UCPI Daily Report, 14 Nov 2025: Dan Gillman evidence

Tranche 3 Phase 1, Day 13
13 November 2025

On the afternoon of Thursday 14 November 2025, the Undercover Policing Inquiry heard evidence from Dan Gillman. He is a teacher, socialist, social justice campaigner and blacklisted trade unionist.

The Inquiry’s interest is because in the 1990s and 2000s he was part of Youth Against Racism in Europe, No Platform, and other anti-racist groups. Gillman was spied on by several Special Demonstration Squad officers, particularly HN104 Carlo Soracchi ‘Carlo Neri’.

At the time of writing a lot of the related documents are not yet published on the UCPI website. The Inquiry is very behind on this. Soracchi himself is not scheduled to give evidence until the week of 2 March 2026 and the documents will probably go online then.

The Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) is an independent, judge-led inquiry into undercover policing in England and Wales. Its main focus is the activity of two units who deployed long-term undercover officers into a variety of political groups: the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS, 1968-2008) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU, 1999-2011). Spycops from these units lived as activists for years at a time, spying on more than 1,000 groups.

Gillman has given the Inquiry a written witness statement [UCPI0000037751].

He was questioned for the Inquiry by Sarah Simcock. The Inquiry’s page for the day has video and a transcript of the live session.

BLACKLISTING

Gillman became an active trade unionist as soon as he started working and has been a member of numerous unions over the years.

When he was 15 he worked for the company with the contract to clean the carpets at Chequers, the official country residence of the Prime Minister.

His boss was contacted and told that Gillman was active in anti-apartheid and CND campaigning, and the company would lose the Chequers contract if they continued to employ the teenager. It was then that Gillman realised the scope and scale of employment blacklisting.

It’s well established that Special Branches across the country illegally gave personal details of political activists to employment blacklists. A company called The Consulting Association ran a construction industry blacklist. It was raided by the Information Commissioner’s Office in 2009 and, among its 3,213 files, was one on Gillman.

Gillman later found out that he has been on that blacklist since 1999. That is odd, given that he has never been a construction worker. His file was purely about being on demonstrations in 1999. Who could have known about that and supplied it to the blacklist?

Gillman believes he was on the blacklist due to information from Special Demonstration Squad officer HN15 Mark Jenner ‘Mark Cassidy’, who spied on union activity. Jenner’s fellow spycop HN43 Peter Francis has said he believes his intelligence also ended up in Consulting Association files.

The illegal collusion of spycops with the equally illegal activity of blacklisting is being practically ignored at the Undercover Policing Inquiry. Blacklisted worker Dave Smith is the pre-eminent authority on the scandal, and yet the Inquiry is refusing to call him to give evidence. Smith has launched legal proceedings to force them to hear his testimony. Gillman says Smith should be sitting in the witness’s chair in his place.

When the Information Commissioner’s Office raided the Consulting Association, they only had a warrant to seize the construction industry files. Those for other industries were left alone. Gillman believes that if he was put in an unrelated industry like construction then he was presumably in the files for other industries too.

Despite being a qualified teacher, every time he applied for a job in his borough he was turned down. This happened so many times that he applied for a job outside his borough and was immediately successful and has held the position ever since. This indicates that someone had told the local authority not to employ him.

The police claim spycops weren’t meant to spy on unions but it was clearly a routine part of the job. HN15 Mark Jenner was a member of builders’ union UCATT. HN104 Carlo Soracchi mentioned Gillman’s membership of the National Union of Teachers in secret reports.

Gillman’s involvement in the trade union movement had nothing to do with public order, proving that the spycops had other reasons for their spying.

Gillman’s blacklist file at the Consulting Association had references to ‘the Socialist Party Away Team (SPAT)’. This is not a name those involved ever used about themselves. It was only used by the spycops. This surely shows that the spycops were the source of the entry.

The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, asks Gillman about it. Mitting is conscious that his remit only covers the SDS, not the whole of the police. He needs to be sure that the information on the blacklist came from SDS officers. He says that all but one entry could be from uniformed police (who may have been prompted by SDS reporting).

Quite how uniformed police might have recognised Gillman and report their sighting to Special Branch isn’t explained.

