Tranche 3 Phase 1, Day 17
20 November 2025

INTRODUCTION

On the afternoon of Thursday 20 November 2025, the Undercover Policing Inquiry heard evidence from Baroness Doreen Lawrence, the mother of murdered teenager, Stephen Lawrence.

This was a key evidence day for the Inquiry. The Lawrence family’s campaign for justice for their son shone a light on institutional racism in the Metropolitan Police.

The revelation, in 2014, that the Met had sent spies to report on the Lawrence family was the straw that broke the camel’s back in the spycops scandal. It was the trigger that prompted the then Home Secretary, Theresa May, to set up the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI), an independent, judge-led inquiry into undercover policing in England and Wales.

The main focus of the UCPI 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 mostly left-wing, progressive groups.

Baroness Lawrence has given the Inquiry a written witness statement [UCPI0000038014].

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

The hearing room was more packed than usual, with several media outlets present, leading to widespread coverage of the hearing at the end of the day (ITVX, The Guardian, The Express).

BACKGROUND – ALL THE INVESTIGATIONS

The Lawrence family have been fighting for justice for Stephen for 32 years. There have been numerous investigations, inquests and inquiries into Stephen’s death and the police response.

In November 1993 there was the Barker review (mentioned in more detail below). An inquest opened on 21 December 1993 which was suspended after new leads came to light. It resumed in February 1997 and found that Stephen had been:

‘unlawfully killed by five white youths in an unprovoked racist attack.’

The family brought their own private prosecution of the five killers at the Old Bailey. On 22 April 1995, the second anniversary of Stephen’s death, a judge issued summonses and warrants to arrest the named suspects.

She told this Inquiry that she went into court believing they stood a chance, but it was clear from the first day that the judge was unsympathetic. He did not allow the jurors to hear much of the evidence.

Most of the trial was taken up with technical legal arguments, and the jury were instructed to reach a not guilty verdict. The case was dismissed in April 1996.

Hemingway pointed out that the judge in that case was not criticised in the Macpherson report published at the end of the 1997-8 public inquiry. Lawrence replied: ‘He should have been’.

In 1997, Kent police conducted an independent review of the Met’s murder investigation, following the family’s the formal complaint to the Police Complaints Authority.

Then, in July 1997, the Home Secretary ordered a public inquiry, chaired by Sir William Macpherson.

Macpherson published the Lawrence inquiry’s report in February 1999, and found that the Metropolitan Police were institutionally racist. He defined that as:

‘The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin.

It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour, which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.’

That definition was raised by the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, during opening statements to this phase of hearings. He shocked core participants by saying he doubts whether it applies to the work of the SDS because they don’t directly provide a service to members of the public.

In January 2012, there was a further review of the killing including fresh evidence. Consequently two of the five killers, Gary Dobson and David Norris, were tried and convicted of Stephen’s murder, almost 20 years after the event.

After several years of shocking revelations in the spycops scandal, in June 2013 it was revealed that the Lawrences had been targeted by undercover officers.

In response, the government set up the Ellison Review into Met corruption in the handling of the Lawrence investigation and the Macpherson inquiry.

The Review confirmed the spying had happened. The fact that it hadn’t been mentioned in any previous proceedings was indefensible. It was the trigger that led to the Undercover Policing Inquiry being announced.

In September 2025, over three decades after Stephen’s murder, the College of Policing was commissioned by the Metropolitan Police to conduct an independent review of the investigation into Stephen’s murder, to determine if there are any outstanding relevant lines of inquiry which can be pursued.

THE UNDERCOVER POLICE

Baroness Lawrence arrived at the UCPI to give evidence to her third public inquiry into the police handling of her son’s death.

The decade that we have all had to wait for this Inquiry to reach this stage pales into insignificance in the face of the thirty years and counting that the Lawrence family have been fighting for truth and justice. Her courage, tenacity and above all, endurance should be an inspiration to us.

Given the number of investigations surrounding the case, Hemingway had to make clear the role of this Inquiry:

‘We have a long line of different investigations, different events that have happened, and it is evident that you are still fighting for justice for Stephen all these years later.

I won’t go into any detail on those previous investigations as I’ve said, but the Inquiry won’t seek to go behind those findings either…

What this Inquiry is interested in is the extent to which matters concerning you, your family, the Stephen Lawrence campaign which was then set up to try to bring his killers to justice, and the groups surrounding the campaign, were reported on by undercover officers.’

Hemingway began by asking Lawrence about her personal background, growing up in Jamaica and coming to London as a child in the 1950s. After leaving school she worked in banking.

She was also asked about Stephen as a little boy. He liked cars, drawing and reading. As he got older he wanted to be an architect. There weren’t many Black children at Stephen’s school, so the majority of his friends were white.

Stephen was just 18 years old when he was murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting at a bus stop on Well Hall Road in Eltham on the evening of 22 April 1993.

Before going on to look at the police response to the murder, the Inquiry asked Lawrence to explain where she was that night. She explained that she was on a study group field trip to the Black Country as part of a humanities degree.

This question was motivated by a claim made by Special Demonstration Squad officer HN43 Peter Francis in his written witness statement to the Inquiry [UCPI0000036012]. He says he received information that ‘could discredit Doreen Lawrence’ which he passed on to his manager, HN86 (but didn’t write up in a report). The ‘information’ was merely a rumour that she had been out partying the night Stephen died.

The suggestion that her attending a party while her 18-year-old son was doing something else could possibly discredit her is, in itself, offensive, but in any case, it was clearly not true.

POLICE RACISM IN RESPONSE TO MURDER

Lawrence said that she did experience racism in her life. She described the racial prejudice that halted her career progression in banking. However, she had not had any dealings with the police before Stephen was murdered, and nothing had prepared her for what was to come.

Doreen Lawrence found out through Stephen’s friends that, after the murder, the police were going to his school and questioning people: Why was he out that night? Where was he on the way home from? What was he doing?

‘The assumption is that, you know, my son must been a criminal, and that was what they kept bringing up.’

Stephen was a young man with no criminality. The police could not believe that a Black family had had no engagement with the police before their son was murdered. It is perhaps unsurprising. Their racist policing puts so many innocent Black youths in the frame that Stephen must have been comparatively rare.

‘When I heard about the stabbing, the main artery that was severed. I just thought that they would be so outraged that they would want to do whatever they could to bring Stephen’s killers to justice…

They showed no interest whatsoever. And if we hadn’t kept speaking out and challenging what was happening, I think to this day we would never have got any conviction whatsoever…

This is when they start thinking about the racism, because had Stephen been white they would have looked at it completely different.’

MARCHES AGAINST THE BNP IN THE AREA

Stephen was not the only victim of a racist stabbing in the area around that time. Rolan Adams, Gurdeep Bhangal, and Rohit Duggal were all named as victims.

At the UCPI, we have heard from witnesses like Lois Austin, Alex Owolade and Karen Doyle about the impact of the presence of the British National Party (BNP) in East London.

All spoke of the efforts of the community to protect themselves against a growing fascist threat, including the 1993 demonstrations against the BNP headquarters in Welling.

During Lawrence’s evidence we heard how Stephen’s friend, Duwayne Brooks, who had been with Stephen that night and survived the attack, was arrested after one of those demonstrations.

Brooks attended the Welling demonstration on 8 May 1993 and SDS officers were asked to identify him from photos. He was then arrested for violent disorder. Lawrence pointed out how inappropriate this was:

‘Rather than them investigating Stephen’s murder they wanted to discredit Duwayne…

Duwayne was the witness, then he should be able to tell the police exactly what happened on the night and so by singling him out in the way in which they did, what they’re trying to do is to discredit anything that he had to say.’

Brooks was twice prosecuted on charges so ludicrous that the case was dismissed by the judge as an abuse of process without Brooks having to even speak. This is so exceptional that there is no other person known to have had this type of dismissal twice.

OVERT RACISM IN THE SDS

Regarding anti-racists and anti-fascists as a problem rather than racism and fascism has been a baked-in feature from the start of the Special Demonstration Squad. It has deployed many more officers into anti-racist groups than into racist ones, and even targeted campaigns against apartheid in South Africa.

We saw evidence of overtly racist comments being made by SDS managers like HN86 and his boss, HN593 Superintendent Bob Potter.

In his written witness statement to the Inquiry [UCPI0000036012], whistleblower SDS officer HN43 Peter Francis maintains:

‘The Special Branch attitude towards the Lawrence family was 100% racist. They were viewed as unable to think for themselves or come up with and run their campaign themselves.’

Francis describes management using horrifically racist language, referring to Black justice campaigners as ‘monkeys’. He claims HN86 said the Lawrence family were being led by their lawyer Imran Khan KC ‘by the rings through their noses’.

Lawrence was asked whether she recalls any overt racism from the police. She says they may not have used that language to her face, but their dismissive attitude spoke volumes about their beliefs:

‘I think they believe that as a Black you can’t string two sentences together, and that many times I think they believe that Mr Khan had to had to speak on my behalf and tell me what to say, which is so further from the truth.

So I think that they have this opinion of what a Black person is like or what a Black family is like. So that seems to influence the way in which they think about people…

I think the police is always very clever and not able to speak in those terms. But by their actions you can always determine exactly what they’re saying to you… they’re so dismissive of anything that you have to say…

Nobody can ever say I’ve been disrespectful to any officer, all my questioning has always been in a way in which I expect them to have respect for me as I have respect for them. And so that’s always been my way of behaving. But I don’t feel as if I’ve always had that from police officers.’

The police have claimed they had to spy on the Lawrence family to prevent supposedly subversive political groups from manipulating or controlling them. However, it is obvious that Baroness Lawrence was very clear in her own objectives and more than capable of managing her own campaign. The family were not about to be influenced or overrun by anyone else.

PREJUDICE IN THE POLICE RESPONSE

In the aftermath of Stephen’s murder, two Family Liaison Officers (FLO), Linda Holden and Steve Bevan, were assigned to the family. Lawrence feels that they did not do their job.

She explained that at the time she had no real understanding of what FLOs were supposed to do, but she now knows:

‘They should be informing us about how the investigation is going, and we didn’t get that sense at all from them.’

Instead, it seemed they were suspicious of the family and surveilling them. Many people visited the Lawrence home to pay their respects and offer support. The FLOs asked the family for the names of everyone who visited in the days after Stephen’s death.

We were shown witness interviews with both FLOs. Holden explained that names would be taken down and recorded [UCPI000003258]. Bevan described his role as being there to investigate a crime [UCPI000003259]:

‘If anything comes up that, in my experience as a detective, needs to be addressed then it would have been reported back and to hell with the consequences, to be quite honest…

The family had been taken over, had been overtaken by plenty of different factions trying to obviously make a political point.’

It is evident that, from the very start, the police took a political approach to the Lawrence family.

Paul Condon was the Met Commissioner from 1993 to 1999, including the time of Stephen’s murder and the Macpherson public inquiry. In October 2013, he spoke to the Ellison review [UCPI000003255].

Condon went so far as to try and blame the failures of the police on the presence of political campaign groups. He described:

‘a sense that this was very crowded airspace in terms of campaigners. At the time you had, in no particular order, the Anti-Nazi League, the Anti-Racist Alliance, the Socialist Workers Party, you had Militant tendency, you had, I think, something called YRE, which was Youth Against Racism in Europe…

Most of that was incredibly good people trying to do good things; a tiny, tiny, tiny minority really of bad people hell bent on revolution and anarchy.’

POLICE BLAME AN EXCESS OF SUPPORT

Condon said that the police investigation was being inhibited because there were too many civilians supporting the family:

‘It became apparent very early on that this was not a sort of street fight or rival gangs or whatever, this was a nasty vicious murder of an innocent young man, who was brutally killed.

As Commissioner, I had a sense that there was a frustration that they [the police] could not get close to the family to support them. That seemed to be inhibiting the inquiry.’

Lawrence says that isn’t true, the FLOs and the police had plenty of opportunity to talk to the family and to properly investigate the murder:

‘We have, especially myself, tried at every attempt to support the police in their investigation by passing on information that came to us. We did not withhold anything from them. And when the liaison officer came to our house, we would give them those information.

What they didn’t do was to inform us as to what happened to that information that we had passed on. So there was nothing that came back to us. We were the ones that kept giving, giving, giving.

Nothing was reported back to us and to say that others were impeding the investigation, I would say that’s not true…

I think they read into whatever they wanted to read into it. Because if they were really looking to solve Stephen’s murder, they would concentrate on the investigation and the information that they were given. And obviously they weren’t doing that.’

Spycop Peter Francis says he received a list of names derived from the lists made by the FLOs and he was asked to establish whether these people were ‘known to the SDS’, what their political affiliations were, and whether they could pose an issue for public order.

He says the list was stapled in his diary. He would regularly refer to it during the early months of his deployment, which began in September 1993, five months after Stephen was killed.

Lawrence explained that she doesn’t really know who was at her house at that time, she had just lost her son and she was mostly shut up in her room grieving, but she does recall the FLOs asking who all the visitors were. She says that the people who came to her house were there to support them, whereas the FLOs were not asking about Stephen or even about the family.

FLO Bevan said when interviewed that the Anti-Racist Alliance and African National Congress were both present in the house. Doreen has no recollection of the latter ever being there.

However, she did meet the ANC’s Nelson Mandela in London during his visit to the UK. He spoke out after the meeting to say that, while he knew Black lives were cheap in apartheid South Africa, he did not expect it to also be the case in London.

That publicity actually led to some arrests being made for the murder, but prosecutors later dropped the charges.

The family’s lawyer, Imran Khan KC, tried to get answers on behalf of the family about why the police were so interested in whoever was providing support. He was met with a wall of silence.

Many groups organised vigils and demonstrations in the aftermath of Stephen’s death. Lawrence pointed out that she was not concerned with anyone’s political agenda. She wanted the focus to be on Stephen, so they set up the Lawrence family campaign. They had a number of key members, including Khan, and they also had links to trade unions.

They also set up the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust in his memory. The Trust initially focused on Jamaica and South Africa, supporting young people who, like Stephen, wanted to be architects.

We saw SDS reports about alleged tensions between some of the political groups that were supporting the Lawrence campaign, for example over whether to hold demonstrations in central or South East London. Lawrence made clear she was not a part of this:

‘I don’t like marches, so I don’t go on marches. I don’t feel that at times that really benefits you in a way.’

She was also still working and bringing up her two surviving children. In any case, she was abroad, burying her son, when the demonstration in question took place. Nevertheless, the family was blamed for the disorder that occurred near the BNP headquarters in Welling, South London on 16 October 1993.

Lawrence was asked what she knew about some of the people who supported her family’s campaign, such as Asad Rehman and the Newham Monitoring Group, Alex Owolade and the Movement for Justice, and groups like the Nation of Islam, the Anti-Nazi League and the Socialist Workers Party.

She says she didn’t really know them, she had heard of some of them but had made clear that she was not about to support the other aspects of their campaigning as she was only interested in justice for Stephen.

In the Inquiry’s morning break, Tom Fowler discussed the hearing with Kate Wilson, author of Disclosure: Unravelling the Spycops Files.

POLICE PROTECT THEMSELVES

From the start, the Lawrence family fought to get justice for Stephen. In 1993, they met Peter Lloyd, Minister of State at the Home Office, and asked him for a public inquiry into the handling of Stephen’s case.

He said they didn’t have the evidence to support an inquiry. Lawrence pointed out that this was because:

‘They did not collect the evidence. And if they did, they did nothing with it…

The struggle that we had to go through, it’s like an everyday thing the police did not want to know. People in authority did not want to know. You know, it’s just another Black boy’s been murdered. You know. So what?

We were constantly being ignored. Even though we raised our concerns, nobody was listening to us.’

In fact, it is not entirely true to say the Lawrence family campaign was being ignored. In private, the police were listening, and they were furious with the family for calling them to account and putting pressure on them.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner David Osland was in charge of the area where the family lived. He wrote of his irritation to Commissioner Paul Condon as early as 8 September 1993:

‘Our patience is wearing thin on 3 Area [south-east London], not only with the Lawrence family and their representatives, but also with self-appointed public and media commentators.’

Osland insisted:

‘I am totally satisfied that the Lawrence family have received a professional, sensitive and sympathetic service from the police’

In autumn 1993, the police commissioned an ‘independent’ review of the case, conducted by Detective Chief Superintendent John Barker (who was an officer in the Met, so hardly independent). He also concluded:

‘The investigation has progressed satisfactorily and all lines of enquiry were correctly pursued.’

He went on to blame the ‘involvement of active politically motivated groups’ for the bad press and public relations the police were suffering around the case.

Lawrence pointed out that if they actually had investigated properly, she would not be here 32 years later, giving evidence to her third public inquiry.

In fact, the family were not even told the conclusions of the Barker review at the time. The Macpherson inquiry described the Barker report as factually incorrect, inadequate, flawed and indefensible.

Lawrence says that with each new inquiry she discovered things about the investigation that the police should have told her before but had not.

In December 1997, Kent police published the result of their investigation into police procedures in the Lawrence investigation. It identified weaknesses, omissions and lost opportunities. Nearly five years after the murder, it was the first time Lawrence had heard that, within 24 hours of Stephen being attacked, someone had walked into a police station to give names but was turned away.

During the first inquest they discovered that Stephen did not really receive first aid at the scene. A qualified first aider came and offered to help but the police didn’t let her. Lawrence recalls this being because they were afraid of ‘a black man’s blood’.

Over and over again we heard how the police failed to keep the family informed about their botched investigation.

SPYCOPS ON THE LAWRENCE CAMPAIGN

SDS spying and reporting on the family began in earnest around 1998, while the Macpherson inquiry was taking place.

The first phase of the inquiry was looking at Stephen’s death and investigation. A second phase examined wider issues of racism in the community, and other justice campaigns.

After the announcement of the Macpherson inquiry, the focus of the Lawrence family campaign shifted to mobilising around it. They were a small group, involved in organised, lawful and public campaigning.

They held regular press conferences, encouraged people to attend the hearings, produced a booklet about what was going on, and linked with other families and organisations to make submissions in the second phase. There was nothing about the campaign that was not either very public or, for very good reason, private as it involved their family life.

The Undercover Policing Inquiry has SDS reports about the Stephen Lawrence campaign set up by the family, the wider Lawrence family support group, and the Stephen Lawrence public inquiry itself. It even has some personal reporting on Doreen and her then husband Neville.

The reports come primarily from HN81 ‘David Hagan’, but also from HN43 Peter Francis and HN15 Mark Jenner. Lawrence says she has seen photographs of the three men but does not recall knowing any of them.

The reports reflect the same racist attitudes we saw in the early days of the police investigation. In January 1998, HN15 Mark Jenner reported [MPS-0000794] that groups like the Anti-Racist Alliance and Movement For Justice supported families like the Lawrences because they aimed to ‘influence the naive from within,’ describing a ‘left-wing scramble for recruitment amongst victim families’.

It’s part of an unyielding narrative in SDS reporting: Black and brown people are gullible and easily manipulated, and left wing groups are trying to take over their campaigns in order to gain political power for themselves.

Lawrence says that if she was naive about anything, it was her expectations of the police and how Stephen’s murder would be investigated. She never felt she was being recruited for anything by political groups.

The undercovers’ reports we saw were about groups trying to prevent racist attacks (something which should have been the job of the police). The tone is derisory, implying that preventing racist attacks is somehow a bandwagon and not a legitimate aim.

Most of the reporting on the Lawrences comes from HN81 ‘Dave Hagan’. His deployment was ironically code-named ‘Windmill Tilter’, a reference to Don Quixote bravely attacking windmills, mistaking them for giants. This suggests that, even at the time, the police were aware that his intelligence was exaggerated and wilfully misinterpreted the groups he targeted.

Hagan mainly infiltrated Movement For Justice (MFJ) which, as the name suggests, campaigned on a range of social injustices. For this they were deemed a subversive threat by the paranoid SDS. Hagan, true to type, continually exaggerated their intentions.

Hagan submitted reports on groups attending the Lawrence inquiry hearings, and his handwritten note on one of them [MPS-0721970] claimed:

‘It was MFJ’s intention to openly or covertly influence the campaign. It was a high profile opportunity to attack the “state”.’

It was quite unnerving to be sat in this Undercover Policing Inquiry hearing, a public inquiry into police wrongdoing, listening to evidence of how the police treat attendance at such public hearings as though it were a subversive or criminal act.

Hagan’s reports, such as one filed on 25 June 1998 [MPS-0001147], note the race and gender of the people attending the Macpherson inquiry hearing.

Lawrence pointed to that report to say that, six years after Stephen died, these so-called police intelligence gatherers had not even bothered to learn how to correctly spell his name, always using a ‘v’ instead of a ‘ph’.

Again, this is a consistent part of spycop reporting, getting the names of the people and groups they spy on wrong. It happens so much that it becomes hard to believe they could be this incompetent, and perhaps instead it’s another way to denigrate those they spied on.

In the hearing’s lunch break, Tom Fowler made two reaction videos. The first was with James and Lauren from Bristol Counterfire:

The second was with John Burke-Monerville whose family camapign for justice is parallel to the Lawrences:

KILLERS TAKE THE STAND

We were shown an extract from the 2018 BBC documentary ‘Stephen: The Murder that Changed a Nation’, which included footage from 29 June 1998, the first day the five men who murdered Stephen attended the inquiry to give evidence. The killers were met with widespread anger from the crowd.

There is a lot of spycops reporting focused on that day. People were understandably frustrated that these men were still free, and many people wanted to be present in the public gallery for their evidence.

SDS reporting prior to the event [MPS-0001129] describes plans for a demonstration involving people turning their backs on the five killers, and holding two minutes’ silence in memory of Stephen.

The BBC clip played on, showing Commissioner Paul Condon refusing to resign after the Macpherson report was published in 1999. He challenged the finding of institutional racism and refused to accept that his force was racist.

We saw Doreen Lawrence being interviewed at the time, pointing out:

‘for Condon to say it was just a few bad apples… It wasn’t just a few. There were hundreds of them.’

A statement that is as true now, about the events being examined at this current Inquiry and the Metropolitan Police of today, as it was at the end of the 1990s.

Asked if she remembers the events outside the Macpherson inquiry on 29 June 1998, Lawrence pointed out she was inside, so she didn’t witness it. However, it was the arrogant and disrespectful attitude of the five killers as they walked in (which is evident in the video clips) that provoked the crowd.

A key point for this Inquiry, about that day, is that undercover officer HN81 ‘Dave Hagan’ was in the crowd, and he has admitted to taking part in the disorder, joining in with the pushing and shoving.

Lawrence was clearly angered by the SDS attitude to breaking the law:

‘If you are a police officer you should not be engaged in those activities. And yes, he said he was undercover, but why did he feel it was right for him to engage in those activities? You are supposed to uphold the law and there clearly shows that he wasn’t on that day.’

She also pointed out that, given the level of public interest in that hearing, a second public gallery with video link-up should have been installed from the start, which would have made the protests unnecessary.

SUPPORT GROUPS UNDER SUSPICION

Hemingway showed us report after report, mostly filed by Hagan, about groups like the Nation of Islam and the Movement For Justice, their campaigning activities and their relationship with the Lawrence family and the Lawrence campaign.

Lawrence was quite dismissive of these reports:

‘The campaign was just seeking for justice, to get those individuals who murdered my son to be locked away, and that’s the only purpose of what the campaign was there for. What these other groups were there doing, I cannot say.’

In response to questions about whether she disapproved of groups like the Nation of Islam, she pointed out that while she was aware of them, she didn’t have strong opinions, and doesn’t believe anyone else in the family disapproved of them either.

Likewise Movement For Justice:

‘I was not aware of what the Movement For Justice and what their position has been, because it wasn’t anything that I was part of. So I can’t answer anything to do with them.’

She also pointed out that the police focus on these groups was all wrong:

‘To be told how many years later, after Stephen has been killed, that this was going on, it’s just to show the disregard for us as a family and it is more important for them to look into other groups.

We weren’t concerned about other groups. What we were concerned about is how the investigation was being carried out.’

However, the police even treated Lawrence’s indifference to these groups with suspicion. One report [MPS-0001129] included a handler’s speculation:

‘It is not beyond the realms of possibility that the inactivity of the Lawrence family in not supporting the various groups is that they have been spoken to at a senior level and been promised some sort of carrot. (Perhaps a resignation).’

Lawrence responded that she never received any such promise:

‘It was suggested to me about we should ask for the Commissioner to stand down and I felt at the time it wasn’t for me to ask the Commissioner, it is for the Commissioner himself to know his role and for him to step down on his own accord and not for me to suggest to him. That’s how I felt at the time.’

In fact, despite intense public pressure and the long procession of shocking revelations, there were no resignations over the handling of Stephen Lawrence’s murder.

She was asked about the accuracy of SDS speculation in their reporting about the levels of activity in the Lawrence family campaign. Lawrence brought us all sharply back to the reality of what was happening to her at the time and the utter lack of humanity displayed by the police in spying on her family:

‘It weighed heavily on me, trying to manage my life, my children, as well as all this was going on. It’s really difficult, and we shouldn’t have to be put through all of this.

As a family we should not have gone through this. We’ve not had an opportunity to grieve over our son, because we are constantly battling, fighting for something that should be there readily for us.’

Her answers also exposed the inherent sexism in the reporting which described her as ‘less politicised’ than her husband. She pointed out that she was simply unable to attend a lot of meetings because she had to be there for her children. She is angry that the police tried to pit her against her husband:

‘They saw Neville as being more reasonable than I was. Because I was asking intrusive questions, because I wanted to know more than what they were telling us.

And they seemed to feel that I was probably too inquisitive, whatever, I don’t know. But I know they were trying to pit us against each other. So they see Neville as quite being reasonable and me not so.’

PERSONAL INTRUSION

The reporting also touched on her private life. On 24 July 1993, Hagan recorded in an intelligence report [MPS-0001212] that Neville and Doreen Lawrence were separated.

SDS officers and reports have variously claimed that this information came from Suresh Grover (who denies it could have come from him), or that they heard it from Duwayne Brooks.

Interviewed in 2013 for the Ellison review [MPS-0721973], Hagan defended the fact that he reported it on the grounds that:

‘All intelligence is good.’

This incredibly intrusive reporting of Lawrence’s private life is of particular concern to the Inquiry because the information ended up in the press.

Lawrence says she has no idea how the police or the press would have come to know that. She recalls having confidential meetings with the police and then hearing what was said in the media. There were so many leaks to the press, she couldn’t trust anyone.

She also reminded Hemingway that, as well as being spied on by the Metropolitan Police, her family was also targeted by the press in the phone hacking scandal. However, wherever the information that she and her husband were separated came from, she made clear:

‘Our family life is private and should not be in a police report.’

Asked about the allegations that the SDS tried to find information to discredit the family, Lawrence replied:

‘I wasn’t looking for special treatment. Somebody had died. It is your job to investigate that murder. And that’s all I was asking for, nothing else.

And so to spend their time looking to smear and to find things to destroy us as a family. As I say it’s hard to believe that people go to that extreme.’

In the afternoon break at the hearing, Tom discussed the evidence with Heather Mendick:

RACIST SPYING ALL THE WAY TO THE TOP

Once she had finished presenting the SDS intelligence reports about the Lawrence family, Hemingway moved on to examine the attitudes of SDS managers to campaigns for justice, and the Lawrence campaign in particular.

We were shown a management document dated 1 July 1998 about Hagan’s deployment [MPS-0748092], which described him as being ‘in a unique position to report on the “victims” of deaths in police custody’, sneeringly putting the word victims in quotes.

We also saw a Special Branch note [MPS-0748392] which referred to ‘perceived police corruption and racism’, demonstrating the police attitude that the very real grievances being highlighted by these campaigns didn’t really exist.

Lawrence was asked about the 1997-1998 SDS Annual Report [MPS-0728620], which indicated a shift in focus towards spying on community-based groups in areas like Brixton, groups like the Movement For Justice and their supposed threat to public order.

She says there is nothing that would justify reporting on her and her family. They had done nothing that could give cause for concern for public order.

HN10 Bob Lambert was an SDS undercover officer who gave evidence about his deployment in tranche 2 of the Undercover Policing Inquiry in 2024. After his time undercover ended, he was promoted to running the unit. He became its controller of operations from 1993 to 1998, a few months after Stephen’s murder to the middle of the Macpherson inquiry.

In an interview in 2013 [MPS-0722549], Lambert claimed his spies were actually there to protect the Lawrence family from campaigners.

Lawrence says if that was their aim, why weren’t they communicating that with the family?

‘Those who were doing things against us, they were well protected. And who was there to protect us? You know, there is no one out there to protect the family.

So it goes at the beginning when Stephen was killed, and the fact that we were sort of thrust into the limelight of things happening, there was nobody supporting the family. We were just left exposed, constantly.’

CORRUPT OFFICERS FALL UPWARDS

However, perhaps the most shocking aspect of the spying on the Lawrence family is the fact that the Stephen Lawrence Review Team, the senior police team producing the Commissioner’s submissions to the Macpherson inquiry, were making use of the SDS spies.

Richard Walton from the Review Team met with HN81 ‘Dave Hagan’ in Bob Lambert’s garden on 14 August 1998 to get information about the Lawrence family supporters’ campaign.

Immediately afterwards, Bob Lambert described that meeting as follows [MPS-0728625]:

‘It was a fascinating and valuable exchange of information concerning an issue which, according to RW [Richard Walton], continues to dominate the Commissioner’s agenda on a daily basis.

RW thanked WT [‘Windmill Tilter’, aka HN81 ‘Dave Hagan] for his invaluable reporting on the subject in recent months. An in-depth discussion enabled him to increase his understanding of the Lawrences’ relationship with the various campaigning groups (like MFJ).

This, he said, would be of great value as he continued to prepare a draft submission to the Inquiry on behalf of the Commissioner. MFJ’s future plans were also discussed at some length.

RW explained a lot of the behind the scenes politics involving the Home Office. It emerged that there is great sensitivity around the Lawrence issue with both the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister extremely concerned that the Metropolitan Police could end up with its credibility – in the eyes of London’s black community – completely undermined.’

Lawrence pointed out that the concerns of the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary were well founded:

‘At the end of the day, within the Black community, the police had no credibility in how they police us and how, you know, what’s happened over the years.

So, yes, in fact rather than doing things to make it better, or to make sure [people] within the Black community they feel supported, what they were doing is the complete opposite.’

When the meeting that Lambert brokered between Richard Walton and HN81 ‘Dave Hagan’ was revealed in March 2014, there was major outrage. Not only did the government set up the Undercover Policing Inquiry but Walton, who had risen to be head of Counter-Terrorism Command, was removed from his post.

Seven months later, despite a pending report from the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the Met reinstated him. Less than a week after the damning report was published in January 2016, Walton resigned, thus avoiding misconduct proceedings.

Lambert had retired from the police in 2007 and had two academic posts teaching new generations of police managers and spycops. He resigned from them both just before the Independent Police Complaints Commission report was published. He retains his MBE awarded for services to policing.

KEEPING IT ALL SECRET

Another briefing note from the time of the Macpherson inquiry [MPS-0720946] contains comments from Operation Commander Colin Black to the Detective Superintendent of Special Branch’s S Squad.

He says:

‘SDS is, as usual, well positioned at the focal crisis points of policing in London. I am aware that Detective Inspector Richard Walton of CO24 [the Met’s race and violent crime task force] receives ad hoc off-the-record briefings from the SDS.

I have reiterated to him that it is essential that the knowledge of the operation goes no further. I would not wish him to receive anything on paper.

I have established a correspondence route to Deputy Assistant Commissioner Grieve via Detective Sergeant McDowell, formerly of SO12, and opened an SP file for copy correspondence with CO24.

It will, of course, fall to C Squad to provide the bulk of that material. They will undoubtedly consult SDS as appropriate.’

It is evident that SDS reporting on the Lawrence campaign was going to the very top of the Met at the time, and that they planned to keep spying on the family and their supporters for quite some time. This is a long way indeed from the police’s claim that it was just a bit of incidental reporting because of other groups that supported the campaign.

It’s also clear that the senior officers knew at the time that it was wrong, as evidenced by requests for the operation to be kept secret and nothing to be put in writing.

Asked how she feels about this, Lawrence almost seemed to deliberately misinterpret the question:

‘It seems as if all during Stephen’s case that senior officers had been informed or continued to be informed about Stephen’s case, but none of that was ever communicated to us. No information was shared to us for us to understand how they are working.

And to say whether or not there was anything to come out of the work that they are doing… Were they looking to arrest any of these individuals?’

She reminded Hemingway that she was never even kept informed by the police about how the murder investigation into her son’s death was going, so she certainly never knew anything about the rest of their activities.

She then cut to the heart of the matter:

‘It just seems as if they are just trying to cover themselves, protect themselves from criticism.’

Had the police put as much resources and attention into this case when Stephen was murdered as they did into spying on the family at this late stage, they would have caught the killers.

Worse, had the police put the resources in finding the gang the first time they attacked someone, they wouldn’t have been still on the street and able to kill Stephen.

STILL AVOIDING THE TRUTH

At the end of her evidence, Lawrence was re-examined by her own counsel, Imran Khan KC, who has been with her since the very beginning of her campaign. There was a marked difference between Hemingway’s persistent queries about disorderly intent and Khan’s connection with the outrageous truths of the issue.

His questions gave a mother, very clearly still grieving her murdered son, an opportunity to tell the Met Police how she really felt.

She pointed out that the police knew who was carrying out racist attacks in the area at the time:

‘Those individuals were known to the police before Stephen’s murder… and the local people within the area knew of them and were giving as much information as they could to the police. And the mere fact that they did nothing with those information.

Q. Would it be fair to say that had they put resources into looking at the previous murders and the racism in the area, do you think that might have made any difference to Stephen and what happened to him?

A. Definitely… if that had been a Black family who the police knew about, they would leave no stone unturned in either to arrest them and to make sure that those individuals were brought to justice.

But when it comes to a Black individual that has been murdered by whites, it’s as if they don’t care. His death is meaningless and that’s why I was just so adamant in making sure that Stephen’s name is never forgotten, because he did nothing wrong.’

She expressed her anger at Sir Paul Condon, who knew all about the police failures and the spying. He entered the House of Lords before she did and she says he cannot even look at her when she is there:

‘He’s never approached me. And even if he walked past in the corridor, he would just hold his head straight, he would never communicate with me.’

Khan asked her about her meetings with successive Home Secretaries. Michael Howard was Home Secretary from the time Stephen was murdered until just before the Macpherson inquiry was announced four years later. He did not meet with her.

But in 2014, just after the Undercover Policing Inquiry was announced, he requested an urgent meeting in which he eagerly assured her that he had known nothing about the spying.

‘He’s the one who invited me to a meeting and he was quite keen to express that he knew nothing about the undercover policing that was happening around my family…

But I don’t believe anything that he was saying, because I think as a Home Secretary, between the Commissioner, so they report to each other, they have conversations, so he would have known about what was happening. I don’t believe that he didn’t know.’

He is now Lord Howard, and Lawrence notes that, like Paul Condon, he studiously ignores her in the House of Lords:

‘We pass each other in the corridor and he’s never spoken to me. So that was the very first time, when he invited me to a meeting. And since then, he hasn’t spoken to me again.’

Her message to the Home Office was this:

‘I would say that the Home Secretary, whoever they are, they have a duty of care. You know, they are there to – especially around the police – there to protect society. And I am part of that society. And none of that took place for us.’

She said the Home Office needs to come and give evidence and explanations to this Inquiry.

She pointed out that, despite it all, she is there giving evidence:

‘It’s something that I am obliged to do. And I think if I was to turn around and say, “I don’t want to be here”, I am sure there would be eyebrows raised saying I have been very critical but yet I am not here in person to give evidence. I don’t like being in the spotlight, I really don’t like it.’

And she had a very clear message for the SDS officers accused of racism and spying on her family, HN86 and HN81 ‘Dave Hagan’, who are both refusing to come to the Inquiry:

‘The least you can do, and have that respect, is to come and give your evidence in public.’

TRUTH MUST ACCOMPANY APOLOGIES

Lawrence spoke about institutional racism, an issue she has worked on for many years and clearly understands deeply. She made clear that the failure to investigate Stephen’s murder was driven by institutional racism, a fact firmly supported by the findings of the Macpherson inquiry.

‘Stephen was a Black young man and in their eyes he must be a criminal. He must be up to something. He cannot be innocent.

And so they set about in whatever they are doing is to undermine we, as individuals, that we do have feelings…

I thought they would be so disgusted in how Stephen was murdered that they would want to do all that they could to bring his killers to justice. And the reality is no, they weren’t interested.’

She also made clear that the attitudes of the SDS in assuming she was being led by others, or that she was not particularly intelligent, or that they were seeking to protect her so they put resources into the undercover operations, were all driven by institutional racism as well:

‘I find it quite insulting really, for them to think that I couldn’t string two sentences together, and also the fact that they needed to protect me.

Yes, they needed to protect me, because I am part of society. They needed to protect my son, which they didn’t do…

It is what followed that, that their intent was completely different.’

Lawrence received an apology from the Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe on 27 March 2014 for the spying on the family.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Saville attended this Inquiry in person on the day she gave her evidence, to apologise to her again. He apologised in private, but Lawrence spoke publicly to him from the witness box:

‘I would welcome the apologies, because I think I have had so many over the years, you know, when is an apology going to be where I feel satisfied that they understand what has happened, and it has taken 32 years for us to get to this point…

It’s like when things become in the public domain, they feel that they need to apologise, that’s the thing…

Whatever happens out of this Inquiry, this now, is for the truth to be heard and to be published…

So I would like, at the end of this, is the report should be shown that what had happened to us was so wrong; and not just apologies just for the sake of apology, it must be meant that way.’

Doreen Lawrence ended her evidence by talking about her son Stephen:

‘Stephen was a decent young man. He like most young people growing up, you know, cheeky, has his faults about him. But at the end of the day he was respectful. He was respectful. He would never have gone out of his way to hurt anyone… nobody had a bad word to say about him. Nobody.

And the mere fact that his life was taken and to have these people who are supposed to be there to protect him and look after and to make sure that whatever happened to him, they did nothing…

For the past 32 years I haven’t had opportunity to grieve my son properly because I have to challenge every step of the way what has happened to him…

Your skin colour should have nothing to do with it. When somebody has done something wrong, they need to be punished. Stephen did nothing wrong, but we have been punished for the past 32 years.’

The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, thanked Doreen Lawrence at the end, not only as a judge, but as a father:

‘I am the father of three sons. I would understand if something had happened to them of the kind which has happened to yours. Thank you for putting yourself through what I know has been a difficult experience and giving evidence to me. Thank you.’

It was an astonishing admission that he’d missed the whole point. Doreen Lawrence wasn’t here because her son died. Rather, it was because of a vast range of racist actions, from the murder itself, through the decades of police reponses to the failure of official procedures and state agencies. These things would never happen to a white family, let alone one where the dad is a knighted judge.

Mitting’s family cannot and will not ever experience what Lawrence has been through. It’s only possible to portray it as the simple loss of a son if you haven’t understood anything about the institutional racism that you’ve just spent the day having laid bare in front of you.

After the hearing ended, Tom Fowelr and Kate Wilson reflected on it:

Tranche 3 Phase 1, Day 16
19 November 2025

INTRODUCTION

On Wednesday 19 November 2025, the Undercover Policing Inquiry heard evidence from Suresh Grover.

Grover is a long-term campaigner against racism. He has worked with the Southall Monitoring Group (later called The Monitoring Group) to help victims of racist violence and their families. Grover was pivotal to the campaign for justice by the family of Stephen Lawrence, a teenager who was murdered by racists in 1993.

This work has led to him being spied on for decades. Released documents show that the Met’s Special Branch opened a file on Grover in the mid 1970s. He was spied on for nearly 20 years before Stephen Lawrence was murdered. The Inquiry ignored this, focusing instead on the 1990s, when Grover was primarily spied on by Special Demonstration Squad officer HN81 ‘David Hagan’.

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.

Grover’s questioning is part of the Inquiry’s Tranche 3, examining the final 15 years of the Special Demonstration Squad, 1993-2008.

Grover has given the Inquiry a written witness statement [UCPI0000038013].

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

BACKGROUND

Grover’s family came from Kenya in 1966 and settled in Nelson, Lancashire. As a teenager in the early 1970s, he was racially attacked and stabbed by skinheads.

‘I was not conscious about racism at that time, but it was a telling moment for me in my life, because before that I didn’t see myself as very different from any other student or kid of my generation.’

The perpetrator was well known. The Grovers had to see him around town, and yet the police refused to even take a statement from him.

‘It really drove me to look at racism and the impact of racism on our communities.’

In the mid 1970s, Grover moved to Southall in West London. Another pivotal moment on his path to activism occurred on 4 June 1976 outside the Dominion cinema on Southall High Street.

‘There was a reporting on the radio that somebody had been murdered, a young student called Gurdip Singh Chaggar, and I saw a police officer at the pool of blood and I went to him and asked him what happened and he just said to me, “Look this is Indian blood, just go away”. The way he said it was as if it was dirty blood.

That inspired a lot of young people in Southall to set up the Southall Youth Movement and come out on the streets against racial violence, because Chaggar’s murder was not the first one.’

THE MURDER OF BLAIR PEACH

On 23 April 1979, the National Front intended to hold a meeting at Southall Town Hall.

‘A public meeting openly calling for repatriation of anybody who was Black or brown or migrant, erasing Southall as a town and creating an English hamlet. That’s how they phrased it.’

There was a huge protest against the meeting, drawing people from many different communities. Police saw the anti-racist protesters as the enemy. Grover was there on the day and describes the scene:

‘A very militaristic occupation of Southall, resulting in 800 people being arrested, who were demonstrating peacefully. In a matter of four hours, 345 people were charged, there were serious injuries.’

One of the antifascists, 33 year old teacher Blair Peach, was killed by police. The Met knew precisely who was responsible yet did nothing.

An investigation by Commander John Cass of the Metropolitan Police’s Complaints Investigation Bureau identified the six officers who had, as a group, attacked Peach. Their lockers were searched and unauthorised weapons were found. One of them had Nazi memorabilia.

Cass’s report was not published at the time (it was eventually published 30 years later in 2010). However, it was available at the time to John Burton, the coroner who conducted the inquest. But Burton was very keen to toe the establishment line.

The Met claimed that Peach had an unusually thin skull. Despite 14 witnesses seeing the assault, Burton questioned whether police were involved at all. Grover was aghast:

‘It wasn’t just the ferocity of the blow, but because somehow he was responsible for having a thin cranium. That outraged a lot of us, and then Dr John Burton kind of out of nowhere created this theory that Blair Peach may have been killed by a left-wing activist to make him a martyr. There is no evidence of it whatsoever.’

The scale of the violence had shocked Grover, and seeing yet another blatant injustice outraged him. He set up the Southall Monitoring Group, embedded in the Asian and African-Caribbean communities to challenge racism, communal violence between religious groups, and domestic violence too:

‘When we set up the Southall Monitoring Group, I remember the first 50 cases that we got, out of which 39 were domestic violence cases. That’s because there was very strong patriarchy in our community and we wanted to challenge these young people.

We wanted to support women unconditionally if they wanted to leave their husbands because of violence. They wanted to set up and support women’s organisations who wanted to develop things autonomously in a self-organised way, so the Southall Black Sisters came out of the women of the Southall Monitoring Group.

It was not possible for us to live in a society where women were treated unequally, and they were part and parcel of the struggle that was taking place for equality and justice and not just against racism.’

Asked about the term and concept of ‘monitoring’, Grover explained that it came from the Black Panther Party in the USA. They were young Black activists who were campaigning against racism, brutality and poverty. As part of this, they would identify particular racist police activity and officers and hold them to account.

SUPPORTING THE TRAUMATISED

Grover says that The Monitoring Group has provided support to over 300 families who have lost a loved one, and given trauma support to over 1,500 victims of racism in the last decade.

He described how the impact of racism is emotional as well as physical, and not just for the person attacked but for whole families, friends and classmates. An instance can impact a whole community, especially when it’s a death.

‘It was about offering professional needs-based culturally-based service to victims of racism. Especially if they had suffered serious offences or were unable to navigate their life because of mental breakdowns or mental health problems, or because the impact was so severe they couldn’t have a meaningful quality of life.

We worked with a lot of psychologists, we created a programme of counselling… and we offered recovery plans to people. It was very private, very confidential.’

After the Stephen Lawrence inquiry in 1998, the Southall Monitoring Group received thousands of enquiries from all over the country. They responded to every one. They realised that they were no longer just for Southall, so changed their name to The Monitoring Group.

Grover is asked about the Ricky Reel campaign. Ricky died after being attacked by racists in October 1997. The police didn’t take his disappearance seriously, instead coming up with racist suggestions such as him running away to escape an arranged marriage.

Grover emphasises that, as always, the campaign was led by the family and he was just someone who supported them. He got local MP John McDonnell involved, organised search parties and had meetings with the police. When, after a week, they persuaded the police to search and directed them to likely places, Ricky’s body was found within a few minutes.

Grover also helped Michael Menson’s family. Menson had died in horrific circumstances in January 1997, the victim of an extremely violent racist attack which included him being set on fire. The police repeatedly suggested he must have done it to himself.

Michael’s family faced police indifference, and a refusal to investigate his death properly. The media were fed misinformation by officers, including smears about Michael’s mental health.

The family contacted The Monitoring Group when it came to Menson’s inquest. The jury reached a verdict of unlawful killing. Despite this, senior police officers continued to insist that the injuries were self-inflicted and that the coroner was wrong. The racist murder was eventually proved and three men were convicted.

Grover also supported Francis and Berthe Climbié after their eight year old daughter Victoria had been tortured and killed by a great-aunt. A great many agencies and professionals had been warned of the danger the girl was in, but they had failed to do anything about it. The ensuing public inquiry brought about major changes to child protection policy in the UK.

Grover described what his support role entailed:

‘Understanding the trauma they are suffering and then creating support around them unconditionally, be available with them on a 24-hour basis. Devise a strategy where we can get answers, whether it is from the police or [to] locate them if they are missing. Develop a campaign around them, using press and media…

It’s not about holding hands, it’s never been that. You know, most people who suffer racism or domestic violence are very conscious of what is the problem. It’s about offering them information and knowledge of what the legal process is and what the campaigning strategy can be. But they are the centre, they make the decisions, and you have to be quite selfless to allow that to happen.’

He said the Group never took charge of a campaign, nor stopped a family from involving whoever else they wanted to involve.

In 1989, Grover was made aware that he was being spied on. Investigative journalist David Rose had covered some of the work Southall Monitoring Group were doing supporting a family in Hounslow that was the target of ongoing racism. The local council had rebuffed The Monitoring Group’s representations and were passing information to the police. The Group was under surveillance by Special Branch.

There were some overt knock-on effects. Grover recounted how local politicians were discouraged from referring cases to The Monitoring Group following discussions with senior police officers. Funders said they were reluctant to allocate money because they’d been told the Group was ‘anti police’.

There were numerous break-ins at the office and to Grover’s car, where nothing of value was stolen, only documents. He was repeatedly stopped and searched by uniformed officers. These things tended to happen when he was involved with cases that had developed a high profile, including that of Stephen Lawrence.

Ramble brings up a Special Branch document from 10 September 1998, concerning the Stephen Lawrence campaign [MPS-0748392], which reported that the anger aroused by such issues could lead to public disorder, adding:

‘A number of groups and individuals see this issue as a natural platform from which to further their own (often extreme) political agenda.’

This is a running theme in spycops reports. They seem unable to comprehend the concept of solidarity, or even that someone could be genuinely anti-racist if they were not personally subjected to racism. Instead, they depict it all as something underhand, a jockeying for power.

Time and again we see the police expressing a belief that the people who say they want political change don’t genuinely mean it. This offers a powerful insight into the hierarchical and devious culture of undercover policing, and how the secret political police (who now openly admit they suffered from failures of ethical judgement) view humanity.

Grover agrees that there were some groups around the Lawrences trying to take advantage, including mainstream political parties. But the Lawrence family were always absolutely clear that they would not tolerate any public disorder on their behalf.

As for the wider potential for disorder, Grover agrees but gives it a different emphasis:

‘There is a lot of suspicion that this issue of racism and police racism won’t be dealt with. And that’s where the anger is coming from.

I think what’s happening is that the Lawrence case is seen as an example or a face of a greater tragedy that the Black communities and brown communities have suffered over decades, if not centuries.

So there is frustration that we are in 1998/1999 and the British state still doesn’t acknowledge that problem of racism. And it has a potential to lead to public disorder depending on what happens, yes.’

‘A CHEQUERED PAST’

The document mentions Grover by name:

‘Suresh Grover, who is the spokesman of the campaign, has long been the de facto head of the Southall Monitoring Group (now simply known as The Monitoring Group). He has a chequered past, involving a number of Trotskyist groups, and a high profile amongst the west London Asian community.’

It’s notable that not only is Trotskyism held to be intrinsically bad, but being Asian apparently ranks alongside it. Grover seems almost bewildered by the accusations:

‘I think it is so shallow, it doesn’t bear any resemblance to the reality… I have never been a member of any political party ever. I have obviously, during the course of campaigns, whether it is the Reel campaign or the campaigns you mentioned, met people from groups that are Trotskyist groups.

I don’t have an issue with talking to people. I have always talked to them. I don’t even have a problem with Trotskyist groups. I have worked with them. I have read Trotsky. It’s not an issue for me, but I have never belonged to them.’

The report continues:

‘Grover has been successful in maintaining the campaign in the public eye. However, he is in danger of losing some support amongst his Asian power base, as many feel he has aligned himself too closely with what they perceive as an Afro-Caribbean dominated campaign.

Furthermore, Grover has had to exercise restraint in his public pronouncements in order to retain his public funding.’

There it is again, the spycop belief that different groups must be in competition with one another, that campaigners are trying to amass personal power, that they all have much more sinister motives than they’re prepared to admit. And now they can apparently be bought off too.

Grover is agog:

‘I don’t think I had a public profile!’

The families he worked with always took the lead and the attention. As for the idea of Asian people not liking campaigns for families of another ethnicity, or The Monitoring Group choosing campaigns on the basis of race:

‘It is just cloud cuckoo land. Families come to us, they can be any race or nationality and we will support them if we have the resources and we believe that we have the capability and the expertise to do that.

So it just happened that I was dealing with the Lawrences, who were from the Caribbean origin, Michael Menson, who is African, and Ricky Reel, who is Asian. The Asian community actually supported the Lawrence campaign. They didn’t see it as different from their own experiences.’

The document also says Grover is about to turn his focus to the Ricky Reel campaign which will give him ‘the opportunity to win back support from his Asian constituency’.

Grover sounds equally disgusted and weary as he dismisses it:

‘I think it is racist stereotyping of me… I am not ambulance chasing different people of different nationalities suffering murder. The Ricky Reel family contacted me, I didn’t contact them.’

As for the suggestion that Asians would only support other Asians:

‘I actually call myself black, because I believe in the word ‘”political black”, I don’t know whether I need to explain that. We called ourselves the black community, which meant a mixture of anybody who had come from colonial countries and suffered racism, including Irish people…

We have never, ever, thought of this as a political campaign for gaining support from people on a Machiavellian basis. This has been purely to support a family because of the injustice that they have suffered.’

