The legal team working for the public inquiry into Britain’s political secret police recently condemned the controversial spying. Next week – 20th to 22nd February – the government, police and victims will respond.
Next week, (Monday 20th to Wednesday 22nd February) there will be three days of presentations to conclude ‘Tranche 1’ of the Inquiry’s evidence, examining spying from 1968-1982).
The Inquiry will hear closing submissions summing up what has been learned so far about the secret and unlawful operations, the shocking tactics employed from the start, and how this was backed and covered up for decades at the highest level of successive governments.
In a devastating blow to the Metropolitan Police and the reputations of former senior police officers, as well as the Home Office civil servants and politicians who oversaw them, the Inquiry’s own legal team have concluded that the authorities ‘should have decided to disband’ the whole operation decades ago.
NEW HEARINGS
Next week’s hearings will be broadcast live on YouTube, with statements presented by the Inquiry Legal Team, the Secretary of State, the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, and lawyers acting for the range of non-State non-police Core Participants targeted.
Full details of the schedule for the presentation of the Tranche 1 Closing Statements, 20th to 22nd February, are on the Inquiry website (Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3). The written submissions will be made public on the day they are read out.
The hearings are a watershed moment as it’s a review of what has been achieved so far by this very slow moving, controversial and expensive Inquiry (£60m costs was the last official estimate).
The Inquiry, originally due to finish in 2018, is now due to be completed by 2026, but preliminary conclusions regarding the period 1968-1982 ( ‘Tranche 1’) will be made in an Interim Report by the Chair, Sir John Mitting, later this year (forecast to be this summer).
It has been demonstrated that the entire undercover policing operation since 1968, led by the Metropolitan Police, has been a scandalous politically motivated attack on progressive campaigns and their members, carried out mainly for and at the behest of the Security Service. Recently disclosed documents have revealed even further the institutional racism within the Metropolitan Police.
CATALOGUE OF ABUSE
It has been demonstrated by the evidence presented at the Inquiry that the surveillance was conducted without any ethical considerations regarding the severe impacts it had on freedom of expression or personal privacy.
The tactics included invading people’s homes and lives, the abuse of women, stealing deceased children’s identities, spying on children, infiltrating family justice campaigns , the blacklisting of trade unionists, taking positions of influence and power within organisations targeted, and brazen interference with the justice system which led to unfair trials and wrongful convictions.
We now know that most, if not all, of the Special Branch reports were copied to MI5. These practices were all signed off by senior civil servants and was a closely guarded secret at the highest level of Government.
Thanks to the campaigners, the victims and lawyers who have worked so hard to expose all this, the shocking reality of this surveillance has at last been revealed – the results of the Inquiry so far are devastating for the police, Security Service and Government.
DEMANDING THE TRUTH
A spokesperson from Police Spies Out of Lives, representing the women targeted for abusive relationships (whose closing submissions will be presented on Tuesday), said:
“Thanks to years of efforts by campaigners the authorities are now on the back foot. We love how far we have shifted the official narrative: from ‘neither confirm nor deny’, through ‘just a few bad apples’, to ‘some unlawful operations’, and now ‘an entire force and policing culture that is rotten to the core’ and sanctioned by the State.”
Dave Morris, a campaigner who was targeted for at least 30 years from the mid-1970s onwards, and who will be delivering his own Statement next Tuesday afternoon, said:
“The Inquiry’s official legal team has concluded that the political spycops should have been closed down decades ago. This would have prevented the shocking and unacceptable targeting of over 1,000 organisations and movements backed by millions of people, campaigning against government policy and for a better society.
The nauseating tactics employed including the serial abuse of women show that the scandals currently engulfing the Met over toxic racism and sexism in police culture are nothing new.
We continue to press for full disclosure about these secretive units, a public apology to all those targeted, and a guarantee from the government that such spying will never be allowed again.
In the face of the the many serious challenges humanity is facing, movements for positive social change are needed more than ever.”
The third day of the 2022 Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings concerning the management of the Special Demonstration Squad 1968-82 included opening statements from:
Rajiv Menon QC (representing Tariq Ali, Piers Corbyn and Ernie Tate) Dave Morris (activist, Inquiry core participant) Kirsten Heaven (representing Other Non-Police, Non-State Core Participants [through the co-ordinating group])
Summary of Evidence of ‘Madeleine’ and Julia Poynter
Rajiv Menon QC (representing Tariq Ali, Piers Corbyn and the interests of Ernie Tate)
NB: Ernie Tate sadly passed away in 2021, without receiving any meaningful disclosure from the Inquiry.
SECRET HEARINGS AND MASSIVE REDACTIONS
Rajiv Menon QC
First of all, Mr Menon spoke about the secret hearings that have been held during the last year, known as the ‘T1P4 hearings’. In his view, it is “fundamentally wrong and unfair” to conduct closed hearings as part of a so-called ‘Public Inquiry’.
The transcripts of those hearings have been heavily redacted, and we are told that this is being done “in the public interest”. Evidence was taken from five officers in T1P4, but we are not being told their real or cover names. Instead of being supplied with copies of their evidence, we have a document of ‘Unattributed Excerpts‘.
This was especially ridiculous in the case of officer HN21:
“an officer who was perfectly willing 20 years ago to speak openly about his undercover role in the BBC documentary True Spies, is unable to give evidence in open session to a Public Inquiry.”
This is someone who admitted having a sexual relationship with at least one woman, but we have not been permitted to question him or find out more about this.
It is estimated that 50% of the evidence gathered during T1P4 has been redacted, and might therefore remain secret forever. Menon repeated the request he made last year – that the Inquiry reconsider the need for such redactions, and commit to regularly reviewing decisions about disclosure, so that names and information can be made public in future if circumstances change.
POLICE VIOLENCE
Mounted police intimidate protesters, Southall,, 23 April 1979 [Pic: John Sturrock]
This secrecy was also wrong in the case of officer HN41 who is of great importance to understanding what happened at the anti-racist demonstration in Southall on 23rd April 1979, when Blair Peach was murdered by the Met’s Special Patrol Group and Tariq Ali and many others were severely beaten by police officers.
HN41 says that he was warned by senior Special Branch officers not to go with his target group “because the uniform police were going to clamp down on the demonstrations” and “management considered the dangers were more than normal”.
Mr Menon states there is no doubt uniformed police were under secret orders to use violence at anti-fascist demonstrations. Meanwhile intelligence from the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) seemed to heighten a view within the police that all anti-fascist demonstrators were subversives so fair game for police truncheons.
POLITICAL BIAS
According to DI Angus McIntosh (officer HN244), there was a “high level policy decision” not to infiltrate extreme right-wing groups. This confirms what we already knew about the prejudiced nature of SDS surveillance. Yet, given HN41’s observations, who exactly made this decision and why?
Mr Menon asks us to bear in mind that the SDS was an integral part of the secret state. Senior offices and politicians were well aware of the SDS’ existence, something borne out by the disclosure we have had.
He also lets the comments of SDS manager Geoffrey Craft (officer HN34) about “mob rule”, “lefties” and “scruffy, hairy so-and-so’s” speak for themselves, having described it as “classic ‘Reds under the Bed’ stuff with a dose of McCarthyism thrown in for good measure” [Inquiry document number MPS-0747446, not yet published on the Inquiry website].
GOOD – FOR NOTHING?
Following up on his earlier points on HN41, he addresses the claimed success of SDS in combating public disorder by asking:
“Are Red Lion Square, Grunwick, Lewisham and Southall supposed to be police ‘successes’? If so, perhaps this gives the measure of what the police were trying to achieve at the time”.
Really “scraping the justification barrel” is the suggestion that the unit’s usefulness includes working out that some groups pose no threat at all, by infiltrating them for long periods of time (which we see in many of the SDS Annual Reports).
ALTERNATIVE INTELLIGENCE GATHERING METHODS
He next looked at whether there were less harmful ways of collecting intelligence, using the case of SDS officer Roy Creamer and the anarchist scene of the late 60s/ early 70s. DI Creamer was described by noted anarchist Stuart Christie as “the Yard’s dialectician of dissent.”
Creamer was curious as to what made anarchists tick. He was the epitome of what Menon called the ‘direct approach’, as opposed to the ‘oblique approach’ developed by Conrad Dixon and the other spycops.
Instead of going undercover, he established friendly relationships with targets and talked to them. The barrister suggested the ‘direct approach’ was a proportionate and less damaging approach to the gathering of intelligence than the SDS method.
However, we at the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance strongly recommend you never talk to coppers, especially if they seem friendly!
SDS & MI5
Menon next moved to a theme of increasing importance in the Inquiry – the relationship between the SDS and the Security Service (aka MI5) [see Inquiry document MPS-0747446 when they upload it to the Inquiry site].
He emphasised the Security Service’s interest in this new unit from the moment it was founded. They recognised the Squad’s potential value as a long-term intelligence gathering operation against all those it deemed ‘subversive’. If anything;
“MI5 were the organ grinders, and SDS were the monkeys. Only the monkeys did not know to whose tune they were really dancing.”
Even Craft says that: “the Branch were the legs of the Security Service… SDS was only a development of that”, and that the SDS provided the Security Service with “a huge base of information for their vetting activity”.
His name appears in multiple SDS reports released by the Inquiry. He was active in various anarchist and environmental groups:
“I have been involved since 1974 in a range of groups and campaigns trying to encourage the public to support one another and empower themselves where they live and work, to challenge injustice, oppression and damage to the environment, and to make the world a better place for everyone.
“The various groups I have been involved in over the decades have been open and collectively-run, and engaged in the kind of public activities which the public are invited to join in or to replicate for themselves, and which are essential if humanity is to progress and survive.”
These groups challenged the government and powerful companies, as well as ruthless and unaccountable elites which were ‘subversive of society and people’s real needs.’
Morris said:
“I am proud of the many groups and campaigns I have been involved in and believe that such efforts should be supported, not undermined.”
Having noted that the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, had been furnished with an education in Trotskyism from Tariq Ali, Morris correspondingly provided Mitting with a primer on anarchism, explaining that some institutions simply cannot be reformed but must be replaced by genuine democracy.
Morris mentioned one spycop, ‘Tony Williams’ (officer HN20), who became treasurer and secretary of the London Workers Group and whose reporting was no doubt passed on to the Security Service for blacklisting purposes. Apparently the SDS told the Security Service they considered Williams’ withdrawal from the field ‘no great loss’ as he had not been ‘particularly productive’.
Morris criticised the Inquiry for continued delays and other problems to do with the publication of documents – some of which were released so late in the day that there was insufficient time for anyone to process them properly.
Morris was particularly critical of the police and the Inquiry for failing to prioritise the welfare of the spycops’ victims. He made the point that those undercover officers had a duty of care towards the public. The police’s sudden championing of privacy and human rights, when it came to applying for anonymity, was hypocritical and self-serving, and only because they themselves were now being exposed to public scrutiny.
Finally, in a slightly surreal moment, Mitting asked Morris which book he would select from his list if he could only pick one. Dave unhesitantly went for Peter Marshall’s Demanding the Impossible, although he warned that it was a “weighty tome”.
Kirsten Heaven (representing the ‘Non State Non Police Core Participants, through the coordinating group’)
In previous hearings we heard shocking evidence of what Heaven described as “an unjustifiable, unlawful, and profoundly anti-democratic system of surveillance that was fundamentally flawed”.
Managers are now in the spotlight to answer for that regime. However:
“The witness statements disclosed in this Inquiry contain a litany of denials and an apparent unwillingness to accept responsibility or admit knowledge on key decision making and events. The managers appear reluctant to give a full and honest explanation of why things went so badly wrong within the SDS in the Tranche 1 era (1968-1982), and beyond.”
Basically, if they retain a sense of loyalty to the police, it is deeply misplaced, Heaven said, referring to the recent appalling exposures:
“This is an institution which has been found to be institutionally racist, institutionally corrupt and marred by a culture of toxic masculinity, homophobia, misogyny, and sexual harassment.”
OVERSIGHT
These managers emphasised to their funders at the Home Office how robust their supervision of the undercovers was. Yet there was no code of conduct or formal training.
“Did the managers conceal these practices from their political masters or was it – as the non-state co-operating group suspect – that the cover-up went to the highest political level?”
In order to understand the problems of the SDS we must understand who controlled the unit, and the extent to which the SDS was being directed by the likes of other parts of Special Branch and the Security Service, referred to as the ‘customers’.
Worryingly, there is disclosed evidence that although they were aware of the problems, the Home Office and senior police officers all turned a blind eye. This meant there was no effective external oversight of the SDS, or of wider Special Branch.
Police detain man, Lewisham, 13 August1977
Additionally, both the Home Office and the Security Service knew that the SDS activities of the time were unlawful. This was the reason for shrouding it in secrecy, a secrecy that allowed the abuses to flourish.
As raised in other Opening Statements, a problematic definition of ‘subversion’ was used to justify reporting on pretty much anything and anyone. The Security Service was able to exercise its influence over the affairs of Special Branch to shape how the unit operated.
Senior police officers were willing to go along with this, and ignore the lack of public order benefits of these deployments. Claims that the SDS benefited and improved the police’s attitudes to public order simply don’t stand up. Heaven used the events of Red Lion Square, Southall and Lewisham as examples. The Brixton riots of 1981 demonstrated just how useless the unit when it came to predicting or preventing public disorder.
There was no real attempt to evaluate the usefulness of the unit more generally. Annual Reports were written up in order to justify its existence and ongoing funding. It was the duty of the managers “to consider the threat to freedom of speech and democratic principles posed by the SDS”, and they failed to do this.
MANAGEMENT OF THE SDS
Heaven noted that the SDS was managed loosely and wonders whether the early ‘free and easy’ style became the blueprint for the future. Despite claims of close supervision, the managers remained blind to the various sexual relationships, and the sexist banter, of these officers.
As to the standardisation of the lengths of deployments to four years, she wants to know if there was a “positive and considered managerial decision to extend all deployments well beyond twelve months”, adding:
“It is not rocket science that the longer a UCO [undercover officer] is deployed, the greater chance there is of collateral intrusion, the development of close personal ties, sexual and intimate relationships, misconduct and abuse of power and trust”.
The lack of training given to both undercover officers and their managers is concerning. The Inquiry must look at what basic police training was at the time to understand how much they knew about legal principles such as entering private property without a search warrant or conduct issues such as sexual relationships while on duty. How did the managers reconcile this with the activities of the SDS?
DODGY REPORTING
As previously evidenced, there is much reporting which is distressing and inappropriate, peppered as it is with racism and misogyny. Nobody pointed it out at the time. The SDS managers all now say that these reports were produced for others to comment on, evaluate and use.
However, these senior officers were responsible for the unit’s work, and as such have a duty to explain this reporting along with the other practices that took place under their watch.
CONCLUSION
The SDS, as an operation, was never lawful. These abuses were aided by the Home Office sanctioning and maintaining the unit’s secretive existence, leading to a “catastrophic failure of policing at the heart of British democracy”.
The way that the unit acted during this period (1968-1982) paved the way for the abuses committed later – we were told that their “abhorrent practices survived and even flourished following legal reforms.”
These written statements, from two ‘civilian witnesses’, were published in full today. The Inquiry prepared a short summary of each, and read it out loud. We prepared our own, below:
‘Madeleine’
Special Demonstration Squad officer Vince Harvey during his deployment
‘Madeleine’ was deceived into a relationship with an undercover officer known as ‘Vince Miller’ (officer HN354), who infiltrated the Walthamstow branch of the Socialist Workers Party (1976 -1979). Since then Vince’s real surname (Harvey) has been released.
