UCPI – Daily Report: 13 December 2024 – ‘AFJ’

Hunt Saboteurs
On 13 December 2024 the Undercover Policing Inquiry questioned a witness known as ‘AFJ’.
He was a hunt saboteur and antifascist activist in London in the early 1990s, and was named in numerous secret police reports by Special Demonstration Squad officer HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’.
He now holds a senior position in a company and his political opinions have altered, so he wanted to be anonymous. He gave evidence remotely, with his voice modulated to disguise it.
He was questioned by one of the Inquiry’s junior counsel, Joseph Hudson.
Political Background
As a teenager, AFJ was into punk music and had been motivated by the Brighton punk scene to become politically active.
He found himself informed and inspired, meeting others who saw that the system was not set up for fairness or justice, and who wanted to create something better for themselves:
‘I enjoyed the camaraderie, like-minded people. As, you know, a teenager you’re looking for a tribe and I think I found that with that group.’
When he was 16, he dropped out of college to get involved in hunt saboteuring. He liked the direct effect of sabbing:
‘It really felt like a good thing to be able to help save the life of a fox and come away from that feeling that you’ve done something, you’ve changed something even if it was reasonably small.’
AFJ was involved in the Brighton hunt sab group between 1989 and 1991, when he moved to London. There were 15-20 people involved in Brighton hunt sabs at the time.
He went out sabbing every Saturday for six months of the year, and helped with coordination. He saw a lot of violence from hunt supporters in co-ordinated attacks, including people beaten unconscious. He never saw anything similar done by sabs.
AFJ explained the importance of transport and vehicles to sabbing. Hunts are in remote places inaccessible by public transport. The driver is essential and at the heart of any group. Drivers were often organisers too.
This is an important point. One spycop after another has been forced to admit they were involved in sabbing and other kinds of direct action but have said they were ‘only the driver’, as if this makes them peripheral instead of a vital core part of the action without which none of it could happen.
AFJ was arrested outside the Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane, London, protesting against a hunters’ ball held there. He was convicted of disorderly conduct.
AFJ moved out of his parents’ house and got more involved in the coordination of the hunt sabbing. He was already aware of the Brixton hunt sabs before he moved to London. He’d met them at hunts and says they seemed a bit louder and a bit more confrontational than other groups. The word ‘Brixton’ played into this, evoking inner city life, with connotations of the 1981 riots:
‘People there were a bit older, they were living in squats and they seemed to be living this kind of radical lifestyle’
Brixton Hunt Saboteurs
AFJ moved to London in June 1991, to a room in a squat where a friend was already living.
He got involved with Brixton hunt sabs and describes how they were split into two distinct parts:
‘The counterculture group, of which I was a part, were living in squats, part of a broader activist lifestyle which included a lot of different areas of politics’
This contrasted with the others:
‘The people who were I would’ve called animal rights activists, only interested in animal rights, were generally living in rented accommodation, working in jobs, students, and living probably, I would’ve thought at the time, a more conventional lifestyle.’
He confirms that spycop Andy Coles was in this second group. Coles was nicknamed ‘Andy Van’ because, like many other spycops, the police had issued him with a van so that he would take a central role in the activities of the groups he was infiltrating.
We’re shown AFJ’s address book from the time [MPS-0744732] which included Andy Van’s contact details.
AFJ says Andy Coles was a frequent attendee of sabbing activities, and was a driver of what he’d assumed was Coles’s own van. He describes Coles as:
‘Quiet, reserved, softly spoken, an observer. Not a kind of big personality or someone who was kind of leading at the front, more someone who was a driver, maybe a bit of a coordinator.’
He says their relationship was ‘very superficial’, they said hello to each other but not much else.

Spycop HN2 Andy Coles aka ‘Andy Davey’ while undercover in 1991
Asked about his broader animal rights activity, he says there was a bit of it when he first moved to London, such as leafleting outside Boots’ shops protesting against their vivisection, but nothing much more than that.
Pressed on whether there was any Animal Liberation Front activity, he says that his squat was given a dog they were told had been rescued from a laboratory, but that’s all. He’s clear that Brixton hunt sabs was a poor choice of gateway into the world of ALF activity.
