After last week’s opening statements in this new round of Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings examining 1973-82, today was the first day of witnesses giving evidence.
Before it started there were protests outside the Inquiry venue, with blacklisted workers and other spied-on activists demanding their secret police files. It was joined by the roving poster van from Police Spies Out of Lives that had visited the Royal Courts of Justice, the men-only Garrick Club where Inquiry Chair is a member, and New Scotland Yard.
Diane Langford
Diane Langford was questioned by Kate Wilkinson by behalf of the Inquiry.
Diane Langford, New York City, 1996 [pic: Marion Macalpine]
Born in New Zealand, Langford moved to London in 1963 and got involved in political activity in 1965.
By 1968 she was a volunteer at the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination, and had joined NATSOPA, the print union. By the end of that year, she had played an active part in the protests against the Vietnam War. She was part of a group called the Britain-Vietnam Solidarity Front (BVSF).
Langford said that her main focus over the past 50 years has been the liberation of women from all forms of oppression and exploitation. She worked politically with Abhimanyu Manchanda, who she later married.
THE SPYING BEGINS
The Special Demonstration Squad were reporting on her and Manchanda by March 1969 [MPS-0732690]. That early report – a BVSF weekly meeting – calls gives Manchanda’s first name as Al. Other reports call him Albert. He was never known by these names.
As well as personal names, Langford disabused the Inquiry of the name for their politics at the time:
‘We didn’t call ourselves Maoists, we called ourselves Marxist-Leninists.’
Although, with her tongue-in-cheek, she said she was happy with ‘Maoist’ as it was shorter!
She and Manchanda saw a need for (and likelihood of) anti-imperialist revolution elsewhere in the world. They saw the various struggles in different places as the same battle for freedom -from imperialism and oppression. There is a spycop file [MPS-0736447] of a 1969 speech by Manchanda that refers to:
‘the world front of imperialism which must be opposed by a common front of the revolutionary movement in all countries’
Langford said that, while there seems to be some investigation into the propensity for violence for spied-upon groups, it can be seen from the other direction; these are people trying to resist the violence of the State in order to get justice and liberation.
Whilst there were politicians such as Enoch Powell espousing overt racism, they also saw all the parties of the British government as wilfully oppressive, enforcing a racist unjust system that divides the working class and diverts wrath away from the ruling class.
These struggles against injustice continue, as we see in everything from deaths in custody and the campaigns that respond to them, to the continuing struggle for women’s liberation:
‘I still think that the State is a force which is there to act as the enforcer of oppression, yes.’
COLLECTIVE IMPERATIVE
Langford was asked what methods she and her comrades used to achieve these ends. She listed many examples including demonstrations, public meetings, trade union activity, industrial activity, literature, film screenings, rent strikes, boycotts, occupations, street theatre – even parliamentary lobbying.
The Women’s Liberation Front’s 7-point mission statement, 1971
Recalling the way that her group operated, Langford explained that they believed in taking collective action, not acting as ‘individualist idiots’. They frowned on certain activists’ methods, including ‘anyone who indulged in macho posturing’. She cited one guy taking off his shirt outside the South African embassy and setting fire to it – he was later condemned by the group for this ‘Petit-bourgeois adventurism’.
She explained some of the differences between her group and the Trotskyists, for example the Trotskyists did not see the struggle in Vietnam as sufficiently revolutionary, as these subsistence farmers were technically landowners.
They also rejected the politics of the Soviet Union, which had occupied Czechoslovakia, and appeared to them as another form of imperialist project.
Whilst they subscribed to Lenin’s idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the ‘magic weapon’ to guarantee victory, and adhered to the principle of revolution by violence, smashing the old state and seizing power by force, they saw these were very distant possibilities.
By definition, they required mass support before conditions could approach being right and, citing Lenin’s comments on the British aversion to revolutionary ideas, she said there was no UK mass movement ready for revolution. Manchanda was not convinced that sections of the white working class were ready to give up the privileges they had received as a result of colonialism.
WOMEN’S LIBERATION FRONT
She confirmed that her feminism stemmed from this same global anti-imperialist thinking.
In 1970 she founded the Women’s Liberation Front (WLF).
Some of the groups Langford belonged to in were targeted by ‘David Robertson’ (HN45, 1971-73). One of his earliest reports is dated 16 February 1971 [UCPI0000010570], and includes a leaflet detailing the WLF’s main aims.
Many of the aims including equal pay, equal opportunities, childcare facilities, and birth control are now accepted across the political spectrum (if not always implemented).
SPYING ON SMALL INNER-CIRCLE GROUPS
Spycop Dave Robertson’s application for study classes in Marxist-Leninist Mao Tsetung thought 1971
Langford and Manchanda formed the Revolutionary Marxist-Leninist League (RMLL), a group of around ten people with a focus on studying deep political theory. They sought to influence and lead the work of groups such as the WLF, BVSF and Friends of China. They regularly met at Langford’s house.
The Inquiry was shown another report by ‘David Robertson’, this time concerning an RMLL meeting in January 1971 [UCPI0000010567]. For the Inquiry, Wilkinson noted that this meeting lasted three and a half hours and asked if this was a standard length of meeting for this group?
With a weary note in her voice, Langford replied, ‘I’m afraid so, yes’.
This particular meeting was attended by 14 people. Three members were applying for jobs at Fords in Dagenham. The WLF, in the meantime, was planning to send its members to get jobs at the Metal Box Company. This was, Langford explained, a deliberate strategy to work at places where they may be industrial action, although their role was not to impose – again, their overarching principle of collective action came first.
Robertson was said to have attended many such meetings at Langford’s home. She seemed unable to accept he had been invited to these closed meetings despite the level of detail in the reports:
‘I find it very hard to believe that he was actually in the room, as he would not have been a member of that inner group. I should explain that we had a system of candidate membership and so there may have been someone in the room who was a candidate member’
She offers a alternative source for the intelligence – perhaps the room was bugged, or if there were some disgruntled group members (who were being challenged over their misogyny) who might have gossiped to a sympathetic person in the pub.
Robertson filled out a form for Langford [UCPI 00000334339], applying to join group’s Marxist-Leninist Mao Tsetung thought study classes in the spring of 1971.
Robertson was Scottish, and Langford remembers talking with him about the political situation in Scotland and noticing that he seemed quite clueless about past struggles such as the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders.
‘Women’s liberation was viewed as a worrying trend at the time.’
Despite having the same responsibilities as her male colleagues, because Davies was a woman she was only paid 90% of a male wage, in accordance with police policy at the time. Ironically, she received this partial wage in order to undermine a group campaigning for equal pay for women.
Davies reported on the WLF’s study group in March 1971 [UCPI0000026992]. This was a meeting at someone’s home, attended by Davies and just six other women. Langford pronounced this to be:
‘very very strange indeed… she would have had to do a lot of work to ingratiate herself to get invited to a meeting like that… she went from a public meeting to private meetings in a very short while’
OUSTING MANCHANDA
Another Robertson report [UCPI0000011741], from March 1971, details an extraordinary meeting of the RMLL that went on for 9 hours. It’s a very detailed report. The 17 people attending this meeting were expected to prepare, and write a paper in advance.
The meeting had been called in an attempt to resolve differences which had emerged in the group, but which caused its eventual split. In the report, Roberston characterised it with brazen contempt for Manchanda:
‘The object of the meeting was, in fact, to “cut down to size” the organisation’s leading personality A MANCHANDA whose offensive manner, dogmatic attitude, bullying techniques and general inefficiency have become too much even for his admirers to swallow.’
This was not the first sneering disparagement from Robertson, who’d previously reported on Manchanda’s ‘insufferable anecdotes’ about his baby, and criticised him for doing childcare while Langford went out to work.
There are a lot of details of private matters at a private home. Robertson claimed he babysat the couple’s infant child. Langford was aghast:
‘I find it absolutely outrageous that he would even make such a suggestion… we would never have left a young baby with someone we hardly knew – certainly not!’
Langford condemned his report as highly subjective and was baffled that this sort of thing was shared with MI5:
‘It’s not even about our politics, it’s about our personal lives, and it’s so intrusive, so nasty and so petty… How did these things end up in the reports of a supposedly serious operation?’
Langford said one of the reasons for the meeting was that many women on the left were starting to examine and call out ‘various misdemeanours’ by left-wing men. The report mentions a letter one of the group had sent to Manchanda. Robertson described it as:
‘a very personal attack on the private morals of [name redacted] arising from an incident that had taken place some time previously’
Langford said that it was much more serious than that. It was an accusation of attempted rape against a man in the group. She remembers the man denying it and his exact words, ‘she’s too ugly to rape’ are still ‘burned into my memory’.
More to the point, Roberston was a police officer hearing a report of a serious offence, yet his response was to misreport in such vague terms that none of his police colleagues would be aware of the truth.
Langford was asked if anyone else in the group reported it to the police:
‘Very few women would. We all knew we’d be subjected to further humiliation.’
The meeting had heated exchanges and Manchanda was suspended from the RMLL. It means Robertson, or whoever the informer was, must have contributed to the meeting and had a vote. Robertson noted this probably meant that Friends of China and the Britain-Vietnam Solidarity Front would be disbanded too.
DEMOLISHING THE WOMEN’S LIBERATION FRONT
Six-months later, in September 1971, there is a report [UCPI0000027021] from a WLF meeting where an emergency resolution was passed to expel Diane Langford from the group that she had set up. The vote was unanimous – so Sandra Davies approved and voted Langford out as well.
According to one of Davies’ reports [UCPI0000010932], the Black Unity and Freedom Party was planning a children’s Christmas party in 1971, and they asked the WLF to contribute home-made sweets and cakes.
Asked why the intention to bake was worthy of reporting by police charged with preventing disorder, Davies seemed to suggest it was a ruse to indoctrinate kids:
‘They were involving themselves with children and the sweets and cakes were an addition. They wanted to get their philosophy across to as many groups as they could. That was their aim’
Another of Davies’ reports [UCPI0000010907] mentions a jumble sale being organised by the WLF. Again, she defended this because:
‘they would have used it as another opportunity for advertising their aims’
Both of these reports were copied to MI5.
In February 1972, a report [UCPI0000010908] shows that spycop Sandra Davies had been elected WLF treasurer. A month later, Davies reported [UCPI0000010911] on an emergency meeting of the Executive Committee of the Revolutionary Women’s Union – as the WLF was now called – that decided to suspend three members from the wider group for ‘disruptive behaviour’.
Six weeks after that, on 4 May 1972, Davies attended another Women’s Revolutionary Union meeting at a member’s home. According to her report [UCPI0000010913], it opened with comments about a general lack of enthusiasm within the group, older members dropping out and not being replaced by new ones. The organisation was finished.
NIXON PROTEST
In January 1973, a report [UCPI0000010247] concerns a private meeting of the Britain-Vietnam Solidarity Front to organise a protest coinciding with the inauguration of US President Richard Nixon. Although much of the world saw Nixon as improving relations with China, the BVSF were keen to protest against Nixon’s extension of the Vietnam War into Cambodia and Laos.
Robertson and Jill Mosdell (HN346) are both shown as contributing to this report. Langford noticed the name Digby Jacks, NUS president at the time, and believes this meeting was about organising the practicalities of the march they were organising. She made the point that they would communicate with the (uniformed) police to agree the route of any marches.
BURNING BANNER BOOKS
Banner Books is mentioned in a report from 1972. It seems that Robertson was working there. In her opening statement last week, Langford pointed out that this meant the SDS had keys for the shop. She remembered that it was later burned down by fascists. This hadn’t appeared in any of the police reports.
For the Inquiry, Wilkinson promised that Robertson will be asked about this when he gives evidence on the morning of Tuesday 27 April.
Ultimately though, Robertson’s cover identity was compromised in 1973 and his deployment ended. If, as Wilkinson suggested, the fire occurred in 1975, this might be the reason he didn’t mention it.
THE MASK SLIPS
In 2015, Langford said that Robertson had long made them uneasy:
‘A moustachioed Scottish man, Dave Robertson, aroused suspicion because he was always driving a different car. When challenged he claimed to be working for a car rental firm. On another occasion he’d told me he worked at a club called the Tatty Bogle. One of the comrades went down to check it out and found this to be untrue.
‘At Manu [Manchanda]’s suggestion, we didn’t confront Dave, but assigned him the most onerous tasks: collecting heavy banners and placards in his car and carrying them on marches. He was always called upon to buy everyone drinks and asked to memorise long passages from James Maxton, an obscure Scottish Marxist.
‘The funny thing was, I quite liked Dave. He was always good-natured and went along with the aggravation. Then all that changed. The sinister nature of his work revealed itself.’
Langford inadvertently played a key role in the blowing of Robertson’s cover. She was working at the Daily Mirror and brought a co-worker, Ethel, along to a meeting of the Indo-China Solidarity Committee about President Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia.
Robertson walked in and Ethel greeted him brightly. He came over very quickly – acting ‘like overbearing men often do’, said Langford – grabbed Ethel by the wrist and said, ‘I want to talk to you outside.’ They didn’t come back.
For about a week, Ethel was awkward with Langford and wouldn’t talk about it. Eventually, she told Langford that she knew him from living in a nearby flat, and it was well known his flat was a police flat.
Ethel explained:
‘Dave works for the Special Branch. He’s threatened that if I tell you or Manchanda, he’ll cause something nasty to happen to my family in Ireland.’
Robertson was never seen again. He and the two officers deployed alongside him, Jill Mosdell and Sandra Davies, were all withdrawn at the same time.
Despite serving in the Met’s elite subversion and public order unit for two years, Davies said in her witness statement to the Inquiry:
‘I did not witness or participate in any public disorder whilst serving with the SDS. I do not even recall going on any marches or demonstrations. I did not witness nor was I involved in any violence.’
It must have been obvious very early on in her deployment what she was involved with. And yet, she was still there, spying full-time on that group, two years later. 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’
LEGACY
Langford says the truth has left her feeling guilty for being unknowingly allowing Robertson into their political groups. She feels anxious about the possibility of State reprisals on Ethel, and outraged that a woman she trusted violated her family space when they were just trying to improve the lives of women.
Langford flatly rejects the police lawyers’ exhortations to make allowances for bigotry in the reports as merely ‘the standards of the time’. She sternly asserted that there was no excuse for such sickening racist, sexist and homophobic language and attitudes. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights had been declared a generation earlier. There were any number of people like Martin Luther King, Claudia Jones, and James Baldwin who were alive and not bigoted and very publicly saying so. Such prejudice and oppression was no more right or acceptable then than it is now.
Dr Norman Temple was Zoomed in from Vancouver (where it was 8.30am when he started). He was, as everybody agreed (even Counsel to the Inquiry David Barr QC who we ran into leaving the venue and who did his questioning), ‘quite a character’.
Temple attended university in Liverpool from 1965-67, but didn’t study much. He was a member of the Labour Party. His interest was piqued by a periodical from China and after he moved to London he got involved with Maoists there.
In 1967, the Vietnam war intensified. The civil rights movement, the hippies in San Francisco, the women’s movement, the gay rights movement were all running in parallel. In Britain there was the specific political situation in Northern Ireland, in France there were the événements of 1968.
He pointed out that there was lots of overlap between these different campaigns, and others, including the fight against apartheid.
He saw that these issues were all connected, and that the system was the problem.
He saw three main factions on the Left at the time: those who were pro-Soviet Union, those who were pro-China, and those who were Trotskyists. He was drawn to the pro-China people, the Maoists, and happily described himself as ‘rent a mob’ – ‘a floating revolutionary’ who got involved in lots of things.
Most of the hearing revolved around the politics of the (splinter-)groups he had been involved in, and it turned out Temple still had quite strong opinions about his former comrades.
PALESTINIAN SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN
Palestine ‘burst on the scene’ in 1969 and became an issue internationally, like apartheid and Vietnam. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) was formed at the Egyptian Embassy, near to the old MI5 building in Mayfair. Asked about his membership of the ‘Kensington and Paddington branch of the PSC’, Temple retorted that ‘It would be more accurate to say I was the branch’.
We were shown an SDS report dated 17 June 1970 [MPS-0739227] signed off by a Detective Inspector (HN294, 1968-69), which includes personal details about members of the group, including their addresses, phone numbers, employment, etc.
Temple said he had no idea that the police were taking such an interest in his doings. He guessed that their thinking was ‘we better find out what these people are are up to case they do something a bit naughty’ – a precaution, just like smoke detectors. Which somehow made it sound like he was giving evidence for the police.
There were about 20 branches of the PSC in the UK, and ten affiliated organisations.
These included Arab student groups, the BVSF and CPGML (Maoist), International Socialists (Trotskists), etc. At a joint conference on 6 February 1971, the Maoists tried to take control of the PSC, but weren’t supported by the Arab student groups. The Trots were trying to do much the same thing.
IRISH NATIONAL LIBERATION SOLIDARITY FRONT
Temple then was asked about his involvement in the Irish National Liberation Solidarity Front (INLSF) in September 1970. It was run by an internal organising committee, which Temple was invited to join after 2 or 3 weeks. The group was producing a paper and needed all the help they could get.
Asked how security-conscious the INLSF was, Temple suggested that for a revolutionary organisation, being considered so insignificant by the police that you’re not under surveillance is ‘the ultimate insult’. The main thing the group did was to remove the telephone from the room during meetings, because they assumed all of their phones were tapped.
The principal activity of the INLSF was the production and distribution of the Irish Liberation Press, a newspaper which was sold in Irish pubs and venues around London. The newspaper dominated everything, according to Temple. They spent a lot of time producing it and then distributing it.
Undercover officer ‘Alex Sloan‘ (HN347, 1971), who infiltrated this group, was around for approximately four months at the start of 1971. According to Temple, he would have visited the flat where the paper was made, but he never got to the level of being trusted enough to be invited to meetings of the inner group.
The Inquiry was treated to a picture of an issue of the newspaper, while David Barr QC read the rabble-rousing text out loud.
Temple described the piece in the paper as ‘full of all these cliches’ and ‘very colourful language’, and did not necessarily reflect his views on things: ‘Everything there is written by Davoren’; nobody else was ever invited to write an article, they might be assigned ‘sort of chicken feed’ tasks.
Temple really sounded as if he still had an axe to grind with Davoren. The latter was the ‘Editor’ of the paper, but also ‘the author of everything’, and someone who believed they never made mistakes, says Temple.
Asked to talk about the level of disruption caused by the INLSF, Temple spoke about the Hyde Park demo, which he probably missed (as he and four others had gone to a trip to Ireland over Easter 1971). INLSF demos would attract 200-300 people, and their pickets around ten.
David Barr questioned him about different tactics used by the group – Temple confirmed that these included putting up posters, and what could maybe loosely be classed as ‘political education’. They would focus on the issues pertinent to people in Ireland, rather than providing a traditional Maoist political education.
Davoren, however, had his own personal political ideology. He ‘loved Stalin’ and wrote about him in the paper, but ‘nothing ever on Chairman Mao’, so Temple thinks it would be more accurate to describe him as a ‘Stalinist’ than a ‘Maoist’.
The Black Unity and Freedom Party, a Black organisation based in Finsbury Park and South London, was ‘the only other organisation that we were friendly with’ – there was no ideological disagreement between the two groups as they worked on completely different issues.
A next report [MPS-0739488] mentions a visit that Davoren paid to the ‘Chinese Legation’ in April – Temple was ‘totally unaware of it’ but reckons this is the sort of thing that Davoren may have done.
The trip to Ireland, mentioned above, was aimed at selling lots of papers, but border control noticed the thousands of copies in their van and wouldn’t let them bring their propaganda onto the ferry.
At a meeting of the group afterwards, according to the report that ‘Sloan’ submitted, there was ‘comment and disbelief’ about the statement of support of the Provisional IRA, who allowed the paper to be sold on their territory.
(Before this support was confirmed, there was an incident Belfast, when the INLSF paper-sellers were told ‘you have five minutes to get out’.) The only topic that Temple felt was safe to debate in NI was the Palestinian struggle.
Davoren was very critical of the IRA and its bombing campaign – he denounced them as ‘Catholic nationalists’. He did not think of them as a left-wing organisation, but people with politics different to his. Asked if Temple had met with any Protestant groups, Temple said ‘absolutely not, that would be very bad for the health'(!)
The hearing then moved to details about dates.
The organisation split after that meeting, with roughly half of the group walking out.
Temple stayed on for some time and shortly afterwards, Davoren set up a new organisation: the Communist Workers League. They were sent out in pairs to sell the paper. There must be mistakes in the reports, Temple says, the CWL can’t have been mentioned before the split.
He doesn’t think he was ever paired up with ‘Sloan’ and doesn’t remember having any proper conversation with the guy. He said that there was another member named Jackson who several of them believed to be a spycop. He says there has been nothing from the Inquiry about this man.
Temple said that, in comparison, ‘Jackson’ was a much more talkative figure, whereas Sloan was very quiet, and ‘made no impact on me’. He does not think that Sloan held any positions of responsibility in the group.
EMERGENCY CONFERENCE
The next report [MPS- 0739470] is on an emergency conference that was held during the weekend of 26-27 June 1971. Some members had been expelled from the Communist Workers League (described as the ‘inner caucus of the INLSF’) a few weeks earlier. You couldn’t possibly resign from the group, you were expelled, and more people left at this ’emergency meeting’.
Temple remembers being warned (by Davoren and Joe O’Neill) that ‘Alex Sloan’ was working for the police. However, at a meeting where this was going to be discussed, despite personally believing that Sloan was an undercover, Davoren accused O’Neill of slander for suggesting that Sloan was a ‘pig’.
Being accused made Sloan’s position in the group untenable, so he left. According to Temple, he did so on amicable terms, with no animosity.
Temple doesn’t know where the idea of Sloan being a police spy came from or what evidence there was for this; and after he disappeared, no further research was done either.
He clarified that he continued working alongside Davoren between June and September 1971, but after this he had very little to do with the guy and his new group.
Temple says he was no longer actively or officially involved in much political activity after this; he would occasionally attend events but not organise so much.
Altogether, there was not a lot we learned form Dr Norman Temple. Most of what he said was common knowledge, at least for anyone who had look at some SDS reports on that period.
Those following proceedings from home, including journalists, found themselves hampered by the continual references to documents that still hadn’t actually been uploaded to the Inquiry website. Some of the exhibits were uploaded earlier on in the day, but not all of them.
The way they were presented on the Inquiry’s pages of the hearing makes it near-impossible to look at them as they’re being discussed. With multiple reports entitled – for example – ‘Special Branch report by HN347 on a private meeting of the INLSF’ there is no way to work out which one is being referred to.
We do need the unique reference number included there, and of course the complete selection of files referred to at the start of the hearing – adding them later on is all too confusing.
ROOFING ROUND-UPS
For those of you who need an even shorter summary of the day and some added comment of your independent experts, have a look at Tom B. Fowler’s roofing round ups, the venerable spycops hearings live tweeter bringing you instant reaction to the hearings given live through the day during the breaks on Facebook.
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.
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:
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.’
‘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.
Phillippa Kaufmann QC representing Core Participants who had relationships with undercover officers
Phillippa Kaufmann QC
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.
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.
