The Undercover Policing Inquiry was announced nearly four years ago and still has not begun. Around 200 significantly affected victims have been designated ‘core participants’. At the recent preliminary hearing, the state had 11 lawyers whilst the victims were only allowed one.

The Spy Cops Communications Group was established to help keep the core participants informed and to let the wider public know what is going on with the Inquiry.

Victims have to take time out of their lives and pay for their own costs to attend hearings and other vital meetings. This is adding to the imbalance of power, tilting the Inquiry to favour the police and other perpetrators who have access to effectively unlimited public funds.

The Spy Cops Communications Group had started a crowdfunder appeal to increase people’s access to justice in a practical way, through:

– Funding travel to attend meetings & hearings 

– Offering legal support

– Providing fortnightly updates

They are aiming to raise £15,000 through this Crowd Justice Campaign so the spied-upon campaigners, and the public, can get the truth they deserve.

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

Background 

The Home Office called the Inquiry in 2014 as result of pressure from people targeted by police spies, after campaigners exposed the level of police infiltration into political groups. The undercover operations invaded people’s lives, committing human rights abuses for decades. Systematic spying was aimed at controlling political dissent in the UK, undermining what should be a healthy democracy.

The police have admitted that they spied on more than 1,000 political groups including those campaigning for equality,  justice, community empowerment and the environment, those fighting against war, racism, sexism, homophobia, government policies, corporate power, and police brutality. 

The Inquiry offers a unique opportunity to hold the police and those responsible to account in the fight for transparency and justice. However, the process is obstructed by police intransigence and weighted down with legal jargon and processes. There is an urgent need to make it easier for people to get involved.

What we will do

£15,000 will enable us to:

• Fund travel and expenses to attend court hearings and meetings with lawyers
• Organise quarterly meetings to help core participants follow the Inquiry, and network with each other
• Maintain a secure online discussion forum to discuss interventions and submissions to the Inquiry
• Liaise with  lawyers to keep taps on what is happening, and understand legal process
• Have a legal observer present at the hearings at all times
• Share a fortnightly email of legal information 
• Provide media training and support people in engaging with the media. 
• Prepare people for appearing in court and giving witness statements

Kim Bryan, Tom Fowler, Chris Dutton, Terence Evans,  Emily Apple, Kirsty Wright, Paul Gravett, Morgana Reddy, Kirk, Jessica and Kevin Blowe.

Seven women deceived into long-term intimate relationships by undercover police officers have lodged a complaint with the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

All were targeted by officers from Britain’s political secret police units for relationships that were psychologically and sexually abusive, the most complete invasion of privacy it is possible for the state to enact.

In 2015 the Metropolitan Police apologised to the seven and agreed that the practice

caused significant trauma… it was a gross violation and also accept that it may well have reflected attitudes towards women that should have no part in the culture of the Metropolitan Police… some officers may have preyed on the women’s good nature and had manipulated their emotions to a gratuitous extent

The fact that they were abused in very similar ways by five different officers over a period of 25 years indicates that this was not rogue officers but was a conscious strategy on the part of the spycops units. Despite receiving the Met’s apology in 2015, the women still have not had any real answers or explanation of why they were targeted. 

This has been compounded by the government’s protection of the abusers. They have failed to prosecute or discipline any of the officers concerned or their managers, and refused to amend UK law to unambiguously make such relationships an offence. They have also failed to name other officers from the units who may have also abused women in this way.

The UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women was adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly.  A Committee of 23 independent experts on women’s rights from around the world monitors its implementation. 

In 2004, the UK ratified the Optional Protocol to CEDAW, which allows people who have been subjected to discrimination under the convention and exhausted all domestic remedies to make complaints (since ratification, only three complaints have been made to the CEDAW committee and all have been held to be inadmissible).

Helen Steel, one of the women bringing the case, explained their motivation.

‘Our central aim in bringing this case is to make sure that these abusive relationships are not allowed to happen again. The repeated use of women in this way by undercover policemen is a form of discrimination against women and a barrier to women’s rights to participate in protest activity.’

Another of the women, Lisa, emphasised that the claim is only asking the government to live up to the values it professes to hold.

‘In signing up to this Convention, the UK has committed itself to work to end discrimination against women. If the committee finds against the UK it will be a huge embarrassment and will shine a spotlight on the institutional sexism in the police and the government’s ongoing failure to outlaw these abusive practices.’

The institutional sexism of the Met is apparent in looking at who was targeted; most of the known officers were men, and all of the long-term intimate relationships were male officers abusing female citizens. 

Harriet Wistrich, solicitor for the women, explained:

‘CEDAW has a complaints procedure which is broad in reach, enabling the women to cite gender based violence, gender stereotyping and the impact on reproductive rights, as part of a pattern of institutionalised discrimination by the State in this case.’

The case has been launched to coincide with the 16 days of action called by the United Nations that commenced with International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25th November and culminates in Human Rights Day on 10th December. It comes a few days after the Met conceded that the relationships amounted to ‘torture, inhuman or degrading treatment’ of the women concerned.

You can read the details of the women’s complaint and background details in their press release.

Bob Lambert, then and now

A man who was born as part of an undercover officer’s deployment is suing the police.

The 32 year old man, known as TBS, was the planned child of ‘Bob Robinson’ and an animal rights activist known as Jacqui.

‘Robinson’ was in fact undercover police officer Bob Lambert of the Special Demonstration Squad. He knew at the time he would be abandoning his new family a couple of years later to return to his real identity, wife and children.

As with cases brought by women deceived into relationships, the Met have tried to have the man’s case thrown out entirely. The Met won’t even meet TBS, according to his legal representative Jules Carey. However, at the High Court on Monday, Mr Justice Nicol rejected the police’s demands.

TBS was born in September 1985, when Lambert was two years into his relationship with Jacqui and they were living together. She told the BBC in 2014

‘He watched me give birth remember and, to me, he was watching his first child being born. He was there throughout the labour. And that is something so intimate between a man and a woman. And I shared that with a ghost, with someone who vaporised.’

Lambert was an undercover officer in the Special Demonstration Squad from 1983-88, infiltrating animal rights groups. Whilst undercover he:

• stole the identity of a dead child
• was arrested & prosecuted under a false identity
• co-wrote the leaflet that led to the McLibel trial
• was part of a group that placed timed incendiary devices in shops

Our detailed overview of his career was given as a talk at the University of St Andrews when he was still a lecturer there in 2015, and there is also an extensive profile by the Undercover Research Group.

When Lambert was exposed in October 2011, he made an apology to another woman he had later deceived into a relationship, Belinda Harvey, but made no mention of Jacqui or his son. They only found out the truth when Jacqui stumbled across it in a newspaper in June 2012, as she detailed in harrowing testimony to parliament. She told the Guardian ‘it is like being raped by the state’.

TBS was 26 at the time and the revelation has caused him to suffer Adjustment Disorder with Depressed Mood since. He told the Guardian of his shock

‘It kind of messes with your identity and who you think you are.’

He continued, saying that finding out that the chance of a father figure

‘was denied to me because of the actions of the police is even more distressing because they are supposed to be upholders of the law… But they quite clearly are not… It is quite scary to me just how the police can dip in and out of people’s lives. They still seem to struggle with realising the impact of what they have done.’

TBS is not suing Lambert, but the Met for their failures of supervision. The Met have already reached settlements with a number of women deceived into relationships – Jacqui was the first of these – so the principle of their institutional responsibility for abusive officers is surely established.

