Keir Stamer as Director of Public Prosecutions

A group of climate activists are calling on Labour leader Keir Starmer to give evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry, alleging he may have been involved in a cover-up of police and prosecutors orchestrating wrongful convictions.

The 18 activists were part of a group of 114 arrested while planning a protest against Nottinghamshire’s Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station in April 2009.

Some of them were prosecuted and convicted of conspiracy.

A further six were in a group prosecuted separately, whose trial dramatically collapsed after they discovered one of the protesters was undercover police officer Mark Kennedy.

When they asked to see Kennedy’s secret evidence, rather than disclose it the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) dropped the charges. When the defendants were given transcripts of Kennedy’s secret recordings of the protest planning meetings, they did indeed exonerate the six. The 20 activists convicted at the earlier trial have now had their convictions quashed.

Two reports were commissioned into the withholding of evidence from the court, one by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, another commissioned by the then-head of the CPS, Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer, who appointed Sir Christopher Rose to inquire.

The Rose report concluded that ‘the failures were individual, not systemic’. But when making a timeline of the facts as given in the two reports, it is clear that police and prosecutors knew full well about the involvement of undercover police, and went to great lengths to keep it secret.

The pivotal CPS figure was prosecutor Nick Paul, the CPS National Co-ordinator for Domestic Extremism (an extraordinary role, given that the term ‘domestic extremism’ has no meaning in law). Paul – who, due to Kennedy’s information, was aware of the Ratcliffe protest before it happened, indeed before many of the activists involved – and was already coordinating with police.

The Guardian published extracts of an email exchange between him and more junior CPS official, Nick Cunningham, discussing the risk of the truth coming out. The Rose report attributed the failings to Cunningham rather than Paul.

Nick Paul had previously been the CPS’ prosecutor in another case setting up climate activists with wrongful convictions, the Drax 29. This surely makes it a systemic issue. The Rose report includes a list of people interviewed; despite his central role in the case, Nick Paul is not mentioned.

By the time the Rose report was published in December 2011, we had learned that Jim Boyling another – wholly unrelated – undercover officer had similarly been involved in a court case in 1997 without the defence being given relevant evidence.

As DPP, Starmer handled the media on the Rose report personally, insisting that we must accept its finding that there’s no systemic problem, despite journalists pointing out to him that this was untrue.

Nick Paul left the CPS immediately after the Ratcliffe case collapsed, returning to be a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, where he Starmer had previously been colleagues before they worked for the CPS. Starmer rejoined him after his tenure as DPP ended 18 months later.

The Undercover Research Group‘s report into the Ratcliffe case, Operation Aeroscope – A Re-examination, makes clear that there are still many serious questions unanswered.

The group of activists arrested at Ratcliffe-on Soar in 2009 are now asking for the relevant CPS officials to be called to give evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry.

The Inquiry’s terms of reference specify that it will examine such miscarriages of justice. It is already clear that, over decades, undercover officers from Britain’s political secret police were often arrested and went through the judicial system in their fake persona, lying to courts and withholding evidence. The problem was clearly systemic, and the public deserve answers.

Full text of the statement from the group of people arrested with Mark Kennedy at Ratcliffe-on-Soar:

Call Keir Starmer to give evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry

A decade ago this month the world learnt that Mark Kennedy was a Metropolitan Police officer spying on environmentalists. This information led to the collapse of a trial where six environmental campaigners were accused of conspiring to occupy a coal-fired power station. In the court building on the morning of January 10th 2010 as the trial collapsed was the then Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and head of the Crown Prosecution Service, Keir Starmer.

Subsequently, the convictions of 20 campaigners for conspiring to occupy the same coal-fired power station were quashed by the Court of Appeal, because the prosecution failed to disclose information about Mark Kennedy’s involvement that would have helped their defence.

Further appeals relating to convictions involving Mark Kennedy and the CPS under the then leadership of Keir Starmer followed. In one ruling, in January 2014, Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas said:

‘There was a complete and total failure, for reasons which remain unclear, to make a disclosure fundamental to the defence.’

The Lord Chief Justice added, that is was ‘either the fault of the police or someone at the CPS or possible counsel involved,’ and said each of those interviewed had ‘given a different account’.

That the police and CPS gave different accounts to the Lord Chief Justice, four years after the initial problems had been identified, leaves many questions unanswered.

A 2015 report by Mark Ellison QC into undercover officers and miscarriages of justice, commissioned by the government, showed there is evidence that undercover police units were, for many years, systematically concealing evidence from trials of protesters over the years and therefore cause them to be unjustly convicted.

This evidence contradicts the finding in a report into the failure to disclose evidence at the Ratcliffe trial, commissioned by Keir Starmer, and conducted by Sir Christopher Rose, which claimed there was no systemic problem at the CPS with failing to disclose evidence relating to trials involving undercover officers. The evidence known now is counter to the statements of Keir Starmer, for example in an interview with Channel 4 News, when he was DPP.

We demand that the public inquiry into undercover policing call the CPS, and former CPS staff, to get to the truth about non-disclosure, prosecutions and miscarriages of justice that involved undercover police officers. Specifically, the inquiry needs to call Keir Starmer as DPP at the time of the Ratcliffe trials, Nick Paul, his lead CPS prosecutor and CPS coordinator of ‘Domestic Extremism’ who liaised with the policing units being investigated by the public inquiry, and the prosecution counsel for the Ratcliffe trial, Felicity Gerry.

This is particularly important as the investigation into miscarriages of justice as part of the Undercover Policing Inquiry appears to be dormant. To our knowledge the CPS has only assessed potential miscarriages of justice that have been brought to them by the media and campaigners. Only the undercover policing public inquiry can get to the truth now.

This matter now takes an even greater urgency, following the provisions for spying on the public in a new bill before parliament, the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill 2019-21.

Specific questions include:

On 10 January 2010, why did the CPS release a press statement claiming that the Ratcliffe trial collapsed because “Previously unavailable information that significantly undermined the prosecution’s case came to light,” when the evidence in a number of subsequent official reports suggests that this statement is untrue. Did Keir Starmer approve the press statement?

Why was Keir Starmer in Nottingham Crown Court on the morning of 10 January 2010?

Why did the Sir Christopher Rose report come to the wrong conclusion that the problems of non-disclosure in the Ratcliffe trials did not apply elsewhere? Did Keir Starmer define the terms of reference for the Rose report to be so narrow that the wrong conclusion, of only individual failings of a single regional prosecutor, was always likely to be found?

Why did the commissioned report by Sir Christopher Rose not interview the most important CPS member of staff involved in the Ratcliffe trials, Nick Paul, the CPS liaison for so-called ‘domestic extremism’ under which Mark Kennedy’s deployment was based. Nick Paul, for example, was informed by police that the Ratcliffe protesters would be arrested before the arrests even happened.
In light of new evidence on the systematic failings at the CPS relating to undercover officers, was the regional prosecutor, Ian Cunningham unfairly blamed for the failure to disclose in the Ratcliffe trial?

Why did Keir Starmer ask for three reviews into CPS failings relating to undercover policing that were kept from public view, before commissioning the Rose report?

What action was taken by Keir Starmer after the Rose report was shown to be wrong, to uncover other miscarriages of justice?
Did the CPS investigate all trials involving the CPS National Coordinator for Domestic Extremism (Nick Paul and his predecessors), for possible problems with non-disclosure?

How did a report Commissioned by Teresa May, the then Home Secretary, by Mark Ellison QC into possible miscarriages of justice identify 83 activists who were convicted in trials involving an undercover officer, over three decades, while the CPS inquiry, has to date discovered nobody who the media and campaigners had not already identified?

Signed by Non-State Non-Police Core Participants in the public inquiry into undercover policing, arrested with Mark Kennedy in 2009, or arrested and charged with conspiracy, or arrested, charged and wrongfully convicted of conspiracy, by the CPS:

1. Olaf Bayer
2. Danny Chivers
3. Shane Collins
4. Spencer Cooke
5. Merrick Cork
6. Leila Deen
7. Nāgakuśala Hiromi Dharmacharin
8. Roger Geffen
9. Patrick Gillet
10. Dan Glass
11. Alice Jelinek
12. Oliver Knowles
13. Ben Leamy
14. Simon Lewis
15. Tomas Remiarz
16. Sarah Shoraka
17. Ben Stewart
18. Kirsty Wright

31 January 2021

A report from the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s hearing of 26 January 2021, discussing how future hearings involving witnesses will be organised.

The Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) was established in 2015 in response to multiple scandals where undercover police had abused their power over a fifty-year period. Officers infiltrated political groups for years at a time, living as one of the activists. They frequently stole identities, orchestrated wrongful convictions, and formed intimate relationships with women they spied on.

After five years of preliminary process, it was only in November 2020 that the Undercover Policing Inquiry first began hearing evidence. It was a worrying time for many of the victims of spycops who have been designated as ‘non-police/state core participants’ (NPSCPs) in the Inquiry, who had spent the intervening years explaining why the Inquiry’s approach was problematic.

For them, the UCPI had focused far too much of its attention on meeting the police’s preferences, while excluding the NPSCPs from effective participation. There was a sense of exhaustion in those who were subjected to the spying who felt that they were consistently being considered last, as if they were an irritant rather than a group of victims who should be at the heart of the process.

Multiple times they had argued they should be more fully centred, given the wealth of experience and knowledge they brought with them. Instead, they were made to wait as the police delayed matters, filing an excessive number of applications for anonymity, regaling the Inquiry with fanciful fears of media intrusion, and worries about what the neighbours would think. These were undercovers and managers who had destroyed lives and careers, violated fundamental human rights, and engaged in state-sanctioned rape. Yet, it was their needs which were constantly being put first, the Inquiry granting them their wishes and all the time they needed to do it.

We have said all this many times, and nothing has changed. Yet it remains the context in which last week’s hearing took place.

A CHANCE TO LEARN AND IMPROVE

The hearing held on Tuesday 26 January was a chance to learn from the many mistakes of the November 2020 hearings. It was welcomed by many NPSCPs as an opportunity to feed in their thoughts on what went wrong and how things could be improved.

The next set of evidence hearings (Tranche 1, Phases 2 and 3, covering the Special Demonstration Squad activities 1973-82) are currently set to be heard in April and July, so it is important these issues are resolved now.

Throughout the day we heard from both police and NPSCPs’ representatives. Numerous submissions had been made in writing, and an extensive note from Counsel to The Inquiry was able to resolve a number of these so they did not need to form part of the discussion.

Much of the focus was procedural or legal in nature, focusing on the conduct of particular aspects of the hearings, or the underlying points of law which different parties were relying on to argue their point. At times it became quite technical, but we will try to give an overview of the main issues discussed below.

However, in amongst it, various bits of important information emerged. In particular, we learned that the majority of the pre-1995 files did not come from Metropolitan Police Service’s Special Branch (which had overseen the Special Demonstration Squad). Rather they were obtained from elsewhere – which the begs the question whether they came from MI5. And if not them, where?

Perhaps less surprising was the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, commenting that he had seen little mention in the formal reports of relationships that undercovers had deceived their targets into. Heather Williams QC, representing many of those women, made the salient point that this was precisely why the women deserved full access to their files, as only they could give the nuanced interpretation needed to show where it was hidden.

HOSTILITY TO VICTIMS

Matthew Ryder QC

A powerful moment came when Matthew Ryder QC, representing a number of NPSCPs, spoke on behalf of Celia Stubbs. Celia, a long time campaigner, was the partner of Blair Peach, who was murdered by police in 1979 at an anti-racist demonstration. Hers was among the first such family justice campaigns spied upon. The murderers were never brought to justice.

Now in her 80s, and despite the risk of Covid, she attended the November hearings, keen to witness them. The measured words of her barrister conveyed her anger and strength of feeling at the betrayal she felt, the importance of the public having confidence in the Inquiry, and how it was failing in that.

Ryder said:

‘she asked us to make clear that she felt disillusioned and unhappy at the hearings. She felt that the structure of how she was able to be involved and the way the Inquiry was carried out was unsympathetic and to some extent, she sometimes felt, hostile to her concerns and her interests as a core participant.’

Ryder then made the powerful conclusion:

‘There is little to be gained from an Inquiry that… doesn’t end up with the confidence of those it was set up to benefit, and only has the confidence of the State Participants it was set up to scrutinise. Therefore the confidence of those core participants is something that is valuable, is very important, we know, to the functioning of the Inquiry and to the end result of the Inquiry, and therefore we do hope that through part 2 and following parts, we can be in a situation where the core participants do feel confident, do feel engaged.’

Though it came towards the end of the proceedings, it was one of those moments that brought the hearing back to earth, grounded in the reality of what had happened to people. Those of us who were at the hearings in November with her are all in awe of her determination to partake, to not give up seeking answers. Forty years on, she deserves justice.

All the above points impacted on the different topics of discussion and we will go into them further. First point on the agenda though was the bruised egos of the police.

BRUISED EGOS AND THIN SKINS

Mitting opened proceedings with reference to a recent letter sent by the Metropolitan Police, who were feeling stung by the criticism that they had been obstructive to the Inquiry. They wanted to challenge this and, although he is the Chair, Mitting spoke up for them.

It was at this point that he noted that much of the pre-1995 material had come from sources other than the Metropolitan Police, and the form in which the Inquiry had obtained it had proved challenging to handle. Mitting said that it contained information which would be damaging to the public interest if it entered the public domain, and the Metropolitan Police had been diligently working to prevent this happening. The irony of that was lost on both Inquiry and police.

Mitting was concerned that we might be suffering from a misperception, that the police were not being forthcoming and candid with this Inquiry. What he didn’t factor in is that we’ve all had enough experience of the police behaving in precisely the opposite way in other inquiries and inquests, and little to date has done anything to change our minds.

Many of the women deceived into relationships by spycops took legal action and were met with a refusal to respond, claims that it was impossible to release any information, the assertion that the relationships weren’t authorised so they were nothing to do with the police as an institution, and many other tricks of dishonest delay. Cases took years to settle and indeed Kate Wilson’s, filed at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in 2011, is still not finished. It is a pattern familiar to victims of State abuses, a double injustice as they face not only the wrongdoing, but also the attempts to avoid accountability and obstruct justice.

Indeed, the reason that it’s taken so long for the Undercover Policing Inquiry to reach this stage is that the police have dragged it out – by filing as many applications for anonymity as they could get away with – for the past three years, and the Inquiry has not stopped them from doing so.

Throughout the day of the hearing, lawyers for the undercovers relied on how fragile the former undercovers and managers were. Steps towards greater participation were countered by how it would impact on these former officers. They would, apparently, become more anxious and less candid in giving their evidence, so the Inquiry itself would lose out. At points it felt like a threat being held over the Inquiry. The police’s position was they liked things as they had been and opposed any relaxation in favour of greater openness.

Their sensitivity was also raised in written submissions with complaints that the word ‘scum’ had been used in relation to spycops on Twitter. A search showed that, up until this point, it has actually happened a handful of times, and even then in response to descriptions of reprehensible behaviour that would make any ordinary person feel angry. This is hardly the basis for making a formal submission to the Inquiry.

The hearing was treated to a full display of the thin skin of police officers in response to any form of criticism rather than acknowledging their gross abuses of power.

ACCESS TO FILES

The NPSCPs have consistently demanded access to the full files held on them. Mitting said that the Inquiry does not have access to the Special Branch’s ‘Registry Files’ on individuals. However, he also implied that he was aware of the ‘Personal Files’ – MI5’s equivalent. He has seen some of them and noted that they contain material from a wide variety of sources, many of which fall outside of the Inquiry’s terms of reference. As such, he said they are too much to deal with and the Inquiry needs to examine other material first.

This was angrily rejected by Dave Smith of the Blacklist Support Group on Twitter, who noted that this was the sort of material that was being passed along to businesses to blacklist workers, and included information gathered and supplied by the undercover police.

Heather Williams QC

Heather Williams, speaking on behalf of the women affected, also made much of this. As observed above, she noted that the nuance needed to accurately interpret files could only come from their subjects, the women themselves. She cited a case where a mention of a wedding in the gathered intelligence was enough to trigger a memory of a woman targeted for a relation attending that wedding with the undercover, even though that was not mentioned in the files.

Williams made the point that the women were in a unique position and had particular interest in seeing the files. Not least in understanding how they’d been set up to be targeted by the undercovers, particularly in developing the ‘false air of commonality’ used in so many cases to prepare the ground for the relationship. She argued this point was totally within the terms of the Inquiry.

Mitting’s counter was to say that he had not seen anything to suggest that undercovers had read the files of those they were interacting with, or had gone back to see the files of those they were in relationships with. According to him, deceitful relationships being mentioned in documents are only mentioned afterwards, when managers have discovered the relationships. This knowledge emerged with hindsight, not in what their predecessors knew in hindsight.

Nonetheless, he did say that requests for information made to police and former undercovers did take such issues on board. It was not his intention that the Inquiry would routinely obtain such personal files. However, a small amount of material in them was of relevance and were being processed so as they could be made available. He also noted that the personal files were the property of MI5 and he has no legitimate justification to compel them to do more than what they’ve already done to assist the Inquiry.

Access to the personal files on individuals has been a fundamental demand of the NPSCPs from the outset. The spying on them was plainly wrong and everyone subjected to it deserves to know the truth. That cannot happen without them seeing what intelligence was gathered on them, unfiltered by police censors. For Mitting to bluntly say it is not going to happen is a huge obstacle in the path to the truth. It undermines the purpose of the Inquiry and takes away a lot of the point of why many NPSCPs were involved in the first place.

ACCESS TO ‘BUNDLES’ OF EVIDENCE FOR HEARINGS

A theme echoed by a number of those involved has been insufficient time given to access the ‘hearing bundles’ of evidence released prior to relevant hearings. For the November 2020 hearings, it was over 6,000 pages delivered four weeks before the hearings began. The NPSCPs have contended they’ve not been given enough time to process such a large amount of material and have been arguing for more people to be able to see the it, and to be given it much sooner.

The lack of access pre-1995 has also impacted on the lawyers for the undercovers. Those deployed before 1995 have not had sight of the material the Inquiry has been relying on. Thus, their lawyers are under the same time pressure to process it.

The Inquiry responded that it was looking at improving the processes, though constrained by issues around what could be released into the public domain. Some material could be released sooner, such as the Special Demonstration Squad’s Annual Reports.

While the police were also concerned about widening access, Mitting did take on board various points from the media and NPSCPs, and agreed to widen the scope of who had advanced sight of the hearing bundle evidence. This should ease the burden on the lawyers and NPSCPs and have positive impacts on the ability to prepare in advance for future evidence hearings.

AUDIO, LIVESTREAMING, PRIVACY, AND THE EQUALITIES ACT

The hearing then turned to a tangle of inter-related issues whose arguments fed into each other. The basic point though was the NPSCPs arguing there should be greater access for the public to the hearings, and particularly in light of the pandemic. Specifically, they argued that there should be full online live-streaming (audio-visual) of the hearings to the public as the basic starting point, and deviations from this need to be justified.

Although many similar inquiries, such as Grenfell, are live-streaming their hearings, for the November 2020 Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, witness evidence was only live-streamed to one 60-person venue in Covid-stricken London. Online access was limited to a live transcript of what was being said.

The police representatives were very much opposed to any form of streaming of hearings, claiming (but without providing evidence) that this would be a security risk. The importance of seeing and hearing witnesses as they gave evidence was acknowledged by Mitting and the NPSCPs.

The police argued for a very restrictive view, saying any live-streaming would undermine the anonymity orders granted to police witnesses. They took the position that if a form of live-streaming was to happen, it should be only be audio, and it should be made subject to various security restrictions – individually watermarked, requiring registration to access it, that it should not go beyond the jurisdiction of England and Wales. At times this became quite technical in nature as to what was or was not possible.

Some of the NPSCPs took a very different approach. Rajiv Menon QC, representing the clients of Jane Deighton (in particular, the family of Rolan Adams, and Ken Livingstone), put forward the case that in restricting live-streaming the Inquiry was breaching its duties under the Equalities Act. Those at greater risk from Covid were being indirectly discriminated against, for example people of certain ethnic minority backgrounds, and elderly people.

Mitting responded by taking the discussion down another the path of legal technicalities, as to whether or not the Inquiry could claim to be exempt from the obligations of the Equalities Act. Menon pointed out that up until now, the Inquiry has acted as if it is covered by the Equalities Act, and that its operations are not exempt.

The decision about providing live-streaming is an operational one, about the services the Inquiry provides, rather than a judicial one. Menon also pointed out that nobody has yet supplied a clear legal authority on this matter (which only became an issue with the release of the Counsel to the Inquiry’s Note the day before) and more time should be allowed for research before a final answer is given by Mitting.

Mitting agreed to allow all parties another seven days to provide written statements about this issue.

PROTECTING SPYCOPS’ ANONYMITY

Owen Greenhall, also acting for the NPSCPs, added that the ‘restriction orders’ granting anonymity to spycops were granted some years ago. Most of these former officers were awarded them on the grounds of privacy, rather than security concerns. The situation has completely changed since then, and they really should be revisited. He noted that for the upcoming hearings (in April) this should not be too onerous a task, as there are only ten former officers due to give evidence then.

Mitting pushed back hard on this, saying it would involve far too much work and add to the delay. Representatives for the police asserted that changing the restriction orders now might upset the former undercovers and impact on their evidence. In one technical point, Mitting said he considered visual live-streaming was not possible because the existing anonymity orders prohibited the release of images.

Mitting’s final position on these matters is yet to be determined. He accepted that improvements on last November’s arrangements were needed, and that some measures could be taken. His starting position seems to be that access to the Inquiry should, as closely as possible, resemble a courtroom under normal conditions. In light of the ongoing pandemic, this means sticking closely to the model of the November hearings, where live-streaming of the officers giving evidence in real time was restricted to a maximum of 60 pre-registered people who were willing and able to attend a hotel in central London.

The online rolling transcript seems set to continue with its ten minute delay, though hopefully with better functionality. Mitting also seemed to accept the need for some kind of audio feed, but it is not clear how restricted access to this might be.

Another point of concern is that registration for attendance at the November hearing was done for the purposes of test and trace, but Mitting saw it equally as a security measure in case of a restriction order being breached. NPSCPs raised the natural concern that they did not want this data being passed on to the police as a matter of course.

ADVERSARIAL VS INQUISITORIAL

Rajiv Menon QC

Before we address the remaining discussions of the day we need to cover a technical legal point: the difference between adversarial and inquisitorial hearings. Most hearings we encounter are the former, the normal day-to-day life of court cases where evidence and witnesses are examined, cross-examined and challenged in an effort to get to the truth. There is an implicit assumption that someone might be lying to justify their actions.

Despite the name, inquisitorial hearings are meant to be different, taking the approach that everyone is cooperating with the proceedings. A public inquiry such as the UCPI is meant to be of this kind. There is no aspect of punishment, merely helping the State to learn, and giving the non-State parties confidence that the learning has been comprehensive and open. Mitting himself has repeatedly said his aim is simply to get to the truth.

Sadly, regardless of the Metropolitan Police’s correspondence, the NPSCPs often feel this memo has passed the police by.

Rajiv Menon, responding to the recent letter from the Metropolitan Police (mentioned above) made the following observation:

‘Specific complaint is made in the letter of what was said in our opening statement, namely that: “The police have used every weapon in their arsenal and spared no expense to obfuscate, obstruct, undermine and delay an open, transparent and fearless public inquiry into undercover policing.”

You [Mitting] have address this letter this morning, sir, in your introductory remarks, and have effectively confirmed what the Metropolitan Police Service have asked you to do, namely that there is no basis for the allegation that the Inquiry’s work has been or is being obstructed by the Metropolitan Police Service….

[The lawyers for police core participants] continue to suggest that it is the Non-State Core Participants who are responsible for the Inquiry not being as inquisitorial as it should be. We say nothing is further from the truth is in fact the correct position.

If the Non-State Core Participants are marginalised, as we say they have been, and prevented, through their lawyers, from participating effectively and meaningfully in the Inquiry, if the State’s obsession with secrecy is permitted to have a foothold in this Inquiry at the expense of openness and transparency, then it can hardly come as a surprise that there is, at times, an adversarial air to the proceedings.

It should never be forgotten, in our submission, that it is the Non-State Core Participants who are the victims in this Inquiry of abuses of power by the State, in some circumstances with the most devastating of consequences.

The former undercover police officers, with respect, are not victims and should never be treated as such.’

This set the tone for the debate as to how the Inquiry should approach questioning of witnesses. This falls into two related categories – ‘Rule 10’ questions and cross-examination.

QUESTIONING WITNESSES : RULE 10

The Inquiries Act 2005 sets out the ways in which evidence should be explored in an Inquiry of this ‘inquisitorial’ nature. Usually, one person – the Counsel To the Inquiry – is appointed by the Inquiry to ask all the questions of witnesses. Cross-examination is not especially encouraged; the emphasis is on witnesses voluntarily cooperating with the Inquiry.

The Inquiries Act does allow lawyers who represent core participants to submit questions seven days in advance, and ask the Counsel to the Inquiry to then put the questions to the witnesses. These are called “Rule 10 Questions”. However, the Inquiry is not obliged to act on these requests.

Rule 10 Questions were submitted at the November hearings, and some of the NPSCPs’ questions were asked. Both Owen Greenhall and Rajiv Menon addressed this issue, and noted that the process was beset by a number of problems, including:

• too much material to process in too little time;
• difficulties in communicating with the Inquiry team in the time available;
• a lack of feedback about the questions submitted – which ones had been accepted and would be asked, and which ones wouldn’t;
• a lack of follow-up on points of significance raised by the witnesses answers when the questioning was performed by the Inquiry’s Counsel rather than the NPSCPs’ own lawyers.

Overall, it had been frustrating and exhausting, and illustrated the advantages of making the evidence (the ‘hearing bundle’) available to NPSCPs and their legal teams much earlier.

It was generally recognised there was room for improvement and that meetings should be set up to facilitate a better process. All parties agreed that doing things earlier would improve the overall process and resolve many of the issues. Mitting and the NPSCPs acknowledged that no process would be perfect but where things came up they could be dealt with on a case by case basis.

CROSS-EXAMINATION OF WITNESSES

A more contentious issue was whether or not witnesses should be cross-examined. Again, Greenhall and Menon led on this for NPSCPs, requesting that in the interests of efficiency and smooth running there should be 30 minutes at the end of a witness giving evidence for others to cross-examine.

At the November hearing, the NPSCPs’ barristers asked for and were granted permission to ask questions of the police witnesses. One set of questions sparked heated exchanges with Mitting. These sought to explore the truth around the relationship between one of the early spycops and one of the activists they were spying on, and the possible links to a miscarriage of justice.

This time, lawyers representing some of the police (and Mitting himself) used the phrase “pre-planned ambush” to describe the way these questions were put, in an attempt to characterise the process as unfair, and to oppose direct questioning going ahead. They argued that only the Counsel to the Inquiry should be permitted to ask questions of witnesses, as otherwise the process would be ‘too adversarial’, increase the ‘anxiety’ suffered by these witnesses, and lead to them being less forthcoming with their evidence.

There was no mention made of the fact that these witnesses are former police officers, professionally trained to give evidence in court and very experienced in doing so.

Another suggestion put forward by the lawyers acting for the NPSCPs was that the Inquiry should automatically schedule time for questioning after each witness has given evidence, so last-minute questions could be asked if necessary. This would avoid the convoluted process of first applying to Mitting for permission to ask each question (and providing him with details of the reason for asking IT), so would make the entire process more efficient, and be less disruptive. This suggestion was also mooted, with the observation that if the Rule 10 system was working well then this need for extra questioning would only be required occasionally. Plus, senior Counsel could be trusted to use their professional judgement wisely.

Predictably, Mitting was not a fan of this idea being made the new normal. He did accept that the Rule 10 Questions process needed to be improved. He also accepted there would sometimes be a need for cross-examination, for example when there was a significant dispute of the facts arising out of the evidence given. He agreed that this issue could be handled on a case-by-case basis. He repeated previous remarks that what he was most concerned about having an effective (from his point of view) framework in place as to how the hearings would be structured, emphasising his need for order and for control over the proceedings.

According to lawyers representing some of the undercovers, the very idea that they might be asked questions by anyone other than the Counsel to the Inquiry was too much and would cause extra anxiety. They opposed permission to question witnesses being granted to any of the NPSCPs’ lawyers.

The definition of ‘ a significant dispute of fact’ was addressed by Heather Williams, pointing out that a number of officers are denying the extent of their relationships or even having had them at all. There, however, it was again argued that a different approach should be taken.

Mitting had on previous occasions implied that if a core participant wanted their representative to ask questions on their behalf, it would only be permitted if they too were willing to be cross-examined. Williams noted this has distressed the victims, already upset by the biased treatment by the Inquiry against them, and worried about the psychological impact this would have on them. Mitting appeared to row back to some degree on this requirement, clarifying his earlier statements. It is to be noted that he has said numerous times that he would not force the victims to give evidence.

Richard Whittam QC, on behalf of the undercovers represented by Slater & Gordon, said they expected disputes of fact between the undercovers and their managers, so they might also wish to cross-examine future witnesses.

REPRESENTATION FOR THE SPIED-UPON

A subject of much discussion prior to the November 2020 hearings was whether legal representatives would be allowed to attend the hearings on behalf of their clients. The Inquiry has taken a very restrictive approach to this, permitting only one representative on behalf of the entire group of over 200 NPSCPs, and those who had a ‘direct interest’ in the evidence of a particular officer being funded to attend.

Matthew Ryder noted that this might prove a false economy, and that there was a risk of this approach (led by purely monetary considerations) damaging something of high but intangible value: people’s confidence in this Inquiry.

The refusal to provide funding has put considerable strain on the NPSCPs’ lawyers, and the November hearing was far from satisfactory for either them or their clients. These problems were exacerbated by the fact that access to the November hearing bundle of evidence was restricted to a very small number of NPSCPs and lawyers, with over 6,000 pages of material to process in an extremely short period of time.