It turns out that he reached the level of Superintendent before retiring from the police, and went on to a top job, National Director at the National Criminal Intelligence Service. The Undercover Research Group have published a summary of Vincent Harvey’s post-undercover career.
In her statement, ‘Madeleine’ recounted the stressful and “excruciating” nature of her live witness testimony at the Inquiry in May 2021, where she suffered “intrusive questioning”.
This was so bad that other women from ‘Category H’ suffered “such significant distress that they were unsure if they would be able to continue their participation in the Inquiry”. This raises serious questions about the treatment of witnesses, who are in effect sexual abuse survivors.
‘Madeleine’ mentioned Vince sending her a postcard at the end of 1979, after he disappeared from her life, giving her false hope about him. She now knows that this was “a cold and cynical tactic”, perpetuated on other women by other undercovers who’d disappeared in similar ways.
MANIPULATED BY THE INQUIRY
She then recounted how she’d generously acceded to the Inquiry’s request not to demand Harvey’s real name, in order to ‘protect’ one of his family members.
However, she then found out more about his long career in policing, which involved many public appearances. She was shocked to learn that while Harvey was its Director, the National Criminal Intelligence Service had responsibility for the Animal Rights National Index (a forerunner of another undercover political policing unit, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit) and the National Domestic Extremism Database:
“I think it is imperative that he is required to provide evidence relating to this role in later tranches.”
Perhaps most disturbing for ‘Madeleine’ was the revelation that Harvey had been in charge of a child sexual abuse investigation, Operation Pragada, saying she felt “physically sick” and “turned her stomach” on finding this out.
‘Madeleine’ now feels manipulated into the decision she made not to demand his real name. The Inquiry would have known about his later senior policing roles. It is a disgrace that they allowed this to happen.
INCOMPLETE RECORD OF REPORTING ON ‘MADELEINE’
Former SDS officer Vince Harvey, 1999
Madeleine has always maintained that the 23 Special Branch reports in her witness pack could not be a complete record of the reporting on her.
Having now come across a report of a meeting that took place at her home, but did not mention her name, she believes that Harvey purposefully omitted her name from the list, due to his involvement with her.
‘Madeleine’ now wants to check all 175 reports produced by Harvey – which the Inquiry has chosen not to publish – to see if they refer to events that she attended with him. All reports thought to have been authored by this officer should be disclosed.
Julia is also a former member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), and knew both ‘Madeleine’ and ‘Vince Miller’ back in the day. She has come forward and was able to collaborate her old comrade’s accounts of the time. Poynter also knew ‘Phil Cooper’ (officer HN155) who infiltrated the SWP (1979-84) after ‘Vince Miller’ had ended his deployment.
Poynter was shocked that the Inquiry held 62 reports which mentioned her name. She described her political trajectory, going from being a disillusioned Labour Party member to joining the SWP in 1975, where her “main focus was anti-racism work through my involvement with the Anti Nazi League”.
MISSED OPPORTUNITY
Poynter says that when she attended a Trade Union Conference on Undercover Policing in November 2019, she saw ‘Vince Miller’s name on a document listing all the undercovers, but did not connect this with the man she knew. If only the Inquiry had released a photo at that time, she would have been able to identify him:
“I could then have provided this evidence to the Inquiry at a much earlier date.”
Two years later, listening to the 2021 hearings, Julia realised that ‘Madeleine’ was an old friend of hers, who she had not seen for many years. She was shocked that Harvey was still maintaining that this had only been a one-night stand:
“It was clear to me at the time that it had been a significant relationship for her.”
‘PHIL COOPER’
Poynter went on to discuss her interactions with ‘Phil Cooper’, who she met through her boyfriend. Cooper and her then-partner set up Waltham Forest Anti Nuclear Campaign (WFANC) in about 1980. Cooper said in his written statement that he had not formed any significant friendships in the group.
However, Poynter recalls that:
“[her boyfriend] and Phil got on very well and were good friends. WFANC would meet at our house and Phil would attend those meetings. My memory of Phil is that he was a real laugh, very much into drinking and having a good time.”
Cooper drank heavily, and smoked weed regularly. On one occasion, she says he was so inebriated that he fell off his chair and broke it.
Poynter addressed many of the Special Branch Reports which mentioned her name. One such report describes a 1981 SWP branch meeting – a fireman contact has offered to help carry out a personal investigation, following a spate of racist attacks on Asians in the area.
According to the report:
“The SWP intend to use this information to stir up further unrest within the Asian community in Walthamstow.”
She does not accept this cynical interpretation – what’s been left out of the report is what had actually happened – in early July petrol had been poured through the door of an Asian household in the area, killing Parveen Khan (28) and her children Kamran (11), Aqsa (10) and Imran (2). She stated:
“The community were rightfully angry and we were reaching out and helping to build alliances in the community. It is offensive that the police were spying on us carrying out this work rather than spending resources identifying the murderers, who as far as I am aware have never been caught.”
The current round of Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings covers the years 1973-82. This day was the last one of opening statements, from Monday 26th April there will be three weeks of taking evidence from witnesses of the era.
But first the Chair, Sir John Mitting, said a few words about Blair Peach and there was a minute’s silence.
Peach was a committed teacher, socialist and anti-fascist. Some 42 years ago to the day, on 23 April 1979, he was killed by police at an anti-racist demonstration in London. His partner, Celia Stubbs, has campaigned for justice for him ever since. That campaign was targeted by the Special Demonstration Squad.
We also now know that both Blair and Celia were spied on before that, though the Inquiry has not let them see any of the documents pertaining to the time before Blair’s death.
The Met’s own investigation at the time concluded Peach was killed by police, and identified Inspector Alan Murray as the likely culprit.
Yet Mitting could not bring himself to acknowledge these facts. Instead, he glossed over it, not mentioning the police and merely referring to Peach being killed by ‘a blow to the head’. In doing this, he insulted all victims of spycops and underlined his partisan nature that is draining the Inquiry of its potential to get to the truth.
Heather Williams QC representing Category F Core Participants: Relatives of Deceased Individuals
Heather Williams QC
Heather Williams QC spoke for relatives of dead people whose identities were stolen by Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) officers as the basis for their fake persona.
She is acting on behalf of:
Frank Bennett and Honor Robson, the bereaved brother and sister of Michael Hartley who died on 4 August 1968 at 18 years of age.
Faith Mason, the bereaved mother of Neil Robin Martin who died on 15 October 1969 at 6 years of age.
Liisa Crossland and Mark Crossland, the bereaved stepmother and brother of Kevin John Crossland who died on 1 September 1966 at 5 years of age.
Mr, Mrs and Ms Lewis, the bereaved father, mother and sister of Anthony Lewis who died on 31 July 1968 at 7 years of age.
Barbara Shaw, the bereaved mother of Rod Richardson who died on 7 January 1973 when he was two days old.
Williams said:
‘each of the clients experienced the death of a child; a life event among the most difficult it is possible to suffer. More recently, the families have also suffered the horror of learning that their loved one’s identity was used by an undercover police officer precisely because of their bereavement, because their son or daughter lost their life when a child. How did it start? At what level was it condoned? Were there no alternatives?’
They’ve been waiting for answers for years – Barbara Shaw found out about the theft of her baby son’s identity in 2013. She is now 80 years old, her health is failing, yet still she waits for answers.
NO SECURITY
Did the theft of identities serve any legitimate purpose? There appears no clear rationale, no justification for this repulsive practice. Earlier SDS officers, from 1968-72, simply made up names and none appeared vulnerable to exposure.
There seemed to be no change in circumstances to have made officers deviate from the practice of simply making-up identities. We have looked through the police documents released and there is no evidence for it.
The SDS annual report 1972 confirmed the advantages of using ‘a fictitious name’ that allows officers to return to their real identity at any time. The 1973 annual report talks of having had no ‘irretrievable exposure of any SDS officer’. There was no need to change the tactic to stealing real identities.
One officer was compromised in 1974 when someone who had known him as a uniformed officer recognised him in a meeting. His choice of fictitious identity, rather than a stolen one, played no part in his exposure.
Apart from ‘Michael Scott‘ (HN298, 1971-76) who stole the identity of a living person, it seems fictional identities were normal until a change of management in 1974. The rpactice continued into the late 1990s – the most recent known being ‘Rod Richardson’ (EN32/HN596, 1999-2003).
The 1990s SDS Tradecraft Manual cruelly talks of ‘finding a suitable ex person’ with a ‘natural or unspectacular death’ and the ‘respiratory status’ of the parents.
But from around 1974, undercovers used the identities of dead children and were instructed and/or expected to do so. Officers who queried this were told it was the usual process. They searched for people who had been born around the same time as the SDS officer, preferably with the same first name.
We have not been provided with any evidence that show why it happened, let alone any consideration of the damage to the families involved, and indeed police and policing. They seemed to assume they would never have to answer for it.
Police lawyers said some former officers were uncomfortable with stealing dead children’s identities but thought the families would never know. There is no evidence to show that it helped the officers in their deployments, even before we consider the ethical issues.
The National Crime Squad says none of the Regional Crime Squads they know of who had undercover officers stole dead people’s identities. So, why did the SDS feel it ‘had to’? The spycops say they were going into ‘more security conscious organisations’.
If that were true, why was there no increase in other measures to protect SDS officer’s security? One officer says his identity ‘was not particularly detailed’ as it was largely left to officers to invent it themselves, with little to no guidance. It hardly sounds like security was intense.
Another officer says ‘I made my legend’ up as I went along’ – and it was not tested by managers.
FACT MEETS FICTION
There was no imperative to steal the identity of a dead child. So where did it come from?
Frederick Forsyth’s novel The Day of the Jackal was published in 1971 and the film released in 1973, showing the practice of stealing dead children’s identities in just this way. So, rather than an official police document, was it instead a work of fiction that in fact inspired this ghoulish practice? Whistleblower SDS officer Peter Francis (1993-97) said that the process was known as ‘the jackal run’ among SDS officers.
In last year’s hearings, police lawyers spoke of the ‘essential operational imperative’ to steal real identities. While suspicious comrades might have doubts assuaged by finding a birth certificate, they would surely be alarmed to discover a matching death certificate.
There are plenty of reasons why a birth certificate might not be found (if someone was born abroad, or adopted). There are no reasons why a living person would have a death certificate.
And this is exactly what happened. Members of Big Flame became suspicious of their member ‘Rick Gibson’ (SDS officer Richard Clark, HN297), and found he was legally dead. They confronted him and he ended his deployment. (More detail on this in James Scobie’s section of this report, below).
Clark was one of the first infiltrators to steal a dead child’s identity, and it blew his cover. So why did the practice continue for over 20 years?
Fictitious identities actually offered better cover to spycops than stealing dead people’s identities. There was no justification to start the practice, and none to continue after Clark was exposed.
If security was so important, why did managers not properly prepare their officers and stop them from behaving in a way that compromised them? Why were they given so little direction and so much latitude to make up their own mission?
Very few former SDS officers seemed to have had any qualms of conscience about stealing dead children’s identities, let alone acting immorally in the dead person’s name, deceiving women into relationships, getting arrested and convicted.
‘I knew that it would cause distress for the family if it was discovered’.
Did his managers who knew that stop to think? Did his colleagues discuss it? Were the undercovers given any choice?
Clark changed his identity using his own date of birth and a different forename. He went on to have a five year deployment without being discovered, probing that it was eminently possible to be undercover without a verifiable birth certificate.
NOT JUST THE NAME BUT THE PERSON
Another spycop ‘Michael James’ (HN96, 1978-83) instructed to visit Blackpool where the child whose identity he stole was born. The local Special Branch helped him ascertain if the family still lived there. It is hard to imagine this was a one-off. This obviously goes beyond simply stealing names.
‘Desmond/Barry Loader‘ (HN13, 1975-78) was convicted of public order offences in the name of a dead child. Was there any regard for the besmirching of good names, or the impacts on families who may find out?
The callous interference with bereaved families was consistent with the broader culture and practices of the SDS, with not a hint of consideration as to the proportionality of their actions, nor thoughts of consequences on others, and no review of efficacy or risk.
Stealing identities simply became an embedded practice in a unit that lacked accountability and effective supervision.
At the Undercover Policing Inquiry, we are seeing excessive redaction of the undercovers methods and told it is because it ‘may harm policing’. How can it do that if it is an abandoned practice from decades ago? It is the fact of the theft that harms policing. It looks a lot like yet another example of the police not wanting to admit the full awful truth of what they did to citizens and taking the Inquiry for a ride.
We want the Inquiry to check if the Met’s redactions of the evidence that damns them are actually justified, or if it is concealing for other reasons.
It also appears MI5 had helped with fictitious identities and helped with materials to support them. There is nothing to show why the SDS decided to move away from. The reason remains unexplained.
SHYING AWAY FROM THE TRUTH
Heather Williams finished her statement, but COPS adds a few additional comments about police shying away from the truth on this matter:
The grave of Mark Robert Charles Robinson whose identity was stolen by spycop Bob Lambert
In 2013, Pat Gallan – then Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met and head of Operation Herne, the Met’s self-investigation into spycops – told the Home Affairs Select Committee they had only found one case of dead child identity theft.
She said the combined efforts of Herne’s 31 staff had failed to find any more in the subsequent five months. She refused repeated requests to give an apology for the practice.
The Home Affairs Select Committee report insisted on the truth being told about SDS infiltrators stealing dead children’s identities and demanded all affected families be told and given an apology by the end of 2013. The Met simply ignored their publications.
Later in 2013, Operation Herne reported that, contrary to Gallan’s claim of it being isolated and unauthorised, identity theft of dead children was pretty much mandatory in the SDS for 20 years.
The Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe then issued a generalised apology for stealing dead children’s identities, addressed to nobody in particular. That was in 2013. It has fallen to the Inquiry to contact families, years after they had been identified. The Met has still not provided any answers.
It’s also worth asking who else knew about it. Bob Lambert (‘Bob Robinson’ HN10, 1984-89) was a spycop in the 1980s who went on the run the SDS in the 1990s. He told Channel 4 News that the practice of stealing dead children’s identities was ‘well known at the highest levels of the Home Office’.
When the Inquiry was announced, six former Home Secretaries from the period concerned were still alive. The Inquiry has taken so long to get going that only four are still alive, the youngest of whom is now 79 years old. We are not aware of any plans for any of them to be called to give evidence to the Inquiry.
James Scobie QC representing Richard Chessum and ‘Mary’
James Scobie QC
Scobie did a great job piecing together the career of undercover officer Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76) rising through Troops Out Movement (TOM) seemingly in order to get access to Big Flame – and how he was eventually found out.
Based on SDS reports and the statements of two people he spied on, Richard Chessum and ‘Mary’, Scobie shows that Clark abused his friendship with Chessum and his sexual relationship with ‘Mary’ (and three other women) to reach that goal.
Clark manipulated a democratic organisation to achieve high office and destabilise it. With this, the SDS went far beyond its remit, and the mangers were fully aware of it.
Scobie also explored how Clark’s deployment served to direct subsequent officers to follow his example and take office in organisations they infiltrated.
ANATOMY OF AN INFILTRATION
In December 1974, Richard Chessum and Mary were students at Goldsmiths College in London, studying sociology and teacher training respectively, and they both were in the college’s Socialist Society.
Mary had come from South Africa and campaigned on anti-racist and civil liberties issues. Chessum had been a Methodist lay preacher, and was political officer for his local Labour Party. He protested against war and for civil liberties.