The long list of TBS’s damning assertions about his father is startling, including:

• a knowing or reckless abuse of the power entrusted to him as a public officer, which he knew was likely to cause the Claimant psychiatric injury, or was recklessly indifferent to this consequence.
• he was not and/or could not lawfully have been authorised to commence a sexual relationship with Jacqui, to father a child with her, to fulfil a father’s role under his false identity and/or to present a false explanation for his abandonment of the Claimant or was reckless as to the same, and that doing so was in plain breach of his obligations as a police officer and such guidance that was or should have been given to him.
• The circumstances of the Claimant’s conception, early life and abandonment by BL carried with it an obvious risk that the Claimant would suffer psychiatric harm.

The police’s defence is, if anything, even more astonishing. They claim abandoning a three year old who doesn’t retain an clear memory of their parent cannot cause harm. That is to say, a child isn’t bonded enough with a parent by the age of three to be seriously distressed by that parent’s disappearance.

They then defend Lambert’s leaving as a positive action, saying if he had stayed with Jacqui the damaging deception would have gone on longer and ‘would have made matters worse’.

TBS’ placing the blame on the Met rests on the fact that Lambert’s managers knew about the relationship and were complicit, or if they didn’t then they were negligent.

In 2013 Lambert was asked by Channel 4 News if his managers knew about his relationships. He refused to answer, and then refused to explain why he was refusing to answer.

This might be because he is in a difficult position. Lambert was later promoted to running the Special Demonstration Squad, where he deployed officers such as Jim Boyling, Andy Coles and Mark Jenner who also deceived women into long-term intimate relationships. So, whether the blame comes down to the individual officers or their managers, Lambert is guilty.

Whatever Lambert’s managers knew of his various abuses, they didn’t mind. Abusing women and deceiving courts was textbook stuff for the spycops units and, rather than Lambert being reprimanded for his behaviour, whistleblower officer Peter Francis says Lambert’s colleagues felt

‘He did what is hands down regarded as the best tour of duty ever’

As well as going on to run the Special Demonstration Squad, overseeing the spying on Stephen Lawrence’s family, Lambert was later rewarded with an MBE ‘for services to policing’.

TBS is, as far as we know, in a unique position. But with the vast majority of officers from the political secret police units still completely unknown, there may be more people like him, abandoned children of mothers abused by spycops.

With the Met admitting that their sexual abuse of women constitutes ‘torture, inhuman or degrading treatment’, it is past time for them to end their obstruction of justice. They must stop their obstruction of justice for people like TBS. They must name names so the victims can get answers and the wider public can know the truth of what has been done in their name.

Kate Wilson and Mark Kennedy

The Metropolitan Police have admitted that undercover officers deceiving women into relationships breaches human rights.

Specifically, it breaches the right to freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, and also the right to a family and private life.

The shock revelation came this week in the latest legal hearing for social justice activist Kate Wilson, who was deceived into a two year relationship by undercover officer Mark Kennedy from 2003 to 2005.

THE LEGAL CASE

Kate is one of eight women, all deceived into intimate relationships by undercover officers, who sued the police in 2011. They alleged deceit, assault, misfeasance in public office and negligence.

They also claimed the relationships breached their human rights, including Article 3 (no one shall be subject to inhuman and degrading treatment) and Article 8 (respect for private and family life, including the right to form relationships without unjustified interference by the state).

Although the relationships were very similar, legal action on human rights could only be taken by the women affected after the Human Rights Act 1998 made the European Convention enforceable in English courts. This ruled out all the women except those who had relationships with Mark Kennedy.

As soon as the women brought their case, the Met began spending vast sums of public money on lawyers who tried every trick to avoid accountability. It’s a pattern familiar to victims of state wrongdoing – the double injustice of what is done, and then the gruelling years of denial, smears and chicanery that compound the damage.

The Met dragged the eight women’s case out for four years before issuing an abject apology in November 2015 (other identical cases still inch onward).

In the apology, the Met admitted

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

However, they did not specify which rights they had violated.

Kate fought on with her human rights claim. It has been sent to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, a secret court that deal with state surveillance issues and almost invariably supports the state spies’ side. Of the thousands of cases the IPT has heard – it doesn’t tell us precisely how many that is – only one is known to have found in favour of the citizen.

INHUMAN, INEXCUSABLE

This week, six years since her case began and more than two years since the Met admitted breaching human rights, Kate was back at a preliminary hearing for her case.

The Met admitted that Kennedy’s actions as a police officer were indeed a breach of articles 3 and 8. Though they denied or declined to admit some of the specific instances Kate cites, this is nonetheless hugely significant.

‘No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’
– Article 3

There are no excuses or exceptions to article 3. Nothing can ever make it justified under any circumstances.

‘Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

‘There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety, or the economic wellbeing of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others’.
– Article 8

Article 8 is conditional and that, if anything, makes the Met admission all the more important. They have just admitted that it wasn’t necessary for officers to do this in order to protect us from political activists.

This finally flattens the line peddled by senior police who told us in 2012 that Kennedy’s targets

‘were not individuals engaging in peaceful protest, or even people who were found to be guilty of lesser public order offences. They were individuals intent on perpetrating acts of a serious and violent nature against citizens going about their everyday lives’.

Chief Constable Jon Murphy flapped his arms and shrieked that Kennedy was keeping us safe from people who

‘are intent on causing harm, committing crime and on occasions disabling parts of the national critical infrastructure. That has the potential to deny utilities to hospitals, schools, businesses and your granny’.

It is now agreed that neither your health and morals, the wellbeing of the country nor your granny were under threat from Kate Wilson.

Moreover, if it is true that Kennedy’s relationships breached these rights, it is surely true of the officers who identically deceived other women. This can only increase pressure for the public inquiry to release the cover names of officers from the political secret police.

IT’S NOT JUST KATE WILSON

At last month’s hearing the Chair, Sir John Mitting, gave a clear statement on the women’s right to know the names and the truth.

‘I have listened to some of the accounts, posted on the Internet, of women who entered into intimate relationships with male undercover officers. They are eloquent and moving. Each of them is entitled to a true account of how and why they came to be induced to conduct an intimate  relationship with a man deployed for police purposes with an identity and background which was not his own…

‘When there is material which gives rise to a suspicion that such an intimate relationship may have been formed by an undercover officer in a cover name, there is a compelling practical reason to require the cover name to be published: to reveal to the woman or women concerned that they may have had an intimate relationship with a man in an identity not his own’.

Shortly afterwards, the lawyer for the victims of spying, Phillippa Kaufmann QC, dropped a bombshell. Mitting was dealing with one of the earliest officers – a man known as Rick Gibson who infiltrated left wing and anti-war campaigns – and was dismissing the idea that anything from so long ago could be relevant. Kaufmann stunned the court by revealing that Gibson had at least two relationships with women he spied on.

The information came to light the way it did for the others, indeed the only way it can happen at all. The officer’s cover name was published, people who were spied on were found, they realised the truth and came forward to tell us what happened.

Most known spycops deceived women into relationships. Most of them did it with multiple women. For decades, it was done strategically. This is institutional sexism.

There must be dozens, probably hundreds, more women out there just as abused and just as deserving of the truth as Kate Wilson.

RELEASE THE NAMES

The officers cannot be trusted to account for themselves. They are trained liars. It is their wrongdoing that is under investigation. To this day, Mark Kennedy only admits to two relationships with women he spied on even though the Met have already reached settlements with four.

Mitting’s remit is to discover the truth. He says he holds the abuse of women as a cherished element of this issue, deserving of the full facts. The only way he can deliver on that is to publish the cover names.

As the Undercover Research Group showed with their bombshell at the Inquiry hearing, there is often more to it than the police admit, and it is we activists who are better, faster, more methodical, more ethical and more trustworthy than the police.

