• In July 2014, police admitted there was proof that undercover officers from the Special Demonstration Squad had spied on 18 grieving groups of families and friends seeking justice for their loved ones. They did not publish a list, but said that ‘the majority’ were black. This is institutional racism.

These people were campaigning for their truth. They only wanted to know what really happened, and for people to see the police for what they actually are and what they had actually done. But people of colour self-organising is perceived as a threat in itself. This was compounded by the threat of embarrassment to the police, the brand damage that would occur if these campaigns became popular.

The combined threat was enough to have them actively befriended by paid betrayers. Officers took active, pivotal roles in campaigns. Undercover officer Mark Jenner was a long-term activist at the Colin Roach Centre, chairing meetings and editing newsletters.

Just as the infiltration of protest groups shows the counter-democratic remit of the spycops, so their infiltration of justice campaigns over a period of 26 years proves a key part of their purpose was to take an active role in obstructing justice.

The resources that should have established the truth and brought the guilty to justice  were instead spent on undermining the grieving loved ones.

Which Campaigns Were Spied On?

But which campaigns were known to have been spied on? The Guardian reported that the police’s 2014 list of 18 included:

1. Harry Stanley
2. Wayne Douglas
3. Michael Menson
4. Jean Charles de Menezes
5. Cherry Groce
6. Stephen Lawrence
7. Ricky Reel

Other reports from the time added:
8. Rolan Adams
9. Joy Gardner

The Undercover Policing Inquiry later confirmed the list included:

10. Trevor Monerville

Beyond the ten we can be sure of, it’s notable that the families of Roger Sylvester and Blair Peach are core participants at the inquiry.

Additionally, whistleblower SDS officer Peter Francis has cited the ‘moral low point’ of his time undercover as his infiltration of the Brian Douglas campaign.

It’s not clear if the Brian Douglas, Roger Sylvester or Blair Peach campaigns are on the list of 18. These are just the named ones they have admitted to spying on. There are eight unnamed and there must surely be many more besides.

We can be confident that police units devoted to secrecy – who institutionally avoided documentation and have shredded incriminating files since the Inquiry was announced – will have spied on many more justice campaigns than there is proof of.

How Many More?

We recently learned of two SDS officers from the early 1970s. Alex Sloan infiltrated the Irish National Liberation Solidarity Front at a time when they were in a demonstration against the police’s killing of Stephen McCarthy.

John Clinton infiltrated the International Socialists (forerunner of the Socialist Workers Party), 1971-74. Was he at the International Socialists-supported demonstration in June 1974 where police killed Kevin Gately outside Conway Hall in London?

There are so many other people killed by police in London whose justice campaigns seem highly likely to have been spied upon. These include Winston Rose, Cynthia Jarrett, Oluwashiji Lapite, David Ewin, Ibrahim Sey, Richard O’Brien, Sean Rigg, Derek Bennett, Azelle Rodney, Paul Coker, Frank Ogburu and Mark Duggan. There are also campaigns by loved ones of people who died in unexplained circumstances with police involvement, such as Nuur Saeed, Colin Roach, Daniel Morgan and Smiley Culture.

Additionally, there are organisations who are racial justice advocates and co-ordinate justice campaigns who were spied on in their own right. Several have already been given core participant status at the public inquiry, including the Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign, Hackney Community Defence Association, Youth Against Racism in Europe, Newham Monitoring Project and the Monitoring Group.

All these are just in the London area, and thus are likely targets for the Met’s spycops. There are many others beyond the capital such as Christopher Alder, Clinton McCrubin, James Ashley, Liddle Towers, Leon Patterson, Giles Freeman and Alton Manning. Then there are the victims of racist killings that were not properly investigated, leaving killers free to do it again.

As with learning the spycops’ names, we have only identified a fraction of the number of spied-upon justice campaigns. We have so much more to learn than the police and public inquiry have admitted to.

Here are brief details of the 13 people’s deaths whose campaigns police have confirmed they spied on.

The 13 Confirmed Campaigns

Wayne Douglas

In December 1995, Wayne was being questioned in Brixton police station. Police said he collapsed during questioning and died of heart failure. The inquest showed that Wayne, who suffered from heart disease, had been held face-down with his hands cuffed behind his back on four different occasions.

