Undercover Policing Inquiry – Andy Coles Primer

Like his former boss Bob Lambert last week, Coles stands accused of serious misconduct whilst deployed, and he has important questions to answer.

Here is a summary of the issues at stake.

INTRODUCTION

Coles was deployed into peace, animal rights and environmentalist groups in and around London from Spring 1991 to February 1995.

The Undercover Policing Inquiry has already heard from a number of people targeted by Coles about how he deceived at least one woman into a long term sexual relationship, and acquired a reputation as ‘creepy’ for his repeated, unwanted sexual advances to women.

Witnesses told the Unquiry that Coles, in his undercover role as ‘Andy Davey’, set up his own Animal Liberation Front ‘cell’ and organised a raid to on a battery chicken farm.

Like many Special Demonstration Squad officers, he is known to have been arrested in a false name, and lied to the courts.

In February 1995, just as his undercover deployment was ending, Coles put pen to paper and authored the Special Demonstration Squad’s Tradecraft Manual, setting out many of these abhorrent practices for future undercover officers to follow.

Like many of the most appalling officers investigated by this inquiry, he was promoted and went on to train and manage police officers, before going into politics.

The truth about Coles’ past was uncovered in May 2017, when his more famous brother, the Reverend Richard Coles, accidentally outed him by describing his brother’s undercover work in his autobiography Fathomless Riches.

Following media exposure, Coles immediately resigned as Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner for Cambridgeshire. However, he refused to resign his roles as a Conservative city councillor for Peterborough and as a school governor, and he remained in that public office until he was voted out in 2024.

He is still President of Peterborough Conservatives.

CREEPY LECH

On Thursday 12 December we heard harrowing evidence from ‘Jessica’ of how she met Andy Coles as a vulnerable and young-for-her-age 19-year-old.

She described how he would just come round to the house she shared with friends inconveniently late at night, and just sit around. She recalled discussion among the housemates: who invited him? And it turned out nobody did. Then one day he just kissed her, completely out of the blue. They were alone, watching TV:

‘he said something which made me turn to him and then he just lunged straight at me and kissed me… It was so awkward. Had he said something at any point, I would have been able to say I don’t think about you like that, but it was the shock and just the unexpectedness of it…

‘My overriding feeling was that I didn’t want to hurt his feelings… I’d like to say now that I would have slapped him. But when I think about it, even now, I still get that awful, awkward feeling. I wish it had been different. I wish that I had done something different’.

After that first kiss he would stay over, and when he did, it was in her room, in her bed. She never went to his place and didn’t know where he lived. Coles was Jessica’s first boyfriend, and she didn’t talk to her friends about him much. She was embarrassed by him: he was unpopular and awkward and a bit odd.

She says there wasn’t much emotional intimacy either:

‘I can’t remember very much about him. I think I was a pretty awful girlfriend… It was not love’s young dream… it wasn’t how I expected it to be.’

Coles lied to Jessica about his age. In real life he was 32 and married. His undercover identity was that he was 28. Jessica was 19 and looked younger. Yet Coles told Jessica he was 24, and told his bosses that she was 20-25.

It never occurred to her that he was significantly older than he said he was.

She told the Inquiry:

‘that’s not right… there’s no reason to be trying to go out with someone that much younger… it’s creepy. It’s inappropriate… it sounds terrible to say, but, you know, old age… at 19 someone like that is old.’

Several other women have reported fending off ‘creepy’ and unwanted advances by Coles, often describing similar incidents where he ‘lunged’ at them.

His colleague and contemporary undercover officer HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ has said in his witness statement that he was aware at the time that other activists thought Coles was ‘creepy’.

Coles’s conduct, the ways he described women in his reporting at the time, and even his behaviour and statements on the issue today, all show him to be a misogynist with contempt for women.

OUTRIGHT DENIAL

Coles is unique among the undercover police known to have abused women they spied on, in that he has publicly and flatly denied that the relationship took place.

When interviewed by police under caution about his relationship with Jessica, he refused to answer questions. In February 2020 we learned that the Metropolitan Police had seen enough evidence to convince them Jessica’s complaint was credible.

In July 2023, the Met admitted that the relationship did happen, and that it should never have happened. They unreservedly apologised to Jessica, and have condemned what Andy Coles did to her as:

‘abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong…totally unacceptable and grossly inappropriate… an abuse of police power and caused significant trauma’

The Met said that if Coles were still a police officer he would have been charged with gross misconduct, the highest level of disciplinary charge which, if found guilty, usually results in instant dismissal.

