Undercover Policing Inquiry Weekly Report 1 2-6 November 2020
After five years of waiting, the Undercover Policing Inquiry finally got off the ground in earnest this week. This first round of hearings will be split in two parts. First, Opening Statements from all the core participants. Second will be actual evidence for the period 1968 to 1972.
The Opening Statements are a chance for the various parties to essentially lay out how they view things. They began with the Counsel to the Tribunal, David Barr QC, presenting a general overview of where we stand.
This was followed by barristers for police and those who were once in the world of police but are no longer. Finally came the non-state/police core participants, whose statements will continue into this coming week. In this report we will try to summarise what was a lot of material, and reflect upon the words of the lawyers.
Barr noted that much of what the spycops did during their deployment is already public knowledge:
• deceived more than 30 women into long-term intimate relationships
• fathered children with some of these activists
• stole the identities of dead children to provide convincing cover stories
• deceived grieving families, and worked to prevent them learning the truth
• undermined anti-fascist, anti-racist, environmental, and other social justice campaigns
• were responsible for the blacklisting of thousands of workers for wanting safe working conditions or being politically active
Despite acknowledging this, it is disappointing that Mr Barr failed to properly credit the activists. The women deceived into relationships were a fundamental part of exposing the spycops. The existence of this Inquiry is based on their work.
This phase will also look at various documents and hear evidence from 1968–1972. It does not cover the actions of spycops while outside England and Wales, despite them being active in around 20 other countries during their deployment.
There were also some surprising pieces of previously undisclosed information, and statements from people previously unheard from.
How and why was the Special Demonstration Squad set up?
Police on horseback charge demonstrators against the Vietnam War, Grosvenor Square, London, 17 March 1968
Following the windows of the US Embassy being broken during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration in March 1968, Special Branch attempted to gather information on the next demo. Their usual tactics being unsuccessful, they created the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) who went deep undercover, living as activists among various anti-war groups.
The next demo in October 1968 was less volatile, and this was taken as a sign of the new unit’s success. Mr Barr has stressed that the Inquiry must decide not if it was successful, but if it was a necessary or disproportionate response.
The SDS rapidly widened its scope and began investigating subversion and demonstrations and disruptions of public order. Any organisation seeking social change could easily be said to be covered by their remit. By the early 1970s, the SDS was aiming to profile anyone ‘within weeks’ of first showing interest in ‘extremist ideas’.
One of the police barristers, Oliver Sanders QC (representing 114 spycops, the majority of former and current undercovers), stated that the main function of the SDS was to assess public order threats. In the period currently being examined by the Inquiry, 1968-72, many of these came from political protests. Their secondary function was providing intelligence on ‘subversion’ to MI5.
What was the role of MI5 and the Home Office?
Since the story of the spycops surfaced, the events have been framed as the work of one rogue officer, then several rogue officers, then rogue units. Those higher up unfailingly point the finger at those lower down.
It is now clear that from the very beginning, the SDS was funded by the Home Office and reported to MI5.
Sanders provided new information:
• MI5 and spycops were so allied that MI5 considered funding the SDS
• They liaised to ensure they didn’t duplicate spying, which might have resulted in spying on each other’s officers
• MI5 recommended tips to SDS spycops, and they asked for specific info
• Most SDS intelligence reports were copied to MI5 with the file reference numbers of the people / group already added
• the SDS weren’t in a position to question MI5’s focus, thinking and efforts, but were just following orders. ‘The SDS was a politically neutral cog as part of a much larger apparatus,’ he said.
Despite the Home Office directly funding the unit for over 20 years, a 2014 report commissioned on the link between the two institutions noted the key file was suspiciously missing. However, a lot of SDS reports have been retrieved for the Inquiry from copies sent to MI5.
How are the police lawyers attempting to portray the actions of the SDS?
It is now clear the various police lawyers are switching tactics and actually trying to justify the actions of the SDS. They describe the spycops as a benevolent and useful group, indispensable to the safety of the public, who only wanted political information so that demonstrations could be effectively policed.
Claim: Police never intend to harm anyone, including the women deceived into relationships
Peter Skelton QC, for the Metropolitan Police, told the Inquiry that the Met is ‘aware of continuing anger and distress of victims of spycops’. He said the Met stands by its 2015 apology to women deceived into relationships by spycops (despite the fact that it still won’t let women see their files, and is delaying civil claims by some of them).
Richard Whittam QC, representing a smaller group of undercovers and managers, also mentioned the apology naming such activity as ‘abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong’. But, he said, spycops committing crime is essential for national security and the prevention and detection of other people committing crime. The apology should be seen ‘in context’, by which he seemed to mean it should be disregarded.
This echoed other police lawyers, who have implied that it was acceptable to abuse people because times were different then, and it was all done for the greater good.
Claim: Spycops are better than the alternative
Blair Peach
Repeatedly, police noted that people have been killed on protests – citing two cases from the 1970s, Blair Peach and Kevin Gately – and there would be more death and injuries if it wasn’t for the undercovers ensuring demos were policed properly.
Contemptuously, they failed to mention that Blair Peach and Kevin Gately actually both been killed by the police; Gately in 1974 on an anti-fascist protest organised by heavily spied-on groups, and Peach in 1979 as a member of the most spied-on group of all, The Socialist Workers Party, on an anti-racist protest.
Discussing spycops stealing of dead children’s identities, Sanders said that though it was regrettable, it was necessary to prevent risk of exposure. The alternative to spycops with stolen identities was paramilitary police on demonstrations, he said. This is a patently ridiculous excuse.
Claim: Intelligence must be gathered indiscriminately
Spied-upon groups which were newly named this week include Justice for Rhodesia, Croydon Libertarians, and the St Pancras & Camden United Tenants Association. This contrasts strongly with police insistence that spycops saved the public from violent riots, murder and mayhem by infiltrating these groups; that it was necessary to spy on people who were committing no crimes in order to get to the ‘real criminals’.
The SDS essentially turned belonging to groups such as Hackney United Tenants Ad-Hoc Committee into a valid reason for the state to target you for surveillance. A report from 1973 gives the names of three people who had merely asked about the International Marxist Group.
They did, however, say they found it difficult to infiltrate black power movements; a rather telling sign that they were lacking in Black police officers.
Claim: Even though they’re bad, we can’t judge them because it was a long time ago
Essentially, police lawyers found various ways to say ‘what the spycops did may have been bad but it was a long time ago, lessons have been learned, it’s different now, nobody need lose their job or pension, move on, there’s nothing to see here’.
This directly contradicts documents that make clear the government was aware from the very beginning that what they were doing was deeply unethical, and would cause public outrage if discovered. Even by the standards of 1968, the spycops’ behaviour was blatantly immoral.
This refrain was accompanied by police barristers stating that other types of undercover work keep the public safe from paedophiles and terrorists. This is of little relevance to the activities of political secret police.
It ignores that the spycops of 2010 – long after the supposed new regulatory framework of the Human Rights Act, and Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act – were, if anything, committing even worse abuses than their 1968 counterparts.
The Inquiry also heard from representatives of the groups and individuals who were spied on
Families of the dead children whose identities were stolen
The Grave of Mark Robert Robinson whose identity was stolen by spycop Bob Lambert
Sanders said this procedure was invented in an earlier time when people felt differently about death and risk (once again using the ‘it was a long time ago’ excuse), yet the practice continued until the 1990s.