The best way to get the truth is to release the cover names, let us have time to do the research and find the victims, then present our findings. The Inquiry cannot begin to do its job until it knows what happened. It cannot know what happened until the victims come forward. Releasing the cover names is a minimum prerequisite for the Inquiry to have a hope of fulfilling its purpose.

This week’s admission that a large proportion of officers breached fundamental human rights emphasises the grave seriousness of the issue. Mitting’s desire to grant officers anonymity out of consideration for their possible hurt feelings is indefensible. Those who did nothing wrong need fear no acrimony, whilst those who subjected citizens to torture, inhuman or degrading treatment must not be allowed to hide for fear of being held accountable.

We have waited long enough. It is time to release the names and let the truth be told.

Kate Wilson’s full hearing is expected to take place in spring 2018.

Dónal O’Driscoll from the Undercover Research Group explains the Undercover Policing Inquiry preliminary hearing on 20-22 November 2017 about the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.

Though attention around this week’s hearing in the Undercover Policing Inquiry is dominated by attempts to keep the details of undercover officers buried, the first day will actually be focused on the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.

The two issues are closely connected. The new chair, John Mitting, has set out his approach and this is being contested by the victims’ group known as Non-Police/State Core Participants (NPSCPs).

POLICE SEEKING ANONYMITY

As part of their evidence to support former undercover officers’ ‘restriction orders – requests to keep their real and cover identities anonymous – the police are privately presenting the convictions of activists in the groups that were spied on. They’re doing this even though some of these convictions are considered spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. The police’s argument is that it shows that officers will be in physical danger if they are named.

However, it is being argued that under Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (ROA), there is an expectation that offences that are spent should not be used unless strictly necessary and that there are appropriate safeguards. Furthermore, it is wrong to deny those whose convictions are spent from having input on how they are being used.

This and other issues have caused a legal quagmire, and throughout this year they have produced a slew of some of the most technical legal documents I’ve ever had the misfortune to read – known as ‘eye bleeders’, as that is the effect you are left with when finished reading them.

However, having simmered away, the arguments have reduced down to a proposal by the Inquiry Chair that he will:

(i) Admit spent convictions as evidence for restriction orders if justice cannot otherwise be done.
(ii) Will not at that stage afford the people who have the convictions any ability to know or make representations.
(iii) Ask the Justice Secretary to create an exemption in the ROA 1974, whereby it is possible to designate any inquiry held under the Inquiries Act 2005 (as this one is) as exempt from the ROA – and designate the Undercover Policing Inquiry as so exempt.

The language of (i) reflects that set out in the 1974 Act, and is not particularly contentious. Indeed, the NPSCPs, as represented by Philippa Kaufmann QC & Ruth Brander, argue this is the correct approach.

Rather, it is (ii) and (iii) which they contend are problematic, and it is for this reason they have asked for an oral hearing on the matter.

UNSPENDING CONVICTIONS

Before we get to the NPSCPs full argument, it is worth quickly summarising what Mitting and the Metropolitan Police have said.

Mitting has noted that a prominent element in his decision not to allow those with spent convictions to know or make representations at the restriction order stage is the time that this would take and the costs that would be incurred. He says he wants the person with the spent convictions to have a chance to respond, but only during the substantive, evidential phase of the Inquiry if it’s necessary. As far as he is concerned, this is the safeguard open to them, as any restriction order can be revisited later in proceedings.

‘What fairness requires is the person affected [i.e. whose spent conviction is being used] should, if practicable, have the opportunity to make representation and to give evidence about the spent conviction and circumstances ancillary to it in the substantive phase of the Inquiry.’
– (Mitting, Minded-To note of 2nd August 2017, para 9)

However, there is a logical gap here. How is an individual to learn their spent conviction has been used secretly to justify hiding someone’s identity? If you don’t know it’s been used, you can’t make a representation around it. All power remains in the Chair’s hand to recognise the moment and inform the affected person.

Or worse, in the situation where a restriction order prevents the release of a cover name, the individual may never learn that they were spied on in the first place and therefore will be denied the chance to make any representations. In effect, the Chair will have made a finding of fact.

Mitting has already held a number of secret closed hearings in which he considered spent convictions. In one note he tells us he has already been considering spent convictions but such that he has ‘no regard for spent convictions’ for those whose convictions are all unspent.

However, where someone has unspent convictions he has been considering all their convictions, spent and unspent equally. He justifies this on the grounds they appear to evidence a pattern of conduct relevant to the issue. He has already done this in a small number of cases on the grounds of being fair to the undercover officers. Thus, he summarises, it is a small but necessary part of the assessment, though minimal in the overall process.

WHAT THE POLICE WANT

The Metropolitan Police’s position is that once someone is told their spent convictions are being used, the cat is out of the bag, the person will be able to guess which of their comrades was an undercover police officer, and it will totally undermine any restriction order. Fairness to the undercover officers is the more important aspect in their assessment.

They make no mention of the fact that undercover police officers are known to have orchestrated wrongful convictions of dozens of activists and the true total is likely to be in the hundreds, possibly the thousands. These miscarriages of justice will cause a second injustice if they are used by police to deny their victims the truth about what was done. Essentially, a police officer can have falsely labelled an activist as a violent villain and now use that label to avoid accountability.

The police noted that whether a conviction is unsafe or not, it does not necessarily change the end assessment of risk, but that the Inquiry is able to loosen the restriction order at a later date. As such, they are content they can rely on the Chair to conduct things fairly.

The police who have already spent years delaying the Inquiry say they are also concerned the timetable will be jeopardised by the extra work notifying people whose convictions are being used, and are mindful of Mitting’s need to avoid unnecessary cost.

WHAT THE VICTIMS SAY

The Non Police/State Core Participants take issue with this, particularly (ii) and (iii) above. These arguments can be summarised as:

For part (ii);
(a) It undermines the Inquiry’s ability to get to the truth and allay public concern.
(b) They are contrary to Article 8 (rights to privacy) of the European Convention on Human Rights with regards to spent convictions.
(c) They are unfair with respect to duties under the Inquiries Act 2005 and the Data Protection Act.
(d) The Inquiry is at risk of applying the wrong test in law for admission of evidence of spent convictions.

For part (iii);
This proposal is an unnecessary and disproportionate interference with Article 8 rights of those who would otherwise enjoy protections under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.

The NPSCPs legal counsel have developed these arguments further in a substantial response to the Chair.

Thus, for objection (a), they note that it compromises core participants’ ability to participate in the inquiry, not least as they have been granted core participant status on the grounds that they themselves may be subject of criticism and should have the right to respond. It fails to allow for conflicts in evidence to be resolved. It likewise fails to allay public concern on how secrecy around undercover policing led to abuses in the first place.

Significantly, it precludes evidence from emerging that may actually undermine the basis for seeking anonymity for the undercover officer. This is particularly iniquitous as one of the key purposes of the Inquiry is to look at where such injustices may have arisen. This needs open hearings where it can be learned, and must not simply rely on assuming police claims that it didn’t happen are automatically true.

In fact, in adopting this approach, the Inquiry is assuming the truth of what the police are saying in the first instance, and thus preventing the exposure of miscarriages of justice. In doing this, the Inquiry undermines its own purpose.

Objection (b) is argued on the grounds that the courts have maintained that it is unlawful for spent convictions to be used in this way, precisely because it is an unwarranted interference with Article 8 rights. The risk is that convictions will be used disproportionately, especially where there is a question over their lawfulness.

As such, the NPSCPs note that a fundamental rule of fairness is that a person who may be adversely affected by a decision should have an opportunity to make a representation, and this unfairness cannot be rectified after a decision is made, because the Inquiry process may effectively end up excluding them from doing so.

