The public inquiry into Britain’s political secret police is publishing more names of undercover officers. Despite this, their list of known spycops is incomplete.

Is this is a catalogue of innocent incompetence despite spending £17m? Or deliberate obfuscation to protect the wrongdoers whose deeds the Inquiry exists to expose?

Whichever, it adds to the list of obstructions that have been the hallmark of this Inquiry.

TOO LITTLE TOO LATE

Last week the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) named the officer previously known as HN78. ‘Anthony “Bobby” Lewis’ is the only known black officer in the history of Britain’s political secret police. He spied on Stephen Lawrence’s family campaign as part of his infiltration of the Socialist Workers Party and Anti-Nazi League between 1991 and 1995.

There are known to have been at least 139 undercover officers in the 50 year history of the spycops units the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) & National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). Lewis is the 26th to have infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party, which means – even ignoring all as-yet unnamed officers – nearly 20% of all spycops targeted that one organisation. It is, by far, the most targeted group, attracting far more attention than the entirety of the far right.

The Inquiry was announced by the Home Secretary more than five years ago and was originally expected to have finished in summer 2018. Last week the Inquiry said it is hoping to start properly in summer 2020. We expect the final report to be published around 2025.

The release of Lewis’ fake name comes more than a year after the Inquiry decided to do it. With their new natty graphics on Twitter, the casual observer might think the Inquiry was starting to become more communicative with the public whose funds it so ravenously consumes.

However, they still haven’t even published a complete list of the officer names that they’ve agreed to publish. Their incomplete list that does exist doesn’t link to any further information on the officers (not even the stuff the Inquiry has published elsewhere on the same site). It is given in order of the officers’ fake surnames, and is not interactive, so you can’t order it by year of deployment, group infiltrated, or even just first name.

THE TRUTH, NOT THE WHOLE TRUTH

Additionally, the list of groups for each officer is incomplete. For example, for ‘Andy Davey’ – the undercover identity of officer Andy Coles – it only lists animal rights groups, but his brief as given in an internal SDS document was ‘Anarcho/ Animal rights/ Environmentalist & Pacifist’.

Coles spent a lot of time infiltrating various environmental and peace groups and going on their demos. However, if people from those organisations word-search the Inquiry site for their group’s name, they’ll draw a blank and the Inquiry will never hear their testimony.

Most of the spycops on the Inquiry website have only a limited amount of groups behind their name, or some none at all (just ‘anarchist groups’ for instance).

Also, because of the organic and intertwined way many of the groups were/are organised, targeting one group meant lots of information was gathered on closely linked groups and people as well.

Organisations like the Socialist Workers Party (and their forerunner International Socialists) were specifically targeted over the years because of their involvement in a wide variety of then-current campaigns.

For a spycop, a position next to a key organiser who knew a lot of people was a goldmine, they would get insights into how things were set up and who were the key players. Chumming up with such organisers also meant that the undercover officer could ask their buddy about people of interest, instead of having to approach that person directly with questions that could raise suspicion.

FILLING THE GAPS

The Undercover Research Group and the Guardian made a list of the groups targeted by spycops but, lacking the Inquiry’s access to police files, it cannot be a comprehensive list.

We keep our post How Many Spycops Have There Been? updated as new names are revealed. It currently stands at 75 named officers out of the total of 139.

Beyond our simple list, the Undercover Research Group have collated the Inquiry’s documents that use code numbers with ‘N’ prefixes for officers. They’ve collated the information along with that of independent researchers produced a more complete rundown of the N-numbered officers.

They have also made an interactive spycops timeline that shows which officers were deployed when and into what political movements. Just imagine what a thorough job the URG could do with a decent fraction of the millions that the Inquiry has wasted. If you’d like to help them, you can donate.

The Inquiry list contains the names used by 68 officers. Fifty of the others have already been granted total anonymity, so the Inquiry will not even publish their fake name. The Inquiry is going to withhold almost all officers’ real names. This means that, even if their deeds become known, they will not be held to account.

Victims of spycops, and the wider public, deserve the truth about what was done to them. The Inquiry is more concerned with protecting abusive officers from suffering any consequences of their abuses. We should all be given the fullest information.

Here’s what we know is missing from the Inquiry’s list of Special Demonstration Squad spycops.

SPYCOPS NOT MENTIONED AT ALL BY THE INQUIRY

These four officers may be among those identified by the Inquiry’s anonymising N-numbers, but there aren’t enough details given for researchers to be able to identify them. If this is deliberate then, given that their names have long been in the public domain, it is ludicrous.

“RC”

‘RC’ was involved in animal rights campaigns around Oxford 2002-06. Like so many spycops, he was an active organiser who used his vehicle to help out, and would occasionally denounce others as spies. He was exposed in February 2016. Although researchers find it overwhelmingly likely he was a spycop, the sliver of doubt means they have withheld his full name and picture.

Full profile of ‘RC’.

“Gary R” & “Abigail L”

‘Gary R’ appears to have been the successor to ‘RC’ in Oxford. He was joined for some of the time by a partner, ‘Abigail L’. They were exposed in July 2016. As with ‘RC’, researchers are withholding full names in case of the unlikely event that they’ve misidentified them.

Full profile of ‘Gary R’ & ‘Abigail L’.

These three officers are likely to have been from the National Public Order Intelligence Unit. Though they worked in parallel with the SDS performing the same function, and indeed some personnel moved between the two, the Inquiry has been much more secretive about this unit. There is no significant information on the NPOIU from the Inquiry that wasn’t already uncovered by activists and researchers.

“Mike Ferguson”

This SDS officer infiltrated the Anti Apartheid Movement in 1969-70, and was actively involved in the Stop The Seventy Tour campaign against South African sporting teams touring Britain.

The campaign was chaired by Peter Hain, later to become a Labour MP and afterwards a member of the House of Lords. ‘Ferguson’ rose to become Hain’s deputy.

After a plan to throw smoke bombs and metal tacks onto a pitch got rumbled by police, Hain realised there was a spy and ejected a member – it wasn’t ‘Ferguson’, who stayed on to continue his espionage.

‘Ferguson’ was exposed in True Spies, a 2002 BBC documentary series on the SDS [transcript, video]. Hain is one of 200 significantly affected people who have been made core participants at the Inquiry. They acknowledged ‘Ferguson’ when granting Hain this status, yet have not mentioned him anywhere else before or since.

In 2015, ‘Ferguson’s daughter wrote an article for the Guardian about growing up with a spycop for a father – including identifying details about him – and described the impact of discovering the truth years later whilst watching True Spies. But for the Inquiry, the fact that he was outed on national TV nearly 20 years ago by his own police handler doesn’t seem to count for anything.

CONFIRMED BY INQUIRY BUT MISSING FROM THEIR LIST

The Inquiry’s list only covers undercover officers of the SDS. In their most recent Update Note, the Inquiry said it will publish a table of NPOIU officers ‘in due course’. The following four officers from the NPOIU have already been officially confirmed by the Inquiry, but they are not included in the cover names list.