Matthew Ryder QC representing three anti-apartheid activists (Ernest Rodker, Professor Jonathan Rosenhead & Lord Peter Hain), & Celia Stubbs
Matthew Ryder QC
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.
Dambusters Mobilising Committee leaflet
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.
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
Celia Stubbs, 2021
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.
Blair Peach
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.
Online meeting to celebrate and learn from the significant victory of the ‘Shrewsbury 24’ in quashing their almost 50-year-old convictions.
Speakers:
Ricky Tomlinson (Shrewsbury Picket and jailed trade unionist)
John McDonnell (Labour MP)
Dave Smith (Blacklist Support Group)
Piers Marquis and Annabel Timan (Doughty Street Chambers barristers)
The Shrewsbury 24 were pickets wrongfully arrested and convicted for their participation in the national building workers’ strike of 1972.
For years afterwards, many were subjected to blacklisting and struggled to find work.It’s now known that blacklists were maintained with the illegal collusion of every constabulary’s Special Branch.
The Shrewsbury 24’s campaign for justice was spied on by officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad.
On Tuesday 23rd March 2021, the Court of Appeal made the following judgement in the case of our clients Ricky Tomlinson, Arthur Murray and the Shrewsbury 24:
“It follows that under Ground 1, the convictions of all the appellants are unsafe.
Their appeals are allowed and all the verdicts in relation to them are quashed.” (pt.99)
The convictions of the Shrewsbury 24 have been quashed. As they walked from court they were – as they have always been – innocent men.
We say they are victims of police corruption, of a political trial, and of a Conservative Government – who at the time were looking to take revenge against the trade union movement.
Join us online on Wednesday 31 March at 6.30pm to analyse and discuss the historical lessons to learn from this courageous struggle.
Speakers:
Ricky Tomlinson (Shrewsbury Picket and jailed Trade Unionist)
John McDonnell (Labour MP)
Dave Smith (Blacklist Support Group)
Piers Marquis and Annabel Timan (Doughty Street Chambers barristers)
Black Defence Committee demonstration, Notting Hill, London, October 1970
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.
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.
Dambusters Mobilising Committee leaflet
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’.
“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.
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.
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.”
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.
“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.
Kevin Gately (circled), anti-fascist demonstration, London, 15 June 1974
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
Spycop Jim Boyling with his 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.
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, 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”.
Black Power demonstration, Notting Hill, London, 1970
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.
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.
‘This set up does not assist, at a very basic level, reporters to do their job of reporting a *public inquiry* established by the Home Secretary to *answer public concerns* about abuses by some officers’. I can’t type that fast to copy down everything.
‘If I could hear the audio – which we are not allowed to do – I could take down quotes in shorthand. We cannot scroll back to check quotes. 20 years ago at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, we could do that.
‘The transcript is being posted as a document after any deadlines for daily reporting. This means that I and others are going to struggle to report the inquiry contemporaneously for evening deadlines. This basically means, from a practical perspective as a working reporter, that a public inquiry becomes largely impossible to report.’
COPS was among those who were able to live tweet, because the Inquiry has provided live-streaming at a venue in London. It’s a large, unventilated room with no windows containing socially distanced desks without power sockets. The live-stream there has no time delay, but the Chair has imposed a ten minute delay on tweeting what is said.
Core participants of the Undercover Policing Inquiry at the London live-streaming venue, 11 November 2020
If these conditions don’t put you off and you would like to attend, tough. You had to apply weeks in advance, going through the whole process for each individual day you wish to attend. The Inquiry only confirmed who had actually been allocated places in an email sent at 10.16pm last night.
The Inquiry knows that victims are spread across the country, and indeed the world, and need to make travel arrangements. One of them, Tom Fowler, has had to travel from low-Covid Wales to lock-down London to live-tweet the hearings.
There can be no excusing this as being the fault of the emergency measures brought in due to Covid. The Inquiry has had an extra five months to make these arrangements. Today’s inadequacies reflect their original plan, of hearings without live-streaming, in a room that couldn’t even hold half of the significantly affected victims who have been designated ‘core participants’, let alone any interested members of the public. And the Inquiry has consistently rejected the suggestion of live-streaming.
EXCLUSION IS A CHOICE NOT A NECESSITY
Meanwhile, other inquiries such as Grenfell and Manchester Arena, which also have to ensure they don’t inadvertently release any sensitive information, have public live-streams. Why can we watch Grenfell hearings on YouTube yet the UCPI only gives us what amounts to speeded-up Ceefax?
Those who do follow the hearings are blindfolded by the Inquiry’s refusal to publish documents until after each hearing, meaning the transcript is examining and discussing things that those outside cannot see.
These are yet more ways in which this Inquiry demonstrates its belief that the victims are marginal and the public merely an irrelevant afterthought.
The Chair, Sir John Mitting, appears to believe himself capable of understanding it all – we plebs needn’t be bothered until he hands us his report. A man who believes he is impartial yet thinks the Macpherson definition of institutional racism is ‘controversial’. A man who thinks he understands how things work and will see through the lies, yet grants anonymity to spycops because he believes any officer who has been married for a long time is incapable of serious wrongdoing.
Mitting has rebuffed repeated demands for a diverse panel to assist him, something that has been standard at such inquiries for over 20 years, because he thinks himself incapable of significant unconscious bias.
FIRST WITNESS: TARIQ ALI
Tariq Ali
The opening phase of the Inquiry will be witness hearings over five days until the end of next week concerned with the earliest days of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad, 1968-72.
The unit was formed after trouble at a demonstration against the Vietnam War in March 1968, in which windows were broken at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London. The original aim was to have officers live undercover as activists to gather intelligence in order to prevent a repeat of the disturbance at a second demonstration in October of that year.
Tariq Ali is a 77 year old journalist, writer and broadcaster, who has been politically engaged all his life. In 1968 he was a key member of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC), and of the Ad Hoc Committee, which organised the London demonstrations against the war.
The Undercover Policing Inquiry devoted the entirety of this first day to questioning Ali.
This included an account of demonstrators coming very close to entering the US Embassy during the demonstration.
Barr asked Ali to account for his use of the word ‘militancy’. He explained that other groups at the time were demanding peace in Vietnam, but the VSC didn’t want ‘the peace of the graveyard’, they supported the Vietnamese people in their struggle against the American occupation.
Barr QC asked if ‘militancy would include a “shoving through” to get to the embassy?’
‘No,’ Ali replied, the militancy was in reference to political support for the NLF [National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, aka the Viet Cong]’. Ali would not be drawn into the concept that being ‘a militant group’ meant violence, but rather a politically partisan position. In this case, a position that was supported by 25% of the UK population according to the opinion polls of the time.
Ali said that there were plenty of discussions about taking further direct action at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square. He said they had dreamed of taking over the Embassy’s telex machine and sending a message of support to the Viet Cong in Saigon. The VSC discussed the idea of occupying the embassy, but some thought it was ‘foolish’ to imagine that the State wouldn’t try to prevent this.
As someone who had only been in the country for a short time, in the event of arrest Ali faced a risk of deportation as well as imprisonment.
Barr: Would it be true there were official aims and unofficial aims of the VSC?
Ali: Yes
Barr: Kept secret to a small circle? The Ad Hoc Committee?
Ali: Just the ones in London.
Barr: The desire to storm the embassy remained?
Ali: Yes, the first demo had been a missed opportunity.
Barr: Why didn’t you push ahead with the plan? Was it fear of your legal situation?
Ali: Yes.
Barr: So you were going to see on the day?
Ali: Yes.
Ali then recollected the composition of the VSC’s ‘National Committee’. Pat Jordan told the group that ‘every single one of my speeches had been noted and studied by Special Branch’.
OUTSIDE ASSISTANCE
The London VSC group was boosted by the support they received from American activists, politicians, Black organisers, and others. Among the American anti-war activists who were in the UK at the time, some of them dodging the draft, was 21 year old Bill Clinton.
Police on horseback charge demonstrators against the Vietnam War, Grosvenor Square, 17 March 1968
As with many subsequent anti-war demonstrations, the protesters did not have overwhelming public support. Two thirds of the British population were in favour of the war in Vietnam, which was very different to other places like France.
Organisers of the March 1968 demonstration had no idea how many police to expect, but they knew that if they were heavily outnumbered there would be no chance of even a ‘token occupation’ of the American Embassy.
There had been a well-publicised rumour that American Marines were waiting inside the embassy on the day of the protest ready to fire live rounds into the crowd if they breached security.
Barr asked a lot of questions about the chances of violence from the protesters and whether the VSC encouraged it, or was at least unable to prevent it. He said that ‘come armed’ stickers had been put on some leaflets for the demonstration.
Ali dismissed the stickers as ‘childish nonsense’ and said that nobody in the VSC or the other groups active against the War behaved in this way, and that at the time he wondered if these stickers were the work of agents provocateur. Ali said he has a very clear memory of the VSC denouncing these stickers at the time.
MAOISTS & ANARCHISTS
Barr asked about the other groups that existed at the time, for example the Maoists.
Ali explained that he had very little to do with the Maoists – they acted autonomously on the whole, and only ‘grudgingly’ accepted any of the VSC’s ‘discipline’. He recalled an Irish Maoist group led by someone called Ed Davoren, ‘but I do not recall him saying anything particularly outrageous’.
The Maoists, Ali explained, tended to regard the VSC committee as ‘revisionists and class traitors and whatever else’.
He was asked about anarchist groups, but Ali said they were small, hostile to the VSC and often didn’t bother joining in with the demonstrations. The insignificance of these groups was such that Ali can’t even remember their names.
He remembered seeing the anarchist newspaper, Freedom, but felt the anarchists were ‘not too strong’ as they were small in number and apparently easy to identify due to their T-shirts [whatever that means].
EUROPEAN SOLIDARITY
The March 1968 demonstration is described on p.254 of Ali’s aforementioned book. It was, he wrote, ‘a marvelous display of colourful flags and banners’. These were people optimistic about a new world without the kinds of conflict they saw around them. They were aware of the Prague Spring going on, which brought hope of compassionate and effective socialism; there was a feeling that change was possible.
A large contingent from Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund, the Socialist German Student Union, came to London from Berlin to join the demonstration. They had a lot of experience of street demonstrations, and brought helmets and their own banner with them.
Ali described them linking arms as they marched, a display of solidarity that also defended them from police attacks, which the VSC hadn’t seen before. Ali said he had no memory of what exactly the Germans did that day, but doubts that they acted alone, they were all part of a huge protest. The tabloid press were not used to seeing Germans at demonstrations, so gave this a lot of coverage.
There was also a French contingent, but they were not mentioned, perhaps because they didn’t adopt visible identifiers like the helmets.
There were several attempts to break through the police lines that day, and it certainly wasn’t the work of the German students alone, ‘nice English students’ were involved as well. Ali does not think the presence of any one group warranted such emphasis.
Barr: Would the German Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund have followed the official position of the VSC on the protest?
Ali: Yes.
Barr: So if the balances of forces on the day had been right, they would have joined to storm the US embassy?
Ali: Undoubtedly.
LOSING THEIR MARBLES
The square and surrounding streets were full of people, there were scuffles, the police decided to send in the horses. Ali heard people shouting ‘the Cossacks are coming’. Barr questioned Ali about the throwing of marbles at horses. Ali did not witness this, but it was talked about afterwards.
US embassy protest, Grosvenor Square, 17 March 1968, aerial view
He illustrated this with a story about support for the VSC not coming exclusively from the young, they were supported by people of all classes, some of whom supplied funding and valuable advice about more effective ways of dealing with horses (involving a string touching the horse’s knee).
Nonetheless, Barr laboured the point about marbles as well as smoke-bombs and other items that may have been brought to the demonstration by individuals.
Ali saw a small number of fireworks, ‘to increase excitement, not to harm anyone’. Barr countered that the VSC didn’t dissuade people from escalating action, something that wouldn’t have been organisationally possible in such circumstances.
Barr is focusing very directly on the role of the protesters in what was, as the vintage footage shows, a direct and deliberate attack on a crowd by the police.
The lack of any questions about police violence, the injustice of the war in Vietnam, the huge death toll of the war, and so on, show the priorities of the Inquiry. Ali was the only at the hearing one to mention the injuries, some serious, suffered by demonstrators on the day due to police violence.
UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHY
‘We wanted the toppling of regimes in Eastern Europe and their replacement with the Czech model, ‘socialism with a human face’, Ali explained. However, he was realistic.
Barr: Were your ultimate aspirations revolutionary?
Ali: Not in Britain.
Barr: You didn’t think the anti-Vietnam War protest would lead to revolution?
Ali: You’d have to be deranged to think that.
Barr: Given the air of change in the wind, you saw the demonstration as part of piece of the jigsaw for a world wide revolution and world wide socialism?
Ali, laughing: No, not really.
Ali and his comrades felt serious socialism was not possible in western Europe without democracy very firmly attached to it.
When he visited Vietnam, he asked North Vietnamese leaders if international brigades of volunteer troops would be a useful response of solidarity from other parts of the world. ‘This is not the Spanish Civil War. The last thing we want is for people like you to come and die here,’ he was bluntly told. ‘All we want from you is to build movements abroad’ to help to bring the war to an end.
Barr: You say that you thought that Parliament should be replaced by Worker’s Councils, is that true?
Ali: We used to think like that. We wanted something like what the Chartists advocated in the 19th century. We explored all these ideas.
The group’s politics evolved over time, but they were generally in favour of far more direct democracy. The current ‘first past the post’ system distorts election results, delivering a succession of governments who have only received a minority of the votes.
UNLIKELY SUPPORTERS
The first evidence to be shown on the screen was a Special Branch report, prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions, following the demo in March 1968. The group interrupted theater shows to talk about Vietnam.
The audiences were mostly sympathetic to the anti-war cause, but actors were hostile on the whole (with the strange exception of the Black & White Minstrel Show, something so unrelentingly racist that even in 1968 there were petitions to against it).
After the conflict at the March 1968 demonstration, both the VSC and police turned their thoughts to organising for the next demonstration in October. The Met created the what was first called Special Operations Squad, who went to live as anti-war activists.
NEWSPAPERS & PROVOCATEURS
The next picture was of a Guardian article from May 1968, entitled ‘Tariq Ali Talks of New London Demonstration’. There is a reference to Ali saying they planned to occupy the Bank of England. Barr suggest that even if was a joke, only uttered once in the press, it meant that the police were compelled to respond.
Ali’s book, on p.293, quotes an American woman from the Students for a Democratic Society (the third different ‘SDS’ mentioned in this hearing!) who said that the only way to defeat the war machine in her country was to emulate the Viet Cong guerrillas who had attacked the US Embassy in Saigon.
She was suggesting a bombing campaign against the corporations who were profiting from the war in Vietnam by producing chemical weapons and other supplies.
Ali explained that he argued strongly against this tactical approach, calling it ‘suicidal in every sense’. He added, ‘I had to think very hard whether the person who wanted to embark on such a course was deranged or a straightforward provocateur’.
Asked about what he knew at the time about police or Special Branch infiltration, Ali responded, ‘we had no evidence, obviously, but we had no doubt that we were under surveillance – there was hysteria in the press. On one occasion a postman dragged me out of the office and told me that our letters were opened every day’.
BLACK DWARF
Ali’s suspicions about provocateurs seem well founded. On one occasion, some ‘hippy anarchists’ spent the night at the Soho office of Black Dwarf, a socialist newspaper which Ali edited. Ali and the others were horrified to see the next morning that these guests had painted a large diagram of how to make a Molotov cocktail on the wall.
He described their response:
‘We covered their crude artwork with a poster. The very next day, the office was raided by the police – they went straight to the poster and pulled it down to uncover the artwork beneath’.
The office had often been made available as somewhere for comrades visiting from other places to sleep. But after this incident, the Black Dwarf group became more strict about letting people sleep in there.
Black Dwarf, June 1968
Barr, welcoming a return to his recurring theme of violence, asked if Molotov cocktails were ever used at a VSC demonstration. Ali responded emphatically, saying that he had no knowledge of anyone ever proposing or intending to take a Molotov cocktail to a VSC-organised demonstration.
Ali questioned the police’s description of information gathered from infiltrating a national VSC meeting, and pointed out that this intelligence was not particularly ‘valuable’ or secret, there was no need to infiltrate the group in order to get that information.
He challenged the view that it was either vital or necessary. The route of the demonstration was publicly debated, and much contested by various groupings. Some people, he said, ‘wanted a punch-up in Grosvenor Square, which we were opposed to’.
The next document brought up as evidence was a Special Branch report on Black Dwarf, which reproduced a column published on the back page of the magazine in October 1968, entitled ‘Softly Softly’.
Although Ali was editor of Black Dwarf, he was often away traveling so did not personally oversee the content of each issue, just endeavoured to ‘cast an eye’ over it. He agreed that this particular piece was not especially well written.
The main message of the article was that the police should be given no excuse to stop the demonstrators from reaching their intended destination. ‘The coaches must get through!’ was in capital letters. It said not to bring anything that could be construed as suspicious, mentioning the marbles and fireworks that so preoccupied David Barr QC at the hearing.
Barr suggested that the article telling people not to bring things like marbles or fireworks, is in fact, an attempt to suggest people should bring them.
Barr cited contemporaneous leaflets from campaigns advocating provocation. Ali pointed out that ‘it’s one thing to write some nonsense… but a completely different thing to actually carry it out’. It wasn’t forbidden to write things, and at that time people were writing all sorts of things.
VIOLENCE AGAINST TEXTILES
After Barr’s ignoring of the police violence against protesters in March 1968, he seemed surprisingly concerned about violence against small pieces of textiles. He asked Ali about a public meeting that took place before the October protest, specifically whether a plain-clothes police officer would have been able to safely attend. Ali said it was.
Barr: This was peaceful, except for the burning of a flag outside Australia House.
Ali: That is still a peaceful act.
The October 1968 demonstration was planned by the VSC as a ‘peaceful show of strength’:
‘We don’t want mindless militancy. We want this to a be a politically militant demonstration of solidarity, not only with Vietnam but with each other’
Stewards were provided by all the organisations who supported the demo. They would have been briefed ahead of the day, short briefing that morning on the Embankment.
Asked ‘to what extent did the marchers exhibit “revolutionary self-discipline”?’ Ali replied ‘we were so relaxed that we forgot we were passing Downing Street – a police officer had to remind me’. He recollected having to scribble a ‘Dear Harold’ message to the Prime Minister of the day on a scrap of paper.
There was an attempt made to kidnap Ali, by a group of unknown men. They did this the night before the demo, probably with the aim of preventing him from attending it. This was in Carlisle Street in Soho, just outside the Black Dwarf office, and luckily was prevented by his comrades, who had noticed it just in time.
SPECIAL BRANCH REPORT: AUTUMN OFFENSIVE
The next document shown by the Inquiry was a Special Branch report from DI Dixon on the VSC ‘Autumn Offensive’ (i.e. the demo on October 27 1968) and the potential for violence. It describes the VSC as ‘Trotskyist-dominated’ and ‘the most influential’ of the extremist groups.
Ali was scathing and unequivocal, saying ‘it’s completely false. It’s fantasy land’.
Barr wasn’t persuaded. ‘Intelligence reports that show there wasn’t any secret agenda is useful in itself, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘No’ said Ali. ‘It’s not useful and it’s not intelligence’.
Ali was not in Grosvenor Square himself that day. He only got third-hand reports, largely from the press, of the events there. But certainly, it was no surprise to anyone that there would be police there.
The VSC had no authority over those who attended the protests, or how they behaved, and had no way of compelling them to act in a certain way.
Page 11 of the Special Branch report lists the number of arrests made before the demo (26, only three of whom received summonses), during the demo (17), and after the demo (one, someone who threw a bottle at the Embassy). Interestingly, it notes that ‘apart from three fascists, none had hitherto come to notice’.
Page 4 of the same document details some of the arrests made the night before the October 1968 demo. These included one German national arrested at St Pancra’s station with a gas pistol and an unspecified amount of cannabis resin. There was also someone who’d been found trying to gain entry to police stables at Hammersmith, it is thought that he intended tampering with the police horses stabled there. Additionally, ‘two youths stopped by police in Green Street, were found to be in possession of radio-jamming equipment and perspex eye shields’.
Barr, seemingly unaware that he was making a non-sequitur, asks if this proves that the spycops were useful. ‘Not at all,’ Ali replied, ‘this was done by normal police’.
The report self-justifies, saying that, despite the crowd’s wishes, there had been no serious disorder because of the intervention of spycops. Ali flatly refuted this, saying ‘this is false, the crowd didn’t have to follow our lead, they could have run riot, they didn’t’.
VSC ORGANISING
Referring to questions about the national organisation of the VSC, Ali got a chuckle from the room when he said ‘this is an eye-opener – I had no idea there were any Maoists in Nottingham’.
Ali’s book talks on p.329 of 1968 as being the ‘last big assembly of revolutionary forces’. What he thought was needed at the time was a unified youth movement, that united young people from all the different left-wing groups, including those who’d been expelled from the Labour party.
According to the second paragraph, the credentials of both official delegates and accredited observers were checked at the door. Voting cards were issued to delegates only. It was a closed event, not open to the public.
Barr asked if the closed nature of the event meant that a plain-clothes (rather than an undercover) police officer would not have been able to gain entry to this conference.
Another SDS report, on a meeting 52 years ago to the day in Conway Hall, includes long quotes from Ali that ‘a real revolution could have taken place’. Ali dismissed the report out of hand, telling the Inquiry, ‘it’s a fabrication, I would never ever talk in these terms. At best, it’s an extreme exaggeration’.
INTERNATIONAL MARXIST GROUP
In the afternoon session, the Inquiry moved on to other parts of Tariq Ali’s long active life.
He was a member of the International Marxist Group (IMG), a British section of an international organisation known as the Fourth International, created by Trotsky in 1938 after he broke with Stalinism.
The IMG had branches in many towns and cities, including Birmingham, Leicester, Chesterfield, Manchester, London, Nottingham, Hull, Oxford, Norwich, Folkestone, Edinburgh, York, Glasgow, Reading and Crewe, and about 100 members at that time (though some branches may have had but a single member).
Ali explained that the Fourth International grew slowly, and it never became a truly mass movement except in Bolivia and Sri Lanka. In Europe, the French movement was perhaps the largest, with around 50,000 members at its peak.
In the UK, the IMG’s membership grew to a thousand at the most. It aimed to create left-wing Marxist parties to challenge Labour for the loyalties of the working class.
It’s interesting to note the questions that David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry, asks about the group: Did the IMG use violence? Did members of the IMG commit serious criminal offences to further their aims?
Ali had to be emphatic that the IMG’s aims and tactics did not include violence, or any serious criminal activities. He said it was possible that the odd member did, but if that was the case it was certainly not known to him.
SPYING ON TRADE UNIONISTS
Next, the Inquiry was shown a special report, signed by officer ‘HN340’ – a Special Demonstration Squad officer using the name ‘Alan Nixon’- and countersigned by Chief Inspector Saunders.
Ali said he feared that the capitalists would win that particular dispute. He very rarely attended these discussions, which were set up by the Red Mole newspaper and therefore often the first contact people made with the IMG. Paragraph 4 suggests that Ali was present, but he cannot recall this meeting at all.