The exception to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act being sought is a blanket one, an argument based on expediency and efficiency. However, the Inquiry is ignoring other options for affected participants to feed in, which undermines the restriction order process in that sense as well. And a consequence, it again prevents a person from learning of important information affecting their private life they are otherwise entitled to under Article 8.

Not least, as objection (c) notes, the person whose spent conviction is being used in this way needs to be able to challenge the process where the information being being used. A blanket approach ignores wrongly the case-by-case specific approach which the Act envisaged.

LET JUSTICE BE DONE

The remaining points require a bit more legal technicality. Under section 7(3) of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, there is an exception for using spent convictions where it is necessary for justice to be done. The NPSCPs accept this is the correct test and that the case law around it applies. This case law requires that exceptions are on a case by case basis with specific evidence submitted; generalities are not permitted as that would undermine the purpose of the Act.

However, under the Inquires Act 2005, section 19(3) gives powers to the Inquiry to take into account those matters necessary for fulfilling its Terms of Reference. Counsel to the Inquiry has argued this amounts to the same thing (‘co-extensive’), but the NPSCPs disagree. They point out that the Inquiries Act is only concerned with the Inquiry’s work, where as the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act has wider public interest matters that need to be taken into account.

Justice for the individual concerned needs to be placed in the wider context of the Inquiry, regardless of whether it is admitted in private or not. Section 7(3) of the Act gives affords the greater protection of the individual as rehabilitated after a period determined by Parliament. Thus, the Inquiry is in danger of going behind the will of Parliament in this.

This is the core of objection (d), but also the objection to (iii), the proposal to get a statutory exemption for any Inquiry designated as being exempt from the protections of the Act. In this, the NPSCPs are seeking to prevent a wider undermining of the intentions of the Act.

They argue that Mitting’s proposal in (iii) is too loose in that it will lose individual considerations around relevance and necessity, and that the Inquiry does not sufficiently acknowledge the difference with the test provided under the Act’s Section 7(3). It is also pointed out that it does not matter if there is no public disclosure of the spent convictions, as it is the use of them that engages Article 8 rights.

The proposed amendment to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act is to be done simply to remove administrative burden, being done for expediency rather than explore alternative approaches, and so loses the safeguards implicit in S7(3). For this reason the Inquiry should rely on S7(3) only, as it effectively sets out in part (i) of the Chair’s proposed approach.

I’m aware that I have brushed over a lot of issues and technicalities in this summary, but for a fuller understanding of where matters stand at the time of the 20 November hearing, it is worth reading the latest NPSCP and Metropolitan Police submissions and the Minded-To note of Mitting on the Undercover Policing Inquiry website.

Update (11 December 2017): The arguments were heard at the 20 November 2017 hearing and he made his ruling on 29 November where he went pretty much with the contents of his previous minded-to.

Mitting reiterated that his taking into account of spent convictions when considering restriction orders was limited, that they formed a small but necessary part of the process. He rejected non-police/state core participants proposal that they should be able to make submissions where convictions were being relied upon, as it would amount to a mini-trial over a finding of fact.

He believes that the correct time to examine whether those convictions where sound in the first place and didn’t not amount to a miscarriage of justice due to the role of a spycop would be during the substantive, evidence phase of the Inquiry. Thus brushing over the point, that were such a conviction is being used to justify restriction of an officers cover name it may prevent such evidence ever coming out in the first place.

While not a significant issue for undercovers dating up to the 1980s, we strongly suspect the issue of spent convictions with potential associated miscarriages of justice is going to be a bigger issue for later deployments, especially in the 1990s and 2000s.

Andy Coles then and now

Whilst Andy Coles was undercover in the 1990s, he groomed Jessica into a sexual relationship.

As soon as the former Special Demonstration Squad officer was exposed in May 2017, he resigned as Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner for Cambridgeshire.

However, he is hanging on to other positions of civic trust, notably as a member of Peterborough City Council. There is now a dedicated Sack Andy Coles campaign in the city.

On 16 September 2017, Jessica travelled to Peterborough to give her first public talk about her experience, and the video is now on our Youtube channel.

Transcript of Jessica’s Speech

I first met Andy when I was 19. I had recently moved to East London and I was involved with a few local animal rights groups and environmental groups. It was within these groups that I first met him.

I can’t remember the initial meeting, but I remember seeing him at various demonstrations and I knew him to say ‘hi’ to. The next thing I remember is he started turning up at our house, uninvited, but you’re polite, you invite people in, and so he was a friend, I thought.

We also know now, after Donal has spoken to lots of other women, that’s actually what he would do. He would turn up around women’s houses, usually in the evenings, and would be quite difficult to get rid of.

One of the other women – I’ve spoken to her, she said it’s fine to read out a statement she actually made – this is Joy’s own words.

‘He made a pass at me with no preamble. As I recall he did not say anything but just lunged at me and tried to kiss me. I pushed him off and he persisted for a while, several minutes, following me around the living room while I avoided contact and repeatedly asked him to stop. I then had to ask him to leave which he eventually agreed to do. I cannot remember exactly what I said, I was upset and angry. I felt a bit stupid for allowing him into the flat in the first place and a bit soiled to be honest.’
– ‘Joy’

Now, Joy was 26 at this time. This is exactly what he did to me, he never actually said anything to me, he just lunged at me and kissed me. I didn’t know what his intentions were, I’d certainly never actually felt that towards him. The only difference between myself and Joy is that I didn’t react as bravely as she did.

I remember feeling shocked, embarrassed, awkward and totally out of my depth. I remember it so clearly because it was so uncomfortable, it has never really felt right. But I put that down to us both being quite young at the time, and it was actually my first proper relationship. Now we know that in actual fact he wasn’t 24 like he told me, but he was actually 32 and also he was married. He had been married for four years at this point.

This has now changed from something that was very awkward and uncomfortable at the time to something that is now very sordid, dirty and manipulative. A much older man leading me into a sexual relationship as a teenager that I wasn’t ready for or confident enough to get out of. I have never said I was underage, I was 19 at the time. But I was no different from lots of people, in that I’d had quite a traumatic childhood, I’d been bullied at school, and those things had left a bit of a mark on me. I had low self-esteem and no confidence, I’d suffered panic attacks and been treated for anxiety. To someone much older, like him, and also a trained police officer I would have been an easy target for being vulnerable.

It’s worth saying at this point that not every undercover officer had a sexual relationship whilst they were deployed. Andy did not have to have a pursue a sexual relationship with me to maintain his cover, he chose to. He absolutely knew that I would have never consented to have sex with a police officer. As far as I’m concerned he did it knowing it would have been against my will.

His bosses also knew it would have been against my informed consent, and yet they allowed it to happen. Where were the police? The people who were supposed to protect me? They were the ones that paid him to do it. They were the ones who arranged the fake birth certificates, the fake driving licences, fake passports, provided him a fake job, his vehicle and his home. They needed to make him convincing and, to me, they did. I never stood a chance, I was a stupid naive teenager now left with the shame of what has happened.

Andy won’t face any charges over what he chose to do to me. I wish there was something I could do about that, but there isn’t. I wasn’t able to stand up for myself as a teenager, so I need to do that now. I need to try and take back some control. All I am able to do now is to sue his employers, the Metropolitan Police. The four ‘torts’, as they call them, for suing them are; assault, deception, negligence (on behalf of his bosses for allowing it to happen) and misfeasance (or wrongdoing) in public office. Also I am also now a part of the Undercover Policing Inquiry, I’m a core participant.

