UCPI Daily Report, 2 Feb 2026: Joe Batty evidence

Tranche 3 Phase 2, Day 1
2 February 2026

The Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) resumed for a new set of hearings on Monday 2 February 2026. Designated as ‘Tranche 3 Phase 2’, these hearings examine the final 15 years of the Special Demonstration Squad (1993-2008).

This opening day was devoted to questioning Joe Batty, a trade unionist, socialist and anti-fascist activist who was spied on by undercover police officer HN104 Carlo Soracchi, cover name ‘Carlo Neri’, who was deployed 2000-2006.

Batty has provided a written witness statement to the Inquiry [UCPI0000037742].

The 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.

Batty was questioned by Tim Salisbury, Deputy First Junior Counsel to the Inquiry.

BACKGROUND

Batty grew up in Greater Manchester in the 1970s and was first politicised by the National Front leafleting his school. He and some friends made counter-leaflets to distribute to pupils. He went to some Anti-Nazi League meetings but did not become a member or activist with any group at the time.

As a young adult, he got a supermarket job and joined the GMB, as membership of the union was mandatory at his workplace. This involvement drew him to socialist politics and he became a GMB branch president, representing workers in disputes and negotiating with employers and government officials.

He went to Oxford University’s Ruskin College, and on to the University of Kent for a degree in British labour history and modern politics. While there, he became friends with Dan Gillman, who gave evidence to the Inquiry in November 2025.

The pair held office in the university’s Labour Club and significantly built up its membership. They also organised coach travel to the large demonstration against the British National Party (BNP) in Welling, South London, on 16 October 1993. Batty and Gillman took responsibility for stewarding the people they’d brought to the protest.

In response to the rise in far-right activity, including attacks on local people, they created Kent Anti-Fascist Action Committee:

‘When I was at Ruskin College and at the University of Kent, I studied fascism. It wasn’t something new to me. I understood what it meant.

I also understood the history of fascism in the UK and what it had done over the historical period. So it was natural that I would want to make sure that it didn’t go off the political agenda.’

In 1993, Batty began working in homelessness, first in Cheltenham and then in London. He remained an active trade unionist, and also helped Youth Against Racism in Europe with stewarding of meetings and protests.

Over the next couple of years, fascist activity died down, yet Batty did not reduce his antifascist activity:

‘Myself and Dan and others recognised that history tells us when the far right is no longer successful electorally, it retrenches to violence.

You know what, I hate to say I am right, but that’s literally what they did, with the bombings that Copeland and his cohort – because I don’t believe he acted alone – were involved in.’

NO PLATFORM

At the end of the 1990s, Batty helped to found No Platform. As we’ve heard so many activists do at the Inquiry (with debatable levels of success), Batty explained that it was wrong to think of his group as a formal organisation:

‘There were about a dozen people or so who may have been the mainstays of it, but it really wasn’t a static organisation with cards and the constitution.

So we drew from people who were interested in being involved in one thing and one thing only, and that was stopping the far right having control of communities in the streets.’

These people had a variety of social backgrounds and political perspectives, united by that sole criterion.

We’re shown a police report by Carlo Soracchi [MPS-0003710], dated 1 August 2000:

‘Frank Smith, a member of the Socialist Party away team has helped to form a new anti-fascist organisation entitled No Platform. The group comprises disaffected members of London Anti-Fascist Action and members from the away team…

The aim of the group is to provide a powerful stewarding arm for left wing public order protests and to undertake the targeting of right wing individuals.’

For so few words, this elicits quite a lot of unpacking by Batty. Firstly, it shows that the spycops, even more than the Inquiry, can only think of groups as regimented and hierarchically structured institutions with official membership. This is not how most activist groups work.

Batty flatly rejects the allegation of targeting right-wing individuals. He also questions the use of ‘away team’ as denoting a formal group, saying it’s only become familiar to him recently from seeing the paperwork at the Inquiry. It was a loose term used occasionally to describe event stewards, yet spycops talk like it was some defined loyal gang of hardened hooligans.

Batty adds that there were indeed some people in No Platform who’d done Anti-Fascist Action work, but ‘disaffected members’ is another inaccurate description.