At this time, undercover officer Richard Clark – 29, married with children – was deployed into Goldsmith’s College. He stole the identity of a dead child, Richard Gibson. His target was the Troops Out Movement (TOM).
TOM was advocating self-determination for the people of Ireland and withdrawal of British troops from Ireland. Their methods were lobbying MPs, drafting alternative legislation, and raising awareness with the occasional low-key demonstration, doing talks and film screenings.
TOM had already been infiltrated, as recently as 1974, by ‘Michael Scott‘ (HN298, 1971-76) who concluded that:
‘It had no subversive objectives and as far as I am aware did not employ or approve the use of violence to achieve its objectives.’
So why were they targeted? Richard Clark is dead, so we have no opportunity to question him. But his reports show what he did.
STEP 1 – IDENTIFYING A TARGET ORGANISATION
Clark’s deployment was well planned. He wrote to TOM head office in advance asking for a local branch to join in December 1974, knowing there wasn’t one.
Chessum had been in the Anti-Internment League and so was known to some in the national office of TOM. He had not joined and had no plans to do so, because he was studying hard and had recently been ill. Nonetheless the national office put him in touch with Clark.
By February 1975, using the Socialist Society as a tool, Clark had succeeded in creating an entirely new branch of the Troops Out Movement. There were five founder members of that branch; Mary, Richard Chessum, his partner, another student, and the undercover officer.
Clark had completed Step 1. He was in the Troops Out Movement. But rather than infiltrating a branch, he had actively established one. He generated something to spy on. He encouraged and organised demonstrations, such as the picketing of the local Woolwich barracks and the homes of local MPs.
Neither Mary, Chessum nor his partner had Special Branch files on them until their involvement with Clark. Their lives were then reported to an extent that was both sinister and ridiculous. This information was passed to MI5. Their physical appearances, commentary on their body size, health issues, addresses, theatres visited, holiday destinations, right down to the brand of cigarettes they smoked.
They were no threat to anyone. They were targeted first for their politics, and secondly, because they were useful. And Clark used them.
STEP 2 – DEVELOPING AN IDENTITY & BUILDING TRUST
Clark had no back history. He had just appeared. He needed to develop a place in the social network of political activists. He did that by exploitation. ‘Mary’ is unequivocal: Clark used sexual advances to ingratiate himself.
Clark established a close friendship with Richard Chessum and initiated a sexual relationship with Mary, having been invited into her home. And he had relationships with at least three other activists to gain position and tactical advantage. The other women were Mary’s flatmate, and two activists from the group Big Flame, Clark’s ultimate target. (His story also shows that forming targeted sexual relationships started early in the SDS.)
STEP 3 – TAKING POSITIONS & MOVING UP THE HIERARCHY
As one of the founder members of the South East London branch of TOM, Clark gained access to the national movement, with an astonishing level of ruthlessness.
By March 1975, he had got himself elected as the Secretary – the top position in the branch. He and Richard Chessum were then elected as voting delegates to the TOM Liaison Committee conference.
That move gave Clark access to the national leadership, knowing he’d be accompanied by Richard Chessum, a man with a proven track record of genuine commitment. His cultivated friendship with Richard Chessum gave him credibility.
In April 1975, Clark got himself elected as a delegate to the London Co-ordinating Committee of the Movement and the All London meeting. He pointedly took an opportunity to, in his own words, ‘severely criticise’ another section of the Movement. It was a move that appeared to ensure that he was elected as the branch’s delegate to TOM’s National Co-ordinating Committee.
He saw members of Workers’ Fight coming into the branch and at the national level. This would endanger his access leadership of the Movement. Clark attended a private meeting of senior members of TOM, with leader Gerry Lawless, to discuss Workers Fight’s attempt to take over. There were only ten people at the meeting, all key in supporting Lawless’s position in the national Movement against what they saw as an attempt by Workers Fight and the Revolutionary Communist Group to take control of the organisation.
In his report, he noted Big Flame had also formed an ‘uneasy alliance’ with Lawless.
Mary’s flatmate was in Workers Fight (WF), and she had attended TOM pickets. She attended a large TOM branch meeting stacked with WF members. Clark saw his post under threat. A WF person was elected to go to a London conference that would elect national posts. Clark competed against his supposed friend Chessum for the second post and won by two votes. It’s believed one of them would have been from Mary’s flatmate with whom, conveniently, Clark had recently begun a sexual relationship.
STEP 4 – SECURE A NATIONAL POSITION
It worked – Clark got elected to the Organising Committee for London, a national position. So here we are: a spycop deprived the movement of Chessum, a decent man who supported the movement, and put himself in, with the help of the second woman he just happened to have started a relationship with.
In Oct 1975, Clark resigned as Branch Secretary as, holding national office, he no longer needed the position any more. He says in his report he made a scathing attack on WF, but Chessum said it was nothing of the sort.
Lawless then nominated Clark for a position on the National Secretariat and he got it – he was now one of seven people in charge of the whole of TOM.
He continued to attend meetings at Richard Chessum’s home and reported on him. He recorded that Richard Chessum had started a new job at the London Electricity Board – information that was passed to MI5, something that becomes relevant later. Mary and her flat-mate largely disappeared from Clark’s reporting, now that they had served their purpose.
Clark organised a national TOM rally, but failed to secure the appearance of any of the headline acts. He arranged speakers for meetings and organised steward protection from attacks from fascists. That was a legitimate protective measure against a common threat at the time. Yet we expect to see those from Youth Against Racism in Europe, Anti-Nazi League and the Socialist Workers’ Party, criticised for the same thing in a later part of the Inquiry.
Due to Lawless’s paternity leave, Clark became acting head of TOM for several months. In that time, he cancelled delegations to Ireland. He criticised certain members. At least one prominent organisation withdrew its affiliation. By the time Gerry Lawless returned, two members of the Secretariat had resigned. Remember this was a serving Metropolitan Police officer, working undercover, making day to day decisions for a campaigning organisation.
STEP 5 – SABOTAGE THE ORGANISATION
Clark then turned against Lawless. He held a meeting with Big Flame in his cover flat to organise opposition to Lawless’ leadership, decapitating the Troops Out Movement of its long-time head.
They planned a coup in the next conference. The new leadership proposed was five people including Clark himself. Was this about TOM, or getting in Big Flame’s good books?
Clark also embarked on sexual relationships with two female members of the Big Flame. For him, sexual relationships were a tried and tested tactic of getting exactly where he wanted to go.
However, Clark overplayed his hand and Big Flame rumbled him. We don’t know quite how. Telling different stories to different women and them comparing? Was he seen as Machiavellian? Or was it simply a lack or political authenticity?
It was not unusual for Big Flame to investigate new people who wanted to join if they did not trust them entirely. Members of Big Flame went to the government’s birth and death records archive at Somerset House and they found Rick Gibson’s birth certificate. Then they found his death certificate.
They confronted Clark with both. Richard Chessum tells of how he heard about this confrontation from his friends in Big Flame. How Clark went white and nearly started to cry. His ambitious plot to unseat Gerry Lawless was over.
Clark took flight and disappeared from the political scene altogether. Richard Chessum later saw a dossier that Big Flame had prepared, that included a letter from Clark written to one of the female activists, saying that he ‘had to go away’.
There was no retribution against Clark after his exposure. It stands out that none of the groups infiltrated were interested in violence unless in self defence. This shows the Met’s applications for anonymity for spycops at the Undercover Policing Inquiry inquiry on safety grounds are highly questionable.
HOW HIGH DID IT GO?
Clark’s taking of high office was known to his superiors, all the way up to the Commander of the Metropolitan Police Service. It completely abandons the early principle of the Special Demonstration Squad:
‘members of the squad should be told, in no uncertain terms, that they must not take office in a group, chair meetings, draft leaflets, speak in public or initiate activity’
Equally, the fact that he engaged in sexual relationships with activists was no secret either. Two officers, to date, have been honest enough to disclose that they knew of Clark’s behaviour. One of those officers, ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1976-79), has gone further and admitted that sexual relationships were talked about at the weekly officer meetings and that his supervising officers would have been aware because they were present.
Senior officers knew of Clark’s history of sexual abuse, yet he left the police with a special medal, a Detective Inspector’s pension, and his conduct certified as ‘exemplary’.
There is only one explanation for this. His conduct was deemed acceptable. It continued for years, and dozens, probably hundreds, of women were sexually abused at the hands of these officers.
NOT JUST CLARK
Following Clark’s deployment, spycops taking of positions of responsibility and trust in infiltrated organisations was commonplace. ‘Michael James’ (HN96, 1978-83), started his deployment in the Socialist Workers Party where he was elected to a position on the Hackney District Committee. After two years he moved on into the Troops Out Movement, where Clark had been four years before in top positions.
James is an interesting officer because he gives different accounts of the position he reached. In his Inquiry impact statement – a document arguing the case for him being granted anonymity – he stressed his seniority, saying he was National Secretary of TOM, ie the top role. Once his anonymity was secure, he shifted, and tried to downplay and minimise the importance of his position.
The fact is was the National Membership and Affiliation Secretary of TOM for a good 18 months. He now seems to suggest he just happened to fall into his roles rather than actively pursuing them. But he was on the top level of the organisation, the National Steering Committee, which he occasionally chaired. He was one of nine people with a direct influence over the direction of the movement.
In this era, from Clark onwards, every single spycop took a role in the organisation they infiltrated, except for Graham Coates who was infiltrating anarchists without hierarchy or official roles. In some case officers took national leading roles. What resulted from this was not just information, but also the opportunity to have a say in the direction of the organisation, and ultimately the ability to derail that organisation.
Scobie then listed twelve more spycops who held office in the organisations they spied on in the 1970s. See Scobie’s written Opening Statement for the details.
‘Vince Miller‘ (HN354, 1976-79) was elected District Treasurer and on the social committee of the Outer East London District branch of Socialist Workers Party. He resigned from his position to mark the ‘disorder and ineffectiveness’ within the branch. Resignation combined with strong criticism is deliberately de-stabilising to the organisation.
‘Sandra Davies’ (HN348, 1971-73) has already said that she did not remember being elected to the Executive Committee of the Women’s Liberation Front – the group founded by Diane Langford who also did a strong opening statement yesterday. The undercover officer claimed she did not remember voting to oust the founding leader and create a completely new group, the Revolutionary Women’s Union.
Scobie warned the Inquiry that most undercover officers tend to ‘have forgotten’ the roles they had, or claimed they don’t know how they landed there. Alternatively, they say that the role was not really a position of trust at all. The institutionalised dishonesty creeps into every aspect of their evidence.
LYING ABOUT POINTLESS SPYING
While many spycops accurately described the Socialist Workers Party as not encouraging violence – indeed, expelling violent members – one officer who infiltrated them, ‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-82), has told the Inquiry there was a lot of violence (officers tend to say this to show they’d be at risk if they aren’t granted anonymity). Gray’s claims are undermined by his own reports, which show nothing of the kind. He is lying.
He says his time undercover had no impact whatsoever on his welfare but that answering questions for this Inquiry is impacting on his welfare. That is because he now has to justify the fact that in reality, he busied himself with pointless and personally intrusive reporting.
Gray reported on more children than any other officer. Recording the minutiae of their lives and sending them on to MI5. Almost all of these reports have photographs of the children attached. These children were either the children of Socialist Workers Party members or children who were engaged enough with their society to be part of the School Kids Against the Nazis.
During the course of Gray’s deployment, fascist group Column 88 were threatening to burn down the homes of SWP members. The National Front were attacking Bengalis in Brick Lane, smashing up reggae record shops and vandalising mosques. There was firebombing and murder. Instead of investigating the racist firebombing that killed 13 young black people in New Cross, the Special Demonstration Squad were reporting on school children and providing MI5 with copies of Socialist Workers Party babysitting rotas.
GOVERNMENT & CABINET KNOWLEDGE
Several of the spycops in the era now being examined, 1973-82, refer to visits to the SDS safe-house by the Commissioner of the Met. (This tallies with similar memories of officers both before and after the period).
One refers to congratulatory messages straight from 10 Downing Street. Another, who himself went on to become a Detective Chief Inspector, was told:
‘the continuation of the unit was one of the first decisions that a new Home Secretary had to make’.
The 1976 authorisation for the Special Demonstration Squad’s continued existence was signed off by Robert Armstrong, later Baron Armstrong of Ilminster. He was Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service. It is difficult to imagine a more highly placed civil servant.
MI5’s ‘Witness Z,’ has told the Inquiry:
‘the pressure to investigate these organisations often came from the Prime Minister and Whitehall’.
Put simply, the existence and functioning of the SDS was known of, and authorised, at the very top.
Every annual application for funding refers to the officers fully recognising ‘the political sensitivity’ of the unit’s existence. Authorisation is only ever granted ‘in view of the assurances about security’. In other words, as long as you can promise us we will not get caught, you can carry on.
The Met were protecting the Government from what they referred to in the 1977 Annual Report as ’embarrassment’. There is nothing embarrassing about preventing crime. But the destabilising of democratic movements, the wholesale and widespread intrusion on citizens, and their exploitation for political advantage? That is worth keeping secret.
Scobie ended with a plea:
‘This Inquiry has been set a challenge – to get to the truth. This means asking difficult questions, again and again, to uncover the truth.
‘Ordinary people have been involved in campaigns for a better society, for social equality, anti racism, anti-fascism, against apartheid and for trade union rights. The best of reasons, and the best of traditions.
‘We hope the Inquiry is ready, willing and equipped to meet that challenge. The Inquiry must be fearless and unflinching in the pursuit of the truth. The people of this country expect nothing less.’
Piers Corbyn is now 74, but has not given up his lifelong activism. He was one of the first people to apply to be a Core Participant in the Inquiry, five years ago. He will give evidence via video next week.
But Rajiv Menon started his opening statement with some more general concerns, making seven points about undercover policing and the material disclosed for the new hearings (Tranche 1 Phase 2, covering 1973-82), and about the Inquiry’s approach to witnesses, redactions, and disclosure.
Firstly. What screams out of the pages is the fact that the SDS was never about protecting parliamentary democracy nor maintaining public order. It was to spy on people and organisations because of their ideas and politics.
The limited public disorder that some spycops describe was largely minor, and certainly did not justify the spying on an industrial scale that was unleashed on the British public in the 1970s or the consequent cost to the public purse.
Just to give two examples. There is a 21 page report on an International Marxist Group (IMG) conference in 1972, and 55 pages on another in 1976. These describe different currents and tendencies within the IMG and summarise debates, as well as details of attendees. What the reports do not include is anything touching upon the protection of parliamentary democracy or the prevention of public disorder.
In short, the SDS was engaged in secret political policing and pure intelligence gathering against the Left, at times Orwellian, at times more Monty Python. Several SDS officers admit gathering as much information as possible, however personal or trivial, because it was for others to decide what was relevant.
Secondly, the most significant document in the current bundle, we believe, is the statement of Witness Z on behalf of the Security Service, MI5, that confirms that the SDS has always been subordinate to MI5.
However, Witness Z is not being called to give evidence, and we cannot understand why this is. Their statement shows they have so much vital knowledge about the roles of the SDS and MI5, and their cooperation. About about MI5’s 1972 definition of subversion as ‘activities threatening the safety or well-being of the State and intended to undermine or overthrow Parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means’, and how most if not all of those spied on by the SDS could not possibly be described as subversive according to this definition.
Thirdly, there are, on our count, 18 SDS officers who were deployed during the relevant period whose cover names have been disclosed and who are alive. But the Inquiry is only calling eight of them to give evidence. The 1970s was a critical period in the history of the SDS, the Inquiry should be hearing from as many spycops as possible.