Though at the inquest the jury acknowledged police action caused Wayne’s death, by majority verdict they said it was accidental. The family’s appeal for a second inquest was refused with Lord Woolf saying:

‘little more could be achieved by subjecting all concerned to the considerable expense and stress of a further inquest.’

Wayne’s sister Lisa Douglas-Williams said:

‘We are particularly upset by the judge’s remarks about the expense of holding a further inquest. A proper verdict on my brother’s death is far more important than money.’

Michael Menson

Musician Michael Menson was racially abused and had his coat set on fire set on fire by three men in February 1997, who then went to get flammable liquid and returned to burn him more severely. In hospital, he told family and police he had been attacked. He died several days later from his injuries. Police treated it as suicide.

After two botched police investigations, the inquest verdict of unlawful killing forced a third which ended in three people being charged.

A three-year investigation for the police complaints authority by Cambridgeshire police found evidence of negligence and racism including an officer telling a pathologist:

‘I don’t know why they’re worried – this only concerns a fucking black schizophrenic.’

The CPS decided not to prosecute any officers.

Michael’s elder brother, Kwesi, said

‘I don’t have any doubt that had a white man been set on fire in a street in north London that there would have been an active and vigorous investigation’

Jean Charles de Menezes

On 22 July 2005, Jean Charles, a 27 year old electrician, lived in South London flats that were being watched by police trying to trace people responsible for failed bombings the day before.

As he left for work he was followed by police who, failing to comply with instructions to stop him entering the tube system, followed him into Stockwell station and executed him on the train.

Spurious details appeared in the press to make him appear deserving of his fate – he was in the country illegally, wearing a bulky jacket on a hot day, his clothing had wires coming out, he vaulted the station barrier and ignored police shouts to stop – all of which were found to be untrue.

His mother told the press

‘I want the policeman who did that punished. They ended not only my son’s life, but mine as well.’

Though the inquest uncovered a host of serious failures by police, and found the officer who shot Jean Charles did not tell the truth, no officer was charged.

The coroner had instructed the jury not to return a verdict of unlawful killing. The jury rejected the police account and returned an open verdict.

Cherry Groce

Dorothy ‘Cherry’ Groce was shot in the chest by police while they were searching her home in Brixton, south London, looking for her son Michael in September 1985. Anger erupted into rioting that evening.

Cherry survived the shooting but the bullet had passed through her spine, leaving her paralysed from the waist down. She reached a settlement with the police but they accepted no liability. Detective Inspector Douglas Lovelock was prosecuted for the shooting but acquitted.

Her son Lee Lawrence described the harassment that followed.

‘When I was in my teens I used to get picked up by the police for things I hadn’t done. They would tell me I fitted the description of someone who had just committed a crime and that sort of thing. Once when I was 17 I was put into a police cell. A police officer opened a flap in the cell door and said: “Are you Cherry Groce’s son?” When I replied that I was he said: “Pity she didn’t die”.’

Cherry died in 2011, and pathologists concluded the injuries from the shooting were causal. An inquest – for which the family were denied Legal Aid until a campaign got the decision overturned – lambasted police failings in the raid and arrogance in refusing to take responsibility afterward.

Stephen Lawrence

Eighteen year old Stephen Lawrence was murdered by a racist gang in Eltham, south London, in April 1993. The swathe of police failings meant that, although everyone knew who the killers were, none were prosecuted.

Five years later the Macpherson Inquiry examined the case and famously concluded that the Met were institutionally racist.

Rev David Cruise said the case showed that it was race, not behaviour, that defined treatment by the police.

‘The irony is that the Lawrences behaved exactly how every black family is supposed to behave. They were law-abiding, close, stable, relaxed and upwardly mobile.’

Stephen’s friend Duwayne Brooks, the main witness to the murder, was repeatedly prosecuted on trumped up charges that were thrown out of court.

Two of the five killers were finally convicted in 2012. Stephen’s mother Doreen responded

‘Now that we have some sort of justice I want people to think of Stephen other than as a black teenager murdered in a racist attack in south-east London in April 1993. I know that’s the fact, but I now want people to remember him as a bright young man who any parent of whatever background would have been proud of. He was a wonderful son and a shining example of what any parent would want in a child.’

Ricky Reel

Ricky was last seen in Kingston-Upon-Thames. He had been harassed by racists who chased him towards the river. His body was found downstream a week later on 21 October 1997.