Mark Kennedy aka “Mark Stone”

The NPOIU officer whose unmasking in 2010 caused the whole spycops scandal to erupt. Deployed from 2003-09 into environmental, anti-capitalist and anti-fascist groups, Kennedy deceived several women he spied on into long-term intimate relationships (four of whom – Lisa, Kate, Naomi & Sarah – have taken legal action against the Metropolitan Police and received apologies).

Kennedy worked in at least 11 countries beyond the Inquiry’s remit of England and Wales. He was arrested several times during his time undercover, and caused at least 49 people to be wrongfully convicted.

After he left the police, he continued spying on the same activist community for corporate paymasters until he was caught by suspicious comrades.

“Rod Richardson” HN 596

(Inquiry also refer to him as EN 36)

‘Rod Richardson’ infiltrated environmental, anarchist and animal rights groups from 2000-2003, as Mark Kennedy’s predecessor. He is one of – if not the very – first officers in the NPOIU. He was trained by Andy Coles, the SDS officer who’d updated that unit’s Tradecraft Manual after his own deployment ended in 1995.

Coles instructed him to use a technique that was, by then, anachronistic; stealing the identity of a dead child as the basis of a fake persona. In the online age, this became hugely risky, and it was a websearch of death certificates that led to the spycop ‘Richardson’ being unmasked in 2013.

The Met refused to confirm or deny it, much to the distress of the mother of the real Rod Richardson who had died as a baby.

In December 2016, the Inquiry confirmed that ‘Rod Richardson’ was an undercover officer of the NPOIU. His name, photo and details have been published in the mainstream media for six years, and the Inquiry has made quite a few references to him, yet because he is an NPOIU officer he does not appear in the Inquiry’s current list of names.

Full profile of ‘Rod Richardson’.

“Lynn Watson” EN34

Based in Leeds from 2002-06, ‘Lynn Watson’ infiltrated environmental, anti-capitalist and peace groups, and was treasurer of The Common Place, a political social centre in the city.

She was especially active in the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, and there is video of her in a clown outfit arsing around in the car park of Hilary Benn MP’s office.

As well as being arrested on a couple of climate change protests, she also committed an offence under the Companies Act 2006 by filing the Common Place’s accounts under a false identity.

Her name and picture were published in the mainstream media in 2011. There was a ten-page section devoted to her deployment in the 2013 book Undercover: The True Story of Britain’s Secret Police by Guardian journalists Rob Evans & Paul Lewis.

Despite all this public knowledge, it wasn’t until 30 October 2018 the Inquiry confirmed her identity by name as it granted her core participant status. The Inquiry will not be publishing her real name.

Full profile of Lynn Watson.

“Marco Jacobs” HN 519

‘Marco’ began his deployment in Brighton in 2004, but after failing to fit in he was redeployed to Cardiff. There, he involved himself in a range of anti-war, anarchist and other causes.

In a dramatic court hearing in 2015 – presided over by Sir John Mitting who would later become Chair of the public inquiry – police conceded they wouldn’t contest the assertion that ‘Jacobs’ was a spycop. Just like his NPOIU contemporary Mark Kennedy, ‘Jacobs’ not only had multiple relationships with women he spied on but actually accompanied one of them to the funeral of her father.

As with ‘Lynn Watson’, ‘Jacobs’ had his cover name, photo and story published in the mainstream media in January 2011 and had a detailed section in the Undercover book. The Inquiry eventually confirmed his identity when making him a core participant in November 2016.

Full profile of Marco Jacobs.

COVER NAME LISTED BUT REAL NAME IS ALSO KNOWN

“Peter Johnson”, “Peter Daley”, “Peter Black” HN 43
Real name: Peter Francis. On Twitter @realspycop

“Jim Sutton” HN 14
Real name: Jim Boyling

“Mark Cassidy” HN 15
Real name: Mark Jenner

“Bob Robinson” HN 10
Real name: Bob Lambert

“John Barker” HN 5
Real name: John Dines

“Mike Blake” HN 11
Real name: Mike Chitty

“Roger Thorley” HN 85
Real name: Roger Pearce

“Andy Davey” HN 2
Real name: Andy Coles

ON THE INQUIRY LIST BUT WITHOUT A NAME

HN 89

This SDS officer infiltrated the far-right in the 1990s. He is now dead. No application has been made by the family to withhold the real name or the cover name. The Inquiry said in November 2017 that it was intending to publish both.

The last two officers to be named by the Inquiry were Paul Gray and Bobby Lewis – both over a year after the Inquiry had announced its decision to do so. How much longer we’ll have to wait for HN 89 is anyone’s guess. We know that waiting for the full truth will take a lot longer, and it will not be something delivered by the Inquiry.

We’re pleased to announce our Trade Union Conference on Saturday November 16th in London.

The one-day event will increase understanding of the impact of political policing on trade unions and movements for social change since 1968.

Over three thousand workers were blacklisted, over one thousand organisations were spied on by undercover police, and tens of thousands of citizens have files held on them by Special Branch.

Bringing together trade unionists, activists and other campaigners, this conference will strengthen our campaign to ensure the forthcoming public inquiry is not a cover-up but exposes the truth of Britain’s political secret police. It will strengthen our struggle for justice and the protection of human rights.

CONSOLIDATING KNOWLEDGE

This conference will be an opportunity to consolidate knowledge and understanding about the political secret police units and the lessons learned for political and trade union activism today, as well as building support for the campaign opposing political policing and those still fighting for justice.

Due to ongoing delays and police obfuscation, the public inquiry into undercover policing is not due to report until at least 2023, and is realistically expected to be much later. We want the conference to lead to greater involvement by trade unions in applying pressure to make the public inquiry as open and democratic as possible.

INTERLOCKING IMPACTS

Another key element of this conference will be exploring the different and interlocking ways in which political policing and surveillance has adversely and disproportionately impacted on trade unions, women, and working class and diverse communities.

For example, several of the officers who deceived women into relationships and spied on anti-racist organisations are known to have infiltrated trade unions, and their intelligence reports were passed onto the companies involved in blacklisting.

The public inquiry into undercover policing will – hopefully – begin hearing evidence in June 2020, so our conference in November 2019 will offer an excellent opportunity for trade unionists to review its progress to date and become involved with campaigning on this issue.

This date also allows opportunities to highlight the anniversary of the apology received by the first seven women from the Metropolitan Police, and the conference is timed to link to the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (25th November).

By sharing and documenting these experiences and building on the recommendations from the ‘People’s Inquiry’ of July 2018, the conference will increase understanding of institutional sexism and racism in the police and call for action to support those still fighting for justice.

The conference will be jointly hosted by:

• Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance (COPS), an umbrella organisation campaigning on behalf of many of those spied upon by Britain’s political secret police.
• Police Spies Out of Lives (PSOOL) a campaign and support group for women affected by abusive relationships with undercover police officers.
• The Blacklist Support Group (BSG), a justice campaign and support network for anyone caught up in UK construction industry blacklisting scandal.

CONFERENCE DETAILS

WHEN: Saturday November 16th, 10:00 – 17:00

WHERE: University of Greenwich Stephen Lawrence Building, Old Naval College, 30 Park Row, London SE10 9LS

COST: The conference is free, and food will be provided.