The group was named No Platform after an existing strategic understanding, aiming to deny the far right legitimacy by preventing them from speaking on public platforms or becoming part of the regular discourse.

STOPPING THE FASCISTS GATHERING

Batty gives examples of the work: shutting down gigs of fascist bands, and occupying the ‘redirection points’ where fascists met prior to going to meetings at secret locations.

He says there would be ‘handbags at paces’ – posturing and taunting – but he doesn’t remember any physical violence.

Often the police would see potential conflict and clear the area entirely, which No Platform were happy about as it meant the fascists couldn’t meet up.

He stresses that they wanted to avoid violence as it would be counterproductive in a community they were trying to defend, and to make it clear that the fascists were the troublemakers.

Simply by turning up at the secret meeting point, No Platform made it apparent to the fascists that they had informers in their midst. This sowed distrust and helped the groups to disintegrate.

Batty is emphatic that these tactics prevented the spread of far-right activity. He points out that when anti-fascists stopped being active in Barking and Dagenham there was a groundswell of far-right support and soon afterwards a BNP presence on the local council, leading to a concerted effort by the party to get their leader Nick Griffin elected there.

He adds that the majority of No Platform work was just stewarding events and involved no confrontation at all.

Batty worked with No Platform on about thirty events over the space of five years until he left London around 2005. The work would generally involve being aware of meetings or protests that might be attacked by fascists and making sure that they had proper stewarding to ensure things happened safely.

Soracchi joined the stewarding groups and befriended Batty. Soracchi’s witness statement to the Inquiry [UCPI0000035550] describes Batty as the ‘main organiser’ for both No Platform and the Socialist Party away team. Batty says the latter is absolutely untrue.

As for Batty’s position within No Platform, a Soracchi report [MPS-0010730] says that Gillman has stepped down and Batty is now its ‘leading activist’. Batty again highlights the fundamental misunderstanding in the phrase, and explains that there was no leadership at all, just people who were consistently available, organising together.

The Inquiry showed a spycop report, presumably Soracchi’s [MPS-0005753], about an anti-fascist counter-demonstration in central London on 14 April 2001:

‘Current No Platform tactics are to locate the meeting point for fascists and then to attack them before they get anywhere near the location of the march.’

Batty hasn’t seen the document before. With the Inquiry now rushing, it is no longer providing witnesses with all the relevant documents, and it has started hearing evidence even though the hearing bundles are incomplete, undermining the potential for getting considered answers.

Batty takes issue with the report’s incendiary terms, saying that they would go to disrupt the meet-up by being at the meeting point, but this is a long way from ‘attacking’, something he declares impossible anyway as No Platform would have only had a dozen people at most.

Some of No Platform’s information about fascist activity came from Searchlight, a group that specialised in gathering intelligence about the far-right.

This exchange was done on an informal basis, though Soracchi’s reports [MPS-0009903] characteristically misrepresent it as being much more formal, as if Batty and Smith had organised delegations to some kind of Searchlight briefing meetings, and furthermore [MPS-0010590] were ‘relishing’ the prospect of going to occupy fascist meeting points.

Batty is clear that the work was not something done with glee or as a fun leisure activity:

‘That would make you sound like you were waiting and willing for some sort of action and that we were addicted to fighting with the fascists. I have to tell you, I have never been particularly a great fan of fighting with anybody.’

EXAGGERATION OF VIOLENCE AND DANGER

After Soracchi’s deployment ended, he compiled a timeline of his activity [MPS-0071194]. In it, he described how No Platform would put stickers and posters up in an area where fascists were present, and would then target fascist election canvassers.

Once again, Batty recognises some of the descriptions but rejects Soracchi’s claims of deliberately seeking aggression and violence. This isn’t just a No Platform principle or about trying to avoid arrest and its impacts on employment and personal lives; he points out that it would be counter-productive too:

‘If we were to engage in assaulting candidates, that would then turn into a huge political issue that would, I am sure, garner sympathy for the very people we were campaigning against. So as a tactic, it’s just not right.’