YOUTH AGAINST RACISM IN EUROPE

Gillman was a member of Militant Labour (later called the Socialist Party) from 1993 to 2015. He was active in the party as a branch secretary, national committee member, youth organiser, chief steward and local election candidate. This led to him stewarding at demonstrations by Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE), whose leadership included Militant members.

Asked about the stewarding role, he explains that because YRE were encouraging people to come on demonstrations, they had a responsibility to ensure those people were safe. Stewards are there to defend the demonstration and make sure people are looked after, keeping to the agreed route with ready access to first aid care and legal advice.

‘They have a very committed, clear picture of what you need to do to run protests properly and efficiently and not get assaulted by the police and by fascists. So it was about being very proactive in your defence. That means you have your stewards at your meeting and then stewards also watching just down the road to make sure your meeting is going to be safe.

So it is a really good professional approach to stewarding that other groups didn’t have. That’s what attracted me towards Youth Against Racism in Europe.’

Gillman explained that the stewarding was never about attacking anyone. It was just about defending communities and one another, spotting problems before they happened and keeping things running smoothly. The YRE was made up of thousands of young people and Gillman says stewarding was comparable to the safeguarding role he currently has as a teacher.

YRE activists would work with other anti-fascist groups including Anti-Fascist Action, the Anti-Nazi League and others. They were regulars in the notably multicultural Brick Lane in East London where the fascist British National Party (BNP) would often make its presence known.

Gillman says he was involved in challenging canvassers for the BNP during election campaigns, telling them to leave the area. He rejects the idea that he was involved in attacking anyone. He says it was necessary to physically challenge fascism. If you politically oppose it, they will assault you; you have to defend yourself.

Gillman was an active member of Kent Anti-Fascist Alliance committee, which he says was largely run by YRE people and had a broader agenda than some other organisations. They used the slogan ‘jobs and homes not racism’, seeing that basic material security diminished the fear that contributed to racist sentiment.

Talking about the No Platform network, Gillman describes it as a coming together of various anti-fascist groups. There wasn’t any vetting, and they didn’t tell each other what to do. Despite it being made up of separate groupings, it was still much smaller than the YRE.

With the Inquiry repeatedly asking the same question about whether they were ever instigators of violence, Gillman explains it as a core principle:

‘The point about being a socialist is you believe in social justice and in fairness above all else. Assaulting someone is not fair. That is why we are socialists, because we are against unfairness and using violence. So you wouldn’t be a socialist if you were out there to cause violence.’

Seemingly unsatisfied with Gillman’s explanations, Simcock quotes from his written statement to the Inquiry:

‘Fascists are only interested in winning power through violence. In the end, they can only be opposed in the same way and that fighting fascism politically by the very character of its ideology means that you have to be prepared to fight it physically too.’

Ignoring the statement’s point about it only ever being a reaction to fascist-instigated violence, Simcock asks if it means that YRE was pre-emptive with violence. Displaying admirable patience, Gillman explains:

‘You have missed out the context of that paragraph. The point is that Churchill wasn’t a pre-emptive violent person. My grandad wasn’t. They were forced into that situation by the nature of fascism.

Millions of men and women died in the wars against fascism because people hadn’t earlier on clocked on you had to stand up to them.

So, the nature of fascism means unless you challenge them, unless you stop them giving out their racist and fascist filth, they just grow and they grow and they grow, and the earlier you intervene, the less disruptive they are, the less death there is.’

THE AWAY TEAM

Gillman is asked about the ‘Away Team’. He says it was never a formal group, just a term for the YRE stewards who were willing taking the risk of being attacked by fascists or the police.

Gillman says that the away team, such as it was, was predominantly male. Though the wider stewarding group was more mixed, he says he feels a bit guilty about how male dominated it was. He sadly acknowledges that the labour movement is dominated by men.

A report [UCPI0000034442] contains a supposed list of away team members, describing it as:

‘The Militant Labour stewarding group which can be called upon if trouble is anticipated. All away team members are trusted street activists.’