REGISTRATION: If you wish to attend, please register here.

Spread the word with the Facebook event.

If your trade union branch or organisation wants to affiliate to COPS, you can find details and a form on our Affiliation page.

An explosive new report on spycops in Scotland proves the need for a proper inquiry into their activity. The Scottish government is refusing to address the issue, so victims are launching a legal case to force them to act.

Officers from Britain’s political secret police worked all over the UK and beyond. They undermined campaigns, invaded families and violated the fundamental human rights that police are sworn to uphold. Everyone affected deserves answers, but people in Scotland are being shut out.

HALF AN INQUIRY

In March 2014 the Home Secretary announced there would be a full-scale public inquiry into political undercover policing. It came as a shock when, a year later, the Inquiry’s terms of reference said it would be limited to events in England and Wales.

There were voices of outrage. The German government officially asked to be included. Irish parliamentarians challenged ministers to do the same. A judicial review of Northern Ireland’s exclusion is underway, backed by Amnesty International. But nowhere has the objection to exclusion been stronger than in Scotland.

Many of the known spycops were active in Scotland, over a period of decades. Every known active officer was at the 2005 protests against the G8 meeting in Gleneagles.

A number of officers initiated and furthered intimate relationships with women they were spying on whilst in Scotland. Some of them took the women on special trips to Scotland purely to cement and deepen the relationships.

By the Metropolitan Police’s own admission,

‘these relationships were a violation of the women’s human rights, an abuse of police power and caused significant trauma.’

All these visits to Scotland should have been sanctioned by the local police forces. Either Scottish police were complicit, or else they weren’t told, which would be a serious breach of protocol. Either way, it warrants investigation.

The matter has been twice debated in the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Justice Minister met with victims of spycops in Scotland. The Scottish government, supported by every party in the parliament, made repeated official requests to be included in the public inquiry. The Home Office refused.

POLICE ASKED TO EXONERATE THEMSELVES

The Scottish government’s response to the rebuff was as baffling as it was insulting to victims. They hired HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland (HMICS) – a body of career police officers – to conduct a review.

HMICS decided to put the task in the hands of Stephen Whitelock, who had worked in and alongside the posts that deployed undercover officers, including authorising Strathclyde’s deployments of the very Met officers his review examines. It was a corrupt self-investigation. Victims protested to no avail, and so it went ahead without actually speaking to anyone who was subjected to the abuses.

It got worse. When the Strategic Review of Undercover Policing in Scotland was published in February 2018, it went beyond the anticipated whitewash. Much of its content was given over to other kinds of undercover policing, information that was utterly irrelevant to the political infiltrations. It didn’t even mention officers having relationships with women they spied on, let alone what happened and who was responsible.

The Scottish government accepted this vacuous decoy of a review and said there was no need for a further inquiry.

THE TRUTH ABOUT SPYCOPS IN SCOTLAND

Earlier this year, the Scottish Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance published Political Undercover Policing in Scotland: The facts about spycops in Scotland & the questions that remain unanswered [PDF].

Written by academic Dr Eveline Lubbers, it focuses on the two main spycops units, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU).

There are extensive details on the activity of nine officers in Scotland, their relationships, and the groups they targeted. It also covers Scottish issues affected by political policing (as opposed to officers visiting the country as part of UK or international issues) including anti-nuclear, anti-war, climate and trade union campaigns.

Additionally, the SCOPS report profiles a number of senior Scottish officers seconded to one of the Met’s spycops units. One of them, Phil Gormley, went on to become Chief Constable of Scotland.

Dr Lubbers told Bella Caledonia:

‘Our research found that Scottish officers had crucial leading management roles in both the NPOIU and the overseeing body ACPO TAM, and were as such involved in setting the agenda for the secret undercover units. Our findings confirm that the NPOIU acted on a national level, and that Scotland was within its remit.’

The SCOPS report vaporises any credibility that the HMICS report may have had. SCOPS has delivered a copy of the report to every MSP, including Justice Minister Humza Yousaf. Mr Yousaf has yet to respond.

You can download the report for free, or order a paper copy to be delivered, at the bottome of the SCOPS page.

JUSTICE FOR ALL

The spycops committed crimes, some of them serious. They were agents provocateur, lied in court and set people up for wrongful convictions. They are known to have orchestrated dozens of miscarriages of justice, and the true figure may be in the thousands. They systematically sexually and psychologically abused women they spied on. They stole the identities of dead children from bereaved families.

Every instance of these abuses should be exposed wherever it happened. Every officer should be held accountable. Everyone targeted by these officers and tactics deserves the truth, and the state should give victims all the support and opportunity for redress that they need. They, and the public, must have answers.

‘Andrea‘, who had a long-term relationship with officer Carlo Soracchi, told The Scotsman:

‘As a victim of political policing in Scotland, I seek the truth as to why I was spied upon and why my life and the lives of my family were so cruelly disrupted. I want to know who was responsible for (Soracchi’s) activities in Scotland and which of his handlers secretly travelled with us.’

It cannot be right that people violated by unlawful and unethical political policing in England and Wales have a judge-led inquiry, whilst those in Scotland get nothing at all.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Tilly Gifford, an activist targeted by political secret police in Scotland, is bringing a legal case to compel the Scottish government into having a credible inquiry into spycops in Scotland.

She has launched a crowdfund appeal for the costs. Please share the link and, if you can afford it, contribute.

On 25^th March, the Undercover Policing Inquiry will hold its second hearing into how it is affected by the General Data Protection Regulations – GDPR.

It’s more than five years since the Inquiry was announced and we are still quibbling over legal points that require specialist barristers to be brought in. The evidence-hearing phase, arguably the most import section, has been put back yet again, probably to 2020.

From the beginning, those spied on have consistently demanded to see their Special Branch files. Only then would it be possible to understand how the undercovers infiltrated their personal lives, and in too many cases, people’s beds, or destroyed their ability to get jobs.

Sir John Mitting, the Chair of the Undercover Policing Inquiry, has replied, saying it would be too much work and would delay the inquiry further. It’s a slap in the face to all who have waited through years of wilful police delays, which Mitting has readily acquiesced to. Indeed, many find it grimly ironic that he is now talking about wasting resources given the amount squandered on police anonymity orders.

The Non-Police/State Core Participants (NPSCPs), the victims in all this, are treated as second class people. They object to police and ex-police being given access to their files while not knowing what personal content is in there, or how accurate it may be. They object to the Inquiry deciding what is and what is not important in those files and thus what the victims will get to see.

Challenging the Secrecy

From the few released Special Branch files it’s clear that political undercover police misinterpret events, they exaggerate, and they lie. People’s lives are ruined on the basis of biased or false information.

What the Inquiry proposes, is that the people whose files are at the centre of things will be the last to see that material, and even then only part of it – that is, only those bits the Inquiry decides is relevant to its work. The NPSCPs only get a say over how some of it is made public, and even then only after everyone else has had a go first. From the NPSCPs’ point of view, what Mitting is proposing will only increase the emotional stress many of them are already currently subject to.