Pressing the point, Counsel shows another Soracchi report that the Inquiry had failed to disclose to Batty in advance, dated 18 June 2001 [MPS-0006121]. It specifies a plan to target the BNP in Bethnal Green. Batty is aghast and dismayed:

‘I don’t know where to begin with this statement. I don’t know where he comes up with this sometimes. I mean, I spent literally hours with Carlo… talking through the political processes as to why violence of this ilk is just counter-productive…

The legitimate process, which I have said time and time again now, is occupying spaces for a defensive purpose to enable the community to feel safe and to enable us to feel safe about going about our business.’

He explains that attacking fascist candidates’ homes would provoke retaliation on their own homes. It would create more fear and violence in the community, the exact thing that they were seeking to dispel.

He points out that part of Soracchi’s backstory was that he’d been involved in the Italian Red Brigades, a group notorious for kidnappings, kneecappings and other serious crime. Batty and others had repeatedly explained to Soracchi that such things have no commonality with the British socialist movement.

Counsel asked about No Platform’s disruption of the BNP’s ‘Red White and Blue festival’ in 2001, a neo-Nazi event held on BNP leader Nick Griffin’s land in Wales [MPS-0006469].

No Platform did not intend to attack the event in any way (apart from anything else, they were outnumbered and they feared the violent neo-Nazi group Combat 18 would be providing security). The plan was simply to picket the entrances, to show that there was opposition to fascism that would be present wherever fascists gathered.

They didn’t manage it because they were turned back by police. Batty is scathing about this acceptance of fascist action with the police stymieing opposition. There were racist attacks and bombings in London, and the BNP spawned National Action, a group that was eventually proscribed under the Terrorism Act, yet the police targeted the antifascists.

The Inquiry took a break, during which Tom Fowler made this video of summary and analysis with Dan Gillman:

Early in his undercover deployment, Soracchi shared a flat in Homerton with another SDS officer, HN77 ‘Jackie Anderson’. Soracchi says that his comrades believed he and ‘Anderson’ were in a relationship, but Batty has no memory of her at all. Anderson was deployed 2000-2005, infiltrating anarchist groups such as the W.O.M.B.L.E.S. and Earth First! (EF!), and worked alongside NPOIU officer Mark Kennedy.

Both EF! and the W.O.M.B.L.E.S. have applied to be included as core participants in this Inquiry, but so far that has been refused. It seems that neither the police nor the Inquiry have been able to contact Anderson at all since the Inquiry began.

FIRST CONTACT

Soracchi’s deployment timeline [MPS-0071194] records that he first made contact with Batty and others on an asylum seekers’ rights march in central London in June 2000.

Batty’s first memory of Soracchi is a social visit to the second flat Soracchi had while undercover, on Narrow Way in Hackney.

Whistleblower spycop HN43 Peter Francis has described how, before being deployed, an officer would be briefed on particular people they wanted to get close to. These people would often be respected activists, targeted because their acceptance of the spycop would make others in the group more likely to be immediately welcoming and trusting.

The briefing would include details of the targeted person’s personal taste outside politics. By pretending to share their interests, likes, and dislikes, the spycop manipulated an instant bond of affinity into existence, encouraging friendship beyond being just another comrade.

Over the course of the Inquiry and in the books written by women deceived into relationships, we’ve seen a lot of evidence that this was standard spycop tradecraft.

Batty says he initially bonded with Soracchi over a shared passion for cycling, and Soracchi had a bike on a trainer treadmill in his flat.

Soracchi was a welcome addition to the social group and their stewarding of events:

‘Having a steward on a demonstration who is, you know, heavy and heavily set, is an asset because you don’t want the group to be attacked. So it’s another barrier between us and trouble.’

We moved on to a report by Soracchi from nearly 18 months later, 26 November 2001 [MPS-0007391], in which he describes a No Platform meeting and names ten people and their formal roles in the organisation.

He is not only, yet again, making it sound much more formal and rigid than it really was, he also lists himself as having been appointed as ‘volunteer to assist with communications’.

Batty is baffled by it, saying that the meeting happened but that the details are wholly false.

THE INDISPENSABLE DRIVER

Batty adds that Soracchi did have a specific responsibility for transport, as he was the only person there with a large, reliable vehicle.