The document hasn’t finished with smearing Grover. It continues:

‘Grover privately agrees that the militancy that the [Stephen Lawrence] Inquiry has generated must be built on and he has promised the MFJ [Movement For Justice] leadership a place on the organising committee for the national civil rights march, planned for later this year.’

Grover says it is simply not true.

THE STEPHEN LAWRENCE CAMPAIGN

Grover was initially approached by a member of the Lawrence family for assistance. He helped them set up a campaign during the private prosecution of Stephen’s killers. He knew Stephen’s parents, Neville and Doreen, well, and was in daily contact with them. The friendship became deeper due to the intensity of the campaign.

‘I would have done anything for them… you want to ensure that people are strong, you make them strong by offering them support.’

He attended all 60 days of the 1998 public inquiry, liaising with the various groups and individuals who attended to show support.

He says at such times campaigns take over his whole life. The state has limitless resources while you have almost none. For the five years between the inquest and the 1998 inquiry, the Lawrences did not even get Legal Aid.

What they did have was a passionate, committed team who knew it was not just about the family themselves but about what it meant to others and what effects success might have:

‘People see their own experience through the tragedy that the Lawrences are suffering and they want things to change.’

OPPORTUNITY FOR CHANGE

With people having been failed by so many state agencies, there was some feeling that the 1998 Lawrence inquiry would be another pointless exercise. Grover knew it presented new opportunities to achieve explicit acknowledgement of institutional racism. The family gave him a de facto role of generating publicity.

He literally stood on a box in South London’s Elephant and Castle shopping centre talking to the general public about the case. He and others from the group leafleted and gave talks.

On the first day of the inquiry, only about a dozen people were in the public gallery. Grover knew that had to change. He wanted people to see the process for themselves, and he also wanted to show the media and inquiry that the public were watching. From there, the wider public discussion and awareness would develop.

The family started the inquiry by asking the Chair, Sir William Macpherson, to step down. They had seen his record in immigration cases. It showed he would not have the understanding of racism required to get to the truth. Their request demonstrated to the world that the Lawrence family were not going to sit by but were actively and uncompromisingly demanding the full truth. This garnered attention and support.

In the end, Macpherson did not step down, and in some ways that may have helped. He was so affronted at police behaving in a corrupt and untrustworthy manner that he came down on it at least as hard as a more liberal judge.

Ramble asks about the involvement of Alex Owolade from Movement For Justice (MFJ). Grover met him at the first week of the Lawrence inquiry and spoke to him no more than five times. MFJ were not part of the campaign.

Ramble brings up the written witness statement of HN43 Peter Francis [UCPI0000036012], who was infiltrating MFJ as well. Francis describes MFJ activist ‘Lewis’ passing on negative personal information about Doreen Lawrence that he’d heard from Grover.

Grover says it is scandalous to even suggest he would spread rumours about Doreen Lawrence, let alone to someone from MFJ who, contrary to Francis’s claims, he was never close to.

‘I am not close to the Movement For Justice. I am listening to them, I respect what they are saying, I am not agreeing with them. And I have a totally different ethos and philosophy and strategy at the inquiry than they do.

But that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be there, that they shouldn’t be engaged. It’s not a problem for me and I am not dismissive of them…

I always thanked people for coming to the inquiry, regardless of what their views were, because I think people taking their time out to support the Lawrence Inquiry is very important.

But I would never, ever and I haven’t ever, spoken about people’s personal issues – especially the Lawrences or any other family member – or any rumours that may be spread to people that I am not close to.’

He adds that he knows what the rumour is, knows it’s nonsense, and that it’s ludicrous to attribute it to him.

SPYCOP ‘DAVE HAGAN’

Ramble moved on to a pivotal SDS officer, HN81 ‘Dave Hagan’, who was deployed 1996-2002.

Much of the Special Branch intelligence on the Lawrence family campaign came from ‘Hagan’. He infiltrated Movement For Justice and, from there, spied on campaigns MFJ supported, including the Lawrences.

Hagan features prominently in the 2014 Stephen Lawrence Independent Review, which quotes a document written by his manager HN10 Bob Lambert saying that Hagan had persistently tried to have MFJ gain influence and steer the Lawrence campaign, despite the family’s attempt to prevent such groups doing it.

The 2014 Review revealed that in 1998, as the Lawrence public inquiry neared its end, Lambert brokered a meeting between Hagan and Richard Walton. Walton was a senior officer from the team crafting the Met’s institutional response to the inquiry. The Review describes Hagan as being, at the time, a police ‘spy in the Lawrence family camp’.

The outrage in 2014 was such that the Home Secretary was forced to set up the Undercover Policing Inquiry, mentioning Hagan four times in her explanation of why the Inquiry is necessary.

On the afternoon following Grover’s evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry, during the questioning of Doreen Lawrence, we learned that the SDS withdrawal strategy document for Hagan [MPS-0728625] says it had been his role to get Movement For Justice to support the Lawrence campaign.

If true, it is a devastating revelation. Movement For Justice was (wrongly) deemed to be a subversive threat to the state. The state sent in an agent who says he steered this ‘bad’ organisation towards the Lawrence campaign, then justified spying on the Lawrences because it was close to the ‘bad’ group.

Hagan has subsequently said it’s not true. He now says he was lying to his managers about his work and achievements. If this version is true, then the spying on the Lawrences and other justice campaigns wasn’t due to their adjacency to subversive groups. It means that the campaigns were, contrary to what the Met has said, spied on as independent targets. This is also a devastating revelation.

It is very disappointing that this wasn’t mentioned during the questioning of Grover about his role within the Lawrence campaign.

The Undercover Policing Inquiry wanted to question Hagan but has excused him as he has PTSD from his deployment and answering questions might make him feel worse.

Yet again, the Inquiry has prioritised the comfort of perpetrators above establishing the truth and giving answers to the victims.

Grover has no memory of ever meeting Hagan, and only became aware of him years later when Peter Francis became a whistleblower.

This tallies with what Hagan himself says in his written witness statement [MPS-0748378]. He rejects the label of ‘spy in the family camp’ and says he was much more peripheral than the 2014 Review claims and that MFJ was ‘barely tolerated’ by the Lawrence campaign.

But if this is true, it places him at odds with what his manager Bob Lambert said about a great swathe of Hagan’s reporting while undercover. Either Hagan lied to Lambert, Lambert lied to his superiors, or Hagan is lying now.

Grover says that Hagan wasn’t ‘in the family camp’, but stresses the need to differentiate between that small group around the family and a wider support group which included organisations like MFJ and the Anti-Nazi League as well as many unaffiliated individuals.

He affirms that there was pressure from such organisations who tried to influence him toward their ideas and methods, such as whether to hold demonstrations or whether to call for the Commissioner to resign.

REPORTING GOSSIP

In 2013, Hagan was questioned by Mark Ellison KC who was conducting the Stephen Lawrence Independent Review. A document from that meeting [MPS-0721026] records Hagan saying he never had a personal meeting with the Lawrences but did with Grover and the Lawrence’s lawyer Imran Khan KC. Grover doesn’t think this meeting actually happened.

Ellison asked Hagan why he reported personal details, such as Doreen and Neville Lawrence separating.

Hagan says something we’ve heard from countless spycops at the Inquiry, that they were told to get all information no matter how irrelevant or unjustified:

‘Part of being an intel officer, all information was valuable. Why did I report why they were going to get divorced? I was told that.’

He went on to claim that the divorce could somehow have led to public order problems which would come within his legitimate remit, and anyway he never thought anyone outside the police would find out.

He said there were ‘wolves circling the Lawrences’ who would try to take over the campaign.

Grover absolutely dismisses this:

‘I think the people who were getting nervous about the Lawrences were the Metropolitan Police, not the “wolves” that he described.’

He finds it shocking that Hagan would imply that the Lawrences were unable to discern who was a friend, or be incapable of running their own campaign. It is yet another example of one of the racist tropes common in SDS reporting, seeing Black people as gullible and needing to be led.

It is extraordinary that police officers who grew up in Britain when dozens of colonies were winning independence, and were undercover in groups studying and taking inspiration from Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Gandhi, could believe that Black and brown people were incapable of organising themselves effectively. The racism was so deep-set that it overpowered the evidence of their own eyes.

The Inquiry took a break, during which Tom Fowler discussed the hearing with Zoe Young of Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance:

CHALLENGING HAGAN’S LIES

Much of the hearing was taken up by running through a catalogue of Hagan’s reports on Grover, asking if what was said in them was true.

On 5 June 1998, Hagan filed a report of a public meeting of the informal group of Lawrence family supporters [MPS-0001129]. It was an opportunity for those, like Grover, who had been at the public inquiry, to relay what had gone on that week and what was coming up.

The gang of five who killed Stephen were due to appear at the inquiry. Hagan wrote:

‘The group intend to let the five make a statement, but if they do not give the answers they want, i.e. confessions, then anything could happen. Given the paucity of policing within the room, disorder should be expected.’

Ramble says that this description makes the report fall within the SDS’s legitimate area of public order intelligence. Grover is having none of it:

‘It is an outrageous statement. Because there was never any contemplation of any disorder within the room, by anyone. There was never even a thought there would be disorder.’

Grover says they didn’t expect any admissions from the murderers. So the campaign planned to turn their backs on them as they entered. They were going to wear T shirts with Stephen’s photo on them in order to humanise him and bring his presence into the room.

Grover says it appears to be another example of a common spycop activity; exaggerating and inventing threats, instead of admitting their deployment was actually needlessly intrusive in citizens’ lives.

‘It is really meant for his superiors to think that he’s doing good work rather than resembling any real possibility [of disorder] taking place.’

He says that the public gallery was always very disciplined. Even when there was frustration it was never expressed with anger or shouting. They were well aware that the murderers’ attendance was going to be exceptional and worked with the inquiry and police to prevent disorder. He is absolutely outraged at Hagan’s suggestion that he was planning the opposite.

On the same day as the last report, Hagan filed another [MPS-0001134] about Grover speaking at a meeting organised by the Socialist Workers Party.

‘Grover, more outspoken than on previous occasions, stressed the importance of Monday and Tuesday when the five accused would be appearing. He was particularly angry over the treatment of Stephen Lawrence’s mother, who had been searched that day prior to going into the inquiry.

He argued that the police’s incompetence was an attempt to cover up their systematic racism and corruption… Grover did not elaborate on plans for within the Inquiry room on Monday…

The general mood of those present was very angry. If similar numbers attend on Monday there is potential for severe public disorder when the five appear.’

Grover makes no apology for his impassioned speeches. Nor for the factual accuracy of what he said, much of which had already been admitted by police. But he had already made plans for the day, as described. He had organised for the hearing to be in a larger room to allow the expected numbers in to witness it.

Once again, Hagan had cherry-picked a couple of sentences and spun them to imply plans for gratuitous violence. This was an example of another common SDS racist trope: seeing Black people as savages who need to be contained and subdued.

‘I think there is an assumption here that when Black people come together there is bound to be public disorder. That’s what I am objecting to.’

CONCOCTING DRAMA

Hagan’s report of 28 June 1998 [MPS-0001145] is the first in a series of reports describing escalating tensions and differences between MFJ and the Lawrence family campaign, with MFJ seeking more militancy. Grover says it was never the issue:

‘We are both angry about state institutions who do not want to acknowledge racism in any way or do not want to acknowledge the violence that is being used on a daily basis on Black communities, and lack of investigation in race murders.

The difference is there is an approach from some groups, where they believe they are the vanguard of a resistance that is taking place, and us, who are saying, “Actually, ordinary people can effect change”…

Anyone, whether it is a mother or a brother or a sister, who experiences this injustice has the capacity to run a campaign and effect change as fearlessly and as audaciously as anybody else.’

He says that this is more concocted drama by Hagan to justify his deployment to his superiors. It may well be that MFJ was getting frustrated that it was unable to influence the Lawrence family campaign – especially as Hagan was tasked to steer MFJ towards it – but Grover says the family had their own strategy.

On 29 June 1998, Hagan reported on the five murderers’ appearance at the Lawrence inquiry [MPS-0001154]. Hagan says 500-600 people were there. Grover thinks it was even more:

‘People were there because they had seen this epic battle between a Black family and the Metropolitan Police…

I think everybody was conscious that this is not time for violence. This is actually the first opportunity over decades, if not centuries, to convince a public judicial inquiry that there is the existence and prevalence of racism within the police force. And for that to be acknowledged would be historic, because it would potentially create a sea change in the police.’

He only had to dissuade around ten people from ideas about disorder, the rest were very disciplined. The factor that was beyond his control was the behaviour of the murderers.

Hagan referred to the Nation of Islam, a Black nationalist group popularised among African-Americans.

‘The appearance of a strike force from the Nation of Islam, who hitherto had played no part in the campaign, was viewed with dismay in many quarters, especially amongst the Lawrence family who strongly disapprove of them.

It is believed that Suresh Grover, who had been unsuccessful in obtaining volunteers to steward the protest, had allowed a small number of NoI [Nation of Islam] members to take on the stewarding role.’

Grover is absolutely baffled by this nonsense. He understood that the Nation had been in contact with Neville Lawrence who was happy for them to attend, the same as any other group or individual. Grover had already sorted out stewarding without them.

Furthermore, the use of ‘strike force’ is nothing more than a hackneyed spycop embellishment to make it sound like they’re working among violent groups.

Hagan said the Nation:

’emerged from the Inquiry building and took up a thoroughly menacing stance, as if stewarding the protesters. Then, when matters had calmed down, they attempted to re-enter the building only to be denied access. It was at this point that the trouble started up once more and resulting in the police resorting to the use of CS gas in their efforts to restore order.’

Grover wasn’t there as he was in the hearing. Someone from the Nation came in and said they’d been CS gassed and the hearing took a break.

Hagan said that as the murderers left the inquiry a group of around 50 protesters tried to attack them, and the five were covered in spittle.

‘The suspects came out spitting at people. I remember them spitting at members of the Southall Monitoring Group at the entrance…

I was quite shocked about their attitude, to be honest. They are street fighters. I had never seen them before. They came out running, spitting…

Yes, there were people who threw cans at them. But there were barriers, they couldn’t be hit.’

Grover spoke to the police officer in charge who agreed nothing serious had happened. This is not the kind of significant public disorder that could ever be used to justify an undercover infiltration. At the various public procedures in the Lawrence campaign, Grover has always worked with uniformed police to ensure things passed off safely.

THE FILTHY LUCRE THAT NEVER WAS

A report of Hagan’s about the Lawrence campaign, dated 21 July 1998 [MPS-0001191], asserted:

‘Groups such as the Newham Monitoring Project (NMP) and Southall Monitoring Group (SMG) may stay within the campaign as they are both in receipt of council funding regarding the inquiry.’

Once again, we see spycops implying that campaigners have their own reasons for their work, that it’s about material gain or personal power rather than genuine principle and solidarity. Grover dismisses it unequivocally:

‘It’s totally inaccurate and made up.’

Newham Monitoring Project weren’t funded at the time of the inquiry, and in fact Grover and others raised money for one of their members! And the Southall Monitoring Group never applied for funding to do Lawrence campaign work either. But beyond the inaccuracy is the slur on Grover’s integrity:

‘The issue of our funding and me using it as a veto not to develop a campaign is insidious and is just shocking.’

Two days later, on 23 July 1998, Hagan submitted a report [MPS-0001212] in which he extends his stories of power struggles. Hagan claims that not only are the MFJ at odds with the Lawrences, but the Southall Monitoring Group and Newham Monitoring Project are also at odds with them, but for different reasons: Neville and Doreen Lawrence being duplicitous in order to maintain public sympathy.

It’s a lot of volatile reporting about what was, in fact, a meeting at the end of the first part of the inquiry, where tickets for a social event to thank the supporters of the Lawrence campaign were given out.

DIVORCE GOSSIP

Hagan claimed that the monitoring groups wanted outside organisations in the campaign but were pretending not to because they had to go along with the Lawrences’ wishes in order to get council funding. He says that Grover has told everyone that Neville and Doreen have separated, and goes on to say they will continue working together as ‘a front for the campaign’.

Grover wholly rejects this drama, and is again especially affronted at the accusation of spreading gossip about the Lawrences’ personal lives.

Hagan said Grover had claimed:

‘There was someone very close to the Lawrence family who was an ‘Uncle Tom’ and as a police agent was actively advising the Lawrences against any real action.’

This, too, is lies. Grover had no such suspicions about anyone, and wouldn’t use the term ‘Uncle Tom’. And, in Hagan’s use of ‘real action’, we see again the implication that there’s a secret lust for violence.

The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, made a rare personal interjection to ask about this point. He said that Hagan must have found out from someone about the Lawrences separating, so if it wasn’t Grover, then who was it?

Grover replied:

‘It’s not me, sir. I can guarantee that it’s not me. I would never say it in a public meeting. It’s not relevant to what I am doing at that meeting. I can’t answer that question.’

You would be forgiven for thinking that would be the end of it. But Mitting spent a further six minutes on this point. Who else spoke at the meeting? Might they have said it? Who knew about the separation at that time, though? Did you say it in the heat of the moment and not remember?

There was an implication that if Grover couldn’t point the finger at anyone else then it must have been him and he’s lying about it.

It didn’t seem to occur to Mitting that Hagan might, like other spycops before and since, have used a report to put a fact gleaned elsewhere into the mouth of an activist. Grover had to give twelve separate iterations of saying it wasn’t him before Mitting relented.

INVENTING SCHISMS

We returned to Hagan’s reports. When the Lawrence inquiry restarted, MFJ held a demonstration and Hagan filed a report about it on 17 September 1998 [MPS-0001314] saying the low turnout was in part because:

‘Suresh Grover had sown confusion by telling other parties, such as [privacy], that he had organised a meeting with the judge the following week.’

Grover has no idea what this is referring to, and says there was no such meeting. Hagan continued:

‘Grover has decided to distance himself from the MFJ in an attempt to keep in favour with Neville Lawrence.’

All of this assumes it’s a power play, where everyone has hidden motives as they try to become more dominant, rather than having any moral motivation or genuine cooperation. Grover is clear:

‘It is utterly wrong. As I said, I was the campaign coordinator for the Lawrence family. I don’t need to get favours from Mr Neville Lawrence, I agreed with his proposition on how things should move. I don’t need to distance myself from the Movement For Justice.’

He emphasises that he was not opposed to MFJ’s motivation or their support for the Lawrence campaign, although he wanted to ensure that any protest done specifically for the Lawrence campaign was done with the family’s consent.

‘If you want to have an anti-racist demonstration, Movement For Justice, please go ahead and do it, I have no issue with that. So I am not stopping them doing things, but I am asking them to respect the Lawrence family if they are using Stephen’s name.’

Hagan expanded on his list of supposed rivalries in a report he wrote the following month, October 1998 [MPS-0001370], in which he alleged that the family of Ricky Reel were annoyed with Grover and using MFJ to try to get his attention:

‘Mrs Reel had asked the MFJ to attend the Southall Monitoring Group annual general meeting on Monday, 5 October to speak to Suresh Grover about the need for the march. Grover himself appears to have lost some of his interest in the Reels’ case in favour of concentrating his efforts on the Menson case.’

Grover is astonished not just at the allegations but at the obvious contradiction. A couple of weeks earlier Hagan had said that Grover had committed to the Reel case in order to reinforce his standing within his ‘Asian power base’, but is now also saying that he’s not really involved in the campaign.

‘I am just horrified that he suggests that. I don’t know whether he’s doing it deliberately to tell his managers that he’s needed and he’s looking at the differences taking place… It is just full of lies.’

In reality, Grover has worked with the Reel family since the day they called him. Indeed some of them are with him at the Undercover Policing Inquiry, sitting in the public gallery as he speaks.

It’s something Sukhdev Reel herself confirmed when she spoke to Tom Fowler in the lunch break:

A NEW CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Hagan reported, on 13 October 1998 [MPS-0001402], that the Lawrences’ barrister Michael Mansfield KC was intending to start a ‘civil rights movement’.

Grover explains that they were looking ahead to the conclusion of the Lawrence inquiry. There would be a report with recommendations for the future.

‘There are many examples of reports that have been completed, recommendations are made and they just end up on a shelf without any kind of audit or accountability or enforcement.

So the Lawrence campaign has always been embedded in communities, supporting families, and this would be an ideal opportunity for us to bring [together] hundreds of families who had become invigorated by the revelations in the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry and saw the possibility of change and wanted to be part of that process.’

They took ideas from campaigns in South Africa, the USA, Ireland and India. This was to be something stemming from those who’d supported the Lawrence campaign, though whether the Lawrences themselves would be involved was up to the family. It would combine the families, lawyers and activists to make something that would sustain.

Hagan said that MFJ had always wanted a mass demonstration along with forming such a movement, and so they might insert themselves into this one.

Grover confirms that they’d wanted the demonstration but there had been no mention of the movement.

‘We were not thinking of a demonstration… we wanted a people-led movement to take ownership post-Lawrence on the anti-racist agenda. That’s how we were trying to build it.’

At the end of that year, 21 December 1998, Hagan wrote [MPS-0001643] about the anticipation of the Lawrence inquiry’s report.

‘A great opportunity is seen to have been lost due to the infighting within these disparate groups. Had the Lawrences called for a civil rights march then it is not unrealistic to imagine that 100,000 people may have taken to the streets.’

Grover confirms that some groups such as the Socialist Workers Party wanted a big protest march to coincide with the inquiry’s report.

‘Was it a missed opportunity to have a march? Possibly. But you have to have a demand which people rally round. It’s not sufficient just to say, “Oh, the Lawrence Inquiry has found this to be institutional racism”, that in itself will bring people together but is not a demand to change something effectively.’

Grover says that they were considering whether to call for the resignation of the Met Commissioner, and this prospect petrified undercover officers, yet they were reporting on peripheral issues like whether to have a march.

Ramble is startled by the use of a word as strong as ‘petrified’, so Grover unpacks his point.

‘Just imagine, the publication of the report finds, as we know, the failure to investigate properly is really to do with three things; lack of senior leadership, institutional racism, and failures due to different missed opportunities.

For the first time, if the Metropolitan Police are found to be institutionally racist, that legitimises years and years of failures and legitimises the struggles that Black and brown people have carried over decades.

And if that led to the dismissal of the Commissioner, I think there was concern within the central government, as well as the senior political reaches, that would seriously damage the Metropolitan Police’s credibility and even create greater distrust between Black communities and the police forces. That’s actually what petrified them.’

A SIMPLE REQUEST

In January 1999, Hagan submitted a report [MPS-0001707] describing Grover as ‘the main mouthpiece and communicator for Neville Lawrence’. Hagan further embellishes his fantasy of Grover being a secret thug who was playing along with the Lawrence family for money and status:

‘Although privately he would favour a more vociferous confrontational approach with groups such as Movement For Justice, he is dictated to by Neville and sees a safer long-term future under the Lawrence umbrella.’

Grover says that he was never a ‘mouthpiece’ for Neville Lawrence, who in fact communicates very well himself and ‘probably better than me, as far as his pain and campaign is concerned’.

He says again that he doesn’t object to MFJ’s support but has never thought that he could align with them strategically for the task in hand, which he eloquently summarises:

‘I am just asking very simple thing, which is that police officers get rid of their bias and racism or misogyny, and act as professional individuals when they put their uniform on. That’s a basic thing that we are asking.

But there is a culture of racism steeped in the Metropolitan Police and other police forces, which is so difficult to eradicate; and unless you put it out in the open and reveal it and expose it, it’s very difficult to change it.’

The same report claims that Southall and Newham monitoring groups fund many of the family campaigns but have threatened to withhold money if these campaigns have MFJ on board. Grover is categorical:

‘It is absolute rubbish.’

He points out that MFJ were involved in supporting Duwayne Brooks, Stephen’s friend who was also attacked and became the main witness to the murder. He was vilified by police and needed support. Grover says that if Brooks wanted MFJ to support him that was no problem.

Again, we see that Hagan was infiltrating MFJ to spy on the Lawrences, so his reporting depicts everything as a power struggle between the two groups.

Later that month, on 24 January 1999, Hagan submitted a report [MPS-0001717] on a march calling for justice for Roger Sylvester who had recently been killed by police (the Undercover Policing Inquiry also heard evidence from Roger’s brother Bernard Renwick on 27 November 2025).

Hagan said that MFJ’s Alex Owolade:

‘appeared to gain the respect of those on the demonstration for his display of leadership. Suresh Grover from The Monitoring Group and Asad from the Newham Monitoring Group followed the march from the sidelines and heckled Owolade’s attempt at attempting to wrest control of the march.’

Once again, Hagan portrays it as a power struggle between the two groups. Grover, once again, seems to be a mix of baffled and offended by the report:

‘It is a total fabrication. I have never heckled Alex at a march. I would have no interest in wresting control of a march.’

Hagan goes on and says it overtly:

‘The petty jealousy that currently exists between The Monitoring Groups and Movement For Justice will continue for the foreseeable future as each side seeks to manoeuvre their own group into a position of influence with any family campaign or victims of perceived police brutality.’

Grover reiterates his respect for MFJ and their right to advocate for what they want, and that his concern is supporting families in a way that they want. It is not and never has been about doing anything for credibility, leverage or power over others.

Grover has no memory of ever meeting Hagan. When prompted, he says that perhaps Hagan was among a small group from MFJ and the Socialist Workers Party who spoke to him once at the end of the Lawrence inquiry.

THE IMPORTANCE OF RECOGNISING INSTITUTIONAL RACISM

The Lawrence inquiry report by Sir William Macpherson famously concluded the Met were institutionally racist, which he defined as:

‘The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.’

This has become a contentious point at the Undercover Policing Inquiry. At the start of the current hearings, Imran Khan KC (representing the Lawrences among others) said that institutional racism was entrenched in every aspect of the Special Demonstration Squad’s operations – the management, authorisation and oversight of the spycops – and so this inquiry’s final report must adopt the definition of institutional racism given in 1999.

The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, interrupted Khan to say it doesn’t apply because the SDS were not directly providing a service to members of the public. He appears to have a view that racism is limited to individual acts of deliberate hatred.

He also has an extremely narrow definition of ‘service’. Policing is a service paid for by the public for their own protection. The Metropolitan Police Service is a very large organisation. Much of its work stems from decisions taken by people who do not deal directly with the public. The racism Macpherson described was not limited to those having direct contact with members of the Lawrence family.

And even with a reductive view of racism as being solely about direct personal interactions, the spycops still count. The Met were deploying these officers into individuals’ lives, and their actions had quantifiable impacts. Just because the citizen is unaware of it does not make it any less real, nor the citizen any less subject to the racism of that individual officer.

In 1998, as the Lawrence inquiry went on, it was obvious that there were failures in the process, and in the behaviour and attitudes of police officers. But more than that, the failures stemmed from an established police culture that treats Black communities differently and adversely.

Black people are more likely to be searched, and if searched they are more likely to be arrested than white people. If arrested, they’re more likely to be charged; more likely to be convicted; more likely to be imprisoned. The attitudes that cause this increased likelihood are replicated in other public services, and even suffered by Black officers within the police service itself.

Grover talks about the pivotal moment of the finding of institutional racism being accepted not just by that inquiry but much more broadly too:

‘It comes up with a definition, which by the way is accepted by the Government. It is lauded by the Home Secretary, it is accepted by all public authorities and it talks about the collective failures of an organisation to provide a professional service to BME communities.

It looks at how that can be detected through the process, through attitudes and behaviours, and it tries to mitigate the racism and bias within the police force.

It also tries to explain the elements of unwitting racism that may exist, or unconscious bias that may exist in the police service.’

Grover then cites the 2023 Casey Review, which found that the Met was still institutionally racist, as well misogynist and homophobic. He lists Casey’s four tests for institutional racism:

• Are there racist and prejudiced attitudes within the police force, does that exist?
• Are officers from racialised groups suffering racism, and is that routinely ignored, dismissed or not even spoken about?
• Are racism and racial bias reinforced within the organisation through lack of action or otherwise?
• Is the police force overzealous when it comes to crimes committed by Black people or Black communities or racialised groups and they are under-protected when the crimes against them take place?

A NEW HOPE

Grover describes the sense of progress and optimism that followed the publication of Sir William Macpherson’s Lawrence inquiry report in 1999.

Legislation was changed and Home Secretary Jack Straw told parliament that the changes would make Britain a beacon on race relations to the whole world. (Straw later discovered that, despite being in charge of the ministry in charge of the police, he was spied on by the SDS from the time he commissioned the Lawrence inquiry). There was a clear drive to change the culture within the police.

This, Grover says, completely changed after the 9/11 attacks. Police resources were diverted from racial violence into counter-terrorism. Jack Straw was succeeded as Home Secretary by David Blunkett who, even by the standards of holders of that office, was markedly regressive. While some individual officers had improved, the institution did not. Once again, it fell to people like the Southall Monitoring Group to try to convince police to take cases seriously.

In the longer term, we got the Brexiteer Tory governments who actively corroded the progress that had been made. Seemingly in reference to Mitting’s reluctance to consider institutional racism at the Undercover Policing Inquiry, Grover says:

‘It is absolutely necessary to look at the prevalence of racism in society at every different level, especially institutional and state racism. And it is not possible to understand the motives of public officers like undercover officers – who served the public – their motives, their behaviour, their decisions, unless you look at the institutional racism.’

Thirty years since the Lawrence inquiry, Grover is at another one. He is asked what, with his experience, he would advise the Undercover Policing Inquiry to do to ensure it creates effective change.

He is upfront that the Lawrence inquiry covered a lot of the same ground – how police respond to Black communities – and so if this inquiry doesn’t come to the same conclusion of institutional racism being a cause, it would be profoundly disappointing and the inquiry should have to explain itself.

‘Everybody keeps saying “I understand the pain”. Yes, you do, and I am grateful that you do, but how do you want the pain to stop? You can’t just put an Elastoplast on it, you have to change the culture that causes that pain. And if you don’t address it at an institutional structure level, you don’t deal with the causes of it.’

He refers back to the four tests in the Casey, telling Mitting to look at Casey and apply the four tests she specifies. Did spycops have racist views? There are plenty of examples. Are there complaints in how they regard Black communities? HN81 describes Mr Lawrence as ‘a boring speaker’. In fact, he is father who’s inspired thousands, not just talking about grief but how to change. Yet he is always looked upon as a problem.

‘The state saw black people as a problem, not racism. We had to change that culture. And HN81 describing Mr Lawrence as a boring speaker totally diminishes his contribution to bringing the inquiry to the forefront of British society’

Grover points out that by saying that to the managers, HN81 is effectively telling his managers, ‘Mr Lawrence cannot think for himself’.

SPYCOP PETER FRANCIS

Ramble moves on to another officer who infiltrated MFJ and spied on Grover, HN43 Peter Francis ‘Peter Black’ / ‘Peter Johnson’ / ‘Peter Daley’. He was deployed from 1993, shortly after Stephen’s murder, to 1997, just before the public inquiry.

In Francis’s written statement to the Inquiry [UCPI0000036012], he says that the Lawrence inquiry was supposed to be a watershed where the Met came clean:

‘My view was that the Inquiry should be made aware of the parameters of my deployment and the fact I had been tasked, from 1993, to gather any intelligence to help put a stop to the anti-racist campaigns, in particular the Stephen Lawrence family campaign, because of the concerns about public order and subversion surrounding the campaigns.’

He says his manager, HN10 Bob Lambert, overruled any suggestion of telling the Macpherson Inquiry about the spying, in discussions that were ‘hostile and heated’.

Grover says the Lawrence inquiry should absolutely have been told.

‘It would have had an impact on the definition of institutional racism for example, because is no longer unwitting racism, this is a police force who not just has let the family down but actually has decided to spy on it, and it is a conscious decision to subvert the campaign.’

Francis mentions an SDS manager, known only as HN86/HN1361, describing him as:

‘incredibly racist. His view of the Black justice campaigns was that they were unable to think for themselves and therefore they must all be being led by the more radical left-wing groups looking to advance their own agendas. In private he was always referring to Black people as “monkeys”.’

Later on in his statement, Francis says that the spying was ordered from on high:

‘I was asked to find out any information that could be used to stop or subvert the campaigns. That tasking came directly from HN86, but was also repeated to me higher up, by Chief Superintendent [HN593] Bob Potter.

Bob Potter was also a horribly racist person. He would come to the SDS meetings and then we would have one-to-one discussions. He would use the n-word to describe the campaigns and impress on me the importance of stopping these ‘effing’ and then the n-word…

Both HN86 and Potter made clear to me that higher up they wanted the campaigns to go away.’

Grover is stunned and appalled:

‘I don’t know what to say, because if this is accurate, and I have no reason to believe it’s not accurate, then there is no difference between Bob Potter using the n-word and the people who killed Stephen Lawrence.’

Francis quotes more extreme racism from Potter, although he is emphatic that he did not hear such terminology from any other SDS managers:

‘In the extremely racist words of HN86, there was a fear that the “monkeys were being organised” and that it was our job to stop it “before all the monkeys in London got out of their trees”.’

Grover is for once struggling for words. He recounts racist behaviour from police officers, drawing the National Front logo in their car window condensation, showing the ace of spades (a reference to a racist slur) to Black people, and says that these add up and consolidate a culture of racism:

‘Unless that’s addressed openly, it just lingers and thrives secretly within the force, especially when it is very hierarchical and militaristic in its formations. So junior officers can do what they want and if senior officers have these attitudes, it gives the junior officers the carte blanche or the openness to be even more racist.’

The Inquiry asked about several other spycops who spied on Grover to a lesser extent.

SPYCOP MARK JENNER

Although Grover has no memory of ever meeting HN15 Mark Jenner ‘Mark Cassidy’, he appears in a number of the spycop’s reports.

The first is on a meeting in March 1999 [MPS-0001935] about the formation of an organising committee for a new civil rights movement.

Once we get beyond Jenner’s standard spycop sneering and supercilious tone, Grover agrees with the factual content but points out that there was no relevance to public order.

Six months later, Jenner reported on Grover and the new civil rights movement again [MPS-0002165]:

‘The movement is run in a dictatorial fashion by Suresh Grover, who has the support of the majority Black Asian community groups and white left-wing groups, who are only too happy to be seen being politically correct.’

Yet again, the spycops see everything as being a game of power, using inauthentic underhand behaviour to appear to be what others would want.

Grover rejects it entirely:

‘I have never run organisations in a dictatorial fashion. In fact I have been criticised for being too democratic and too inclusive…

The way I conduct a meeting is actually to give everybody a chance to speak, no matter how long it takes, especially marginalised people. So if giving women the chance to speak is politically correct, I am not going to apologise for that.’

Jenner doubles down on his theme:

‘Victims will be encouraged to talk to the NCRM [new civil rights movement] before going to the police. So that a fully investigated documented case can be put to the authorities.

While sounding laudable, there is little doubt that the hidden agenda is to further weaken black and Asian trust in the police and to highlight their perceived weakness in dealing with racial crime.’

Grover says the aim was actually to empower victims and families to be able to speak out for themselves.

‘There is nothing in the programme or the strategy which says the reason why we are doing this is to undermine police, [and] confidence between them and the Black communities. You know, we don’t have to do that. The police do that very well themselves…

If women come to us, suffering sexual violence or rape which is racially motivated, you are going to get asked to support these women and expose why those failures were taking place. So I am not going to apologise about that. I wish it didn’t take place. I want to live in a society which is equal.’

SPYCOP CARLO SORACCHI

HN104 Carlo Soracchi ‘Carlo Neri’ was deployed 2000-2006. As with Jenner, Grover has no memory of meeting him but he nonetheless appears in the officer’s reports.

On 16 October 2000, Soracchi filed a report [MPS-0004301] saying that people were scathing of Grover, blaming him for the low turnout at a civil rights march.

Once again, the view is that left wing groups are a violent threat, and family justice campaigns are gullible, incompetent and ripe for takeover by socialists.

Grover highlights the way spycops are trying to use their image of violent socialists as an excuse for spying on the campaigns socialists supported. He is emphatic that MFJ, his supposed violent rival, has never advocated anything violent in front of him at all.

He rejects not only the caricature but also the schism:

‘When we were experiencing serious racial violence in our towns, the only groups that turned up to support were far-left groups and we developed a relationship with them. But we didn’t necessarily join their political groups…

For example, we know in Southall we consider Blair Peach to be our brother. We never met him. We have no problem that he was a member of Anti-Nazi League. The reason why we remember him is because of the way he was killed. We think solidarity is an essential aspect of civilised, just society.’

There was a break in the hearing, during which Tom Fowler and Heather Mendick discussed what we’d heard.

SPYCOP ‘SIMON WELLINGS’

HN118 ‘Simon Wellings’ was deployed 2001-2008, infiltrating the Socialist Workers Party and Globalise Resistance.

In November 2001, Wellings wrote a report [MPS-0007284] saying South London Stop the War Coalition were planning a meeting with Grover as one of the speakers, and another report a week later [MPS-0007351] on how the meeting went. It’s factually accurate but has nothing to do with public order.

DISCOVERY

Grover was stunned when he first received evidence that he’d been spied on:

‘I was actually angry and devastated. I was. Because the work we’ve done, I think, is totally legitimate. It’s totally lawful. It’s raising issues and cases to the extreme levels so the State begins to respond to it, because otherwise [the State] is totally oblivious to the concerns of people who are suffering injustices.

Yes, we are vocal, we can be fearless, we can be audacious, and sometimes we are deliberately that, but it is within the parameters of being totally lawful.’

Asked about the impact of the spying on him and his work, Grover is damning:

‘It is devastating to know that we live in a liberal democracy and there are decisions made by a police force which is there to protect you or deal with issues to do with crime, consciously deciding to spy on families whose only crime seems to have been asking questions which are legitimate… families whose children have been murdered. That is soul destroying.

But, you know, you have to keep on going. You have to be strong for other families and I think the impact on them is much greater than on me, and I don’t want to make it about what the impact on the Southall Monitoring Group is.

But we know as The Monitoring Group and the Southall Monitoring Group, that it has had serious consequences on what we are able to achieve and not achieve, because of the way that they have spied on us.’

He expresses disappointment that he has not received more documents from the Inquiry.

He realises that it has harmed his work and the people he helps. When he meets with senior police as an advocate for a family who’ve suffered injustice, it is plain that the police feel he has a hidden agenda that is different from that of the family. It is equally plain that the officers will get that impression from the fanciful, libellous smears peddled by spycops.

He cites an example of Bob Lambert specifically talking about the Hounslow Monitoring Group, which Grover coordinated, as being ‘anti-police’. He also mentions meeting Commander John Grieve during the Lawrence inquiry and being specifically asked if he or The Monitoring Group were opposed to working with the police.

It’s clear that the police do not recognise The Monitoring Group as legitimate. The claim that they were only spied on because of adjacency to fearsome socialists is plainly untrue. They were targeted as a Black-led group for the work they did in exposing police failings.

‘The real danger they see within the Lawrence campaign and other campaigns is that we are trying to project that the Lawrence case is not exceptional but it is a part of culture, and that threatens them.’

Grover asks the big question underneath the whole scandal:

‘The issue here is why they were doing it, where the information was going to, who was controlling that information, what the strategies were to get more surveillance on us. What was the point of it? What did they want to achieve in the end?’

Grover concludes with a statement he prepared in the afternoon break a few minutes earlier.

Watch a video of that statement in full:

He says that the state has failed to destroy the campaigns it has spied on. He criticises the Undercover Policing Inquiry for creating obstacles to the truth, and for giving preferential treatment to police wanting anonymity.

He says the period we’re talking about, the 1990s, was less perilous than today when we recently saw a far-right march 150,000 strong.

‘Racial incidents have spiralled nationally; Islamophobia, attacks on Black people, antisemitic attacks. The far right want our community to feel afraid and isolated, and these groups have been emboldened by global funding and the political establishment that seeks to scapegoat migrants, particularly Muslims. The austerity which has been manufactured by successive governments has plunged vast sections of society into poverty and in effect can be mobilised against migrants.’

He highlights the use of sexual violence as a tool of racism, and the hypocrisy of racist ‘save our women and children’ protests that include people with records of criminal violence against women and children.

‘We have to condemn sexual violence no matter the race of the perpetrator, because misogyny and sexism are not confined in any one race or community, but embedded in patriarchal systems of power and deeply intertwined with racism and economic inequality… To achieve true justice we must dismiss these intersecting systems of oppression.’

He condemns escalating repression and limits on the right to protest, and praises the tenacity and strength of the spied upon in their engagement with the Inquiry and the wider campaign, the women deceived into relationships, blacklisted workers, and the justice campaigns.

‘There is one lesson that we need to learn from all this, is that we need to be more vociferous in trying to convince the Chair about dealing with the issue of institutional racism and misogyny and what the women have classified as institutional sexism, and we really need to ensure that the Inquiry does not waver when it comes to ensuring that the right of protest and the right of assembly remain intact in this society.’

After the hearing, Tom Fowler discussed the day with Eveline Lubbers of the Undercover Research Group:

Tranche 3 Phase 1, Day 5
20 October 2025

INTRODUCTION

Spycop boss HN143 Dennis ‘Ben’ Gunn gave evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry on 20 October 2025 at the International Dispute Resolution Centre in London.

Though the Inquiry has started its ‘Tranche 3 Phase 1’ hearings, examining the final 15 years of the Special Demonstration Squad 1993-2008, Gunn was actually a holdover from Tranche 2, which covered 1983-1992.

Gunn was commander of operations for the Metropolitan Police Special Branch from February 1988 to November 1991. This meant he had oversight of all the operational work of the various Special Branch squads, including the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS).

The Inquiry’s page for the day has video and a transcript.

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.

Gunn has provided a witness statement to the Inquiry [MPS-0749634]. Questioning him was Sarah Simcock, her first appearance as Counsel to the Inquiry.

Gunn is in his 80s but comes across as someone still sharp, though there are some blanks in his memory. He demonstrated the attitude of someone certainly used to wielding authority, not used to being questioned. He is not afraid to express his opinions on matters.

He could also be quite patronising and talked down to Simcock when she drilled down into the version of events that he wanted to present.

This is a long report, use the links to jump to a specific topic:

The Man and His Mission
Gunn’s career and outlook

The Scutt Affair – Reputations At Stake
Stefan Scutt, the spycop who went off the rails. His breakdown and the desperate measures taken to protect the secrecy of the unit

Spycops Methods
Oversight, stealing dead children’s identities, operating beyond the law

Relationships
Officers deceiving women into long-term intimate relationships

Criminal Spycops
Officers arrested under false names, deceiving courts, and their managers’ efforts to protect them

SDS Targeting Strategy
Who they spied on and how they justified it

Public Disclosure
The True Spies documentary and the public inquiry

The Man and His Mission

As commander of operations for the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch (February 1988 to November 1991) Gunn was in charge of many intelligence gathering units, including the SDS. He had not formally played a role in the SDS prior to this, but that did not stop him having very firm opinions about it all.

It is worth nothing that from the outset at the Inquiry, Gunn exhibited a tone that we have not seen before. He wasn’t combative, but at times he bordered on the aggressive, leaning forward and displaying anger. Particularly so when lines of questions took him into areas where he had strong views on the appropriateness of matters.

Repeatedly, he would return to restate points such as how upset he was that interviews given to Operation Herne, the Metropolitan Police’s internal investigation into the spycops scandal, had been given to the UCPI.

GUNN RIDES TO THE DEFENCE OF THE SDS

Gunn’s took the position it was only ten or so officers who had let the side down, and the Inquiry was simply not hearing about all the great stuff the SDS had achieved to prevent the collapse of civilisation.

He was determined to be the voice of all the SDS officers he considered as having been wronged. It became clear that he is following the Inquiry closely, listening to much of the testimony.

If officers such as HN10 Robert Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’, or HN78 Trevor Morris ‘Anthony “Bobby” Lewis’ came off as tone deaf, Gunn took it another step forward. It was difficult listening. However, in his eagerness to defend the SDS, he also let a lot out of the bag in the process, demonstrating the value of hearing such witnesses live rather than just taking written statements.

Being questioned about events from forty years ago while now an elderly man, Gunn could be expected to have poor recollection. There were things he could firmly answer, but there were quite a few topics where he simply had no recollection whatsoever, not even vaguely, which he said bothered him. However, he was clear he stood by his decisions at the time and the minutes that went with them.

PROTECT THE POLICE

He didn’t shy away from anything in this respect and felt able to justify why decisions were made as they were back then. Pretty much that came down to the need to protect the police, the Home Office and government more generally from embarrassment had certain matters being made public at the time – which included even the existence of the SDS.

This embarrassment was another regular theme of his: he was determined to ensure that the good, honest, hard-working police officers of Special Branch were not going to take the blame for just doing what they had been told to do by their political masters.

It was clear he had come with points to make, and he would make them at every opportunity. In the process, he would demonstrate his annoyance with the questions coming from Simcock that made him repeat what was so obvious to him. For him, it was all part of the Inquiry having the wrong approach and not considering all the laudable work that the SDS had done.

One came away from his evidence with a sense that there is disquiet among the former Special Branch managers that the Metropolitan Police has been shifting its stance to condemn the SDS.

At the outset of the scandal, the MPS relied on the ‘rogue agent, bad apple’ excuse. However, as more became exposed, it was the undercovers to blame. As the managers gave evidence, even that limited damage control became untenable with the managers increasingly shown to be incompetent or turning a blind eye.

Finally, the Met seem to have begun washing their hands of the entity of the SDS as the evidence has become overwhelming. At the beginning of Tranche 3 they conceded it was ‘a dysfunctional unit’, an admission forced by the Inquiry’s publication of the Met’s damning internal Closing Report [MPS-0722622] written when the SDS was shut down back in 2009.

Now the senior managers from the time, such as Gunn, can apparently see the spotlight slowly shifting to them, and with it the entire reputation of their dearly beloved Special Branch. As such, his fighting approach can be seen in this context.

OPENING SALVOS

The first question from Simcock is whether Gunn spoke to other current or former police officers before making his witness statement.

Gunn is quick to set the tone, rushing ahead with:

‘If I could just explain: I was a coordinator of a group of former senior Metropolitan Police Special Branch officers. That group, of which there were 15 of us when we started, sadly there are only seven left, that group was formed and I coordinated it to help this Inquiry with factual information of the background to the SDS.

Under no circumstances did we collude in any way, shape or form on the evidence presented or would be presented by potential witnesses.’

He added he had spoken to Piers Doggart, Solicitor to the Inquiry, to whom he had:

‘made it absolutely clear that whatever we discussed in terms of former colleagues it was not about the evidence, it was about process, facts and help.’

This included his close friend and colleague HN587 Peter Phelan. A Special Branch officer who was Gunn’s predecessor as Commander of Operations, for a time Phelan was directly above Gunn as Deputy Assistant Commissioner – Specialist Operations/ Security (DACSO).

Phelan was due to give evidence in the same week as Gunn but was withdrawn due to ill-health. We have been told he will be rescheduled.

Gunn says he is in contact with Phelan:

‘but under no circumstances would either of us talk about the evidence. And we were absolutely sacrosanct in making that distinction when we spoke to one another. We are friends and former colleagues, but under no circumstances did I collude in any way talking about the evidence that either he or I give.’

Simcock then points out that the Inquiry asked both Gunn and Phelan the same questions about knowledge of relationships.

Gunn’s responses to them are at paragraphs 131 to 133 of his statement, and Phelan’s at 144 to 146 of his statement [MPS-0749627]. She notes that they are similarly worded and in fact, bar one word, the middle paragraph is identical.

Gunn says he’s unsurprised because the question was the same, and again denies any collusion with Phelan.

CAREER

Gunn had been Detective Chief Superintendent in charge of R Squad, that part of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch which dealt with policy, communications and statutory powers.

Unfortunately, this is all we learned as, despite questions being submitted by core participants, the Inquiry didn’t feel the need to explore this aspect more.

It is hard to see how R Squad is not relevant, as this department was not just responsible for overseeing policy and statutory powers, but was also where top-secret policy files were kept. Even if it is not of direct concern, why it didn’t play a role in oversight of the SDS ought to have been explored.

Following this Gunn did a stint as a uniformed Chief Superintendent in Area 6 (West London) from 1986 to 1987. This was something senior officers did as part of their progression to higher positions.

From February 1988 he succeeded Phelan as Special Branch’s Commander of Operations.

In late 1991, Gunn left the Metropolitan Police, having been appointed Deputy Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Police – going on to become Chief Constable. There, among other issues, he dealt with hunt saboteurs and animal rights campaigns, particularly in relation to the notorious vivisection laboratories at Huntingdon Life Sciences.

COMMANDER OF OPERATIONS

It is Gunn’s time as Commander of Operations that is of most relevance to the Inquiry. He is the first officer to give testimony who held this senior position.

He did not really have a handover from Phelan, but didn’t need one as they had worked closely together for 30 years and he knew what the job entailed. If he had any questions, they had adjoining offices so could speak at any time. Had there been anything sensitive to know about S Squad, they would probably have discussed it, but he doesn’t recall any specifics.

At the time the Deputy Assistant Commissioner – Security was the Head of Special Branch, with the Commander of Operations (also at this time at commander rank) being the effective deputy.

Commander Ops, as it was known, had responsibility for all operational work carried out by the Met’s Special Branch. This included the SDS, which sat in S Squad but moved to C Squad (which monitored left wing political activism) in 1988. Alongside him was Commander Administration – at that time HN295 Don Buchanan who would later succeed Gunn as Commander Ops.

Every morning at 10am, all the senior managers, including Phelan, Gunn and Buchanan, met with the Detective Chief Superintendents of each of the Special Branch squads. Also there was George Churchill-Coleman, the Commander of SO13 Anti-Terrorist Branch. They discussed the business of the day as it affected the different squads, and made decisions (this was the ‘prayer meetings’ mentioned by other senior Special Branch managers).

Gunn is questioned on who would have known of the SDS at this rank. He replied that until an officer reached Commander rank, most Special Branch officers ‘did not appreciate the full remit or the existence of the SDS’.

He is certain the senior ranks of Assistant Commissioner, Specialist Operations (ACSO) and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police were aware of the unit, in the sense of what they were doing, though not about the day-to-day running or the techniques and tactics used.

It is at this point, only 15 minutes in, that Gunn makes a statement he would return to repeatedly:

‘And don’t forget we did this work on behalf of the State. We were asked to do this by the Home Secretary in 1968, when the febrile atmosphere of demonstrations and extremism in this country was much greater than it is today.

And I don’t know how many of the Inquiry team were experienced and understand what we went through in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. But it was important that the Commissioner, who was asked by the Home Secretary in 1968 to get our act together on the intelligence side, we were performing those duties on behalf of the State. For the State.

And don’t forget, we had no statutory power to do what we were doing at the time. We were operating in a statutory vacuum – and that meant we had to make decisions on what we did from our own pragmatic knowledge, staying within the law.’

OVERSIGHT OF THE SDS

The SDS, a small unit in itself, was accordingly a relatively small part of Gunn’s responsibilities as Commander Ops. He had other issues such as terrorism to deal with. He didn’t ignore the SDS, but left it to the Chief Superintendent of S Squad to inform him of operational and reputational matters.