Fourthly, we are also dismayed that the evidence of seven SDS officers whose real names and cover names have been restricted is not being disclosed. Instead it is redacted, edited and amalgamated into an eight page ‘gist’. We cannot say which officer did what. We need to know what they did individually if their information is any use to anyone at all.
Fifthly, many if not most of the SDS intelligence reports have been destroyed at some stage by the Met. Many of the disclosed reports that have survived are only in existence because copies had been retained by MI5. Interestingly, whilst MI5 is apparently happy to disclose copies of police documents, they are rather more circumspect in disclosing any of their own documents that might reveal the nature and extent of their own spying operations on political activists and others.
Sixthly, redactions. Most frustrating is the redaction of the names of many groups spied on and infiltrated by the SDS between 1969 and 1984. None of this is justifiable. We are looking at 35-50 years ago so what’s the problem? What are they hiding?
The SDS Annual Reports on the years 1969-84 have 130 group names redacted. Why must these remain secret forever, at the insistence of those who did the spying? It’s a betrayal of the purpose of the Inquiry.
Seventh and finally, disclosure. We are not being given enough time to read and digest material by the Inquiry. We were meant to get documents in mid March, but another 2000+ pages have been added in April. Nobody can go through all that in a matter of a couple of weeks.
PIERS CORBYN
Piers Corbyn had no idea of the extent of the spying on him. He has always been open about his politics and has nothing to hide, in contrast with the anonymous spycops who spied on him. Despite having been a Core Participant at the Inquiry for over 5 years, he knew little until recently.
He had only been provided with 53 Special Branch intelligence reports (most of which were relatively unrevealing) and no witness statements from any of the undercover police officers who had spied on him, still less any photographs of those officers to help him recollect these events that took place between 40 and 50 years ago.
Why was Piers Corbyn of interest? Special Branch opened a file on him over 50 years ago, in 1969, and he still can’t see it.
Piers Corbyn outside houses in Shirland Road, London, barricaded by the squatter occupants against impending eviction, November 1975
He was President of the Imperial College Union. He attended rallies against the Vietnam War. He joined the International Marxist Group (IMG). He supported Irish civil rights, anti racism, and trade union rights.
He was very active in London squatting in the 1970s. In 1982, he left the IMG and joined the Labour Party. In the 1980s, he was active in the ‘Fare Fight’ campaign to keep down the cost of public transport. In 1986, he became a Labour councillor in Southwark, a position he held for four years.
Piers Corbyn barely learned anything about the spying on him from the new documents disclosed by the Inquiry. He is mentioned in passing in a one report and in the witness statement of two others, who will not be giving evidence. The Inquiry has shown him pictures of some spycops but not the ones who spied on him!
Piers Corbyn was granted Core Participant status by the Inquiry for being one of the main organisers of squatting groups in London between 1972 and 1982, but this barely features in the intelligence reports in which he is named. In short, what is revealed by the disclosure is a damp squib.
What would tell us far more about the secret state’s interest in Piers Corbyn is his Special Branch Registry File. But nobody ever gets to see their Registry File, not even during a public inquiry into undercover policing.
We want to see is his file to see the full nature of why he was spied on. Why won’t they let him see it? Why can’t the Inquiry compel the police to do it? Is it because it’s so tedious and unnecessary that it will embarrass them? Or something else?
Whilst secrecy continues to trump openness, the Inquiry will only scratch the surface, however interesting and revealing some of the documents it is disclosing may be.
The victims of spycops are dismayed at the new delays to the Inquiry. This benefits those who want delay. More documents will be lost and destroyed, more witnesses will die. Justice delayed is justice denied.
Kirsten Heaven representing other Non-Police, Non-State Core Participants
Kirsten Heaven began by expressing the disappointment and anger felt by core participants last week, when they learnt that the next set of hearings, scheduled to take place in October 2021, would be delayed until sometime in the first half of 2022.
The Chair, Sir John Mitting, interrupted her with his reason for this delay – the excuse that the Inquiry want to disclose evidence to a new core participant from the Socialist Workers Party and then collect her witness statement, and says there is so much SWP material that it cannot be done between now and October.
Heaven went on to say that core participants had also just learnt for the first time – in the Counsel to the Inquiry’s Opening Statement two days ago – that the Tranche 2 hearings (covering the years 1983-1992) would no longer be heard in 2022, and would be delayed until at least 2023.
Waiting for another two years is not acceptable for the core participants who have already suffered from many years of delay. She reminded Mitting that his predecessor (Lord Pitchford, the original Chair of this Inquiry) had intended to conclude in 2018.
We are losing crucial evidence with every year that passes, as both officers and witnesses get older. We heard yesterday that, despite being in contact with spycops ‘Alan Bond‘ (HN67, 1981-86) for at least three years, the Inquiry has failed to take a witness statement from him and he is now said to be too ill to provide any evidence.
Heaven recommended that the Inquiry make it an urgent priority to collect statements from all former officers and managers. And that they provide the group with a full list of all Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) managers from the years 1968-82 who are due to give evidence in Phase 3, along with regular updates on their state of health.
The main cause of delay in this Inquiry has been the excessive demands for redactions made by the police and State bodies.
WHO WAS SPIED ON?
Heaven then moved on to analyse some of the facts in the documents recently released by the Inquiry covering the years 1973-82.
It is clear from looking at the newly disclosed evidence just how widespread this political policing was, and the wide range of left-wing groups which were infiltrated and spied upon. This included justice campaigns and defence campaigns, and even their lawyers. Trade unions & mainstream political parties were spied on. There was excessive surveillance of many sections of society, including children and young people. Spycops were involved in criminality, miscarriages of justice, and illegal blacklisting. They had begun stealing the identities of deceased children.
Information – including people’s details – was routinely copied to MI5, meaning the security service. There was deep collaboration between them and the spycops.
She described the SDS’ ‘oblique approach’ – unashamedly described by the unit’s founder Conrad Dixon as “the infiltration of relatively innocuous organisations” as a stepping stone to others.
The women’s liberation movement were targeted, with reports detailing such subversive events as jumble sales & a children’s Christmas party. The youth wing of the Liberal Party was targeted by ‘Michael Scott‘ (HN298, 1971-76) in order to gather intelligence about anti-apartheid activist Peter Hain. The spycops cynically targeted all sorts of non-radical groups, displaying an utter contempt for civil society.
According to a 1973 report from officer HN294, the International Socialists & International Marxist Group made for ‘disappointing’ targets as they did not do anything warranting police interest. It is clear that many of the spycops quickly realised that the groups they’d joined were not a serious threat to public order, or violent in any way. It is also clear that no meaningful risk or threat assessment seems to have been carried out, so how did the SDS know who should be targeted?
We now have a witness statement from ‘Witness Z’ made on behalf of the security services. It contains an admission that subversive organisations were not actually considered a high threat at this time, but that pressure to spy on them often came from the Prime Minister/ Whitehall. No stone should be left unturned in investigating this.
TARGETING JUSTICE
We see the continuation of reporting on lawyers & material that may be subject to legal privilege, often around justice campaigns following police misconduct.
An early example was ‘Alex Sloan‘ (HN347, 1971 reporting on the justice campaign that sprang up in 1971 after the death of teenager Stephen McCarthy (following his arrest and alleged assault by police). Sloan is also known to have taken part in a visit to an asylum seeker being held in Holloway Prison – why was the SDS interested in her case?
Heaven listed a selection of the groups and individuals whose names have appeared in Special Branch’s files or in the latest disclosure:
Shrewsbury Two Defence Committee
Roach Family Support Committee
Stoke Newington and Hackney Defence Campaign
Persons Unknown Defence Campaign
Murray Defence Campaign
Deptford Action Massacre Committee
Friends of Blair Peach Committee
Celia Stubbs (partner of Blair Peach and now a Core Participant)
Graham Smith (another Core Participant)
Justice for David Ewen Campaign July 1995
Deborah Coles (Director of INQUEST, set up to monitor deaths in custody and support bereaved families)
It is clear that these justice campaigns were directly targeted by the spycops, despite the denials of police lawyers at the Inquiry.
Another development in this period was that the spycops reporting included children. One report, signed off by very senior officers and copied to MI5, included details about someone’s brother and his wife, and contained a line about the couple having a ‘Mongol child’.
The police’s lawyers say there is no need for concern because reporting on children ‘did not cause any harm’. But it was a gross invasion of privacy and family, and harmful to society.
‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-82) reported extensively on young people (and their teachers), and would send descriptions, details and even photographs of children off to his bosses (and MI5). One of the groups he targeted was School Kids Against the Nazis (SKAN) but none of them are here to speak for themselves, and we have no idea if the Inquiry has tried to contact any of them or not.
Heaven showed the Inquiry a short archival film from 1979 featuring the kids of Hackney SKAN handing out leaflets at schools and talking about racist scapegoating and the need to drive the National Front out.
DIVERSITY OF TARGETS
The next list of groups read out demonstrates the extent to which the SDS’s interests had grown since the unit started:
Christian Aid
Fellowship Party (No Racism No Violence say yes to Fellowship)
Numerous branches of the Labour Party
Orpington Young Liberals
Lewisham Humanists
6 London Trade Union Councils
National Union of Students
Teachers’ unions
Transport & General Workers Union Legal Workers Branch
There are many examples of intrusive reporting of women:
Women’s Voice
Spare Rib Collective
Women Workers League
Brixton Black Womens Group
Greenham Common Women’s Support Group
Lambeth Women For Peace
One report attributed to ‘Barry Tompkins‘ (HN106, 1979-83), includes details of a woman activist who had an abortion, and speculation about ‘the putative father’. This kind of invasion of privacy cannot be justified.
According to the police’s lawyers, the spycops were politically neutral and did not favour or target one group over another. However this is patently not true. Hundreds of groups and individuals perceived to be on ‘the left’ were targeted, while the rising far-right, who created fear through their use of violence, were not policed in the same way.
The SDS’s annual reports consistently downplayed the threat posed by the far-right.
An earlier statement by the police’s lawyers suggested that there was no need to infiltrate groups like the National Front because they tended to cooperate’ with Special Branch. There appears to be no evidence to support this.
Neither is there any evidence that the police were able (or willing?) to pre-empt or prevent National Front violence and racist public disorder during this period.
This makes for a stark comparison with the lengths the SDS went to in order to infiltrate the left. Heaven referenced one example: ‘Gary Roberts’ (HN353, 1974-78) was enrolled on a degree course as part of his cover. He attended classes four days a week for several years, and got involved in student politics (becoming an NUS vice-president).
BLACKLISTING
Many eyebrows were raised by the police lawyers’ insistence in their November Opening Statement that the SDS did not infiltrate trade unions and were not involved in blacklisting.
The SDS’s own report from 1972 contains references to trade union activity and strikes (the miners, the dockers and building workers), as well as the union-initiated Shrewsbury Two campaign.
‘David Hughes’ (HN299/342, 1971-76) joined the TGWU and attended their meetings. It appears that many of his reports (including those on the Claimants Union) are missing, but the Inquiry has decided that we do not need to hear more from him.
The Blacklisting Support Group are outraged by the police lawyers reference this week to “so-called blacklisting organisations”. There is no doubt that blacklisting occurred and any attempt to belittle it is deeply offensive to its many victims and their families.
Heaven reminded the Inquiry that it was Operation Reuben, the Met’s own investigation, that found:
‘police, including Special Branches and the security services, supplied information to the blacklist funded by the country’s major construction firms, the Consulting Association and other agencies.’
SPYCOPS – FOOTSOLDIERS OF MI5?
The SDS seem to have infiltrated all sorts of groups, even those which posed no threat to law and order, at the behest of MI5, harvesting photographs, bank account details, membership lists, phone numbers etc.
We are told by police lawyers that the SDS was ‘neither an agent nor a servant of MI5’, but at the same time they tell us the SDS was not in a position to challenge MI5 in any way. Which is true? It can’t be both.
It’s the job of this Inquiry to work out who really controlled the SDS, and answer more questions about this relationship.
The Home Office did provide some official guidance to Special Branch in 1967, 1970 and 1984, but these documents do not answer all of the pertinent questions. The SDS and Special Branch were specifically cautioned in 1984 to seek advice from the security services before targeting any alleged ‘subversives’, and warned against undermining ‘the legitimate expression of ideas’ or ‘interfering in the exercise of political and civil liberties’.
INEQUALITY OF INFORMATION
Before finishing her submissions, Heaven moved on to summarise some procedural points.
At the last hearings, the problems around disclosure and only having a live transcript rather than a proper live stream meant many core participants couldn’t participate fully.
Disclosure of documents has been little better this time, but a large number of documents were missing from what was initially disclosed and a month later it seemed that the volume made available to us fell far short of what had been promised.
This reinforces the unfairness and inequality embedded in this Inquiry.
We can see that there was significant cooperation between the spycops and the security services and, once again, we demand disclosure of all Special Branch ‘registry files’ and other information being held about core participants.
We ask for explanation of the file reference numbering systems so we can understand what the files were.
The Inquiry must be more proactive in encouraging members of the public to come forward with evidence. Publishing the cover names used by officers and photographs of them would be helpful.
We ask again for the full list of groups reported on to be published, and for groups’ names not to be redacted from evidence.
We are still extremely concerned about the withholding of some spycops’ cover names.
Are secret ‘closed’ hearings really required for certain officers? At least one of these men appeared in the BBC’s True Spies documentary talking about his career so it is unclear why he cannot give public evidence to the Inquiry.
MORE OFFICERS, MORE EVIDENCE
Out of the eighteen officers from 1973-82 who are still alive, the Inquiry only plans to call eight to give evidence at these hearings.
‘Gary Roberts’ (HN353, 1974-78) initially supplied a statement in 2019. He has left the UK since then, so the Inquiry has decided to only provide a summary of his evidence. He was present at the 1974 Red Lion Square anti-fascist protest when Kevin Gately was killed, and at the Battle of Lewisham, but his reports seem to be missing.
Being abroad is no excuse to exclude him, he could still give evidence via Zoom like the other witnesses are in the UK.
Another officer who is not being called to give evidence or answer questions is ‘David Hughes’ (HN299/342, 1971-76). One of his reports was described on Wednesday by Counsel to the Inquiry as ‘the most disturbing document that we have found’. This referred to one person interrupting a reading group to talk about how TWO million people would be killed ‘when the socialist revolution took place’. The Inquiry needs to be able to better discern rhetoric and overstatement from actual threats.
Another spycop, ‘Bob Stubbs’ (HN301, 1971-76) was also at Red Lion Square, where he was punched in the face by a uniformed officer. We have not been supplied with all of the evidence about this day, the advance intelligence or any debriefing. The lack of them suggests they have been destroyed, making oral evidence all the more important.
‘Barry Tompkins‘ (HN106, 1979-83) denies reports of deceiving a woman into a relationship. We are now told that he will not be giving evidence due to ill health. However we have not seen any evidence that his condition has been properly verified by the Inquiry. There needs to be more transparency about such medical evidence.
RELEASE THE FILES
There was widespread, systematic contempt for the rights of those on the left of the political spectrum, whose common law rights and human rights have both been breached by the actions of the spycops. Any assurances from SDS & MI5 cannot be trusted.
Those who were spied upon must be shown their files so they can appraise what was done and correct the false information they undoubtedly contain. The whole purpose of this Inquiry was to learn from the mistakes of the past, so such human rights abuses would not be repeated in the future.