This too is standard spycop tradecraft. Sometimes (as with Soracchi) it was an estate car, but more commonly it was a van. This was SDS practice as early as HN354 Vince Miller ‘Vince Harvey’ who was deployed in 1976, and it continued all the way through to EN12 Mark Kennedy ‘Mark Stone’ (2003-2009). HN2 Andy Coles was so useful with his that he was known among those he spied on as ‘Andy Van’.

Activists were generally not well off, so a dependable functioning vehicle was very useful. The driver would be the one of the first to be told about any plans for which travel was needed. They would pick people up and drop them off, thus learning all the home addresses.

More than one SDS officer deliberately dropped a target off last in order to spend time alone with them and get more information. HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’ did that with ‘Jacqui’, and other officers are also known to have done this as a way of initiating intimate and sexual relationships.

Beyond all this, having a vehicle and being involved in logistics gave spycops a subject to talk about in detail that didn’t require any political understanding.

Batty says Soracchi was diligent about attending meetings, which were then reported on, but less motivated to attend events. As the group was so small, around a dozen pepople at most, Soracchi inevitably helped to influence and steer its direction.

Soracchi’s written witness statement to the Inquiry [UCPI0000035550] claims that the groups he spied on were criminal, including committing Actual Bodily Harm and Grievous Bodily Harm. Batty rejects this outright.

Counsel seemingly enjoys collecting rebuttals on the exact same topic and returns to a report of Soracchi’s [MPS-0010730] which claims Batty wants to make No Platform into a secret terrorist organisation:

‘Batty is aware that London No Platform needs a successful public action to attract numbers to the group, but is very much taken by the notion of a small committed cadre carrying out raids ‘in the living rooms’ of the far right.

He is aware that the state might well regard such acts as terrorism and react accordingly, but the recent rise in popularity and street presence of the extreme right wing might, he believes, leave anti-fascists with no other option.’

Batty patiently reiterates to Counsel that not only is it untrue but – as he’d also explained to Soracchi at the time – on a tactical level it would undermine the purpose of the group because such activity invites reaction in kind, including attacks on his and his comrades’ families, something he wanted to avoid at all costs.

‘It is just a nonsense. It looks like he’s justifying his placement within No Platform and within the left wing in general.

I really don’t recognise that statement and I take offence at it being written about me.’

THE COCK TAVERN INCIDENT

Counsel moved on to discuss a series of Soracchi’s reports. The first of these was about disorder at The Cock Tavern on 16 December 2000. It was a venue used by the left wing and the Irish community, and the National Front held a demonstration at it.

Batty describes a callout among left wing and antifascist groups who had a sizeable turnout outside the pub. Temporary steel barriers separated them from the fascists over the road, with police ensuring the two were kept apart.

Batty is clear that this wasn’t some kind of difference of legitimate opinion, but rather one group that was seeking to destroy community cohesion, challenged by another that felt a civic duty to defend the community from hatred and division.

Batty and around ten others went round the back of the fascists, intending to create a noise and make the police feel it was too difficult to keep the fascists isolated and so make them disperse.

He’s clear that they weren’t going to attack in any way as there would be hardened fascist thugs present as well as police. The plan worked.

Soracchi has said he was there, but Batty is pretty sure that’s not true. A spycop report from Soracchi’s information [MPS-0004904] says Batty was ‘satisfied’ with the event because of the ‘attack’ on the fascists. He corrects the version again – ‘attack’ has a number of meanings and implies physical interaction, which wasn’t the plan and did not happen.

The police did arrest a number of antifascists, but none were convicted and one received compensation from the Met for wrongful arrest.

However, the personal details of those arrested were published in far-right journal The Flag. The only way this could have happened was that someone with fascist sympathies at the police station took the information and passed it on.

This is not the first time we have heard evidence of the police passing anti-fascist activists’ details to the far right. Activist Mark Metcalf told the Inquiry how he provided a bail address that was a school, which later appeared in a far-right newspaper even though the only people who could possibly have that address for him were the police.