Hence, Gunn did not involve himself in the day-to-day management of the SDS, but had an oversight role. Asked that that oversight meant, he replies:

‘Well, the oversight of the SDS was demanding that they stayed within the law, that they perform their duties properly. Both from a discipline and criminal law aspect and any matters that affected the reputation of the Metropolitan Police would obviously need to be brought to my intention…

But I would have been informed in any matters that affected the reputation and the operational credence of such a unit.’

Hence, he only became involved in SDS matters when they were referred to him. He didn’t have a daily meeting with the Chief Superintendent of S Squad about the SDS (HN103 David Smith, HN115 Tony Wait), and Gunn had sufficient confidence in them to be telling him what he needed to know. They were in charge and he, Gunn, relied on their operational judgement.

Matters he would expect to be referred to him were:

• any arrest of an undercover, whether in real or cover identity
• any prospective disciplinary issue
• any substantial increase to the public risk to an undercover officer, whether as a result of suspicion by targets or otherwise
• any welfare issues that required the support of the wider Met or outside agencies

It is only 19 minutes in, and Gunn interjects into the questioning to make the second of the points he was determined to hammer home throughout his evidence:

‘Could I just put into context some of what you are asking? The matters of the SDS, it was a highly sensitive and secret operation [redacted] and it was on behest of the Government and the Home Office that we performed such duties.

An overriding consideration for all matters affecting the SDS was the reputation of the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office and the Government, that these very sensitive issues are not traded about daily so that it would become an embarrassment to the Home Office and Government.

We were operating under that pressure, when everything we did we had to bear in mind the fact: was the reputation of the Metropolitan Police going to be in jeopardy if information leaked on some of the things we were doing?

And that to some extent explains some of the rationale that I put later when dealing with the arrest of people, undercover officers and/or informing or not informing the court.’

He is asked who within the Met would see the SDS Annual Reports. Phelan did, and if necessary the Commissioner himself. Ask why the Commissioner would see them, he is back on his hobby-horse:

‘Because, as I explained, the delicacy and sensitivity of much of the work we were doing on SDS was unique. It had not been done before. It’s helpful to the Inquiry to distinguish between undercover policing as we knew it at the time and the new form of undercover, deep-cover policing, that occurred with the SDS.

The two are different and I am not absolutely sure that this Inquiry has entirely understood the difference between what we started to do uniquely in 1968 and what was going on in terms of the normal undercover work in respect of crime.’

Gunn brushes over the fact that the SDS had been going twenty years by the time he came along, and predated the formalisation of undercover work elsewhere in policing including the Met. But the point he wants to drive home here, as well as later, is that the Inquiry doesn’t understand how special and unique the SDS were.

The Scutt Affair – Reputations At Stake

 

Even by SDS standards, the actions of HN95 Stefan Scutt, ‘Stefan Wesolowski’, was one of the lowest points in the unit’s history. Infiltrating the Socialist Workers Party in 1988, this undercover went off the rails spectacularly.

His withdrawal from the field appears to have tipped him over the edge, causing him to act erratically and eventually leading to him retiring on medical grounds – rather than facing disciplinary proceedings for his actions.

It created an existential crisis for the SDS, which it ought to have learned lessons from. However, such lessons were not really learned. As such it has been a point of focus by the Inquiry when questioning multiple officers, particularly how decisions were made and especially what motivations underlay choices made by senior managers.

 

Gunn was closely involved at the time as Special Branch sought to contain the fall-out. However, he states he has no recollection of it whatsoever. He doesn’t deny he was involved in the decision making process and involved in the aftermath, but just doesn’t recall any of it and he cannot understand why he does not remember, and is troubled by that.

However, having read the documents, he does not think he would have done anything differently. Regardless of this, he’s asked questions and his responses are illuminating in their own way, not least in how his answers demonstrate his mindset as a manager.

Issues such as possible criminality by spycops, welfare and disciplinary matters would have been decided as a whole rather than being compartmentalised. They would be part of the totality of the decision-making process.

Counsel to the Inquiry asks if there was generally a prioritising of SDS operational security and the secrecy of the unit over potential disciplinary or criminal investigation of an undercover.

‘Ms Simcock, as I mentioned in an earlier answer, there was an overriding concern that the secrecy of the SDS and the classification of the work of the SDS should be kept to an absolute close need to know. And, yes, it would have been a consideration in making judgements on whether or not a discipline or a criminal case would follow a particular incident.’

Counsel does not rise to his patronising tone, and asks whether there was a concern that if the Scutt affair became public there was a risk the SDS would have been closed down.

‘Well, it just wasn’t Scutt. Any detail in respect of the work of the SDS – and I can’t emphasise highly enough it was a top secret unit operating in a statutory vacuum at the behest of the Government/Home Office.

And as far as the [Special] Branch were concerned, any handling of SDS information, intelligence, et cetera, had to be at the highest and most discreet level because of the embarrassment it could have been caused to the Home Office and to the Government if the work and understanding of the SDS had been made public at that time.’

Pressed on this, he says that maintaining the secrecy and operational security of the SDS was not a deciding factor in decision-making, but it was a significant one. He and the head of S Squad would have taken into account:

‘the need for the utmost secrecy of this operation. And I can’t emphasise that enough. And that was not our doing, that was the Government and the Home Office wish.’

COVERING UP CRIMINALITY

Counsel asks about whether there was a concern that a culture of covering up criminality had developed in Special Branch, and whether that was a necessary consequence of the level of secrecy.

Gunn says no, he doesn’t think there was such a culture of secrecy to avoid doing things or admitting things. Rather the culture of secrecy was about the very existence of the work of the SDS:

Q: But if criminality or misconduct on behalf of undercover officers became public, that secrecy would be in jeopardy and therefore the unit itself and its existence could be in jeopardy?

A: Obviously. And that was part of the decision-making process that I and others had to make when it came to the delicate area of undercover officers committing criminal offences.

And we had to take into account not just the circumstances of the case, the overriding need of the interests of justice, but also the overriding need of the Government and the Home Office that whatever action we took should not jeopardise the publicity of SDS activities. And I can’t emphasise that enough.

Asked why he would have recommended Scutt be removed from the list of authorised firearms officers, he explains:

‘Well, obviously, we were taking into account the risk [Scutt] posed to himself and to the organisation in respect of the activities or alleged activities.’

It’s extraordinary seeing a high ranking police officer admit that the SDS was operating outside of any legal basis, its officers were permitted to commit crimes because disciplining them would risk them becoming disgruntled and exposing the unit’s existence, and yet he talks about this as if it were all right and proper.

TO DISCIPLINE OR TO RETIRE

Gunn stands by the judgement to let Scutt retire on an ill-health pension rather than following a disciplinary route. He states that welfare considerations at the time in the police were not sophisticated, and they didn’t know the potential psychological damage undercover work was doing to the officers. That said, he suspects they wouldn’t have dealt with Scutt differently if they’d known, but they would have been forewarned.

It’s also clear from his contemporary minutes to Phelan that Gunn preferred to take the medical route rather than disciplinary in dealing with Scutt. This was apparently less about the welfare needs of the troubled undercover, than, as Gunn recorded at the time [MPS-0740892]:

‘the very real possibility of compromising his position in his covert role and possibly other S Squad activities. I did not feel it prudent indeed practical to launch into a discipline investigation at that time’.

Counsel asks about the thinking behind him writing that, to which he responds:

‘Well, I think as I have already explained in some detail, there was an overriding need to protect the security, sensitivity and classification of the SDS’s activities. It would have been a feature and a very strong feature in my decision, as indeed was shown by the minutes…

I felt it was best for Scutt and it was best for the Metropolitan Police, and, I have to say, it was best for the Home Office and Government, that he should be allowed to retire in a dignified and quiet way, rather than the paraphernalia of a discipline case which would have attracted huge publicity.’

He is pressed if publicity was an overriding factor. He says no, but it was nonetheless a powerful factor in the consideration.

Could he have done both disciplinary proceedings and ill-health retirement at the same time? No, he responds, because it would not have solved the issue of publicity. It was agreed by him and other senior managers that ill-health was best for all concerned. And he wouldn’t change that now.

It is clear that Gunn has, in his own mind, made a distinction between cover-up and keeping things secret – the latter being the way he can justify dubious decisions – and he will not deviate from this. It is his version of plausible deniability that he will rely on to justify his management of situations as the issues on his watch mount up.

It’s noted that after this decision was made Gunn met with medical professionals involved with treating Scutt. He says he would not have brought pressure to bear to go down that route, and that would have been ‘wholly improper’.

OUR SIDE OF THE BREAKDOWN

Counsel notes that Gunn had minuted to Phelan that he had spoken with the consultant psychiatrist treating Scutt and emphasised ‘our side of the case’.

He is asked what that might mean, to which he answers that would have been about the sensitivity of what Scutt had been doing.

‘I don’t think he would probably have been aware, but the sensitivities of explaining the background to the work the officers were doing, which I say again was unique, we haven’t done this before, we were on the rim and the outside of the law on many occasions and these issues had to be based upon judgement taken in good faith at the time.

And 40 or 30 years later, trying to rewrite history and/or reassess the circumstances that we were under then I think is not particularly fair.’

There he is again, even more clearly admitting that he knew the spycops’ remit was unlawful, but claiming it’s unfair for the Inquiry to objectively judge what they did.

Continuing with Gunn’s reaction to Scutt’s breakdown, Counsel notes that he recorded at the time:

‘I reiterated to the doctor our concern in this case both about the sensitivity of the issue… and the need to protect our continuing operations. I also mentioned our concern about the alter ego problem.’

The note recorded that a consulting psychiatrist, Dr Farewell, had told Gunn that given his condition, Scutt should not be seen by any police officers until further notice.

Counsel points out that he ignored this advice and got Phelan’s permission for SDS manager HN337 to visit Scutt to recover documents relating to his cover role.

She said that the Inquiry understood their recovery was necessary to prevent compromise of Scutt’s undercover work and SDS operations more generally and to protect the safety of his colleagues still deployed.

She asked if that was right, to which he answered:

‘I think that’s entirely sensible.’

Once HN337 had successfully done this did Gunn instruct that no other police officer should contact Scutt, as he was concerned about Scutt’s mental health and welfare.

Gunn met with the Met’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr Bott, and the consulting psychiatrist, Dr Farewell. Following this meeting, they agreed [MPS-0740892]:

‘The pressing operational need to assess potential damage limitation factors overrode potential concern for Scutt.’

Gunn recorded that Dr Bott was happy with Special Branch’s actions to date in a memo to Phelan, adding:

‘I am now confident that adequate damage limitation measures have been taken to protect SDS activities and I am hopeful that that aspect of the Scutt affair has been resolved.’

ABSCONDING TO YORK

As part of his breakdown on being told his deployment was ending, Scutt vanished, only to turn up in a distressed state in York. He was detained by local police there, who found his Met personnel assessment paperwork.

Gunn visited North Yorkshire Police to find out what they had on Scutt. He is troubled he cannot remember this, but thinks he must have seen someone at assistant chief constable level or higher, and have been driven to Yorkshire and back.

He adds:

‘But whatever happened it would have been for the specific purpose of maintaining the security of the SDS in respect of the reputation of the Metropolitan Police and the need to know.

And if we had information around Scutt’s activities in North Yorkshire or elsewhere, then we would need to verify and/or try and minimise the damage that could potentially have been caused from that.’

Counsel notes that records say North Yorkshire Police agreed to destroy records. Gunn doesn’t recall that, and doesn’t know why he would have wanted the paperwork destroyed:

‘We weren’t trying to hide anything. But again, if I said that, I can’t recall why.’

He agrees that he likely sought assurance that they wouldn’t disseminate anything they’d been told further.
Shortly afterwards, Gunn adds:

‘It is unfortunate that Scutt not only broke his cover but also reprehensibly gave details of the nature of his SDS work to unauthorised persons.

I fear that little will be achieved in pursuing any disciplinary action against Scutt. Indeed, we have more to lose.

Suitable damage limitation has been taken in respect of North Yorkshire Police Force and I feel this particular facet of the Scutt saga must rest there.’

Why did you consider there was little to be achieved by pursuing disciplinary action? Again, Gunn is emphatic that going down the disciplinary route would risk the severe downside of publicity.

‘I stand by the judgement I made in respect of the sensitivity and security needs of the work that Scutt was involved in, and the potential for that matter becoming public with the huge danger and difficulty it would create both politically and police-wise for us and Government.’

GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT

It’s only an hour in to his day at the Inquiry, but it is already apparent that Gunn is very keen to bring the Government in whenever he can.

He does however accept that the reputation of the Met would have been an issue for making that judgement and agrees that if the Scutt affair had become public the SDS’ existence would have been in jeopardy.

In a regular feature of his evidence, he immediately adds:

‘The efficiency and effectiveness of the SDS at the time in terms of the information it was providing, the intelligence it was providing, was crucial to the Home Office, to the Government, to the Security Service at the time.

So it wouldn’t just have been a question of the SDS folding. That vital intelligence that we were asked to gain – which we did over the years – would have gone. Where is the vacuum that would have filled that? And I think we are viewing some of that today with the mismatch between intelligence and public order problems.’

We see again his determination to defend the SDS and what it was doing, bigging up (without ever substantiating) the value of its work.

Gunn’s eagerness to say that the government directed the spycops is startling. Other police witnesses at the Inquiry have downplayed everything and refused to point the finger of blame higher up the command chain.

Gunn is so emphatic that it’s easy to read it as an attempt to avoid the blame, and maybe that’s all it is. But then again, it does fill a few of the major blanks.

The big question, far beyond what the spycops did, is who ordered it. The Home Office set up the SDS and directly funded it for the first 20 years. It received annual reports detailing what was done. The funding was renewed annually.

Right at the start, government documents showed that they felt the secrecy about the SDS’s existence was paramount, fearing ’embarrassment to the Home Secretary and HM government’.

So, they knew the public would be outraged, and they knew they wanted plausible deniability.

Despite two decades of working for the Home Office, a search of all Home Office archives found that not one document about the SDS has been retained. This can only be to ensure that if – as has happened – the public did find out about the SDS, the blame stays with the police rather than their paymasters.

AND MI5 TOO

It’s not just the government that Gunn has his eye on. When the interest of MI5 in the Scutt affair is raised, he cant recall the detail, but is quick to declare:

‘The Security Service knew exactly what we were doing in the SDS. They lived off the product. They enjoyed the product. They even targeted and helped targeting. So it’s important that the Security Service were part of the equation when it came to decision-making process on all matters dealing with SDS that might affect the Security Service work.

And it is no good saying, “I was upstairs collecting fares at the time”. They were involved in most of the work of the SDS, particularly in the early days when we were dealing with subversion, extremism left, which was the Security Service’s province.

And I think I have to say, having listened to each of the tranches, every bit of evidence that’s been delivered to this Inquiry so far, I don’t see much from the Security Service in terms of supporting or justifying what we did in those days. And I think that is a matter of concern.’

Gunn doesn’t like to miss an opportunity to make criticisms of the Inquiry’s approach to things. It’s clear he has been following the Inquiry’s progress avidly and is not happy with its conduct, not least because the fine men of the SDS are not getting the credit he thinks they deserve, while the government and MI5 don’t get the same scrutiny.

Counsel ask if, at the time, there was any consideration that the influence secrecy and security of operations had over decision-making was setting a dangerous precedent?

‘Well, Special Branch had many experienced and diligent officers at all levels. Although you would be surprised thinking it from some of the details that have been presented to this Inquiry.

But the experience of the Special Branch officers – particularly the managers – in conjunction with the Home Office, in conjunction with the Security Service, there was a common agreement. And I can’t emphasise this enough.

There was a common agreement that the secrecy and confidentiality and knowledge of the work of the SDS should be kept to an absolute need to know. And that need to know, I don’t think has fully been explained yet to this Inquiry.’

Gunn is the man to do that, apparently. Though no other manager has said nearly as much as he has done. In his determination to defend the SDS and by extension Special Branch, he is content to throw everyone else under the bus. Seemingly, as we’ll see, because in his eyes that’s what’s happening to them.

Before the Stefan Scutt debacle, there had been the case of HN155 ‘Phil Cooper’, who was also retired on ill-health. He had infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party 1980-84, and was on close terms with some MPs. He wrote a letter to the Commissioner complaining about his treatment in his disciplinary case.

Gunn is asked about whether there would have been a concern about someone like this raising a disciplinary matter with the Home Secretary.

He answers that it was not about the individual case but any disciplinary inquiry would have been public and hence the exposed the SDS:

‘It was about the circumstances that the Home Office would need to have known if there was a reputational issue coming their way.’

SCUTT, MI5 AND THE HOME OFFICE

Counsel returns to MI5’s interest in the Scutt affair, and a note of a meeting they had with SDS managers. In it they note that nobody was going to say anything about the matter to the Home Office [UCPI0000030663].

In his written statement to the Inquiry, Gunn said Scutt would have been an operational matter for the Met police not the Home Office whose role was just policy and funding, so Scutt’s removal and welfare concerns were matters that were solely the concerns of the Met.

He adds, unprompted:

‘And I think it underlines again what I tried to say earlier, that the Security Service were head and shoulders and above dealing with these matters in respect of keeping the secrecy of this operation sacrosanct and we, in addition to the Security Service, would take into account the position of the Home Office and Government in making those judgements. And that, I believe, is the clear implication of those minutes.’

Counsel presses whether the real reason is the Home Office would have cut funding if they found out. Gunn doesn’t like the question.

‘No, that’s your judgement and I don’t agree with it. It would have been an issue. And, as I’ve said, the Home Office was very sensitive about the activities of the SDS and how we controlled the need to know.’

He doesn’t think it would have necessarily cost the SDS its funding, adding:

‘The [Home Office] knew that these were very sensitive, difficult operational matters. So the line between operations and policy in respect of the police, the Security Service and the Home Office was a thin one, but it was very important.

And we had to take into account the sensitivities of each of those players, if I can put it that way, in respect of any action that was taken by the SDS.’

He’s asked directly if the Home Office should have been told of the Scutt affair. He tries to manoeuvre around the question. Counsel does not let go, saying that given it was known in Special Branch that the secrecy and operational security of the SDS was a primary concern to the Home Office, surely they should have been notified.

Gunn caves and says once more that he was between a rock and a hard place, and made that judgement, though he doesn’t recall it. Again, he doesn’t think he would have changed the decision he made at the time.

At the end of the morning session, the Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting, intervened to ask questions. He had picked up on what Gunn said about details of the Scutt affair being detailed up to the Deputy Assistant Commissioner level and beyond. He wanted to know who he meant by ‘beyond’?

Gunn says depending on the seriousness and jeopardy it would have gone up the line of command in the Metropolitan Police. He cannot recall at all, but thinks in the circumstances it would have gone as high as the Commissioner, or very close to him.

Mitting notes that the Commissioner at the time was Sir Peter Imbert, prompting Gunn to state:

‘Ah, well, I would have thought almost certainly it would have gone to Sir Peter because he was a former Special Branch officer. He would have been trusted and understood the security of the operation of the SDS.’

Gunn probably didn’t realise how big a statement he just made, both on knowledge of issues in the SDS, but that there was corollary to his words, that Commissioners might not have been trusted. But that Special Branch men trusted one another to a degree that wasn’t extended to outsiders, even if they were their superior officers.

That is quite a position to have, demonstrating the sheer arrogance of Special Branch towards the rest of the Metropolitan Police, let alone the rest of the human race.

 

Spycops Methods

 

Following the Scutt affair, Gunn had asked HN39 Eric Docker, then the Detective Chief Inspector running the SDS, to conduct a review [MPS-0726998].

Docker’s report made a number of recommendations, among them was one for psychiatric testing of SDS candidates at the recruitment stage, and of former undercover officers as part of the post-SDS procedure.

Gunn says that was a sensible reaction to the Scutt affair, that he was trying to learn lessons and correct things.

In his reponse to Docker’s review [MPS-0726998], Gunn had expressed concern about the ‘necessarily long reins of supervision given to field officers’ and said they needed to be tightened. Counsel wants to know what the concern was here.

OVERSIGHT ISSUES

Gunn responds that normal undercover work was short-lived and focused on getting evidence to charge someone. The SDS deployments were different.

‘It was built upon the same – this is a point that’s not necessarily I think been understood by the Inquiry. Undercover policing is all about deception, deceit, intrigue. I am sorry, but that’s the reality of what undercover policing is.

When you have officers dealing with that, there is a sensitivity that they should understand the problems that they are going to face, which we tried in terms of management, but the SDS officers who were undercover were out on their own in the field, sometimes in dangerous circumstances, and their command was back in the office.

I thought at the time, was there some way we could put at management level or a supervision level to shorten the lines of communication between the poor – the undercover officers out there on their own in dangerous circumstances and the back office in respect of supervision.’

Gunn wanted closer links between the back office and the undercovers, not just for the officer’s welfare but also overseeing some of the behaviours:

‘I mean, these officers were out on their own and sadly some of them transgressed. That’s a matter of huge regret, but it happened. If there had been a closer supervision from the office to the field, it is possible we could have obviated the need for the distress that that caused.’

He adds that one shouldn’t expect someone who’s at the head of the organisation, as he was, to know all the details of the SDS’s operational activities. They inevitably had a lot on their plate. With a bit of buck passing, he reiterates that he relied on all the levels of the chain of command that stretched between him and the undercovers.

In a telling way, as he answers this point it’s clear he sees those undercovers as somehow victims in all this:

‘But the idea in that minute of closer supervision was to shorten the line of command between those in a difficult position and those in the office.’

This tightening of the leash never took place. Instead, as Gunn acknowledged in his witness statement, the intended level of senior oversight never materialised. He attributes that to a looser attitude towards supervision at that time, in the SDS chain of command and higher up.

THE VALUE OF THE SDS: THE REDS ARE STILL UNDER THE BED

Docker wrote at the time:

‘Officers of the Special Demonstration Squad are in a prime position to be able to report on any threat from London’s principal subversive groups and it is therefore essential that the SDS be allowed to continue its role as hitherto.’

Gunn agreed with that and had given no consideration to closing the unit down. In any case, such a decision would have involved the Commissioner, the Home Office and the Security Service.

Counsel drew attention to a 1988 MI5 briefing on the reduced threat from subversion. Gunn recalled it followed a change in the definition of subversion to the ‘Harris Definition’:

‘Those which threaten the safety or well-being of the State, and which are intended to undermine or overthrow Parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means.’

MI5 took the view that they would not be so interested in public order issues in future. Special Branch command, including Gunn, took a wider, more pragmatic view of public order.

‘We did not accept that certain elements of the activity that caused public order wasn’t described as subversion.’

He then cites the current Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Jonathan Hall KC (Inquiry watchers may recall him as the barrister for the Metropolitan Police in 2017 and a keen proponent of anonymity for the undercovers) who recently said there should be a new law against subversion.

Gunn is passionate about this:

‘It is still a matter that was burning into our souls at the time that we were taking on, without necessarily the support or encouragement of the Security Service, on public order matters.’

DEAD CHILDREN’S IDENTITIES

Gunn says that the theft of dead children’s identities as the basis for undercover personae was a well established practice when he became Commander Ops.

He’s asked what he understood about the legal basis of this. He says the subject troubles him greatly, but then goes on a historical digression in order to demonstrate that Special Branch didn’t invent the tactic. They didn’t invent burglary or mugging either, but those would still be crimes if they committed them. A crime doesn’t become legal just because it’s committed by a police officer.

He understands the distress it would have caused the families had the information got out at the time, something that’s hard to justify.

Similarly, the current distress they have is, he says, a matter of personal regret for him. He acknowledges some of the evidence heard by the Inquiry from the families affected, calling it heartrending, and ‘that’s a great burden’.

Gunn could have stopped there, but he wants to defend the SDS. He says the practice was ‘necessary because we needed secure legends for our undercover officers’.

He points out that the decision to adopt this practice was made before his time, saying he believes that two or three undercovers using purely fictitious ‘legends’ had been compromised as a result. This method was judged to be better for for the interest and safety of the officers. Gunn makes it clear that he considers this to have been the right decision: ‘necessary operationally’.

Asked for more details about these compromised undercovers, Gunn says he can’t remember the details. He says he was aware it was part of the rationale that the use of birth certificates as officers had been compromised in the past.

There is no evidence to show these ‘two or three’ exposed officers existed. However, the fifth SDS officer to steal a dead child’s identity, HN297 Richard Clark ‘Rick Gibson’, was investigated by suspicious members of the group he’d infiltrated and confronted with ‘his’ death certificate. Despite this, the tactic continued for another 20 years, into Gunn’s time and well beyond.

Counsel points out that HN56 ‘Alan Nicholson’, an undercover deployed during his period as Commander Ops, had used a completely fictitious identity. Gunn says he can’t remember him.

Gunn isn’t stopping with that fictional excuse for identity theft. He adds that it was 40 years ago, without issues of computerisation. He marches on with his tone deaf defence, blaming the fact that this secret eventually got out as the real cause of the families’ pain.

‘And if I could just say, we did not believe with the secret nature of the work and the tactic, we did not believe that would ever get into the public domain. It didn’t get into the public domain from the SDS or the police. And I will leave the judgment as to how it got into the public domain for others to make.

But it was that that caused the stress, hurt and unhappiness of the poor families. Not our particular specific use of the tactic, although obviously the use exacerbated the problem.

But it was a very difficult and a very stressful time for officers and commanders and senior officers, and with the benefit of hindsight we would never use it again. We wouldn’t need to use it again. And I personally apologise to the families that were involved in that, because there were some heartrending cases.’

NO LEGAL BASIS

He’s asked what the legal basis for the tactic and he responds with one of the stand-out quotes of his already spectacular evidence:

‘Well, there was no legal basis for it, as I understood. And indeed there was no legal basis for a lot of the work we were doing…

We had no statutory backing for what we were doing until the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, in 2000. We had no authority, legal authority, to have covert human intelligence sources until that Act. We were operating in a statutory vacuum.

We had very little statutory backing for what we did. It was fly by the seat of your pants and make judgements on difficult political operational decisions in everything we did.’

Gunn is on a roll, back where he wants to be, defending the brave SDS, constantly referring to them as ‘we’, as he identifies himself with them.

‘And, I think in 40 years of activity, I think we did that. We achieved – and this is another thing that I don’t think this Inquiry has fully covered – the importance of the work and the results that were achieved by our brave officers, who didn’t go off piste, who didn’t engage in sexual relationships, and that’s regrettable and should never have happened.

Where have we heard about all the excellent undercover operational work that took place for 40 years? Where have we heard that in this Inquiry?

I accept entirely that much of it is secret and will probably be held in camera, but that will never reach the public domain.

What the public have heard and will hear is the mistakes, the cock ups, the faults, the damages of the people who did wrong. And that’s wrong, and I take full responsibility as Commander Ops for whatever happened on my watch.’

Counsel notes his 2013 statement [MPS-0723255] to the Met’s own internal spycops investigation, Operation Herne, on the topic where he said:

‘I am not aware that the identities of dead children were used in creating the false identities and do not believe that to be so.’

After going off on one about Herne (see below), he claims that this was incorrect and he had said so at the time. In his written statement, he tries to explain this away by saying that to the best of his knowledge, he had never signed off on an application for a birth certificate of a dead child while he was Commander Ops.

He tries to claim that his straightforward, unequivocal, total denial actually just meant he didn’t believe he answered any queries about it or approved any applications.

He doesn’t recall when he first learned of the tactic, but he can say it was not common knowledge in Special Branch. He accepts that as Commander Ops he could have ended the practice but the issue was never raised with him.

He is asked why he would need to wait for the issue to be raised with him.

He replies that it was considered operationally necessary, plus it hadn’t leaked into the public domain and caused any problems, so seemed the most suitable method. He says if the legality or propriety of it had been raised, he would have taken inquiries, but it wasn’t and hence it wasn’t a burning issue, and he never thought to question the legality of identity theft himself.

He accepts that with hindsight it would have been better had he taken a closer look, but can’t help having another dig at the Inquiry for having exposed the tactic.

NO ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Earlier Gunn had raised the case of Vaclav Jelinek, a Czechoslovakian spy who also stole an identity in this way.

Jelinek received wide publicity when he was exposed in 1977, and it caused huge distress to the family of the child whose identity he’d stolen. Why did that not give Gunn pause for thought to its moral and ethical implications?

As usual when he’s annoyed, Gunn employs Counsel’s name in a patronising way:

‘Well, as I have tried to explain, Ms Simcock, it was morally wrong. We shouldn’t necessarily have used that tactic in terms of the distress and hurt that it has caused, and I accept that entirely.

All I can say is in terms of the torrid period we were in, in the 1970s and 1980s and some of the 1990s, the security and safety of our officers undercover was of great importance.’

He says that judgement is supported by the fact that not only did everyone think the tactic would never would get out, but also that it shouldn’t have got out.

Counsel ask what might have happened if in the process of unmasking an undercover the tactic was discovered by activists. Was that consideration at the time?

‘Yes, it was a constant concern and the matter was continually considered as to whether or not the tactic should remain.’

The careful listener probably picked up on this inconsistency in his evidence. For someone who didn’t have involvement with SDS until he became Commander Ops, and said that he left all such matters to the Squad’s managers, Gunn betrays here and elsewhere a deeper role than he wants to let on.

Such a review of identity theft was because of its unethical nature and the Met would do everything in its power to keep it secret. If they could have done without it, they would have.

This is nonsense. In the early years of the SDS officers simply made up names. Then the tactic was described in spy thriller book and film The Day of The Jackal, after which SDS officers started doing it.

CHANGE TO CREATION

From the mid 1990s onwards, they reverted to making up names. They themselves proved they could do without it.

Gunn says that at the time it was an appropriate and necessary means to protect undercover officers:

‘We did take into account, I am absolutely certain, and I was at the time troubled if this ever got out it was going to be extremely embarrassing, not just for the police but for the Home Office and the Government. But it didn’t get out.

Now that’s not justification, I understand, for using it. But it is a consideration in terms of context and proportionality of the risk that we faced and how we deal with that risk.’

So the concern at the time was only for state actors, not for the bereaved families.

He reiterates his apology to the families. It is clear this topic troubles him a lot, but he cannot stop himself trying to square it with appeals to necessity and the belief it would never get out to the public. Even though it had done so, thanks to both the Jelinek case and The Day of the Jackal.

Our attention is taken to the 1990-1991 SDS Annual Report [MPS-0728958]. It noted that creating cover backgrounds became increasingly difficult as public records were computerised.

Was this not an opportunity to reconsider the necessity of the theft of dead children’s identities? Gunn says he would have seen the report, but was busy dealing with Irish and international terrorism. However, he accepts, with hindsight, that he should have acted on it.

He can’t say if he knew whether the Home Office was aware of the tactic. He says he doesn’t recall them being involved with the SDS while he was Commander Ops. He states that Home Office support of this tactic would have helped clarify the judgement of the officers who took the initial decision on the use of stolen identities. He says that given that the unit existed for 50 years, the Home Office must have been aware of these undercover operations.

He says he can’t confirm the exact degree of knowledge officers above him in the Metropolitan Police hierarchy had. However he finds it difficult to believe that they didn’t know about the spycops unit, particularly the ‘Assistant Commissioner Specialist Operations’.

HORRIBLE HERNE

Operation Herne is another bugbear of Gunn’s, and he is determined that the Inquiry will hear his views on it repeatedly. Herne was the Metropolitan Police’s own investigation into the spycop scandal, set up when the story first broke in 2011 and focusing on the SDS.

Counsel draws his attention to the statement he gave Herne in 2013 [MPS-0723255]. Gunn is glad she’s raised this as apparently Herne has been troubling him, and other officers involved in the Inquiry, ‘quite considerably’.

He points out that when they gave their interviews to Herne’s investigating officers, it was to provide them with a history of the unit, because they had no idea. It was done from memory, without looking at any documents, and they made ‘mistakes’. Gunn is very upset that the details have since been released into the public domain by the Inquiry.

‘They were notes of interviews that were never, ever signed by the officer who made them. That is wrong and I don’t believe it should have happened.’

This is odd, as every page of his own Herne statement has a line at the bottom marked ‘witness signature’, and on each page it has been signed. He put his signature on it seven times. The Inquiry has redacted the signature but marked it as his.

He is not the first officer to be upset at the Herne statements being used in the Inquiry and made public.

It seems a lot of officers lied to Herne because they didn’t think anyone would check the plausibility and veracity of their claims, such as Gunn’s blanket denial of the theft of dead children’s identities.

Others went the other way and, in being interviewed by fellow police officers, were more frank and forthcoming than they’ve been at this Inquiry.

The Herne statements were, Gunn said, made for a different purpose and a different reason and not under caution. Counsel points out that he signed it with a statement of truth.

Later in the hearing he will bring this subject up again, referring to the statements (which he refers to as ‘unsigned notes’) and the outrage he feels about them appearing in the public domain thanks to the Inquiry.

Relationships

Another of Docker’s recommendations was:

‘Whenever possible, only married officers with a stable family background should be selected for SD duties. Although there should not be a total bar on the recruitment of single officers who may be deemed especially suitable.’

Gunn supported these recommendations at the time, and emphasised:

‘Only in wholly exceptional cases should single officers be considered, and then only after prior discussion with the candidate’s squad chief superintendent and Commander Ops.’

He doesn’t recall it.

Earlier, Counsel had pointed out that at the time of the Scutt affair, Gunn had stressed [MPS-740892] that:

‘There was a concern that the role of having an alter ego as an undercover became an easy excuse for any SDS officer to put forward whenever he experienced a professional/domestic problem.’

She asks about what sort of domestic problem such a defence would apply to.

Gunn explains that the undercovers were operating under extreme stress, but that it wasn’t really understood at the time:

‘They were living a lie. They were living a different world to their home life with their family, and we didn’t fully understand that, I am quite sure. It is a matter of regret, but it’s a fact of life 30, 40 years ago, I am afraid.’

He’s pressed about whether the reference to ‘domestic problem’ meant undercovers having sexual relationships outside marriage.

‘Yes, well, obviously. There was obviously a risk that any extra-marital sexual relationships of the undercover officers would affect their marriage. And taking into account the interests of the family was part of the process. But it probably didn’t — obviously didn’t work, because it wasn’t good.’

Pressed again whether it was an acknowledgement of the risk of deceitful sexual relations, he answers:

‘I don’t think it’s an acknowledgement. I think it’s an accepted risk.’

He didn’t explain what the difference was. Once again, the nuances that are apparent in Gunn’s mind are lost on the rest of us.

ANOTHER SPYCOP BOSS WHO DIDN’T KNOW

He claims that he wasn’t aware of any allegations of sexual relationships by undercovers at any time during his tenure as Commander Ops.

He says it was wrong and had he known it would hopefully have been stopped. He says ‘hopefully’ because he’d have had to take into account the circumstances.

‘And I apologise again, as everyone else seems to apologise, but I do it sincerely in respect of the sexual activity.’

But he wants to immediately add ‘context and proportionality’:

‘Nine or ten people allegedly transgressed in my period. What about all the dozens of other good, brave, intelligence-gathering undercover officers who didn’t go off piste, who didn’t go on a journey of their own and commit sexual offences. When have we heard about those?

All I am saying, Ms Simcock, is there is some balance that is not being drawn upon this and I want to put the context and balance, without in any way justifying the activity. Because it shouldn’t have happened.’

He is clear that when one of his chief superintendents was alleged to have known of a sexual relationship that officer should have told him. And likewise, that such knowledge should have been passed up the chain to him more generally. He is definitive that it was known to be wrong:

‘It is self-evident that that behaviour jeopardised the security and classification secret of that operation. The dangers that those officers exposed themselves to by that behaviour was paramount in terms of the whole exercise being revealed.

You don’t need police discipline regulations to know that unauthorised sexual activity in the job, when we were dealing with targets, is wrong, not right. They knew that. They must have known that.

But each one had circumstances which may or may not have put a different shade to it. I am not saying that. I am not suggesting that it justified the behaviour at all. But it should have come to the knowledge of Commander Ops.’

He is declaring the relationships to be wrong because of the operational problems they might cause for the spycops. There is, even this late on, still no consideration of the harm that was done to the women.

Counsel notes that Scutt had alleged that another undercover was having a sexual relationship, but the investigation of his claim was left to two SDS managers. And given all that had happened, they were unlikely to have believed him.

Gunn’s answer is telling. He asks what the alternative would have been, asking if he was supposed ‘to bring in an outsider into the SDS to deal with matters that were highly secret’. For him it was proper to do the initial inquiry in-house, to see if there was anything behind this allegation. He doesn’t recall how this inquiry concluded.

It appears from contemporary documents that the undercover was exonerated. No action was taken.

However, Gunn accepts that this could have been because of the need to keep SDS operations secret. Such a decision would have to happen at commander level, but he doesn’t recall it coming to him.

Asked what he’d have done at the time, he says he would have considered all of the circumstances and sought the views of the SDS managers and line-managers. He would have made a judgement, ‘taking into account the wider issues involved, including reputation, security and all the other matters’.

It’s a non-answer with no actual action described, but given his earlier emphasis on the need to keep the SDS secret and avoid officers being disgruntled, it’s easy for us to imagine what he would have done.

SYMPATHY FOR ABUSERS

He’s taken to his Herne interview again (which he moans about some more). It gives an impression that he sympathised with the undercovers who entered into deceitful relationships:

‘I am conscious of the extreme pressures on the undercover officers and it may well be that, to maintain their deep cover, some officers may have engaged in sexual activity.’

Gunn disagrees, saying he didn’t sympathise, and repeats that this conduct was wrong and shouldn’t have happened. He does acknowledge that there was a risk of it happening, that had to be analysed alongside all the other risks.

He says his response would have depended on the circumstances. He claims that if the allegation was true, the undercover would likely have been removed from the field. Their continuing such a relationship could have risked not just their own cover, but the security of the entire spycops operation. Again, there is no mention that these officers were violating citizens they were supposed to protect.

Counsel points out that HN10 Bob Lambert and HN5 John Dines both had long-term sexual relationships on his watch. Gunn claims not to have been aware of this sexual activity at the time. Why does he say (in his witness statement) that he doesn’t consider this to be ‘a failure of oversight by senior managers’?

He accepts that, again with the benefit of hindsight, this issue should have been treated more seriously, but he wants to remake his point that the Inquiry is concentrating here just on the ‘miscreants who misbehaved’.

‘In terms of context and balance, all I can say is it is regrettable, seriously regrettable, that these officers went off piste and engaged in that behaviour. But there are so many others that did not, and I cannot emphasise that enough in terms of balance, proportionality and context.’

Counsel notes that Lambert disclosed his relationship to his manager, HN115 Tony Wait, at the time, and the latter took no action. Was that a failure of oversight?

Certainly, say Gunn. He adds that he should have been told at the time and would have done something. Counsel then asks how does he know that was an exception, as Gunn seems to rely on, rather than standard practice for managers?

Gunn admits he can’t be certain, but that doesn’t mean that senior managers would have known of the other relationships. He points out that the undercovers may not have all made such disclosures to their managers; after all they must have known these relationships were wrong. He claims to find it ‘distressing and almost unbelievable’ that he had no knowledge of this when he was in charge.

Later it is brought to his attention that, in his evidence, Wait said he reported Lambert’s relationship to his superior HN113 Ray Tucker. Gunn says he does not recall Tucker being associated with the SDS.

DECEIT, SUBTERFUGE, CONFUSION

In his written statement, Gunn states that the undercovers were aware that if such inappropriate sexual activity was discovered, the consequences could well be ‘career-ending’ for them. He says that this, combined with their skills in subterfuge, explains why they ensured that their managers didn’t discover these relationships.

Surely the managers should have overseen the deployments more closely, precisely because the undercovers had those skills in subterfuge?

‘Yes, well, I have already said, the whole essence of undercover work is based upon deceit, subterfuge, confusion. And it is quite clear that officers who had the skills and the ability to do that sort of work don’t grow on trees. But it is also quite clear that they all knew that they had to stay within the boundaries of the law.

But I have also explained, the boundaries of the law as far as SDS was concerned in the first 30 years of its operations were very sketchy. And you don’t need a law to say officers on duty shouldn’t engage in unwanted sexual behaviour.’

He accepts, though, that there was a risk. For him, this is yet another opportunity to make a point about how the Inquiry is failing to recognise how great the undercovers were for not commiting even more sexual misconduct!

Gunn is certain that the undercovers really suffered, repeatedly using words like ‘extreme’ to characterise their deployments. Bear in mind he’s largely talking about people leafleting McDonald’s and going to Socialist Workers Party meetings.

He does not excuse the officers who did engage in deceitful relationships, but he wants the other undercovers to be recognised for managing not to:

‘If you put a man and woman together in the circumstances that these officers were actually acting under, it was clearly a risk. These officers were going to squats, sleeping on mattresses, rooms full of individuals. The context of exactly what happened has not been properly discovered by this Inquiry, as far as I am concerned.

The circumstances – we put those officers in that position. We must take the responsibility for that. Not because they misbehaved – they should not have misbehaved – but we put them there and they behaved in the vast majority of cases properly, with integrity, with honesty and not a little bravery. And I don’t think that has been understood.’

In his statement, he says such relationships would have fallen under the definition of ‘disreputable conduct’. Does that not understate the seriousness of it?

‘Yes, it does. But let’s go to context again, Ms Simcock. I am trying to illustrate the boundaries within which managers’ and officers’ work within the SDS were very close to the limits of the law.’

The world was a different place back then, he reminds us.

MARRIED MEN ONLY

Counsel returns to the recommendations made in Docker’s report, especially the one about not deploying single men except in exceptional cases. Gunn agrees that the rationale for this was to mitigate the risk of sexual relationships, admitting that at the time, it was acknowledged as a risk that needed mitigation.

He agreed with Docker that a stable family background was an important anchor for the undercovers. Inappropriate sexual activity was not foremost in his mind but it was a consideration. It was not a priority for him. He says he had other concerns, especially in the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing in December 1988.

Shouldn’t it have been acknowledged that some risk still existed, even if officers were in a supposedly stable relationship, such as marriage? Gunn claims this must have been considered, but agrees that they got it wrong.

He doesn’t recall any other action being taken to mitigate the risk of inappropriate relationships. He doesn’t think these could have been prevented by additional training, and says that any closer supervision would have meant undercover monitoring of the SDS undercovers.

Later on he’s asked whether he would have taken any steps to inform the woman being deceived, had he discovered such a relationship? He says that’s a difficult question, falling back to say that he would have needed to take all the circumstances into consideration first.

He says again that such relationships were wrong and shouldn’t have happened. He adds that he watched the recent TV show on the women affected, The Undercover Police Scandal: Love and Lies Exposed, and it was clear that the women were hurt, and this tugged at the heartstrings.

However, in their cases the relationships were not casual. He says the undercovers were certainly not directed to seduce the women in order to gather intelligence. It’s clear from how he says it, that for him there is a difference between a sexual encounter and a long-term affair.

Criminal Spycops

Every week, Gunn signed the diaries of the undercovers. He told Herne that the spycops’ accounts and expenses were strictly controlled. In testimony, Gunn says this was not unique to the SDS, it was ‘part of the general operational supervision in Special Branch’.

Every Friday, Branch officers submitted their diaries, which recorded what they had been up to, as well as their expenses claims. Usually it was signed off at Chief Superintendent (head of Squad) level, but for the SDS it went higher, to Gunn, because of the sensitivity involved. This was also done by Gunn’s predecessor as Commander Ops, Peter Phelan.

Could a more thorough examination of this kind of administrative paperwork have helped mitigate the risk of relationships and/or lead to their discovery? Gunn says it’s possible but notes that he had a lot of responsibilities:

‘And some of the matters you are raising in the cold light of day here – which are important and I don’t decry that – but actually they may pale into insignificance slightly when you’ve got a Lockerbie.’

ARRESTS OF UNDERCOVERS

Home Office Circular No. 35 from 1986 [MPS-0727412] sets out unequivocal rules:

‘The police must never commit themselves to a course which, whether to protect an informant or otherwise, will constrain them to mislead a court in any subsequent proceedings.

If his use in the way envisaged will or is likely to result in its being impossible to protect him without subsequently misleading the court, that must be regarded as a decisive reason for his not being used or not being protected.

The prosecution should be informed of the fact and of the part that the informant took in the commission of the offence.’

Gunn says he was aware of all this at the time. He says it applied to the SDS but that it was guidance only. He says there were only two undercovers who were arrested on his watch. One (HN4) was for drink-driving.

The other was HN5 John Dines, who was not only arrested in the 1990 Poll Tax riot but also wrote an article bragging about it.

In his written statement, Gunn said that as a starting point, the undercovers were supposed to avoid involvement in criminality, and anything beyond that was supposed to considered and authorised by managers.

Did that always apply, irrespective of the kind of group or activity the undercover was being deployed into?
Gunn responds more broadly:

‘Well, it was in part consideration of the circumstances involved in each incident. I had to make a judgement as Commander Ops as to whether or not the guidance was followed to the letter or whether the guidance was followed to the spirit.

On occasions I found myself between a rock and a hard place. John Dines was a classic example of a rock and a hard place, not so the previous drunk drive.

But I took the action I took in the best interests (1) justice, (2) the reputation and safety of the officer, (3) the reputation of the Metropolitan Police. And I had to make a judgement.’

IMMUNITY FOR SPYCOPS

He goes on to note that recent legislation – the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021 (aka the ‘spycops bill’) – recognises that undercovers could commit criminal offences for reasons of national security.

‘We never had that. But I had to do and take the spirit of the recognition that sometimes you are on the edge of the law.

And I was on the edge of the law but made that decision in the full cognisance of the guidance, my judgement against the circumstances of the time.’

The controversial law was opposed by many human rights advocates including Amnesty International, Reprieve, the Pat Finucane Centre, Privacy International and the Centre for the Administration of Justice.
Gunn says he was not aware of an acknowledgement within the SDS at the time that those targeting animal rights groups would inevitably need to participate in criminal activity.

He says he doesn’t recall any discussion with the Security Service about the difficulties of infiltrating the animal rights movement. Or the possibility that doing so might necessitate committing criminal offences, in order to gain acceptance from ‘hardened activists’.

He agrees though that this is highly likely, as animal extremists were seen as a much greater threat than many other target groups:

‘Not too many people remember the febrile atmosphere there was in this country at that time concerning animal extremism and the threat and risks that this country faced from those elements at the time.

They were extraordinary circumstances and we had to use extraordinary measures to deal with them. And animal extremism in respect of potential for criminal offences would have been top of the list.’

He rejects Counsel’s suggestion that perhaps there was an acknowledged risk that in such cases, the Home Office Circular’s directions wouldn’t necessarily be followed.

‘What I did was take into account the principles of the decision and the guidance, match it against the principles of the circumstances, and come to a judgement. And as I said: sometimes it’s a rock and a hard place.’

In his written statement, Gunn says he believed that the SDS had a process in place (to assess the involvement of undercovers in criminality) that appeared to work. Undercovers would inform the SDS if they were arrested and the managers would monitor the case as it went through the judicial system. They would report to the S Squad chief. Gunn says that as Commander Ops he would expect to also be made aware of the case.

He maintains that this process was entirely appropriate, even though it meant that the police got to decide what the courts were allowed to know. Gunn is not happy about such abuses of the judicial system being regarded today as ‘miscarriages of justice’:

‘As I have said, we were faced with circumstances that we had to deal with according to the law as it stood at that time – and I emphasise “at that time” – and the circumstances of the offence. And I go back to what I said earlier this morning about the need for security of the operation in respect of the Government, the Home Office and others.’

Essentially, he seems to be saying that if the law didn’t allow them to do what they wanted, then they’d ignore the law and do it anyway, because it was the law that was wrong.

TELL ME ABOUT IT

Gunn says he would expect to be informed of criminal activity carried out by an undercover even when it didn’t lead to their arrest. He cannot think of any offences or arrests Commander Ops should not have been told about, or any circumstances that would warrant not telling him.

In this, he includes criminal activity which the undercover was involved in, or on the periphery of, which led to the arrest of other people. He says he would expect to be informed of any charges or prosecution which followed, and if any undercover was expected to appear as a defence witness.

He states (in his witness statement) that if operationally necessary, it was acceptable for an undercover to commit minor offences, such as bill posting. However more serious offences were unacceptable.

When would it be considered ‘operationally necessary’? What would you have classed as ‘more serious’?

He says this means ‘offences which involved public safety, injury to others, serious criminal damage’, then, exhibiting another one of the nuanced differences that exist only in his head, adds:

‘The circumstances of the offence is pertinent to the decision on whether or not to follow the strict guidance of the Home Office or the spirit of the guidance of the Home Office.’

In this, he evidences how he and Special Branch granted themselves and the SDS a lot of latitude, which they clearly took up whether or not they were allowed to. Sadly, this is something Counsel did not really go into.

Any decision not to take action against an undercover had to be made by an officer of appropriate rank (thus Commander and above) and properly recorded. He claims there was no culture of turning a blind eye, as his actions in the Scutt affair showed.

When might they have decided not to take action? He gives the now familiar response: that where there was a danger of exposure to the work of the SDS or a threat to the safety of the undercover, these would be taken into account.

But any action against an undercover presented a danger of exposure. And indeed, we’ve already seen from a vast number of other witnesses that this is precisely why SDS undercovers were allowed to violate laws and citizens with impunity.

Gunn affirms that it was SDS policy for undercovers to give their cover names when they were arrested, in order to maintain their cover. And that Commander Ops would retain discretion over what to disclose and to whom.

This also applied to cases when the undercover was involved in criminality but not arrested, but would depend on the level of criminality. Commander Ops would have to make a decision, balancing the risk to the SDS of an undercover appearing in open court versus the interests of justice and the seriousness of the offence.

Gunn seems to miss the point:

‘There are circumstances where it’s a fact of life: undercover officers may get caught up in the criminality and/or public order issues of their colleagues’.

He is plainly going against the Home Office guidance, which required him to either withdraw the officer from the group or have them admit their identity to the court.

He then added the incredible justification – and this as someone who served as a Chief Constable – that deceving the infiltrated group was more important than being honest with a court:

‘I tried to explain earlier that undercover policing, its very essence is deceit, deception and subterfuge. It is unsurprising that those undercover officers give the name which would be deceitful to the criminal justice system, but which for their compatriots and co-extremists was essential, because they are hardly likely to turn round, “I am Police Constable Bloggs”.’

THE PROBLEM OF JOHN DINES

Gunn says he was not aware of the relationship between HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’ and Helen Steel. He says that her name and contact details appearing on Dines’s vehicle rental didn’t prove anything, although he concedes that ‘possibly’ it should have prompted some investigation.

He is not aware of ‘Operation Muscat’ [MPS-0706718], in which the police were still watching Steel as she began her efforts to trace Dines after his disappearance from her life.

In 2002, she tracked him down to New Zealand and the Met, aware of her journey, spent taxpayers’ money relocating him to a different country.

DINES’ FIRST ARREST

Gunn was in office when Dines was arrested at an animal rights protest targeting a livestock transporter in Herefordshire on 6 December 1988. Dines was prosecuted and convicted as ‘John Barker’.