This is another important point, as the spycops who infiltrated the sabs and other lawful London animal rights groups have been trying to justify it by saying it was just that.
AFJ says just because the formal faction was ‘straight’ did not mean they eschewed radical views. They had very, very strong opinions about animals and might have been willing to break the law. But if they were, he wouldn’t have wanted to know; he was more interested in other issues.
AFJ accepts he was an enthusiastic part of Brixton hunt sabs, but had no organisational role.
We are then shown a spycops report of 30 October 1991 by Andy Coles about AFJ [MPS-0744609]:
‘He is currently the equipment officer for Brixton Hunt Saboteurs group.’
AFJ laughs at this:
‘There was no equipment officer and I certainly wouldn’t have been trusted too much with the equipment!’
Yet again, police are inventing formal structures where none exist, making activists out to be more involved than they are, and portraying groups as much more regimented than they actually are. But it sounds good to their superiors who read the report, and nobody could have checked the veracity even if they’d wanted to.
He disputes Coles’s description of Brixton sabs as ‘fearsome’. They were certainly notorious and irreverent but they wouldn’t have struck fear into anyone. They would defend themselves when attacked, but then so did many other sabs. They inspired more annoyance than terror.
AFJ confirms that sabs sometimes wore face coverings. He dismisses the Inquiry’s suggestion that it was to intimidate hunters, saying it was more about not being recognised and photographed – sabs had concerns about being on the receiving end of intimidation themselves, as well as potential impacts on their employment and academic careers.
Hunt saboteur ‘Callum’ said in his evidence that his (different) hunt sab group deliberately wore matching jackets and masks, in part to look intimidating in the hope it would stop them being attacked. AFJ says Brixton never discussed it in those terms nor any others.
AFJ says that the counterculture faction of Brixton hunt sabs was ‘more rowdy, more irreverent’ and also drawing on broader political motivations:
‘It wasn’t a caring for animals motivation all the time. It was also a bit of wanting to protest against the upper class. So those kind of politics were probably more important in that group. And going out, disturbing and disrupting a hunt was equally important to saving a fox’s life.’
He’s asked about his description of this in his witness statement [UCPI36920]:
‘Our thinking was how can we cause disorder? How can we annoy the ruling class and how could we do it in a way that might get media attention?’
He’s clear that they were always focused on stopping the hunt, and that by being chaotic it was more likely that the hunt would pack up and go home early.
South London Action Group
We’re shown a January 1993 report by Coles about what he calls the South London Anarchist Group (actually the South London Action Group) with the charming acronym SLAG.
AFJ says it only ever had one meeting:
‘It was a failed attempt to become more organised. As a group of kind of anarchist squatters who wanted to pool efforts in areas where we thought we could have an impact. So that might be housing, local protests around local anti-racism issues, protesting I think against the local McDonald’s that was opening up at the time.’
AFJ seems to be chuckling as he recalls how people opposed to authority weren’t always good at turning up to meetings on time, respecting the chair, or even agreeing if there should be a chair.
We’re next shown another Coles report, dated 9 January 1993. It says SLAG would meet every Wednesday at the 121 Centre on Railton Road in Brixton, and that meetings were organised by 56A Infoshop.
AFJ says he was working at 56A Infoshop at the time:
‘So the 56A bookshop was a bit like the 121 Bookshop but it was in Elephant and Castle and it was a place where we sold anarchist books, information about protests, punk rock records. And people would stop in and have a cup of tea, chat about politics and music. It was very sedate but a nice place to spend an afternoon and I worked there with a friend one day every week.’
He goes on to talk about Christopher Jones who organised the Infoshop. Andy Coles later used the name Christopher Andrew Jones when he was arrested sabbing alongside AFJ in November 1994. This is a subject the Inquiry would return to in detail at the end of the hearing.
According to Coles’ report of the meeting:
‘The group is comprised almost exclusively of the Brixton ‘crusties’ ie members of the anarchist squatter community and the meetings are coordinated through the 56A Collective.