The Inquiry has decided that only those NPSCPs with a ‘direct interest’ in each phase/ tranche of hearings should be given access to evidence beforehand. However, they have adopted a very narrow definition of who can be considered to have that ‘direct interest’.

Heather Williams argued that this definition must be widened. There are particular groups, for example the women deceived into relationships, who have a direct interest in understanding how certain tactics (eg targeting activists for intimate relationships) were created and developed over the years.

The Inquiry has recognised that those who fall into categories of the families of deceased children whose identity were stolen and women deceived into relationships have an interest in the emergence of these tactics in the undercover units. Thus, their legal representatives will be funded to attend the next set of evidential hearings.

It is unclear what Mitting’s final ruling on representation as a whole will be, but it is feared that he will continue with this narrow definition and restrictive approach, though further discussion is to be had. He did make the point that if he granted greater latitude in some areas, it would be at the expense of other parts.

CALLING OTHER WITNESSES

One more point that came up in the hearing – a relatively minor one – was the mention made of the obvious dearth of non-State witnesses due to give evidence about the 1970s. Mitting acknowledged this, and complained that the Socialist Workers Party had collectively decided not to take part in his Inquiry. According to him, the object of the Inquiry ‘is not exhaustive investigation but sufficient investigation’.

The NPSCPs say that nevertheless, the witness list for the next phase – covering 1973-82 –  has gaps that are too significant to ignore. Matthew Ryder noted that the NPSCPs would like to put forward relevant witnesses where they could be identified and were willing. In line with much of what else he said during the day, Mitting gave a guarded acceptance of that, indicating that he was prepared to consider them, dependent on various factors.

CONCLUSION

Overall, it was a better tempered hearing than previous ones presided over by Mitting. However he continued to openly press and challenge the lawyers representing NPSCPs in a way that he does not do with those representing the State, keen to maintain the status quo.

Although there have been some positive shifts towards better access, and a few of the suggestions for improvement have been acceded to, the UCPI is likely to continue to fall far short of what would be considered a genuinely accessible, genuinely public inquiry.

A number of important issues remain to be judged with rulings expected to be handed down in the next fortnight.

Morning and afternoon live-streams of the hearing
Draft transcript of the hearing
Associated publications

The third week of the Undercover Police Inquiry’s hearings brought revelations and frustrations.

The former undercover officers of Britain’s secret police engaged in a parade of selective amnesia, admitting what their vintage documents confirmed, but not a lot more.

And yet, we also brought the murky world of the spycops further into focus, learning the names of another MP who was spied on and a senior officer who illegally colluded with industrial blacklisting, as well as catching the Inquiry itself covering up for a criminal spycop.

CELEBRITY GUERRILLA COVERAGE

The Inquiry still refuses to live-steam its hearings, only giving us a live transcript that can’t easily be paused or rewound – a challenge to stare at for hours on end.

The women from Police Spies Out of Lives, representing women deceived into relationships by spycops, took matters into their own hands with a live reading of the transcript on their YouTube channel.

They took this inspired idea a stage further later in the week, with actors Maxine Peake, Siobhán McSweeney, and Barnaby Taylor speaking the words of the spycop witnesses.

There is, of course, no reason why the Inquiry can’t provide us with an audio-stream of the hearings. It would be no different to the read-a-long in terms of security. It’s further evidence of the way the Inquiry regards victims of spycops as marginal and the wider public as an irrelevance.

OVERVIEW

In the last three weeks, the Inquiry hearings have focussed on the formation of what began as the ‘Special Operations Squad’ (SOS) in 1968, and the years leading up to its re-naming as the Special Demonstrations Squad (SDS) in 1972.

It has confirmed the names of more than 100 groups who weren’t previously known to have been spied on.

There’s no good reason why the list couldn’t have been published by the Inquiry before, allowing members of those groups to come forward with relevant testimony in time to contribute.

The movement against the war in Vietnam was the original target for this new method of deep surveillance, and during this period the spycops also reported on anarchist, socialist, communist, Irish and anti-racist groups.

‘THROWN IN’

One after another, the former spycops described:

• being asked to join the unit, rather than formally applying;
• receiving no formal training or briefings;
• being initially sent out without even a target group or movement, just to see what they could join;
• not being steered away from groups that were clearly no threat to anyone;
• no advice as to what information to report, just a vague indication that all information was good information;
• deployments lasting much longer than the 12 month maximum stipulated by SDS founder Conrad Dixon (unless something went wrong & it was ended early);
• no psychological care during or after deployment.

Spycop ‘Dick Epps’ said:

‘I was never sat down in a classroom or a training room and given a training manual, or training lectures… We were all, if you like, being thrown in to a maelstrom, and seeking to find some sense of what we were trying to do’

Rather than merely gathering information on public order issues, it is abundantly clear that spycops were foot-soldiers for the Security Service, and most SDS reports were copied to MI5. It’s also a fact that details of activists were illegally shared with employment blacklisting organisations.

This overlap has been starkly, if unwittingly, illustrated by spycops who flitted between the concepts of democracy, national security, government policy, and corporate convenience as if these were all one and the same.

The spycops talked about targeting groups who ‘want to overthrow our form of democracy’, yet they spied on numerous democratic organisations, including political parties whose very function was to participate in our form of democracy. They sent one officer after another into the anti-apartheid movement, whose sole objective was to help bring democracy to South Africa.

NO SET TARGET

Giving evidence, the spycops admitted very little beyond what their own vintage documents proved, unless it served to distance them from responsibility. Their denials were risibly implausible, claiming to be unable to recall some of the central campaigns they were spying on.

When forced to concede that many groups they spied on posed no threat to the public, they tried to defend their deployments by saying the innocent groups were allied with more dangerous ones who were the actual focus.

None of them could explain why they failed to join the supposed real targets, nor why they were reporting personal details of the people in any and every group they came across.

Epps claimed anarchists were always the likely cause of any public disorder, but when asked why he didn’t infiltrate them instead of peace campaigns, he said:

‘I don’t know that it ever occurred to me that that was a route that I might find useful. But some of them were, as I say, harebrained and a little overexcited at these moments, and I didn’t feel drawn to that sort of grouping.’

Epps infiltrated the International Marxist Group (IMG) because they ‘took part in every demonstration going’. He was instructed by his managers to make a copy of the IMG’s office keys. He admitted he didn’t remember any IMG members being violent or disorderly at demonstrations, but claimed ‘they were much busier than other groups’ – as justification in itself.

OFFICER HN340 ‘ANDY BAILEY’

Officer HN340, ‘Andy Bailey’ (or ‘Alan Nixon‘), was, like Epps, deployed between 1969 and 1972. He said a lack of instruction was a continual feature of his work, and that he just made up his methods and activities. He presumed he was doing the right thing because his managers never told him otherwise.

Bailey joined a tiny left-wing discussion group, the North London Red Circle. In his written statement he described the Red Circle as ‘a talking shop’, saying:

‘It did support a revolutionary agenda and was subversive to the extent that it advanced the overthrow of the established political system in the UK, albeit never took any concrete steps… violence would have been the last thing on many of their minds’.

He said it was a ‘recruiting ground for the International Marxist Group’, with an implication that the IMG was in itself a serious threat to public safety even though, as we heard from Dick Epps, other officers knew that wasn’t the case and they’d only spied on the IMG because they, in turn, was supposed to be adjacent to the real targets.

IRISH ISSUES

Bailey also infiltrated the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign (ICRSC). Irish republican politics was a popular cause with the left at the time. As in the early years of the Troubles, Republicans were only attacking military targets in Northern Ireland it was, for many, a cause with little moral dilemma.

In October 1970, Bailey also attended the founding conference of the Irish Solidarity Campaign (ISC) in Birmingham. For an SDS officer to go to another constabulary’s jurisdiction, the unit must have either secured the permission of the local police, in which case they were complicit in what the spycops did, or else it was done without local approval, which is a serious breach of police protocol.

That Irish Solidarity Campaign founding conference was also attended by Bailey’s colleague, SDS officer HN68 ‘Sean Lynch’, whose deployment focused on Irish solidarity groups. A report was produced afterwards, with both their names attached to it, which contained a long list of all the groups and ‘fraternal delegates’ who attended the conference.

He explained:

‘They were there and so I reported it; it was then down to the back office to do their filtering, vetting, or whatever you call it’

The report was sent to both MI5 and the Home Office. The Met’s Deputy Assistant Commissioner commended the ‘first class work’ and asked that the officers be praised.

It will have been obvious to that senior officer that the depth of knowledge in the report can only have come from sustained infiltration.

It is already clear – and getting even clearer – that the SDS’s work was known and approved of at the highest levels of the Met, as well as its paymasters in the Home Office. There is, therefore, no way to sustain the claim that the SDS was a rogue unit, so secret that nobody outside really knew what was going on.

Bailey could not recall ISC members ever taking part in any acts of violence, nor any public disorder at any demonstrations organised by the ISC:

‘I’m sure something like that would have stuck in my memory and it definitely doesn’t.’

ANOTHER MP SPIED ON

Bailey’s reports would specifically mention whether or not events were attended by Bernadette Devlin, a young independent Irish republican MP.

According to Bailey:

‘if she was known to be going to attend any meeting or demonstration or whatever, then of course that would increase the likelihood of more people arriving at the demonstration’.

Devlin joins the growing list of MPs confirmed as having been spied on by the SDS, the unit that was supposedly formed to frustrate those who would overthrow parliamentary democracy.

SPYCOPS ABROAD

Bailey’s managers had instructed him not to join the International Marxist Group because it was ‘recognised as more of a political party’. This doesn’t tally with the fact that his contemporary, ‘Doug Edwards’, was not merely a member of the Independent Labour Party but the Tower Hamlets branch treasurer.

His managers did, however, instruct him to attend the Conference for a Red Europe in Brussels in November 1970, organised by the Fourth International (of which the IMG was a part).

As with the ISC conference in Birmingham a month earlier, Bailey says there was no direct contact between him and the other spycop who attended. That other officer was officer HN326, ‘Doug Edwards’, who complained about the trip in his evidence to the Inquiry.

This is the earliest known instance of spycops travelling abroad. It’s unclear whether the SDS followed protocol and got permission from their counterparts in Belgium (and any countries they passed through).

It is yet another example of spycops’ being engaged from the start in an activity that has been explained away as a later aberration.

TRADE UNIONIST DAVE SMITH

Blacklisted trade unionist Dave Smith was initially forbidden to deliver his opening statement to the Inquiry, as it mentioned the real name of spycop ‘Carlo Neri’ – which is Carlo Soracchi. The Inquiry insisted on nobody saying the name Soracchi out loud, even though it has been in the public domain for 18 months.

Dave Smith

Smith spoke on behalf of the Blacklist Support Group (BSG), representing union members who were unlawfully blacklisted by major construction firms.

When the BSG first spoke about being blacklisted for union activities, they were ridiculed as conspiracy theorists. But it’s conspiracy fact – and it involves the collusion of the police and the security services.

Established in 1993 using an existing blacklist from the Economic League, The Consulting Association (TCA) was a secret body comprised of most major construction companies. Between them, they illegally orchestrated the blacklisting of thousands of construction workers.

Every job applicant on major building projects had their name checked against TCA’s blacklist. If there was a match, the worker would be refused work or dismissed. These checks were done on hundreds of thousands of workers a year.

It wasn’t just the major firms who kept union activists under surveillance and contributed to blacklisting – it was the same political police who are at the heart of the Undercover Policing Inquiry.

The police’s internal spycops investigation, Operation Herne, produced a report on blacklisting which concluded:

‘Police, including Special Branches and the Security Services, supplied information to the blacklist funded by the country’s major construction firms, The Consulting Association’

SPECIAL BRANCH INDUSTRIAL UNIT

The Special Branch Industrial Unit was established in 1970, ‘with the aim of monitoring trade unionists from teaching to the docks’. Special Branch files were effectively a database for MI5, private firms and others to find out about trade union activists.

Spycops often worked for the Industrial Unit, before or after being deployed undercover. One was HN336 ‘Dick Epps’, who told the Inquiry that Chief Superintendent Herbert Guy ‘Bert’ Lawrenson, head of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch’s union-monitoring C Squad in those early days, went to work for the Economic League.

One can readily imagine Special Branch Industrial Unit officers had a ready exchange of information with Lawrenson, their former boss, the man who quite possibly hired and trained them.

The Operation Herne report confirmed that, prior to The Consulting Association’s foundation in the 1990s:

‘Special Branches throughout the UK had direct contact with the Economic League’

MODERN POLICE HELP FOR BLACKLISTERS

As well as Special Branch files, police intelligence on political activists was later kept on the National Domestic Extremism Database, which holds files on thousands of citizens whom the State considers ‘domestic extremists’, many of whom have committed no crime whatsoever.

One of the units responsible for the database was the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (NETCU), whose Detective Chief Inspector Gordon Mills gave a presentation to a secret Consulting Association meeting in 2008. This was a senior police officer helping TCA, a company whose work was illegal.

NETCU and the Special Branch Industrial Unit, along with all the spycops units, are now absorbed into the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command. State spying on unions is now classified as counter-terrorism.

PERSONAL TARGETING

Page from undercover officer Mark Jenner’s 1996 diary, showing his attendance at a UCATT meeting

Smith then focused on a small group of union activists on the blacklist of which he was part. From the early 1990s until mid 2000s, they were spied on by three separate spycops: Peter Francis, Mark Jenner, and Carlo Soracchi.

Mark Jenner joined the construction union UCATT as ‘Mark Cassidy’. He attended picket lines, protests, and conferences, and even chaired meetings. Smith flatly accused Jenner, and through him the British State, of interfering with the internal democratic processes of an independent trade union.

When Jenner’s deployment was coming to an end, another spycop, Carlo Soracchi, using the name ‘Carlo Neri’, was sent to spy on the same group of activists. Soracchi was an agent provocateur, trying in vain to incite union members to commit arson against a charity shop he claimed was run by Roberto Fiore, leader of Italian fascist party Forza Nuova.

Jenner deceived ‘Alison’, an activist for the National Union of Teachers, into a five year co-habiting relationship during his deployment. Soracchi deceived two women into relationships with him during his deployment – Donna McLean, a Transport and General Workers Union rep from a homelessness charity, and ‘Lindsey‘ who was also an active trade unionist.

SDS officer Carlo Soracchi

If the purpose of the spycop units was genuinely, as the police claim, to detect serious criminality or public disorder, why, in over ten years of spying, were none of these people ever charged or prosecuted with a serious criminal offence? This is nothing to do with disorder or crime, it’s purely political policing.

Smith said the police can claim all they like that they were protecting democracy. But by spying on trade union members and colluding with blacklisting, spycops are actually just protecting big business and capitalism. Capitalism and democracy are not the same thing.

OFFICER HN348 ‘SANDRA DAVIES’

Giving over a long session to questioning Special Demonstration Squad officer HN348 ‘Sandra Davies’ seemed something of an odd proposition, as she appeared to have had an uneventful deployment.

As it turned out, this was the point; her testimony demonstrated the pointlessness of many deployments, and the total absence of any consideration of the impact of this intrusion on the lives of those targeted.

The SDS’ annual report of 1971 confirmed that she was recruited for her gender:

‘The arrival of a second woman officer has added considerably to the squad’s flexibility and has proved invaluable in the comparatively recent field of women’s liberation.’

Davies infiltrated the Women’s Liberation Front (WLF). A small feminist group with Maoist leanings, its meetings were attended by about 12 people, hosted at one of the member’s homes.

As a constable, she had the same powers and responsibilities as her male colleagues but, as a female officer, was only paid 90% of the men’s salary.

In the SDS, she was sent to spy on the WLF who, according to her, mainly campaigned for equal pay, free contraception and free nurseries.

SUBVERSIVE BAKING

Davies reported on the WLF supplying home-made sweets and cakes for a children’s Christmas party organised by the Black Unity and Freedom Party. She also reported on the WLF holding a jumble sale. Both of these reports were copied to MI5.

She was elected treasurer of the WLF. As part of the six-strong executive committee, she took part in the expulsion of several members that led to the group’s decline.

Looking back, she continued:

‘I do not think my work really yielded any good intelligence, but I eliminated the Women’s Liberation Front from public order concerns’

That is a mitigation that could be applied to thought-crime spying on literally anyone. More to the point, it was a fact that must have been obvious very early on in her deployment. And yet she spent two years, full-time, spying on that group.

There was no suggestion that her managers gave much thought to whether what she was doing was worthwhile. As with other deployments, it seems that once they had their spycops in place, keeping them there was more important than the substance of the information they gathered.

The rights of the people being spied on – who had police officers in their lives and homes week after week – didn’t get a look-in.

MENTAL GYMNASTICS

Davies has been granted anonymity by the Inquiry. In her ‘impact statement’, she said that she wanted anonymity because she would be embarrassed if the group’s main activist found out the truth. She also said her reputation would be tainted if her friends found out she had been a spycop.

This is an extraordinary mental gymnastics – when we question the purpose of spycops, the police tell us that they’re doing vital & noble work ensuring the safety of everyone, yet when we ask why they want anonymity, they say it would be humiliating to be known as one.

SUMMARY WITHOUT QUESTION

Rather than insisting that all of the surviving former spycops give evidence, the Inquiry has chosen not to ‘call’ the majority of them.

Instead, the Inquiry team have prepared a short summary of each officer’s witness statement, and read it out. There is no opportunity for anyone to question the spycops, giving rise to a worry that their real history will remain hidden.

Less anticipated was that the Inquiry would be more inclined to cover up an officer’s wrongdoing than the officer themselves.

OFFICER HN339 ‘STEWART GOODMAN’

Officer HN339, ‘Stewart Goodman’, was deployed undercover from 1970 to 1971, initially against the anti-apartheid groups. He joined the Lambeth branch of the International Socialists (now the Socialist Workers Party), where – mirroring Doug Edwards’ and Sandra Davies’ roles – he became treasurer.

Speaking for the Inquiry, Elizabeth Campbell summarised:

‘HN339 recalls being involved in some fly-posting while in his cover identity, but no other criminal activity. Near the end of his deployment, HN339 was involved in a road traffic accident while driving an unmarked police car, which necessitated the involvement of his supervisors on the SDS.

‘HN339 states that he does not remember much about his withdrawal from the field, but suspects that this event may have been a catalyst for the end of his deployment.’

Goodman was not merely ‘involved in a road traffic accident’.

For those willing to wade through the documents, on page 18 of Goodman’s witness statement he said:

‘I crashed my unmarked police car. I had been at a pub with activists and I would have parked the car away from the pub so as not to arouse suspicion. I drove home while under the influence of alcohol and crashed the car into a tree’.

The car was a write-off. When uniformed officers arrived, Goodman breached SDS protocol and broke cover, telling them he was an undercover colleague. Rather than arresting and charging him, they drove him home.

He was eventually charged and went to court, accompanied by his manager Phil Saunders. He believes he was prosecuted under his false identity and that Saunders briefed the magistrates. He was convicted and fined.

INQUIRY COVERING UP THE TRUTH

It is utterly outrageous that the Inquiry told the public that the only crime Goodman committed undercover was fly-posting and then, literally in the next sentence, referred to a much more serious criminal offence.

Investigating the often-corrupt relationships between the spycops and the courts is one of the stated purposes of this Inquiry, yet here they are deliberately burying examples of wrong-doing which the officers themselves admit.

Because Goodman wasn’t called to give evidence to the Inquiry in person, there was no way to question him about the possibility of judicial corruption.

Beyond that, we are left wondering what else has been covered up in this way, and lies there among the hundreds of pages the Inquiry bulk-publishes after it has finished discussing a given officer’s deployment.

OFFICER HN343 ‘JOHN CLINTON’

Another summary was given for HN343 ‘John Clinton’, who served in the SDS from early 1971 until late 1974, infiltrating groups including the International Socialists (IS).

Clinton considered the IS to be subversive, though he had an exceptionally broad definition of the word, writing in his witness statement:

‘I witnessed a lot of subversive activity whilst I was deployed undercover… During industrial disputes they would deploy to picket lines and stand there in solidarity.’

He reported on campaigns and issues supported by the group, such as women’s liberation, tenants’ rights and the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

WHAT HE DIDN’T SAY

Clinton was infiltrating International Socialists in London in the summer of 1974, yet he made no mention of their involvement in the large anti-fascist demonstration on 15 June 1974 at which a protester, Kevin Gately, was killed by police.

It was the first time anyone had died on a demonstration in Britain for over 50 years. It was a huge cause célèbre for the left. Clinton didn’t mention this, nor any of the vigils for Gately and campaigning that followed among IS and the broader left.

It is a glaring omission that arouses suspicion. Given the SDS’s avid focus on such justice campaigns later on, it would be very odd indeed if their officer in IS didn’t participate, let alone fail to recall it as significant.

As with Stewart Goodman earlier, because this was an Inquiry lawyer reading out a hasty summary, nobody was able to question Clinton about any of this.

OFFICER HN345 ‘PETER FREDERICKS’

Barbara Beese on the protest for which she would be arrested as one of the Mangrove 9, Aug 9 1970

Spycop HN345, ‘Peter Fredericks‘, describes himself as being ‘of mixed heritage’. He was deployed by the SDS for about six months in 1971.

Fredericks was asked if he thought he was asked to target the Black Power movement because of his race.

‘No. I never came across anything vaguely associated with that statement,’ he replied, as if the police might have sent a white officer to infiltrate Black Power groups instead.

ANOTHER FAULTY MEMORY

Fredericks was asked if he remembered the case of the Mangrove 9:

‘Not clearly, no’.

The disbelieving scepticism of the barrister asking was clear even on the plain type of the transcript:

‘It doesn’t ring any bells at all? Let me see if I can help you.’

The Inquiry was then told how, on 9 August 1970 – a few months before Fredericks joined the SDS – there was a demonstration in Notting Hill about the police harassment of the Mangrove restaurant. As a result of that demonstration, nine black activists were arrested and prosecuted for riot.

There was a defence campaign set up, and their trial started at the Old Bailey in October 1971, while Fredericks was undercover in Black Power groups.

Fredericks said:

‘I was not involved closely with them. I would have read about it in the papers. I would have known something, perhaps.’

As with John Clinton’s failure to mention the death of Kevin Gately, this absence of memory is simply not credible. Even the barrister knew it:

‘And you don’t remember any conversations with any of your SOS colleagues, or anybody else in Special Branch, about this seminal event in the history of the Black Power Movement?’

Fredericks determinedly kept the lid on the can of worms:

‘Definitely not. Definitely not.’

In fact, the totality of Fredericks’s recollections of Black Power seemed to amount to very little at all.

‘SAMPLE THE PRODUCT’

When asked about intimate relationships between undercover officers and the people they spied on, his jaw-dropping response led to collective gasps of horror:

‘I have, if you like, a phrase in my head which helps guide me here. If you ask me to infiltrate some drug dealers, you can’t point the finger at me if I sample the product.

‘If these people are in a certain environment where it is necessary to engage a little more deeply, then shall we say, I find this acceptable, but I do worry about the consequences for the female and any children that may result from the relationship. That would be dangerous. So yes, it shouldn’t be done.’

Tom Fowler was live-tweeting from the Inquiry venue, watching on a screen. He reported:

‘Reading the words from the transcript is bad enough, but when you see it delivered with a wide grin, tongue darting in & out of the mouth, with the final “it shouldn’t be done” tacked on to the end with a complete lack of sincerity, it reveals an extreme misogyny as well as a certain sadism; a psychopathic willingness to use people for political ends, whilst enjoying it at the same time’

It serves to underline the problem of the Inquiry only providing a live transcript and thereby missing all the tone and inflection, something highlighted on the COPS blog earlier in the week.

WHAT NEXT?

The Undercover Policing Inquiry will now take a break to prepare for the next set of hearings. These will examine the Special Demonstration Squad 1973-82, and are expected to be held in March or April 2021.

Whenever they happen, COPS will be live-tweeting the hearings and producing daily reports, as well as weekly summaries like this one.

All our daily and weekly reports are linked from our Inquiry page.

<<Previous UCPI Weekly Report (9-13 Nov 2020)<<

>>Next UCPI Weekly Report (21-23 Apr 2021)>>

Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 14

19 November 2020

Evidence from:

Officer HN 333 (summary of evidence)
Officer HN 339 aka ‘Stewart Goodman’ (summary of evidence)
Officer HN 349 (summary of evidence)
Officer HN 343 aka ‘John Clinton’ (summary of evidence)
Officer HN 345 aka ‘Peter Fredericks’

Black Defence Committee demonstration, Notting Hill, London, October 1970

This was the final day of hearings in the first phase of the Inquiry, looking at the earliest years of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) from its formation in 1968 to around 1972.

We heard evidence from five former undercover officers of the SDS. The Inquiry gave brief summaries of four of their careers, before the fifth, ‘Peter Fredericks’ gave evidence in person for several hours.

Once again the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, locked horns with Rajiv Menon QC, barrister for those who were spied upon. The bias of the Inquiry was set out in even starker terms when we discovered that, in the summary of officer HN339 ‘Stewart Goodman’, it actively hid the officer’s admissions of criminality. It’s as if the Inquiry is more on the police’s side than the police themselves. 

Officer HN 333
(summary of evidence)

Temporary Mystery Man

Very little is known about this officer. Their real and cover names are being restricted, along with details of the groups he targeted.

The reason for restricting real and cover names and target group was previously set out by Mitting as:

“There is, however, a small – in my judgement, very small – risk that if his cover name were to be associated with the valuable duties which he performed subsequent to his deployment, he would be of interest to those who might pose such a threat.”

He was on duty as a plain-clothes Special Branch officer at the large anti-Vietnam War demonstration on 27 October 1968, then joined the SDS shortly afterwards.

According to his witness statement, there was tight secrecy around the SDS. There was also no formal training, though once in the field the undercovers would share their experience and knowledge. He did not use the name of a deceased child, and there was only limited guidance about choosing a cover name.

He was deployed for 9 months, into a now-defunct left wing group. He attended meetings and demonstrations, but said it was a ‘loose association’ rather than a formal organisation, so he did not have any roles of responsibility.

He gave verbal updates to SDS managers at the safe house – he said he was not responsible for writing intelligence reports.

Having become ill, he was withdrawn (via a planned process) in 1969, giving his excuses to the group. He then returned to normal Special Branch duties.

The full witness statement of HN333.

A summary of information about HN333’s deployment can be found on p122 of the Counsel to the Inquiry’s Opening Statement.

Officer HN 339 aka ‘Stewart Goodman’
(summary of evidence)

‘Stewart Goodman’, the Drunk Driver

This officer joined Special Branch in the 1960s, during which time he attended meetings of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination.

He said “everyone in Special Branch knew about the existence of the SDS”, which contrasts with other officers saying it was a well-kept secret, or something about which there were only vague rumours.

He was married at the time the joined the SDS, but there was no welfare check to discuss the impact of his new job on his family.

Dambusters Mobilising Committee leaflet

He was deployed undercover from 1970 to 1971, initially against the Anti-Apartheid Movement, from which he also reported on the Dambusters Mobilisation Committee. Most of his early reporting relates to this latter organisation, which was a coalition of anti-apartheid groups who opposed the construction of the huge Cabora Bassa dam in Mozambique to supply electricity to South Africa.

He subsequently infiltrated the Lambeth branch of the International Socialists (now the Socialist Workers Party), where he became treasurer (a position more than one of his contemporaries occupied in groups they infiltrated). This put him very close to the branch secretary – ‘effectively his right hand man’. He attended both public and private meetings.

While spying on the IS, much of what Goodman reported on was internal party discussions and political disputes. As well as at Lambeth branch, he also reported on the group’s affairs at a national level – including reporting on a major rift. He went to their national convention at Skegness. It appears IS were targeted because the security services believe they fell within their definition of ‘subversion’.

Goodman also said:

“MPs giving their support to protest movements was potentially of interest to Special Branch”.

The Inquiry also notes that his “intelligence evidences a particular interest on the part of IS in trade union activity”.

He did not use the name of a deceased child and says he did not have any sexual relationships.

INQUIRY COVER-UP

Non-state core participants have been worried about the Inquiry having a lawyer read a summary of an officer’s activity, with no opportunity to question the officer. What we hadn’t anticipated was the Inquiry being even more inclined to cover-up an officer’s wrongdoing than the officer themselves.

Speaking for the Inquiry, Elizabeth Campbell said:

“HN339 recalls being involved in some fly-posting while in his cover identity, but no other criminal activity. Near the end of his deployment, HN339 was involved in a road traffic accident while driving an unmarked police car, which necessitated the involvement of his supervisors on the SDS. HN339 states that he does not remember much about his withdrawal from the field, but suspects that this event may have been a catalyst for the end of his deployment.”

Goodman was not merely ‘involved in a road traffic accident’.

For those willing to wade through the statements, on page 18 of Goodman’s witness statement he said:

“I crashed my unmarked police car. I had been at a pub with activists and I would have parked the car away from the pub so as not to arouse suspicion. I drove home while under the influence of alcohol and crashed the car into a tree”.

The car was a write-off. When uniformed officers arrived, Goodman breached SDS protocol and broke cover, telling them he was an undercover colleague. Rather than arresting and charging him, they drove him home.

He was eventually charged and went to court, accompanied by his manager Phil Saunders. He believes he was prosecuted under his false identity, and that Saunders briefed the magistrates. He was convicted and fined.

Having been bailed out by his managers, he was withdrawn from his undercover role, but faced no formal disciplinary action.

INQUIRY UNDERMINING ITSELF

It is utterly outrageous that the Inquiry told the public that the only crime Goodman committed undercover was fly-posting and then, literally in the next sentence, referred to a much more serious criminal offence, for which he was convicted (with the complicity of uniformed police and the judiciary).

The Inquiry cannot claim ignorance, as they not only specifically mentioned the incident, but made a conscious choice to turn his statement from an admission of criminal culpability into a more neutral account, with no crime mentioned.

Investigating the often-corrupt relationships between the spycops and the courts is one of the stated purposes of this Inquiry, yet here they are deliberately burying examples of wrong-doing that the officers themselves admit to.