Documents from the time show Gunn was briefed and kept informed throughout [MPS-0526792]. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Phelan was also informed.

Gunn does not recall this incident, but stands by what was written at the time and the decisions he made as Commander Ops. As he has said so often, this involved weighing up the issues: an undercover facing prison for his actions or the definite exposure of the SDS in court hearings.

In Gunn’s mind, Dines’ criminality was not serious, so his accepting a bind over from the courts was fine.

He acknowledged that the SDS managers did not declare an interest to the courts or otherwise intervene, and it was good fortune the prosecution did not offer any evidence. He feels that the matter resolved itself.

He would have discussed it with Phelan as he was in the next room. This was a serious matter as it could potentially cause reputational risk for the police, or, even worse, the exposure of the SDS.

Did he consider the rights of the other arrestees? Gunn ‘would like to think’ that he did, and that he ‘hopefully’ also considered the law and the Home Office guidance. However it is clear that he believes it was fine to sometimes ignore this guidance.

‘Q: Because the guidance would have directed that his identity should be disclosed?

A: Yes. But there is no guidance in my submission that can cover every eventuality of the sort of situation we were in, extraordinary situation dealing with extraordinary threats to the country. No guidance from the Home Office or anywhere else can cover every aspect of that.’

He’s talking about a very minor offence that the court felt warranted no more than a promise to behave in future. His follow-up response tells us a lot about Gunn. For him, it was a war:

‘We have to deal with the circumstances we are faced with at the time and sometimes in the heat of battle decisions are made that you might change later. On this occasion, I wouldn’t have changed it.’

He simply does not recognise how his own mindset coloured so many of his actions.

Counsel asks whether he saw this lack of disclosure to the court as problematic?

‘In the circumstances of the incident, no. The greater good – the greater risk of disclosure in that case to me didn’t match the activity alleged.’

He asserts that he does understand that misleading the court is problematic, because in a previous case, that of an undercover drink-driving, he took action which recognised exactly that.

The activists arrested with Dines made an official complaint, which resulted in West Mercia Police needing to interview all the arrestees, including the undercover. Gunn agreed to this interview taking place, as it was the only viable option if Dines was to maintain his cover.

He says he can’t tell us what else he considered at the time, as he can’t now recall this incident. Was telling the West Mercia force the truth about Dines an option? He agrees it was an option, but insists that this risked exposing Dines and the entire SDS.

DINES’ SECOND ARREST

On 31 March 1990, Dines was arrested again, using a different false name, ‘Wayne Cadogan’, at a Poll Tax demonstration. He was charged with threatening violent disorder for assaulting uniformed police officers.

Gunn agrees that this constitutes a serious offence. Dines stated his intention to go to court and plead not guilty. However, Gunn and Phelan authorised him to instead skip bail. He notes that Dines could have been sent to prison if found guilty:

‘We were going to prejudice possibly the interests of justice, whichever course of action we took. If John Dines had been allowed to go to court in his cover name, that’s misleading the court. If John Dines skipped bail, that’s misleading the court.

But the lesser of those two evils, given into account all of the issues we had to consider and I keep coming back to the range of issues that we had to administer in these circumstances, the lesser of those two evils in my judgement was he skipped bail.

So, there was an implicit interference with justice on that occasion, but not as implicit as putting him before the court and going through a whole trial with duff details.’

He says it was ‘a rock and a hard place’ again, ignoring the fact that there was a third place – telling the truth. He stands by his decisions right or wrong:

‘Sometimes you have to make decisions which in the cold light of today may not appear justified. Well, so be it.’

Unfortunately there are redactions which cover the reason why he approached Detective Chief Superintendent Ramm, overseeing the investigations, to have the warrants against Dines cancelled. Gunn is able to confirm that Phelan knew all about this case too; he recalls that dealing with this arrest ‘severely’ taxed them.

PROTECT THE CRIMINAL

Gunn personally supervised the actions needed to protect Dines from legal repercussions, particularly in light of the redacted issue. This included discussing his approach with Deputy Assistant Commissioner Meynell (head of Area 8, overseeing the Poll Tax prosecutions) He says they took ‘an appropriate and principled approach to an intractable problem’.

Asked what principle this was, he replies:

‘Well, the principle was the greater evil would have been for John Dines to have appeared before the court. So the principle was accepting and acknowledging that whatever decision we took on that was going to, in some sense, transgress and almost alter – not alter but go against – the Home Office guidance. Again, we had to make a decision.’

Gunn tries to justify this dishonesty and lack of integrity. He insists that sometimes when making decisions about the SDS, he found himself ‘on the boundaries of the law’, but claims to have operated with ‘honesty, commitment and integrity’. He then doubles down, saying that on this occasion, he didn’t think he got it wrong.

Counsel presses Gunn on whether revealing to the court that Dines was undercover was an option.

‘There was an option, and there was a consideration, and if it had been normal undercover policing in respect of usual crime, as opposed to this extraordinary version of undercover policing that we had, that’s what happened.

You normally inform the court and the court makes the decision as to whether or not it progresses, and the prosecuting authority makes the decision as to whether they pull the case.

In essence, what I was doing was short circuiting that and pulled the case. Now, I accept in the strict letter of the law that shouldn’t apply.’

It is a remarkable admission for a chief police officer, that he is in effect acting as judge and jury, that he feels he had the right to circumvent due process whenever it was more convenient to do so.

That he does not reflect on what this says about how police viewed things, that it was okay to mislead the court, is equally extraordinary and telling.

Did he consider disciplining Dines for the behaviour that led to his arrest in the first place? This provides us with more insight into Gunn’s approach: he felt this was a war, in which rules needn’t apply, as your side’s survival is all that matters:

‘Well, I come back to what undercover policing is all about. It’s not pussy footing around in terms of a court proceedings; it’s about being out in muck and bullets flying with circumstances and potential risks and threats to the individual according to whatever they are doing.’

In Gunn’s world, the undercovers were constantly at risk of serious harm and violence (when not inflicting it themselves on uniformed officers). This is why they need him to stand up for all these brave agents, who could do no wrong.

It is unclear if this is really how he saw it at the time, or whether this is just a persona he’s presenting to the Inquiry to justify the egregious decisions he made.

Either way, and unfortunately for him, his world-view does not match with the evidence of the undercovers and the paperwork. And even if that was the case, where was the close oversight that such risk ought to have entailed?

He doesn’t realise that the reverse side of this approach is that it demonstrates how reckless they were to send undercovers out, with such poor oversight. It is clear that, despite all his protestations that everything was considered, the reputation of the police was always going to trump in his decision-making.

‘WAYNE CADOGAN’

Though he’d already stolen the name and identity of John Barker, a boy who’d died of leukaemia aged 8, Dines also created ‘Wayne Cadogan’ as a second false identity some time prior to his arrest. It is known that Gunn was aware of this as he mentioned it to DACSO Phelan [MPS-0526796].

Gunn is asked if he had a problem with this? Yes, Gunn is definite:

‘The policy was quite strict in fact on undercover identities. With all the rigmarole and security measures we put into place to create a cover identity, it wouldn’t seem a lot of sense or point to change that identity on a whim.’

He speculates:

‘I suspect this was John Dines thinking on his feet when approached by his cohorts, giving another false name against his false name. And he wasn’t the only one that did that.

In animal rights activity, extremism around the country at the time, I understand that it was common practice that if you got nicked by Old Bill you didn’t give your right name, you gave a different name. Well, his right name wasn’t his right name, it was a wrong name.

But Dines at the time that he was at the Poll Tax demonstration, when there was absolute mayhem as you may or may not remember, it’s not surprising that he used that tactic. Wrong, but not surprising.’

This wasn’t just making a name up on the spot though. Counsel mentions that it too was stolen from a dead child, and Dines already held a driving licence in this name. He had clearly set it up quite some time beforehand.

Gunn accepts that this wouldn’t have been authorised at the time. He doesn’t recall how this was dealt with, saying it would have been something for the Chief Superintendent of S Squad to handle. He goes on to claim that if other undercovers had created and used unauthorised false identities, they’d probably been withdrawn from the field. And yet Dines wasn’t.

But Gunn is keen to excuse Dines for going against the law, Home Office guidance and SDS policy all at once:

‘I keep coming back to the fact, the essence of undercover policing is deceit, deception and subterfuge.
And the tactics that go with that in terms of operational, at-the-coalface police activity, necessarily mean that some tactics aren’t quite as comfortable in the cold light of this room.

And I have to say also when judging those matters, we didn’t get it all right. But we neither got it all wrong.’

Counsel makes the point that when Dines was instructed to skip bail, those he was arrested with would have understood it meant he was going on the run due to the outstanding warrants. She notes that Helen Steel certainly understood it that way.

Gunn says he was unaware of who Helen Steel was at that time, and had no idea there was a sexual relationship between her and Dines, or that she was being targeted by the SDS.

HN4 DRINK DRIVING

This charming undercover has been granted full anonymity in the Inquiry, despite admitting that he is not at risk from the people he spied on. We are not given his real name, his cover name, the group he infiltrated, nor even the years he was deployed (apart from ‘late 1980s and early 1990s’). The Inquiry has not divulged its reasons for this level of secrecy.

HN4 was arrested in his cover name, for drink-driving. He gave his real identity at the police station. Coincidentally, 20 years earlier HN339 ‘Stewart Goodman’ had done the exact same thing during his deployment spying on anti-apartheid activists.

Gunn was called at home, at 3am, to be told about HN4. When the case reached trial, Gunn attended in person and spoke with the stipendiary magistrate, explaining the circumstances. They agreed HN4 could appear in court in his cover name as he would be accompanied by his ‘fellow extremist demonstrators’:

‘That it was in the interests of the safety of the officer and also I explained, without going into the detail, the secrecy of the operation to the stipendiary magistrate.

The stipendiary magistrate discussed it with his chief clerk, I think, and they agreed that they were happy to hear the case in the cover name.’

HN4 pled guilty, using his cover name, and was disqualified from driving for a year. Gunn confiscated his real licence for that period.

As standard by now, he added his view of being comfortable as all arms of the judicial process:

‘It’s an example, if I may put it, of pragmatism against strict legal process – but a lot of the work we were dealing with, I am afraid, was on the boundary.’

Counsel points out that Gunn and Pheland discussed this case, and the risk that if HN4 lost his job, he might turn against Special Branch. It was proposed that representations be made to John Howley, Assistant Commissioner of Specialist Operations, that no disciplinary charges should be brought against the officer.

Gunn accepts that this was an example of them prioritising operational security and secrecy over disciplining this type of behaviour. As the Goodman case had shown barely two years after the SDS was formed in 1968, this was fairly standard spycops practice. Gunn doesn’t consider the court to have been misled.

DEBENHAMS

In 1987, spycop HN10 Bob Lambert had helped create an Animal Liberation Front cell which placed timed incendiary devices in branches of Debenhams department stores that sold fur.

They were set to go off in the dead of night and create just enough smoke to trigger the sprinkler system, which would douse the stock and render it unsaleable.

Three stores were targeted on the same day, with Lambert planting the device in the Harrow store. The men who planted the other two, Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke, were later arrested, thanks to Lambert’s intelligence and evidence, and they both received lengthy prison sentences.

Gunn says he was aware of the case but was not involved in the disclosure decisions or the prosecution of Sheppard and Clarke. He knew from reading the paperwork at the time that Bob Lambert was involved in intelligence gathering. As with all these things, he claims that he doesn’t really recall it now.

He asserts that the Metropolitan Police Special Branch had no involvement in the prosecution, as it was the operational responsibility of Anti-Terrorist Branch. Likewise, Gunn, as Commander Ops, had no role in the prosecution itself or any disclosure relating to it.

Counsel asks why, given all he has said today about the role of Commander Ops in decision-making, he was not more involved in the case.

‘Because there is a demarcation line between intelligence and evidence. Intelligence is the role of the Special Branch. Evidence was the role of the Anti-Terrorist Branch and there is a corridor of air between the two so that intelligence can be protected and the propriety of the evidence given in a criminal trial is not jeopardised by intelligence issues.’

And if you believe that, we’ve got a bridge to sell you.

Counsel didn’t follow this up, though it raised the question what the intelligence was actually for. Given that Debenhams led to one of the SDS’s supposed greatest successes, an actual prosecution of an ALF cell, Gunn’s account glib demarcation really does not have the ring of truth to it.

Should he have had greater involvement, given Lambert’s role? He accepts that, with hindsight, closer involvement would have been prudent.

SDS Targeting Strategy

Gunn was aware of the various groups and fields that undercovers were being deployed into. The Met would have had reasons for targeting organisations, but he confirma that the Security Service absolutely influenced the spycops’ targeting.

He was not routinely in receipt of SDS intelligence. He expected the Chief Superintendents (and those below them) to deal with any inappropriate material.

He says he was kept updated by the SDS Annual Reports. He didn’t see anything in them that he considered unjustified or inappropriate. He didn’t think it was necessary for Commander Ops to be involved in that layer of decision-making, saying cases would only be referred to him if there was a particular concern about a target. However he can’t recall this ever actually happening.

Gunn is happy to maintain the fine Special Branch tradition of passing the buck to someone else, as we’ve seen so many managers do at the Inquiry.

What action would you have taken had you thought that the targeting of a particular group wasn’t justifed? He says that he would have sought more information about why this decision had been made in the first place, by the commander of S Squad and other ‘experienced Special Branch officers’ (a phrase we’ve heard multiple times from other managers). He would not be consulted.

Groups that the Annual Reports said were infiltrated when Gunn was in post included:

• Animal Aid
• Birmingham 6 campaign
• Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament
• Freedom Collective and Bookshop
• Guildford 4 campaign
• Lambeth Anti-Apartheid Group
• London Greenpeace
• OutRage!

Gunn didn’t query any of these. He seems to believe they all deserved it.

Counsel raises the fact that Eric Docker’s report noted that final decisions regarding targeting rested with the Chief Superintendent of S Squad in consultation with Commander Ops, namely Gunn. She also notes that HN115 Tony Wait told the Inquiry that Gunn would have been consulted, and effectively authorised decisions on targeting. Gunn can only respond with: ‘That’s not unfair’.

However, in his witness statement Gunn claimed he was only ‘rarely, if ever, required to intervene’ in SDS targeting decisions. He says he had confidence in his senior officers and their ability to make such judgement calls; he doesn’t recall ever querying their justifications.

He now accepts that he might in fact have had more involvement than this, which is what other managers have said. However he claims not to properly recall. He says it would have been exceptional for him to get involved. This wasn’t something he did as a matter of course or practice.

The main criteria for a group being targeted for infiltration by an undercover would have related to the ‘coverage’ already in place, and risks to public order. Gunn repeated that there was an intense febrile atmosphere in the country in the 1970s and 1980s. Public order was a major problem.

In Gunn’s mind, the public disorder seen at the racist British National Party’s headquarters in Welling proved that the police:

‘needed to have extraordinary measures to deal with extraordinary problems, and that’s what happened.’

You have to wonder what existential threat he imagined was posed to the state by CND, London Greenpeace, et al, that justified extraordinary measures. For all his bombast, Gunn simply never addresses the many groups which were plainly inappropriate targets for SDS reporting.

Instead, he gets out another of his axes to grind. He’s not happy that the current Metropolitan Police Commissioner has apologised for the targeting of justice campaigns. Like others, he tries to re-write things:

‘I agree in principle they shouldn’t have been targeted and they weren’t targeted. It was the extremist groups and agitators around those justice campaigns that were targeted. And there is a misunderstanding that we targeted the justice campaign itself. We did not.’

Gunn fails to see how the reports of his own era contradict his own point. And one has to wonder what political activity wasn’t extremist in his worldview. At this point, he comes across as someone who would report you as ‘subversive’ for reading The Guardian or The Mirror.

WE DON’T NEED NO GUIDELINES, WE KNOW BEST

Counsel is not deterred by Gunn’s increasingly narky manner and sense of entitlement. She points out that the 1984 Home Office Guidelines for Special Branch [UCPI000004584] state:

‘Senior officers must exercise strict control over the selection of targets for investigation when the current activities of an organisation are legitimate and peaceful.’

Gunn addressed this contradiction in his written statement by claiming the guidelines clearly only referred to mainstream inquiries rather than undercover intelligence operations. Once again, the rules simply didn’t apply to the SDS. This was nothing to do with their work being dangerous. It was simply that the unit was reactionary, paranoid, and primarily concerned with its own perpetuation.

Gunn is unperturbed by the SDS apparently assuming greater powers than it should have had. He claims that they were gathering intelligence for the ‘safety and security of the state’. He once again tries to dodge the issue by appealing to the words of Jonathan Hall on subversion.

However, Counsel is not having it, and asks him directly why the 1984 Guidelines shouldn’t have applied to the SDS.

The former Commander Ops fell back on the ‘I knew best’ argument, demonstrating his very poor skills in self-reflection:

‘Well, I am not sure whether the Home Office fully understood at that time exactly the operations of the SDS…

All I would say in respect of those matters is we targeted what we felt was necessary. The SDS was a completely new range of activity. And I don’t think that has been completely and fully understood and, it’s not for me to say, it may not have been understood at the time the Home Office made those guidelines, the extraordinary activity that the SDS was involved in. I don’t think that was fully understood.’

But, an undeterred Counsel points out, the 1984 Guidelines were not precluding undercover policing. Rather, they specifically addressed the work:

‘Special Branch investigations into subversive activities in particularly sensitive fields, for example in educational establishments, in trade unions, in industry and among racial minorities must be conducted with particular care so as to avoid any suggestion that Special Branches are investigating matters involving the legitimate expression of views.’

That applies to SDS undercover deployments, doesn’t it?

In response, he says yes, claiming the guidelines were applied. Counsel points out that the SDS were involved in pretty sensitive fields, and Gunn has to agree with her.

She continues to press her point, quoting another paragraph of the Guidelines:

‘It is not the function of the force Special Branch to investigate individuals and groups merely because their policies are unpalatable, or because they are highly critical of the police, or because they want to transform the present system of police accountability.’

Gunn says he agrees with this too. So then, Counsel asks, was the risk of interference recognised at the time? Wasn’t there a risk of interference with civil and political liberties?

Gunn fudges, trying to create a straw man argument rather than deal with the point face on:

‘Well, sometimes there is a thin line drawn between protest legal and protest illegal, and public order problems, and it’s not always possible to delineate exactly where the line is.’

EVEN IF WE WERE WRONG WE WERE STILL RIGHT

But Gunn does agree that there was a risk. He also acknowledges that ‘collateral intrusion’ or ‘damage’ (reporting on non-targets, just because they’re adjacent to the target) was a real risk, given the nature of SDS activities.

Gunn says he is confident that this issue would have been considered by the SDS, and if necessary referred to him as Commander Ops. Funnily enough though, the SDS managers haven’t seen it like that.

What guidance was given to the spycops about where that line was drawn? Gunn is narked:

‘This again – and it’s been a recurring theme in this Inquiry so far – doesn’t entirely understand intelligence gathering as it was in those days. What appears to be, as it has been remarked many times on SDS reporting, why do you need to report that, what’s to do with the colour of their eyes, what’s this – each scrap of information needs to be brought together, assessed, collated.

All intelligence is information. But all information is not intelligence. And the process for dealing with intelligence, in gathering scraps of information that go together and form a jigsaw, a puzzle that comes together maybe much later than the apparent information that’s been offered, is something which I think has not been understood.

There is an assumption that intelligence-gathering only involves and should have only involved pure intelligence. Well, it’s not. It’s about information that is converted to intelligence by an assessment made by others. And that’s the back office.

The officers and the squad, they had their experience in Special Branch to go on. But they did not make the decision as to whether the information they were reporting was intelligence or information that needed to be assessed.’

To be fair, Gunn is right on this, we’ve seen very little of what actually happened with the SDS intelligence in the Inquiry.

However, he – like many Special Branch undercovers and managers – is content to rely on the gathering of information in case it might be useful, to speak in terms of generalities and suppositions. They’d be far better providing examples of where it was actually used, but there might be an uncomfortable reason for why any evidence of this is so thin on the ground.

For a unit which had so many resources poured into it, on which so much time was spent, all apparently at such great risk to the reputation of the Met and the Government, there is remarkably little to show.

Gunn would have been better reflecting on the Met’s own internal Closing Report into the SDS [MPS-0722622] and its damning conclusions.

HOME OFFICE

Gunn is asked about what influence the Home Office had on targeting. As this has been one of the points he’s been at pains to emphasise, it’s not surprising that we get a nice long answer.

He talks about the Home Office, along with the police and other agencies, being members of a national security committee. They would not necessarily have a role in operational matters. However, this provided them with a way of raising with the police any political concerns about activity which threatened the state.

He says such ‘advice’ would be taken into account but the targeting decisions were made elsewhere (by Special Branch and the Security Service). He doesn’t accept that the Metropolitan Police Special Branch deferred to that sort of influence.

He notes that both the Home Office and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher were aware of the SDS and its stressful work.

Apparently, in June 1988, Thatcher was talking to her Principal Private Secretary Robin Butler about the threat of animal rights activism. She was glowing in her praise of the police, but wondered if they had considered mounting undercover operations.

Gunn describes the scene:

‘Happily, we were able to tell the Home Office, who were also involved in the tripartite chat, that we had been doing it for 25 years. And actually, thank you very much for your support.

That is why at Prime Minister level, at Government level, they knew – and you didn’t have to be at Prime Minister level, because the threat to the street to the fur trade, to the calf trade, all sorts of things, was indicative of the need for some form of intelligence to combat the threat…

I read Margaret Thatcher’s enthusiastic praise as being a tick in the right box.’

Later, Gunn recalls giving a briefing on the SDS to the senior Home Office official John Chilcot, probably on an issue of funding.

He may have mentioned the case of HN155 ‘Phil Cooper’ (see below) while there. He says he only went to the Home Office two or three times in total.

He repeats:

‘Because the SDS was an operational police unit, but because it was part funded by the Home Office, there was a Home Office interest. And I have to say also, as I have said repeatedly today, the sensitivity of the work of the SDS was considerable. Political damage that could have been done by exposure of the work was ever present.’

Counsel notes that HN295 Don Buchanan, who succeeded Gunn, told Operation Herne that he and Gunn had stood up to the Home Office, and as a result, were not popular there.

Gunn goes off again on the Inquiry’s use of Herne statements. Asked again about the accuracy of Buchanan’s words he sulkily replies: ‘I have no comment at all.’

POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY GROUPS

He is also asked about the targeting of police accountability groups and a notorious 1983 Special Branch report which emerged in Tranche 2, profiling such groups: ‘Political Extremism and the Campaign for Police Accountability within the Metropolitan Police District’ [MPS-0748355].

Gunn said these groups were in danger of crossing the border from political activity to disorder, disarray and subversion, because there were left-wing groups involved. And where that alleged disorder arose, the police needed intelligence. He is completely unapologetic about this.

He seems incapable of recognising that these groups were not giving rise to disorder but responding to police violence.

Unfortunately, Counsel didn’t ask him for any examples of police accountability groups causing such terrifying violence.

He admits that such groups would have been of interest to Special Branch because of the nature of what they did – they wanted to watch and report on Metropolitan Police activity – and this would have influenced undercover deployments.

He insists that this was about public disorder, and other activities threatening the state were being brought in for political reasons. He maintains that reporting on such groups was justified solely on grounds of public order, not that they were anti-police.

Eventually he is directed to the fact that in 1988 the Security Service said they were not interested in receiving more reports on such groups as they were not considered subversive.

Once again he falls back on a ‘we knew best’ reply which, having already put the SDS at odds with the courts, the Home Office, and the law itself, now put the unit at odds with MI5 too:

‘Well, I have tried to explain that in previous answers. They may not have been overtly subversive in the definition strictly as it stood, which is why the Security Service stood back from public order problems.

But a more pragmatic view of these issues by Special Branch and by our uniformed colleagues indicated there was still a need to go for intelligence on areas which were a threat to public order. And if that included police monitoring groups, so be it.’

TARGETING JUSTICE CAMPAIGNS

In his written witness statement Gunn says:

‘A targeting decision had to fulfil either the policing requirement of preserving the Queen’s peace or supporting the Security Service in its counter-subversion task.’

What care was taken to ensure that Special Branch weren’t ‘investigating and reporting on the legitimate expression of views’, rather than fulfilling ‘a proper policing purpose’?

Gunn claims they did not target the social justice campaign itself. Then he goes back to talking up the disorder supposedly created by extremists in the 1970s and 1980s, groups who latched on to such campaigns for their own political or extremist causes.

But, Counsel presses, what consideration was there to safeguarding against collateral intrusion into those social justice and defence campaigns?

Gunn repeated the line that many managers have used in the Inquiry, that they could rely on the rectitude and integrity of their men.

‘Well, the operational directions and the nous of the individuals that were undertaking this work understood that there were boundaries that they had to stay within.

Sometimes they may have strayed outside. Obviously they did from some of the details presented to this Inquiry. But they understood their role. And it was, as far as possible, dealing with extremism, subversion and those issues. Not social justice.’

It is a significant gap in the Inquiry’s exploration around this that we have seen very little of the actual training that Special Branch officers had at the time. It is clear from other evidence that the undercovers and managers had no real training in the SDS, so what understanding they had was coming from elsewhere in Special Branch.

One also has a sense that Gunn’s confidence in his work being valid and right rests on a very idealised image of the officers under him, or perhaps he’s frightened of acknowledging that one of the places where the buck stopped was actually with him and his fellow senior managers.

SPYING ON VICTIMS OF RACIST VIOLENCE

When it came to racial justice campaigns, Gunn says the reason for reporting on them was the fringe groups and individuals that latched on to those organisations.

He is also asked about his awareness of racist violence in London at the time. He says it was there from way back, endemic in society. However, Special Branch was tasked to provide intelligence on extremism in whatever form it reared.

Counsel follows up by asking whether or not he was aware of the criticisms made of the Met’s (inadequate) responses to racial violence. Gunn says there’s no way he couldn’t have been aware of this.

What steps did you take to address those concerns?

‘Well, I would reiterate with the Chief Superintendent and the teams to tell the troops when they were being at meetings, advised on the areas where they go and importantly areas where they don’t go.

So, there were personal briefings from the team in the back office to the front-line officers and they would then use their own initiative as to when that may have happened or not.’

He agrees that a high incidence of racially motivated crime was understood to represent a particular public order risk when he was Commander Ops. And that would make policing more difficult and dangerous for uniformed police.

Asked if it was in everyone’s interest to address these concerns, he gives the rather strange response:

‘I think the Welling demonstration in 1991 illustrated that amply. Because there was a racial influence from the Anti-Racist League [sic] in there and the [British National Party] bookshop, where there was mayhem, absolute mayhem.’

He was aware that racism was something police needed to deal with sensitively, properly and firmly, but he says never saw any overt racism in Special Branch or when a uniformed chief superintendent at Ruislip. There clearly was some, but he never witnessed it personally.

He is asked about HN593 Bob Potter, the racist Chief Superintendent. He goes off on one, clearly annoyed, on how ill the man was and once he had to save him from jumping in front of a tube train.

‘I will not accept Bob Potter being used as a thrust to demonstrate that there was racial activity in Special Branch, just because one man who was seriously unwell did what he did, which was an outrageous behaviour if I remember it rightly.’

He wasn’t aware that reports from Family Liaison Officers at the homes of bereaved Black families were being passed to Special Branch and the SDS. When pressed, Gunn admits such a practice would not have been justified.

SPYING ON ELECTED POLITICIANS

In summary, Gunn reckons spycops reporting on elected politicians was valid if what they were saying came within the definition of public order, subversion or something untoward.

‘Then, where the safety or security of the State may have been threatened, whatever the person’s status as an elected representative, they still had a responsibility to comply with the law. And the police had a responsibility to report where there was potential threat to the law.’

He then says some of the politicians’ comments were on the borderline of stirring up unrest.

However, in all the reporting of elected representatives carried out by the SDS and Special Branch, there is nothing that illustrates this ever happening. Counsel doesn’t point this out though. Gunn is clearly simply assuming a post-facto justification for what was obviously standard Special Branch practice.

It would have been interesting to specify what Gunn’s own politics were, as the way he constantly spoke about extremism on the left the listener with a sense that he really didn’t like the left-wing, and that this coloured all his decision-making.

This became clear when he was asked about Ken Livingstone, saying he considered Livingstone to ‘espouse some extreme views at times’.

Livingstone was a Labour MP who went on to become Leader of the Greater London Council 1981-86, then Mayor of London 2000-2008.

Gunn claims that reporting on him would have been justified, but:

‘Only if it threatened public order or was subversive. And I keep repeating, we did not and should not have interfered with the genuine political activity of Members of Parliament or elected members of councils.’

The Inquiry misses this opportunity to ask Gunn to explain what he considered to be ‘genuine political activity’, and how he was made such judgements. Almost all of the spycops’ reports on Livingstone and other polticians fails to meet that definition. It is clear that the police regarded any advocating of significant social change as a form of ‘subversion’.

A lot of things seem to have slipped through on Gunn’s watch. How much did the ideological outlook of officers such as him shape the environment around the SDS, its managers and its reporting?

MCLIBEL

Gunn is also asked a few questions about the McLibel case and the implications of the police’s collusion with the McDonalds corporation.

The tiny London Greenpeace group had produced a leaflet entitled ‘What’s Wrong With Mcdonald’s?’. This was co-written by one of the spycops who’d infiltrated the group, HN10 Bob Lambert. It was then passed to McDonald’s, who threatened to sue for libel.

Two of the group, Helen Steel and Dave Morris, refused to back down. McDonald’s pressed ahead and it became the longest trial in English history.

Just before the writs were served, another spycop inside London Greenpeace, HN5 John Dines, deceived Steel into a long-term intimate relationship. The role of spycops – indeed, their very existence – was kept secret from the defendants and the court.

Gunn is condescending, praising the defendants then justifiying the spying:

‘I take my hat off to Helen Steel and Dave Morris for their tenacity, because it took nine years to solve that case…

But let me say this: it was good practice for police in possession of intelligence about threats to industry, commerce and whatever, to share that information with those potentially affected.’

He says there is no mention of him or of Special Branch in that matter; he’s not saying he wasn’t involved but he can’t recall it.

What he knew he mostly learned afterwards, most of it through this Inquiry. He says he only became interested in the topic after Dave Morris gave evidence. This evidence included that SDS reporting was passed to McDonald’s, the corporation knew Dines was an undercover, and that it had campaigners followed by private investigators.

He sneers about Morris giving evidence and:

‘waving a bit of paper in the air like Chamberlain, as if it was damning evidence of something’

Having tacitly admitted it was the SDS’s role to undermine campaigns because they threatened corporate profits, Gunn claimed this was also about damage to property, citing firebombs supposedly being set in Oxford Street.

The relationship between Special Branch and private companies that were the subject of protests was not, he said, a commercial arrangement, but a security decision to prevent harm. Decisions around it would have been made at the Chief Superintendent level, not at his level. It might have been referred to him if it was something contentious.

Gunn says he didn’t know that the Met had intervened to stop spycop Dines being named on the writ of defamation served by McDonald’s in 1990, on Helen Steel, Dave Morris and other activists, which led to the trial.

Counsel reminds him that spycops manager HN115 Tony Wait said that this would have needed Commander Ops authorisation. Gunn says he doesn’t recall seeing it. As ever, any decision would have considered the reputation of the Met Police, the Home Office and the Government.

McDonald’s security department at the time was run by Sid Nicholson and his deputy, Terry Carroll. They had both previously been senior Met officers, based in Brixton.

Nicholson told the McLibel trial that everyone employed in the security department was a former police officer, and that this helped them to access information (illegally, from the police). Gunn denied knowing either Nicholson or Carroll.

Public Disclosure

TRUE SPIES

Counsel asks about the 2002 BBC documentary on the SDS, True Spies, which revealed a huge amount of detail about the unit, its methods and history.

It is immediately clear that Gunn has a lot he wants to say on this topic.

‘I have waited 25 years to have an explanation of what went on on the True Spies, which was grossly distorted because of the lack of actually what happened as opposed to what people thought happened.

I have lost a few friends in the past because they considered my decision was wrong. It may well be, with the benefit of hindsight, but I stand by it, because the greater evil would have been not to have cooperated with the programme.’

He says he was approached by Peter Taylor of the BBC’s premier documentary programme Panorama, who he had worked with previously on Irish terrorism. In fact, he was probably the first person to be approached by Taylor:

‘Peter had never let me down and I trusted him’

However, what Taylor said on this occasion made Gunn’s jaw drop.

‘I was terrified at what he was telling me and it was clear he had been well briefed by somebody connected with the SDS either past or present…

Some of the information that he was passing to me, not just the fact that they were known as the hairies, everybody I think probably knew that by that time, but some of the information of the contacts, the informants, if that had been published would have done lasting damage not just to us but to the Government, to the Security Service and to us.’

He took the position that they had to either cooperate with Taylor to minimise this or let his programme go ahead and do the damage.

He discussed it with both the Assistant Commissioner Specialist Operations HN144 David Veness and the then-Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, John Stevens, telling them all held would break loose and bring down the government:

‘It was that serious.’

Of course, Gunn doesn’t let on what could be so powerful about the SDS that it could bring down the government of Tony Blair.

They were able to influence Taylor sufficiently, to ensure that the most damaging parts were left out. He was not aware of any other meetings within the Metropolitan Police about it, as by this time his role was as Chair of the Association of Chief Police Officers’ Terrorism and Allied Matters Committee (ACPO-TAM). This oversaw the other main spycops unit, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit).

Taylor asked Gunn if he would contact former members of the SDS to see if they would cooperate with the programme, to which Gunn said absolutely not.

 

 

He says there were two officers – one from Metropolitan Police Special Branch, the other from West Midlands – featured on the programme who ‘went off piste’, in a way which was potentially damaging.

THE COMMISSIONER’S APOLOGY

At the end, Gunn raises the issue of the Commissioner’s apologies as given in the Opening Statements.

This has clearly been bothering him. He provides the following lengthy response:

‘The Commissioner’s statement, at the end of last Monday, I thought was sad and unnecessary, and not in any sense denigrating his rightful say of apologising to all and sundry. That was right. And I join his apology in that.

What the Commissioner didn’t say – and this is grievous in respect of the truth – of the other side to this story, the other part of the story, all those officers that put their lives on the line in the interests of the state has not been discovered.

And for the Commissioner to say that the SDS was a dysfunctional unit carte blanche, for 40 years, when we know the Home Office funded it for 25. We know the Security Services and the Home Office were complicit in most of what they did I think is an appalling stretch of the truth.

And I fear that that damning statement that it was a dysfunctional unit was grossly unfair and there are a lot of people that have contacted me from the undercover officers who feel grievously hurt that their reputation has been traduced and besmirched by, sadly, a Commissioner giving half a story.

I know Mark Rowley [the Commissioner], he’s a very fair and reasonable man. But he didn’t, sadly, use the whole – or inform the whole story. He threw us all under the bus for the sake of eight or nine miscreants. That’s unfair.’

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.

Tranche 3 Phase 1, Day 13
13 November 2025

Content warning: this report contains descriptions of severe interpersonal violence, killing, and misogynist abuse.

INTRODUCTION

On the morning of Thursday 14 November 2025, the Undercover Policing Inquiry heard evidence from Lois Austin.

Austin is a lifelong socialist and social justice campaigner. She’s a member of the Socialist Party (formerly Militant Labour) and works with us, Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance.

In the early 1990s she was part of Youth Against Racism in Europe and was spied on by several Special Demonstration Squad officers, particularly HN43 Peter Francis ‘Peter Black’/ ‘Peter Daley’ / ‘Peter Johnson’. Hence the Inquiry’s interest in her now.

She is one of a number of activists being called to give evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry ahead of Francis’s appearance in the first week of December.

Austin gave powerful, sincere and candid testimony challenging specific falsehoods. She unambiguously explained the politics, process and culture of the campaigns she was involved with.

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.

Austin has given the Inquiry a written witness statement [UCPI0000037774].

She was questioned by Sarah Hemingway, Second Junior Counsel to the Inquiry.

The Inquiry’s page for the day has video and a transcript of the live session.

BACKGROUND

Austin grew up in Welling, South London, as part of a socialist family. She was politically active from the age of 14 or 15 with the local branch of the Labour Party Young Socialists, alongside her younger sister.

The 1984-5 miners’ strike galvanised her political spirit. She was outraged at the police violence and biased media reporting. She was active in many of the prominent campaigns of the day including anti-apartheid, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. She wasn’t shy about taking on active organising roles and doing media work.

The Thatcher government set up the Youth Training Scheme (YTS), in which young people had to work full-time hours for unemployment benefits. In 1985, Austin organised a school strike in opposition to plans for the YTS to be made compulsory. She made numerous national media appearances talking about it.

She was on the Labour Party Young Socialists’ London regional committee and the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee youth sub-committee.

THE BNP IN WELLING

Austin was asked about the far-right British National Party (BNP), the main racist organisation on the rise in Britain at the time. The BNP moved into a residential street in Welling in 1987, calling their operational base a ‘bookshop’.

They chose Welling due to its history of far-right support. Austin remembers a 1981 National Front march several hundred strong coming down the High Street.

The BNP went into youth clubs, recruiting new members. The area immediately experienced a huge rise in racist attacks, including murders of young Black men. One Asian family in particular was singled out. The police weren’t interested, so the campaigners organised a rota of visitors:

‘We wanted the British National Party to see that this was a family that had support, the whole of the community, black, white and Asian, and we made sure there was people in and out.

Sometimes people had to stay there overnight because we wanted to send a signal that this is a family that is being protected, it is being defended by the community and you need to stay away.’

In response to the BNP’s presence in her neighbourhood, Austin helped to co-ordinate opposition among trade unionists, socialists and other anti-racist community groups to form the Bexley and Greenwich Labour Movement Campaign Against Racism and Fascism.

The group petitioned the council to use planning laws and the Race Relations Act to have the BNP ejected from their ‘book shop’ headquarters. From 1987 to 1993 they lobbied every full meeting of Bexley council, and had sympathetic councillors present motions to the meetings.

Austin recalls how upsetting it was to hear Bexley council, the police, and the press saying the left were just as bad as the BNP. The BNP were trying to create hatred and division whereas they were doing the opposite.

The campaign also did street stalls for outreach, something that was dangerous given the presence of the violent far-right group Combat 18. Austin was singled out. Neo-Nazi Combat 18 activists were asking around in local pubs about ‘that commie slag Lois Austin’, wanting to know where she lived. She ended up on a Combat 18 hit list.

Asked if she accepted the BNP as a legitimate political party with a right to campaign, she was clear and blunt.

‘No. I would not accept that. Because the British National Party were openly fascist. They said that… They said “We are a Nazi party and Hitler was right”.’

Even Combat 18’s name is a Nazi reference – the 1st and 8th letters of the alphabet are Hitler’s initials.

On 8 May 1993, in the aftermath of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, an anti-racist demonstration was held in Welling. As always, the Inquiry was keen to find out about anything that might be construed as violence from the people who were spied on. Austin says some placards were thrown at the BNP office but not much else.

The main disorder was caused by police who waded in with horses and riot gear, attacking people. This was not a one-off, and Austin is emphatic that the Inquiry needs to examine the actions of the police in attacking demonstrations.

ENTER SPYCOPS – THE OCTOBER 1993 DEMO

HN43 Peter Francis was deployed on 27 September 1993, shortly before a large anti-racist protest in Welling on 16 October 1993. He was tasked to infiltrate Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE), which had been formed in 1992 in response to rising racist attacks across the continent. Austin became one of the UK leaders.

Austin rejects the claim in spycop reports that YRE was merely a front for Militant Labour. She says there’s a long history of socialists setting up broad organisations (Eleanor Marx was involved in setting up the GMB!). The biggest contingent on the October 1993 march was unaffiliated local people.

She explains how her specific role on 16 October 1993 was to lead the demonstration with the banner. They found the planned route blocked by riot police with mounted officers behind. They were not being permitted to go past the BNP office, but nor were they given an alternative. They were penned in with no exit, an early example of police ‘kettling’ that increased at protests over the following years.

We are shown a clip from ‘Violence With Violence’, an episode of the ITV political documentary series World in Action which alleges the existence of a secret violent group with YRE. The footage shows police blocking the 16 October march.

Austin says they were affronted at being blocked from marching past the BNP, because it breached their democratic right to protest.

A spycop intelligence report [UCPI0000025694] claims that the night before the demonstration activists were confident of destroying the BNP headquarters during the protest. Austin says this is a wildly fictionalised account of a meeting that just had stewards planning logistics to keep it safe and orderly.

Francis says there was a Class War plan to burn down the BNP bookshop. This seems to amount to little more than a notice in that group’s provocative anarchist publication.

‘I think Class War were probably not even seriously putting that forward. Because I think “Lewis” described yesterday, their magazine being the sort of Beano of the left… “Eat the Rich” and stuff like that. So nobody really took them seriously.’

Austin says she never heard of such a plan at the time and would have been stridently opposed if someone had actually suggested it.

She dismisses the idea as ridiculous on several levels. Not only was it wholly beyond the ways and methods of YRE, but the BNP HQ was a heavily fortified building next door to a residential house and a fire would have put people at risk.

‘And that, quite frankly, is ridiculous. Because the method of Youth Against Racism in Europe, and the Anti-Nazi League as well, actually… was to build a mass political campaign. That is how you defeat fascism.’

Austin describes how she was charged by police and knocked on the floor then saved by YRE stewards:

‘If it weren’t for the Youth Against Racism in Europe stewards, people like Dan Gillman and others who jumped on my back when the police were trying to batter me and they took the blows on their backs, if it hadn’t have been for that, I honestly believe I would have ended up like Julie Waterson who was whacked across the head by a police truncheon.

And I can see her on my left. I am negotiating with the police. Police keep charging us and I can see Julie Waterson in her white jacket covered in blood. I was saying to our stewards, “They have got Julie, they have got Julie, you have to go over there, you have to assist.” That was what was going on. That was the reality of Welling.’

She asks again, why did the police block the exit at Lodge Hill that would have taken everyone away from the BNP and up to the park? Every exit route was blocked. The inescapable conclusion is that it was a police trap so they could attack the crowd.

Austin points out that riot police chased protesters across fields as they were trying to leave the area, beating people up as they were leaving.

THE OCTOBER DEMO IN WELLING – ANALYSIS

The spycop report of the march, apparently by Francis [UCPI0000025694] claims the march was a group of hoodlums bent on violence, prevented by seeing the might of their adversaries:

‘The physical presence and appearance of large numbers of fully equipped riot-police was the single most persuasive deterrent to the ill-intentioned mob on that day. The second major factor was the choice of battleground by the police.’

Austin not only rejects the allegation but also the wider mindset of it being akin to a military conflict. The police are mounting gladiatorial opposition to people exercising their democratic rights, and people shouldn’t be portrayed as violent just because they protest.

She says the police intimidation and violence were part of a strategy of scaring people away from protesting, and this is totally unacceptable in a democracy.

Austin also dismissed the World in Action documentary’s characterisation which, while talking about a secret plan for anti-racist violence, only actually shows police attacking protesters and the crowd reacting.

Given how closely the World in Action perspective matches the fictions of the spycops, this suggests that the SDS may have been the source of the programme’s information.

Similarly, the spycops report said ‘stewards were instructed not to carry weapons’, which is a way of admitting they were unarmed but still crowbarring in an implication that they were wanting violence.

‘We didn’t have to say to our stewards “don’t carry weapons” because we didn’t carry weapons… the idea that we were violent, that we were carrying weapons, that we were up for a fight and all of that, it’s just not true.’

The spycops report claims ‘coloured youths of murdered families and a holocaust survivor were being used as stooges’ by YRE activists. Austin is disgusted at this. Again, it characterises activists as inauthentic, having a nefarious desire for violence rather than genuinely holding the moral position that they’re always talking about.

It shows the police find it hard to believe anyone could actually be actively anti-racist, and believe there can be no legitimate opposition to racism.

But more, Austin points out, it shows a racist basis to their thinking:

‘The fact that the police report it in that way shows their racism actually, and their prejudice, that Black families, Black members of the community, have to be led or can be in some way manipulated by activists, socialists, trade unionists. It is absolute rubbish.’

The spycop report talks about how ‘actual fighting was started by 60-100 ‘crusties’’ (members of a scruffy anarcho-political youth subculture of the time) who the stewards were powerless to control. It says they were hunt sabs and anarchists, two favourite bogeymen of the spycops and conservative state. It doesn’t say how they were able to ascertain this.

Austin is asked if it is true, and she flatly rejects it. When people were penned in and shoved by police there were people pushing back, but the overt violence was started by the police.

Though the day was fraught, the sustained campaigning won in the end, which Austin says shows that both the cause and the method were vindicated. They had been lawfully campaigning for the law to be applied and a danger to public order to be removed; things the police should support, yet the police had treated them as the problem.

‘What ultimately happened was that our campaign was successful. The political campaign that we had in the area, the mass pressure from everything that we did, along with other groups, meant that the authorities eventually did set up a planning inquiry…

I wrote the evidence for Youth Against Racism in Europe where I linked issues around planning and detriment to the community to the Race Relations Act and incitement to racial hatred, and I said that the Race Relations Act is relevant to planning law and that is a reason to close it.

And the judge included our submission and that point in his reasoning as to why the British National Party headquarters should be closed down. So our mass political campaign won.’

TARGETED FOR WANTING CHANGE

The intelligence report of the 1994 Militant Labour AGM [MPS-0745874], filled with the characteristic disdain of the spycops, says:

‘A debate of some interest took place on the Sunday afternoon, when the question was raised as to whether Militant Labour should conceal the fact that it is really a revolutionary group, bent on the overthrow of the capitalist state.

Given its relationship with the Labour Party had been severed so unceremoniously, it was perhaps no surprise when it was decided that the message should be shouted from the rooftops in true Trotskyist tradition.

This apart, the weekend offered little to interest a normal person.”

Austin responds with a fundamental truth, that everyone says there is something wrong with society. She is a socialist who wants to transform society, at the time focused on – as the reports show – anti-racism, jobs and housing.

In November 1995 the Security Service (aka MI5) are recorded [UCPI0000027223] as asking the SDS for information on specific members of Militant Labour. Austin says this proves the political policing extended well beyond the SDS, and that MI5 should be being investigated as part of the Inquiry.

‘There is nothing in our paper, in our magazines that doesn’t say what we are, who we are and what we stand for and why we want people to join us. Again, it’s political policing and it’s the state, the Security Services, operating in a biased way…

Why are the Security Services getting involved with Special Branch to infiltrate and subvert organisations which are supposed to be tolerated in a democratic society?’

MILITANT ISN’T VIOLENT

For the Inquiry, Sarah Hemingway once again suggests Youth Against Racism in Europe was part of Militant Labour. Austin explains that while there were Militant Labour members, YRE was a broad organisation 20,000 strong.

From there, Hemingway asks what the term ‘militant’ means, suggesting there is something intrinsically violent about it. Austin gives a comprehensive and eloquent answer:

‘When we use the word militant or militancy in a labour movement context, that is language of the labour movement, and if somebody is raising it to suggest that it means violence or something they don’t really understand the labour movement.

I would describe myself as a working class militant. I work for a campaigning trade union and when an employer says we are going to make job cuts, or we are going to rip up your terms and conditions, or we are going to outsource you to a rotten private company, then we take militant action. We build the union. We organise for ballots for industrial action, we set up strikes and picket lines.

So that’s what it means in the context of the labour movement, and it’s a term that’s always been there.’

Hemingway isn’t really listening and interrupts to ask:

‘Does it mean confrontation? Does it mean violence?’

Austin patiently replies that no, it doesn’t.

Hemingway is certainly having a peculiar day of it. She comes across as disorganised and flustered. She is clearly keen to not overrun and so interrupts Austin’s longer responses, seemingly unaware that she’s just heard the answers to questions she’s about to ask.

NOT VIOLENT ANYWHERE ELSE, EITHER

Hemingway asks Austin if she has ever been violent on a demonstration.

‘I have never been arrested and brought before a court and I do not have a criminal record and I have never been violent. So why do the Metropolitan Police and the secret services have a huge file on me?

It is completely and utterly wrong. It is disgraceful and it is something that should never, ever happen in a so-called or supposedly democratic society.

And I think what goes to the heart of all of this, and again it needs to be said at this Inquiry, is that this is political policing. This is the police, the secret services and British State saying “anybody that criticises the state and what it is doing is a legitimate target”, and that is completely and utterly wrong.’

This underlines Austin’s fundamental theme of the day: the spycops were not about preventing disorder, they were political police units aimed at those whose political beliefs were deemed unacceptable.

Hemingway interrupts again to ask Austin if the Youth Against Racism in Europe logo of a fist smashing a swastika was violent, noting that more recently it’s just a swastika going in a bin. There is laughter from the public gallery, and Austin seems a tad surprised that she has to explain that the fist is symbolic.

A spycop report of 9 November 1993 [UCPI0000033071] talks about an event called ‘Smash the Nazis’ organised by Austin. Hemingway asks if this was a sign that she was violent. Austin once again points out that there is no evidence of them ever attacking anyone. She explains, again, that YRE was a political campaign using petitions, lobbying and marches.

Austin says they would use slogans like ‘smash the BNP’ but this didn’t mean bodily smashing individual BNP members. It certainly wasn’t taken that literally by anyone she ever worked with, and on a practical level such violence would have been counter-productive, discouraging people from joining the campaign.

Hemingway quotes spycop Peter Francis’ witness statement [UCPI0000036012] which says that the YRE used the slogan ‘no platform for fascists’ and that they wanted to ‘hit the BNP’ whenever they could. Might this, then, be proof at last that YRE was violent?

Austin points out that Francis, despite all his embellishments, gives no evidence of any violence ever occurring with YRE.

She has to explain the concept of ‘no platform’ meaning kicking the fascists out of their headquarters, and banning them from using public premises like libraries for meetings. This is not the same as the tooled-up street fights Hemingway seems so keen to imagine.

‘No platform means that we need to use a political campaign, we need to use the community, the mass, as many people as we can, to ensure that they are not platformed. That’s what we mean by that.’

THE AWAY TEAM

Hemingway asks about the ‘away team’, named in the World in Action documentary as YRE’s secret violent core.

Austin explains that it was just a loose term for YRE members who stewarded at meetings and marches to try to ensure safety and prevent people from being attacked by fascists or police. It wasn’t a formal organisation, let alone the clandestine street-fighting squad that the spycops and World in Action describe.

Austin explains that they were asking lots of people to come to demonstrations against the BNP, so they had to take stewarding seriously. Protesters had been hospitalised by fascists and police, so they organised well-disciplined stewarding to defend themselves and keep it as safe as possible.

Stewards would ensure people kept to the agreed route, they would spot fascists up ahead and ensure the two sides didn’t meet. They would also put themselves between police batons and marchers, and prevented some terrible injuries from happening.

Asked again if the away team was a secret self-organised group within Militant Labour, Austin has to explain how they organised as a hierarchical party and that sort of thing would not happen. She reiterates it was an open political campaign.