So, last year, the NPSCPs raised the point that under the new GDPR regulations they did actually have rights over their data in the hands of the Inquiry, and such rights were over all such data, not just what the Inquiry decided was important. What matters is not what the Inquiry wishes but what are the rights protected in law.

The Inquiry clearly realised there was an issue as they quickly ordered a hearing. That took place at the end of January, and it was a bit of a shambles. Only the NPSCPs’ lawyers effectively grasped the issues, necessitating a second hearing to address the legal points that had been raised.

The rest of this article sets out the legal points which will be discussed (links to all submission documents are here). Hopefully, it will assist anyone seeking to follow the arguments on the day and give a quick reference to the various paragraphs and articles which will be cited.

Welcome to the GDPR

The GDPR has a number of articles which set out conditions for processing data, rights over that data and what exceptions to those rights and conditions which may exist. The Data Protection Act 2018 codes all this into UK law, updating previous acts. The regime is tougher and more comprehensive than previous legislation; it is also relatively new, which means interpretation of the finer points still have to be worked out in the courts. Some reliance can be placed on previous case law arising from the 1998 Data Protection Act, but it does not always apply.

There is also the issue of what sort of body the Undercover Policing Inquiry is. It is not a court but is in fact established by a piece of stand-alone legislation, the 2005 Inquiries Act. It may seem like semantics, which for the most part such discussions are, but in this case it is an important question.

So, the GDPR Articles of most relevance for the hearing of 25^th March are:

• 13: Information to be provided where personal data are collected from the data subject.
• 14: Information to be provided where personal data have not been obtained from the data subject.
• 15: Right of access by the data subject.

Several others which might play a role are Articles 16 (the right to correct), 17 (the right to be forgotten) and 18 (the right to restrict processing). These are not likely to be a focus of attention as it is accepted by core participants that to get to the truth, the Inquiry and those involved need to have access to the information gathered by the police as it was, in order to understand the abuses that went on.

A particular complication is how to share documents where more than one person is named. In some cases – such as a small, tight group where everyone knew everyone else – this is not likely to be that much an issue. However, quite a few documents name multiple people, not all of whom will know each other. In the jargon, this is called ‘third party rights’, and can be used to restrict material, for example where giving you your data may cause a third party’s data to be revealed. In this case, you both lose out.

This becomes more focused when looking at what is called ‘special category’ data. This is material considered sensitive and of a highly personal nature – family life, addresses, sexuality and so on. Even political opinions are caught here. It is a balancing exercise, but NPSCPs are aware such material is in police documents, and the prospect of further sharing of them without a chance to check over it is compounding their violation and pain. For this reason, the Inquiry is becoming part of the problem.

Exemptions from Disclosure

The files, whether personal files, intelligence reports, or others, all fall under Article 14 as the Inquiry is processing data it got from the police. Under normal conditions the Inquiry would be required to give the data subjects notice and what data it holds before it can process it, such as passing it on to retired police officers. However, there are exceptions, two of which the Inquiry seems keen to rely on.

Clause 5(b) of Article 14, ‘the paragraph 5 exemption’, says that the data controller (in this Inquiry, Mitting) is exempt from his obligations if ‘the provision of such information proves impossible or would involve a disproportionate effort’. However, it is still required to protect the data rights of the individuals.

The second is known as ‘paragraph 7(2)’, and comes from the Data Protection Act 2018. The Act states the data controller can claim an exemption from complying with the data rights where complying would ‘prejudice the proper discharge’ of the function the data is being processed for. Provided that function is ‘designed to protect members of the public against dishonesty, malpractice or other seriously improper conduct’ and is ‘of a public nature, and is exercised in the public interest’.

The extent to which the Inquiry can rely on these two exemptions are central points for the Inquiry’s hearing on March 25^th.

Both the Inquiry and, unsurprisingly, the police say they can rely on them, and furthermore they are ‘blanket exemptions’ which cover all cases. So if and when the Inquiry decides they are available to it to use, then it’s effectively game over. The Information Commissioner’s submissions say that the Inquiry can rely on them, but they are not blanket exemptions.

Victims Claim Their Rights

The NPSCPs say it is far more nuanced than that, and even where the exemptions apply, it is only on a case-by-case basis, and does not excuse the Inquiry from all its rights. There are measures it can and should be taking which will alert people to the fact that they may be named in documents – for example through their presence at a certain meeting, or role in a group.

The NPSCPs are also emphatic that they should be seeing their information much earlier on in the process so that they can make representation over sensitive material that might be in the files (and finally get to see what has been said about them).

The Inquiry is arguing that NPSCPs should only see their files only after all the other redactions have been made in terms of national security, protection of police tactics and so on, and that early disclosure to the NPSCPs will delay getting statements back from the undercovers and their managers. This is where it is supposedly disproportionate and would cause delays.

NPSCPs say this is not good enough; it is the Inquiry’s fault for letting the police cause delays for the last three years and now this is being thrown back in in the victim’s faces. It is granting privileges to the police that it doesn’t give to those who were inappropriately spied upon, and implies the latter can be treated with less concern for their rights.

The NPSCPs also do not accept that the work that will have to be done in providing disclosure to them first is disproportionate. Looking at the greater volume of material handled by other public inquiries which also require extensive redactions, it is clear the Inquiry is overstating the impact. Nor does the Undercover Policing Inquiry make the effort to actually justify its claims. The Inquiry simply relies on broad statements with very little supporting material.

The NPSCPs want the Inquiry to succeed, so they accept compromises have to be made; but they want to be respected also. To this end they have accepted a curtailment of their rights and put forward pragmatic proposals that would have some impact on the Inquiry, but bring them into it in a way that will help the Inquiry in the long run. The core of what they propose is a re-arrangement of the order of things, not anything new.

The Judicial Exemption

There is a second route where the Inquiry can argue it is given an exemption from complying with its obligations under the GDPR. If it can successfully be argued that the Chair is not acting in a “judicial capacity” in ’judicial proceedings” then the Inquiry can say it is exempt. Simple, eh?

Well, this is where the lawyers earn their money and it all goes down the technical hill from there. It’s not that straightforward as “judicial proceedings” is not explicitly defined and the meaning of the term itself relies on a lot of case law rather than legal statute. Nor does the Inquiries Act make it clear what the case is.

So, while on the surface the Chair does appear to be acting in a judicial capacity, there are various problems. For instance, an Inquiry is not necessarily judge-led, and unlike other tribunals, it only makes recommendations and deliberately doesn’t have the power to consider liabilities. The key point is that while the Chair will report to the Home Secretary (and may make referrals to other bodies), he does not have the power to make binding decisions and has no powers of enforcement.

Any Rulings are made under the Inquiries Act and are not necessarily court derived, even though they can be judicially reviewed. But then, many decisions not just court ones can be judicially reviewed. And so on.

The good news is that the Information Commissioner agrees with the NPSCPs on this and they have put that in their submissions (see below).

The Submissions to the Inquiry

With the exception of one or two, most of the police / state submissions for the new hearing continue the bare-bones approach that lead to the January debacle. Despite the many thousands of pounds being spent on this, it is clear that barristers are prepared to rely on broad-stroke assertions that make little effort to unpick the arguments. Naturally such an approach suits the police who want to ensure as little as possible reaches light of day.