Additionally, one family whose living child’s identity was stolen has been informed.
Justice campaigns of grieving families, represented by Richard Parry and Jane Deighton
These were families in mourning who just wanted answers about what had happened to their loved ones so that they could have at least some closure; in many cases the parents and relatives of people who were barely more than children, and died violent deaths under traumatic circumstances.
Instead, their efforts were blocked and police were openly hostile to them and spycops infiltrated their campaigns for the truth. Police resources that should have been spent catching killers were instead spent on obstructing justice.
As a teenager in 1993, Duwayne Brooks survived a racist attack in which his best friend Stephen Lawrence was murdered. Brooks was spied upon in an attempt to discredit his evidence. He said this week that he won’t testify unless he can see his whole police file first.
Skelton said the Met is ‘grateful’ for Duwayne Brooks’ and Stephen’s mother Doreen Lawrence’s work.
Workers with trade unions and/or politically active workers who were blacklisted
Dave Smith
Reports show that trade unions were targeted and spied on from as far back as 1973. Yet, Sanders unequivocally stated that the SDS did not have any involvement in industrial blacklisting.
It did not target justice campaigns, members of parliament or trade unions directly, it was merely inevitable collateral collection while spying on other things, he claimed. These are lies, with ‘collateral damage’ as an excuse. Whether accidental or deliberate, it’s still spying.
Three wives (now ex-wives) of spycops, represented by Angus McCullough QC
For all but one of the wives of the undercover officers, it is the first time their words have been heard. In most cases they are now ex-wives, such was the stress their relationships were subjected to due to the activities of their husbands.
There can be no doubt that they were deceived and abused as badly as any other victim of the spycops. They were told that their husbands were gone for long periods in the interests of national security, not that they were on holiday in Thailand or Crete with women they’d manipulated into believing were the loves of their lives.
McCullough described how although they were vetted as support for their husbands, the wives and their children were offered no support during the periods of deployment. Nor were they years later, when the Met knew that the stories were about to hit the press and yet did not deign to warn them.
The officers themselves were flatly told that there would be very little support during deployment. They were given no prior warning of the psychological impact that going deep and long-term undercover would have on them. They received even less support than they’d been promised.
Skelton admitted the Met ‘hasn’t always understood’ how to support the spycops officers. Their wives, all of whom are mothers with children to care for, were used by the SDS and the Met as free, unqualified, in-house emotional support and therapy for their officers.
Peter Francis, represented by David Lock QC
SDS whistle-blower Peter Francis
Peter Francis, the only spycop whistle-blower to have come forward, was an SDS officer from 1993-98.
This week he requested a cast-iron guarantee from the Metropolitan Commissioner of immunity to prosecution for information about spycops he revealed prior to the Inquiry starting. Under the Inquiry’s terms, witnesses including Peter Francis cannot be prosecuted for anything that he says during the proceedings.
However, he could be charged under the Official Secrets Act for his previous public statements. His pension hangs in the balance, and he will not testify without absolute confirmation he will not be charged.
It should be obvious that without his evidence, this cannot be a properly informed inquiry. Under the current timetable, the Inquiry doesn’t intend to take evidence from Francis until 2023.
People from a vast range of groups targeted for their political beliefs and activism, overwhelmingly from the left
This week, they revealed the previously unknown names of just 44 of them. This comes too late for members of those groups to ascertain which of their friends or intimate partners never really existed, let alone participate in their only current chance for some kind of justice.
New photos of SDS officers published
The Inquiry also published previously unseen photos of various officers. Only one was a spycop; the rest were mostly back office staff, apparently all at the same festive event in 1968.
People are excluded from the Inquiry, including core participants
Lawyers for the non-police side noted that without names and photos of spycops it is impossible to reach all the people who were their victims. It is grossly unjust that they will not be represented through the deliberate choice of the Inquiry to exclude them.
There are a great many people who, even though they know they were spied on and have come forward, will also be excluded. Another deliberate choice by the Inquiry is to refuse to livestream the proceedings.
After this week, the hearings will be conducted in secret. Despite that fact that secure livestreams have been set up due to Covid-19, only the text will be made available after the proceedings have finished.
As already stated, over five years into the Inquiry many victims still have no documents. Many more have no names or photographs that would answer otherwise impossible, unanswerable questions.
People giving evidence who were spied on during this time were only provided with relevant documents – a total of 5,263 pages – five weeks ago. Attempting to read all of them before the start is roughly equivalent to reading all of Lord of the Rings twice a week for five weeks straight.
No diversity, no understanding
Sir John Mitting
The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, is not just preventing the victims’ access to full understanding, he’s determined to prevent his own. From the very beginning, calls have been made for a diverse panel of people with relevant life experience to advise and guide the Inquiry. This is standard practice for other inquiries, yet Mitting refuses to follow precedent.
The goal of this Inquiry should be to unflinchingly and honestly deal with institutional sexism, racism, and attacks on workers’ rights and the conditions of the disadvantaged. As an old white cis male Knight of the Realm who is a member of the men-only Garrick Club and finds the Macpherson definition of institutional racism ‘controversial’, comprehending these realities is beyond him.
As Ruth Brander, representing the Non Police/ State Core Participants, told him this week, ‘With respect, the concern is you, sir’.
A wise and impartial man would ask for help. Instead, Mitting refuses the offer of information that would increase the chances of a fair conclusion to the proceedings.
What next?
After two more days of opening statements from victims of spycops, the Inquiry’s first evidence hearings (Phase 1 of Tranche 1) will start on Wednesday 11 November. 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. They will continue until Friday 20 November.
The next set of hearings after that, taking evidence of events from 1973 to 1982, are expected in spring 2021. The Undercover Policing Inquiry has no set end-date, but is expected to perhaps conclude around 2026.
COPS will be live tweeting every hearing, producing a summary every evening, and a weekly report like this one at the weekend.
For more information including an FAQ, see the links on our UCPI Public Inquiry page.
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.
Oliver Sanders QC (Designated Lawyer Officers i.e. speaking for 114 spycops)
Richard Whittam QC (Slater & Gordon Clients representing 12 individual undercover officers / managers)
David Lock QC (whistle-blower officer Peter Francis)
Angus McCullough QC (Category M Core Participants – three ex wives of undercover officers)
Rajiv Menon QC (spied-upon core participants represented by Jane Deighton & Richard Parry)
Oliver Sanders QC
(Designated Lawyer Officers)
Oliver Sanders QC
Oliver Sanders QC, representing the majority of former spycops, concluded the opening statement he’d begun at yesterday’s hearing.
Sanders said the main function of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) was to assess public order threats, of which many came from political protests in the period currently being examined by the Inquiry (1968-82). However, he said it’s hard to quantify because few records have been kept and even at the time intelligence was ‘sanitised’ to obscure its source.
He turned to the SDS’ secondary function, providing intelligence on ‘subversion’ to MI5. He conceded that subversion is an amorphous concept and ‘difficult to grasp as a threat to national security’ but insisted it was a real threat then and now. He cited hostile states sponsoring cyber attacks as subversion, as if that has anything to do with those of us targeted by spycops. It was an extension of the previous day’s repeated iterations of ‘undercovers protect us from terrorism and paedophiles’, a tactic which only serves to smear victims of spycops.