Ali confirmed that IMG members’ involvement in trade unions was open and unashamed, rather than covert.
SPYING ON ELECTION CAMPAIGNS
On 14 April 1977, the IMG held a meeting at Southall Town Hall as part of their Greater London Council election campaign. About 50 people attended. It was suggested, by the spycops officer who reported on it, that many of the white attendees were not local to Southall.
Ali was asked for his reaction to the discovery that the police had been reporting on this. He said it was so unnecessary, what was going on was no big secret. It was a public meeting, anyone was welcome.
There was then more discussion of the Anti Nazi League (ANL) and its strategies for combatting racism. Ali reminded us of the slogan ‘self defence is no offence’.
SPYING ON A CONCERT IN A PARK
Tom Robinson, Carnival Against the Nazis, April 1978
Another SDS report was shown to the Inquiry, listing 229 names of people identified from the 100,000 people attending the ANL’s Carnival Against the Nazis, a free concert in April 1978 – including Tariq Ali and fellow core participants at the Inquiry, Peter Hain, Colin Clark and Dave Morris.
The free concert featured The Clash, Steel Pulse, X-Ray Spex, and the Tom Robinson Band.
Ali said it was a pleasant day, with lots of children and music, and he could not recall any violence.
The next such report listed 69 named individuals who attended an ANL march and rally on 14 May 1978, including, again, Ali and Dave Morris.
Local organisers were worried about the possibility of racist attacks, and put Ali in a safe house to keep him out of any trouble. He was holed up with reggae band Misty in Roots when the police charged into the house, and pulled everyone out. An estimated £10,000 of damage was done to the contents of the house, including the equipment of Misty in Roots.
Ali and the others were made to run a gauntlet, and he was truncheoned so severely that he passed out. The skull of Clarence Baker, manager of Misty in Roots, was fractured and he was in a coma for five months. Ali woke up in a police vehicle, under arrest. Upon his eventual release, he had to walk home.
He said that the police’s treatment of them that day made him think of a colonial police manual from the days of the Raj. At the trial of one of those arrested, one of the police officers testified that ‘there was no overall direction of the police forces at this time’ and described it as ‘a free for all’. Needless to say, no police officers were charged with anything.
BLAIR PEACH
Blair Peach
That was the same day that Blair Peach – who we have already heard about in this Inquiry – was killed by the police in Southall. When the police unit responsible had its lockers searched, weapons found included a crowbar, metal cosh, whip handle, stock ship, brass handle, knives, American-style truncheons, a rhino whip and a pickaxe handle.
This rather sets Barr’s suggestion that people shouldn’t be caught with marbles on their way to a demo into relief.
Unsurprisingly, the next report was on a meeting called by those campaigning for justice after Blair Peach’s death, which Ali attended.
Barr apologised for being repetitive in his questions, but asked Ali how he felt about being spied on at this event. Ali retorted:
‘What is the point of having a report like this except to keep people in work? Or to make my file heftier than it was, for absolutely no rhyme or reason?’
Ali was invited to speak at a wide range of public meetings over many years. He was involved in many groups on the left.
A much more recent document was produced at the hearing – a report into a meeting of the Stop the War Coalition steering committee on 15 March 2003. Ali’s name is listed, along with MPs including Jeremy Corbyn and George Galloway.
THE PERSONAL IS THE POLITICAL
The final three reports shown to the Inquiry had a more personal nature.
The first was an SDS report, dated 23 January 1980, about a man called Phil Evans. He is described as ‘a long-standing member of the SWP [Socialist Workers Party], who lives at [redacted], a single man, he is employed as a sub editor, at. a publishing firm called Engineering Today Ltd’ and the address is given.
The report continued:
‘Although a committed revolutionary socialist, Evans rarely plays an active part in SWP activities, but conveys his politics by means of cartoons submitted to left wing publications. He has recently completed a series of cartoons to be included in a book written by Tariq Ali, entitled Trotsky for Beginners.’
Despite admitting that Evans had no serious role in the SWP, he was spied on to a degree that the reporting provided details of his employer and landlord, and listed the same info about his partner, a fellow member of the SWP and a primary school teacher in Newham. A photo of Evans was also included.
‘How could that be relevant to anything? It’s perfectly accurate. The IMG bookshop was in trouble, I’d got some royalties from book sales, et cetera, and I gave them a loan. Full stop.
TOTAL FICTION
The final SDS report shown was signed by a Sergeant Fisher of the SDS, countersigned by Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon, founder of the unit. As with the last one, it had been copied to MI5.
Dated October 1968, it reports ‘intimate contact’ between Ali and a young man second year student at a teacher training college, who had been president of his Students’ Union.
Ali was flabbergasted:
‘It is total fiction. I cannot believe it. To suggest that I had intimate contact with a male students’ union president is bizarre. I have never been gay or bisexual; there is no truth to it whatsoever’
Ali was asked if he would like to add anything else, now that he has seen the huge bundle of documents prepared for this ‘tranche’ of Inquiry hearings. These comprise 5,263 pages, and were served five weeks ago. Attempting to read all of them before the start of the Inquiry is roughly equivalent to reading all of Lord of the Rings twice a week for five weeks straight.
These are documents the Inquiry will have had ready to release ahead of the original pre-Covid scheduled start in June. Why were they not released earlier? Why, when the Inquiry says it has a million pages, are core participants seeing such a small fraction, yet served too late to be properly comprehended?
DEPRIVATION THEN DELUGE
It is a pattern familiar to many victims of state injustice. They are first ignored; then the injustice is denied; then disclosure is delayed; then, finally, comes an avalanche of irrelevance to overwhelm and thus deflect those who would hold the state to account.
Ali merely said that, unsurprisingly, ‘I haven’t been able to go through them all as thoroughly as I would like, because as you’ve already demonstrated, a lot of them are quite repetitive or irrelevant.’
Ali then shared an unsettling anecdote.
‘Around 1995 or 1996 I was going for a jog round Hampstead Heath and I was stopped by a person, a male, younger than me, and he “Are you so and so?”, and I said, I am. He said, “I’m sorry to interrupt your running, but I have something important to say to you.”
‘He said, “My wife used to work at GCHQ, and can I just ask you two questions to confirm you are the person? Did you, in 1980, break up with your partner and you had a young daughter, six years old?” I said I did.
‘And he said, “It is you. My wife was detailed to listen to all your phone conversations. And she listened quite a few days to your daughter crying, you crying, you reading stories to her, your daughter pleading with you to come back to your old apartment. And she finally couldn’t take it and said, ‘I didn’t join GCHQ to spy on people,’ and gave in her resignation.”
‘So I said, Well, give her a big hug from me. I’d had no idea that I was still under surveillance.’
The next questions were from Rajiv Menon QC, who sought to let Ali give some explanation of himself and his circumstances.
Menon asked Ali for his memories of the police raid on the Black Dwarf offices in 1968. It was the one mentioned earlier, when the police knew there was a diagram of a Molotov cocktail behind a poster. Ali said the police weren’t there long and did not seize anything.
TRUE SPIES
Menon then reminded Ali of the 2002 BBC spycops documentary True Spies.
Spycop Wilf Knight described a huge political phone tapping operation, and named Ali as a target. Ali said he and his friends knew their phones were tapped. They had even planned a fake rendezvous on the phone and when they checked, the police were there.
The True Spies documentary also revealed that – in addition to being raided, tapped and having his mail opened – Ali was spied upon further, as spycops had keys to the Black Dwarf office. This can only result from a copy being made by someone who was a trusted, integral part of the organisation.
Menon said that we now know that the person who copied the keys used the name ‘Dick Epps‘. However, Ali has no recollection of this person.
THE NEED FOR PHOTOS
Menon asked if seeing a photo of ‘Epps’ might help. Ali said it might well do. The Inquiry has not provided him with one, and so has missed out on any memories he may have.
A long time ago, the Inquiry promised to publish photos of spycops in their undercover guise. After much to-ing and fro-ing, it was provided with a number of such pictures by non state core participants, with all the stipulated copyright authorisations. It then decided not to publish them after all.
OPPOSING THE VIETNAM WAR
Menon asked Ali why he’d opposed the Vietnam War so actively.
Ali replied that it had been given extensive TV coverage, and the scale of violence and torture was obvious and astonishing:
‘What we saw every day was non-stop bombing, use of napalm, use of chemical weapons, the burning out of whole villages, with women and children rushing out screaming in agony. And I remember one CBS reporter Morley Safer describing and filming Marines burning a village, killing people, saying, “And this is what we are fighting for: freedom”.’
Menon returned to the March 1968 demonstration in London. Ali explained that the route had been agreed with police, and included Grosvenor Square, where the American embassy was located.
Ali explained that they were so surprised by the number of people present that they felt the agreed route wouldn’t work and asked the police to take it the other way round the Square, but this was refused.With the backing up of the crowd, people pushed against the lines, scuffles broke out, and the police line was broken.
Menon asked Ali what was different that day compared to earlier protests he had seen. Ali replied:
‘what was new about the March ’68 demonstration was that a very large number of people were insistent on determining their own agenda and not being pushed around. And the violence was actually minimal, compared to what happened later in the poll tax riots, or the Black ghettos. But that was enough to create shock waves, that this was actually happening in Grosvenor Square outside the US Embassy. That’s about it.’
Next, Menon showed a document and asked Ali about Mr A, who had been arrested for handing out a leaflet outside the meeting of the Notting Hill branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and was subsequently charged with incitement to riot.
Ali said he didn’t know Mr A well, but that he’d seen him with a Maoist group and a Black Power group.
SOUTHALL SURVIVOR
Menon asked about the brutality Ali suffered in Southall in 1979. Ali confirmed that he was never given any explanation for the raid on the house where he was sheltering with Misty in Roots, saying:
‘we were never told that, and no police officer felt the need to inform us. I don’t think anyone knew. Basically, I think that they had decided that they had to make an example of the anti-fascist demonstrators.’
Turning to the killing of school teacher Blair Peach on the same day, Menon showed the Inquiry a further Special Branch document, reporting on a public meeting of the Camden Anti-Nazi League entitled ‘Who Killed Blair Peach?’
Menon explained the code next to Ali’s name: “RF” stands for registry file, which means that there was a Special Branch or MI5 file opened on him. The number “65” indicates that that file was opened in 1965. Ali was still a student at Oxford at this time.
One of the other Special Branch reports released today reveals that Ali first came to the notice of police in 1964 when he took part in an anti-apartheid protest in Oxford.
A little further on in the ‘Who Killed Blair Peach?’ report, it shows that Blair Peach himself had a registry file, opened in 1978. It then said ‘the East London Teachers Association has come to the notice of Special Branch on numerous occasions.’ Spycops were targeting Peach and others in their professional capacity as teachers.
BUGS NOT TAPS
Menon returned to the report on the Stop the War Coalition steering committee from March 2003, as seen earlier. He established that, as the meetings weren’t open to the general public, the report must come either from someone on the committee or, perhaps more likely, from a recording device.
Mitting nearly jumped out of his chair. He warned Menon that the Investigatory Powers Act prohibits any reference to the use of intercept unless he deems it necessary in advance. ‘You will be committing an offence if you persist’,’ he intoned. ‘I would warn you not to’.
Menon explained that he was talking about a recording device, a planted bug, rather than an intercept of communications, so the Act doesn’t apply. Mitting apologised and retracted his lawyer-snaring mandibles.
Ali was baffled at why the Stop the War Coalition was so profoundly spied on when it has been completely open in what it’s doing and what its aims are. It was publicly set up, open to all and, as one might expect from a peace campaign, there has been no suggestion of any violence involved.
Concluding, Menon quoted from Ali’s written statement to the Inquiry:
‘my strong feeling is that this Inquiry is likely to be a monumental waste of time. This is because the direction of travel is clear from the questions – to dissect the politics of the victims of police spying, and therefore to turn the spotlight away from the actions of the police. This is the politics of ‘blame the victim’. And no doubt I and others will be declared guilty. Even 50 years on, the State is fighting exactly the same battle it was engaged in in 1968.’
Menon asked if, having been questioned in person today, he felt differently in any way.
Ali replied:
‘when I said “is likely to be a monumental waste of time”, I should have added “for me”, not for any of the other participants. But I don’t think it has been a waste of time for me, I think it’s been quite important, and I hope that the final report reflects the balance as we discussed today, that much of the spying and infiltration, in my opinion, was totally unnecessary.’
Mitting buttered Ali up to assist him further, by asking for a free history lesson on Trotskyism. We stopped tweeting at that point, but if you really want to you can find that bit at the end of today’s official transcript.
The final scheduled day of opening statements at the Undercover Policing Inquiry was centred around the moving stories of people who were spied on as part of justice campaigns. These are mostly families whose loved ones have died at the hands of the police, or whose deaths had investigations that were scandalously inadequate.
Several themes recurred from the spied-upon:
the need for the Inquiry to centre their experience and knowledge;
not taking police statements at face value;
the need for a diverse panel to advise a rich, white, male Chair who cannot properly understand systemic discrimination;
the need for live-streaming the hearings to stop it being a private inquiry, which is being done by other inquiries.
All of it seemed to bounce right off Sir John.
Neither Helen Steel (delayed from yesterday), nor Dave Smith’s statements (delayed from Friday) have been allotted new dates as yet.
Imran Khan QC
(Baroness Doreen Lawrence)
Imran Khan QC
Imran Khan opened proceedings, representing Baroness Lawrence, campaigner and mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.
Khan stated that Baroness Lawrence has lost confidence in the ability of the Inquiry to get to the truth of why her family was spied upon. She is also disappointed with the Metropolitan Police’s statement that they have undergone a substantial change in their. She thinks the Met remains institutionally racist.
Ethnic minority people are over policed and under protected. This is illustrated by disproportionate use of stop and search against young Black people today.
The 1998 Macpherson inquiry into Stephen Lawrence’s death should have been the end of it. The Met claimed to have already given all evidence to Macpherson. This was a bare-faced lie.
CORRUPTION AND LIES
In 2012, it was reported that there was detailed evidence of one of the investigating detective’s criminality that was held back from the public, the Lawrence family’s legal team, and the Macpherson inquiry. These revelations led to the Ellison Review, which also found spycops had targeted the Lawrences.
Khan then outlined the well-known background of the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the incompetent and corrupt police investigation that followed. Stephen Lawrence was murdered at just 18 years old in 1993 in South London whist waiting for a bus. Justice was slow and by no means reached. Baroness Lawrence still mourns the death of her son.
Khan said that the same racism that led to the murder of Stephen and let his killers walk free, still exists. All the police involved with the botched initial investigation were promoted or have since retired, not one of them has been disciplined, let alone sacked.
Baroness Lawrence said:
‘To lose a child is unthinkable. To be fighting for justice for him 27 years later is inexcusable’.
Five years later, in 1998, Macpherson made his findings, which included the fact that police attending to the scene of Stephen’s murder did nothing to try to save him. Khan says it seems ‘the police did not want to get their hands dirty with a Black man’s blood’.
SPYCOPS DIGGING FOR DIRT
In 2013, they learned that police spied on the family’s campaign and ‘sought dirt’ to discredit them and their supporters. Undercover officer Peter Francis said he was just one of four officers tasked with doing so. However, the Lawrence family were law abiding, so there was no dirt for the undercovers to find.
Imran Khan QC & Baroness Doreen Lawrence
Francis was then tasked to find dirt on people more peripheral to the campaign, using names passed on by the family liaison officers purportedly supporting the family. The police officer referred to as HN78 (‘Bobby Lewis’), interviewed in the Ellison Review, and picked up information on the Lawrence campaign.
The Lawrence family’s campaign was one of many such family justice campaigns targeted by undercover police. Police resources that should have been spent catching killers were instead used to obstruct justice in this way.
The Lawrences then wrote to the Home Secretary saying the Met hadn’t given a satisfactory explanation about the allegations of spying. They asked for a public, transparent inquiry. Home Secretary said no, unless the Ellison report recommended it. The report, when it came, did indeed recommend a public inquiry.
Baroness Lawrence said that a public inquiry was the only way to conduct a satisfactory investigation as internal police investigations cannot be trusted. Khan went on to outline the various investigations conducted – and the broken promises made by the police.
The Home Secretary finally ordered the undercover policing public inquiry in 2014, remarking that ‘it is deplorable the family have had to wait so long’. The irony isn’t lost on core participants, finding themselves nearly seven years later at the very start of an Inquiry that has swathed itself in secrecy.
HOLLOW PROMISES
In 2014, the Met Commissioner said all material about the spying on the family would be released. The Lawrence family have received absolutely nothing since then. They still don’t know why they were spied on. Should the police have given these files to the Inquiry in the meantime, Baroness Lawrence wants them to be handed over to her now.
Baroness Lawrence is exhausted by decades of hollow, hypocritical promises that are never delivered on. She wants to know the extent to which the Met’s Commissioner at the time, Paul Condon, knew about, or authorised the spying on the her family. On the one hand, she has been told there was no direct spying, yet on the other the Met have already apologised for it – what is the truth?
The culture of the police has played a part in creating miscarriages of justice and covering up racism. Public apologies aren’t matched by real reform. For instance, the one whistle-blower, Peter Francis, still faces the threat of prosecution for coming forward. While Francis’ spying was reprehensible, the Met’s intransigence and denials are much worse. He must be be given the assurances he seeks about immunity from prosecution.
Baroness Lawrence trusted Mark Ellison’s investigation as he’d secured the convictions of two of Stephen’s killers. His recommendations were clear. In contrast, she said, although the Undercover Policing Inquiry was supposed to be a ‘proper, transparent inquiry, rigorous in pursuit of the truth’ it has turned out to be secretive and ‘we should be able to see every officer who chose to spy on us’.
Khan contrasted the open way that Baroness Lawrence campaigned, despite hostility from the police with the anonymity granted to the police. She didn’t have the luxury of hiding, so neither should the undercover police. The Met, unless forced to do otherwise, will seek to avoid accountability and hide evidence. They can’t be trusted to simply offer it up to the Inquiry.
DIVERSITY OR FAILURE
The Macpherson Inquiry only succeeded with the help of a diverse panel advising. Khan also explained the vital context of the racism surrounding the spying. If the Chair doesn’t understand this, then surely point Baroness Lawrence makes is proven: a diverse panel is therefore needed.
The idea that the Special Demonstration Squad operated lawfully and in the public interest is nonsense. Clearly, there is no good reason to spy on any of Baroness Lawrence’s campaigning.
Khan concluded: ‘We must have the truth’, and then quoted Baroness Lawrence:
‘I was a happy married woman with three gorgeous children. Now I have lost a son and I am divorced, but that’s only a tiny part of what has changed. Unless you’ve lost a child you can’t understand the depth of heartache I’ve felt… and would give up all I have to go back to the seconds before Stephen died. I simply ask for justice’.
Heather Williams opened by saying why she was here and, in a sense, why we were all here.
On 22nd April 1993 Stephen Lawrence was murdered by racists in Eltham while waiting for a bus. He was stabbed by a gang of white youths who used racist language. The initial murder investigation was completely inadequate; during it Dr Lawrence felt as if he was in a constant battle with police.
The Macpherson Inquiry decided that institutional racism was apparent in the police investigation into Stephen’s death and in his family’s treatment by officers. These failings meant that Stephen’s killers largely escaped justice.
This has impacted on all of Dr Neville Lawrence’s life. As the Macpherson Inquiry demonstrated, the police were not on their side. Despite that Inquiry’s historic recognition of institutional racism in the police, Dr Lawrence believes too little progress has been made. He feels the state has failed him.
Against this background, the allegation of police interference with his family has only further undermined his confidence in the police. Intelligence on Dr Lawrence was passed up the chain of command by police, and an undercover officer attended the Macpherson inquiry pretending to be a supporter of the family. The existence of this was also kept secret from Lord Macpherson.
How then can the public have confidence in policing of Black communities if resources are used like this against them? It appears to many that Black lives don’t matter to the police.
LONG TERM SPYING
Williams made it clear that Dr Lawrence doesn’t have confidence in the Inquiry. He wanted to participate in an inquiry capable of finding the truth and stopping these abuses from being repeated in the future. However, he, like so many victims of spycops, has had almost no disclosure of documents.
The Met didn’t just spy on the Lawrence family’s campaign in the immediate aftermath of the murder. Five years later, as the Macpherson Inquiry was heading towards its conclusion, the Met had a spy in the Lawrence family camp – a Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) officer using the name Dave Hagan.
The undercover officer met with Richard Walton who was part of the team who were providing the Commissioner’s response to the Inquiry, feeding them information on the family’s thinking. That meeting was brokered by SDS boss Bob Lambert.
In 2013, we learned from whistle-blower SDS officer Peter Francis that undercover police had targeted Black justice campaigns, including the Lawrences. Alongside that, the family liaison officers were gathering intelligence rather than concerning themselves with the welfare of the family.
However, it was not until 2016 that the truth about undercover police undermining the Macpherson Inquiry was revealed. Walton, by then, was running spycops operations as the head of Counter Terrorism Command. Like many guilty police officers who find themselves under investigation, he resigned to avoid disciplinary charges.
A SPY IN THE FAMILY CAMP
A document from the foundation of the SDS in 1968 says the unit was created to provide information on public order, and related intelligence. Twenty years later it said it was concerned with terrorism and politically motivated crime. Whichever, the grieving, devastated Lawrence family fell under none of these categories. Therefore there was no excuse for snooping around the Lawrences, whether directly or otherwise.
Neville Lawrence
And yet, undercover police were circling the Lawrence family, looking to smear them instead of catching their son’s killers. Macpherson found the Lawrences were treated unfavourably because of their race. The 2014 Stephen Lawrence Review by Mark Ellison QC discovered undercover officer ‘Dave Hagan’ spied on the family campaign at a time when the family was taking legal action against the police. Hagan reported back personal details as well as the Lawrence family’s campaign strategy.
The police’s self-investigation into undercover policing, Operation Herne, started in 2012. Its 2014 report centred on allegations of spying on Lawrences. Like Ellison, they did not find ‘smoking gun’ documentation proving that there was an instruction to spy on the Lawrence family. But, in a unit where creating written evidence was often avoided, we cannot rely on documents. The Inquiry must rely on oral evidence.
SDS officers routinely ‘hoovered up’ all knowledge and retained it, ignoring issues of privacy, the third Operation Herne report was published in 2014. Numerous undercovers have confirmed they received no training on collateral intrusion and that they took no account of the issue.
It’s plain there was no legal authority or justification for the intrusion on the Lawrence family. And, nearly seven years in, we’ve had almost no information from the Inquiry. It appears to have done nothing significant towards its purpose. Dr Lawrence has received no substantive disclosure.
The delays to the UCPI have increased the distress of victims. We are promised disclosure will happen, at an unspecified time, but we cannot properly contribute until that is done.
Dr Lawrence wants to know the full extent to which undercovers spied on him at the time of Stephen’s death and afterward. He has many questions that he wants the Inquiry to answer. He does not think a white family in the same position would have been treated this way.
Williams went on to say that the Ellison Report only focuses on 1993 and 1998, which missed out the period in between, including the time of Stephen’s inquest. This also leaves questions to be answered. For instance, why was Dave Hagan allowed to befriend the family and attend the Macpherson inquiry?