Because Goodman wasn’t called to give evidence to the Inquiry in person, there is no way to question him about the possibility of judicial corruption. Beyond that, we are left wondering what else has been covered up in this way, and lies there among the screeds pages that the Inquiry bulk-publishes after it has finished discussing a given officer’s deployment.

The full witness statement of HN339 ‘Stewart Goodman’.

A summary of information about HN339’s deployment can be found on p138 of the Counsel to the Inquiry’s Opening Statement.

Officer HN 349
(summary of evidence)

The Failed Anarchist

Both the real name and the cover name of this officer has been restricted by the Inquiry. The names of the groups he targeted have also been withheld, which has made it impossible for anyone he spied on to come forward to the Inquiry with their evidence.

He was recruited by another undercover to join the SDS after a short time in Special Branch. He was not given formal training; instead he read reports in the back office and met with other spycops before being deployed.

He grew his hair and beard and started wearing scruffy clothes, but did little else to develop his ‘legend’. His cover story was poorly developed compared to his colleagues (he had no cover job, for instance).

Deployed in the early 1970s, he was apparently not initially tasked to spy on any particular group, instead he went to demonstrations in central London and sought to get to know regulars.

He was eventually asked to target various loose-knit anarchist groups.

While at the safe house he would discuss anything and everything – including details of their deployments – with the other spycops, something other spycops have denied in their evidence to the Inquiry. In his witness statement he said:

“No topic of conversation would be off limits.”

If and when necessary, managers would take an undercover off for private chats, away from the group:

“This happened more frequently for officers who were involved in the more sensitive areas of work.”

The deployment was unsuccessful as the target group were mistrustful of strangers and did not let him build up relationships with them. Consequently, following a meeting with his managers, he was withdrawn after just nine months in the field.

He then spent time in the SDS back office, before returning to other Special Branch duties. He notes he did work with intelligence gathered by SDS undercovers though it was not marked as such. He also made requests for specific information from the SDS while at Special Branch.

HN349 noted that most Special Branch officers were “aware of the SDS and had an idea of the kind of groups they had infiltrated”. He also noted:

“It was also generally accepted by myself and fellow UCOs [undercover officers] that the Security Services provided some of the funding for the SDS.”

The full witness statement of HN349.

A summary of information about HN349’s deployment can be found on p141 of the Counsel to the Inquiry’s Opening Statement.

Officer HN 343 aka ‘John Clinton’
(summary of evidence)

‘John Clinton’ and the Subversive Pickets

This undercover served in the SDS from early 1971 until sometime in 1974. He was deployed into the International Socialists.

Prior to joining the SDS, he had been deployed as a plain-clothes Special Branch officer to report back on public meetings. Whilst in Special Branch, he had heard ‘vague whispers’ of the existence of a secret unit.

He had no formal training. He spent 3-4 months in the SDS back office, reading up on the political landscape. His cover story was basic and he gave his cover job as van driver, in case he was spotted elsewhere in London by his targets. He was give a vehicle as part of his cover.

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISTS

Clinton was tasked by his managers to infiltrate the International Socialists (IS). From October 1971 to March 1972, many of his reports are of the IS’s Croydon branch. However, he explained that the documents do not reflect the totality of his reporting during this period. Rather, he attended various IS meetings and demonstrations across London before focusing on the Hammersmith & Fulham branch.

This branch was chosen as there was “a lot of Irish activity discussed”, which he knew was of great interest to the Met.

He found it easy to join as they were keen for new members; he turned up at meetings and demonstrations, expressing his enthusiasm for the cause. Once in, he used a ‘flaky’ persona to avoid being given responsibility in the group.

He was aware that the SDS was interested in both public order and counter-subversion issues. He said that IS was a “Trotskyist subversive group with links into Irish Groups”. He witnessed public disorder during his time undercover, but noted that any violence was not caused by IS members.

Clinton did consider IS to be subversive, writing in his witness statement:

“I witnessed a lot of subversive activity whilst I was deployed undercover. IS were constantly trying to exploit whatever industrial or political situation that existed in the aim of getting the proletariat to rise up. During industrial disputes they would deploy to picket lines and stand there in solidarity.”

He attended a wide range of public and private events, providing significant reportage of IS’s internal affairs, including details of elections and appointments, and political rifts. He also reported on trade union membership and industrial action taken by IS members. He did not join a trade union, but did go on demonstrations in support of industrial action organised by trade unions.

Other matters covered included campaigns supported by the group, such as women’s liberation, tenants’ rights and the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

Clinton noted that he had considerable discretion as to what he reported on, but was guided by what he knew Special Branch to be interested in generally. He received general tasking and updates at the SDS weekly meetings.

He wrote:

“My remit was to gather intelligence on IS. That was both with a view to public order, but also information that was relevant to counter subversion. What they were doing politically, how they were organised, and the identity of influential individuals was all important information.”

THE DEATH OF KEVIN GATELY

Clinton was infiltrating International Socialists in London in the summer of 1974, yet he made no mention of their involvement in the large anti-fascist demonstration on 15 June 1974 at which a protester, Kevin Gately, was killed.

Kevin Gately (circled), anti-fascist demonstration, London, 15 June 1974

At 6 feet 9 inches tall, Gately stood out, and his head is readily seen above the level of crowd in photos of the demonstration. This may well be why he was killed. Police charged into the crowd on horseback, lashing out with truncheons. Gately’s body was found afterwards.

The inquest found Gately died from a brain haemorrhage caused from a blow to the head from a blunt instrument. His exceptional height led several newspapers of the time to allege his death was the result of a blow from a mounted police truncheon.

It was the first time anyone had died on a demonstration in Britain for over 50 years. It was a huge cause célèbre for the left. Clinton didn’t mention this, nor any of the vigils for Gately and campaigning that followed among IS and the broader left.

It is a glaring omission that arouses suspicion. He would certainly have known of it and may well have been part of the demonstration and subsequent commemorations and events. Given the SDS’s avid focus on such justice campaigns later on, it would be very odd if their officer in IS didn’t remember it as being significant.

As with Stewart Goodman earlier, because this was an Inquiry lawyer reading out a hasty summary, lawyers for the ‘non-state core participants’ (those who were spied on) weren’t able to question Clinton about any of this.

END OF DEPLOYMENT

Clinton left his deployment in September 1974 as he had enough of being an undercover; this was supported by his managers. In one of the earliest known developed exit strategies, he used a ‘phased withdrawal’, telling the group he was going travelling.

Being undercover permanently changed him, in that it made him very private in his personal affairs.

In late 1980s, he was posted to Special Branch’s C Squad for a few months and would have received intelligence from the SDS in that role, but as it was ‘sanitised’ he would not be privy to full details of the spycops’ doings. He retired from the police after 30 years.

THE MAN WITH THE VAN

Spycop Jim Boyling with his van

It’s interesting to note that he was a van driver, with a van supplied by the SDS. This became a common part of later spycops’ deployments.

As Clinton said, it gave them an excuse if they were spotted somewhere unexpected. It also made them the group’s unofficial taxi: they would drop everyone home after meetings, thereby learning people’s addresses. If a group was planning to go on any political action, they would ask the member with the reliable van first.

It became a standard part of spycops’ fake identities across decades and units. Andy Coles (SDS, 1991-95) was known as ‘Andy Van’.

Later on, Mark Kennedy (National Public Order Intelligence Unit, 2003-2010) was known as ‘Transport Mark’, in charge of logistics for all the Climate Camps.

The full witness statement of HN343.

A summary of information about HN343’s deployment can be found on p154 of the Counsel to the Inquiry’s Opening Statement.

Five More Spycops

As if these summaries truncated enough, the Inquiry also published without summary documents relating to five former members of the SDS who have not provided witness statements:

– HN346, real name Jill Mosdell, cover name unknown. Spied on Stop the Seventy Tour, the Anti-Apartheid Movement & related groups.

– HN338, real name restricted, cover name unknown. Spied on the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, the International Marxist Group (in particular the Notting Hill and West London branches), and the Anti-Internment League.

– HN1251, real name Phil Saunders, cover name, if any, unknown. Detective Inspector in the SDS, overseeing undercover officers.

– HN332, real name restricted. Cover name, if any, unknown. Detective Inspector and subsequently head of the SDS.

– HN394, real name restricted and cover name, if any, unknown. Detective Sergeant and then Detective Inspector in the SDS.

It wasn’t explained are SDS bosses are not even not giving statements? Are they somehow deemed irrelevant? Are they refusing to cooperate? Have they died?

It’s not clear why there appears to be no mention of HN 394 on the Inquiry website.

Officer HN 345 aka ‘Peter Fredericks’

Only one officer, ‘HN345’, gave ‘live’ evidence at the Undercover Policing Inquiry on Thursday. He was questioned by Counsel for the Inquiry, David Barr QC, and later by Rajiv Menon QC and Ruth Brander on behalf of non-state core participants. Questions were based on his written witness statement.

His mannerisms and tone obviously do not come across in the time-delayed transcript, so it is worth noting that he was usually grinning, poked his tongue in and out whilst speaking, and drew out certain words.

The opening questions are formalities, confirming that he knew the contents of the witness statement he provided, and that they are is true. Even at this, he was cocky. Asked if he was ‘familiar with the contents of the witness statement, he replied ‘slightly’.

He came across as incredibly creepy, and his evidence reiterated a number of now familiar themes: the lack of training or guidance these officers received; the bizarre claim that they all sat together in a flat for hours writing reports without exchanging information or ideas about their deployments; the ‘fishing expedition’ nature of the deployments – where everything and anything was passed on to the managers, who it was assumed would only include the information that they considered important in the final intelligence reports; the inexplicable infiltration of groups involved in political debate and even humanitarian aid; stark and shocking evidence of deep rooted sexism, racism and political prejudice; the fact that the Inquiry has only received a small fraction of the overall reporting; and the ever-present influence of “Box 500”, the code name for MI5.

GOING UNDERCOVER

Fredericks joined the police in the mid 1960s, and in the course of his ordinary policing, was offered the opportunity to do some undercover work. He “thought it sounded more interesting than road traffic duties” and agreed. Fredericks was deployed by the SDS for about six months, in 1971.

He was trained ‘on the job’ to do this ‘ordinary’ (i.e. non-spycop) undercover work. Whilst undercover he came across people involved with political groups – including the anti-apartheid Stop the Seventy Tour campaign, and the “Black Power movement”. He had not been tasked to report on either of these groups, he said it “just happened while I was doing other things”. He sent the information he gathered to his bosses.

Fredericks was asked by Ruth Brander – on behalf of Peter Hain – whether he knew that the information he had gathered about the Stop The Seventy Tour was being given to the Security Services. His lengthy response included the claim that “the system needed to know about it and I was pushing the information up”. And what about the South African security services? He didn’t have much of a response to this, managing only a weak “no”.

He explained that as a result of this intelligence-gathering, he was noticed by both Special Branch and MI5. He was interviewed and invited to join Special Branch, as a member of “C-squad” dealing with ‘domestic extremism’. He was in the section that dealt with Trotskyists and anarchists (as opposed to the one that dealt with the Communist Party of Great Britain and similar groups). He said he could not remember being briefed about any specific groups.

He said he had not heard of what was called the Special Operations Squad (SOS, later the Special Demonstration Squad) at the time. The Inquiry was shown one of Fredericks’ reports [UCPI0000005817] from his time at C-squad, before he became a member of the SOS, about a meeting on the Vietnam war where another non-state CP, Tariq Ali, was speaking.

ANOTHER AMNESIAC SPYCOP

As with most of the other officers who have so far given evidence, he said he remembered what documents proved and little more. Asked about his reporting on Tariq Ali, whose activism was so prominent at the time that his name would be used in headlines, Fredericks said he could only “remember the name very clearly but no more. It’s one of those strange things”.

While part of C-squad, he was also instructed to attend demonstrations.. At one of these demos, about the conflict in East Pakistan/ Bangladesh, he met a woman who was connected to the ‘Operation Omega’ campaign.

He gave an account of an incident he witnessed during another Bangladesh demo. He stated that he and other plain-clothes Special Branch officers had been summoned by radio back to Scotland Yard, and he was near Parliament when he spotted a police communications vehicle on fire and the female officer inside “in distress”. He said he didn’t notice any other serious trouble or violence that day:

“I didn’t notice anything to be worried about. Having said that, of course we did have the fire”.

As a result of his accidentally making connections with various political groups, he seems to have been flagged as a potential recruit for the SOS. He was approached by Ken Pendered, told that the Security Services (MI5) had written a letter commending him and that he would be transferred to this secret squad and given an undercover identity.

He was also questioned about HN326 and HN68 visiting him at his home – he can’t remember exactly when or why this took place, although he and HN326 were already acquainted. However, his pride at having been noticed by “Box” (i.e. MI5) was still evident in his demeanour, fifty years on.

NO FORMAL TASKING OR TRAINING

He confirmed that he was not given any training on the definition of ‘extremism’ or ‘subversion’, giving the somewhat vague answer that:

“what is subversive to one group could be helpful to another, or positive to another”.

He added that he had his own private views on those terms, and he cannot remember any received understanding within Special Branch on this point.

He felt the training he was given when he joined Special Branch was not particularly useful. In contrast, there was no training or guidance when he was transferred to the SOS. “We were left to our own devices”.

He had “no memory” of being instructed on what information was and wasn’t of interest. In his previous undercover work, he had been very selective in what he reported, but in the SOS he tried casting a wide net and gathering as much info as possible, from all sorts of people.

He compared himself to the provenance of antiques – “if I can be seen to be someone who knows a lot of people, different organisations, perhaps I would gain more trust”. He would hand over all the info he gathered. If he made mistakes in his report, someone would correct them. He didn’t type his own reports – there was a typing team for that – and others in the SOS decided what was relevant enough to be included.

As undercover officers, they were quite isolated, although they would have conversations at the ‘safe house’, the SDS flat. “We were on a bit of a learning curve” he explained.

In common with his contemporaries that the Inquiry had already heard from, Fredericks described being given a free rein on how he worked, negligible feedback on his reports, and no indication of what was good or bad in his work.

NEITHER GOOD NOR BAD

Were his bosses ever pleased with the intelligence he provided? “Not pleased, not dis-pleased” he answered. Indeed, the only time he can remember anyone being ‘pleased’ with his work was when that complimentary letter from ‘Box’ turned up right at the start.

Was this SOS work just an extension of the work he’d been doing in Special Branch, then? It appears not. Fredericks explained one of the main differences: “You didn’t go anywhere near the office” at Scotland Yard once you were in the SOS.

However, it should also be noted that Fredericks doesn’t think the Inquiry have seen all of his reports – there are only three reports of political meetings attended by ‘Fredericks’ in the bundle– yet he said he was “fully occupied” during his months with the squad, sometimes attending several meetings in the same day and filing several reports every week.

OPERATION OMEGA – HUMANITARIAN AID

Fredericks did not remember who had tasked him to infiltrate Operation Omega (also known as Action Bangla Desh), although it may have been Ken Pendered again. He doesn’t remember any discussions with his managers about the motivations of these groups, or being directed to infiltrate any groups in particular. He claims not to remember the names of other groups that he reported on, just Operation Omega’.

Asked about the aims and objectives of the police in infiltrating this organisation, he said they were trying “to reduce or eliminate unhelpful behaviour on the part of certain individuals within these various groups”. However, he also admitted that much of the work done by the Operation Omega group was humanitarian. Operation Omega was in fact a very small, London-based group involved in taking humanitarian aid to victims of the war in the Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) as it seceded from the Dominion of Pakistan in 1971.

Fredericks described the group as having plans to build housing for people, who had lost their homes during the war. They met up to stuff envelopes together and talk, and said that decisions were not made in his presence. “It was more admin than anything else” he said and noted that he didn’t have access to the group’s mailing list, but if he had, he would have passed it on to his superiors. He didn’t know the members very well, and he wasn’t “involved in the hierarchy”.

One of the members of the group told him that her family had donated £6,500 to the cause. “That was a great deal of money in those days” Barr suggested [it equates to approx £75,000 today] and some members of the group travelled to East Pakistan to deliver aid; he heard that one of them gave birth while in custody there. He wasn’t invited to go to East Pakistan with them.

Fredericks did attend demonstrations with the group, but can’t remember “anything special about those”. One was in Slough and involved several thousand people but was un-policed and peaceful.

“Would this have been unusual?” asked Barr, who said he was getting the impression that there were no public order concerns that day. Fredericks described them as sort of “a walk in the park on a Sunday”.

Barr said that there don’t appear to be any surviving reports by Fredericks about Operation Omega. Fredericks confirmed that he will have made two or three a week for about six months. We can only speculate as to why this might be.

FLY-POSTING WAS THE ONLY CRIME

Fredericks was also asked about an instance where he apparently went fly-posting with the group. He got no special permission from his managers to do this, he said, but on the other hand, no one was upset that he did it.

He went on to say that fly-posting wasn’t serious – “the authorities have more important things to do”. Barr agreed that it was “at the very very bottom end of the scale of criminal offending”. He was asked if Operation Omega were involved in any other criminal activity. “None at all,” he replied.

We were shown the Special Demonstration Squad’s Annual Report, written at the end of 1971 [MPS-0728971] in which Action Bangla Desh is indeed listed as having been ‘penetrated’ by the spycops, however Operation Omega is not.

When asked if there were any other officers reporting on Action Bangla Desh, or whether this would have been a reference to his work, Fredericks expressed a belief that he was the only officer deployed against Operation Omega. Nevertheless, we were also shown another report on Action Bangla Desh signed by officer HN332.

YOUNG HAGANAH – ‘WIDENING THE GEOGRAPHY’

At Operation Omega events, Fredericks met two women from the ‘Young Haganah’. He said he didn’t ‘join’ or participate in this group, or socialise with them and had no plans to infiltrate them, and no memory of being instructed to do so (by Phil Saunders or any other manager).

When asked about the connection to Israel he said “it just widens the geography”. He then admitted that he doesn’t know anything about the Young Haganah, but knew, from doing some research, that the original Haganah were involved in setting up the state of Israel decades before. The ‘Young Haganah’ were a completely separate group, who “just wanted to help people” he said. “I felt they were OK”.

Despite taking care to be someone who knew people here and there, to make himself less likely to raise suspicions, there came a time when he “knew something was wrong”. He recalled being diplomatically ‘steered away’ from meeting Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and two Labour MPs at a function, by the woman whose family had funded the Operation Omega group’s activities.

BLACK POWER

Rajiv Menon QC, on behalf of the Inquiry’s non-state core participants, pointed out that Fredericks referred to himself as being of ‘mixed heritage’ in his witness statement and asked if, in 1971, his mixed heritage was perhaps more visibly apparent than it is now.

Fredericks batted the question away:

“It’s not for me to judge. I don’t know. I don’t spend that much time looking at myself in the mirror.”

Menon asked Fredericks if he thought he was asked to target Operation Omega or the Black Power Movement because of his race.

“No. I never came across anything vaguely associated with that statement,” he replied, as if the police might have sent a white officer to infiltrate Black Power groups.

Fredericks said said he was not directed towards infiltrating the Black Power movement by anyone in the SOS. He had just met a guy at Speakers Corner and “hit it off”. He was then invited to Black Power events & meetings, which led to him meeting activists from the United States.

He knew that any such group would be considered to be of interest to Special Branch, and although he was “on the periphery, by no means at the heart of it”, he “did meet some interesting people” at this time.

Fredericks said he got on “pretty well” with some of the Black Power members, but later that he didn’t get to know them “hugely well”. A lot of his time with them was spent socialising, and playing pool, rather than discussing politics, but he thought this was a good tactic to gain their trust.

THE MANGROVE 9

Fredericks was asked if he remembered the case of the Mangrove 9. ‘Not clearly, no,’ he replied.

The Counsel’s scepticism was clear even on the transcript:

‘It doesn’t ring any bells at all? Let me see if I can help you.’

The Inquiry was then told how, on 9 August 1970 – a few months before Fredericks joined the SDS – there was a demonstration in Notting Hill about the police harassment of the Mangrove restaurant. As a result of that demonstration, nine black activists were arrested and prosecuted for riot.

There was a defence campaign set up, and their trial started at the Old Bailey in October 1971, while Fredericks was in the SDS, undercover in Black power groups.

Fredericks said:

“I was not involved closely with them. I would have read about it in the papers. I would have known something, perhaps.”

As with John Clinton’s failure to mention the death of Kevin Gately, this absence of memory is simply not credible. Even the Counsel knew it:

“And you don’t remember any conversations with any of your SOS colleagues, or anybody else in Special Branch, about this seminal event in the history of the Black Power Movement?”

Fredericks determinedly kept the lid on the can of worms:

“Definitely not. Definitely not.”

REPORTING ON RACIAL JUSTICE GROUPS

The Inquiry was shown one of his reports [UCPI0000026455] of a Black Defence Committee meeting in a pub in September 1971. The speaker was a student from South Africa, described in the report as “coloured”, and talking on the subject of apartheid. There were a dozen people (including Fredericks) in the audience.

There was a second Black Defence Committee meeting [UCPI0000026456] later that month. Solicitor Michael Siefert was the speaker, who was part of the Angela Davies Defence Committee (they were all members of the Communist Party of GB). Fredericks said he couldn’t remember much about that campaign, and he was not given any guidance on the appropriateness of spying on a justice campaign.

THREATENED BY A JOKE

Finally, he was asked about an incident he recounted in his written statement – at a meeting of around 80-90 people on the subject of violent protest, with a speaker from the USA. His witness statement included a description of worrying that he was “going to be kicked to death” after someone suggested that there was an MI5 spy in the room and he thought he was about to be accused.

He recalled the feeling “when you know you’re outnumbered and you’re in deep difficulties” – before he realised that the activists were joking, not serious – and said that he was aware “that I was involved with people who had access to and were prepared to use violence as and when necessary”.

However, when he was asked more generally about the Black Power activists, he stated that he never witnessed any violence, or public disorder, nor had he any memory of the group committing criminal offences. When asked whether they encouraged disorder, he seemed unable to give a coherent reply and said this was “difficult to answer”.

Black Power demonstration, Notting Hill, London, 1970

In fact, Fredericks’s recollections of Black Power seemed to amount to very little at all.

When asked if he thought his infiltration of Black Power was the best use of a police resource he replied, “there were times when I thought I was wasting my time, but… there were…people up there, senior people, who knew a lot more about the landscape”, who considered his deployment a good use of resources.

Back in the day, he thought it was worth keeping “an eye on what was going on, to prevent the sort of excessive behaviour that sometimes accompanies these projects”, and his view remains the same now, although he clarified “it’s not something I think about a lot”.

SEXISM

When asked about intimate relationships between undercover officers and the people they spied on, his jaw-dropping response led to gasps of horror from around the room. It is so glaringly sexist that it warrants being repeated verbatim here:

“I have, if you like, a phrase in my head which helps guide me here. If you ask me to infiltrate some drug dealers, you can’t point the finger at me if I sample the product. If these people are in a certain environment where it is necessary to engage a little more deeply, then shall we say, I find this acceptable, but I do worry about the consequences for the female and any children that may result from the relationship”.

It appears that the police lawyers (who hover in the background posing as “technical IT support” for the witnesses) may have had words with him about this during the break, because when pressed on this point later by Ruth Brander, representing non-state CPs, he appeared to recant his earlier statement a little, saying that the situation with these relationships was “hugely confusing”.

Although he admitted “you could call it deception, you could call it anything you like, it can’t be nice”, he also implied that the relationships may not even have happened, saying it is like you are “gazing into a darkened room, looking for a black cat you can’t see that may not be there…”. Speaking of the spycops who committed these abuses, he said “Perhaps – my view is perhaps they had no choice”.

Neil Woods, who was an actual undercover drugs officer, had no time at all for this as he responded on social media:

‘To compare sampling some drugs undercover to having a sexual relationship in a deployment is very twisted indeed. The casual nature of this comparison is revealing. One could argue that it’s as a result of canteen culture, the grim sexism that male dominated culture can produce. But this is beyond mere sexism, it’s disregard to the point of malice. A machine of misogyny.’

POLICE RACISM

Menon asked Frederick about racism, and Fredericks claimed that he did not encounter any hurtful racism in the police, although he talked about how disparaging things were said “with humour. I think it’s called irony”.

Menon then drew his attention to a report [MPS-0739148] (nothing to do with Fredericks) that relates to a conviction at the Central Criminal Court in February 1969.

At this point, as at numerous previous hearings, Menon clashed with the Chair, Sir John Mitting, who said:

“You are about, I think, to ask a witness about a document that is nothing at all to do with him… I’m not conducting an inquiry into racism in the Metropolitan Police for the last 50 years, I’m looking at the SOS.”

Menon pointed out that it was, in fact, an SOS document that he wanted to show.

Mitting relented without changing his position:

“I will let you do it. But this is not to be taken as a precedent for what may happen in the future. I’m really not willing to allow people to question other witnesses about documents that are nothing to do with them.”

This is a further example of Mitting’s refusal to admit the fact of institutional racism and bigotry in the Met, something which, though the Met admitted it more than 20 years ago, Mitting has called a ‘controversial’ view.

Institutional racism and sexism are at the core of the spycops scandal. For Mitting to reduce it to individual actions is a denial of the systemic nature of the abuses committed by spycops.

Allowed to show the document about the court case, Menon drew the Inquiry’s attention to details of the convicted man’s involvement in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and Black Power groups, then states “he has the usual attitude of coloured people towards police and authority”.

Is this the kind of ‘casual banter’ you were referring to, or something more sinister?, asked Menon.

“What I’m reading could be described as an overly wide brush-stroke”, Fredericks responded, adding:

‘we are all human beings, and no group occupies one sort of social or moral space, there is a divergence, and it’s up to us to learn to live together.’

Fredericks recognised that racism has been common in humanity, but was unwilling to agree that it has ever been a particular problem in British society, or in the police.

A FETISH FOR FOREIGN SPIES?

In addition to his obvious pride in recalling his commendation letter from MI5, Fredericks spoke about one woman from the Operation Omega group who appears to have fascinated him, because he believed she was a foreign spy.

He described her as having a “hidden agenda” – he found it hard to explain what he meant by this – he said she seemed different to the others. “She didn’t fit”, he said, but he couldn’t work out why. He was not sure if he could mention which country she was from, and after receiving permission said that she was from the United States, appearing to suggest there was a link with the CIA.

“I could be totally wrong, but it attracted my attention”, and he clearly still remembers the strength of his hunch now. “I don’t know what it was, but this woman knew what she was doing”.

Freericks was in his 20s at the time and remembered that she was older than him, and most of the others in the group. He said he was very careful – listening, and doing as little talking as possible.  “We enjoyed each other’s company,” but there was mutual suspicion.

When asked if they had a romantic relationship, he said, “I’d rather not comment, but no is the answer”.

He said he would certainly have mentioned her in his reports, but didn’t gather any meaningful info (although earlier he said that he discovered her work address). This, like many of Fredericks’s answers hints at a hidden grimness to his operation. But without proper testing of the testimony, that’s all we can say.

His international spying fantasies seem to have come full circle at the end of his deployment, when – after being suddenly removed from the field – it transpired that part of the reason for this was that one of his referees (from the ‘positive vetting’ process carried out when he first joined the police) turned out to have been a Russian spy.

A SUDDEN END

Fredericks’s deployment was ended abruptly – he just stopped attending the meetings – but he said there was no consideration of possible ‘safety concerns’. He said that when he joined the unit he was told that he would be looked after, but when he left there was precious little after-care. His time undercover just ended, and there was no debriefing.

He received no guidance from his bosses about mixing with the activists he had spied on after his deployment had ended.

This led to the recounting of a curious incident in which, long after his deployment ended, Fredericks called round on someone he’d befriended while undercover – “there was no romantic involvement, I just found her interesting as a human being” -only to find out she had committed suicide not long before.

Even if we accept this at face value, it is disturbing, exposing his absence of care about the power wielded by spycops, and the lack of awareness that it is even an issue. There appears to be no part of him that felt this deception was in any way wrong. He thought – and clearly still feels – it was OK to just put his spycop persona back on for his own edification. What other activities do spycops do this for?

BITTER AFTERTASTE

Fredericks summed up his leaving the SDS:

“The way I felt was if I was no longer part of the system, then my existence doesn’t matter, my opinion doesn’t matter, get on with the rest of your life”.

He still seemed bitter about this. He did see a psychiatrist after his deployment ended, however he said he doesn’t know why his managers sent him to see someone who had no understanding of undercover policing: “The whole thing was a waste of time”. He said he did not attend any of the SDS social events or reunions.

Despite expressing the belief that the spycops’ techniques were more effective than normal Special Branch operations, and that being more deeply embedded with the activists meant he was able to gather more info from them. “I have my views,” he said, “but I’m ready to admit that I’m wrong”.

However, his creepy answers, and his unrepentant tone and demeanour throughout the questioning suggest that is not really the case.

COPS has produced a report like this for every day of the Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings. They are indexed on our UCPI Public Inquiry page.

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Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 13

18 November 2020

Evidence from:
Officer HN348 aka ‘Sandra Davies’

The penultimate day of the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s first phase was scheduled to have two people appear.

Helen Steel, a lifelong environmental and social justice activist who was in numerous spied-upon groups and was deceived into a relationship by undercover officer John Dines, was due to deliver her opening statement. However, she was unable to do so.

The rest of the day was given over to evidence from Special Demonstration Squad officer HN348, which seemed something of an odd proposition, given that she appeared to have had about as minor a deployment as is possible for a spycop – long ago, not for long, deployed into one group that doesn’t appear to have warranted spying on even by the police’s standards.

As it turned out, this was the point; her testimony demonstrated the lack of guidance given to officers, and the seemingly total absence of any consideration of the impact of this intrusion on the lives of those targeted.

She infiltrated the Women’s Liberation Front for about two years, 1971-73, using the name ‘Sandra Davies’. A small feminist group with Maoist leanings, its meetings were attended by about 12 people, hosted at one of the member’s homes.