I have so many questions that I don’t think I will ever know the answers to. Did he despise all of us, people who thought of him as our friend? Is that the way he treated all of women or was that just the way he treated us?

Was he lying to me when he told me he had a two year old daughter? We know it wasn’t with his wife at the time, his first daughter with her was born the year after he and I split up. But we don’t know exactly when he was deployed so whether he did have a two year old child with another activist, we don’t know.

Why did he choose such public roles when he knew the danger of his being discovered? Does he feel even the tiniest bit of guilt for what he did to me? I wasn’t a criminal, I don’t have a criminal record, so why did it happen to me? How much did he share with the other undercover officers about me? What did he put in his reports about us and our relationship? He came to my parents’ house on several occasions, was there a file on them?

How did he know about my being adopted? It’s unlikely I would have told him, it was something I had been bullied about and was deeply ashamed of, so it was unlikely I’d tell him but people remember him saying it was a great match that he and I were together, what with both of us being adopted. Did he use something so private and painful to me just as a ploy to ingratiate himself? I will never know.

I wake up in the early hours every morning with these questions running through my head. I can’t get a moment’s peace from any of this. It’s twisting the knife that he remains in a trusted public position, as though what he did to me means nothing.

He stepped down from the DPCC role, and if he had a shred of decency he’d step down from this role too.

16 September 2017

Guardian columnist Paul Mason has picked up on former MI5 boss Stella Rimington’s admission that security services have spied on people who are now advisors to Jeremy Corbyn, the person likely to be the next prime minister.

Mason lists a catalogue of counter-democratic outrages by the Met’s Special Branch in the 1980s and 90s; undermining union disputes, spying on families of victims of racist murders, deceiving women into long-term relationships.

Then he boldly asserts

‘that world is gone. Corbyn, who himself was targeted by MI5 and Special Branch, could soon be prime minister. With the Human Rights Act, the creation of a Supreme Court and the operational policing changes in the aftermath of the Macpherson report, the legal framework around policing and intelligence has tightened.’

Where does he get this idea from? The Human Rights Act was passed in 1998 and the Macpherson report was published in 1999. Far from ending the era of political policing, they came just as it began a period of expansion.

The second major political policing unit, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, was founded in 1999 to deploy the likes of Mark Kennedy and extend the worst of the spycops’ abuses. More spycops units were established in the 2000s.

Political policing has not ended. In 2013 HM Inspectorate of Constabulary explained that the old spycops units have been subsumed into the Met’s Counter-Terrorism Command (known as SO15), and that

‘All deployments of undercover officers which target the activity of domestic extremists are coordinated either by the SO15 Special Project Team (SPT), or by one of the regional SPTs’

There is no reason to think that the known abuses by political policing units have stopped.

In mentioning undercover officers deceiving women into intimate relationships, Mason links to a report on the recent letter from a group of them to the public inquiry. These women include those who were in relationships with officers as recently as 2009, far beyond his cutoff of 1999.

A LAW UNTO THEMSELVES

Mason continues;

‘From top to bottom, the UK’s armed forces, security services and police are acutely aware of constraints on their activities by the rule of law.’

They have always been aware of these constraints, and duly ignored them. In 1969, a year after the Special Demonstration Squad was formed, the Home Office issued unequivocal instructions:

‘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 subsequent proceedings.’

Dozens of SDS officers were arrested whilst undercover, many of them multiple times. They infiltrated defendants’ meetings, gave false testimony to courts, and some were even prosecuted under their false identity. These actions fit most people’s definition of perjury and perverting the course of justice.

With only a small fraction of the officers exposed, we have already had 50 wrongful convictions quashed, many from the late 2000s. The true total could be in the thousands.

Many of these officers committed crimes, organised illegal activity and made a personality trait of mocking activists who weren’t prepared to participate in their plans. Compliance with the law was irrelevant to them.

UNION BUSTING

Without supporting evidence, Mason instructs us to make a startling assumption.

‘The law enforcement culture that allowed undercover cops to perpetrate abuses is, we must assume, gone. Likewise, by implication, the culture that allowed MI5 to “destabilise and sabotage” an entirely legal trade union must be assumed to have gone.’

Undermining unions isn’t limited to MI5 and the specialist deep-cover units of the Met. The Independent Police Complaints Commission concede that every constabulary’s Special Branch illegally supplied information about political activists to the Consulting Association, a company who ran an illegal blacklist of construction workers.

Those on the blacklist were mostly targeted for their union organising, though others were on it for asking for proper personal protective equipment at work, or being spotted by police on environmental or anti-racist demonstrations.

The Consulting Association was active until it was raided in 2009 by the Information Commissioners Office. Although most major construction firms illegally used the list, none has faced any charges or even any censure beyond a letter asking them not to do it again. No police have been held to account. Why would they have stopped?

As workers – not only in construction but healthcare and numerous other sectors – can testify, blacklisting is clearly still going on. We know that the Met’s spycops unit still uses other blacklists of trade unionists and political activists. There is no reason to assume that the long-term, routine police collusion has suddenly ended.

TRUTH ISN’T PARANOIA

Mason cites undercover officers’ spying on Stephen Lawrence’s family, and the power of the Macpherson Inquiry report into the murder. He ignores the fact that the police deliberately withheld any mention of the spying from Macpherson. It was this very revelation in 2013 that led to the setting up of the public inquiry into undercover policing.

The secret state does not play by the rules. Those abused by it deserve answers. Yet Mason, echoing President Trump’s condemnation of Charlottesville ‘violence on many sides’, says

‘Amid the social warfare of the 80s, there are people from both sides who could say, as Rutger Hauer does in Blade Runner: “I’ve done questionable things.” Unless we’re going to have a South African-style truth and reconciliation process, the challenge is to bury the paranoia and move on.’

It’s not paranoia when the spying and methods are documented, established facts.

More than 1,000 political groups have been targeted by spycops in the last 50 years. Put simply, there aren’t that many who’ve done questionable things, and even the Met agree none of them deserved to be treated like like the dozens, perhaps hundreds, of women subjected to psychological and sexual abuse. This is a victim and perpetrator situation.

A glance at those targeted, even among the 200 significantly affected people designated core participants at the public inquiry, shows the breadth of this counter-democratic policing. Everyone targeted by spycops should should be told what was done to them and given access to their files. Only the police, and seemingly Paul Mason, want to bury the facts.

CHANGE AT THE TOP

Mason’s belief that a Labour government will do away with spycops’ activity is contradicted by the historical evidence. The secret state is run by people who are not hired by the government of the day. Governments come and go, but they endure.

Mason points to MI5’s plotting against Harold Wilson’s government in the 1960s, but there is more to it than that. As lawyer David Allen Green wryly noted,

‘ “Former Labour Home Secretary” is one the most illiberal phrases in British politics.’

All the major spycops units – the Special Demonstration Squad, National Public Order Intelligence Unit, National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit, National Domestic Extremism Team – were set up under Labour governments.

This mirrors the fact that the worst eras of detention without trial and our most repressive anti-terrorism laws are also Labour creations. Just this this week we learned of a political activist being victimised thanks to police powers granted by the Terrorism Act 2000, a law so draconian that you can get six months in jail for wearing the wrong T-shirt. It was created by Labour’s Jack Straw.

The current Labour party is very different to its predecessors, and it’s reasonable to hope that having a Prime Minister and Home Secretary who were themselves targeted by spycops would lead them to equally different approaches to political policing.

Whether the secret state complies is another matter. The spycops don’t even obey their own superior officers.

DON’T DO WHAT YOU’RE TOLD

The political secret police started spying on the Green Party’s Jenny Jones after she was democratically elected. They continued for over a decade, whilst she was a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority, the Met’s scrutiny body.