Austin is challenged on saying the away team was never formalised. We are again shown a spycop report about the 1994 Militant Labour conference (the same one that said they were going to declare themselves bent on overthrowing the state) [MPS-0745874] that says there was a motion passed confirming the official formation for the away team.

Austin says there is no evidence any such motion took place. It appears to be yet another spycop fairytale invented to shore up the story of derring-do in the face of danger, created to impress their managers.

Peter Francis says in his witness statement:

‘Part of my deep cover involved convincing my targets that I was interested in the confrontational side against the BNP. We as a group certainly instigated violence with the BNP. I, as part of that group, attacked people. That was the role. The role was agreed with management.’

Austin gives it no credence whatsoever:

‘I don’t think there is any truth in this at all. I am not aware of that at all. We were not involved in pre-emptive attacks. We were involved in lobbies, protests, mass demonstrations, counter protests. If the British National Party were having a protest we would have a counter protest. But we were not involved in pre-emptive attacks.’

Francis also claims that there were ‘dawn raids’ on BNP members by people he spied on, with swastikas painted on houses and dog excrement pushed through letter boxes. However, Francis himself admits he never saw them actually happen. Austin rejects the entire accusation outright too, saying it simply never happened.

BRICK LANE

Austin is asked about an incident where the BNP were on the streets in the notably multicultural Brick Lane on 19 September 1993, three days after the BNP had a councillor elected. She can’t remember if Peter Francis was there.

We are shown another clip from World In Action, shot on the day. There are Anti-Nazi League banners and Austin is visible as part of the static protest behind railings, in a police-approved pen on the opposite side of the road from the fascists.

The World in Action voiceover refers to it as the sinister ‘away team under the ANL banner’. A group of anti-fascists were mistaken for fascists by police and guided across to the BNP side of the road, where they chased the fascists away.

Austin accepts that the group who rushed the BNP paper sellers included YRE stewards. She says she had no knowledge of any premeditated plan to rush the BNP. She puts it in proportion, pointing out that worse goes off at West Ham matches on a Saturday, never mind the horrendous racist attacks of the time.

Hemingway brings her back to the point, that this was surely a confrontational attack. Austin doesn’t disagree, but sets it in terms of self-defence. Again, the footage is at odds with the commentary. There is no evidence of a secret violent group in YRE, and chasing fascists down the street is hardly riotous disorder.

Peter Francis claims that the YRE had ‘an appetite for violence’. Austin rejects that entirely. It was a mass organisation made up of trade unionists and teenagers. There was no public disorder at the vast majority of events they were involved in. The spycops can’t see it as anything other than a small, violent group when it was actually neither.

Austin says YRE always had pre-event negotiations with the police. For every single event, including small matters like lobbying of the council, they always got permission.

THE EARL’S COURT ATTACK

The Inquiry then turned to a genuinely horrific incident at Earl’s Court tube station on 15 January 1994.

Neo-Nazi band Blood and Honour were due to play a gig in a pub in Becontree, East London. There was an anti-fascist protest to try to stop the gig. Austin thinks they contacted police about it in advance.

As she was approaching the location, a van of riot police drove alongside at walking pace with its side door open. An officer called out to Austin by name, saying ‘we know all about you’.

‘I was targeted by the police on that day. And my question again for the Inquiry, which needs investigating, is what role did undercover police officers play in trying to create an image that I was a violent person that needed to be contained, which was just not true?

What role did they play in setting all of that up? And what did undercover police officers say to the uniformed police and the riot police on that day that meant that I was targeted?’

Asked how they intended to prevent the gig, Austin explains that they would have liked the antifascists to have has sufficient numbers to prevent the gig, although in the event it was cancelled anyway.

The police surrounded the protesters and told them were not allowed to leave. The spycop report [UCPI0000029708] says the police told the group that the police had laid on a special train to take them to Bow Road where there was a fight going on with fascists, and that Austin ‘rather naively’ accepted the offer.

Austin angrily dismisses this ludicrous fiction:

‘They said, “you can only get out of this area by getting on this train. There is no other way we are going to let you go. You can only get out of this area by getting on this train, and you are going to Victoria and you can disperse from Victoria.” That’s what was said.’

The train went non-stop through 22 stations, and people were very nervous. It was very packed. On arrival at Victoria, the doors weren’t opened. They could see ordinary passengers outside, and several people were banging on the window trying to let people know that they were trapped inside the train.

After a while, the train went on to Earl’s Court. On arrival, the doors opened and there was relief because people believed they were going home. They were very wrong indeed.

There were riot police on all platforms and escalators. It was a trap. Austin remembers an officer seeming to recognise her and grinning.

At the top of the escalators, they found the gates out of the station had been closed and the general public had been cleared out. A great mass of police were hitting people on their heads with batons. A gang of them rushed towards Austin and beat her to the floor. While they were kicking her, they were shouting insults:

‘They were battering me, booting me and kicking me and whacking me with truncheons, and while they were doing it they were calling me a fucking cunt, a fucking slag, calling me the worst misogynistic, sexist abusive names you could possibly imagine.’

The gates were opened, and Austin was among the protesters who managed to run out onto road. They turned round to see the gates being shut and police batoning those still inside.

Shortly after, the gates were opened again and the police charged out. Austin was battered on the top of her head. She was left with a large wound and blood streaming down her face.

She feels she was personally targeted. The signs all points towards it. The earlier intimidation of ‘we know who you are’, the grin on the escalator, the number of officers who made a beeline for her as she got to the top, and the fact that Dan Gillman (who gave evidence to the Inquiry on the same day as Austin) was assigned to her that day as a steward to protect her but was arrested just before she was attacked.

Austin wasn’t doing anything to draw attention to herself at all. She was targeted as organiser of these antifascist protests.

‘Again, that’s political policing. That is outrageous in a democratic society. Why are we not allowed to protest without being in fear of our lives in terms of police brutality?’

Hemingway inevitably asks if the protesters were being violent towards the police. Austin says not at all, and recounts the sickening violence by the police against them. She is impassioned, and visibly upset recalling her trauma from the experience.

There is no doubt that the attack at Earl’s Court was planned well in advance. To have had so many officers ready and kitted out in riot gear, to have a dedicated tube train ready and waiting, to clear the station and close it to the public, all must have taken a great deal of preparation, under instructions from high up.

RISKING KILLING – AGAIN

Austin was one of about 30 people who needed hospital treatment. The nurse who attended to her said ‘why are they hitting you on the head, do they not know they’ll kill somebody doing that?’

It was no exaggeration, but a very real and present risk. Metropolitan Police blows to the head have killed many people in the past, including anti-fascist protesters.

Kevin Gately was a 20 year old student protesting against the National Front in Red Lion Square on 15 June 1974. At 6’ 9” tall, his head was well above the level of the crowd when mounted police charged through, batoning anyone they could reach. He died of a brain haemorrhage.

33 year old teacher Blair Peach was killed when police hit him over the head with an unauthorised weapon at an anti-fascist protest in Southall on 24 April 1979.

Barely a year after police attacked Austin and the YRE protesters at Earl’s Court, on 3 May 1995 police stopped Brian Douglas in Clapham. Although walking backwards away from the officers with empty hands, they hit him on the head with one of the Met’s then-new long acrylic batons. He died of a massive brain haemorrhage.

The officer who killed him lied to the inquest, saying he’d merely hit Douglas’s shoulder. Douglas’s loved ones campaigned for justice, for which they were spied on by Peter Francis.

No police officer was ever charged for any of these killings.

In the aftermath of the Earl’s Court attack, the spycop report of 18 January 1994 [UCPI0000029708] mildly describes the violence as nobody’s fault, and praises the police for setting up the situation:

‘There was some confrontation with police at Earl’s Court station, and at least seven members of the group, including Lois AUSTIN, sustained injuries.

The special train ploy to remove this violent group was brilliantly conceived and executed.’

Austin has never been able to trust the police again.

It’s incredible that the Inquiry regards chasing fascists down the street one time as violence while ignoring the premeditated attacks by police.

Imagine if YRE had tooled up with batons and armoured clothing, locked a load of police in an enclosed space and battered their heads, leaving dozens hospitalised. The name of the incident would still be general knowledge all these years later.

The attack did not become legal just because it was committed by police officers. Criminal prosecutions should have followed. But because police were perpetrators it’s just accepted, nobody hears about it. Nobody is held to account and we just move on.

Austin brought a civil claim against the police for it, and received a settlement.

PERPETUAL SPYING

As a person of interest, Austin continued to be subjected to intrusive personal reporting by spycops that had no policing value at all. The fact of being spied on in the past meant you were going to be spied on in future.

A spycops report of 1 October 1996 [MPS-0246670] gives details of Austin moving house. It says she is ‘always moving house’. She points out she was a young woman living alone at the time and a group of men were secretly keeping tabs on where she was living:

‘If I had known about this at the time, I would have been frightened.’

A further spycops report of 26 November 1996 [MPS-0246858] describes Austin attending protests around the country, including an anti-deportation protest in Manchester and a memorial event for Ken Saro-Wiwa, a West African campaigner against Shell’s environmental devastation in the Niger delta.

We’re shown a spycops authorisation for HN104 Carlo Soracchi ‘Carlo Neri’, deployed 2000-2006, [MPS-0069948] which says that the Special Branch ‘Red Desk’ is asking for more information about Lois Austin.

The Inquiry then showed a document from Operation Herne, the police’s internal investigation into spycops [MPS-0721975]. Officer HN73 said that comprehensive reports on people would be commissioned on individuals once they had come to be ‘of interest’, often at the behest of MI5. Austin notes that many of these reports are stamped ‘Box 500’, meaning copies had been given to MI5.

EXIT THE SPYCOP

Austin is asked about when spycop officer Peter Francis was nearing the end of his infiltration and money was raised for him by the Hackney branch of Militant Labour, where he had risen to the post of secretary.

As was standard for spycops, he feigned a mental breakdown to provide him with a credible excuse to vanish from everyone’s lives.

And, as was also standard, this lie caused a great deal of worry among the friends he’d spent years cultivating friendships with.

Francis claims in a spycop report that he sold all his furniture at a car boot sale and gave the proceeds to Militant Labour. Austin doesn’t think that’s true. Her recollection is that people visiting his flat noticed how sparse it was, felt sorry for him and had a collection among themselves to give him money.

Hemingway asks Austin if Francis failing to overtly have sex with members of Militant Labour led her to suspect he might be a state agent.

‘That is ridiculous. The idea that I or anybody else in the leadership of Youth Against Racism in Europe and Militant knew about the sex lives and who was having sex with who is ridiculous. I mean we are a very, very working class organisation, full of ordinary people in trade unions and things like that.

I have seen reports about the “wearies” being promiscuous, and all of that. The undercovers have said that, and if you weren’t having lots of sex then your cover would be blown. That’s absolute and utter nonsense.

I would not have even known if he was having sex, or who he was or wasn’t having sex with, and it wouldn’t have interested me in the slightest. It does interest me if he was an undercover officer infiltrating our organisation and deceiving women into intimate sexual relationships. That’s abuse.’

Austin says Francis has done real public service by becoming a whistleblower, and for that she is grateful. But she says we cannot allow his claims that YRE were violent and looking for trouble to go unanswered.

That’s the last question for Austin. She will be back to answer questions about events on May Day 2001 where she was spied on by HN104 Carlo Soracchi and brought another civil claim against the Met. This will be dealt with in the Tranche 3 Phase 2 hearings scheduled to be held February-March 2026.

Tranche 3 Phase 1, Day 13
12 November 2025

INTRODUCTION

The testimony of ‘Lewis’ to the Undercover Policing Inquiry took place on Wednesday 12 November 2025.

It offered one of the clearest illustrations yet of political policing based on Metropolitan Police paranoia, faulty intelligence, and institutional suspicion producing years of unwarranted surveillance.

Lewis was a student organiser at Kingsway College, in the early 1990s. His leadership of the Kingsway College Anti-Fascist Group (KAFG) and involvement in Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE) led to him being secretly targeted in 1993 by Special Demonstration Squad officer HN43 Peter Francis ‘Peter Black’ / Peter Johnson’ / ‘Peter Daley’.

What emerged from Lewis’s account was the deeply ordinary, democratic nature of the anti-fascist organising he led, and the extraordinary levels of distortion in secret police reports that transformed a small, youthful, non-violent student group into a supposed ‘violent anti-fascist alliance’.

The story is less about genuine threat and more about police paranoia, misreads, bureaucratic exaggeration and the willingness of the Special Demonstration Squad to treat left-wing youth campaigning as subversion.

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.

Lewis values his privacy and has been granted a high level of anonymity at the Inquiry. His evidence was not video or audio recorded, and was only available to those in the room at the time, and from a transcript published later. A more detailed examination of the events he describes and the SDS reports on them can be found in our reports of the hearings for his contemporaries such as Lois Austin, Dan Gillman, Alex Owolade and Hannah Sell.

Lewis’s questioning was part of the Inquiry’s Tranche 3, examining the final 15 years of the Special Demonstration Squad, 1993-2008. Lewis has given the Inquiry a written witness statement.

He was questioned for the Inquiry by Don Ramble.

YOUTHFUL ANTI-FASCISTS MISCAST AS A MENACE

The Kingsway College Anti-Fascist Group was, at its core, a student-run contingent of teenagers and young adults determined to oppose the British National Party and racist violence in early-1990s London.

Members were mostly between 16 and 25. They travelled together to demonstrations, marched behind their own banner, and maintained internal discipline through their own stewards.

According to Lewis, KAFG’s ethos was unambiguous: they avoided violence, never masked up, and attempted to calm anyone who tried to behave aggressively within their section.

Their stewarding tactics at large mobilisations, including the huge high-profile 1993 Welling demonstration against the British National Party (BNP), involved firstly protecting their young members, and then linking arms to stop panic when police charged, in order to protect the demonstration. They believed in mass mobilisation, good stewarding, self-defence, but not initiating confrontation.

Yet early SDS documents, prepared before Francis even infiltrated the group, cast this modest college-based contingent as the spearhead of a new violent bloc inside YRE.

The SDS mistakenly identified Lewis as having led a ‘charge’ on BNP paper sellers at Brick Lane in East London, an event at which he stated categorically he attended but did not ‘lead the charge’ as reported. Yet that single error snowballed into a formal targeting decision, and undercover officer HN43 Peter Francis was deployed to spy on him.

YOUTH AGAINST RACISM IN EUROPE:
BROAD, DEMOCRATIC AND ORGANISED

Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE), another of Francis’s targets, appears in the Inquiry testimony as a broad, multi-racial, youth-led coalition active in Hackney, Tower Hamlets, and across the UK and Europe. It was not a clandestine outfit but a public, campaigning organisation that held meetings, organised demonstrations and stewarded marches in a disciplined manner, and had over 20,000 members.

While some in its leadership were members of Militant Labour (now called the Socialist Party), Lewis said that, contrary to what Francis and other spycops reported to their manager, YRE cannot meaningfully be described as a Militant ‘front’. Lewis himself was from a rival political tendency, yet became a leading organiser within local YRE branches simply by virtue of commitment and activity.

YRE and KAFG often collaborated. At the Unity Demonstration in Welling (organised jointly by YRE, Anti-Nazi League, and the Indian Workers Association), YRE stewards linked arms with students from Kingsway on the front lines of the march.

A later TV documentary would sensationalise claims about an ‘away team’ within YRE who were bent on provoking violence, but Lewis clarifies that the term only appeared around a single Brick Lane protest and did not represent YRE policy or culture.

The organisation neither planned nor advocated violence and, in Lewis’s words, ‘posed no real threat to the state whatsoever’.

Yet Francis, in his retrospective justifications, framed groups like YRE as potential subversives, assertions that Lewis flatly rejects.

BRICK LANE: PUBLIC ORGANISING, POLICE MISINTERPRETATION

The BNP held regular paper sales in the multicultural Brick Lane in East London. One particular protest there forms the crux of why Lewis believed he was targeted.

In 1993, alongside YRE and Militant Labour, Lewis co-organised a mass mobilisation designed simply to occupy the BNP’s pitch before they arrived. This was a standard and openly advertised tactic. Lewis’s mobile number was even printed on fly posters.

According to his evidence, this innocuous fact, being publicly identifiable as an organiser, appears to have been misread by Special Branch and SDS officers as evidence of militancy or leadership of a violent faction.

When undercover officer HN78 Trevor Morris falsely associated Lewis with a supposed ‘charge’ on BNP supporters, an entire mythology grew around him: he was inflated into a dangerous ringleader.

Lewis dismissed all these claims as fiction. There had been no casualties, no charges, no plots, just bad, invented intelligence, later laundered into a justification for intrusive surveillance.

WELLING: DISCIPLINE, NOT DISORDER

Lewis gave evidence on the Welling Unity Demonstration. The 16 October 1993 anti-fascist mobilisation was one of the largest in a generation.

Lewis describes KAFG’s contingent as disciplined and defensive: linking arms against police charges, wearing hard hats only to protect against baton strikes.

He completely rejected the idea that demonstrators wore masks or carried improvised weapons.

Lewis stated that Peter Francis’s reporting on Welling blends fragments of truth with exaggeration. He correctly notes a post-demonstration meeting held to review stewarding, but attributes to Lewis comments and intentions that Lewis contests or considers distorted.

The suggestion that KAFG or YRE intended to break through police lines or take control of far-right premises is, in Lewis’s view, wholly inaccurate.

TARGETING DECISION BUILT ON FICTION

In his evidence Lewis highlighted how he only discovered the truth about the level of surveillance years later, when a journalist sent him an article written by Peter Francis portraying him as the ‘most dangerous man in London’.

Lewis did not even recognise himself in the description. The SDS, he says, built its entire rationale for targeting him on false premises.

The impact on him was twofold:

1. Personal shock: that radical student activism could be misread as violent extremism.
2. Political concern: that police narratives were not rooted in reality but in stereotype, assumption, imagination and paranoia.

Peter Francis’ later claims that the groups intended to overthrow parliamentary democracy – the standard spycop justification for their infiltrations – are dismissed out of hand. Lewis argues that neither KAFG, YRE, nor related groups had anything like that intention or capability. The SDS, he suggests, simply projected its own fears onto radical youth activism.

THE SDS: PARANOIA AND FANTASY

As Lewis made clear, the evidence was not merely a personal narrative, but a case study in systemic failure:

• False intelligence transformed a student organiser into a supposed extremist.
• Political prejudice against left-wing youth activism blurred distinctions between peaceful protest and subversion.
• Undercover policing powers being deployed not to prevent crime but to monitor legitimate anti-racist organising.
• Official reports exaggerated, sensationalised, or outright invented threats.

Thirty years later these failings will strike a chord, particularly with student activist groups being targeted by the Prevent programme today.

The Kingsway Anti-Fascist Group and Youth Against Racism in Europe appear from Lewis’s testimony to have been lively, disciplined, democratic youth groups confronting racism and fascism in their communities. The dangers attributed to them existed not in reality but only in the imagination of the state.

And at the heart of it, as a young organiser, Lewis found himself monitored, infiltrated and categorised as a menace, all on the basis of a catalogue of mistakes and lies.

Tranche 3 Phase 1, Day 8
4 November 2025

INTRODUCTION

On the afternoon of Tuesday 4 November 2025, the Undercover Policing Inquiry heard evidence from an unexpected witness who was only recently added to the hearings schedule.

Known by the Inquiry only as ‘L3’, he was an active member of Croydon Hunt Saboteurs during the time when the group was infiltrated by undercover officer HN16 James Thomson ‘James Straven’ who was deployed 1997-2002.

Not until the opening statements of the current Inquiry hearings in October did L3 hear that in 2001 Thomson had accused him of attempting to traffic a firearm to the UK from France, as part of a supposed plot to murder a fox hunter.

L3 absolutely rejects the allegations and describes the supposed plot as:

‘the biggest event of my life that I am not aware of, up until about a fortnight ago.’

He was hastily added to the hearings schedule and also made a 24-page written statement [UCPI0000039400], which was only submitted the previous Tuesday (28 October).

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.

L3 was questioned by Don Ramble, Junior Counsel to the Inquiry. The Inquiry’s page for the day has audio and a transcript of the live session.

BACKGROUND – HUNT SABBING AND ANIMAL RIGHTS

L3 explained that he has been involved in low level animal rights campaigning since the early 1990s.

‘Very specifically it was targeted towards public outreach events. We did High Street stalls, we did leafleting. We did village fetes, this kind of thing. Anything in which we could get exposure. We did public meetings…

Some of the people I was conducting the outreach events with were also part of the local hunt sab group and I was introduced that way.’

In the mid 1990s he went abroad and worked for an animal rights organisation where he learned how to run a campaign and do media work.

Bizarrely, when the time came for Thomson’s lawyers to pose questions for L3, they appeared more interested in this media training than in L3’s account of the trip to France. The only reason we can see for this is that L3 was a very convincing and credible witness and they wished to try to undermine that by implying that he had been trained.

This is an odd approach, given that police officers could be expected to have training and experience in interview techniques and cross examination, yet the evidence given by ex-undercover officers has been consistently appalling and unconvincing. It seems far more likely that L3 is simply an intelligent, articulate man who was telling the truth.

At the end of 1997, L3 returned to the UK. He moved into a communal house where the person known as ‘L1’ in the Inquiry, and L3’s brother (known as ‘L2’), were living. Both L1 and L2 knew James Thomson from Croydon Hunt Sabs.

L3 first met Thomson in early 1998. Thomson would visit the house, but L3 thinks they first met out hunt sabbing.

‘He was already very much a part of that sab group and if anything I was the new boy. But I came with some credence, because L1 and L2 were already very much a part of it and would have introduced me. So that would have given me some kind of grandfather’s rights, as it were.’

L3 became part of what has been referred to as the core group of Croydon Hunt Sabs, alongside L1, L2, L4 and ‘Wendy’, who he describes as:

‘one of the finest humans I’ve ever met… She’s honest, trustworthy, dependable, wants to do the right thing. Wouldn’t cross you. She is just a very decent human being.’

James Thomson was also a part of the core group, in that he would go out sabbing very frequently, sometimes twice a week.

L3 was asked about equipment provided by Thomson, specifically some night vision equipment.

‘It was specifically given to those of us that were living at the house… rather than the group as a whole…

It was quite a sophisticated piece of equipment for the time. It certainly wasn’t something you would have been able to buy. It was a battery-operated device that illuminated the view in front of you to one degree. It wasn’t binocular is what I mean. You would see it in normal vision…

The garden at the back of L4’s house had a large badger sett running around the back of it, and he would take many of us to come and watch the badgers. And this piece of equipment was excellent for that purpose. That was how it was used initially.

And later, in order for us to gain our own information in what was an increasingly difficult environment to obtain information on the hunt, I used that equipment in my own intelligence gathering.’

L3 made clear that the device was not used for anything that broke the law, or to commit crime. However, he thought that might have been Thomson’s intention in giving it to them.

‘It was quite obvious that we didn’t have the capacity to obtain this level of equipment and so perhaps as a way to provide himself with some kudos, he provided us with the equipment. Or perhaps it was indeed meant for us to facilitate even further acts, that that might enable us to be able to do that we weren’t able to do so beforehand.’

Thomson told L3 he was from Scotland. He mentioned that he had an ex-wife and children, that he worked for a film company as a location finder, and lived in a small flat in the Oval area of London.

Thomson didn’t talk to L3 much about the film work he did, but others spoke to him about it often. It gave him a lot of flexibility.

‘And being in the film world I think we just assumed there was some money there that wouldn’t necessarily be aware to us, and that would explain the nice vehicle that he drove.’

Thomson had a Land Rover Discovery that he would often use to drive people around in. After going hunt sabbing the group would often go for a social in a local pub. Thomson would often drive them in his Land Rover. He also offered use of the vehicle to L3 and L2, and left it with them when he went travelling.

In addition to hunt sabbing, Thomson attended other animal rights demonstrations, like the ones against Shamrock Farm, a notorious breeder of primates for vivisection.

L3 says that he and Thomson also took an active role in destroying badger traps.

‘That campaign was generated by a Government initiative to eradicate badgers because of a concern of TB amongst cattle. The argument was highly contested… But nonetheless, the Government went ahead with their plan at that time and there was large-scale actions against it…

It was quite a sizeable, heavy steel constructed cage in which it was baited with foodstuff to attract the animal… it would release a spring-loaded trap which would close the door behind, trapping the animal inside…

We visited the area and essentially the desire was to release live badgers from traps, but actually we very seldom found badgers in the traps. But we found the traps themselves quite easily and, yes, they were destroyed by us when we found them. It took quite a bit of effort. They are quite solid, as I have just explained. You could squash them if you stood on them and bounced up and down.’

THE ATTEMPTED MURDER OF L4

As the 1990s drew on, the hunters became increasingly violent towards the sabs:

‘By the end of the 1990s it was at an unprecedented level and quite frankly we could expect the possibility of an attack on any given day that we were out with them… Saturdays were always more at risk of that than mid-week, because it attracted more people.

But at that time, every other week there may well have been something at some level, at some degree, somebody got hurt.’

There were rarely more than 20 or 30 sabs out at any one time. The hunt and its supporters would have numbered hundreds.

Q. You refer to being hit. With fists?

A. Yes, with fists, yes, but it was also whatever they had to hand. The members of what they call the field, which is the riders, they would use their crops, bone-handled crops, and the terrier men of course had any number of tools on their vehicles. Shovels, spades, spikes, you name it. All of which they used in an attempt to dig out and kill the fox, but it could also be employed to attack us with.

L3 says that sometimes the hunt sabs had to defend themselves from attack:

‘We never brought weapons with us. That would have been counter-productive. It would have been stupid of us to do so, even if we had wanted to. The vehicle was regularly searched by the police. Those would have been confiscated and doubtless us arrested. So, no, we did not bring weapons to our hunt sabs.

I will not deny that it is entirely possible that in our attempt to defend ourselves that we picked up whatever we found on the ground near us. I am not saying that we didn’t pick up a stick when we needed to. I am sure that we did… [Thomson] would have been very much a part of that.’

On 1 September 2000, the activist known as ‘L4’ was airlifted to intensive care after a supporter of the Surrey and Burstow Hunt ran him over in a Land Rover. We were shown an intelligence report filed by Thomson [MPS-0003867] that same day, which states:

‘Not surprisingly there is a great anger amongst the sabs at this incident as it was felt to be a deliberate act. There has been immediate talk of reprisals, but no definite plan has yet been formulated.’

L3 wasn’t present when the incident happened, but he went to visit L4 in hospital that evening. He rejects Thomson’s claim that there was any talk of reprisals.

L4 was on a life support machine and it was touch and go whether he would live. If he had succumbed to his injuries he would have been the third hunt sab to have died. The mood was not one of revenge.

‘My abiding memory of that event was just – I think it just simply washing over you just how serious it had become, that L4 was anything but out of the woods. I mean he wasn’t conscious at this point in the bed. He wasn’t aware of who we were. It was that serious for him.

And it’s just the prevailing mood that evening was just one of shock and horror at what had happened… But at that moment, absolutely no talk of reprisals at all. It was completely the opposite.

And in any case, L4’s partner was present. She was not a member of our sab group and it would have been wholly inappropriate for anybody to want to talk like that. But it just wasn’t what was on people’s minds. People were just completely deflated by what they saw.’

The day after the incident the sabs held a protest at the Burstow Hunt kennels. People of all ages and backgrounds came from far afield to express their support. L3 became very emotional as he explained to the Inquiry that they expected L4 to die at that point.

Thomson did not attend the demonstration and L3 says he was very surprised by that. It was very odd behaviour for a supposed friend and comrade.

During the protest at the kennels, a leading member of the hunt came out with his servant. They were carrying a riding crop and a spade, and they confronted the protestors.

L3 is clear that the protest at the kennels was not some sort of revenge attack. The trouble started when hunters attacked the protesters with weapons, and it ended as quickly as it had begun. Protestors were injured. A number of them were arrested in the days and weeks that followed. No hunters were ever arrested.

A further report, dated 6 September 2000 [MPS-0003897], four days after the protest, states:

‘Following the incident last week where L4 was run over and badly injured during a fracas between hunt saboteurs and hunt supporters, there is to be another demonstration this evening by members of the Hunt Saboteurs Association against members of the Surrey and Burstow Hunt.

The demonstrators will meet at East Grinstead BR station at 6 pm and from there make ‘home visits’ to a number of prominent members of the hunt.’

At that point L3 intervened to make a comment about ‘home visits’:

‘I understand that it can be taken as a controversial area, that protesters would turn up outside somebody’s own front door and make them aware in a very personal way that what we felt they were doing was objectionable…

I don’t think it’s been mentioned so far and it’s not in the interests of people like Thomson to have made this aware to you in his statement, but we really did consider what we were doing before it was done…

We knew who we were going to and we knew the risk that we were taking in so doing and how it may come across…

I can assure you that there were one or two people who we became aware of who were metaphorically crossed off the list for home visits, because others they lived with were considered too vulnerable and we wouldn’t wish to upset them. So these were considered actions is what I want you to understand.’

He points out that ‘home visits’ were demonstrations, there were no sinister overtones and they did not masquerade as an opportunity to cause damage.

Asked about Thomson’s reporting, L3 vehemently responded:

‘Again, it is florid writing. This is supposed to be a dispassionate document. If you are supplying information it should be very objective and not subjective, and the moment it starts adding opinion – and it is opinion that has been written there – it is steering the reader immediately to form an impression that is not their own. So, no, I refute it. We were not in a volatile mood at all.’

Appropriately, that damning critique of Thomson’s ‘florid writing’ brought us to the real matter L3 was called to give evidence about: Operation Lime.

OPERATION LIME

On 8 January 2001, L3 and Thomson travelled to France in his Land Rover Discovery. They were heading to Marseille, where L3 understood that Thomson had a meeting with someone about a business venture, importing golf carts into the UK. L3 went along for the ride.

Ramble began his questioning on Operation Lime by showing us a Special Branch note of 8 February 2001 [MPS-0005282]. This was written a month after the trip to France.

It claimed:

‘In the immediate aftermath of the incident [in which L4 was injured] and in the ensuing months there have been a number of revenge attacks against members/associates of the hunt. All members and supporters of the hunt concerned are now considered to be at risk, although the driver of the vehicle would be a particularly attractive target.’

L3 says that he is not aware of any such revenge attacks, only the protests that took place in the days immediately after the incident.

The report goes on to claim that those most angered by what happened are L4’s personal friends, and singles out L3’s brother, L2. The report claims L2 made a connection with a French national with a view to buying a quantity of black powder and a firearm, and says:

‘MT’s [Thomson’s code name, Magenta Triangle] credibility within the group was such that he was asked to use his vehicle to drive to France to collect the items.’

L3 was asked about his reaction to that.

‘My reaction to that is that I was utterly aghast when I first saw it. And I simply didn’t recognise what I was reading. This is fantasy, sir. It did not happen.’

Thomson’s account is that there was a ‘dry run’ to France in November 2000 to check out the route.

‘It was during this trip that MT became aware that the collection would take place in the Marseille area, although he was not told the identity of the French contact. The plan was to spend a few days in France, ostensibly as tourists, collect the weaponry, secrete it in his vehicle and return to the UK where L2 would take possession of it.’

L3 points out that this so-called ‘dry run’ was probably a day trip to Calais that Thomson, L1 and L1’s girlfriend took, on a ‘booze cruise’. L3 wasn’t on that trip, and he doesn’t know much about it.

Ramble points out that the reporting suggests there was a lot of discussion after the trip because they got searched by customs on the way home. L3 has no memory of such conversations:

‘They went across to Calais, they had a day out and brought back a load of cheap beer is what I understood happened.’

Ramble then showed a series of documents that demonstrated extensive involvement of Special Demonstration Squad management in Operation Lime. In a document from 13 November 2000 [MPS-0009484] Bernard Greaney and Noel Warr describe visiting Thomson the day after the supposed ‘dry run’:

‘He had just returned from an exhausting day in Calais with L1 and his girlfriend on 9/11 [2000]. They had gone out on the 1100 Eurotunnel train and been pulled by the internal security. No obvious reason for this – another car had also been singled out and subject to a search, including a sweep with some kind of machine which was look for explosives! (Presumably this is part of the Xmas anti-RIRA [Real Irish Republican Army] campaign).

Not surprisingly this rattled L1 somewhat, but MT managed to point out the random nature of this and will work on reassuring the group over the next few days.’

If this were true, there needs to be some examination of why Thomson would have wanted to ‘reassure the group’ and encourage them to go ahead with this supposed arms trafficking and murder plot rather than just be put off by a random customs search. Instead, inside the SDS, the absurdity continued.

ONE HOLIDAY AMONG MANY

We see another manager, HN58, supporting the proposal that Thomson take a week-long trip to Istanbul with L4 [MPS-0004441]. In this memo, HN58 also refers to the supposed murder plot:

‘At present there is a plan to obtain black powder and a gun from France through a French animal rights activist. While the target is unknown, it is very probable that the driver of the vehicle remains the most likely recipient. Magenta Triangle is well placed to report on this enterprise…

L4 is employed by [privacy] and had been working in Turkey earlier in the year… He was shortly after receiving his current injury scheduled to return to Istanbul to complete his contract.

Clearly he has not been able to fulfil his work commitments but he is now well enough to travel and intends to go to Istanbul to collect some belongs and ‘tie up’ some loose ends. Due to his condition he requires someone to accompany him. Magenta Triangle has been asked whether he can help.’

L3 describes this report as utterly staggering. He says it’s plausible that Thomson would have been asked to help L4, and he has a vague memory of the two of them making the trip to Istanbul. He emphasises that L4 had recently suffered extreme trauma.

‘This would have been him mining L4 for information… this is terrible really because L4 was in a very delicate position here. At this stage he was still in recuperation. He was not a well man. And vulnerable.

And who knows where his mind would have been at that point, and what he could have been engaged in, or get a couple of drinks in him as well, and who knows what he might have been saying at the time. He wasn’t in his right mind after what had happened to him.’

Yet another manager, HN53, filed a report on 13 November 2000 about the Istanbul trip [MPS-0527650]:

‘In the context of the Marseille operation, the importance of Magenta Triangle’s participation in the trip to Istanbul with L4 should not be understated. In the first instance, there is the probable intelligence dividend to be gained from L4 about the longer-term intentions of L1, L2 or L3.

More particularly, however, the cementing of the relationship between Magenta Triangle and the most high-profile animal rights “martyr” will greatly enhance his credibility and standing amongst those who are driving the procurement.’

L3 criticises the language used, and insists on how inappropriate it was to be getting close to L4:

‘It seems deliberately inflammatory. I mean, by very definition he wasn’t a martyr. But no. They are attempting to propel L4 to be something that he wasn’t. What he was, was a very vulnerable man who had nearly died and was desperately in need of friends to help him.’

The trip to Istanbul was authorised by Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Black. It seems most of SDS management were aware of what was happening, yet no one took any issue with the cynical targeting of the vulnerable victim of a serious assault who had suffered life-changing injuries.

On his return from Istanbul, Thomson filed a report [MPS-0004762] in which he claims a meeting took place with L3 on 30 November. It contained a detailed itinerary of the planned trip to France, travelling to Calais, on to Bordeaux, then to Marseille, and from there back to Calais.

L3 says that he doesn’t remember the trip being planned so far in advance. L3’s understanding was that Thomson was going to Marseille for a meeting about a business venture importing golf buggies.

‘I described it as having “fallen into my lap” and that suggests that it wasn’t planned sort of six weeks in advance, so I don’t think that’s correct…

It came to my attention that Thomson had a reason to be in the South of France relating to business, totally unconnected to our animal rights activity.

And it was mentioned to me, possibly even in just passing, and I saw an opportunity at a time where things were not great in a relationship I was having, and I thought, “I wonder if he would want somebody to help drive on a trip like that? It is a bit of a distance and there is an opportunity for me to get away and have a little break, effectively, without having planned it”.’

L3 went along for the ride, and his main motivation was the opportunity to visit Bordeaux and sample wines.

‘If the itinerary had been purely mine to create, we would have never gone anywhere near Provence, we would have gone straight to Bordeaux. I was not part of any planning to go to Marseille. That was something I had to accept on the grounds that this is where his business meeting was due to take place.’

L3 says the ‘business meeting’ in Marseille was always going to happen first, and that this business venture was plausible coming from Thomson.

‘To be perfectly honest, if anyone else in our sab group had mentioned this, I would have probably had 101 questions for them. But not so much with him, because he always displayed a degree of wealth that the rest of us did not have, and therefore I didn’t question it quite so much, because it wasn’t so implausible that he might have seen a little opportunity for a business venture.’

Thomson also reported that L3 had ‘sheepishly’ asked if his girlfriend could come along. L3 says this is nonsense.

‘The whole idea was to have a bit of time away so I wouldn’t have asked for her to accompany us…

At some point during the trip we were to liaise with “Sara” [who Thomson had deceived into a relationship], which I understood to still be a bit of a grey area as to whether they were still a couple or not… if anyone’s girlfriend was to accompany us, it was going to be his.’

In fact, Sara did meet up with them in Bordeaux and she gave evidence about the holiday to the Inquiry on 17 October 2025. Like L3, she had no inkling whatsoever that there was supposedly arms trafficking involved.

The fact that she met them in Bordeaux is significant because Thomson had told his managers that the itinerary was to travel to Bordeaux first, then Marseille, then back to Calais.

He claimed that the plan was only changed at the last minute, affording him no time to warn them that he would be in Marseille first. As a result, his handlers were in the wrong city when the supposed arms deal took place.

Yet Sara had booked a flight to be in Bordeaux at the correct time, suggesting Thomson had told her well in advance where he would be and when.

L3 and Thomson met up at Sara’s house before setting off to drive to France. It was just the two of them and they took the car ferry to Calais and drove south, staying in Lyon overnight.

‘So this is the beginning of what I now understand to be Operation Lime. And totally beyond my level of awareness, this has clearly been possibly the biggest event of my life that I am not aware of up until about a fortnight ago.

So I have put much thought to this and have a fairly well-constructed timeline of events, of what really took place as opposed to what you are going to ask me in terms of what Thomson believes took place. And the two could not be further apart…

I was to share the driving and the trip was to begin across the Dover-Calais ferry route and we were to drive down the eastern side of France towards Marseille, with a stop en route…

There was very much a holiday atmosphere to it. We were laughing and joking. It was very clear that we were away from life at home, and there was a fairly carefree feel to it.

And I remember where we stopped in the little rest area there was even a bit of winter sunlight. We were able to sit at a picnic table wearing just a jacket. It was all quite convivial.’

They shared a twin room and the only time L3 spent apart from Thomson before Marseille was when one of them went to the bathroom.

When they got to Marseille, Thomson went to have his meeting and L3 spent a couple of hours exploring the city and window-shopping before reconvening with Thomson to get food.

‘We arrived in the Marseille area around lunchtime. So it is early afternoon by the time we have checked into the hotel and parked up the car…

It had been established that his meeting was going to be at the bank… to be perfectly honest I wasn’t greatly interested. It sounded like a slightly far-fetched venture and I didn’t really see how the world of golf buggies was going to work. It was not really something I was very interested in.

If I am honest, I was just delighted to be somewhere else and was quite happy if he wanted to go off for two or three hours to his meeting, I was going to go off and explore…

He returned after his meeting. I don’t doubt for a moment I asked if it went well. There would have been some small talk over it. But nothing really sticks in my mind.’

L3 has provided a statement in which he recounts all the things he remembers about their time in Marseille. He recalls seeing ten uniformed French police patrolling together:

‘We turned a corner and coming down the street to meet us were ten members of the uniformed French police and, yes, we most certainly commented that, “Oh my God, where have we come to that they need to patrol in these numbers?”.’

He also provided detail about a cat behind a shop window:

‘It is ridiculous, I know, but the cat was engaging with us behind the glass. And I don’t know why I remember it. It just sticks in my memory. I tapped the glass and sort of engaged with the cat back and brought it to Thomson’s attention and, yes, it just sticks in my mind. I have no idea why I remember it.’

He says most of the rest of the evening wasn’t memorable. There was nothing odd about Thomson’s behaviour and they just went to get some food.

THE CAR DISAPPEARS

On the morning of 10 January, L3 woke to find that Thomson had already left.

‘I am either blessed or I suffer from the fact that I am a heavy sleeper. And I did not realise that at that point as I woke that I was alone in the room, and I woke to find that a handwritten note had been left for me… the basic detail of which was to let me know that he had discovered that the car had been stolen and that he was out effectively reporting that fact…

At some point I went out on to the street, probably with him, and I was shown the point at which we had left the car. I was aware that the car was parked very close to the entrance to the hotel. I could see that it wasn’t there.

There was shattered glass on the road, it was pointed out to me. And, well, I mean the vehicle is not there, and there seems to be evidence. What more could I do but accept the fact that the car had indeed been stolen, or so it appeared?…

I have always thought it a bit odd that it was stolen, but at the same time it is still believable.’

L3 explained that he had always felt something about the trip and the car theft wasn’t quite right:

‘No one was ever completely comfortable with the stories he gave. And it has been my thought across the last 25 years that the reason I was selected to help drive on this trip is so that I would be a captive audience for him for about a week and perhaps he would have all the time in the world to engage me in conversation and general intelligence gathering… that the car had in fact been wired for sound, if I can put it that way… and that possibly during the journey down, some of this equipment had malfunctioned and that he then needed a replacement vehicle in order to continue simply gathering evidence.

I have always wondered if I was being a bit paranoid about that, but I have been disabused of that in the last fortnight, haven’t I, because I didn’t even come close.’

L3 says there was some discussion about what to do with the rest of the trip now that they didn’t have a car.

Thomson said he was willing to hire a car, using L3’s driving licence. We are shown the rental agreement, which was attached to Thomson’s expenses claim for the trip [MPS-0527763].

The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, interjected to confirm the spelling of L3’s name. As his name is restricted, it was impossible for L3 to answer, creating an awkward situation.

It is not the first time Mitting has asked anonymous witnesses to spell their names out from the witness box during live evidence. It turns out the reason for the question is that his name was spelt incorrectly on the form.

Once the vehicle had been hired, L3 and Thomson left Marseille and drove towards Bordeaux, stopping overnight in Cahors. As already noted, they picked Sara up at the airport in Bordeaux.

We were shown a photo of L3 taken by Thomson during that trip [UCPI0000039401].

‘We did a number of things using Bordeaux as a base. It was a complete holiday atmosphere…

We had a picnic out on the beach, along the peninsula. Again, I can remember the day, I can remember what we did. We visited the city itself and some of its more prominent architecture. And then closer to the end of the trip into Bordeaux itself we visited the historic town of Saint-Emilion.’

After returning Sara to the airport, L3 travelled north with Thomson in the hire car, staying in Dieppe overnight. They went to a memorable little restaurant (finding a vegetarian restaurant in a small town in France 25 years ago was pretty unusual, and they ate well that night). They then returned to Calais and back to the UK.

L3 says this was the only time he and Thomson travelled abroad together. There had been a political gathering in Amsterdam in April 1998 that they both attended, but on that occasion they travelled separately.

HN26 ‘CHRISTINE GREEN’

This led to a brief tangent in the questioning as he also saw a fellow animal rights activist we now know was Thomson’s colleague, undercover officer HN26 ‘Christine Green’, at that event. L3 only knew her by sight.

‘There are several occasions I can bring to mind where I have come into contact with other undercover officers, one of whom I now know to be “Christine Green”. She was associated with a fellow sab group at the time that operated out of the West London/ Reading area. They usually joined forces to sabotage hunts along the M4 corridor, and she was very embedded with them.’

L3 was asked about Green’s association with the hunt sab activist Thomas Frampton (known as Joe Tax or Joe Tex).

‘I can’t recall seeing them being intimate with one another, but there was no question in anybody’s mind that they were a couple.’

Green is understood to have confessed her true identity to Frampton, resigned from the police, left her husband and moved in with Frampton. They were known to be together for a long while after.

AFTER FRANCE

Ramble then returned to Operation Lime. Thomson was debriefed after the trip, on 16 January 2001 [MPS-0005257]. He describes L3 as having phoned a French contact on arrival in France, using a new SIM card.

L3 denies it completely:

‘That is not true. That did not happen. I knew no one in France. I had no contact to phone. I certainly didn’t have a separate sim card. It’s blatantly not true.’

In the report, Thomson goes on to explain the supposed last-minute change of plan, and the decision to drive direct to Marseille. He said it was because the contact was unable to make the meet later in the week, so it was arranged to rendezvous with him in Marseille the following afternoon.

‘I mean it just didn’t happen, so there is no further comment to make. It’s made up. It’s fictitious, there was no arranged rendezvous with anyone else in Marseille.’

We were then read Thomson’s lurid description of a meeting in a cafe next to Marseille station.

‘The contact is described as North African appearance (yellow skinned) spoke with very good English with little or no French accent he has possibly spent time in England. He introduced himself as [privacy]. They were shown the items and then drove with the contact a short way from Marseille to prove the items.’

Again, L3 is flabbergasted:

‘We met no one in Marseille other than in casual form – by which I mean a hotel receptionist or waiter – but under no circumstances did this event happen. I met no French North African. We did not sit in any cafe. This did not happen.’

The debrief goes on:

‘Initially the contact wanted his two mates to travel in the back of the vehicle with him. MT was not happy with this and insisted in sitting in the back seat with the contact, with L3 driving. The other two were left behind to catch a taxi.

MT directed where L3 should drive which was not the direction favoured by the contact. (MT feels he may have shown out a little as until this moment he had been the acquiescing of the two. However he felt decidedly uneasy about being in the vehicle with three strangers who were probably armed).

They stopped the vehicle a short distance away from Marseille and L3 checked the weapon.’

L3 says this is absolute nonsense:

‘I have absolutely no idea how you go about buying an illegal weapon, but if this is how you go about it, then I can’t believe you are going to walk away from this unscathed, it seems insanity.’

It is claimed he paid £700 for the gun. L3 says if he’d had £700 back then he’d have felt he’d won the lottery.

Thomson claimed the items were stashed in a hidden compartment in his Land Rover, and then he told his handlers where the vehicle was parked.

‘The vehicle was located at 1 am … the vehicle was recovered in such a manner as to simulate that it had been stolen. The following items were secreted in the vehicle: one Colt .45 automatic handgun. 18 rounds of ammunition, two small bags of black powder.’

We were shown photographs of the items found in the car [MPS-0004963, MPS-0004969, and MPS-0004959].

L3 was asked what his reaction to those photographs was:

‘I was utterly shocked… it began to dawn on me just how serious a situation I had unwittingly got myself into in offering to drive on a holiday. It had never occurred to me in my wildest dreams that this is what was really going on behind the scenes. And that my concocted little theory of a car being bugged was about as far away from what was really going on behind my back as could be the case.

I had never seen that weapon before. I had no idea it was stashed in the vehicle…

During the time that we were separated for a short while in Marseille, he obviously reacquired the weapon and stowed it in the vehicle along with the ammunition and black powder. All the while, I was doing nothing more than window-shopping my way around Marseille.’

While Thomson’s reporting is clear that the supposed intention for the gun was to seek revenge for the attack on L4, the intended purpose of the black powder is never specified.

We were shown another of Thomson’s reports, from about a year earlier, dated 23 March 1999 [MPS-0001925]. The report is very short and claims that animal rights activists, possibly in the north of England, had acquired some gunpowder.

L3 says he doesn’t know about that, and further wonders how Thomson would have known about it. This report doesn’t specify what the powder would be used for either.

A report filed by Thomson on 13 March 2001 [MPS-0005473] claims that one of the hunt sabs had found out the address of the driver who tried to kill L4.

L3 says this is untrue:

‘We didn’t attempt to locate him. And remember, at this point there is still some hope in that he’s been arrested and the case has been forwarded to the Crown Prosecution Service. So we are hopeful at this stage that he is going to face trial for attempting to murder L4. So we would not have wanted to interfere with that process.’

Five weeks later on 20 April, Thomson filed a further report, [MPS-0005752] confirming his earlier information was false, and no one had the address.

Another report by Thomson, dated 17 April 2001 [MPS-0748499], refers to a proposed trip to Amsterdam with L2, L3 and L4.

L3 says he has no memory of that trip ever being discussed, it certainly never happened, and he doubts that L4 would have been capable of it at the time.

By September 2001, L4 was working in Jakarta. We are shown a note on the authorisation for Thomson to travel there, from 13 September 2001 [MPS-0006714]. It claims that ‘following the failure of their attempt to bring a handgun to the UK, activists were content to allow the courts to deal with the matter,’ but that the collapse of the case against L4’s assailant had led to a ‘desire to kill’.

L3 says that obviously they were not happy with the failure to convict the hunter.

‘To be honest, I think everybody just simply felt depressed and deflated and cynically felt that the justice system was not there for us, and that it protected the powerful and the wealthy.’

He doesn’t believe Thomson was persuaded to go to Jakarta to visit L4, and he became emotional saying how much he regrets not making the trip himself.

‘It was known he was in a low mood at this point. His partner is the one who initiated these thoughts to us and was very worried about him, and wanted someone there with him basically. She was not able to go herself. She had too many commitments. So she looked to someone close to him to offer him that support so that he wasn’t going to be there alone…

It should not have been him [Thomson]. Because his intention was not there to support L4, quite the opposite.’

Asked his reaction to Thomson’s written statement to the Inquiry, L3 says it is all complete fabrication.

‘It’s difficult to separate where the truth is, there is so little of it. Everything that he has supposedly accounted for in what we know as Operation Lime is simply not true. It was made up.

I think there is a variety of reasons why he did this, and we mustn’t forget that in doing so he was equally deceiving his own people as well as us. In fact, everybody but himself was being deceived by this fake operation…

It seems to have been very financially lucrative to him to be in this deployment, that he wanted it to continue as long as possible. I mean, he was having a great time.

He was travelling the world, he was being paid overtime to essentially have a good time with his friends and be with his girlfriend. Why wouldn’t you want that to continue? So he came up with a scheme in order to maintain that deployment and a great lifestyle.’

L3 points out that if you look at the intelligence reports that Thomson was filing and then remove the gossip and tittle-tattle, what you’re left with is so thin that unless he embellished it, he would have been filing blank pieces of paper.

A later report of Thomson’s, dated 5 March 2002 [MPS-0008258] still talks about intentions to target ‘L5’, the hunt supporter who attempted to kill L4, claiming the Animal Liberation Front – the go-to bogeyman name the spycops used for animal rights scare stories – intended to cause him serious harm.

L3 says this is not real and rejects it entirely. It is notable that, despite having a reputation for violence and having attempted to murder a hunt sab more than a year previously, L5 is recorded in this report as having ‘N/T’ in Special Branch records – they had ‘no trace’ of him presumably because they felt he wasn’t worth watching. Given how much time the reports and the Undercover Policing Inquiry spend talking about Special Branch preventing violence and disorder, this is damning.

Ramble then turned to the authorisation document for Thomson’s trip to France [MPS-0526880]. L3 is asked about the way he is characterised in Thomson’s authorisation document. It refers to L3 as an intimidating figure, and implies he had carried out arson attacks.

L3 says it’s not true:

‘This is a deliberate picture being painted to make us appear far more extreme than we actually are. Because if a genuine report about what we were doing went in, there would have been no justification for the deployment.

