Tranche 1, Phase 3, Day 10

20 May 2022

Witness:

Trevor Charles Butler (officer HN307)

 

This was the last day of the 2022 round of the Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, which have examined Special Demonstration Squad managers 1968-82.

The day began with the Inquiry’s Elizabeth Campbellon reading out summaries of evidence relating to three men who worked in the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) back office towards the end of this period covered by this ‘tranche’.

Richard Reeves Scully (officer HN2152) joined Special Branch in 1968. He’s not entirely sure when he was sent to work in the SDS back office, but it’s thought to have been around 1977. His role was handed over to Paul Croyden in 1979.
Witness statement of Richard Reeves Scully

Paul Andrew Croyden (officer HN350) served in the SDS for two years, from July 1979 to August 1981.
Witness statement of Paul Croyden

Christopher Skey (officer HN308) was also part of the SDS for around two years, and then spent a year as Liaison Officer between Special Branch and the uniformed public order unit (aka ‘A8’). Skey provided two witness statements, one in 2020 and another in 2021 which added a little more detail about his time as a Liaison Officer.

The Inquiry also published documents relating to two deceased senior officers:

Ken Pryde (officer HN608) was described as “the Detective Chief Inspector in charge of the SDS from November 1977 till early 1978” – although this doesn’t correspond with what the Inquiry has told us elsewhere.

Mike Ferguson (officer HN135) is said to have run the unit from January 1978 until February 1980, having spent time undercover himself ten years earlier (reporting on anti-apartheid campaigners like Peter Hain).

Trevor Charles Butler (officer HN307)

On this final hearing of 2022 the Inquiry heard oral evidence from one man: Trevor Charles Butler OBE (officer HN307). He was recruited to the unit in 1979 and left in 1982. He was questioned by David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry.

This was a notably reticent witness, who favoured one-word answers (and often that word was “no”).

In his witness statement, Butler referred to True Spies, the 2002 BBC documentary series that detailed the work of the SDS, as:

“an earth-shattering breach of the ‘need to know’ principle”

It’s clear he sees the Inquiry in the same light. Safeguarding a ‘need to know’ principle is his vocation, and he treated the Inquiry as a violation of that.

Butler claimed to remember very little about events that took place in the 1970s, including his time in the SDS and in other parts of Special Branch.

Butler attended police training courses, and learnt about the main principles of police powers, but freely admitted not bothering to consider these while he was in the SDS.

He said that he didn’t think normal police discipline regulations – covering, for example, sexual misconduct – applied to the spycops as they were:

“experienced, trustworthy men, who I had no concerns about.”

He was happy to go along with existing day to day practice, and very happy with the SDS’s method of unfiltered reporting (hoovering up as much information as possible and putting it all on file). He doesn’t seem to have gone out of his way to question anything, to consider doing things differently, or to actively review deployments or assess their value.

He had no qualms about officers stealing dead children’s identities, and said he had no idea that other undercovers had been issued with British Visitor Passports, which did not require a birth certificate.

Butler recalled little contact with the senior managers above him, saying:

“We were left to our own devices”

This was due in part to the move of the SDS office out of New Scotland Yard to Vincent Square. He also professed to be unaware that some of them had previously been involved in running the unit.

He couldn’t recall why the SDS 1979 Annual Report said that “covert policing is being subjected to increasingly close and critical scrutiny” or any concerns at this time about the spycops’ relationship with the Security Service (aka MI5).

There were a lot of subjects that he claimed no recollection of at all.

SUBVERSION

He says that he didn’t receive any training of the type listed in the 1979 ‘Initial Training for Special Branch Officers’ Agenda. He relied on his own “common sense” to guide his understanding of what was or was not ‘subversive’.

He didn’t recall seeing Special Branch’s 1970 Terms of Reference, and its definition of the word ‘subversion’, before. During this period, the Security Service actively tried to expand the working definition of ‘subversion’, and a slightly different definition appeared in a Circular sent out to Chief Constables in 1974 (referring to industrial disputes) . Butler says he doesn’t recall seeing this either.

A similar Circular, referring to subversive activities in schools, was sent out in 1975. Butler does not recall any sensitivity around reporting on school-children, or the School Kids Against the Nazis.

COMPREHENSIVE COLLECTION OF DATA

What were the most important things the SDS did?

According to Butler’s written statement, the main aims of the SDS were public disorder and collecting information to update Special Branch’s files.

Addressing the second of these, Barr asked him to explain why this was so important, and what such information was used for – for example, was this related to public order?

According to Butler, after some waffle, such details weren’t always immediately important, but might have what he called “latent value” – meaning they might

“possibly be relevant at a future date.”

Might the information be used for vetting purposes?

In paragraph 129 of his statement, Butler admits that “parts may seem unacceptable in today’s context” and Barr quoted the whole thing, ending with:

“I do not believe that individuals finding their names on a Special Branch or Security Service file is too high a price to pay for comprehensive intelligence coverage, providing that those individuals were not unlawfully discriminated against because of this.”

Barr asked him to explain what he meant by this, and Butler admitted that he must have been referring to people losing their jobs or being blacklisted – he says this is “unacceptable” but insists that it would only have happened if such information was ‘leaked’ from Special Branch, and he doesn’t believe this happened:

“I’m convinced that Special Branch records were properly maintained and there was no leakage.”

We saw the kind of information that was kept on file for its ‘latent value’ – contact details copied from the address book of “a leading member of the Freedom Editorial Collective”.

Having established that ‘N/T’ stands for ‘No Trace’ – it is clear that the majority of these names have not already come to the attention of Special Branch. These names were retained for decades and Butler doesn’t see it as a problem.

Asked to explain how gathering intelligence on individuals assisted with public order, he claimed that this would enable the police to make arrests after disorder had occurred. The SDS were quick to claim their public order ‘successes’ but nowhere is this kind of success mentioned.

PLAYING SQUASH WITH THE BOYS

Trevor Butler liked to play squash with his colleagues. Because of something Barr said today, we now know that he also played squash with the guys from the Security Service as well (a minor detail that was redacted – and replaced with the word ‘sport’ – in one of the documents released by the Inquiry).

He says he got to know the officers:

“some of them very well, others not so well, but reasonably well, all of them”

The unit was an all-male environment. Butler remembers banter and jokes. Were any of these of a sexual nature?

“I can’t remember, but probably”

However, he insists that he heard no suggestion of spycops being the subject of sexual advances, and nothing about sexual contact actually occurring. He said he didn’t consider this to be a risk:

“they were married men with a stable background who I trusted not to get involved sexually outside of their marriage.”

He says he never asked them if they had come under “pressure to indulge in sexual activity” never mind asking directly if they’d engaged in any form of sexual contact.

If this is true, then the lack of curiosity exhibited by him and other managers clearly demonstrates a culture of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ within the SDS. He didn’t remind them not to engage in sex on duty, consider setting up ‘cover girlfriends’ or finding other ways of reducing the risk.

Rick Clark (‘Rick Gibson’, officer HN297, 1974-76) is known to have had at least four relationships; he was investigated by the group he infiltrated, Big Flame, and was exposed as a result. Butler claims he can’t remember anything about this.

Similarly, he says he didn’t hear any gossip about ‘Jim Pickford‘ (officer HN300, 1974-77), withdrawn after falling in love with an activist, who he went on to marry.

BARRY’S GIRLFRIEND

Another incident was discussed in more depth. ‘Barry Tompkins‘ (officer HN106, 1979-83), in his witness statement, details a ‘platonic’ relationship with a woman that he met while undercover. He says they were just friends, and he slept in her home – supposedly in her child’s bedroom with a noisy hamster – a few times, rather than driving home drunk.

This woman was often referred to as “Barry’s girlfriend” amongst those he was infiltrating. Tompkins says that he was asked by his manager, Trevor Butler, to account for an intercepted phone call in which an activist had talked about storing “items from Ireland” at “Barry’s girlfriend’s place”.

“I think Trevor said something along the lines of ‘You’re not going to get us in trouble, are you?’ and I simply said ‘no, it’s nothing like that’.”

Butler says he does not recall this at all. He categorically refuses to accept that this may have happened but he forgot about it (like everything else). He is adamant that Tompkins must have confused him and another manager from the office.

Asked what he thinks he might have done if these events had occurred as laid out in Tompkins’ statement, he says “my outlook was probably different then than it is now”, yet goes on to say that he can’t remember what his outlook was then.

Barr was somewhat flummoxed by this and points out that if he doesn’t know what his outlook was before, how does he know it’s changed?

“Now, I think I would have insisted that he ended such a relationship. Then, I might have been more tolerant.”

Butler explained that he has become less tolerant since becoming “older and more disagreeable” (his words, verbatim).

In those days, he goes on, he wouldn’t have been concerned about a platonic relationship like this. Would he have investigated to find out if more was going on?

“That’s a hypothetical question. It didn’t happen.”

But he added:

“I would have investigated very thoroughly.”

Would a sexual relationship have led to disciplinary action? Butler says he would have made sure the officer left the SDS, but agreed that there might have been difficulties taking formal disciplinary action, and that decision would have been ‘above his pay grade’.

Another exhibit was shown: a Security Service note about a visit to the SDS – in the shape of senior managers  ‘Sean Lynch‘ (officer HN68) and Dave Short (officer HN99) – in June 1982, after Butler had left. It contains the remarkable line:

“Information on this subject may be bedevilled by the fact that HN106 [‘Barry Tompkins’] has probably bedded [privacy] and has been warned off by his bosses.”

Does he know what this refers to? Is is something he told Dave Short? Unsurprisingly, Butler can’t help with this as, yet again, he can’t recall. (NB: Tomkins himself says that this refers to a different woman, who the Security Service wanted to use as an informant, and who he denies sleeping with).

In his witness statement Butler says that he knew ‘Barry Tompkins’ was married with young children at the time.

“I would have reminded him about his obligations to them and to the job in fairly strong terms if I had even the slightest suspicion that he had or was tempted to stray.”

Barr put it to him that this demonstrated consideration of the possible impact on this marriage, and of the risk to both the SDS and the wider Met, but none for the woman who ‘Barry’ had formed this close friendship with. Butler confirmed that he did not or would not have given her any consideration at all.

NO CONSIDERATION FOR WOMEN

Other officers that are known to have had sexual relationships in this era include Vince Harvey (‘Vince Miller’, officer HN354, 1976-79), with four women; officer HN21, with one woman; and ‘Paul Gray’ (officer HN126, 1977-82).

Butler says he gave zero consideration to the harm that any of these women may have suffered as a result.

He said he knew ‘Phil Cooper’ (officer HN155, 1979-84) quite well, but

“he didn’t give me any reason to suspect that his behaviour was cause for concern.”

He added that Cooper wouldn’t have confessed to doing sex and drugs to Butler anyway as it would have led to trouble for him.

Barr read out a declaration from Butler’s statement:

“As far as I was concerned, then and now, the SDS provided a terrific service’ trouble-free”

Did he still think that, in light of all this evidence?

Butler asserted that:

“I considered I was extremely lucky. I had a couple of years working with a very successful team who presented no problems and I suspected were doing nothing untoward.”

The strength of his loyalty to the SDS is very clear throughout. Pressed about the sexual misconduct that has come to light, the most critical comment he could make was to say that he was “disappointed”.

REPONSIBLE ROLES

Butler’s statement refers to undercovers not “crossing the line between acceptable recording and unacceptable direction setting and incitement”, so Barr explored this topic.

In his witness statement, ‘Mike James‘ (officer HN96, 1978-83) said that he’d been advised by colleague ‘Geoff Wallace’ (officer HN296, 1975-78) not to get too involved, or become too prominent, in the groups he was infiltrating.

However, he was elected to the Hackney District Committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and chaired meetings of the Party’s Clapton branch, becoming their ‘District Book Organiser’.

The same officer was then encouraged by his bosses, in around 1980, to get more involved in the Troops Out Movement (TOM), and ended up being elected as TOM’s Membership and Affiliation Secretary.

He didn’t get a chance to discuss this with his managers beforehand – the nomination “came out of the blue” – but says he told them as soon as he could and they were “pleased” with this news.

Butler cannot recall being one of those managers. However he agreed that this would have been seen as “a good thing” as it gave the SDS much more access to information.

He didn’t view this position (which came with a seat on the TOM’s national steering committee) as a problem. He says he wouldn’t have interfered, just trusted the officer’s judgement as to what he felt “comfortable” with.

‘Paul Gray’ (officer HN126, 1977-82) also spied on the SWP, rising beyond branch roles to join its North West London District Committee. This was also “a good thing”, according to Butler.

Surely this meant he could be voting on things and influencing the direction of the group? “I don’t know what they did” was Butler’s response.

Asked if he, as the manager receiving information, he tried to find out what they did, Butler simply answered “no” as a sentence in its own right. Again.

SPYCOPS’ WIVES

Before new undercovers went out into the field, Butler would visit their wives at home. He would explain that their husbands’ working hours and appearance would change, but nothing more about what this “important work” actually entailed.

He says he wanted to ensure they “were happy to support their husband in the role” and “understood the difficulties” – i.e. the disruption to family life caused by long, irregular hours. He agreed that the SDS asked a great deal of these officers’ wives.

ANTI-RACIST ACTIVISM IN 1981

‘Barry Tompkins’ (officer HN106, 1979-83) reported on a meeting that took place in Walthamstow in August 1981, organised by the Winston Rose Action Committee.

They were campaigning for a public inquiry into the death in custody of Winston (a 27-year-old boxer, who had been born in Jamaica) a month earlier.

One of the speakers was Fran Eden, of East London Workers Against Racism (ELWAR), a group which Tompkins had infiltrated. Butler was asked what he thought the policing value of this reporting was.

Barr ventured to suggest that sending an undercover officer to spy on such a meeting might not be good optics for the Met, and could risk “doing more harm than good”. If he’d been discovered, might that not have served as a catalyst for the community to take to the streets, as they had done in Brixton and other places around the country already that year?

Butler’s said “that could probably be said of every report that an undercover officer submitted”, doubling down on his opinion that “it was wholly justified and a fine report”.

He had no concerns about Tompkins reporting on a Revolutionary Communist Tendency meeting that took place in Brixton directly after the riots, on 16th April, about setting up South London Workers Against Racism, organising legal defence for members of the local community, involving legal representatives.

Also in April, Tompkins reported on ELWAR holding an election meeting in Stoke Newington Town Hall, as one of their members was standing as a candidate in the upcoming local elections.

Barr suggested that electoral activity isn’t exactly subversive.

But in Butler’s view, if a group’s worth reporting on, then it’s worth reporting on every single thing they do:

“my attitude was always it’s far better to report too much than too little.”

BLAIR PEACH

Just like the other managers we’ve heard from at the hearings, Butler said he barely remembered the events around police killing Blair Peach and the subsequent justice campaign. It is yet another stretch on his credibility.

According to the SDS 1979 Annual Report, there was “a sustained campaign to discredit and criticise the police” after Peach’s murder. Butler admitted that he may well have written this.

The SDS reported on these campaigners, but Butler insisted that the Metropolitan Police’s only interest in such intelligence would be due to potential disorder, nothing to do with collecting information about people who were critical of the police.

Barr pointed out that there was “very little trouble indeed” from the justice campaign, and asked why the Friends of Blair Peach were described in that way.

Butler ended up in another awkward dance, trying to avoid the point that the justice campaign was deliberately targeted for calling for accountability from the police. He did at least concede it was inappropriate to take photographs of mourners at Peach’s funeral.

MESSED-UP PRIORITIES

The SDS 1980 Annual Report said that “anti fascist activity continued to tax the resources” of the police.

Butler explained that when it came to confrontations between the far right and the far left, the police tended to blame the anti-fascists for causing (or as he re-worded it, ‘creating’) serious disorder, for “attacking those they opposed”.

He said the police were also “a good target” for the demonstrators.

He grudgingly admitted that the far right were responsible for lots of serious street violence, but said it wasn’t the SDS’s job to predict or prevent racist attacks, who were “more interested in large scale social disorder”.

His attention drawn to the section of the SDS 1981 Annual Report headed ‘Security’ (on page 7). Operational security is described as always being “of paramount importance” for the unit – both for the “personal protection of the field officers and to prevent embarrassment to the Commissioner by its existence becoming public knowledge” – and the “political sensitivity” around the SDS operations is mentioned.

Squeezing blood from the stone, Barr got Butler to admit that such ’embarrassment’ would stem from the public learning that undercover policing tactics weren’t restricted to drugs gangs and serious criminality, but were also being used in a political way, “to manage public disorder”.

Barr went on to note that the Report says that all infiltrations had to be fully justified on the basis of the Commissioner’s responsibility for the preservation of public order.

Under the heading ‘Coverage’ (on page 4) is a list of groups whose infiltration would be hard to justify on these grounds, such as Womens Voice, the Freedom Collective, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).

Butler claimed not to know who the first two were, but even he couldn’t pretend not to have heard of CND, a hugely popular campaign that held protests hundreds of thousands strong.

Instead, he suggested that CND demonstrations were often ‘infiltrated’ by “extremists”, and then added another explanation for spying on them: that the SDS didn’t have enough undercovers to infiltrate all of the groups, but many of those people attended CND events.

We now know that CND was infiltrated, in its own right, by John Kerry (officer HN65, 1980-84) but Butler claimed he wasn’t involved, saying this must have happened as he was leaving. However Kerry joined the unit in 1980 and Butler didn’t leave until 1982.

HOME OFFICE: PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY

In his statement, Butler recalled meeting for “a beer and a lunch” with a relatively senior Home Office official every month.

His bad memory returned when he was asked about these meetings – he couldn’t remember their purpose or anything about what business was discussed at them, but says that he knew that it had no influence over the unit’s work.

The SDS was set up by the Home Office in 1968, and was directly funded by them for twenty years. Funding had to be applied for and renewed annually.

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.

The Security Service’s ‘Witness Z’ has previously 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.

There is nothing embarrassing to the police or Home Office 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.

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.

There appears to have been a lot of careful work to ensure no proof of the link survives. After the spycops scandal broke, in 2015 former Audit Commission director Stephen Taylor looked into the links between the SDS and the Home Office. His report said the ‘investigation did not identify any retained evidence available in the Department of any correspondence, discussions or meetings on the SDS for the 40 year period’ that the unit existed. Nothing. In the entire Home Office.

Time and again Taylor found reference to a file, catalogue number QPE 66 1/8/5, understood to have covered Home Office dealings with the SDS. It has disappeared. It would have contained material classified Secret or Top Secret, which would have strict protocols around its removal or destruction, yet there is no clue as to what happened to it.

They physically searched all storage facilities in the Home Office. It’s gone. Taylor couldn’t make allegations but rather pointedly said ‘it is not possible to conclude whether this is human error or deliberate concealment’.

Butler appears to be well acquainted with the Home Office’s stipulation that details of their involvement must never come to light.

DRINKING ON THE JOB

Finally, Barr asked Butler some questions on issues raised by the Inquiry’s Non State Core Participants (ie, victims of spycops).

One significant issue had been about the spycops’ consumption of alcohol whilst on duty.
Butler was asked about their expenses claims, and clarified that they were not allowed to claim for alcohol they’d drunk, unless it was as “part of a substantial meal”.

He admitted that they could have claimed for drinks consumed by other people, which would have “been shown as an incidental expense”, but had no recollection of any of them doing so.

In his words, most of the officers “drank regularly but not excessively”. He contradicted other witnesses by saying they “usually had a beer” when they met at the safe house.

He went on to explain that they wouldn’t want to drink so much as to be drunk in their activist group, or be caught drink-driving (as having a driving licence was important for their jobs). This contradicts countless reports from the people who were infiltrated.

He had no concerns about anyone drinking to a level that impaired their judgement or affected their long term welfare.

Was he concerned about them buying lots of drinks for those they were spying on? No. He assumed they would buy rounds when out with activists, but “you wouldn’t buy excessive drinks just because you could afford to.”

DEPARTURE

The last thing we heard about from Butler was about his leaving the SDS. He was told by Commander Wilson that he was being moved on, ostensibly on the grounds that he was getting too close to those he managed and losing his objectivity:

“he said that it was time for me to move on to another role before I unquestioningly took the side of the UCOs [undercover officers] in all matters.”

It seems likely that had something to do with him fighting their corner on the issue of overtime payments, possibly another illustration of his loyalty to the undercovers. He continues to insist that they did an “excellent job”.

WHEN WE MEET AGAIN

The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, then closed this round of hearings with the line:

“When we’ll meet again remains to be seen.”

The next set of evidential hearings (covering ‘Tranche 2’, the SDS 1983-92) are not due to take place until 2024. In the meantime there may be an interim report from the Inquiry to look forward to.