’Davies’ was a full-time spy on them for two years, producing no intelligence of any value, and would have stayed longer if she hadn’t been compromised by another officer. It’s the generalised, hoover-up approach to information gathering, checking on people who pose no threat.

PRIDE OR SHAME?

Davies has been granted anonymity by the Inquiry despite being assessed as having a low risk of any kind of reprisal. In her ‘impact statement’, she said that she wanted anonymity because she would be embarrassed if the group’s main activist found out the truth. She also said her reputation would be tainted if her friends found out she had been a spycop.

It’s an extraordinary display of mental gymnastics – when we question the purpose of spycops, police tell us that they’re doing vital & noble work ensuring the safety of everyone, yet when we question why they want anonymity, they say it would be humiliating to be known as one.

This feat is matched by the idea that although the spycops used the Stasi principle of gathering all information on anyone close to political activity, with the expectation that some of them might turn out to be a problem at some point in the future, this was necessary to protect us from having to live in a repressive Stasi-like State.

MAXINE PEAKE IS A SPYCOP

As the Inquiry persists with the idea that a glitchy live transcript is adequate public access – denying the feel of the witness’ evidence, causing eyestrain for viewers and excluding anyone visually impaired – Police Spies Out of Lives once again provided a read-along on their YouTube channel.

Today, guest star Maxine Peake read the words of ’Sandra Davies’.

The read-along’s popularity exceeded the Inquiry’s own ‘viewing’ figures.

There will be another read-along, of HN345‘s evidence, on Thursday 19 November, starting at 11:30.

SANDRA DAVIES WAS ALSO A SPYCOP

HN348 made a written statement to the Inquiry last October.

She recalled using the cover name ‘Sandra’, and having seen some documents listing members of the Women’s Liberation Front that name ‘Sandra Davies’, she conceded this may well have been her. The evidence – which we’ll come to a bit later – seems conclusive, yet she still wouldn’t completely confirm it was her.

It set a pattern for the afternoon, of the documents showing things, and her saying that she was unable to recall anything beyond what the documents showed.

In this report, we’ll call her Davies for ease of reading.

JOINING THE SPYCOPS

Davies was vetted before joining the police, and joined Special Branch in January 1971, having passed an exam and several interviews. She didn’t have any undercover experience before being asked to join the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), and it appears that she did this remarkably quickly – by mid-February.

She was asked if this meant there were only 3-4 weeks before she was recruited into the SDS, She said she couldn’t remember, but thought it was longer, perhaps a few months. However, her first SDS report is dated 17 February 1971.

She explained her motivations for joining Special Branch – these included her career development within the police, which she viewed as a long-term career.

RECRUITED BY HIGH-FLIER IMBERT

Until she was approached by Peter Imbert (who later became Commissioner), she had never heard of the SDS. He was the one who asked her to join, and explained that her job would be to ‘collect and disseminate information about anti-social behaviour’. She understood that intelligence was needed to prevent the police being unprepared for serious public order situations like the demonstration against the Vietnam War in March 1968.

Imbert will not be giving evidence at all, as he is one of the three Metropolitan Police Commissioners who have died since the Inquiry was announced. Between them, Imbert, David McNee, and Kenneth Newman ran the Met from 1977 to 1992. More than that, as Imbert’s recruitment of Davies to the SDS shows, they will have had a lot of relevant knowledge from the time before they became Commissioner.

It’s not enough to know what the officers did. We need to know who authorised and sanctioned these operations. The loss of testimony from those Commissioners, who were ultimately in charge of the SDS for a third of its existence, is one of the effects of the colossal delays the police have inflicted on the Inquiry process.

TRAINING? WHAT TRAINING?

Apart from being advised to keep a ‘low profile’, Davies was given very little training or guidance. She didn’t know how long she would be deployed for. She doesn’t remember any ‘home visit’ from a senior officer.

Asked why she was recruited, she said:

‘perhaps they were just looking for a woman, and in those days there weren’t that many of us! Perhaps there was nobody else.’

The SDS’ annual report of 1971 [MPS-0728971] said:

‘The arrival of a second woman officer has added considerably to the squad’s flexibility and has proved invaluable in the comparatively recent field of women’s liberation.’

The other woman was Jill Mosdell – Sandra confirmed that she knew Mosdell well and they became good friends. Mosdell was deployed into the Anti-Apartheid Movement from 1970-73.

DEPLOYMENT

She described her preparation for going undercover as taking off her wedding ring and make-up, finding a cover address (a shared house in Paddington to which she went only occasionally) and being ready to tell people she was a student at Goldsmiths if they asked (they never did).

She said that she would go to meetings and other events, then a day or two later visit one of the two SDS ‘safe houses’, where she would draft a report. This would then be discussed with her manager, amended, and sent for typing up.

She attended the safe house most days, and would talk to the other officers there, though, she claims, not in any detail about their deployments.

She didn’t have any experience of writing such reports beforehand, and was given little in the way of guidance. Her approach was to report anything she observed. According to her, the spycops were ‘building up a picture of the people who were involved in these various groups’.

PERSONAL INTRUSION

Davies was shown a report she’d made [UCPI0000026387] in August 1971, about a member of the Women’s Liberation Front (WLF) and the North London Alliance in Defence of Workers’ Rights (LADWR) travelling to Albania on holiday. The activist’s photo was attached to the report.

Asked why she’d felt that degree of personal information was necessary, she replied that it might be:

‘to do with the bookshop in North London, and the links with other extreme groups associated with that bookshop’

She said that the Women’s Liberation Front merited investigation by the spycops because ‘of the way they were expressing themselves, and their links’ to other groups of interest.

Most of her reports concern her attending regular meetings, often in people’s homes.

Was she ever given guidance about balancing people’s privacy vs what was needed for ‘effective policing’ – for example was she given guidance about entering people’s homes?

She was told that her job was to “be an observer, not a participant”, that she should avoid being an ‘agent provocateur’ but stick to recording what was said in the meetings she attended.

Her supervisor would accept her hand-written report, she said she didn’t always see the typed version; neither did she know who typed it or where it went. She claimed not to have realised that reports were routinely sent to MI5, but concedes it might have happened (most of the SDS reports that have been published for these hearings are marked as copied to MI5). She said she didn’t think much about this at the time.

SHARING SECRETS

Sandra Davies’ report, 14 Sept 1972, stamped ‘Box 500’, meaning it was copied to MI5

The Inquiry was then shown a document [UCPI0000014736] which is Special Branch’s response to a request for intelligence from ‘Box 500’ – that is to say, the Security Service, MI5.

Two weeks earlier, they had asked Special Branch to find out about a couple of WRU/ LADWR activists’ recent house move.

It appears that Davies (whose name is attached to the report) was tasked to find out where they had gone, and duly supplied the information to her bosses, to send on to the security services. Davies said, again, that she had no memory of this.

She described some of the large women’s liberation meetings that she attended, some of which involved hundreds of women, and said that there were lots of stalls, leaflets being handed out, she didn’t have to work hard to be invited to meetings.

She checked in with her managers to get approval for any meeting she attended.

EXTREMISM & SUBVERSION

Officer HN45, ‘David Robertson’ was already deployed, and he gave her a presentation about the Maoist movement, and Abhimanyu Manchanda who led the Revolutionary Marxist-Leninist League.

Davies said:

‘I can’t remember one word of that presentation, but it was really a group that was opposed to our form of democracy’.

Asked what she was told about ‘subversion’ and ‘extremism’, she repeated:

‘We all understood that these groups were working against our form of democracy’

There was the feeling that she meant something else. Just as previous officers have conflated national security with the convenience of the government of the day, so Davies seemed to use ‘democracy’ to mean the current political hierarchy. As Dave Smith said yesterday, capitalism and democracy are not the same thing.

The SDS was spying on numerous open, democratic organisations, including political parties whose sole function was to participate in our form of democracy. Her close colleague Jill Mosdell was infiltrating the Anti-Apartheid Movement, whose sole objective was to bring democracy to South Africa.

Sandra said that her purpose was to see if the Women’s Liberation Front would ‘take direct action or whether it was just words’.

Asked if direct action was a problem, she said that in our country:

‘we’re entitled to our opinions and we can say what we like, well no, we can’t say exactly what we like but we’ve got Speakers Corner…. people can say what they like as long as they don’t go too far’

She seemed unaware that every regime on earth would describe their system in that way. Davies had a glaring absence of any questioning of the inherent rightness of the morals and intentions of the police and State.

DON’T DO CRIME

The next document was a Home Office circular about informants taking part in crime. Sandra does not recall seeing this before, but felt she understood the principles. She was very clear that she did not get involved in any criminal activities.

‘You’re there to uphold the law not break it… regardless of what role you’re playing’

According to her the police do use informants that are involved in criminality, but police officers shouldn’t get involved in criminality.

Were there rules about forming close relationships with activists?

Davies said she was told to ‘listen, learn and report back’, the spycops were not to get close to their targets. She was confident that officers in her day did not have sexual relationships with the people they spied on:

‘It didn’t need to be discussed specifically, it was something that didn’t happen’

Davies said she hadn’t heard about spycops deceiving people into relationships until she was contacted about this Inquiry, about three years ago. She hadn’t been to any SDS reunions over the years, so hadn’t heard stories from anyone else. She watched a documentary, ‘found it quite shocking’ and didn’t know what to believe.

MANAGEMENT

She described the SDS as being run by two Superintendents, a Chief Inspector, and two Sergeants.

Davies mainly reported to Phil Saunders and, to a lesser extent, HN294. They would have a direct debrief at the safe house.

She wasn’t provided with any back-up or support, she was sent out alone. She actually created her own security arrangements (with her husband) for travelling home late at night.

WOMEN’S LIBERATION

In her written statement, Davies said:

‘Women’s liberation was viewed as a worrying trend at the time.’

It seems clear that this is why she was recruited. Asked who exactly was worried by women’s liberation, she could only vaguely offer ‘all sorts of people’. She hurried to clarify that this didn’t mean those people were worried about the entire movement, just ‘factions within it’.

Counsel to the Inquiry then led her through a set of questions that exposed the hypocrisy and absurdity of Davies’ deployment in the Women’s Liberation Front.

She confirmed that, as a uniformed constable, she’d had the same powers and responsibilities as her male colleagues. However, women officers got 90% of the men’s wage at that time.

She was reminded of an violent confrontation in which she’d helped rescue injured officers and come back covered in blood. She was given no support or aftercare following the incident, beyond being told ‘you joined a man’s job so get on with it’.

According to her statement, the WLF mainly campaigned for equal pay, free contraception, and free nurseries. These are things that seem not just reasonable, but far more in keeping with a fair and just society than the practices of the police who employed her.

The policies and campaigning methods weren’t subversive by any real measure, so why was she sent to infiltrate the women’s movement, and specifically the Women’s Liberation Front?

Davies said it was because the WLF had links with ‘more extreme groups’. Asked if she was told the names of these groups that were supposed to be her true target, she once again became vague, referring to ‘a lot of unrest’ at the time. She mentioned the Angry Brigade, and added that the ‘Irish situation was very volatile’.

Davies’ own statement says the activists she spied on were not breaking any laws, just hosting meetings, leafleting and demonstrating – ‘all within the bounds of the law’ – and that she did not witness or participate in any public disorder during her entire deployment. So what was the point?

‘I was tasked to observe them because Special Branch did not know much about them’

IRISH CONNECTIONS

The Inquiry was shown a report [UCPI0000026992] of a WLF study group on 11 March 1971, comprising of seven people meeting in someone’s home.

Davies reported that one woman present praised the recent actions of the IRA, which she described as ‘a good way to start a revolution’. She’d put the words in quote marks.

We should note that, at this time, the IRA was only attacking British military targets in Northern Ireland. It is extraordinary that this comment on current affairs, made in a private home with no intent for action of any kind, was deemed worthy of reporting and filing by Britain’s political secret police. So much for ‘you are free to express your opinions’.

There seemed to be little else in the way of Davies reporting on the Irish situation she’d suggested as one of her true targets.

CHINESE CONNECTIONS

The next report [UCPI0000026996] was of another meeting of the study group, on 15 April, with 11 people present this time. Davies reported ‘general discussion’ of a ‘The East is Red’ – which she described as a ‘Chinese Revolutionary film’ – which was due to be shown twice that weekend.

Then came a report [UCPI0000026997] on a meeting of the Friends of China, that took place on 27 April. It was held in another private house, the home of Diane Langford, Besides Langford, her partner Abhimanyu Manchanda (a prominent Maoist), and Davies, there were only five other people present. Once again, Davies told the Inquiry that she had no memory of this meeting, but accepts that this report was hers.

According to the report, the Friends of China’s first matter of business was discussing the WLF’s magazine. Someone [their name is redacted] criticised the effort and resources put into it, before two members agreed to each take away 50 copies to sell.

There was more discussion of ‘The East Is Red’, which had been screened again, at the Cameo Poly Theatre in Regent Street. One person said it had shown too much violence, but another replied that there hadn’t been enough. A completely legal discussion about a legal film screened in a public venue.

The next document [UCPI0000027026] was a report of a WLF meeting, dated 8 December 1971. The speaker at the meeting had just returned from a trip to China and was ‘was clearly very impressed by the Chinese system’. This developed into a group discussion about all aspects of everyday life in China, including the use of acupuncture.

The speaker showed photos of life in China and is reported as saying Britain was ‘in desperate need of change,and that the Chinese methods would work here’; in his opinion ‘violent revolution’ was the means of achieving this change.

THE REVOLUTIONARY WOMEN’S UNION

The Women’s Liberation Front held their AGM on 6 February 1972. They agreed to adopt a new constitution (that meant only women could be members) and new aims. There was also a proposal to change the organisation’s name to the Revolutionary Women’s League, but this was left for another meeting

Its new list of aims said it sought:

• ‘To organise women in general, working class women in particular, to fight for the elimination of all exploitation and oppression and for a socialist society.
• ‘To expose the oppression suffered by women and to relate this to capitalist society and to oppose those who confuse the effects of women’s oppression for the real cause, ie the private ownership of the means of production.’

This is entirely lawful, and not anti-democratic unless, like the spycops, you think democracy and capitalism are the same thing.

The group wanted to achieve these things as a path towards things that sound largely moderate and desirable to modern ears:

• ‘To demand equal opportunities in employment and education.
• ‘To fight for equal pay for work of equal value.
• ‘In order that women have real opportunities to take part in social production, we demand that crèches and nurseries are installed at the place of work, education and in the community, wherever there is a need.
• ‘All women should have the right to have children or not. In order to make this right effective, alongside child-care facilities, adequate contraceptive and abortion information and facilities should be made available free on the NHS.
• ‘To demand maternity leave for a definite period with no loss of pay, in the pre-natal and post-natal periods, and the right to return to the same job, guaranteed by law.
• ‘To fight against all discrimination and injustice suffered by women in all realms of society, in laws as regards marriage and divorce, in the superstructure; customs and culture.
• ‘To fight against the discrimination suffered by unmarried mothers and their children.
• ‘To wage a consistent struggle against male chauvinism and to strive to educate and encourage men to participate in all our activities.
• ‘To take our full part in the struggles against the growing attacks on our standard of living and our democratic rights and against the growing racism and fascist policies of the ruling class.
• ‘To mobilise women to support the anti-imperialist struggles of all oppressed peoples for the realisation of our common aim, the ending of the system of exploitation and oppression.’

ANGRY BRIGADE

Having cited the Angry Brigade as one of her true targets, she was asked about her reporting on them.

The Angry Brigade, a left wing group responsible for around 25 bombings in the early 1970s (the term should be qualified with the fact that they were relatively small devices and, between them, caused slight injury to one person).

Davies had reported [UCPI0000008274] attending a women’s liberation conference in 1972. She wrote that one woman associated with the Angry Brigade gave out copies of their ‘Conspiracy Notes’. The ‘Stoke Newington 8’ – a group of people facing serious charges connected with the Angry Brigade – were reaching out to other radical groups at the time for support.

The meeting was reported as chaotic, with calls for better structure to the discussion being heckled by Gay Liberation Front activists.

That appears to be the extent of her reporting on the Angry Brigade.

BLACK POWER CONNECTIONS

One of Davies’ reports [UCPI0000027028] was about a WLF weekly meeting that took place on 18 November 1971 – again in someone’s home – where 15 people attended.

There was a talk by Leila Hassan from the Black Unity and Freedom Party (BUFP)

Asked if Special Branch had asked her to pay special attention to this group, Davies said ‘not to my knowledge, no’.

Was she aware of the trial of the ‘Mangrove Nine’, a group being prosecuted following an incident in the Mangrove restaurant, a venue that had been raided by (racist) police officers many times?

Davies claimed to know absolutely nothing about this case, and nothing of Leila Hassan’s connection with them.

All in all, it seems Davies had done basically nothing about her supposed true target groups, only mentioning them in passing when they came into the orbit of the WLF.

SO WHAT DID SHE ACTUALLY DO?

The reports Davies made show a pattern of weekly WLF meetings held in the evenings at people’s private homes. They were mostly study groups, reading political texts and discussing them. One example [UCPI0000026990] describes reading ‘Lenin Conversation with Clara Zetkin’ which deals with women’s emancipation in 1920.

Asked how she avoided revealing anything personal about herself, Davies said it was easy because she was never asked. Others liked to talk a lot, and liked to be listened to. Yet she also said that she doesn’t remember those soliloquies mentioning any personal details about any of the people in the group.

She was asked if she ever felt uncomfortable spending time with those women every week, knowing that they didn’t knowing her true identity and role:

‘I was doing a job at the time, so I wasn’t – I don’t think I considered that, no. I was just doing my job.’

SUBVERSIVE BAKED GOODS

According to one of Davies’ reports [UCPI0000010932], the Black Unity and Freedom Party was planning a children’s Christmas party in 1971, and they asked the WLF to contribute home-made sweets and cakes.

Asked why the intention to bake was worthy of reporting by police charged with preventing disorder, Davies seemed to suggest it was a ruse to spring some indoctrination on the kids:

‘They were involving themselves with children and the sweets and cakes were an addition. They wanted to get their philosophy across to as many groups as they could. That was their aim’

Another of Davies’ reports [UCPI0000010907] mentions a jumble sale being organised by the WLF. Again, she defended this because:

‘they would have used it as another opportunity for advertising their aims’

Both of these reports were copied to MI5.

At this point, the fact that Davies herself admits the WLF’s aims didn’t warrant intrusion by undercover police is largely obscured by the absurdity of her claim that a jumble sale was a recruiting ground for radical political activist.

IDLE GOSSIP

Davies reported [UCPI0000010931] a letter which criticised an un-named activist for having an affair, and mentioned the termination of the employment of an un-named person (who may or may not be the same person – we can’t tell because of the name’s redacted) at Banner Books.

Why was it necessary to report this personal gossip?

Davies, yet again, didn’t remember, but accepted she had written the report.

Then how would it have helped effective policing of public order situations?

‘It just shows how the group was functioning… giving people an insight into what was happening at the time.’

She said that it wasn’t felt irrelevant by her managers, as it wouldn’t have got as far being typed-up if that were the case.

DIRECT INFLUENCE

Some of Davies’s reports are on meetings of the WLF Executive Committee. This was a group of six people, and the only way she could have been in those meetings is if she was a member. That required holding office in the group and thereby influencing its direction, something that SDS founder Conrad Dixon had specifically forbidden.

Women’s Liberation Front AGM minutes 1972, showing spycop ‘Sandra Davies’ elected as treasurer

The documents show that somebody called Sandra Davies was elected treasurer of the WLF (the same post that ‘Doug Edwards’ took in the Tower Hamlets branch of the Independent Labour Party).

Despite allegedly having no memory at all being on this Executive Committee, or attending any of these meetings, she was remarkably adamant that she didn’t influence the direction or policies of the group in any way.

The Inquiry returned to Davies’ report of the WLF Executive Committee meeting of February 1972 [UCPI0000010906] again.

This meeting appears to mark a change of leadership and a change of direction for the group.

This was when the idea of changing the group’s name to the Revolutionary Women’s Union (RWU) was first formally proposed, and eventually agreed. As part of such a tiny group, how much influence did Davies have? Was she responsible for its adopting a more radical, ‘Revolutionary’ name?

A month later, Davies reported [UCPI0000010911] on an emergency meeting of the RWU’s Executive Committee.

This time, the Committee decided to suspend three members from the wider group for ‘disruptive behaviour’. They agreed to serve them the three with written notices of suspension, and spend three weeks compiling a dossier with details of their ‘disruptive tactics’. These would then be circulated to all members.

Despite this prolonged, controversial and divisive work being agreed and carried out by the small group, Davies says she remembers none of it.

Did she remember that this internal division then led to reduced enthusiasm and drive within the group?

‘I can’t comment on that. I have no idea’.

Six weeks later, on 4 May 1972, Davies attended another Women’s Revolutionary Union meeting at a member’s home.

According to her report [UCPI0000010913], it opened with comments about a general lack of enthusiasm within the group, older members dropping out and not being replaced by new ones. This appears to be a direct consequence of the suspensions Davies had a hand in. One of those present was convinced that her phone was tapped, and warned/ reminded the others not to discuss their WRU activities over the phone.

END OF DEPLOYMENT

Davies’ deployment was terminated in February 1973. There had been ‘an incident’ involving another officer, HN45, ‘David Robertson, with a risk of his cover being blown. As a result, he, Jill Mosdell and Davies were all withdrawn from the field at the same time.

Despite serving in the Met’s elite subversion, demonstration and disorder unit for two years, Davies said in her witness statement:

‘I did not witness or participate in any public disorder whilst serving with the SDS. I do not even recall going on any marches or demonstrations. I did not witness nor was I involved in any violence.’

Looking back, she continued:

‘I do not think my work really yielded any good intelligence, but I eliminated the Women’s Liberation Front from public order concerns’

That is a mitigation that could be applied to thought-crime spying on literally anyone. More to the point, it was a fact that must have been obvious very early on in her deployment. And yet, she was still there, spying full-time on that group, two years later.

There was no suggestion that her managers gave much thought to whether what she was doing was worthwhile. As with other deployments, it seems that once they had their spycops in place, keeping them there was more important to the police than the information they gathered.

The rights of the people being spied on – who had police officers in their lives and homes week after week – didn’t get a look-in.

Had it not been for the incident with HN45, she probably would have stayed on even longer, as there was ‘no indication’ that her managers wanted to withdraw her. Nor is there any indication she would have left:

‘I was submitting my reports and was guided by superior officers’

Davies told the Inquiry that she stood by what she wrote in her statement:

‘In hindsight, I would not have joined the SDS as I was putting myself too much at risk and there were more worthwhile things I could have been doing… I question whether police officers should be undercover at all’

And that remains her view now, 50 years after being deployed herself.

Here ended the Counsel to the Inquiry’s questioning.

ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT?

After this, Ruth Brander, representing non-state core participants at the Inquiry (ie people who were spied on), was permitted to revisit three of the topics raised.

First, Brander asked about the SDS officers meeting at the safe house. Davies had said they much of the day was spent waiting around, yet did not discuss much detail of the deployments that they were all immersed in. What did they talk about?

Davies said the spycops would write their draft reports, and wait for their turn to have one-to-one talks with the managers. She said the atmosphere was good and – despite the common values of the times and them being outnumbered by men – the women officers were not subjected to any sexist behaviour.

So, Brander asked, if they didn’t talk about the people they spied on, what were the topics of conversation?

Davies said it was general chat, probably ‘holidays and houses and families’.

Moving on, Brander asked if, although she said she wasn’t aware of any sexual relationships between spycops and people they targeted, there were other emotional involvements, such as going out for dinner or drinks. Davies insisted not.

SPYING ON CHILDREN

Finally, Brander asked about Davies’s report [UCPI0000010928] on a school strike organised by the Schools Action Union in May 1972.

Several North London schools had taken part in the strike with a list of demands that, rather like the Women’s Liberation Front’s calls for an end to gender inequality, appear moderate:

• Teacher-pupil committees to run the schools
• No school uniforms
• No corporal punishment
• Free school meals and milk
• Freedom to leave school during the lunch break

Davies said that she hadn’t been involved in it, she would just have picked up details from what people said.

Brander asked if she’d given any consideration to the appropriateness of reporting on school children.

‘I wasn’t reporting on children,’ Davies protested.

‘Well, the report here is about action taken by children, isn’t it?’ Brander pressed her.

Davies, her memory apparently intact now, replied:

‘I don’t know anything about the Schools Action Union, I wasn’t involved in any of that.’

Brander’s eyebrow could be heard raising, even through the silent transcription. She pointed out that it’s quite a lengthy report – running to 13 separate numbered paragraphs of intelligence – with a lot of detail. It named several of the children who’d been arrested.

The fact that the typed report exists means that, as with the others, it was discussed and approved by the spycops’ managers.

The accompanying written witness statement from HN348.

COPS will be live-tweeting all the Inquiry hearings, and producing daily reports like this one for the blog. They will be indexed on our UCPI Public Inquiry page.

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Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 12

17 November 2020

Opening statement from Dave Smith

Witness hearings procedural meeting

Dave Smith with his blacklist file

Tuesday 17 November was scheduled to be a day off for the Undercover Policing Inquiry, but two items pushed their way onto the schedule.

Dave Smith, blacklisted trade unionist and core participant at the Inquiry, was due to give his opening statement along with everyone else last week. However, it was dramatically withdrawn after a legal challenge to its contents; specifically, that he was going to give the real name of one of the spycops who spied on him, Carlo Soracchi. This came even though the name has been in the public domain for 18 months and you just read it at the end of the previous sentence.

This led to anyone referring to Soracchi (real name of SDS undercover ‘Carlo Neri’) at the Inquiry having to promise not to say his actual name. After that was sorted out, Smith contracted Covid so had a further few days’ delay until today.

The other matter was a meeting of the barristers representing the various core participants at the Inquiry – police and those that were spied on – about the format of questioning witnesses. It followed a couple of grumpy exchanges between the Chair and Rajiv Menon QC, who represents non-state core participants, including the one where Mitting threatened Menon with being silenced.

Dave Smith
Blacklisted trade unionist

Smith explained that he spoke on behalf of the Blacklist Support Group (BSG), representing union members who were unlawfully blacklisted by major construction firms.

When the BSG first spoke about being blacklisted for union activities, they were ignored by the authorities and ridiculed as conspiracy theorists. But it isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s conspiracy fact – and it involves the collusion of the police and the security services.

TRADE UNIONS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN BLACKLISTED

Trade unions arose during time of the industrial revolution and British Empire, Smith said. As dynastic fortunes were made in the slave trade, Parliament – an institution then comprised solely of the very wealthy – was passing the Combinations Acts to make trade unions illegal.

State agents have spied on working class organisation ever since. Hostility towards trade unions – just like racism and sexism – became so deeply ingrained in the mindset of the British establishment that it has carried on through the generations.

In 1834, year of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, a meeting of the Master Builders in London agreed that every craftsman wanting work had to sign ‘the document’, a declaration that they would never join a trade union. Failure to sign meant dismissal or refusal of work which, in turn, meant destitution.

In 1919, a group of Conservative MPs, captains of industry, and ex-military intelligence officers set up the Economic League, ‘a crusade for capitalism’, keeping left wing union activists under surveillance and out of work. They had direct formal and informal links with police and MI5. Thousands of workers lost work.

THE CONSULTING ASSOCIATION

The Undercover Policing Inquiry will find that, after the Economic League closed down in 1993, Cullum McAlpine, director of Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd, bought the construction part of the Economic League’s blacklist to set up The Consulting Association.

This secret body was comprised of major construction companies including: Balfour Beatty, Laing O’Rourke, Costain, Skanska, Kier, Bam, Vinci, AMEC and AMEY. Between them, they illegally orchestrated the blacklisting of construction workers.

The Consulting Association was run by former Economic League employee, Ian Kerr. The Information Commissioner’s Office raided it in 2009, seizing files on 3,213 people. Details in the files included not only names, addresses and National Insurance numbers, but photos, phone numbers, car registrations, and information about the subject’s medical history and family members.

When a blacklisted worker was elected as a union representative, or when they raised concerns about safety on site, submitted an employment tribunal or took part in a protest, it was recorded on their Consulting Association blacklist file.

The Consulting Association didn’t have spies everywhere. Instead, construction companies nominated a contact, usually a director, who received information from managers on site and forwarded it to Ian Kerr.

INDUSTRIAL SCALE INDUSTRIAL BLACKLISTING

Every job applicant on major building projects had their name checked against the Consulting Association blacklist. If there was a match, the worker would be refused work or dismissed.

Each blacklisting name-check cost £2.20. The last set of invoices for Sir Robert McAlpine alone, when the company was building the Olympic Stadium, was for £28,000. This isn’t a few managers chatting after work, it’s industrial-scale, systematic blacklisting of union activists.

Because of blacklisting, in the middle of the 1990s building boom there were highly qualified and experienced workers who found themselves virtually unemployable. While many construction workers took their families on holidays, blacklisted workers defaulted on their mortgages.

THE HUMAN COST

Partners of blacklisted workers had to take two or three jobs to keep the family afloat. One wife of a blacklisted worker has spoken about the painful decision not to have a second child because of the family’s financial hardship. Families lost their homes and there were divorces.

Smith described how, in the 1990s he was a worker and trade union safety representative on the Jubilee Line Extension. Some of his fellow workers who took part in a safety dispute over the lack of fire alarms at London Bridge station ended up being blacklisted.

Blacklisted workers outside the High Court

Some of those workers went on to take their own lives. No one can say that blacklisting was the sole reason for any suicide, but prolonged periods of unemployment and family tensions are not good for anyone’s mental health. Blacklisting has contributed to deaths.

Blacklisting causes workers’ deaths in other ways. When union safety reps are sacked for highlighting unsafe conditions such as asbestos, electrical safety or poor scaffolding, it sends a message to other workers and creates a climate of fear where they’re too scared to report concerns.

As a result, the blacklisting of safety reps is a factor in workplace fatality rates in the construction industry – consistently the sector with the highest number of deaths of any major industry in the UK.