MI5’s FOOT SOLDIERS
Sanders was keen to emphasise that the SDS was no aberration in its choice of targets, merely reinforcing the established work of MI5. He cited The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 by Christopher Andrew (2009), which estimated that in the 1970s a quarter of MI5 resources went on counter-subversion.
In 1980s the groups that fell under this category included the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (which had around 250,000 members and was mainstream enough to have its aims included in the Labour Party manifesto), trade unions such as the National Union of Mineworkers, and an array of left wing organisations including the Socialist Workers Party, International Marxist Group, and the Militant Tendency.
He said that MI5 and spycops were so allied that MI5 considered funding the SDS, and they liaised to ensure they didn’t duplicate spying – it would not only have wasted resources but they may have ended up spying on each other’s officers.
Most SDS intelligence reports were not only copied to MI5 but were sent with the file reference numbers of the people/group already added. The partnership was active, with MI5 recommended tips to SDS spycops, and they asked for specific info – though he didn’t mention any instances of the flow of information and directives going the other way. Instead, it seems the SDS was used as the foot-soldiers of MI5. Sanders noted that the SDS weren’t in a position to question MI5’s focus, thinking and efforts.
Sanders was at pains to assert that there was nothing sinister, surprising, or objectionable in this collusion, it’s just what both organisations were tasked to do.
The subtext of Sanders’ explanation was that, because MI5 targeted the same people in the same ways as the SDS, it means the SDS was acceptable rather than both of them being unacceptable.
PART OF THE UNION
Sanders then made a few tenuous claims about the limits of SDS activity. He unequivocally stated that the SDS did not have any involvement in industrial blacklisting. It did not target justice campaigns, members of parliament or trade unions directly, it was merely inevitable collateral collection while spying on other things.
Page from undercover officer Mark Jenner’s 1996 diary, showing his attendance at a UCATT meeting
Mr Sanders appears to have short-term memory issues. On Monday this week, David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry, confirmed that in its earliest years, the SDS spied on the Shrewsbury 2 Defence Committee, a group in support of trade union activists who’d been fitted up with charges after their invovlement in the 1972 building workers’ strike.
SDS officer Mark Jenner was a member of construction union UCATT.
Officer Carlo Soracchi was often on picket lines, and was photographed on an RMT picket in 2004 calling for the reinstatement of Steve Hedley.
Hedley went on to become general secretary of the union and is also a core participant at the Inquiry because it’s credibly established that he was spied on for his trade union activity.
Sanders said talk of the SDS spying on thousands of groups is wholly wrong. Once again, he’s arguing with the Inquiry itself, as that is the source of the fact that more than 1,000 groups were targeted. Sanders did not suggest what sort of figure he would like us to believe.
SPYCOPS STEALING DEAD CHILDREN’S IDENTITIES
Sanders then peeled a figurative onion and tried to sound a bit sad as he came to the issue of spycops stealing the identities of dead children to use as the basis of their undercover persona. He said it was invented in an earlier time when people felt differently about death and risk, and doing this to protect people who were still alive would probably have been OK with the families involved.
He said it was done because having a real birth certificate was the only way to prove a person was real. It was lawful, he reckoned, as ‘it didn’t involve quote-unquote theft’ he said. To the rest of the world, taking someone’s identity without the knowledge of them or their family and then using it to pretend to be them is a solid definition of identity theft.
Sanders said that though it was regrettable, if spycops hadn’t stolen dead children’s identities they would have been at greater risk of exposure, or else there would have to be no spycops and the alternative to that was paramilitary police on demonstrations. So, it was an unpalatable choice but obviously the best of a bad bunch.
This lawyer representing UK police officers, a force that supposedly prides itself on policing by consent, is saying anyone wanting to be politically active must put up with being targeted either by spycops violating fundamental rights in our homes or paramilitary police threatening us on the streets.
Spycops, Sanders informed us, understand why stealing dead child’s identity is upsetting, some were even uncomfortable doing it at the time, but they felt there was no choice. There was no pleasure taken in doing it, and the police hope that is of some comfort. He said it happened until the 1990s.
Sanders doesn’t explain why, once spycops were stealing dead kids identities and the Home Office Select Committee demanded families were told in 2013, the Met refused. In the end the Inquiry had to tell them recently.
SPYCOPS DECEIVING WOMEN INTO RELATIONSHIPS
Sanders said a couple of his clients admit to deceiving women into relationships while undercover, and just two of them say it was long-term. But, unable to deny established facts, he conceded that it appears a significant minority of SDS officers entered into such relationships. These shouldn’t have happened and were wrong, he said.
His excuse was that many of the officers who deceived women into relationships were unsuitable for undercover work, and officers who did so were personal failures who’d lost sight of what they were supposed to be doing. This is palpable nonsense; the very opposite is true. Such relationships were standard practice, known to the managers and seen as integral to the job.
Far from being seen as inadequate misfits, several of the officers who perpetrated them were appointed as role models. SDS officer Bob Lambert deceived at least four women he spied on into relationships and had a planned child with one of them. He was promoted to running the SDS, where he deployed numerous officers who did the same. He received an MBE for services to policing.
SDS officer Andy Coles groomed a vulnerable teenager known as Jessica into a year-long relationship when he was undercover in the early 1990s. He went on to be an SDS cover officer, before being appointed to train the first officers of the SDS’ sister unit the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). After that, he moved on to being Head of Training for the Association of Chief Police Officers’ Terrorism & Allied Matters committee, which oversaw the NPOIU.
SECRECY AND FEAR
Sanders then criticised the Inquiry itself. Its remit is too broad in covering 50 years. It’s also too narrow in only examining activity in England & Wales when spycops often went to other jurisdictions (like a stopped clock momentarily telling the right time, that last point is the bit of Sanders’ speech that does indeed have great merit).
Sanders accurately said that we can’t say what would have happened if there hadn’t been spycops. He then said the lack of this knowledge means the Inquiry will be inadequate, and that as we can’t say things would have been better, we can’t really say they were a bad thing overall.
He suggested that demonstrations may have been more violent and, as he did the previous day, invoked the death on protests of Kevin Gately and Blair Peach – both of whom were killed by police at events with heavily spied-on groups.
If Sanders’ reasoning were sound, we would expect any deaths to have been in unknown groups, and those who were infiltrated would have been safely policed. Instead, the very opposite happened. The spycops targeted the groups seen as dangerous threats, as did the most violent uniformed police in public order situations, all leading to the very worst consequences.
Sanders said a further limit on the Inquiry is the anonymity granted to many officers, including 34 out of the 74 he speaks for. This is, of course, the anonymity that officers have actively imposed on the Inquiry. But, Sanders said, if their identities were revealed some would be targeted and possibly killed.
Numerous spycops have been outed for years, including real names and photos. Some of them have outed themselves, appearing at advertised public events and doing media appearances. Many would be very easy to find. None have come to any harm, and it’s frankly insulting to victims to portray them as such a threat.
‘I’ve gone public with my real name. And I actually did take down some dangerous people. Ridiculous to suggest that UC’s are at risk having infiltrated London Greenpeace or CND etc. But besides that, I ALWAYS understood that my anonymity was a privilege not a right.’
Sanders said that there was some genuinely dangerous work done by SDS officers, so secret that the Inquiry can’t talk about it, meaning that people will only hear about the pointless and outrageous activity and not have things in balance.
