and that meetings should be set up to facilitate a better process. All parties agreed that doing things earlier would improve the overall process and resolve many of the issues. Mitting and the NPSCPs acknowledged that no process would be perfect but where things came up they could be dealt with on a case by case basis.

CROSS-EXAMINATION OF WITNESSES

A more contentious issue was whether or not witnesses should be cross-examined. Again, Greenhall and Menon led on this for NPSCPs, requesting that in the interests of efficiency and smooth running there should be 30 minutes at the end of a witness giving evidence for others to cross-examine.

At the November hearing, the NPSCPs’ barristers asked for and were granted permission to ask questions of the police witnesses. One set of questions sparked heated exchanges with Mitting. These sought to explore the truth around the relationship between one of the early spycops and one of the activists they were spying on, and the possible links to a miscarriage of justice.

This time, lawyers representing some of the police (and Mitting himself) used the phrase “pre-planned ambush” to describe the way these questions were put, in an attempt to characterise the process as unfair, and to oppose direct questioning going ahead. They argued that only the Counsel to the Inquiry should be permitted to ask questions of witnesses, as otherwise the process would be ‘too adversarial’, increase the ‘anxiety’ suffered by these witnesses, and lead to them being less forthcoming with their evidence.

There was no mention made of the fact that these witnesses are former police officers, professionally trained to give evidence in court and very experienced in doing so.

Another suggestion put forward by the lawyers acting for the NPSCPs was that the Inquiry should automatically schedule time for questioning after each witness has given evidence, so last-minute questions could be asked if necessary. This would avoid the convoluted process of first applying to Mitting for permission to ask each question (and providing him with details of the reason for asking IT), so would make the entire process more efficient, and be less disruptive. This suggestion was also mooted, with the observation that if the Rule 10 system was working well then this need for extra questioning would only be required occasionally. Plus, senior Counsel could be trusted to use their professional judgement wisely.

Predictably, Mitting was not a fan of this idea being made the new normal. He did accept that the Rule 10 Questions process needed to be improved. He also accepted there would sometimes be a need for cross-examination, for example when there was a significant dispute of the facts arising out of the evidence given. He agreed that this issue could be handled on a case-by-case basis. He repeated previous remarks that what he was most concerned about having an effective (from his point of view) framework in place as to how the hearings would be structured, emphasising his need for order and for control over the proceedings.

According to lawyers representing some of the undercovers, the very idea that they might be asked questions by anyone other than the Counsel to the Inquiry was too much and would cause extra anxiety. They opposed permission to question witnesses being granted to any of the NPSCPs’ lawyers.

The definition of ‘ a significant dispute of fact’ was addressed by Heather Williams, pointing out that a number of officers are denying the extent of their relationships or even having had them at all. There, however, it was again argued that a different approach should be taken.

Mitting had on previous occasions implied that if a core participant wanted their representative to ask questions on their behalf, it would only be permitted if they too were willing to be cross-examined. Williams noted this has distressed the victims, already upset by the biased treatment by the Inquiry against them, and worried about the psychological impact this would have on them. Mitting appeared to row back to some degree on this requirement, clarifying his earlier statements. It is to be noted that he has said numerous times that he would not force the victims to give evidence.

Richard Whittam QC, on behalf of the undercovers represented by Slater & Gordon, said they expected disputes of fact between the undercovers and their managers, so they might also wish to cross-examine future witnesses.

REPRESENTATION FOR THE SPIED-UPON

A subject of much discussion prior to the November 2020 hearings was whether legal representatives would be allowed to attend the hearings on behalf of their clients. The Inquiry has taken a very restrictive approach to this, permitting only one representative on behalf of the entire group of over 200 NPSCPs, and those who had a ‘direct interest’ in the evidence of a particular officer being funded to attend.

Matthew Ryder noted that this might prove a false economy, and that there was a risk of this approach (led by purely monetary considerations) damaging something of high but intangible value: people’s confidence in this Inquiry.

The refusal to provide funding has put considerable strain on the NPSCPs’ lawyers, and the November hearing was far from satisfactory for either them or their clients. These problems were exacerbated by the fact that access to the November hearing bundle of evidence was restricted to a very small number of NPSCPs and lawyers, with over 6,000 pages of material to process in an extremely short period of time.

The Inquiry has decided that only those NPSCPs with a ‘direct interest’ in each phase/ tranche of hearings should be given access to evidence beforehand. However, they have adopted a very narrow definition of who can be considered to have that ‘direct interest’.

Heather Williams argued that this definition must be widened. There are particular groups, for example the women deceived into relationships, who have a direct interest in understanding how certain tactics (eg targeting activists for intimate relationships) were created and developed over the years.

The Inquiry has recognised that those who fall into categories of the families of deceased children whose identity were stolen and women deceived into relationships have an interest in the emergence of these tactics in the undercover units. Thus, their legal representatives will be funded to attend the next set of evidential hearings.

It is unclear what Mitting’s final ruling on representation as a whole will be, but it is feared that he will continue with this narrow definition and restrictive approach, though further discussion is to be had. He did make the point that if he granted greater latitude in some areas, it would be at the expense of other parts.

CALLING OTHER WITNESSES

One more point that came up in the hearing – a relatively minor one – was the mention made of the obvious dearth of non-State witnesses due to give evidence about the 1970s. Mitting acknowledged this, and complained that the Socialist Workers Party had collectively decided not to take part in his Inquiry. According to him, the object of the Inquiry ‘is not exhaustive investigation but sufficient investigation’.

The NPSCPs say that nevertheless, the witness list for the next phase – covering 1973-82 –  has gaps that are too significant to ignore. Matthew Ryder noted that the NPSCPs would like to put forward relevant witnesses where they could be identified and were willing. In line with much of what else he said during the day, Mitting gave a guarded acceptance of that, indicating that he was prepared to consider them, dependent on various factors.

CONCLUSION

Overall, it was a better tempered hearing than previous ones presided over by Mitting. However he continued to openly press and challenge the lawyers representing NPSCPs in a way that he does not do with those representing the State, keen to maintain the status quo.

Although there have been some positive shifts towards better access, and a few of the suggestions for improvement have been acceded to, the UCPI is likely to continue to fall far short of what would be considered a genuinely accessible, genuinely public inquiry.

A number of important issues remain to be judged with rulings expected to be handed down in the next fortnight.

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Morning and afternoon live-streams of the hearing
Draft transcript of the hearing
Associated publications

The third week of the Undercover Police Inquiry’s hearings brought revelations and frustrations.

The former undercover officers of Britain’s secret police engaged in a parade of selective amnesia, admitting what their vintage documents confirmed, but not a lot more.

And yet, we also brought the murky world of the spycops further into focus, learning the names of another MP who was spied on and a senior officer who illegally colluded with industrial blacklisting, as well as catching the Inquiry itself covering up for a criminal spycop.

CELEBRITY GUERRILLA COVERAGE

The Inquiry still refuses to live-steam its hearings, only giving us a live transcript that can’t easily be paused or rewound – a challenge to stare at for hours on end.

The women from Police Spies Out of Lives, representing women deceived into relationships by spycops, took matters into their own hands with a live reading of the transcript on their YouTube channel.

They took this inspired idea a stage further later in the week, with actors Maxine Peake, Siobhán McSweeney, and Barnaby Taylor speaking the words of the spycop witnesses.

There is, of course, no reason why the Inquiry can’t provide us with an audio-stream of the hearings. It would be no different to the read-a-long in terms of security. It’s further evidence of the way the Inquiry regards victims of spycops as marginal and the wider public as an irrelevance.

OVERVIEW

In the last three weeks, the Inquiry hearings have focussed on the formation of what began as the ‘Special Operations Squad’ (SOS) in 1968, and the years leading up to its re-naming as the Special Demonstrations Squad (SDS) in 1972.

It has confirmed the names of more than 100 groups who weren’t previously known to have been spied on.

There’s no good reason why the list couldn’t have been published by the Inquiry before, allowing members of those groups to come forward with relevant testimony in time to contribute.