So it was in his interests to make us appear like some crazed group of individuals hell bent on what he’s discussed here.

But nothing ever comes with detail. It’s just in the scantest, we are just expected to take his word for it. This is not true.’

We were shown other documents which single out L3 as being likely to be involved in ‘terrorism’ and describing him and his friends as a ‘cell’. However, as L3 had already pointed out, there are no specifics.

This is not the first, nor the only instance of vague, unsubstantiated intimations of serious criminality appearing in SDS reports, with seemingly no corresponding investigations or arrests ever taking place.

L3 points out that he and his friends were open and public: they went sabbing and were involved in public campaigns.

‘Virtually everything we were doing was available for scrutiny by local policing units, not some central spycop unit. It would not have necessary…

They didn’t need this. So in order for him to be in place, he would have to have embellished those reports in order to sustain his activity…

In his statements at points 2.18 and 2.34 it even mentions that his own boss described his last two and a half years as a sham and that his intelligence was not worthy, that he was not supplying them with details at all.’

IDENTITY THEFT

Thomson has defended his theft of the identity of a dead child, Kevin Crossland, in order to create an alternate identity for himself, claiming that:

‘Being a party to such ‘dodges’ to avoid police action with close members of the ungodly, whilst not technically necessary were [and are] to my mind essential in providing the depth of character essential for “James Straven” to be accepted through the core of this target group’s criminality.’

He specifically claims that activists, including L3, did the same. L3 says this is also not true:

‘This is just another outrageous attempt to deflect the fact that he took the identity of a dead child for his own benefit.’

L3 says he doesn’t believe he or other activists were ever aware that Thomson used the Kevin Crossland identity.

‘Had he spoken to me about such things I think it would have piqued our interest and we would have asked him a great deal more questions. I have no idea how you would go about doing that. We didn’t do it…

No one used that level of intrigue to develop a false identity. The only occasion in which I can remember using an alias, not a false identity, is when dealing with the media. And that was purely to protect myself.’

The Powerbase article on James Thomson (UCPI0000035222 on the Inquiry website) was then shown. It includes reference to an interview L3 gave to the Undercover Research Group, and we were taken through each of the points attributed to him. Most of it referred to things already discussed in evidence, but in less detail, because L3 was working from memory in 2018 without having seen the files disclosed by the Inquiry.

L3 was then asked why he only submitted a statement to the Inquiry last week, having provided evidence to the Undercover Research Group seven years previously. L3 said that, before he knew of being framed for the Operation Lime gun plot, he didn’t think he was especially relevant:

‘I was aware that this Inquiry had been established. Although I wasn’t quite aware of how far you had got. I wasn’t paying that much attention.

If I am perfectly honest, I really up until recently didn’t think I had very much to offer you, beyond what others would have already told you…

It was only as I began to hear testimony by people I actually once knew that it piqued my interest and I began to think, “Hang on, what? That’s not quite right”… I would have come forward much, much earlier had I had any idea of what I was about to read.’

It is put to L3 that Thomson would be giving evidence the following day, sat in the same seat L3 was sat in.

Q. I just want to ask you again… in terms of the timing that you provided your statements. If there was any suggestion that you didn’t come forward to the Inquiry years ago because you were involved to some extent in criminality, what would you say about that?

A. No. No, the complete opposite. I didn’t come forward because I really just didn’t think that what I was up to in terms of hunt sabotage and in terms of public engagement events would be of any interest to you.

I really just thought I was such a minnow that I would have nothing to offer you.
And it only became clear to me what had been going on behind the scenes, unwittingly to my knowledge, very much later and, in fact, at the eleventh hour.

He points out that the material contained in the secret files is very serious and, without him knowing anything about the causes, could have had a huge effect on his life.

‘I can’t imagine what could have potentially befallen me had they taken it to that level and wanted to make an arrest. What would have happened to me exactly? How has this affected me across the last 25 years of my life? Unbeknown to me?…

Would it have led to another massive miscarriage of justice had I been arrested for such crimes that I knew nothing of, and were the figment of a rather twisted imagination of James Thomson?…

I was his fall guy.’

That was the end of Ramble’s questioning.

CROSS-EXAMINATION CROSSED WIRES

There was some confusion at the end of the questioning about what would happen next. Richard Whittam KC, who represents 12 former undercover officers including Thomson, submitted a last-minute application to cross-examine L3 himself.

This would be a significant departure from the Inquiry’s usual process, where all questions are asked through Counsel to the Inquiry. It’s a key principle of a public inquiry being inquisitorial rather than adversarial.

The Inquiry has made clear that in exceptional circumstances, where witness accounts of very significant events are completely at odds, it might allow for this. Because of the seriousness of the allegations about Operation Lime, and the fact that Thomson and L3’s accounts are so fundamentally different, this could have be one of those exceptional occasions.

However, when asked what questions he wished to put to L3, Whittam inexplicably cited the media work L3 referred to right at the start of his evidence, what contact he has had with ‘Wendy’ prior to giving evidence, and the reasons for his late engagement with the Inquiry. Thomson’s counsel seemingly had no questions at all about the events in France.

The Chair, Sir John Mitting, seemingly as surprised and baffled as the rest of us, responded:

‘I had anticipated, wrongly as it now transpires, that you would have wished to question him about the critical issue in the evidence that he has given, Operation Lime. If that is not the case, I am not minded to accede to your application and would suggest that it is dealt with by the ordinary Rule 10 process.’

At the end of his evidence, L3 was therefore asked further questions by Ramble including the ones raised by Thomson’s counsel.

He explained that his media experience involved doing radio interviews for an environmental and animal welfare organisation abroad. As part of that he did some rudimentary media training.

Asked about his relationship with ‘Wendy’, L3 says they have had some communication over the years, although it’s been ten years since they met in person. He made clear that she had told him she had been asked to give a statement to the Inquiry, and that she thought he should contact them as well, but that she did not tell him what was in Thomson’s statement, nor that he was named as being involved in sourcing a firearm in France.

It was then pointed out to him that he sent an email to the Inquiry on 15 October offering to help the Inquiry. He says he would have heard of the firearm in the opening statements on 13 October, rather than in Sara’s evidence on 17 October as he had previously stated.

There was an absurd and petty feel to these questions which all seemed to seek to discredit him personally as a witness, rather than question his account of events.

L3 was then questioned by his own counsel, Hannah Webb, about his reflections on the way Thomson’s actions had affected him. L3 declared:

‘This is the most incredible event that has ever happened to me without me being aware of it.’

Mitting then thanked L3 and apologised for the length of time he is going to have to wait before the Inquiry publishes its determination and conclusions on this issue. Those are anticipated to be in the Inquiry’s interim report on the Special Demonstration Squad, expected in the second half of 2027.

Tranche 3 Phase 1, Day 6
23 October 2025

INTRODUCTION

‘Ellie’ (not her real name) was deceived into a one-year intimate, sexual relationship by undercover officer HN16 James Thomson, who she knew as ‘James Straven’. He was deployed 1997 to 2002. However, he remained in contact with Ellie for a further 16 years after his deployment ended, long after she had left London, and he continued to conceal his true identity from her.

She gave evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry remotely from Australia on Thursday 23 October and Monday 3 November 2025.

This hearing was part of the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s ‘Tranche 3 Phase 1’ which will run from October 2025 to July 2026 (with two breaks), examining the final 15 years of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad, 1993-2008.

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.

There are transcripts and videos of this hearing available on the Inquiry website’s pages for 23 October and 3 November.

Ellie has made a 38-page written statement [UCPI0000038206]. She was questioned by Sarah Hemingway, Second Junior Counsel to the Inquiry.

BACKGROUND

Ellie was not an animal rights activist. Thomson described her as an ‘animal welfare sympathiser but not an extremist or an activist’ and she agrees with this. She had an interest in animal welfare, and began volunteering at a local wildlife hospital when she was 18 years old.

She became friends with ‘Wendy’ (who gave evidence on the afternoon of 23 October) at the wildlife hospital. Wendy was a vegan and an activist. It was through her that Ellie met Thomson, when she was 20 years old, when Thomson went to help out at the wildlife hospital in 1999 or 2000.

Q. What was the extent of your interaction with James on that occasion?

A. Minimal. The wildlife hospital was quite busy. I had a lot of work on. I cannot imagine I would have said more than a few words.

Yet Thomson asked Wendy for Ellie’s number, and told her he wanted to date her.

Around that time, Wendy’s mother was dying. She was always back and forth to the hospital and Thomson was very supportive, driving her there and taking her to other places. Ellie assumed Thomson was interested in Wendy, but she didn’t see him that way, they were just very close friends.

Meanwhile, Ellie was having a bad time at the wildlife hospital because her boss was sexually harassing her. He put a lot of pressure on her, asking her out, firing her when she refused to go out with him, withholding staff pay and threatening to kill himself:

‘He gradually he got more and more control over everything and we ended up sort of living under his roof, eating his food, asking to be paid, and then there was just drama after drama. And just harassing and harassing and harassing and it just wears you down after a while…

He would sort of climb into my bed at night. And then if I got out there would be a big argument, which would go on for hours and I would end up sort of wedged in the corner and I put pillows behind me to kind of keep him away…

We’d asked him a few times for a contract. That didn’t go down well, so we never got the contract…

It just gradually got worse and worse and worse until he fired me again and when he went, “Okay, you can come back”, and I said, “No, I am done”.’

The harassment had gone on for 6-8 months. When she finally walked away Ellie lost her job and her home. Wendy helped Ellie out and let her move into Wendy’s mother’s house after she died.

At the time she started dating Thomson, Ellie explains she was:

‘An awkward, geeky, naive, possibly a bit sheltered, 21-year old. I’d moved out of home and moved into the wildlife hospital and that was my first step into the real world, and I had screwed that up quite spectacularly…

I just walked straight into a bad situation and then ended up homeless within a period of a year of moving out…

I would cry at the drop of a hat. A simple task that should have taken five minutes seemed to take half an hour. I was sleeping all the time, I didn’t have a lot of motivation. I was quite underweight.’

That was the situation Ellie was in when Thomson started dating her. It fits a pattern we have seen time and time again in this Inquiry of undercover police officers identifying vulnerable women much younger than themselves to target and groom into intimate, sexual relationships. Thomson’s manager HN10 Bob Lambert with ‘Jacqui’, HN2 Andy Coles with ‘Jessica’, and HN5 John Dines with Helen Steel. By any definition, the Special Demonstration Squad was a grooming gang.

ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP

Thomson told Ellie he was 33 years old. He seemed to be very conscious of the age gap. Ellie explained that when they first started dating, the 13-year difference concerned her somewhat too. It was actually even wider.

‘There was an incident when we were having dinner and he mentioned his children and I worked out that he would have been quite young when he’d had his first child. And that had made him a bit uncomfortable…

I got some random phone call from him saying that he had spoken to “Sara” and she had pointed out that he had his age wrong and he was actually 36 and not 33…

I thought he obviously always knew his age, he just had lied to me about his age because he was conscious of the age difference, but he was actually 36 years old.’

Sara gave evidence on 17 October where she made clear that the conversation never took place. She was certain that she would not have said what he claimed because she always believed he was two years younger than her, which would have made him 33 years old.

Hemingway asked Ellie about the age gap:

Q. Did his being older cause you any real concern at the time?

A. When I thought he was 33, that was sort of the upper limit. I know my sister had a concern about that. But I was okay with him being 33. When I found out he was 36, that was an issue, but at that point we were dating and I liked him and it wasn’t an issue enough to end it.

In fact, Thomson was 37 years old when he started dating Ellie, who was just 21.

They would meet up once a week, going out for meals, cinema dates and suchlike. That progressed to day trips on the back of Thomson’s motorbike, staying at B&Bs.

Hemingway then read out the now infamous section of the 1995 SDS Tradecraft Manual [MPS-0527597] that recommends undercover officers have:

‘fleeting disastrous relationships with individuals who are not important to your sources of information’.

Ellie agrees that her relationship with him did not fit this description. She was very close to Wendy, who was part of his target group, and she gave him unfettered access to her home.

FAKE IDENTITY

Thomson told Ellie that his background was Scottish, and his father was a Laird. He claimed to be the black sheep of a military family, and he said his sister was an actress. She notes that this seems to fit with him using the identity of James Christopher Swinton, brother of the actress Tilda Swinton. She asks the Inquiry to investigate this.

Thomson told her he had three children with a previous partner. He said the relationship had been unhappy, but every time they were going to split she became pregnant.

Ellie remembers finding Thomson’s home strange:

‘His cover accommodation was a shock when I first got there. It just – he was always quite well presented and well turned you out, his clothes were always quite neat. I know some of the hunt sabs, including “Wendy”, used to laugh at him for ironing his jeans.

So when I saw his accommodation, it wasn’t what I expected. It was very run down. I think there were two very thready towels in the bathroom. There was nothing personal in there at all. There was hardly any food in the fridge. It didn’t look lived in and it didn’t fit with him.’

He told her he worked as a locations manager, and that he had worked with the BBC before he set up his own company. He was away a lot with work, and she remembers his ‘James Straven’ name appearing on the credits of a TV show he’d worked on.

Ellie described her relationship with Thomson:

‘From my point of view, he was my first what I would call “proper” relationship. So anybody that I dated before hadn’t been – the feelings hadn’t been that intense, it hadn’t been there. This one I was very comfortable in quite quickly. I could see it going on for a long time…

It was easy, it was nice, there was no pressure, I could be myself. Apparently not, but he was my first love, basically. My first proper intense relationship…

I was having a conversation once, I do remember that, with “Wendy” and we were talking about people cheating on each other and I said, “Yes, I don’t think James would do that” and she went, “No, he’s not really the type. He doesn’t seem to be the type”. We got that incredibly wrong, but I was under the impression it was monogamous…

the fact that it was a nice low pace and we weren’t in each other’s pockets suited me very well. And then when we were together it was lovely. It was romantic, it was caring, it was sweet, it was easy, it was fun. It was great, and then I still had time for myself.’

She says Thomson was reluctant to have sex without contraception, but he didn’t use condoms.

‘So I went to maybe look at going on the pill. And talking with my doctor, we trialled the injection… once that was done we never used any other forms of contraception.’

On 17 October we heard painful evidence from Sara, Thomson’s partner prior to Ellie, about how Thomson told her in great detail that he had traumatic childhood experiences of sexual abuse.

Hemingway asked Ellie if he ever brought that up with her:

‘The rape? No, that was fairly horrific that he would say that. He did say that he had had a sexual relationship with a school nurse, but he seemed quite proud of that. That was only really mentioned once.’

Thomson never seemed to have any issues with having a sexual relationship with Ellie.

Ellie explained he was always very generous and paid for trips away and meals out.

‘I didn’t have a lot of money, especially because after the wildlife hospital I was finding my feet and trying to get sort of – by the time you’ve paid bills there’s not a lot left…

I did try and pay halves as much as I could, but… he paid for a lot of those things.’

He also paid for Ellie to do her motorbike training course, and they travelled together to Indonesia and Singapore in September/ October 2001.

INDONESIA AND SINGAPORE

The trip was Thomson’s suggestion. He asked her if she wanted to come and she jumped at the chance. She is sure that he paid for her to go and organised everything.

He told her he was going there to visit a friend, known at the Inquiry as ‘L4’, who had nearly died from being run over by a hunter in a Land Rover. Ellie had met L4 a couple of times.

‘What I found out later – which I didn’t know at the time – was that his partner had contacted James and she had said that she was exceptionally worried about L4, because of things that had happened, and she was worried that he was over there isolated and alone, and she paid for James to go over and be with him, because she knew they were friends and she just wanted him to be supportive and be a supportive friend over there.’

The trial of the hunter accused of nearly killing L4 had collapsed by that time.

Ellie is certain that Thomson paid for everything:

‘He organised everything, I literally just floated along…

He did all the tickets and the passports and everything, and he did all the checking in and all the sorting out and I just thought this is just something he does.’

Ellie never saw Thomson’s passport.

Hemingway then read a long extract from a police report into Thomson’s undercover activities written in 2002 at the end of his deployment [MPS-0719722]:

‘Indonesia. Matters began to come to a head in early September 2021 when Detective Sergeant Thomson sought authorisation to visit L4 in Indonesia. His operational grounds for doing so were based on a need to brief L4 on legal issues around the L5 trial.

His request was initially authorised, but events soon overtook that decision with the attack on 11 September.

It quickly became apparent, both from media sources as well as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, that there were too many risks attached to such a visit, particularly in view of the anti-American and British fervour being fomented in Indonesia. Detective Sergeant Thomson was therefore instructed not to travel to the Far East.

He was patently dismissive of the decision and its rationale, but advised the office that he would travel to France on annual leave instead (from 26 September to 5 October)…

By early November, enquiries had established that Detective Sergeant Thomson had indeed travelled to Singapore and Indonesia during his leave period using his covert identity.

As a result of this serious breach of operational security and discipline, he was interviewed by Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Black and informed that his operation would be concluded at the earliest opportunity – a final date being set of 27 January 2002.

Detective Sergeant Thomson continued to maintain that he held the moral high ground and justified his decision to override the veto on travel to Indonesia on the basis of operational necessity. There was, incidentally, no intelligence feedback from this trip.’

Ellie’s account is that she and Thomson didn’t actually spend much time with L4, only a few days before they went to Singapore, where he took her to the iconic luxury hotel Raffles to have a Singapore Sling cocktail:

‘He was quite keen on doing that. That seemed to be a bucket list thing…

I have found out since then that this was a bit of a place that all of the undercovers were quite keen on visiting. There’s a Raffles in London, where Ian Fleming wrote the James Bond stories, and that seems to be a thing for them, that they all like. I didn’t know that at the time.’

Ellie knew that Thomson had the nickname ‘James Blond’, and she knows he was aware of the name, because she called him that herself sometimes.

She believes it had come about because of suspicions about him when he first appeared at the hunt sabs. She says that his whole persona fitted the rogue character breaking the rules.

Ellie says that in retrospect, it fits with her experience of him that he was having sex on the job.

Thomson told Ellie to give him the roll of film from her camera when they got back from Indonesia and Singapore so that he could get it developed with his.

He gave her a collage of photos, plane tickets, a coaster from Raffles and other memorabilia, but there were no pictures of him in it. He told her all the photos taken by her ‘didn’t come out’.

She only has two of her photos from that trip which were the ones that remained in her camera. Everything else was gone.

THOMSON’S WITHDRAWAL

At the start of 2002, Thomson told Ellie that his ex-partner was emigrating to San Francisco and taking the children. He said he was going to move over there to be close to them.

‘From there things did progress quite quickly. I was round at his place, he went out, he said he had to go out for a meeting. When he came back he was a bit quiet and a bit, you know, in a little bit of a bad mood and he said things were progressing faster than he wanted, and he was probably going to be leaving quicker than he anticipated.’

He eventually left around March 2002. The SDS’s ‘extraction plan’ for Thomson’s deployment, codenamed ‘Magenta Triangle’ [MPS-0007389] shows that he had been instructed by Detective Chief Superintendent Colin Black to terminate his operation by 27 January 2002. That timeline was extended at Thomson’s request (as recorded in the later overview document MPS-0719722).

We were shown Thomson’s phone records [MPS-0719641]. They show 301 calls or texts to Ellie between April 2001 to April 2002, almost one a day, with the comment ‘no reporting’. In comparison, the records show 226 calls or texts to Thomson’s ex-wife and children and 627 to his real-life partner during the same period.

Before Thomson left, supposedly to live in America, he paid for Ellie to have a follow-up motorbike course. He sent her a card enclosing a voucher for the course in which he quoted poetry [UCPI0000038280]. It ends:

‘See you in the South of France! With love, James’.

She felt hollow at him moving away.

‘I wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do. Everything seemed a bit up in the air. He seemed to have a lot on his plate, so I did leave the ball in his court. So when he left I wasn’t sure if I would hear from him again.’

She says if he had just gone, and never contacted her again, she would have got on with her life. But that’s not what he did.

ONGOING CONTACT

After leaving and claiming he had gone to live in the USA, Thomson continued to contact Ellie. His deployment officially ended on 25 March 2002. His first email to Ellie after he left is dated 8 May 2002 [UCPI0000038289].

‘I could rarely get a genuine insight into how you felt about things when I was with you I’d definitely want to know now.

As there is no longer any possibility of my being able to look at you whilst you’re ‘talking’ I am hoping it’ll be easier for you. I do want to know that you’re happy after all. I also want to know that you’re grabbing the life that should be yours.

You are a hell of a lot smarter than either you let on, or allow yourself to believe. But when you get careless and distracted it leaks out, mostly through your sense of humour and wit (which I miss hugely, by the way) as you often don’t have the confidence to force an issue even when you know you’re right…

I don’t see you ever ducking an adventure, so it’s just a matter of being in the right places to let them happen to you. I really do want you to have as much fun in your life as I’ve had (and hopefully will continue to have) in mine. It’ll be fun meeting up when you’re old and grey, and I am a ghost, to swap war stories – all to be horribly exaggerated in the interests of a good yarn of course…

I also need you to do a spot of considering. I am likely to be heading for Europe in a while (the Cannes Film Festival, Daaaaarling) and will have to stop off in London either on the way there or on the way back.

So what I need know is how you feel about meeting up for a curry or pizza or some such. Is it too soon and how do you feel, et cetera, et cetera.

Have a serious think and let me know. I won’t take offence either way and will continue to bother you via email until much later when we can meet in the Pyrenees or Alps on motorcycles.

Oh, and can you not mention this to anyone else as I don’t want to be obliged to chase around seeing everyone – it’ll only be a short visit re that script thing.

Anyway, that’ll do for now. It’s far too hot to remain out here without a swim.

Take care my love. Yours aye. James X.’

This was the start of many years of email communication. He did the same with Wendy. Ellie is still baffled by his reasoning.

‘I don’t know why he kept in touch with us. I don’t know what he was playing at, at all.’

Thomson’s emails are deeply personal, flirtatious and flattering. Wendy knew Ellie was still in touch with Thomson. Other friends of hers knew they were still in contact as well. Ellie and Thomson would meet up every year or two:

‘It picked up where it left off, it was like going on a date again, yes, it just slipped straight back into that…

Always a goodbye kiss. Like an intimate kiss. I think sometimes holding hands. And then later on, sort of over the years, there were very intimate moments…

It was more than friendship, but it wasn’t a relationship. It was somewhere in the middle… I never really labelled it.’

DECEIT ACROSS THE WORLD

Ellie moved abroad in 2005, but the connection with Thomson continued.

‘Whenever I was going – and the same with “Wendy” – whenever we were going back to the UK to visit, we would email and say these are the dates we are going to be back, if you can make it back there and we can catch up, that would be great. And he would very often manage that… In fact he was one of the most consistent relationships I had.’

From Thomson’s emails to Ellie [UCPI0000038281], he seemed to be travelling the world. There were emails claiming to be from Tunisia, Malaysia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Malta and Kuala Lumpur (from where he asked Ellie to visit him).

We were shown one email where he said he was in Iraq:

‘I am up in the north this time in Kurdistan – so quite near the Iranian, Syrian and Turkish borders, which is good as I’ve not been here before.

Tomorrow the rough boys are taking me up to their ranges in the mountains to play with their big guns – although now I write that it sounds a bit dodgy! But it’s not as if any of them are hairdressers, what do you think? So I’ll try to get a photo of me being all manly, as I gather that’s how one impresses you antipodeans.’

This email was sent in 2008, six years after Thomson’s deployment ended. He told Ellie that he was making all those trips to dangerous war zones as part of a location manager job for American TV news. In fact, he was in the Metropolitan Police’s Specialist Operations Unit until 2012.

When the spycops scandal broke after EN12 Mark Kennedy was unmasked in 2010, Thomson was removed from operational duties to protect the Met and preserve his anonymity while they assessed the risk that might arise from the public disclosure in the media.

From then until his retirement in June 2014, he says he only fulfilled administrative duties in and around New Scotland Yard [UCPI0000035553].

The emails to Ellie were emotional. They were very special to her. She looked forward to receiving the next one. He asked her to send him a Google Earth link to where she was living after she moved house.

The emails often contained attempts to plan to meet up physically, something they managed to do on numerous occasions. We were shown one email which Thomson sent shortly after they met up for the day in England and gone out on motorbikes:

‘Whilst I hadn’t forgotten that I missed you, I hadn’t fully remembered why – a conscious effort on my part admittedly – and even seeing you so briefly brought it all back.

I had a truly wonderful time. I always did in your company. As for the attraction I so obviously still feel for you; suffice to say I’ve never felt as frustrated as I did knowing you were in a hotel near Heathrow without a chaperone while I was stuck in Scotland!

And all for the want of a little planning (or so I told myself). Actually I had made promises to myself to behave so I didn’t disconcert you, but I was perfectly happy to bin that idea even while on a motorbike.’

SEXUAL SUGGESTIONS

Thomson frequently asked Ellie to send him photographs, and he gives them explicitly sexual connotations:

‘I am expecting many paragraphs and photos – anything involving lingerie and you will no doubt help with the aforementioned aargh condition you left me in by being at Heathrow when I was in Scotland (note how it’s all your fault in my head at least).’

Thomson frequently referred to his own sexual frustration in emails with ‘aaargh’ as the subject line, and repeatedly asked Ellie to send photos of herself in lingerie.

On 23 October 2011, which is more than a year after spycop EN12 Mark Kennedy was uncovered and after eight women had filed claims against the police for deceitful relationships, Thomson emailed Ellie saying he was in Libya.

He told her he hadn’t moved on and was suffering from sexual frustration from not being able to have sex with her. Many of his emails were sexually suggestive and Ellie says it remained very common for Thomson to ask to meet up or request her to send him explicit photos. His manner is incredibly salacious, signing off emails with comments like:

‘sent with all my love as ever was, and still thinking of you far more than is good for me (and not always undressed)’

Ellie explained that she did not send him the photos he asked for and this sort of talk was pretty one sided. She didn’t deter him, but she just isn’t that sort of person.

We were shown a document dated 19 October 2001 [MPS-0719701], planning Thomson’s extraction from deployment. It specifically states that he should gradually be sending shorter and more rushed emails, displaying less interest in the members of his target group with more focus on himself and his own career in order to diminish his standing as a friend.

Yet ten years later he was doing nothing of the sort. On the contrary, he was still expressing a great deal of interest and desire to meet up and spend time with Ellie.

In his own witness statement, Thomson admits he stayed in contact with Ellie, claiming they met up once every three or four years. Ellie says there was more contact than that, they met up more like once a year. Ellie was aware that Thomson would also meet up with Wendy when she went back to the UK.

In an email dated 15 April 2012, Thomson refers to going to Afghanistan which he says he prefers to the office job. He sent her photos of himself with lots of people in uniform with guns.

By that time, he had been removed from working in close protection of prominent public figures, because the media had picked up on the existence of the SDS and he might be recognised.

Thomson retired from the Met in 2014 but his contact with Ellie continued. In fact, he stayed in contact for 16 years after his deployment ended, from 2002 until 2018.

It appears from emails in 2014 that Thomson was trying to work out exactly where Ellie was living. In June 2014 he asked her about the location of her current home. He tried to arrange meeting up with her, and makes very suggestive comments, but he also apologises for those, saying ‘it’s your body after all’. His emails also express contempt for what he calls ‘the powers that be’ – his management, the rules and regulations.

In retrospect Ellie sees all that in context of the fact that undercover officers were being uncovered, and it appears that he has contacts who could be quite threatening. She still feels vulnerable to him taking revenge on her, especially because he knows where she lives.

THE PUBLIC INQUIRY

Ellie has exhibited text messages between her and Thomson that show he chased her to meet up in June 2015 and visit her at her hotel, where they had sex. This was more than a year after the Undercover Policing Inquiry had been announced.

On 17 April 2018, Thomson told the Inquiry that he only had an old email address for Ellie. He did not admit he was still in contact with her by calls and texts.

At the same time, Thomson messaged Ellie on WhatsApp asking if they could talk, and the following day, 18 April 2018, they spoke on the phone.

Ellie recounts:

‘So he rang and I had gone into my room for some privacy, and there was a few seconds of just superficial, “Hi, how are you going, how are you doing”.

And then he’s just launched into saying that back when we were dating, he had actually been undercover – and it was about a half an hour conversation where he said, “Look, there’s a bit of an inquiry going on, they may try and contact you”. And then talked about it a little bit…

The conversation itself was a bit of a shock, and there is just this weird numbness that happened. Just like – just I have never felt anything like it. I can’t explain it. Just really – just a strange feeling, I didn’t quite know what to think, I didn’t quite know what to ask, I wasn’t quite making sense of it. I thought, the way he was talking, that maybe everything was real apart from his job. I thought maybe he wasn’t a locations manager.

And it was only as things progressed that he was sort of talking about Wendy and all the rest of it, and then he said, “the Inquiry will probably tell you my real name”, and that hit quite hard. Because I was like, “oh no, everything’s a lie”, and that hit home that little bit…

We were housemates again, Wendy and I, and she was in the lounge. And he’d said “maybe don’t tell Wendy, she’ll be angry”… I did not know what to do. So I went and had a shower.

I sat in the shower, had my sort of forehead against the tiles and I just thought for a bit and just thought “just don’t do anything for 24 hours and then tell Wendy and don’t plan anything beyond that”.’

Wendy had already heard about the Inquiry, so she pretty quickly cottoned on to what was going on. They both contacted the Inquiry. Thomson texted her again after that, saying he knew she had spoken to the Inquiry:

‘Hi Ellie.

Hope this finds you doing well. Heard from solicitors to say you had been in touch with the Inquiry in the UK. As I said when we spoke that’s absolutely your right and I will continue to respect whatever decisions you make.

So, really only wanted to say that if you do still want to discuss any of this at the personal level then that offer also stays open, and I will … be happy to speak to you and to explain, at least as far as I can, anything you want to ask.

Obviously, if you don’t want to speak, or have been advised against it, then please just ignore this.

Good luck for the future, whenever it might take you.’

She felt sick.

‘I was at work and clearly I do not have a poker face. I got the message and I stopped and one of my colleagues went, “oh my god, are you okay?” And I was like, fine”, and I thought I was going to vomit, I had to leave the room.’

THE IMPACT

The discovery of who he really was turned everything on its head. Ellie became very paranoid that she was being watched. She researched the spycops story, trying to work out what was going on, what was happening, who he was, who they were.

Her faith in men and relationships was absolutely shattered:

‘James had sort of restored my faith a little bit in men, being honest and upfront and decent and trustworthy and all of that kind of thing.’

In his witness statement, Thomson says he never considered the impact he would have on Ellie as he never considered she would ever find out. Ellie wonders how long would it have gone on for if the inquiry hadn’t happened.

She was asked to explain how it has impacted her life. She talked about her lack of trust, how she can’t make new friends, and she can’t drive her car without checking the boot and back seat. She became so emotional talking about this that she had to stop.

She asked if she could finish her answers about the impact at the next evidence session. It was clear this is a topic that deeply upsets her, and the Inquiry’s chair, Sir John Mitting, agreed:

‘You are speaking of events that none of us here, I suspect, have ever experienced personally anything even remotely like it. I entirely understand that it is not easy. I say now I am very grateful to you for taking the trouble to give oral evidence to me and you need to apologise for nothing.’

After taking a short break Ellie took a few more questions. She explained that the deceitful relationship Thomson had with her, which spanned 17 years of her life from the age of 21 to 38, disrupted any chance of her finding a suitable partner.

Because it was such a good relationship, she always felt ‘this is what you could have, so don’t settle for anything else’, and in all that time she hasn’t. She didn’t realise that ‘anything else’ would have meant something legitimate and real.

Hemingway then asked her how she feels about Thomson now:

Q. That sense of a James Bond character that we spoke about earlier, this lovable, affable rogue who is, you know, a charming person, doesn’t really do too much damage at the end of the day, what do you say about that? Is he really a James Bond character?

A. I am not going to swear, but no, I don’t think there is anything lovable or roguish about it…
I don’t for one second believe that any of it was legitimate… “Sara”, “Wendy” and myself are very different people, and all three of us thought highly of him…

“Sara” and I dated him and we are very different people. So for both of us to think that it was great suggests that he was a bit of a chameleon, which means none of it was genuine… whether he was doing it for his ego or because it was a bit of fun or because he just got off on it, I don’t know. But I know it wasn’t real.

She explained that she read the Undercover Research Group’s article ‘Was my friend a spycop?’, and she realised that Thomson met 12 of the 15 criteria. She sees that his relationship with her gave him legitimacy, and gave him access to Wendy’s home:

‘I woke up at night, he was staying over and he wasn’t in bed. And I was like “oh, maybe he’s gone to the loo or something”, and he didn’t come back for ages. And then I heard him come upstairs.
And the house was on three levels, so you had the kitchen downstairs and then you had the lounge room, a bathroom and my room on the middle level…

So he had been down in the kitchen that whole time and the kitchen was sort of at the heart of the home… And it’s where we kept things, certain things, certain paperwork, keys, all of that kind of stuff was all down in that kitchen.

So he had access to that all night, if he wanted it… I think also he had ample opportunity – and this is where I sound paranoid – to plant bugs in the house… so that he could hear us talking and he could hear Wendy talking if she had other friends come round, he could eavesdrop on their conversations.’

COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY

Ellie finished the day on 23 October with an emotional speech:

‘It was just so completely unnecessary. The people that he was going after, the people that they were spying on, that to me, they didn’t need to be spied on. And it was political stuff, it wasn’t even policing.

They weren’t breaking the law, it just seemed to be very politically motivated and very over the top, especially for the kind of information that they were getting, that they were looking for. You could get that by being very superficial, but he did this massive deep dive into everything, I think just for fun and just because he could.

The police – especially the Met – never had the best reputation, and they have been known to be… corrupt, racist, misogynistic, the whole lot. The general consensus is it’s not a case of one bad apple, it’s the whole orchard.

But for them to know that they did this, and to know that they did it to groups that were just speaking out about stuff they believed in, and even think the unions, justice campaigns for families… the level of intrusion was unbelievable… whoever thought that was necessary or relevant just needs their head read.’

RE-EXAMINATION BY CHARLOTTE KILROY KC – 3 NOVEMBER

Ellie returned a few days later on the morning of 3 November 2025 to answer questions put to her by her own barrister, Charlotte Kilroy KC.

Those questions went back over some of the topics touched on in her first day’s evidence, examining in more detail the relationship Ellie had with Thomson, before and after his deployment ended.

Kilroy began by asking Ellie whether she would have agreed to have a sexual relationship with Thomson if she had known that he was an undercover police officer. Ellie was categorical in her response:

‘Absolutely not. No. Not a chance.’

Ellie saw Thomson once or twice a week, and they were in contact via regular texts and calls. Kilroy asked what they would talk about:

‘How your day went, what have you been up to, planning on when we were next going to meet up, what we were doing next… caring, nice, relaxing, romantic, nothing too heavy. We didn’t have deep and meaningful conversations over text messages.’

Ellie explained that Thomson was her first proper relationship and her first love, and she saw it continuing long term, with a possibility of moving in together in the future.

But Thomson contacted her in early 2002 and asked her to go for a walk around the block. He told her that his ex-partner had a new partner and this new partner had a new job in San Francisco. They were taking his children, so Thomson was going to move too. This was a lie to cover up for the fact that his undercover deployment was ending and he needed an excuse to disappear from her life.

Kilroy pointed out that a move like the one he described should have taken a long time to organise. Ellie agreed. She said she was surprised how fast it progressed. He gave the impression it was the first he knew about it, and she imagined she’d have at least six months before he left. It went a lot quicker than that, and she wasn’t happy about it, but she didn’t want to make him feel bad.

When he left, buying her the motorcycle course and writing the note saying ‘see you in the south of France’, she took that as a positive sign they would keep in touch.

The email he sent six weeks later confirmed it:

‘It showed that he made an effort and he said some lovely things in it, so I printed it out and I kept it… it suggested that he still cared quite deeply and didn’t want to let the relationship go. And wanted to meet up and, like, there was no way I wasn’t going to meet up with him.’

CURATING SEXUAL INTEREST

Kilroy took us to that email [UCPI0000038289] to look in detail at how Thomson makes clear he is thinking about her body in a sexual way:

‘Actually unless I get my ass (that’s the local colloquialism for arse in these parts – oh, and that’s just reminded me of yours but moving swiftly on)’

He compliments her about her intelligence and wit, then refers to her insecurities and lack of confidence, and talks about still knowing each other when they are ‘old and grey’.

Ellie explained that the email made her feel differently about the end of the relationship. It suggested he still cared about her, it wasn’t really over and they would stay in contact. She felt something more might happen in the future.

In fact, they met up again within a few months, and it was like a date:

‘It would have been the two of us, we would have gone out, maybe dinner, maybe drinks, intimate conversation. Basically, whenever we met up it was like we’d picked up where we left off… Touching, handholding, kissing at the end… He would walk me to the train station, wait until my train was coming, we would have a kiss goodbye and then I would go to the platform and catch a train.’

They emailed every couple of months, and met up about once a year. She thought he was living in the USA and those were the only times they could see each other. She didn’t know at the time he was living in the UK as a serving police officer. Knowing that now makes her feel a bit of an idiot.

‘But I would never in my wildest dreams have thought that it was all a lie. That would never have occurred to me.’

Ellie moved to Australia in 2005, but the contact with Thomson continued. She would visit the UK every 18 months or so, and she would meet up with Thomson almost every time. There were hundreds of calls and texts over the years, which were always caring and romantic in tone.

Again, Kilroy took us through several of Thomson’s emails in detail, particularly Thomson’s expressions of sexual frustration [UCPI0000038281]:

‘I had a truly wonderful time. Even seeing you so briefly brought it all back. As for the attraction I so obviously still feel for you; suffice to say I’ve never felt as frustrated as I did knowing you were in a hotel near Heathrow without a chaperone whilst I was stuck in Scotland!’

Thomson makes multiple sexual allusions, describing how much he is still attracted to her. He refers to a time they had sex, and indicates that he is fantasising about her in uniform.

Knowing the truth about Thomson makes these emails extremely uncomfortable and unpleasant. He blames her for leaving him in sexual frustration, and asks over and over for photos of her naked or in lingerie in a self-confessed ‘tirade of sexual longing’ that went on for more than a decade.

He told Ellie that she was the only cure for his sexual frustration and complained that she was ‘half a world away’, and describes himself as ‘sordid’ talking about her ‘bare naked arse’.

Ellie says all his emails were like this and that made her keen for a sexual relationship with him again. She is clear the relationship was not platonic. It was only because they were a long way apart that it wasn’t sexual, and you wouldn’t talk like that to someone who was just a friend.

‘It stopped me moving on, because there was still that connection there. And it was still like a very strong reminder of the relationship and the sexual relationship that we had, and it was still suggesting that that could continue in some form or another.’

Ellie recalled a time that they met up and kissed on Box Hill:

‘We were sitting on the hill and I was in front of him and he had his arms around me and I sort of leant back and we had a kiss. And then there were these two men that walked past and they looked over at us – quite clearly at us – and laughed. And I thought it was odd. And I mentioned it at the time, I was, “did they see us or something?” And he said, “oh, they must have done”. In hindsight, I think they knew him.’

Kilroy points out that in an email from June 2014 Thomson refers to thinking of Ellie hanging around his office naked. Given where he had worked that is a deeply unpleasant thought.

When she visited the UK in 2015, Ellie met with Thomson at a hotel near Heathrow where they had sex. The initiative came from him. She now knows that this was after he had come forward to the Undercover Policing Inquiry.

The emails continued, but that was the last time she saw him before she spoke to him on the phone, in 2018, and he told her he was an undercover officer.

‘He sort of blurted it out quite early. He explained that there was an inquiry, that someone might be in touch. He asked me if I still had my old email address.

He told me that he couldn’t tell me a lot of information. He said he was willing to talking about it and tell me what he could. He said that they will probably tell me his real name, but his first name was James…

He said things were different today than they were back then. But he definitely did not think he’d done anything wrong.’

He did not apologise to Ellie for deceiving her for 18 years, instead telling her ‘my private life is my private life’.

Thompson told her someone might be in touch, specifically that ‘a sweaty English man in a raincoat talking about the Inquiry’ might visit her. She wasn’t sure if he was being light-hearted or resentful. She found the prospect disturbing. He told her not to let Wendy know the truth as she would be angry.

Ellie pointed out that when Thomson first appeared, many of the animal rights activists suspected him of being an undercover officer:

‘As time went on, I think they decided that he couldn’t be – he was just a little eccentric.’

Ellie’s first reaction to Thomson’s call was similar to that of many other people deceived by spycops into having close personal relationships. She didn’t want to betray him. She still felt their bond was genuine. It took her a while to accept the reality. It was a process, and she is annoyed with herself now that she realises it was all a lie.

When Thomson contacted Ellie again to say he knew she’d been in touch with the Inquiry she felt sick.

Q. Why did you feel sick?

A. Because he knew. And I hadn’t expected him to contact me and then I had this – it was quite confronting and just there’s a whole range of emotions that go on. I was still at that point, I think, feeling a certain aspect of guilt, I suppose. Although that wasn’t logical and I knew it wasn’t logical, I still felt quite intimidated by the text. There was no reason, there was nothing intimidating in it, but I felt quite intimidated by it… Because he knew and I didn’t know where that put me.

For a few months after I just went down rabbit holes. Like I can’t explain the need to know, where you need to find out.

One of the things I looked at is what kind of personality would be an undercover officer and from what I read it’s quite similar to con artists and they tend to have this sort of personality trait, which means they are able to lie, they don’t feel guilt lying and they don’t feel empathy.

So they tend to have quite strong straits of psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, all of that kind of stuff and the problem with that is people like that do not like being confronted, do not like being called out on their behaviour and it is very common for them to want revenge. So that’s something I am very aware of and he knows where I live.

She is convinced that he is still keeping an eye on her. She feels sure there are going to be repercussions for her giving this evidence. As a result, Ellie has closed off from people. She feels her home is bugged. She doesn’t keep a phone on her, and she takes different routes to work.

It is clear that talking about these impacts deeply upsets her and, as at her previous hearing, Sir John Mitting intervened to say:

‘I appreciate that this is not easy for you. But if you would like to continue to finish I am more than happy to do so, or to rise for a bit if you want to.’

Ellie simply said that she cannot imagine things will be any different in the future, and she had nothing else to add.

With that, her evidence ended. She was thanked by Mitting.

Tranche 3 Phase 1, Day 6
23 October 2025

INTRODUCTION

On Thursday 23 October 2025 the Undercover Policing Inquiry took evidence from ‘Wendy’. She was deceived into a long-term intimate friendship with Special Demonstration Squad officer HN16 James Thomson ‘James Straven’, which he continued long after his deployment ended in 2002.

We had previously heard evidence from ‘Ellie’, a friend of Wendy’s, who Thomson had deceived into a long-term sexual relationship.

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.

Wendy has provided the Inquiry with a 30-page written witness statement [UCPI0000038208]. The Inquiry’s page for the day has audio and a transcript of the live session.

Wendy was questioned by Don Ramble, Junior Counsel to the Inquiry, who began his questioning by asking her about her interest in animal rights and her involvement with Croydon Hunt Saboteurs.

ANIMAL LOVER

Wendy described growing up an animal lover, and being profoundly impacted by an animal rights stall when she was 14 years old. She discovered how she was inadvertently harming animals through her way of life, went vegetarian and started attending protests against a nearby vivisection lab.

She attended her first hunt at 16 years old and started going out regularly with the Croydon Hunt Saboteurs when she was 17.

Ramble asked her about membership of the group, and Wendy pointed out the voluntary nature of hunt sabs:

‘I think it’s important to note it’s not – even though there is the Hunt Saboteurs Association, it’s not like we sign up to a membership and have to, you know, commit to weekly meetings or anything like that.

So you might go out one week and there was four people and then you might go out the next week and there would be 20 people. I would say there was a core group of around ten people who would be there if they could.’

Wendy was the youngest person in that core group, most of whom were young men. She was usually the only woman from Croydon out in the field. They would socialise together:

‘After a hunt you really needed to decompress, so people would tend to go to the pub as a group, and just sit and have a chat and bring everything back down.’

Wendy would go out pretty much every weekend during the hunting season, and she described the experience of taking direct action that had an immediate and obvious effect: saving the life of an animal. In the off-season she would do a fundraising stall and attend protests.

FRIENDSHIP WITH THOMSON

James Thomson was deployed 1997-2002, using the name ‘James Straven’. He infiltrated hunt saboteurs and other animal rights campaigns in South London. Wendy was 17 years old when she first met him. She was still in school doing A Levels and living at home with her mother.

‘I do remember being in the back of a van and having a conversation with him quite early on when I was going out and realising that, for want of a better term, he was quite posh. And at the time, you wouldn’t believe it now, but at the time I was quite posh.

And I think we kind of went, oh, okay, we are both going to get a bit of ribbing for being the middle class sabs or, as he liked to refer to himself, “upper middle class”.’

Ramble asked if people were suspicious of Thomson, who quickly earned himself the nickname ‘James Blond’. Wendy explained that you had to be slightly suspicious of everyone:

‘We knew that there were phone taps at the time. Both because you would hear clicking when you picked up the line, but also because if you shared false information you would see the end result being that police would turn up at the false place instead of where you were actually going…

I do remember an experience where somebody who was actually an undercover journalist came out and next week there’s a story in the papers. So, again, it’s not so much that you treated everybody like a spy, but you treat everybody at arm’s length initially.’

She explained that there was something about Thomson that wasn’t quite right:

‘But then after a certain amount of time, when he starts being close friends and he starts dating, of course you go, “Well, he’s just a bit off, he’s just a bit of an oddball and that’s just him”.’

He claimed to come from a posh Scottish family, and would smirk when he spoke about himself, in a self-deprecating and ironic, but nonetheless boastful way. Wendy knew him to be a vegetarian, but others said they thought he was vegan.

He claimed to be a filming locations producer, and he was always willing to talk about his ‘work’. He would name drop people he said he was working with, such as Joanna Lumley, Peter O’Toole, Keira Knightley, Gillian Taylforth (who he supposedly got fired for mocking) and other celebrities.

There is a lot of truth to this as he actually gets on-screen credits in several productions, including the 1998 TV drama Coming Home, which starred Lumley, Knightley and O’Toole.

Ramble made clear that the Inquiry was concerned about how Thomson could have found the time to work in the film industry as a locations assistant while also being an undercover police officer.

Wendy explained that he would be away for work for about three weeks at a time every couple of months.

‘But also bear in mind, you know, we weren’t full-time animal activists. We were going out when the hunt went out. We might meet up during the week. But pretty much the week was his and then he was just with us on the weekends, maybe the odd evening.

So he had all the time in the world to do whatever he wanted to do, I suppose, and whatever he was getting extra money for.’

Thomson also told Wendy that he had three children with an ex, and seeing the kids was often a reason he gave for not coming to hunt meets.

WENDY’S FRIENDSHIP WITH THOMSON

Thomson became closer to Wendy in the second half of 2000. At that time, her relationship with her then-partner came to an end, and her mother found out her cancer had returned.

‘He made a lot more effort to see me on my own… I don’t have a lot of memories of James and I seeing each other on our own while I was in a relationship. But after that relationship ended, we spent time together alone…

He was one of the people that I spoke to after I found out [my mother] was terminally ill. And obviously I was very distressed about that.’

Thomson seemed to be very supportive at that difficult time. During her mother’s illness he made an effort to take her places. He met her mother, who really liked him.

‘She said to me after: “Why don’t you want to go out with him? He seems lovely. You wouldn’t want him because he’s a nice one.” And I said, “I just don’t see him like that mum”…

She’d never really kind of been vocal about me being with somebody or not being with somebody… and I said to her, why are you suddenly trying to make me date people? And she said, “Well, because I don’t want you to be alone after I am gone. I don’t like the idea of that. I’d really like to see you with someone”.

And obviously now I hate the fact that she thought he was a nice guy who I could potentially be with after she was dead’.’

Wendy goes on to describe Thomson taking her out for dinner with friends as her mother’s health declined:

He also took her sabbing:

‘Obviously around the time of my mother being severely ill and dying, things get very foggy… But one of my very clear memories was he actually took me out sabbing when she was in a coma in the last days…

I was told when they stopped life support that she would be gone in a couple of days, and she lasted ten days after that. So it was a very difficult time.

And I remember him saying: “I will come and pick you up. You don’t have to talk to anyone else while you’re out there, you don’t have to talk to me. We’ll go out, we’ll go sabbing and I will drop you back and let’s just – you know, you can’t just be at the hospital all the time”.’

Thomson was one of Wendy’s primary sources of support during her mother’s illness, and she was grateful to him at the time. Now she says:

‘I think he saw an opportunity when I was vulnerable and perhaps, you know I was single, I was vulnerable. I needed someone.’

She points out that he deliberately chose to intrude on her most personal moments, saying:

‘If you had any shred of human decency and empathy there are times when you could very easily use your children or your job as a locations producer to say, “I am so sorry, I can’t be there for that”, and let somebody who is genuinely close to that person step in and support them. And he instead took those times as an opportunity for himself.’

Wendy believes Thomson targeted her for a sexual relationship. She gave examples of incidents where he made sexualised comments when she was in her late teens and early 20s.

The Special Demonstration Squad officers have a history of homing in on vulnerable young women and grooming them into sexual relationships. Thomson’s boss, HN10 Bob Lambert, had done it himself when he was undercover in the 1980s with ‘Jacqui’. Thomson went on to do the same with Ellie. This was part of the spycops’ tradecraft. They were a state-sponsored grooming gang.

Ramble then read from what Thomson says about Wendy in his witness statement [UCPI0000035553] where he clearly seeks to minimise the relationship:

‘I would describe her as a close associate in that I came to know her well through [privacy] and her animal rights activities… I wouldn’t describe her as a close personal friend.’

We are told that Thomson repeats the phrase ‘close associate’ several times to describe his relationship with Wendy, to which she replied:

‘I was a pretty close associate for 21 years. That’s a long time to not be a personal close friend of somebody.’

Thomson’s phone call logs for 2001-2 [MPS-0719641] reveal a great many text messages and calls to Wendy’s personal mobile phone. He has sought to downplay this by claiming he was simply leaving messages for Ellie.

However, Wendy says that never happened. The vast majority of these were text messages for her; some were longer conversations with her. She pointed out that Ellie had her own phone (and his logs show multiple calls to that number as well).

‘It’s the most bizarre excuse he could have thought of, to be honest. If we were messaging regularly or speaking regularly on a certain day, it was probably because we had plans.

I can’t obviously tell you what those plans were, but we weren’t either of us the kind of person to just send a message going, “Hope you have a great day, buddy”, so if there was lots of back and forth we would be planning something. It would be a dinner or we would be catching up with other people, or, you know, whatever it may be.’

RELATIONSHIPS

Asked about Thomson’s relationships, Wendy explained:

‘I in no way want to suggest that when I felt James was trying to get with me and then instead went with “Ellie” it’s because “Ellie” was a second choice or he’d have rather been with me than “Sara”.

He didn’t care who he was with. He wasn’t interested in any of us as more than perhaps a momentary enjoyable moment while he was getting to have sex and get paid for it.’