After they said they had destroyed her files, she asked them to check. This was in 2014, after senior police had ordered the preservation of files for the pending public inquiry, in line with the demands of the Inquiries Act.

At this point, a whistleblower reports, officers hurriedly shredded the bulk of Jones’ records so a sanitised version could be presented.

Whilst the campaigns Mason mentions were over in the 1990s, the spying and repression they were subjected to has continued with other targets. If it is to be ended, there must be disclosure and accountability.

We know Britain’s political secret police have been active long after Mason’s imagined cut-off date and that his wishful naivety has no basis in fact. There is no indication that it has abated.

Those of us subjected to political policing, including Paul Mason, and the wider public all deserve truth and justice.

Over 100 people affected by political policing, frustrated by the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s lack of openness, are demanding answers and action.

Their concern about the direction and state of the Inquiry centres on the need for it to come clean over three crucial factors that would enable victims of police spying to understand the extent to which their lives have been invaded.

The necessary measures have not yet been taken by Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting, despite being more than three years into the process.

As Kim Bryan, speaking on behalf of the Spycops Communications Group, said:

‘Unless Mitting orders the release of the names of the undercover officers, the names of the 1000-plus groups that have been spied upon and allows the victims of police spying to gain access to evidence about them that is controlled by the MPS, there is no hope that this Inquiry can set out what it said it was going to do: discover the truth. It is time for the Inquiry to come clean.’

The Inquiry was set up in 2014 to investigate and report on undercover police operations conducted by English and Welsh police forces in England and Wales since 1968.

It was called by the then-Home Secretary, Theresa May after revelations from victims of undercover policing revealed widespread abuse of human rights and miscarriages of justice and the now notorious spying on family and friends of Stephen Lawrence.

The Inquiry has designated less than 200 significantly affected people as core participants. They are mostly political activists drawn from a wide range of political groups including those campaigning for equality, justice, community empowerment, the environment, workers’, civil, women’s, LGTBQ, human and animal rights; and campaigning against war, racism, sexism, homophobia, government policies, corporate power, and police brutality.

A majority of them have signed the letter expressing their grave concerns.

Kim Bryan explained:

‘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.’

In August, Mitting made a notable departure from the approach of the previous Chair, Justice Pitchford, who resigned for health reasons.

The August rulings and ‘Minded-To’ notes prevent a thorough investigation and give non-state core participants no right to reply – without any justification.

The letter asks that Sir John Mitting respond to the five following questions:

1.What steps will be taken to ensure that all undercover identities are released as soon as possible, and when can we expect that to happen?

2. What steps will be taken to ensure that the names of the 1,000 or so groups spied upon by undercover police officers are released as soon as possible, and when can we expect that to happen?

3. What steps will be taken to conserve, and speed up disclosure of the evidence controlled by the MPS, in order to allow the victims of undercover policing to understand the extent to which their lives have been affected?

5. What measures will be taken to the tackle the significant financial and power imbalance between the MPS and victims of police spying within the Inquiry?

6. Most importantly, what steps will be taken to ensure that the Inquiry is open and transparent, so that the public and NSCPs can have confidence in its findings?

Copies of the letter have also been sent to Amber Rudd, Home Secretary, and Diane Abbott, Shadow Home Secretary.

FULL TEXT OF THE LETTER

Sir John Mitting
Undercover Policing Inquiry
PO Box 71230
London NW1W 7QH

Monday 23rd October 2017

Dear Chair,

RE: The need for openness in the Undercover Policing Inquiry

We are writing to you to express our serious concern over the current state of the Undercover Policing Inquiry and wish to raise a number of issues.

It is clear to us from the materials released at the start of August 2017 ⁱ that you are minded to take the Inquiry in a different direction than it has been heading to date, one of far greater secrecy.

For us, this Inquiry is about political policing to undermine groups and organisations campaigning for a better society and world, yet the content of the documents released on 3rd August shows a new course that places the needs of the police, particularly undercover officers, above those of their victims. This approach denies those who have suffered abuse at the hands of undercover police access to the truth and the right to justice. It appears, to those of us who have been targeted and have experienced an unacceptable intrusion of our lives, that police sensitivities are being allowed to trump all other concerns.

Your unilateral decision to grant HN7 complete anonymity on medical grounds ⁱⁱ without allowing those grounds to be examined is a case in point. By putting his needs above any consideration of HN7’s involvement in the issues covered by the terms of reference of the Inquiry, and refusing to release even his cover name, the Chair has negated any possibility of discovering if he engaged in sexual or other inappropriate relationships, caused a miscarriage of justice, or was involved in other abusive or illegal behaviour in his undercover role.

This decision denies any victim in HN7’s case the opportunity to come forward. The fact that the ruling makes no attempt to take this into account demonstrates that the Inquiry has a clear bias in favour of police interests. This is echoed throughout the ‘Minded-To’ notes ⁱⁱⁱ, announcing closed hearings around other officers, particularly N81.

As Non-State Core Participants (NSCPs) we are rapidly losing confidence in the Inquiry. We note that the previous Chair, Lord Justice Pitchford, recognised the importance of hearing from both officers and their victims – and the need for this to be done in public as far as possible. He explicitly noted that any departure from openness must be justified ^iv; what we are seeing at the moment is quite the opposite. The August rulings and ‘Minded-To’ notes prevent a thorough investigation.

We ask you to remember that this Inquiry was called following a series of very alarming revelations about wrongdoing by police, the scale of political policing, and institutional sexism and racism. There is considerable evidence of the police attempting to destroy evidence and cover up that wrong doing. Undercover officers and staff who acted in public office should not be protected from accountability. That they may be upset or suffer disquiet is not sufficient reason for a Public Inquiry to be kept in secret.

We would also like to register our very deep concern at the tone taken by the “Mosaic effect” ^v and ‘Jaipur’ ^vi, ‘Karachi’ ^vii and ‘Cairo’ ^viii assessments, where anonymous officers, in some cases personal friends of undercover officers, make explicit and unfounded attacks against the victims of these undercover officers, particularly those who have brought to public attention the grievous abuses committed – at no little personal pain to themselves. This is simply inexcusable and it is an embarrassment to the Inquiry.

Furthermore, we would like, once again, to raise the issue of the significant imbalance in financial resources and power between the State and Non-State Core Participants in this Inquiry. This means that Non-State Core Participants (NSCPs) are often prevented from making submissions on issues of concern to them, while the MPS remains in complete control of the evidence and is able to bog the Inquiry down with multiple applications of its choosing.

We support the letter delivered to Amber Rudd, Home Secretary, on the 19th of September 2017, by 13 women who were deceived into sexual relationships with undercover officers. The letter highlighted concerns about institutional sexism and the lack of openness in the Inquiry.

We reiterate the need for answers to the following questions to restore faith in the Inquiry. In the absence of clear answers to these questions, we, as NSCPs feel that we are being asked to participate blindly in an Inquiry that is not fulfilling its own terms of reference, and may not even really intend to do so.

1. What steps will be taken to ensure that all undercover officers’ identities are released as soon as possible, and when can we expect that to happen?

2. What steps will be taken to ensure that the names of the 1000 or so groups spied upon by undercover police officers are released as soon as possible, and when can we expect that to happen?

3. What steps will be taken to conserve, and speed up disclosure of the evidence controlled by the MPS, in order to allow the victims of undercover policing to understand the extent to which their lives have been affected?

4. What measures will be taken to the tackle the significant financial and power imbalance between the MPS and victims of police spying within the Inquiry?