All brush any sense of nuance under the carpet; their willingness to trust it all to Mitting is indicative of how on side their they clearly consider him to be. Thus there is no attempt to actually consider the non-blanket approach, to reason through the wider obligations presented by the GDPR, which the law requires.

Even where there are exemptions allowed, data rights do not vanish like that; they still exist and so have to be properly considered. That means paying attention to the nuance to develop a working framework that meets everyone’s needs, not just the side of the abusers.

And let us remember, it was the Metropolitan Police who admitted that its officers were engaged in human rights abuses.

Victimising the Victims

The NPSCPs accept the situation is far from ideal but are willing to work with the Inquiry to find a way forward. In not asserting their rights entirely, there needs to be a quid pro quo. Unfortunately, the Inquiry is more determined than ever to keep the victims at arm’s length from the process, treating them as an irritant with little to contribute.

The NPSCPs argument is that it should be the opposite, that the Inquiry is causing itself these problems by this attitude. If instead, it sought to work properly with NPSCPs it could have avoided reaching this point in the first place.

As once core participant told us:

“We have practical and pragmatic solutions that would prevent further pain and contribute to the process, while recognising our legal rights. In sticking to the hypocritical mantra that it would only delay the process, that the police have absolute right to see everything but we only get scraps, Mitting places himself firmly on the side of the police. His farce is our pain”.

If you can, please support the crowdjustice fundraiser for women targeted by spycops to take their cases to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal and the UN.

Kate Wilson outside the Royal Courts of Justice, 3 October 2018

Wednesday 3 October was one of the most extraordinary days in the eight gruelling years of convoluted legal cases by spycops victims.

Kate Wilson, deceived into a long-term relationship by undercover police officer Mark Kennedy, finally secured proof that managers sanctioned it, and saw the court order police to substantively respond to her claim at long last.

As a group accustomed to police stonewalling ahead of a day in court, biased judges in the courtroom, and empty hands as we leave the building, it was a startling relief.

The public inquiry, which is supposed to be independent investigation into acknowledged police wrongdoing, has lost the faith of victims because it protects officers who committed perjury, sexually abused women and undermined democratic organisations.

And yet last week’s hearing at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal – special secret courts the adjudicate on matters of state surveillance – gave the Met short shrift and ordered them to produce witness statements responding to the facts of the case so that the Tribunal can establish what happened and who knew.

The myth of rogue police officers

The Met’s extensive self-investigation into spycops, Operation Herne, was unequivocal. In 2014 they issued a report telling us:

‘There are and never have been any circumstances where it would be appropriate for such covertly deployed officers to engage in intimate sexual relationships with those they are employed to infiltrate and target.

‘Such an activity can only be seen as an abject failure of the deployment, a gross abuse of their role and their position as a police officer and an individual and organisational failing.’

We now know this is not true.

Kate Wilson was given a 200 page sample of the 10,000 pages of documents containing her name that the Met admit to holding. They show Mark Kennedy’s managers were well aware of the extent of his relationship with her, right down to details of him cleaning her mum’s windows. They authorised payments – from the public purse – for him to buy her gifts.

It’s the latest U-turn in a long trail of police dodging disclosure and accountability. Wilson was one of eight women who brought a legal claim in 2011.

The Met initially suggested the women should instead sue the individual spycops in the relationships. They were rogue officers, the women were told.

‘It is absolutely not authorised… It is never acceptable under any circumstances… for them to engage in sex with any subject they come into contact with’
– Chief Constable Jon Murphy, spokesperson for the Association of Chief Police Officers which ran Mark Kennedy’s National Public Order Intelligence Unit.

But the patterns of the relationships with so many women over several decades were so similar it was patently clear that this was strategy and training. There is nothing Mark Kennedy did as a police officer that wasn’t done by dozens before him. Far from being rogue, he was textbook.

Unauthorised authorisations

The women noted the police’s contention that relationships weren’t authorised, and that it meant the case would be heard in open court, rather than the secretive Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) that deals with authorised state surveillance.

The police baulked at this and, less than a year after telling the court the relationships were unauthorised, the same Met lawyers were back in the same courtroom saying of course the relationships were authorised, and therefore the case should go to the secretive IPT where complainants are barred from court and don’t see the evidence against them.

The police lawyers pointed out that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 authorises ‘personal and other relationships’.

The word ‘other’ might imply non-personal, such as business relationships, but the dictionary definition encompasses literally all kinds of relationship. Because of this, the Met said that any relationship – even years spent as a co-habiting lifepartner integrated into a family – can be regarded as included and would therefore be authorised and legal.

This argument is why Kate Wilson has ended up at the IPT and not in a normal court.

What is the Investigatory Powers Tribunal?

The IPT was set up under the Regulatory of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA). The government realised that state surveillance could breach human rights, but didn’t want complaints dealt with in open court for reasons of security.

The IPT is a bizarre institution. Most of its hearings are held in secret. At these, the citizen complaining isn’t allowed to attend. Neither are their lawyers. They just get to effectively shove their papers under the door.

The state spies, however, are in court. The complainant doesn’t get to see what’s in the MI5/police papers, so they can make anything up about the complainant, or omit anything that is unhelpful to the security services’ case. The judges look at both sets of papers, talk to the spies, then make a judgment.

They only announce who has won. They do not explain their reasoning, nor even confirm that any spying ever took place. The complainant cannot appeal against the judgment.

We don’t know how many cases they hear, but looking at the annual reports of the
Interception of Communications Commissioner, between 2000 and 2011 there were at least 1,300. Of these, just 10 complaints – less than 1% – were upheld.

They have held Kate Wilson’s preliminary hearings in public, which bodes well for access to hearings in the rest of her case.

Police obstructing justice

The police, true to form, have tried to get out of disclosing documents with any argument that comes to hand. At the last hearing, they said that there’s no need to give Kate the 10,000 documents they have on her as they have already admitted that her human rights were breached.

They’ve previously used compensation to fob off similarly deceived women who would have preferred ‘less money and more truth‘. By the same token, this case is not about stopping at abstract admissions. It is about knowing the facts of what happened, how extensive the surveillance was, why it was authorised, who knew, and then holding those responsible accountable for their actions.

It’s a safe bet the other women abused by spycops were monitored and documented to the same degree. They too deserve real answers – all the women affected should be given their full, unredacted files so they can judge for themselves what went on rather than trusting the police who abused them to make redactions.

If had been found to be, say, a secret medical unit that had been abusing citizens for decades, it’s unthinkable that the doctors involved would be protected from scrutiny and prosecution. The exceptionalism expected by police – and too often granted to them – is utterly extraordinary.

An organisation interested in justice would want those who abuse power rooted out. Instead, the police commit a second injustice against the victims as they close ranks around miscreants, doing all they can to stymie efforts to get to the truth.

Kate Wilson’s case against the police

Wilson’s civil case with seven other women ended in 2015 with an unprecedented apology from the Met which plainly asserted:

‘sexual relationships between undercover police officers and members of the public should not happen. The forming of a sexual relationship by an undercover officer would never be authorised in advance nor indeed used as a tactic of a deployment.’