Parliament was so outraged by The Consulting Association that it introduced the Blacklisting Regulations 2010. In 2016, a High Court case was settled when the UK’s biggest building firms made a public apology and paid damages for their blacklisting activities.

SPYCOPS BREAK THE LAW

But the Undercover Policing Inquiry will find that it wasn’t just the major firms who kept union activists under surveillance and contributed to blacklisting – it was the same political police who are at the heart of the Inquiry.

The police’s internal spycops investigation, Operation Herne, produced a report on blacklisting which said:

‘Police, including Special Branches and the Security Services, supplied information to the blacklist funded by the country’s major construction firms, The Consulting Association’

The police investigation found that, prior to The Consulting Association’s foundation in the 1990s:

‘Special Branches throughout the UK had direct contact with the Economic League, public authorities, private industry and trade unions.’

The Undercover Policing Inquiry has already seen that, from the start of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) in 1968, spying on left-wing trade union activists was a central part of the unit’s activities.

Special Branch files were effectively a database for MI5, private firms and others to find out about trade union activists. Indeed, many trade unions had their own dedicated Special Branch files.

SPECIAL BRANCH INDUSTRIAL UNIT

The Special Branch Industrial Unit was established in 1970, just two years after the SDS, ‘with the aim of monitoring trade unionists from teaching to the docks’ and developing a network of industry contacts that included company directors, as well as General Secretaries of trade unions.

The police’s Operation Herne report said the Special Branch Industrial Unit had a dedicated officer as official liaison with Economic League. Industry informers had two-way sharing of info with Special Branch’s Industrial Unit. Intelligence gathered by both undercover and uniformed officers was available to the Industrial Unit and was passed on to both major employers and blacklisting organisations.

SDS spycops often worked for the Industrial Unit, before or after being deployed undercover. One was HN336, who told us yesterday that Chief Superintendent Herbert Guy ‘Bert’ Lawrenson, head of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch’s C Squad in the SDS’s early days, went to work for the Economic League.

For all its admissions, Operation Herne didn’t even mention Lawrenson. Blacklisted workers expect the Inquiry to examine the relationship between officers from the Special Branch Industrial Unit and their former boss, the man who quite possibly hired & trained them, Bert Lawrenson.

SPYCOPS DATABASE

As well as Special Branch files, police intelligence on political activists was kept on the National Domestic Extremism Database (NDED), originally compiled by the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), a sister unit to the SDS and one of the main topics of the Inquiry.

This database holds information on thousands of citizens who the State considers ‘domestic extremists’, many of whom have committed no crime whatsoever. Another unit responsible for the database was the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (NETCU).

Superintendent Steve Pearl, NETCU’s former head, told the Daily Telegraph that the unit was set up to:

‘take over MI5’s covert role watching groups such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, trade-union activists and left-wing journalists’.

The Consulting Association constitution required companies to send a director to secret quarterly meetings.

In October 2008, Detective Chief Inspector Gordon Mills of NETCU gave a presentation to a secret Consulting Association meeting that included eight senior managers from blacklisting firms. He told them of ‘emerging threats’ from the left wing, for which ‘companies needed to have strong vetting procedures in place’. Bear in mind that this was a police officer helping the Consulting Association, a company whose work was illegal.

In a witness statement compiled for the High Court blacklisting trial, Ian Kerr, Consulting Association CEO, said that NETCU:

‘wanted an output for their information… I gave them the email addresses of the contacts in the construction industry and they would feed them information’

NETCU and the Special Branch Industrial Unit, along with all the spycops units, are now absorbed into the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command. State spying on unions is now classified as counter-terrorism!

Sharing of police intelligence across all sectors of industry continues through Operation Fairway and the National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit’s Industrial Liaison section. In 2010, the National Coordinator for Special Branch urged police forces across the UK to become ‘more proactive’ in putting on Special Branch briefings, to share information with academics and contacts in business and the public sector.

Special Branch clearly know that when they tell an employer someone is on a database of extremists, it will affect lives. It is the only possible result – and, therefore, the only real purpose – of their sharing information on trade unionists.

PERSONAL SPYCOPS

Smith then focused on a small group of union activists on the blacklist of which he was part. From the early 1990s until mid 2000s, they were spied on by three separate SDS officers: Peter Francis, Mark Jenner and Carlo Soracchi.

Page from undercover officer Mark Jenner’s 1996 diary, showing his attendance at a UCATT meeting

Mark Jenner infiltrated the construction union UCATT as ‘Mark Cassidy’. Claiming to be a joiner, he attended Hackney Branch of UCATT, and his union subscriptions were paid by a bank account set up by Special Branch.

In his undercover role, Jenner attended picket lines, protests, meetings and conferences. After each meeting, his partner recalled him at their shared home typing up pages of handwritten notes, presumably to be fed back to Special Branch as intelligence reports.

Jenner also infiltrated the Colin Roach Centre, which was home to Hackney Trade Union Resource Centre, and two small union groups in which Jenner actively inveigled himself; the Building Workers Safety Campaign and the Brian Higgins Defence Campaign.

Jenner actually chaired meetings and used his position as ‘a worker fighting for safety at work’ to contact union branch secretaries from unions including UCATT, UNISON, TGWU, RMT, EPIU, NUT and CPSA.

He wrote letters to safety body London Hazards Centre, and to INQUEST, the charity that supports people campaigning over deaths in police custody. Brian Higgins and John Jones were leaders of groups Jenner infiltrated, and both have entries on their blacklist files relating to those campaigns.

Smith personally remembers Jenner being particularly disruptive at meetings they both attended in Conway Hall, London. While spying on picket lines over unpaid wages at Waterloo, Jenner also came into contact and spied on other people, some of whom are now core participants in the Undercover Policing Inquiry.

One of these is Steve Hedley, currently Senior Assistant General Secretary of the RMT rail union. In the 1990s, Hedley was in a union delegation to Northern Ireland as part of the peace process organised by the Hackney Trade Union Resource Centre and the Colin Roach Centre. Mark Jenner was also part of that delegation and stayed at Hedley’s family home during the trip.

ANTI-FASCIST & PROUD

The trade union movement is proud of opposing fascism. At the time of spycops Peter Francis, Carlo Soracchi and Mark Jenner’s deployments, fascists were terrorising communities, planting bombs and committing racist murders. They also targeted union offices.

SDS officer Mark Jenner

Construction union activists stewarded labour movement events to protect them from fascist thugs. One loose network, of which Smith was a part, who did this was known as the ‘Away Team’. Spycops Peter Francis, Mark Jenner and Carlo Soracchi all spied on them.

Smith flatly accuses Mark Jenner, and through him the British State, of interfering with the internal democratic processes of an independent trade union. They did it by covertly joining the union UCATT, participating in debates and voting at meetings on policy motions; by distributing literature favouring a particular candidate; by calling for the sacking of an elected union convener; and by creating divisions.

Jenner also deceived ‘Alison’, an activist for the National Union of Teachers, into a five year co-habiting relationship during his deployment (Her account of this was heard on Day 6). Misogynist abuse of women activists is one of the most disgraceful human rights violations of the whole spycops scandal.

CARLO SORACCHI

When Jenner’s deployment was coming to an end, another spycops officer, Carlo Soracchi, using the name ‘Carlo Neri’ was sent to spy on the same group of activists.

SDS officer Carlo Soracchi

On more than one occasion, Soracchi incited Frank Smith, Dan Gilman and Joe Batty to fire bomb a charity shop in North London. Joe Batty was a TGWU union steward. He has been denied core participant status by the Inquiry.

Soracchi claimed the shop in question was run by Roberto Fiore, leader of Italian fascist party Forza Nuova. Fiore fled Italy while being wanted by Italian police in connection with the terrorist bombing of Bologna railway station in 1980 that killed 85 people.

Smith accuses Carlo Soracchi of being an agent provocateur, of deliberately attempting to entrap union members by inciting them to commit arson. The spied-upon activists wanted nothing to do with the idea: they are trade union and anti-fascist activists, not terrorists.

Soracchi also deceived a Transport and General Workers Union rep from a homelessness charity, Donna McLean, into a relationship. She was one of two women he targeted for a relationship, the other being ‘Lindsey’.

Soracchi, having orchestrated a split from Donna, then moved in with Steve Hedley as a lodger. In October 2004, Hedley was victimised and sacked from the Channel Tunnel Rail Link project, a dispute that appears on his blacklisting file. Soracchi turned up on the picket line, spying on union members while supposedly showing solidarity with Hedley.

Smith mused on the bizarre fact that he was prohibited from saying Carlo Soracchi’s real name in this statement. He’s known it for over five years. When he published the book Blacklisted: The Secret War Between Big Business & Union Activists in 2016, he opted not to use Soracchi’s real name.

However, it’s now been in the public domain for 18 months. Four weeks ago Smith had an article published in Tribune in which he referred to Soracchi’s incitement to commit arson, using his real name.

It’s another one of the topsy-turvy aspects of the Inquiry that it, as the body charged with uncovering the truth about spycops, is the one place that we can’t say the spycop’s name.

PETER FRANCIS

Spycops did not merely spy on trade unionists: the intelligence they gathered was passed on to employers and found its way onto the blacklists.

SDS officer Peter Francis

Former spycop Peter Francis admits opening the Special Branch file on Frank Smith in the early 1990s. It included entries about his anti-racist role in the Away Team and his relationship with an American woman, Lisa Teuscher.

Francis says the blacklist file on Frank Smith uses his appraisal and almost his exact words: ‘under constant watch officially and seen as politically dangerous’. It’s laughable to suggest a construction manager could be the source of that.

Francis also gathered intelligence on Lisa Teuscher, primarily because of her role in the anti-racist campaign group Youth Against Racism in Europe. Spycops had her refused Indefinite Leave To Remain in the UK. She has a blacklist file, despite not working in construction at all.

SYSTEMATIC SHARING

No-one is suggesting spycops personally provided info to the blacklist. That was not their job. It was more senior officers from the Special Branch Industrial Unit or NETCU who were tasked with sharing information with ‘industry contacts’.

Another glaring example of information being fed to The Consulting Association blacklist from Special Branch relates to an incident in November 1999. Every Remembrance Day, the fascist National Front lay a wreath at the Cenotaph. That year, Frank Smith, Dan Gilman and Steve Hedley were there at a counter-demonstration.

Operation Herne has confirmed that the three core participants were observed by police on the day and that intelligence about their participation at the Cenotaph was added to Special Branch files. Within a few days, the same information appears on the blacklist, marked as supplied by Costain.

Two senior Costain managers are known to have had close relationships with Special Branch spycops: Dudley Barrett (now retired) and Gayle Burton (currently a senior executive at the Jockey Club).

If the purpose of the spycop units was genuinely, as the police claim, to detect serious criminality or public disorder, why, in over ten years of spying, were none of these people ever charged or prosecuted with a serious criminal offence? This is nothing to do with disorder or crime, it’s purely political policing.

Smith made another accusation: that the Special Branch Industrial Unit and NETCU supplied information to the blacklist.

PARTISAN POLICING

Despite what the police claim, they are not neutral. The State is never neutral in a major dispute between big business and trade unions. Police collusion in blacklisting is not an aberration, or the actions of a rogue unit, it is standard operating procedures for political police.

Seven million people in the UK are members of trade unions. And the unions are simply their members, rather than something separate. To spy on any union members or officials is to spy on the union as a whole. Those seven million deserve to know which of their branches were spied on, and which reps weren’t who they thought they were.

We want the names of the trade unions and all of the 1,000+ political groups that were reported on by the spycops to be released. But we want much more than that. We want the names of the contacts, and the companies that were provided with information about union members.

BLACKLISTING BEYOND CONSTRUCTION

We have found the construction industry’s blacklist, but clearly other industries have their own versions. The BBC kept a Staff Transfer Register (of those vetted by MI5). The Subversion in Public Life database, run by the security services, was used to blacklist civil servants. The retail sector’s National Staff Dismissal Register blacklist was actually funded by a £1million grant from the Home Office!

The 2002 BBC documentary True Spies featured an undercover officer explaining that Ford’s Halewood factory in Liverpool provided Special Branch with a list of all job applicants to vet. One of the spycops featured in it stated:

‘It was very, very important that trade unions were monitored… We were expected to check these lists. You call it blacklisting and that’s what it is. In any war there are always going to be casualties’.

PRIVATISATION OF STATE SPYING

Assistant Chief Constable Anton Setchell was the officer in charge of the UK police ‘domestic extremism’ spycops between 2004 and 2010. He is currently head of global security at Laing O’Rourke, one of the construction firms who worked with spycops to create and maintain the blacklist.

Superintendent Steve Pearl, who ran NETCU, is now a non-executive director at Agenda Security Services. Barrie Gane, the former deputy head of MI6, sits on the Board of Threat Response International. Both companies report on activists for corporate clients.

Control Risks, a private security firm that employs ex-State spies, had a £59,000 contract with Crossrail to keep union activists under surveillance. Those spied on included Frank Morris, first union rep on the publicly funded project, who was sacked within days of being elected.

Given the mass privatisation over the past four decades, has there been a blurring of the lines between State and corporate spying? Which companies got contracts? How much taxpayers’ money have they been given? If State spying is now privatised, what oversight is there?

WE UNCOVERED THE TRUTH

Smith said that the Blacklist Support Group is extremely sceptical about the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s chances of success. Everything we know so far about the spycops scandal in relation to trade unions and blacklisting is known because activists have uncovered it.

Steve Acheson has one of the largest blacklist files in the country and was almost unemployable for nearly a decade, nearly losing his home. It is people like Steve who have helped uncover the truth – not the police.

When the Blacklist Support Group first complained about police involvement in blacklisting in 2012, the Metropolitan Police refused to even accept the complaint! After lawyers got the complaint accepted, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, confirmed that:

‘it is likely that all Special Branches were involved in providing information about prospective employees.’

NETCU, a spycops unit that operated for seven years, now claims that all their files have been destroyed, and not a single page still exists. That is a blatant lie. Not only must their files still exist, I imagine they’re still being accessed.

As the Hillsborough families, the wrongly imprisoned striking miners, the Birmingham 6, and so many others can attest, it’s not name-calling to say police are capable of lying. So why do the police get the benefit of the doubt?

As recently as 2018, the police were telling us, and the Inquiry, that only one spycops officer had joined a union. It was clear then that this was nonsense. Any officer spying on unions without being a member would have stuck out a mile. They’re still lying to us.

We want our police files. But the police say they ‘neither confirm nor deny’ that they have such a file, due to national security.

TRUTH DENIED

In July 2018, the Blacklist Support Group held a meeting with Inquiry team, and specifically requested the release of police files on Brian Higgins and John Jones. This was because those two core participants were both severely ill and in their 70s.

Brian Higgins (left) on a UCATT picket

The BSG was given assurances by the Chair of the Inquiry, Sir John Mitting, that everything possible would be done to make this disclosure happen. More than two years later, the files have still not been released. Brian has died.

What possible national security reason can there be for denying a dying man access to his police file from the 1990s? Brian Higgins’ family are outraged at their treatment by the Inquiry.

The Inquiry is relying on reports from the police’s internal investigation, Operation Herne, yet they are selective, partisan publications. What’s striking is their use of language. They qualify terms, such as ‘alleged victimisation’ and ‘supposed blacklisting’, even though they had cast-iron proof in their own files.

There are 74 appendices to Operation Herne’s report – including witness statements with the former Special Branch contact with the Economic League – none of which have been disclosed to the Blacklist Support Group.

The Herne officers called Smith’s book, ‘Blacklisted’, ‘the most comprehensive collection of material on the subject’, a fact that demonstrates the need for accounts from activists who have uncovered the truth to be treated by the Inquiry with as much, if not more, validity as witness statements from the officers.

The 1968-72 spycops’ annual reports that have been published by the Inquiry should be seen for what they are: PR exercises for their bosses. The Inquiry must stop taking police documents as objective.

LIES, DELAYS & EXCLUSION

Rather than being transparent and accessible, the Inquiry has set up as many barriers as possible to prevent core participants, the public and the media from being able to view or listen to proceedings. Seeing the oral evidence is only possible for 60 people who have pre-registered, who must then travel to London during a lockdown to sit in a windowless, unventilated room and watch the proceedings on a TV screen.

The only other way to view evidence is via a transcript feed, which is like being transported back to the 1980s to watch it on Ceefax. This just doesn’t work. People get their news from the media, and the Inquiry’s system makes it impossible for journalists to check quotes which, in turn, means they can’t post reports in time for the TV and radio news.

BBC reporter Dominic Casciani said:

‘from a practical perspective as a working reporter, a public inquiry becomes largely impossible to report’

At the start of each day, the Chair states that:

‘members of the public are entitled to hear the same public evidence as I will hear and to reach your own conclusions about it.’

This is patently not true. Though it’s easily resolvable. The Inquiry could live-stream all of the evidence, exactly as the Grenfell public inquiry is doing. Unfortunately there seems little chance of this, and we seem to be watching a good old-fashioned Establishment cover-up take place before our eyes.

DON’T EXPECT JUSTICE

The treatment of blacklisted workers by the British legal system does not make us optimistic. The multinational corporations that ruined so many lives were literally able to buy themselves out of a High Court trial involving over 700 claimants.

Blacklisted workers do not expect justice from the State investigating itself. Blacklisted workers are participating in the slim hope that some evidence of the anti-union bias, institutional racism, and institutional sexism of the British State’s spying machinery will be exposed.

Keeping this dark underbelly of anti-democratic political policing hidden is against the public interest. It only helps the perpetrators, not the survivors, nor the British public.

The police can claim all they like that they were protecting democracy. But by spying on trade union members and colluding with our blacklisting, spycops are actually just protecting big business and capitalism.

For the avoidance of all doubt: capitalism and democracy are not the same thing.

PDF of the accompanying written opening statement from Dave Smith on behalf of the Blacklist Support Group

Witness hearings procedural meeting

The Inquiry then held a meeting of four of the barristers representing core participants, in the hope of agreeing a format for asking questions of witnesses.

All this revolves around the “Rule 10” issue, referring to legislation setting out guidance for how a public inquiry should work. Rule 10 is not permission to ask questions of a witness, but the right to submit them to the Inquiry to have them asked. There is no requirement for the Inquiry to accept those questions to be asked, or to let a non-Inquiry barrister ask the questions – that is all at the discretion of the Inquiry’s Chair.

At the moment, the various lawyers submit their lists of questions to one barrister, the ‘Counsel for the Inquiry’, who then deals with the witness. The idea is that this stops it turning into an ‘adversarial process’ that feels like a criminal trial, with witnesses trying not to be ‘caught out’. It means placing a lot of trust in the impartiality, thoroughness and skill of the Inquiry Counsel.

Over the last week, the barristers for some of the different categories of core participants have been submitting the questions they would like to have asked alongside those being asked by the Inquiry. Some of our questions have been accepted by the Inquiry and asked. This has allowed us to unpick some of the points that matter most to us.

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS

However, there has been an issue with this system. Once a question has elicited an answer, it has not been possible to follow up with another question. We have said all along that our input at this stage would be necessary for the effective examination of witnesses’ evidence. Another issue is the Inquiry’s reluctance to accept questions about the wider issues, such as institutional sexism, rather than about specific ‘facts’, as if the Inquiry is buying the police line that the past is a different country.

Last week, the Inquiry allowed two of the barristers representing non-state core participants to ask questions of witnesses. However, the request to do this from one of those barristers, by Rajiv Menon QC, led to Mittings’ extraordinarily fractious behaviour.

Specifically, SDS undercover and administrator Joan Hillier was asked about the possibility that her close colleague, Helen Crampton, had deceived someone she was spying on into a relationship. The Chair, Sir John Mitting, felt that this question was sprung on Hillier without warning and was therefore not fair.

THRASHING IT OUT

The meeting today included Menon, with Ruth Brander (also working for the non-state core participants), Oliver Sanders QC (representing 114 undercover officers), and Peter Skelton QC (from the Metropolitan Police).

Mitting began by saying that the format for questioning witnesses remains a ‘work in progress’. There will be a meeting in January for those involved, to discuss how it will work for the next round of hearings. These are currently scheduled to take place in March or April 2021.

All four lawyers said that was fine with them.

Mitting said to Menon that Rule 10 is there to allow the Inquiry to control its proceedings. He listed three incidents that he wanted to give Menon a dressing-down for:

1. Tariq Ali, answering a question of Menon’s, had named an individual, breaching a Restriction Order on divulging the name.

“This isn’t a court”, said Mitting. We can’t explore every relevant issue, we have statutory limits. I have to protect people’s rights and privacy.

2. Menon’s question to spycop John Graham (about taking part in a ballot at a political meeting that he had infiltrated) was described by Mitting as ‘unhelpful’. He agreed it did not cause any harm, but he still didn’t like it.

3. Mitting felt that Menon questioning former officer Joan Hillier about her colleague Helen Crampton (who may have had a relationship with someone she was spying on in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, George Cochrane) was bang out of order.

Mitting said witnesses must have significant advance warning of what they’ll be asked about. We can’t let you do this stuff, it’s not a trial, we have different processes than a court.

MENON NAMES NAMES

Menon said that Ali was asked by the Inquiry about a meeting at the Notting Hill branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. A spycops’ report was on the screen, with a redacted name of someone who’d distributed a leaflet. Ali couldn’t comment without knowing the name.

Rajiv Menon QC

Menon explained that he knew the name. He believed the man to be dead and so unaffected by privacy issues, and hoped that telling Ali the name would help jog his memory. Which, indeed, it did.

It turns out the man in question is not dead. Menon said if he’d known that he wouldn’t have named him, and he apologised. It was also this incident which led him to be more vague when questioning Joan Hillier later on.

Menon emphasised that these mistakes are the inevitable result of having to process thousands of pages of police documents in a short space of time, check the facts and formulate questions. They received 5,500 pages with only four weeks to go before the hearings began.

MENON DE-VOTED

Menon then turned to his questioning of officer John Graham, defending it stoutly. Graham was one of nine undercover officers present at a meeting that voted on the route of a demonstration. Menon said it was directly relevant to the Inquiry, not because the nine might have swung the decision one way or the other, but because we should be told how the police voted.

If, say, they voted with the people wanting a confrontational route, then it’s directly in the Inquiry’s remit – it’s about spycops and public order policing. Either way voting at all is contrary to Special Demonstration Squad founder Conrad Dixon’s document on the ‘penetration’ of groups, which insists they eschew active roles.

Mitting admitted that “no harm whatever had been done by that line of questioning”, and that his doubts about its usefulness were just a “matter of opinion” between him and Menon.

MENON & THE FIRST SPYCOP RELATIONSHIP

Menon then addressed his questioning of Joan Hillier. The issue of officers deceiving people they spied on into relationships is a major theme of the Inquiry, and here we have a strong indication that it was happening from the start. He said Hillier is the only surviving officer who infiltrated the group (Notting Hill branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign), so he would be failing in his professional duty both to his clients and to the Inquiry’s seeking the truth if he didn’t ask questions of the only possible witness.

Menon said he only got the information the night before. He drafted specific questions (albeit without sources) and sent them to the Inquiry lawyers, but they didn’t bother getting back to him. When Counsel to the Inquiry failed to ask about this, he applied to ask these questions himself. At the time, Mitting agreed that this was an important issue, and gave permission for the questions to go ahead, so it’s a bit rich to complain.

Menon stands by his decision to raise this issue, and has suggested that better communication on the Inquiry’s part might prevent problems of this kind arising again.

Mitting said that the outside world doesn’t understand the Covid-times problems of getting documents to everyone who needs them. He recognises that it puts a lot of time pressure on lawyers, but that’s going to be the way it is.

Menon asked if documents could be handed out piecemeal, as soon as they’re redacted and whatever, rather than piling them up and dropping them in a massive stack at short notice. He wants maximum time with as much of the evidence as possible. He requested that materials for the next hearings are made available sooner rather than later (eg in December rather than February), to him and the other non-state lawyers, so they have time to go through the evidence in advance of the next set of hearings.

BRANDER: GIVE US TIME

Ruth Brander (also representing non-state core participants) said it would help to have a proper explanation about exactly what the Inquiry’s delays are. Victims of spycops feel like they’re at the bottom of the list for their input, the last to get the disclosed files, and left with explanations.

Ruth Brander

She said non-state core participants will be able to give real value to the understanding of documents yet they don’t get to see them until they’re made public, after they’ve been brought up as evidence in the Inquiry. It makes her clients feel repeatedly excluded from the Inquiry. (Non state core participants have repeatedly raised this issue with the Inquiry Legal Team, but been consistently ignored. It is seen as another way in which the Inquiry is skewed in favour of the police, who obviously have access to the files that they themselves made.)

Brander pointed out that if the non-state core participants only see the material “for the first time, as it’s passing by their eyes on the screen, they have virtually no opportunity to feed into the process”,

Mitting said that he asks for questions for witnesses to be handed in a week in advance, and they generally do get asked, so what’s the problem?

Brander said both she and Menon struggle with the seven-day deadline because she’s not allowed to share the disclosed police documents with most of her clients. For most, they first see the evidence as it rolls by on the screen during the hearing. At the end of each day, she receives queries from her clients wondering why certain questions weren’t asked.

Especially, the women deceived into relationships want to know about the origins of the practice, but aren’t allowed to see documents unless they relate to the period that the particular officer was involved in.

BRANDER: EVIDENCE ALREADY SHOWS WE NEED ACCESS

Brander noted that we’ve had two officers this week who admitted going out for dinner and drinks with women they spied on very early in the history of the spycops units, and that they did it to bolster their credibility. This is important and relevant to the women later abused by officers, but they don’t get to suggest questions because they don’t see the material in advance.

Brander made a solid proposal, asking for the remainder of this phase – namely this week – to have ten minutes at the end of witnesses’ evidence for non-state questioning. This will allow her to communicate with clients who’ve come up with questions while following the hearing. She emphasised that this would assist the Chair in his role, not just be some kind of ‘favour’ to her.

She then said she wants to broaden the scope of questioning, not keep it limited to people directly affected by that individual witness. The women deceived into relationships have a lot of knowledge and expertise that others can’t bring to bear on this. Black justice campaigns and others will be in a similar expert position to see the systemic issues and ask the right questions of the witnesses to reveal the over-arching themes.

POLICE LAWYERS

Skelton represents the Metropolitan Police. This is the organisation which tried to strike out court cases brought against them by the women, and caused years of delay to this Inquiry, by applying for every officer to be given total anonymity and every hearing to be conducted in private).

He said ‘the Met hasn’t improperly delayed the disclosure process’. He added that he knew Menon didn’t believe him but his clients hope that the Inquiry does.

That out of the way, Skelton said that Menon’s questioning of Hillier was an ‘issue of fairness’ and suggested that such contentious issues need more consideration. Hillier should have been told she’d be asked about Helen Crampton’s alleged relationship, and seen the evidence if it exists. This can’t be allowed to happen again.

Skelton said the Inquiry is inquisitorial not adversarial, it’s not trying to build a case. Rule 10, under which witnesses are questioned by a single lawyer working for the Inquiry, encourages witnesses to give ‘free and open evidence’ because they feel the questioner is neutral, not hostile. He took the trouble to specify that this was especially important for elderly witnesses like these, who have felt ‘personally under attack’ for many years

Skelton concluded by saying that everyone wants to see their questions asked, but that would have to apply to everyone and would be long-winded and unwieldy (and costly). The Met are satisfied with the current, ‘hybrid’ arrangement, and would like Mitting only to allow extra questions when there are ‘significant factual disputes’.

Sanders, representing a lot of individual officers (including HN328 and HN336), endorsed Skelton’s words. And criticised Menon for asking questions of HN328 last week without Mitting’s express permission. Police witnesses aren’t alleged to have done anything wrong, he said, referring to the subjects of an Inquiry into the wrong-doing of police officers. It unsettles them to be asked things they didn’t expect. Some of the non-state core participants have partisan and hostile views about the officers, he said. The police hate the idea of the non-state legal representatives getting ten minutes to effectively cross-examine them.

David Barr (Counsel to the Inquiry) said Rule 10 avoids delay and repetition, makes it fairer and keeps costs down. It’s more work for lawyers, certainly, but basically worth it.

Mitting said he’d discuss this issue with Barr and get back to everyone.

MITTING: FEELING BETRAYED

Before the break, Brander brought up another issue. The system of suggesting questions in advance cannot work when her clients who would have questions to suggest don’t see the evidence in advance. Either they need access to the evidence in advance, or else they have to be allowed to ask questions at the end. To have neither is “have both hands tied together behind our backs” and shuts us out.

Mitting then made a really insensitive criticism of ‘Rosa‘, one of the women who was deceived into a relationship by spycop Jim Boyling. Mitting said that multiple core participants have asked for a live-stream to their homes, like Mitting has to his. He has only granted this request to one person, ‘Rosa’, because of her exceptional circumstances. When she applied , she said she didn’t want these circumstances to be made public.

Mitting said he was surprised that Phillippa Kaufmann QC’s opening statement last week included a detailed description of Rosa’s story and circumstances, using a lot of the same phrasing that she’d previously wanted kept confidential.

Brander seemed taken aback, unsure of the exact basis of Mitting’s complaint. It wasn’t relevant to the question of seeing evidence in advance, it was more like venting something that had been bothering him for a while. His tone firmly indicated a sense of having been hoodwinked in some way.

Brander said she’d try to speak to Rosa but could certainly affirm that there is no doubt to the truth of Rosa’s statement. Rather it appears she decided it was OK to mention her circumstances in public in the specific context of Kaufmann talking about exactly what spycops did to women they abused.

PROCEDURE DECISION

The Inquiry took a break for Mitting and Barr to discuss the changes to the procedure of questioning witnesses. They came back with the decision that for the rest of this phase – i.e., until Thursday, with only two witnesses – once Counsel for the Inquiry has finished asking the aggregated questions from the various lawyers, the hearing will pause for 10 minutes and the lawyers can tell Mitting if they’ve anything additional to ask.