Witness statement of Trevor Butler

Transcript, video of the morning and afternoon the day’s hearing

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<<Previous UCPI Daily Report (19 May 2022)<<

Tranche 1, Phase 3, Day 9

19 May 2022

Witness:Angus McIntosh (officer HN244)

 

The penultimate day of the 2022 Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, dealing with spycops’ managers 1968-82.

Today, we first heard about Richard Walker (officer HN368), who worked in the SDS back office for over three years. He was not called to give oral evidence, but provided the Inquiry with a witness statement, so a summary of this was read out by a member of the Inquiry team.

The Inquiry then introduced documents relating to Lesley Willingale (officer HN1668), who is now deceased.

Only one witness gave evidence at the hearing: Angus Bryan McIntosh (officer HN244), the Detective Inspector who served as second in command of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) from mid 1976 to late 1979.

Lacking the polished veneer of his colleague Geoffrey Craft (officer HN34) the previous day, Angus McIntosh (inadvertently) gave more insight into the attitudes of the unit towards those it was targeting. A number of his statements caused outrage.

Otherwise, what we encountered was not dissimilar to much of the other live evidence so far. A mixture of truth and dissembling; though more forthcoming than others, he also had inexplicable memory lapses on important issues.

He was a teenager when he joined the police, moved to Special Branch in 1964, and continued to be promoted, up to Commander level – moving to National Coordinator of Ports Policing when it was formed in 1987, and staying in this role until he retired from 11 years later – very much a career Branch man.

TRAINING

Rebekah Hummerstone, barrister for the Inquiry, began by questioning him about his understanding of the law around policing.

McIntosh recalled attending police training courses at Bramshill and Hendon during this time, but these were general, and didn’t cover anything to do with undercover policing.

He was asked how he understood police powers to apply to undercover work, and admitted that they hadn’t given much thought to this at the time.

He suggested that if officers were invited to enter a private home or premises – even if this was under false pretences – they did not need a warrant, and suggested that in fact, not accepting an invitation might raise suspicions and therefore jeopardise their cover story.

He says his role entailed him applying his common sense and instinct – it was about “careful people management” of the individual officers to ensure their morale and safety.

His Special Branch background provided useful knowledge of the groups being targeted, the style in which reports were created, and some of the possible pitfalls. However the unit’s tactics were new to him, and he says there was no manual, and no specific SDS training course in those days.

In his statement he says that he introduced tutoring for SDS officers so they could take their ‘promotions exams’, and felt that his role included providing informal training for them, including the new recruits, who joined the office team first.

He says that he just learnt on the job, as was standard practice in those days, and adopted the unit’s existing practices.

CRAFT WORK?

Yesterday’s witness, Geoff Craft, couldn’t remember working with McIntosh in the SDS. Bizarrely, today McIntosh could not recall working with Craft either. The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, has asked both men to explain why, as the timeline prepared by the Inquiry shows significant overlap.

McIntosh’s only theory to explain this confusion is that he knows that he was away on various training courses for months, during which time someone else – probably Lesley Willingale (officer HN1668) – would have been acting up to cover his Inspector role.

MIKE FERGUSON

He did remember Mike Ferguson (officer HN135). He says that he first learnt the details of what the SDS (or ‘Hairies’ as they were known within the Branch) did from Mike, before he joined the unit himself.

He actually recalled an incident that took place during Ferguson’s undercover deployment, in which he infiltrated the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

Ferguson turned up one day at McIntosh’s home, ‘seeking refuge’ – his wife didn’t recognise him but Angus recognised his voice and let him in.

“He visited my flat in his undercover appearance and clothing before I was part of the SDS. He wanted to be in a safe place and took refuge in my flat. I do not know what it was that he was seeking refuge from, but he wanted to be off the street.”

Later on, when they worked together – Ferguson became Chief Inspector of the unit in early 1978, so was effectively McIntosh’s boss – he remembers them as close, Ferguson as able to give practical advice to the officers, based on his own personal experience of going undercover, and seems to have shared a lot of his knowledge with McIntosh.

THE BLACK FOLDER

Despite saying “there was no training manual”, McIntosh clearly remembered the ‘black loose-leaf folder’ that others have mentioned, which contained SDS tradecraft and knowledge that had built up over the years.

He described it as “full of good advice for the new officers”, but at the same time claimed that he never looked inside himself. Unfortunately, this contradiction was not picked up on.

He was asked if managers ever checked the contents, to ensure that suggestions of bad practice were removed, but seemed to think this wasn’t needed.

TASKING AND SUPERVISION

McIntosh would expect requests for information – including those from the Security Service – to come in via a Special Branch Squad, usually C Squad which dealt with left-wing activism.

The SDS managers met daily with their line manager, an S Squad Superintendent, and such requests could be discussed then. Sometimes they turned them down, if they didn’t have a source in a suitable place.

Referring to A8 (the uniformed public order unit) McIntosh said:

“We fed them; they didn’t feed us”

That is, although the SDS provided them with plenty of information, they didn’t receive any requests from them.

Sometimes this information was delivered via a phone call, especially when it was urgent news about an upcoming demo.

The unit’s managers had a lot of autonomy and made a lot of important decisions without any external input. They would keep the S Squad Superintendent informed, but not always give them all the details. They wouldn’t necessarily report any problems that arose.

NO SPYING ON THE FAR RIGHT

McIntosh said he was too junior to have been party to a “high-level policy decision” like the one not to infiltrate the far right. However he recalls that it was thought it would be too difficult and dangerous for an undercover to be sent in, as these groups were so very violent, and prone to criminality.

This is another glaring contradiction. Ever since the spycops scandal broke in 2010, the police have denfended it by saying they had to infltrate groups in case they were planning anything violent or criminal. But McIntosh says it wasn’t safe to infiltrate groups who were violent or criminal, so they focused their attentions elsewhere.

He then added that the police didn’t need to spy on the far right to keep an eye on them; they could obtain good information about them from the left-wing groups who monitored fascist activity, with much less risk to officers.

This is something we learned at one of last year’s hearings. Several spycops said that, despite the far right waging campaigns of violence and murder, they weren’t regarded as much of a problem. Only one SDS officer infiltrated the far right in the 1970s, and he did so inadvertently.

‘Peter Collins‘ (officer HN303, 1973-77) infiltrated the Workers Revolutionary Party who, in turn, sent him in to spy on the fascist National Front.

THE SECURITY SERVICE

McIntosh suggested that his lowly position as a Detective Inspector meant that he had very little contact with the Security Service (aka MI5).

However, this is somewhat contradicted by a document he was shown; a summary of the contact that took place between the Security Service and the SDS in 1979.

It shows that he and Ferguson attended a meeting in February on behalf of the SDS, and the Security Service were keen for these meetings to become regular monthly events.

HOME LIVES

It was considered essential for undercovers to have stability, an ‘anchor’, and so almost all of them were married men. McIntosh made a point of always visiting the partners of new recruits before deployment. He said the main reason for this was to introduce himself, gain her trust, and ensure she had a way of contacting him if she had any problems. He says hardly anyone ever rang the telephone number they were supplied with.

He would use this opportunity to tell the officer’s partner what to expect: long absences, working evenings and weekends, etc. Although they wanted to asses the officer’s domestic situation, they “certainly didn’t investigate”.

It was left to the officer to ‘use his judgement’ about how to explain his changed appearance and new job to his spouse: “rightly or wrongly, we left it to them to deal with it”.

The welfare of these women was of very little concern to the managers of the SDS, the only thing that mattered to them was maintaining the secrecy around these operations.

He also referred to the wives and families in the context of overtime, saying he was concerned that officers weren’t spending enough time at home, at the same time claiming the long hours of overtime were important for maintaining their cover stories.

STEALING IDENTITIES OF DEAD CHILDREN

McIntosh was asked about spycops’ theft of dead children’s identities to create undercover backstories or ‘legends’.

He seems genuinely aggrieved by this – not regretting the practice as such, but the fact that it was exposed by activists:

“I think it is most unfortunate that this Inquiry has enabled the poor families and relatives to realise that this has happened. In normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have happened. I mean, it’s extraordinary.”

WELFARE

Undercovers were expected to phone the office before 11am every day to ‘check in’. The meetings at the SDS safehouse also served a social purpose – as we’ve heard before, they offered an opportunity for the officers to relax together and be themselves. One of them would cook lunch, but the office staff did not join the undercovers at the pub.

We have heard about a dysfunctional drinking culture within the SDS. McIntosh was asked of the officers were given any guidance on drinking; he says no beyond no drink-driving.

SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS

Again, as previously, the Inquiry spend considerable time on officers deceiving women they spied on into sexual relationships, as McIntosh oversaw a number of undercovers who did this.

The Inquiry asked about the comments of ‘Graham Coates‘ (officer HN304) about the sexist banter at the meetings. McIntosh remembers the banter but does not recall jokes about Rick Clark’s sexual prowess (see below). He says he was out of earshot most of the time, having individual talks in the other room.

Like Richard Walker (officer HN368), another manager who has given a written statement, McIntosh says that what banter he heard, he did not take particularly seriously.

McIntosh felt he was able to build close relationships with the undercovers and that they could have approached him for help with problems, but if these problems were what he called “self-induced” he suspects they may not have been entirely honest with him as a senior officer. Particularly, he couldn’t see any of them confiding in him about a relationship in the field as this could have affected their career.

Asked if Ferguson was someone they felt they could confide in, he said yes, “he was a man’s man.”

McIntosh was also agreed that the risk of relationships was a real one and meant a serious a security risk to the unit. However, he did not view it as a case of an officer abusing his power; in his view “things happen” and it was a personal, individual matter, security risks aside.

SPECIFIC OFFICERS

The Inquiry then asked McIntosh about a number of officers whose problematic behaviour has been frequently discussed at the hearings.

Vince Harvey (aka ‘Vince Miller’, officer HN354, 1976 -1979)

When joining the SDS, Harvey had been in a long term relationship, but that had ended. McIntosh was not aware of that fact, but would have dealt with it as a matter of welfare.

McIntosh said he was “amazed” at learning of Harvey’s sexual relationships while undercover, which had only come to his attention through the Inquiry.

Had he known, he says he would have taken this to Superintendent level and expects that Harvey would have been withdrawn.

Richard Clark (aka ‘Rick Gibson’, officer HN297, 1974-76)

Clark was exposed after the group he infiltrated investigated him and confronted him with his stolen identity. He also had multiple sexual relationships while undercover, which contributed to this exposure. McIntosh recalls Clark being withdrawn from the field, but claimed not to know many of the details.

However he says he was part of the surveillance team who sat outside the pub while Clark was being confronted by his suspicious comrades, just in case things turned nasty for the officer. He thought that Craft was there with him; yesterday Craft testified that he was there, but with Superintendent Derek Kneale (officer HN819).

McIntosh’s vague memory is incredible, given the severity the threat this represented to the secrecy of the entire unit.

This officer’s compromise doesn’t seem to have prompted any particular evaluation around security and processes. New officers were trained in exactly the same way as Clark, complete with the stolen identity that could lead suspicious comrades to a damning death certificate.

He described Clark as “very outgoing… the type that would brag about anything.”

He said he’d had no idea about Clark getting involved with at least four women while undercover, and sounded quite upset about Clark’s conduct:

“His behaviour has let everyone down.”

Not because of the possible impact on the women though but, extraordinarily, blaming Clark for everything, including this Inquiry being set up and a spotlight being shone into the workings of the SDS.

He sounded genuinely distressed that things had ‘unravelled’ and the unit was no longer a secret, saying:

“One of the proud things of SB was that the SDS was run without the general knowledge of the Branch let alone the police force or anyone else. Now the whole thing’s been exposed, unravelled, and that’s why I think it’s a great shame.”

‘Jim Pickford‘ (officer HN300, 1974-77)

McIntosh described Pickford as a “strange character” but also claimed to be unaware of his reputation as a womaniser. Another officer has told the Inquiry that Pickford confided in him that he had “fallen in love with” a female activist, prompting him to go straight to one of the unit’s managers (in his words, “the one with a Scottish name”).

This led to Pickford being withdrawn from the field. McIntosh denies being this manager, and insists that he knew nothing, and just thought Pickford’s deployment came to its natural end.

He said that if he had known about this, he would have gone to more senior management, and Pickford would have had to leave the Branch (as this would have affected his vetting status). Craft also denied knowing about this situation at the time.

However, Sir John Mitting said that in the Inquiry’s ‘closed sessions’ where certain officers have given evidence without the public present, he heard very detailed and convincing testimony from an undercover about them telling management about Pickford.

McIntosh expressed surprise that Pickford’s subsequent marriage (to the same activist) saying it was “amazing that rumour control kept it a secret”. He again suggested that this might all have happened while he was away from the unit – perhaps Leslie Willingale had been the manager?

Perhaps conveniently for McIntosh, the Inquiry is unable to check this as Willingale is dead.

THE PRINCIPLE OF SEXUAL DECEPTION

McIntosh didn’t think officers had to be reminded that sexual conduct on the job was a breach of police regulations.

He said he never “probed”, or asked them if they were engaged in such activities it would have been pointless to do so as they were unlikely to tell him, their supervising officer, that they were breaking the rules.

He denied that such relationships equated to an abuse of position or power. He viewed this as “sexual contact between consenting adults”, not something he gave a “green light” to but only because it was against police regulations.

He was asked if he considered this to be deceit:

“I can’t really answer that”

Instead, he posed a counter-question:

“Does everyone say before they have a sexual encounter, what is your occupation? And if it’s a certain one, do they say ‘Definitely not, because you are a policeman, or postman?’ So no.”

Which, again, is starkly reminiscent of what his colleague Craft said yesterday, leaving a strong impression that the managers are coached as to what to say, or got together to straighten out their stories.

SPYING ON BLAIR PEACH’S FUNERAL

The Inquiry has heard that another former undercover was advised by his managers not to attend the April 1979 demonstration against the fascist National Front in Southall, because it was known that the uniformed police was going to ‘clamp down’ on the protesters.

McIntosh denied being that manager, or having any knowledge of this, but understood why the warning would have been passed on:

“Well, we don’t want our officers arrested. We don’t want our officers involved in violence.”

Despite him saying this warning represented a “fairly unusual statement” he was not pressed to explain the rather curious fact that, according to officer HN41, a decision had been taken beforehand to crackdown on the protesters.

Likewise, McIntosh could not remember that the SDS had arranged for an undercover to be smuggled into Scotland Yard to make statement about the death of Blair Peach. Chuckling, he replied:

“Not on this occasion, but we used to smuggle in officers for various reasons”

Again, he wasn’t asked to explain.

An undercover who was infiltrating the Anti-Nazi League, officer HN21, was tasked with attending Peach’s funeral. McIntosh says he can’t remember if it was him, or another manager, who gave this instruction.

McIntosh provided his justification for spying on the mourners, claiming it was necessary to “identify disorder” and normal to cover such events of interest:

“because the whole reason of the funeral was for a person involved in extreme left wing politics and demonstrations, that’s all.”

Even HN21 has said that there was no known risk of public disorder at this event. Faced with this, McIntosh dismissed his officer’s professional judgement as a “subjective one”.

Sir John Mitting then intervened, suggesting that:

“many people might think it distasteful for a police officer, whether undercover or not, to attend the funeral of someone who had died in the circumstances we now know and record the names of all of those capable of being identified who have attended it.”

Mitting’s choice of phrasing, ‘died in the circumstances we now know’, is very telling. Blair Peach was killed by police officers. The police investigation showed this at the time, and identified Inspector Alan Murray as being highly likely to have been the killer. Yet even now, Mitting seems incapable of describing it in this way.

At last year’s hearing on the anniversary of Peach’s death, the Inquiry held a minute’s silence. In his preamble, Mitting avoided all mention of the police, and merely referred to Peach being killed by ‘a blow to the head’. In doing this, he insults all victims of spycops and underlines his partisan nature that is draining the Inquiry of its potential to get to the truth.

The comments made by McIntosh in response were the most outrageous yet:

“I can understand some people being upset by it, but, however, in public disorder … I’m quoting Northern Ireland for instance, funerals are often a hotbed of problems, and it wasn’t the friends and relatives of the person whose funeral it was, it was because there was an opportunity of demonstration against… it would be anti-police, in one way or the other.”

It is an extraordinary rant, with the bizarre suggestion that the National Front might have demonstrated at the funeral.

“Unfortunately, sir, I don’t think there’s a lot of respect in those circumstances for the real reason of the occasion.”

He didn’t see the irony in his comments.

Undercovers are known to have spied on the Blair Peach campaign at other events over the years. In one of last year’s hearings, we saw internal documents showing they were still spying on vigils for Peach on the 20th anniversary of his death.

In his written statement, McIntosh said that he did not believe they were reported on because they sought to discredit or criticise the police.

However, today he told the Inquiry something different, and was asked to clarify his views – why did he think those people had been reported on?

One of the excuses he gave was that if an undercover was sent to cover an event, they understood it was their duty to report the names of those present, without any filtering. It’s more likely that they would have included activists’ names on the list as the officers are more likely to have recognised those people.

He then claimed to not recall the full details about the demonstration where Blair Peach was killed. Which was maybe the first time ever that a police officer used those words, acknowledging what has actually happened.

Witness statement of Angus McIntosh

Transcript, video of the morning and afternoon the day’s hearing

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The current round of Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, focusing on Special Demonstration Squad managers 1968-82, continue until tomorrow, Friday 20 May.

<<Previous UCPI Daily Report (18 May 2022)<<

Tranche 1, Phase 3, Day 8

18 May 2022

Witness:
Geoffrey Craft (officer HN34)

The eighth day of the 2022 Undercover Policing Inquiry‘s hearings examining spycops managers 1968-82 was devoted to the evidence of just one man: Geoffrey Craft (officer HN34).

Craft was a Detective Inspector with the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) from May 1974 to October 1976, when he was promoted to head the unit as Detective Chief Inspector, which he remained until October 1977. In 1982 he returned to oversee the spycop unit as Chief Superintendent of ‘S’ Squad.

The pattern of questions remained the same as previous days, starting with his training and understanding of the law. Craft was a much more capable witness than Derek Brice, who gave evidence on the previous day. He was able to responded quickly to questions, many of which clearly irritated him.

On some points he was quite open, but like other officers he suffered inexplicable amnesia about highly significant moments and could not recall the characters of any of the undercovers deployed during his time.

He came across as very much loyal to Special Branch and found little fault with it, and clearly believed that he himself had done nothing wrong, although he did express disappointment in learning about the behaviour of undercovers under his watch. He claims no contemporary knowledge of any of that wrongdoing and appears to characterise himself as naive.

TRAINING AND THE LAW

There was no training or thought given to the lawfulness or ethics of what the SDS was doing, or the intrusion into private life that came from it.

When he joined the SDS, there was no real handover, Craft moved in as second in command to Derek Kneale (officer HN819) who told him what he needed to know. Intelligence was gathered to support public order policing and secondary to that was reporting on subversive activities, material which C Squad  – the department concerned with left-wing activists – then channelled to the Security Service (aka MI5). The undercovers’ targets were chosen following discussions on which groups were involved in public order issues at the time.

In an incredible piece of double think, when asked if he had considered back then whether the public would approve of what the SDS was doing, Craft said he had concluded that the public as a whole are happy to live in a parliamentary democracy and public demonstrations were part of that, so the police naturally needed intelligence to ensure appropriate policing.

SUBVERSION

As with previous witnesses, considerable time was devoted to Craft’s understanding of the term subversion. It was clear that he had just gone along with existing practice, and like so many other things had given it little or no consideration.

Basically, he and other Special Branch officers would have absorbed what they needed to know as junior officers and he was comfortable in his own mind what was subversive or not.

This also brought up the issue of spying on school children, covered in previous hearings. Craft’s position was that they would have only been interested in school children if they were involved in one of the organisations they were monitoring for public order purposes.

They would have reported on School Kids Against Nazis because they were supported by the Socialist Workers Party, he said.

This contrasts with the evidence specifically highlighted by lawyers representing ex-undercover officers that this was done at the specific request of MI5 who were interested in ‘subversion’ in schools.

TARGETING

Who an undercover officer should target was a matter for the Chief Superintendent responsible for the SDS, who had to bear in mind it was primarily for public order purposes. However, there would be coordination with the Secret Service (via C Squad) and other squads to avoid duplication, and their views were taken into ‘consideration’ – especially as it was C Squad that had to produce the threat assessments. The SDS was simply a support service in that, albeit a major one.

Craft never considered whether there were alternative ways to get intelligence as that was not ‘S’ Squad’s responsibility – that was down to ‘C’ Squad. Like other managers, he speaks of a cordial relationship with the Security Service, in which the SDS tried to accommodate requests for further information.