Further, what did Hagan tell Walton at the 1998 meeting? Was this information used at the Macpherson inquiry? Who else saw it? Who knew about the meeting? Lambert was Hagan’s handler, speaking to him several times a day. Dr Lawrence also wants to hear what he has to say, as well as Hagan’s other managers.
DON’T TRUST THE PREPETRATORS
Due to the police’s tendency to destroy records, the Inquiry should take control of all documents rather than trusting the police not to pre-sort the files to avoid incriminating themselves. Williams then went on to speak of Neville’s concern about particular officers being granted anonymity. These are HN109 who was Peter Francis’ manager, HN101 who was also involved in his tasking, HN86 the SDS boss 1993-1996 who gave the order to find dirt on Lawrences, and HN58, the boss 1997-2001 so who will have known about the 1998 meeting with Walton.
Heather Williams made the point that almost all non-state core participants have been making since the Inquiry began: if you give a spied-upon person a cover name, they are more likely to be able to give evidence about that person, but with just a number that is impossible and we only get the officer’s own account.
Williams then quoted Lord Bingham, a senior member of the judiciary: ‘Publicity is a powerful disinfectant’.
Beyond the secrecy, Dr Lawrence is, like Baroness Lawrence, particularly concerned by the lack of a diverse panel in the ‘fact-finding’ part of the Inquiry as well as the anonymity given to the undercover officers.
Where there’s evidence of racism, police must be held to account through the legal system if there’s to be any confidence in that system. Dr Lawrence has been failed badly by institutions over the years, and hopes that he will not be failed again at the Inquiry.
The Inquiry continued with the return of Imran Khan QC, this time speaking for Michael Mansfield QC, who a a core particpant due to his role as a lawyer representing the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.
Khan started with reference to the situation today, saying the State acts with increasing hostility towards the legal profession, with sneering from the Prime Minister about ‘lefty human rights lawyers’ who are ‘hamstringing’ the criminal justice system.
The Home Secretary dismissed lawyers objectións to her similar comments, saying they should ‘get back to work’, even though she was actually objecting to their work.
When the State appears to be having a wholesale attack on lawyers, there are grave consequences.
Khan said:
‘It is chilling to consider that lawyers might have failed to take on cases or acted otherwise in accordance with their duty, in the knowledge that they might attract the unwanted attention of the State and its institutions.’
Mansfield wonders if we’re in an era where the legal profession is imperilled. The State has always tried to silence critics, but the scale of it varies and this moment is especially precarious.
MICHAEL MANSFIELD’S CAREER
Michael Mansfield has long been targeted by undercover police, as he has represented people perceived as a threat since the early 1970s, such as the Angry Brigade.
He continued to represent people who suffered at the hands of the police, e.g. (with Gareth Peirce) the Birmingham 6, families at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, and the families of Jean Charles de Menezes, Pat Finucane and Stephen Lawrence. Among his clients are Ricky Reel’s family, who were targeted by spycops while Ricky’s killers walk free.
If you don’t have lawyers who are willing and able to challenge the State, you remove the right to challenge at all. Yet lawyers that bring such challenges are subjected to attacks and undercover operations.
Undercover surveillance of Mansfield had no justifiable reason. There was no ‘public order’ or ‘public interest’ justification, and no criminality. However, if state sanctioned tactics of unlawful surveillance were designed to intimidate lawyers such as Mansfield, they failed.
LOW EXPECTATIONS OF THE UCPI
He does not have high hopes of this Inquiry, as it is held under the Inquiries Act 2005. Mansfield scathingly descibes the Act as ‘legislation that serves to undermine the rule of law, erode protection of human rights, shake public confidence, and lessen further the independence of the judicial and legal system.’
Furthermore, it was not properly debated, it repealed earlier, more effective laws, and it does not allow parliamentary scrutiny of Inquiry decisions. Also, arbitrary appointments mean such inquiries are never truly independent.
Similarly hasty and equally egregious is the CHIS Bill currently being rushed through Parliament will allow any state agent to be authorised to commit any crime, it’s an open invitation to damage and destroy lives.
RECOMMENDATIONS NOT ACTIONS
In conclusion, Michael Mansfield takes on cases that are uncomfortable to the state, but this should have no bearing on how he is treated. A lawyer is a lawyer. Mansfield is just one of many who have been spied on. This Inquiry must find out the full extent, why it was done, and who authorised it. Mansfield wants a sincere apology to him and to the other core participants.
There is a huge risk that the police will just ignore what they see as yet another set of recommendations. So many hard-won inquiries are just left to gather dust in the Home Office. If the Inquiry fails in this, fear and intimidation could replace fearlessness among lawyers, and we would lose the capacity for challenging state wrongdoing.
Mansfield will not go away quietly. He is clear that for an Inquiry to have real purpose it not only needs powerful and far-reaching guidelines and recommendations, but also their effective implementation. We must criminalise unjustified surveillance of lawyers.
Andrew Trollope QC
(Azhar Khan, Miscarriages of justice)
Andrew Trollope QC
Before lunch, the Inquiry heard from Andrew Trollope QC on behalf of Azhar Khan, a solicitor who was targeted by undercover officers and wrongly prosecuted.
In 2007, the Metropolitan police conceived a covert ‘sting’ operation, culminating in the arrest of Azhar Khan for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. This new and unique operation went beyond covert surveillance, and was a plan for undercover officers to pose as potential criminal clients in order to set him up.
SPYCOPS ENTRAP A SOLICITOR
Azhar Khan began his own solicitor’s practice in 2005, one of the few BAME lawyers to do so.
Settled in a deprived area’of London, he served important local needs, doing mostly legal aid defence work and working for local charities as well. He also worked to encourage BAME men and particularly women to get ahead in the profession.
For some reason police took exception to his work and launched Operation Castration or Castrol. This involved undercover officers posing as criminals to become his clients over a sustained period in order to try to induce him to commit crime. They would have themselves arrested as drug dealers or money launderers then request Khan as their lawyer. The ‘suspects’ were then released on bail.
This sting operation lasted 18 months and involved four spycops and the complicity of six other officers who made the staged arrests, as well as senior officers who reviewed the operation.
Khan’s ‘clients’ offered him the opportunity to launder £50,000, which he refused. They also showed him big bags of tablets, supposedly drugs, offering them to him. Posing as someone from organised crime, one of them kept ringing Khan, seeking meetings and repeatedly tried to lure him into criminal deals.
NO EVIDENCE
By September 2009, there was no evidence of wrongdoing at all. The officer in charge wanted to end the operations. But the spycops trying to dupe Khan said they’d had a meeting where he’d agreed to a crime – this was a complete lie – which led to a renewal of the authorisation.
The spycops were persistently trying to trap Khan into committing crime for a very long period of time, in the face of his impeccable integrity. There were no real grounds, nothing even alleged, that could justify it. It was plainly illegal.
At no stage did Khan agree to any of the various crimes they offered. Nonetheless, police raided his home and office in December 2009, charging him with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
The police later conceded that the staged arrests and procedures at the police stations were designed to deceive Azhar Khan in the course of his professional practice, in order to try and find evidence of criminal conduct by him.
ABUSE OF PROCESS
The objective of the operation was not to investigate any crime of which Azhur Khan was suspected. Rather, it was to ‘integrity test’ his conduct as a criminal defence solicitor by using undercover officers to suggest the commission of crimes to see how he would react’. Over and over again.
Trollope explained that ‘no evidence of any offence on the part of Azhur Khan was gleaned. The clear aim was to put him and his practice City Law Solicitors out of business.’
He continued, ‘one of the most legally and morally objectionable features of the operation was that these attempts were so persistent in the face of Azhur Khan’s repeated failure agree to the suggestions of crime.’
Eventually, the case was thrown out of court, the judge ruling it was abuse of process with no case to answer.
A RACIST OPERATION
The very basis of the operation was racist. As an Asian lawyer, it seems he was singled out in a way that would never have been done if he were white. All the undercover officers in the operation were BAME. Did they think Khan would be more liable to commit crime with them?
Where did they get the idea from? Who else has been treated this way? Which other officers might have given them tactics and advice?
This was spycops acting as agents provocateur, for a long period, against someone for whom there was no evidence of corruption. Khan was a victim of a miscarriage of justice. The Inquiry must find the full extent and justifications of this operation.
Dave Morris
(Social & environmental activists, [appearing in person])
Dave Morris has been a community and political activist for nearly 50 years. He’s best known for being one of the defendants in the ‘McLibel’ Trial along with Helen Steel, but his work encompasses many more issues beyond that.
Just as at the McLibel trial 30 years ago, he has no lawyer covering that period at the Undercover Policing Inquiry and is instead speaking for himself.
Morris opened by outlining his anarchist, workplace, environmental, community, and other activism.
In the 1980s, he was involved in London Greenpeace (a small collective founded in 1971, independent from the later-formed Greenpeace International) which was infiltrated by undercover officers from the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS).
The group began a publicity campaign focused on McDonald’s as an example of what all transnational corporations are doing – opposing their environmental destruction, promotion of junk food, treatment of workers, abuse of animals, exploitation of children, and more. They produced a leaflet called What’s Wrong With McDonald’s. The burger giant sued for libel, presumably expecting them to back down. It was a drastic misjudgement.
McLIBEL
What happened next was the stuff of fiction. Steel and Morris couldn’t afford lawyers and represented themselves in court (assisted behind the scenes by a young barrister prepared to work for free called Keir Starmer) against a large McDonald’s legal team led by a QC charging £2,000 a day. McDonald’s had objected to the whole leaflet, so Steel and Morris had to defend every word. It became the longest trial in English history. In the end there were a number of damning judgements against the fast food giant, and versions of the leaflet were being handed out in millions all over the world.
You can see more about the case in the McLibel documentary and at the campaign website from back in the day McSpotlight.org (which was one of the first of its kind in 1996).
The McLibel Support Campaign around the trial was also infiltrated by spycops. They didn’t know this at the time, so it never came up in court. The spycops weren’t just attending meetings, they played an active part. In 2011, Morris and Steel discovered that ‘Bob Robinson’, who had significantly contributed to the leaflet, was actually undercover police officer Bob Lambert.
PRIVATE SPIES
As well as undercover police infiltrating London Greenpeace, McDonald’s sent at least seven spies into the group, one of whom deceived a genuine member into a six-month relationship.
Sid Nicholson, McDonald’s Vice President and Head of Security, oversaw that spying operation. He’d come to the firm from being the former Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendant in Brixton, following a career in the police in apartheid South Africa. He had stated from the witness box that McDonald’s security department was wholly comprised of ex-police officers. Nicholson had admitted asking friends on the force for information on activists and having a two-way exchange, including home addresses, which was illegal.
Morris referred to footage, obtained from McDonald’s during the McLibel trial and shown in the McLibel documentary, of a London Greenpeace protest at McDonald’s HQ (East Finchley) in 1989. McDonald’s spy Michelle Hooker can be seen handing out anti-McDonald’s leaflets next to spycop John Dines, who scandalously developed a long, intimate relationship with Helen Steel. Sid Nicholson had testified that a Special Branch officer was given ‘a perch’ next to himself at the HQ to jointly observe that very protest in the film. It was later discovered that during the case, yet another spycop Matt Rayner also had an abusive sexual relationship with a woman living next door to Morris in Tottenham.
John Dines and Helen Steel lived together as a couple whilst she, Morris and Keir Starmer made pre-trial preparations. Dines then disappeared. How much privileged legal advice was Dines illegally privy to whilst living with Ms Steel, and what was passed on to McDonald’s?
Steel and Morris sued the Met for sharing their personal information with McDonald’s. The police choose to settle the case out of court, including apologising, paying compensation and committing to inform all London police officers not to do share confidential information to third parties.
The McLibel judgment found that McDonald’s had been responsible for industrial-scale breaches of employment laws and the welfare rights of animals. yet the people who were exposing this were the ones targeted by spycops.
In 2005, the European Court of Human rights found the McLibel case had violated their right to a fair trial and freedom of expression, and they were compensated by the British Government. The Court ruled:
‘The Government had contended that, as the applicants were not journalists, they should not attract the high level of protection afforded to the press under Article 10. However, in a democratic society even small and informal campaign groups, such as London Greenpeace, had to be able to carry on their activities effectively.’
Neither McDonald’s nor the police were ever held to account for any of this.
Since 1968, more than 1,000 groups campaigning in the UK for a better society and world have been spied upon and infiltrated, by secret unaccountable political spycops. They targeted a huge range of groups – environmentalists, trade unions, women’s rights, racial justice, LGBTQ rights, animal rights, as well as campaigning against war, corporate power, repression, and police brutality.
The groups represented in this Inquiry were not terrorists, but were pushing for positive social change in an overwhelmingly public and open way.
Many of the groups spycops targeted have been vindicated by history, their ideas have become mainstream orthodoxy, and some have resulted in legal and other formal recognition by society. Yet any group that challenged the established order seemed to have been deemed a legitimate target of the secret political policing units.
SPYCOPS’ CRIMES
Spycops weren’t merely observing, they infiltrated personal lives. Fake friendships were developed and exploited. Many people, especially women, were deceived into intimate and abusive relationships.
The McLibel 2: Dave Morris & Helen Steel [pic: Spanner Films]
Bugging a phone is recognised as a breach of human rights and police have to apply for a warrant. Spycops hacking people’s lives is infinitely worse and should be totally unacceptable to everyone.
Spycops weren’t aberrations or ‘rogue officers’. This spying was established and conducted with the full sanction of the state and supported by its apparatus and taxpayer funding.
By targeting such groups, spycops show institutional discrimination, racism, sexism and anti-democratic action, including industrial-scale breaches of laws and charters that protect basic human rights and the right to protest.
THE ‘THREAT’ OF SOCIAL JUSTICE, OR RETROSPECTIVE ‘JUSTIFICATIONS’ FOR SPYING?
If spycops are worried about political violence, why were fascists largely left to their own devices while we were spied on? The police plainly have political bias.
Why did the state see social justice as a threat to society? Why didn’t they put spycops into financial corporations, hedge funds, military elites, and power-mad establishment political parties? Such institutions employ and promote daily, mass institutional violence – war, poverty, exploitation of workers, colonialism and environmental destruction – reinforced by PR and manipulation of society for their own selfish ends. There’s your actual threat to public order and well being.
What should we count as ‘extremism’? The Climate Emergency, said Morris, is the most extreme threat we face. In 1968, the American Petroleum Institute commissioned scientists to investigate burning fossil fuels, they discovered ‘there seems to be no doubt that the potential damage to our environment could be severe.’ That was the same time spycops were set up. The oil industry has obstructed efforts to tackle it. Has the oil industry ever been targeted by spycops? If not, why not?
Morris however noted the public outrage at the beginning of 2020 over campaign groups being lumped in with fascist and other terrorist groups in police counter-terrorism documents. This included the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement which had a few months earlier been blockading roads in central London for over a week calling for action to prevent climate catastrophe. In response to the controversy, the Minister for Security was forced to admit to Parliament that XR was not and should not be categorised as ‘extremist’. So just who are the real extremists?
Morris also tackled MI5’s seemingly dominant role over the secret police spying operations from the very beginning. He stated that MI5 was seeking information about, and the undermining of, groups and movements which are deemed to support ‘subversion of the State’. But Morris said they should look elsewhere – for the last 30 years mass subversion of the State, supported by successive Governments, has been systematically and continuously carried out by unaccountable multinational corporations seeking deregulation of laws protecting society from unrestrained profiteering, and taking over formerly nationalised industries and sectors so that a tiny few can profit from what were once State-run public services.
Adding insult to injury is the deliberate widespread use of ‘tax havens’ and other so-called ‘loopholes’ to annually avoid billions of pounds of taxes due to the State which could have been used for our struggling public services. Millions of people have suffered as a result. But have there been any undercover officers targeting of this serious, industrial-scale daily subversion of the State? He guessed never.
PROTECTING THE PERPETRATORS
Spycop Bob Lambert (right) at McDonald’s handing out the McLibel leaflet he co-wrote, 1986
It took five years of spycops revelations – largely from victims’ own research – to get the promise of the public inquiry, and five more for it to begin. Police and the Inquiry have consistently refused to release lists of officers, or groups targeted, or relevant documents.
Victims of spycops are dismayed by the Inquiry’s prioritising of the protection of the perpetrators’ privacy above the right of victims and the public to know the truth.
As the people who brought this scandal to public awareness, we’ve worked hard to get the justice we and the public are entitled to.
We remain determined to bring the whole murky political policing operation into the public spotlight where it belongs.
DAMAGE LIMITATION
This is supposed to be a public inquiry, but it’s more like a police damage-limitation exercise. The hearings are not yet publicly accessible and nor will they be live-streamed, which is the only way to ensure the public and victims can follow it.
Having covered so much nefarious activity, Morris ended on an optimistic note. Despite being undermined by spycops, movements for positive change are still here and have had many successes. Such movements are needed now more than ever. A better world is possible and it’s up to all of us to support – rather than pay spycops to undermine – efforts for real change.
Imran Khan QC (The Monitoring Group, Justice campaigns)
Imran Khan QC then spoke for the Monitoring Group.
Suresh Grover, founder and director of The Monitoring Group
The Monitoring Group (TMG) was founded by Suresh Grover, who is still a co-director. It is one of the oldest anti-racist organisations in the UK, carrying out advocacy work and supporting struggles for civil rights among ethnic minority groups and migrants. It occupies a unique place within the UK’s social justice network.
The organisation was founded in Southall, London, in the mid-1970s, and originally called the Southall Monitoring Group (SMG). It was inspired by national and global struggles against apartheid. It has made many achievements over 40 years, and has offered trauma support to more than 1,500 victims of racism over the last decade.
Its earliest campaigns were around the murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in June 1976 and Blair Peach, killed during an anti-racist demo in Southall in 1979. Peach’s partner, Celia Stubbs, and her campaign were supported by TMG. It was not until 2010 that the Met released the 1979 report that effectively admitted a police officer had killed Peach.
TMG supported Stephen Lawrence’s family campaign for many years. It also supported the family of Ricky Reel, who was murdered by racists in 1997, and whose family was then targeted by undercover police. Other families supported included that of Michael Menson, also killed in a 1997 attack which, as with Ricky Reel, police wrongly denied was racist in nature. As mentioned earlier in the day, at least 18 such justice campaigns were targeted by undercovers.
Given their involvement with so many spied-on campaigns, the TMG was surely spied upon too. The National Civil Rights Movement (NCRM) was founded by TMG’s Suresh Grover in 1999 to support such campaigns and to push for full implementation of the recommendations from the Macpherson inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence. Undercover police were at the NCRM founding conference. However, Suresh and TMG have had no formal admission they were ever spied on. After five years, they are losing hope that this Inquiry can be transparent and reveal the truth.
POLICE TARGETING OF THE MONITORING GROUP
The first revelation of police surveillance of the Group was made in a 1989 Guardian article. It said, that in 1987 the Southall Monitoring Group was the subject of a report written by Ealing police intelligence officer, PC J.E. Black describing them as a ‘political cell’ set up by the Greater London Council (GLC) to follow an agenda while purporting to be a community organisation.
Police saw anti-racism as being somehow anti-police, and seemed distressed about SMG’s ability to marshal support for causes and cases.
Thereafter, Grover noticed a reluctance from politicians to engage because they did not want to be spied on. There were unexplained burglaries of the office. Grover himself was targeted for arrest. This was not, as the police claimed last week, merely ‘collateral intrusion’ in family justice campaigns. It is a worry then, that Mitting takes the police’s word on that at face value. Operation Herne, the police self-investigation into spycops, effectively treated a lack of surviving files as an implication of innocence – absence of evidence as evidence of absence.
DISLIKE OF RACIAL JUSTICE GROUPS
It’s well established that numerous racial justice groups in the 60s were non-violent yet spied on by the British State fearing civil unrest. That unrest came in 1981, and for the reason the State had feared – ‘racial disadvantage’ was the phrase used by Lord Scarman in his report into the 1981 Brixton disturbances.
Scarman stated:
‘Urgent action is needed if it is not to become an endemic, ineradicable disease threatening the very survival of our society… racial disadvantage and its nasty associate racial discrimination, have not yet been eliminated. They poison minds and attitudes; they are, as long as they remain, and will continue to be a potent factor of unrest’.
The State took none of this on board, instead bringing in Sir Kenneth Newman as Met Commissioner to apply his Northern Ireland experience to Black, Asian and migrant communities in London. There was surely coordination with the Met’s sub-unit of undercover police, the Special Demonstration Squad.
Some people are core participants in the Undercover Policing Inquiry directly because of Newman’s legacy. They were not ‘collateral intrusion’, but deliberately spied upon.
After the 2005 London bombings, TMG worked in Beeston in Leeds, where more than one of the bombers had come from. Grover was twice contacted in the first week by MI5 to discourage him from interacting with the ‘suspect community’.
INQUIRY UNABLE TO INVESTIGATE
As other core participants have mentioned today, Mitting is simply incapable of investigating racism in the police and undercover police if he rejects the Macpherson report’s definition of institutional racism. There must be a diverse panel appointed to help the Chair before the Inquiry starts taking evidence. Otherwise, it cannot fulfil its remit, examining 40 years of undercover police who were guided by bias and discrimination.
Khan recounted psychological studies that show implicit biases even in those who consciously oppose discrimination. An object is more likely to be perceived as a weapon in a Black hand than if it’s in a white one. These studied have proven right those who report subtle discrimination, and people in Mitting’s kind of position would do well to take notice.
Racism does not stand still, it changes size, shape and function. When it becomes institutionalised we are not dealing with prejudice, but power and institutional practices.
By the time this Inquiry reports, it will be nearly 20 years since the Special Demonstration Squad was disbanded. Police will say it is now a historical issue, and that they’ve already learned their lessons. Such assurances cannot be accepted on their own terms, every such claim must be tested by the Inquiry.
To date, TMG has participated in three public inquiries. They initially encouraged people to get involved with this one. They even had the Inquiry’s legal team participate in a public conference they organised. However, the continuing secrecy has been disappointing and damaging to the Inquiry’s credibility.
CREATING ITS OWN PROBLEMS
The Inquiry’s difficulties are of its own makings. It agreed to give spycops anonymity without good reason, and it allowed police and other State bodies to delay it excessively. It has shown remarkable reluctance to address critical areas of racism and sexism because, in reality, it sees them as marginal, issues that are not worthy of its time.
Because of all this, the Inquiry has rejected the chorus of calls for specialist advisers to assist it. In doing all this, the Inquiry has created an uneven playing field tilted in favour of the perpetrators and against their victims.
The Inquiry only exists because of the bravery and tenacity of core participants. It has substance because of the whistle-blower who exposed the skeletons in the first place and journalists who reported the horrors to the public. Its conviction derives from the unshakeable spirit of protestors – Black and white, women and men – who dared to dream for a better world. That dream will live on regardless of the conclusions of this Inquiry.
Pete Weatherby QC
(Newham Monitoring Project [Justice campaigns], & Core Participants who are Political, Social & environmental activists)
Finally, we heard a tremendously powerful and incisive statement from Pete Weatherby QC, speaking for eighteen different core participants.
He began the show with a video clip, of spycop ‘Lynn Watson‘ (EN34) playing the clown.