Mitting spelled out that there is no way this will be the format for the next hearings, but a better system will have been designed by then. Brander and Menon thanked him.

MITTING: ALOOF AND REMOTE

Brander raised Mitting’s querying of Rosa, saying Rosa wants to make a public response as:

‘she was quite alarmed that her integrity was called into question in a public hearing without advance notice’

As for the chronology, Brander explained, Rosa’s refusal to agree to her application being made public was a week before the Opening Statement was finalised, which included a lot of the same details. It was a very difficult and painful process for Rosa to feel she could put her story in a public Opening Statement made to the Inquiry. She took it right to the deadline because it was so unsettling for her.

Mitting said he accepted all that unreservedly, and that he never meant to criticise her integrity:

‘It’s not necessary, frankly, for her to make a public response, but she’d free to do so if she wishes’.

This is yet another example of his absolute failure to understand what he’s dealing with. He treated it as if Rosa had somehow got one over on him, or debased his precious gift of confidentiality. The fact that he brought it up in response to a request for live-streaming speaks volumes too; the subject was public streaming, yet he didn’t talk about that, but went off into something that appears to have stuck in his craw since last week and he can’t shake it.

His final comment, with the dismissively barbed ‘frankly’ jutting out, showed that he has no understanding of the scale of the trauma Rosa and the other women face. Nor, indeed, of the way that trauma in general produces conflicting intense feelings.

Many of those abused by spycops simultaneously feel that they want the world to know their story, but also that they’ve been invaded too much and can’t stand the pain of the slightest thing more being taken from them. When dealing with the huge trauma that comes from having your life violated by spycops, it is hugely important for victims to have some semblance of control over the narrative of their own lives.

Mitting showed more concern for his feeling put-out at having a decision seemingly undermined than for all the unspeakable horror that Rosa has been subjected to and her right to tell of it as she see fit, despite having had it explained to him so unflinchingly and eloquently by Phillippa Kaufmann QC.

COPS will be live-tweeting all the Inquiry hearings, and producing daily reports like this one for the blog. They will be indexed on our UCPI Public Inquiry page.

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Incidents in the Spycops Inquiry show the importance of public inquiries hearing the evidence in public, writes Donal O’Driscoll.

Behind the scenes of the Undercover Policing Inquiry, a protracted struggle is taking place to ensure the public inquiry is held, well, in public.

The current set up is prohibitively hard to access, and despite numerous representations, the Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting, is effectively ignoring all requests for live streaming of the evidence given by the former undercover officers.

There are many reasons why this is important, public access to the Inquiry in times of Covid not least among them. However, I’d like to draw particular attention to two incidents last week which exemplify just why live streaming of evidence is so crucial.

Currently the system for the wider public is a live transcript (on 10 minute delay) broadcast via YouTube. This effectively removes all body language, pause and tone from the evidence as the following moment illustrates.

DOUG EDWARDS’ CHANGE OF TONE

For those who were not able to see the Inquiry’s barrister questioning HN326, an undercover who went by the name Douglas Edwards, he came across as a very affable, laughing East Londoner, the sort of fellow you’d not mind meeting down the pub. Many of his answers were delivered in the same rolling manner, an old man down playing his role in events he could barely remember.

Then, at one point, the questioning touched on Special Branch’s Industrial Section. The transcript reads as follows:

Inquiry Counsel, David Barr QC, asked:

‘You talk about C Squad’s industrial desk and say that agencies and other people would contact C Squad for information. What I’m interested in is, was it public or private sector organisations, or both, which were contacting C Squad for information about industrial matters and people involved in industrial disputes and union activity?’

Douglas answered:

‘I think they’d got a good source of – surely we’re going beyond the scope of your inquiry now, aren’t we, for me to start talking about branch matters generally?’

What the transcript misses altogether, is just how dramatically his tone changed. The persona fell away as Douglas was no longer joking switched to something much harsher. The inner cop came out in a flash, and what you will not get from just reading the words, is that it was a challenge, an effort to instruct Barr not to chase that point.

As well as raising the issue of what he was so desperate to hide on a point that goes directly to the issue of illegal blacklisting, it also gave a full and proper insight into the true nature of the man giving the evidence. It was one of those moments the public really needed to see.

JOHN GRAHAM DOESN’T CRINGE

The evidence of undercover HN329 ‘John Graham’ gave a different perspective. In his statement, he noted that he had asked a woman from his target group out for dinner.

Given that John was married during his deployment, he was asked what his wife thought about it:

‘My wife has never been interested in what I did for a living, apart from the fact she knew I was a member of Special Branch. I may well have done so. She certainly knows about, as far as this Inquiry is concerned.’

Some of those following the transcript were keen to know if he cringed on being asked that, given the insight it gives to the evidence and issues around sexism. For those curious, he did not cringe, nor show remorse.

MITTING’S TONE

The third incident to highlight was the exchange between Mitting and one of the barristers for the non-police core participants, Rajiv Menon QC.

The subject matter of the exchange is well-covered in a COPS daily report. What those of us watching were able to see was the Chair’s evident anger and hostility that someone was seeking to put questions and elicit points that are of considerable importance to the non-police core participants.

It was shocking to watch and very important for us to see. It went directly to how confident the non-police core participants can be that the judge is able to address issues such as racism and sexism. The transcript alone provides none of this insight, and significant information is lost.

THE WRITE TO BE HEARD 

Reading the Inquiry’s flickering live transcription for hours at a time is a test of anyone’s patience and eyeballs. The women of Police Spies Out of Lives, who represent those deceived into relationships by undercover police officers, have taken matters into their own hands and are streaming a simultaneous readalong on their YouTube channel.

It’s an inspired idea, providing a more accessible format whilst highlighting the Inquiry’s failure to do the same. Once again, it has fallen to those abused by spycops to bring the facts to the public as the authorities put obstacles in the way of public understanding.

However, as the readers are reciting words they’re seeing for the first time, though they re-humanise the blinking text they still can’t know if they’re accurately reflecting the delivery of the witness. Words alone don’t tell the story. For that, we need the Inquiry to accede to live streaming of hearings.

THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH

There is a reason why hearings of all forms, from Parliament down to magistrates, have evidence given in person and not just in writing. It’s not only the asking of questions, but seeing and being able to judge the answers that is important.

By not live streaming, and refusing to let the wider public hear, let alone see the evidence being delivered, Mitting is preventing a vital part of the judicial process taking place – that justice needs to be seen to be done.

Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 11

16 November 2020

Evidence from:

Officer HN336 aka ‘Dick Epps’
Officer HN340 aka ‘Andy Bailey’ or ‘Alan Nixon’

At the Undercover Policing Inquiry, Monday 16 November was taken up by hearing evidence from two former spycops. Both were deployed between 1969 and 1972. Both have scant memories of key incidents, yet still yielded vital details.

Last week we learned that many of the spycops abuses of power ‘- deceiving people they spied on into relationships, attending family events, spying beyond their jurisdiction – were around from the very earliest days of their unit. Today we added another one to the list – another MP has been confirmed as being spied on by these officers of the counter-democratic political secret police.

SELECTIVE AMNESIA

Tom Fowler, who was spied on in the 2000s by officer ‘Marco Jacobs‘, has been following the hearings and said:

‘Given that the events being talked about are up to 52 years ago, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that memories of the details of many events don’t come to mind.

‘However, it is very telling that all five of the former professional falsifiers had rather good memories on certain matters, generally ones that absolved them of blame, like “it was definitely just one drink one, one time”, only to have blank memories on other issues that might unearth more detail on what kind of operation Conrad Dixon was running with the Special Demonstration Squad, like “my closest colleague acting as a prosecution witness in a case that successfully convicted an innocent man of incitement to riot, based on a leaflet she collected at a meeting I attend with her? I really can’t remember anything”.

‘No one remembers any discussion with any of the colleagues about anything to do with any of their deployments, even ones that overlapped their own undercover roles…

‘A number of the officers remarked that the evidence bundle that had been presented to them was missing an unknown number of reports they had written… [while there are] plenty of others which bear the names of officers who dismiss the contents as “far too eloquent” for anything they might have written.

‘You begin to get the impression that one section of the SDS was putting together all the reports that justified the existence of the unit, whilst the rest of the officers were there to sign off whatever was written, regardless of whether they had picked up the intelligence themselves or not.’

GUERILLA COVERAGE

The Undercover Policing Inquiry still refuses to live-steam its hearings, only giving us a time-delayed on-screen transcript that can’t be paused or rewound. It makes the whole process much harder to follow.

The women from Police Spies Out of Lives, which represents women who were deceived into relationships by spycops, have taken matters into their own hands by doing a live feed of them reading the Inquiry’s transcript.

There is, of course, no reason why the Inquiry can’t provide us with its audio of the hearings. It would be no different to the readalong in terms of security. It’s further evidence of the way regards victims of spycops as marginal and the wider public as an irrelevance.

Once again, it falls to those abused by spycops to do the work to bring the facts to the public. This one doesn’t even have security excuses, it’s just that they feel the public are an irrelevance.

Follow the readalong when the hearings are happening on the Police Spies Out of Lives YouTube channel.

Back to the day at the Inquiry:

‘Dick Epps’

SDS officer HN336

‘Day 11’ of the Undercover Policing Inquiry began with the testimony of officer HN336 – ‘Dick Epps’.

In his time undercover in the Special Demonstration Squad between 1969 and 1972, Epps infiltrated:

• Britain Vietnam Solidarity Front
• Vietnam Solidarity Campaign
• British Campaign for Peace in Vietnam
• Stop The Seventy Tour
• International Marxist Group

Later, he worked for Special Branch’s Industrial Section and appeared as ‘Dan’ in the 2002 BBC documentary True Spies.

Dick Epps’ testimony touched on several issues, including chauvinistic reporting of targets, Special Branch burglaries, and the connection between Special Branch and the blacklisting of trade unionists.

Counsel to the Inquiry, David Barr, kicked off proceedings by asking the former undercover questions around search warrants – your general police training, pre-Special Branch – did it cover entering private dwellings?

Epps answered that it did so. However, there was no special training regarding attending political meetings – Special Branch officers learned ‘on the job’. This included how to write up reports – he was expected to record who attended meetings (if he could identify them) and admitted that just attending a meeting was enough for someone to be included in a report.

He was given verbal instructions, and provided with general support by his colleagues:

‘I was never sat down in a classroom or a training room and given a training manual, or training lectures… We were all, if you like, being thrown into a maelstrom, and seeking to find some sense of what we were trying to do’

He admitted that there was no actual training or briefing about the groups that were being spied on.

Epps couldn’t recall making a separate report about any person but did talk about how someone might draw attention to themselves at a meeting and this would be recorded.

Epps also described it as a ‘fundamental requirement’ that undercovers report on a group’s plans, activities, discussions and interests. He then spoke about those days being different and added that ‘political correctness’ hadn’t been invented yet. He said that his superiors were always curious about the content of his reports, but didn’t give him much feedback. Reports would be altered and ‘tweaked’ by the SDS office staff to match the ‘style’ used by the unit.

Later he added that his reports would include personal details of any ‘new faces’ he met at these meetings – though he claimed he had no idea if this info was used for vetting or not. However, he had admitted to working within Special Branch for five years before joining the SDS, and knew that most forms went to MI5.

SUBVERSION

As with previous witnesses, he was then asked about his understanding of the term ‘subversion’. Specifically, what he meant by distinguishing (in his written statement) between ‘peaceful genuine protest’ and that which was ‘divisive or venomous’ – was that a personal distinction or an official one?

His answer eventually settled on it being more a personal one:

‘my feeling was, and is, that we existed within a very sophisticated political system that’s evolved over many years, and there is an order to the way that system might be changed. As a parliamentary democracy, it’s through the ballot box.

‘And there were and are those that seek to disturb that balance of matters and subvert that system by other means. And so that would be, in the broadest terms, my understanding of “subversion”.

He was asked how secretive the SDS was within Special Branch – he thought that in the early days some people within the Branch knew of the new unit’s existence, but many did not: ‘you didn’t ask questions’.

Oddly, he has also claimed that he was never actually ‘targeted’ into any specific group or individual, but just went out ‘fishing’ to see what groups he could latch onto. In fact, something that stood out strongly with Epps (as well as some of the other undercovers) is that he seemed to drift aimlessly between one group and another.

BRITAIN VIETNAM SOLIDARITY FRONT

The first group that Epps spied on was the Britain Vietnam Solidarity Front (BVSF) – politically Maoist in belief. They met weekly at the Union Tavern Pub on King Cross Road and the meetings were large enough (20-25 people) that a new person wouldn’t stand out too much.

Epps protested that for the BVSF:

‘I think “infiltration” sounds rather too strong a word. I attended the meetings and I was interested from a professional point of view in terms of learning what their viewpoints were, and also trying to glean anything from that that might take me elsewhere, in time.’

He also said the BVSF provided him with a useful introduction to political nuances and the various factions that existed at the time. He hoped it would be a ‘gateway’ to other groups.

The Union Tavern, Kings Cross Road. London

He said he was never an established member of the group, even if he became ‘an accepted part of the furniture on a Sunday evening’. He saw his task as keeping tabs on people who were seeking to disrupt the status quo.

He was asked about Tariq Ali and Abhimanyu Manchanda, who he described as ‘prominent individuals’. He wasn’t given any briefing about either man by his managers but would report back on them.

Epps later commented on both individuals of being worthy of SDS attention, claiming that their rhetoric, especially that of Ali, could stir-up trouble. However, when pressed, he could not give examples of violence from either group.

Barr then asked him about a deceased member of the SDS, Mike Ferguson, inquiring as to why both officers had infiltrated the BVSF at the same time – and how it came to be there were reports signed in both their names.

Epps explained that he was ‘a new boy’ and this was an opportunity for him to ‘learn a trade, learn a skill that I was going to find useful’. However, he denied collusion with Ferguson: ‘We would not sit down together and compile a report, no’.

He suggested that SDS officers had an advantage over normal Special Branch officers:

‘the fact that your face was known made it possible to sort of glide in and slide into the grouping, rather than stand out as a total stranger. There was always a sensitivity about strange faces.

He tried to stress that the context of the time as a justification for the surveillance:

‘it was a hotbed at that time of — of street activity. And some of it was — was very reasonable in its protest, but some of it was really, really violent… And so there was a need to protect, if you like, as I say, in the wider sense’

Then another nickname for the SDS officers unit emerged – he called them ‘the Hs’, short for ‘Hairies’.

One of his reports from a BVSF meeting included details of two forthcoming marches, one about Palestine and another about women’s equality. Epps was at pains to tell us that his focus was the group, not these issues, even though he reported on them.

Barr asked him bluntly, ‘From what you could see of the BVSF and its members, was it a violent organisation?’

Epps had to concede:

‘No, not compared with other groupings at that time, no.’

CAMDEN VIETNAM SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN

After some time with the BVSF, Epps moved on, to the Camden branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC). Asked why he left the BVSF, he explained that it ‘got to a point where I felt uneasy…there was never finger-pointing, or a moment where any accusations were made’ but he felt that its leader Manchanda was suspicious of him, and read it as the time to move on.

Epps noted that Camden VSC had previously been infiltrated by SDS founder Conrad Dixon. The officer recalled that the group had remembered Dixon as a ‘figure of fun’ recalled by the Camden VSC members as wearing ‘a yachtsman’s outfit’ – he had a ‘big sailor type beard’, a ‘jaunty’ cap and a smock – ‘slightly out of place in Camden, dare I say’.

He described the Camden VSC group as ‘loose-knit and very friendly’, with ‘wide-ranging views’. He developed the impression they ‘had a Communist party leaning’ and they referred to him as a ‘Trot’, and therefore a reformist in their eyes.

Justifying it, Epps said:

‘The whole objective of the penetration of what was going on was to provide your individual persona with credibility.’

He subsequently moved on to target the Kentish Town VSC, but had very few memories of that branch.

BRITISH CAMPAIGN FOR PEACE IN VIETNAM

Next, Epps targeted a north London branch of the British Campaign for Peace in Vietnam (BCPV). This entailed attending meetings that were held in a private house, though he did not recall any reaction from his managers to this.

His witness statement mentioned regularly going out for post-meeting drinks with members of this group throughout the six months that he was infiltrating them.

One of the members was a woman with whom he later went out for a drink. He made sure to state:

‘There was never anything beyond that ordinary conversation. If she had any desire to develop a relationship or a friendship, she didn’t convey that and neither did I.’

He said they just had a ‘nodding acquaintance’ relationship afterwards. He believes going out for drinks with her aided his acceptance and credibility in the group. This obviously foreshadows the use of women to gain access to activist groups.

Later in the hearing, after Barr had finished questioning Epps, barrister Ruth Brander, on behalf of non-state core participants, was also permitted to ask him a couple of questions about this drink with the woman from the BCPV. He confirmed that he could even still recall her name, fifty years later, but brushed away the idea there was any significant reason for this.

STOP THE SEVENTY TOUR (STST)

Epps next targeted the anti-apartheid Stop The Seventy Tour having been introduced to this campaign by a member of the BCPV. (Peter Hain, a member of this group and due to give evidence in the Inquiry next year, recently made an impassioned speech in the House of Lords against the current CHIS Bill, most of which is in a Guardian Column today.)

Peter Hain, arrested at Downing Street, 1969

STST opposed sporting tours of white South African teams in the UK, and British teams going to play in apartheid South Africa. Epps recalled ‘there was a lot of passionate revulsion’ towards the apartheid regime.

His witness statement mentioned two incidents – digging up the pitch at Lords cricket ground and pouring oil over the wickets – but Barr explained that the Inquiry has  been unable to find any press coverage of such an event during the STST’s campaign. This issue was later pursued in questions by the Chair himself, and at that point, Epps conceded he had muddled up events.

Epps did talk more about the STST activists, citing an incident at a match he attended with them. STST tried to disrupt these matches, with the aim of delaying play, or better still, causing the entire match to be postponed. The group’s tactic was to ‘rush’ the pitch, upon a given signal. Epps could not recall what this signal was, or who gave it, but says the activists tried to ‘push the police around’, and alleges that one or two of them even threw punches at uniformed officers, something he found hard to watch.

Barr then returned to the undercover officer Mike Ferguson, reminding Epps that he had described Mike as ‘Peter Hain’s right-hand man’ in his statement. Epps now claimed he had meant that as a bit of a joke. He added that you did not have to go as far as Ferguson to do the job – but admitted that he lacked the ‘drive or nouse’ to be as effective as some of the other undercovers.

ANARCHY IN THE UK

On more than one occasion in his written evidence, Epps claimed it was anarchists who were the likely cause of any public disorder. Reasonably, Barr asked why in that case he did not attempt to infiltrate the anarchist groups?

Epps responded with some reminiscing about some ‘spontaneous moments by hair-brained bunches’ including ‘a dozen or so cars set alight in the vicinity of Claridge’s’ when Ronald Reagan visited London in the 1980s.

When pressed Epps said:

‘I don’t know that it ever occurred to me that that was a route that I might find useful. But some of them were, as I say, harebrained and a little overexcited at these moments, and I didn’t feel drawn to that sort of grouping.’

Putting aside the accuracy of Epps opinions about anarchism, this seems wholly at odds with the SDS’ supposed public order remit.

RACIST & SEXIST REPORTING

Again, in regards to his infiltration in the London STST committee, Epps wrote a report about a member of the group:

‘She is, in fact, a somewhat immature, naïve person and it would seem that she was made Secretary of the group because of her clerical experience.’

More worryingly, he went on to describe her physically:

‘Aged about 23 years; height 5’0″; short fair hair; slim build with well-developed bust; slightly Jewish appearance’

Barr asked him to explain this racialised and sexualised reporting, and suggested that the reports were based on stereotypes.

‘Can I say, that’s a modern-day interpretation and not how it would have been viewed then?’

In a similar manner, Epps also described another woman as being ‘attractive’. He was unable to explain how useful either of these descriptions would have been to Special Branch.

Epps was asked more about the STST campaign’s plans. This included a suggestion that they hold a torch-lit midnight procession. Why did the police need to know about an entirely peaceful demo? According to Epps, street demos are ‘still something that the police should be aware of’.

The officer also said he didn’t get to know members of the STST very well, but rather he ‘drifted in and out’.

INTERNATIONAL MARXIST GROUP – BURGLARY

Epps said he does not remember how he first got involved with the International Marxist Group (IMG). They were possibly targeted because they ‘took part in every demonstration going’.

He admitted that he didn’t remember any IMG members being violent or disorderly at demos but claims ‘they were much busier than other groups’ – as if that was justification in itself.

Epps said he was instructed by his managers to make a copy of the IMG’s office keys. He had also mentioned this in True Spies, where he claimed he ‘just happened’ to have clay on him to take the pressing. Today, however, he admitted he had told his boss he had an opportunity to get a pressing of the key and was then told to go ahead, possibly with plasticine provided by them (his oral and written evidence vary on this).

Under questioning, Epps gave more details. He recalled attending an IMG meeting, where they were looking for someone to look after the office. He ‘reluctantly volunteered’ for the task. Epps also intimated that burgling activists offices was not something that Special Branch would do – although there are countless anecdotal reports, spanning many years, of mysterious break-ins of campaign premises where nothing was actually taken.

FALL OUT FROM ‘TRUE SPIES’

Epps said that he lost a lot of good friends as a result of taking part in the BBC TV series True Spies, even though his participation was authorised by Special Branch.

He was ‘still at a loss to understand’ why they were so upset and was disappointed ‘that some seemed to take such exception to rather frivolous comments.’

Barr then asked: Do you think your colleagues were upset because they were concerned you had compromised the operational security of the SDS, or did they regard you as a whistle-blower?

Epps replied:

‘I don’t think they viewed me as a whistleblower. I think it was just a rather shortsighted thing to have said on my part. And maybe they were right in that respect.’

As with all police witnesses to date, he loyally gave his colleagues an absurdly uncritical tribute as a ‘committed bunch of individuals and people I have great admiration for. ‘

However, earlier in the questioning, Epps made some seemingly less than favourable comments about SDS founder, Conrad Dixon – in contrast to previous police witnesses – saying that he was a dominating force in a manner that wasn’t wholly positive.

His written witness statement said:

‘Conrad was a clever man, but also an ambitious and devious man. He saw an opportunity for himself as well as an opportunity to create something useful.

Barr asked Epps to elaborate on this, and he replied:

‘personally, to me, would always come across as a gambler. And I don’t mean that in a well, a chancer. He was brash.’

SPECIAL BRANCH INDUSTRIAL SECTION – AND BLACKLISTING

At the beginning of this part of the questioning, it was revealed that Chief Superintendent Bert Lawrenson, the former head of C Squad in Special Branch, who spied on left-wing union activists, went on to work for blacklisting and union-busting organisation The Economic League after the left the police.

Epps later worked in the ‘industrial section’ of Special Branch. He covered the engineering sector and described the concerns regarding Soviet infiltration of that industry. However, to his knowledge, SDS officers had nothing to do with the Economic League although they ‘swam in the same pond’.

Recalling an induction lecture at Special Branch, ‘I remember being quite alarmed by Lawrenson’s assessment of the infiltration of British groups by the Russians’. Epps claimed that ‘people would come to us’ – suggesting these were trade unionists who were ‘not tainted by communism’. This information was included in True Spies as well.

Barr pressed Epps to confirm that, while at the industrial desk, Epps would have access to Special Branch records – given that if the SDS had reported someone’s trade union activities, that report would have been available to the Industrial Section of Special Branch?

Epps replied, claiming:

‘There would be no overlap between the – whatever was held within the SDS would remain there. I can’t conceive of any situation where SDS information, intelligence would leak into the normal pool of Special Branch records activity.’

This would seem strange, as some, if not all, SDS reports were fed into the enormous Special Branch registry file system. However, he did agree that it was ‘reasonable to assume’ that many of his reports went to MI5.

After Ruth Brander asked her questions about Epps’ drink with a member of the STST committee, Owen Greenall, a barrister appearing on behalf some non-state core participants, asked about the dates of his deployment and the STST’s actions at Twickenham. However, Epps said he didn’t make any written record of these events. There ended a lengthy first session.

PDF of the accompanying written witness statement of HN336 ‘Dick Epps’

‘Andy Bailey’ or ‘Alan Nixon’

SDS officer HN340

In the afternoon, we heard evidence from officer HN340, who infiltrated various groups – including the International Marxist Group (IMG), North London Red Circle and Irish Solidarity Campaign – between 1969 and 1972.

He is now known to have used the cover names ‘Alan Bailey’ and ‘Alan Nixon’. Here’s his Undercover Research Group profile.

Though it’s not his real name, we’ll call him Bailey in this report for ease of reading.

BEFORE THE SPYCOP

Bailey joined the police in the 1950s. He can’t remember much about the first two years of probationary training, or being told anything much about ethics or standards.

He then joined Special Branch in the 1960s. There was a written exam. He said that he was not required to do any undercover work prior to joining the spycop unit.

Occasionally Special Branch officers would go along to Speakers Corner, in their normal clothes, but he never went to any ‘closed meetings’.

JOINING THE SPYCOPS

After about five years in Special Branch, Bailey was invited to join the Special Demonstration Squad by Phil Saunders. He was only then given an outline of what the unit did, and was told it would involve weekend working.

The unit wasn’t well-known. He said he knew ‘basically, nothing’ about the SDS before joining it. This was, he explained, in keeping with the wider Special Branch ethos of working on a ‘need to know’ basis; ‘you didn’t need to spell it out’.

His written witness statement recounts a conversation with Mike Ferguson, who had already been deployed undercover by the SDS. Ferguson advised Bailey to get a cover name, cover address and cover job.

In today’s hearing, Bailey couldn’t clarify where this conversation had taken place – at first he claimed it had been in the ‘back-office’ at Scotland Yard, but then he admitted that Ferguson would never have visited the building while deployed undercover.

STOP THE SEVENTY TOUR

He claims not to have known much about Mike Ferguson’s role in the Stop the Seventy Tour (STST) campaign, or his position in the anti-apartheid movement – something the Inquiry seems to be asking every officer about.

The Inquiry seems to be focusing on a few ideas that now fit with modern mainstream sensibilities – that apartheid was wrong, or that singling out people for their disabilities is unacceptable – rather than seeing them as part of the SDS’s wider attack on progressive politics and citizens’ personal integrity.

Bailey didn’t create any kind of back-story or ‘legend’ for himself, and in retrospect admitted that this might have been useful later on.

Like all SDS officers, he spent a little time in the ‘back office’ of the unit, ‘probably typing up reports and checking out various bits and pieces’, which will have given him an idea of what would be expected from him when he went undercover.

He doesn’t recall other former or waiting-to-be-deployed undercovers being in the back office at the same time as him (somewhat contradicting his earlier written statement, according to Rebekah Hummerstone, who was asking questions for the Inquiry).

Bailey didn’t recall much preparation, and confirmed that he received no training in undercover work. He said Ferguson told him to ‘play it by ear’:

‘I was hoping he might have given some pearls of wisdom but as I said once you’re out there nobody knows exactly what’s going to turn up next and you’ve got to be prepared for anything’

Bailey’s written statement said that as an undercover you ‘were trusted to use your common sense and good judgement’.

He does not recall receiving any guidance about entering private addresses, even though he did inevitably attend meetings held at activists’ homes.

He would go the SDS flat each day and write up his report of the previous evening’s political meeting. His reports would routinely include details of the group’s plans and events, and personal information, including identifying information, about the individual people he met. They would then be typed up by back-office staff.

Bailey’s memory has a lot of gaps which, after 50 years, isn’t really surprising. Did he see any of his reports after they’d been typed up? Did he see them to sign them? He doesn’t recall.

He expressed surprise that any of his reports are still in existence 50 years later, and is sure the ones he’s seen are only a fraction of the ones he made:

‘there are certain little incidents that I do have vague recollection of, which aren’t contained in the bundle’

Pressed for details on what this meant, after he consulted with another person, he said he remembered the explosion at the Post Office tower, for example.

On 31 October 1971, a bomb went off in the restaurant at the top of the Post Office Tower (now BT tower) in central London. Responsibility was claimed by the IRA, and later by the Angry Brigade anarchist collective.

Bailey had attended a ‘function’ with members of the Irish Solidarity Campaign nearby that evening. Senior officers, who must clearly have been aware of which groups he was infiltrating, asked him if he had any information that might help their enquiries. However he had left the area when the pubs closed and ‘it must have occurred after that’ (the explosion came at 4:30am).

Bailey stated his role was to gather intelligence about forthcoming events, pickets and demonstrations, in order to prevent public order problems. His statement says that Special Branch had no formal role in counter-subversion.

However, he said the SDS (and therefore Special Branch) did collect information about people who were ‘unfriendly towards the State and its institutions and might use criminal methods to undermine it’. In fact he went on to say that this ‘secondary role’ was in fact one of Special Branch’s ‘main functions’.

RED MOLE

The spycops worked weekends; Bailey often stood outside Archway tube station selling Red Mole, a newspaper edited by Tariq Ali that was the voice for many in the International Marxist Group.

Bailey estimated that he only went to his cover accommodation two or three times a week, and only slept there ‘very rarely’.

In contrast, he visited the SDS flat almost every weekday afternoon, as did most of the other spycops at that time, where they would write up their reports. He described this a functional arrangement, and spycops didn’t really discuss their experiences with each other, not even in a ‘sanitised’ way.

His written witness statement suggested that his deployment was very open-ended – and he could be ‘re-tasked’ as necessary.

Bailey said a lack of praise was a continual feature of his work, and that he just made up his methods and activities, and presumed he was doing the right thing unless his managers told him otherwise:

‘If they’d thought it was a waste of time I’m pretty sure they would have said “don’t bother”.’

Managers regularly visited the SDS flat but Bailey doesn’t remember being given many specific instructions by them, or directed to infiltrate any specific groups.