Craft was later questioned about the decisions to target a number of specific organisations (see below). What stood out most in his responses was the suggestion that groups were targeted “just in case” and that this was standard practice for the SDS:

“We tried to be ahead of the game, certainly”

USE OF REPORTING

Intelligence gathered by the SDS was passed on to C Squad, who sent it to A8 (Public Order Branch) or the Security Service. In his recollection, a great deal of the intelligence that eventually went to A8 in the form of a C Squad threat assessment was likely to have originated in the SDS. It was unusual for the SDS to have more direct contact, except perhaps at weekends when an undercover may phone in an urgent bit of intelligence during a protest.

A8 and C squad had other sources, but the SDS brought to the public order picture the intentions of the revolutionary groups – especially as those groups tended not to cooperate with the police. Craft repeated the line that it was equally important to reassure A8 that there was not going to be any trouble, to keep policing to a minimum. Otherwise, uniformed police would be pulled off other duties to the detriment of the people of London.

Craft like other mangers said filtering of what intelligence the undercovers provided was not his problem – others decided that. Barr pointedly noted that C Squad, where most of the intelligence went first, did not seem to do a great deal of filtering either. “You’re probably right”, Craft conceded.

Asked why Special Branch wanted reports on individuals, Craft replied it it was for the Security Service. Pushed, he accepted that the intimate personal details recorded were for the Security Service and were not simply a result of lax attitudes. It was not, according to him, used for Special Branch vetting as they only dealt with vetting relating to Irish Republicanism.

FEAR OF THE MEDIA

Craft told the Inquiry that the operational security of the SDS was paramount. This meant that, should the operation become public, the Commissioner needed to have a strong defence: “that the police were acting as the police were sworn to act, in the preservation of the Queen’s peace.”

Asked what he feared, Craft was very clear: the media. More specifically “the attack upon the police by the media, for acting undercover to achieve the result we did.” How he could square that with taking instructions from the Security Service on infiltrating groups that were acting perfectly lawfully but considered ‘subversive’, was a question he failed to answer.

SPILLING THE BEANS

As part of the questioning on the relationship with the Security Service, Barr drew the Inquiry’s attention to document [UCPI0000027451] which discussed the knowledge of the SDS as an undercover unit among other police forces in 1976.

It turns out it was quite well known after a Special Branch course run by the Metropolitan Police Special Branch had included a lecture on the SDS and its successes, given by the unit’s founder Conrad Dixon.

This was later considered have been a mistake and the subject was not supposed to be mentioned again. Craft expressed surprise, saying this was all new to him and he should have known about it.

COVER IDENTITIES

The practice of stealing dead children’s identities to create cover stories was already in place when Craft arrived on the scene and he did not consider the ethics of it at the time, he just assumed it was legal.

He claimed that because the SDS was a top secret operation it seemed inconceivable that any family would find out.

In hindsight, of course, that isn’t the case, and he says his view now is that bereaved families had suffered enough:

“anything the SDS did to exacerbate that was very sad.”

Barr, for the Inquiry, reminded him that Richard Clark had been exposed by discovery of the death certificate for his stolen identity. Craft elaborated on how difficult it must have been for the activists to find this. However, he did not revisit the utility of the tactic in light of these events.

SUPERVISION & SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS

The Inquiry came next to the issue of supervision of the undercovers, and – importantly – the managers’ awareness of the sexual relationships. Craft denied knowing anything about the sexual relationships officers had indulged in on his watch.

He was asked about various officers who served under him, many of whom are now known to have engaged in intimate relationships while undercover. Rick Clark (‘Rick Gibson’, officer HN297, 1974-76) and ‘Jim Pickford‘ (officer HN300, 1974-77) came up multiple times during the day, mainly because they were singled out in previous evidence as womanisers who had sexual relationships with women in their target groups.

Craft denied knowing anything of their reputation, and said he did not know any reason why they should not have been undercovers.

Other officers mentioned included:

• ‘Alan Bond‘ (officer HN67, 1981-86)
• Mike Chitty (‘Mike Blake’, officer HN11, 1981-86)
• ‘Barry Tompkins‘ (officer HN106, 1979-83)
• ‘Paul Gray‘ (officer HN126, 1977-82)
• ‘Phil Cooper‘ (officer HN155, 1979-84)

Craft claimed not to be aware of their relationships, nor to have had any concerns about their behaviour. Indeed it made him wonder how well he actually got to know the members of his team.

We heard about the great meetings held twice a week, where allegedly everything was discussed, the camaraderie, how they called each other by their first names, and rank was not an issue.

As he saw it, these get-togethers should have served for the spycops to realise they were still in a police operation, although why he felt that a friendly get together where everyone used first names and rank was not an issue would remind officers it was a police operation was not clear.

Pressed on why he never gave any guidance that sexual relationships were off limits given that the undercovers were young men being put into potentially tricky situations (not least Clark being put into Goldsmiths College), he answered:

“The thought just never crossed my mind.”

However, earlier in his evidence he stated that it was drummed into all police officers that sex while on duty was cause for dismissal and he was even able to cite a case going back to 1830 in support of this.

FILTH

Barr asked Craft to elaborate on a point from his statement where he expressed why he was so against undercover officers having sexual relationships. In his answer Craft started with the risk of disease, and then went on to talk about the wife, the family and marriage. Finally, he referred to things they might have let slip while having sex “which could have damaged the operation”.

Pressed on this, he said that the threat to the family he was thinking of was the risk of sexually transmittable disease and the break-up of the marriage.

The matter-of-fact-way that Craft said this brought home the extent to which female campaigners were viewed as filth, merely potential spreaders of sexually transmissible diseases, rather than human beings with their own rights and dignity. It’s the Met’s contempt for political dissent compounded by their institutional sexism.

Asked about consideration for the woman deceived, Craft said he is not happy about the relationships, musing:

“But what is the alternative? Because accepting that rape is not involved, does all sexual activity in terms of modern moral attitude require a legally endorsed exchange of CVs before sexual activity takes place?

“And so, to the extent to which the man concerned is operating under false colours, is that something which one could prevent? I don’t know.”

Specifically, Craft was not happy with Rick Clark (‘Rick Gibson’, officer HN297, 1974-76) and said as much. Clark never said anything to Craft about the multiple sexual encounters he had had while undercover, which – according to what he told contemporaries – had contributed to his exposure.

Craft also did not like the fact he had not picked up on that at the time – clearly seeing it as a his own failure, though only in hindsight. At the very end of the day, in further questioning, he was asked how come he didn’t have the same opinion of Rick Clark, and another officer, ‘Jim Pickford‘ (officer HN300, 1974-77) that other witnesses have shared with the Inquiry?

His response may have actually contained some truth:

“People that are good at putting up a front can sometimes confuse one.”

In this, he is effectively claiming that both men had concealed their misconduct from their bosses, and blaming his own naïvety.

He claims no memory of Vince Harvey (‘Vince Miller’, officer HN354, 1976-79) coming to him for advice about the “amorous” attentions of an Socialist Workers Party member.

BOB LAMBERT

Even more unlikely, he stated that he never came across Bob Lambert (‘Bob Robinson’, officer HN10, 1983-88).

One of Lambert’s colleagues, whistleblower Peter Francis, has spoken of the unparalleled regard Lambert was held in long after his undercover deployment:

“He did what is hands down regarded as the best tour of duty ever”

Lambert was involved in the most shocking activities of the spycops. He stole the identity of a dead child, was prosecuted under his false identity, acted as an agent provocateur (allegedly burning down a shop) and deceived women he spied on into sexual relationships, including having a child with one.

Lambert later went on to run the SDS in the 1990s, deploying other officers to act similarly.

‘Who is Bob Lambert?’ – talk given by COPS, March 2015

Bob Lambert is one of the pre-eminent figures in SDS history, and his exposure in October 2011 was one of the pivotal moments in the spycops scandal.

Craft said:

“I wouldn’t recognise the man.”

He also says he was shocked to discover that Lambert had fathered a child with an activist:

“One wonders how he had the time.”

Asked what he would have done had he learned about an undercover having sex, Craft confidently declared he would have removed the undercover from the field.

At this point the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, intervened, asking whether the undercover would have been formally disciplined. Craft answered in theory yes, but there would have had to be a hearing, which would potentially expose the secret unit, so probably not.

WIVES & WELFARE

The thinking behind using married officers, according to Craft, is that the home life gave them something stable to return to, away from the stress of undercover life. It was all about stability, not about preventing sexual relationships.

Craft was asked about the officers’ wives. He said he didn’t always visit the wives of new recruits; they were invited to Christmas parties. He admitted that – despite the importance of these officers being married and enjoying stable home lives – there was no ongoing monitoring of their marriages, and not much care and attention paid to their wives. In retrospect, he sees that the job would have had an impact on them, and says the police should have done more to look after them.

He explained the reason for deployments tending to last four years, and said that the concerns he had about lengthy deployments were about the officers’ well-being but not because he considered any risk to family life, or an increased risk of what he termed “transgressions”.

POSITIONS OF RESPONSIBILITY

Craft claimed that undercovers he was supervising did not rise high in the ranks of the groups they were targeting. However, it quickly became clear that they did.

Richard Clark rose through the ranks of the Troops Out Movement (TOM) to become National Convener. Craft said he would not have approved of this.

Clark got involved in factional in-fighting – why wasn’t that stopped? Craft doesn’t know, and he can’t explain why he did nothing.

However he does seem to have approved of Vince Harvey (‘Vince Miller’, officer HN354, 1976-79) becoming both Treasurer and Secretary of Socialist Workers Party branches – agreeing that this represented a “fantastic opportunity” as “it clearly gave him access to all the membership”.

‘Phil Cooper‘ (officer HN155, 1979-84) and ‘Colin Clark’ (officer HN80, 1977-82) – also held “significant positions” within the Party and had access to the Party’s headquarters.

Would Craft have considered it proper or improper for someone to take or copy documents?

“Proper” was his prompt response – it was a “jolly good thing” – he would have completely approved and seen their work as very valuable; he still doesn’t consider that anything these officers did was illegal.

‘Gary Roberts‘ (officer HN353, 1974-78), in his witness statement, tells how he got involved in the student union at Thames Polytechnic, becoming Vice President, and attended National Union of Students conferences as an official delegate. Why didn’t Craft tell him not to take up this position?

Craft’s only respoded:

“It had happened so we were stuck with it.”

POLICE ARRESTED

We heard about a number of officers who were arrested during Craft’s tenure.
‘Desmond “Barry” Loader’ (officer HN13, 1975-78), was arrested and prosecuted on two occasions.

Loader’s first arrest (described on page 12 of this ‘Minute sheet’) took place on an anti-fascist march from Ilford to Barking in September 1977, which he attended with his ‘comrades’ from the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist). He was arrested under the Public Order Act, allegedly while “shielding two children” from the police, and is said is have been “somewhat battered”.

The case was complicated by an arresting officer having served with this undercover years earlier. This led to concerns about him being recognised in court, blowing his cover.

Craft went along to Barking Magistrates for a conversation with this Constable and met with a magistrate and a “helpful” clerk. Later entries show the SDS remained in contact with these officials. The trial eventually took place in 1978 – by this time Craft had moved on, and his successor, Ken Pryde, was in post.

We also heard about ‘Michael Hartley‘ (officer HN12, 1982-85) being arrested for fly posting on Holloway Road, alongside a ‘comrade’ from the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG).

Craft denied remembering this case, or considering the fairness of the other RCG member being prosecuted. This report was signed off by Craft and sent to the Commander of Operations.

UNDER CONSTANT REVIEW?

In a covering letter attached to the 1976 annual report we see the claim that the SDS was engaged in “constant review”, with reference to a small working party examining the unit’s work in detail, and increasing its effectiveness as well as shrinking the number of personnel required (to 12 deployments, which is said to be the minimum required to gather the necessary level of intelligence).

This working party was the only formal review of the SDS that Craft can recall. Barr pointed out that it was therefore a bit of an exaggeration to call it constant review. “I think it’s painting a slightly strong picture” admitted Craft

After seeing some letters of thanks and appreciation – such as one from Lancashire police following a demo in September 1976 and another one from 1977 – we heard more about the results of the Watts working party in 1976. The review found that, though public disorder at protests had declined since the SDS’s formation, police and the Security Service thought the SDS should continue its work.

WHAT WAS THE POINT?

Why couldn’t the police just monitor open sources and talk to activists? Craft claimed that undercover tactics were essential because the people they were spying on would never have told the police what they were up to.

“Accurate, timely intelligence was vital for proportionate policing and for keeping the peace”.

He insists that the SDS made a considerable difference to the policing of public order. The benefits for the Security Service are described as ‘off-spin’.

Craft was promoted in mid 1981, to run S Squad, and so had oversight of the SDS for the next three years – he calls it a “fairly close” relationship and says he sometimes visited the office and had discussions with those in the field.

What did they talk about? Just general stuff.

Does he recall any problems or welfare issues arising? What about new officers? Were you involved in discussing deployments? Probably not – Craft claims this would probably have been a conversation between the SDS and C Squad

RED LION SQUARE

Barr read an excerpt from the unit’s 1974 Annual Report (paragraph 20 on page 13) – about the death of Kevin Gately on 15 June during mounted police charges into a crowd at an anti-fascist demo at Red Lion Square, London.

Craft may have written this paragraph, but he isn’t sure. It mentions the SDS giving the uniformed police:

“forewarning of both the size of the demonstration and the possible disorder which might occur.”

However, while Craft knows that the SDS had undercovers deployed in most of the left-wing groups involved, he can’t remember any specifics about what intelligence the unit was able to contribute, nor how they did so. The Inquiry has failed to find any other evidence relating to this.

WHO TO SPY ON?

A number of Barr’s questions examined the motives behind the targeting of specific groups or events.

In reference to the far-right, Craft spoke about how “essential” it was to collect intelligence about extreme groups at both ends of the spectrum if the police were to successfully keep the peace between them. He confirmed that he did offer the SDS’ services for this purpose, but ultimately it was C Squad who decided.

When it came to the anti-racist groups, he said those who cooperated with the police were of no concern; those who didn’t were seen as a problem.

Asked why the Anti-Apartheid Movement was reported on (before his time in the unit) he said they were involved in disorder and criminal damage, referencing the direct action taken by the Stop the Seventy Tour campaign.

He admitted that the group had been “very thoroughly infiltrated” as a result of a reputational “hangover”, even though it was run by Young Liberals, rather than ‘ultra Left’ types.

Barr also asked about the Troops Out Movement (referenced in the SDS’s 1976 Annual Report). Craft admitted that TOM wasn’t seeking to overthrow the State and wasn’t really a public order threat. He attempted to justify their infiltration – describing them as “an umbrella movement” who might be infiltrated or ‘manipulated’ by the ‘ultra Left’, or attract Irish Republican support – it was here that he expressed the opinion that it was best to infiltrate them “just in case”.

In relation to the various anarchist and situationist groups, Barr pointed out that that Roy Creamer (officer HN3903, who gave evidence earlier in the week) had painted a benign picture of – for example – the Freedom Press.

Craft said he was “happy to bow to Roy Creamer’s expert knowledge” rather than attempt to distinguish between the various groups – it was “quite beyond me”.

In 1976 Richard Clark’s cover was compromised. The group he was infiltrating, Big Flame, is listed on page 4 of the Annual Report, described as a “sinister” organisation, albeit one with no known illegality. It is reported that members are “well-educated” and have links to the Angry Brigade. It is also credited with “practical ingenuity” in the field of security consciousness, compared to other ultra-Left groups:

“There is little doubt that this organisation has more to hide, and hence more to fear, from the police than some of the others”.

Craft says he’s “hesitant” to talk more about this paragraph now. This was possibly a reference to his slip-up, saying something that should have been restricted, earlier in the day.

DUBIOUS DEPLOYMENT DECISIONS

Was it Craft who instructed one of the undercovers to attend the funeral of Blair Peach, who was killed by police on an anti-fascist demonstration in 1979?

He doubts it, but can’t be sure. He agrees that Peach’s death and inquest were “bad news for the Met police” (the inquest found that Peach had been killed by a police officer). Did the SDS take a special interest in the campaign? Only in that it would have been wise to keep an eye on them in case of disorder, Craft asserts.

Why was the Campaign for Nucelar Disarmament (CND) targeted? Obviously a male officer couldn’t have infiltrated the women’s peace camp at Greenham Common – in Craft’s words, they needed “a lady” for this.

Craft claims this is the only time that the SDS had any interest in CND, however the Inquiry already knows that John Kerry (officer HN65, 1980-84) infiltrated CND itself.

What about animal rights – why were you interested in spying on them? Craft talked about firebombs, attacks on research centres, “quite akin to terrorism”. He went on to say that he thought this whole thing “started with one policeman in Essex who was keeping an index” and the Branch took this over, realising the movement was “dangerous”.

The SDS’s 1974 Annual Report describes the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) as a “highly disciplined organisation” that has not caused any public order problems (paragraph 28, page 15). Their interest in “industrial unrest” is mentioned, and Craft openly admitted that this would have been purely for the benefit of the Security Service.

Several spycops infiltrated the WRP but these deployments ended in Craft’s time – does he recall why? He doesn’t, but imagines they were no longer considered a threat to public order. (Former WRP member Liz Leicester gave evidence to the Inquiry last week.)

The Inquiry noted that Craft signed off on every Annual Report during this era, and always endorsed them in glowing terms, in the knowledge that these went to the Home Office and were instrumental in securing the go-ahead (and funding) for the spycops operations to continue.

PRAISE FROM THE HIGHEST LEVEL

Craft still believes in the immense value of the SDS’s work. He remembers the Commissioner visiting the SDS while he was running the unit – he visited the safe house, met the undercovers, ate lunch with them – “he was chatting to everybody”. Craft remembers “it was good for morale”.

He was similarly positive about another visit paid to the SDS safe house by the Home Secretary, accompanied by the Met Commissioner, Sir Kenneth Newman, while he was at S Squad.

This means the Inquiry has now heard that every Commissioner from the squad’s inception in 1968 until 1993 was personally involved and approved.

• 1968-72 – John Waldron
  Rajiv Menon QC told the Inquiry Waldron gave officers champagne after an October 1968 Vietnam War protest
• 1972-77 – Robert Mark
  Spycop Graham Coates told the Inquiry Mark visited the safe house to congratulate officer
• 1977-82 David McNee
  Spycop Roger Harris told the Inquiry Mark and McNee both visited the safe house
• 1982-87 – Kenneth Newman
  Geoff Craft told the Inquiry Newman visited with the Home Secretary
• 1987-93 – Peter Imbert
  Imbert was previously a Special Branch officer, spycop ‘Sandra Davis’ told the Inquiry Imbert personally recruited her to the SDS

Additionally, before the Inquiry began, whistleblower officer Peter Francis described how the Commissioner he served under (Paul Condon, 1993-2000) visited the safe house and gave out bottles of whisky as a token of his gratutude.

This completely demolishes the Met’s earlier claims that the SDS was some kind of ‘rogue unit’ that senior officers were unaware of.

However, the Inquiry will not be hearing evidence from Sir Kenneth Newman, nor David McNee or Peter Imbert. All three of them have died since the Inquiry began.

It’s not enough to know what the spycops did. We need to know who authorised and sanctioned these operations. We need to know why. The loss of testimony from those Commissioners, who were ultimately in charge of the SDS for a third of its existence, is one of the effects of the colossal delays the police have inflicted on the Inquiry process.

FINAL QUESTIONS

Craft was questioned more about ‘Phil Cooper‘ (officer HN155, 1979-84). According to a Security Service note from a meeting with Detective Inspector ‘Sean Lynch‘ (officer HN68, 1968-74) in the summer of 1982:

“despite his misdemeanours, Cooper has not been withdrawn as an SDS source”.

‘Lynch’ is said to be worried:

“because Cooper’s position in the Right To Work movement gives him regular access to Ernie Roberts MP and meetings at the House of Commons”.

We know that ‘Cooper’ was having marital difficulties at this time; it sounds as though anything about his work becoming public could have had serious consequences, and been highly embarrassing for all concerned. Craft agrees that he too would have been concerned – this was “too close” to what he calls “legitimate politics”.

Craft was asked if he had ever heard the term “Wearies” – used to refer to the activists spied on by the SDS – and he denied ever hearing it, then or since, adding “I don’t even know what it means”.

There was one final lasting confusion. Craft does not recall Angus McIntosh (officer HN244) working in the SDS office as his deputy. But as far as the Inquiry knows, their time in the unit definitely overlapped. We’re due to hear McIntosh’s evidence tomorrow, on Day 9, so perhaps this mystery will be cleared up then. Craft has repeatedly said he’s “confused” by this:

“It’s amazing – I know him very well – but have no recollection at all of working with him in the SDS”

Craft has submitted two written witness statements to the Inquiry:
First witness statement (December 2020)
Second witness statement (February 2022)
Documents referred to are listed in the Inquiry’s Bundle for the day.

Video of the morning and afternoon the day’s hearing

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The current round of Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, focusing on Special Demonstration Squad managers 1968-82, continue until Friday 20 May.