No, seriously, footage of her being trained up by the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) Leeds, and then taking part in a range of actions with the Clown Army. These included visits to a military recruitment centre, to the US spy-base at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire. It begins in the car park of Hilary Benn MP’s constituency office.
Weatherby asked ‘How on earth was that considered legitimate policing?’
He then showed a picture of spycop ‘Simon Wellings‘ (HN118) wearing a bright orange cardboard ‘tank’ he’d made while infiltrating Globalise Resistance – an anti-war, anti-capitalist network – at an anti-arms trade protest. ‘How was that legitimate policing?’
The absurdity of investing massive resources into groups of this kind illustrated what the debacle of the last fifty years of undercover political policing looks like; farcical yet deeply damaging.
Millions of pounds (which could have been spent on other public budgets) were mis-spent over the decades of State-sanctioned, clandestine activities by the police, monitoring justice campaigns, anti-racism and anti-police violence groups, environmental campaigns, community and solidarity networks, animal rights groups, and the political activism of rebel clowns, musicians, artists, campaigners, and others – the vast majority of them on the political left.
These images do not represent a light-hearted point. There is actually nothing funny to see here. These operations were profoundly sinister, and an affront to democracy itself.
More than five years in to the Inquiry, and none of the groups and individuals he represents have received any meaningful disclosure. It looks likely that they will have to wait until at least 2022 for the Inquiry to deal with their cases.
While ‘Lynn Watson’ and ‘Simon Wellings’ have their rights protected by the Inquiry’s restriction orders, the rights of his clients are treated as secondary. They are all being made to wait.
FACTS WITHOUT DETAILS
For example, the Newham Monitoring Project may have been spied on throughout their thirty year history (from 1980 onwards) but they have yet to be told who spied on them, or when.
His clients include an array of anti-war, anti-arms trade, environmental, anti-hunt, social justice and Palestinian rights activists – some of them know some details of their surveillance and infiltrations, but only because they exposed these undercover activities themselves.
They remain in the dark. The lack of transparency, and the enormous delay, has sapped the trust of non-state core participants, and risks undermining the credibility of the entire Inquiry. This Inquiry, Weartherby declared, needs to do better.
He noted that the live-streaming is due to be switched off tonight for the rest of the five years or so of the Inquiry. Mitting has ruled that ‘in-person access’ will be limited to those core participants who are able to attend in the current circumstances. Everyone else will be left with just a delayed transcript. Other Inquiries have securely broadcast their public hearings, and the refusal to do so here has left people feeling excluded and alienated.
The core participants’ ability to make opening statements has been substantially diminished, by the failure to provide them with even basic facts or disclosure. Did Parliament, when they made the Inquiries Act, ever envisage that an Inquiry would make its core participants blind to what was going on? Of course not.
SECRECY ABOUT SECRETS
Pete Weatherby QC
Weatherby spoke of the palpable imbalance between State and non-state core participants. The former have all the information and the material, the latter have next to none. This is the very reverse of how a healthy public inquiry should be. The State should be compelled to show their hand, but have largely chosen not to.
That an Inquiry established to shed light on the secretive, undercover activities of the police against ordinary citizens, should itself perpetuate secrecy and obfuscation is beyond irony. This undermines trust, and also promotes failure.
Instead of seeking to side-line non state core participants, or to keep them uninformed, this Inquiry should embrace their knowledge and actively seek out their assistance.
Without their scrutiny, their full and effective participation, the Inquiry may assume that the evidence produced by the spycops and their managers is truthful, correct and reliable, and it will fail to get to the truth.
A public inquiry should be independent and rigorous, not deference to a State narrative, especially not one hell-bent on secrecy, on distortion, and on covering up its wrongdoing.
NOT ASKING FOR THE TRUTH
We have asked the Chair – back in 2019, and ever since – to require the State core participants to provide position statements, that ‘set out their stall’, by this stage of the Inquiry, to hold their hands up to what went wrong, and perhaps even apologise.
Sir John Mitting has the power to make such requests, but has refused to do so, despite his legal duty to maximise openness and disclosure (section 18 of the Inquiries Act), to act in the public interest and with candour.
The Chairs of other current Inquiries – including Grenfell and Manchester Arena – have insisted on position statements and specified the issues to be addressed in them.
The Met claimed just last week that “the Met would assist the Inquiry in every way it can”. Yet they do not intend to comment on the evidence until the very end of the process, many more years down the line. This is not assisting, or acting in the public interest; it only serves to defend the Met.
The police have had plenty of time to examine their own behaviour and, by now, really should be able to admit to their wrong-doings.
The Chair could compel the Met to provide a chronology, and more details of the deployments, who was involved and whether the Met now believes they were justified or not – this would save time and resources – but instead he seems to take the police at their word when they say they no longer use spycops for ‘counter-subversion’, and not insist on answers even to his own questions.
SWAGGERING ARROGANCE
How can all this be described as ‘helping the Inquiry’? This is the swaggering arrogance of an institution which cannot see beyond its own interests, a public body that is hopelessly institutionally defensive, that puts its own reputation above the public interest.
Candour is the oxygen of justice. This Inquiry has two choices: it can either back off, and let the police see what they can get away with, or it can step up, be more robust, and demand position statements.
It’s not just Mitting who wants answers; the core participants and the wider public need them, and are entitled to them.
The delays have already caused huge distress to those involved. Why not save time and money by compelling the State bodies to tell us all: Which undercover operations will they defend? Which will they admit were wrong? Taking this common-sense approach could help the Inquiry gain a valuable commodity – the confidence of non state core participants.
WON’T ADMIT WHAT THEY KNOW
During the last five years, the Met must surely have looked into the deceitful relationships that the spycops formed. Why is it so difficult for them to come clean about the extent of this? Why won’t they shine a light on these practices? And why will the Inquiry not require them to do so?
The Met have already conceded that this Inquiry is likely to find that some deployments were ‘not justifiable’. They must have reached this conclusion for themselves, and in that case they should be able to tell us more details.
Let the police provide their justifications. Let them explain to the public why the mass infiltration of campaign groups for over 50 years was justified. Let them tell us why they infiltrated a clown movement, or a samba band. Surely this is the correct starting point for any investigation into these abuses?
The State should be made to tell us what lessons they have learnt, and what they have undertaken never to do again.
Any pretence that ‘political policing’ only began with the Special Demonstration Squad in 1968 is wrong. The pretence that the police are ‘neutral’ is wrong. Political policing doesn’t just happen elsewhere.
The substantial violations of civil and political rights, and the individual human rights of those involved, are the same as we see in authoritarian regimes around the world.
The Inquiry should remind itself of the rhetoric used by repressive regimes around the world, which seek to silence political voices, which challenge the official narrative, while pretending to respect international human rights norms, including freedom of expression and assembly, and respect for personal autonomy.
HISTORIC WRONGS
Last week we learnt that the likes of the Croydon Libertarians and the Women’s Liberation Movement were spied on in the early 1970s, but this does not ‘beggar belief’.
It is well-documented that the women’s suffrage movement was targeted by spycops. Would the police now seek to justify the State’s infiltration of women campaigning for the right to vote, of anti-slavery campaigns in the 19th century, or other suffrage campaigns, from Peterloo to the Chartists?
Why are these more recent protestors – for nuclear disarmament, against fracking, against road-building and against hospital closures – fair game?
Dissenters are often the drivers of social change. Slavery was abolished as a result of mass campaigns, building on and amplifying slave revolts. Protest and radical dissent has always involved friction with the State, and the State uses this form of policing to undermine that dissent.
The suffragettes and the slavery abolitionists were on the right side of history, and so are those who oppose racism, fox-hunting, and illegal or immoral wars today. The institutional racism of the police, identified and campaigned against by the Newham Monitoring Project (NMP), is now broadly recognised. Though, as this Inquiry illustrates, it remains as entrenched as ever.
DISSENT ISN’T MEANT TO BE CONVENIENT
Civil rights don’t exist to protect those who are comfortable complying with the status quo. They’re not needed for that; they’re a bulwark against authoritarianism.
Demonstrations and protests are often perceived to be a nuisance, or inconvenient, or tiresome, by those who are unsympathetic to their aims. However, freedom of expression is a human right. Citizens don’t need the permission of the police to protest.
In response to the claim made at the Inquiry last week by Oliver Sanders QC, representing the majority of former spycops, it is not ‘totalitarian’ to do what the NMP have done: to call out institutional police racism, or to protect their community from racist attacks. The police claim neutrality, but it was mainly progressive, social justice and left-wing groups that were targeted by the spycops units.
It is not for any limb of the State to insert itself into, curtail or spy on political and social justice activists, nor insert itself into the minutiae of peoples’ lives because they disagree with government policy or campaign to change the law or for a better society.
Lord Hoffman stated that ‘civil disobedience on conscientious grounds has a long and honourable history in this country,’ and went on to recognise that history sometimes vindicated such activism. He talked of ‘conventions’ on both sides: ‘protesters behave with a sense of proportion, and police and prosecutors, on the other hand, behave with restraint’. But what restraint have the spycops shown?
Weatherby then explained more about the core participants he represents.
NEWHAM MONITORING PROJECT
Newham Monitoring Project was established in 1980, by Black activists & white anti-racists, to fight racism in East London. This included racism perpetrated by the police, and the police’s failure to properly investigate racist murders, like that of Akhtar Ali Baig.
In NMP’s own words:
“For NMP the term ‘Black’ was a colour of resistance; it included African, Caribbean, Asian and all other ‘people of colour’ in a political sense. Our enemy was a political enemy which oppressed across Black communities. We recognised the nature of that enemy and the need for unity in combatting it. Whilst we did not ignore the cultural differences which these days increasingly appear to divide the community, we rejected the way ethnicity was used to marginalise our communities”.
In its very earliest incarnation NMP was to be purely a resource for the community through which to collate and disseminate information about the nature and scale of racist violence in Newham. This limited role was very quickly overtaken by the political reality of racist violence. Racism and racist violence are politicising phenomena. Those who experience them are not passive recipients of the violence and the hatred. The experience radicalises and politicises.
NMP developed its political analysis, its understanding of how race and class were linked, and grew over the years. They were well-known and respected for their work, which included combatting racist violence around the home, and defending members of the community from criminalisation. Was this what made the spycops take an interest? NMP have no idea, as they have not been provided with any information as yet.
NMP also countered fascist attacks; less organised, ‘casual’, racist violence from white football gangs; and police racism and violence, including stop and search and the replacement of the ‘sus’ laws with low level Public Order Act prosecutions. Was this the reason they were infiltrated? Because they challenged the police’s wrong-doing?
They articulated and exposed the institutional racism of the police (and other public bodies) long before the Macpherson Inquiry. They highlighted police corruption, they called out police racism. Were they infiltrated because their work threatened to damage the police’s reputation? Were they targeted because they were a Black-led organisation?
Every annual report produced by NMP was sent to the local Newham Commander. These should have already been supplied to this Inquiry, if the Met have upheld their disclosure duties.
Like other non state core participants, NMP are deeply frustrated about the lack of disclosure. What might it show? Did the spycops infiltrate NMP in order to gather information about other justice campaigns? They were connected to many campaigns, some of which are also core participants, like the Lawrence family.
The local police disliked, even hated, NMP. They exposed ‘community policing’ as a lie, at odds with the truth how racialised communities were policed. In the 1980s and 1990s there was an “extraordinary” lack of police accountability, and police violence was routine. The Black Lives Matter movement of this century shows that the structural issues highlighted by NMP haven’t gone away. To what extent is that due to spycops undermining the work of groups like NMP?
HUNT SABOTEURS ASSOCIATION
The Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) has campaigned against bloodsports since 1963, mainly by disrupting hunts.
Seemingly vindicated by the Hunting Act 2004, which banned the hunting of wild mammals with dogs, the HSA’s work has been forced to continue due to widespread flouting of the ban, and the badger cull.
The reasons why the HSA was targeted by spycops remain unclear. Was this due to political pressure, given the quintessentially ‘Establishment’ activity of fox hunting, and the status of those who support it? Or was it because the police sought to conflate the disruption of hunts – civil disobedience – with ‘violent extremism’?
There is a long history of violence, including serious violence, and harassment from hunt supporters against HSA activists. Even the SDS Tradecraft Manual contains a complaint from one undercover officer about the way in which his uniformed colleagues treated animal rights activists.
No fewer than nine spycops are now confirmed to have infiltrated the HSA, in the 19 years between 1983 and 2002. “The HSA doubt that they have been spared the attentions of the police before and after this time.
The targeting of a group like the HSA, who tended to use lawful tactics, cannot be justified. There is widespread public support for their main aim, which is why the law was eventually changed.
Why were they infiltrated by spycops? Was this done to disrupt and derail their efforts to change the law? Or to provide “n easy gateway for spycops to spy on other groups and individuals? Is this justifiable?
Another issue raised was miscarriages of justice. It appears that information supplied by spycops led to the arrests of hunt saboteurs. They failed to prevent (or prosecute) violence on the part of hunt supporters.
Were undercover officers told to look the other way? Was their involvement covered up? Did they encourage illegal activity as agents provocateurs? Did they supply hunt sabs’ personal details for illegal blacklisting?
Some of the officers who infiltrated hunt sab groups also deceived women into intimate relationships, and other activists into close personal ‘friendships’, even holidaying abroad with them (presumably under their false aliases, using false passports).
EMILY APPLE
Emily Apple has been an activist all of her adult life, involved in numerous campaigns. She was a founding member of the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) and of FITwatch (set up to counter the police’s ‘Forward Intelligence Teams’).
She has been arrested countless times, typically without basis. She was involved in campaigning against the arms trade (including the biannual DSEI arms fair), against war, and for environmental causes (including the Earth First! network).
She has encountered at least seven spycops while active in these groups. There are serious issues related to Apple’s arrests and legal privilege.
Apple was not just spied on by these police officers. During her time working with the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, she was also reported on by Martin Hogbin, a corporate spy, employed by BAe Systems.
RHYTHMS OF RESISTANCE/ NICOLA BENGE
Nicola Benge is a core participant in her own right, as well as being part of Rhythms of Resistance (RoR), a samba band that played at numerous protests in the 2000s. RoR still have no idea who spied on them, nor when, but suspect that they too might have been considered an easy gateway for spycops who wished to target other groups.
Benge was involved in other groups that are known to have been spied on in some way, for example the Advisory Service for Squatters’. But, like RoR, they have not yet been given any disclosure or details by this Inquiry either. She remains completely in the dark, as do the other musicians.
GLOBALISE RESISTANCE/ GUY TAYLOR
Guy Taylor worked as an organiser for Globalise Resistance between 2001-07. Founded with the aim of bridging the gap between the trade union movement and other activists, this network was infiltrated by HN118, known to them as ‘Simon Wellings‘.
Spycop Simon Wellings
Wellings deceived Taylor into what he believed to be a close personal friendship. As well as making the orange tank, Wellings got himself elected onto the group’s steering committee, and acted as the group’s photographer (presumably an ideal opportunity for his handlers to collect photos of many activists)
He travelled to other countries to attend protests with the group – including the United States, Spain and France – making a mockery of this Inquiry’s remit being limited to events in England and Wales.
He had access to, and influence over, Globalise Resistance itself but also other connected campaigns and groups. What did he feed back about trade unions – including the Communications Workers Union and Unison – and the Green Party? What was the justification for this? Why was he allowed to assume such a prominent role in the organisation? To what extent did he influence and derail the group? Why was he permitted to travel overseas?
Ultimately, Wellings was exposed by his own error – he mistakenly left a message on an activist’s phone, with a recording of a conversation between him and his spycops handlers.
Despite making several ‘Subject Access Requests’ to the Met, Taylor still has no disclosure relating to Wellings, which casts significant doubt on the police’s disclosure integrity.
‘NRO’
‘NRO’ is a medical professional and an academic. He is a deeply committed and life-long campaigner on matters related to social justice and freedom of expression. He wants to know why he was targeted.
Spycop Jackie Anderson
In the 2000s, he was part of a broadly anti-capitalist group known as the WOMBLES (a distinctive presence at protests, they wore white overalls, padding & helmets to protect them from police violence). He knows that he was spied on by EN32 (‘Rod Richardson‘) and HN77 (‘Jackie Anderson‘) during his time with the WOMBLES.
‘NRO’ was also involved with Aktivix, who provide web services for activists, and Indymedia, an open, independent reporting/ publishing network used by activists.
Indymedia was set up as an alternative to the corporate media. At its peak, the network consisted of around 150 local collectives, spread across the globe. UK Indymedia had its servers repeatedly seized by the police.
‘NRO’ has questions – about spycops’ involvement in these server seizures, about the online surveillance of activists, about the spycops’ use of platforms such as Indymedia. Spycops used to post news and comments on Indymedia, and it is believed that spycops used Indymedia to post fake news stories (prsumably to undermine campaigns, or perhaps justify their deployments) , as well as to gather information.
INDRA DONFRANCESCO, MEGAN & MORGANA DONFRANCESCO
Indra Donfranceso has been active in environmental groups, including Earth First!, for most of her adult life. Morgana and Megan are her daughters; they attended numerous protests, campaigns, meetings, and related social events, throughout their childhood.
Mark Kennedy befriended the family in 2003, and was close to all three of them. He volunteered to be the photographer at her wedding in 2007, and they shared a 40th birthday party with others two years later. What happened to the photos?
Megan and Morgana both thought of ‘Mark Stone’ as an uncle figure. Learning that he was in fact an undercover officer has affected them badly. One of the women Kennedy deceived into a relationship, ‘Lisa‘, was a close friend of Indra’s.
How was befriending a family, including young children, justifiable? Are these the actions of a responsible, accountable police force?
Such corrupt and depraved behaviour shames not just the officer but those who organised and those who facilitated the system, as well as those who still seek to make excuses for the spycops now.
CLANDESTINE INSURGENT REBEL CLOWN ARMY (CIRCA)/ JENNIFER VERSON
Spycop ‘Lynn Watson’
This network was formed in 2003, by writers, educators, performing artists and other activists, in response to a State visit by George W Bush, and the war in Iraq. They obtained Arts Council funding to tour the UK and put on performances and workshops. They used humour and performance to make their points and sometimes mock the police.
For three years, Jennifer Verson was involved in training up new clowns, including at least one spycop, EN34, known as ‘Lynn Watson‘. CIRCA had close links with other groups, including RoR and the Dissent Network (opposing the G8 Summit in 2005).
How on earth could anyone believe that infiltrating a performing arts group was justified? It may seem obvious to us that this was a huge waste of public funds, but the fact that this was not obvious to those running the spycops unit must not be overlooked.
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT (ISM)
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a Palestinian-led group, with branches around the world. ISM sends volunteers with the privilege of a foreign passport to Palestine, to bear witness and document, and where possible protest Palestinians from human rights violations, harassment and persecution.
Spycop Rob Harrison
The group’s activities in England and Wales just involved leafleting and stalls. What was the justification for surveillance? There is a suspicion that information gathered by the spycops may well have been passed to foreign agencies.
Asa Winstanley, an investigative journalist who writes about Palestine, got involved in ISM in 2004. Atif Choudhury and ‘MCD’ were also associated with the London ISM group. All three were devastated and deeply traumatised to learn about the infiltration of the group by spycop HN118 ‘Rob Harrison‘.
Choudhury considered ‘Harrison’ a close friend – he even DJed at the wedding of Choudhury’s sister. Harrison’s depravity did not stop there. He used his connection to Choudhury to deceive a young neighbour, ‘Maya’, into a sexual relationship, as we heard yesterday.
MCD’s activism has been motivated by her Quaker faith and commitment to active pacifism. All three of these core participants struggle to understand how this intrusion into their lives could possibly be justified.
‘VSP’
Spycop ‘Marco Jacobs’
‘VSP’ has been involved in many campaigns and groups, including the Cardiff Anarchist Network (CAN). She has been arrested many times, and has been targeted by both overt and covert policing. She has been strip-searched, and mocked and jeered by officers whilst naked, and as a result has received several settlements from the police.
She was spied on by ‘EN1’ (Marco Jacobs) and Mark Kennedy. ‘Jacobs’ became close to VSP and her family, and initiated two sexual relationships with female friends of hers. He sowed so much disruption and division within CAN that the group stopped functioning.
He often put himself forward to travel abroad (sometimes alongside Kennedy) and represent CAN at activist meetings. Did they sabotage these meetings?
WHEN DO WE GET ANSWERS?
The victims have given up significant details of their lives and activities, in their core participancy applications, and in the written Opening Statement. However, none of them are mentioned in the Opening Statements of the police or the Counsel to the Inquiry, and they have yet to be provided with any further details of the spying on them. How much longer must they wait?
There was, and is, no justification for the undercover operations which intruded into their lives, their families and careers, nor is there any justification for the Inquiry to delay them being provided with information.
The Newham Monitoring Project pull no punches in their written Annex:
“It is essential that it be appreciated that we have no faith in this Inquiry. Characterised as it is by extraordinary secrecy, a total lack of accountability and transparency, all aggravated by the absence of adequate representation and constant delay, we are confident this is not a forum through which the actions of the police can be properly explored and scrutinised.
“Those quaintly described as ‘core participants’ are engaged, tantalised, and seduced by the promise of disclosure. This interest will, we believe, remain wholly unrequited. Any meaningful disclosure is unlikely to materialise in any real sense because the overriding priority appears to be the protection of those officers deployed. In any event, we have no faith that the relevant records have not already been destroyed. Yet the illusion must be maintained because the continued involvement of the ‘core participants’ adds infinitely to the credibility of a process that is already bankrupt.”
Rajiv Menon QC(Core Participants represented by Richard Parry and Jane Deighton)
Matthew Ryder QC (Core Participants represented by Mike Schwarz, Simon Creighton, Tamsin Allen & Jules Carey)
Donal O’Driscoll (Category L [Social and environmental activists] Core Participant, appearing in person)
Rajiv Menon QC (Core Participants represented by Richard Parry and Jane Deighton)
Rajiv Menon QC speaking for some of the spied-on people, finished the statement he started yesterday.
He spoke of two people who were spied on during the very early years of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) 1968-72, the period that will be the focus of this phase of the hearings.
TARIQ ALI & ERNIE TATE
Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali, activist for over 50 years, will be the first to give witness evidence next week. Ernie Tate was due to give evidence but is now too ill. He is yet another victim of the delays to the Inquiry.
Tariq Ali was born in Punjab in colonial times and is now 76. He’s been in many political and campaigning organisations including the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC), International Marxist Group, and Stop the War. He has written more than a dozen books on history and politics. He was President of the Oxford Union in 1965 when Special Branch opened their file on him.
Ernie Tate was born in Northern Ireland. Tate was a founder of the original target of the SDS, the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, and was on its national council until 1969 when he emigrated to Canada.
The fact that the VSC was an open, non-violent organisation did not stop it from being targeted. Tate was also a founder of the International Marxist Group where he became a friend of Tariq Ali. He’s said he’s always been open about his politics, so there was no need for subterfuge to reveal his views or activities.
In the VSC, Tate and Ali organised the 1968 demos against the Vietnam war that led to the foundation of the SDS.