The new release of 200 pages from her files demolishes that. As Wilson wrote in The Guardian:

‘I was lied to by the police in a public apology that was supposed to be reparation for their deceit and abuse.

‘Now I really want answers. I want to know how high up the police hierarchy knowledge of the abuses went. I want access to the 10,000 documents they claim to hold on me, and to know why at least eight police officers were sent to deceive me and spy on every area of my life.

‘I want the court to examine the institutional sexism and political prejudices that informed the decisions they made, and to look at the legality of the operations and the inadequate laws that are supposed to protect our human rights.’

Wilson’s IPT case asserts that the police breached a number of her rights under the European Convention on Human Rights.

The police have already conceded that they violated Articles 3 and 8.

Article 3 – the right to freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment – is a fundamental right; there are no circumstances in which it is acceptable to breach it. Since 2002, the constable’s oath taken by every new officer includes swearing to ‘uphold fundamental human rights’.

Article 8 – the right to a private and family life – is qualified. It may be breached for some reasons, for example for national security. The police have said this threshold was not reached in Wilson’s case. They admit that her activities were not a threat to the public and did not warrant such intrusion, which undermines the ‘eco terrorist domestic extremists’ line the police have been pushing to the Undercover Policing inquiry and elsewhere.

Taken together, these are already huge admissions with major implications for the efforts of other spycops’ victims seeking the truth about what was done to them.

She also claims they violated Article 10 (freedom of expression), Article 11 (freedom of association), and Article 14 (freedom from discrimination). The police still haven’t answered these.

What next for Kate Wilson’s case?

At a hearing a year ago the police were told to disclose their documents. They have failed to do this (again, this has been a standard delaying tactic over the last eight years).

The police told the court it would be expensive and Met funds are finite; these words came from the mouth of the fifth new lawyer for the police in the past six years, as the police have dragged out Wilson’s claim since 2011, seemingly having no problem finding funds for devious vexatious attempts to strike out the case and avoid accountability.

‘It’s expensive to comply with the law so we won’t’ isn’t a convincing argument from anyone, least of all those who are supposed to enforce it. The fact that it’s a big job makes it more important, not less. They systematically abused citizens for decades. The public deserve answers.

The Met told the court that they still regard Kennedy’s actions – which they admit breach the Human Rights Act – as properly granted and fully lawful.

They also argued that the Undercover Policing Inquiry could do the job of investigation. Even if we ignore the fact that it has turned into a secret public inquiry, gullibly believing the proven liars who are its subject whilst treating victims with suspicion and disdain, it is optimistically predicting that the public will see its report in 2024, six years away and 14 since Wilson discovered the truth about Kennedy.

The court was having none of it. It gave the police three months to provide witness statements with supporting evidence and a fully pleaded defence of their case. Then it went further, requesting that all relevant authorisations and the intelligence that led to those authorisation requests in the first place be explained and provided to the Tribunal, in order to assess whether the operations were lawful at all.

What the court does after that is uncertain. We have no guarantee that we will see any of the material. But if we were finally on the road to truth and justice, this is what it would look like.

‘I was abused by an undercover police officer who was sent into my life, into my home, into my parents’ home, and into my bed, by the Metropolitan Police.’
– Kate Wilson

Kate Wilson, lifelong social and environmental activist, was deceived into a long-term, intimate relationship by an undercover police officer, Mark Kennedy.

She won a Civil Claim against the police and is now taking legal action under human rights legislation.

There will be an important hearing in the case on Wednesday 3rd October, with a support demonstration outside beforehand.

The relationship

‘I met Mark in 2003 at an open political meeting in Nottingham about mobilising against the G8. He was charming, and we seemed to share a lot of interests. Within about two weeks of that meeting we had started a romantic relationship.

‘He moved into a house with me and some friends, and we lived together for over a year. He visited my parents on many occasions, and he attended my grandmother’s ninetieth birthday. He was my partner in just about everything, for two years, and then we separated, but we remained close friends with him often visiting me right up until 2010.’

Kate Wilson and Mark Kennedy

In 2010, a friend rang Kate to tell her that Mark had been outed as an undercover officer. The effect this has had on her life has been shattering.

‘The impact on your life and relationships is devastating. The psychological damage is deep and long lasting, because of the intrusiveness and the psychological violence of the tactics they use.

‘It is not just the sexual relationships, but the intimacy, the emotional manipulation and the abuse of trust, which is completely inherent to any undercover policing operation. I think the impact of that could be seriously underestimated by anyone who has not been subjected to it.’

Since 2010, Kate has discovered the infiltration was even greater than first suspected . For a period of twelve years, colleagues, house-mates, lovers and casual acquaintances have all turned out to have been undercover police, and all because of her dedication to making environmental and social change.

These officers include confirmed undercover officers Jim Boyling (‘Jim Sutton’), ‘Jason Bishop‘, ‘Marco Jacobs‘, ‘Lynn Watson‘, ‘Rod Richardson‘, and Mark Kennedy (‘Mark Stone’) as well as two men who visited, claiming to be ‘friends of Mark Stone’, introducing themselves as ‘Vinny’ and ‘Ed’. Of course, there may be others whose identity is not yet known.

Background on Kate’s legal battle

In 2015, the police withdrew their their defence against Kate’s civil claims of deceit, assault/battery, misfeasance in public office and negligence, and in 2017 she became one of a growing number of women to receive an apology from the Metropolitan Police for relationships they had with undercover police.

Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt, the Metropolitan Police finally conceded that:

‘officers, acting undercover whilst seeking to infiltrate protest groups, entered into long-term intimate sexual relationships with women which were abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong” and that “these relationships were a violation of the women’s human rights, an abuse of police power and caused significant trauma.’

However, the police continue to lie, obfuscate and obstruct any attempt to gain access to reliable information about the extent of this abuse and the political motivations behind it, or of how far up the chain of command knowledge of these tactics went. Kate and other women are therefore still fighting for the truth, and Kate’s claim has gone into the Human Rights Courts.

Human Rights Claim

Kate’s human rights claim is being heard by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, a judicial body, which hears complaints about surveillance by public bodies.

She accuses the police of Human Rights violations that include inhumane and degrading treatment at the hands of Mark Kennedy and his supervisors; but which also include being a victim of sexist discrimination by police, and violations of her right to private life, and her political rights to freedom of association and expression, not only by Mark Kennedy, in his time as her partner, but also by at least seven other undercover officers, and by managers and commanding officers right up the chain, over a period of more than 12 years.

She is claiming that the police violated her Human Rights under Articles 3, 8, 10, 11 and 14 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

Ultimately, Kate is seeking the truth about what happened:

‘I want to see the files, I want them to fill in the gaps about all of those moments where I don’t know what was really happening in my life. I naively believed that the courts could force the police to give us information about that, because the truth is the most important reparation. Instead, what’s happened is that we’ve had the full might of the police legal department and huge amounts of public funds being dedicated to making sure we never get any any information at all.’

Kate’s claim deals with human rights violations that raise serious questions about the role of senior officers in sexual abuse.