MORE LIES

Counsel shows another Soracchi report that they failed to disclose to Batty in advance [MPS-0005529]. It’s about No Platform’s response to the BNP standing for election in Beckton, East London, in March 2001. Soracchi reports that No Platform were going to attend the vote count:

‘Activists are intending to single out the British National Party security team for attack.’

Batty is now weary of repeating the same point:

‘I have explained already pretty much ad nauseam that we are not against the electoral system, we are against the far right, and we wouldn’t attack anybody standing in an election.

There was instances of the far-right attacking canvassers in Barking and Dagenham and it was really not a good look.

It doesn’t help the legitimate candidates who are standing to have people who often are supporting them beating people up in front of the count. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s not what we would do.’

Batty does recall a separate occasion where antifascist leafleters bumped into BNP canvassers. They had a verbal exchange but nothing physical. And certainly, it was not a premeditated ‘attack’ of the kind that Soracchi repeatedly claimed they were planning.

Moving on to two documents that refer to No Platform in the Bradford Riots of July 2001 [MPS-0006264 and MPS-0029169], Batty explains that while there were people in Bradford using the name of No Platform, they weren’t a branch of a national organisation. There was no ownership of the name, it was used by anyone of roughly the same standpoint.

In March 2001, Batty and several friends went for a couple of sessions at a gym, Batty reviving an earlier interest in boxing. They only went a couple of times and it did not become a habit. Despite this, Soracchi reported on it through his ever-present lens of imagined political violence [MPS-0005536]:

‘The group has been in training for the past four weeks and believes it will be useful in any confrontation with the fascists.’

Soracchi reported [MPS-0527773] that Batty and Dan Gillman had invited him to accompany them to a Socialist Party event in Leuven, Belgium in July 2001, and then go on to Genoa in Italy to join large protests against the G8 summit. Soracchi, unusually, specifically says the group did not intend to get involved in any confrontation in Genoa.

But Batty says that he wouldn’t have been able to go for any reason. It was hard enough to get time off work for the Leuven trip, an extra week would not have been possible for him even if he’d wanted it.

DEFENCE IS NO OFFENCE

The Inquiry showed Soracchi’s quarterly review for the end of 2001 [MPS-0007737] which describes the target group:

‘No Platform was formed in late 2000 and is in effect a coming together of militant anti-fascist street fighters whose common link is the willingness to carry out violent assault on individuals or groups belonging to the extreme right wing.

Although activists are drawn from differing strands of the far left and anarchist tradition, they are united in the belief that violent confrontation is a key strategic element in beating fascism.

To that end, No Platform has on a number of occasions in the past year put that belief into violent action against members of the National Front and also police officers acting to prevent disorder.’

Batty totally rejects this description, both of No Platform and of himself personally:

‘I have already said it previous times. This is always a defensive action. The way it is being worded “street fighters”, “militant”, “attacking”, “far left”. I never considered myself far left. I never considered myself a street fighter. I never considered I was particularly militant…

I don’t understand where this sort of characterisation comes from. Unless you are trying to legitimise an ongoing situation of undercover policing when you can’t actually report on anything of substance.’

He adds that none of them were ever arrested for anything like this, which would be very odd if they really were a group who were running about maiming police officers.

It’s notable that Soracchi, like many spycops before him who made stuff up, says his group has been involved in serious crime yet is unable to provide specific examples.

Jumping ahead to 27 October 2003, Soracchi reported on No Platform’s supposed plans for the protests against the visit of US President George W. Bush [MPS-0029555]:

‘They see the visit as the first opportunity in a very long time for a situation where mass public disorder can develop.

Most of the group are not strangers to protests of this kind and have experience of being able to agitate and aggravate a developing situation.

Joe Batty and Frank Smith are particularly good in these situations.’

No Platform weren’t relevant to Bush’s visit. On the day, Batty and others stewarded the Socialist Party section of the protest. In stark contrast to Soracchi’s fanciful imaginings, it all went off peacefully.

Batty adds that the only times he’s seen real violence on a protest were the Poll Tax protest of March 1990, and the anti-BNP march in Welling in October 1993. He adds that both of these demonstrations were turned into riots by police action.