Rebekah Hummerstone, the Inquiry’s barrister carrying out the questioning, said that we know they did step in to give some direction on at least two occasions, telling him – and told him not to become a member of the International Marxist Group, and that he should to attend the Conference for a Red Europe in Brussels in November 1970, organised by the Fourth International (of which the IMG was a part)

He accepts that his attendance of a meeting at Conway Hall must have been on instructions:

‘I must have been told because I wouldn’t have gone off wandering off to Red Lion Square just off my own initiative’

There was a lot of this in his answers – an inability to recall events at all, let alone in detail, but a readiness to accept the accounts and implications of the documents. This contrasts with other officers’ evidence that the reports were often written by their superiors, without their knowledge, or that reports were credited to the person did the typing rather than the one did the spying.

The report of the Conway Hall meeting says Bailey approached and talked with both Tariq Ali and Vanessa Redgrave. They had both spoken at the meeting, he didn’t know anyone else, so did what Ferguson had recommended, he ‘played it by ear’, and went over for a chat. Ali invited him to attend the next meeting of the North London Red Circle.

Bailey didn’t think he had heard of the Red Circle before, he’s not sure if his managers were very aware of the group, they certainly hadn’t tasked him to target it; he fell into it by chance because of this encounter with Ali. He hoped that attending Red Circle meetings would provide him with useful intelligence about ‘potential flash points’.

NORTH LONDON RED CIRCLE

Bailey’s written witness statement described North London Red Circle as a ‘recruiting ground for the International Marxist Group’, with a presumption that the IMG was in itself a serious threat to public safety, so anyone in its orbit was fair game for spying.

Bailey became the Red Circle’s ‘tea club secretary’, on his own initiative, in order to learn the names of group members. Echoing what other spycops have recounted, he said he felt it was best to gather as much information as possible, in case it became useful later.

The reports show the Red Circle was a tiny left-wing discussion group. It held talks on Israel, Black Power, trade unions, the Fourth International, the National Union of Mineworkers, the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders’ dispute, anti-racist campaigning, unemployment, apartheid, and more.

Asked about the content of these meetings, Bailey once again only offered an apologetic blank memory.

SPYING ON WOMEN’S LIBERATION

Another report was about a meeting on the topic of women’s liberation. The speaker talked about attempts to form a union for women night cleaners.

When queried on the relevance of these campaigns and whether Special Branch spied on the trade union and women’s liberation movements, Bailey said he didn’t think he could speak for Special Branch as a whole, and then failed to speak even for the Branch unit he was in.

He agreed that this report was a good example of him writing down everything that might possibly be of interest, and leaving it to the back-office to decide what to include in the final typed-up version.

IRISH POLITICS

An August 1971 report on a Red Circle meeting [UCPI0000008196] describes an unusually large crowd for the group – all of 24 people – were present to hear a talk by a Provisional sympathiser followed by questions.

The speaker said that if the IRA did commence terrorist activities in England, they considered it the ‘duty of all revolutionaries to render whatever assistance was asked’. Bailey can’t remember if any Red Circle attendees agreed with this view.

Thirty people attended a Red Circle meeting in February 1972, according to Bailey’s report [UCPI0000008944], to hear civil rights campaigner Bob Purdie speak about Ireland, in place of a scheduled talk about Spain.

Purdie talked about the Republican movement, explaining that the recent split was due to tactical differences rather than political ones. In answer to a question afterwards, Purdie said extending the armed struggle to England would be politically wrong, but if the Irish movement’s leaders called for assistance, then the IMG line was that revolutionary groups in Britain should support them.

Bailey admitted that the name Bob Purdie rings a bell, but he could not remember much more. Again, he followed his absence of specifics with supposition because on residual understanding of the group:

‘From what I remember I can’t think of any of them now that I would consider to be tending towards any kind of violence”.’

A very faint report from April 1972 shows the Red Circle again having a talk about Ireland because the scheduled speaker (this time on Cuba) couldn’t make the meeting on the day.

The Red Circle ‘was a talking shop’, Bailey said in his written statement to the Inquiry:

‘It did support a revolutionary agenda and was subversive to the extent that it advanced the overthrow of the established political system in the UK, albeit never took any concrete steps… violence would have been the last thing on many of their minds’.

IRISH CIVIL RIGHTS SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN

Bailey also infiltrated the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign (ICRSC). His name appears on a report on the group’s activities filed in September 1970.

He said he attended their meetings ‘almost as a co-opted member of the North London Red Circle’ but struggled to explain why.

Bailey doesn’t remember being ‘tasked’ to attend the ICRSC meetings, it was again more a case of chance, but that it his managers had disapproved he would not have gone.

IRISH SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN

His involvement with the ICRSC resulted in Bailey attending the founding conference of the Irish Solidarity Campaign (ISC) in Birmingham, in October 1970.

It was unusual for an SDS officer to go beyond London. Asked if he got special permission to make the journey to another constabulary’s jurisdiction, he once more failed to remember anything:

‘I must have slept somewhere overnight… but quite honestly I can’t remember where we stayed’

For an SDS officer to go beyond the Met’s area, the unit must have either secured the permission of the local police, in which case they were complicit in what the spycops did, or else it was done without local approval, which is a serious breach of police protocol.

That Irish Solidarity Campaign founding conference was also attended by Bailey’s colleague, SDS officer HN68 ‘Sean Lynch’, whose deployment was mainly focused on Irish solidarity groups. The two tried to avoid any contact – ‘there was no reason that we should know each other, so we didn’t’ – but Bailey thinks it likely they knew of each other’s plans to attend the event in advance.

A report was produced afterwards, with both their names attached to it. Bailey has no recollection of collaborating on this with HN68, but ‘it seems as if it would have been inconceivable that we hadn’t discussed it’. The report contained a long list of all the groups (and ‘fraternal delegates’) who attended the conference.

He explained:

‘They were there and so I reported it; it was then down to the back office to do their filtering, vetting, or whatever you call it.’

The report was sent not just to MI5 but also to the Home Office. The Deputy Assistant Commissioner commended the ‘first class work’ and asked that the officers be praised (though Bailey does not remember receiving or being told about such praise). It will have been obvious to that senior officer that the depth of knowledge in the report can only have come from sustained infiltration.

There is no way to sustain the claim we’ve heard from the Met that the SDS was a rogue unit, so secret that nobody outside really knew what was going on.

It is already clear – and getting even clearer – that the SDS’ work was known and approved of at the highest levels of the Met, as well as its paymasters in the Home Office who have managed to lose every single document about their 21 years of direct funding.

Hummerstone read out the six main aims of the ISC (as laid out in Appendix D of [MPS-0738150]). Would that information have been of interest to Special Branch?

‘At the time I may have thought so, but…,’ he tailed off, unhelpfully.

PAUCITY OF MEMORIES

The Inquiry was then shown a report from January 1971 on a meeting of the central London branch of the ISC. There was mention of tarring and feathering incidents, and the speaker was very critical of the Republican leadership at the time.

Next came a report from the following month, February 1971, about a talk on ‘people’s democracy and the civil rights anti-apartheid movement Northern Ireland’ by Gerry Lawless.

This rung the lonely sound of a bell in Bailey’s memory, who said Lawless was ‘one of the very few names that I remember from then, because he was so active’.

Lawless was described as being involved in the ISC, as well as the IMG, and he additionally sometimes attended Red Circle discussion meetings.

Later in 1971, the Red Circle held a discussion entitled ‘why the Provisionals’. Bailey could not remember anything about what attendees thought of the speaker’s views.

ALDERSHOT

Finally on this theme, a report [UCPI0000008500] dated March 1972, a week or two after the bomb explosion at Aldershot army barracks which killed seven civilian staff. The ISC slogan at the time was ‘Victory to the IRA’.

Bailey was asked if he had any contact with the police investigating this bomb. He replied that ‘off our own bat there’s no way any of us would have had contact with a non-Met police force’.

Even within the Met, Bailey’s description made it appear that the sharing of information was left to managers, if it happened at all. He said that he only had contact with the SDS back-room staff, nobody else. Special Branch’s B Squad dealt with Irish matters, yet Bailey said he had no contact with them at all.

Bailey could not recall ISC members ever taking part in any acts of violence, or any public disorder at any demonstrations organised by the ISC. Again, he elaborated with a suggestion interpreting his lack of specific memory:

‘I’m sure something like that would have stuck in my memory and it definitely doesn’t’.

A few weeks after the Aldershot bombing, then-current and former members of the ISC had their homes raided. It may well have stemmed from Bailey’s reports on them; he professed not to know if that was the case.

BERNADETTE DEVLIN MP

His reports would mention whether or not events were attended by Bernadette Devlin, a young independent Irish republican MP.

According to Bailey:

‘if she was known to be going to attend any meeting or demonstration or whatever, then of course that would increase the likelihood of more people arriving at the demonstration’.

Interestingly, one of the files suggests that there was not yet a Special Branch file opened on Bernadette Devlin at this time.

He said he couldn’t elaborate beyond that because he merely reported, and what happened with the information he gave, or because of it, ‘was not my concern’.

Bernadette Devlin joins the growing list of MPs confirmed as having been spied on by the SDS, the unit that was supposedly formed to monitor those who would overthrow parliamentary democracy.

His reports also contained what was described as an ‘unflattering portrait of Irish solidarity groups’; a report of a conversations between another Northern Ireland political activist Eamonn McCann and others, and of McCann turning up late at a meeting.

SPYING ABROAD

Bailey attended the Conference for a Red Europe in Brussels in November 1970, having secured specific permission to travel abroad from his managers.

As with the ISC conference in Birmingham a month earlier, Bailey says there was no direct contact between him and the other spycop who attended that conference. That other officer was officer HN326 ‘Doug Edwards’, who complained about the trip in his evidence last Friday.

Until last week, it had been thought that Peter Francis’ 1995 visit to an anti-racist gathering in Germany was the first time an SDS officer had gone abroad undercover.

VIETNAM SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN

Although his name is attached to several reports on the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, Bailey said he cannot remember attending any of their meetings.

He said he couldn’t comment on whether spycops would have been more likely to attend a meeting that Tariq Ali attended. Neither could he remember if he already knew the name Piers Corbyn in 1971.

BLACK POWER GROUPS

Bailey also reported on the Black People’s Defence, the Black Defence Committee, and Black Power. Asked if he had been directed to report on anti-racist groups he was, once more, at a loss to say.

END OF DEPLOYMENT

Bailey’s managers had instructed him not to join the International Marxist Group because it was ‘recognised as more of a political party’, something that doesn’t tally with the fact that his contemporary, ‘Doug Edwards’, was not merely a member of the Independent Labour Party but the Tower Hamlets branch treasurer.

Bailey’s undercover career lasted around two years, well in excess of the 12 month maximum stipulated in a document written by SDS founder Conrad Dixon. Bailey can’t understand how 12 months would be enough time to gain the trust to make detailed reporting worthwhile, and can’t imagine many had so short a deployment unless something went wrong. He says he was unaware of the supposed limit until the Inquiry told him about it.

He suffered from headaches, nosebleeds, and migraines, which he attributes to the stress of his job. thought to be caused by stress. He recalls negligible support in the macho world of the spycops, saying ‘you got on with it’.

PDF of the accompanying written witness statement of HN340 ‘Andy Bailey’/ ‘Alan Nixon’

COPS will be live-tweeting all the Inquiry hearings, and producing daily reports like this one for the blog. They will be indexed on our UCPI Public Inquiry page.

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Undercover Policing Inquiry
Weekly Report 2
9-13 November 2020

After seven days of opening statements, and six years since it was first announced, the Undercover Policing Inquiry finally started taking evidence from witnesses this week.

This phase of the Inquiry concerned the earliest days of the Metropolitan Police’s spycops unit, the Special Operations Squad (later called the Special Demonstration Squad), for the years 1968-72.

The week began with the final opening statements from the significantly affected people whom the Inquiry has designated ‘core participants’.

HARROWING STORIES

Some came from the women deceived into relationships by officers, many of whom were directly responsible for the uncovering of the spycops who abused them. We touch on their accounts here, but cannot do full justice to these often harrowing stories.

On Wednesday, we heard from the very first witness, Tariq Ali. A 77-year old journalist, writer and broadcaster who has been politically active most of his life, Ali was spied on by many undercovers, right from the inception of the units in 1968 through to the 2000s. And for the first time we heard the undercovers themselves, with three sessions on the final two days from officers who were part of the unit when it was formed.

Given breadth of the hearings, in this report we will focus on bringing out the main themes and highlights of the week, rather than going into specific detail. All of the detailed daily reports can be found on our UCPI public inquiry page.

ONGOING PROBLEMS

The opening statements heard this week powerfully repeated points those who were spied on have been arguing for years.

They put the case that in order to get to the truth, we need to know:

• Cover names and real names of the spycops. These have still not been released. Lawyer Heather Williams reiterated that with the Inquiry only giving an identifying number for spycops, it is impossible for spied-upon people to actually know they were spied upon, and be able to come forward and give evidence. We will be left with just the officer’s unchallenged account of their activities.
• Information about what they did during their deployments, and which groups they targeted. We know that more than 1000 groups were spied on, yet less than 150 have been named. When they were on holiday with people they spied on, was this ordered or sanctioned by their managers?
• Photographs of the spycops, as they looked at the time, as this is likely to have far more effect jogging people’s memories. Tariq Ali said if he had been shown a photo of ‘Dick Epps‘ (who spied on him in the 1960s) he might have been able to recollect more about him. Non-state core participants have provided the Inquiry with personal photographs but the Inquiry has chosen not to publish them.
• What is in the files: what data was gathered about individuals and the groups they were part of? The vast majority of non-state core participants have been provided with nothing at all so far. A small number have been given access to the ‘hearing bundle’, but this 5,500 page stack came just five weeks before these hearings began; far too much to comprehend, while still but a fraction of the million pages the Inquiry has.

Another point reinforced was the demand, argued for years now, that the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, urgently needs the assistance of an advisory panel, made up of people with more life experience and expertise than him. It is clear he lacks the understanding to investigate the institutional racism and sexism which lie at the heart of this scandal.

These initial problems with the Undercover Policing Inquiry, and more, are detailed in our report from last week.

NEW PROBLEMS: LIVE STREAMING & REPORTING 

Sir John Mitting

Although this was already known about last week, the loss of public access to the live-streaming of the hearings from Wednesday morning has caused even more than the expected difficulties. A few things changed in light of protests from those attending, but there are still significant problems for those present and those prevented from attending.

There is considerable upset that people could only follow it properly by travelling to central London during a pandemic. However, Mitting is still flatly refusing to live-stream the whole thing on ‘security grounds’, even though other inquiries dealing with sensitive material, such as Grenfell and Manchester Arena, are live-streaming their hearings.

It’s clear it’s technically possible; it was done for the seven days of opening statements. Indeed, Mitting is still permitted his own personal live-stream, and two more are in the rooms provided for no more than 60 people to watch proceedings. The rest of the world had to deal with video of a live transcript of what was being said. One core participant trying to follow it described it as watching ‘speeded up Ceefax’.

IMPOSSIBLE TO FOLLOW

Another problem was that many of the documents being referred to were not shown, making it near impossible to follow some of the key details. The video feed couldn’t be rewound to check things that had been said. If you missed something, that was it.

This led to outright anger from some of the media, as well as victims’ lawyers. Journalists said it was making it impossible for them to report on issues. Many people trying to follow it from elsewhere were bitterly frustrated with how difficult it had become. These complaints resulted in some minor improvements such as a different video process and the documents being released on the same day.

The Inquiry video venue is also proving problematic for those attending; the two live-stream rooms are windowless and unventilated.

CARLO SORACCHI

Spycop Carlo Soracchi

Another significant issue this week is Mitting’s continuing refusal to let the real name of spycop ‘Carlo Neri’, which is Carlo Soracchi, be used in proceedings. This is on the application of his ex-wife.

Soracchi was deployed 2001-2006, infiltrating trade union, socialist and anti-fascist groups.

Mitting’s ban on anyone saying his real name has affected two of the women he deceived into relationships, and the Blacklist Support Group (BSG).

As a result, Dave Smith of the BSG was unable to give his Opening Statement. This is despite the fact that Soracchi’s name has been out in public for quite some time, reported in newspapers and on social media.

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED IN THE SECOND WEEK OF UCPI HEARINGS? 

One of the most shocking facts to emerge this week is that many of the abuses, previously portrayed as the unsanctioned acts of rogue officers that were only perpetrated in recent years, have all been going on since the very beginnings of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). These include:

• Relationships with activists. Far from being some recent deviation, spycops were forming deceitful intimate relationships with activists from 1968 onwards. These include a long-term sexual relationship between ‘Mary’ and spycop ‘Rick Gibson’ in 1975, and the strong indication of officer Helen Crampton having a relationship with an activist within weeks of the SDS’ foundation in 1968.
• Travel to other countries. Whistle-blower Peter Francis genuinely believed that he was the first spycop to be deployed abroad when he travelled to Germany in 1993. Yet ‘Doug Edwards’ (HN326), who left the job in 1971, stated he ‘went to Brussels with this other officer whose name I can’t even mention’. Evidence also showed that another of the undercovers travelled to Scotland in 1969.
• Attending family events of people they were spying on. Birthdays, weddings, and funerals were all attended by spycops as far back as 1969. Not only were the details of private family occasions collected by the State, but memories (and many of the photographs) of them are now marred by the knowledge that one of the people there was the very opposite of a friend.

POLICE FOCUS ON VIOLENCE

A repeated theme this week has entailed barristers for the Inquiry asking about the violent tendencies of protestors, and the protestors emphasising the peaceful nature of most of the groups and campaigns they were part of.

Black Dwarf, June 1968

Back in October 1968, protestors were asked not to bring fireworks and marbles to the demonstration against the Vietnam War, let alone anything else. Tariq Ali edited left-wing magazine Black Dwarf which published an article titled ‘Softly, Softly’ which stressed that, to ensure the protestors’ buses made it to the demonstration, nothing should be carried that could give the police cause to stop them.

A decade later, Ali was the Socialist Unity parliamentary candidate in Southall. During a confrontation between the National Front and anti-racists, local organisers put Ali in a safe house to keep him out of any trouble.

Police raided the house and the occupants, including Ali, were made to run a police gauntlet as they were ejected. Ali was truncheoned so severely that he passed out. The skull of the man he was with was fractured, leaving him in a coma for five months.

That was the same day, and in the same area, that Blair Peach – who we have already heard about in this Inquiry – was killed by the police. When the police unit responsible for killing Peach had its lockers searched, weapons found included a crowbar, metal cosh, whip handle, stock ship, brass handle, knives, American-style truncheons, a rhino whip and a pickaxe handle.

When considering which groups were the most violent and heavily armed, the police – with their arsenal of illegal weapons, aggressive attitude and fatal injuries – were clearly more of a threat than the activists.

Tariq Ali told the Inquiry in a written statement:

‘my strong feeling is that this Inquiry is likely to be a monumental waste of time. This is because the direction of travel is clear from the questions – to dissect the politics of the victims of police spying, and therefore to turn the spotlight away from the actions of the police. This is the politics of “blame the victim”.’

CREDIBLE THREAT OR DAFT IDEAS?

In order to continue operating, the SDS and other undercover officers had to  convince superior officers that what they were doing was worthwhile. The groups they were infiltrating had to be seen as a credible threat to society.

Tariq Ali

In some cases, police provocateurs provided evidence by creating it themselves. Tariq Ali described a group of ‘hippy anarchists’ who spent the night in the offices of Black Dwarf. The group made a crude painting of how to make a Molotov cocktail on one of the walls, just in time for it to be ‘found’ during a police raid.

This tactic of provocation is seen over and over again throughout the entire history of the spycops, no matter what acronym they used.

Taking just one spycop that we know of, Bob Lambert, as an example, provocation ranges from writing or co-writing articles, such as the ‘What’s Wrong With McDonald’s?’ leaflet, to allegedly planning and committing arson by placing a timed incendiary device in the Harrow branch of Debenham’s in 1987.

Once again, this behaviour must be contrasted with that of the spied-upon groups; in 1968 the VSC were actively expelling groups that wanted to use violence on the anti-war marches. In many cases it is clear that the police were creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. The factor which made groups a ‘serious, credible threat’ was the spycops themselves.

FROM THE (POLICE) HORSE’S MOUTH

This assessment is borne out by evidence given by several spycops this week. Seemingly unaware that they were undermining their own justifications, various officers described the groups they had infiltrated as ineffectual at best, and deluded at worst.

As officer ‘Doug Edwards’ said on Friday:

‘They got an exaggerated idea of their own importance. They sort of had daft ideas’

‘Don de Freitas’, SDS officer HN330, infiltrated Havering International Socialists in 1968. His evidence portrayed a peaceful group, whose aims were not subversive, with most members ‘unwilling to support civil disobedience or terrorism’ (as if the two activities were comparable).

John Graham, who infiltrated Camden Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in the same year, viewed the members as ‘revolutionary’ because, even though they eschewed violence, they sought a change of government by trying to ‘persuade people to their point of view’.

Edwards, who in 1969 reported on the ‘Action Committee Against NATO’, said ‘I do not remember what the group stood for or what they did. I do not remember how I infiltrated the group or why I infiltrated them’. Obviously, it made very little impression on him. This is not what we’d expect from a dangerous group committed to serious disorder, which is what the SDS claims it existed to spy on.

There are many more examples of this attitude and experience from officers in our daily reports.

IF THEIR TARGETS WERE A THREAT, WHY WEREN’T SPYCOPS TRAINED?

Even before the officers’ evidence that the groups were not actually a serious risk to public safety, there is the lack of training to consider. If the spycops were indeed being sent to infiltrate dangerous organisations which threatened society, why weren’t they better prepared?

It was clear from the police statements there was a lack of direction in how to begin approaching their targets, exactly which groups to target, or other ‘fieldcraft’. ‘You had to play it by ear,’ ‘Doug Edwards’ explained.

If we’re to believe the Inquiry when it says spycops must have anonymity because, even now, being named would risk their lives, they need to explain why officers were left to do the job on a whim instead of being given instructions.

Spycop Joan Hillier asserted that SDS officers didn’t really need training as they were all experienced Special Branch officers (despite Hillier herself only joining Special Branch shortly before the SDS was formed):

‘Instinct would tell you what you shouldn’t do and what you should do.’

Officers would instinctively know not to get involved in people’s personal lives, form intimate relationships, commit crime, or appear in court under a fake identity, she said.

What Hillier refers to isn’t actually instinct, it’s personal individual morality. If it allows the officer to spy upon grieving families, undermine anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigns, and sabotage groups working for a healthier global environment – all whilst using the stolen identity of a dead infant – it is corrupt.

The fact that spycops did actually do the things Hillier lists them ‘instinctively’ avoiding, when she was an officer and afterwards over generations of deployments, shows it was not left to the individual, it must have been suggested and encouraged.

INSITUTIONAL RACISM & SEXISM 

Undercover political policing’s core traits of institutional racism and sexism aren’t news to anyone who has been following this topic, but the more evidence is heard at the Inquiry, the more inescapably obvious it becomes.  

Phillippa Kaufmann QC

Some of the most shocking testimony this week came from the women activists who were deceived into intimate and often long-term relationships by spycops.

Phillippa Kaufmann QC and Heather Williams QC spoke on behalf of over twenty of them; we cover this in detail in Monday’s summary of events. Kaufmann’s written statement gives further details of each woman’s story, and we strongly recommend that you read it.

Kaufmann also highlighted how both opening statements last week by Counsel for the Inquiry and whistle-blower spycop Peter Francis severely understated the role the women have played in exposing the spycops scandal. It was the women who, in the aftermath of their ‘loved one’ disappearing, uncovered the truth. Their unflinching determination cannot be overlooked.

Trying to summarise their evidence in this report cannot do it justice. Many of their experiences, in their own words, are gathered on the Police Spies Out Of Lives site and should be read there.

On Tuesday, the leading focus was the targeting of Black family justice campaigns and groups. In particular, we heard from the barristers representing Doreen and Neville Lawrence, The Monitoring Group, and Mike Mansfield QC. The Inquiry was reminded again of how it has an uphill struggle to even convince these core participants that it is capable of preventing yet further injustice, let alone of tackling the issue of institutional racism.

‘YOU WILL BE SILENCED’

Sir John Mitting, who is so sure of his own lack of bias that he’s refused input from any perspective other than his own, has treated Rajiv Menon QC, barrister for the victims of spycops, very poorly.

Rajiv Menon QC

As the very first police witness gave evidence, Menon wanted to ask a series of questions. Mitting was clearly unhappy with this, describing his own decision to permit Menon questions on a single issue as ‘exceptional, and I do not propose to invite you to ask questions on any other topic’.

Menon tried to protest and explain why it was important for the non-police  core participants, at which point Mitting’s hostility became overt, telling Menon to obey or ‘you will be silenced’.

On Wednesday, Menon questioned Tariq Ali about a closed meeting of the Stop the War Coalition steering committee in 2003. As the public were not allowed at this meeting, the report must have come from a committee member or a recording device.

Mitting’s reaction to this simple statement was extraordinary: immediately and forcefully interrupting to warn Menon that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 prohibits any reference to intercepting communications unless Mitting deems it necessary in advance. ‘You will be committing an offence if you persist’, he intoned. ‘I would warn you not to’.

Menon, a barrister of 26 years’ experience and well aware of the law, explained that he was talking about the committee being bugged by a recording device, rather than an interception of communications, and therefore, the Act doesn’t apply. Mitting apologised, but it’s clear that he is giving Menon very little credit, and even less chance to pursue vital lines of questioning.

POLITICAL POLICING

Mitting’s attitude and performance so far fall completely in line with the overarching theme that the State and the spycops are there to support each other in maintaining the norms and values of the current government.

Spying upon anyone who they wanted to spy on was not only justified, but good, simply because they did it. National security, public order, and the convenience of the government of the day were fully interchangeable concepts for them. Any intrusion was justified because every citizen is a potential subversive.

Joan Hillier said that personal details – dates of birth, home addresses, etc – of those not even suspected of anything untoward would be routinely added to Special Branch files ‘in case it was needed in the future’.

By the spycops’ own admission, their aims were hazy, their training ranged from the informal to the non-existent, and they often didn’t feel like they accomplished anything.

On Thursday, Counsel to the Inquiry David Barr quoted from spycop John Graham’s written statement on Special Branch’s role regarding policing political groups:

‘I understood the role of Special Branch to be carrying out enquiries concerning the security of the State, in other words gathering intelligence on activities that sought to undermine the status quo, the government of the day and the political establishment’.

The conflation of national security with the convenience and policy of the government has always been a central factor in what spycops do. This Inquiry is, thus far, no different from the spycops’ operations.

WHAT NEXT?

There will be three more days of evidence from police (Monday, Wednesday and Thursday), with the possibility of unfinished things being heard on Tuesday and/or Friday.

After that, the Inquiry will take a break to assess what it’s heard. It will be back next year for another batch of hearings covering the SDS 1973-82. That’s currently expected to be around April 2021.

Hearings concerning the SDS 1983-1992 are expected in the first half of 2022, and those examining the SDS 1993-2007 are likely to take place in the first half of 2023.

Some time later there’ll be hearings on the National Public Order Intelligence Unit 1999-2011, then other undercover policing, then mid and senior rank officers, other agencies and government departments.

The Undercover Policing Inquiry has no set end-date, but is expected to perhaps conclude around 2026.

COPS will be live tweeting every hearing, producing a summary every evening, and a weekly report like this one at the weekend. All our daily and weekly reports, and our UCPI FAQ, are linked on our UCPI Public Inquiry page.

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Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 10

13 November 2020

Evidence from:

Officer HN330 aka ‘Don de Freitas’ (summary of evidence)
Officer HN321 aka ‘William Paul “Bill” Lewis’ (summary of evidence)
Officer HN322 (real name withheld) (summary of evidence)
Officer HN328 Joan Hillier
Officer HN326 ‘Doug Edwards’

The Undercover Policing Inquiry had a full day of police witnesses, and it was a startling day of discovery.

This phase is only covering 1968-72, and today we learned that many of the spycops activities we’d been led to believe came later on were actually there from the start.

An officer having a sexual relationship with someone they spied on in 1968. An officer spying on a political group in Scotland in 1969. Officers pretending to be a couple to seem credible to the groups they infiltrated in 1968. An officer attending the wedding of someone he spied on around 1970. Officers going beyond the UK in their undercover persona before 1972. It seems that what the spycops units ever did, they always did.

If this is what we’re learning from what we’re told, just imagine what is being concealed by the anonymity orders that the Inquiry has granted to most spycops.

SUMMARY DISMISSAL

As with yesterday, one of the most significant exchange didn’t involve a witness, but the Chair’s irate interruptions of the victim’s barrister in order to prevent him from asking questions.

The day started with two short summaries of ‘Don de Freitas’, (referred to by the Inquiry as HN330), ‘William Paul “Bill” Lewis’ (HN321), and officer HN322, whose cover name is unknown.

Doing summaries of the careers of officers who are dead is one thing, but to have a lawyer simply read summaries of statements from living spycops without any apparent opportunity to challenge the evidence or question them is quite another.

Yet again, the Inquiry acts as if the police – whose decades of deceit and abuse are the subject – can be taken at their word, and those of us who were targeted can have no insight that hasn’t already occurred to the Chair, Sir John Mitting, and he can dismiss our objections out of hand.

‘Don de Freitas’
SDS officer HN330

‘Don de Freitas’ served briefly in SDS for a month over September / October 1968, infiltrating the Havering branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC).

As a Special Branch officer he used various cover names and occupation at different times, but his SDS deployment differed in that he used a fixed false identity.

Prior to his time with SDS, he had reported on Tariq Ali, and also Notting Hill VSC – particularly the Powis Square incident where members of the group were arrested.

Conrad Dixon, founder of the SDS

He knew the SDS founder Conrad Dixon socially and was invited to join the unit following a chance meeting in a corridor. He described the SDS as informal in nature.

Other than standard Special Branch training, he received no training or guidance. Operating out of Scotland Yard, he did not change his appearance other than to dress casually.

He initially went to a meeting of Havering International Socialists on 26 September 1968, which had been advertised in a leaflet distributed in Romford Market. He ingratiated himself with speakers and attendees which led to him being invited to join the private committee meetings.