This crooked logic pretends that it’s a balancing act, that if you catch enough bad guys it’s OK to abuse some passers-by. The Met have admitted that spycops deceiving women into relationships is a violation of human rights including the right to freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment. This is an absolute right that no circumstances can ever justify breaching. There is no pair of moral scales in which to put anything that can outweigh the abuses committed by spycops.
Despite all the admissions of abuse we’ve forced out of the Met in recent years, Sanders submitted that the SDS was lawful, effective and working in the public interest when gathering intelligence and helping MI5. ‘The SDS was a politically neutral cog as part of a much larger apparatus,’ he said.
There’s a right of free speech but no right to be heard or force views on others, he said. If we had a right to disrupt things without the police knowing it would have to be a right enjoyed by everyone and there would be mayhem. A lot of the groups targeted by the SDS wanted to promote their own views and suppress the views of opponents. It’s not fair to blame the SDS just because these groups had beliefs that were in conflict with the Met’s neutral job.
Richard Whittam spoke for Slater & Gordon clients, 12 individual undercover officers / managers.
He said that an uninitiated observer may think the Inquiry was just about spycops deceiving women into relationships, but it’s much more than that. However, it isn’t about blaming individual officers. The Inquiry will examine inappropriate deployment and tactics; management and supervisory structure, targeting and authorisation, reporting on justice campaigns, management’s attitude to relationships and commission of crime, the welfare of officers and their families. There are many more issues, Whittam said, but these are of particular importance to the people for whom he speaks.
Whittam said that officers can’t properly justify themselves because those who employed them adhere to the principle of ‘Neither Confirm Nor Deny‘ if anyone is an undercover officer (this tactic has been often been used by police to try to obstruct people getting the truth about spycops). The fact that the Met and Inquiry have confirmed the spycops, using ciphers to protect identity if they feel it necessary, means this assertion is simply not true in this case.
Officers committing crimes while undercover isn’t a problem, Whittam said, because there is some legal basis for allowing it. He expanded, saying the CHIS Bill proves the government see that commission of crime is an essential feature of undercover work in getting to the heart of groups that would cause the public harm. He didn’t pause to define public harm, nor to question whether the current government can be trusted as impartial and infallible moral arbiters.
Whittam turned to the personal well-being of the officers he was speaking for. He told us that their undercover careers and this Inquiry have had a significant impact on their mental health. He lamented that it was supposed to conclude in 2018 yet is only just beginning (neatly sidestepping that the bulk of the delays have come from the police).
Some of the officers he represents are further worried by campaigns to expose their identity. Some deceived women they spied on into relationships but, he said, it’s important not to judge the fact in isolation – one of these relationships continues to this day.
One of Whittam’s spycops, Jim Boyling, deceived several women into relationships. One of them, with a woman known as Rosa, was what Whittam termed “a consensual relationship, albeit with an undercover officer using his cover name, which was not regretted until more than a decade later when his true identity was known”.
‘If you put all these things together, you have a team of officers conspiring to rape’.
Boyling faced investigation for sexual offences for what he did. In addition to legal action for rape, he was subject to misconduct proceedings, and was sacked in 2018. Whittam said it’s all a heavy burden for Boyling to bear.
Is it credible that no manager knew about these relationships? Did any of them give approval? Perhaps, he speculated, there are too many for it to be possible to blame individual officers.
We shouldn’t blame them separately for the existence of what was clearly an institutionally accepted and encouraged tactic; for that, we must indeed go to the managers. But we can also certainly blame the undercover officers for perpetrating it.
But, he said, spycops committing crime is essential for national security and the prevention and detection of other people committing crime. So we need to see the Met’s 2015 apology to the women ‘in context’, by which he seemed to mean it should be disregarded.
Perhaps it was justified to have a relationship to build and maintain an undercover persona, Whittam said with the air of someone who hadn’t just cited the occasion on which the Assistant Commissioner of the Met officially and bluntly declared:
‘sexual relationships between undercover police officers and members of the public should not happen. The forming of a sexual relationship by an undercover officer would never be authorised in advance nor indeed used as a tactic of a deployment… I can say as a very senior officer of the Metropolitan Police Service that I and the Metropolitan Police are committed to ensuring that this policy is followed by every officer who is deployed in an undercover role’
Peter Francis was an SDS officer from 1993-98. Like many of his colleagues, he suffered serious mental distress and PTSD after his deployment ended. He sued the Met for lack of psychological care. In 2010, he blew the whistle on spycops with an interview for the Observer. He has been a major source of evidence for researchers and journalists.
David Lock began by saying that we simply wouldn’t have the Inquiry if it weren’t for Francis. But he’s not a policy maker or politician, he’s only of use here as an ex-spycop.
Those giving evidence at the Inquiry have immunity from prosecution based on what they say at the Inquiry, but this doesn’t extend to revelations made elsewhere.
Francis has had no assurance that he won’t be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act for what he has already revealed. Such a prosecution would leave him open to forfeiture of his pension. He is, declared Lock, hereby asking the Met Commissioner for a cast-iron assurance that he won’t be prosecuted nor have his pension removed because of past disclosures. He wants to receive this before giving evidence to the Inquiry.
On 14 March 2010 Francis began his journey of disclosure because he believes the public have a right to know what is done in their name and with their money. By 2011, the Guardian had published more articles with him using his cover name Peter Black, and in 2013 he unmasked himself. He said he came forward despite threats of prosecution, but he had some confidence that a case would not be brought against a whistle-blower acting in the public interest.
Whistle–blowing is usually of interest not just for the facts, said Lock, but for the failure of the institution to admit the truth early on. Whistle-blowers have inadequate protection, there is no support for those who do it after leaving a job, or release the info to the public domain. Francis faces the additional threat of the Official Secrets Act. Police are effectively banned from whistle-blowing, even if the facts are about public harm. The Met don’t recognise Francis as a whistle-blower, so he has no security.
Although he went public over ten years ago, and the Inquiry was set up more than five years ago, Francis hasn’t been asked to make a statement to the Inquiry, and memories are fading with time. The Inquiry is undermining itself by creating such delays. Under the current timetable, the Inquiry doesn’t intend to take evidence from Francis until 2023.
Lock continued to relay Francis’ thoughts, saying that it’s clear when Francis was undercover in the 1990s that there wasn’t proper governance or oversight to balance the needs of the police with the rights of targets. The Inquiry must decide whether this has changed much, but claims of procedural improvement must be taken with circumspection as they come from professional liars in defence of their position.
The duty of care owed to officers is routinely breached, according to Francis, because the Met doesn’t see the stress of lying and deceiving as part of one’s day job. Those who live untruths for extended periods will find themselves living in the psychological shadows.
Lock said that focus is quite rightly on victims of this barely and badly regulated activity, but dedicated spycops like Francis were badly failed by the state too. He had to resort to litigation, which was settled in 2006. He left the Met with fragile mental health having lost the real Peter Francis from living a lie for so long. There should be long term aftercare for spycops as PTSD is a long term condition.
LOOKING FOR TARGETS
Francis observed that those targeted by the SDS were supposed to be subversives seeking the undermining of the state, but this concept was conflated with the policies and convenience of the government of the day, and of economic interests.
The Vietnam War was the policy of a foreign government, yet opposition to it was seen as so subversive of the British state that the SDS was formed to counter it. None of the original target groups were proscribed. Francis believes it is never justified to spy on non-violent groups.