Finally on this topic, we were shown a document authorising the continuation of Soracchi’s deployment [MPS-0526932]. As one might expect from something that decides whether he could continue in the role he enjoyed, Soracchi employed some extra-special made up exaggeration, referring to ‘leading Antifa activist Joe Batty’.

DECEIVING WOMEN INTO RELATIONSHIPS

Counsel then moved on to what Batty knew of Soracchi deceiving women into relationships.

In 2001, Soracchi initiated a relationship with ‘Lindsey’. Batty knew Lindsey beforehand, and thought of her as personable and intelligent. She was a Socialist Party member but was not involved in No Platform.

He remembers the relationship going on for some time, and that it was certainly known to the wider social group.

He became concerned at Soracchi’s poor treatment of Lindsey towards the end of the relationship. He spoke to Soracchi about it repeatedly and at length at the time – of course, being wholly unaware of the truth. Lindsey is due to give evidence to the Inquiry on 25 February 2026.

In September 2002, Soracchi was stewarding an anti-war march where he met Donna McLean. As with Lindsey, Batty knew McLean, though not especially well. She was a good friend of his comrade Dan Gillman, and they all had jobs in related work. Soracchi instigated a whirlwind romance and, just three months later, at a New Year’s Eve party at McLean’s, they got engaged. In reality, Soracchi was already married.

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 on 24 February 2026.

INCITEMENT TO ARSON

At the same New Year’s party, Soracchi told Batty and several others that a nearby charity shop was actually a front for Roberto Fiore, a notorious Italian fascist widely believed to be involved in the 1980 bombing of Bologna railway station that killed 85 people.

Soracchi suggested firebombing the shop. Several of them – though not Soracchi himself, as far as Batty remembers – took a drunken walk to the location. Batty banged on the window and they lost interest and went back to the party.

A few days later Soracchi gave Batty a lift and drove past the shop, pointing it out.

‘I can remember telling him that there is a philosophical reason why we are not involved in terrorism. It is really simple. It alienates everybody and wins no arguments.

So I am not sure if that part of his legend was he wanted to try and persuade us in a different direction, but it really disappointed me that he never actually picked up on that.’

Nothing further happened with the shop.

The Inquiry took a lunch break, during which Tom Fowler made a summary and analysis video with antifascist and blacklisted trade unionist Dave Smith:

In November 2002, Soracchi and Batty were among a group of five who planned a trip to Florence for the European Social Forum, a conference of anti-capitalist groups. Soracchi reported on it a few weeks beforehand [MPS-0010591], and the timeline created at the end of Soracchi’s deployment [MPS-0071194] describes it in more detail.

Batty remembers a huge march in Florence and Soracchi pointing out that they were passing the home of Dario Fo, Nobel Prize winning playwright, author of Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! and Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Fo was waving to the crowd, and even though he was exactly the kind of person the SDS would view as dangerously subversive and warranting spying on, Soracchi’s write-up for internal police use described the venerable writer as a genius.

Soracchi’s reporting says he stayed in a squat with an anarchist he knew, and reported on ‘an emerging connection between UK and Italian extremists’. Batty doesn’t remember anything that fits this description.

THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED

Soracchi filed a report [MPS-0062785] claiming that Socialist Party activists were closely involved in the campaign for justice for Jean Charles de Menezes. Batty does not remember this being the case at all.

Jean Charles de Menezes was a Brazilian electrician who was shot dead by police at Stockwell tube station in July 2005 after being mistaken for a possible Islamist suicide bomber.

Rather than try to establish and admit the truth, police sought to take the minimum of blame for the killing, and gave off-the-record briefings to journalists.

The public were told that de Menezes was wearing a bulky jacket on a hot day, that his jacket had wires sticking out, that he vaulted the barrier at the tube station, that he ran down the escalator, and ignored police shouts to stop; that he was in the country illegally and that he was a sex offender. Not one of these things was true.

De Menezes was living with his cousin at the time, Patricia da Silva Armani, and she has campaigned for truth and justice ever since. She is due to give evidence to the Inquiry on 12 March 2026.