Areas of interest for the group include squatting issues, anti-fascist activity, international solidarity protests, anti-state demonstrations and radical animal rights issues (hunt sabotage, inspections of animal housing institutions and Animal Liberation Front activity).’
AFJ completely rejects the reference to ALF activity, saying it wasn’t an issue many people there felt strongly enough about to be involved in. It appears that Coles, tasked to infiltrate the ALF, is simply tagging it on to make it look like he’s succeeding in his job when he’s actually failing.
Asked to define ‘crusty’, AFJ says:
‘People who were unemployed, you know, shabbily dressed, part of a counterculture. You know, for a while at that point I had dreadlocks and we would spend a lot of our time going to punk gigs or raves or, yeah, living an alternative lifestyle and not dressing or washing as often as we could…
It’s a bit pejorative but, you know, it’s not the end of the world.’
The report talks about these crusties using ‘false names… even among close friends’. AFJ says this is misleading – people had nicknames which was part of a friendly subculture. Coles is either trying to make them look nefarious or perhaps, due to his own personal disposition, genuinely sees camaraderie as a form of deviousness.
Coles’s report on the SLAG meeting continues:
‘It is possible that the group will become a recruiting ground for the Brixton-based cell of the Animal Liberation Front.’
Again, AFJ bluntly rejects this allegation.
The report concludes:
‘The SLAG has the potential for becoming a significant threat to public order if it continues to develop with enthusiasm and unity.’
AFJ mocks this with a reality check:
‘We couldn’t agree on a chair so I think the chances of us being a threat to public order were quite small.’
Anti-Fascist Activity

Youth Against Racism in Europe protest against the BNP, 1993 (pic: Ged Grebby)
AFJ also took part in anti-fascist activity, trying to stop the National Front and British National Party from organising on the streets.
He says the far right distributing their literature on the street created a climate where racist attacks could happen, and that direct action was the best way to have an impact on that.
At the time he saw the police as sympathetic to the far right, giving fascists an easier ride than the left wing.
He felt that police handling of racist murders demonstrated that, and subsequent inquiries have proved his perspective right.
AFJ says if the anti-fascists heard of a demonstration against racism they would turn up to protect it from attacks by fascists. If they heard of far-right groups leafleting or selling newspapers they would go and confront them:
‘I’m not a strong or a tough person but I would get myself in the mindset to defend myself if there was a physical confrontation. My ideology at the time was that you need to stand up to fascism, to Nazism, and so that I would be prepared to fight back if attacked, or if there was disruption or disorder I would be prepared to respond if provoked.’
AFJ says there is no way to peacefully confront the far right, but that doesn’t necessarily mean his actions were violent:
‘They were disruptive but they were not violent. I was in the way of them [the far right] leafleting but I never carried out an act of violence or did anything violent myself.’
He agrees with the Inquiry’s suggestion of his area of action:
‘We’ve effectively drawn your line in terms of becoming physically very close to members of the far-right without throwing the first punch.’
He explains that it was similar to hunt sabbing, confronting those he opposed en masse. And, like sabbing, they sometimes wore face coverings. And again, as with the questioning about sabbing, he’s asked if people covered faces to intimidate their opponents:
‘I didn’t want the police to see or, you know, if any of these confrontations erupted or were provoked or whatever, I didn’t want that to follow me for the rest of my life.’
He laughs at the irony of it:
‘It turns out I’m still here talking about it, but I didn’t want it to be something I was always known for. I didn’t want it to disrupt my future life.’
For the Inquiry, Hudson asks AFJ to say more about the organised antifascist groups, starting with the Anti-Nazi League. He recalls the kind of demonstrations they would hold:
‘Well, that was a formal group. Closely tied to the Socialist Workers Party, who I very much rejected but I would go along to their protests if it was a big protest or it was in an area where there had been a racist attack and we felt that the BNP would go after that protest.’
As for Anti-Fascist Action, he says that his group generally wouldn’t be invited to their events, which tended to require people of more conventional appearance.
