Spycops Scandal Set to Deepen as Inquiry Resumes

PRESS RELEASE

Metropolitan Police’s secret political spying operations face further condemnation for their racist targeting of family justice campaigns, including the family of Stephen Lawrence

Undercover Policing Inquiry Tranche 3 Begins – Core Participants Call Protest

On Monday 13 October 2025, the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) will start its Tranche 3 (Phase 1) hearings – covering Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) operations from the early 1990s to 2008.

The first three days will consist of online Opening Statements by the Metropolitan Police and Core Participants outlining the shocking evidence to come over the next weeks and months. The ‘live witness’ evidence hearings will be in person at the International Dispute Resolution Centre, starting Friday 17 October.

A timetable of those due to give evidence is here.

On Friday 17 October at 9am, the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance will hold a protest outside the Inquiry at the International Dispute Resolution Centre, St Paul’s Churchyard, London EC4M 7BQ.

Core Participants will be present to respond to media inquiries (see details below).

At these Tranche 3 (Phase 1) hearings from October to December, the Inquiry will hear oral evidence from 26 witnesses, including:

• Three former SDS undercover officers
• Two former Metropolitan Police Service senior managers; and
• 21 non-state witnesses

Shocking Evidence Revealed

The Inquiry has revealed the staggering scale of abuses carried out by Britain’s secret political policing units and their long-term infiltration deployments. The Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) was formed in 1968 and continued its activities for 40 years.

The SDS operated in secret, targeting social justice campaigners, peace groups, socialist and anarchist organisations, environmental campaigners, trade unionists, left-wing MPs, and a range of progressive organisations. The spies’ abuses included:

• Deceiving women into long-term intimate relationships, even fathering children.
• Spying on grieving families of those killed by racists or police. This included the Lawrence family, who were campaigning for justice for their murdered son Stephen, and police infiltration of other family justice campaigns
• Infiltrating anti-racist, socialist and progressive campaigns, including Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE), the Anti-Nazi League, and multiple environmental campaigns – with the aim of monitoring, reporting on and disrupting them.
• Colluding in the blacklisting of thousands of trade unionists.
• Playing a role in miscarriages of justice.
• Stealing and using the identities of deceased children, to bolster the spies’ fake personas
• Hoovering up personal details on thousands of people involved with or supporting the campaigns targeted, passed on to MI5

Despite some serious shortcomings, the Inquiry has shone a light on the hidden machinery of such ‘stasi-like’ political policing. In Tranche 1 and 2 the MPS argued that the SDS was was dealing with ‘public disorder’ and ‘subversion.’

However, in his 2023 interim report, the UCPI Chair Sir John Mitting concluded that the SDS should have been ‘brought to a rapid end’ just a few years after it was set up. Yet it continued for decades, its activities signed off by successive Home Secretaries despite its unethical tactics getting progressively worse.

Further Powerful Evidence Expected

The Tranche 3 period covers up to fairly modern times. It saw the introduction of the Human Rights Act, and a supposed new ’regulatory’ regime (RIPA) in 2000.

But new laws apparently did nothing to curb the corruption and abuse, and the SDS was not shut down until 2007, superseded by the equally controversial National Public Order Intelligence Unit (which will be dealt with in Tranche 4 at the end of 2027). Lessons that should have been obvious were not learnt, and the Inquiry will investigate why.

Thousands of secret documents will be examined and published as the hearings offer a unique chance for the public to see the secret state exposed in its own words.

Among those giving evidence for the first time will be:

• Doreen and Neville Lawrence, who were subject to monitoring and reports from the SDS while mourning their son Stephen who had been murdered by racists. Another family justice campaigner Sukhdev Reel will also testify about how the SDS monitored her and the campaign seeking answers following the death of her son Ricky.
• Lois Austin and Hannah Sell will describe how undercover officers infiltrated Youth Against Racism in Europe and other anti-racist movements. Suresh Grover, a central campaigner in the Lawrence family campaign and the Reel family campaign, will also give evidence.
• Whistleblower Peter Francis, an SDS officer from 1993 to 1997, will talk about spying on anti-racist groups and the Lawrence family, and what went on behind the scenes.
• Women who were deceived into intimate relationships will also be providing crucial evidence to the Inquiry and how they were targeted as political activists by SDS officers, including Mark ‘Cassidy’ Jenner and James ‘Straven’ Thompson – who will also have to give evidence.

Core Participants continue to demand to be given the personal files held on them, and demand further apologies from the police, MI5 and the Government for their authorisation of the spying operations.

Protest details:

Friday 17 October, 9am
The International Dispute Resolution Centre, St Paul’s Churchyard, London, EC4M 7BQ

Core Participants testifying in the coming hearings will be available for comment at the protest, including:

• Sukhdev Reel, mother of Ricky Reel
• Dave Nellist, former Labour MP
• Lois Austin, Youth Against Racism in Europe
• Dave Smith, Blacklist Support Group

---

UCPI Background Notes:

The UCPI was established by then-home Secretary Theresa May in 2015 after a series of revelations exposed by campaigners and the media.

It is investigating undercover policing operations including secret political policing by the SDS and NPOIU, spying on 1000 left-wing political groups and campaigns between 1968 and 2014.

The public can view live proceedings online from 13 October at 10am.

This Inquiry has already cost £114.3 million (up to June 2025). Only a fifth of that represents victims’ legal costs.

The Metropolitan police have spent an additional £70m of taxpayers money on secrecy, redactions and their own defence. [See 11 June 2024 MPS response to Freedom of Information request FO1-8602-24-0100-000]

The UCPI Interim Report, 29 June 2023. On page 96, para 28, the Chair concludes:

“The question is whether or not the end justified the means set out above. I have come to the firm conclusion that, for a unit of a police force, it did not; and that had the use of these means been publicly known at the time [the early 1970s], the SDS would have been brought to a rapid end.”

In the last 18 months the Met have also had to make a series of major public apologies, including for the targeting of women for abusive sexual relationships, for spying on Black and anti-racist organisations and family justice campaigns, for the spycops routinely stealing the identities of deceased children, and for shocking failures of supervision of the covert operations. See eg. paras 24, 29, 38, 71, and 80 in this Met statement of June 2024.

Tranche 3 Phases 2 and 3 hearings are scheduled for 2026. The Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting will then retire to produce his second Interim Report by 2027. Meanwhile a new Chair will be appointed to oversee the remaining Tranches 4 and 5.

For more on what the Undercover Policing Inquiry is and how it’s organised, see our UCPI FAQ.