Heaven ended her submissions by suggesting that the sheer scale of the spycops scandal, the huge number of people spied upon, the apparent lack of accountability, exaggeration of risk, and the obvious political biases of the police all contribute to the belief that these undercover operations were unjustified and illegitimate. Instead they constituted an unlawful enterprise, conducted for political purposes and motivated by a desire to protect the Establishment rather than the wider public interest.
Dave Morris & Helen Steel outside McDonald’s. [Pic: Spanner Films]
This was Dave Morris’ second opening statement to the Undercover Policing Inquiry, having already made a fuller statement at the November hearings. This one was mainly made in regard to the recently disclosed documents about undercover officer ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1976-79) who used his association with Morris to gain access to the anarchist milieu in London during the mid to late 1970s.
Coates has been said by the Counsel to the Inquiry to have infiltrated the International Socialists/Socialist Workers Party and the collectives who ran Anarchy and Zero Magazines, as well as the ‘Persons Unknown’ defendants solidarity group. He also used a dead child’s identity and visited the area where he was born. We have also been told that in his written statement, he refers to SDS officers jokingly discussing sexual relationships with activists and that management were aware of the practice.
Morris started by reiterating his previous statement, and endorsing Kirsten Heaven’s description of the spycops activity:
‘an unlawful enterprise conducted for political purposes and motivated by the desire to preserve the power of the establishment rather than protect the wider public interest.’
ORIGINS
Morris told how had had come across anarchist/libertarian ideas through a BBC documentary series ‘Open Doors’. In early 1975 he attended Freedom Newspaper collective meetings, and then went to Anarchy Magazine, discussing housing, poverty, feminism, exploitation at meetings of the friendly, sociable, advertised and open group.
He said that printed articles representing a wide range of views, inevitably including some he disagreed with. He was also a postal worker and was local branch secretary of the Union of Postal Workers.
By the end of the 1970s, Morris had begun to get involved with environmental campaigns such as London Greenpeace and, with fellow London Greenpeace member Helen Steel, was one of two defendants in the famous McLibel trial.
A life-long community activist, Morris is currently Secretary of the Haringey Federation of Residents Associations, and Chair of the National Federation of Parks and Green Spaces.
He explained the common thread running through his activism:
‘The essence of my personal motivation and political beliefs has remained constant throughout the last 50 years or so – the desire to tackle injustice, to seek improvements in society in the public interest, and to encourage and empower people to have as much control over their lives as possible.’
TARGETED
Turning to the early spying he’s just been told about, Morris said:
‘Looking back on the surveillance and infiltration of groups I was involved within in the 1970s… and how I was personally targeted, I feel disgust at this cynical and blatant breach of trust. Not just for me but also for the other victims I knew and know – such as the family with young children whose home was where the Anarchy Collective held meetings. Of course, I am outraged not just by the tactics used but also by the very existence and purpose of the whole spying operation. This Stasi-like behaviour is totally unacceptable.’
All of Morris’ activity was standard campaigning activism, albeit at the left of the spectrum. Organising public meetings, social events, protests, defence for people whose rights were infringed. These are rights enshrined in international law and should have the highest protection.
Indeed, a lot of his work has been about upholding rights and the law.
The McLibel trial – the longest running court case in English history – helped defeat McDonald’s attempt to silence critics. Corporations haven’t tried that sort of thing again.
The McLibel 2 then won an additional victory against the UK government at the European Court of Human Rights because the McLibel trial had been unfair.
After the Climate Camp in 2008, Morris won a case against the police and showed that mass stop and search of campaigners was in fact illegal. In both of these legal cases, he rolled back infringements on the rights of people to voice their dissent against oppressive powers.
The spycop Coates has said:
‘anarchists I reported on posed a minimal challenge to public order… didn’t even discuss activities that could be a public order threat… I do not not think any information I provided was significant’.
Coates reported many personal details, naming the area Morris was brought up in, what A levels he did and more – and got all those details are wrong! What less subjective stuff in their reports were they also wrong about? Some spycop reports are written a month after the event described & may have been embellished by officers who weren’t even there.
A spycop report says Morris suggested that the Anarchy Collective should be involved in fire-raising activity on government building in support of a firefighters strike. But he remembers the group deciding to produce stickers and join local picket lines. It’s possible someone may have made an offhand joke, but the police should be able to discern between that and genuine beliefs or intent.
THE REAL THREAT
Morris also said that while the coverage of left-wing activists seemed to be very thorough, those on the far-right of the political system have had little attention.
Morris said that a proper risk assessment of threats to society at the time would have set its sights on other dangers.
London Greenpeace’s opposition to McDonald’s was wide ranging – not just the harm caused in the manufacture of the food, but its workers rights, its subversion of the parent-child relationship and more. Why was this subversion not targeted by the SDS?
Beyond that were fossil fuel companies, tobacco companies, tax havens, car companies, the military intervention in Northern Ireland, and major construction companies who ran an industry blacklist (that both Morris and Helen Steel were added to!). Why didn’t the police, who nominally exist to protect the public, target people organising these serious threats?
He concluded by saying:
‘It was a gross breach of peoples’ trust and human rights, which maybe could have raised an arguable case if targeting active gangs of mass killers but has no shred of legitimacy when it was actually being used to protect those who control society’s wealth and power from the real needs of the public.’
That concludes the three days of opening statements for this phase of the Undercover Policing Inquiry. The Inquiry resumes on Monday at 12 noon for hearings taking evidence from witnesses. These will not be live streamed, instead there will be a live transcript and – for those in England & Wales only – an audio feed. COPS will be live tweeting and producing daily reports like this one.
The final scheduled day of opening statements at the Undercover Policing Inquiry was centred around the moving stories of people who were spied on as part of justice campaigns. These are mostly families whose loved ones have died at the hands of the police, or whose deaths had investigations that were scandalously inadequate.
Several themes recurred from the spied-upon:
the need for the Inquiry to centre their experience and knowledge;
not taking police statements at face value;
the need for a diverse panel to advise a rich, white, male Chair who cannot properly understand systemic discrimination;
the need for live-streaming the hearings to stop it being a private inquiry, which is being done by other inquiries.
All of it seemed to bounce right off Sir John.
Neither Helen Steel (delayed from yesterday), nor Dave Smith’s statements (delayed from Friday) have been allotted new dates as yet.
Imran Khan QC
(Baroness Doreen Lawrence)
Imran Khan QC
Imran Khan opened proceedings, representing Baroness Lawrence, campaigner and mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.
Khan stated that Baroness Lawrence has lost confidence in the ability of the Inquiry to get to the truth of why her family was spied upon. She is also disappointed with the Metropolitan Police’s statement that they have undergone a substantial change in their. She thinks the Met remains institutionally racist.
Ethnic minority people are over policed and under protected. This is illustrated by disproportionate use of stop and search against young Black people today.
The 1998 Macpherson inquiry into Stephen Lawrence’s death should have been the end of it. The Met claimed to have already given all evidence to Macpherson. This was a bare-faced lie.
CORRUPTION AND LIES
In 2012, it was reported that there was detailed evidence of one of the investigating detective’s criminality that was held back from the public, the Lawrence family’s legal team, and the Macpherson inquiry. These revelations led to the Ellison Review, which also found spycops had targeted the Lawrences.
Khan then outlined the well-known background of the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the incompetent and corrupt police investigation that followed. Stephen Lawrence was murdered at just 18 years old in 1993 in South London whist waiting for a bus. Justice was slow and by no means reached. Baroness Lawrence still mourns the death of her son.
Khan said that the same racism that led to the murder of Stephen and let his killers walk free, still exists. All the police involved with the botched initial investigation were promoted or have since retired, not one of them has been disciplined, let alone sacked.
Baroness Lawrence said:
‘To lose a child is unthinkable. To be fighting for justice for him 27 years later is inexcusable’.
Five years later, in 1998, Macpherson made his findings, which included the fact that police attending to the scene of Stephen’s murder did nothing to try to save him. Khan says it seems ‘the police did not want to get their hands dirty with a Black man’s blood’.
SPYCOPS DIGGING FOR DIRT
In 2013, they learned that police spied on the family’s campaign and ‘sought dirt’ to discredit them and their supporters. Undercover officer Peter Francis said he was just one of four officers tasked with doing so. However, the Lawrence family were law abiding, so there was no dirt for the undercovers to find.
Imran Khan QC & Baroness Doreen Lawrence
Francis was then tasked to find dirt on people more peripheral to the campaign, using names passed on by the family liaison officers purportedly supporting the family. The police officer referred to as HN78 (‘Bobby Lewis’), interviewed in the Ellison Review, and picked up information on the Lawrence campaign.
The Lawrence family’s campaign was one of many such family justice campaigns targeted by undercover police. Police resources that should have been spent catching killers were instead used to obstruct justice in this way.
The Lawrences then wrote to the Home Secretary saying the Met hadn’t given a satisfactory explanation about the allegations of spying. They asked for a public, transparent inquiry. Home Secretary said no, unless the Ellison report recommended it. The report, when it came, did indeed recommend a public inquiry.
Baroness Lawrence said that a public inquiry was the only way to conduct a satisfactory investigation as internal police investigations cannot be trusted. Khan went on to outline the various investigations conducted – and the broken promises made by the police.
The Home Secretary finally ordered the undercover policing public inquiry in 2014, remarking that ‘it is deplorable the family have had to wait so long’. The irony isn’t lost on core participants, finding themselves nearly seven years later at the very start of an Inquiry that has swathed itself in secrecy.
HOLLOW PROMISES
In 2014, the Met Commissioner said all material about the spying on the family would be released. The Lawrence family have received absolutely nothing since then. They still don’t know why they were spied on. Should the police have given these files to the Inquiry in the meantime, Baroness Lawrence wants them to be handed over to her now.
Baroness Lawrence is exhausted by decades of hollow, hypocritical promises that are never delivered on. She wants to know the extent to which the Met’s Commissioner at the time, Paul Condon, knew about, or authorised the spying on the her family. On the one hand, she has been told there was no direct spying, yet on the other the Met have already apologised for it – what is the truth?
The culture of the police has played a part in creating miscarriages of justice and covering up racism. Public apologies aren’t matched by real reform. For instance, the one whistle-blower, Peter Francis, still faces the threat of prosecution for coming forward. While Francis’ spying was reprehensible, the Met’s intransigence and denials are much worse. He must be be given the assurances he seeks about immunity from prosecution.
Baroness Lawrence trusted Mark Ellison’s investigation as he’d secured the convictions of two of Stephen’s killers. His recommendations were clear. In contrast, she said, although the Undercover Policing Inquiry was supposed to be a ‘proper, transparent inquiry, rigorous in pursuit of the truth’ it has turned out to be secretive and ‘we should be able to see every officer who chose to spy on us’.
Khan contrasted the open way that Baroness Lawrence campaigned, despite hostility from the police with the anonymity granted to the police. She didn’t have the luxury of hiding, so neither should the undercover police. The Met, unless forced to do otherwise, will seek to avoid accountability and hide evidence. They can’t be trusted to simply offer it up to the Inquiry.
DIVERSITY OR FAILURE
The Macpherson Inquiry only succeeded with the help of a diverse panel advising. Khan also explained the vital context of the racism surrounding the spying. If the Chair doesn’t understand this, then surely point Baroness Lawrence makes is proven: a diverse panel is therefore needed.
The idea that the Special Demonstration Squad operated lawfully and in the public interest is nonsense. Clearly, there is no good reason to spy on any of Baroness Lawrence’s campaigning.
Khan concluded: ‘We must have the truth’, and then quoted Baroness Lawrence:
‘I was a happy married woman with three gorgeous children. Now I have lost a son and I am divorced, but that’s only a tiny part of what has changed. Unless you’ve lost a child you can’t understand the depth of heartache I’ve felt… and would give up all I have to go back to the seconds before Stephen died. I simply ask for justice’.
Heather Williams opened by saying why she was here and, in a sense, why we were all here.
On 22nd April 1993 Stephen Lawrence was murdered by racists in Eltham while waiting for a bus. He was stabbed by a gang of white youths who used racist language. The initial murder investigation was completely inadequate; during it Dr Lawrence felt as if he was in a constant battle with police.
The Macpherson Inquiry decided that institutional racism was apparent in the police investigation into Stephen’s death and in his family’s treatment by officers. These failings meant that Stephen’s killers largely escaped justice.
This has impacted on all of Dr Neville Lawrence’s life. As the Macpherson Inquiry demonstrated, the police were not on their side. Despite that Inquiry’s historic recognition of institutional racism in the police, Dr Lawrence believes too little progress has been made. He feels the state has failed him.
Against this background, the allegation of police interference with his family has only further undermined his confidence in the police. Intelligence on Dr Lawrence was passed up the chain of command by police, and an undercover officer attended the Macpherson inquiry pretending to be a supporter of the family. The existence of this was also kept secret from Lord Macpherson.
How then can the public have confidence in policing of Black communities if resources are used like this against them? It appears to many that Black lives don’t matter to the police.
LONG TERM SPYING
Williams made it clear that Dr Lawrence doesn’t have confidence in the Inquiry. He wanted to participate in an inquiry capable of finding the truth and stopping these abuses from being repeated in the future. However, he, like so many victims of spycops, has had almost no disclosure of documents.
The Met didn’t just spy on the Lawrence family’s campaign in the immediate aftermath of the murder. Five years later, as the Macpherson Inquiry was heading towards its conclusion, the Met had a spy in the Lawrence family camp – a Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) officer using the name Dave Hagan.
The undercover officer met with Richard Walton who was part of the team who were providing the Commissioner’s response to the Inquiry, feeding them information on the family’s thinking. That meeting was brokered by SDS boss Bob Lambert.
In 2013, we learned from whistle-blower SDS officer Peter Francis that undercover police had targeted Black justice campaigns, including the Lawrences. Alongside that, the family liaison officers were gathering intelligence rather than concerning themselves with the welfare of the family.
However, it was not until 2016 that the truth about undercover police undermining the Macpherson Inquiry was revealed. Walton, by then, was running spycops operations as the head of Counter Terrorism Command. Like many guilty police officers who find themselves under investigation, he resigned to avoid disciplinary charges.
A SPY IN THE FAMILY CAMP
A document from the foundation of the SDS in 1968 says the unit was created to provide information on public order, and related intelligence. Twenty years later it said it was concerned with terrorism and politically motivated crime. Whichever, the grieving, devastated Lawrence family fell under none of these categories. Therefore there was no excuse for snooping around the Lawrences, whether directly or otherwise.
Neville Lawrence
And yet, undercover police were circling the Lawrence family, looking to smear them instead of catching their son’s killers. Macpherson found the Lawrences were treated unfavourably because of their race. The 2014 Stephen Lawrence Review by Mark Ellison QC discovered undercover officer ‘Dave Hagan’ spied on the family campaign at a time when the family was taking legal action against the police. Hagan reported back personal details as well as the Lawrence family’s campaign strategy.
The police’s self-investigation into undercover policing, Operation Herne, started in 2012. Its 2014 report centred on allegations of spying on Lawrences. Like Ellison, they did not find ‘smoking gun’ documentation proving that there was an instruction to spy on the Lawrence family. But, in a unit where creating written evidence was often avoided, we cannot rely on documents. The Inquiry must rely on oral evidence.
SDS officers routinely ‘hoovered up’ all knowledge and retained it, ignoring issues of privacy, the third Operation Herne report was published in 2014. Numerous undercovers have confirmed they received no training on collateral intrusion and that they took no account of the issue.