This became another justice campaign that the police regarded as hostile and sent spycops to spy on. In claiming that his target group was actively included in the campaign, Soracchi knew he was delivering what his managers wanted to hear.

In his witness statement [UCPI0000035550], Soracchi also claims to have been arrested (but not charged) after violence between No Platform and the BNP at Gants Hill. Batty has no memory of the event or arrest, nor can he remember Soracchi ever being involved in any political violence or other criminal activity.

There was one incident of violence but it wasn’t political. Batty and a friend had been out drinking with Soracchi. It was late in the evening and, as Batty phrased it, ‘we were towards the end of our sobriety’ when they were attacked in the street for no apparent reason. There was an altercation but no arrests were made and nothing came of it after.

Batty agrees with Soracchi’s description [MPS-0010097], apart from taking issue with the officer’s drastic underestimate of the level of drinking.

CLOSE FRIENDSHIP

Batty describes how he was close friends with Soracchi for more than four years from late 2000, spending a lot of recreational time together:

‘Steam baths, dinners, meals, going out for drinks. Drinking absinthe. You get the scene. We were going out socialising properly.’

Soracchi arranged for Batty and his partner to visit Bologna where they were met by someone they believed to be a relative of Soracchi’s, though they now realise it was probably a police officer.

Batty describes Soracchi as the instigator of many of the social activities, and the glue that held the friendship group together. Soracchi also helped Batty move to Manchester, and while doing so he stayed at Batty’s parents’ house:

‘My mum, being my mum, really made him welcome. She loved the fact he was Italian, was always going on about food and all this sort of stuff, so she enjoyed his company.’

While Batty was away in Manchester for about four months, he arranged for Soracchi to be able to stay in his London flat. We’re shown the documents making the arrangements with the City of London Corporation, including the receipt of a deposit paid by ‘Carlo Neri’ [MPS-0527068].

On 26 August 2004, while paying the rent on Batty’s London flat, Soracchi filed an entire report on Batty’s marriage titled ‘Joe Batty experiencing marital problems’ [MPS-0036399]. In it, Soracchi says that Batty’s partner, ‘Fawzia’, has not enjoyed living in Manchester and wants to leave:

‘Batty is very pessimistic about the current situation. He feels that his partner has not given the move a chance and is very upset about her behaviour.

“Fawzia” has always been the more dominant part of the relationship, but if Batty is pushed too far he will become extremely intractable, the future does not look rosy for the relationship, even if both were to return to London.’

Batty confirms that there was some discussion about staying in Manchester permanently, but it was nothing like the loggerheads described (and indeed he and Fawzia are still together). He wasn’t in touch with Soracchi at the time, so has no idea where the information would have come from.

He is affronted at Soracchi’s level of invasiveness:

‘He really had no right. And the Met had no right to try and weave a narrative of what is going on in people’s homes with what they are doing in their political life.

I am offended by this, and I am also offended by the fact that I had never seen that. I have not had my police record, I never had anything. So I didn’t know until this was made available very recently that this had been said.

And I think it’s a violation. That’s what it is. I feel violated, and I feel quite viscerally about that.’

INVENTING ABUSE FOR SYMPATHY

Like many spycops, Soracchi had invented a backstory featuring distressing details of abuse in his family.

Doing this serves several purposes. It creates a sense of trust for the person the spycop was telling, and that would likely be reciprocated.

Trusting the officer on confidential matters of activism, but also with intimate personal matters, made the target activist easier to influence and manipulate.

These stories of abuse or childhood hardship also gave the spycop good reason for not introducing people to their family, and for sometimes acting in inexplicable ways or ‘needing time away alone’ (when they are visiting their real family).

This pretence of a troubled mind also leads to people being ready to accept the standard story at the end of a spycop’s deployment, where they feign a mental breakdown and say they’re permanently moving somewhere far away.

Soracchi told Batty and others that after his mother had died, his sister had told him that their father had been sexually abusing her. Soracchi showed Batty a photo of his supposed perpetrator father.

The friendship group were all concerned for Soracchi, and they collected money to help him with incidental costs of the aftermath of his mother’s supposed death:

‘Our friendship was such that towards the end of his time with No Platform I felt I could counsel him when he confided in me about personal issues.