Such a draconian incursion into the lives of ordinary people expressing peaceable opposition to the government of the day is wholly unjustified, according to Francis. It beggars belief to allege that the Women’s Liberation Movement or Croydon Libertarians posed a threat to society.
Lock said that Francis is clear that undercover policing can destroy lives, both those of the spied upon and those of the officers themselves. It cannot be done lightly. Undercover policing is legitimate in the right circumstances, he says, but policing must be transparent and with the consent of the public.
Obviously, spycops wouldn’t be able to work if they were exposed at the time, but Francis suggests that some time after the deployment people could be told. He’s keen to be clear that he doesn’t have the expertise to speculate about timetables, but there must be a time when the state says who has been lied to and why it was justified, and be entitled to compensation if the targeting was unwarranted. Keeping the lid permanently on the box shouldn’t be an option.
It is an excellent point. The Thirty Year Rule lets us see secret Cabinet papers from 1990, yet we can’t see SDS files from 1970.
Angus McCullough QC
(Category M Core Participants: Families of Police Officers)
Angus McCullough QC
If there was any doubt as to how deep the institutional sexism of the spycops goes, look at how they treated their own wives. Angus McCullough represents three women who were wives of SDS officers.
McCullough said the women provide unique insight into the officers and the management. The Inquiry will hear many heart rending stories of betrayal and deceit, he said. The sacrifices of the wives went beyond anything they thought they were taking on. It has shattered their lives.
Each of the women has their own story, he said, but they all felt that being police wives was woven into their identity, as part of the wider police service. They felt pride in their husbands joining Special Branch, thinking they would be keeping people safe. They believed they were supporting their husbands in the fight for the good of the country.
McCullough described how they took on the burden of secrecy and fear of reprisals. They did it without any proper support from the Met. Years later they found out their marriages were based on lies. Their husbands’ jobs, of which they had been so proud, were vehicles for the worst kind of infidelity.
SDS Mark Jenner on holiday in Vietnam with Alison. Jenner is understood to have been in couples counselling with Alison & his wife at the same time, with both thinking they were his only partner
They saw the stress and anger that came with the spycop’s job. One had her husband tell her that they had to relocate the family at short notice, and was visited at home by manager Bob Lambert. She now doubts the necessity of this and other significant family decisions.
None had any idea that their husbands had relationships with women they spied on. All were shocked when they saw the media coverage.
Their children were born into relationships imbued with deceit. They saw them struggle with their fathers’ roles at the time, and had to help them negotiate this, then re–chart the relationships again after the publication of the awful truth. Neither the children nor the women got support.
They were an integral part of the process but also exploited by it. This is a unique position for the Inquiry. They saw close–up the impact on the officers and the lack of support. They occasionally met senior officers and have direct evidence about that and the veracity of what the managers said.
They can testify about the recruitment process into the SDS, including indications they specifically sought married men in order to ‘keep them grounded’ (i.e. outsource the stress relief and psychological care) without consideration of the damage it was likely to cause.
McCullough described how they were vetted as support for their husbands, but no support was offered to them.
SDS officer Carlo Soracchi on holiday in Bologna with Donna McLean
They were told that their husbands were infiltrating groups of serious violent criminals. When they found out the truth about the groups that were infiltrated they were horrified about how they’d been lied to.
They suffered further with the impact of their husbands’ unsocial hours, absences and missions abroad (which they now know included holidays with the women their husbands had deceived into relationships).
McCullough said the managers promised them support, yet this never materialised. With one exception, there has been no support at all since the scandal broke. They received no warnings before stories appeared in the media, even though the Met obviously knew it was going to happen. They had no support before during or after any of it.
McCullough said the women can also testify as to frequency of contact between spycops and managers, which was basically daily and gives the lie to claims managers didn’t know what undercover officers were up to.
The women who were deceived into relationships have received an apology, but not the wives of the same officers. Why has the Met not acknowledged the sacrifice they had to make and damage to them and their families?
McCullough described the women’s anguish as they’ve been left with so many questions unanswered. How much did their support make the officers a safe bet for spycop duty? Why were they encouraged to have kids even as the stresses piled up? What support were officers offered? Was there anything else the women weren’t told about? Why were the requests for support for wives ignored? Who in the SDS knew about spycops deceiving women into relationships? Were they authorised to have those relationships? Why weren’t wives told before they were made public?
Spycops should not deceive people they spy on into relationships. Nobody should be subjected to it, nor families have to deal with it. The wives are have been dismayed by the statements from police lawyers attempting to minimise and justify the abhorrent practice.
Rajiv Menon QC
(Core Participants represented by Richard Parry & Jane Deighton)
Rajiv Menon QC
Jane Deighton represents Audrey, Nathan & Richard Adams, the family of teenager Rolan Adams who was murdered by racists in February 1991 & whose campaign was one of those targeted by spycops. Jane also represents Duwayne Brooks, friend of Stephen Lawrence & prime witness to Stephen’s murder.
Richard Parry represents five targeted activists, two of whom – Tariq Ali & Ernest Tate – will supply evidence to the early phase of the hearings covering 1968-72.
Menon opened with a bold and blunt question: Why has it taken 2,065 days for the Undercover Policing Inquiry to start?
The original Chair, Lord Pitchford, hoped to finish it in 2018. Some delay is understandable as Pitchford fell ill and Sir John Mitting took over and had to get up to speed, and of course Covid hasn’t helped, but this only explains a fraction of the delay.
The main reason for the long wait, said Menon, is the police’s attempt to obfuscate, obstruct, undermine and delay. They made 148 applications for anonymity for real and cover names of spycops, they insisted every document be vetted before others involved see it. Meanwhile, some of the witnesses have died.
The applications for anonymity were not justified, said Menon. There is no evidence that officers would be at risk if they were identified – no harm has befallen any former officers, either those outed by activists, or those who have outed themselves. It is ironic that officers who invaded other people’s privacy so intensely now invoke their right to privacy at an Inquiry into their own misdeeds.
Police compounded this with mass shredding of documents. The Inquiry’s indulgence of police whims led victims to walk out of the Inquiry then processes in 2018. Little has improved since. Yet victims are still here, hoping for answers.
The Inquiry’s forerunner, ‘Operation Herne’, admitted some facts but sought to defend them and portray the problems as historic, as we might expect from a police self-investigation.
The choice is stark. Is this Inquiry also going to blame the victims and give the state a ‘get out of jail free’ card? Will it blame a few rogue officers? Or will it admit that, since 1968, the spycops have been rotten from top to bottom?
There are 219 victims who are core participants. There are surely thousands more who fit the criteria. Special thanks are due to the Undercover Research Group who have tried to list who was spied on, as neither the police nor Inquiry will publish the lists they have.
What do the victim core participants have in common? They were spied on due to direct, indirect, or perceived connection to social justice, be it against war, racism, inequality, police wrongdoing, animal cruelty, environmental destruction, the abuse of corporate power, or the exploitation of workers. Some were victimised simply for challenging a police narrative. Then we have families of children whose ID was stolen by spycops, wives of officers and a lawyer targeted.
Menon went on to list ten general points on the subject of the Inquiry.
1 – Incompatibility. Spycops’ activity is incompatible with a truly democratic society, being targeted just for having anti-establishment beliefs.