It’s plain there was no legal authority or justification for the intrusion on the Lawrence family. And, nearly seven years in, we’ve had almost no information from the Inquiry. It appears to have done nothing significant towards its purpose. Dr Lawrence has received no substantive disclosure.
The delays to the UCPI have increased the distress of victims. We are promised disclosure will happen, at an unspecified time, but we cannot properly contribute until that is done.
Dr Lawrence wants to know the full extent to which undercovers spied on him at the time of Stephen’s death and afterward. He has many questions that he wants the Inquiry to answer. He does not think a white family in the same position would have been treated this way.
Williams went on to say that the Ellison Report only focuses on 1993 and 1998, which missed out the period in between, including the time of Stephen’s inquest. This also leaves questions to be answered. For instance, why was Dave Hagan allowed to befriend the family and attend the Macpherson inquiry?
Further, what did Hagan tell Walton at the 1998 meeting? Was this information used at the Macpherson inquiry? Who else saw it? Who knew about the meeting? Lambert was Hagan’s handler, speaking to him several times a day. Dr Lawrence also wants to hear what he has to say, as well as Hagan’s other managers.
DON’T TRUST THE PREPETRATORS
Due to the police’s tendency to destroy records, the Inquiry should take control of all documents rather than trusting the police not to pre-sort the files to avoid incriminating themselves. Williams then went on to speak of Neville’s concern about particular officers being granted anonymity. These are HN109 who was Peter Francis’ manager, HN101 who was also involved in his tasking, HN86 the SDS boss 1993-1996 who gave the order to find dirt on Lawrences, and HN58, the boss 1997-2001 so who will have known about the 1998 meeting with Walton.
Heather Williams made the point that almost all non-state core participants have been making since the Inquiry began: if you give a spied-upon person a cover name, they are more likely to be able to give evidence about that person, but with just a number that is impossible and we only get the officer’s own account.
Williams then quoted Lord Bingham, a senior member of the judiciary: ‘Publicity is a powerful disinfectant’.
Beyond the secrecy, Dr Lawrence is, like Baroness Lawrence, particularly concerned by the lack of a diverse panel in the ‘fact-finding’ part of the Inquiry as well as the anonymity given to the undercover officers.
Where there’s evidence of racism, police must be held to account through the legal system if there’s to be any confidence in that system. Dr Lawrence has been failed badly by institutions over the years, and hopes that he will not be failed again at the Inquiry.
The Inquiry continued with the return of Imran Khan QC, this time speaking for Michael Mansfield QC, who a a core particpant due to his role as a lawyer representing the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.
Khan started with reference to the situation today, saying the State acts with increasing hostility towards the legal profession, with sneering from the Prime Minister about ‘lefty human rights lawyers’ who are ‘hamstringing’ the criminal justice system.
The Home Secretary dismissed lawyers objectións to her similar comments, saying they should ‘get back to work’, even though she was actually objecting to their work.
When the State appears to be having a wholesale attack on lawyers, there are grave consequences.
Khan said:
‘It is chilling to consider that lawyers might have failed to take on cases or acted otherwise in accordance with their duty, in the knowledge that they might attract the unwanted attention of the State and its institutions.’
Mansfield wonders if we’re in an era where the legal profession is imperilled. The State has always tried to silence critics, but the scale of it varies and this moment is especially precarious.
MICHAEL MANSFIELD’S CAREER
Michael Mansfield has long been targeted by undercover police, as he has represented people perceived as a threat since the early 1970s, such as the Angry Brigade.
He continued to represent people who suffered at the hands of the police, e.g. (with Gareth Peirce) the Birmingham 6, families at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, and the families of Jean Charles de Menezes, Pat Finucane and Stephen Lawrence. Among his clients are Ricky Reel’s family, who were targeted by spycops while Ricky’s killers walk free.
If you don’t have lawyers who are willing and able to challenge the State, you remove the right to challenge at all. Yet lawyers that bring such challenges are subjected to attacks and undercover operations.
Undercover surveillance of Mansfield had no justifiable reason. There was no ‘public order’ or ‘public interest’ justification, and no criminality. However, if state sanctioned tactics of unlawful surveillance were designed to intimidate lawyers such as Mansfield, they failed.
LOW EXPECTATIONS OF THE UCPI
He does not have high hopes of this Inquiry, as it is held under the Inquiries Act 2005. Mansfield scathingly descibes the Act as ‘legislation that serves to undermine the rule of law, erode protection of human rights, shake public confidence, and lessen further the independence of the judicial and legal system.’
Furthermore, it was not properly debated, it repealed earlier, more effective laws, and it does not allow parliamentary scrutiny of Inquiry decisions. Also, arbitrary appointments mean such inquiries are never truly independent.
Similarly hasty and equally egregious is the CHIS Bill currently being rushed through Parliament will allow any state agent to be authorised to commit any crime, it’s an open invitation to damage and destroy lives.
RECOMMENDATIONS NOT ACTIONS
In conclusion, Michael Mansfield takes on cases that are uncomfortable to the state, but this should have no bearing on how he is treated. A lawyer is a lawyer. Mansfield is just one of many who have been spied on. This Inquiry must find out the full extent, why it was done, and who authorised it. Mansfield wants a sincere apology to him and to the other core participants.
There is a huge risk that the police will just ignore what they see as yet another set of recommendations. So many hard-won inquiries are just left to gather dust in the Home Office. If the Inquiry fails in this, fear and intimidation could replace fearlessness among lawyers, and we would lose the capacity for challenging state wrongdoing.
Mansfield will not go away quietly. He is clear that for an Inquiry to have real purpose it not only needs powerful and far-reaching guidelines and recommendations, but also their effective implementation. We must criminalise unjustified surveillance of lawyers.
Andrew Trollope QC
(Azhar Khan, Miscarriages of justice)
Andrew Trollope QC
Before lunch, the Inquiry heard from Andrew Trollope QC on behalf of Azhar Khan, a solicitor who was targeted by undercover officers and wrongly prosecuted.
In 2007, the Metropolitan police conceived a covert ‘sting’ operation, culminating in the arrest of Azhar Khan for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. This new and unique operation went beyond covert surveillance, and was a plan for undercover officers to pose as potential criminal clients in order to set him up.
SPYCOPS ENTRAP A SOLICITOR
Azhar Khan began his own solicitor’s practice in 2005, one of the few BAME lawyers to do so.
Settled in a deprived area’of London, he served important local needs, doing mostly legal aid defence work and working for local charities as well. He also worked to encourage BAME men and particularly women to get ahead in the profession.
For some reason police took exception to his work and launched Operation Castration or Castrol. This involved undercover officers posing as criminals to become his clients over a sustained period in order to try to induce him to commit crime. They would have themselves arrested as drug dealers or money launderers then request Khan as their lawyer. The ‘suspects’ were then released on bail.
This sting operation lasted 18 months and involved four spycops and the complicity of six other officers who made the staged arrests, as well as senior officers who reviewed the operation.
Khan’s ‘clients’ offered him the opportunity to launder £50,000, which he refused. They also showed him big bags of tablets, supposedly drugs, offering them to him. Posing as someone from organised crime, one of them kept ringing Khan, seeking meetings and repeatedly tried to lure him into criminal deals.
NO EVIDENCE
By September 2009, there was no evidence of wrongdoing at all. The officer in charge wanted to end the operations. But the spycops trying to dupe Khan said they’d had a meeting where he’d agreed to a crime – this was a complete lie – which led to a renewal of the authorisation.
The spycops were persistently trying to trap Khan into committing crime for a very long period of time, in the face of his impeccable integrity. There were no real grounds, nothing even alleged, that could justify it. It was plainly illegal.
At no stage did Khan agree to any of the various crimes they offered. Nonetheless, police raided his home and office in December 2009, charging him with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
The police later conceded that the staged arrests and procedures at the police stations were designed to deceive Azhar Khan in the course of his professional practice, in order to try and find evidence of criminal conduct by him.
ABUSE OF PROCESS
The objective of the operation was not to investigate any crime of which Azhur Khan was suspected. Rather, it was to ‘integrity test’ his conduct as a criminal defence solicitor by using undercover officers to suggest the commission of crimes to see how he would react’. Over and over again.
Trollope explained that ‘no evidence of any offence on the part of Azhur Khan was gleaned. The clear aim was to put him and his practice City Law Solicitors out of business.’
He continued, ‘one of the most legally and morally objectionable features of the operation was that these attempts were so persistent in the face of Azhur Khan’s repeated failure agree to the suggestions of crime.’
Eventually, the case was thrown out of court, the judge ruling it was abuse of process with no case to answer.
A RACIST OPERATION
The very basis of the operation was racist. As an Asian lawyer, it seems he was singled out in a way that would never have been done if he were white. All the undercover officers in the operation were BAME. Did they think Khan would be more liable to commit crime with them?
Where did they get the idea from? Who else has been treated this way? Which other officers might have given them tactics and advice?
This was spycops acting as agents provocateur, for a long period, against someone for whom there was no evidence of corruption. Khan was a victim of a miscarriage of justice. The Inquiry must find the full extent and justifications of this operation.
Dave Morris
(Social & environmental activists, [appearing in person])
Dave Morris has been a community and political activist for nearly 50 years. He’s best known for being one of the defendants in the ‘McLibel’ Trial along with Helen Steel, but his work encompasses many more issues beyond that.
Just as at the McLibel trial 30 years ago, he has no lawyer covering that period at the Undercover Policing Inquiry and is instead speaking for himself.
Morris opened by outlining his anarchist, workplace, environmental, community, and other activism.
In the 1980s, he was involved in London Greenpeace (a small collective founded in 1971, independent from the later-formed Greenpeace International) which was infiltrated by undercover officers from the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS).
The group began a publicity campaign focused on McDonald’s as an example of what all transnational corporations are doing – opposing their environmental destruction, promotion of junk food, treatment of workers, abuse of animals, exploitation of children, and more. They produced a leaflet called What’s Wrong With McDonald’s. The burger giant sued for libel, presumably expecting them to back down. It was a drastic misjudgement.
McLIBEL
What happened next was the stuff of fiction. Steel and Morris couldn’t afford lawyers and represented themselves in court (assisted behind the scenes by a young barrister prepared to work for free called Keir Starmer) against a large McDonald’s legal team led by a QC charging £2,000 a day. McDonald’s had objected to the whole leaflet, so Steel and Morris had to defend every word. It became the longest trial in English history. In the end there were a number of damning judgements against the fast food giant, and versions of the leaflet were being handed out in millions all over the world.
You can see more about the case in the McLibel documentary and at the campaign website from back in the day McSpotlight.org (which was one of the first of its kind in 1996).
The McLibel Support Campaign around the trial was also infiltrated by spycops. They didn’t know this at the time, so it never came up in court. The spycops weren’t just attending meetings, they played an active part. In 2011, Morris and Steel discovered that ‘Bob Robinson’, who had significantly contributed to the leaflet, was actually undercover police officer Bob Lambert.
PRIVATE SPIES
As well as undercover police infiltrating London Greenpeace, McDonald’s sent at least seven spies into the group, one of whom deceived a genuine member into a six-month relationship.
Sid Nicholson, McDonald’s Vice President and Head of Security, oversaw that spying operation. He’d come to the firm from being the former Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendant in Brixton, following a career in the police in apartheid South Africa. He had stated from the witness box that McDonald’s security department was wholly comprised of ex-police officers. Nicholson had admitted asking friends on the force for information on activists and having a two-way exchange, including home addresses, which was illegal.
Morris referred to footage, obtained from McDonald’s during the McLibel trial and shown in the McLibel documentary, of a London Greenpeace protest at McDonald’s HQ (East Finchley) in 1989. McDonald’s spy Michelle Hooker can be seen handing out anti-McDonald’s leaflets next to spycop John Dines, who scandalously developed a long, intimate relationship with Helen Steel. Sid Nicholson had testified that a Special Branch officer was given ‘a perch’ next to himself at the HQ to jointly observe that very protest in the film. It was later discovered that during the case, yet another spycop Matt Rayner also had an abusive sexual relationship with a woman living next door to Morris in Tottenham.
John Dines and Helen Steel lived together as a couple whilst she, Morris and Keir Starmer made pre-trial preparations. Dines then disappeared. How much privileged legal advice was Dines illegally privy to whilst living with Ms Steel, and what was passed on to McDonald’s?
Steel and Morris sued the Met for sharing their personal information with McDonald’s. The police choose to settle the case out of court, including apologising, paying compensation and committing to inform all London police officers not to do share confidential information to third parties.
The McLibel judgment found that McDonald’s had been responsible for industrial-scale breaches of employment laws and the welfare rights of animals. yet the people who were exposing this were the ones targeted by spycops.
In 2005, the European Court of Human rights found the McLibel case had violated their right to a fair trial and freedom of expression, and they were compensated by the British Government. The Court ruled:
‘The Government had contended that, as the applicants were not journalists, they should not attract the high level of protection afforded to the press under Article 10. However, in a democratic society even small and informal campaign groups, such as London Greenpeace, had to be able to carry on their activities effectively.’
Neither McDonald’s nor the police were ever held to account for any of this.
Since 1968, more than 1,000 groups campaigning in the UK for a better society and world have been spied upon and infiltrated, by secret unaccountable political spycops. They targeted a huge range of groups – environmentalists, trade unions, women’s rights, racial justice, LGBTQ rights, animal rights, as well as campaigning against war, corporate power, repression, and police brutality.
The groups represented in this Inquiry were not terrorists, but were pushing for positive social change in an overwhelmingly public and open way.
Many of the groups spycops targeted have been vindicated by history, their ideas have become mainstream orthodoxy, and some have resulted in legal and other formal recognition by society. Yet any group that challenged the established order seemed to have been deemed a legitimate target of the secret political policing units.
SPYCOPS’ CRIMES
Spycops weren’t merely observing, they infiltrated personal lives. Fake friendships were developed and exploited. Many people, especially women, were deceived into intimate and abusive relationships.
The McLibel 2: Dave Morris & Helen Steel [pic: Spanner Films]
Bugging a phone is recognised as a breach of human rights and police have to apply for a warrant. Spycops hacking people’s lives is infinitely worse and should be totally unacceptable to everyone.
Spycops weren’t aberrations or ‘rogue officers’. This spying was established and conducted with the full sanction of the state and supported by its apparatus and taxpayer funding.
By targeting such groups, spycops show institutional discrimination, racism, sexism and anti-democratic action, including industrial-scale breaches of laws and charters that protect basic human rights and the right to protest.
THE ‘THREAT’ OF SOCIAL JUSTICE, OR RETROSPECTIVE ‘JUSTIFICATIONS’ FOR SPYING?
If spycops are worried about political violence, why were fascists largely left to their own devices while we were spied on? The police plainly have political bias.
Why did the state see social justice as a threat to society? Why didn’t they put spycops into financial corporations, hedge funds, military elites, and power-mad establishment political parties? Such institutions employ and promote daily, mass institutional violence – war, poverty, exploitation of workers, colonialism and environmental destruction – reinforced by PR and manipulation of society for their own selfish ends. There’s your actual threat to public order and well being.
What should we count as ‘extremism’? The Climate Emergency, said Morris, is the most extreme threat we face. In 1968, the American Petroleum Institute commissioned scientists to investigate burning fossil fuels, they discovered ‘there seems to be no doubt that the potential damage to our environment could be severe.’ That was the same time spycops were set up. The oil industry has obstructed efforts to tackle it. Has the oil industry ever been targeted by spycops? If not, why not?