5. Most importantly, what steps will be taken to ensure that the Inquiry is open and transparent, so that the public and NSCPs can have confidence in its findings?

Yours

Advisory Service for Squatters
‘AJA’
Albert Beale
Alex Hodson
Alice Cutler
Alice Jelinek
‘Alison’
‘AN’
‘Andrea’
‘ARB’
Belinda Harvey
Ben Leamy
Ben Stewart
Blacklist Support Group
Brian Healy
Brian Higgins
‘C’
Carolyn Wilson
Celia Stubbs
Ceri Gibbons
Chris Dutton
Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army
Claire Fauset
Claire Hildreth
Climate Camp Legal Team
Colin Roach Centre
Dan Gilman
Dan Glass
Danny Chivers
Dave Morris
Dave Nellist
Dave Smith
Debbie Vincent
Dr. Donal O’Driscoll
Duwayne Brooks OBE
Emily Apple
Frances Wright
Frank Smith
Geoff Sheppard
Dr. Graham Smith
Guy Taylor
Hackney Community Defence Association
Hannah Lewis
Hannah Sell
Dr. Harry Halpin
Helen Steel
Indra Donfrancesco
Jacqueline Sheedy
‘Jane’
Jason Kirkpatrick
Jennifer Verson
Jesse Schust
‘Jessica’
John Jones
John Jordan
Kate Holcombe
Kate Wilson
Ken Livingstone
Kim Bryan
Kirk Jackson
Kirsty Wright
Leila Deen
‘Lindsey’
‘Lisa’
Lisa Teuscher
‘Lizzie’
Lois Austin
London Greenpeace
Reverend Dr. Malcolm Carroll
Mark Metcalf
Martin Shaw
Martyn Lowe
Matt Salusbury
McLibel Support Campaign
Megan Donfrancesco Reddy
Melanie Evans
Merrick Cork
Michael Zeitlin
‘Monica’
Morgana Donfrancesco Reddy
‘Naomi’
Newham Monitoring Project
Nicola Benge
‘NRO’
Olaf Bayer
Paddy Gillett
Paul Chatterton
Paul Gravett
Paul Morozzo
Lord Peter Hain
Piers Corbyn
Robert Banbury
Robbin Gillett
Robin Lane
‘Rosa’
‘Ruth’
‘S’
Sarah Hampton
Sarah Shoraka
Shane Collins
Sharon Grant OBE
Sian Jones
Simon Lewis
Smash EDO
Spencer Cooke
Stafford Scott
Steve Acheson
Steve Hedley
Suresh Grover
Thomas Fowler
Tomas Remiarz
Trapese Collective
‘VSP’
William Frugal
Youth Against Racism in Europe
Zoe Young

i UCPI Anonymity applications: Special Demonstration Squad, 3rd August 2017
https://www.ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/20170803-directions-SDS.pdf
ii UCPI Ruling in respect of HN7 – Undercover Policing Inquiry, 3rd August 2017
https://www.ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/20170803-ruling-N7-anonymity.pdf
iii UCPI Minded to notes, 3rd August 2017
https://www.ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/20170803-Minded-to.pdf
iv UCPI Restriction orders (legal approach) Ruling, 3rd May 2016
https://www.ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/160503-ruling-legal-approach-to-restriction-orders.pdf
v Evidence submitted by the Metropolitan Police Service “The Mosaic Effect”
https://www.ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Mosaic-report-open-version.pdf
vi Anonymous evidence submitted by the Metropolitan Police Service in the name “Jaipur”
https://www.ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Jaipur-Risk-Assessment-with-redactions-burned-in.pdf
vii Anonymous evidence submitted by the Metropolitan Police Service in the name “Karachi”
https://www.ucpi.org.uk/publications/anonymity-karachi-3
viii Anonymous evidence submitted by the Metropolitan Police Service in the name “Cairo”
https://www.ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Cairo-Statement-dated-20-July-2017-open-version.pdf

A new member of Britain’s political secret police has been named. On 5th October, the Undercover Policing Inquiry released the cover name William Paul ‘Bill’ Lewis, who was undercover in the Special Demonstration Squad 1968-1969.

The announcement follows the Met’s blanket application to keep undercover officers’ names – real and fake – secret.

The inquiry is working through the list of names and said in August that it was minded to release the cover name – but not the real name – of this officer. The Met then withdrew their application to keep it secret.

The fake name is about all we have. The inquiry doesn’t even tell us which groups he actively infiltrated, only that

He may have been encountered by individuals involved with the International Marxist Group or the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in London at that time.

We have no photo, no detail on whether he, like so many of his colleagues, deceived women into sexual relationships or orchestrated miscarriages of justice.

Whilst any information is better than none, this announcement doesn’t move us onward. To understand what these disgraced units did, we need to hear from those who witnessed it.

We need the list of cover names used by officers and the list of over 1,000 groups that they spied on so that the activists may be contacted and speak about what they saw. Until this happens the inquiry cannot begin to do its allotted task.

At a preliminary hearing on 1st November the Inquiry Chair Sir John Mitting is going to ‘make a statement on the future conduct of the Inquiry’. It’s not clear exactly what this means, but his recent compliance with much of the Met’s desire for secrecy does not give cause for great optimism.

We now have details on 24 of 144 undercover officers. ‘Bill Lewis’ is the first new one identified in three months, and even then in such scant form as to be practically useless. This glacial pace, driven by the Met’s stonewalling, denies justice to those who have already waited too long.

Today, thirteen women who were deceived into intimate sexual relationships with undercover policemen, over a period spanning nearly 30 years, have written to the Home Secretary to raise their concerns about the progress and recent direction of the Public Inquiry into Undercover Policing.

The women noted that, two years into the Inquiry, the names of the 1000+ groups spied on by political policing units have still not been made public, nor have the cover names used by officers while undercover.  These two steps are critical to allow non-police witnesses to come forward and give evidence to the inquiry.

The women also raised concerns about the recent appointment of Sir John Mitting as Inquiry Chair.

Institutional Sexism

“We are very concerned that Sir John Mitting is a member of the Garrick Club which has consistently voted to exclude women from membership and to remain a men-only club. How can someone who accepts the principles of membership of such a club be suited to a role that will involve making judgements on evidence of institutional sexism within the police and wider legal system?”

“In the ‘Two Year Update’ produced by the Public Inquiry in July, the word ‘women’ does not appear at all, despite the seriousness of the abuses committed against women by undercover police officers. The timeline in that document also failed to include the public apology issued by the MPS which acknowledged that undercover police officers entering into intimate sexual relationships is a human rights abuse.”

“It is clear from these omissions that the serious abuses we suffered at the hands of the police are not taken seriously by the Inquiry.”

“In light of all these matters it is extremely difficult for us to have any confidence that the Inquiry will properly investigate the abuses we have been subjected to, or put in place measures to ensure that they never happen again to anyone else.”

Openness

The Metropolitan Police Service has been allowed to set the pace of the Inquiry with severe and ongoing delays and applications for secrecy.  They also continue to hold the evidence which could demonstrate wrongdoing, and have refused to share any records with victims of abuses despite the need for victims to understand the events they were subjected to.

“We are alarmed by the imbalance in resources between victims of police spying and the fact that the Metropolitan Police Service is currently using public money to impugn those who were spied on and abused. This is a similar tactic – now thoroughly condemned – to that used by the police at Hillsborough, and it must not be allowed to continue.”

“It is critical that the cover names of the officers are released, along with the names of the groups spied upon.  Without this information the public will not be able to come forward to give evidence to the Inquiry and it will be impossible to identify the scale and nature of the abuses perpetrated.”