The movement against the war in Vietnam was the original target for this new method of deep surveillance, and during this period the spycops also reported on anarchist, socialist, communist, Irish and anti-racist groups.

‘THROWN IN’

One after another, the former spycops described:

• being asked to join the unit, rather than formally applying;
• receiving no formal training or briefings;
• being initially sent out without even a target group or movement, just to see what they could join;
• not being steered away from groups that were clearly no threat to anyone;
• no advice as to what information to report, just a vague indication that all information was good information;
• deployments lasting much longer than the 12 month maximum stipulated by SDS founder Conrad Dixon (unless something went wrong & it was ended early);
• no psychological care during or after deployment.

Spycop ‘Dick Epps’ said:

‘I was never sat down in a classroom or a training room and given a training manual, or training lectures… We were all, if you like, being thrown in to a maelstrom, and seeking to find some sense of what we were trying to do’

Rather than merely gathering information on public order issues, it is abundantly clear that spycops were foot-soldiers for the Security Service, and most SDS reports were copied to MI5. It’s also a fact that details of activists were illegally shared with employment blacklisting organisations.

This overlap has been starkly, if unwittingly, illustrated by spycops who flitted between the concepts of democracy, national security, government policy, and corporate convenience as if these were all one and the same.

The spycops talked about targeting groups who ‘want to overthrow our form of democracy’, yet they spied on numerous democratic organisations, including political parties whose very function was to participate in our form of democracy. They sent one officer after another into the anti-apartheid movement, whose sole objective was to help bring democracy to South Africa.

NO SET TARGET

Giving evidence, the spycops admitted very little beyond what their own vintage documents proved, unless it served to distance them from responsibility. Their denials were risibly implausible, claiming to be unable to recall some of the central campaigns they were spying on.

When forced to concede that many groups they spied on posed no threat to the public, they tried to defend their deployments by saying the innocent groups were allied with more dangerous ones who were the actual focus.

None of them could explain why they failed to join the supposed real targets, nor why they were reporting personal details of the people in any and every group they came across.

Epps claimed anarchists were always the likely cause of any public disorder, but when asked why he didn’t infiltrate them instead of peace campaigns, he said:

‘I don’t know that it ever occurred to me that that was a route that I might find useful. But some of them were, as I say, harebrained and a little overexcited at these moments, and I didn’t feel drawn to that sort of grouping.’

Epps infiltrated the International Marxist Group (IMG) because they ‘took part in every demonstration going’. He was instructed by his managers to make a copy of the IMG’s office keys. He admitted he didn’t remember any IMG members being violent or disorderly at demonstrations, but claimed ‘they were much busier than other groups’ – as justification in itself.

OFFICER HN340 ‘ANDY BAILEY’

Officer HN340, ‘Andy Bailey’ (or ‘Alan Nixon‘), was, like Epps, deployed between 1969 and 1972. He said a lack of instruction was a continual feature of his work, and that he just made up his methods and activities. He presumed he was doing the right thing because his managers never told him otherwise.

Bailey joined a tiny left-wing discussion group, the North London Red Circle. In his written statement he described the Red Circle as ‘a talking shop’, saying:

‘It did support a revolutionary agenda and was subversive to the extent that it advanced the overthrow of the established political system in the UK, albeit never took any concrete steps… violence would have been the last thing on many of their minds’.

He said it was a ‘recruiting ground for the International Marxist Group’, with an implication that the IMG was in itself a serious threat to public safety even though, as we heard from Dick Epps, other officers knew that wasn’t the case and they’d only spied on the IMG because they, in turn, was supposed to be adjacent to the real targets.

IRISH ISSUES

Bailey also infiltrated the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign (ICRSC). Irish republican politics was a popular cause with the left at the time. As in the early years of the Troubles, Republicans were only attacking military targets in Northern Ireland it was, for many, a cause with little moral dilemma.

In October 1970, Bailey also attended the founding conference of the Irish Solidarity Campaign (ISC) in Birmingham. For an SDS officer to go to another constabulary’s jurisdiction, the unit must have either secured the permission of the local police, in which case they were complicit in what the spycops did, or else it was done without local approval, which is a serious breach of police protocol.

That Irish Solidarity Campaign founding conference was also attended by Bailey’s colleague, SDS officer HN68 ‘Sean Lynch’, whose deployment focused on Irish solidarity groups. A report was produced afterwards, with both their names attached to it, which contained a long list of all the groups and ‘fraternal delegates’ who attended the conference.

He explained:

‘They were there and so I reported it; it was then down to the back office to do their filtering, vetting, or whatever you call it’

The report was sent to both MI5 and the Home Office. The Met’s Deputy Assistant Commissioner commended the ‘first class work’ and asked that the officers be praised.

It will have been obvious to that senior officer that the depth of knowledge in the report can only have come from sustained infiltration.

It is already clear – and getting even clearer – that the SDS’s work was known and approved of at the highest levels of the Met, as well as its paymasters in the Home Office. There is, therefore, no way to sustain the claim that the SDS was a rogue unit, so secret that nobody outside really knew what was going on.

Bailey could not recall ISC members ever taking part in any acts of violence, nor any public disorder at any demonstrations organised by the ISC:

‘I’m sure something like that would have stuck in my memory and it definitely doesn’t.’

ANOTHER MP SPIED ON

Bailey’s reports would specifically mention whether or not events were attended by Bernadette Devlin, a young independent Irish republican MP.

According to Bailey:

‘if she was known to be going to attend any meeting or demonstration or whatever, then of course that would increase the likelihood of more people arriving at the demonstration’.

Devlin joins the growing list of MPs confirmed as having been spied on by the SDS, the unit that was supposedly formed to frustrate those who would overthrow parliamentary democracy.

SPYCOPS ABROAD

Bailey’s managers had instructed him not to join the International Marxist Group because it was ‘recognised as more of a political party’. This doesn’t tally with the fact that his contemporary, ‘Doug Edwards’, was not merely a member of the Independent Labour Party but the Tower Hamlets branch treasurer.

His managers did, however, instruct him to attend the Conference for a Red Europe in Brussels in November 1970, organised by the Fourth International (of which the IMG was a part).

As with the ISC conference in Birmingham a month earlier, Bailey says there was no direct contact between him and the other spycop who attended. That other officer was officer HN326, ‘Doug Edwards’, who complained about the trip in his evidence to the Inquiry.

This is the earliest known instance of spycops travelling abroad. It’s unclear whether the SDS followed protocol and got permission from their counterparts in Belgium (and any countries they passed through).

It is yet another example of spycops’ being engaged from the start in an activity that has been explained away as a later aberration.

TRADE UNIONIST DAVE SMITH

Blacklisted trade unionist Dave Smith was initially forbidden to deliver his opening statement to the Inquiry, as it mentioned the real name of spycop ‘Carlo Neri’ – which is Carlo Soracchi. The Inquiry insisted on nobody saying the name Soracchi out loud, even though it has been in the public domain for 18 months.

Smith spoke on behalf of the Blacklist Support Group (BSG), representing union members who were unlawfully blacklisted by major construction firms.

When the BSG first spoke about being blacklisted for union activities, they were ridiculed as conspiracy theorists. But it’s conspiracy fact – and it involves the collusion of the police and the security services.

Established in 1993 using an existing blacklist from the Economic League, The Consulting Association (TCA) was a secret body comprised of most major construction companies. Between them, they illegally orchestrated the blacklisting of thousands of construction workers.

Every job applicant on major building projects had their name checked against TCA’s blacklist. If there was a match, the worker would be refused work or dismissed. These checks were done on hundreds of thousands of workers a year.

It wasn’t just the major firms who kept union activists under surveillance and contributed to blacklisting – it was the same political police who are at the heart of the Undercover Policing Inquiry.