Morris however noted the public outrage at the beginning of 2020 over campaign groups being lumped in with fascist and other terrorist groups in police counter-terrorism documents. This included the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement which had a few months earlier been blockading roads in central London for over a week calling for action to prevent climate catastrophe. In response to the controversy, the Minister for Security was forced to admit to Parliament that XR was not and should not be categorised as ‘extremist’. So just who are the real extremists?
Morris also tackled MI5’s seemingly dominant role over the secret police spying operations from the very beginning. He stated that MI5 was seeking information about, and the undermining of, groups and movements which are deemed to support ‘subversion of the State’. But Morris said they should look elsewhere – for the last 30 years mass subversion of the State, supported by successive Governments, has been systematically and continuously carried out by unaccountable multinational corporations seeking deregulation of laws protecting society from unrestrained profiteering, and taking over formerly nationalised industries and sectors so that a tiny few can profit from what were once State-run public services.
Adding insult to injury is the deliberate widespread use of ‘tax havens’ and other so-called ‘loopholes’ to annually avoid billions of pounds of taxes due to the State which could have been used for our struggling public services. Millions of people have suffered as a result. But have there been any undercover officers targeting of this serious, industrial-scale daily subversion of the State? He guessed never.
PROTECTING THE PERPETRATORS
Spycop Bob Lambert (right) at McDonald’s handing out the McLibel leaflet he co-wrote, 1986
It took five years of spycops revelations – largely from victims’ own research – to get the promise of the public inquiry, and five more for it to begin. Police and the Inquiry have consistently refused to release lists of officers, or groups targeted, or relevant documents.
Victims of spycops are dismayed by the Inquiry’s prioritising of the protection of the perpetrators’ privacy above the right of victims and the public to know the truth.
As the people who brought this scandal to public awareness, we’ve worked hard to get the justice we and the public are entitled to.
We remain determined to bring the whole murky political policing operation into the public spotlight where it belongs.
DAMAGE LIMITATION
This is supposed to be a public inquiry, but it’s more like a police damage-limitation exercise. The hearings are not yet publicly accessible and nor will they be live-streamed, which is the only way to ensure the public and victims can follow it.
Having covered so much nefarious activity, Morris ended on an optimistic note. Despite being undermined by spycops, movements for positive change are still here and have had many successes. Such movements are needed now more than ever. A better world is possible and it’s up to all of us to support – rather than pay spycops to undermine – efforts for real change.
Imran Khan QC (The Monitoring Group, Justice campaigns)
Imran Khan QC then spoke for the Monitoring Group.
Suresh Grover, founder and director of The Monitoring Group
The Monitoring Group (TMG) was founded by Suresh Grover, who is still a co-director. It is one of the oldest anti-racist organisations in the UK, carrying out advocacy work and supporting struggles for civil rights among ethnic minority groups and migrants. It occupies a unique place within the UK’s social justice network.
The organisation was founded in Southall, London, in the mid-1970s, and originally called the Southall Monitoring Group (SMG). It was inspired by national and global struggles against apartheid. It has made many achievements over 40 years, and has offered trauma support to more than 1,500 victims of racism over the last decade.
Its earliest campaigns were around the murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in June 1976 and Blair Peach, killed during an anti-racist demo in Southall in 1979. Peach’s partner, Celia Stubbs, and her campaign were supported by TMG. It was not until 2010 that the Met released the 1979 report that effectively admitted a police officer had killed Peach.
TMG supported Stephen Lawrence’s family campaign for many years. It also supported the family of Ricky Reel, who was murdered by racists in 1997, and whose family was then targeted by undercover police. Other families supported included that of Michael Menson, also killed in a 1997 attack which, as with Ricky Reel, police wrongly denied was racist in nature. As mentioned earlier in the day, at least 18 such justice campaigns were targeted by undercovers.
Given their involvement with so many spied-on campaigns, the TMG was surely spied upon too. The National Civil Rights Movement (NCRM) was founded by TMG’s Suresh Grover in 1999 to support such campaigns and to push for full implementation of the recommendations from the Macpherson inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence. Undercover police were at the NCRM founding conference. However, Suresh and TMG have had no formal admission they were ever spied on. After five years, they are losing hope that this Inquiry can be transparent and reveal the truth.
POLICE TARGETING OF THE MONITORING GROUP
The first revelation of police surveillance of the Group was made in a 1989 Guardian article. It said, that in 1987 the Southall Monitoring Group was the subject of a report written by Ealing police intelligence officer, PC J.E. Black describing them as a ‘political cell’ set up by the Greater London Council (GLC) to follow an agenda while purporting to be a community organisation.
Police saw anti-racism as being somehow anti-police, and seemed distressed about SMG’s ability to marshal support for causes and cases.
Thereafter, Grover noticed a reluctance from politicians to engage because they did not want to be spied on. There were unexplained burglaries of the office. Grover himself was targeted for arrest. This was not, as the police claimed last week, merely ‘collateral intrusion’ in family justice campaigns. It is a worry then, that Mitting takes the police’s word on that at face value. Operation Herne, the police self-investigation into spycops, effectively treated a lack of surviving files as an implication of innocence – absence of evidence as evidence of absence.
DISLIKE OF RACIAL JUSTICE GROUPS
It’s well established that numerous racial justice groups in the 60s were non-violent yet spied on by the British State fearing civil unrest. That unrest came in 1981, and for the reason the State had feared – ‘racial disadvantage’ was the phrase used by Lord Scarman in his report into the 1981 Brixton disturbances.
Scarman stated:
‘Urgent action is needed if it is not to become an endemic, ineradicable disease threatening the very survival of our society… racial disadvantage and its nasty associate racial discrimination, have not yet been eliminated. They poison minds and attitudes; they are, as long as they remain, and will continue to be a potent factor of unrest’.
The State took none of this on board, instead bringing in Sir Kenneth Newman as Met Commissioner to apply his Northern Ireland experience to Black, Asian and migrant communities in London. There was surely coordination with the Met’s sub-unit of undercover police, the Special Demonstration Squad.
Some people are core participants in the Undercover Policing Inquiry directly because of Newman’s legacy. They were not ‘collateral intrusion’, but deliberately spied upon.
After the 2005 London bombings, TMG worked in Beeston in Leeds, where more than one of the bombers had come from. Grover was twice contacted in the first week by MI5 to discourage him from interacting with the ‘suspect community’.
INQUIRY UNABLE TO INVESTIGATE
As other core participants have mentioned today, Mitting is simply incapable of investigating racism in the police and undercover police if he rejects the Macpherson report’s definition of institutional racism. There must be a diverse panel appointed to help the Chair before the Inquiry starts taking evidence. Otherwise, it cannot fulfil its remit, examining 40 years of undercover police who were guided by bias and discrimination.
Khan recounted psychological studies that show implicit biases even in those who consciously oppose discrimination. An object is more likely to be perceived as a weapon in a Black hand than if it’s in a white one. These studied have proven right those who report subtle discrimination, and people in Mitting’s kind of position would do well to take notice.
Racism does not stand still, it changes size, shape and function. When it becomes institutionalised we are not dealing with prejudice, but power and institutional practices.
By the time this Inquiry reports, it will be nearly 20 years since the Special Demonstration Squad was disbanded. Police will say it is now a historical issue, and that they’ve already learned their lessons. Such assurances cannot be accepted on their own terms, every such claim must be tested by the Inquiry.
To date, TMG has participated in three public inquiries. They initially encouraged people to get involved with this one. They even had the Inquiry’s legal team participate in a public conference they organised. However, the continuing secrecy has been disappointing and damaging to the Inquiry’s credibility.
CREATING ITS OWN PROBLEMS
The Inquiry’s difficulties are of its own makings. It agreed to give spycops anonymity without good reason, and it allowed police and other State bodies to delay it excessively. It has shown remarkable reluctance to address critical areas of racism and sexism because, in reality, it sees them as marginal, issues that are not worthy of its time.
Because of all this, the Inquiry has rejected the chorus of calls for specialist advisers to assist it. In doing all this, the Inquiry has created an uneven playing field tilted in favour of the perpetrators and against their victims.
The Inquiry only exists because of the bravery and tenacity of core participants. It has substance because of the whistle-blower who exposed the skeletons in the first place and journalists who reported the horrors to the public. Its conviction derives from the unshakeable spirit of protestors – Black and white, women and men – who dared to dream for a better world. That dream will live on regardless of the conclusions of this Inquiry.
Pete Weatherby QC
(Newham Monitoring Project [Justice campaigns], & Core Participants who are Political, Social & environmental activists)
Finally, we heard a tremendously powerful and incisive statement from Pete Weatherby QC, speaking for eighteen different core participants.
He began the show with a video clip, of spycop ‘Lynn Watson‘ (EN34) playing the clown.
No, seriously, footage of her being trained up by the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) Leeds, and then taking part in a range of actions with the Clown Army. These included visits to a military recruitment centre, to the US spy-base at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire. It begins in the car park of Hilary Benn MP’s constituency office.
Weatherby asked ‘How on earth was that considered legitimate policing?’
He then showed a picture of spycop ‘Simon Wellings‘ (HN118) wearing a bright orange cardboard ‘tank’ he’d made while infiltrating Globalise Resistance – an anti-war, anti-capitalist network – at an anti-arms trade protest. ‘How was that legitimate policing?’
The absurdity of investing massive resources into groups of this kind illustrated what the debacle of the last fifty years of undercover political policing looks like; farcical yet deeply damaging.
Millions of pounds (which could have been spent on other public budgets) were mis-spent over the decades of State-sanctioned, clandestine activities by the police, monitoring justice campaigns, anti-racism and anti-police violence groups, environmental campaigns, community and solidarity networks, animal rights groups, and the political activism of rebel clowns, musicians, artists, campaigners, and others – the vast majority of them on the political left.
These images do not represent a light-hearted point. There is actually nothing funny to see here. These operations were profoundly sinister, and an affront to democracy itself.
More than five years in to the Inquiry, and none of the groups and individuals he represents have received any meaningful disclosure. It looks likely that they will have to wait until at least 2022 for the Inquiry to deal with their cases.
While ‘Lynn Watson’ and ‘Simon Wellings’ have their rights protected by the Inquiry’s restriction orders, the rights of his clients are treated as secondary. They are all being made to wait.
FACTS WITHOUT DETAILS
For example, the Newham Monitoring Project may have been spied on throughout their thirty year history (from 1980 onwards) but they have yet to be told who spied on them, or when.
His clients include an array of anti-war, anti-arms trade, environmental, anti-hunt, social justice and Palestinian rights activists – some of them know some details of their surveillance and infiltrations, but only because they exposed these undercover activities themselves.
They remain in the dark. The lack of transparency, and the enormous delay, has sapped the trust of non-state core participants, and risks undermining the credibility of the entire Inquiry. This Inquiry, Weartherby declared, needs to do better.
He noted that the live-streaming is due to be switched off tonight for the rest of the five years or so of the Inquiry. Mitting has ruled that ‘in-person access’ will be limited to those core participants who are able to attend in the current circumstances. Everyone else will be left with just a delayed transcript. Other Inquiries have securely broadcast their public hearings, and the refusal to do so here has left people feeling excluded and alienated.
The core participants’ ability to make opening statements has been substantially diminished, by the failure to provide them with even basic facts or disclosure. Did Parliament, when they made the Inquiries Act, ever envisage that an Inquiry would make its core participants blind to what was going on? Of course not.
SECRECY ABOUT SECRETS
Pete Weatherby QC
Weatherby spoke of the palpable imbalance between State and non-state core participants. The former have all the information and the material, the latter have next to none. This is the very reverse of how a healthy public inquiry should be. The State should be compelled to show their hand, but have largely chosen not to.
That an Inquiry established to shed light on the secretive, undercover activities of the police against ordinary citizens, should itself perpetuate secrecy and obfuscation is beyond irony. This undermines trust, and also promotes failure.
Instead of seeking to side-line non state core participants, or to keep them uninformed, this Inquiry should embrace their knowledge and actively seek out their assistance.
Without their scrutiny, their full and effective participation, the Inquiry may assume that the evidence produced by the spycops and their managers is truthful, correct and reliable, and it will fail to get to the truth.
A public inquiry should be independent and rigorous, not deference to a State narrative, especially not one hell-bent on secrecy, on distortion, and on covering up its wrongdoing.
NOT ASKING FOR THE TRUTH
We have asked the Chair – back in 2019, and ever since – to require the State core participants to provide position statements, that ‘set out their stall’, by this stage of the Inquiry, to hold their hands up to what went wrong, and perhaps even apologise.
Sir John Mitting has the power to make such requests, but has refused to do so, despite his legal duty to maximise openness and disclosure (section 18 of the Inquiries Act), to act in the public interest and with candour.
The Chairs of other current Inquiries – including Grenfell and Manchester Arena – have insisted on position statements and specified the issues to be addressed in them.
The Met claimed just last week that “the Met would assist the Inquiry in every way it can”. Yet they do not intend to comment on the evidence until the very end of the process, many more years down the line. This is not assisting, or acting in the public interest; it only serves to defend the Met.
The police have had plenty of time to examine their own behaviour and, by now, really should be able to admit to their wrong-doings.
The Chair could compel the Met to provide a chronology, and more details of the deployments, who was involved and whether the Met now believes they were justified or not – this would save time and resources – but instead he seems to take the police at their word when they say they no longer use spycops for ‘counter-subversion’, and not insist on answers even to his own questions.
SWAGGERING ARROGANCE
How can all this be described as ‘helping the Inquiry’? This is the swaggering arrogance of an institution which cannot see beyond its own interests, a public body that is hopelessly institutionally defensive, that puts its own reputation above the public interest.
Candour is the oxygen of justice. This Inquiry has two choices: it can either back off, and let the police see what they can get away with, or it can step up, be more robust, and demand position statements.
It’s not just Mitting who wants answers; the core participants and the wider public need them, and are entitled to them.
The delays have already caused huge distress to those involved. Why not save time and money by compelling the State bodies to tell us all: Which undercover operations will they defend? Which will they admit were wrong? Taking this common-sense approach could help the Inquiry gain a valuable commodity – the confidence of non state core participants.
WON’T ADMIT WHAT THEY KNOW
During the last five years, the Met must surely have looked into the deceitful relationships that the spycops formed. Why is it so difficult for them to come clean about the extent of this? Why won’t they shine a light on these practices? And why will the Inquiry not require them to do so?
The Met have already conceded that this Inquiry is likely to find that some deployments were ‘not justifiable’. They must have reached this conclusion for themselves, and in that case they should be able to tell us more details.
Let the police provide their justifications. Let them explain to the public why the mass infiltration of campaign groups for over 50 years was justified. Let them tell us why they infiltrated a clown movement, or a samba band. Surely this is the correct starting point for any investigation into these abuses?
The State should be made to tell us what lessons they have learnt, and what they have undertaken never to do again.
Any pretence that ‘political policing’ only began with the Special Demonstration Squad in 1968 is wrong. The pretence that the police are ‘neutral’ is wrong. Political policing doesn’t just happen elsewhere.
The substantial violations of civil and political rights, and the individual human rights of those involved, are the same as we see in authoritarian regimes around the world.
The Inquiry should remind itself of the rhetoric used by repressive regimes around the world, which seek to silence political voices, which challenge the official narrative, while pretending to respect international human rights norms, including freedom of expression and assembly, and respect for personal autonomy.
HISTORIC WRONGS
Last week we learnt that the likes of the Croydon Libertarians and the Women’s Liberation Movement were spied on in the early 1970s, but this does not ‘beggar belief’.