2 – Focus. The Inquiry wasn’t created by police wanting to confess, but by the work of people the police were abusing. Particularly, the women deceived into relationships, and Duwayne Brooks, Doreen Lawrence and Neville Lawrence. Also Rob Evans and Paul Lewis, whose book Undercover is a must-read on the subject. Political policing must remain the focus of the Inquiry. This wasn’t ‘serious and organised crime’.
3 – Scope. The Inquiry is about human interaction; only in England and Wales; only police not MI5. Any conclusions Inquiry reaches will this be partial and incomplete. MI5’s escape of scrutiny is alarming given that most spycops intelligence was shared with MI5 but the reverse isn’t true. Their role is essential to understand the issue.
4 – Disclosure. We must see the documents for ourselves, and in good time, if we are to properly engage. Giving Tariq Ali & Ernest Tate and their lawyers over 5,263 pages of evidence five weeks before the hearings is not good enough.
The Inquiry says it has over a million documents. How can we participate if we only belatedly see a tiny fraction of what documents are available? The Inquiry should supply all relevant documents, as in a criminal case.
With redactions, we should be told who made them – police or the Inquiry? On security or privacy grounds? Why were they needed? Some of the names of spied-on groups from 1968 were redacted. Why?
5 – Shredding. We feared spycops would do it, and they did. The Inquiry must investigate this. How can there be trust in police who have definitely shredded relevant files?
6 – Racism. The British police have always been permeated with racism at all ranks. The Macpherson Inquiry ruling of ‘institutional racism’ wasn’t news to black people, but it was the first admission from the state itself.
We’re concerned that the Chair presides alone without a diverse panel. The Chair told lawyers that Macpherson’s definition of racism is ‘controversial’. The Inquiry mustn’t reverse the progress made due to the courage of black people who’ve fought racism.
7 – Burden. The burden is on the police to explain spycops, not on the victims to justify their own actions. To dissect the politics of victims, turning the spotlight away from the police, is the politics of victim-blaming.
8 – Responsibility. The Inquiry failed to ask the state participants to supply their position in advance, so we’re only just finding out what the agencies think. Some of these opening statements have defended abuse of women by spycops by talking about undercover work against serious and organised crime. This is a red herring, spycops were never about this.
9 – Participation. After next week, the only Inquiry live-streaming is to the Chair’s home and one limited venue in London for which booking has closed. The Grenfell and Child Sexual Abuse inquiries are live-streamed – even closed hearings get streamed to the core participants, lawyers and accredited journalists via secure lines. The Inquiry’s proposed live transcription is not adequate.
Reading is not equivalent to, or even close to being equivalent to, the experience of seeing and hearing a witness give evidence, either in person or on screen. It is also impractical to expect people to read five to six hours of transcript each sitting.
This is an Inquiry with hearings shrouded in secrecy, with most of the police hidden from the public. A time delay in the streaming would avoid any wrong things being broadcast, as other Inquiries are doing.
Which non-state participants are excluded from coming to the venue to see the live-stream? Those who can’t travel; black, disabled and older people are especially at risk. This is a breach of Equalities Act obligations.
Even now, the Inquiry can set up a secure link. If the Chair can have this, why can’t others involved.
10 – Objectives. Participants want answers, chapter and verse, not just scraps. Full disclosure, seeing their full files, complete access as Stasi victims had. They want to know when they were spied on, who authorised, who else saw it?
If the Inquiry does have people’s files, why can’t the subjects even see a redacted version? If the Inquiry doesn’t have them, how can they do their job?
WHAT DO WE WANT? WHEN DO WE WANT IT?
Menon concluded his contribution for the day by saying what the people he speaks for want to see as outcomes, and why the defences we’ve heard from police representatives in the last three days should be brushed aside.
We want it publicly declared that spying on us was wrong. We want the full disbanding of the political policing units, and nothing like them to exist ever again.
Since the 1880s, Special Branch has spied on suffragettes, socialists, pacifists, anti-colonialists and more. Ideas are policed; that’s what Special Branch is there for. But in 1968 things changed, and spycops began living undercover as activists for years on end. The SDS were different from other undercovers by gathering intelligence, rather than evidence for use in trials, so their activities went without scrutiny for decades. The SDS was never about detecting crime, but spying on political opponents of the status quo.
The SDS had a clear political orientation to the right of the spectrum. Officers were politically vetted. Targets were initially all on the left. This was secret, anti-democratic political policing. Only in the late 1970s did a couple of far-right groups attract attention.
There appear to have been no safeguards to check if this spying was justified, necessary or proportional, or its methods ethical or lawful. It was given free rein, regardless of norms and values.
Today, the 70th anniversary of the signing of the European Convention on Human Rights, police lawyers are telling the Inquiry ‘don’t judge 1968 by our standards’, as if people in the 60s didn’t care about human rights and liberty.
We have a host of regulations and supposed oversight bodies. So are spycops’ excesses a thing of the past? It would be extremely naive to assume the police have learned and moved on. Note the reluctance of Counsel for the Met to answer Inquiry’s questions about current policing yesterday: The CHIS Bill demolishes our belief in the effectiveness of oversight, placing no limits on state agents from committing crime, and bars victims from seeking legal redress.
Rajiv Menon will conclude his statement on the morning of 5 November.
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.
After months of stalling, the Home Office has finally decided to exclude spycops activities in Scotland from the Pitchford inquiry into undercover policing.
In a letter to Neil Findlay MSP on 25 July 2016, Policing Minister Brandon Lewis said that Theresa May had taken the decision as one of her final acts as Home Secretary.
Rather like an American president’s cluster of controversial pardons or David Cameron’s showering of honours on undeserving acolytes, it appears to be the act of pulling the pin out and running, knowing they will be out of the blast radius when it goes boom.
The letter confirming Scotland’s exclusion goes on at length about how the Inquiry is unable to change the terms of reference. We know, that’s why we didn’t go to the Inquiry but instead addressed the Home Secretary who made up the terms of reference and can change them at will. This isn’t the law of gravity we want altering.
The Home Office say the Inquiry will get the general idea of undercover policing from only looking at events in England and Wales. This is an outright betrayal of the people and campaigns abused by spycops in Scotland and elsewhere.
The Pitchford inquiry should not be about getting a rough idea of what happened in order to ‘learn lessons’. It should give the public and victims the truth and, from there, the chance of justice.
Every instance of these things should be exposed wherever it happened, every officer should be held accountable. Every person affected deserves to know what was done to them and the state should give them all the support and opportunity for redress that they need.
It was the same officers doing the same things in Scotland. No other organisation would be allowed to say ‘we have apologised to a few of the people we harmed, so let’s keep all the rest secret’.
The Home Office letter says the inquiry may choose to take information about miscarriages of justice seriously and pass them on to other agencies. It says nothing about the inquiry seeking out such information as part of its inquisitorial role. Given that events in Scotland are outside its remit, Pitchford may even feel bound to deny the chance for such evidence to be given.
The Home Office refer to the lack of time to fit any change in, even though the Scottish government formally requested inclusion seven months ago and the inquiry hasn’t started yet.
This is also a constitutional issue. The snub will appear to many in Scotland as further proof of Westminster treating the nation as a second class part of the United Kingdom.
In the Scottish Parliament debate a month ago, all parties were united in their desire for inclusion in the Pitchford inquiry. The SNP were repeatedly asked if, as the four opposition parties desired, there would be a separate Scottish inquiry in the event of exclusion. The spokesperson for the government dodged the question on the grounds that there was no exclusion yet. That time is over.