The police’s internal spycops investigation, Operation Herne, produced a report on blacklisting which concluded:

‘Police, including Special Branches and the Security Services, supplied information to the blacklist funded by the country’s major construction firms, The Consulting Association’

SPECIAL BRANCH INDUSTRIAL UNIT

The Special Branch Industrial Unit was established in 1970, ‘with the aim of monitoring trade unionists from teaching to the docks’. Special Branch files were effectively a database for MI5, private firms and others to find out about trade union activists.

Spycops often worked for the Industrial Unit, before or after being deployed undercover. One was HN336 ‘Dick Epps’, who told the Inquiry that Chief Superintendent Herbert Guy ‘Bert’ Lawrenson, head of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch’s union-monitoring C Squad in those early days, went to work for the Economic League.

One can readily imagine Special Branch Industrial Unit officers had a ready exchange of information with Lawrenson, their former boss, the man who quite possibly hired and trained them.

The Operation Herne report confirmed that, prior to The Consulting Association’s foundation in the 1990s:

‘Special Branches throughout the UK had direct contact with the Economic League’

MODERN POLICE HELP FOR BLACKLISTERS

As well as Special Branch files, police intelligence on political activists was later kept on the National Domestic Extremism Database, which holds files on thousands of citizens whom the State considers ‘domestic extremists’, many of whom have committed no crime whatsoever.

One of the units responsible for the database was the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (NETCU), whose Detective Chief Inspector Gordon Mills gave a presentation to a secret Consulting Association meeting in 2008. This was a senior police officer helping TCA, a company whose work was illegal.

NETCU and the Special Branch Industrial Unit, along with all the spycops units, are now absorbed into the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command. State spying on unions is now classified as counter-terrorism.

PERSONAL TARGETING

Smith then focused on a small group of union activists on the blacklist of which he was part. From the early 1990s until mid 2000s, they were spied on by three separate spycops: Peter Francis, Mark Jenner, and Carlo Soracchi.

Mark Jenner joined the construction union UCATT as ‘Mark Cassidy’. He attended picket lines, protests, and conferences, and even chaired meetings. Smith flatly accused Jenner, and through him the British State, of interfering with the internal democratic processes of an independent trade union.

When Jenner’s deployment was coming to an end, another spycop, Carlo Soracchi, using the name ‘Carlo Neri’, was sent to spy on the same group of activists. Soracchi was an agent provocateur, trying in vain to incite union members to commit arson against a charity shop he claimed was run by Roberto Fiore, leader of Italian fascist party Forza Nuova.

Jenner deceived ‘Alison’, an activist for the National Union of Teachers, into a five year co-habiting relationship during his deployment. Soracchi deceived two women into relationships with him during his deployment – Donna McLean, a Transport and General Workers Union rep from a homelessness charity, and ‘Lindsey‘ who was also an active trade unionist.

If the purpose of the spycop units was genuinely, as the police claim, to detect serious criminality or public disorder, why, in over ten years of spying, were none of these people ever charged or prosecuted with a serious criminal offence? This is nothing to do with disorder or crime, it’s purely political policing.

Smith said the police can claim all they like that they were protecting democracy. But by spying on trade union members and colluding with blacklisting, spycops are actually just protecting big business and capitalism. Capitalism and democracy are not the same thing.

OFFICER HN348 ‘SANDRA DAVIES’

Giving over a long session to questioning Special Demonstration Squad officer HN348 ‘Sandra Davies’ seemed something of an odd proposition, as she appeared to have had an uneventful deployment.

As it turned out, this was the point; her testimony demonstrated the pointlessness of many deployments, and the total absence of any consideration of the impact of this intrusion on the lives of those targeted.

The SDS’ annual report of 1971 confirmed that she was recruited for her gender:

‘The arrival of a second woman officer has added considerably to the squad’s flexibility and has proved invaluable in the comparatively recent field of women’s liberation.’

Davies infiltrated the Women’s Liberation Front (WLF). A small feminist group with Maoist leanings, its meetings were attended by about 12 people, hosted at one of the member’s homes.

As a constable, she had the same powers and responsibilities as her male colleagues but, as a female officer, was only paid 90% of the men’s salary.

In the SDS, she was sent to spy on the WLF who, according to her, mainly campaigned for equal pay, free contraception and free nurseries.

SUBVERSIVE BAKING

Davies reported on the WLF supplying home-made sweets and cakes for a children’s Christmas party organised by the Black Unity and Freedom Party. She also reported on the WLF holding a jumble sale. Both of these reports were copied to MI5.

She was elected treasurer of the WLF. As part of the six-strong executive committee, she took part in the expulsion of several members that led to the group’s decline.

Looking back, she continued:

‘I do not think my work really yielded any good intelligence, but I eliminated the Women’s Liberation Front from public order concerns’

That is a mitigation that could be applied to thought-crime spying on literally anyone. More to the point, it was a fact that must have been obvious very early on in her deployment. And yet she spent two years, full-time, spying on that group.

There was no suggestion that her managers gave much thought to whether what she was doing was worthwhile. As with other deployments, it seems that once they had their spycops in place, keeping them there was more important than the substance of the information they gathered.

The rights of the people being spied on – who had police officers in their lives and homes week after week – didn’t get a look-in.

MENTAL GYMNASTICS

Davies has been granted anonymity by the Inquiry. In her ‘impact statement’, she said that she wanted anonymity because she would be embarrassed if the group’s main activist found out the truth. She also said her reputation would be tainted if her friends found out she had been a spycop.

This is an extraordinary mental gymnastics – when we question the purpose of spycops, the police tell us that they’re doing vital & noble work ensuring the safety of everyone, yet when we ask why they want anonymity, they say it would be humiliating to be known as one.

SUMMARY WITHOUT QUESTION

Rather than insisting that all of the surviving former spycops give evidence, the Inquiry has chosen not to ‘call’ the majority of them.

Instead, the Inquiry team have prepared a short summary of each officer’s witness statement, and read it out. There is no opportunity for anyone to question the spycops, giving rise to a worry that their real history will remain hidden.

Less anticipated was that the Inquiry would be more inclined to cover up an officer’s wrongdoing than the officer themselves.

OFFICER HN339 ‘STEWART GOODMAN’

Officer HN339, ‘Stewart Goodman’, was deployed undercover from 1970 to 1971, initially against the anti-apartheid groups. He joined the Lambeth branch of the International Socialists (now the Socialist Workers Party), where – mirroring Doug Edwards’ and Sandra Davies’ roles – he became treasurer.

Speaking for the Inquiry, Elizabeth Campbell summarised:

‘HN339 recalls being involved in some fly-posting while in his cover identity, but no other criminal activity. Near the end of his deployment, HN339 was involved in a road traffic accident while driving an unmarked police car, which necessitated the involvement of his supervisors on the SDS.

‘HN339 states that he does not remember much about his withdrawal from the field, but suspects that this event may have been a catalyst for the end of his deployment.’

Goodman was not merely ‘involved in a road traffic accident’.

For those willing to wade through the documents, on page 18 of Goodman’s witness statement he said:

‘I crashed my unmarked police car. I had been at a pub with activists and I would have parked the car away from the pub so as not to arouse suspicion. I drove home while under the influence of alcohol and crashed the car into a tree’.

The car was a write-off. When uniformed officers arrived, Goodman breached SDS protocol and broke cover, telling them he was an undercover colleague. Rather than arresting and charging him, they drove him home.

He was eventually charged and went to court, accompanied by his manager Phil Saunders. He believes he was prosecuted under his false identity and that Saunders briefed the magistrates. He was convicted and fined.

INQUIRY COVERING UP THE TRUTH

It is utterly outrageous that the Inquiry told the public that the only crime Goodman committed undercover was fly-posting and then, literally in the next sentence, referred to a much more serious criminal offence.

Investigating the often-corrupt relationships between the spycops and the courts is one of the stated purposes of this Inquiry, yet here they are deliberately burying examples of wrong-doing which the officers themselves admit.

Because Goodman wasn’t called to give evidence to the Inquiry in person, there was no way to question him about the possibility of judicial corruption.

Beyond that, we are left wondering what else has been covered up in this way, and lies there among the hundreds of pages the Inquiry bulk-publishes after it has finished discussing a given officer’s deployment.