COUPLED

Conrad Dixon suggested he and officer HN334, ‘Margaret White‘, attend the meetings together as a couple to make them less suspicious.

The remit was to find out as much as possible of the group’s plans for the big anti-Vietnam War demonstration of 27 October 1968. He stopped undercover work shortly after this demonstration, on 29 October. While with the group, he reported on their preparations including leaflet distribution and fly-posting, which he took part in.

His evidence gave a picture of a peaceful group, whose aims were not subversive and most members ‘unwilling to support civil disobedience or terrorism’.

ON THE MARCH

At the October demonstration, he marched with the group, chanting pro-Vietnam slogans. His final report is to note the general opinion of Havering VSC that the protest was a ‘complete and utter disaster’.

Among his reports was information on a Labour Party official, who was a member of Havering VSC. The officer notes this was included because MI5 were interested in whether extremists were penetrating what he describes as ‘legitimate left-wing political organisations’.

At one point, he was tasked to investigate information that an individual was seeking ingredients to make a smoke bomb. Another report in his name notes the plans of anarchists from University College Swansea for the October demonstration, but it is unclear how he came by this information.

Three documents, dated after his SDS time, show he was involved in the monitoring of the Anti-Apartheid Movement from July 1960 to June 1970. These were copied to MI5.

‘William Paul “Bill” Lewis’
HN321

‘Bill Lewis‘ now lives abroad and has provided a witness statement. He was deployed from 18 September 1968 to 30 September 1969. Soon after leaving the SDS he resigned from the police as he had ‘tired of the work’.

The majority of his reports focus on the International Marxist Group (IMG).

Prior to the SDS, he was with Special Branch’s B Squad where he would attend public meetings in casual clothes, noting attendees and their activities; he did not have a false identity for this. He was recruited to the SDS because a Special Branch manager had been impressed by the detail in his reports, and he was encouraged to attend a meeting regarding the formation of the squad.

INVITED TO SPY

He recalled going to a meeting of around 30 people in which Conrad Dixon said their work was going to be secret. HN321 accepted the invitation to join. There was no training or guidance; the objective was to gather intelligence on the 27 October demonstration against the Vietnam War.

His cover job was as an instrument and control technician, which he knew enough to talk about if necessary. He used two cover flats – one in Earl’s Court and another in Acton.

He would attend the SDS safe house several times a week, as advised by Dixon, to keep officers engaged during their downtime. The undercovers learned on the job and by sharing experience – for example how to avoid blowing their cover.

Not assigned to a particular group, he initially attended a demonstration and then a meeting, which he discovered was an IMG one. Dixon instructed him to attend further IMG meetings as they were a group of interest to the SDS.

Lewis’ first report covers a public meeting attended by Ernie Tate and the US socialist presidential candidate Fred Halstead. However, after that the IMG reports all cover private events. He also reported on Lambeth and other VSC branches.

On 26 October 1968, he telegrammed Special Branch to alert them to comments made at a South West VSC Ad Hoc Committee meeting in Brixton, that police coaches on Vauxhall Bridge would be sabotaged during the demonstration the following day. His witness statement however notes that he did not think the IMG would carry this out as they were ‘actually quite passive and intellectual’. He did not express this view to his managers, reporting only the facts of what took place at the meetings.

80 PEOPLE FILED

At one point, he was able to record the details of approximately 80 members of the IMG, which were passed on to MI5.

The subject of other reports related to discussions and planned demonstrations around Northern Ireland, the Middle East, the International Congress of the Fourth International, Scottish nationalism and women’s rights. There was also a debrief after the 27 October demonstration.

His last reports on the IMG were regarding the IMG’s 1969 education camp in Dunbartonshire, which he attended, giving a lift to three IMG members in his cover vehicle.

[This shows that SDS were travelling to Scotland from within the first year of the unit, much earlier than had been previously admitted.]

He states that his only criminal activity while undercover had been obstruction of the highway and perhaps fly-posting. Generally he recalls being advised not to resist arrest if it happened, and that it could be ‘sorted out’ further down the line with charges probably being dropped.

SDS officer HN322
Real name withheld

This individual served in SDS for a short time in its early months and was not deployed undercover. Their real name is being withheld by the Inquiry.

He was approached by Conrad Dixon who personally invited him to join the squad. He was not given much information initially. He had a young family at the time and, once he realised it would mean a lot of time away from them, he asked to be taken off the squad.  He went on to have a senior rank in the Metropolitan Police.

In his experience, his time in SDS was much the same as time doing generic Special Branch work – both involved going to meetings and gathering intelligence.

He may have been directed to look at South East London VSC. He recalls being told to attend and report on a few different meetings. Reports show these were Earl’s Court VSC and the South East London Ad Hoc Committee of the VSC.

He wrote reports on behalf of officer HN335, Mike Tyrell, which covered private meetings and planned activities of the British Vietnam Solidarity Front and the Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation.

He notes the lack of direction and supervision within the SDS as compared to the rest of Special Branch. He was advised to go to meetings, but given no direction or guidance about what to do when in attendance, and had a lot of free time.

Joan Hillier
SDS officer HN328

Only known before today as officer HN328, Joan Hillier gave evidence under her real name.

In her oral evidence, there was a lot she said she couldn’t remember, and some contradiction of established facts.

Hillier joined the Met in 1958, and moved into Special Branch in March 1968, coincidentally the day after the disorder at a Vietnam War protest outside the American Embassy in London, which spurred the formation of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS).

Hillier said there was little in the way of mentoring compared to when she’d joined the uniformed police. She got the impression that the Home Secretary had ordered that there be no repeat of the anti-war demonstration’s uproar and, in July 1968, Special Branch formed the SDS in response.

She remembers no application process, rather officers were invited from various Special Branch squads.

There was no formal SDS decision making on which groups to infiltrate, they ended to be selected by casual discussion among SDS officers. They were given casual, informal briefings on the politics of people they were going to spy on, rather than any structured lectures. Tactics were planned in detail, rather than targets. She said she did not remember any discussions about the risk of becoming involved in criminality.

PUBLIC ORDER OR POLITICAL POLICING?

At the time, Hillier was under the clear impression that the SDS was concerned with public order issues only, centered on the forthcoming October 1968 protest against the Vietnam War, rather than any wider counter-subversion spying. This is at odds with the fact that most SDS files were copied to MI5, who were not involved in public order policing.

She was shown a paper authored by the SDS founder and boss, Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon, about ‘penetration of extremist groups’ [MPS-0724119, not yet published at the UCPI website]. This was something she said she had no memory of seeing before.

Invited to define extremists, she said it was people who use extreme means – violence, disorder – to get what they want, seemingly without awareness that the threat and use of violence is the basis of the power of uniformed police.

The SDS was just another Special Branch squad, Hillier said, but with the added advantage of being members of targeted groups and so able to go to non-public meetings. And yet, many of Hillier’s reports are of public meetings, both before and after she joined the SDS.

WOMEN UNDERCOVER

Hillier’s written statements said that there were no female undercover officers in the SDS at the start, yet we’ve seen that there was not only herself and Helen Crampton, but officer HN334 whose statement says she had a cover job and address, which is even more involved than Hillier’s activity.

Spycops Helen Crampton (left) & Joan Hillier (right, redacted)

Her statements also described how only male spycops went to private meetings, yet reports show Helen Crampton and female officer HN334 did it.

Hillier accepted the evidence as true and blamed fading memories of things that happened over 50 years ago.

Conrad Dixon wrote a document stating that it was important that targets were unaware of spycops, so if there was the desire to get evidence and arrest someone in an infiltrated group, it is better to send female officers in as he believed they were less likely to be suspected. He followed this with a list of female officers including Hillier.

She said she had no memory of ever doing this, nor of Helen Crampton, with whom she worked as a pair, doing it either.

It was pointed out that in 1969, Crampton gave evidence in a prosecution arising from a meeting she’d attended with Hillier (more about this later). Hillier said she has no memory of this at all.

UNGUIDED

The lack of training and guidance was a major theme. Hillier doesn’t remember any instruction on what to include and exclude in reports. Your reports would contain whatever you thought reports should contain, she explained.

She did confirm that personal details (dates of birth, home addresses, etc) would be routinely added to Special Branch files ‘in case it was needed in the future’.

Hillier said that the SDS was able to obtain information that normal Special Branch officers couldn’t get. She confirmed that superior officers wanted to know in advance who would be at demonstrations, and so there was a desire for the supply of details on anyone involved:

‘Information is never wasted, really’

Reporting everything ‘in case it was needed in future’ because ‘information is never wasted, really’ is properly Orwellian. Watch anyone long enough and you’ll find something.

NO NEED FOR TRAINING

Despite her earlier description of only joining Special Branch shortly before the SDS was formed, Hillier blithely asserted that SDS officers didn’t really need training as they were all experienced special Branch officers:

‘Instinct would tell you what you shouldn’t do and what you should do’

Officers would instinctively know not to get involved in people’s personal lives, form intimate relationships, commit crime of appear in court under a fake identity, she said.

And yet, not only were these things standard practice in the SDS shortly after, we know that her contemporaries were dating people they spied on.

Specifically asked about officer Mike Ferguson, who infiltrate the anti-apartheid movement, Hillier said she only knew he was in that political area. She didn’t know any details, nor what managers knew of his activity.

SECRET PUBLICITY OFFICER

A document was shown a page from the Conrad paper mentioned above, describing the structure of the SDS. It said there was a Chief Inspector at the top, with three Detective Inspectors below them, one of which is tasked with ‘press and liaison’, which seems most peculiar for a secret unit.

Hillier had no idea what it meant, and said she’d never seen the document and doesn’t recognise the command structure it describes.

The same document has a section on ‘scope of activities’ which warned against becoming an agent provocateur:

‘The incompetence of the British left is notorious, and officers must take care not to get into a position where they achieve prominence in an organisation through natural ability. A firm line must be drawn between activity as a follower and a leader, and members of the squad should be told in no uncertain terms that they must not take office in a group, chair meetings, draft leaflets, speak in public or initiate activity.’

Hillier said she had never been warned of this, but she wasn’t undercover after October 1968 anyway, as she moved into the unit’s administrative staff.

AUTHOR OR SCRIBE

Asked about the content of a number of reports she made on meetings elsewhere, Hillier said that although she was the credited reporter, she was in fact merely the typist for the officers who’d done the spying. This certainly makes a change from the traditional amnesiac answers from police.

Hillier explained that spycops would hand her a report in pencil with a list of names, and she would look up the people’s file numbers, type it up, sign it on their behalf and pass it to Chief Inspector Dixon.

Signing for others wasn’t standard Special Branch practice, but was easier for the SDS as being split across two sites and not seeing one another regularly could lead to delays.

In her later administrative role, she described herself as the go-between for information between the SDS’ secret base and Scotland Yard, where no undercover officer could afford to be spotted.

Asked what the SDS was like, she replied:

‘when I joined, it was a very nice unit. It was very happy. Everybody got on well together. They were all going for a common cause. And it was a very happy unit. That’s the only way I can describe it really.’

ENTER MENON

When the Inquiry Counsel finished their questioning of Hillier, Rajiv Menon QC, representing some of the people targeted by spycops, applied to ask questions.

As with yesterday’s hearing, the most significant and instructive part of the day came not from a witness, but from the way the Chair treated the voice of those who were spied on. We’re describing this section in some detail to give a strong flavour of what we’re facing.

Menon said he had a number of points that he wanted to ask about:

• Hillier giving evidence in her real name;
• An issue relating to the ‘Penetration of Extremist Groups’ paper authored by SDS boss Conrad Dixon;
• Hillier & Crampton’s involvement with the Notting Hill branch of the VSC;
• Spycops having intimate relationships (the most pertinent one in the list, according to Menon);
• An issue about about Highgate & Holloway branch of the VSC;
• Inter-relations of the SDS with Special Branch and MI5.

Mitting said that disputes of fact can get questioned, but Menon would not be allowed to put ‘general questions’ of the kind he was suggesting.

Menon replied that all his questions were relevant to matters squarely within the Inquiry’s terms of reference, and will assist the Inquiry in its fundamental aim to get to the truth of undercover policing. He wanted to ask open questions to establish the ground from which he foresaw questions of specific fact emerging.

Menon pointed out that the hearing was ahead of schedule, so there was no pressure of time. He asked for a little latitude in favour of a barrister with 26 years experience, and the precise relevance of his questions would soon become visible. He added that his questions that were submitted to Counsel for the Inquiry in advance hadn’t all been asked, and he would only take ten or fifteen minutes.

NOTTING HILL VSC

Mitting homed in on the dispute of fact about Crampton in Notting Hill VSC. Menon wanted to be circumspect and ask open ended questions to see if it would settle a query as he has information from another source.

Mitting vaporised any chance of that approach by asking what the specific issue was. Menon said it was whether Crampton had a relationship with a leading Notting Hill VSC member.

Mitting asked which member, and Menon replied that it was a George Cochrane, who is named in the reports as Chairman of the branch. This is an important issue as, if true, it shows spycops were deceiving people they spied on into relationships from the very start, contradicting what has been claimed by the officers of that era.

The Inquiry Chair followed up, asking if Cochrane was still alive (and would therefore have privacy issues). Menon did not know, but as Cochrane’s name isn’t redacted in the numerous documents the Inquiry is releasing, it indicates that the latter believes he’s deceased.

Mitting, though continuing to think Menon was impudent for wanting to ask questions at all, relented on this point. However, he imposed very tight parameters, saying ‘this is exceptional and I do not propose to invite you to ask questions on any other topic’.

QUESTIONING THE WITNESS

Menon then got the chance to question Hillier.

He refreshed what had already been said; that Hillier was with Crampton at all the Notting Hill VSC meetings she went to except one. He asked if she knew this particular branch had been disowned by national council of the VSC because of its politics (one of the three that VSC organiser Ernest Tate described yesterday as expelled Maoists).

Rajiv Menon QC

Hillier said she only went to about four meetings and wasn’t on first name terms with anyone. Menon said that, as she marched with the branch at the October 1968 demonstration, she must surely have exchanged names, which she conceded, adding that it would have been a cover name.

Menon asked if, when Hillier had said she didn’t know of any spycops having relationships with people they spied on, if it included going on dates. Hillier said she couldn’t say absolutely that it wouldn’t have happened, but she didn’t know of any instances.

Menon then asked his central question – did Helen Crampton have an intimate relationship with a Notting Hill VSC member? Hillier said she didn’t know for sure, but very much doubted it.

Menon led Hillier through some of the vintage SDS reports. A report of a Notting Hill VSC meeting on 2 October 1968 [MPS-0739188] shows George Cochrane was chairman, and Hillier was there with Crampton, as well as officers HN68 and HN331. Hillier signed the report. She replied that she didn’t remember Cochrane’s name at all.

ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE

Helen Crampton had given evidence in the trial of a man arrested after handing out a leaflet at the Notting Hill VSC meeting on 9 October 1968. Documents [MPS-0739187] show Hillier was at the meeting, along with Crampton, HN68 and HN331. Crampton’s report written the day after the meeting included mention of the leaflet.

Menon pulled up a file which showed the individual being convicted in 1969, on Crampton’s evidence, and given a two year sentence for incitement to riot. This was the only conviction the SDS directly secured in its early phase.

Menon pressed Hillier one whether she really couldn’t remember Crampton being involved, or whether Crampton getting the leaflet and showing it as something worth reporting for further action. Menon asked if Hillier had herself been a witness at the trial to corroborate Crampton’s account, but again she claimed she was drawing a total blank.

Despite her good memories of other events, Hillier had nothing at all to offer on the topic, and Menon could ask no further questions.

Oliver Sanders, one of the police barristers, then asked Hillier about her role in Highgate & Holloway. She’s already said she had no involvement with the branch, and yet there’s a report [MPS-0722098] on the branch that she signed. It has a list of names and addresses, and matches them with their Special Branch file numbers, or else says ‘no trace SB records’.

Hillier said, once more, that she didn’t author the report but merely typed it.

‘Doug Edwards’
SDS officer HN326

The afternoon was devoted to evidence from former spycop HN326, who used the cover name ‘Doug’ or ‘Douglas Edwards‘. (Despite it not being his real name, we’ll call him Edwards in this report for ease of understanding.)

Edwards was undercover in the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) from late 1968 to May 1971. He infiltrated various groups including anarchist groups, as well as the Independent Labour Party, Tri-Continental and Dambusters Mobilising Committee. He provided a witness statement to the Inquiry in 2018, and a further one relating to photographs in 2019.

UNSPECIFIED REMIT

Edwards said he was not given any training about the groups that Special Branch was interested in, or about the meaning of the word ‘subversion’. He was only in Special Branch for a few months, before his Detective Inspector (Saunders) invited him to join the new Squad. It was so secretive that he had no idea what he was being asked to join.

While he was part of the SDS, he understood that his job was to look at the different ‘left-wing groups that were fomenting trouble on the streets’. Inquiry Counsel Warner said ‘that sounds more like public order policing’.

Warner asked if he was collecting information to work out if the groups were ‘subversive’ or not. Edwards said that you needed to identify individuals and try and understand what their political beliefs were. He said there were all sorts of rivalries in political groups (Trotskyists and anarchists were ‘bent on causing violence’, apparently).

He was on probation within Special Branch for that first year, and recalled that ‘you had to do what you were told in those days’. The existence of the SDS was kept very secret.

Edwards said that SDS officers were told not to break the law, probably by DI Saunders and Chief Inspector Dixon. ‘You couldn’t go into a squat for instance’.

FIRST TARGETS

There wasn’t much else in the way of training, how to begin approaching their targets, nor exactly which groups to target, or other ‘fieldcraft’. ‘You had to play it by ear,’ he explained.

Edwards confirmed that he knew SDS officer Roy Creamer, ‘an intellectual and knowledgeable man about left-wing affairs’. He doesn’t recall a specific political briefing.

If the SDS was there to infiltrate groups intending to ‘undermine parliamentary democracy’, one wonders why the Independent Labour Party (ILP), who stood candidates for election, fit the brief. Edwards said he remembers being told to join the ILP, as this would give him a ‘handle to swing’:

‘The man in charge [HN325], he wanted me to look at an anarchist group; and I was told that the way to do this was to go to Piccadilly Circus and sit about there and I would be recruited; and I’d be able to be joining the anarchists. But of course it was a load of rubbish. You know, when I’d done that for a few nights, I thought, “Well, what am I wasting my time for?”‘

His statement describes visiting the place ‘somewhere in the East End’ where long-running anarchist newspaper Freedom was published. The Inquiry was shown a report that refers to a leaflet being printed by Freedom, about the ‘East London libertarians’ who wanted to occupy council houses for homeless families:

‘You couldn’t go into a squat, for instance. You couldn’t get involved with that.’

He agreed that whistle-blower SDS officer Peter Francis’ description of the early undercovers as ‘shallow paddlers’, who didn’t fully immerse themselves with their targets their successors did, is ‘an apt description’.

It’s a relative term, though. As was standard practice, Edwards integrated himself into the personal lives and social communities of the people he was spying on.

Asked about his attendance at the wedding of two activists, he explained, ‘I couldn’t not do it, that was the thing’.

He said he joined in the celebration at the pub afterwards, but didn’t go to the registry office. This meant that he avoided appearing in any of the photos. He even took a gift along for the happy couple (this was a ‘fancy tin opener’, according to an earlier statement!)

He knew in advance that he’d been invited to the wedding, but does not remember what his managers thought about this.

He recalled the difficulty of doing the job, of being matey with his targets while being ‘on edge’ all the time:

‘it wasn’t always easy to maintain your cover. But I did my best and I was successful with it.’

And what exactly was that success in?

WEST HAM ANARCHISTS aka TEENAGE GRAFFITI WRITERS

Edwards was sent to spy on West Ham anarchists, the oldest of whom was 21.

He reported on a meeting of eight of them, intending to produce leaflets for a forthcoming by-election with the slogan ‘don’t vote, all parties lie’. He reported the personal details of at least one member to be put on file.

He was asked about the rowdy day at the South African Embassy that he described in a statment was with the West Ham Anarchists:

‘That’s a good question. Do you know, I can’t remember that. I was on a demonstration outside in Trafalgar Square at the South African Embassy, and it got a bit tasty. They started smashing windows and it was violent, and there we are. The mounted police came in then, to try and stop things… I know they were anarchist groups because they were all chanting this “Anarchista!” was the order of the day.’

He said the group definitely committed some minor criminal damage and graffiti – ‘just making a nuisance of themselves locally’ – and this was covered in the local press.

ILP – ANTI-DEMOCRATIC SPYING

Logo of the Independent Labour Party

Edwards didn’t just use the ILP as a gateway into politics, he attended meetings and demonstrations with them, describing them as ‘quite left-wing, pleasant, sociable, wrapped up in a world of intellectual Marxism’.

Edwards was asked how a demonstration might ‘undermine parliamentary democracy’, and struggled to answer. He talked of the fear the police had of the ‘sheer volume’ of people involved in the demonstrations, and their revolutionary ideals. He remains confused about whether these revolutionaries were going for ‘total anarchy’ or a ‘socialist society’ though!

He was in the Tower Hamlets branch of the ILP, and reported them talking about organising an anti-fascist rally and a local rent struggle. There are some reports about the preparations for a debate between the National Front and the ILP. The meetings were very small, literally four or five people.

The closest they appeared to come to political violence was a conflagration in a pub between his ILP comrades and some other left-wing faction (he thinks it might have been the International Socialists, but wasn’t clear).

He chortled dismissively about the size of many of the left-wing groups, saying:

‘They got an exaggerated idea of their own importance. They sort of had daft ideas. And of course, it resulted in this punch up in the pub.’

Edwards seemed unaware that the more feeble and insignificant the group targeted, the more unjustifiable the infiltration.

His fellow undercover officers Phil Saunders and Riby Wilson watched the scrapping from a car on the other side of the street. They later told him they’d have come to his aid if he needed it, but he’s not sure they really would have done.

The Inquiry was shown a larger report containing more about the workings of the ILP, with information from ‘very reliable sources’ (the plural was noted). Edwards said that his intelligence would have been included in this report:

‘It’s a big justification really of them sending me to the ILP.’

Edwards denied influencing the ‘direction of travel’ of the Tower Hamlets ILP branch, saying he just kept quiet and made mental notes of what was going on. This isn’t easy to reconcile with the fact that he became branch treasurer.

Edwards explained that this was a small group, a ‘tin pot organisation’. He remembers setting up a Barclays bank account, and the branch didn’t have much money. Funds were spent on banners, or sent to ‘the Chilean earthquake disaster fund or something like that’.

He said he didn’t remember speaking to his managers about accepting the position of treasurer, or any reaction from them to this development:

‘I can’t truthfully say one way or the other. You know, I’m not going to make answers up.’

‘Of course not,’ the Inquiry counsel said smoothly.

IRISH CIVIL RIGHTS SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN

The Inquiry was shown a report [MPS-0732317] about the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign’s Islington branch, made by Edwards and counter-signed by CI Saunders.

Edwards said that he never went to the group’s meetings, but he knows another spycop did, and he was ‘on observation’ duty for him at least one time.

He said he only went to one demo outside the Ulster Office in Berkeley Street, but apart from that, he didn’t cover any Irish groups – this was done by someone else.

In his witness statement, he said he’s seen two SDS reports ICRSC meetings, from September and October 1970, and he is their credited author. His statement says that he did not in fact write them. In the same statement he described the ICRSC as ‘a front for the IRA’.

He admitted today, that he would have reported finding out that someone was a member or a supporter of such a group.

TRI-CONTINENTAL

The next document [UCPI0000008209] was a November 1969 report about the ‘Action Committee Against NATO’. There had been a meeting of the committee on 5 November – only three people were present.

According to the report, Tri-continental provided money for the deposit, so they could book meeting space at Conway Hall.

Edwards thought that Special Branch files were automatically destroyed after 30 years and seems perturbed that these have been ‘dragged out from somewhere’. He suggested from the ‘hairy cupboard’ (he likes his ‘jokes’).

He suggested that his managers would have been interested in this anti-NATO group, because they were worried about these ‘demonstration people’ targeting something that was ‘vital for the security of the country’.

He said that he can’t remember anything about Tri-continental. Let alone whether they ever did anything unlawful or got involved in public disorder.

DAMBUSTERS MOBILISING COMMITTEE

The Dambusters Mobilising Committee (DMC) was a coalition of groups opposing the proposed construction of the colossal Cahora Bassa dam project in Mozambique. The project was intended to supply electricity to apartheid South Africa.

Edwards was asked if he could remember the Dambusters group buying Barclay’s bank shares so they could attend the AGM. Did the Dambusters commit any serious crimes? Were they violent? Were they involved in any public disorder?

Edwards was even less forthcoming than he had been about Tri-Continental, saying ‘you’re asking me things I can’t answer. I can’t speak for the managers and what they thought’.

His witness statement from February 2019 was somewhat more expansive but no more specific:

‘DMC was concerned with a dam in Mozambique or South Africa and it had something to do with South African politics too. I do not remember what the group stood for or what they did. I do not remember how I infiltrated the group or why I infiltrated them. It may have been something to do with the group being on the fringes of all of the trouble with the movement against apartheid.’

The fact that the officer can’t even remember the politics of a group he was part of, suggests it made very little impression on him. This is not what we would expect to see from membership of a group committed to serious disorder, which is what the SDS claims it existed to spy on. The fact that he thinks it may be allied to undermining the struggle against apartheid compounds the sense of anti-democratic action emanating from his words.

SOCIALIST ALLIANCE AGAINST RACIALISM

An April 1970 report by Edwards on a new socialist anti-racist group, Socialist Alliance Against Racialism (SAAR), was shown to the Inquiry. Once again, Edwards said he didn’t remember them at all.

Mark Kennedy’s injuries after beating by police, 2006

He was asked if it being a ‘campaign against racialism’ would have made it of interest? Or because of the groups involved in founding it? And what his managers’ attitude towards the group was?

He did did not recall much.

There were some questions about the VSC, and a report about their planning meetings before a peaceful demo which took place in the autumn of 1970. He, personally, considered the VSC a front to cause trouble.

He confirmed that he himself was assaulted on a demonstration in Grosvenor Square, by uniformed police armed with truncheons. Asked why the police had gone for him, he said:

‘it’s just the fact you’ve got long hair and a beard and they wallop you, you know, you’re you’re one of them sort of thing. It’s 50 years ago, this was what they were doing. It’s a different attitude to things.’

His faith in the restraint of more modern uniformed officers is quaint. Any number of undercover officers have stories of the brutality of their uniformed colleagues.

At the 2006 Climate Camp at Drax coal-fired power station in North Yorkkshire, spycop Mark Kennedy was so badly beaten by a group of uniformed officers that he reportedly needed surgery on his lower back.

WORKING ABROAD

In complaining about the difficulties of his role, Edwards casually and seemingly unwittingly dropped a bombshell. It had long been thought that SDS officer didn’t go abroad until later on. Peter Francis believed his trip to Germany in the 1990s was the first.

Yet Edwards, who left the job in May 1971, said:

‘I went to Brussels with this other officer whose name I can’t even mention, I suppose, but, you know, the amateurish way that it was done then, it was a strain.’

Whatever the spycops ever did, it seems they always did.

END OF DEPLOYMENT

Edwards was undercover in the SDS for about two years. He finished because:

‘I’d had enough. I’d had enough of going round with a long beard and long hair and being scruffy. It’s quite a strain on the system doing the job, it really is… until you’ve done the job you don’t know what is involved’

Edwards mused about how it had got more difficult later on, for the spycops who came later and got more deeply embedded, for longer periods.

His deployment’s peculiar mix of pointless triviality and undermining of fundamental rights is captured in his 2019 witness statement in which he said:

‘I did not have any idea of how I was helping, one way or the other: nobody ever told me or gave me feedback and there was no other way of me knowing’

After his time with the SDS, Edwards returned to work in other areas of Special Branch. He took on a more clerical role in undermining democratic organisations, and began working on the ‘industrial desk’, which spied on trade unions and is thought to have illegally supplied details on union activists to private blacklisting companies. He said he didn’t know what was done with this kind of information –  ‘obviously it would go to the security service in the first instance’.

Later in his career he worked in the ‘vetting office’. This was primarily security vetting of new recruits to the police, including members of Special Branch itself, done in conjunction with MI5. They sent the completed from off to MI5, who would respond if they considered somebody a security risk.

THE SECRET WASN’T SECRET

Edwards said he was sure the existence of the SDS wasn’t a secret among the top brass. He noted the way ‘all the management all ended up as top commanders and all the rest of it’, and he reminisced about the time that a senior officer brought a bottle of whisky along to the SDS to say thank you for their work.

In his witness statement, he said it was presented at the SDS safe house by the Commissioner or Assistant Commissioner. Whistle-blower officer Peter Francis said exactly the same thing happened to him after the anti-fascist demonstration in October 1993, when the bottle was presented by the Commissioner himself, Sir Paul Condon.

Edwards repeated and expanded on a line from his witness statement:

‘I was just a small cog in a great big machine and I did my little bit as best I could to help the police and the uniformed police and be a good branch officer. That’s what it’s all about, you know. Loyalty to the Branch’

He then veered into a bitter rant about those who’ve exposed decades of the unit’s counter-democratic action and violation of citizens by the thousand. With no trace of irony, he lamented the pain he feels because those he was close to have betrayed his trust.

‘And of course we’ve not seen now any loyalty from some of these people, and that I find very upsetting. You know, when you can’t trust people. I’ve not been to reunions and things like that, because you don’t know who you can trust any more. People are all talking to the press and everybody else, and can’t keep their traps shut. So I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed. You have a long career and that’s what happens.’

That concluded the second week of the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s evidence hearings. They will continue next week (Monday, Wednesday and Thursday are definite, other days undecided as yet), then there will be a break until around April.

COPS will be live-tweeting all the Inquiry hearings, and producing daily reports like this one for the blog. They will be indexed on our UCPI Public Inquiry page.

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