Wendy pointed out that there were no single women in the Croydon Hunt Sab group until Sara joined, and he more or less immediately initiated a relationship with her. Then, when Wendy became single, he tried to start a relationship with her, and when that didn’t work out, he targeted her close friend Ellie (who was outside the group).

Wendy struggles with the fact that she encouraged both Sara and Ellie to have relationships with her friend ‘James Straven’.

Asked about the relationship with Sara, Wendy says Thomson never talked about Sara with her, which was odd. Thomson ended that relationship by giving Sara a letter claiming he couldn’t have a sexual relationship due to severe sexual abuse when he was a child.

Wendy didn’t know about the details of the letter Thomson gave to Sara. However, she remembers how Sara was after that conversation:

‘She seemed a little bit smaller, if you know what I mean. She just shrunk a little bit. Probably a little bit less bubbly. Yes, like she wouldn’t talk about it a great deal. I realise now [it was] out of respect for what he claimed had happened to him. But she just seemed a little bit smaller in person.’

Wendy met Ellie in 1999, when they were both working at the wildlife hospital. They ended up living in the same house, one owned by a relative of their boss, and working on a rota together.

In early 2001, Thomson asked Wendy how old Ellie was (21, the same age as Wendy herself) and asked her if she thought Ellie would be interested in a relationship with “an oldie like me”. Thomson told Ellie he was 33. He later said he’d got his age wrong and he was 36. He was in fact 37 when he first deceived Ellie into a relationship.

She recalls that he had probably only met Ellie once, and not even spoken to her, before this conversation. She says now:

‘Not only did I directly set her up with him, she wouldn’t have met him any other way. He wouldn’t have targeted her if she wasn’t my friend. And essentially I destroyed my friend’s trust in men and ability to date. So I struggle quite hard with that.’

ACTIVISM

Next, Wendy is asked about Thomson’s involvement in animal rights activism.

She says he regularly came along to hunt sabs, but didn’t do anything to stop the fox being killed. He didn’t even carry citronella with him (sabs would spray this essential oil on the ground once a fox had broken cover to mask the fox’s scent and enable it to escape the hounds).

Asked about the frequency of violence, Wendy explained that this depended on the hunt involved – some were known to be more violent than others.

The sabs would try to avoid such confrontations whenever they could, by running away. Their priority was to prevent the fox being killed, which they couldn’t do if they were arrested or stuck in a fight.

The Inquiry has spent a long time asking witnesses about violence at hunts. The police – far beyond the spycops – have portrayed sabs as keen instigators of violence, rather than its victims.

This comes despite many officers who infiltrated sabs, including Thomson, describing violence from the hunters, often with collusion of uniformed police.

Wendy has a clear memory of Thomson being present at two occasions when the sabs were violently attacked by hunters or supporters. On one of these, the hunters charged down a hill at them on horseback:

‘We turned around to exit the field and the police shut the gate. When we tried to climb over the gate, they pushed us back into the field at which point the men on horses started striking us with their whips. And I remember being hit on the head with a brass-ended whip which – excuse my French – bloody hurts.’

In another incident, two vehicle loads of hunt supporters, armed with golf clubs and bats, chased the sabs, then viciously attacked them:

‘I was struck with a golf club and I don’t know if I was momentarily knocked out, but I was on the ground and I was being kicked in the face by a man who was also on the ground and our legs were kind of tangled up and I was trying to kick at him, and he kicked me in the face and ended up leaving an imprint on my face.’

Thomson described this incident in his reporting. In his written witness statement he notes:

‘I have been referred to the file note at MPS-0001577, which refers to me sustaining bruising to my jaw, upper and lower back and legs during hunt saboteur activity on 21 November 1998. I remember this incident because I was attacked during a hunt sab and struck with a golf club.’

Wendy says the only times she saw Thomson involved in any physical altercation:

‘He was defending himself the same as we were. I believe the reason for that is that had he started violence out sabbing, it would have stood out like a sore thumb’.

REPORTING ABOUT WENDY

Wendy was then shown a number of reports by ‘Magenta Triangle’ (Thomson’s code name). One, from 20 July 1998 [MPS-0001211], is about the Annual General Meeting of the Hunt Saboteurs Association.

It mentions the Croydon sabs, saying that they will travel to Kent to support the sabs there in the coming season. Wendy explains that sometimes it was good to have ‘strength in numbers’ when a group was attacked by the Hunt.

Wendy is listed as attending this AGM. So is a sab known at the Inquiry as ‘L4’, who would later be almost killed by hunters and featured in Thomson’s spying. Wendy says that she and L4 were close friends.

She notes that Thomson seems to have deliberately inserted himself into L4’s life after he suffered serious injuries, similar to the way he inveigled himself more firmly into Wendy’s life when she was single and her mother was dying.

We hear about another report of Thomson’s, dated 24 August 1998, [MPS-0247867] which describes an Old Burstow Hunt cubbing meet that was attended by Wendy, L4, L1 & L2.

She confirms that L1 and L2 were also good friends of hers, as was L2’s brother, L3. Standing together, ‘back-to-back’, defending each other against hunt violence, made them all a close-knit group. However, she points out that she knew Thomson better than most of the other people in the group, having met him first.

Ramble reads a single-paragraph report from 29 March 1999 [MPS-0001923], in full. It claims that the Croydon sabs ‘are forging close ties’ with the animal sanctuary where she and Ellie worked. It specifically mentions plans to construct a duck pond. Wendy pointed out that, despite only being five lines long, the report has a number of inaccuracies, and went on to say:

‘I think it reflects fairly badly on any claims that they are making that they were there to intercept illegal activity or threats to the public or processes.

Because, you know, he was literally in his reports telling them that the activity we were undertaking was building a duck pond. It’s not really a threat to public security.’

A further report by Thomson, about a meeting of ‘Surrey Fighting for Animals’ on 5 August 1999, [MPS-0002323] talks about ‘activists’ and ‘fluffies’. Wendy points out how derogatory this report is, and how bitter Thomson sounds. She also notes that he invented division where none really existed.

She said Thomson himself would have attended ‘home visits’ against vivisectors, which were legal at the time. She explains that as the purpose was to make sure that people who ‘tortured animals for a living’ weren’t able to hide what they did from their neighbours, there would be some yelling, but no criminal damage or other criminal offences committed.

The report goes on to state:

‘Robin Webb then gave his speech, which was excellent but largely wasted on those present. Webb was then subjected to an hour of the most moronic questioning he may ever have had to face and it is unlikely he will darken the Surrey Fighting for Animals doorstep again.’

‘Everything he says is just creative theatre,’ Wendy says. It appears this was just a way for Thomson to make jokes at the activists’ expense, for his colleagues to laugh at.

She adds:

‘This isn’t reporting on criminal activity, proposed criminal activity, anything of value whatsoever.

It’s basically just trying to find ways to belittle, feel superior and make jokes. There doesn’t seem to be any relevance to it. That’s what confuses me the most, is all the money, time and effort that’s gone into these undercover officers’ deployments, there didn’t seem to be any reason for it.’

Thomson reported on 21 February 2000 [MPS-0003033] about who was living with Wendy and her boyfriend at this time. In another report, dated 26 April 2000, [MPS-0003413] he detailed that Wendy had now split up with her boyfriend.

She is scathing about the petty details of activists’ personal relationships being put into such reports, saying it’s:

‘obvious that they didn’t have anything of quality to report. What else did he have to talk about other than who was sleeping with who and who was living with who?’

She says the first report didn’t bother her so much – it just ‘highlighted what utter rubbish the whole thing was’ – but she felt more angry and hurt when she saw the second one:

‘I spoke to him quite a bit during the time that my relationship was breaking down and after it had broken down, and he was very supportive of me leaving the relationship. And yet it’s just another anecdote for him to put down, because he doesn’t have anything else to talk about.’

OPERATION LIME

L4 was deliberately run over by a hunt supporter in September 2000. Fortunately he was not killed, but he did sustain serious life-changing injuries. Wendy was not present, but heard about it the same day, as did Thomson.

Emotions were very high, especially as the driver of the vehicle, known in the Inquiry as ‘L5’, would turn up to hunts afterwards and taunt the sabs by making steering wheel motions with his hands. He was charged with grievous bodily harm with intent to kill. However, the trial collapsed.

Q. After that trial, was there any talk about ‘well, we will take the law into our own hands, we will get revenge or reprisals after that’, that you witnessed?

A. The only talk I heard and was part of after that trial collapsed was, “Oh my God, what’s going to happen with L4? This is going to kill him. How do we support him, what can we do?”

However, in his written statement, Thomson described a plot to obtain a gun and ammunition from France in order to seek revenge for what had happened to L4.

Thomson claimed to be part of this plot, stating that he had foiled it by arranging for the gun to be left in his vehicle, which was then ‘stolen’ by his SDS handler. This was ‘Operation Lime’.

Ramble asked Wendy what she thought when she read Thomson’s version of events. She responded:

‘I would say I was as close, if not closer, to L4 than James was and there was certainly never anything discussed or mentioned or even hinted with me, and the same from L1, L2 and L3. Never anything…

The second I read it, my jaw hit the floor. And I knew straight away it was utter crap…

I can remember thinking how ridiculous the entire thing was, that I couldn’t believe that at the time the rest of the police bought into it. Because, putting aside entirely my knowledge personally of the other individuals involved, and my 100 per cent knowledge in my heart that they would never have been part of something like that, it was the dumbest plot I could have conceived.

If you are an animal rights activist supposedly involved in such extremist activity that you are going to murder someone, why would you drive to France to buy a gun from a stranger to drive it back through customs to the UK?’

Wendy was not on the trip to France but she heard about it at the time. As far as she knew, the only things ‘Sara’, Thomson and L3 did on this trip were to drink wine and have a nice time.

L3 is also being questioned by the Inquiry about this. He is a late addition to the Inquiry, having gone years without realising what happened, and how close he’d come to being framed by Thomson for a fictional gun plot that could have ended in a long jail term and a ruined life.

POST DEPLOYMENT

When their deployment was ending spycops usually told the people they spied on that they were moving a long way away, often to another country. Thomson did this, saying his ex was moving to the USA with his children, and so he was going to move there too in order to be a good parent.

Wendy remembers Thomson’s departure as a sad occasion for them all, and recalls how upset Ellie was. She says he wasn’t happy either; he wanted to be near his kids, but didn’t want to leave his comrades or the UK.

He stayed in contact with Wendy long after his deployment ended. After she moved to Australia, he would normally meet up with her when she came back to the UK every 18 months or so, although she notes that he carefully avoided meeting other former targets.

He kept in touch by email and the odd phone call for many years, well after the spycops scandal was public and the Undercover Policing Inquiry was set up. Wendy has shared the emails with the Inquiry [UCPI0000038209].

The tone is one of lots of love, kisses and plans to meet up at various stages over the years. He even met her then partner. We’re shown an email from Thomson to Wendy, dated 24 November 2006, in which he asked her to send a photo – which she did. She hastens to make it clear that this was not a request for a sexual photo (which is something he did with Ellie).

He asked her for L4’s address, ostensibly so he could visit. She gave it to him, and now wonders what he did with it. She knows that he never contacted L4 at the time.

‘It haunts me. I cannot begin to imagine why he wanted that address. His deployment had ended, yet he was still working for the Metropolitan Police.

To me, it just reaffirms my belief that he was staying in touch with me because I remained useful on getting information. I do not accept that that information was not to be passed to the police. There is absolutely no reason why he would have required L4’s address, and in fact I confirmed, at the time, I remember confirming with L4 whether he had gone there, and he had not.’

Another email, sent to Wendy on 14 September 2009, asks her to tell Ellie that ‘she still owes’ him an email, adding ‘where are the photos?’.

She explains that at the time she just assumed that this was something Ellie had promised him in a conversation. Having heard Ellie’s evidence now, about the number of times Thomson harassed her for explicit photos, she now characterises this as:

‘sexual harassment by a dirty old man who wanted to get his jollies off with looking at photos of a younger woman he had tricked into a sexual relationship… I found it absolutely repulsive’.

INTERFERENCE WITH HER MOTHER’S WILL

After her mother died, Wendy started looking to buy a house with her inheritance.

‘I knew the contents of my mother’s will. I knew the executor of her will, which was her best friend, and obviously I knew the solicitor and the solicitor said: “Look, it’s an easy will, it’s not contested, it should just take a few weeks. So if you want to start looking at houses now, you should be able to do that.”

He said: “Technically, probate can take up to six months but that’s only for really complicated scenarios, usually where there’s multiple challenges, so you should be okay to start looking”. It took six months to the day.’

Wendy nearly lost out on buying the house she had set her heart on, back in 2001.

‘It felt like something positive could happen in regards to I had found a home that I actually wanted to be in, that was suitable, that was close to everything I needed to be close to. And I had made an offer and it was a new build from a small building firm…

As probate took longer and longer and we didn’t have any answers as to why, the builders started saying, “We can’t hold this property for you, we have multiple other buyers we could be selling this to”… I was going to lose the property.’

A highly detailed Special Demonstration Squad document on the plan for the ending of Thomson’s deployment [MPS-0719701] includes the following peculiar and disturbing comment:

‘Wendy recently moved into an address in [address redacted] which she has bought following the death of her mother, attempts to disrupt this purchase having failed. It is impossible to predict how long she might remain here.’

Wendy described her reaction on reading that report:

‘It was one of those heart-stopping moments… I started thinking back to that time and how odd it was, how long the process had taken for probate and how I kept going to the solicitor and asking what was happening, and he said he had no idea. There were no updates.

He was chasing my mother’s best friend, who was the executor of the will, who was also an estate agent, and had started showing me other properties and trying to persuade me to buy another property.

So I am thinking, was she in on it somehow? Was my solicitor in on it somehow? Did they contact the probate office and interfere with probate and just tell them to put it at the bottom of the pile? How deep did this go and how far up was it approved? Who approved this?’

In his written witness statement Thomson simply says he has no memory of the plan to disrupt Wendy buying a house. She does not believe him, nor does she believe management did not know.

DISCIPLINARY INVESTIGATION

Towards the end of Thomson’s deployment one of his managers, HN53, produced a report on various problems [MPS-0719722]. It describes how Thomson fabricated intelligence and was dishonest with his managers. Investigations revealed financial irregularities, identity theft and other possible criminal activity. This led to his deployment being terminated.

His security status was downgraded and had to re-apply for his firearm licence. However, he was not disciplined, let alone faced with criminal charges, and was allowed to remain in the police until 2014.

He was also given his firearm back and returned to active protection duties just two years after his deployment ended – highly unusual for an officer who had an unblemished history – let alone one as murky as James’.

Wendy says she is disgusted that despite his lies, sexual relationships and criminal activities being known, the police took no action against him.

‘They decided that the important thing was not to make the Metropolitan Police look bad. And they acknowledge in their internal documents that the risk of taking any other form of action, be it even just more formal discipline against James Thomson, might make them look bad. And that was what they based their decision to take no action upon.’

IMPACT

Finding out that Thomson was an undercover officer has affected Wendy’s memories of her mother, devastated the life of her best friend, and utterly ruined her trust in other people. Wendy was extremely forthright about her feelings about this:

‘This is not just the disgusting pathetic things that James has done while he’s playing spy. It is showing the absolute corruption of the entire system. Not even just the Metropolitan Police, but whoever had knowledge of these actions. It’s mind blowing.’

Asked if there are any other points she wishes to make, Wendy flagged several items.

Firstly, she dismissed Thomson’s ‘ridiculous claims’ about suffering from dissociation disorder, pointing out that this can be easily disproved. For example, he falsely claimed in reports that Sara was dating another activist (L1) in order to cover his own inappropriate relationship with her, showing he knew he was doing something wrong.

She also pointed out that despite the concerns raised by HN53, and the supposed policy that SDS undercovers were not supposed to take up protection duties within 10 years of their deployment ending, Thomson was given back his firearms licence, and put to work in close protection, after just two years.

New photographic evidence has now emerged of him engaged in close protection work with Tony Blair in 2010. She asks what would have happened if someone at that anti-war event had recognised Thomson.

She also referred to a letter that she’s seen, sent to Thomson in August 1996, before he joined the spycops unit. He is invited to take part in group therapy and advised to ‘keep taking the tablets’. She asked the Inquiry to investigate whether he was known to have mental health problems before he was deployed into her life.

‘The last thing I would like to say is just that I feel there is abundant evidence to show that at every stage, at every level, the Metropolitan Police has encouraged, facilitated and even covered up abuses of human rights.

And in my opinion they are continuing to do so and I sincerely hope, for those of us who have been impacted so severely, that the Inquiry holds both the undercover officers and all levels of management accountable for these actions.’

At the end of her evidence the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, thanked Wendy:

‘for the care and attention that you have given to your evidence and to your not-easy task of giving it orally and publicly. I am very grateful to you. I am very dependent upon those who participated in the events that I am looking into providing their own evidence about it, so that I can make a judgment about where the truth lies and about what really happened.’

Tranche 3, Phase 1, Day 2

14 October 2025

INTRODUCTION

On Tuesday 14 October 2025, the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s ‘Tranche 3 Phase 1’ hearings began taking Opening Statements from many of those who were spied upon by undercover police.

The hearings will run from October 2025 to July 2026 (with two breaks), examining the final 15 years of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad, 1993-2008.

The three days of opening statements at the start are an opportunity for those who are significantly involved to set out what they expect to see in the hearings.

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.

There is a full transcript and videos of this hearing available on that day’s page on the Inquiry website.

This is a long report, use the links to jump to a specific speaker:

• Maya Sikand KC, representing HN43 Peter Francis
• Fiona Murphy KC, representing ‘Category F core participants’ (families who discovered that the spycops had stolen their deceased relatives’ identities to create their cover names), including Liisa and Mark Crossland
• Charlotte Kilroy KC, representing ‘Category H core participants’ (women who were deceived into intimate relationships by these officers), in particular ‘Alison’, ‘Ellie’, ‘Maya’, ‘Sara’ and ‘Wendy’
• Angus McCullough KC, representing ‘S’, the ex-wife of spycop HN15 Mark Jenner
• Leslie Thomas KC, representing these clients of Bhatt Murphy solicitors: Bernard Renwick; Dr Graham Smith; Lee Lawrence; Mark Metcalf; Myrna Simpson; Stafford Scott; Winston Silcott
• Rajiv Menon KC, representing Duwayne Brooks OBE
• Ifeanyi Odogwu, representing Dr Neville Lawrence OBE
• Dave Morris, representing himself

Maya Sikand KC

Sikand represents whistleblower spycop HN43 Peter Francis ‘Peter Black/ Daley/ Johnson’. He has provided a written Opening Statement to the inquiry.

Sikand begins by pointing out that Francis and his legal team had to write and deliver this statement before being provided with all of the relevant disclosure from the Inquiry.

In particular, it was made before he was given the witness statement of HN86 who was the Chief Inspector in charge of the SDS and effectively Francis’ senior line manager when he was first recruited to the unit.

All opening statements had to be submitted in September. They were only disseminated to other Core Participants late on Friday afternoon before the hearings started on Monday, leaving little time to read and respond to their contents in the hearings.

Francis first supplied an opening statement to this Inquiry in 2020. Over a decade has passed since the Inquiry was officially announced by then-Home Secretary, Theresa May, in 2014.

‘NOBODY LIKES A WHISTLE-BLOWER’
(UNLESS WHAT HE SAYS SUITS THEM)

Sikand says Francis feels aggrieved that in all those years, he has not been thanked enough for his courage in speaking out, and that the Inquiry has not acknowledged his trauma. He complains that he hasn’t been treated as a hero, and has instead faced criticism from every corner.

In particular, Sikand highlights the criticisms of the Designated Lawyer group (other former officers, old colleagues of Francis) and the activists who were spied on between 1993 and 1997 by ‘Pete Johnson’ (his official cover name, although he also used the names ‘Pete Black’ and ‘Pete Daley’).

Later on, Sikand teaches Mitting the modern meaning of the term ‘throwing shade’, and provides some examples of the differing levels of contempt contained in their witness statements.

She quotes directly from the statement of ‘Lewis’, who certainly doesn’t pull any punches in his description of the man who went to the length of enrolling at Kingsway College in order to befriend him and spy on the very small group he was part of in those days:

‘A sad and lonely outsider who was a bit weird, boring and sometimes annoying.’

Francis says he understands why such groups would naturally feel anger upon discovering that somebody in their midst had been an undercover police officer, whose lies included emotional manipulation designed to elicit their sympathy.

For example, many of them sent him condolence cards after he lied to them that his mother had died. However, Francis complains of character assassination and says they should be blaming the Metropolitan Police, not him personally.

Sikand says that Francis ‘cannot apologise for telling the truth’ – however inconvenient his truth is. Nor can he apologise on behalf of his former employers, but he is sorry for any hurt and pain he may have caused; not just to those whose lives he infiltrated, but also the family of the real Peter David Johnson. She says he is especially remorseful about stealing the identity of a dead child.

Francis is pretty much unique among spycops in proactively divulging details that are detrimental to him personally. Others have only admitted disgraceful acts after others – usually the people they spied on – had exposed them.

ENDURANCE TEST

Sikand portrays Francis as someone who has been patient and loyal, who has stuck with this Inquiry, and unlike other officers, has always been willing to cooperate and participate.

She likens it to an endurance test, giving some examples of what her client has faced: the strange lies and bizarre allegations made by some of the more blatantly dishonest spycops. HN2 Andy Coles said Francis shot a wild boar with a firearm while undercover in Germany, and HN78 Trevor Morris suggested to a police internal investigation, Operation Herne, that Francis was twice admitted to a psychiatric hospital.

Only the previous day at the Inquiry, Oliver Sanders KC, representing the majority of spycops, had called Francis a liar and his claims preposterous. Sanders cited Francis’s mention of Commander Black and said there was no such officer.

Even by the standards of a professional defender of spycops, this is a ludicrous claim. Commander Colin Black is well known as one of the officers investigated by the Independent Police Complaint Commission over the spycops involvement with the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry in 1998. The Inquiry has published and cited an SDS document recording Black’s involvement with HN16 James Thomson in 2001.

Black is a key ficure, a manager who admitted at the time that they knew undercovers deceived women into relationships. After interviewing Thomson in September 2002, Black recorded in a document [MPS-0722289] that:

‘It is clear that he has entered into relationships during the course of his work which are inappropriate’.

Sikand points out that the Inquiry’s own official timeline shows that HN146 Colin Black was Operational Command Unit Commander Ops from April 1996. Black personally signed off the commendation given to Francis in 1998.

‘In accusing my client of fiction, Mr Sanders has in fact created his own.’

Francis also objects to redactions made to his witness statement, all the adverse criticism, and of course the very long wait to give his evidence.

‘Had I known that the public inquiry would take over ten years to hear my evidence, I would never have called for an inquiry in the first place’.

FIFTEEN YEARS AND COUNTING

He first spoke out about the SDS in March 2010, being referred to only as ‘Officer A’ in an account and accompanying article which both appeared in the Observer. Sikand notes that this was over six months before Mark Kennedy was exposed, catapulting spycops into the public consciousness.

Francis later spoke to the TV programme Dispatches, to the police’s own Operation Herne inquiry, and to the Stephen Lawrence Independent Review, which fed into the decision to set up the Undercover Policing Inquiry.

He says that the Inquiry has not bothered asking what he needs in order to give his evidence; they’ve just sent him what Sikand refers to as a ‘generic witness pack’. He finds it incredible that it took them until this year to create a Vulnerable Witness Policy, despite five years of the Tranche 1 and 2 hearings, and several years after Francis wrote his witness statement.

Francis says it is well-known that he suffers from severe mental health issues. These are caused by his undercover deployment and compounded by the lack of post-deployment support, the weight of being the lone whistleblower, and the stress of not knowing if he would be prosecuted for doing so.

After Francis took part in the landmark Dispatches documentary about spycops, senior police demanded that Channel 4 hand over the material with a view to charging Francis for breaching the Official Secrets Act.

This has all been exacerbated by the strain and uncertainty caused by this Inquiry’s many delays and glacial progress.

Like other core participants stuck in this limbo, Francis waited many years for disclosure and was then expected to respond within unreasonably tight deadlines. He has been excluded from the process of deciding just how much of the evidence, including his own, would be redacted and restricted, hidden from the public gaze.

Sikand asserts:

‘Peter Francis firmly believes that only when you come into the cold light of day unmasked can you be truly accountable.’

PROTECTING THE GUILTY

Francis is highly critical of the fact that the majority of his SDS colleagues sought, and were granted, anonymity in the Inquiry. Both of his line managers (HN86, and HN67 ‘Alan Bond’) have been given full anonymity, as have two other senior Special Branch officers (HN58 and HN53) who he blames for failing to properly support him after his deployment ended.

He believes that such senior and significant individuals, no longer even active in policing, should not be permitted to hide behind a cloak of secrecy in an inquiry which should be underpinned by ‘the key tenets of accountability, openness and transparency’.

Sikand speaks more about the ‘duty of candour’, and about the new statutory standards which will soon be introduced via legislation (the Public Office Accountability Bill, known as the Hillsborough Law). This will require all public servants – including police – to act honestly, with frankness and transparency in testimony and in disclosing documents, especially in court cases and official investigations like this one.

Francis asks why exactly the Inquiry has decided that HN81 ‘Dave Hagan’ no longer needs to appear. He is a crucial witness, at the heart of many of the important issues this Inquiry was set up to examine, such as the infiltration of the campaign for justice by the family of murdered Black teenager Stephen Lawrence.

We are now told that Hagan is too ill due to PTSD from his deployment. Francis understands that some officers are genuinely ill and unable to participate as a result, but notes that HN81 seems to have been well enough to produce and send in a 77 page, very detailed, self-serving witness statement fairly recently.

Francis points out that Hagan is someone who has repeatedly impugned his credibility, yet there will be no opportunity for these allegations to be questioned and his version of events tested.

To learn at the last minute that he won’t be turning up isn’t just of concern to Peter Francis, says Sikand. It’s bound to be a huge disappointment to the Lawrence family and other core participants, and erode public confidence in this Inquiry’s ability to get to the truth.

Francis believes that such untested evidence should be afforded less weight than his own. He says he’s willing to answer the questions put to him, go ‘through the wringer’, and have his evidence robustly examined.

He expects to come under attack from all sides. He’s aware that he might offend people with his unvarnished truths, but says this shouldn’t be ‘some sort of expensive tax-funded popularity contest’. He says his evidence will not be sanitised; he plans to account for himself candidly, using ‘unflinching and unfiltered language’.

THE MANY ACHIEVEMENTS OF PETER FRANCIS

Francis claims that he did a good job, successfully gaining his targets’ trust and infiltrating their ‘inner circle’. According to him, he was a highly effective undercover officer who excelled at gathering high grade intelligence for his paymasters, and asserts that this is borne out by his annual appraisals.

He says that the Security Service appreciated the quality of his unrivalled reporting on Militant Labour activists, and he was later awarded an official Commendation for his SDS work.

He notes that many of his core disclosures about the secrets of the SDS, made over a decade ago, have now been proven to be true.

Everything from the operational details of the spycops’ tradecraft through to specific forms of what is now considered unacceptable and unjustifiable misconduct on their part (e.g. sexual relationships while undercover, and the theft of deceased children’s identities).

Despite the shade that has been flung, many other SDS officers have now given evidence which corroborates what Francis has always said about the way the unit operated.

He claims that there is now considerable collateral evidence that SDS officers were tasked with spying on and undermining Black family justice campaigns.

He notes that those who were targeted in this way, who have plenty of experience of the police’s institutional racism and misconduct, have not been hugely surprised by these revelations. Francis believes that they have welcomed his blowing the whistle on these highly intrusive and inappropriate undercover policing operations.

YOU WOULDN’T MAKE IT UP

Sikand reiterates that he should be considered a whistleblower:

‘Mr Francis has stuck his head significantly above the parapet, without any whistle-blower protection and without any psychological support associated with his whistle-blowing.

To this day, the Metropolitan Police Service still do not recognise him as a whistle-blower, despite the misconduct he has uncovered. He has suffered a significant detriment for the greater good.’

She notes there is no legal protection or support available to police officers who make such disclosures in the interests of the public. In his submissions Francis suggests that legal reform is needed and that this is something that the Inquiry should include in its official recommendations.

Sikand points out that Francis has nothing to gain from telling the truth. It hasn’t won him any friends, nor financial gain, but instead come at considerable personal expense to him and his partner. He hasn’t been thanked by anyone.

Francis says that people forget that the undercovers themselves are also victims of the SDS. Sikand explains:

‘Many officers who were approached to join the SDS were already in some ways vulnerable, being attracted by such an extreme and isolating role in order to escape from personal problems.’

She quotes Francis’ more blunt description:

‘We referred to the SDS as mushroom undercover policing, because we were kept in the dark and fed bullshit.’

Francis says he is not the only one of the spycops to be left with complex PTSD, having been ‘hung out to dry’ by the Metropolitan Police.

He goes into more detail about the ways in which he was badly failed by his employers, before, during and after his deployment.

He complains that he did not receive enough information about what would be involved, or the likely psychological impact on him. Training and ethical, legal, or practical guidance were practically non-existent. He believes that the undercovers were deliberately and negligently left to their own devices, so that they might ‘swim deeper’.

According to Francis, these failings were ‘abject, inexcusable and unforgivable’. He says that when his time in the field ended, he really struggled to reintegrate, both into Special Branch and into his real identity.

The indifference and lack of support with this rehabilitation led to him suffering a mental breakdown, and going off work sick. He ended up suing the police for psychiatric damage, and receiving a settlement in 2006.

Fiona Murphy KC

Murphy represents the Crosslands and other bereaved families whose deceased relatives’ identities were stolen to create undercovers’ identities.

They are known as Category F core participants in this Inquiry, and you can download their written Opening Statement.

The Category F families say that there is no good reason, justification or necessity for the SDS’s ghoulish practice of stealing identities from dead children.

Murphy refers to the unit as a lawless clique, and points out that:

‘The choice of senior and junior officers alike to ignore the obvious legal, moral and ethical abhorrence of the practice in preference to the vain hope that the families would never find out, reflected the morality of the kindergarten.’

SMUG INHUMANE DISDAIN

The SDS’s 1995 version of its Tradecraft Manual, written by HN2 Andy Coles shortly after his deployment ended, drips with smug, inhumane disdain for anyone outside the SDS.

His instructions for stealing an identity say:

‘On finding a suitable ex person, usually a deceased child or young person with a fairly anonymous name, the circumstances of his or her untimely demise was investigated.

If the death was natural or otherwise unspectacular and therefore unlikely to be findable in newspapers or other public records, the SDS officer would apply for a copy of the dead person’s birth certificate.

Further research would follow to establish the respiratory status of the dead person’s family, if any. And, if they were still breathing, where they were living.

If all was suitably obscure and there was little chance of the SDS officer or more important one of the wearies running into the dead person’s parents/siblings et cetera the SDS officer would assume squatters’ rights over the unfortunate’s identity for the next four years.’

The families note that this tradecraft was known about by very senior officers, right up to the rank of Deputy Assistant Commissioner.

This includes HN587 Peter Phelan, who was due to give evidence on Monday 20 October but excused at the last minute. Most of the officers who have been asked admit that they did not give the morality of the practice much thought.

WE WERE NEVER MEANT TO FIND OUT

There is plenty of evidence to show that the police never considered how the bereaved families would feel about the theft of their loved ones’ identity. The Met didn’t really think about the possibility of reputational harm if the public knew, because they confidently assumed that it would never ever become public knowledge.

One spycop after another has defended the practice at the Inquiry by saying nobody was ever meant to find out. This is also true of anyone else who commits identity theft. The crime doesn’t become legal or justified just because a police officer does it.

It is clear that concerns were raised many years before the spycops tactic of identity theft was finally formally ended in 1994.

It has been said that this change was prompted by practical considerations, such as the computerisation of birth and death records, and the risk of someone finding a death certificate in the cover name, rather than any consideration at all for the bereaved families.

The families want to know why it took so long. The issues likely to be caused by computerisation were mentioned in the unit’s Annual Report of 1990-91. The now-infamous Tradecraft Manual, with its flippant and degrading references to bereaved families, refers to ‘many earlier fears’ as well as the problem of computerisation.

The Category F families’ written statement includes a list of questions they would like the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, to investigate.

According to the SDS Annual Report of 1994-95, SDS management conducted a thorough review before a new, more secure procedure of creating an entirely fictitious cover identity was introduced. However, this review has never been disclosed to the families, so they are left wondering if it has been lost, destroyed, or withheld.

The families disagree with the Metropolitan Police’s assertion made in the opening statement delivered by Peter Skelton KC the previous day: that HN26 ‘Christine Green’, deployed in 1994, was the very first SDS field officer to use a wholly fictitious cover name. They remind Mitting that this was common practice in the earliest years of the unit’s existence (1968-1974) and that it was done by HN56 ‘Alan Nicholson’ in 1990-91.

LIFE IMITATING ART

When the SDS was formed in 1968 officers simply made up names. It was only after the theft of a dead child’s identity was featured in the 1973 spy film The Day of the Jackal that it became standard practice for SDS officers. They even referred to finding an identity as ‘the Jackal run’.

As well as being illegal and immoral, it carried an obvious tactical vulnerability – ssuspicious comrades might find the death certificate. While there are several reasons why a birth certificate can’t be found, there is no excuse for having a death certificate if you’re alive.

And sure enough the fifth known officer to do it, HN297 Richard Clark ‘Rick Gibson’, had members of Big Flame confront him with ‘his’ death certificate. He had to end his deployment immediately. Despite this, the practice continued for more than 20 years.

The families have heard from Peter Francis that it was standard practice for SDS officers to not merely use the birth certificate but also research the family and background of the child whose identity they were planning to use, and would go as far as to visit places in person.

Some managers have denied that this kind of investigation took place, but the Category F families remain firmly unconvinced by these denials. They want to know exactly what research was carried out, what was recorded, and what consideration, if any, was given to the ethics of doing this.

QUESTIONS FOR HN16 JAMES THOMSON

Kevin Crossland was killed in 1966 aged five, along with his sister and mother. The family’s only survivor of the plane crash was David Crossland, Kevin’s father, who remarried (to Liisa) and they had another son, Mark, afterwards.

David sadly died in 2001. It was only much later that Liisa and Mark discovered that Kevin’s name and identity had been stolen by a police officer, Detective Sergeant James Thomson.

It appears that Thomson had, around the time of David’s death, been procuring false documents in the name of Kevin, giving the name ‘Kevin Crossland’ when he was arrested in his undercover persona, and possibly even hiring private detectives to research the real Kevin’s family.

Liisa has said that she felt shocked, confused and disgusted by these revelations. Understandably, she and Mark seek answers, and hope that Thomson will provide some when he appears at the Inquiry.

However, they note that to date, his evidence has been ‘contradictory, inconsistent and wholly unreliable’, and that he has a reputation for lying to everyone. Not just the activists he spied on and the women he deceived for several decades, but also his SDS managers, other police officers, this Inquiry and its risk assessors. Even by the standards of the spycops, he is unlikely to be truthful.

The ‘Kevin Crossland’ persona was apparently an entirely unauthorised, additional false identity that he created for himself. He had already been issued with false documentation in his official, agreed, cover name, ‘James Straven’, before being deployed undercover by the SDS in early 1997. He registered both false identities on the electoral roll at the flat he lived in while undercover.

The Crosslands want to know why his managers didn’t make any effort to properly discipline him for doing so.

When asked about this matter in 2002, Thomson made a series of conflicting claims to SDS management, which included saying that he wanted a name he could use if he was ever arrested, and saying he wanted a name he could use to travel to the United States, as part of his eventual exfiltration.

They found out that neither explanation could be true. He had in fact applied for a certified copy of the birth certificate as far back as 1991, more than five years before he even joined the SDS.

We now know, from Thomson’s own statement, that he added Kevin Crossland’s name to the electoral register in 2000, used it to set up electricity and bank accounts in 2001 and even applied for a ‘Kevin Crossland’ provisional driving licence in 2002.

Another excuse provided by Thomson was that he suffered a head injury early in his deployment, and it was a mental illness (dissociative identity disorder) which caused him to start making irrational decisions.

MULTIPLE OFFICERS WITH MULTIPLE IDENTITIES

The Crossland family do not believe him. They know that bad practice was commonplace within the SDS, and shared informally from one officer to another. Also, Thomson was not the only spycop to acquire and make use of additional false names and identities.

For example, we heard in Tranche 2 that HN5 John Dines had cover documents in at least two extra names as well as his official cover name, ‘John Barker’. He even had a driving license as ‘Wayne Cadogan’. Also, that HN2 Andy Coles used other false names, not just ‘Andy Davey’ (e.g. he was arrested as Christopher Andrew Jones while hunt sabbing in November 1994).

Thomson has been criticised by others for his shoddy tradecraft. He is known to have travelled on a dodgy passport that he’d tampered with by removing pages, and indeed to have multiple passports.

Unlike the other spycops, who tended to do a complete vanishing job from their targets’ lives when their deployments ended, ‘James Straven’ took the extraordinary risk of staying in contact with a number of women friends for up to sixteen years after his supposed departure.

QUESTIONS FOR THE MET

Thomson claims to have been arrested and given the name ‘Kevin Crossland’ to the police on two occasions. He must have known that there was a risk of his managers finding out about these. The Crosslands believe that this indicates that he was confident that they wouldn’t mind.

They want the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, to study the chronology closely and find out the truth, if he can.

It is clear Thomson was only able to act like this because of a complete lack of effective management, supervision or oversight.

This is further illustrated by his apparent lack of ‘product’, the reports that were meant to be the point of his deployment. Between January 2000 and March 2002, he submitted just 21 intelligence reports; fewer than one per month.

There is a seeming reference to the Thomson affair in the Met’s 2008 internal SDS Closing Report and ‘alarm bells being missed’.

Supposedly SDS managers carried out a detailed investigation into Thomson’s activities. A Detective Inspector, known to us only as HN53, recalls compiling a list of criminal offences committed by Thomson. Detective Sergeant HN9 told Operation Herne, the police’s internal spycops inquiry, that he had fully expected Thomson to be arrested for his wrongdoing.

NO CONSEQUENCES

However, Thomson was never arrested and charged, nor even formally disciplined. Murphy submits that he was shielded from prosecution because the SDS preferred to do things informally, protecting the entire operation from scrutiny or exposure.

She notes that all that happened was a temporary reduction in his vetting status, a temporary removal of his firearms licence, and a temporary move to administrative duties. He was allowed to continue working as a Metropolitan Police officer until 2014.

An officer who left the SDS before Thomson joined, HN56 ‘Alan “Nick” Nicholson’, has given evidence about James Thomson trying to get hold of a cover driving licence, after his undercover deployment had ended, ‘for nefarious purposes’. He did not remember what name this licence was in.

Incredibly, Thomson was recommended for promotion after his criminal activities had come to light, by none other than the now-disgraced SDS boss, HN10 Bob Lambert, someone who was quite partial to criminality and fraudulent expenses claims himself.

This is just one of many issues which the Crosslands want the Inquiry to thoroughly investigate. They heard, and acknowledge, what the police had to say the previous day about supporting their campaign for answers.

However, it is clear that the Crosslands need to gain a greater understanding of the institutional knowledge around many of these issues in order to make sense of what happened, and what they term ‘the institutional malaise’ that led to such a lack of effective scrutiny and oversight on the part of senior police officers. These answers can only come from the Met itself.

Murphy ends with these words:

‘It is increasingly apparent, as this Inquiry commences its third tranche, that cloaking the SDS in secrecy and depriving it of any form of public scrutiny or accountability facilitated the SDS to descend into yet further depths.’

Charlotte Kilroy KC

Kilroy represents the Category H core participants. In this tranche, this means women who were deceived into sexual relationships by undercover officers, as well as ‘Wendy’, who was groomed by SDS officer James Thomson and deceived into a long-term close friendship.

You can download their written Opening Statement. As it says, by 1993 the practice of deceiving women in this way was a fully entrenched part of the SDS’s operations.

SUSTAINED SYSTEMIC ABUSE

Kilroy points out that this Inquiry has already heard evidence of dozens of such sexually abusive relationships spanning the previous 25 years. Many involved women who were young, and/or vulnerable in some way. For some of them, the undercover officer was their first serious boyfriend. For many, he seemed a potential life partner, a soul mate.

The undercovers made up all kinds of false stories to entrap and manipulate the women they targeted in this way, to downplay suspicions and deepen their emotional involvement. They inflicted an emotional whirlwind on their victims. They used remarkably similar strategies to exit from their lives, convincingly feigning breakdowns over a sustained period before disappearing, leaving the women shaken to the core, worried for their partner’s lives.

All of this was done with the full knowledge and approval of SDS managers and, as is now clear, the knowledge and approval, or at least indifference, of more senior officers.

Kilroy reminds Mitting that:

‘Woman after woman has told this Inquiry about the havoc these men wreaked with their lives, the confusion, paranoia and heartbreak. The lost life chances, houses not bought, jobs not taken, children not had.’

They have told us about the worry caused by their loved ones suddenly disappearing without trace, the fruitless searches they embarked on. Then came the devastation that accompanied the appalling discovery, usually many years later, that these men had been paid to lie and spy. This has understandably caused huge trust issues, and for many, paranoia and paralysis.

‘Many women have told you that they feel they have been raped.’

As this Inquiry goes on, we hear yet more of these stories, with disturbing new twists and features, all ending in irrevocable damage.

In these new hearings, Tranche 3 Phase 1, we will hear from four of these women: ‘Alison’, ‘Ellie’, ‘Sara’ and ‘Wendy’.

In Phase 2, which starts in February 2026, we’ll hear about seven more.

A CHANGE IN THE LAW IS LONG OVERDUE

Before going further, Kilroy addresses a common misconception: that these deceptions were basically equivalent to any con man or lothario who tells lies in order to trick women. Immoral but normal, in short.

She says that these cases are fundamentally different, because the misconduct is much more serious, and the damage caused by it far more severe and far-reaching. This is abuse being carried out by paid agents of the state, acting with the active or tacit approval of some part of the state apparatus and then deliberately concealed, by the state, for many years.

These men were trained and guided to be the opposite of their real selves, overseen by an unknown group of managerial staff, and paid by the state for every second they spent with the women they lied to. They planned their profoundly distressing departures long ahead of time. They were only ever in these women’s lives to undermine the values the women held most dear; to betray them, their friends, and their principles.

Kilroy describes the impact on the victim and explains how this experience ruptures our trust in the entire world:

‘This is not just one act of sex or one act of deception, but thousands of memories of intimate moments in hundreds of days trashed. The photograph albums we have in the mind are polluted by an intruder and that intruder is the state, who we have always been told to trust. The painstaking work of reconstructing our memories to represent truth will take a lifetime…

The particular evil of the acts perpetrated by each of these undercover officers and their managers and superiors must also be properly acknowledged. I will be asking you to do that in your report on the SDS. I will also be asking you to recommend that in future this conduct is accepted to be a serious sexual offence…

It cannot be right that an ordinary person who impersonates a person’s husband or pretends to be a different gender is committing rape, but undercover officers who trick their way into women’s bodies, and their managers who conspire with them to do so, are not committing any sexual offence at all.’

VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The officers who have behaved in this way and have been questioned at the Inquiry have all accepted that they did so in the clear knowledge that consent would never have been given if their true identities were known.

Kilroy points out that this violation has been found by a court to be a breach of article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights – the right to freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment – saying it is shameful that domestic UK law does not yet fully recognise the special breach of trust and the severe consequences for the victim.

She proposes that a new statutory offence is created, to deal with this form of ‘aggravated rape’, and promises to address this in more detail in her closing submissions at the end of Tranche 3.

She also mentioned the case brought by ‘Monica’ who was deceived into a relationship by HN14 Jim Boyling ‘Jim Sutton’.

She brought a case to challenge the Crown Prosecution Service’s decision not to prosecute him for sexual offences and misconduct in public office. Her case failed. Kilroy asks Mitting to include a recommendation in his report that the decision of the Appeal Court be revisited.

She says that society owes this to the women as recompense for the failings that led to their abuse, and owes it to future generations to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.

MORE APOLOGIES FROM THE POLICE

Kilroy notes that in his opening statement, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has made yet another apology for the way these women were treated, and the SDS managers’ failure to prevent this mistreatment.

It repeats what the police have said before about these relationships being ‘abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong’, the result of an institutional culture of sexism and misogyny within the police force.

He has also condemned the attitudes of the SDS managers, who he says demonstrated a:

‘complete disregard for the sexual autonomy of the individuals who were being deceived into sexual relationships and the emotional and psychological consequences of that deception on them’

He also rejected the impression given by the unit’s Tradecraft Manual, that such relationships fell into a ‘grey area’, rather than being wrong.

Kilroy highlights three more admissions that have now been made by the police.

1. It is thanks to the efforts of many of the women who are ‘Category H’ core participants at the Inquiry (i.e. women deceived into relationships) that many senior police officers have begun to recognise sexual misconduct as an abuse of power.
2. There is said to be ‘deep regret’ that this wasn’t recognised or understood earlier.
3. The police want to apologise for the way they have treated these women in the past. Specifically, the way they responded to their civil claims, their insistence that they could ‘Neither Confirm Nor Deny’ what had happened, and their failure to prioritise candour and openness over continuing secrecy. They additionally now apologise for taking so long to recognise the abuse of power inherent in this serious sexual misconduct.

Welcoming these developments, the women agree that this has taken the police far too long. Taking part in this Inquiry has at times been an ordeal. The women have attended many of the hearings. As well as giving their own evidence, they have listened to that of former officers, who have often been deeply duplicitous and contemptuous.

SPYCOPS DISAGREE WITH THE POLICE

Kilroy explains that some officers have pointedly refused to align themselves with the police’s apology, and their evidence has been:

‘marred by repeated failure to show remorse for their sexual misconduct and by attempts to justify it.’

She goes on to speak about the power of the women’s contributions to the Inquiry:

‘All of us who have heard the women speak for themselves, describing what it means to be deceived and ill-treated in this way, the thousands of degradations, large and small which it involves, will have been struck by how impossible it is for anyone else to properly describe what has happened to them or to imagine it.

Their evidence, the damage that has been done to them, and the dignity of their suffering leaves an indelible impression. There is, in short, no substitute for hearing from the women themselves.’

She then extends an invitation to the Commissioner to meet with the women as a group and hear from them directly, with the aim of working to ensure that these abuses are never repeated.

Kilroy moves on to give a little more detail about each of the four women who will be a witness in this first set of Tranche 3 hearings running up to Christmas 2025.

TRANCHE 3 PHASE 1 WITNESSES:
‘ALISON’ (MONDAY 8 DECEMBER)

‘Alison’ was deceived into a five-year relationship by HN15 Mark Jenner ‘Mark Cassidy’ between 1995-2000. She was 30 when it began, and thought they would have children and a life-long relationship. She will be exhibiting video footage she filmed, showing their life together.

‘Mark Cassidy’ (as she knew him) moved into her flat, but refused to have children with her. As a result they attended couples counselling for 18 months. She says now that this was extremely cruel of him. She had no idea that he already had a wife and children.

Kilroy goes further, pointing out that:

‘It requires a cold, calculating mindset to sustain a deception this pervasive. His behaviour could be described as “sociopathic”.’

Jenner disappeared very suddenly from her life, turning it upside down. Alison spent years looking for him, and says that at times she questioned her own sanity. Eventually she met Helen Steel, who had been similarly abused by HN5 John Dines.

Alison pieced together her suspicions and worked out what Jenner was. However, even after she brought a civil claim against the police, they refused to confirm whether or not he was ever a police officer, citing their supposed cast iron policy of ‘neither confirm nor deny’. The impact of this, and Jenner’s deception, has been huge.

Kilroy highlights the fact that, rather than showing any remorse or empathy in his statement, Jenner has sought to portray himself as the true victim, showing scant regard for either Alison or his former wife, ‘S’.

‘S’ will also be appearing, on Tuesday 9 December, and telling the Inquiry how her ex-husband’s deceit and sexual infidelity has impacted her.

Four days have been allocated to hearing what Mark Jenner himself has to say, 15-18 December.

‘SARA’ (FRIDAY 17 OCTOBER)

‘Sara’ met HN16 James Thomson ‘James Straven’ while hunt sabbing in 1998, and this developed into a sexual relationship soon after. She has described it as serious and intense; she loved him, and thought it was mutual.

He told her all sorts of lies, and used similar manipulative tactics to other SDS undercovers to end their sexual relationship after a year or so, telling her that he had been sexually abused as a child.

However, he didn’t do this in order to exfiltrate himself from the field. Instead they continued as emotionally intimate but platonic friends until she moved abroad in 2001. At this point he started a new relationship with someone she knew, ‘Ellie’.

‘Sara’ wrote to him afterwards but he never replied. She was left feeling profoundly unsettled.

It wasn’t until August 2018 that she learnt (from the Inquiry) that ‘Straven’ had in fact been James Thomson, an undercover police officer.

This shocking news has affected her in many ways. She’s been left feeling angry, paranoid and betrayed. As time has gone on the stress has been exhausting, and she’s realised more about the ways in which she was used and violated. She feels disgusted, distressed and drained.

‘ELLIE’ (TUESDAY 23 OCTOBER AND MONDAY 3 NOVEMBER)

‘Ellie’ was also deceived by HN16 James Thomson ‘James Straven’, and had her first serious relationship with him. When it began she was just 21. He was 38 at the time, but told her he was 33.

She had first met him over a year earlier, while volunteering at a wildlife hospital with a mutual friend, ‘Wendy’.

She and her sister moved in with Wendy, and Thomson then asked Wendy to set them up as a couple. Their relationship developed quickly; she describes him being romantic and sending her postcards. After a year or so, he told her that he had to move to the United States as his children were now living there, and he left.

However, he didn’t disappear entirely. He stayed in touch and continued to string her along. They would sometimes meet up in person for dates and continued kissing when they did. They stayed in contact with regular emails to each other.

Even after she moved to Australia in 2005, Thomson continued being romantic and sexually suggestive in his communication. They had sex again in 2015, and several years after this he asked for her Australian address.

This was well after the Inquiry had been set up. He must have known the truth would come out.

Despite knowing Ellie’s home address, and her email, Thomson lied to the Inquiry when they asked him if he could help to locate her.

A year later, in 2018, he contacted Ellie himself. He confessed to being a police officer, telling her not to tell Wendy. He did not apologise to her.

She still hasn’t fully processed this. She feels anxious and unsafe. She is now single and says that she can never trust another man again.

‘WENDY’ (TUESDAY 23 OCTOBER)

‘Wendy’ found out the truth about ‘James Straven’ from her friend Ellie in 2018.

She had known him for over 20 years by this point. She first met him in 1997, when she was a hunt sab, just 17 years old. She suspected that he had a romantic interest in her, but for many years, they were just friends.

Her mother was terminally ill, and died in 2001. ‘Straven’ met her mother during this period, and inveigled himself into Wendy’s support circle, driving her to hospital and taking other support roles.

Wendy bought a house with her inheritance, and was shocked to find out recently that the police tried to prevent this purchase.

