Spycops Inquiry to Hold ‘Milestone’ Hearings
The legal team working for the public inquiry into Britain’s political secret police recently condemned the controversial spying. Next week – 20th to 22nd February – the government, police and victims will respond.
The Undercover Policing Inquiry into the highly controversial and now totally discredited secret undercover policing units that infiltrated or reported on over 1,000 left-wing organisations, black family justice campaigns, trades unions, and social and environmental campaigns since 1968 – has reached an important milestone.
Next week, (Monday 20th to Wednesday 22nd February) there will be three days of presentations to conclude ‘Tranche 1’ of the Inquiry’s evidence, examining spying from 1968-1982).
The Inquiry will hear closing submissions summing up what has been learned so far about the secret and unlawful operations, the shocking tactics employed from the start, and how this was backed and covered up for decades at the highest level of successive governments.
In a devastating blow to the Metropolitan Police and the reputations of former senior police officers, as well as the Home Office civil servants and politicians who oversaw them, the Inquiry’s own legal team have concluded that the authorities ‘should have decided to disband’ the whole operation decades ago.
NEW HEARINGS
Next week’s hearings will be broadcast live on YouTube, with statements presented by the Inquiry Legal Team, the Secretary of State, the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, and lawyers acting for the range of non-State non-police Core Participants targeted.
Full details of the schedule for the presentation of the Tranche 1 Closing Statements, 20th to 22nd February, are on the Inquiry website (Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3). The written submissions will be made public on the day they are read out.
The hearings are a watershed moment as it’s a review of what has been achieved so far by this very slow moving, controversial and expensive Inquiry (£60m costs was the last official estimate).
The Inquiry, originally due to finish in 2018, is now due to be completed by 2026, but preliminary conclusions regarding the period 1968-1982 ( ‘Tranche 1’) will be made in an Interim Report by the Chair, Sir John Mitting, later this year (forecast to be this summer).
It has been demonstrated that the entire undercover policing operation since 1968, led by the Metropolitan Police, has been a scandalous politically motivated attack on progressive campaigns and their members, carried out mainly for and at the behest of the Security Service. Recently disclosed documents have revealed even further the institutional racism within the Metropolitan Police.
CATALOGUE OF ABUSE
It has been demonstrated by the evidence presented at the Inquiry that the surveillance was conducted without any ethical considerations regarding the severe impacts it had on freedom of expression or personal privacy.
The tactics included invading people’s homes and lives, the abuse of women, stealing deceased children’s identities, spying on children, infiltrating family justice campaigns , the blacklisting of trade unionists, taking positions of influence and power within organisations targeted, and brazen interference with the justice system which led to unfair trials and wrongful convictions.
We now know that most, if not all, of the Special Branch reports were copied to MI5. These practices were all signed off by senior civil servants and was a closely guarded secret at the highest level of Government.
Thanks to the campaigners, the victims and lawyers who have worked so hard to expose all this, the shocking reality of this surveillance has at last been revealed – the results of the Inquiry so far are devastating for the police, Security Service and Government.
DEMANDING THE TRUTH
A spokesperson from Police Spies Out of Lives, representing the women targeted for abusive relationships (whose closing submissions will be presented on Tuesday), said:
“Thanks to years of efforts by campaigners the authorities are now on the back foot. We love how far we have shifted the official narrative: from ‘neither confirm nor deny’, through ‘just a few bad apples’, to ‘some unlawful operations’, and now ‘an entire force and policing culture that is rotten to the core’ and sanctioned by the State.”
Dave Morris, a campaigner who was targeted for at least 30 years from the mid-1970s onwards, and who will be delivering his own Statement next Tuesday afternoon, said:
“The Inquiry’s official legal team has concluded that the political spycops should have been closed down decades ago. This would have prevented the shocking and unacceptable targeting of over 1,000 organisations and movements backed by millions of people, campaigning against government policy and for a better society.
The nauseating tactics employed including the serial abuse of women show that the scandals currently engulfing the Met over toxic racism and sexism in police culture are nothing new.
We continue to press for full disclosure about these secretive units, a public apology to all those targeted, and a guarantee from the government that such spying will never be allowed again.
In the face of the the many serious challenges humanity is facing, movements for positive social change are needed more than ever.”
CAMPAIGN OPPOSING POLICE SURVEILLANCE [COPS]
www.campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com
POLICE SPIES OUT OF LIVES [PSOOL]
www.policespiesoutoflives.org.uk
UNDERCOVER RESEARCH GROUP [URG]
www.undercoverresearch.net
THE MONITORING GROUP[TMG]
www.tmg-uk.org
BLACKLISTSUPPORT GROUP [BSG]
https://www.hazards.org/blacklistblog/