OFFICER HN343 ‘JOHN CLINTON’

Another summary was given for HN343 ‘John Clinton’, who served in the SDS from early 1971 until late 1974, infiltrating groups including the International Socialists (IS).

Clinton considered the IS to be subversive, though he had an exceptionally broad definition of the word, writing in his witness statement:

‘I witnessed a lot of subversive activity whilst I was deployed undercover… During industrial disputes they would deploy to picket lines and stand there in solidarity.’

He reported on campaigns and issues supported by the group, such as women’s liberation, tenants’ rights and the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

WHAT HE DIDN’T SAY

Clinton was infiltrating International Socialists in London in the summer of 1974, yet he made no mention of their involvement in the large anti-fascist demonstration on 15 June 1974 at which a protester, Kevin Gately, was killed by police.

It was the first time anyone had died on a demonstration in Britain for over 50 years. It was a huge cause célèbre for the left. Clinton didn’t mention this, nor any of the vigils for Gately and campaigning that followed among IS and the broader left.

It is a glaring omission that arouses suspicion. Given the SDS’s avid focus on such justice campaigns later on, it would be very odd indeed if their officer in IS didn’t participate, let alone fail to recall it as significant.

As with Stewart Goodman earlier, because this was an Inquiry lawyer reading out a hasty summary, nobody was able to question Clinton about any of this.

OFFICER HN345 ‘PETER FREDERICKS’

Spycop HN345, ‘Peter Fredericks‘, describes himself as being ‘of mixed heritage’. He was deployed by the SDS for about six months in 1971.

Fredericks was asked if he thought he was asked to target the Black Power movement because of his race.

‘No. I never came across anything vaguely associated with that statement,’ he replied, as if the police might have sent a white officer to infiltrate Black Power groups instead.

ANOTHER FAULTY MEMORY

Fredericks was asked if he remembered the case of the Mangrove 9:

‘Not clearly, no’.

The disbelieving scepticism of the barrister asking was clear even on the plain type of the transcript:

‘It doesn’t ring any bells at all? Let me see if I can help you.’

The Inquiry was then told how, on 9 August 1970 – a few months before Fredericks joined the SDS – there was a demonstration in Notting Hill about the police harassment of the Mangrove restaurant. As a result of that demonstration, nine black activists were arrested and prosecuted for riot.

There was a defence campaign set up, and their trial started at the Old Bailey in October 1971, while Fredericks was undercover in Black Power groups.

Fredericks said:

‘I was not involved closely with them. I would have read about it in the papers. I would have known something, perhaps.’

As with John Clinton’s failure to mention the death of Kevin Gately, this absence of memory is simply not credible. Even the barrister knew it:

‘And you don’t remember any conversations with any of your SOS colleagues, or anybody else in Special Branch, about this seminal event in the history of the Black Power Movement?’

Fredericks determinedly kept the lid on the can of worms:

‘Definitely not. Definitely not.’

In fact, the totality of Fredericks’s recollections of Black Power seemed to amount to very little at all.

‘SAMPLE THE PRODUCT’

When asked about intimate relationships between undercover officers and the people they spied on, his jaw-dropping response led to collective gasps of horror:

‘I have, if you like, a phrase in my head which helps guide me here. If you ask me to infiltrate some drug dealers, you can’t point the finger at me if I sample the product.

‘If these people are in a certain environment where it is necessary to engage a little more deeply, then shall we say, I find this acceptable, but I do worry about the consequences for the female and any children that may result from the relationship. That would be dangerous. So yes, it shouldn’t be done.’

Tom Fowler was live-tweeting from the Inquiry venue, watching on a screen. He reported:

‘Reading the words from the transcript is bad enough, but when you see it delivered with a wide grin, tongue darting in & out of the mouth, with the final “it shouldn’t be done” tacked on to the end with a complete lack of sincerity, it reveals an extreme misogyny as well as a certain sadism; a psychopathic willingness to use people for political ends, whilst enjoying it at the same time’

It serves to underline the problem of the Inquiry only providing a live transcript and thereby missing all the tone and inflection, something highlighted on the COPS blog earlier in the week.

WHAT NEXT?

The Undercover Policing Inquiry will now take a break to prepare for the next set of hearings. These will examine the Special Demonstration Squad 1973-82, and are expected to be held in March or April 2021.

Whenever they happen, COPS will be live-tweeting the hearings and producing daily reports, as well as weekly summaries like this one.

All our daily and weekly reports are linked from our Inquiry page.

<<Previous UCPI Weekly Report (9-13 Nov 2020)<<

>>Next UCPI Weekly Report (21-23 Apr 2021)>>

Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 14

19 November 2020

Evidence from:

Officer HN 333 (summary of evidence)
Officer HN 339 aka ‘Stewart Goodman’ (summary of evidence)
Officer HN 349 (summary of evidence)
Officer HN 343 aka ‘John Clinton’ (summary of evidence)
Officer HN 345 aka ‘Peter Fredericks’

This was the final day of hearings in the first phase of the Inquiry, looking at the earliest years of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) from its formation in 1968 to around 1972.

We heard evidence from five former undercover officers of the SDS. The Inquiry gave brief summaries of four of their careers, before the fifth, ‘Peter Fredericks’ gave evidence in person for several hours.

Once again the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, locked horns with Rajiv Menon QC, barrister for those who were spied upon. The bias of the Inquiry was set out in even starker terms when we discovered that, in the summary of officer HN339 ‘Stewart Goodman’, it actively hid the officer’s admissions of criminality. It’s as if the Inquiry is more on the police’s side than the police themselves. 

Officer HN 333
(summary of evidence)

Temporary Mystery Man

Very little is known about this officer. Their real and cover names are being restricted, along with details of the groups he targeted.

The reason for restricting real and cover names and target group was previously set out by Mitting as:

“There is, however, a small – in my judgement, very small – risk that if his cover name were to be associated with the valuable duties which he performed subsequent to his deployment, he would be of interest to those who might pose such a threat.”

He was on duty as a plain-clothes Special Branch officer at the large anti-Vietnam War demonstration on 27 October 1968, then joined the SDS shortly afterwards.

According to his witness statement, there was tight secrecy around the SDS. There was also no formal training, though once in the field the undercovers would share their experience and knowledge. He did not use the name of a deceased child, and there was only limited guidance about choosing a cover name.

He was deployed for 9 months, into a now-defunct left wing group. He attended meetings and demonstrations, but said it was a ‘loose association’ rather than a formal organisation, so he did not have any roles of responsibility.

He gave verbal updates to SDS managers at the safe house – he said he was not responsible for writing intelligence reports.

Having become ill, he was withdrawn (via a planned process) in 1969, giving his excuses to the group. He then returned to normal Special Branch duties.

The full witness statement of HN333.

A summary of information about HN333’s deployment can be found on p122 of the Counsel to the Inquiry’s Opening Statement.

Officer HN 339 aka ‘Stewart Goodman’
(summary of evidence)

‘Stewart Goodman’, the Drunk Driver

This officer joined Special Branch in the 1960s, during which time he attended meetings of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination.

He said “everyone in Special Branch knew about the existence of the SDS”, which contrasts with other officers saying it was a well-kept secret, or something about which there were only vague rumours.

He was married at the time the joined the SDS, but there was no welfare check to discuss the impact of his new job on his family.

He was deployed undercover from 1970 to 1971, initially against the Anti-Apartheid Movement, from which he also reported on the Dambusters Mobilisation Committee. Most of his early reporting relates to this latter organisation, which was a coalition of anti-apartheid groups who opposed the construction of the huge Cabora Bassa dam in Mozambique to supply electricity to South Africa.

He subsequently infiltrated the Lambeth branch of the International Socialists (now the Socialist Workers Party), where he became treasurer (a position more than one of his contemporaries occupied in groups they infiltrated). This put him very close to the branch secretary – ‘effectively his right hand man’. He attended both public and private meetings.