It is well-documented that the women’s suffrage movement was targeted by spycops. Would the police now seek to justify the State’s infiltration of women campaigning for the right to vote, of anti-slavery campaigns in the 19th century, or other suffrage campaigns, from Peterloo to the Chartists?
Why are these more recent protestors – for nuclear disarmament, against fracking, against road-building and against hospital closures – fair game?
Dissenters are often the drivers of social change. Slavery was abolished as a result of mass campaigns, building on and amplifying slave revolts. Protest and radical dissent has always involved friction with the State, and the State uses this form of policing to undermine that dissent.
The suffragettes and the slavery abolitionists were on the right side of history, and so are those who oppose racism, fox-hunting, and illegal or immoral wars today. The institutional racism of the police, identified and campaigned against by the Newham Monitoring Project (NMP), is now broadly recognised. Though, as this Inquiry illustrates, it remains as entrenched as ever.
DISSENT ISN’T MEANT TO BE CONVENIENT
Civil rights don’t exist to protect those who are comfortable complying with the status quo. They’re not needed for that; they’re a bulwark against authoritarianism.
Demonstrations and protests are often perceived to be a nuisance, or inconvenient, or tiresome, by those who are unsympathetic to their aims. However, freedom of expression is a human right. Citizens don’t need the permission of the police to protest.
In response to the claim made at the Inquiry last week by Oliver Sanders QC, representing the majority of former spycops, it is not ‘totalitarian’ to do what the NMP have done: to call out institutional police racism, or to protect their community from racist attacks. The police claim neutrality, but it was mainly progressive, social justice and left-wing groups that were targeted by the spycops units.
It is not for any limb of the State to insert itself into, curtail or spy on political and social justice activists, nor insert itself into the minutiae of peoples’ lives because they disagree with government policy or campaign to change the law or for a better society.
Lord Hoffman stated that ‘civil disobedience on conscientious grounds has a long and honourable history in this country,’ and went on to recognise that history sometimes vindicated such activism. He talked of ‘conventions’ on both sides: ‘protesters behave with a sense of proportion, and police and prosecutors, on the other hand, behave with restraint’. But what restraint have the spycops shown?
Weatherby then explained more about the core participants he represents.
NEWHAM MONITORING PROJECT
Newham Monitoring Project was established in 1980, by Black activists & white anti-racists, to fight racism in East London. This included racism perpetrated by the police, and the police’s failure to properly investigate racist murders, like that of Akhtar Ali Baig.
In NMP’s own words:
“For NMP the term ‘Black’ was a colour of resistance; it included African, Caribbean, Asian and all other ‘people of colour’ in a political sense. Our enemy was a political enemy which oppressed across Black communities. We recognised the nature of that enemy and the need for unity in combatting it. Whilst we did not ignore the cultural differences which these days increasingly appear to divide the community, we rejected the way ethnicity was used to marginalise our communities”.
In its very earliest incarnation NMP was to be purely a resource for the community through which to collate and disseminate information about the nature and scale of racist violence in Newham. This limited role was very quickly overtaken by the political reality of racist violence. Racism and racist violence are politicising phenomena. Those who experience them are not passive recipients of the violence and the hatred. The experience radicalises and politicises.
NMP developed its political analysis, its understanding of how race and class were linked, and grew over the years. They were well-known and respected for their work, which included combatting racist violence around the home, and defending members of the community from criminalisation. Was this what made the spycops take an interest? NMP have no idea, as they have not been provided with any information as yet.
NMP also countered fascist attacks; less organised, ‘casual’, racist violence from white football gangs; and police racism and violence, including stop and search and the replacement of the ‘sus’ laws with low level Public Order Act prosecutions. Was this the reason they were infiltrated? Because they challenged the police’s wrong-doing?
They articulated and exposed the institutional racism of the police (and other public bodies) long before the Macpherson Inquiry. They highlighted police corruption, they called out police racism. Were they infiltrated because their work threatened to damage the police’s reputation? Were they targeted because they were a Black-led organisation?
Every annual report produced by NMP was sent to the local Newham Commander. These should have already been supplied to this Inquiry, if the Met have upheld their disclosure duties.
Like other non state core participants, NMP are deeply frustrated about the lack of disclosure. What might it show? Did the spycops infiltrate NMP in order to gather information about other justice campaigns? They were connected to many campaigns, some of which are also core participants, like the Lawrence family.
The local police disliked, even hated, NMP. They exposed ‘community policing’ as a lie, at odds with the truth how racialised communities were policed. In the 1980s and 1990s there was an “extraordinary” lack of police accountability, and police violence was routine. The Black Lives Matter movement of this century shows that the structural issues highlighted by NMP haven’t gone away. To what extent is that due to spycops undermining the work of groups like NMP?
HUNT SABOTEURS ASSOCIATION
The Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) has campaigned against bloodsports since 1963, mainly by disrupting hunts.
Seemingly vindicated by the Hunting Act 2004, which banned the hunting of wild mammals with dogs, the HSA’s work has been forced to continue due to widespread flouting of the ban, and the badger cull.
The reasons why the HSA was targeted by spycops remain unclear. Was this due to political pressure, given the quintessentially ‘Establishment’ activity of fox hunting, and the status of those who support it? Or was it because the police sought to conflate the disruption of hunts – civil disobedience – with ‘violent extremism’?
There is a long history of violence, including serious violence, and harassment from hunt supporters against HSA activists. Even the SDS Tradecraft Manual contains a complaint from one undercover officer about the way in which his uniformed colleagues treated animal rights activists.
No fewer than nine spycops are now confirmed to have infiltrated the HSA, in the 19 years between 1983 and 2002. “The HSA doubt that they have been spared the attentions of the police before and after this time.
The targeting of a group like the HSA, who tended to use lawful tactics, cannot be justified. There is widespread public support for their main aim, which is why the law was eventually changed.
Why were they infiltrated by spycops? Was this done to disrupt and derail their efforts to change the law? Or to provide “n easy gateway for spycops to spy on other groups and individuals? Is this justifiable?
Another issue raised was miscarriages of justice. It appears that information supplied by spycops led to the arrests of hunt saboteurs. They failed to prevent (or prosecute) violence on the part of hunt supporters.
Were undercover officers told to look the other way? Was their involvement covered up? Did they encourage illegal activity as agents provocateurs? Did they supply hunt sabs’ personal details for illegal blacklisting?
Some of the officers who infiltrated hunt sab groups also deceived women into intimate relationships, and other activists into close personal ‘friendships’, even holidaying abroad with them (presumably under their false aliases, using false passports).
EMILY APPLE
Emily Apple has been an activist all of her adult life, involved in numerous campaigns. She was a founding member of the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) and of FITwatch (set up to counter the police’s ‘Forward Intelligence Teams’).
She has been arrested countless times, typically without basis. She was involved in campaigning against the arms trade (including the biannual DSEI arms fair), against war, and for environmental causes (including the Earth First! network).
She has encountered at least seven spycops while active in these groups. There are serious issues related to Apple’s arrests and legal privilege.
Apple was not just spied on by these police officers. During her time working with the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, she was also reported on by Martin Hogbin, a corporate spy, employed by BAe Systems.
RHYTHMS OF RESISTANCE/ NICOLA BENGE
Nicola Benge is a core participant in her own right, as well as being part of Rhythms of Resistance (RoR), a samba band that played at numerous protests in the 2000s. RoR still have no idea who spied on them, nor when, but suspect that they too might have been considered an easy gateway for spycops who wished to target other groups.
Benge was involved in other groups that are known to have been spied on in some way, for example the Advisory Service for Squatters’. But, like RoR, they have not yet been given any disclosure or details by this Inquiry either. She remains completely in the dark, as do the other musicians.
GLOBALISE RESISTANCE/ GUY TAYLOR
Guy Taylor worked as an organiser for Globalise Resistance between 2001-07. Founded with the aim of bridging the gap between the trade union movement and other activists, this network was infiltrated by HN118, known to them as ‘Simon Wellings‘.
Spycop Simon Wellings
Wellings deceived Taylor into what he believed to be a close personal friendship. As well as making the orange tank, Wellings got himself elected onto the group’s steering committee, and acted as the group’s photographer (presumably an ideal opportunity for his handlers to collect photos of many activists)
He travelled to other countries to attend protests with the group – including the United States, Spain and France – making a mockery of this Inquiry’s remit being limited to events in England and Wales.
He had access to, and influence over, Globalise Resistance itself but also other connected campaigns and groups. What did he feed back about trade unions – including the Communications Workers Union and Unison – and the Green Party? What was the justification for this? Why was he allowed to assume such a prominent role in the organisation? To what extent did he influence and derail the group? Why was he permitted to travel overseas?
Ultimately, Wellings was exposed by his own error – he mistakenly left a message on an activist’s phone, with a recording of a conversation between him and his spycops handlers.
Despite making several ‘Subject Access Requests’ to the Met, Taylor still has no disclosure relating to Wellings, which casts significant doubt on the police’s disclosure integrity.
‘NRO’
‘NRO’ is a medical professional and an academic. He is a deeply committed and life-long campaigner on matters related to social justice and freedom of expression. He wants to know why he was targeted.
Spycop Jackie Anderson
In the 2000s, he was part of a broadly anti-capitalist group known as the WOMBLES (a distinctive presence at protests, they wore white overalls, padding & helmets to protect them from police violence). He knows that he was spied on by EN32 (‘Rod Richardson‘) and HN77 (‘Jackie Anderson‘) during his time with the WOMBLES.
‘NRO’ was also involved with Aktivix, who provide web services for activists, and Indymedia, an open, independent reporting/ publishing network used by activists.
Indymedia was set up as an alternative to the corporate media. At its peak, the network consisted of around 150 local collectives, spread across the globe. UK Indymedia had its servers repeatedly seized by the police.
‘NRO’ has questions – about spycops’ involvement in these server seizures, about the online surveillance of activists, about the spycops’ use of platforms such as Indymedia. Spycops used to post news and comments on Indymedia, and it is believed that spycops used Indymedia to post fake news stories (prsumably to undermine campaigns, or perhaps justify their deployments) , as well as to gather information.
INDRA DONFRANCESCO, MEGAN & MORGANA DONFRANCESCO
Indra Donfranceso has been active in environmental groups, including Earth First!, for most of her adult life. Morgana and Megan are her daughters; they attended numerous protests, campaigns, meetings, and related social events, throughout their childhood.
Mark Kennedy befriended the family in 2003, and was close to all three of them. He volunteered to be the photographer at her wedding in 2007, and they shared a 40th birthday party with others two years later. What happened to the photos?
Megan and Morgana both thought of ‘Mark Stone’ as an uncle figure. Learning that he was in fact an undercover officer has affected them badly. One of the women Kennedy deceived into a relationship, ‘Lisa‘, was a close friend of Indra’s.
How was befriending a family, including young children, justifiable? Are these the actions of a responsible, accountable police force?
Such corrupt and depraved behaviour shames not just the officer but those who organised and those who facilitated the system, as well as those who still seek to make excuses for the spycops now.
CLANDESTINE INSURGENT REBEL CLOWN ARMY (CIRCA)/ JENNIFER VERSON
Spycop ‘Lynn Watson’
This network was formed in 2003, by writers, educators, performing artists and other activists, in response to a State visit by George W Bush, and the war in Iraq. They obtained Arts Council funding to tour the UK and put on performances and workshops. They used humour and performance to make their points and sometimes mock the police.
For three years, Jennifer Verson was involved in training up new clowns, including at least one spycop, EN34, known as ‘Lynn Watson‘. CIRCA had close links with other groups, including RoR and the Dissent Network (opposing the G8 Summit in 2005).
How on earth could anyone believe that infiltrating a performing arts group was justified? It may seem obvious to us that this was a huge waste of public funds, but the fact that this was not obvious to those running the spycops unit must not be overlooked.
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT (ISM)
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a Palestinian-led group, with branches around the world. ISM sends volunteers with the privilege of a foreign passport to Palestine, to bear witness and document, and where possible protest Palestinians from human rights violations, harassment and persecution.
Spycop Rob Harrison
The group’s activities in England and Wales just involved leafleting and stalls. What was the justification for surveillance? There is a suspicion that information gathered by the spycops may well have been passed to foreign agencies.
Asa Winstanley, an investigative journalist who writes about Palestine, got involved in ISM in 2004. Atif Choudhury and ‘MCD’ were also associated with the London ISM group. All three were devastated and deeply traumatised to learn about the infiltration of the group by spycop HN118 ‘Rob Harrison‘.
Choudhury considered ‘Harrison’ a close friend – he even DJed at the wedding of Choudhury’s sister. Harrison’s depravity did not stop there. He used his connection to Choudhury to deceive a young neighbour, ‘Maya’, into a sexual relationship, as we heard yesterday.
MCD’s activism has been motivated by her Quaker faith and commitment to active pacifism. All three of these core participants struggle to understand how this intrusion into their lives could possibly be justified.
‘VSP’
Spycop ‘Marco Jacobs’
‘VSP’ has been involved in many campaigns and groups, including the Cardiff Anarchist Network (CAN). She has been arrested many times, and has been targeted by both overt and covert policing. She has been strip-searched, and mocked and jeered by officers whilst naked, and as a result has received several settlements from the police.
She was spied on by ‘EN1’ (Marco Jacobs) and Mark Kennedy. ‘Jacobs’ became close to VSP and her family, and initiated two sexual relationships with female friends of hers. He sowed so much disruption and division within CAN that the group stopped functioning.
He often put himself forward to travel abroad (sometimes alongside Kennedy) and represent CAN at activist meetings. Did they sabotage these meetings?
WHEN DO WE GET ANSWERS?
The victims have given up significant details of their lives and activities, in their core participancy applications, and in the written Opening Statement. However, none of them are mentioned in the Opening Statements of the police or the Counsel to the Inquiry, and they have yet to be provided with any further details of the spying on them. How much longer must they wait?
There was, and is, no justification for the undercover operations which intruded into their lives, their families and careers, nor is there any justification for the Inquiry to delay them being provided with information.
The Newham Monitoring Project pull no punches in their written Annex:
“It is essential that it be appreciated that we have no faith in this Inquiry. Characterised as it is by extraordinary secrecy, a total lack of accountability and transparency, all aggravated by the absence of adequate representation and constant delay, we are confident this is not a forum through which the actions of the police can be properly explored and scrutinised.
“Those quaintly described as ‘core participants’ are engaged, tantalised, and seduced by the promise of disclosure. This interest will, we believe, remain wholly unrequited. Any meaningful disclosure is unlikely to materialise in any real sense because the overriding priority appears to be the protection of those officers deployed. In any event, we have no faith that the relevant records have not already been destroyed. Yet the illusion must be maintained because the continued involvement of the ‘core participants’ adds infinitely to the credibility of a process that is already bankrupt.”
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptRejectRead More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
The legal team working for the public inquiry into Britain’s political secret police recently condemned the controversial spying. Next week – 20th to 22nd February – the government, police and victims will respond.
Morris mentioned one spycop, ‘Tony Williams’ (
Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 7
What happened next was the stuff of fiction. Steel and Morris couldn’t afford lawyers and represented themselves in court (assisted behind the scenes by a young barrister prepared to work for free called Keir Starmer) against a large McDonald’s legal team led by a QC charging £2,000 a day. McDonald’s had objected to the whole leaflet, so Steel and Morris had to defend every word. It became the longest trial in English history. In the end there were a number of damning judgements against the fast food giant, and versions of the leaflet were being handed out in millions all over the world.