Menon said that the Inquiry had viewed TV news reports of the March 1968 protest that ended in trouble, but the pro-police commentary is at odds with the visuals. Instead of steering the demonstration along its agreed route, police corralled the head of the march near the US Embassy. Police then failed to contain the crowd – who fanned out across the green – and the police ended up sending in the horses.
The injuries that were caused were the result of the police’s actions. The demonstrators were prevented from handing in a letter to the US embassy even though that had been agreed with the police in advance. This was all explained at a VSC press conference the following day.
It has become already become a oft-repeated fable at the Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings that trouble at the March 1968 demo was due to a failure of intelligence. This lie was the original sin that led to the founding of the SDS.
The lack of trouble at the subsequent VSC demonstration in October 1968 was claimed as a success by the new unit, but it was really due to better stewarding, and the intentions of the protesters. This is not mere speculation on our part, the press at the time reported this.
But credit was given where credit was not due. Commissioner Waldron gave a bottle of champagne to SDS officers.
A PERMANENT ARRANGEMENT
The SDS expected to be disbanded after the anti-war protest in October 1968, but MI5 saw the value of spycops having a permanent and much wider remit. The Home Office gave the scheme their blessing and successive governments provided funding year after year.
There should be no mistake. Whilst this squad was kept secret from the public, it was completely integrated into the established security apparatus of the British state, with a chain of command through the senior ranks of the police to the highest levels of government. Documents show the Prime Minister and Home Secretary expected advance reports on the Vietnam demos. The spycops were secret from the public but well known to government.
The SDS spread its attention to other ‘subversive’ groups. Police bragged that new entrants to groups were being identified and reported on within weeks. They were told to cast a wide net.
Their objective was to prevent positive social change, keep people in their places, and allow the established order to thrive.
If people are persuaded that socialism is a better alternative to rampant capitalism, should they not be allowed to exercise their democratic right to pursue such politics without being spied on? The State would say an unequivocal ‘no’.
The International Marxist Group grew to around a thousand members. Its office was burgled by the SDS after spycop ‘Dick Epps‘ was trusted with the keys and made copies.
Only one SDS officer, ‘Alan Nixon‘, admits to brief interactions with Tariq Ali. Ali wants to hear condemnation of the unwarranted spying, but expects instead to hear justification.
Ali is proud to be a revolutionary. He is a proud socialist for peace but is unashamed to say that violence is justifiable if, say, you are a Vietnamese person fighting invaders or a British soldier fighting the Nazis. This does not make him a valid target for spycops.
PIERS CORBYN
Piers Corbyn is in his 70s and still protesting. He has always been open about his politics and has nothing to hide. He attended VSC rallies in the late 1960s and joined the IMG in 1971. He also joined antifascist, Irish and trade union causes, but it seems squatting is what got him spied on.
Police claim they don’t know what cover name the relevant officer (code number HN338) used! Why was Corbyn asked about spycop Alan Nixon, yet officers aren’t asked about him? Corbyn can’t say how he was spied on because neither police nor the Inquiry will say who the spies were.
ADVISORY SERVICE FOR SQUATTERS
The Advisory Service for Squatters (ASS) has been advising people on housing rights since 1975 and has sold more than 150,000 copies of the Squatters Handbook since 1976. Squatting in residential buildings was criminalised in England and Wales in 2012, but ASS was spied on long before that.
Tenants and housing groups seem to have been spied on since at least 1971. SDS called squatting ‘the nursery of extremists’. The ASS say the state spying on them was indefensible. They have only been given two documents by the Inquiry and have no details of why or how they were spied on.
FRIENDS OF FREEDOM PRESS
Freedom Press is the largest anarchist publisher in the UK, and the oldest in the world. It was set up, with the blessing of William Morris, in the 19th century. It was constantly raided by police during world wars for producing Freedom anarchist newspaper.
Spycop Roger Pearce infiltrated Freedom Press from 1979 to 1984. He was actively involved, writing articles for them. Pearce later went on to manage the SDS (and write cheesy police-based novels). Another spycop, ‘Doug Edwards‘, also attended Freedom Press meetings.
Freedom Press’s headquarters was firebombed by fascists in 1993. Did spycops know about it? Did they know it was coming and decide not to stop it?
Freedom Press have had 11 intelligence reports from 1974-77. They have not been asked for a witness statement, nor been officially told which officers spied on them, so cannot possibly comment properly.
One stalwart Freedom Press member died last year, another person failed by Inquiry delays.
JUSTICE CAMPAIGNS
ROLAN ADAMS’S FAMILY
Rolan Adams
South London couple Richard and Audrey Adams’s oldest son Rolan was studious, about to take GCSEs, and a talented footballer scouted by West Ham, and also passionate about writing music.
In February 1991, racist attacks were on the rise in the area since the British National Party moved their headquarters to the area in 1989. One evening a gang of 12-15 racists chased and stabbed Rolan. His brother Nathan escaped and returned later to find Rolan dying. The gang called themselves Nazi Turnouts. Police knew who they were, and allowed them to walk free.
Neither the police nor the CPS admitted the crime was racist, an ongoing problem of British institutions dealing with such violence. They had a racist stereotype of there being no innocent black boys. Instead of being treated as a victim of crime, Nathan was instead harassed and criminalised by police, repeatedly arrested and searched.
The CPS frequently uses ‘joint enterprise’ against groups of people involved in a crime, yet didn’t prosecute any other attackers with murder. One attacker was sent to jail, and the judge asserted that the crime was indeed racially motivated.
Rolan’s parents started a campaign for justice. They made links with others in similar circumstances. Police were hostile to the campaign, intercepting people coming to the Adams’ house, clearly with advance knowledge of the visits. The family were being harassed but got no protection. They had to leave their home for their own safety three months after Rolan was killed. If police had focussed on the attackers rather than the family perhaps this could have been avoided.
The Adamses family are still angry and grieving. They are angry at the lack of charges, and at the culture of denial of the racist culture that led to Rolan’s murder. If police had taken decisive action, and used intelligence against racists rather than justice campaigns, perhaps they could have prevented later racist murders in the area. Instead, as racist murders rose, more young black men were arrested.
Richard Adams says the Inquiry appears to be a damage limitation exercise for spycops. There is no good reason for the ongoing refusal to live stream the future hearings. The family are cncerned that the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Moitting, is not assisted by a diverse panel. Whose side is the criminal justice system on?
DUWAYNE BROOKS
Duwayne Brooks
Duwayne Brooks was 18 in 1993, living in South East London, training to be an electrical engineer. Stephen Lawrence was his close friend. In April 1993 they were attacked by racists and Stephen was murdered.
His courage exposed the racist nature of the attack, yet police were hostile to him. Whistle-blower SDS officer Peter Francis has described combing through hours of footage of demonstrations and vigils to see if he could find something with which to charge Brooks.
It mirrored the Adamses’ experience; a racist attack with victims treated like criminals and subjected to spycops surveillance. Brooks did everything asked of him. He assisted three investigations. He gave evidence in court when medically unfit. Brooks has since helped numerous police bodies with their work on racism.
Despite – or because – of this, Brooks has been targeted by the police. He was prosecuted on trumped-up charges, a meeting with his lawyer was bugged by the Met, and he has had to face the truth trickling out over many long years. He has received more information than most about his spying, but has received nothing at all from this Inquiry.
Brooks won’t get to see the hearings via live-streaming. The Chair sits without a diverse panel to advise him.
When Brooks is given FULL disclosure he will address the Inquiry, but not before. He refuses to be treated like a suspect all over again, answering the Inquiry’s questions in advance, as if the burden is on him to establish that there was no good reason for the police spying on him.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
Ken Livingstone
Ken Livingstone led the Greater London Council (GLC) from 1981 until its abolition by Margaret Thatcher, but was active long before. He joined the Labour Party in 1969, and soon held office locally, focusing on housing issues.
Livingstone has received limited disclosure from the Inquiry, but has not been told why he was spied on. As soon as he was elected Leader of the GLC he faced relentless vilification from his opponents and in the press.
Special Branch had intelligence of threats to his safety. Having said there’d be no peace in Northern Ireland without a negotiated settlement, he was told that an Ulster Defence Association assassin had been sent to kill him but was called off at the last minute. Livingstone says this is an example of a legitimate use of undercover policing, dealing with a proscribed organisation involved in serious and violent crime.
After the GLC was abolished, Livingstone entered parliament in 1987, something he described as ‘like working in the Natural History Museum except not all the exhibits are stuffed’. Whistle-blower spycop Peter Francis named Livingstone as one of the people he knows was spied upon when they were an MP. Like the other spied-on MPs, he wants to see his file.
Livingstone has been involved in mainstream political life for 50 years, always in public. He can’t see any justification for targeting by spycops, either before or after he was elected.
WHY WERE THE SPYCOPS THERE?
The SDS was a weapon in the arsenal of the state from 1968-2008, with other units doing the same things after, to keep people in their place and allow the established order to thrive. Its unofficial motto was ‘by any means necessary’ but, to address a point made by the police lawyers, the ends DO NOT justify the means.
The victims of spycops aren’t just those who were spied on. In the broader sense, all who want to see an open, democratic, and fair society have suffered for what the spycops did.
We’re here to try to shine a light, let the world see into the dark den of police spies. We hope our participation will allow people to see at least a little of the truth.
In 1962, Martin Luther King said the guardians of the status quo are always on hand with oxygen tents to keep the old order alive. We hope the Undercover Policing Inquiry will not prove to be such a guardian.
(Core Participants represented by Mike Schwarz, Simon Creighton, Tamsin Allen and Jules Carey)
Matthew Ryder QC
Matthew Ryder QC speaks for lawyers representing the majority of non-state core participants, more than a hundred individuals and groups whose targeting by spycops was inappropriate, improperly regulated, and abused their rights. They were spied on over a period of more than 40 years, and range from community activists to a Peer who was once a Secretary of State. They all deserve answers. Officers must be called to account, as must the system that permitted it.
Spycops weren’t just out of control. They had political bias that affected the whole process. It included racial bias, and we expect an assiduous exploration of that in the Inquiry.
Spycops targeted many groups who did not seek to overthrow the ‘established democratic order’ unless we take it to mean basically any political or social change. It’s the antithesis of what political culture should be about.
SDS founder Conrad Dixon said a ‘firm line must be drawn between follower and leader’: that spycops mustn’t speak in public, take office, draw leaflets or anything else active in a campaign. These instructions were swiftly ignored. Spycops got deeply involved in stimulating the very groups they were meant to be surveilling, influencing the direction they took and the means of protest they employed.
We’ll never know the true cost of diverting and hindering the targeted campaigns. Voices that should have been amplified because their cause was right were selected for silencing. So many anti-racists, environmentalists and others who were spied on have been vindicated over the years by history and science.
Many were wrongfully convicted, encouraged into acts by spycops whose involvement hidden from the courts.
Most people who were spied on have not seen any documents from the Inquiry, which is a disgrace. Victims are keen to know the life-changing details that have been kept hidden for so long. They want fullest disclosure. They’ve had basically none so far.
Four of the people Ryder speaks for are in Tranche 1 of the Inquiry, which looks at 1968-82. Three of them were anti-apartheid campaigners. The fourth is Celia Stubbs, partner of Blair Peach, an anti-racist campaigner killed by police in 1979, who was spied on for her justice campaign.
ANTI-APARTHEID CAMPAIGNERS
Anti-apartheid campaigners opposed one of the most repulsive racist regimes of the 20th century. Yet the SDS targeted those who opposed apartheid, not its often-violent supporters.
The anti-apartheid movement was mentioned in the first annual report of the SDS. Black power groups were also of particular interest to the new unit. Sporting boycotts were a key part of protesting against apartheid, and were therefore targeted by spycops.
Three core participants – Ernest Rodker, Jonathan Rosenhead, and Peter Hain – were active in the Stop The Seventy Tour (STST) campaign opposing the all-white South African rugby and cricket teams. They made a real contribution to wider anti-racist movement.
Anti-apartheid campaigns helped to bring democracy to South Africa. In December 2015, STST’s role was recognised at the highest level by the South African government when they awarded Peter Hain the Tambo National Award in Silver for his excellent contribution to the freedom struggle.
Yet the police lawyer’s opening statement to the Inquiry this week talked of target groups having ‘totalitarian objectives’.
The three anti-apartheid campaigners were seemingly targeted by spycop Mike Ferguson, but we don’t know for sure because the Inquiry is protecting his identity even though he’s dead. As a Cabinet Minister in the 2000s, Peter Hain has been entrusted with the most serious secret information of state, yet is still not being told which spycops targeted him in his own home 50 years ago.
We do know that Mike Ferguson wasn’t a rogue officer. His colleagues knew about him and have testified about what he did. This wasn’t police using informants, this was police trying to take control of a political movement, a serving officer placed in the group to help direct activity.
We may yet hear explanations from police at the Inquiry. But it appears spycops retro-fit excuses for their surveillance. If there aren’t records to support a given justification the Inquiry should remain sceptical.
Ryder then spoke about some other core participants.
LONDON GREENPEACE
Bob Lambert handing out the McLibel leaflet, McDonald’s Oxford St, 1986
London Greenpeace (LGP) was founded in 1971 to encourage people to take action to preserve the ecosystem.
LGP initially promoted home composting, turning off lights not in use, putting bricks in cisterns to save water, and planting trees. It remained a small, leaderless group and encouraged others to create similar networks. A 1981 LGP leaflet describes itself as nonviolent and libertarian.
In the 1980s Bob Lambert infiltrated LGP. Lambert’s behaviour is truly shocking. He had multiple relationships with women he spied on including fathering a child. He encouraged activists to join actions, and even drove them there. He was still undercover in 1987 when fellow spycop John Dines joined the group.
Dines became LGP treasurer, gave lifts to members (in order to find out their addresses), and deceived one member, Helen Steel, into a long-term cohabiting relationship. Lambert deceived more than one woman into a relationship while he was in LGP. It was unjustifiable by any measure.
People who were part of LGP are concerned about spycops steering the direction of the group, including towards the anti-McDonald’s campaign, which Lambert vigorously encouraged.
The way intelligence was collected was a serious infringement of the subject’s life, and they have no idea what was gathered and how it was used. But we do know it was shared with private companies such as McDonald’s.
Some LGP members are on the construction industry blacklist despite never having worked in the industry. Were their details supplied by the spycops?
It can’t be claimed it was necessary for Lambert to infiltrate LGP to prevent serious crime, when Lambert himself admits they weren’t involved in any such activity. It was a violation of democratic rights.
Former SDS officer Peter Francis says that Lambert’s undercover career was ‘regarded as hands down the best tour of duty’ in the history of the unit. After his deployment he was promoted to running the SDS.
We don’t know which other officers infiltrated LGP, but a Cabinet report suggests it was being spied on in the late 1970s, long before Lambert arrived. So LGP calls for all files to be opened and all officers’ cover names published so those who were spied on can realise what happened and give evidence to the Inquiry.
RECLAIM THE STREETS
Reclaim The Streets was founded in the late 1990s to challenge the noise, pollution, and dominance of cars in our public spaces, and many of the group’s ideas have now been taken up across society. It shows the role of protest groups in inspiring progressive change in society.
Reclaim The Streets was infiltrated by spycops Jim Boyling, Jason Bishop and Jackie Anderson. There may well be others. During the infiltration, spycops were arrested and prosecuted under their false identities.
Reclaim the Streets, London 1995
Boyling was arrested for a protest in 1996 in support of striking tube workers, occupying the office of London Transport office. He and Bishop were both arrested on the Mayday 2000 anti-capitalist protest.
It appears Bob Lambert was Jim Boyling’s direct supervisor. Many of Lambert’s tactics in LGP were used by his charges: active involvement in steering campaigns, sharing intelligence with private firms, and abusing women.
Boyling had at least 3 relationships while undercover, with huge impact, and went on to have two children with Rosa. There can be no justification for this tactic. The fact that it echoes Lambert’s treatment of women shows it was institutional.
From 1999-2005, Bishop was very actively involved in campaigning against the DSEI arms fair. Again, this was a case of an undercover officer encouraging and steering a group.
ALDERMASTON WOMEN’S PEACE CAMP
For the last 35 years, Aldermaston Women’s Peace Camp (AWPC) has been based at the UK’s main nuclear weapons factory. It is a purely political campaign against militarism. It’s one of the few women-only protest spaces in the UK. Spycop Lynn Watson infiltrated AWPC in the years 2003-2004.
Lynn Watson was at Aldermaston at the same time as other groups, and we have to presume that she would have reported on them, espeically as she attempted to infiltrate some of then. However they have been refused core participant status at the public inquiry.
CLIMATE CAMP
In 2006, the first Climate Camp took place at Drax coal-fired power station in North Yorkshire.
There were further camps until 2010, all sited near high-carbon locations, such as power stations and airports, bringing hundreds of campaigners together to educate each other and protest.
Spycops officer Mark Kennedy was deeply involved in planning Climate Camp, attending five of them and being arrested twice. He was in the secret planning group that made the earliest and largest decisions about the Camps, as well as organising all logistics.
Spycop Lynn Watson also attended and helped organise the first Climate Camp, where she engaged in sexual activity with an activist. Like Kennedy, she was part of a secret group which organised the occupation of the site, and gave briefings to the group in her living room in Leeds.
DR HARRY HALPIN
Dr Harry Halpin is a global academic expert in infomatics who worked at MIT. He travels the world, giving talks to the likes the UN, the OECD and the European Parliament.
Halpin is also an environmentalist, who was spied on at the Kingsnorth and London Climate Camps in the late 2000s, since when he’s had repeated problems when travelling, including being detained under terrorism legislation.
It’s plain to see that Harry Halpin has been blacklisted for his environmentalism at events infiltrated and organised by British spycops.
CARDIFF ANARCHIST NETWORK
Mark ‘Marco’ Jacobs
Cardiff Anarchist Network was a group of about 20 people active from 2005 to 2010. The network consisted of autonomous collectives in opposition to all forms of exploitation and capitalism. Their campaign tactics included direct action.
It was infiltrated by spycop ‘Marco Jacobs’, who got involved in the group’s administrative tasks. He caused discord and fractiousness among the group, and deceived two women into relationships.
Jacobs formed close friendships, attending funerals of family members of the people he spied on. It was a gross invasion of their personal lives.
DEFEND THE RIGHT TO PROTEST
Defend The Right to Protest aimed to respond to the criminalisation of young protesters after the anti-cuts and student protests around 2010. It was an identified target of the National Domestic Extremism Unit. Spycop Simon Wellings was deployed 2001-07.
Wellings spent four years as part of the controlling group of Globalise Resistance. He outed himself by accidentally dialling one of the group while in a police meeting identifying the people he spied on, where he could be heard sharing personal information about activists in photographs he was showing to another officer.
MARK KENNEDY INCITING AND TRAVELLING
In 2009, spycop Mark Kennedy approached anti-militarist campaigner Kirk Jackson to organise UK activists going to Germany.
Jason Kirkpatrick was spied on by Kennedy on numerous occasions between 2005 and 2009, at his home in Berlin and in several other countries as he toured to give talks about protests against the G8 Summits. Politicians in some of these places – Germany, Ireland, Northern Ireland – have called for answers, but the Inquiry seems likely to disregard these as its remit only covers the spycops’ activities in England and Wales.
POLITICAL POLICING WITHOUT LIMITS
This was political policing. There was no constraint to comply with the law, not even the basic rights of those targeted. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 did not restrain spycops – we’ve seen how they carried on well into the 2000s.
The collection, retention and use of data is a major concern. This went on with no legal framework in mind. There was no meaningful system of oversight. Courts and prosecutors were deceived even as they carried out legal processes.
Senior officers either failed to control, or gave approval to, inexcusable acts. This continued for decades under various managers. It was institutional.
The Inquiry limiting access to data – and even the names used by the infiltrators – means victims are prevented from engaging meaningfully with the Inquiry meaningfully.
RACIAL JUSTICE CAMPAIGNS
Spycops targeted family justice campaigns and community organisations. The preponderance of black campaigns shows how their race was part of the threat they were seen to pose.
Celia Stubbs’s partner Blair Peach was killed by police in 1979. Lee Lawrence’s mother Cherry Groce was shot by police in 1985. Myrna Simpson’s daughter, Joy Gardner, died after restraint by police in 1993. Bernard Renwick’s brother died in 1999, again after being restrained.
Beyond those killed by police, Sukhdev and Tish Reel lost Ricky Reel after he was attacked by racists. Michael Menson died after being set alight by white youths.
Other core participants here are Winston Silcott, who was wrongly convicted of the murder of PC Blakelock, and Stafford Scott, who supported those arrested in the aftermath of the Broadwater Farm disturbances in 1985.
Sharon Grant’s late husband, MP Bernie Grant, supported many such campaigns, and was spied on. All these people were merely seeking justice over police malpractice.
CELIA STUBBS
Blair Peach
Blair Peach was a teacher and trade unionist who attended a protest against the racist National Front in 1979.
Eleven witnesses saw six police get out of a van and one of them give Peach a fatal blow to the head. The determined cover-up that followed lasted decades. Police officers refused to answer questions. Commander Cass’ investigation said officers were ‘clearly obstructing’ the investigation.
Cass was clear that a police officer had killed Peach, but officers wanted to maintain the cover-up. All officers present claimed not to remember details. Cass’ report was kept from the inquest and went unpublished for 31 years, until 2010.
The coroner wrote to politicians before the inquest had even finished, saying the idea Peach was killed by police was a political lie. He therefore indicated to the Home Office that the investigation was biased. Blair’s partner, Celia Stubbs, knew none of this.
Stubbs says it can’t be expressed how exhausting it is to suffer bereavement then face such official intransigence. The guilty officer has been identified. Nobody has ever been charged.
Stubbs helped to establish Inquest for people in similar positions. Stubbs knew her phone was tapped but never suspected she was being spied on in person by undercover police. There would have been no justification for it. There were no secret meetings.
She finds it especially distressing that there was undercover reporting at Blair’s funeral.
Stubbs says spycops lost all sense of the fact that Blair was killed by police. His loved ones’ distress was criminalised. Stubbs has had no explanation for why she was spied on, nor why it was kept secret – no officer blew the whistle.
Spying on the Blair Peach campaign was a gross abuse of the trust given to police. They wanted to stay one step ahead of the campaign to assist the police in frustrating the attempts to secure accountability.
Stubbs got an apology from the police in 2015. It is not enough, it must just be a starting point.
The opening statement by police lawyer Oliver Sanders on Tuesday cited the deaths of Kevin Gately and Blair Peach. This was an offensive comment. Peach was not killed by protest or protesters. His killing does not stand as justification for spycops. Blair was killed BY police, and the truth covered up for decades.
What would have saved him was restraint of police brutality against a campaigner against racism. It’s an outrageous way to start the Inquiry.
LEE LAWRENCE
Cherry Groce
In 1985, Lee Lawrence saw his mother Cherry Groce shot by police at their home by Officer Lovelock. She used a wheelchair for the rest of their life.
In 2014, an inquest found that the shooting had contributed to her death.
Mr Lawrence has sat on advisory boards helping police improve tactics. His positive attitude has built bridges, yet he was spied on.
MYRNA SIMPSON
Joy Gardner
In 1993, Joy Gardner was at home with her three year old son when there was a raid by police and immigration. Her hands were bound to her sides, her legs strapped together, and 13 feet of tape was wrapped round her head. She was asphyxiated.