<<Previous UCPI Daily Report (17 May 2022)<<

>>Next UCPI Daily Report (19 May 2022)>>

Tranche 1, Phase 3, Day 7

17 May 2022

Witness:
Derek Brice
Statement from:
Anthony Greenslade

Today’s hearing of the Undercover Policing Inquiry saw only one live witness, Derek Brice (officer HN3378), who deserves a prize for most evasive answers in the Inquiry so far.

It also featured the publication of written evidence from Anthony Greenslade (officer HN2401) who was apparently brought in to boost “low morale” among the spycops of the Special Demonstration Squad.

Derek Brice (officer HN3378)

Brice was a Detective Inspector in the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), from around May 1973 to October 1974.

Brice had been allocated an entire day as he is the only SDS manager of his era who is alive and in sufficient health to give evidence – or so it was thought. His tenure covered a number of important aspects – it is the period of the first known sexual relationships between undercover officers and people they spied on, the early use of dead children’s identities and the significant public order event that was the 1974 anti-fascist protest at Red Lion Square that resulted in the death of Kevin Gately.

A good 90% of the hearing was an exhausting litany of failures to remembering anything, even the basics, interspersed with monosyllabic answers and claims that he had no awareness of stuff going on around him at the time.

After several years on Special Branch he was brought in as an officer with considerable expertise, although he had not been involved in any undercover work personally. He had served on the Bomb Squad, set up to investigate the Angry Brigade where he had been on the surveillance team – along with Greenslade. He continued to do work for the Bomb Squad after he was appointed to the SDS.

However, the exact relationship between the SDS and the Bomb Squad is not clear, and Brice did not leave us any the wiser. He stated that Conrad Dixon had been a senior manager at the Bomb Squad yet claimed not to know that Dixon had set up the SDS, nor – being shown a handwritten organisational chart [MPS-0737402] – that both teams were being jointly supervised at that time.

Of his time at the SDS he said he was asked to join but not interviewed, that he never received any guidance from the then-head of the SDS, officer HN294 (1970-1973), on what the team was about or what his job entailed. As with the undercover officers, he said he learned on the job.

Describing his work as ‘welfare officer’ (or ‘quartermaster’ in his statement) he failed to explain what that entailed. Making sure the officers felt safe on the job, and had not reached the stage of having enough of it yet – that was about it.

CONVENIENT AMNESIAC

He claimed not to have known about the use of dead children’s birth certificates as the basis of the false identity adopted by undercovers. This stretches credulity, especially as many officers prepared their cover story while he was serving on the squad. Brice simply cant recall much discussion about this.

Among the many things he could not recall or was not aware of was the SDS’s relationship with C Squad, which monitored the left wing more generally. Nor was he aware of how information was transferred to A8 – the public order branch of the Met Police.

Things became slightly ridiculous when Brice said he was unaware of the close relationship with the Security Service (aka MI5). He was shown a document [MPS-0735753] which put him at a meeting with the Security Service, where the latter spoke about setting up a new department (F6) to also gather intelligence on left wing groups and subversion.

The SDS was asked for support, to share information and to help out if secret agents would get in conflict with the law. Brice had no recollection.

ANOTHER PUSH FOR ANSWERS

Despite the frustrating evidence, there were a few hints here and there which led to follow up questions at the end of the session, many put in by the other legal teams present.

There was a bit of exploration about officer HN294, now deceased, who Brice served under. HN294 is a key figure in the unit as it was in his time that many of the unit’s abuses first appear. Theway he appears to have run the unit and its relationship to the rest of Special Branch remains obscure and unexplained.

Brice let it slip that HN294’s successors were more approachable. It had also been noted that HN294 ran the SDS as his own ‘fiefdom’. Pressed on this, Brice admitted that that HN294 was “fairly dour” and “kept things to himself”. We are given an insight into a manager who kept to himself and apparently did not even visit the undercovers at their safehouse.

He had previously denied that two undercovers of the era, Rick Clark (‘Rick Gibson’, officer HN297) and ‘Jim Pickford‘ (officer HN300) were widely known as womanisers. Asked about whether such a reputation would have affected their selection for undercovers, Brice says he never thought about the risk of officers forming inappropriate relationships. He thought that (inadvertently) the practice of forming the relationships was lowered by recruiting married men.

However, when pressed over whether knowing that officers had a reputation as “womanisers” would have impacted on his own thinking regarding recommendation for being an undercover, he was unwilling to say it would have ruled them out.

RED LION SQUARE

The last question came directly from the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting. He drew attention back to the events of Red Lion Square and summoned the 1974 SDS Annual Report [MPS-07930906] to point out the line:

“Fortunately, the SDS gave forewarning of both the size of the demonstration and the possible disorder which might occur.”

Red Lion Square was the biggest public order event of its era and the first death on a protest in decades. The Chair noted that Brice was the only senior SDS officer alive from the time and asked for help in understanding the claim in the Annual Report.

Brice’s position is that it was at the end of his time in the SDS (actually he still had four months to serve in the unit when Kevin Gately was killed) and, in line with the rest of the day, he said he couldn’t be of assistance as he barely remembered the event.

Mitting noted the Inquiry also can’t find any written evidence to back up the SDS’ claim – and wonders would the information have been communicated orally? Brice confirms that such information would have been committed in a written report.

With this mystery left unsolved, the day finally came to an end. As with the missing material around the anti-fascist demonstration in Southall and the death of Blair Peach five years later, the SDS seems to have made big claims but the evidence to support it’s reason for existing is remarkably lacking – a topic which the Inquiry and core participants on all sides will no doubt return to.

Witness statement of Derek Brice

Anthony Greenslade (officer HN2401)

The day also saw the publication of the written evidence of Anthony Greenslade (officer HN2401). He joined the police in the mid-1950s, and Special Branch in 1960.

He worked at Britain’s seaports, and after a spell in Anguilla, returned to London in 1970 to work in a section that was concerned with Black Power for around a year. He said Conrad Dixon wanted to get rid of him from the Black Power desk.

BOMB SQUAD & SDS ADMINISTRATOR

He was then posted to the Bomb Squad from 1971-74, and during this time had dealings with the SDS, in late 1973 (for six months) but did not at first consider himself a member of the unit.

At this time the Bomb Squad was conducting surveillance of the Angry Brigade; he worked alongside Brice (see below). He served the unit as a DI towards the end of 1973, working in an admin role. He helped the SDS by purchasing 12 cars for the undercovers to use and setting up second safe house for the spycops.

SDS RECRUITS – BOTTOM OF THE CLASS

It seems that the SDS ‘Class of 73’ had a problem with passing exams. as Greenslade was tasked with improving the spycops promotions exam record – he ran weekly classes for them at the safe house that lasted 3-4 hours. Only three of his six students passed these exams.

Interestingly, he states that low morale was a known issue in the SDS, and he was not the only officer brought in to help solve this problem.

‘KINGPIN’

He says people were recruited in a random way, at the time by HN294 who he describes as the unit’s ”kingpin”, running the unit as a “fiefdom”.

He says he wasn’t involved in choosing targets or the officers’ reporting, or any liaison with outside agencies like the Security Service.

He says he doesn’t know about many of the other key issues we’ve heard former officers being questioned about this week, such as the use of deceased children’s identities, sexual relationships with targets (which he thinks would have been unacceptable), or tradecraft. He knew nothing about the any ‘incidents’ in the SDS.

He said that personal details were routinely included in Special Branch reporting – there was nothing unusual about the material that the SDS were including in theirs.

Greenslade simply repeats that the SDS contribution to policing was that they provided advance warning in demonstrations, something that Roy Creamer brought into doubt yesterday.

He said:

“Information about trade unions would have been reported because of the effect of trade unions on the economy.”

About overtime, he noted that members of the SDS received fairly high overtime payments, and remembers that ‘Phil Cooper‘ (officer HN155) was the “highest paid” Detective Seargent in the Met at the time”. However, he doesn’t think this money affected the length of time they spent on the unit or their reporting.

Greenslade retired in 1987 at the rank of Chief Superintendent.

Probably the most interesting thing in Greenslade’s statement is his negative view of undercover policing:

“The only matter I want to add is that I wish to add if that I disagree fundamentally disagree with the principal of Undercover Policing, it was damaging to individuals many suffered from the work, and some left the police afterwards. I think some people are psychologically unsuited to that kind of work, as I am.”

Witness statement of Anthony Greenslade

Transcript and video of the morning and afternoon the day’s hearing

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The current round of Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, focusing on Special Demonstration Squad managers 1968-82, continue until Friday 20 May.

<<Previous UCPI Daily Report (16 May 2022)<<

>>Next UCPI Daily Report (18 May 2022)>>

Tranche 1, Phase 3, Day 6

16 May 2022

Witnesses:

Bill Furner
David Smith
Roy Creamer

The sixth day of the Undercover Policing Inquiry hearing evidence concerned with the Special Demonstration Squad’s managers 1968-82 began with a summary of William Furner’s statement being read out. He was a founding member of the Squad in the summer of 1968.

This was followed by live evidence from David Smith (officer HN103). The afternoon was taken up by Roy Creamer (officer HN3093), present by video link.

The Inquiry also published many documents today relating to other early managers who are now deceased: Conrad Dixon (officer HN325, founder of the Squad), Phil Saunders (officer HN1251), and Riby Wilson (officer HN1748).

Bill Furner

In his first statement, Bill Furner (officer HN3095), a founding member of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) had helped the Inquiry to identify people in photos taken at the SDS Christmas party in 1968. His second statement dealt with his job in the back office of the SDS.

Furner supported the first group of undercover officers, who infiltrated left wing groups preparing for the October 1968 demonstration against the war in Vietnam. Based at Scotland Yard, his job was administrative.

For instance, he checked officers’ expenses against their diaries, made sure they “paid their rents and that it was all genuine and above board”. He did not deal with cover identities, cars or houses.

He was present at the meetings held at the undercover flat, which all officers came to in order to hand over their diaries and reports, and to talk about who was attending upcoming events.

Occasionally, he also attended meetings and demonstrations, remembering ones at Trafalgar Square and at Twickenham. For these, he was simply part of the audience to make notes; he did not change his appearance other than to wear a scruffy coat.

In his written statement, asked what the SDS achieved for the benefits of policing, his response was that these deployments:

“meant that we had the people under observation and different organisations completely and utterly tapped. They did not make a move that we did not know about. The obvious benefit is that we knew what their aims were.

“For example there was one group that decided to chain themselves to the rugby posts at Twickenham when South Africa were playing. We knew about this, and uniformed police were told to be present with bolt cutters.”

Bill Furner is one of the few officers who says that information from the Security Service (aka MI5) came into their office, implying it was not a one-way street. The next sentence in his statement was gisted as “Reading this information was a major part of my job.”

The SDS had a very close liaison with the Security Service – “we helped each other”.

As Furner added:

“Special Branch were the arm to make enquiries… [we] had the power to effect arrest… The Security Service was divorced from police work.”

First witness statement of Bill Furner

Second witness statement of Bill Furner

David Smith

The appearance of David Smith (officer HN103) as a witness was marked by his ability to recall seemingly mundane administrative details about the SDS and an equal inability to recall anything which might be controversial.

He spent considerable time in his post as back-office sergeant in the SDS – from 1970 to 1974, giving him substantial knowledge of the unit’s administrative side.

Like almost all other police witnesses, Smith claimed he knew nothing about the sexual relationships that officers had whilst undercover. When queried on this – and characteristic of the roundabout way he answered questions – he started musing about there being fewer women involved in radical groups in those days, with the exception of the Women’s Liberation movement.

In his witness statement, Smith was more critical, saying it was “wrong and foolish”, as it posed a risk to the Squad – and obviously had an impact on the other parties.

“Some more wrong than others, but it was wrong, full stop.”

Unlike some of the witnesses we have (and will) hear from in this set of hearings, Smith was adamant that the SDS decided which groups they would target – and that the Security Service did not tell them what to do. He suggested that there was not much interference from outside the SDS. “We knew what we had to do” – “in many ways” the operation ran itself.

Special Branch relied heavily on the two senior SDS managers to oversee the unit – they decided on who was targeted, according to Smith. Unfortunately he wasn’t pressed on this topic, even when he contradicted himself, saying that Special Branch’s C squad advised on tasking.

Later, Smith said he often took Special Branch Registry files about individuals to the safe house, with a note asking the officer in the field if they could assist with information about these people.

Smith also says that right wing organisations weren’t appropriate targets for the SDS at that period in time, not worth infiltrating. However, by the time he had become a Chief Inspector in C Squad in the late 1970s and early 1980s and was responsible for right-wing and animal rights groups, that had changed and he had “put up” an argument for spying more on far-right organisations. Any final decision about targeting would have been made by the Chief Superintendent or similar.

“COMMON SENSE”

As with most officers, when asked whether there was any proactive attempt to advise officers not to become sexually involved with their targets, Smith said it was simply “common sense” not to do so. Obviously, not for everyone.

While there was no official training, Smith said the main thing that was “hammered home” to SDS officers was to avoid being an agent provocateur:

“We wanted them to be a fly on the wall not to be taking a leading part in things.”

He also said there were some organisations which were “pretty common throughout” meaning they were always spied on), then others “sort of came and went”. They adjusted their coverage accordingly, with “the advice of the rest of the Branch … it naturally evolved”.

Most of the undercovers had already spent three or four years in the Branch, so had a good idea about the organisations being infiltrated. He described their “rolling programme” – those whose deployments were ending could give very valuable advice to those whose time undercover was about to start.

The SDS was well-established by the time he joined in 1970: it had become a permanent unit subject to annual review. He was not worried about it being curtailed, saying:

“I thought it would go on as long… as it remained a secret”.

In Smith’s view, if a tactic is proven to be effective, you do not get rid of it.

ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS?

Smith said the SDS was necessary because it ‘sharpened’ things to get accurate numbers on demos to inform public order policing levels.

He then explained that joining a less extreme group, such as the Young Liberals, could provide a useful “stepping stone” and give some “street cred”, which would enable an officer to join more radical groups without seeming suspicious.

One officer, ‘Michael Scott‘ (officer HN298, 1971-76) did so and went on to infiltrate anarchist and Irish groups and the Workers Revolutionary Party, for example.

Next, Smith was asked how SDS reports were processed. He told the hearing that he received bundles of handwritten reports from the spycops. Sometimes information also came into the office by telephone. His job was to collate and put them in the standard format for typing up by the typing pool (which was next door).

He denied doing any “sanitising” or analysing – he says he was aware enough to recognise if anything “needed to be expedited.”

The next moment he said that sometimes he did “slightly sanitise” reports, getting rid of some specific details and making them “less precise” in order to send them to A8, which was outside of Special Branch. He said this was his “common sense” – nobody needed to tell him to do this, he just “instinctively knew”.

C Squad, the part of Special Branch which oversaw operations against left wing groups, prepared threat assessments for A8, which dealt with public order. The Inquiry suggests that they did 600-700 of these per year – this would have equated to 10+ every week. Smith was not surprised by these figures.

SDS intelligence would have been “woven into” these assessments – he says the unit helped by “padding out the juicy bits,” and being able to provide more precision in terms of numbers and the likelihood of violence. (The role of Special Branch Liaison officer was created at some point around this time, to “help A8” understand enough and act appropriately, while protecting the source of the information.)

Smith thought that about 50-60 SDS reports would have been written in the course of a week, of which around 75-80% went to the Security Service, adding “we didn’t send them the Irish stuff”.

He agreed with Geoff Craft (who we will hear from on Wednesday) that no other police officers were more closely monitored than the SDS officers. Monitored for what exactly? we may ask!

Unconvincingly, Smith says he cannot recall what happened at Red Lion Square in 1974. He was slightly too fast to say the name rang a bell, but that was all. It is quite unlikely that he can’t remember the death of Kevin Gately at a demonstration against the fascist National Front. Gately was the first person to die on a demonstration in England for decades – and to prevent such public order problems was the SDS’ ultimate reason for existing.

PICKFORD AND CLARK

‘Jim Pickford‘ (officer HN300) and Rick Clark (officer HN297) were both recruited as Smith was leaving the unit. Both men were known as ‘womanisers’ within Special Branch. Had he known at the time, he would have advised against recruiting them to the SDS, he now says.

Asked for his view about the sort of person who was suitable for undercover work, Smith said they needed to have a “balanced, calm disposition.” Otherwise, he kept his opinions about the spycops he worked with to himself.

Smith wasn’t hugely concerned about spycops being arrested and going to court – it didn’t happen very often – he can only recall one incident of an officer ending up in court and testifying under a false name. He agreed that “technically” this did constitute misleading the court, but also talked about “different degrees” – and drew upon an unconvincing analogy about speeding to suggest it was not all that serious.

Smith returned for some supplementary questions after lunch but said nothing of consequence.

Written statement of David Smith

Roy Creamer

Roy Creamer (officer HN3903) was an eagerly anticipated witness in this phase of the Inquiry. Originally, the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, had not planned to call Creamer to give live evidence. But after representations were made by non-state core participants (ie victims of spycops) Mitting relented and agreed that we should hear from him.

Though the former Special Branch manager is in his 90s, Creamer was well able to provide a detailed account of his time, his memory often better than younger colleagues.

He was questioned by Counsel to the Inquiry, David Barr QC.

BACKGROUND

Creamer was involved in the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) at its formation in 1968, when he worked closely with Conrad Dixon. He was later active with the Bomb Squad, where he is best known for having investigated and arrested alleged members of the Angry Brigade. This topic was not touched on today. Later, he returned to C Squad (which deals with left wing activists) as a Detective Inspector. He retired in 1980.

Whereas, so far, many witnesses were relatively new to Special Branch when they encountered the Special Demonstration Squad, Creamer was already an experienced officer of ten years before the SDS was set up in 1968.

He spent much of the decade prior to the founding of the SDS, working on the left wing desks (B / C Squad). This work involved being sent to meetings, to report back on what was heard and look for the next opportunity to report on. At that time, the main focus was on the Communist Party of Great Britain, not the ‘ultra Left’ groups, which were not seen as much of a threat or considered worthy of police attention. This changed as those groups grew in size and strength.

ANARCHISTS

Creamer was particularly interested in the anarchist milieu. Rather than just reporting, he actively went out to talk to them and find out what they were about. In his justification, he said that anarchists openly boast about assassinating leaders, so it was important to find out who might be likely to try that. This interest led to him being called the ‘dialectician of dissent’ by a leading anarchist of his time, Stuart Christie.

The officer talked about his open approach to talking to anarchists, not hiding that he was from Special Branch. This lead to uneasy relationships with Christie, Albert Meltzer and others. He visited Meltzer’s bookshop to read the notices in the window on upcoming anarchist activities.

Creamer said that in his conversations he got very little on the anarchists themselves, but what he did learn about was their attitude to other groups which provided insight into how the different politics intersected with each other.

Barr noted that while the Angry Brigade was clearly of interest to Special Branch, what about Freedom Press, the anarchist publishers? Creamer was clear they were not targets for public order purposes. They were not a force to be reckoned with and were not really up for a fight.

There were ‘so-called anarchists’ who he considered hooligans, who didn’t want to obey anyone including protest organisers and so were a public order issue. He summed up anarchists as difficult to keep an eye on:

“I don’t think we were up for it. They were cleverer than us in many ways.”

TROTSKYISTS & THE ‘EXTREME LEFT’

Next, Barr explored Trotskyists groups such as the International Marxist Group (IMG), International Socialists (IS, later Socialist Workers’ Party) and the Socialist Labour League (SLL, later Workers Revolutionary Party).

Creamer described them in terms of how disciplined they were and their ability to discipline their members or the protests they organised. They could be difficult to infiltrate, but if you did you would learn a lot about what was going on. Other groups were easier to infiltrate but one learned less.

The SLL were the most disciplined group which actually meant they were much less of a public order issue. On the other hand, the IMG were not prepared to discipline themselves and did not have the will or numbers to particularly marshal their protests. The IS were a threat to public order, but only in the sense they were prepared to organise large demonstrations – which is what mattered from a policing point of view.

On the Maoists, he said that some of them were from the Far East themselves, and there was an uncertainty about their cultural norms. They could be quite loud and emotional on protests, but how much that came from anger over injustice or how much was their natural way was unclear. Given their numbers were small, he wrote that they were noisy and boisterous, but not dangerous, suggesting that a competent group of police could handle any of their demonstrations.

PRE-SDS PRACTICE

He briefly spoke of the far-right in his pre-SDS work. Then they were a mostly discredited group of little interest. Their demonstrations only received attention when attacked by the left.

Barr asked Creamer about the right of entry into a private home, a recurring legal issues in these hearings. Creamer admitted that in normal police work an officer would not go into a house without a warrant. This was the official line, including when Special Branch officers were sent to monitor meetings. Sometimes it did happen that a plain clothes officer got in, but it happened so rarely people did not think about it as an issue.