However, Coles told the Peterborough Telegraph he was effectively exonerated because:

‘the Metropolitan Police has taken no further action against me’.

With each piece of evidence that shows he’s lying, Coles has chosen to double down on his denial, compounding the insult and injury to Jessica.

Andy Coles has backed himself into a corner. If he admits the truth, it won’t just be about his abuse of Jessica 30 years ago – he’d also be admitting to having lied to friends, family, colleagues and voters in Peterborough for the last few years.

However, lying to the Inquiry under oath is a criminal offence. Coles’ account to date has been implausible and inconsistent, and we hope that the Inquiry will use these three days of questioning to vigorously challenge his version of events.

INVENTING THE ALF

Last week the Inquiry also heard from ‘Callum’ that Coles’ claim that he ‘slogged his guts out’ to become second in command of the Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group was nonsense. There was no hierarchy, and Coles had a minor informal admin role.

He would have seen address labels when he was doing the quarterly envelope stuffing for the newsletter. That was the limit of his work. In any case, the ALF-SG was a public, wholly law abiding group. Coles basically spent three years watching Callum do legal activity.

Having apparently failed to find any bona fide ALF activity to report on, Coles decided to create some. The Inquiry heard how he called a large and bizarre meeting where he invited people to take part in an illegal action (most of them very sensibly declined). He then went on to organise a raid at Great Hookley Farm to rescue battery chickens.

He was described as ‘central to the action’. He drove people, assigned them roles and encouraged Jessica and her friend to attend. He also took photographs and wrote an article that was used to encourage people to take further, similar actions.

Like other undercover officers, ‘Andy Van’ would regularly drive people to and from planned demonstrations, hunt sabs and other actions where it was anticipated illegal activity would occur.

There is evidence of Coles’s involvement in numerous petty crimes, as well as lying to the police and the courts. He will have to be examined on all of these allegations over the next three days.

MISLEADING COURTS

Coles is known to have reported on meetings discussing defence strategy for criminal trials; withheld evidence from the defence; failed to report police violence against protesters that he witnessed; given the name of another activist to the police when he was arrested, and lied to the courts.

Home Office instructions expressly forbid undercover officers from being involved in anything that is likely to lead to a court being deceived. If officers do find themselves in such a situation, the Home Office unequivocally orders that they must be exposed or have their deployment ended.

However, in his post-deployment debrief Coles is quoted as as saying:

‘Misleading a court is something done by criminals and government ministers alike – we shouldn’t be squeamish about the ends justifying the means in our own case.’

TRAINING AND TRADECRAFT

Perhaps the most damning evidence against Coles is the fact that he personally wrote the now infamous ‘Special Demonstration Squad ‘Tradecraft Manual’, including tips on how to conduct the sexual relationships that Coles now claims he never had.

He wrote deeply offensive instructions to undercover officers on how to assume ‘squatters rights’ over the identities of dead children for their cover and ‘establish the respiratory status of the dead person’s family, if any, and, if they were still breathing, where they were living’ in order to shore up their backstory.

Another section contains advice on having ‘fleeting and disastrous’ relationships with the opposite sex, where he notes that ‘[i]n the past emotional ties to the opposition have happened and caused all sorts of difficulties, including divorce, deception and disciplinary choices.’

The damage done to the victims of these deceitful relationships is not mentioned in his text.

Coles’s career and the contents of the Tradecraft Manual are particularly significant because he is known to have gone on to train not only future SDS officers but also the first recruits to its successor organisation, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit.

This new secret police unit employed officers such ‘Rod Richardson’ who, on Coles’s instructions, stole the identity of a dead child, and Mark Kennedy and Marco Jacobs who deceived multiple women into abusive sexual relationships.

Until 2011, Coles was Head of Training for the Association of Chief Police Officers’ Terrorism and Allied Matters committee, which oversaw the deployment of Kennedy.

FURTHER CAREER

After leaving the police, Coles became a Conservative city councillor for the South Bretton and Fletton & Woodston wards of Peterborough, and the Deputy Police & Crime Commissioner for Cambridgeshire.

When the truth came out in May 2017, Coles resigned as Deputy Police & Crime Commissioner within hours. He refused to explain why.

He only admitted even having been an undercover officer a year later, when the public inquiry had named him.

He lost his council seat in the local elections in May of this year. However, he is still the President of Peterborough Conservatives.

Men who abuse their public roles to violate women should not be in positions of civic trust. Men who lie about it, doubly so. He must resign.