Spycops – The Truth, Newport

‘Alison’ lived with her partner Mark Cassidy for five years. He was integrated into her wider family, and they planned for their lives together.

Mark Cassidy was a member of construction union UCATT and was invovled in trade union activities. He also took an active role in a number of groups, including anti-fascists, justice campaigns for people whose loved ones were killed by police.

Alison had no idea that amiable joiner Mark Cassidy was in fact Mark Jenner of the political secret police unit the Special Demonstration Squad. The only reason he was in her life was to undermine her values and actions. He was being paid every moment he was with her.

As she describes:

‘He stands next to me in my mother’s wedding photo that sits on her mantelpiece, he teases me in the family videos of my nephew’s and niece’s birthdays and he lies about his family to my now deceased grandmother in the last video footage I took of her before she died. He is not only engrained in the memories in my head but features in so much of our family memorabilia from those years.

‘I was deeply in love with Mark and he knew this. I do not believe it is a coincidence that all of us involved in this case describe a deep, loving, intimate bond with our ex-partners. In normal relationships, problems can occur when people’s egos clash; in our relationships the men were presenting us only with their state sponsored, easy-going alter egos.

‘That I loved a police officer is a reality that still confuses me all these years later. I had been active in the Colin Roach Centre, an independent group that had exposed police corruption in the early 1990s and promoted trade union, anti-fascist politics. To love someone who, with hindsight, embodied the very institution much of my political energy was channeled into challenging has gone to the core of my own identity and has shaken the foundations of my judgements about many things.

‘Of one thing, however, I remain sure: the state intrusion into my most personal life over a period of five years was unethical, immoral and, I hope we can prove, unlawful.’

On Thursday 23rd May at 7pm, Alison will be at the Pen & Wig in Newport to tell the public about her relationship with Jenner, about how his behaviour matches that of so many other officers, about the institutional sexism of the Met and its responsibility for these officers, and about the pursuit of justice by the women and other activists who were targeted.

Spread the word with the Facebook event.

This public meeting is organised by Wales Morning Star Cymru.

The Undercover Research Group have produced a detailed profile of Mark Jenner.