While spying on the IS, much of what Goodman reported on was internal party discussions and political disputes. As well as at Lambeth branch, he also reported on the group’s affairs at a national level – including reporting on a major rift. He went to their national convention at Skegness. It appears IS were targeted because the security services believe they fell within their definition of ‘subversion’.

Goodman also said:

“MPs giving their support to protest movements was potentially of interest to Special Branch”.

The Inquiry also notes that his “intelligence evidences a particular interest on the part of IS in trade union activity”.

He did not use the name of a deceased child and says he did not have any sexual relationships.

INQUIRY COVER-UP

Non-state core participants have been worried about the Inquiry having a lawyer read a summary of an officer’s activity, with no opportunity to question the officer. What we hadn’t anticipated was the Inquiry being even more inclined to cover-up an officer’s wrongdoing than the officer themselves.

Speaking for the Inquiry, Elizabeth Campbell said:

“HN339 recalls being involved in some fly-posting while in his cover identity, but no other criminal activity. Near the end of his deployment, HN339 was involved in a road traffic accident while driving an unmarked police car, which necessitated the involvement of his supervisors on the SDS. HN339 states that he does not remember much about his withdrawal from the field, but suspects that this event may have been a catalyst for the end of his deployment.”

 

Goodman was not merely ‘involved in a road traffic accident’.

For those willing to wade through the statements, on page 18 of Goodman’s witness statement he said:

“I crashed my unmarked police car. I had been at a pub with activists and I would have parked the car away from the pub so as not to arouse suspicion. I drove home while under the influence of alcohol and crashed the car into a tree”.

 

The car was a write-off. When uniformed officers arrived, Goodman breached SDS protocol and broke cover, telling them he was an undercover colleague. Rather than arresting and charging him, they drove him home.

He was eventually charged and went to court, accompanied by his manager Phil Saunders. He believes he was prosecuted under his false identity, and that Saunders briefed the magistrates. He was convicted and fined.

Having been bailed out by his managers, he was withdrawn from his undercover role, but faced no formal disciplinary action.

INQUIRY UNDERMINING ITSELF

It is utterly outrageous that the Inquiry told the public that the only crime Goodman committed undercover was fly-posting and then, literally in the next sentence, referred to a much more serious criminal offence, for which he was convicted (with the complicity of uniformed police and the judiciary).

The Inquiry cannot claim ignorance, as they not only specifically mentioned the incident, but made a conscious choice to turn his statement from an admission of criminal culpability into a more neutral account, with no crime mentioned.

Investigating the often-corrupt relationships between the spycops and the courts is one of the stated purposes of this Inquiry, yet here they are deliberately burying examples of wrong-doing that the officers themselves admit to.

Because Goodman wasn’t called to give evidence to the Inquiry in person, there is no way to question him about the possibility of judicial corruption. Beyond that, we are left wondering what else has been covered up in this way, and lies there among the screeds pages that the Inquiry bulk-publishes after it has finished discussing a given officer’s deployment.

The full witness statement of HN339 ‘Stewart Goodman’.

A summary of information about HN339’s deployment can be found on p138 of the Counsel to the Inquiry’s Opening Statement.

Officer HN 349
(summary of evidence)

The Failed Anarchist

Both the real name and the cover name of this officer has been restricted by the Inquiry. The names of the groups he targeted have also been withheld, which has made it impossible for anyone he spied on to come forward to the Inquiry with their evidence.

He was recruited by another undercover to join the SDS after a short time in Special Branch. He was not given formal training; instead he read reports in the back office and met with other spycops before being deployed.

He grew his hair and beard and started wearing scruffy clothes, but did little else to develop his ‘legend’. His cover story was poorly developed compared to his colleagues (he had no cover job, for instance).

Deployed in the early 1970s, he was apparently not initially tasked to spy on any particular group, instead he went to demonstrations in central London and sought to get to know regulars.

He was eventually asked to target various loose-knit anarchist groups.

While at the safe house he would discuss anything and everything – including details of their deployments – with the other spycops, something other spycops have denied in their evidence to the Inquiry. In his witness statement he said:

“No topic of conversation would be off limits.”

If and when necessary, managers would take an undercover off for private chats, away from the group:

“This happened more frequently for officers who were involved in the more sensitive areas of work.”

The deployment was unsuccessful as the target group were mistrustful of strangers and did not let him build up relationships with them. Consequently, following a meeting with his managers, he was withdrawn after just nine months in the field.

He then spent time in the SDS back office, before returning to other Special Branch duties. He notes he did work with intelligence gathered by SDS undercovers though it was not marked as such. He also made requests for specific information from the SDS while at Special Branch.

HN349 noted that most Special Branch officers were “aware of the SDS and had an idea of the kind of groups they had infiltrated”. He also noted:

“It was also generally accepted by myself and fellow UCOs [undercover officers] that the Security Services provided some of the funding for the SDS.”

The full witness statement of HN349.

A summary of information about HN349’s deployment can be found on p141 of the Counsel to the Inquiry’s Opening Statement.

Officer HN 343 aka ‘John Clinton’
(summary of evidence)

‘John Clinton’ and the Subversive Pickets

This undercover served in the SDS from early 1971 until sometime in 1974. He was deployed into the International Socialists.

Prior to joining the SDS, he had been deployed as a plain-clothes Special Branch officer to report back on public meetings. Whilst in Special Branch, he had heard ‘vague whispers’ of the existence of a secret unit.

He had no formal training. He spent 3-4 months in the SDS back office, reading up on the political landscape. His cover story was basic and he gave his cover job as van driver, in case he was spotted elsewhere in London by his targets. He was give a vehicle as part of his cover.

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISTS

Clinton was tasked by his managers to infiltrate the International Socialists (IS). From October 1971 to March 1972, many of his reports are of the IS’s Croydon branch. However, he explained that the documents do not reflect the totality of his reporting during this period. Rather, he attended various IS meetings and demonstrations across London before focusing on the Hammersmith & Fulham branch.

This branch was chosen as there was “a lot of Irish activity discussed”, which he knew was of great interest to the Met.

He found it easy to join as they were keen for new members; he turned up at meetings and demonstrations, expressing his enthusiasm for the cause. Once in, he used a ‘flaky’ persona to avoid being given responsibility in the group.

He was aware that the SDS was interested in both public order and counter-subversion issues. He said that IS was a “Trotskyist subversive group with links into Irish Groups”. He witnessed public disorder during his time undercover, but noted that any violence was not caused by IS members.

Clinton did consider IS to be subversive, writing in his witness statement:

“I witnessed a lot of subversive activity whilst I was deployed undercover. IS were constantly trying to exploit whatever industrial or political situation that existed in the aim of getting the proletariat to rise up. During industrial disputes they would deploy to picket lines and stand there in solidarity.”

He attended a wide range of public and private events, providing significant reportage of IS’s internal affairs, including details of elections and appointments, and political rifts. He also reported on trade union membership and industrial action taken by IS members. He did not join a trade union, but did go on demonstrations in support of industrial action organised by trade unions.

Other matters covered included campaigns supported by the group, such as women’s liberation, tenants’ rights and the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

Clinton noted that he had considerable discretion as to what he reported on, but was guided by what he knew Special Branch to be interested in generally. He received general tasking and updates at the SDS weekly meetings.

He wrote:

“My remit was to gather intelligence on IS. That was both with a view to public order, but also information that was relevant to counter subversion. What they were doing politically, how they were organised, and the identity of influential individuals was all important information.”

THE DEATH OF KEVIN GATELY

Clinton was infiltrating International Socialists in London in the summer of 1974, yet he made no mention of their involvement in the large anti-fascist demonstration on 15 June 1974 at which a protester, Kevin Gately, was killed.

At 6 feet 9 inches tall, Gately stood out, and his head is readily seen above the level of crowd in photos of the demonstration. This may well be why he was killed. Police charged into the crowd on horseback, lashing out with truncheons. Gately’s body was found afterwards.

The inquest found Gately died from a brain haemorrhage caused from a blow to the head from a blunt instrument. His exceptional height led several newspapers of the time to allege his death was the result of a blow from a mounted police truncheon.