Gillman says it’s accurate, but with misleading implications:

‘Take out the word “street”, I think street has connotations about street violence. But the word about “trusted”, people who have been stewards week in week out, know what to do in a difficult situation, are prepared to put themselves in the line of risk, that is fairly accurate. It is informal.’

A spycop report by Soracchi [MPS-0071194] claims the away team was:

‘A stewarding group that worked closely with AFA [Anti-Fascist Action] on its actions and had been involved in mass disorder…

The away team also undertook actions on its own initiative, usually involving small BNP [British National Party] electioneering groups. The group would attack canvassers, destroying their material and using violence to convince the extreme right-wing activists of the error of their ways.’

Gillman flatly denies attacking, saying they only ever took defensive action.

‘We never attacked canvassers. We didn’t use violence. But if you ever tried to have a conversation with a fascist, it never goes very well.

There is no political debate you can have with a fascist. You don’t say “excuse me young man, you can’t give out your racist material” because they just punch you.

So if we were in community campaigns, defending communities from fascists spewing their racist filth through letterboxes, you would approach them and say “you need to not do that down this street, mate. You are not welcome, racists aren’t welcome here, you need to move on.”

The fascist response is to assault you. That is the nature of fascism. So you are put in a situation where you self-defend yourself. You defend the community you are in, you defend your other stewards with you, you defend yourself.’

We’re shown a clip from a World in Action documentary, ‘Violence With Violence’, broadcast on 15 November 1993. It shows a YRE and Anti-Nazi League protest across the road from a British National Party presence in Brick Lane amongst its Bangladeshi community.

At the protest a group of antifascists were thought to be fascists by the police and steered towards the BNP. The antifascists promptly chased the fascists off.

Simcock says that some of away team were ‘dressed as fascists’ there. Gillman says he has short hair and is wearing normal clothes, the same as those men. The police just made wrong assumptions about stereotypes of working class men.

Gillman squarely rejects the idea that the BNP were being attacked. He says the BNP were attacking the community in Brick Lane. Anti-racists drove the BNP away from the streets. This is not violence.

‘Youth Against Racism in Europe and all the antifascist groups were in Brick Lane for week after week, because the Brick Lane community were trying hard to eject the racists and fascists from their community.’

Gillman has continued to support antifascist groups such as Unite Against Fascism and has been a steward for Searchlight and Hope Not Hate. He has acted as chief steward for Black Lives Matter and for protests opposing the English Defence League.

An SDS report by Soracchi [MPS-00073304] says that Anti-Fascist Action was very successful in preventing any Nazi music gigs from happening in London. Gillman says it’s true, and he is proud that he helped prevent fascists from having a relaxing bonding session after a day of being violent thugs.

SPYCOP SORACCHI’S CATALOGUE OF LIES

Special Demonstration Squad officer HN104 Carlo Soracchi ‘Carlo Neri’ homed in on Gillman and filed numerous reports about him.

One Soracchi report, dated 19 December 2000 [MPS-00004904], described a fascist protest outside the Cock Tavern pub in Euston. It claimed Gillman and another person from No Platform ‘expressed satisfaction at the recent attack by their group on the right-wing demonstration’.

This simply isn’t true, says Gillman. On the contrary, No Platform defended the pub at the request of the landlord when an Irish music event was happening there and fascists had amassed outside in opposition. Police had arrived but were doing nothing to defend the pub from the fascists.

‘When they are about to throw bricks and things through the window and about to assault the pub, you stand in front of the pub and say “this is not going to happen. You are not going to attack this community pub. We have been asked here by the landlord to defend this event. This is a completely legitimate event. We are here to defend that event.”

When the fascists attack it, you stand in the way. But when you stand in front of fascists they start to assault you…

As I keep saying, if you are committed to promote the labour movement and communities and defend them from fascism, the nature of fascism means that they are going to assault you. And so, violence erupts because the fascists bring that violence with them.’

Soracchi submitted a report on 13 January 2001 [MPS-0004991] describing No Platform activists meeting outside a pub to ambush a National Front demonstration. There is no exaggeration in this, says Gillman. Rather, it is a complete fiction, it did not happen at all.

Four days later, on 17 January 2001, Soracchi reported [MPS-0004993] that No Platform would not be stewarding the Bloody Sunday march as there was going to be a major police presence. This is just more rubbish. Gillman says they didn’t go because the organisers said they would not be needed.