Three officers were acquitted of manslaughter.
Joy Garner’s mother Myrna Simpson was spied on by the SDS. We do not know why.
RICKY REEL
Lakhvinder ‘Ricky’ Reel
Ricky Reel’s family have been campaigning for an investigation into his racist murder in 1997, which police treated as an accident. The police investigation disregarded the racial harassment of Ricky Reel immediately prior to his death. They decided it was accidental death before the investigation was complete.
The police investigation was subject to two inquiries, but the reports are confidential. The family were told in 2013 that they had been spied on by the SDS.
For the Reel family to find out they were spied on on top of Ricky’s death and the failed police investigation has had a horrific impact. Resources weren’t available to investigate the death, but were available for spying on those who were left behind.
MICHAEL MENSON
Michael Menson
On 21 January 1997, Michael Menson, a 30-year old black man, was discharged from hospital where he had received treatment for mental health matters. A week later he was found in the street, having been set alight. He was taken to hospital where he said he’d been attacked. He died of his injuries on 13 February 1997.
Police treated it as self-immolation; the family said it should be murder. The inquest ruled it an ‘unlawful killing’.
In 1999, three men were convicted of the murder in two separate trials. A Cambridgeshire police investigation found negligence and racism, with one police officer saying ‘I don’t know why they’re so worried, this only concerns a fucking black schizophrenic’.
Michael Menson’s family was told in 2014 that the SDS had spied on their campaign. They saw heavily redacted files. The family grieved for Michael, and were let down by the police investigation. To this day, they don’t know the full truth.
ROGER SYLVESTER
Roger Sylvester
On 11 January 1999, Roger Sylvester was acutely unwell with a mental health episode. He was taken away by police and was restrained in a way that killed him.
The inquest jury ruled it an unlawful killing, but this was overturned by the High Court.
Roger Sylvester’s family have seen redacted reports on the funeral. Why was that even reported on, and what was redacted?
WINSTON SILCOTT & BROADWATER FARM
Winston Silcott
In October 1985, a few weeks after police shot Cherry Groce, police entered the North London home of Cynthia Jarrett, and she died from a heart attack. People on the Broadwater Farm estate felt unsafe in their own homes. A protest the next day developed into a disturbance, and PC Keith Blakelock was stabbed to death.
Winston Silcott was convicted of the murder, despite not even being at the scene. Officers had fabricated incriminating notes.
Spycop John Dines lived in a house overlooking the Silcott family home as Winston’s appeal was pending. Alcott’s conviction was quashed in 1991. He was spied on for up to ten years afterwards.
After the Broadwater Farm disturbance, Stafford Scott worked to support people arrested. Scott was arrested during the investigation into the death of Blakelock, and the police later had to compensate him for their mistreatment. He has devoted his life to supporting victims of police malpractice.
The Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign suffered a series of ‘burglaries’ and it is thought spycops are responsible. Spycop John Dines attended at least one protest in support of the Campaign.
HACKNEY COMMUNITY DEFENCE ASSOCIATION
Dr Graham Smith was part of the Hackney Community Defence Association in the 1980s and 90s, along with Mark Metcalf They supported victims of police brutality and abuses of power.
In 1993, Smith and Metcalf established the Colin Roach Centre, which hosted anti-racist, police accountability, civil rights and trade union activists. It too was burgled, and its computers destroyed.
In 1995, spycops officer Mark Jenner infiltrated the Colin Roach Centre. He became very active in it, including writing for its bulletin.
Jenner was privy to confidential information about cases against the police. He then turned his attention to trade union activity, even becoming chair of one group. He also deceived a woman known as Alison into a long-term relationship.
SHARON & BERNIE GRANT
Bernie & Sharon Grant with Tony Benn, 1994
Sharon Grant is the widow of Bernie Grant, MP for Tottenham 1987-2000. In 1987, Bernie was one of three black MPs elected, the first time such a thing had happened in the UK. He supported some of the cases mentioned including the Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign. He challenged police stop and search practice, he opposed apartheid, and frequently travelled abroad for his anti-racist work.
As well as being Bernie’s wife, Sharon was his office manager and an activist in her own right. Was she also targeted by spycops? What justification was even given at the time for spying on an MP? Who else saw the intelligence – the press who vilified him?
DIANE ABBOTT
Diane Abbott was elected at the same time as Bernie Grant, the first black woman in the Commons. She’s been a leading anti racism campaigner for decades, supporting many campaigns including those of Blair Peach and Stephen Lawrence. Whistle-blower spycop Peter Francis says Abbott was spied on while an MP.
Joan Ruddock has supported many progressive causes and was an MP and minister. She too was spied on whilst an MP.
Unjustified, unregulated political policing like this distorts the ability of the public to engage with the political process.
None of these campaigns should have been spied on, nor the MPs. It wasn’t merely insensitive to grieving families. It was police shielding other officers from legitimate criticism and exposure of police wrongdoing.
The targeting of black campaigns and MPs mirrors the very complaints community campaigns were making. For simply seeking accountability by lawful means, they were subjected to the kind of intrusive spying people would think was reserved for serious and violent criminal activity.
Victims were treated as perpetrators. We want to know not just who did it, but who sanctioned it? What level approved or failed to prevent it?
This has a particularly disturbing aspect: unaccountable police undermining campaigns for police accountability. All the people I speak for, irrespective of their own ethnicity, want the Inquiry to be unflinching in exposing the racism of this policing.
MISCARRIAGES OF JUSTICE
Spycops took part in direct action protests and caused miscarriages of justice. They influenced and planned actions, including encouraging unlawful activity for which participants were convicted and even jailed. This was entrapment.
Managers who should have been providing oversight were tolerating, even encouraging this unlawful behaviour. Courts weren’t told. Proper disclosure and integrity of evidence were disregarded. It’s not only contempt for the spied-upon but for the legal process and rule of law .
Home Office guidance was clear – undercover officers mustn’t be agents provocateur, nor ever mislead a court [as cited in our post about spycops and miscarriages of justice]
The SDS Tradecraft Manual actively discouraged spycops from admitting their real identity to arresting police. Spycops arrested on protests were party to defence meetings with their lawyers, breaching legal privilege.
Spycop ‘Mike Scott‘ infiltrated a 1972 anti-apartheid demo, and was arrested and convicted under his fake identity. It is described here by one of those wrongly convicted, Professor Jonathan Rosenhead:
‘Mike Scott’ withheld evidence that exonerated the activists convicted – he knew they weren’t on a public highway as his uniformed colleagues had alleged. The spycops Tradecraft Manual itself warns of the risk of being ‘fitted up’ by uniformed officers.
ANDREW CLARKE & GEOFF SHEPPARD
Andrew Clarke and Geoff Sheppard were animal rights activists in the 1980s and 90s. Sheppard was convicted three times, and each a spycops officer was involved.
Clarke and Sheppard were convicted of planting incendiary devices intended to set off sprinklers in Debenham’s.
At their trial, Clarke and Sheppard had been convicted of joint enterprise, even though they may not have planted all the devices. There was no evidence of Clarke planting any. The Crown said a third person planted one.
In 2011, they found out the third person in their group, ‘Bob Robinson’, was actually spycop Bob Lambert, and appealed their convictions.
Clarke and Sheppard served long sentences. Lambert’s role was kept secret. He went on to run the SDS and get an MBE for services to policing.
Spycop John Dines was involved in Sheppard’s second conviction, when flour was thrown at a hunters’ ball. After that, spycop Matt Rayner encouraged Sheppard to acquire a shotgun, for which he was then convicted.
It seems that neither prosecutors nor the courts were aware of any spycops’ involvement. These officers had access to the defendants’ legal activity. This is secret police overriding the rule of law with nobody approving it but themselves.
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) was a group campaigning to close Huntingdon Life Sciences vivisection labs. Several activists were convicted of blackmail in 2013. Numerous spycops, including Rod Richardson and Mark Kennedy, were involved, plus a corporate spy called Adrian Radford.
Spycops gave witness statements to court for Debbie Vincent’s trial, and we believe it happened in Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty trials as well.
JOHN JORDAN
John Jordan was convicted in 1997 for a Reclaim the Streets action – all other defendants including spycops officer Jim Boyling were acquitted.
Jordan’s conviction was quashed in 2014 but without disclosure of any evidence. The judge said it would come out at the current Inquiry.
RATCLIFFE CLIMATE TRIAL
In April 2009, 114 climate activists were arrested planning a protest to shut down Ratcliffe on Soar power station. Eventually, 26 were charged with conspiracy. In a first trial, 20 admitted the plan but said it was justified, and they were convicted in 2010.
In a second trial, six people denied being part of the conspiracy. Just before their trial began, they discovered that their fellow-arrestee ‘Mark Stone’ was actually spycop Mark Kennedy. They asked the prosecution to comply with their obligation to hand over all evidence, including Kennedy’s reports. On the day the trial was due to start in January 2011, the Crown Prosecution Service dropped all charges.
The Ratcliffe 20 then had their convictions quashed. The judge said future inquiries such as the current one would make everything clear.
DRAX CLIMATE TRIAL
A year before the Ratcliffe arrests, in 2008, 29 climate activists were arrested for stopping a coal train on its way to Drax coal-fired power station in North Yorkshire. The activists acted totally peacefully and with impeccable health and safety considerations. They were convicted.
In 1996, hunt saboteurs went to Good Easter in Essex. They were stopped and searched on the way, and several were arrested. In a similar instance nearby, another person was arrested after being stopped by police.
The police were extremely aggressive. This treatment of animal rights activists chimes with spycop Andy Coles’ contribution to the SDS Tradecraft Manual. In it, he told of the low opinion he’d developed of uniformed officers dealing with animal rights activists, saying it was ‘often out of proportion to your behaviour’.
Those arrested later received compensation. But one of the other ‘activists’ present was in fact a spycop, Jim Boyling. Boyling gave a witness statement about the police’s unlawful behaviour, but as this was believed to be coming from just another hunt sab, it carried no weight.
FAIRFORD COACHES
NPOIU officer known as Rod Richardson
Protesters travelling on coaches to RAF Fairford to protest against the start of the Iraq War were turned back by police, who then shut off all exits from the motorway to London. They said it was because a protester group known as WOMBLES were on the coaches, allegedly intent on disorder.
One of the passengers, Jane Laporte, brought a judicial review which found in her favour and against the police. This went to the High Court and House of Lords. Police had said they had ‘no basis for distinguishing between passengers’.
But spycop Rod Richardson was on one of the coaches. He knew who was on there, and their intentions. He would also have known who was and wasn’t in the WOMBLES. Spycop Jason Bishop had helped organise the coaches, and would also have known about the passengers.
Police misled the highest appeal court in the land, claiming not to have intelligence they clearly had.
LONDON ANIMAL ACTION
London Animal Action was a collective of animal rights groups founded in 1994. Numerous spycops joined; Andy Coles, Matt Rayner, Christine Green, Dave Evans, and possibly more. Bob Lambert was manager of some of these. All but Evans are known to have had intimate relationships with people they spied on.
We know corporate spies infiltrated London Animal Action. Did they get intelligence passed to them from spycops?
THE COMMON PLACE
In 2005, The Common Place social centre was founded in Leeds. Its first treasurer was spycop Lynn Watson. She complied with the legal obligation to file accounts – but did so under her false name. After she left and this was realised, the centre had to close.
HOW MANY MORE?
Mark Ellison and Alison Morgan’s 2015 report found spycops routinely withheld evidence from courts when they were involved in cases.
All spycops miscarriages of justice cases that have been reviewed have been the result of those convicted raising concerns, not from the police coming clean
Ellison & Morgan’s report also said that the lack of surviving records means we can’t tell what evidence once existed that would have changed court cases.
Ellison & Morgan identified 26 SDS officers arrested on 52 occasions. But it couldn’t identify all potential miscarriages of justice. This is extremely disturbing – the secrecy of the spycops means the facts of what they did were deliberately withheld from courts and some miscarriages of justice can never be rectified.
The refusal of police and the Inquiry to release documents, and pictures of spycops, are obstacles to discovering more.
Those spied upon, who have done better than police or CPS on this issue, must be given a central role at the Inquiry.
WHY WE NEED THE TRUTH
Core participants targeted by spycops are not confident the Inquiry will reach the truth. After years of asking, they’ve been told almost nothing. It makes it hard for them to properly contribute.
Speaking for the police at the Inquiry, Oliver Sands QC said criticism of spycops misses the point because if there were a right to be heard without the police knowing in advance, it would have to apply to everyone regardless of their politics, and that result in ‘pandemonium’.
We think the right to be heard without police knowing in advance is a human right of freedom of expression, it should not apply to those whose politics are deemed officially acceptable.
The behaviour of the spycops was consistent with what they were told was acceptable and encouraged to do; it was systemic, not rogue officers.
Exposing the truth about spycops has come at huge human cost. The spied-on did the work themselves to find out the truth, which is traumatic in itself. But it’s made harder because of the obstructions by police.
Had it been left to the police alone, we would never have heard of it. Discovering for themselves they have been spied on has had profound, long lasting and damaging impacts on the activists themselves.
One of the core participants who exposed Mark Kennedy said:
‘It was worse than a bereavement. When a loved one merely dies they go away forever but, unlike a spycop, they don’t undo all the shared experiences that made you love them when they were here. He should never have been in our lives and families. But more than that, we should not have had to find the truth for ourselves, and by chance…
‘But speaking to others who can’t be sure which of their friends were spycops, I realise I have been spared something even more damaging. The thing worse than knowing is not knowing.’
Undercover policing of this kind must never happen again. Even at this early stage of the inquiry, we should be looking for what changes the Inquiry will recommend for the future. We want to know what the purpose of the spying? Was it tainted by racism or other prejudices? Is the purpose a retrospective excuse that can’t be verified?
What framework did the spycops work to, and is there any evidence of it being adhered to? If it existed at all, why did it fail to protect victims?
The Inquiry itself is a test of whether an inquiry process can deliver justice and explanations to the wronged. It must deliver the truth we all deserve and have waited so long to hear.
Donal O’Driscoll
(Category L [Social and environmental activists] Core Participant
Donal is representing himself at the Inquiry. He was involved in numerous campaigns targeted by spycops, and is a researcher for the Undercover Research Group. This is a summarised version of his statement, you can read the full thing on their site.
It appears the Inquiry believes it can do its work without the non-state non-police core participants if needed, that it can interpret the moments and movements we were part of by hearing the words of those whose core training was to lie, people who were willing to pervert the course of justice.
Disclosure of material the police had years to pore over, we are given at the eleventh hour, with insufficient time to process properly.
Trauma, pain and injustice are at the heart of the matter. The undercover policing scandal has its impact because this is what it caused, in myriad different ways. People were abused. Democracy was attacked by ideologically motivated units, yet we are told they are the ones who need protecting with anonymity. The police committed serious crimes, and are clearly approaching the Inquiry as an adversarial process. The constant prioritising of police’s desires exacerbates the pain we all feel.
I’ve seen some of the information spycops police kept on us. I know how extensive, personal and vile it is, and the lies and inaccuracies within. The Inquiry will not get through the layers of deception where the police have covered their tracks, leaving documents that deliberately obscure the truth if they left any record at all.
I grew up in Northern Ireland aware of state sponsored murder gangs and shoot to kill policies. We knew what the British state is capable of and what it is willing to cover up or justify to itself.
So, I come to this with no illusions. However, I will not stand by when the Inquiry tells me it can get to the truth without letting me know the names of the undercovers who spied on me. When the Inquiry insists on withholding those basic facts from myself and others, it is not getting to the truth, it is helping cover it up.
In 1998, I was hospitalised, pushed under a moving car by a police officer during a demonstration, a deeply traumatising moment that still affects me. In the subsequent months I was targeted by police which furthered that trauma. I now believe spycop Christine Green would have been around for that. I want to know what reporting she and other undercovers made in relation to that period, and how that impacted on the civil claim I was then preparing against the police.
PERSONAL HISTORY
In the late 1990s I was placed on construction industry blacklisters The Consulting Association’s so-called ‘greenlist’ of environmental activists and experienced the impact of that, having job offers withdrawn last minute.
In the 2000s, I was involved in defending animal rights groups against civil injunctions that sought to undermining their right to protest. I now know that not only were the domestic extremism units overtly active around this, they were covertly active as well, including one corporate spy now known to have passed material to police. I want to know to what extent undercovers active at the time, at least one close to me, were disrupting our legal defences and who sanctioned that.
During one of the injunction cases, it emerged that Superintendent Stephen Pearl head of the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (NETCU), a sister unit to the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), handed over to lawyers representing a number of private companies the names, details and convictions of 52 individuals including myself.
It was clear that this type of assistance was done as a matter of course and the practice only emerged when they sought to formalise it for proceedings. I managed to successfully intervene on that occasion, but the question remains as to how much other material, including that gathered by undercovers, was being passed over to private companies.
Superintendent Pearl went on to become a director of a vetting and security firm, Agenda. It raises the question of just how seriously should we take claims of risk facing NPIOU officers when, as of yesterday, he was listing his NETCU role and business interests on LinkedIn, along with a photograph of himself.
Around 2010, I was with Debbie Vincent talking to the pharmaceutical giant Novartis, negotiating in good faith regarding their injunction. However, we were not talking to Novartis as we’d been led to believe, but to undercover officer James Adams. I was arrested for conspiracy to blackmail, something I believe was done to undermine my work on the injunctions more generally. The charges were later dropped.
A PROUD ACTIVIST
I would like to make it clear that, as an animal rights activist, environmentalist, anarchist and anti-fascist, I remain proud of all I have been involved in and continue to be committed to those causes. I regret very little. I am sure the state will happily label me a criminal, but that does not bother me.
I have always fought for and been motivated by a sense of justice. It is at the core of who I am, that one does not stand idly by in the face of cruelty or oppression. Positive change comes only through people standing up to the powerful. I will not accept such criticism from a state that gives its agents, unchecked powers to abuse, rape, even murder, and will spend millions to cover for them. Whatever I have done that some might find disagreeable, it is nothing compared to the police.
In October 2010 I was among the first to get the phone call, a friend telling me they had just confirmed my friend Mark Stone was in fact the undercover Mark Kennedy. Over the next few months I watched the pain and tears. I watched good friends and colleagues being broken. I knew a number of those he had relationships with, and could only try to console them as they processed that horror.
In the last decade I have spoken to over 150 people who had been targeted, from all forms of campaigns and groups. Probably better than most, I know how far and deep the emotional scars of this scandal go.
Campaigning is hard enough, causes enough burnout and trauma in itself, without knowing there are those working alongside you to directly undermine all you are seeking to achieve.
It is apparent the undercovers had access to medical records and were willing to use health issues to facilitate access to people. They were close to people suffering serious medical trauma and inserting themselves in their lives and care.
SPYCOPS TRAUMATISING CHILDREN
In a number of cases, spycops were involved in the lives of children of activists. I have listened parents tell of the guilt at leaving their loved ones in the care of people who didn’t really exist, the doubt about their own judgement, and the anger toward the police that sanctioned this.
I’m also very aware of how much it impacted those children, some having to live with parents processing the trauma, others damaged by the knowledge that someone they thought was a friend was lying to them about everything.
Spycops pointed the fingers at other people, alleging them to be police or informers. How many people were wrongly accused in this way, effectively driven out and denied their ability to partake? This is a profoundly cynical, destructive and anti-democratic thing to do, and the interference with their rights should not be glossed over. None of any of these were one-off cases.
INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSIBILITY
The spycops units were not rogue. They were known of at the highest levels and their activities condoned. Many went on to senior management which tells us that knowledge permeated the police. Any investigation must find how far that knowledge went, but also how much there was wilful blindness to the abuses.
The police want to focus on the alleged criminality of protestors to justify the undercover deployments. But these units were ideologically motivated, individually and systemically racist and sexist, with little interest in the rights of those they targeted.
They didn’t send the officers in to tackle the alleged criminality of one or two people, they targeted groups wholesale for exercising their rights to protest and seeking positive social change. In doing so, they effectively criminalised these communities, and once that was accepted practice, it became reason enough to justify everything else.
The notion of “collateral intrusion” has no place in this Inquiry. These units saw nobody as collateral, but reported on everyone regardless.
Even if it management claim they did not know of individual abuses, they do not escape responsibility for creating a culture where anything went and they were content to fund it, and signed off on the choice of targets.
We know that undercovers and their managers went on to work for private firms, taking their knowledge and experience with them. In doing so they perpetuated the same intrusion and abuses they carried out as undercovers. It is not simply a matter of whether they worked undercover subsequently, but whether they also took information with them or used contacts back into Special Branch to obtain that information.
Ironically, many of the spycops make out it is they who are at risk. What they are most worried about is being held responsible. Hiding behind anonymity orders is a cowardly refusal to acknowledge they had no right to carry out their political, sexist, racist and anti-democratic policing.
There is no doubt it is still going on. We know domestic extremism units continue to exist and monitor protests to this day. The fact that they remain embedded in Counter Terrorism Command shows nothing has fundamentally changed in how they view campaigners.
Changing unit names has not altered the ideological foundation that gave rise to the abuses in the first place. These counter terrorism units are merely a rebranding of Special Branch while their Special Project Teams continue to deploy undercovers. The spycop scandal is not an issue of the past; it remains relevant right up the current moment.
People cannot and will not be fobbed off. Growing up aware of the injustice of the Widgery Tribunal’s whitewashing of the Bloody Sunday massacre in itself is, in part, is why I am here today. As with Shrewsbury, Orgreave, blacklisting, and so many family justice campaigns, the issue of spycops will not go away until answers are had, in public.
COPS will be live-tweeting all the Inquiry hearings, and producing daily reports like this one for the blog. They will be indexed on our UCPI Public Inquiry page.
Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon, founder of the Special Demonstration Squad, c.1968
Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 1
2 November 2020
Evidence from:
David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry
The opening day of the Undercover Policing Inquiry was wholly taken up with David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry, spelling out what the Inquiry is, and explaining the foundation and early years of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) undercover political policing unit.
There were some surprises – many new targeted groups were named and several officers’ photos were published. Whilst these are welcomed, leaving it so late it means the people in those groups, or who would recognise the officers, are only just getting a chance to learn they were spied on. As a method of disclosure, it seems designed to exclude affected people from being able to contribute to the Inquiry.
WHAT THE UCPI IS ABOUT & HOW IT WILL WORK
Barr made it clear that while there was a significant focus on left-wing groups, the SDS’s remit went beyond them very early on in its history, encompassing those opposing race and gender discrimination, campaigns for disarmament, and justice campaigns such as the family of Stephen Lawrence. Spycops, Barr confirmed, had been involved in the blacklisting of politically active workers.
Spycops stand accused of being agents provocateur, including Bob Lambert, accused of firebombing a Debenham’s store in 1987 while undercover. (The Metropolitan Police’s investigation into this, begun in April 2016, four years after the allegation was made, has still not concluded!)
The Inquiry, he assured us, will make facts public wherever possible, drawing on historic documents as well as testimony made directly to the Inquiry.