It was the first time anyone had died on a demonstration in Britain for over 50 years. It was a huge cause célèbre for the left. Clinton didn’t mention this, nor any of the vigils for Gately and campaigning that followed among IS and the broader left.

It is a glaring omission that arouses suspicion. He would certainly have known of it and may well have been part of the demonstration and subsequent commemorations and events. Given the SDS’s avid focus on such justice campaigns later on, it would be very odd if their officer in IS didn’t remember it as being significant.

As with Stewart Goodman earlier, because this was an Inquiry lawyer reading out a hasty summary, lawyers for the ‘non-state core participants’ (those who were spied on) weren’t able to question Clinton about any of this.

END OF DEPLOYMENT

Clinton left his deployment in September 1974 as he had enough of being an undercover; this was supported by his managers. In one of the earliest known developed exit strategies, he used a ‘phased withdrawal’, telling the group he was going travelling.

Being undercover permanently changed him, in that it made him very private in his personal affairs.

In late 1980s, he was posted to Special Branch’s C Squad for a few months and would have received intelligence from the SDS in that role, but as it was ‘sanitised’ he would not be privy to full details of the spycops’ doings. He retired from the police after 30 years.

THE MAN WITH THE VAN

It’s interesting to note that he was a van driver, with a van supplied by the SDS. This became a common part of later spycops’ deployments.

As Clinton said, it gave them an excuse if they were spotted somewhere unexpected. It also made them the group’s unofficial taxi: they would drop everyone home after meetings, thereby learning people’s addresses. If a group was planning to go on any political action, they would ask the member with the reliable van first.

It became a standard part of spycops’ fake identities across decades and units. Andy Coles (SDS, 1991-95) was known as ‘Andy Van’.

Later on, Mark Kennedy (National Public Order Intelligence Unit, 2003-2010) was known as ‘Transport Mark’, in charge of logistics for all the Climate Camps.

The full witness statement of HN343.

A summary of information about HN343’s deployment can be found on p154 of the Counsel to the Inquiry’s Opening Statement.

Five More Spycops

As if these summaries truncated enough, the Inquiry also published without summary documents relating to five former members of the SDS who have not provided witness statements:

– HN346, real name Jill Mosdell, cover name unknown. Spied on Stop the Seventy Tour, the Anti-Apartheid Movement & related groups.

– HN338, real name restricted, cover name unknown. Spied on the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, the International Marxist Group (in particular the Notting Hill and West London branches), and the Anti-Internment League.

– HN1251/371, real name Phil Saunders, cover name, if any, unknown. Detective Inspector in the SDS, overseeing undercover officers.

– HN332, real name restricted. Cover name, if any, unknown. Detective Inspector and subsequently head of the SDS.

– HN394, real name restricted and cover name, if any, unknown. Detective Sergeant and then Detective Inspector in the SDS.

It wasn’t explained are SDS bosses are not even not giving statements? Are they somehow deemed irrelevant? Are they refusing to cooperate? Have they died?

It’s not clear why there appears to be no mention of HN 394 on the Inquiry website.

Officer HN 345 aka ‘Peter Fredericks’

Only one officer, ‘HN345’, gave ‘live’ evidence at the Undercover Policing Inquiry on Thursday. He was questioned by Counsel for the Inquiry, David Barr QC, and later by Rajiv Menon QC and Ruth Brander on behalf of non-state core participants. Questions were based on his written witness statement.

His mannerisms and tone obviously do not come across in the time-delayed transcript, so it is worth noting that he was usually grinning, poked his tongue in and out whilst speaking, and drew out certain words.

The opening questions are formalities, confirming that he knew the contents of the witness statement he provided, and that they are is true. Even at this, he was cocky. Asked if he was ‘familiar with the contents of the witness statement, he replied ‘slightly’.

He came across as incredibly creepy, and his evidence reiterated a number of now familiar themes: the lack of training or guidance these officers received; the bizarre claim that they all sat together in a flat for hours writing reports without exchanging information or ideas about their deployments; the ‘fishing expedition’ nature of the deployments – where everything and anything was passed on to the managers, who it was assumed would only include the information that they considered important in the final intelligence reports; the inexplicable infiltration of groups involved in political debate and even humanitarian aid; stark and shocking evidence of deep rooted sexism, racism and political prejudice; the fact that the Inquiry has only received a small fraction of the overall reporting; and the ever-present influence of “Box 500”, the code name for MI5.

GOING UNDERCOVER

Fredericks joined the police in the mid 1960s, and in the course of his ordinary policing, was offered the opportunity to do some undercover work. He “thought it sounded more interesting than road traffic duties” and agreed. Fredericks was deployed by the SDS for about six months, in 1971.

He was trained ‘on the job’ to do this ‘ordinary’ (i.e. non-spycop) undercover work. Whilst undercover he came across people involved with political groups – including the anti-apartheid Stop the Seventy Tour campaign, and the “Black Power movement”. He had not been tasked to report on either of these groups, he said it “just happened while I was doing other things”. He sent the information he gathered to his bosses.

Fredericks was asked by Ruth Brander – on behalf of Peter Hain – whether he knew that the information he had gathered about the Stop The Seventy Tour was being given to the Security Services. His lengthy response included the claim that “the system needed to know about it and I was pushing the information up”. And what about the South African security services? He didn’t have much of a response to this, managing only a weak “no”.

He explained that as a result of this intelligence-gathering, he was noticed by both Special Branch and MI5. He was interviewed and invited to join Special Branch, as a member of “C-squad” dealing with ‘domestic extremism’. He was in the section that dealt with Trotskyists and anarchists (as opposed to the one that dealt with the Communist Party of Great Britain and similar groups). He said he could not remember being briefed about any specific groups.

He said he had not heard of what was called the Special Operations Squad (SOS, later the Special Demonstration Squad) at the time. The Inquiry was shown one of Fredericks’ reports [UCPI0000005817] from his time at C-squad, before he became a member of the SOS, about a meeting on the Vietnam war where another non-state CP, Tariq Ali, was speaking.

ANOTHER AMNESIAC SPYCOP

As with most of the other officers who have so far given evidence, he said he remembered what documents proved and little more. Asked about his reporting on Tariq Ali, whose activism was so prominent at the time that his name would be used in headlines, Fredericks said he could only “remember the name very clearly but no more. It’s one of those strange things”.

While part of C-squad, he was also instructed to attend demonstrations.. At one of these demos, about the conflict in East Pakistan/ Bangladesh, he met a woman who was connected to the ‘Operation Omega’ campaign.

He gave an account of an incident he witnessed during another Bangladesh demo. He stated that he and other plain-clothes Special Branch officers had been summoned by radio back to Scotland Yard, and he was near Parliament when he spotted a police communications vehicle on fire and the female officer inside “in distress”. He said he didn’t notice any other serious trouble or violence that day:

“I didn’t notice anything to be worried about. Having said that, of course we did have the fire”.

As a result of his accidentally making connections with various political groups, he seems to have been flagged as a potential recruit for the SOS. He was approached by Ken Pendered, told that the Security Services (MI5) had written a letter commending him and that he would be transferred to this secret squad and given an undercover identity.

He was also questioned about HN326 and HN68 visiting him at his home – he can’t remember exactly when or why this took place, although he and HN326 were already acquainted. However, his pride at having been noticed by “Box” (i.e. MI5) was still evident in his demeanour, fifty years on.

NO FORMAL TASKING OR TRAINING

He confirmed that he was not given any training on the definition of ‘extremism’ or ‘subversion’, giving the somewhat vague answer that:

“what is subversive to one group could be helpful to another, or positive to another”.

He added that he had his own private views on those terms, and he cannot remember any received understanding within Special Branch on this point.

He felt the training he was given when he joined Special Branch was not particularly useful. In contrast, there was no training or guidance when he was transferred to the SOS. “We were left to our own devices”.

He had “no memory” of being instructed on what information was and wasn’t of interest. In his previous undercover work, he had been very selective in what he reported, but in the SOS he tried casting a wide net and gathering as much info as possible, from all sorts of people.