Soracchi’s claim that they were discouraged by police presence is clearly intended to imply they only attend to commit crimes. It is yet another smear. Soracchi’s running theme of YRE and No Platform seeking pre-emptive violence is undermined by a paucity of reports of them ever actually doing it.

Soracchi filed a report on 9 February 2001 [MPS-0005305] claiming that Gillman, as a supposed leading light of No Platform, was approached by Irish Anti-Fascist Action to provide security for a benefit gig they were organising in Brixton on 10 February. Soracchi says Gillman agreed ‘as he is keen to develop closer links with Anti-Fascist Action.’

‘That’s just not true. We ran it. It was our event. We got all the proceeds… We stewarded it. We booked the bands. It was nothing to do with Anti-Fascist Action.’

Anti-Fascist Action were seen by the SDS as the more confrontational group. This report appears to be Soracchi providing yet another example of a spycop inventing links between the people they spied on and the groups who were perceived as dangerous, in order to make their deployment look more valid.

Gillman says he was never willing to join Anti-Fascist Action because they were prepared to put themselves in a higher level of risk than he was. He was only interested in safe events, and defending community and himself where necessary.

Soracchi made a report on 4 May 2001 [MPS-00005831], detailing antifascist activity against a National Front march in Leicester. Gillman says this too is nonsense. The march was actually the first Gay Pride in Leicester. They stewarded the march to protect it from fascist attack. The report is pure fiction.

SORACCHI LYING TO PROTECT HIS CUSHY JOB

Another Soracchi report, dated 18 June 2001 [MPS-0006121], claims Gillman wanted to gather intelligence in order to target and attack far right activists. This is made up nonsense, says Gillman.

It’s Soracchi once again trying to justify his deployment by reporting things that sound dangerous. Gillman completely rejects the idea they would incite violence from neo-Nazi group Combat 18:

‘If you have ever seen Combat 18, the last thing you want to do is provoke them into a fight. No, we have never tried to provoke these great big Nazi thugs into a fight. It is just not a wise thing to do.’

Asked why Soracchi would want to paint a dishonest picture, Gillman points to the self-interest:

‘What a cracking job. He’s getting paid to go out drinking with his mates and having fun. He has to justify the millions of pounds being spent on him and his nice flat and everything else spent on him.

He has to justify that, so he has to create this picture that’s just not a real picture. It is just there to try to justify the immorality of what he’s doing.’

On 8 October 2001, Soracchi reported [MPS-0006937] about a No Platform action to oppose the far right on Remembrance Sunday:

‘The leading faces in NP such as Dan Gillman and ‘Mario’ will be used as a decoy for the police spotters by going to an unconnected location, possibly Hyde Park or Green Park.

Dan Gillman will use his phone, which he believes to be monitored, to suggest that the NP meeting point will be at this unconnected location…

It is hoped that this will give the NP the breathing space away from police attention that they need to organise an attack on the right-wing.’

This too is twaddle. Gillman explains that Soracchi has described the actual plan and added an invented secret plan for violence that never happened:

‘That was the meeting point! We were going to meet at Green Park, which is just around the corner from the Cenotaph and we were, as antifascists do every single year, going to protest at fascists celebrating at our Cenotaph.’

Asked if he did believe his phone to be monitored, Gillman says there was no element of mere belief, he was certain. His phone number, and his wife’s, were recorded by spycops and illegally passed to employment blacklisters. Why else would the police do that?

He says he was nonetheless happy to use his phone. They never did anything illegal, none of them were ever arrested, and they had nothing to hide.

Soracchi reported on 31 March 2003 [MPS-00011626] that they’d attacked a BNP meeting in Crouch End on 4 February 2003. This is batted away by Gillman who points out that they never attacked any BNP meetings.

In fact, they prevented the BNP attacking left wing meetings. It was common for the BNP to attack many kinds of meetings: socialists, trade unions, LGBTQ, Black and Asian community meetings, all sorts of things.

On this occasion, he was outside the town hall to defend a left wing meeting which fascists had threatened to turn up to.