AFJ says before Anti-Fascist Action events there was generally an understanding that this was not a normal protest, it was two groups confronting each other rather than one trying to protect a march. Even then, altercations weren’t inevitable:
‘A lot of the time it happened the presence of the two groups would mean that the police successfully intervened and both groups went home. That happened a lot. But that would be a successful day for Anti-Fascist Action. Because they weren’t there to promote any ideology themselves, just to stop the far-right. So that was successful.’
When police weren’t present it did sometimes kick off:
‘AFJ: There were times when it did go into confrontation but it would generally be skirmishes where people were running towards each other, and it was slightly comical, almost like West Side Story dancing, you know, but not really – occasionally there would be actual fights, yeah, but they would be quite rare.
Q: Is another way to describe that as violent disorder?
AFJ: I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t know the technical term of law. I’ll defer to you guys on that.’
In July 2024, the Inquiry heard from officer HN56 ‘Alan “Nick” Nicholson’ who briefly infiltrated the Loughton branch of the BNP in 1990. He said that in this role, he saw the real risk of violence being antifascists attacking BNP members.
AFJ disputes this, saying there’s endless evidence of BNP members attacking people.
It’s also worth noting that antifascists would only be violent to fascists, whereas fascists were violent to people in many marginalised groups. This isn’t two even sides, only one of them is threatening the community and seeking out ‘untermensch’ to persecute.
AFJ describes the far right coming into a Troops Out march punching and kicking, but on other occasions antifascists averted trouble simply by visibly being there with low regard for their own personal safety.
He’s asked about a specific incident he described in his witness statement. It was around 1993, when the BNP sold their newspapers in Brick Lane on Sundays. The Anti-Nazi League often held protests against it, with police there separating the sides.
One Sunday there was a large turnout and AFJ and his friend decided to pretend to be fascists so the police would allow them through the line:
‘We’re marching along, seig heiling and the like, the police let us through and we managed to then confront the paper sellers who ran off and I think the paper sale was abandoned.’
Hudson says that AFJ describes running towards the fascists which suggests that he was the aggressor in this situation. He responds saying that the fascists ran away – protected by police – and nobody was actually hit. Ending the fascists’ presence was the aim rather than violence.
He and his comrades didn’t carry weapons as such, but did carry soft drinks in glass bottles (‘something you could fit in your pocket easily’ and isn’t an obvious weapon) in case they needed to defend themselves.
Anti-Fascist Protests: The Battle of Waterloo and Welling

Fascists confronted at the Battle of Waterloo, London, November 1992 (pic: antifascistarchive.net)
AFJ is asked about ‘The Battle of Waterloo’. In November 1992 there was a far-right concert with notorious fascist band Skrewdriver supported by Blood & Honour. These bands couldn’t advertise openly so would have meet-up places and redirection points.
Antifascists went to the redirection point at Waterloo Station. AFJ saw violence from both sides, punching and kicking rather than use of weapons. He had felt it was important ‘to do my bit’ to help stop the gig.
AFJ is next asked about the protest at BNP headquarters in Welling, southeast London, in October 1993. He was no longer squatting by this time. He attended the protest with a small group of friends. AFJ was further back from the disorder but saw some missiles being thrown before his group was cleared out of the area by the police.
We’re shown an earlier report [UCPI0000028278] made by HN78 Trevor Morris ‘Anthony “Bobby” Lewis’ on 26 February 1992. It says that on 22 February, the Rolan Adams family campaign held a march and rally at the BNP headquarters in Welling, southeast London.
Rolan’s father Richard Adams has given evidence to the Inquiry about his family’s attempts to seek justice following his son’s murder.
The organisers of the march told the Anti-Nazi League they didn’t want any violence, so the ANL told their supporters to remain peaceful.
Around 2,000 people attended the march and rally, and AFJ is named in the report as one of them.
AFJ doesn’t actually remember doing so but agrees that it’s likely and speaks of his respect for Richard Adams:
‘My purpose in attending would be sort of add my voice to his, back his call at the time for justice, and also if the far-right did intimidate or attack some of these peaceful protests, as did occur – and I remember one occasion, it may have been that one, where there was a group of far-right activists standing, intimidating, by a church, I know that a church was mentioned in the document – that we would be there to hopefully dissuade them from confrontation.’