They next moved on to an extensive exploration of the usefulness of infiltrating many groups on the left. Creamer in his written statement had been quite critical of the role of the SDS and the unrealistic nature of what it was being asked to in terms of identifying public order issues.

Overall, it was Creamer’s assessment that prior to 1967, the standard Special Branch approach to public order and answering Security Service queries was sufficient, especially given the culture of the time. He was critical of the inefficient organisation and thought the lacklustre reporting back on protests was very weak. The latter was something Creamer actively tried to improve.

In particular, he noted that following a demonstration at the house of the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, his commanding officer Victor Gilbert was slammed for not being able to identify those responsible and explain their motivations. Something Creamer resolved.

He also took on Gilbert’s request to improve the quality of intelligence being sent to A8 (the uniformed police’s public order division):

“I felt it was my mission to do that.”

He sought out ways to write reports that would give A8 the correct impression, while noting that it was not possible to quantify the information they wanted, without offending them. For instance, if he thought a protest was going to be ‘lively’, he would up the estimated numbers so there would be sufficient police.

Special Branch’s attitude towards protests changed after the March 1968 anti-Vietnam War protest, which led to the founding of the Special Demonstration Squad.

SPECIAL DEMONSTRATION SQUAD

Creamer was hand-picked by SDS founder Conrad Dixon to play a part at the very beginning of this new Squad. His was almost exclusively a back office role – he says that he refused to be sent undercover, because he preferred to do things in an open way and because he clearly could not have got away with it, being known and recognisable to so many on the left.

He described Conrad Dixon as someone who took on setting up the SDS as an adventure, to Dixon it was difficult work but something he felt he could do. Creamer, in his words, was there to restrain him from ‘doing anything stupid’ – this was a tacit agreement between them.

Creamer helped Dixon with the reports and attended bigger meetings so he had the big picture – which meant that Dixon could tell those higher up the right answer:

“I knew what I had to, and he knew what to expect from me.”

Barr wanted to know if Dixon took legal advice on operating an undercover unit. Creamer was certain he that didn’t and it wouldn’t have been in his nature to do so:

“[Dixon] saw this as a challenge and he didn’t want to be inhibited by any scruples that other people might have because he trusted himself to be scrupulous as the situation demanded, no more and no less, and to be honest, that’s the situation.”

As to his role within the SDS, Creamer did admit that he looked out for the undercovers and helped them with advice. He particularly wanted them to avoid getting arrested, taking drugs, or contracting illnesses (in his words).

Though he conceded the subject was serious, Creamer spoke of the levity the spycops enjoyed as they spied on people and undermined campiagns:

“when we were in that squad, it was a lark in many ways, it was an adventure, and there was no ill will towards the people we were penetrating or whatever. It was an experiment to see if it could be done. That was the theme of Conrad’s police.”

REPORTS

Barr took him through a number of reports which bore his name. Creamer said that while reports were signed by him, that might be a cover for the undercover sourcing the material. Barr pointed out on that the language in the report on the Anti-Imperialist Solidarity Movement was very much the language used by Creamer.

Creamer noted that the two sets of minutes from meetings of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign’s working committee dated December 1968 could not have been obtained by traditional Special Branch methods.

Of a report which noted that the attraction of the Maoist leader Abhimanyu Manchanda was based on him being willing to take the most revolutionary line, he said that he had to pass on the ‘germ of the ideal’. In fact he thought it would not lead to much, but at that point in time the people around Manchanda fell under the list of groups capable of ‘doing a mischief’.

One unusual report that discussed internal political divisions within the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign coalition remains a bit of a mystery. It was not from an undercover, or an informer, but by a source who knew what was going on. Creamer didn’t want to say more about it, though he clearly knew the origins. He also noted that was of a much higher standard than either he or Dixon could have produced.

VALUE OF THE SDS

The SDS had been established after the police were unprepared for the disorder at a March 1968 demonstration against the Vietnam war. The unit was established to gather intelligence and prevent any repeat in a further demonstration in October 1968.

Barr asked if undercover policing made a difference to the handling of the October demonstration. Creamer was of the opinion that it did in the run up to the day, as A8 received a higher standard of information. But on the day itself, no. It mainly came down to reassuring the powers that be that there was not going to be a violent protest.

Creamer’s most trenchant criticism, both in statement and orally was that the SDS were being sent out to look for evidence of pre-planned violence, which was never going happen. It was an unrealistic request.

He was firm that the SDS should have packed up after October 1968. As far as he was concerned, the unit was ‘hedged around’ with all sorts of difficult problems. Instead, management should have started again properly, picking out the good bits and getting rid of the bad bits. In any case, in his eyes the ‘battle had been won’ in October 1968.

However, the problem was the police were very reluctant to cancel demos outright – it was viewed as more trouble than it was worth. So protests were going to happen in any case. That attitude did not change until the violence at the August 1977 ‘Battle of Lewisham‘ clash between fascists and anti-fascists – which clinched it for Creamer that undercovers were no longer needed.

LATER LINKS WITH THE SDS

After leaving the unit, Creamer had little to do with the SDS directly. He did accept, however, that in his time as a Detective Inspector on the left wing desk in C Squad, he received intelligence that he recognised as emanating from the undercover unit.

Creamer is clear that C Squad did not influence the tasking of SDS undercovers – they had influence, and perhaps a veto, but to the best of his knowledge, C Squad did not use it.

Though he had his own thoughts on how things should be or could be improved, Creamer notes multiple times that any interference from him wouldn’t have been welcomed, so he stayed in his lane. He didn’t want to make waves and didn’t dare interfere with what the later SDS was doing; a fact that’s very iluminating about about Special Branch culture at the time.

Written statement of Roy Creamer

Transcript and video of the morning and afternoon the day’s hearing

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The current round of Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, focusing on Special Demonstration Squad managers 1968-82, continue until Friday 20 May.

<<Previous UCPI Daily Report (13 May 2022)<<

>>Next UCPI Daily Report (17 May 2022)>>

Tranche 1, Phase 3, Day 5

13 May 2022

Witnesses:

Elizabeth Leicester (former member of the Workers Revolutionary Party)
Barry Moss (undercover officer 1968, manager 1980-82)

Today was the second day of live witness hearings in the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s current phase examining managers of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) 1968-82.

The first testimony came from Liz Leicester, a former member of the Workers Revolutionary Party.

We also heard the testimony of a central figure in the spycops scandal, Barry Moss, who was an undercover officer in 1968 and then a senior officer responsible for the SDS between 1980 and 1982.

He went on to be Commander of Special Branch during the time that undercover officer Peter Francis was deployed against the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence’s, and several officers under his management had sexual relationships whilst undercover. Frustratingly, questions today were limited to the Tranche 1 era – 1968-82 – by the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting.

Elizabeth Leicester (former member of the Workers Revolutionary Party)

First we heard from Elizabeth Leicester, who was part of the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) – originally known as the Socialist Labour League (SLL).

Leicester lived at White Meadow (aka The Red House), the WRP’s training centre in Derbyshire, between 1975-1978. Her former husband and WRP comrade Roy Battersby was a film director, and also a prominent member of the party.

We heard about Leicester’s involvement in the SLL – she worked in its Clapham office, on its paper, the ‘Workers Press’. Her and her husband were both part of the outer London branch. It was an unusual branch: is well known that Corin and Vanessa Redgrave were members but other prominent actors such as Clive Dunn, Spike Milligan [MPS-0747833] and Frances de la Tour were also involved.

Leicester said the open aim of the WRP was to establish a socialist state. It had a chain of bookshops and a film production company. Like yesterday’s witness Lindsay German, Leicester said that the WRP did not envision themselves being a vanguardist organisation – it was up to the majority of the working class to have a revolution.

She described the many strikes of the 70s, a “real upsurge of workplace democracy” – and made it clear that “we worked as genuine trade unionists” – rather than covertly infiltrating those unions. While they were inspired by the Russian revolution, the WRP used constitutional, non-violent and lawful means to advance their aims.

Amusingly, part of the WRP election manifesto was read out, with an unfortunate slip-up by the Inquiry’s lawyer – who accidentally said ‘conservative’ instead of ‘communist'(!)

WHITE MEADOW

Initially purchased by the actor Corin Redgrave supposedly as a “drama and arts centre”. Leicester is asked whether that was ever its real purpose – or was it always going to be a college of Marxist education? She said that the aim was to protect it from adverse attention from fascists – and not to alarm the locals.

A police raid took place at White Meadow on 27th September 1975. This seems to have resulted from a meeting between The Observer Newspaper and Special Branch officers a couple of days previously [UCPI0000034744]. Leicester also recalled that an aerial photo appeared on the front on the Daily Telegraph – presenting the WRP as a serious threat to the public. The WRP sued the editor of The Observer for libel.

A seven-page Special Branch report probably written by ‘Michael Scott‘ (officer HN298, 1971-76) [UCPI0000012240] gives many details on the White Meadow Centre. Dated 25 February 1976, the report describes the founding of White Meadow the previous summer. It also claimed 900 students had attended the centre in the previous six months. Leicester said that the figure was massively exaggerated.

Additionally, the report lists several financial costs associated with the centre. Leicester says there is no way an undercover could have gleaned that information by attending the centre – and suggest the intelligence might have come from ‘Peter Collins‘ (officer HN303, 1973-77) who also infiltrated the party.

SECURITY MEASURES

Understandably, after the police raid, security measures were increased. Leicester and Battersby searched students on entrance to the centre after the police raid. They also worried about electronic surveillance and found many listening devices. During a summer camp set up by the SLL, there was a concern about a police raid. For security Leicester says she took the membership and financial docs to London with her.

Leicester said the measures were to guard against both state and fascist infiltration. Some of the students who attended their centre were from Greece, Portugal and Spain all of which had fascist dictatorships in the early 1970s.

CONCLUSION

The Special Branch report also listed the subjects taught. As you would expect, these revolved around classic Marxist texts. Leicester jokingly wondered how the undercover got on with “Lenin, Vol. 38 – not an easy read!”

Leicester said it was outrageous that her family home – and two children – were spied upon. The WRP were not a public order threat – and the police knew that – and they were spied upon anyway.

She notes that ‘Michael Scott’ (HN298), whose time at White Meadows was described by a senior officer as ‘his swan song’, was ordered not to go there but went anyway. He could have dropped out of attending without raising any suspicion, raising a glaring question Leicester asked aloud:

“So why did he choose to go there?”

Leicester finished by saying that it’s a shame that the WRP are not core participants at the Inquiry, and that Collins’ infiltration is not being investigated more. Former WRP members don’t have the full disclosure they deserve.

Witness statement of Elizabeth Leicester

Barry Moss (undercover officer 1968, manager 1980-82)

BACKGROUND

Barry Moss was one of the first undercovers of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), deployed for three months in 1968. He used the cover name ‘Barry Morris’. This period was covered in his first witness statement.

On leaving the SDS he took part in the accelerated promotion scheme, moving around all the main Special Branch squads. He also spent time outside of Special Branch in CID before returning in February 1980 to become Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) for the SDS, where he remained for a year before being promoted to Superintendent of ‘S Squad’ with oversight of the SDS.

After a period (1990-1991) as a uniformed Commander with responsibility for North East London, he became a Commander of Special Branch. In 1995 he was Commander of Operations which included responsibility for the SDS. In 1996 he became overall head of Special Branch until he retired in 1999. He helped establish the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, the second major spycops unit after the SDS.

In his capacity as head of Special Branch, Moss gave evidence to the Ellison Inquiry into police corruption surrounding the murder of Stephen Lawrence. He told Ellison that he had no knowledge of the workings of the SDS, a claim that, given his extensive career with the unit, cannot possibly be true.

However, the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, has refused to allow questions about this later period in this evidence, which deals only with his role as an SDS DCI (in the Inquiry’s Tranche 1 Phase 3 period, ie 1968-82).

LEGALITY OF UNDERCOVER POLICING

The evidence began with David Barr, Counsel to the Inquiry, diving straight into issues raised in the opening statement of Charlotte Kilroy, QC, on behalf of women deceived into relationships by spycops.

Barr wanted to know about the training Moss had received – any on race or sexual equality, or on human rights more generally? None.

What about the powers of entry which police officers had? Moss received some training on this at the beginning of his police career and later while with CID.

Barr sought to explore what grasp a senior commander such as Moss had of basic policing principles. Moss struggled quite a bit to answer on this. There was no sense he had ever given much thought to the reasons for doing things, particularly their necessity or purpose, let alone their lawfulness.

The complete lack of training or guidance given to managers and undercover officers was a recurring theme throughout the day, as was an utter disrespect for, and lack of interest in, the law. It was only from what he had picked up from the Inquiry that he realised they had been breaking the law.

Barr looked at intelligence reports Moss had authored as an undercover officer, including a meeting of Maoists in a private home. Moss admitted he was not given any guidance on the legality of entering a home without a warrant.

“I think my understanding of the rules in normal work would have been fairly clear. I had no idea that this may have been illegal, as I’ve seen from Ms Kilroy’s submission earlier to this Inquiry.

“We were there to garner information (…) it might have been illegal in one way or another, I did not think of it.”

When pressed, Moss admitted there was no consideration given to its legality at all.

INTERPRETING REPORTS & OTHER MATERIALS

The Inquiry also addressed time Moss spent serving with C Squad, the part of the Met’s Special Branch that dealt with left wing activists.

This included an important point where he interpreted the annotations next to dates on the Special Branch Registry File index of Diane Langford, as coming from an old government classification scheme.

He was able to say C meant Confidential, S was Secret and SP was Secret ‘Pink’ – meaning material accessible to anyone in Special Branch. He also described a further category, Secret ‘Green’, for top secret material.

He admitted that while at C Squad he had written several threat assessments on demonstrations and described the process by which these were constructed. Asked if he could tell if intelligence reports feeding into the assessment came from the SDS, he replied:

“Yes, the preamble usually gave an indication that it came from SDS, if you understood the system.”

When Barr returned to this point later on, Moss took him through how the intelligence gathered – such as lists of members – fed into constructing a threat assessment. If a group or branch was organising a demonstration, the starting basis was how many people were they, what sort of people were they and what links did they have to bring in other groups or branches which would bring in numbers.

Barr also had Moss explore the SDS’s relationship with C Squad, the part of Special Branch which oversaw operations against left wing groups.

From Moss’ evidence it is clear that C Squad was very important in terms of setting the agenda for the SDS. This included guidance on which groups should be targeted. Moss confirmed that C Squad was as a key ‘customer’ of SDS intelligence, and the main conduit for passing SDS reports on to the Security Service.

There was no regular contact with C Squad, but there did not need to be as, given their long relationship, the SDS was pretty much producing what they wanted anyway. Knowing what to report as an SDS officer was developed for the most part through having been an officer in the wider Special Branch.

MANAGING THE SDS

Moss took over from Mike Ferguson (a former undercover himself) as Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) in what appears to have been an abrupt transition. He received no handover from Ferguson and had to find his own way. He learned on the job, reading reports by undercovers, and relied heavily on his deputy, Detective Inspector Trevor Butler, who had also been deputy under Ferguson, and who Moss described at one point as a “mentor”.

He also relied heavily on his brief time as an undercover, 12 years previously. Asked whether he knew about misbehaviour by a number of previous undercovers, he denied knowing anything other than that Rick Clark had been exposed.

LITTLE CHANGE

Mostly Moss continued with practices that were already in place. The only change of note is that he considered the unit had too much coverage of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and when he became manager he directed a newly deployed undercover (‘Malcolm Shearing‘, officer HN19) to look at a different milieu.

He accepted it was up to him to review the justification of deployments but it was hard, because undercovers were deeply entrenched in groups and difficult to move around. He gave very little consideration to the legality or justification, or alternative ways of gathering the intelligence. As far as he was concerned the system he inherited was a good one:

“The SDS already existed, so why not use it?”

He did not assess the level of intrusion against what was actually produced. As far as he was concerned, it all served some purpose or another.

Asked if operational security was of paramount importance he replied:

“Yes, no other organisation in the country, or even in the world was doing what we were doing.”

This is ironic, given the extensive propaganda criticising political policing in Eastern Bloc countries. There were clearly many agencies doing exactly what they were doing, in dictatorships all over the world.

He was firm that the primary reason for the SDS was to gather intelligence on public order issues, and the intelligence for the Security Service was ‘ancillary’, although he belied some of his points on public order by admitting that putting an undercover into the anarchist newspaper Freedom Press would have been a stepping stone to get to another group.

INTRUSIVE REPORTING

Barr took Moss through a number of reports that he had signed off, and was responsible for as head of the unit.

His response was a mixture of not remembering the details, shifting the responsibility to others – whether individual undercover officers he was overseeing, or the ‘customers’ of the SDS – C Squad, A8 (the Met department delaing with public order) and the Security Service.

Moss did not compile or assess reports, but did sign them off – well, sometimes at least. The reports were disseminated as C squad saw fit, he had no influence on that. The SDS approach was to hoover up as much intelligence as possible, which was to be considered and analysed by others.

In a few, very few, cases (such as a 1980 report on an individual who had just joined the SWP that included his job at the General Post Office, his address and bank account, the fact that he was gay and was an avid reader of Gay News), Moss reluctantly agreed that with hindsight he should have been more cautious in signing it off, as some reporting was not appropriate; but hey, those were different times.

Barr then pulled up a long report dated August 1980, about a woman, her activities, relationships, where she lived, and with whom, Barr read out a long quote:

“In the last week [she] has intimated that she wishes to fall pregnant again, and for this purpose has ceased to take ‘the pill’ on a regular basis. She is however, not quite sure at the present as to who will sire this latest socialist offspring.”

Discussing her political involvement the report says that such:

“would not include an interest in Irish orientated groups … as her main interest, culturally, politically and personally is with the black races and persons of similar ethnic origins”.

Barr asked Moss:

“You signed it, so you would have read it?”

Moss replied:

“Yes.”

And he did think the content was relevant, because this individual would probably ‘settle down’ and be less active in the ‘ultra left’ if she had another child – adding sexism to his racism.

Barr pressed on:

“Did you consider the tone appropriate?”

Moss started stuttering:

“I — I — I thought one of the sentences was — was a bit odd, and I’m not sure I’d — in — in today’s light — I haven’t got it in front of me any more — “

Although Moss said he understood that the tone of this report would be unacceptable now, he was very reluctant to accept that the extraordinary level of detail was inappropriate – insisting that such details were of relevance to the Security Service, and therefore he would pass them on.

STEALING DEAD CHILDREN’S IDENTITIES

Moss said that at the time, he didn’t consider if using the birth certificate of dead children was lawful or not, but he did not see any other way for the undercovers to obtain documents in their cover names. He left it to his officers to create their fake identities, saying he wasn’t personally involved in this himself.

Moss accepted there was a risk, as Richard Clark (officer HN297) had been confronted with the death certificate of Rick Gibson, the dead child whose identity he’d stolen. However he said he thought “the chances of it happening again were probably remote”, because this had only happened once.

FAR RIGHT

The far right were not infiltrated in the same way as the left wing groups.

The SDS did not target them, something Moss says he and Butler discussed, due to a policy decision from a higher level – “because they were too violent, and we were concerned what the officer may have to do to prove his credentials”.

RELATIONSHIP WITH THE SECURITY SERVICE

Moss describes a cordial, good relationship between the Special Demonstration Squad and the Security Service under his management. They had meetings every few months and they appeared to be genuinely grateful for the intelligence supplied, particularly the intelligence on the SWP who in the Security Service’s mind had replaced the Communist Party of Great Britain as the main subversive group. He wanted to be as helpful to the Security Service as possible, provided it did not cut across the public order mandate of the SDS.

In these hearings, and earlier ones, we had heard there was almost no formal training or guidance for undercover officers, but today Barr brought out a syllabus from 1979, for a Special Branch training course that ran over three weeks.

Later in his career Moss held responsibility for organising these courses for Special Branch officers from all over the country, which ran parallel with courses by the Security Service for their staff. In conjunction, they would provide lecturers for a number of topics.

He supposed that the Security Service would have liked to have even more influence over the SDS than they did, saying:

“if we could accede to their requests without detriment to ourselves, then we would oblige them… it wasn’t quite a two way flow of information – we probably gave them more than they gave us”.

Asked if undercover officers took risks in order to gather intelligence for the Security Service, he said he left it to his officers to judge whether the risk was worth it – the priority was to maintain their cover in the group. Much of the communication with the Security Service was mediated by C Squad.

The names of the groups being infiltrated were given to the Security Service. Moss at first claimed that the officers’ cover names would not have been shared, then admitted that this may have happened, claiming their real names certainly weren’t though.

SUBVERSION

Discussion of the Security Service led to a long and technical discussion about the definition of ‘subversion’. It was clear that Moss had given no serious thought to what it meant, and made a lot of assumptions.