When his parents reported him missing, the police officer mockingly suggested Ricky had run away to avoid an arranged marriage or because he was secretly gay. They have consistently refused to consider the death as foul play, let alone a racist murder. When Ricky’s clothes were returned to the family, his mother Sukhdev found a big rip in the shirt. Police accused her of making it.

A report by the Police Complaints Authority concluded there had been ‘weaknesses and flaws’ in the initial investigation and criticised three officers for neglect of duty. Sukhdev became an ardent fighter for justice.

‘I became a lawyer because it was my way of processing everything that had happened to me. I just kept seeing how a normal family like ourselves, not rich, can be turned upside down overnight. You can be completely normal and secure to completely vulnerable in a heartbeat and then you’re reliant on people like the police in authority to help you.’

Sukhdev Reel remains a committed and moving campaigner for justice for her son.

Rolan Adams

Fifteen year old Rolan was with his brother Nathan in February 1991 when they were attacked by a large racist gang. Telling Nathan to run, Rolan was chased, cornered and fatally stabbed in the neck.

Though there were 15 attackers only one, Mark Thornburrow, was convicted of the killing. Four others were found guilty of public order offences and given 120 hours’ community service.

Two years later, Stephen Lawrence was murdered nearby. Two of the four convicted over Rolan’s death were named in the Macpherson report into Lawrence’s murder as individuals the police should interview.

Rolan’s father Richard Adams said:

‘There is no doubt that had Rolan’s murder been investigated properly, Stephen Lawrence may still have been alive today.’

Harry Stanley

Harry Stanley was a 46 year old painter and decorator, brought up in Glasgow but living in London all his adult life. In September 1999 he was returning home with a bag containing a table leg that had been repaired by his brother.

Police had received a call about “an Irishman with a gun wrapped in a bag”. Two armed officers challenged Harry from behind. As he turned to face them, they shot him dead at a distance of 15 feet.

The coroner only allowed a verdict of lawful killing or an open verdict, and the jury opted for the latter. Harry’s family managed to get a second inquest which returned a verdict of unlawful killing. The officers involved were suspended, but after more than a hundred of their colleagues handed in their firearms authorisation cards in protest, the suspensions were lifted.

Harry’s son Jason said

‘If this can happen to my dad, it can happen to anyone. It just proves that nobody is safe on the streets.’

In 2005 the High Court the High Court decided that there was insufficient evidence for the verdict of unlawful killing and reinstated the original verdict, with the judge saying a third inquest should not be allowed. The Stanley family said

‘families cannot have any confidence in the system. They feel they cannot get justice when a death in custody occurs’

Joy Gardner

Mature student Joy Gardner had her north London house raided by immigration officials in June 1993.

When she resisted attempts to put her in a 4-inch wide restraint belt with attached handcuffs she was shackled, gagged, and 13 feet of adhesive tape was wrapped round her head. She rapidly suffered respiratory failure and died four days later without regaining consciousness.

Joy’s mother, Myrna Simpson, said the police were in denial about their racism.

‘[Met chief] Paul Condon said it was not about race. Well, I say, how many white women have they done that to? Look at [serial killer] Rose West and look at what she did. But they still treated her as a human being. They didn’t go into her house, truss her up and kill her. What they did to Joy was terrible, terrible. I just keep asking why? Why? Why?’

Three police officers were charged with manslaughter. Though four pathologists agreed on the cause of death, police – as they would do later with Ian Tomlinson – found one who would give an alternative cause. The suggestion that it was a head injury, rather than complete blockage of airways, that caused the lack of oxygen gave a grain of doubt and all three officers were acquitted.

The use of gags was banned shortly after, but no admission has ever been made that it was part of the cause of Joy’s death.

Special Demonstration Squad boss Bob Lambert oversaw the spying on Joy’s family campaign. At the time of her death, Joy was studying Media Studies at London Metropolitan University, which would later coincidentally employ Lambert as a lecturer.

Trevor Monerville

In January 1987, 19 year old Trevor Monerville was taken to the notorious Stoke Newington police station. Two days later his father John reported him missing and the police still didn’t say he was in custody.

Trevor had been severely beaten, with extensive injuries to his face and brain which left him with permanent brain damage. Police had then taken him to hospital where he had to have emergency brain surgery.

The Police Complaints Authority refused to release the custody record, and Trevor’s doctors were told not to speak to the family’s lawyers.