“In order for us and the public to have confidence in the inquiry the principles of transparency and openness need to be upheld.”

The letter in full:

c/o Birnberg Pierce Solicitors
14 Inverness Street
London
NW1 7HJ

19th September 2017

Dear Amber Rudd,

Undercover Policing Public Inquiry

We are writing to request a meeting with you to discuss our serious concerns about the progress and recent direction of the Public Inquiry into Undercover Policing. We are women who were deceived into long-term intimate sexual relationships with undercover police officers over a time span of nearly thirty years. Our experiences may only be the tip of the iceberg. We are aware of other women who have been similarly deceived and believe it extremely likely that there are still more women, and possibly also children, who have yet to find out. The extent and nature of this practice amounts to institutional sexism.

As you know, the Inquiry was set up in response to revelations about the conduct of undercover police officers in political policing units such as the Special Demonstration Squad and National Public Order Intelligence Unit who had committed serious human rights abuses. These abuses were brought to light not by the police, but through the investigations of women who suffered at the hands of these officers, combined with the actions of the whistle-blower Peter Francis, and investigations by journalists.

In correspondence with the previous Home Secretary, (letter sent 11.2.15 through our solicitor, Harriet Wistrich), we stressed the importance of transparency in the Public Inquiry. This is essential in order for the truth to be known, the victims of undercover police abuses to understand and come to terms with what happened, and for the public to have any confidence in the Public Inquiry. We are alarmed, therefore, that two years into the Inquiry, the public has learned nothing new about the extent of these abuses or how they were allowed to happen. Even the names of the 1000+ groups spied on have still not been released.

In addition we are alarmed by the appointment of Sir John Mitting as Inquiry Chair, and by the fact that this was announced on August 2nd when many lawyers and/or their clients were on holiday making it difficult to raise any objections. We feel that this demonstrates again a lack of respect for those abused by the police. Since Sir John Mitting became Inquiry Chair it appears that there has been a significant shift towards greater secrecy.  We believe that his background as Vice President of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal since 2015 is likely to have influenced this shift and we are concerned that steps need to be taken immediately to rectify this and increase transparency.

Institutional Sexism
We also understand that Sir John Mitting is a member of the Garrick Club which has consistently voted to exclude women from membership and to remain a men-only club.  We question how someone who accepts the principles of membership of such a club can be suited to a role that will involve investigating sexist practices and making judgements on what we consider to be clear evidence of institutional sexism within the police and wider legal system.

It is noteworthy that in the ‘Two Year Update’ produced by the Public Inquiry in July, the word ‘women’ does not appear at all, despite the seriousness of the abuses committed against us and other women by undercover police officers.  While there are references to the sensitive issue of dead children’s identities being used for cover purposes, there are no such references to the long-term abuse of women.  We also note that the recently published timeline in that document failed to include the public apology issued to us by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) which acknowledged that we were subject to human rights abuses by undercover police officers. We attach a copy of this apology in case you are not familiar with it. It is clear from these omissions that the Inquiry is failing to take seriously the grave abuses we and other women suffered at the hands of the police.

In light of all these matters it is extremely difficult for us to have any confidence that the Inquiry will properly investigate the abuses we have been subjected to, or put in place measures to ensure that they never happen again to anyone else.

We seek a meeting to resolve the following concerns:

1. What steps will be taken to ensure that the Inquiry has sufficient knowledge and understanding of sexism and its effects to be able to identify and address the clear institutional sexism which has been revealed by the repeated use and abuse of women (over the course of several decades) who were deceived into intimate sexual relationships by undercover police officers.

2. What steps will be taken to ensure that the Inquiry is open and transparent, so that the public can have confidence in its findings?  In the recent indicative and final rulings by Sir John Mitting on restriction order applications by the MPS, he has repeatedly come down in favour of secrecy for the police at the expense of truth for the victims and public; the secrecy approach taken by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal of which he is Vice President is definitely not an appropriate approach to bring to a public inquiry.

3. Cover names must be released, otherwise it will not be possible to identify the true scale nature of the abuses perpetrated. Women and children may be left unable to make sense of events in their lives, and witnesses will not be able to come forward to give evidence to the inquiry.

4. The MPS has been allowed to set the pace of the Inquiry with severe and ongoing delays and applications for secrecy, and despite a huge budget have been allowed every latitude to delay still further. What steps will be taken to ensure that cover names are released as soon as possible?

5. The Inquiry is an investigation into serious wrongdoing by the MPS yet this same body maintains control of much of the evidence, including that which could demonstrate the guilt of officers and their managers, how can this be appropriate?

6. Evidence controlled by the MPS is not being disclosed to those spied upon. This both impacts on our ability to process what happened and hampers the Inquiry’s progress and likely success: since our investigations were instrumental in bringing human rights abuses to light, clearly if we had access to these documents we could assist with identifying areas for investigation and with correcting inaccuracies. What steps will be taken to speed up the release of material, especially of material over twenty years old, in line with the government’s twenty-year rule?

7. It is wrong that the MPS has unlimited resources to impugn those who were spied on and abused. This is a similar tactic – now thoroughly condemned – to that used by the police at Hillsborough, and it must not be allowed to continue. We are concerned in any event at the significant financial and power imbalance between the MPS resources and those of the victims of police spying. As a result of this imbalance, the non-state core participants (NSCPs) are, in practice, prevented from making submissions on issues of concern to them, whereas the MPS is able to make multiple applications of its choosing.

8. MPS documents served recently, including the Risk Assessment and Mosaic Report, contain multiple inaccuracies and offensive material. They suggest that our motives for searching for our disappeared partners were sinister and malign, rather than acknowledging that the police abuses would not have come to light without our research and that of the Undercover Research Group.

9. MPS reports repeatedly attempt to downplay the abuses committed against us and other women, or even suggest they did not happen, for example Mosaic Effect Report [4.4] uses the word allegedly regarding a woman being deceived into a sexual relationship with Bob Lambert, despite the fact that after women he deceived bravely came forward to report this abuse, even Lambert himself admitted to having four sexual relationships while undercover.

10. Public protests seeking accountability for the actions of police who have committed abuses have offensively been labelled harassment [e.g. Risk Assessment Briefing Note 10.12] despite the fact that protest is a protected right. Furthermore, as none of the officers have been prosecuted or disciplined for the human rights abuses they have committed, the public clearly cannot rely on the state for accountability. What steps will be taken to ensure that this abuse of victims and public resources does not continue?

11. It is insulting that we were required to provide intrusive psychological reports to the MPS which was responsible for the abuse and invasion of privacy we were subjected to, yet neither we nor our lawyers are allowed to see or challenge police psychological reports being used by the MPS to argue for secrecy at the Inquiry.

12. The fact that the Chair is minded to accept secrecy in the Inquiry around the identities and actions of officers and units who committed serious abuses, for fear that openness would cause too much stress or potentially harm those officers, is of grave concern. This is not a privilege generally extended to anyone else accused or under investigation, and looks alarmingly like an attempt to protect the reputation of the police.

13. The disparity between the cavalier approach to the privacy of victims of undercover policing compared to the cautiousness towards the MPS, evidenced by data breaches relating to NSCPs, including the recent publication by the Inquiry of the real name of one of us despite a court order with penal notice prohibiting this.

We request a meeting with you at your earliest convenience to discuss our concerns.

Yours sincerely*,

“Alison”
“Andrea”
Belinda Harvey
Helen Steel
“Jane”
“Jessica”
Kate Wilson
“Lisa”
“Lizzie”
“Monica”
“Naomi”
“Rosa”
“Ruth”

* Names in inverted commas are the pseudonyms by which we are known to the Public Inquiry