Seen in tandem with the recent denial of ‘core participant’ status to people who have been intensively targeted by spycops, the refusal to include Scotland suggests a worrying trend in the inquiry’s organisation, shutting out essential elements before it has even begun.
Those who know they were spied upon will surely be willing to tell their stories in an arena that takes them seriously. Perhaps a Scottish inquiry would take a more open approach than Pitchford and may even become the more credible of the two.
The full text of the letter to Neil Findlay MSP:
Brandon Lewis MP
Minister of State for Policing and the Fire Service
25 July 2016
Dear Neil,
Thank you for your correspondence of 1 June addressed to the former Home Secretary on behalf of your fellow MSPs regarding your position that the scope of the undercover policing inquiry should be extended to include Scotland. I am replying as the Minister of State for Policing and the Fire Service.
The current terms of reference for the undercover policing inquiry specify that it should ‘…inquire into and report on undercover police operations conducted by English and Welsh police forces in England and Wales’. This geographical limitation reflects both the police forces involved and the scope of the Home Office’s responsibility for policing.
For a number of reasons, it is not possible to expand the geographical scope of the inquiry without formally amending the terms of reference. The Inquiry chairman has a wide discretion as to which documents he reviews as being appropriate within the terms of reference. However, given the parameters of the inquiry established by the terms of reference, he will not be able to make any determinations or recommendations with regard to activities within any other jurisdiction, even if such evidence is submitted. If the inquiry were to look at evidence relating to another jurisdiction, for example because it was implied that they should do so, a risk arises that it would be acting outside of its powers, as defined in the terms of reference.
The former Home Secretary carefully considered the representations made regarding the extension of the undercover policing inquiry beyond England and Wales. The inquiry as it stands is extensive and complex, with around 200 core participants. Amending the terms of reference at this stage would require further consultation and delay the progress of the inquiry. In the interests of learning lessons from past failures and improving public confidence, it is important that the inquiry can proceed quickly and make recommendations as soon as possible. The Home Office is confident the inquiry can both gain an understanding of historical failings and make recommendations to ensure unacceptable practices are not repeated without the need to consider every instance of undercover policing, wherever it was under taken. On balance, therefore, the former Home Secretary has confirmed she does not intend to amend the terms of reference.
You may be aware that there have been suggestions that, as an alternative to changing the terms of reference, the inquiry could pass any relevant evidence it receives to another organisation to consider. As the inquiry is independent, it can not be directed to do so – although the Inquiry may, of its own volition, do this if it considers this appropriate (for example, because evidence received reveals a potential miscarriage of justice or criminal conduct). During the lifetime of the Inquiry any material which it receives will only be passed to a third party with the express permission of the supplier of that information.
Once the Inquiry is concluded, all material will be lodged with the National Archives and the usual rules of access to archived material will then apply.
L-R: Kate Wilson, Helen Steel, Belinda Harvey and their lawyer Harriet Wistrich at their press conference, 20 November 2015 (Pic: Danny Shaw, BBC)
It’s an extraordinary statement by any standards. Even when the police pay large compensation, they usually do so with no admission of culpability for anything. But last Friday they issued a detailed, unreserved apology for the abuse of women who had relationships with undercover police officers.
Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt even made a video of the admission, bluntly stating for the record that the relationships were
abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong. I acknowledge that these relationships were a violation of the women’s human rights, an abuse of police power and caused significant trauma…
Most importantly, relationships like these should never have happened. They were wrong and were a gross violation of personal dignity and integrity.
The outrageousness and severity of how these women were treated is finally an acknowledged, settled fact.
MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS
Some of the harrowing, heart wrenching impacts were spelled out by Lisa Jones – partner of Mark Kennedy for six years and whose discovery of his true identity brought the issue to light – when she gave her first ever interview on Friday.
This has affected my whole view of the state and it went as deep as my womb
Kate Wilson’s description of what was done to her was similarly powerful, and her highlighting of the continuing lack of transparency – “the police have made no effort whatsoever to provide any kind of answers” – shows that all this is far from over.
It echoes what was said a year ago when the Met settled the first such case. Jacqui, who had a child with Bob Lambert, received £425,000 compensation but said
The legal case is finished but there is no closure for me. There is the money, but there is no admission by the police that what they did was wrong, there is no meaningful apology and most importantly there are no answers.
Although Friday’s apology is a major historic victory, it is only confirming that what the women already know to be true. There is so much more still hidden from view.
As Gayle Newland starts her eight year sentence for creating a false identity to deceive someone into a sexual relationship, it’s pretty clear that if this gang of men weren’t police officers they would already be behind bars. Nobody else would get away with just giving an apology and a cheque from public funds.
In order to prosecute misconduct in public office, the prosecution would have to show that an officer knowingly abused their position in order to bring a sexual relationship about
It is hard to see how anyone could say anything else now. The Met have just conceded that the relationships didn’t just happen but
none of the women with whom the undercover officers had a relationship brought it on themselves. They were deceived pure and simple…. [it was] an abuse of police power
STRATEGIC INSTITUTIONAL SEXISM
But even now, the Met can’t quite admit the whole truth. They
accept that it may well have reflected attitudes towards women that should have no part in the culture of the Metropolitan Police
They still can’t bring themselves to use the word ‘sexism’. The Met is institutionally sexist as well as institutionally racist. This cannot ever change if they refuse to fully face the facts, and in this apology they just shied away once again.
Police say relationships were never authorised in advance and were never used tactically. But the overwhelming majority of known officers – all but two – did it. Most had long-term, committed life-partner relationships. One of them, Bob Lambert, lived with a woman and fathered a child before going on to run the unit, overseeing protegee officers who did the same thing, including ones involved in this week’s settlement. He must surely have known.
Sometimes officers were deployed together. Certainly, Lambert, Marco Jacobs and Lynn Watson saw colleagues having relationships. So, did they fail to report this ‘grossly unprofessional, never allowed’ behaviour to their seniors (thereby placing themselves at risk if they were ever found out)? Or did they report it but their bosses didn’t intervene? Or was it, as it appears, an established, accepted tactic?
PULLING BACK THE SHROUD OF SECRECY
Three years ago police lawyers said relationships weren’t authorised, trying to blame individual ‘rogue officers’ and shield managers from responsibility. But then it was pointed out that if this was unauthorised behaviour then it wasn’t covered by the rules governing surveillance in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. If that were so then any case would be heard in open court instead of a secret tribunal where the womens’ side weren’t allowed. So those same lawyers went back to the same court and argued that relationships were actually authorised after all.
That was just one twist in the course of the four years and hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ pounds police spent trying to stop these women bringing the facts to light. The blanket use of “Neither Confirm Nor Deny” to refuse to even admit anyone was a police officer was an additional insulting hurdle to make the path to truth more gruelling.
It’s a pattern familiar from so many other justice campaigns – there’s the injustice of what the police did, then the double injustice of the cover-up, smearing and legal obstacles that follow.
The apology statement rightly mentioned the extra distress caused by the protracted legal case and paid tribute to the tenacity and mettle of the women.
Even now, having just paid compensation and apologised to the women abused by John Dines and Mark Jenner, the police have not actually confirmed they were Special Demonstration Squad officers.
Nonetheless, the apology, like the agreement to be liable for damages paid to people spied on by Marco Jacobs, is effectively an admission that these men were police. It is another hammer blow to the devious, farcical tactic of Neither Conform Nor Deny. With the public inquiry still to come, that is significant.