He compared himself to the provenance of antiques – “if I can be seen to be someone who knows a lot of people, different organisations, perhaps I would gain more trust”. He would hand over all the info he gathered. If he made mistakes in his report, someone would correct them. He didn’t type his own reports – there was a typing team for that – and others in the SOS decided what was relevant enough to be included.

As undercover officers, they were quite isolated, although they would have conversations at the ‘safe house’, the SDS flat. “We were on a bit of a learning curve” he explained.

In common with his contemporaries that the Inquiry had already heard from, Fredericks described being given a free rein on how he worked, negligible feedback on his reports, and no indication of what was good or bad in his work.

NEITHER GOOD NOR BAD

Were his bosses ever pleased with the intelligence he provided? “Not pleased, not dis-pleased” he answered. Indeed, the only time he can remember anyone being ‘pleased’ with his work was when that complimentary letter from ‘Box’ turned up right at the start.

Was this SOS work just an extension of the work he’d been doing in Special Branch, then? It appears not. Fredericks explained one of the main differences: “You didn’t go anywhere near the office” at Scotland Yard once you were in the SOS.

However, it should also be noted that Fredericks doesn’t think the Inquiry have seen all of his reports – there are only three reports of political meetings attended by ‘Fredericks’ in the bundle– yet he said he was “fully occupied” during his months with the squad, sometimes attending several meetings in the same day and filing several reports every week.

OPERATION OMEGA – HUMANITARIAN AID

Fredericks did not remember who had tasked him to infiltrate Operation Omega (also known as Action Bangla Desh), although it may have been Ken Pendered again. He doesn’t remember any discussions with his managers about the motivations of these groups, or being directed to infiltrate any groups in particular. He claims not to remember the names of other groups that he reported on, just Operation Omega’.

Asked about the aims and objectives of the police in infiltrating this organisation, he said they were trying “to reduce or eliminate unhelpful behaviour on the part of certain individuals within these various groups”. However, he also admitted that much of the work done by the Operation Omega group was humanitarian. Operation Omega was in fact a very small, London-based group involved in taking humanitarian aid to victims of the war in the Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) as it seceded from the Dominion of Pakistan in 1971.

Fredericks described the group as having plans to build housing for people, who had lost their homes during the war. They met up to stuff envelopes together and talk, and said that decisions were not made in his presence. “It was more admin than anything else” he said and noted that he didn’t have access to the group’s mailing list, but if he had, he would have passed it on to his superiors. He didn’t know the members very well, and he wasn’t “involved in the hierarchy”.

One of the members of the group told him that her family had donated £6,500 to the cause. “That was a great deal of money in those days” Barr suggested [it equates to approx £75,000 today] and some members of the group travelled to East Pakistan to deliver aid; he heard that one of them gave birth while in custody there. He wasn’t invited to go to East Pakistan with them.

Fredericks did attend demonstrations with the group, but can’t remember “anything special about those”. One was in Slough and involved several thousand people but was un-policed and peaceful.

“Would this have been unusual?” asked Barr, who said he was getting the impression that there were no public order concerns that day. Fredericks described them as sort of “a walk in the park on a Sunday”.

Barr said that there don’t appear to be any surviving reports by Fredericks about Operation Omega. Fredericks confirmed that he will have made two or three a week for about six months. We can only speculate as to why this might be.

FLY-POSTING WAS THE ONLY CRIME

Fredericks was also asked about an instance where he apparently went fly-posting with the group. He got no special permission from his managers to do this, he said, but on the other hand, no one was upset that he did it.

He went on to say that fly-posting wasn’t serious – “the authorities have more important things to do”. Barr agreed that it was “at the very very bottom end of the scale of criminal offending”. He was asked if Operation Omega were involved in any other criminal activity. “None at all,” he replied.

We were shown the Special Demonstration Squad’s Annual Report, written at the end of 1971 [MPS-0728971] in which Action Bangla Desh is indeed listed as having been ‘penetrated’ by the spycops, however Operation Omega is not.

When asked if there were any other officers reporting on Action Bangla Desh, or whether this would have been a reference to his work, Fredericks expressed a belief that he was the only officer deployed against Operation Omega. Nevertheless, we were also shown another report on Action Bangla Desh signed by officer HN332.

YOUNG HAGANAH – ‘WIDENING THE GEOGRAPHY’

At Operation Omega events, Fredericks met two women from the ‘Young Haganah’. He said he didn’t ‘join’ or participate in this group, or socialise with them and had no plans to infiltrate them, and no memory of being instructed to do so (by Phil Saunders or any other manager).

When asked about the connection to Israel he said “it just widens the geography”. He then admitted that he doesn’t know anything about the Young Haganah, but knew, from doing some research, that the original Haganah were involved in setting up the state of Israel decades before. The ‘Young Haganah’ were a completely separate group, who “just wanted to help people” he said. “I felt they were OK”.

Despite taking care to be someone who knew people here and there, to make himself less likely to raise suspicions, there came a time when he “knew something was wrong”. He recalled being diplomatically ‘steered away’ from meeting Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and two Labour MPs at a function, by the woman whose family had funded the Operation Omega group’s activities.

BLACK POWER

Rajiv Menon QC, on behalf of the Inquiry’s non-state core participants, pointed out that Fredericks referred to himself as being of ‘mixed heritage’ in his witness statement and asked if, in 1971, his mixed heritage was perhaps more visibly apparent than it is now.

Fredericks batted the question away:

“It’s not for me to judge. I don’t know. I don’t spend that much time looking at myself in the mirror.”

 

Menon asked Fredericks if he thought he was asked to target Operation Omega or the Black Power Movement because of his race.

“No. I never came across anything vaguely associated with that statement,” he replied, as if the police might have sent a white officer to infiltrate Black Power groups.

Fredericks said said he was not directed towards infiltrating the Black Power movement by anyone in the SOS. He had just met a guy at Speakers Corner and “hit it off”. He was then invited to Black Power events & meetings, which led to him meeting activists from the United States.

He knew that any such group would be considered to be of interest to Special Branch, and although he was “on the periphery, by no means at the heart of it”, he “did meet some interesting people” at this time.

Fredericks said he got on “pretty well” with some of the Black Power members, but later that he didn’t get to know them “hugely well”. A lot of his time with them was spent socialising, and playing pool, rather than discussing politics, but he thought this was a good tactic to gain their trust.

THE MANGROVE 9

Fredericks was asked if he remembered the case of the Mangrove 9. ‘Not clearly, no,’ he replied.

The Counsel’s scepticism was clear even on the transcript:

‘It doesn’t ring any bells at all? Let me see if I can help you.’

The Inquiry was then told how, on 9 August 1970 – a few months before Fredericks joined the SDS – there was a demonstration in Notting Hill about the police harassment of the Mangrove restaurant. As a result of that demonstration, nine black activists were arrested and prosecuted for riot.

There was a defence campaign set up, and their trial started at the Old Bailey in October 1971, while Fredericks was in the SDS, undercover in Black power groups.

Fredericks said:

“I was not involved closely with them. I would have read about it in the papers. I would have known something, perhaps.”

As with John Clinton’s failure to mention the death of Kevin Gately, this absence of memory is simply not credible. Even the Counsel knew it:

“And you don’t remember any conversations with any of your SOS colleagues, or anybody else in Special Branch, about this seminal event in the history of the Black Power Movement?”

Fredericks determinedly kept the lid on the can of worms:

“Definitely not. Definitely not.”

REPORTING ON RACIAL JUSTICE GROUPS

The Inquiry was shown one of his reports [UCPI0000026455] of a Black Defence Committee meeting in a pub in September 1971. The speaker was a student from South Africa, described in the report as “coloured”, and talking on the subject of apartheid. There were a dozen people (including Fredericks) in the audience.