She moved to Australia in 2005 but ‘Straven’ remained in contact with her, always asking her for news of mutual friends and acquaintances in the animal rights scene.

Since she found out that he was in fact a police officer named James Thomson, she has made huge changes in her life, and stepped back from involvement in animal rights and some of the work she used to do. She doesn’t feel safe, and doesn’t trust people.

She feels guilty about introducing him to people like Ellie, and for the part she may have inadvertently played in him gathering information. Both her mental and physical health have suffered.

CONCLUSION

Kilroy says the deeds of James Thomson seems quite extraordinary, and declares them scandalous even by SDS standards.

She highlights that he has been the subject of numerous critical internal police reports over the years, which record a catalogue of misconduct, lies and potential criminal offences. The failure to discipline him was representative of just how lawless the SDS had become.

However, these reports contain little sign of concern or care for the women he deceived. Such relationships are not even mentioned in the Met’s 2009 internal SDS Closing Report.

This omission makes it clear that other forms of undercover misconduct such as misleading courts were taken much more seriously than the abuse of women’s human rights and bodily autonomy. As recently as 2009 these abuses were viewed as incidental, inevitable and an intrinsic part of the job. They still are by many serving senior officers.

Kilroy suggests:

‘Sexual relationships were synonymous with and necessary to the “deep swimming” approach to undercover deployments that was so celebrated by Bob Lambert and the SDS.’

Officers of all ranks remain blinded by institutionalised misogyny, and far too many still seek to make excuses for the spycops’ sexual misconduct. However, the general public have been horrified to learn about these deceitful relationships. It is clear to them that the culture of the police needs to change.

Kilroy ends her submissions by drawing Mitting’s attention to one more point, which is raised in the written opening: that the Inquiry should explore why the legislative changes made in the Tranche 3 era (1993-2008), for example the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998 and Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, did not effect any real change in the way the SDS operated.

This is another argument for the introduction of a new criminal offence, rather than relying on failed police regulations and codes of conduct to prevent sexual relationships from taking place.

Mitting responds, thanking Kilroy’s clients for their witness statements and their willingness to give oral evidence about these matters.

He follows this by saying he thinks that recommending changes to the laws around rape are beyond this Inquiry’s Terms of Reference, and would require more input from ‘fields well outside undercover policing’. He tells Kilroy that they should both reflect on this.

This avoidance of the issue underlines one of the Inquiry’s major failings. It is common practice for a public inquiry to appoint a panel with relevant life experience to advise it.

Since the beginning, we have said that Sir John Mitting’s immensely privileged white male life cannot have given him the understanding required to address systemic racism and sexism. To achieve its aims, the Inquiry needs a diverse panel of advisors, as has proved so vital in other inquiries. Mitting has steadfastly rebuffed the suggestion.

Four days have been allocated to hearing what James Thomson has to say for himself: 5, 6, 10 & 11 November.

Angus McCullough KC

Angus McCullough KC speaks on behalf of ‘S’.

She is the ex-wife of HN15 Mark Jenner ‘Mark Cassidy’. Along with two other former wives of undercover officers, she was designated as a Category M core participant in this Inquiry (families of police officers).

They contributed a joint Opening Statement at the start of Tranche 1, back in November 2020, and we reported on McCullough’s powerful opening statement then.

Since that time, the other two women (‘KTC’ and Jennifer Francis) have decided to end their involvement in the Inquiry.

McCullough says that much of what has been heard in evidence since 2020 has borne out what was said in that statement, while some of it has gone beyond even their very worst fears.

THE BACKGROUND OF ‘S’

He starts by providing some more information about ‘S’, who has submitted a new Opening Statement for Tranche 3 Phase 1. She says that she was in a happy marriage with Jenner, and they had two young children. He was already a Special Branch officer and confided that he had been asked to take on undercover work.

His manager, HN10 Bob Lambert, came to the house to meet her. She knew that Lambert had received a Commendation for his own undercover work, and erroneously believed him to be a trustworthy, family-oriented man. She was given the impression that her husband’s new role would be dangerous but very important for the safety of society.

She made many personal sacrifices in order to support Jenner’s career choices, and took care to keep his new work secret from friends and family members. He told her that it would mean him being away most evenings and weekends, so she took on the bulk of the work of caring for their two children at these times.

LOYALTY AND PERSONAL COST

This unwavering support extended to agreeing, following an incident when one of his targets walked past the house, to uproot her young family and move out of London.

Jenner and Lambert both told her that Jenner would be at risk of serious violence if they stayed in their original home.

The move entailed enormous upheaval (though the financial costs were covered by the SDS). Now that she’s discovered the true nature of his target groups – antifascists and trade unions – she questions the whole basis of the move.

She stuck with her husband throughout his deployment and for many years afterwards, but they eventually separated. Even after the spycops scandal broke in 2011, he did not tell her the truth.

She only learnt about his sexual infidelity, and the long-term sexual relationship he had entered into while undercover, from reports which began appearing in the media in 2013, in which the other woman was referred to as ‘Alison’.

This news blind-sided her and her family. She has described how the devastating impact of this discovery was exacerbated by the police’s policy to ‘Neither Confirm Nor Deny’ any information about these undercovers. She couldn’t trust what Jenner told her. Much of the truth has only been revealed due to what she credites as the ‘hard work and tenacity’ of Alison and the other women who had been deceived by spycops.

‘S’ has had to re-examine every aspect of her marriage and work things out for herself. She has realised that when Jenner took trips abroad without her and the children, something he did multiple times during his deployment, using his holiday time and their family money to do so, he was accompanied by Alison. The couple went on trips to Vietnam, Greece, Israel, Thailand, the Netherlands, Scotland and Northern Ireland together.

‘S’ says it is inconceivable that the SDS managers did not know the truth about these trips, and about the relationship with Alison. He and Alison lived together from February 1996 to March 2000.

‘S’ considers it her duty to take part in this Inquiry, and she hopes that her unique perspective will help it uncover the truth.

AN INTIMATE VIEW OF THE SPYCOPS

Some of the explanations and excuses she’s heard in the spycops’ evidence so far do not ring true to her, based on her knowledge of the unit. She is in a position to counter the narrative that has been spun by these officers, by relating her own experiences and memories.

She says that it is not the case that SDS officers had to spend long periods away from their real families, isolated and stuck in their undercover identities, a claim made by HN2 Andy Coles, HN43 Peter Francis, and HN78 Trevor Morris.

She remembers things differently. Jenner returned to her and their children almost every single weekday morning (when Alison and his other targets thought he had gone to work) and stayed with them until as late as 5pm on the days when there was no SDS meeting.

Similarly, many of the spycops have said that they were left to their own devices, unsupervised for the most part, and had very little contact with the unit’s managers.

‘S’ recalls that Jenner spoke with his boss, Bob Lambert, on the phone every day. The entire SDS met in person twice a week, and Jenner had a circle of friends in the unit. ‘S’ met many of his colleagues, and their wives and partners, at events such as the SDS Christmas parties.

Finally, she remembers well the culture of secrecy that surrounded the unit, and how important it seemed. She describes feeling so brainwashed that even when Jenner’s misdeeds were being exposed in Parliament and in the media, she felt unable to talk freely or seek support from anyone.

THE LACK OF WELFARE SUPPORT

It is obvious that nobody at all, either within the SDS or the wider Metropolitan Police, ever considered the impact of these deployments on the officers’ partners or children, or ways of mitigating this. The only thing offered to ‘S’, after Jenner had been exposed, was a panic button.

Many of the former spycops have spoken about the way that this work affected their mental health. She notes that those who are giving evidence in this tranche say their personalities changed during their deployments – they became more short tempered and aggressive, suffered from paranoia and anger or developed conditions such as PTSD and dissociative identity disorder.

Yet the SDS managers ignored these problems, or failed to prevent them. And they did nothing to support the families who bore the brunt of the behaviour of these damaged men.

THE RISK OF RELATIONSHIPS

Of most concern to ‘S’ was the revelation that the risk of spycops engaging in sexual relationships was common knowledge within the unit by 1994, yet nobody thought to let her know about this when Mark was being recruited.

Jenner was advised by HN2 Andy Coles that such relationships were ‘inevitable’ but claims he didn’t believe that he would engage in one himself. It is noteable that he began his deceitful relationship with ‘Alison’ in the early months of his deployment.

‘S’ provides a list, in her written statement, of evidence relating to this sexual misconduct and its prevalence.

As McCullough notes:

‘Peter Francis says that he would be very surprised if the whole of the SDS did not know that nearly every SDS officer was having sex whilst undercover.’

Far from the shallow, ‘fleeting and disastrous’ relationships recommended by Coles in the unit’s infamous 1995 Tradecraft Manual, it appears that during this era, these relationships were often long-term ones, considered serious and committed by the deceived women.

The spycops moved in with them, went on holiday with them, celebrated Christmas, New Year and Valentines Day with them, proposed marriage to them, and in some cases, maintained these fictional relationships in some way long after their deployment had ended.

QUESTIONS RAISED SO FAR

‘S’ hopes that she will learn more about her husband’s recruitment and his deployment. She says she has been shocked by some of the evidence that has now come to light, leaving her with more questions, such as:

• If one of the reasons for the SDS’s policy of only recruiting married men was to minimise the risk of them indulging in sexual relationships while undercover, but found it ‘clearly ineffective’, why wasn’t it scrapped?
• If the purpose of SDS managers visiting officers and their wives at home during the recruitment process was to carry out some kind of assessment of their suitability, but nobody was ever assessed as unsuitable, what was the point?

In addition, she has included a long list of questions in paragraph 25 of her written Opening Statement, most of which are queries first raised by her and the other Category M women in 2020. As of 2025, they still have no answers.

WHAT ‘S’ HOPES FOR FROM THIS INQUIRY

‘S’ says that she appreciates the Met Commissioner’s apology to her and other ex-wives, reiterated the previous day.

Disappointed by some of the tight-lipped witnesses who have already appeared, she hopes that the SDS officers – undercover officers and managers – who give evidence in Tranche 3 do so with more candour, and the same sense of commitment that they had to their SDS work.

She has observed that many of the other witnesses (i.e. those who were spied on) have been remarkably candid in their evidence, and she wishes the spycops would do the same. She believes it is disrespectful of them not to.

She has chosen to be anonymous in order to protect the privacy of her children. She hopes that this Inquiry results in more recognition of the impact of the SDS on them and women in her position.

‘S’ now seeks openness, transparency and answers. She would like to feel assured that lessons will be learnt and laws introduced to ensure:

• that nobody will be subjected to sexual deceit in the name of policing again
• that undercover officers’ partners will not be exploited in the way that she was
• that there is a cultural and systemic change in police attitudes towards women, to expunge misogyny and sexual misconduct from policing

‘S’ is due to give her evidence in person on Tuesday 9 December.

Leslie Thomas KC

Leslie Thomas KC speaks on behalf of six clients of Bhatt Murphy solicitors.

They have given a written Opening Statement.

INTRODUCTION

The first three were all spied on by the SDS because of their involvement in campaigning for justice after the deaths of close family members, all of whom were killed in contact with the police.

They are:

• Myrna Simpson (the mother of Joy Gardner)
• Bernard Renwick (the brother of Roger Sylvester)
• Lee Lawrence (the son of Cherry Groce)

The other three are:

• Winston Silcott, a victim of a miscarriage of justice. He was falsely convicted of the murder of PC Keith Blakelock and later had the conviction quashed.
• Dr Graham Smith, who founded the Hackney Community Defence Association (HCDA), which supported people who had suffered as a result of police misconduct.
• Mark Metcalf, who was involved in the Colin Roach Centre in Hackney, where HCDA was based.

Bhatt Murphy, their solicitors, also represent other people whose experiences of the spycops have been very similar. We’ve heard from some of them in previous tranches, including Sharon Grant OBE and Celia Stubbs. Stafford Scott will supply a written witness statement to be published as part of Tranche 3 Phase 1, but he is not being called to give oral evidence.

The police have never liked being criticised. They didn’t like the many groups who campaigned for police accountability and protested about police harassment, racism and brutality, even when that behaviour had inflicted serious injuries and death.

Thomas starts by reminding us about the founder of the police, Sir Robert Peel, and his seventh principle of policing, quoting it in full. He says that the SDS:

‘forgot that they were citizens in uniform, and instead treated fellow citizens as enemies.’

Those he represents were citizens who sought justice, and found themselves under surveillance and covert scrutiny as a result. He reminds us that these were often traumatised and grieving people whose lawful campaigns were treated as threats.

He says the evidence clearly shows:

‘a pattern of fabrication, inter-generational targeting, trauma and mission creep.’

His clients were not accused of criminality or public order breaches. What they had in common was taking legal action against the Metropolitan Police in an effort to simply hold the police to account for what they had done.

THE SDS: PAID TO LIE

In their reporting, the SDS frequently lied about these campaign groups. There are many examples of them fabricating information, from making up names of non-existent groups, to misrepresenting their politics, to false accusations of all kinds.

It is noticeable that most of the people Thomas speaks about are Black. The SDS’s bias and prejudice against both those on the left and against Black people obviously informed the way they reported on these groups. Thomas explains that this tended to mean portraying them as dangerous or at least hopelessly open to exploitation.

Whether it was to justify their infiltration and ongoing surveillance of a particular group, or to justify their own existence, it is clear that the SDS often deliberately exaggerated their reports.

Thomas notes that the Met’s internal SDS Closing Report, compiled in 2009 after the unit had been closed down, refers to them ‘padding out an otherwise redundant operational deployment’.

ONCE TARGETED, ALWAYS TARGETED

Some of this surveillance went on for decades and often across multiple generations of the same families.

Lee Lawrence was just 11 when his mother was shot. Joy Gardner’s son was five years old when his mother was suffocated to death. Winston Silcott was a young man when he was wrongly convicted of murder and sent to prison.

Just like Celia Stubbs, who we know was the subject of surveillance for decades after the police killed her partner Blair Peach, all of them were targeted by the police for many years, compounding the trauma they had already lived through.

The spycops’ intrusion knew no bounds. They often attended, and reported on, funerals and memorial services, events that should have been private. Thomas asks the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting:

‘What kind of police force spies on grieving families?’

CREEPY AND CHILLING

Many of the spycops’ reports had very little to do with public order, the supposed reason for their undercover operations, and did not even pretend to be.

In what Thomas terms a clear sign of mission creep, these reports included details of civil legal claims and defence strategies, meetings with lawyers. They prove that, contrary to earlier claims, the unit definitely was monitoring members of Parliament and elected officials.

By targeting groups and individuals who were involved in or supporting those involved in litigation, the SDS undermined the rule of law.

There are accounts of peculiar burglaries and break-ins, where the only thing taken seems to have been information. There are suspicions of SDS involvement in these incidents.

The unit’s managers were complicit in the wrongdoing of the undercover officers. They sanctioned and approved their actions, signed off on their reports and failed to raise concerns about the inclusion of racist language or legally privileged material. There is a strong sense that this rot ran up the chain of command.

The surveillance of police accountability groups, and other entirely lawful and peaceful justice campaigns, is widely understood to have a ‘chilling effect’ on democratic participation.

Back in 1984, the Home Office clearly told Special Branch (in response to their 1983 report Political Extremism and the Campaign for Police Accountability within the Metropolitan Police District) that they should not spy on people just because they were ‘highly critical of the police’, yet it is obvious that the SDS merrily ignored these instructions. Because they could.

For more about police spying on police accountability groups, see this excellent article by Donal O’Driscoll of the Undercover Research Group.

MISINFORMATION AND MISSING EVIDENCE

Winston Silcott, like many of those maltreated or killed by the police, was demonised and smeared in the media.

It has long been suspected that the SDS gathered all sorts of information about bereaved families, their friends and supporters, so the police could pass misinformation on to the media and undermine their campaigns. It is crucial that this Inquiry investigate this matter.

Both HN78 Trevor Morris and HN15 Mark Jenner have told the Inquiry that they submitted many more reports than have been disclosed here. In the absence of so many of the SDS’s reports, it will not be as easy to fully understand why (or when) groups were targeted.

This is made more difficult by the fact that so many of the former spycops are not being expected to give evidence. For example, HN81 ‘Dave Hagan’, whose absence is particularly frustrating for the family justice groups he spied on.

MYRNA SIMPSON

Thomas then gives more information about each individual he represents, starting with Myrna Simpson.

He asks for an image of Joy Gardner to be displayed, but the Inquiry doesn’t bother to show it to those of us watching on YouTube.

Joy was born in Jamaica, and later moved to the UK where her mother, a British citizen, was already living. At the time of her death, she was a mature student, living in North London with her five year old son who had been born there.

Thomas describes in detail exactly how, in July 1993, Gardner was killed in the presence of her young son by police officers from the Met’s Aliens Deportation Group.

Having been denied any contact with her solicitor, she was forced to the floor, bound, handcuffed and gagged with 13 feet of surgical tape wrapped round her head, preventing her from breathing. She was taken to hospital in a coma, and died there of asphyxiation caused by the tape and restraints.

‘JUSTICE FOR JOY’ CAMPAIGN

Joy’s mother, Myrna Simpson, campaigned for truth and accountability for many years following this tragedy, and continues to do so.

The police officers responsible for Joy’s death were acquitted of manslaughter at a trial in 1995, having told the jury that Joy was ‘the most violent woman they had ever dealt with’. There has never been an inquest or a public inquiry.

Thomas tells us that this acquittal raised concerns within the highest levels of the Met at the time. They were terrified that riots would break out.

At least four different SDS officers are known to have filed reports about Myrna Simpson and her campaigning. One of them, HN78 Trevor Morris, fabricated a false story about the involvement of the Socialist Workers Party, and also claims to have spoken at one of the public meetings held by the campaign in Tottenham Town Hall.

Simpson doesn’t believe this happened, and doesn’t wish to give it the dignity of a response, but has no memory of the meeting.

It’s unlikely the truth will ever be known, as Counsel to this Inquiry failed to test the claims made by Morris when he gave his oral evidence last year.

At no point do the SDS managers seem to have considered the propriety of spycops involving themselves in such campaigns or speaking at such public meetings.

Simpson was horrified by the derogatory and untrue reporting that appeared in the media following her daughter’s death, and has provided the Inquiry with an academic report of these smears.

She does not accept that there was any justification at all for the spycops’ intrusion into her life, saying:

‘Our aim was not to make trouble. It was just to get a voice as we needed justice for Joy, for the way she was killed. We still need that justice.’

BERNARD RENWICK

Renwick is taking part in the Inquiry on behalf of his family, including his parents, Sheila and Rupert, who came to London from Grenada over 60 years ago and had five children.

Bernard Renwick’s brother, Roger Sylvester, was killed by police in January 1999. We are shown a picture of him. 30 years old at the time, his death resulted from prolonged restraint by eight police officers. They have never faced criminal charges. The inquest jurt took just two

ROGER SYLVESTER JUSTICE CAMPAIGN

The family waited for almost five years for an inquest, which finally took place in 2003. The jury took just two hours to return a unanimous verdict of unlawful killing, but that was later quashed in the High Court.

The family have continued campaigning for justice for Roger, but were disappointed by the decision of the Crown Prosecution Service earlier this year not to prosecute the officers who killed him.

The campaign was set up and led by members of Sylvester’s family, and the very first march and vigil took place in Tottenham just one week after his death.

Renwick strongly disputes what HN81 ‘Dave Hagan’ put in the report he filed about this event, which included the claim that it was ‘predominantly’ Black youth to make it sound scarier. Renwick points out that it was led by his parents and their pastors, widely publicised, and attended by local people of all ages.

He is adamant that there has never been a group with the name ‘Friends of Roger Sylvester’, yet this name appears in SDS reports authored by Hagan.

There are many other falsehoods and inconsistencies in these reports, including complicated, entirely concocted stories about Sylvester’s family and their relationship with other family justice campaigns and groups such as the Movement for Justice.

Renwick says that the police did not view his brother as the vulnerable young man he was, someone struggling with mental illness. Due to their racism, they saw him as a Black man who posed a threat. This racial prejudice can also be seen in the intelligence reports of the SDS, which led to riot police turning up at the inquest.

Bernard Renwick is due to give evidence in person on Thursday 27 November.

LEE LAWRENCE

Thomas introduces Lee Lawrence as ‘an award-winning writer’. His book, The Louder I Will Sing: story of racism, riots and redemption, is about growing up as a young Black man in the UK, including the way that the shooting of his mother, Cherry Groce, has influenced every aspect of his life. He founded an initiative to tackle youth violence, the Cherry Groce Foundation.

Lawrence’s mother, Cherry Groce, was shot by the police in September 1985, during a surprise raid of the family’s home. Lawrence was just 11 years old at the time. He and his sisters were in the house when the raid happened.

Their mother was left paralysed, and had to use a wheelchair for the rest of her life. He and his siblings became her main carers, and he continued living with her until he was 27.

In his statement Lawrence describes an incident which took place in October 1999. Having intervened to prevent a racist attack, Lawrence was charged with assault.

One of the SDS undercovers, HN81 ‘Dave Hagan’, began filing inaccurate reports about Lawrence and this case, in which he made sure to refer to him as ‘Lee Groce’, and ‘the son of Cherry Groce’.

Cherry Groce died in 2011, as a result of the injuries she’d suffered in 1985. Lawrence fought for an inquest, which eventually took place in 2014. He and the other surviving members of the family were finally allowed to see the police’s own report into the botched raid, which had been deliberately withheld for 29 years.

The inquest found that Groce’s death was the result of ‘serious and multiple police failures’, after which the Met Commissioner issued an apology to the family. Cherry Groce never received an apology when she was alive.

THE ‘GROCE FAMILY SUPPORT CAMPAIGN’ (SIC)

We now know that the name ‘Cherry Groce’ appeared in an SDS report just six weeks after she was shot.

The 1985 SDS Annual Report contains the bizarre claim that the ‘GROCE Family Support Campaign’ is an organisation that has ‘been effectively penetrated by SDS officers’.

Earlier in 2025, the Inquiry heard evidence from HN115 Tony Wait that the term ‘penetrated’ usually meant that a spycop had infiltrated a group and repeatedly attended/ reported on its activity.

Lawrence disputes this. Friends and members of the local community did meet to discuss what had happened, but he says there was never a definable campaign as such, so he is at a loss to understand what this might have referred to.

He has now seen around a dozen reports about his 1999 arrest and subsequent trial, at which he was acquitted. They contain false allegations, details of his solicitors and his defence case, and the possibility of him taking civil action against the police. They all appear to have been written by HN81 ‘Dave Hagan’.

Although Hagan has provided a written statement to the Inquiry, he has not even tried to explain this reporting. He has been excused by the Inquiry from giving evidence in person to answer any questions.

Lee Lawrence’s second book, The Colour of Injustice, described as ‘a history of the overpolicing and under-protection of Britain’s Black community’, was published in October 2025, and he was interviewed by the Guardian in September.

Thomas ends by asking Mitting to consider whether the Met’s ‘damage limitation perspective’ was a driving factor in its persistent interest in campaigns for justice and police accountability.

WINSTON SILCOTT

PC Keith Blakelock was killed in October 1985 during disturbances on the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham. These disturbances followed the death of Cynthia Jarrett after four police officers had entered her home.

Winston Silcott and two other men were convicted of Blakelock’s murder in March 1987, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. However, all three convictions were quashed in 1991 after it became clear that the case rested on a police-fabricated ‘confession’, and there was no other evidence to link them with the crime.

THE ‘TOTTENHAM THREE’ CAMPAIGN

Many people campaigned tirelessly for these convictions to be overturned. Amongst them was Winston’s brother, George Silcott, and a good friend of his, Delroy Lindo. There was also Stafford Scott, of the Broadwater Farm Defence Committee, who gave written evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry in Tranche 2.

Even though none of them had links to left wing politics or groups, or to any public order concerns, and they were campaigning against a clear miscarriage of justice, they became the subjects of SDS reporting, ‘with alarming regularity’, according to Thomas.

These reports included all sorts of personal information about family members, details of phone calls made from prison, legal matters and George Silcott’s election campaign.

Even after the convictions were overturned, the SDS spying continued. Winston was the subject of SDS reports until at least 2001. He ended up spending longer in prison than the other two because of a second conviction relating to an incident where he acted in self-defence, but he is now out.

Six different SDS officers reported on the Silcott family. In addition, HN5 John Dines deceived Helen Steel into a relationship while undercover. Like other spycops who abused women, he manipulated her into feeling she’d found her soulmate.

Six months into the intense relationship, Dines found a flat that backed on to the Silcott family home and moved in there with Steel. This was during the campaign for Winston’s release.

The Silcotts have long held suspicions about some strange incidents involving items in their house being moved or disturbed, and wonder if there is a connection.

Winston’s conviction was quashed in November 1991. Around the same time, Dines and Steel moved out of their flat. Dines’s undercover deployment ended soon after.

The officers in charge of the investigation into the murder of Keith Blakelock were later prosecuted for fabricating the evidence that was used against the Tottenham Three, but were acquitted.

Despite being found completely innocent of Blakelock’s murder in 1991, Silcott has been the subject of unfair treatment by the police, both from individual officers and as an institution, ever since. He says he feels that he has a ‘target on his back’ because of his association with a crime the Court of Appeal agrees he did not commit, and that none of the SDS’s continued surveillance of him can be justified.

DR GRAHAM SMITH

Dr Graham Smith is a recently-retired university lecturer, and an expert in police complaints. He was involved in founding the Hackney Community Defence Association (HCDA) in 1988, and was active in it throughout its seven year life-span.

DEFENDANTS’ INFORMATION SERVICE

Separately, Dr Smith and others set up a project called the Defendants’ Information Service (DIS) in 1994. This was a very useful database of police officers who had been, in his words:

‘found to have lacked credibility and whose evidence was either not relied on by prosecutors or rejected by the courts.’

They had to register with the Data Protection Registrar so that this information could be shared with criminal defence and police litigation solicitors. The Association of Chief Police Officers and several police forces complained about the existence of the DIS, and tried to prevent this registration, or stop the service from operating, but failed.

The DIS database, its reports written for solicitors, and correspondence with them, were considered subject to ‘legal professional privilege’, i.e. they were confidential and sacrosanct from partisan spying by police. Despite this, HN15 Mark Jenner filed reports containing details of DIS.

The Colin Roach Centre, which hosted the DIS project, was broken into overnight on 22-23 December 1994, and it is thought that this may be why.

‘HACKNEY COMMUNITY DEFENCE ASSOCIATION’ (HCDA)

HCDA was first reported on within a month of its launch, by HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’, who described it as ‘a front organisation for local anarchist activists’.

Smith says that this is simply not true. It was set up as a self-help group for victims of police injustice – Trevor Monerville’s family were involved – who thought it might be worth taking their cases to civil courts instead of trying to get justice from the police complaints procedure.

HCDA gained a reputation for the good work it did campaigning for police accountability, and supporting many local people with their cases in both the criminal and civil courts. A lot of these cases involved police brutality and false accusations, including the planting of drugs.

HCDA investigated cases and published reports into corrupt policing. They were instrumental in overturning many miscarriages of justice and highlighting the ongoing racism that had led to them. They were also very successful at helping people to claim damages and win settlements from the Met for the mistreatment they had suffered.

HN78 Trevor Morris ‘Anthony ‘Bobby’ Lewis’, one of the very few Black officers in SDS history, was asked to report on the group’s activities in 1991.

HN15 Mark Jenner was deployed in February 1995. He was specifically tasked with infiltrating HCDA, which is described in SDS documents at the time as being:

‘involved in the coordination and opposition to local police allegations of harassment, racism and wrongful arrest.’

Unfortunately for Jenner, this was the year when HCDA disbanded, and Dr Smith says he withdrew from community activities.

Undeterred, Jenner recorded this development in June 1995 in a report which Smith says is littered with inaccuracies, then filed at least ten more reports about Smith over the following three years.

Thomas points out that the SDS’s reporting on the HCDA, DIS and Dr Smith flew in the face of the Home Office directives that police accountability groups were strictly off-limits, and this reporting was entirely unjustified and improper.

There are lots of questions that will need to be put to Jenner when he appears during the week 15-18 December.

Dr Graham Smith is due to give evidence in person just before that, on Thursday 11 December.

MARK METCALF

Mark Metcalf has provided a personal witness statement, as well as one on behalf of the Colin Roach Centre.

Metcalf has been involved in political, community and trade union organising all his adult life. His name appears in many SDS reports, from 1986 onwards. He’s learnt that Special Branch opened a Registry File on him in 1987, marking him out as someone they were actively watching and recording.

The SDS prepared a ‘tasking strategy’ for HN15 Mark Jenner when his deployment began. According to this, his main target was supposed to be anarchists in Hackney. This document mentions Metcalf and the HCDA by name.

Metcalf says he has never been an anarchist. Despite this, Jenner admits in his statement that he set out to get close to Metcalf as a way of gaining access to a wide range of groups. Jenner then reported on every aspect of Metcalf’s life, from job applications to bank accounts.

THE COLIN ROACH CENTRE (CRC)

The Colin Roach Centre in Hackney hosted many community organisations including, as previously mentioned, the Hackney Community Defence Association and the Defendants’ Information Service.

It was named after Colin Roach, a 21 year old Black man who died of a shotgun wound inside Stoke Newington Police station on 12 January 1983.

The police claimed it was suicide, but evidence showed that he had not entered the police station with the gun, the position of the gun was inconsistent with self-use, and the police surgeon found his injuries were inconsistent with self-inflicted shotgun wounds.

In 2013, Metcalf wrote one of the earliest articles about Jenner, in which he also described HCDA’s work.

Metcalf says that the SDS’s reports suggest that the CRC and the HCDA were one and the same. Metcalf disputes this. He points out that the Centre was used as a base by many local groups – including a gay and lesbian group, support for refugees and asylum seekers, trade union work, as well as HCDA – and it provided advice of all kinds to the community.

Metcalf also disputes Jenner’s claim that his infiltration of the Colin Roach Centre had nothing to do with the work to counter police misconduct that took place there, but was for the purpose of gathering information about demonstrations for public order reasons.

Any such demonstrations that took place were well-publicised and there was no need to infiltrate the CRC to find out about them. It’s noteworthy that the police undermine their own claim: Jenner is described as having ‘unique access to a range of anti-police campaigns’ in the SDS Annual Report of 1995-96.

Jenner says he intended to use Metcalf and the CRC as ‘stepping stones’ from which to target other groups, and was particularly interested in Irish Republicans and Red Action. These weren’t groups that Metcalf got on well with, so it’s unclear why associating with him would have helped Jenner gain their trust.

Mark Metcalf is due to give evidence in person on Wednesday 10 December.

CONCLUSION

Thomas summarises the point:

‘Any decent observer knows that grieving families are not legitimate targets of covert policing. There was no disorder to quell, there was no hidden criminality to expose, only people exercising their right to demand justice.’

He ends his submissions by saying that until all the families and individual campaigners he’s talked about receive proper, meaningful, personal apologies from the Met, ‘the stain on the reputation of the Metropolitan police will endure’.

The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, says he was ‘delighted’ to hear Thomas quoting Sir Robert Peel, adding that Peel ‘should be in our hearts’. It is telling that he is so effusive about Peel and is not moved to say that those who have died at the hands of the police should be in our hearts and minds.

Rajiv Menon KC

Rajiv Menon KC represents Duwayne Brooks OBE. His oral submissions closely follow the content of Brooks’ written Opening Statement.

As a teenager, Duwayne Brooks grew up in South East London. He was a close friend of Stephen Lawrence, and was with him on 22 April 1993. While waiting at a bus stop that evening they were the victims of a violent racist attack, which resulted in Stephen’s murder.

Duwayne survived, traumatised by the original attack but also by the hostility and racism of the police. Rather than dealing with him sympathetically, as the vulnerable young victim of a serious crime, they treated him like a criminal suspect.

During this period, racist attacks were horrifically common in that part of London. Stephen Lawrence was not the only one to be killed. In many ways, what happened to Brooks mirrored the experiences of another young Black man whose story has been heard in this Inquiry, Nathan Adams.

Nathan’s older brother, Rolan Adams, was killed in similar circumstances to Stephen Lawrnce, while Nathan, like Duwayne, escaped and survived.

Both Adams and Brooks suffered from severe trauma, compounded by the way the police treated them immediately after these murderous attacks. They were key eye-witnesses, as well as victims in their own right, but never received any support from the police. No charges were ever brought for the attacks against them. They were both utterly failed by the police.

Institutional racism was, and appears to still be, endemic in the Metropolitan Police, as recognised by the 1999 Macpherson inquiry into the Stephen Lawrence case and more recently by Baroness Casey’s report in 2023.

It is clear that both young men were victims of police racism. They were the victims of racial stereotyping at the time, and the victims of police harassment, and covert surveillance, for years afterwards.

SPIED ON FOR SERVING SOCIETY

Duwayne Brooks has spent much of his life dealing with the aftermath of that night in April 1993. He was arrested six times in the following six years. He was repeatedly prosecuted on trumped-up charges that fell apart as soon as a court examined them. He has sought police accountability for his treatment, and finally received damages after seven years of civil proceedings.

As well as assisting the police with their murder investigation, and appearing as a witness in the 2011 murder trial, Brooks provided evidence for the private prosecution of three of the murderers brought by the Lawrences in 1996, and of course took part in Macpherson’s inquiry into the case.

Menon tells us that alongside this, Brooks has worked to expose racism and corruption in the police. He reels off a long account of Brooks’ public service, and his efforts to improve policing and race relations over the past 25 years.

Brooks knows that he, like many other campaigners for police accountability and for justice for the victims of racism, was the subject of various forms of covert surveillance, including undercover policing.

He is disturbed that the police chose to use resources for spying on people like him, rather than well-known racist criminal gangs who were committing serious violent crimes.

Menon notes that just this week, the Met have finally changed tack, and accepted that:

1. undercover officers indefensibly reported on people like Brooks, who presented no risk of criminality or public disorder
2. it would have been a better use of police resources to prevent and investigate racist violence – an issue that this Inquiry should now examine the extent of, Menon suggests

Menon moves on to address the topic of police spying on Duwayne Brooks in more depth.

He notes that not all of this spying was carried out by the SDS. For example, there is an instance of Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Grieve, who was in charge of the Stephen Lawrence murder investigation at the time, secretly recording at least one of the meetings he’d arranged to have with Brooks and his lawyers. This raises many questions, not least if this was common practice by senior police officers.

Brooks has also learnt that one of the officers employed within the Racial Incidents unit at Plumstead police station was used as a plain-clothes police ‘spotter’ during the large anti-racist demonstration in Welling in May 1993, identifying Black people he recognised for police records.

SPYING ON THE BEREAVED

Mark Ellison KC published the findings of his Stephen Lawrence Independent Review in 2014, having carried out an investigation into the possible impact of police corruption and collusion on the original murder investigation.

Some of his findings related to the role of undercover policing. He found he was unable to make definitive findings about some of the claims made by HN43 Peter Francis due to the destruction of many SDS documents. It is hoped that this Inquiry may be able to get to the truth.

Ellison discovered that in August 1998 a meeting was brokered by SDS boss HN10 Bob Lambert, bringing together one of his undercover officers who’d been spying on the Lawrence family, HN81 ‘David Hagan’, with former Special Branch Detective Inspector Richard Walton.

Walton was working with the Met’s legal team on their response to the Macpherson inquiry. Ellison said there was no justification for this meeting; it was ‘wrong headed, inappropriate and highly questionable’.

The revelation of this fact triggered Walton’s 2016 resignation from the police in order to avoid disciplinary proceedings, and Lambert’s resignation from his university posts.

Ellison’s report contained some other findings that related to Brooks personally: his arrest in May 1993 and subsequent charging; the SDS tasking Peter Francis to identify him in footage to try to discredit him; the SDS’s reporting in the years 1999-2001; and their gathering of personal information about him and his civil claim.

As Menon says, the Ellison review raised a lot of questions (these are listed in full in the written statement).

EXCUSING THE SPY

Another section of that statement addresses the evidence that has been disclosed to Brooks by this Inquiry. Much of it relates to the two undercover officers who spied on him – HN43 Peter Francis and HN81 ‘Dave Hagan’ – and their manger, known only as ‘HN86’, who has been accused of being ‘thoroughly and overtly racist’.

Duwayne Brooks has spent years waiting for this Inquiry to investigate some of these issues. Like everyone else who was spied on by HN81 ‘Dave Hagan’, he is furious that the officer has been excused from attending and answering questions. He says it’s ‘a slap in the face’ that this man will not be asked to account for his actions or explain his reporting.

HN86 has refused to give evidence too, and threatened legal action against the Chair if there is an attempt to force him to do so.

Brooks campaigned for this Inquiry to take place, but is disappointed at how it’s gone. The way that ‘Non-State’ core participants (i.e. people who were spied on) have been treated, excluded from the process and secretive ‘closed’ hearings, and denied full disclosure.

This not only defies justice and transparency. On a practical level, it impedes their ability to give best evidence and ultimately destroys any chance of the Inquiry meeting its Terms of Reference and uncovering the truth about the spycops’ operations.

Brooks says that those who were wrongly spied on deserve to be treated with respect and humanity rather than as inconvenient witnesses. He remains willing to provide oral evidence and assist the Inquiry – but not until he has received full disclosure of relevant documents with enough time to digest them before responding.

Menon notes that many of the Black core participants in this Inquiry share similar experiences of racist policing, and ends by suggesting that they were spied on:

‘precisely because they were challenging the injustice of racist policing, not because they posed any public order threat.’

DO WHAT YOU’RE TOLD

After Menon finishes, Mitting responds to say that if Brooks is unwilling to take the slot allocated to him in this Tranche, then it may not be possible to hear his oral evidence at all.

It was shocking to hear such an insensitive threat from Mitting, willing to actively exclude such an essential witness rather than simply provide him with the relevant documents in a way that should be standard for all witnesses.

Given his earlier comments about Robert Peel, it wasn’t even the first time that afternoon that Mitting had shown a gleeful bias toward police. He seems unwilling or unable to properly see the perpetrator-victim nature of his subject, and instead adds another instance of showing contempt for those who have been wronged if they dare to say anything that challenges his position.

Ifeanyi Odogwu

Ifeanyi Odogwu represents Dr Neville Lawrence OBE, father of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence. Dr Lawrence has also supplied a written Opening Statement.

Stephen Lawrence was murdered on 22 April 1993. His parents, Neville and Doreen, immediately became the subjects of invasive police surveillance. It started with the ‘Family Liaison Officers’ (FLOs) who visited their home that evening. These officers have admitted that they recorded the names of people who visited the family after Stephen’s death.

HN43 Peter Francis says that he was handed a copy of the list compiled by these FLOs, and tasked with investigating the people on it, and their political persuasions. He says that he was also asked to gather information that could be used to alter the perception of the public about the family and its campaign, and that this intelligence-gathering was the SDS’s number one priority.

Lawrence heard what the spycops’ lawyer Oliver Sanders KC had said the previous day. Sanders attacked the credibility of Francis and his evidence about what he was tasked to do, mainly on the basis that there are no written records that back it up.

Odogwu points out that the absence of records does not prove that this didn’t happen. As the Ellison Review into spying on the Lawrences found, many instructions were oral and went unrecorded at the time. In addition, many of the records no longer exist, having been lost or deliberately destroyed.

HN78 Trevor Morris gave evidence to the Inquiry in 2024 about his part in the intrusive surveillance of the Lawrences and the volume of his reporting, admitting that the SDS reports may well have contained material capable of smearing the Lawrences. Nothing he said contradicted the evidence of Peter Francis.

TARGETING THE GRIEVING, NOT THE KILLERS

Odogwu brings up the issue of proportionality. It is clear that at this extremely sensitive time, the police’s time and resources should have been devoted to investigating Stephen’s murder and finding the killers, not putting his family under surveillance.

Neville Lawrence remains deeply troubled about this matter:

‘The implication that we were somehow the ones to watch was as perverse as it was offensive. It was as though our grief was treated as a threat, and our home as a site of suspicion, something I will never accept or forgive.’

The reports which have survived contain a great deal of subjective gossip, along with intimate details of the Lawrences’ personal lives, finances and political opinions. They also contain information about the meetings they attended and spoke at, and about their long, arduous and entirely lawful campaigning efforts.

It is clear that by December 2000, SDS reports contained legally privileged information about the family’s civil claim. There is precious little that relates to the supposed point of the SDS operation: imminent disorder, subversion or crime.

One of the results of their campaign was a public inquiry into matters arising from the death of Stephen Lawrence, announced in 1997. This was an inquiry that set out to examine the ways in which the family had been failed, so that lessons could be learnt for the future.

It concluded that there were multiple failings on the part of the Metropolitan Police and that institutional racism was at the heart of these. These findings were published in the Macpherson report in 1999.

A SPY IN THE LAWRENCE FAMILY CAMP

It is shocking to think that while the public inquiry was going on, the SDS sent another undercover officer to spy on the family and their supporters. This was HN81 ‘Dave Hagan’. The Ellison Report characterised Hagan as ‘an MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] spy in the Lawrence family camp’ (a description disputed by Hagan himself).

There is evidence that the information gathered by Hagan was sent to the legal team that represented the Met in the Macpherson Inquiry, and that a secret ‘back channel’ was set up to enable direct communication between this legal team and the SDS.

Detective Inspector Richard Walton, a former Special Branch officer, acted as a conduit for this flow of ‘valuable’ intelligence. He is said to have received ad-hoc off-the-record briefings from the undercover unit.

This collusion was not disclosed to the Macpherson inquiry at the time. Neither was the fact that the police had used undercover officers to spy on the Lawrences after Stephen’s death. Peter Francis says he saw that inquiry as the time for the Met to come clean. He advocated for telling it about the SDS, but he was overruled by managers.

These things are coming to light now, with plenty of details due to be disclosed in the upcoming hearings. Odogwu refers to what we can expect to hear more evidence of: the kind of in-depth discussion that regularly took place between Walton and SDS manager HN10 Bob Lambert, and about the great interest that Commissioner Paul Condon took in Hagan’s ‘invaluable reporting’.

He notes that Hagan was congratulated by Condon, and subsequently received a Commendation for his work. Condon has since denied all knowledge of the SDS.

NO QUESTIONING THE SPY

Having waited so long for this Inquiry to get going, so he could discover the truth of the SDS spying on his family, Dr Lawrence is extremely disappointed that Hagan has been excused from giving evidence in person.

This means that he cannot be asked to account for his actions, explain anything or answer questions. His written evidence will not be ‘tested’ and like many other core participants, Dr Lawrence believes that this is a serious problem.

It’s worth noting that HN86, the SDS manager who was responsible for Peter Francis’ tasking, will probably not be appearing either. He is refusing to travel to the UK to give evidence, or to do so online.

The Lawrence family were campaigning for legal justice following the racist murder of their son. They did not cause public disorder, or work with any groups who caused disorder, and Odogwu submits that there was no possible justification for the intrusion they suffered.

Even the Met have now accepted that the SDS reporting on Dr Lawrence was wholly indefensible and would have rightly prompted public outrage if the public had actually known about it.

EXPOSING THE RACISM

One of the most important issues which this Inquiry must investigate and get to the truth of is the part played by race, and racial discrimination, in the undercover policing operations suffered by the Lawrences and other families.

Were they treated worse than a white family would have been? Were they the victims of unconscious (and conscious) bias?

Black-led campaign groups and anti-racist organisers were almost always treated with suspicion. They were the subjects of systematic police infiltration, reporting and harassment.

During this Inquiry we have heard about a long list of campaigns and groups who fought against racism and in support of those who were victims of it, who were deemed ‘subversive’ and therefore deserving of surveillance.

In contrast, racist white gangs did not attract the same levels of intrusion. There is no evidence of the SDS targeting the many violent, far-right, racist organisations that were active during its existence with anything other than a few very short undercover deployments.

These groups caused huge harm to communities, and often presented public order problems for the police, but were not subject to the kind of intrusion aimed at the Lawrences over the course of many years.

The Inquiry has already heard contradictory excuses for this from spycops. HN298 ‘Mike Scott’ said:

‘There weren’t any right-wing groups who were demonstrating, or causing any problems as far as I can recall.’

But HN56 ‘Alan Nicholson’ said that, on the contrary, the far-right was such a big problem that it would have been too dangerous for him to infiltrate a particular group.

The police knew about the problems caused by right-wing groups but didn’t do anything, instead pouring resources into countering those who would simply illuminate the police’s endemic racism.

We have heard far too many examples of overt racism on the part of individual police officers during this time. The fact that racist language and attitudes went unchallenged and undisciplined is further evidence of discrimination within the force. Race influenced every aspect of the SDS’s work; their targeting, tasking and reporting. Their reports include many examples of racial profiling and categorisation.

In 1999, Sir William Macpherson’s inquiry into Stephen Lawrence’s murder found that the Met suffered from ‘institutional racism’. Baroness Casey reached the same conclusion in the 2023 Casey Review.

Odogwu submits that this problem is ‘rooted in culture and systems’.

Dr Lawrence’s opening statement ended with an invitation to the Inquiry to examine these issues carefully, with the prospect of a finding of race discrimination.

Dave Morris

The day’s final Opening Statement comes courtesy of Dave Morris, one of the two McLibel case defendants. He has also submitted a written version.

The other defendant in the McLibel case was Helen Steel, and she is preparing her own witness statement on wider issues, including the shocking extent of the SDS’s impact on her life.

Morris was the subject of SDS reporting for decades and so has already appeared as a witness in this Inquiry:

• Opening Statement, Tranche 1 Phase 2, 23 April 2021
• Opening Statement, Tranche 1 Phase 3, 11 May 2022
• Live evidence, Tranche 2 Phase 1, 8 July 2024
• Live evidence, Tranche 2 Phase 2, 5 & 7 November 2024

He has not been invited to give oral evidence in these Tranche 3 Phase 1 hearings, but is allowed to make an Opening Statement so seized his chance to have a say!

Before getting underway, Morris makes some remarks of solidarity with the other ‘Non-State’ core participants (the people significantly spied upon).

The Interim Report published by this Inquiry in 2023 concluded that the SDS should have been closed down decades earlier than it was, and Morris points out that if only this had happened, the human toll, and the impact on all of those whose stories of being spied upon we have heard, would have been far less. He notes that even the Metropolitan Police now admit that this was ‘a dysfunctional unit’.

THE MCLIBEL TRIAL

Morris explains the McLibel case. Activists in London Greenpeace had distributed a leaflet highlighting McDonald’s many harmful practices. The burger corporation threatened to sue for libel, presumably expecting the skint activists to back down. But they didn’t.

The two of them spent 15 years embroiled in this legal battle, the longest trial in English history, followed by lengthy appeals, and then by a ground-breaking victory in the European Court of Human Rights. They did not receive legal aid, and relied on the support of volunteers, including a young and seemingly principled Keir Starmer.

Morris says this Inquiry has begun to shine a light on a dark and highly significant secret, referring to the two-way collusion that went on between the Metropolitan Police and the McDonald’s corporation.

In his written statement, he has provided more detail about some of the facts that have already come to light. Prime among these is the fact that both the Head of McDonald’s security team, Sid Nicholson, and his deputy, Terry Carroll, had previously been senior police officers, based in Brixton. Nicholson boasted that McDonald’s security were all ex-police, and this meant they had plenty of contacts who were still serving officers, and could supply them with information.

POLICE IN THE CASE

London Greenpeace was infiltrated and reported on by several undercover officers, including HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’, who actually helped to write the ‘What’s wrong with McDonald’s?’ leaflet that sparked the libel action.

Lambert returned to run the SDS as its Inspector in 1993, by which time the McLibel trial was underway, but his part in making this ‘libel’ was never disclosed during the trial.

In order to find out the names of the activists who were campaigning against them, and allegedly libelling them, McDonald’s hired private spies to infiltrate London Greenpeace. Their libel writ was then served on five named individuals.

Although HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’ was very active in campaigning and distributing leaflets, his name was omitted from the writs because McDonald’s knew about the SDS and that he was an undercover police officer, not a genuine activist. Dines was concerned that this omission might raise his targets’ suspicions.

Dines knew about the private spies. So did the Security Service, who asked the SDS to provide a report. And so did another SDS officer, HN67 ‘Alan Bond’, who told Dines that he had known about the McDonald’s spying operation from the outset.

Dines received information about the company’s plans. He knew in advance about the writs, even the date they were due to be served. Carroll spoke of receiving assessments from Special Branch. It is evident that information flowed in both directions.

As well as infiltrating London Greenpeace’s activities and attending its open meetings, Dines engineered a long-term intimate relationship with Steel. This meant that he was privy to the strategy discussions that took place amongst the five people who originally received writs. He had the opportunity to steer their thinking.

He reported on a ‘closed meeting’ held early in this phase of the campaign, and many subsequent legal meetings, and has admitted that he was relaying the legal advice to his bosses in the SDS.

This is a clear violation of the principle of legal privilege, that a lawyer and client’s communications should be confidential and sacrosanct. Once again, rather than upholding the law, police officers are violating the law in order to maximise corporate power and profit.

STYMIE THE SEARCH, HIDE THE TRUTH

Helen Steel spent years looking for Dines after he disappeared from her life. Lambert and the SDS management were so worried that she might locate him that they launched a major operation to stop her.

In 2002, Steel tracked Dines down to his new life in New Zealand. The Met had been following her moves and spent a large amount of taxpayers’ money relocating their ex-employee to a different country so Steel wouldn’t find him.

As the unit’s boss by this time, Lambert was concerned about the possibility of Dines (or the Met’s Commissioner) being forced to give evidence in the McLibel case, and the risk of the unit’s existence being revealed.

We haven’t seen all the SDS reporting; much of it has been ‘lost’ or destroyed. However, during this set of hearings, the Inquiry will have the opportunity to question two former senior officers who had oversight of the unit, and may well be able to answer some of the many questions Morris has.

The main questions are:

• Who knew about these matters?
• How long did it go on for?
• How was the collusion conducted?
• How high up was the authorisation given?
• Who liaised with McDonald’s?
• What was the role of Bob Lambert?
• What was the role of the Security Service?
• Why was it allowed to happen?

Various former SDS managers told the Inquiry last year that any collusion between the SDS and McDonald’s would have had to be authorised by officers who were more senior than them.

Morris notes that one of these men, HN143 Commander Dennis ‘Ben’ Gunn, is due to give evidence on Monday 20 October. He also notes that Gunn produced a ‘position paper’ regarding the Special Branch having established excellent links with commercial and industrial organisations including through delivering presentations and briefings, and offering what he termed a ‘consultancy service’.

WHO WILL TAKE RESPONSIBILITY?

Morris keeps his biggest question for the end:

’Who is now going to take the responsibility and apologise unreservedly for this scandal?’

He acknowledges that various apologies have now been made by the Met for the serious wrong-doing of the SDS.

But he notes that the Home Office still haven’t provided this Inquiry with a full witness statement, and that no Home Secretary – of the nine politicians who have occupied that position since this Inquiry was first announced – has ever issued an apology.

These secret political policing deployments were ultimately signed off at the very highest level, by successive Governments from the start of the SDS in 1968 onwards, and that needs to be apologised for too.