‘I had a relationship with a man who didn’t exist, but that was supported by a back room team, managers, and superior officers who were making the decisions about that relationship. There were support teams following him around on our holidays, and people listening to our phone calls, and reading our emails. Perhaps they were taking photographs of us together, or even listening to us when I believed we were alone.

‘They knew every detail of my life. I still don’t even know who they were; and it is not just me. These units have been systematically abusing women in this way since 1968.’

And that amounts to institutional sexism, a fact the police are desperate to cover up.

Kate’s claim questions the legitimacy of such political policing in a democratic society, and the legality of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) that is used to authorise such operations.

The case is still in its preliminary stages. The police initially tried to get the case held in secret, but have since been forced to make significant public admissions in their written defence. They were ordered by the court to release secret documents, but in the most part have simply failed to do so.

They are now trying to get the case closed down, saying that if they admit to certain parts of the claim they should not need to release any more evidence. On 3rd October the Tribunal will hear arguments about whether it should give in to this request to limit the hearings.

This means the Tribunal would not examine the extent of senior officers’ involvement in the abuse; it would not assess the lawfulness of the involvement of at least seven other undercover police officers in Kate’s life; and it would ignore the issue of whether such intrusion violated the principle that human rights should be enjoyed by all, without discrimination on grounds of sex or political beliefs.

These are all extremely important issues, not only for Kate, but for society as a whole. The case comes at significant personal cost, and this gets worse the longer the Police try to obstruct it.

‘The police being unbelievably bullying in their response to our cases, and we have had to reveal huge amounts of deeply personal information to the courts and to the police and to the police solicitors. The whole process has been very damaging, constantly pouring salt in the wounds that were created when I found out that Mark in fact didn’t exist.’

Show your support for Kate by attending the hearing and/or the demonstration outside the hearing on Wednesday 3 October at 9.30am, and spread the word with the Facebook event.

This article was originally published by Police Spies Out of Lives.

Marc Wadsworth, spycops People’s Inquiry, 8 July 2018

On 8 July 2018, people targeted by Britain’s political secret police held a ‘people’s inquiry’ at Conway Hall in London.

Exasperated by the state public inquiry’s bias towards secrecy as it drags on for years without even formally starting, the victims of spycops held this theatrical event to envision what an effective inquiry would look like.

It was part of a weekend of activities celebrating 50 years of progressive political campaigns achievements despite being infiltrated by counter-democratic police.

Our Youtube Channel has three short videos from the People’s Inquiry session.

This first one has an overview of the People’s Inquiry event, showing the kind of first-hand testimony that was heard from a diversity of people whose lives were invaded in a wide variety of ways, and it also shows thirst for justice in those present.

One of the people giving testimony was veteran anti-racist campaigner Marc Wadsworth. In the 1980s he led the Labour Party’s black section, and in the 1990s he was leader of the Anti-Racist Alliance.

Asked by Stephen Lawrence’s family to help build their campaign for justice, Marc was targeted by officers from Britain’s political secret police. He is a core participant at the Undercover Policing Inquiry.

At the end of the afternoon the panel gave a list of recommendations for an effective inquiry, a list of demands to remedy what is absent from the increasingly pointless, expensive and secret state inquiry

Our 13 Recommendations following the Peoples Public Inquiry:

1. Full disclosure of all names – both cover and real – of officers from the disgraced political police units, accompanied by contemporaneous photographs

2. Release of the names of all groups suspected to have been spied upon

3. Release of all personal files on activists

4. Extension of the inquiry to all countries where the British spycops are known to have operated

5. The appointment of a diverse panel with experience relevatnt ot victims to assist the chair in making decisions and judgements

6. Inclusion of children and young people who had contact with spycops as Core Participants in the Inquiry

7. Urgent and immediate review of convictions where spycops had involvement in the cases & misled courts – 50 wrongful convictions have already been overturned and this is likely to be a fraction of the true total.

8. The Inquiry must extend its scope to understand political policing and its impact on democracy. This must include a thorough investigation into racist, sexist, anti-working class, anti-democratic behaviour on behalf of the spycops and those that instructed them to operate in this manner. Such political policing and political policing units must be abolished.

9. An urgent review into all undercover police activities to investigate whether the bad practice exposed by this inquiry has been extended to other areas of undercover operations

10. Make available the necessary resources of the judge to be able to do their job in the available time

11. Equalising of resources, the police are spending millions on stonewalling the inquiry, victims have almost nothing

12. Increase the severity of penalties for non-compliance with the inquiry

13. Investigation into collusion between police and corporate spies

Tilly Gifford

Today sees a vital court hearing in the battle for truth and justice for victims of political spycops in Scotland.

Our new sister organisation, Scottish Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance, explains the background:

After a series of “activists” were exposed as long-term undercover police spies, and the revelation that police undercover officers had been spying on political campaigners from 1968 to the present day, a Public Inquiry into undercover policing was ordered.

The UK government, however, chose to limit the Inquiry to England and Wales. Many of the same police spies now being investigated by the Inquiry also operated in Scotland. We know that they spied in Scotland, we know that they lied in Scotland, and we know some of them were with their unsuspecting activist partners in Scotland – something the Met concedes is a breach of fundamental human rights that police are sworn to uphold.

The Scottish government made repeated formal requests to the Home Office to extend the Inquiry to cover Scotland. Every party in the Scottish Parliament backed the call. They were repeatedly refused.

Rather than have their own inquiry, the Scottish government hired HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland – an organisation of career police officers – to do a report. It was the most brazen whitewash imaginable. It ignored all policing before 2000 and failed to even mention officers deceiving women into relationships.

Tilly Gifford, a social justice activist with the Plane Stupid climate campaign group, was targeted by spycops in Scotland in 2009. In 2016 Tilly took legal action to challenge the UK government over its failure to extend the Inquiry to include Scotland, and also to review why the Scottish Government failed to have its own independent public inquiry.

She was denied legal aid as the case supposedly had no merit. After considerable legal wrangling, and some crowdfunding, she got the decision overturned. The full hearing is happening today and tomorrow, the 19th and 20th of July.

Realising this crucial moment was coming, a month ago, Tilly and other activists, researchers and lawyers called a public meeting in Glasgow to form the Scottish Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance (“SCOPS”).

SCOPS, along with its UK-wide counterpart Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance, is an alliance of people spied on by Britain’s political secret police. SCOPS’ focus, however, is on political policing carried out by Scottish police forces and on political policing in Scotland. The first task for SCOPS is, of course, to support Tilly in her judicial review.

SCOPS believes that victims of political policing in Scotland deserve nothing less than a full, independent, Scottish public inquiry. We’ve looked in increasing horror at the undercover policing inquiry in England and Wales, and we are determined to learn from its mistakes.

It must be led by a panel of experts. One sheriff – or judge, in the case of the Inquiry down South – is not nearly representative enough. Time and again we’ve seen the Inquiry’s chair display his lack of awareness of modern life. Scotland can and must do better. Whatever the outcome of this week’s judicial review, SCOPS will continue to campaign for a proper independent public inquiry.

We hope you’ll join us on the 19th and 20th of July at the Court of Session in Edinburgh. But whether you’re able to join us or not – if you, or someone you know, has been affected by political policing in Scotland, or can share information on political policing by Scottish police forces, please do get in touch.