In the end the fascists never showed. Not only was there no BNP meeting, there were no BNP people. The report is more inflammatory lies and nonsense.

Gillman addresses the continual theme in Soracchi’s reports about him: the allegations that he sought out members of the far right for personal violence. He points out that there is no evidence of him ever doing anything violent, despite Soracchi being beside him for the whole period in question.

A spycops report [MPS-0004158] about ‘No Platform’ is shown, describing Gillman and Frank Smith leading a group of 20 to 30 No Platform activists to an anti-fascist protest in Berlin. Gillman says it was actually only three people – him, Frank and Joe Batty – going to a Committee for a Workers’ International event, a meeting of socialist parties of which they were all members.

On 9 August 2001, Soracchi filed a report [MPS-0006444] claiming No Platform was going to disrupt the BNP’s Red White and Blue festival in Wales. It said they were going to take advantage of the fact that BNP leader Nick Griffin would be away at the festival as an opportunity to attack his house. Soracchi seems unaware that the festival was actually held at Griffin’s house and land.

Gillman confirms that No Platform did intend to disrupt the festival, but there was no violence planned. He admits some damage was intended, but says the report is a massive exaggeration. The more lurid claims, such as intent to sabotage the water supply, are simply lies.

Gillman highlights that this was the same time that fascists were planting nail bombs which were killing people in London. It was ridiculous that police were driving from Wales to his house in London to serve notice on him for protesting a fascist festival.

He adds that the far right had a website, ‘Redwatch’, that had lists of names and photographs of left wing activists to attack. There was no such version run by the left to attack the far right.

THE FIREBOMB PLOT THAT NEVER WAS

Gillman says Carlo Soracchi tried to convince him to petrol bomb a fascist-owned shop. Soracchi claims it was all Gillman’s plan.

Soracchi told Gillman he had been involved in the Red Brigades in Italy, a communist group responsible for murder, kneecapping and kidnapping. The group was just beginning a resurgence at the time. Soracchi said he was up for some more extreme action.

During a party on New Year’s Eve 2002, Soracchi took Gillman and some other partygoers to a charity shop owned by Italian fascist leader Roberto Fiore, who was using the shop as a fascist front. Soracchi told them of the link and suggested petrol bombing it. The friends said that wasn’t their style at all, and they were more interested in going back to the party.

A few days later, Soracchi encouraged Gillman and Joe Batty back to the shop. Asked why they went along, Gillman explained:

‘If you try to organise left-wing groups or antifascist groups, getting active enthusiastic people is a really hard thing to do. We had a really enthusiastic keen young man wanting to help and get involved, so you want to nurture that, you want to go with that.

So we didn’t want to knock it on the head there and then. We wanted to encourage his enthusiasm, but then you would use your political persuasion in that conversation to sort of direct him, that that isn’t really what we do.’

It appears that Soracchi reported every single conversation he had with Gillman, apart from the one where Gillman told him not to petrol bomb a shop.

This sort of scheme was not unusual in the Special Demonstration Squad. Soracchi’s boss was HN10 Bob Lambert who, when he was undercover, entrapped people he spied on with a plot to put incendiary devices in shops. HN16 James Thomson, one of Soracchi’s contemporaries, invented a gun smuggling plan to try to frame hunt saboteurs he spied on.

MOVING ON

Gillman quit being chief steward for No Platform in 2002 when his teaching career and family responsibilities made him less comfortable with taking personal risks. Carlo Soracchi became chief steward in his place.

In a report of 16 October 2003 [MPS-0029382], Soracchi said Gillman was being an ordinary steward; he wasn’t getting involved in any criminal activity because he was now a teacher and was being pressured by his wife.

Gillman says it’s nonsense on several levels – his partner has always been supportive of his political work, and he’s never been involved in criminality.

A written operational review of Soracchi’s deployment by supervising ‘cover officer’ HN9 [MPS-00748418] says Gillman had been effectively removed from active political organising due to SDS intelligence. Gillman says this is nonsense. He just got a new job, and continued to be politically active which indeed he is to this day.