According to Morris’s report, AFJ was with a contingent of around 30 anarchists at the rear of the march who were ‘somewhat disappointed’ that there wasn’t a fight with the fascists.
AFJ doesn’t know how Morris could possibly claim to know whether he or the others wanted a physical confrontation, and says he would have been happy that the day passed off peacefully. He points out that Rolan Adams’s family were there, the mood would have been solemn. It was important to show due respect.
Hudson tells him that the spycops have sought to justify their intrusion of such family justice groups by saying there was a risk of violence from people such as himself. AFJ is clear that this is the police trying to deflect blame away from themselves:
‘I don’t think my activities or anything I did were in any way central to the organised activity. These campaigns were legitimate campaigns for justice for people who had had their relatives murdered, potentially by the far-right, and then not had their claims fully investigated properly by the police.’
Good Easter Hunt Saboteur Arrests
We move on to hear about the Good Easter hunt sab event where both AFJ and spycop Andy Coles were arrested.

Squatters protest against the Criminal Justice Bill in London, 26 July 1994
We’ve heard from earlier witnesses how hunt sabs would sometimes organise a large ‘regional or national hit’, bringing sabs from numerous groups together for a big turnout.
This was usually done in response to incidents of hunt violence against sabs, to show that violence didn’t intimidate the sabs and in fact would make life harder for the hunt. At Good Easter, it was also about defying a new law that criminalised sabbing.
A friend from Brixton hunt sabs rang AFJ and asked if he and some others would ‘come out of retirement’ to help make a hit on the Essex hunt especially large. By this time AFJ had mostly moved on from protesting, but he still supported the cause and readily agreed to go.
It took place on 19 November 1994. AFJ was arrested, charged and convicted for obstructing a police officer and for the brand-new crime of ‘aggravated trespass’, introduced by that month’s Criminal Justice & Public Order Act (CJA).
The CJA was wide-ranging, attacking not just hunt sabbing and other protests but also criminalising Travellers and squatters, while increasing the police’s powers to stop and search, take intimate samples, and draw inference of guilt from people exercising their right to silence on arrest.
AFJ was aware of the Criminal Justice Act and opposed it, attending one of the large protests against it earlier in the year. He was a DJ in the rave scene, and the new law included provisions to ban raves, infamously singling out dance music for criminalisation in section 63 as music:
‘wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.’
AFJ travelled to the hunt from South London, in a van of some kind. He says he would have been with people he knew, from the Brixton hunt sab/squatter milieu. There were probably eight or ten of them, all of whom he would place in the ‘counterculture’ camp:
‘The idea was to do what we had previously done on the hunt sabs, which was to arrive in such numbers that they would hopefully call off the day’s hunting.’
He thinks the hunt was already underway by the time the sabs arrived. The vans stopped in a narrow track and they saw the hunt about 500 metres away.
They went over a stile into the field, and ran towards the hunt. Hudson suggests this was to evade the police but AFJ denies that, saying it was just standard practice on sighting the hunt:
‘If you’re going to have any chance of getting close to it you’d have to move fairly quickly, they’re on horseback.’
Coles says in his witness statement:
‘The intention of the sabs was to cause absolute disruption. The large number of attendees had been organised by the Hunt Saboteurs Association to overwhelm the normal level of policing that was put in place for such events.’
Despite being on opposing sides, AFJ broadly agrees with this:
‘I mean I guess the clue’s in the name, hunt saboteurs, right? You know, that is the aim of the organisation. It’s to sabotage fox hunts by, you know, people arriving en masse peacefully and overwhelming. That was something that had happened over several years previously. This one was a particularly big one and that was because the new law that was being brought in.’
In his witness statement, AFJ says:
‘It was a protest as much about the legislation as about a disruption of the hunt.’
The police had run ahead and were trying to stop the sabs from reaching the hunt:
‘There were not enough police to have a line across the whole field. So at some point a police officer ran in front of me and I stopped…
He struck me with his truncheon and told me to stop going towards the hunt. I was stopped. He struck me several times with his truncheon. It was an extendable truncheon. And then he grabbed me and arrested me.’