We believe political policing is likely to disproportionately affect Scotland, where trade union activism has always been strong. It’s notable that the construction industry blacklist – in which police help to illegally prevent political activists from working – has a disproportionate number of Scottish names. We strongly suspect recent campaigns in Scotland – from Faslane to the Independence Referendum – will have been targeted by spycops. Every piece of information that comes to light seems to prompt further revelations.

Our campaign is just beginning, and it won’t end until political policing in Scotland ends.

SCOPS on Twitter

SCOPS on Facebook

This weekend in London we’re celebrating 50 years of resistance. Since the Metropolitan Police formed their counter-democratic undercover Special Demonstration Squad in 1968, more than 1,000 groups have been spied upon. Despite this, those targeted have achieved great things.

On Saturday 7 July we will have a roll call of groups in Grosvenor Square, where 1968’s demonstration against the Vietnam War triggered the formation of the spycops unit.

On Sunday we will be at Conway Hall for a day of exhibitions, discussions and much more.

See our 50 Years of Resistance page for more.

Here’s the full programme of the weekend’s events (which you can also download download as a PDF):

Three people spied upon by Britain’s political secret police are bringing a crucial legal case in an attempt to steer the public inquiry away from its bias towards secrecy and protecting abusive police officers.

They have launched a crowdfund appeal to raise the funds.

PUBLIC INQUIRY FAILING VICTIMS

Announced in 2014, the Undercover Policing Inquiry has yet to formally begin. Since the original Chair, Lord Pitchford, stepped down for health reasons in June 2017, it has been under the stewardship of Sir John Mitting. There were concerns about his suitability at the time, especially his background in secret courts that almost invariably find in favour of state spies, but victims gave him the benefit of the doubt.

In September 2017, a group of 13 women deceived into relationships by undercover police officers wrote to the Home Secretary with concerns that Mitting and the Inquiry were not recognising the institutional sexism of the Met’s spycops.

Nearly 200 of the most significantly affected victims of spycops have been granted core participant status at the Inquiry. In October, the majority of them wrote to Mitting expressing their grave fears about the direction in which he was taking the Inquiry.

As one of them, Kim Bryan, explained at the time:

‘As Core Participants we are rapidly losing confidence in the Inquiry and in the abilities of John Mitting. He is rowing back on commitments made by the previous Chair, Christopher Pitchford, who stated the inquiry’s priority is to discover the truth and recognised the importance of hearing from both officers and their victims along with the need for this to be done in public as far as possible.’

None of it has made any difference. Mitting has been granting full anonymity to around 30% of spycops, even when the police’s own risk assessments say there is little danger in publishing the name, and when the officer’s objection rests on fear of embarrassment.

In his first public hearing in November 2017, Mitting said he would not comply with the Met’s dodging tactic of saying they ‘neither confirm nor deny’ any details about undercover deployments. Mitting unequivocally stated:

‘Neither Confirm Nor Deny has no part at all to play in Special Demonstration Squad deployments’

But by February 2018 he was granting full anonymity to officers without explanation, repeatedly telling victims they would ‘meet a brick wall of silence,’ and saying:

‘it is not a Neither Confirm Nor Deny approach. It is stronger than that. It is a flat refusal to say anything about the deployment in the open.’

This led to victims walking out of court and boycotting all subsequent hearings on anonymity for officers.

Sharon Grant – widow of Bernie Grant, one of ten Labour MPs known to have been spied on – accompanied Stephen Lawrence’s father Neville to hand deliver a letter to the Home Secretary demanding change.

It’s plain that Mitting is to gullible and biased to be at the helm of the Inquiry. For the process to function, he needs to be replaced, or at least sit alongside, a panel of people with life experience relevant to the victims.

Phillippa Kaufmann QC, lawyer for the victims, told Mitting of the urgent need for a panel of:

‘individuals who have a proper informed experiential understanding of discrimination both on grounds of race and sex. Two issues that lie absolutely at the heart of this Inquiry…

‘The core participants – the non-state, non-police core participants – do not want this important Inquiry, something that they so richly deserve to have conducted in an efficacious way, to be presided over by someone who is both naive and old-fashioned and does not understand the world that they or the police inhabit.’

Neville Lawrence is clear that the appointment of a panel of people from different backgrounds is make-or-break. If it the Inquiry doesn’t get that, he said:

‘I will withdraw from it. I will leave it alone because it’s a waste of my time. I’ve wasted two years already.’

THE LEGAL CHALLENGE

Three core participants at the Inquiry want to bring a legal challenge to the refusal to appoint a diverse panel. They need to raise £5,000 to get a hearing to apply. If the win that, they will need a further £50,000 to bring the full case.

The three are:

1) The family of Jean Charles de Menezes; a young, innocent Brazilian man, was gunned down at Stockwell tube station on 22 July 2005 by police officers in a botched surveillance operation after he was wrongly deemed to be one of the fugitives involved in failed bombing attempts the previous day.

Over the next decade, the family endured the stress of two IPCC complaint investigations, an inquest, a civil claim, a further complaint and two legal challenges in their quest for justice for their loved one. In 2014, they were devastated to learn that their justice campaign had been spied upon by undercover police. They demand to know why and will not be denied justice again.

2) ‘Jessica’ (a pseudonym) was an inexperienced, vulnerable 19 year old girl with a love of animals. Her first real sexual relationship was, she believed, with Andy Davey,a 24 year old, socially awkward, fellow animal rights activist who shared her values.

Last year she found out that he was Andy Coles, a 32 year old, married, undercover police officer, tasked by his senior officers to spy on her and her friends. Jessica would never have consented to sex or intimacy if she had known his real identity.. She feels violated and humiliated. She wants to know the truth about his deployment and his relationship with her, particularly whether her clear vulnerability made her easy prey.

3) John Burke-Monerville’s 19 year old son, Trevor, was held at Stoke Newington police station in 1987 during which time his family believe he was beaten and in consequence suffered brain damage. A Justice for Trevor campaign was mounted, supported by the Hackney Community Defence Association. Trevor and members of his family were thereafter harassed by the police. Tragically, Trevor and his brother were murdered in separate incidents years apart. No one was prosecuted for the murders because, the family believe, of failures in the police investigation. Mr Burke-Monerville has learned that the justice campaign meetings were subject to surveillance by the Special Demonstration Squad.

The loved ones of Jean Charles de Menezes and Trevor Monerville are just two of 18 such campaigns that the Met admit spying on. Resources that should have caught killers were spent preventing justice.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

The people launching the appeal have spelled out their aim to have an Inquiry that simply fulfils its remit:

‘Our fear is that if it continues in its current trajectory that the Undercover Policing Inquiry will be a whitewash. We have been forced to initiate a legal challenge to the Home Secretary’s decision to refuse to appoint a panel with the skill and diversity required.

‘Our aim is to restore public confidence in the Undercover Policing Inquiry and its ability to get to the truth. Join us by contributing now and sharing this page on social media.’

The Crowdfund page is here.

Please share the link and, if you can afford it, donate.