The nearest he had to any training on this was during the Security Service induction session for junior Special Branch officers, when there was some discussion of what ‘subversion’ was.

It was pointed out that several Special Branch Annual Reports said SWP were not really a threat, he responded that the Security Service certainly saw them as subversive.

BLAIR PEACH

After anti-fascist Blair Peach was killed by police on a demonstration in April 1979, a police internal investigation identified the officers reponsible, yet none face any charges and the report remained secret. There was a concerted public campaign for truth and justice. As with so many similar justice campaigns, it was spied on by undercover police.

Moss maintained that the main reason for gathering intelligence on the Friends of Blair Peach was the potential risk to public order.

Barr asked about the SDS Annual Report for 1979 which said:

“The culmination of the virulent anti-fascist demonstrations was the death of the Anti-Nazi League supporter Blair Peach and the subsequent campaign against Police.”

Moss admitted that this was “unfortunately phrased” and came from “a rather defensive mindset”.

Barr pointed out that in his own witness statement, Moss had referred to “the SWP piggybacking on to Blair Peach’s death”.

As Peach was an SWP member, Barr asked “wouldn’t it be fairer to recognise that Blair Peach was one of their own?” and further enquired:

“Would you accept that this was a justice campaign which ultimately did secure some justice?

Moss replied:

“I would.”

Moss said the SDS never received any requests for intelligence on the Blair Peach campaign, or any other similar justice campaign. This didn’t stop them from indiscriminately hoovering it up anyway.

THE NATIONAL FRONT

The SDS Annual Report for 1980 shows that the counter demonstrations organised against the fascist National Front were a major theme when Moss was Head of SDS. He claimed there was

“always a matter of debate within the police service how far the police should go to facilitate free speech.”

Moss was of the opinion that “it was the Left that caused the disorder in those circumstances” – and in his dubious logic, he suggested they should be banned from demonstrating:

“So what I’m saying, in rather a lengthy way, is, if the National Front had just been allowed to demonstrate and the left wing hadn’t turned up, there probably wouldn’t have been any disorder, in my opinion.”

Barr asked:

“What would have happened if the left and right had been allowed to appear without a police presence?”

Moss was sure:

“Oh, it would have been mayhem.”

RELATIONSHIPS

Almost all of the officers who were deployed undercover were married, yet their cover identities were of single men. Moss said it never crossed his mind that this might increase the risk of sexual activity occurring.

Was there not a risk of undercovers forming such relationships to protect them from suspicion and enhance their cover stories? In Moss’s view, this would have been such a “silly thing to do” that they wouldn’t have contemplated it, so he never felt the need to give them any advice about this.

We heard about the conversations Moss had with his officers when he met them at the unit’s safe houses (twice a week) – to check in about their welfare and their work. They were able to bring up any issues and discuss anything they wanted. However it seems that Moss never brought up the issue of sexual relationships with them.

Barr took Moss through a long list of undercover officers who had, under his watch, got intimately involved with women they were spying on; officer HN21 (cover name not published), ‘Barry Tompkins’ (officer HN106), ‘Paul Gray’ (officer HN126), and ‘Phil Cooper’ (officer HN155). Moss said he’d had no inkling of any of this at the time.

We also heard about some significant contradictions in how the SDS dealt with relationship issues. ‘Jim Pickford’ (officer HN300) confessed to falling in love with an activist (who he later married), and was removed from the SDS in the 1970s.

We’d heard earlier about Moss’s feelings about a Special Branch officer who was known to have been unfaithful to his wife – by indulging in an affair with a civilian colleague in New Scotland Yard – who he blocked from joining the unit.

However, when an officer already inside the unit (‘Paul Gray’, HN126) decided to live with his affair partner, another police officer, in the Met’s married quarters, Moss didn’t have a problem with it.

He went so far as to pay a personal visit to the wronged wife of this officer, presumably to put pressure on to keep her quiet, as she’d threatened (in an anonymous letter) to spill the beans about the entire operation of the ‘Hairies’, as the spycops were known.

We heard more about ‘Phil Cooper’ (HN155), and his wife. Moss said he “did not treat her well”, and upon questioning, admitted that there was some kind of domestic abuse going on, and possible violence.

Did that not give him concerns about Cooper’s suitability as an SDS officer?

“It probably should have done – if it was physical, but I can’t remember if it was physical or mental, if I can use that word. He was a larger-than-life-character.”

That chilling apology for domestic abuse ended Day 4 of the current hearings.

Transcript and video of the day’s hearing (Elizabeth Leicester on screen, Barry Moss audio only)

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The current round of Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, focusing on Special Demonstration Squad managers 1968-82, continue until Friday 20 May.

<<Previous UCPI Daily Report (12 May 2022)<<

>>Next UCPI Daily Report (16 May 2022)>>

Tranche 1, Phase 3, Day 4

12 May 2022

With the current Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings’ opening statements concluding yesterday, today saw the first day of evidential hearings. Testimony came from Dr Lindsey German, a witness who knew several undercover officers from the period covered in Tranche 1 of the Inquiry (1968-82) from her time in the Socialist Workers’ Party.

Dr Lindsey German was active for 30 years in the International Socialists (later the Socialist Workers’ Party or SWP). She was made a full-time student organiser in 1975, became the District Organiser for Central London in 1977 and was appointed to the Central Committee in 1979. She later helped found and lead the Stop The War Coalition.

However, today’s evidence focused only on the Inquiry’s Tranche 1 period (1968-1982). A detailed account of German’s political background can be found in her written statement to the Inquiry.

At least 24 undercover officers have spied on the SWP, recording such personal details as physical appearances, holiday plans, weddings, sexuality, and childcare arrangements.

INQUIRY OR TRIAL?

Before German’s questioning began, the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, responded to her witness statement, in which she addressed various common misconceptions and preconceptions about the SWP’s aims and tactics.

Mitting was keen to assure her that he and his team do not have any preconceived views. However, their approach to questioning, and their loaded use of the word ‘revolutionary’, showed they clearly do.

At times it seemed like German was on trial, to the extent she observed that:

“A lot of the questions this morning have been about my politics, rather than the role of the undercover police, which is the aim of the Inquiry.”

She was not put off by this, using it as an opportunity to correct the Inquiry and share her views of how a more just and democratic society could come about.

Nevertheless, the Inquiry’s hostile approach to questioning members of the public who were spied upon could put off future witnesses. This concern has been raised by a number of victims of spycops’ abuses, who do not want, and should not have to, defend themselves against the Inquiry’s preconceived views and thinly-veiled attacks.

IMPROVING DEMOCRACY

Under questioning from David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry, German talked about the aim of the SWP to replace Parliament with things like Workers Councils: “a higher version of democracy than we have now”. However, in her opinion, these revolutionary aims were never close to fruition in her time with the SWP.

Barr asked a series of questions about whether the SWP sought to “escalate” industrial disputes and “confront” fascism. He questioned German’s “critical view of the police” and the security measures taken by the SWP at their National Delegate conference [UCPI0000013228] in 1978.

German responded that a more assertive attitude by workers was the best strategy, something that had also been trade union policy, as well as the SWP. She gave context about the growth of fascism and how her relatives had fought fascism in World War Two.

She explained that the SWP’s security stemmed partly from fears of state surveillance and blacklisting – fears, that it turned out, were entirely justified – and added the threat from the far-right.

POLICE BIAS

German explained her views of police bias, in terms of crimes prosecuted and the fact that they are used as a force of repression. These views are backed up by the evidence currently before the Inquiry, which shows the police planning to attack demonstrators and treating the far-right much more favourably than the left. In her view, she confirmed, the institution of the police does not benefit the working class.

Barr made a large jump from that statement to ask if that meant she thought the police were “fair game” for physical violence in the streets. He asked whether if the police outside outside Conservative Party conferences – for example those who policed the Right to Work demonstration outside the one in Brighton in 1980 – [UCPI0000015888], were fair game for protecting the elite? Was it therefore legitimate to push through their cordons?

He pressed this point several times. German calmly argued that the question implied a misconception about whether people planned violence at demonstrations. They didn’t.

INTERACTION WITH OTHERS

Barr then went on to ask about a number of other organisations: School Kids Against the Nazis (SKAN), Women’s Voice, Rock Against Racism, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and armed Irish republican group the Provisional IRA(!)

We’ve already heard how the spycops of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) targeted youth organisations like SKAN at the Security Service’s direction.

German agreed the SWP was involved in SKAN, however she said that it was a broad front and ‘larger groups’ joined the fight against fascism. The SWP were a minority in that organisation.

Women’s Voice was different, it was not a broad front type organisation, it was an organisation of socialist women. While Rock Against Racism was different yet again, formed by a small group of people in reaction to racist comments made by Eric Clapton.

Barr asked if the SWP had a “surreptitious” approach to “controlling” the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). She dismissed the claim, saying the SWP was open about and localised in its approach to CND.

She did agree that the SWP wanted CND to be “more militant” – not by doing more direct action (something that CND already did, and continue to do, a lot of), but by making more links with trade unions and the working class, and being more collective.

ARMED STRUGGLE

Barr then pressed German on the SWP’s support for “the armed struggle” [UCPI0000015994], particularly in Ireland. She replied that the SWP supported the Provisional IRA’s aims but not their bombing campaigns; she could support attacks on military infrastructure but not the bombings of pubs or other targets.

We were shown another Special Branch report [UCPI0000019543] about a party held at the home of SWP organiser Chris Harman. Somebody who attended the party, a former IMG member who had lived in Belfast, allegedly ‘while somewhat the worse for drink’, spoke of being ‘trusted by’ the Provisional IRA and ‘fully sympathetic to their cause’.

Barr asked how common such views were within the SWP.

German didn’t think this report was true. This person was involved in the H blocks campaign, seeking political status for IRA prisoners, and in supporting the hunger strikers – something that enjoyed wide support at the time.

Ironically, we know that if the SWP really were directly involved with the Provisional IRA, they probably wouldn’t have been spied upon; the SDS’s 1976 Annual Report stated it was policy not to infiltrate groups directly connected with the Provisionals as this would be too dangerous for the spycops.

CONFRONTING FASCISM

After a break, Barr’s questions moved to the relationship between the SWP and the far-right. He started with events in Red Lion Square in June 1974. The fascist National Front had booked Conway Hall for a rally, and a broad range of organisations organised a counter-demonstration to stop them.

At the time German was a student at the nearby London School of Economics, a short walk away. She recalls that journey, and the huge number of police vans she saw on the way:

“I’m not surprised that somebody died on that day. It was very very heavily policed and in a very violent way”.

The police pursued demonstrators, attacking them with truncheons and even throwing some over the railings into the underpass on Theobalds Road. During charges into the crowd by mounted police, Kevin Gately, a young student from Warwick, was killed.

German said:

“We didn’t go looking for trouble, we weren’t the people who created the trouble.”

Rather, the police had put a huge operation in place because they were determined to ensure the fascist event would go ahead.

Barr mentioned Lord Scarman’s inquiry after the event, saying that he “fairly and squarely put the blame on the IMG [International Marxist Group]” who “assaulted the police in an unexpected, unprovoked and viciously violent attack”.

German disagreed: “that’s not an accurate description”, pointing out that Gately was an IMG member, and:

“they were demonstrating perfectly acceptably.”

THE BATTLE OF LEWISHAM

Barr next cited a report from a 1976 meeting about racism in Hackney which described how a “negress in the audience” had said that Black people in Brixton were arming themselves with “knives and coshes”.

German pointed out that the “bizarre” report should be taken with a big pinch of salt, especially as there is no other evidence of this. It was down to her (not Barr) to comment on the language used by the author, saying “even in the 70s people didn’t talk like that”.

She also reminded Barr that this was a dangerous time for socialists, as well as Black and Asian people – fascists would attack people on the tube for wearing anti-racist badges. The SWP believed that combatting racists should be done collectively, involving the trade unions and wider groups.

“We were very careful, we didn’t want this to become a kind of individual gang fight between left and right”.

Barr had brought this up because he wanted to ask German about the August 1977 events that became known as the ‘Battle of Lewisham‘, and the SWP Central Committee’s attitude towards the anti-fascist counter-demonstrations that had been planned for that day.

German was at a by-election in Birmingham at the time of the Lewisham demonstration, and was not a member of the SWP’s Central Committee until 1979. Nevertheless, she patiently explained why it was so important to oppose a fascist demonstration that had deliberately chosen to walk through a multicultural community. It was a consciously provocative and intimidating act.

Indeed, not seeking to prevent the fascists marching would have been a mistake, as the consequence of not coming out on the streets (in Lewisham or anywhere else) would be more attacks on Black people – much, much worse.

Pressed, German provided more detail on the SWP’s approach to demonstrations, explaining that the SWP had an extensive stewarding operation:

“We wanted to make sure people could get to marches safely, that they would take place in a collective, disciplined way and not descend to individual fighting. We put a lot of effort into that.”

When asked about their use of obstruction as a tactic, she explained that they would occupy the road in order to prevent fascists from marching into areas where they might cause trouble. There were more than 50 racist murders of Black and Asian people in those years and the SWP felt strongly about this issue. There should have been official recognition that the National Front marches were unacceptable.

Nobody wanted the National Front in Southall – pretty much the entire community there were very clear about not wanting the fascists in their area, yet the police went out of their way to let that rally happen in 1979. There was a huge counter-demonstration, which SWP members attended, and this is when the police killed Blair Peach, who was a member of the Party.

Eventually, the Met banned all National Front marches in 1981.

German also gave examples of successful community resistance to the National Front such as occupying the space at the top of Brick Lane to stop them selling fascist papers there, painting over racist slogans, dealing with racism in ‘low-level ‘ways in workplaces, etc.

SPYCOPS IN THE PARTY

Finally, towards the end of the morning, Barr’s questioning moved to the activities of some of the spycops themselves. German was involved in the Right To Work campaign. In 1981 she spent three weeks on a Right To Work march – as did an undercover officer using the name ‘Colin Clark’ (officer HN80, 1977-1980).

She says that Clark put himself very much at the centre of the operation – “presumably to find out as much information as he could”. He took part in most of the day to day decisions, about money for food, etc, but also important discussions such as how to avoid dangerous situations or prevent young people who joined the protest march from being arrested.

Looking back, German said:

“It’s very disturbing that he was in this position… I feel uncomfortable, it’s disquieting…I find no justification for it whatever.”

After a brief detour to ask his characteristic questions about “trouble” during that Right to Work march (spoiler: there wasn’t any), Barr cited a 1982 report [UCPI0000015888] containing details of donations (including small ones) made to the campaign. This information was meant to be confidential, but it was hoovered up by the SDS.

The Inquiry sought a better understanding of the way the campaign (and the SWP) was organised and how these donations were dealt with. There were a number of questions about the office and headquarters, about the different positions within the SWP structure, and what these levels meant in terms of access to information and involvement in decision-making.

German explained that although some people in leadership roles worked from home, they would also come in to the office. Those who worked in the office would come along to meetings and social events, trips to the pub, etc.

She remembered some of the spycops – she says they attended social events and generally kept a fairly low profile. Some, like ‘Phil Cooper’ (officer HN155, 1979-1984), although not on the SWP’s Central Committee would have had some influence over what was going on. Of most concern, though, is the level of access to information of all kinds – people’s names and personal data, Party finances, etc – that he would have had. [UCPI0000011563]

TRIPE

Barr then moved on to a series of reports from October 1977, 1979 [UCPI0000013669], 1980 [UCPI0000013961], and 1983 [UCPI0000015986], all of which mention German by name.

TThe spycops had reported back about her appointment as a new District Organiser, and then her promotion to the SWP Central Committee and role of as ‘Women’s Organiser’. They reported on her attending a Blair Peach demo on the first anniversary of his death.

One exhibit said that the photo they had of her on file was no longer a good likeness, and requested a new one. The last detailed her new address and living arrangements.

Barr wanted German’s reaction to all of these. She described the last report as “tripe”, dismissing it as inaccurate and pointless. She said these reports represented a completely unjustified level of intrusion, and pointed out that much of the information they contained was in the public domain. Events such as the SWP National Conference at Skegness were advertised publicly.

Blair Peach was her neighbour, someone she regularly saw and spoke to. The demo where he was killed was described by someone she knew as “the most violent demonstration he’s ever been on”.

“We know that Peach was murdered by the police”.

That the spycops reported the SWP used his death “for their own ends” was a “complete disgrace”, saying more about the mindset of the undercover police and their attitudes towards those who demonstrated.

German said this Inquiry must address the “appalling way” the police treated “people who were going about perfectly legitimate political activity”.

SPYCOPS AT THE PARTY

After lunch, Barr pulled up more reports, from the Easter rallies the SWP held in Skegness in 1980 [UCPI0000014551] and 1982 [UCPI0000018180].

According to German, these weekend-long events in Skegness were part holiday/ social, part political. Many of those who attended were not party members or politically involved – some “just went there because the wanted a good time” – others accompanied their partners – many people brought their children.

These two reports contain long lists of attendees’ names (running to 50 pages). Barr pointed out the words “no trace” after many of the names – suggesting that Special Branch ran searches on all the names and this was the first time that many of these people had come to their attention. Some of them were only there as paid entertainers, comedians and the like.

German confirmed that these lists of names, as well as other documents displayed by Barr, containing internal Party statistics [UPCI0000016148], and the phone numbers of the SWP secretariat [UCPI0000016582] would have been confidential, as would the level of detail in thereport of the SWP’s 1980 National Delegate conference [UCPI0000016619].

German stated that there was no justification for this level of intrusion from the police. She concluded the police “simply wanted to put the Left in a very bad light.”

Notably, there was no such infiltration of the National Front, an obviously political decision.

Asked for her reflections on the spycops operation, she said it represented a big effort and a lot of public money for very little results.

Mitting had a few questions for her at the end of the day. He noted that electoral candidates – even the National Front – were legally permitted to hold election rallies in public buildings , to make some kind of point:

“I accept that you objected to it, but you knew that the law of the land actually provided that they were entitled to make use of these places?”

The Inquiry’s Chair then thanked her for her time, inviting her back for Tranche 2 – covering 1983-92, expected to occur in 2024 – “health and intellect permitting of course – that goes for both of us”, he laughed.

With that slightly disturbing ‘joke’, suggesting that ongoing delays to the process will continue to result in many witnesses, and perhaps even Mitting himself, being too dead, infirm or mentally incapacitated to take part, Day Four of this round of hearings came to an end.

Follow Lindsey German on Twitter: @LindseyAGerman

Witness statement of Lindsay German

Full list of associated publications

Video and transcript of the day’s hearing

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The current round of Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, focusing on Special Demonstration Squad managers 1968-82, continue until Friday 20 May.

<<Previous UCPI Daily Report (11 May 2022)<<

>>Next UCPI Daily Report (13 May 2022)>>

Tranche 1, Phase 3, Day 3

11 May 2022

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

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

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”.

Opening statement of Rajiv Menon QC

Dave Morris (representing himself)

This was a relatively short statement from Morris, who has already given several previous opening statements to the Inquiry and a witness statement.

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.”

One of those campaigns which is now known to have been infiltrated was the Torness Alliance anti-nuclear campaign.

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.

He helpfully provided a list of books for the Chair to read in order to better understand anarchist thinking:
Anarchism – A Very Short Introduction by Colin Ward
Demanding the Impossible by Peter Marshall
On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky
and just in case Mitting was partial to science fiction, Ursula Le Guin’s classic The Dispossessed.

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”.

Opening statement of Dave Morris

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.

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.”

Opening statement of Kirsten Heaven

‘Madeleine’ and Julia Poynter: Written statements

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’

‘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.

(‘Madeleine’ had already provided the Inquiry with a written statement in February 2021, and gave compelling evidence in hearings of May 2021. Also see Charlotte Killroy QC’s statement on her behalf this week)

COLD AND CYNICAL TACTICS

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’

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.

Opening statement of ‘Madeleine’

Julia Poynter

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.”

Opening statement of Julia Poynter

Transcript of the full day’s hearing

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The current round of Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, focusing on Special Demonstration Squad managers 1968-82, continue until Friday 20 May.

<<Previous UCPI Daily Report (10 May 2022)<<

>>Next UCPI Daily Report (12 May 2022)>>

Tranche 1, Phase 3, Day 2

10 May 2022

The second day of the 2022 Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings concerning the management of the Special Demonstration Squad 1968-82 included opening statements from:

Catherine Brown (representing the Home Secretary)
James Scobie QC (representing Lindsey German, ‘Mary’, & Richard Chessum)
Fiona Murphy QC (representing ‘Category F’ core participants – families who discovered that the identities of their loved ones had been appropriated by the spycops to construct cover names)
Charlotte Kilroy QC (representing ‘Category H’ core participants – women deceived into sexual relationships, as well as a child born as a result of one of those relationships, and one man deceived into a long term close friendship)
Charlotte Kilroy QC (representing Diane Langford and ‘Madeleine’)
Owen Greenhall (representing Lord Peter Hain, Ernest Rodker and Jonathan Rosenhead)
Sam Jacobs (representing Celia Stubbs)

Catherine Brown (representing the Home Secretary)

A very brief appearance, just confirming that the current Home Secretary remains supportive of the Inquiry’s work.