AFJ says whilst he was getting hit and arrested, he was aware that someone else near him was getting the same treatment.
Hudson asks about the role of drivers. Coles says he was arrested while running across a field, so Hudson wants to establish whether this rules him out as a driver.

Brixton Hunt Saboteurs in the field, 25 January 1992. Spycop HN2 Andy Coles in foreground, indicated with red arrow.
AFJ says the drivers would normally have stayed with the vehicles, and tried to get to a place where the sabs could get another lift if they needed it. It wouldn’t make much sense for a driver to run across a field but, that said, he’s sure it has happened on occasion.
In his intelligence report of the day [MPS-0745541], Coles says there were over 350 sabs present. AFJ says ‘it was half that, maximum’. He agrees with the rest of the report’s details, including that 22 Brixton sabs found a different direction than other sabs from which to approach the hunt.
AFJ gave his real name to the police. He had been arrested before, and given several different names, but would never have used someone else’s real name as it would obviously be detrimental to them.
Coles gave his name as Christopher Andrew Jones and an address in Plato Road that was a squat. He was charged but failed to appear in court, leading to an arrest warrant being issued for Christopher Jones.
As there was a real Christopher Jones in South London anarchist circles, this may well have led to him being arrested and charged. It could also lead to the address he gave being visited by police looking to arrest Jones.
Asked about legal advice, AFJ says that activists usually used solicitors who they knew and trusted to advise correctly. If they were arrested together, they often used the same lawyer. They would refuse to use the duty solicitor at the police station as duty solicitors were felt to be more sympathetic to the police and wouldn’t have the specialist knowledge required to defend activists.
Andy Coles says he called the ‘Hunt Saboteurs Association solicitor’. The Inquiry is keen to know if police officers were part of groups that received legal advice together, as this would breach the principle of clients having confidential contact with their lawyers. However, AFJ doesn’t remember Coles being in any meetings with lawyers.
Miscarriage of Justice?

Hunt saboteurs around and on one of their Land Rovers. Pic: Andrew Testa
AFJ was convicted of aggravated trespass and obstructing a police officer. He was fined £175. AFJ asks the Inquiry to consider whether Coles’s involvement means his conviction should be reviewed.
Hudson establishes that Coles did not encourage AFJ, he may have driven him but if he hadn’t someone else would have. AFJ was an experienced sab who ran at the hunt. Taking all this into account, why would the conviction be unsafe?
But the point of reviewing convictions isn’t just about the person’s guilt, it’s about whether they received a fair trial. If the prosecution fails to give the defence all evidence – and with Coles’s secret reports of the day, they most certainly did – then the court was not following its own processes to ensure a fair trial.
The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting asks about AFJ’s actions on the day he was arrested. He seems curious to work out if it was AFJ’s intention not just to demonstrate this opposition to the increased criminalisation of protest and much more, but also to disrupt the fox-hunting. AFJ says it was both. It’s unclear what this means for the safety of his conviction.
AFJ says it’s something he would like ‘further discussion’ about.
The events of 19 November 1994 were AFJ’s final involvement in activism. He had not been involved with anything for a while before that. Despite this, he is recorded in January 1993, April 1993, September 1993 and February 1997 in documents by Operation Wheel Brace, the Met’s investigation into ‘criminally active animal extremists’.
‘I was never an animal extremist. That’s a mischaracterisation of my views and motivations.
I would question whether the amount of criminality justified the amount of resource that was put into monitoring activities of people like myself.’
AFJ says that the spycops deceiving women into relationships is very concerning. They need to abide by strict guidelines. They have to have accountability.
With that, the questioning ends. Mitting thanks AFJ profusely:
‘You have given evidence frankly about what you did. You have also given very helpful evidence about what occurred 30-ish years ago and your participation in it, and you have given me evidence which will go some way to assisting me to determine whether or not the deployment of undercover officers into groups such as the one that you belonged to was justified or not.’