There was a second Black Defence Committee meeting [UCPI0000026456] later that month. Solicitor Michael Siefert was the speaker, who was part of the Angela Davies Defence Committee (they were all members of the Communist Party of GB). Fredericks said he couldn’t remember much about that campaign, and he was not given any guidance on the appropriateness of spying on a justice campaign.

THREATENED BY A JOKE

Finally, he was asked about an incident he recounted in his written statement – at a meeting of around 80-90 people on the subject of violent protest, with a speaker from the USA. His witness statement included a description of worrying that he was “going to be kicked to death” after someone suggested that there was an MI5 spy in the room and he thought he was about to be accused.

He recalled the feeling “when you know you’re outnumbered and you’re in deep difficulties” – before he realised that the activists were joking, not serious – and said that he was aware “that I was involved with people who had access to and were prepared to use violence as and when necessary”.

However, when he was asked more generally about the Black Power activists, he stated that he never witnessed any violence, or public disorder, nor had he any memory of the group committing criminal offences. When asked whether they encouraged disorder, he seemed unable to give a coherent reply and said this was “difficult to answer”.

In fact, Fredericks’s recollections of Black Power seemed to amount to very little at all.

When asked if he thought his infiltration of Black Power was the best use of a police resource he replied, “there were times when I thought I was wasting my time, but… there were…people up there, senior people, who knew a lot more about the landscape”, who considered his deployment a good use of resources.

Back in the day, he thought it was worth keeping “an eye on what was going on, to prevent the sort of excessive behaviour that sometimes accompanies these projects”, and his view remains the same now, although he clarified “it’s not something I think about a lot”.

SEXISM

When asked about intimate relationships between undercover officers and the people they spied on, his jaw-dropping response led to gasps of horror from around the room. It is so glaringly sexist that it warrants being repeated verbatim here:

“I have, if you like, a phrase in my head which helps guide me here. If you ask me to infiltrate some drug dealers, you can’t point the finger at me if I sample the product. If these people are in a certain environment where it is necessary to engage a little more deeply, then shall we say, I find this acceptable, but I do worry about the consequences for the female and any children that may result from the relationship”.

It appears that the police lawyers (who hover in the background posing as “technical IT support” for the witnesses) may have had words with him about this during the break, because when pressed on this point later by Ruth Brander, representing non-state CPs, he appeared to recant his earlier statement a little, saying that the situation with these relationships was “hugely confusing”.

Although he admitted “you could call it deception, you could call it anything you like, it can’t be nice”, he also implied that the relationships may not even have happened, saying it is like you are “gazing into a darkened room, looking for a black cat you can’t see that may not be there…”. Speaking of the spycops who committed these abuses, he said “Perhaps – my view is perhaps they had no choice”.

Neil Woods, who was an actual undercover drugs officer, had no time at all for this as he responded on social media:

‘To compare sampling some drugs undercover to having a sexual relationship in a deployment is very twisted indeed. The casual nature of this comparison is revealing. One could argue that it’s as a result of canteen culture, the grim sexism that male dominated culture can produce. But this is beyond mere sexism, it’s disregard to the point of malice. A machine of misogyny.’

POLICE RACISM

Menon asked Frederick about racism, and Fredericks claimed that he did not encounter any hurtful racism in the police, although he talked about how disparaging things were said “with humour. I think it’s called irony”.

Menon then drew his attention to a report [MPS-0739148] (nothing to do with Fredericks) that relates to a conviction at the Central Criminal Court in February 1969.

At this point, as at numerous previous hearings, Menon clashed with the Chair, Sir John Mitting, who said:

“You are about, I think, to ask a witness about a document that is nothing at all to do with him… I’m not conducting an inquiry into racism in the Metropolitan Police for the last 50 years, I’m looking at the SOS.”

Menon pointed out that it was, in fact, an SOS document that he wanted to show.

Mitting relented without changing his position:

“I will let you do it. But this is not to be taken as a precedent for what may happen in the future. I’m really not willing to allow people to question other witnesses about documents that are nothing to do with them.”

This is a further example of Mitting’s refusal to admit the fact of institutional racism and bigotry in the Met, something which, though the Met admitted it more than 20 years ago, Mitting has called a ‘controversial’ view.

Institutional racism and sexism are at the core of the spycops scandal. For Mitting to reduce it to individual actions is a denial of the systemic nature of the abuses committed by spycops.

Allowed to show the document about the court case, Menon drew the Inquiry’s attention to details of the convicted man’s involvement in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and Black Power groups, then states “he has the usual attitude of coloured people towards police and authority”.

Is this the kind of ‘casual banter’ you were referring to, or something more sinister?, asked Menon.

“What I’m reading could be described as an overly wide brush-stroke”, Fredericks responded, adding:

‘we are all human beings, and no group occupies one sort of social or moral space, there is a divergence, and it’s up to us to learn to live together.’

Fredericks recognised that racism has been common in humanity, but was unwilling to agree that it has ever been a particular problem in British society, or in the police.

A FETISH FOR FOREIGN SPIES?

In addition to his obvious pride in recalling his commendation letter from MI5, Fredericks spoke about one woman from the Operation Omega group who appears to have fascinated him, because he believed she was a foreign spy.

He described her as having a “hidden agenda” – he found it hard to explain what he meant by this – he said she seemed different to the others. “She didn’t fit”, he said, but he couldn’t work out why. He was not sure if he could mention which country she was from, and after receiving permission said that she was from the United States, appearing to suggest there was a link with the CIA.

“I could be totally wrong, but it attracted my attention”, and he clearly still remembers the strength of his hunch now. “I don’t know what it was, but this woman knew what she was doing”.

Freericks was in his 20s at the time and remembered that she was older than him, and most of the others in the group. He said he was very careful – listening, and doing as little talking as possible.  “We enjoyed each other’s company,” but there was mutual suspicion.

When asked if they had a romantic relationship, he said, “I’d rather not comment, but no is the answer”.

He said he would certainly have mentioned her in his reports, but didn’t gather any meaningful info (although earlier he said that he discovered her work address). This, like many of Fredericks’s answers hints at a hidden grimness to his operation. But without proper testing of the testimony, that’s all we can say.

His international spying fantasies seem to have come full circle at the end of his deployment, when – after being suddenly removed from the field – it transpired that part of the reason for this was that one of his referees (from the ‘positive vetting’ process carried out when he first joined the police) turned out to have been a Russian spy.

A SUDDEN END

Fredericks’s deployment was ended abruptly – he just stopped attending the meetings – but he said there was no consideration of possible ‘safety concerns’. He said that when he joined the unit he was told that he would be looked after, but when he left there was precious little after-care. His time undercover just ended, and there was no debriefing.

He received no guidance from his bosses about mixing with the activists he had spied on after his deployment had ended.

This led to the recounting of a curious incident in which, long after his deployment ended, Fredericks called round on someone he’d befriended while undercover – “there was no romantic involvement, I just found her interesting as a human being” -only to find out she had committed suicide not long before.

Even if we accept this at face value, it is disturbing, exposing his absence of care about the power wielded by spycops, and the lack of awareness that it is even an issue. There appears to be no part of him that felt this deception was in any way wrong. He thought – and clearly still feels – it was OK to just put his spycop persona back on for his own edification. What other activities do spycops do this for?

BITTER AFTERTASTE

Fredericks summed up his leaving the SDS:

“The way I felt was if I was no longer part of the system, then my existence doesn’t matter, my opinion doesn’t matter, get on with the rest of your life”.

He still seemed bitter about this. He did see a psychiatrist after his deployment ended, however he said he doesn’t know why his managers sent him to see someone who had no understanding of undercover policing: “The whole thing was a waste of time”. He said he did not attend any of the SDS social events or reunions.

Despite expressing the belief that the spycops’ techniques were more effective than normal Special Branch operations, and that being more deeply embedded with the activists meant he was able to gather more info from them. “I have my views,” he said, “but I’m ready to admit that I’m wrong”.

However, his creepy answers, and his unrepentant tone and demeanour throughout the questioning suggest that is not really the case.

 

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COPS has produced a report like this for every day of the Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings. They are indexed on our UCPI Public Inquiry page.

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