Opening statement of Catherine Brown

James Scobie QC (representing Lindsey German, ‘Mary’, & Richard Chessum)

‘Mary’ – one of the women who was deceived into a relationship
Richard Chessum – associated with Big Flame, Troops Out Movement and other campaigns
Lindsey German – Socialist Workers Party / Stop the War campaigner.

Scobie argued that the material disclosed by the Inquiry demonstrates that:

• There was no justification for the spycops’ infiltrations on the grounds of preventing public disorder. The true purpose was political and economic. There was no legal justification and the Government knew this.
• The Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) was really part of a large data-harvesting scheme, run on behalf of MI5, targeting anyone with left-wing politics.
• ‘Public order’ was used as an excuse, to justify the unit’s ongoing existence.
• The Government was aware that these operations were targeting lawful, democratic activities.
• The intelligence gathered by the SDS was used to blacklist law-abiding members of the public and prevent them from being employed in a wide range of jobs.

He pointed out that the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has been mischaracterised in order to justify its being infiltrated (by over 24 SDS officers over the years). In fact, the ‘revolutionary change’ they advocated was democratic in nature, with the aim of creating equality for all. As he put it:

“The aims of revolutionary socialism are to transform society from within, re-addressing the balance of power away from the minority that holds it, to the majority that should. That process has to be democratic by definition.

“They campaigned on issues such as sexual discrimination, racism, low-pay, unsafe working conditions, unemployment and poverty. All of which needed transforming.

“They focused on building a mass movement and broad-based campaigns with the aim of helping to create a better society.”

According to ‘Colin Clark’ (officer HN80), who spent five years embedded within the SWP’s headquarters, the Party:

“were strongly opposed to government policy but were not seeking to subvert the institutions of the state.”

Scobie showed that although the unit had a purely public order remit when it was founded, by the mid-1970s this justification became increasingly contrived, as public disorder was on the decline. Instead, the unit moved towards serving ‘customers’ such as MI5, who “told them what to get and where to get it”. SDS management had regular meetings with the security services.

Between 1968 and 1971, there was an “exponential” increase in the number of SDS reports being produced, from a few hundred to tens of thousands. The vast majority contained personal details of left-wing sympathisers, rather than anything relating to public order. This is an accurate reflection of the true priorities of the spycops, not the ‘skewed’ picture the police now claim it to be. The content of the unit’s Annual Reports back up his assertion.

Even the public order successes claimed by the SDS are misleading. Scobie was able to demonstrate how they did this, in Lindsay German’s experience of the Right to Work campaign.

The SDS exaggerated the potential threat of disorder and then claimed the credit for it not occurring, when in fact it was the campaigners themselves who ensured events were well-stewarded and passed off peacefully.

Scobie highlighted the Metropolitan Police’s refusal to acknowledge the racist nature of many acts of extreme violence, such as the murder in 1978 of Altab Ali. Racially motivated attacks were relatively common, yet those responsible were ignored by the SDS.

The real threats of public disorder and violence came from the far-right, yet Scobie noted that according to Detective Inspector Angus McIntosh (officer HN244), there was a deliberate policy decision, made at a high level, for the SDS not to infiltrate them.

From the (closed) evidence of officer HN21:

“From the SWP side, it was mostly shouting. From the far right thing, it was mostly physical violence.”

Instead, two Special Branch officers were reportedly (in 1968) sent by their Chief Superintendent to take tea on the lawn of one well-known fascist (later imprisoned for inciting racial hatred), Lady Jane Birdwood, and “thank her” for the information she shared with them.

Next, we heard about the guidelines applied to Special Branch’s work, and therefore to the SDS, and the way ‘subversion’ was interpreted by them. Definitions were left deliberately vague, so that legitimate political and industrial activity could be treated as ‘subversive’ and therefore fair game for the spycops.

This may explain why senior managers (and the Home Office, according to material that’s now been released) were keen to ensure that the existence of the unit remained secret, and the public never found out that these officers had been given unchecked powers to “pry into political opinions and private conduct of law abiding citizens”, and to interfere with freedom of assembly and expression.

At least nine spycops are known to have assumed positions of responsibility within the SWP. These include ‘Colin Clark’ (officer HN80) and ‘Phil Cooper’ (officer HN155), who provided incredibly detailed reports and received commendations for their work. Their reports included a lot of information about trade union activity, an area neither MI5 or Special Branch was officially permitted to investigate. The SDS bent the rules to suit themselves.

The real reason for the systematic ‘hoovering up’ of hundreds of SWP members’ data was political and economic policing. SWP activists were at real risk of being refused work and blacklisted, and this is something Richard Chessum experienced himself. This document from 1975 refers to a ‘close and mutually profitable relationship’ between the police and employers.

Members of Parliament were concerned enough about this issue back in the 1970s to ask questions about trade unionists being targeted, but the police lied to them.

Opening statment of James Scobie

Fiona Murphy QC (representing ‘Category F’ core participants – families who discovered that the identities of their loved ones had been appropriated by the spycops to construct cover names)

Their earlier Opening Statements (in November 2020 and April 2021) described the devastation of losing their loved ones, and the horror they suffered upon learning that their identities had been used in this morally abhorrent way.

This stage of the Inquiry is of particular importance to them as they seek to learn how the practice of using the identities of dead children began and how it came to be normalised by the spycops.

Murphy took a moment to remember Barbara Shaw, who sadly passed away last year. She had been instrumental in pursuing justice for the families affected in this way for the past decade, since learning that her son’s name, Rod Richardson, has been stolen by one of the spycops.

In 2021, the Crown Prosecution Service concluded there was sufficient evidence to bring a criminal prosecution against officer EN32/HN596, but they nonethelss decided not to press charges. They feel it is ‘not in the public interest’ as the officer was only following his unlawful training. The fact that a conviction would be likely is surely enough to prosecute him, and his unlawful mentor – who we now know to be Andy Coles (officer HN2).

The CPS told Rod Richardson’s family of their decision last year, eight years after the truth was revealed, and two weeks after Barbara Shaw had died.

The delays of this Inquiry continue to cause significant distress to the remaining families, who ask that officers now “volunteer the full truth without any ambiguity and without any economy as to that truth”.

There is one family listed whose name has been redacted from the Statement. This is due to a Restriction Order granted by Mitting, awarding both real- and cover-name anonymity to the undercover who used the name of their deceased child. This means that they too are silenced, and cannot speak up in public, cannot seek support, and:

“Against a backdrop of unspeakable trauma, the family feel degraded, humiliated, debased and silenced both in the public domain and in their personal relations. The family have been shut out from the opportunity to scrutinise whether even the process that resulted in the imposition of the restriction took proper account of the ongoing gross interference with their rights.”

The families say that the evidence they heard last year ‘crystallised’ their views, that there was no need for this ghoulish practice to have been adopted in the first place, or maintained for so many years, and they question the need for the spycops operation’s very existence.

As Murphy put it:

“the Special Demonstration Squad (“SDS”) was a secret operation, operating in isolation from and far beyond the moral and legal norms of policing; and they had every confidence that its secrets, including the immorality and illegality at the core of its practices, would remain secret.”

Murphy then provided an overview of the practice, the many contradictions and how mangers sought to justify it.

In the early years of the SDS, only one officer (‘Mike Scott‘, officer HN298) stole the identity of a deceased child. He says he did so on his own initiative. Other undercovers in those years (1968-74) simply created fictitious identities, and this worked fine. They were able to obtain driving licences, library cards, etc, in their invented names, and no deployments were compromised as a result. Regional and National Crime Squad officers continued in this way until at least 1998, again without any problems.

However, we now know that many SDS officers (approximately half of those represented by the Designated Lawyers) chose this method of constructing an identity based on the real name of a deceased child, from 1974 onwards.

It’s been suggested that this became standard procedure due to deployments based on purely fictitious identities being compromised. However there is no evidence of this being the case.

There were spycops who raised concerns about this practice, and about the moral implications, and at least one who is known to have refused to adopt this method of creating a ‘legend’. ‘Colin Clark’ chose to use a fictitious name during his time undercover (1977-82), with a passport issued and no known problems.

When deployments were compromised, this was often due to the officers themselves making mistakes – for example, ‘Graham Coates‘ (officer HN304) accidentally gave his real name when stopped for drink driving.

Richard Clark (officer HN297) was confronted by Big Flame activists with a copy of a death certificate for the person he was pretending to be (‘Rick Gibson’) and had to be pulled out of the field immediately as a result.

Whether or not this tactic originated with The Day of the Jackal book, or the film of the same name, or the KGB (!) remains unknown.

Murphy went on to say that the SDS was “an entirely misguided enterprise”, blaming the unit’s managers for perpetuating this unethical and illegal practice and a “toxic culture” of secrecy. She cited the current temporary MPS Commissioner, who recently spoke out about failures of leadership resulting in institutional toxicity that could not be explained away as just a few ‘bad apples’.

Opening statement of Fiona Murphy QC

Charlotte Kilroy QC (representing ‘Category H’ core participants – women deceived into sexual relationships, as well as a child born as a result of one of those relationships, and one man deceived into a long term close friendship)

Kilroy began her oral statement with some very old case law – about the ransacking and seizure of property by the Earl of Halifax, in the home of John Entick, in 1762. The relevance to the Inquiry soon became apparent.

Entick went on to sue for trespass, and the resulting, 260-year old judgement Entick v Carrington is one of the most important pieces of British constitutional case law. It establishes that the state cannot issue “general warrants”, or any kind of speculative or non-specific invasion of private homes in search of evidence of crimes. This, together with the Common Law principles of personal security, liberty and property, underpins much of modern policing.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

Fast forward two centuries, to 1968. Following unrest on the March 1968 Grosvenor Square demo, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) was set up by Special Branch and the Home Office, seemingly with any proper legal or political oversight. Very quickly, officers were creating false identities, being provided with accommodation and expenses and being deployed for years on end.

They routinely entered private homes, and were given very little direction about what to report or who to target. They gathered huge amounts of very private information and shared that with other agencies. This plainly conflicted with the bedrock of the law. However, they had a weapon the Earl of Halifax did not have: secrecy.

Charlotte then re-told the now familiar story of officer Mark Kennedy’s unmasking in 2010, which began the unravelling of the secrecy surrounding the SDS and Kennedy’s unit, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit.

It was revealed that they had entered the private homes of thousands of people and that Kennedy was one of dozens of officers who had deceived women into sexual relationships. Some even had children. All this was discovered by accident and it is only because of that accident that this Inquiry exists at all.

THE PROBLEM WITH SECRECY

“Secret surveillance powers characterise the police state and are a menace.”

This was the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in Klass & Others v Germany 1978. Secret surveillance poses a danger of undermining, even destroying democracy, while claiming to defend it. In all democracies governed by the rule of law, covert powers are confined to the most serious threats. Secrecy is always dangerous to democracy. It corrupts, and it encourages abuse.

THE APPLICABLE LAW

Ms Kilroy QC made detailed written submissions on the applicable legal framework.

Freedom of Expression is described as “the primary right” in a democracy, because “without it, an effective rule of law is not possible”. The right to hold and share opinions without interference and without being monitored and placed under surveillance is protected in both common and international law.

The sanctity of the home, the family, and possessions is zealously protected in common law and Article 8 of the Human Rights Act and is considered absolutely sacred, just as every person’s body is considered inviolate. Any interference is considered trespass, and the burden is on the police to justify their trespasses.

Mr Sanders, representing some of the former undercovers, yesterday suggested that everything a public authority does is considered lawful until ruled otherwise by a court. That is untrue. A statutory instrument is presumed lawful, but a trespass is not. Using deception and tricks to gain an invite to someone’s home is no justification, and even where a warrant exists, it is not lawful if it allows discretion as to who the target of the warrant is, or speculative searches for evidence of crime.

THE EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

The primary focus of Ms Kilroy’s submissions is UK Common Law, nevertheless, international law is also relevant. Yesterday the police suggested it was not applicable, and Mitting appeared to agree.

This is wrong for 3 reasons:

1. The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) was applicable law at the time, and the UK was committed to comply with it. Any failure to do that must be relevant to an assessment of the statutory regulation of undercover policing, which is part of the Inquiry’s task. How can the Inquiry conclude the statutory regulation of undercover policing was adequate, if it led to the UK breaking its international human rights commitments?

2. One of the great iniquities of secrecy is that it obstructs accountability. The UK twice changed domestic law in response to ECHR rulings during the 1980s and 90s. If people had been able to raise the practices of the SDS in Strasbourg it would very likely have led to changes in law.

3. The Inquiry is tasked with examining the effects of undercover policing on individuals and the public in general. The large scale breach of people’s Human Rights and the denial of redress due to secrecy is clearly a serious effect.

INVESTIGATORY POWERS TRIBUNAL RULING IN WILSON

This case from 2021 addresses all the rights outlined above in the context of undercover policing. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) ruled that the Met and National Police Chiefs Council had violated Wilson’s rights under Articles 3, 8, 10, 11 & 14. The ruling is summarised here.

The police lawyers yesterday sought to diminish the relevance of this case to the inquiry, by saying that it is based on the facts of that case. That is of course true, but the similarity between the facts and the impact on individuals spied on in that case, and those in Tranche 1 of this Inquiry, is impossible to ignore.

Specifically, the police’s argument – that allowing the police to make proportionate responses to demonstrations is a justification for undercover operations – was rejected by the IPT. Likewise, they cannot be considered to justify trespass.

The findings that the operations violated Wilson’s rights to freedoms of expression and association also have obvious implications for the actions of the SDS.

The IPT also ruled that two senior officers knew about the sexual relationship and others adopted a policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell”. A finding the inquiry must bear in mind when questioning managers in this tranche. The police accepted the judgment, and did not appeal any of the findings.

POLICING BY CONSENT

The whole concept of Policing by Consent is likely to be viewed by most CP;s and as fantasy of the liberal state. Some activist groups have recently declared their withdrawal of any consent.

However, the concept did provide Kilroy with some extra ammunition. For instance, Principle 5 of the Peelian Principles (1829) states that officers are injuncted at all times to uphold the historic tradition that “the police are the public and the public are the police”.

The police are only members of the public paid to give full time attention to duties that are incumbent on every member of the public. Lying and deceiving the public and trespassing on their privacy, property and intimate lives fundamentally undermines this principle.

THE 2005 INQUIRIES ACT

The police submissions yesterday sought to suggest that the applicable legal framework is not relevant to the Inquiry’s task, because Section 2 of the Inquiries Act says the Chair cannot determine individual liability. However that does not mean that the law is not relevant to the Terms of Reference in other ways.

CONCLUSIONS

Managers ought to have been well aware of the risks posed by their operations, yet in the Inquiry’s Tranche 1 period alone (1968-82), at least 6 officers engaged in deceitful relationships with numerous women.

It is a striking feature of all the evidence so far that the common law and human rights of the individuals and the impact of long-term undercover operations on those rights were rarely if ever considered:

• There was no guidance or training on privacy or relationships
• Tasking was broad brush and officers were given free rein to decide who to spy on
• There was no restriction on entering homes
• No guidance was given about what to record, and undercover officers were expected to hoover up as much information as possible
• Very little crime, disorder, or intelligence suggesting a risk to democracy was ever recorded. Usually reports showed an absence of such risks

In conclusion, Kilroy stated that it is the Category H position that these operations were incompatible with all standards of law. Scrutiny, when it finally came, came only by accident. Responsibility for that lies with the senior police officers and Home Office officials who maintained this secrecy for so long. The Police were corrupted by these practices. Their betrayal of the values of truth, integrity and honesty is made particularly clear by their willingness to lie to the courts, attacking the very institutions it was their duty to support.

Why did managers decide to abandon all the tenets of common law and the principles of policing, simply to find out how many officers to send to a demonstration, or whether people’s ideas were “subversive”? Answering this will be an important area of investigation for the inquiry.

Charlotte Kilroy QC (representing Diane Langford and ‘Madeleine’)

The experiences of these two women provide more evidence of the police overreaching their legal powers with open ended, ‘broad brush’ investigations that relied on the spycops’ discretion. Any tests of justification for targeting and reporting on them fail, something particularly egregious given the deception of Madeleine into a relationship.

 

Diane Langford, a long time political activist, has never taken part in or been arrested for criminal activity. Despite this, at least six undercover officers infiltrated her life, and reported on her, and on private meetings held in her home. These reports contained personal information about her, often accompanied by inappropriate personal comments on her views and domestic arrangements.

Both ‘Sandra Davies’ (officer HN348) and ‘Dave Robertson’ (officer HN45) have admitted that they never witnessed any public disorder or criminal behaviour being committed by Diane or her comrades. It is difficult to see what justified the level of intrusion she suffered or the use of police resources.

Groups like the Women’s Liberation Front were targeted for no reason other than curiosity on the part of the police and/or security services. According to Sandra Davies, the undercovers were not provided with guidance or limits about entering private homes or collecting personal, private details of their targets. Robertson’s remit was likewise to gather as much intelligence as possible on his targets.

In Diane’s case, there is none of the evidence that would be required to justify an overt investigation, never mind a covert operation. This made the surveillance unlawful.

Diane now knows that the files relating to her have not all been disclosed, and requests that this happens so she can fully and properly assist the Inquiry.

‘MADELEINE’

‘Madeleine’ was deceived into a relationship by undercover Vincent Harvey (aka ‘Vince Miller’, officer HN354).

She describes how after giving evidence on this last year, she learned his real name. This led to her finding out that he went on to lead the Operation Pragada investigation into child sexual abuse in Lambeth and later became a national director at the National Criminal Intelligence Service. Madeleine was shocked by this, given what he did to her.

Kilroy pointed out that Harvey was allowed to choose his own targets and use his personal judgement when deciding what to include in his reports. He took up positions of trust (such as Secretary and Treasurer) within SWP branches and used these as an opportunity to gather intelligence on party members and activities. He reported personal information expecting it to be of use to the Security Service.

Madeleine was involved in SWP activities which were entirely open and lawful, aiming to create a fairer society. Vince Harvey himself noted that their main interest was in building a working class movement, for all that there was rhetoric around ‘revolution’.

Madeleine’s evidence is confirmed by a new witness in the Inquiry, Julia Poynter, a former SWP member, who attests to both the nature of the local SWP groups and Madeleine’s relationship with Harvey.

Owen Greenhall (representing Lord Peter Hain, Ernest Rodker and Jonathan Rosenhead)

Greenhall opened with the anti-apartheid protest at the Star and Garter Hotel in Richmond, almost 50 years ago today. Activists sought to delay the departure of the British Lions Rugby team on their tour to South Africa.

Among them was a man known as “Mike Scott” (officer HN298). Fourteen activists, including Scott himself were arrested that day and later convicted at trial. This has already been referred to the panel considering miscarriages of justice. It is an affront to justice that he deliberately deceived the defence, prosecution and court to as to his identity and the nature of his role.

There was no prior authorisation for him to participate in a demonstration leading to his arrest; he withheld key factual information that should have acquitted the defendants; the presence of an undercover officer was never disclosed to the arresting officers, the defence, the prosecution or the court; and he breached legal privilege, reporting and recording confidential conversations between defendants and their lawyers.

These concerns have already been articulated in previous statements, however we are now looking the role of SDS managers. It is clear from the evidence at the current Inquiry hearings that this was all done with the full knowledge and encouragement of SDS managers and senior officers in at all levels of the Metropolitan Police.

SDS manager Sergeant David Smith (officer HN103) was present at the first court appearance on 15th May 1972 and SDS managers monitored the case closely. Within days details had been communicated to the highest levels of Special Branch.

Deputy Commissioner Ferguson Smith sent a memo confirming the Assistant Commissioner had been verbally briefed. Senior management were strongly supportive, saying HN298 had acted with “refreshing initiative” and that they should “take advantage of the situation”.

Discussions were had about assisting Scott in maintaining his deception, participating in criminal proceedings in a false identity, and even applying for legal aid. The only concern expressed was about the potential for embarrassment to the police if they ever got found out.

This apparently sent the tone and created a template for a policy of total secrecy, lack of disclosure and complete disregard for legal privilege and the integrity of the criminal justice system.

Like Scott, ‘Desmond/Barry Loader’ (officer HN13) was arrested a number of times, faced trial, and was even found guilty of public order offences. No disclosure was ever made, however the court was told he was “an informant” (not a police officer), and were asked to ensure he did not go to jail.

In both cases, SDS managers at all levels were quickly aware of and complicit in the lies, with Deputy and Assistant Commissioners and even the Commissioner himself involved in decisions to deceive the courts. There is no mention of any concern for the rights of co-defendants or the integrity of the criminal justice system.