A GRAIN OF TRUTH – TIME FOR THE HARVEST
All the appalling abuse these women suffered came from just five police officers. Even this isn’t the end of it – there are several other similar cases are still ongoing, including more partners of Mark Kennedy and Marco Jacobs.
We only know of the exposed officers due to the investigations and luck of activists and journalists. These are not necessrily the worst of them, merely what chance has revealed. There is so much more beyond. We have the names of around a dozen officers, less than 10% of those known to have worked undercover in the political secret police units.
How many other women were similarly abused? How many other children searching for their fathers are doomed to failure because it’s a name a police officer made up or stole from a dead child? How many campaigns were stymied? What other outrages have occurred that none of the known officers committed? At least 500 groups and uncountable thousands of individuals were spied on. They all have a right to know.
If these seven women deserve justice, so do the rest. If the public deserves the truth it deserves the whole truth, not somewhere under 10% of it.
The only way we will get the truth is if those who were targeted tell their stories. The only way that can happen is if they know that their former friend and comrade was in fact a police spy. If the Inquiry is to serve its purpose, and if the Met are truly contrite, then they must publish the cover names of all undercover officers from the political policing units.
inquire into and report on undercover police operations conducted by English and Welsh police forces in England and Wales since 1968.
This
will include, but not be limited to, the undercover operations of the Special Demonstration Squad and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit.
More than half the exposed officers from those units worked outside England and Wales. They spied in at least seventeen different countries over a period of 25 years (the Undercover Research Group has produced a detailed list of dozens of instances). If this is the case with the known officers, it’s safe to presume many of their colleagues did it too.
Some officers are known to have committed crimes whilst working undercover abroad. It’s more than two years since German MP Andrej Hunko told the UK parliament.
Mark Kennedy was accused and found guilty of an arson attack in Berlin. But he was giving evidence in court under his false name to escape legal proceeding under his real name.
This is exactly the sort of thing that is the subject of the inquiry – if it’s in England and Wales. If the British police are farming these activities out on a large scale to dozens of countries it surely warrants proper investigation.
Conversely, Hunko has discovered that German police sent numerous undercover officers to the anti-G8 protests in Scotland in 2005. It is hardly likely to have been a one-off.
If an officer’s actions are an outrage in England and Wales, the same deed is equally an outrage if committed elsewhere. Who is responsible if an English undercover officer commits crimes whilst working abroad? What protects the public from foreign spies here? What deals are done between governments? If these officers aren’t reined in when working in the UK, are they even more cavalier toward citizens, laws and rights when away from their overseers?
As it stands, the Pitchford Inquiry appears uninterested in the answers. Its stated aim is to explore “the motivation for and scope of, undercover policing operations in practice and their effect upon individuals in particular and the public in general”. The geographical blinkers are a barrier to this. If it refuses to look at a significant element of the work of many officers, the inquiry cannot get a thorough overview and so undermines its very purpose.
This restriction in the Terms of Reference was handed to Pitchford and his team by the Home Secretary. It’s time for the inquiry, and others, to insist that she drops this clause.
If it is to be credible, the Pitchford Inquiry must give equal weight to equivalent actions and experiences of undercover officers and their victims, wherever they happened to be. The limit of England and Wales has to go.
= = = = = = = = = = =
British undercover officers and the countries they worked in
Mark Kennedy
A 2012 report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary refers to Kennedy professionally visiting 11 countries on more than 40 occasions, including 14 visits to Scotland. As with so much else, officialdom has not been forthcoming and the real work has been done by spied-on activists and allied journalists. It appears these countries included:
Mark Jenner
1. Israel
2. Greece
3. Netherlands
4. Thailand
5. Vietnam
6.Ireland
7. Northern Ireland
8. Scotland
In Northern Ireland, Jenner took campaigners on a trip to republican West Belfast and Derry which included meeting Sinn Fein councillors. He also took part in fighting when nationalists clashed with a loyalist Apprentice Boys of Derry march.
Marco Jacobs 1. Poland
2. Germany
3. France
4. Scotland
As with the huge stack of similar reports on the issue, it gives us quite a few dry facts and criticises some administration but fails to tackle the key, shocking issues.
It reveals that 1,229 officers are trained for undercover work. However the police’s National Undercover Index only lists 568 of them. This ‘renders the database unsuitable to the task for which it was created,’ says the report.
Seven types of deployment are listed, but there is no mention of the political spycops. For a report commissioned as a response to the revelation that the Stephen Lawrence campaign had been spied on, after several years’ groundswell following the exposure of Mark Kennedy in 2010, this is no mere oversight. It’s a dodge.
Campaigning for social justice or for the proper investigation of the death of a loved one due to incompetent or malevolent police is left entirely unmentioned in all 206 pages, unless they somehow count among ‘those who seek to commit serious crimes, eg acts of terrorism’.
The report is only critical of administration, training and support for officers, rather than the impacts on citizens and the sinister intent of certain undercover operations. It essentially saying that a little bit more oversight and authorisation will make everything alright.
The authors find it ‘reassuring’ there is apparently ‘a universal understanding by the undercover officers and those managing them’ that intimate relationships aren’t allowed and ‘there are good safeguards in place’ to prevent it.
But out of the 14 spycops so far exposed, 13 had sexual relations with citizens they spied on. Threehad kids. One – Bob Lambert – became a manager overseeing a new crop of officers who did it. Citizens have not been ‘protected’ from the most complete invasion of privacy that it is possible for the state to enact. They have been subjected to it in such a comprehensive way that it can only be seen as accepted standard practice and strategy.
It shows a staggering amount of gall to even suggest that there is ‘universal acceptance’ of it being wrong and there is therefore no problem.
There are 49 recommendations at the end of the report. None are about the known outrages of these relationships, let alone others such as undermining family justice cases and political campaigns, and the police collusion with illegal corporate activity.
We need a simple law that bans sexual relationships whilst undercover outright. It is already illegal in Germany for spies to have sexual relations in their undercover persona and German society is not suffering because of that restriction. It is needless, inexcusable institutionalised sexism.
But the report tells us that
if society wants the police to identify & apprehend some of its most dangerous criminals, it has to allow individual police officers to “get their hands dirty”.
The report does concede that the ‘neither confirm nor deny’ (NCND) policy “is not grounded in legislation” & mustn’t be used if it risks a miscarriage of justice. This is to be welcomed. But as words in isolation, it is meaningless. Police lawyers are obstructing a legal bid for justice by a group of women, saying that NCND is essential. Those same lawyers also argued that the supposedly safeguarded-from sexual relationships are actually legally authorised. The women’s group has already condemned the new report.
This report is yet another bucket of bitter whitewash written by police and their associates. It insults those who’ve been abused by the undercover officers from the counter-democratic political police units. Beyond that, it insults anyone who believes in the right to make a stand for environmental and social justice.
It is another decoy, papering over deep cracks in a rotten architecture. It must not distract from the need for a full, open, public inquiry that examines each aspect of undercover political policing in detail and takes testimony from all those impacted by it. COPS will continue to campaign for such an inquiry.
We will continue to host events and support those organised by the various groups and individuals who have been targeted. You can support our campaign by coming to those events and getting your trade union, campaigning organisation or other group to affiliate to us.
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Undercover Policing Inquiry
Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 4