I believed at the time that his sister had been a victim of sexual abuse and that this had surfaced around the period when his mother was either dying or had just passed away.

I remember spending a lot of time talking to him about these issues, offering empathy and support…

A lot of the work that I did with rough sleepers was about trauma, and so I wanted to be there for somebody who has obviously gone through trauma – his mum passing away, which as you know is no easy thing for anybody – and then to find out this revelation at that pretty painful time was something that I thought he wanted to talk about.

So we talked about it. We spent a lot of time talking about it.’

We’re shown a document from 2 January 2006, late in Soracchi’s deployment, where he methodically lists the activists he spies on, the kind of contact he has with them, and how frequent it is [MPS-0704577].

Batty is second on the list, and seems primarily perplexed by the reason for the spying to be happening at all when his activism was open and public.

PERSONAL INTRUSION

On at least ten occasions, Soracchi reported personal details about Batty, including personal and work contact details and domestic living arrangements. He also reported in April 2004 [MPS-0034066] that Batty had lost his job and wages owed when his employer went into liquidation. Batty describes confiding in the man he thought was a trusted friend:

‘What I was expecting had all gone. I had a domestic situation with my mum being unwell. There was a lot of things that happened at the same time. Of course it was deeply personal.

The liquidation by the way was a fraud, and I would rather the police had investigated the fraud than me, but there you go.’

When the Independent Police Complaints Commission was established, Batty and a friend applied for jobs there. Soracchi reported on this in alarmed terms on 29 March 2004 [MPS-0032327]:

‘It is viewed as an opportunity as to really cause damage to the Met Police.’

It’s the same police conflation of accountability with hostility that led them to infiltrate and undermine various justice campaigns.

Batty never even received a reply to his application and laments a missed opportunity.

‘I wanted to use my experience – and I know another person wanted to use their experience – in working with vulnerable adults to ensure that they were also getting justice or were heard. So by inferring that we were doing it for nefarious reasons, it undermines us doing it.’

BETRAYAL AND ONGOING MISTRUST

In concluding, Batty reflects on how his working life with homeless people necessitated a lot of positive working with police. But since learning about the spycops and how he was personally spied on, his feeling towards working with the police have soured:

‘I brought that forward, what had happened, and the experience of what had happened, to my last job, which I worked for eight years with the community of North Kensington that was affected by the Grenfell fire.

And throughout the period that I was involved in that, I really, really, really, struggled to not say to people in their campaign groups, “you really ought to be careful, because the police will be sitting in your meetings, recording the things you do and invading your personal life”.

And that for me was really horrible, and I told them, just as I will say now, that I hope you get justice from your inquiry system, just like I hope that this will provide justice for people.

Because if not, why do people at the bottom end of the scale believe there is ever going to be any justice? And that, for me, it really hurt me. It hurts me now.’

At the end of the hearing, the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, spoke to Batty. His manner was markedly different from the way in which he’s treated other left-wing witnesses. He seemed to regard Batty as something akin to an equal. Perhaps Batty’s mention of being a Freeman of the City of London had some effect.

Mitting asked Batty about his personal history. Batty detailed a long and impressive career working with vulnerable people, particularly rough sleepers. It involved working with numerous agencies, and giving direct help and advice as well as designing management strategies to improve the lives of those affected.

He says this leads him to the conclusion that his employment chances at the Independent Police Complaints Commission were deliberately stymied:

‘I just outlined my CV, as it were, and that makes me a really good candidate for a number of those areas because I understand the milieu of working with people who are vulnerable when they interface with the police or drugs services or the other.

So the fact that I never got a response to being able to be an interface between the community and people who have complaints about the police does show me that somebody definitely sat on it.’

Mitting expresses thanks to Batty, saying that the testimony was especially welcome as the Inquiry has had a huge amount of testimony about the personal impacts on women who were deceived into relationships by spycops, but far less about the people who were close platonic friends. With that, the hearing finished.

Immediately afterwards, Tom Fowler made this summary and reaction video with Zoe Young from Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance:

Carlo soracchi is due to giveevidence to the Inqruity on 2-5 March 2026.