He then ran through a chronology of the scandal: basically one myopic whitewash report after another, interspersed with increasingly outrageous revelations from activists and journalists until the public inquiry was called. Unfortunately, there was a lack of recognition from him of the activists, notably the women deceived into relationships, who did most of the major work exposing the officers. Without them, none of this would be happening.
Barr ran through the Inquiry’s terms of reference, as laid out when it was commissioned in 2015.One of the limitations mentioned is this is an Inquiry into the actions of police officers in England and Wales, even though the spycops are known to have travelled to around 20 other countries, undermining campaigns and violating human rights.
The immunity of witnesses was mentioned – no document produced at the Inquiry will be used against people in future criminal proceedings (unless it’s about giving false evidence to the Inquiry itself), though documents produced by others for the Inquiry aren’t covered by this.
The Inquiry has told 19 families that their dead children’s identities were stolen by spycops. Additionally, one family whose living child’s identity was stolen has been informed.
THE NEW SCHEDULE
When Sir John Mitting took over as Chair in 2017, he cited his predecessor’s desire to discover the truth – that’s not necessarily the same as revealing the truth to the public though.
The Inquiry is divided into Modules, subdivided into Tranches and Phases, which you can see explained in our UCPI FAQ. Sir John Mitting will preside alone over the evidence, then a panel will be appointed by the Home Secretary for the final module that will look at making recommendations for the future (which the CHIS Bill seemingly makes irrelevant).
Although originally scheduled to report in 2018, the Inquiry is now looking like it’ll finish in about 2026. The pandemic is slowing the delayed process even further, as they say that classified documents can’t be worked on at home.
There was dismay at the new protracted timetable for the Inquiry. Tranche 1 Phase 2 (SDS 1973-82) is now expected to be in March or April 2021. They expect the Tranche 2 (SDS 1983-92) hearings will happen in the first half of 2022, Tranche 3 (SDS 1993-2007) in the first half of 2023. As for Tranches 4 (NPOIU), 5 and 6, who knows?
THE FIRST EVIDENCE HEARINGS
The first evidence hearings (Phase 1 of Tranche 1) will start next week. They will cover the formation of the Special Demonstration Squad in 1968, in response to protests against the war in Vietnam, and why it continued beyond that.
There is no evidence in any documents that the earliest SDS officers (1968-72) had sexual relationships with women, nor that it was standard to steal dead children’s identities. However, these things do emerge in Phase 2 (1973-82), the hearings due to take place in early 2021.
Witness statements have been taken from 18 SDS officers for Phase 1 (1968-72), eight of whom will give evidence. For the targeted people, Tariq Ali from the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign will give evidence, and Dr Norman Temple from Irish National Liberation Solidarity Front will have his statement read for him.
The Inquiry will examine documents including Home Office Circular 97/1969, which specifically said spies must never incite crime, and if there’s ever a possibility of misleading a court the spy must be withdrawn (which is cited in our post about spycops and miscarriages of justice).
In covering who was responsible in the early period, Barr listed Home Secretaries and Metropolitan Police Commissioners. It’s worth noting that the huge delays in starting the Inquiry mean that three Met Commissioners (collectively in charge 1977-1993) and two Home Secretaries have died since the Inquiry was announced.
STOPPING THE ‘STOP THE WAR’: HOW THE SDS BEGAN
Special Demonstration Squad officer Dave Fisher, c.1968
A March 1968 demonstration in London against the Vietnam War ended with windows being broken at the American embassy. Eager to avoid a repeat at the October 1968 demo, police came up with the idea of deep-cover intelligence officers, and the Special Demonstration Squad was born.
The Inquiry was then shown a contemporary ITV report of the March protest, featuring lots of pushing at police lines and officers kicking people on the ground, two officers carried away on stretchers, several fireworks and some incidental damage to shrubbery. It was overdubbed with continual crowd noise that doesn’t change when the scene cuts, and a voice-over about the wild violence of protesters in “a riot such has Britain has never before witnessed”.
Internal police reports allege foreign demonstrators were catalysts and agitators, though Barr said that Tariq Ali from the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign contests the accuracy and validity of this focus.
Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon of Special Branch resolved to prevent a repeat. Dixon’s report of April 1968 said no intelligence had shown anyone planning violence at the demo, and yet it happened. Implied in this is a common police belief that things have a rigid command structure similar to their own, and if that can’t be seen it must be because it’s being well hidden.
The Inquiry went through a number of contemporaneous documents. They showed a few that said Special Branch had gone to a degree of effort to find out the scale and nature of the March 1968 demo. One Special Branch document describes Special Branch attending a Vietnam Solidarity Campaign meeting but being recognised and asked to leave. Another attempted to attend a private meeting was aborted due to cops not knowing anyone and dressing like cops. Special Branch clearly felt a problem in not being able to get into meetings of anti-Vietnam War activists.
There’s very little contemporaneous documentation of the formation of the Special Demonstration Squad, but it appears to have been founded on 30 or 31 July 1968. Early SDS documents stated its intention as being solely to gather intelligence ahead of the 27 October 1968 Vietnam demo, using publications, informants, technical devices, and undercover police officers.
It rapidly moved from this multi-method narrow-remit approach to the very opposite – just using deep-cover police for a wide, ill-defined range of ‘subversives’.
As the anti-Vietnam War movement factionalised, the SDS infiltrated the various groups. Officers ‘Don de Freitas’ and ‘Margaret White’ posed as a couple to infiltrate a group. One black power leaflet they came across led to prosecution and imprisonment of its distributor, and the officer gave evidence in her real identity.
The spycops had been deployed into a variety of groups, even taking active roles in the organising.
THE OCTOBER 1968 DEMONSTRATION
By the time the October 1968 Vietnam demo came round, Chief Inspector Dixon saw all the factions and anticipated less trouble than had been seen in March. He was correct, but David Barr said that’s not the point. The Inquiry must ask was this necessary? Was it proportionate? Could intelligence have been gained without the use of spycops?
On 29 October 1968, the US ambassador congratulated Special Branch for a less volatile demo than in March. One has to wonder if there would have been such a strong reaction to March demo if it had been at a target that didn’t embarrass the UK in front of the USA.
We were then shown another contemporaneous news report. As with the earlier one, there’s a striking difference between the pictures and the commentary – the ‘Maoists’ / ‘anarchists’ (the words are used interchangably) are violent for linking arms and walking into police, police ‘keep their cool’ throwing punches and kicking.
Again, Barr recounted the police’s narrative seemingly from a position of accepting it as fact, describing how they regarded the comparatively peaceful nature of the Oct 1968 Vietnam demo as a big success for the policing tactics.
It’s unclear if the Inquiry is taking all this at face value. The October 1968 demo was always intended by the organisers to be more peaceful, and the International Marxist Group stopped a large attempted breakaway to the US embassy.
Certainly, it was used as the pretext for making the SDS a permanent arrangement with a much wider scope. Barr talked about the dual role of SDS, covering demonstrations/public order and subversion, but pretty much every organisation seeking any social change could be seen to fit into either category (or both).
The conflation of the former with the latter gave an excuse for state surveillance of almost all protest groups. Within a fortnight of the October demo, spycops boss Chief Inspector Dixon had proposed long term infiltration of the relevant organisations. Funding was requested from the Home Office. Home Office wasn’t overly keen on permanence but paid up anyway.
DEEPER POCKETS, WIDER NET
Special Demonstration Squad officer Helen Crampton, c.1968
The documents make clear that the Home Office reticence wasn’t due to any ethical principles. Rather, Home Secretary Reginald Maudling was very afraid of personal impact of exposure.
The fact that the government was terrified of spycops being public knowledge indicates a belief that the public would be outraged, as indeed they were once the truth came out in 2010. They always knew it was profoundly unethical, that it was abuse of citizens and unwarranted curtailing of political dissent.
Funding was granted for the calendar year in 1970 and 1971, but in 1972 it moved to the financial year, indicating that the old temporary spying on Vietnam War protesters had become permanent and broader. A vague mention of spycops in the press yielded no serious opposition from public or civil liberties groups, leading to increased confidence in making the unit permanent, continuing and expanding their roles.
Early 1970s documents show the unit’s stated aims being forecasting the scale and mood of demonstrations, identifying organisers, and ‘gathering information for long-term intelligence purposes’ with people profiled ‘within weeks’ of first expressing interest in ‘extremist ideas’.
WHO WAS TARGETED
David Barr then read out lists of groups targeted according to the SDS’ first few annual reports. Some we knew from the Undercover Research Group/ Guardian list, but almost 50 were new.
Certainly, the breadth of interest was extraordinary. It included groups from Hackney United Tenants Ad-Hoc Committee to Croydon Libertarians, Justice for Rhodesia to the Independent Labour Party. The Undercover Research Group posted the full list.
The reports lamented the ‘obvious problem’ of finding it hard to infiltrate black power movements. “Coloured and foreign organisations, because of their exclusivity, continue to be resistant to penetration”.
The SDS said that the Communist Party and extreme right wing groups weren’t covered by its remit, but was up for doing it if they were told to. This is essentially asking for sanction for mission creep.
Big Flame were among the groups described as “penetrated to a lesser degree”, but this somewhat arbitrary distinction doesn’t mean the involvement is minor. They were targeted by Richard Clark, aka ‘Rick Gibson’, but the group became suspicious of him and discovered that he was using the stolen identity of a dead child. They confronted him and he left. The story was unpublished at the time
Clark deceived at least four women he spied on into relationships. One of them, Mary, gave a powerful statement to the Inquiry in 2018:
“I came from South Africa, thinking I had escaped that kind of interference by the state in the life of its citizens. To find that the police and the state in the UK operate in a similar fashion is very disturbing”.
Chief Inspector Dixon laid down some rules. He wanted recruitment by personal approach, and daily supervision of officers, with a maximum of 12 months (the average ended up being 4-5 years). He was firm that officers should not get actively involved in groups, drafting leaflets, etc. This, as has already been mentioned, wasn’t adhered to even then, and it went right out of the window shortly after.
None of the officers the Inquiry has spoken to recalls formal training. There is little evidence of specific guidance on criminal activity, sexual relationships, breaching legal privilege. Unsurprisingly, most say they didn’t commit any offence when undercover.
The Inquiry then published photos of various officers, all seemingly taken at the same event (one has to suspect the 1968 SDS Christmas party). Most of the officers whose faces are shown were backroom staff, rather than actual undercover officers. The Undercover Research Group posted all the pictures of the 1968 spycops.
EXAMPLE DOCUMENTS
The Inquiry concluded the day by showing a range of documents to illustrate key themes.
A report on large public meeting of Vietnam Solidarity Campaign from 1968:
Routine form for early SDS work reporting on events. It lists all the officers present at the meeting (which included Dixon, the head of the SDS, and Saunders, second in command), all of whom were able to vote at the meeting. The document is noted as having been copied to MI5. It’s a clear illustration of spycops having influence on the organisations they spied on, and that this was known at the very highest levels.
A report from officer ‘John Clinton‘ on the April 1972 International Socialists conference:
Almost 400 people attended, and the report is lengthy. This was followed by another from same officer, on the results of International Socialists national committee election, noting specific person’s politics. These two were the basis for the next document, a cover note saying managers were very pleased about the reports on International Socialists, that it proves the value of the SDS, and reports have been copied to MI5. This is proof that such reporting wasn’t a rogue officer but within the remit of the SDS.
A 1969 report from officer ‘Bill Lewis‘ on the International Marxist Group’s summer camp in Scotland, attended by 42 people. This shows spycops acting across borders and jurisdictions very early on, and makes a mockery of the Home Office limiting the Inquiry to England and Wales.
A 1971 report by ‘David Robertson‘, reporting on a Maoist couple, including personal details about financial affairs, home life and child. This kind of intrusive, unpolitical detail was commonplace in such reports.
A 1968 document from ‘Don de Frietas‘ and ‘Margaret White‘, officers who pretended to be a couple to infiltrate the Havering branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. The report covers a meeting in a pub with details of all nine attendants.
A 1971 report from ‘John Clinton’ on a member of the International Socialists, who wants to get fellow members to work within a trade union. This was followed by another Clinton one from 1973 reporting on membership changes in International Socialists, noting their locality and trade union. These illustrate the attention to trade unions even in the early days of the SDS.
A 1973 report of officer HN338, noting names of three people who’ve asked for information on the International Marxist Group. This shows that one didn’t have to be an activist or even a member of a target group in order to have a spycops file.
A 1971 report also from HN338 on a Black Defence Committee talk entitled ‘Rhodesia and the racist problem in Britain’. Opposing those things was a threat to the political establishment.
A 1971 report by ‘David Robertson’ on Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) meeting addressed by a delegation that had visited China, but includes details of industrial action and remarks about the ethnicity of certain attendees.
A 1971 ‘Robertson’ report, submitting a Women’s Liberation Front leaflet that advocated an end to exploitation and repression of all kinds, equal pay without regard to gender, access to contraception and abortion. The report has been stamped as copied to MI5.
A 1971 report from officer HN338 reporting on a meeting of editorial groups of an activist publication called Indo-China, showing active involvement in steering groups. Numerous spycops wrote articles whilst undercover, encouraging the political activity they were ostensibly there to undermine.
A 1973 report from officer HN338, reporting on meeting about police oppression by International Marxist Group, Socialist Labour League and International Socialists. Example of police regarding well-earned threats to their reputation as seriously as any other threat.
Finally for the example documents, a report from 1974 by ‘John Clinton’ reporting on a Socialist Worker rally for the Shrewsbury 24 and their families. This clearly shows spycops working to defending the reputation of the police against those who’d expose miscarriages of justice.
COPS will be live-tweeting all the Inquiry hearings, and producing daily reports like this one for the blog. They will be indexed on our UCPI Public Inquiry page.
Where: M Shed, Princes Wharf, Wapping Road, Bristol BS1 4RN
Price: Free!
Bristol Radical History Group (BRHG) have organised a full programme of events for their 2020 Radical History Festival, in collaboration with hosts at M Shed.
Themes
The 2020 Festival has two main Themes, where once again we will reveal hidden histories, debate and agitate for a future of better pasts:
– State and private surveillance of labour and social movements (1792 to now)
– Hidden histories of post-war mainland Britain (1945-51)
State and private surveillance of labour and social movements (1792 to now)
When environmental campaigners exposed Mark Kennedy as an undercover police officer (or spycop) in October 2010, after a seven-year posting, outrage ensued over the fact he had coerced a number of female activists into relationships, and taken part in criminal actions.
Numerous other spycops were (and are being) exposed after this, forcing the Government to set up the Undercover Policing Inquiry into the activities of its undercover operations through the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) since 1968.
The cover-up, and whitewash, was underway, utilising multiple arms of the British state. But as we will show in this theme, surveillance activities by both the British state and private/corporate entities have been ongoing for centuries, often working together, hand in glove.
From fears in the aftermath of the French revolution in the 1790s, republicanism and the struggles for democracy to resistance to World War One and the increasing political and economic power of the working class in the 1960s, the British state through spying has attempted to neutralise, suppress and stymie progressive movements and groups. And they didn’t stop yesterday…hello Special Branch!
Hidden histories of post-war mainland Britain (1945-51)
Post World War II we find a Britain with its treasuries exhausted after paying for the War; a diminishing world power supported by colonies it could no longer afford to maintain, nor contain! Its citizens were determined not to be short-changed again, as they were after WWI, in a post-WWII settlement they had fought so hard for, after a conflict in which so many had lost their lives.
Money for this reconstruction and social investment could only come from the US, the only global power to emerge unscathed from WWII. What would the rising US Empire demand in return from the diminishing British Empire?
We’ll share peoples’ stories of the push for social reforms, labour activism, civil rights and experience of national service within a diminishing empire under austerity; and look too at the break-up of the colonial Empire and Britain’s treatment of its former subjects.
Black Power & undercover policing in the 1970s
Now aded to the line-up: Winston Trew of the Oval 4 & Rosie Wild on ‘Black Power & undercover policing’ in 1970s.
It’s Not All Talks
So, you’ll know it’s not just going to be talks, discussions and workshops!
Once again expect:
walks
films
singing and performances
exhibitions
stalls with books and merchandise from local and national groups
Not to be missed – go up to Level 2 to see the Feminist Archive’s Women’s Liberation exhibition.
All the events at M Shed are free with no booking required – all are welcome!
M Shed
This will be the 4th Bristol Radical History Festival, which once again is hosted by M Shed, Bristol’s social history museum located on the historic harbourside.
Other Events
There are several tie-in events:
Monday 6th April, 8pm at Cube Cinema – The Dirty War on the NHS: Director John Pilger’s searing critique on the history of the NHS from 1948 to the present. £5/4 – Tickets/info here.
Friday 15th May, 8pm at Cube Cinema – Gadael Tir / Leave Land, the story of a thousand years of land rights and protest in Wales (in English). £10/8 – Tickets/info here.
Three people spied upon by Britain’s political secret police are bringing a crucial legal case in an attempt to steer the public inquiry away from its bias towards secrecy and protecting abusive police officers.
Announced in 2014, the Undercover Policing Inquiry has yet to formally begin. Since the original Chair, Lord Pitchford, stepped down for health reasons in June 2017, it has been under the stewardship of Sir John Mitting. There were concerns about his suitability at the time, especially his background in secret courts that almost invariably find in favour of state spies, but victims gave him the benefit of the doubt.
In September 2017, a group of 13 women deceived into relationships by undercover police officers wrote to the Home Secretary with concerns that Mitting and the Inquiry were not recognising the institutional sexism of the Met’s spycops.
Nearly 200 of the most significantly affected victims of spycops have been granted core participant status at the Inquiry. In October, the majority of them wrote to Mitting expressing their grave fears about the direction in which he was taking the Inquiry.
As one of them, Kim Bryan, explained at the time:
‘As Core Participants we are rapidly losing confidence in the Inquiry and in the abilities of John Mitting. He is rowing back on commitments made by the previous Chair, Christopher Pitchford, who stated the inquiry’s priority is to discover the truth and recognised the importance of hearing from both officers and their victims along with the need for this to be done in public as far as possible.’
None of it has made any difference. Mitting has been granting full anonymity to around 30% of spycops, even when the police’s own risk assessments say there is little danger in publishing the name, and when the officer’s objection rests on fear of embarrassment.
In his first public hearing in November 2017, Mitting said he would not comply with the Met’s dodging tactic of saying they ‘neither confirm nor deny’ any details about undercover deployments. Mitting unequivocally stated:
‘Neither Confirm Nor Deny has no part at all to play in Special Demonstration Squad deployments’
But by February 2018 he was granting full anonymity to officers without explanation, repeatedly telling victims they would ‘meet a brick wall of silence,’ and saying:
‘it is not a Neither Confirm Nor Deny approach. It is stronger than that. It is a flat refusal to say anything about the deployment in the open.’
This led to victims walking out of court and boycotting all subsequent hearings on anonymity for officers.
Sharon Grant – widow of Bernie Grant, one of ten Labour MPs known to have been spied on – accompanied Stephen Lawrence’s father Neville to hand deliver a letter to the Home Secretary demanding change.
It’s plain that Mitting is to gullible and biased to be at the helm of the Inquiry. For the process to function, he needs to be replaced, or at least sit alongside, a panel of people with life experience relevant to the victims.
Phillippa Kaufmann QC, lawyer for the victims, told Mitting of the urgent need for a panel of:
‘individuals who have a proper informed experiential understanding of discrimination both on grounds of race and sex. Two issues that lie absolutely at the heart of this Inquiry…
‘The core participants – the non-state, non-police core participants – do not want this important Inquiry, something that they so richly deserve to have conducted in an efficacious way, to be presided over by someone who is both naive and old-fashioned and does not understand the world that they or the police inhabit.’
Neville Lawrence is clear that the appointment of a panel of people from different backgrounds is make-or-break. If it the Inquiry doesn’t get that, he said:
‘I will withdraw from it. I will leave it alone because it’s a waste of my time. I’ve wasted two years already.’
THE LEGAL CHALLENGE
Three core participants at the Inquiry want to bring a legal challenge to the refusal to appoint a diverse panel. They need to raise £5,000 to get a hearing to apply. If the win that, they will need a further £50,000 to bring the full case.
The three are:
1) The family of Jean Charles de Menezes; a young, innocent Brazilian man, was gunned down at Stockwell tube station on 22 July 2005 by police officers in a botched surveillance operation after he was wrongly deemed to be one of the fugitives involved in failed bombing attempts the previous day.
Over the next decade, the family endured the stress of two IPCC complaint investigations, an inquest, a civil claim, a further complaint and two legal challenges in their quest for justice for their loved one. In 2014, they were devastated to learn that their justice campaign had been spied upon by undercover police. They demand to know why and will not be denied justice again.
2) ‘Jessica’ (a pseudonym) was an inexperienced, vulnerable 19 year old girl with a love of animals. Her first real sexual relationship was, she believed, with Andy Davey,a 24 year old, socially awkward, fellow animal rights activist who shared her values.
Last year she found out that he was Andy Coles, a 32 year old, married, undercover police officer, tasked by his senior officers to spy on her and her friends. Jessica would never have consented to sex or intimacy if she had known his real identity.. She feels violated and humiliated. She wants to know the truth about his deployment and his relationship with her, particularly whether her clear vulnerability made her easy prey.
3) John Burke-Monerville’s 19 year old son, Trevor, was held at Stoke Newington police station in 1987 during which time his family believe he was beaten and in consequence suffered brain damage. A Justice for Trevor campaign was mounted, supported by the Hackney Community Defence Association. Trevor and members of his family were thereafter harassed by the police. Tragically, Trevor and his brother were murdered in separate incidents years apart. No one was prosecuted for the murders because, the family believe, of failures in the police investigation. Mr Burke-Monerville has learned that the justice campaign meetings were subject to surveillance by the Special Demonstration Squad.
The loved ones of Jean Charles de Menezes and Trevor Monerville are just two of 18 such campaigns that the Met admit spying on. Resources that should have caught killers were spent preventing justice.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
The people launching the appeal have spelled out their aim to have an Inquiry that simply fulfils its remit:
‘Our fear is that if it continues in its current trajectory that the Undercover Policing Inquiry will be a whitewash. We have been forced to initiate a legal challenge to the Home Secretary’s decision to refuse to appoint a panel with the skill and diversity required.
‘Our aim is to restore public confidence in the Undercover Policing Inquiry and its ability to get to the truth. Join us by contributing now and sharing this page on social media.’
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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.
Online meeting to celebrate and learn from the significant victory of the ‘Shrewsbury 24’ in quashing their almost 50-year-old convictions.
Barr asked Ali to account for his use of the word ‘militancy’. He explained that other groups at the time were demanding peace in Vietnam, but the VSC didn’t want ‘the peace of the graveyard’, they supported the Vietnamese people in their struggle against the American occupation.
Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 7
What happened next was the stuff of fiction. Steel and Morris couldn’t afford lawyers and represented themselves in court (assisted behind the scenes by a young barrister prepared to work for free called Keir Starmer) against a large McDonald’s legal team led by a QC charging £2,000 a day. McDonald’s had objected to the whole leaflet, so Steel and Morris had to defend every word. It became the longest trial in English history. In the end there were a number of damning judgements against the fast food giant, and versions of the leaflet were being handed out in millions all over the world.
Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 4
When: Saturday 16th May 2020, 10-4.30pm