The themes of lack of policy, training, guidance and oversight; an overriding need to preserve total secrecy of SDS and prevent reputational damage to the police; and lack of consideration for the rights of those spied upon are echoed in other areas of concern, such as the targeting of political groups, the indiscriminate collection of information and undercover officers taking active roles within political groups.

Greenhall went into some detail about the targeting of the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the Young Liberals and notes that the evidence paints a picture painted of targeting led by the undercover officers themselves, with SDS managers unable to exercise proper control.

He also cited deeply personal details recorded on his clients and their families by the SDS and passed on to the Security Services.

He concluded by citing similar concerns over the indiscriminate recording and retention of information by Special Branch as reflected in a Home Office Paper produced in 1980 which noted that some of the information collected “may not easily be justified”, reflecting that disproportionate data collection was directly related to the lack of clear management guidance and recommending independent oversight and supervision. Yet forty-two years later, here we are.

Opening statement of Owen Greenhall

Sam Jacobs (representing Celia Stubbs)

Celia Stubbs was the partner of Blair Peach, who was killed by a police officer striking a blow to his head during a protest against racism in Southall in April 1979.

The circumstances of the tragic death of Blair Peach and the sustained cover-up that followed it is told in Celia Stubbs’ statement, and was summarised for Part 2 of the Inquiry. Undercover officers reporting on her commenced in the 1970s, and continued at least into the 1990s.

Her statement today, read out by Sam Jacobs, focused on the question how she became a target of the SDS and why intelligence was gathered on her for decades. Importantly, she found out that the Metropolitan Police still withholds information on the death of Peach.

The managers who have given written evidence generally deny any knowledge of why the Blair Peach campaign was reported on. However, when it comes to explaining the reporting on the funeral of Blair Peach, Angus McIntosh says that he would not have known to what use such information would have been put, but his understanding is that it was “for the Security Service, and for vetting, and identification/tracing”.

More was revealed in the summaries of the closed hearings the Inquiry has held. Officer HN21 recalled “one of the management” asked him to attend Blair Peach’s funeral, and it “could have been Geoff Craft [officer HN34].”

As to why it was that the SDS wanted to report on the funeral, HN21 describes that “part of the core business was to identify people, individuals who were connected to groups.” In the instance of attending Blair Peach’s funeral, the motive “was just that” and he had not thought that there was any possibility of disorder.

As was mentioned earlier today, SDS managers did not want undercover officers to attend the rally at Southall, as it was known that uniformed officers were planning to “clamp down on the demonstrations” and dangers were “more than normal”.

Undercover officer HN41 also described the “disastrous mistake” in public order planning of closing down part of Southall.

For Celia Stubbs,

“this offers a glimpse into the information likely within the report that may have been profoundly important in exposing the approach of the police to the rally, and the violence which resulted in the death of Blair Peach.”

Crucially, HN41 recalled he was “smuggled in” to Scotland Yard to give a statement as the “Murder Squad” had heard of his presence at Southall. This shows that the officers investigating Blair Peach’s death were well aware of the SDS presence and likely knowledge of events, knowledge that was never revealed in the inquest at the time.

The fact that this has only been dealt with in closed hearings raises concerns about the ability for Stubbs and others to participate effectively in the Inquiry, as without full access it is not possible to question the witnesses properly. As Jacobs emphatically stated:

“This evidence must be revisited by the Chair.”

These revelations only add to Stubbs grief about the ongoing refusal of the Metropolitan Police to be open and honest about its actions. It is painful that time and again, it is up to her to come up with new evidence of the police’s failure. And of the Inquiry’s for that matter.

Like Diane Langford who we heard earlier this week, Stubbs submitted a Subject Access Request and received her Special Branch Registry File and some further documents from the Metropolitan Police that were not disclosed by the Inquiry.

The documents include the first information on her, with a photo attached, her relationship to Peach, and an assault by two members of the National Front for wearing an Anti-Nazi League badges.

One file shows that Special Branch information was collated on all individuals who provided a statement in respect of the killing of Blair Peach. Why was that information collected and put on file?

The disclosed reports – while heavily redacted – reveal the disdain that the Metropolitan Police held towards those seeking to hold police to account. Though she never did achieve justice for Blair Peach, her campaigning was valiant and dignified. To Special Branch, however, she was a mere “propaganda tool” for the “left wing publicity machine.”
Stubbs hopes the Inquiry understands how traumatic discovering this has been:

“I have felt more distressed but also angry. To put it bluntly, police officers took my partner’s life and then concealed the truth. The concluding job of this Inquiry is to uncover the truth.”

 

Video of the morning session
Video of the afternoon session
Transcript

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The current round of Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, focusing on Special Demonstration Squad managers 1968-82, continue until Friday 20 May.

<<Previous UCPI Daily Report (9 May 2022)<<

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Tranche 1, Phase 3, Day 1

9 May 2022

Proceedings opened today in the third round of evidential hearings in the Undercover Policing Inquiry, with statements from the Inquiry’s lead barrister, David Barr QC, and lawyers representing the Metropolitan Police Service and individual undercover officers.

Also released were statements from several non-state witnesses, summaries of which can be found below.

Hearings will continue tomorrow with statements on behalf of the Home Office and representatives of some of the victims of police spies, including the statement of Charlotte Kilroy QC which featured heavily in the comments made today.

COUNSEL TO THE INQUIRY, DAVID BARR QC

The opening statement from the Inquiry barrister, David Barr QC, was long and detailed, for a large part summarising some of the evidence the Inquiry is releasing today. However, it did highlight further disturbing evidence of the scale and extent of wrongdoing by these undercover units.

In addition to the deliberate targeting of school children campaigning against the far right, seemingly at the behest of the Security Service (aka MI5), Barr cited a Special Branch memo that shows police were involved in passing information about trade union activists to private companies:

“some employers plead to be given warning if known agitators seek or obtain employment with them… when a Special Branch officer is himself seeking help from an employer, or from a union official, it is asking a good deal to expect him to insist invariably that he is engaged in a one-way traffic.”

The Inquiry also highlighted an MI5 report pointing out the dangers of vetting amounting effectively to blacklisting:

“The transmission of security information to an employing authority can have serious consequences for the person concerned, leading in extreme cases to purge from the Civil Service or, in other cases, to denial of access to classified information which can have an adverse effect on careers.”

Considerable attention was paid to the relationship between the Metropolitan Police’s undercover political policing unit the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) and MI5. Though complex and changeable, their interaction was involved, and it is clear that the latter was highly influential on spycops’ reporting and activities.

Barr also cited Special Branch annual reports, noting that over five thousand files were opened, mostly on individuals, and over a million entries were made in Special Branch files in 1979 alone.

His statement notes that:

“the SDS reported on the activities of black justice campaigns and infiltrated far left groups which, amongst other things, actively promoted racial equality. SDS reporting on such matters formed a part of a wider Special Branch interest in racial tension”

Barr spent some time on the context of the SDS within Special Branch and how it related to the Security Service and the Home Office, including what defined the undercover unit’s reason for existence – particularly the definition and interpretation of subversion.

Though dry and historical, this will no doubt be of significance for placing any conceivable justification of the SDS in a wider context.

In particular, Barr highlighted the kind of rhetoric the police spies used about their targets and pointedly asked:

“Were revolutionaries behind and exploiting every public demonstration, ‘pop’ festival, or squat or sit-in? Or were Special Branch, even allowing for risks to national security generated by the Cold War, looking for Reds under the bed? Was SDS reporting for public order purposes, in all the circumstances, invaluable?”

He also summarised the results of recent secret, closed hearings where the Inquiry heard further evidence from undercover officers that included candid accounts of sexual relationships officers had with their targets.

This included the use of sex as an operational tactic, and the recognition that the women would not have consented if they had known they were sleeping with a police officer, as well as accounts that certain officers were known by colleagues to be “sexual predators”.

One undercover undermined the manager’s position of claimed ignorance, referring to Rick Gibson, known to have had multiple relationships while undercover, saying:

“Rick had a certain reputation and it gradually came out that he had had a sexual relationship which led to his being compromised, and that was, to my way of thinking, generally well known among the existing SDS officers.”

Finally, in recognition of the fact that the massive delays that have plagued the process have left victims without answers for too long, the Inquiry announced their intention to produce an Interim Report at the end of this first tranche of evidence. The scope and timing of that report are still to be decided.

COORDINATED STATEMENTS FROM THE MET & EX-UNDERCOVER OFFICERS

In surprisingly defensive and clearly coordinated opening statements, lawyers representing the Met and the designated lawyers for over 100 individual ex-undercover officers claimed that it would be “unfair” to judge the activities of the Special Demonstration Squad without hearing from the officers and agents that the SDS gathered the intelligence for.

Peter Skelton QC, representing the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) suggested the Inquiry should not seek to establish whether the early years of police spying on political groups were justified (despite this being a key part of the Inquiry’s terms of reference), saying that it is “inherently problematic and unfair”.

He went on to say:

“If the Inquiry does intend, however, to make findings about the justification and value of SDS deployments into specific groups, or its reporting on specific individuals, during in the T1 period, then this can only be done fairly by asking former officers of MPSB [Met Police Special Branch] C Squad, A8 Uniform Branch, and the Security Service, directly to explain the justification for seeking intelligence on those groups and individuals, and what value the resulting intelligence had to their work.

“They should also explain why intelligence needed to be sought using undercover deployments, rather than by some other means – for example, open sources such as public meetings and publications, or alternative closed sources such as informants and surveillance.”

This echoes the long-standing demands of campaigners and core participants for a fuller investigation into where ultimate responsibility for the activities of Britain’s secret political police lies.

However, it also reflects a recognition by police core participants in the Inquiry that their undercover operations are difficult (if not impossible) to justify based on any of the evidence they have been able to provide so far. It seems they now wish to imply they were just following orders, and to pass the buck for decision making and justification of the operations further up the chain.

Both former undercover officers (represented by Oliver Sanders QC for their opening statement) and the Met make clear in their statements that the SDS was by no means an autonomous policing unit; it produced intelligence for “customers” on request.

The Met noted the huge volume of reports the SDS provided to the Security Service, often in response to specific requests, while the officers’ lawyers specifically claim that it was the Security Service who were seeking information on school children and that is why the SDS filed those reports.

Far from offering any justification for the operations, both statements raise extremely worrying questions about the extent to which even deeper, darker secret agencies have been allowed to subvert policing resources into unlawful and anti-democratic activities that had no possible legitimate policing end.

WHOSE HISTORY?

Both the Met and ex-undercover officers also repeated calls to know what relevant books the Chair is reading and for “independent, neutral, expert witnesses” to be called to give evidence about the historical context of the time.

They back up their somewhat disingenuous claim that such evidence could be neutral, by claiming that “history is an academic discipline and historians observe certain ethical and professional requirements” but go on to cite Christopher Andrew, the author of ‘Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5‘ as one such possible ‘objective’ expert.

Overall, they appear very concerned that, by present day-standards, what they did is clearly abhorrent, and they seem to hope putting it into the historical context of the sexist, racist policing of the 1970s (like a real-life episode of ‘Life on Mars’) might lead to them being judged in a more favourable light.

SPYCOPS STEALING DEAD CHILDREN’S IDENTITIES

The issue of undercover officers stealing dead children’s identities also came up. Both barristers apologised again for the practice but were keen to point out that it wasn’t really the SDS’s fault. They want Mitting to look at where the practice originated, citing a variety of earlier examples, including the fact it was used by other agencies such as the KGB. Their worry is that the SDS will get all the blame for this ghoulish practice.

Skelton also added that the Security Service had a way of tracking when dead children’s identities were being stolen to generate false passports; this is the first we have heard of this.

At the end of Skelton’s statement, Mitting addressed some of the points he had raised.

He did not accept that the theft of dead children’s identities should be investigated more widely. He was focused on the SDS and was not investigating the Security Service, and he rather pointedly warned the police that they may not want to compare their own practices to those of the KGB:

“I can’t believe that you would want us to think that the KGB were the inspiration for the practice of a domestic police force. I think the less said about that the better, no?”

As far as he was concerned, he did not need the assistance of a historian as during the period the Inquiry covers he was a ‘sentient adult’ interested in political affairs and he feels he is already aware of the political and social circumstances of the time.

If he needs any further information on a particular aspect, he can ask a witness, as, he says, he did in his previous questioning of Tariq Ali on the nature of Trotskyism. He also recognised that historians themselves have widely differing perspectives.

He was equally scathing of the request to let core participants know all the books he had read. Saying that he had a library of over 300 books, he was not going to catalogue them all, or put into the public domain every bit of evidence that had formed his understanding. He was happy to have reading material suggested to him, though.

To his mind, the most useful material he could get were the documents themselves; with most of the senior officers from A8 and the Security Service deceased, that would be his best source – if those documents exist. Apparently, despite calling for the evidence, the Met do not know where their own material, such as the risk assessments sent to A8, might be found…

However, though Mitting is not going to call on junior officers still alive, as they would not have had the full picture either, he is going to ask those who can help to do so.

Nobody pointed out that the Met are actually calling for evidence that only they can provide, and so far have failed to do. In fact, they have produced very little evidence that could put their boys in the SDS in a good light.

WERE SPYCOPS EVEN LEGAL?

The final issue he addressed arising from Skelton’s arguments was the issue of the lawfulness of the SDS itself. This has been raised by Charlotte Kilroy, QC on behalf of the women targeted for relationships – whose statement will be heard tomorrow. Kilroy has advanced a powerful set of arguments challenging the foundation of undercover policing.

Both Skelton and Sanders were clearly worried by this and sought to head some of the arguments off at the pass. Sanders spoke a lot about the ‘values’ and ‘context’ of the 1970s in his defence, and raised the point that it would also affect the likes of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.

Mitting responded that the main issues of lawfulness to his mind related to whether undercover police had the right to enter private homes as part of their work and the distribution of confidential information such bank details without a warrant.

He is open to further submissions on these points which go to the heart of all activities of the undercover policing units, and it is expected Ms Kilroy QC will go deeper into these issues tomorrow at 12:15pm.

Oliver Sanders QC, speaking for the undercover officers themselves, following Mitting’s response to Skelton, was left floundering. The goal posts have not only been moved but the ball has been taken away, he plaintively complained.

His statement clearly showed the SDS are worried they will take the brunt of the blame for the egregious behaviour even though other spies were also at it. He echoed much of Skelton’s points where he could.

Where he did expand on something new, was the request for expert advice from a psychiatric analyst. He was keen to suggest that this would shed light on the undercovers’ activities and give necessary context.

Mitting said no, there is sufficient material on the subject from the 1990s and 2000s, and Sanders’s suggestion went beyond what was reasonable to expect of the Inquiry.

As far as he was concerned, it was already obvious that being undercover had adverse impacts on some of the officers. He also pointed out that if we are going to talk about psychological damage, he would have to investigate the damage done to the victims of the police spies.

ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

In addition to the oral statements reported above, written statements were also published on the Inquiry website today on behalf of Diane Langford, John Rees and Joan Rudder

DIANE LANGFORD ON THE IMPORTANCE OF SPECIAL BRANCH REGISTRY FILES

Diane Langford was active in the Britain Vietnam Solidarity Front, set up the Women’s Liberation Front, was the partner of Maoist leader Abhimanyu Manchanda, and gave a strong statement during the last set of hearings in May 2021 (and also wrote up how she got involved in the Inquiry).

This year, she submitted an additional statement after finding out that the Metropolitan Police held more information on her, which the Inquiry had failed to find even though it was right in front of them. The Inquiry has something to learn here, from a core participant who would not take no for an answer.

Langford submitted a Subject Access Request to the Metropolitan Police for her Registry File. And, quite extraordinarily, she got it. The 12 pages provided is a heavily redacted copy of her personal file opened by Special Branch, the ‘history sheet’ listing the dates that information was added, and what it entailed.

Unsurprisingly, the Inquiry refused to provide her with all the included reports, saying such was “not proportionate” (read: too much work). Langford subsequently asked for the material linked to 12 specific Registry File entries to which the Inquiry agreed.

They subsequently identified two reports she had not seen previously, but said they did not consider it necessary for her to get them before the current hearings.

Clearly, the history sheet complements the disclosure provided to date by the Inquiry, Langford says:

“It seems to me to be a very simple and proportionate way to identify relevant reporting.”

As it appears to give a more detailed picture of the undercover deployments, she has some useful advice for Mitting:

“If other civilian witnesses are provided with their own history sheets it could help them to assist the Inquiry in its investigations significantly.”

Langford also concludes that the decision to open a Registry File on her was made largely as a result of SDS intelligence. What if the Britain Vietnam Solidarity Front had not been infiltrated in the first place?

This is an important issue for the Inquiry to keep in mind. Infiltrating groups on the left becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: because a spycop is planted next to you, you get ‘mentioned’ in their reports on a regular basis, and a certain amount of ‘mentions’ would become a reason to open a personal file.

The formal designation as ‘a person of interest’ has significant implications, Langford states, blacklisting being an obvious example.

“Did the opening of my Registry File lead to other agencies opening files on me? Did it lead to trade union ‘blacklisting’ agencies spying on me at work?”

Diane Langford has every right to ask these questions, as her Subject Access Request also revealed some heavily redacted reports (not released) on her separation from Manchanda, her union activities, and even on the books she took to work: “frequently seen reading Maoist literature.”

Langford finds this particularly disturbing:

“a clear example of thought policing… how on earth did this information end up in a Special Branch report?”

She wants the Inquiry to tell her who produced the reports and who the information was collected for.

Langford is now 80 years old, and yet the state still holds files on her based on her attendance at political meetings over half a century ago. Her own research has brought to light yet more discrepancies in the work of the Inquiry. It turns out some of the reports listed on her Registry File have been disclosed by the UCPI before, but do not name her. How did the information that she attended end up in her file?

Last but not least, the history sheet of her personal file ends in 1984, and she wonders if this is because Registry Files were computerised in the mid 1980s.

“As I said in my first statement, given that I am as politically active now as I was then, I find it extremely unlikely that the surveillance of me has ever stopped and feel that this is something that is relevant for the Inquiry to investigate.”

CONFRONTING FASCISTS ON THE STREETS – REES AND RUDDER

Joan Rudder and John Rees were anti-fascist activists in the late 1970s.

Rudder worked for the Anti-Nazi League in London and had been present at the ‘Battle of Lewisham’ in August 1977, when the fascist National Front had been confronted and repelled by a huge number of people.

Rees took part in a demonstration in Southall, south London, on 23 April 1979 to protest against a march of the National Front. This protest became notorious after anti-fascist protester Blair Peach was killed by police.

Rees lived with his parents and came to London specifically for the day. He had been active in the Socialist Workers Party at Hull University, but attended this demonstration alone.

The questions the Inquiry asked of these two witnesses were quite revealing, exposing the context of the investigation. The Anti-Nazi League (ANL) and the Socialist Workers Party had put out calls to attend the demonstration, and it seems the Inquiry still hopes they can be held responsible for organising riots. The Inquiry relentlessly probed this line, asking:

“Did the ANL use violence to advance its aims? Did the ANL foresee a time when violence would or would be, necessary to realise its aims? Did the ANL advocate, provoke or approve of public disorder in order to advance its aims? Did the ANL consider it necessary to break the law to advance its aims? If so, please explain.”

Both were asked about the violence they witnessed, and both give convincing and detailed accounts of how the police were responsible for most if not all confrontations.

Joan Rudder recalls how she saw many wounded people, most having been beaten on the head. After the police refused them access to the ambulances, she accompanied them to a house made into a make-shift medical centre.

However, they were not allowed to stay there until things had quietened down. They were forcibly evicted:

“As we exited the house we went along a path to the gate, which was obviously open, the police had stationed themselves either side. I am guessing 6 or 8 officers were either side with truncheons drawn ready.

“As we went through the gate we were attacked and beaten. I was beaten on the crown of my head, my head split open. I have got six stitches and the hair has never grown back.”

“My long lasting memory of this event was that the police were out of control. Without doubt. The people I was standing with, nobody had any weapons or anything that could be used as a weapon.

“On the counter demonstration we were being herded around by the police. Their whole mobilisation was to deny our right to peacefully protest, they had riot shields, they were out with the horses, they had their batons drawn and they were long batons they weren’t short ones. Someone somewhere must have authorised their use.”

In this context it is worth repeating the reference made by Barr QC in his opening statement today to secret evidence heard by the Inquiry in closed hearings.

An undercover officer, HN41, was present at the demonstration at Southall at which Blair Peach died, even though his managers had some reservations about him attending “because uniform police were going to clamp down on the demonstrations”. This quite clearly suggests that the police violence in Southall that killed Blair Peach had been planned in advance.

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The current round of Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, focusing on Special Demonstration Squad managers 1968-82, continue until Friday 20 May.

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