Soracchi even reported later activity, such as Gillman stewarding at a 2005 Stop the War demonstration [MPS-0064059]. Though why Soracchi would do this is another matter, as Gillman noted:

‘These are massive demonstrations, completely legal. I don’t get why he’s bothering to make reports on them.’

Gillman takes issue with the personal details in the spycop files that have no policing value. In April 2006, Soracchi reported the fact that Gillman and his partner were expecting their first child [MPS-0064264]. Another report gives details of his family moving house. A further report records his wife’s phone number.

‘What on earth has my family or my wife got to do with Carlo’s placement, that he’s publishing her phone number to a bunch of misogynistic sexist policemen?’

Two other spycops reported on Gillman, HN15 Mark Jenner ‘Mark Cassidy’ and HN43 Peter Francis ‘Peter Black’ / ‘Peter Daley’ / ‘Peter Johnson’. While Gillman was at events with them, he wasn’t close to either.

DECEIVING DONNA

Gillman and his wife were very close friends with the man they knew as ‘Carlo Neri’, the spycop Carlo Soracchi. They took his fake persona at face value.

They had no reason to doubt his story that he was a locksmith. Saying it was a favour to his comrades, Soracchi upgraded their locks, and those of some of their friends. It meant he and Special Branch had keys to the houses of many Socialist Party activists.

Soracchi had a year-long relationship with Socialist Party member ‘Lindsey’, starting soon after his deployment began.

Shortly after that ended, Gillman introduced Soracchi to his good friend Donna McLean. McLean wasn’t an activist. Soracchi started a sexual relationship with her very quickly. They had a whirlwind romance.

Only three months after meeting, Soracchi proposed to McLean at the same New Year’s party where he tried to get Gillman and others to burn the fascist’s shop. Soracchi and McLean got engaged and moved in together. In reality, he was already married.

He then used the relationship with McLean to get closer to Gillman and his wife. Gillman is clearly emotional as he describes feeling guilty and responsible for Soracchi’s abuse of McLean. If she had not been his friend, she would never have suffered the colossal emotional and sexual abuse from Soracchi.

In 2023, McLean published a book about her experience, Small Town Girl: Love, Lies and the Undercover Police. She is due to give evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry in February 2026.

IMPACT

Soracchi betrayed Gillman on a deeply personal level. It has not affected his political beliefs, but it has destroyed any faith he might have had in the commitment of the police to keep families like his safe.

Gillman ends his evidence with a moving and insightful prepared statement. This is the text in full:

‘I want to say it because I think I have answered all your questions and I felt there was a direction they kind of went. The direction was to try and present me and others as a bunch of thugs; and the more that we were seen as a bunch of thugs, the more you could justify the social and sexist abuse of young women, the spying on us, the using dead children’s identities, the blacklisting of us, and the spying on victims of racial abuse rather than protecting them.

And yet, I am proud of what we have done. I am proud of all the things we talked about today. I have tried to explain: we have never chosen violence, never chosen criminality; it has always been forced upon us by the fascists.

When we all, 10,000 people, went out on to Hoe Street in Walthamstow recently, we didn’t choose violence, we didn’t choose criminality, but every single one of us was breaking a public order law, every single one of us was prepared to put our body in the way of a fascist boot or a fascist fist. That is No Platform. That is anti-fascism. But when you stand there, the fascists don’t turn up. They disappear into the ether.

Again, I think I said today that I have always defended democracy. I have not firebombed it, like Carlo tried to make us do. It is a different democracy to what Carlo believes in. It is a democracy where we defend families of colour who want to go out on the streets, rather than defending the fascists when they goosestep up and down Whitehall. It is a democracy where we arrest the fascists. We don’t arrest a thousand old ladies who are in Palestine Action T-shirts.

I am a history teacher and I teach 1000 years of mostly British history. Most of it the kids find a bit annoying and it is a bit embarrassing, nothing much I am proud of. But I am proud that this country has a proud history of standing up to fascism. I think I am a small part of that.

No Platform didn’t achieve much but we had a go, we picked up the baton, and if I see my grandads, I can say well, I did my bit. I am not sure Carlo, Mark and Peter can say the same.

No pasaran!’

This drew a round of applause from the public gallery.

The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, thanked Gillman for his evidence.