Afterwards, Trevor was repeatedly arrested and charged for various offences, and was repeatedly acquitted.

Trevor was murdered in an apparent street robbery in 1994. Nobody was ever charged.

Trevor’s 73 year old grandmother was assaulted by police so badly that she eventually received £50,000 compensation.

In 2013, Trevor’s brother Joseph Burke-Monerville was shot in a case of mistaken identity. The three main suspects were so implicated that they were forced to attend the inquest and eventually charged only for the Crown Prosecution Service to offer no evidence on the day of the trial. In 2017 they lodged a 15-page complaint about police failings over the murder.

After more than 30 years fighting for justice, father John Burke-Monerville said

‘It would be a real joy to the family to have a conviction. Twice around and we have had no result whatsoever. We are in limbo, waiting.’

At Joseph’s inquest, the family wondered why Trevor hadn’t had one. Their lawyer discovered in August 2017 there had in fact been an inquest for Trevor but the family hadn’t been told about it.

Roger Sylvester

In January 1999, police were called as Roger Sylvester was outside his house and shouting. Thirty year old Roger had bipolar disorder and wasn’t himself that day. Eight police restrained him and took him away for detention under the Mental Health Act.

Though officers are trained not to restrain people face down, they did this with Roger. He suffered serious brain damage and cardiac arrest, and fell into a coma.

The Met’s press office issued a statement claiming that someone had called 999 and described Roger as acting in an ‘aggressive and vociferous manner’. They were later forced to admit this wasn’t true and apologise for it. Roger died eight days later without regaining consciousness.

Police coroner Freddy Patel told the media Roger was a crack user, something his family denied. Patel later performed the autopsy on Ian Tomlinson that favoured the police version of events and led to Tomlinson’s killer’s acquittal. In 2012 Patel was struck off by the General Medical Council who found that he was not only incompetent but also dishonest.

Though it took four years to get an inquest for Roger, it took the jury only two hours to reach a unanimous verdict of unlawful killing. The officers responsible for the killing had the verdict overturned on appeal.

Roger’s brother Bernard Renwick said

‘From day one we were told to expect openness, accountability and transparency. We merely wanted truth and where necessary justice. Instead we have had obstacles, delays, anguish, smoke and mirrors and ‘just-ice’. Where is the justice?’

Blair Peach

Teacher Blair Peach went on an Anti-Nazi League demonstration in Southall, South London on 23 April 1979. It was a few weeks ahead of the general election and the National Front were having an election meeting at the Town Hall.

Having broken away from the main demonstration into a side street, Peach was confronted by a vanful of Special Patrol Group riot officers, one of whom fractured his skull with an unauthorised weapon. Eleven witnesses gave testimony.

The coroner dismissed the possibility of an officer killing Peach, discounted accounts from Sikh witnesses, and tried to prevent a jury being instated. A misadventure verdict was returned.

Crucially, the inquest ignored the report by Commander John Cass which found the SPG officers had a range of unauthorised weaponry and Nazi memorabilia. The officers refused to co-operate with the inquiries and many changed their appearance to impede witnesses ability to identify them. The Cass report was published 30 years later. It identifies ‘Officer E’ as ‘almost certainly’ being Peach’s killer.

Blair’s partner, Celia Stubbs, reflected on Blair and his measure of justice after so long.

‘He was a dedicated teacher, a committed trade unionist and anti-fascist. He was a good, funny and loving person to his family and friends. He was a socialist who believed passionately in fairness and equality.

‘He supported the Bengali community in their protests against the National Front selling their newspapers in Brick Lane, demonstrated outside a pub that would not serve black customers, and had been instrumental in getting the National Front headquarters closed in Shoreditch.

‘It was his socialist beliefs that took him to Southall, and it is amazing that he is remembered by so many people.’

Officer Alan Murray – who lied to investigators and refused to take part in identity parades at the time – has identified himself as the officer in question (though he denies killing Peach). Neither he, nor anyone else, has ever faced any charges.

Brian Douglas

Police stopped Brian Douglas while driving in May 1995. Witnesses say that PC Mark Tuffey used a then-new extendable baton to strike a downwards blow on Brian’s head. Tuffey said it was aimed at the upper arm but slid up over the shoulder.

Three pathologists later said Brian had received hard blows to the back of the head. Brian suffered massive and irreversible brain damage. Despite vomiting in his cell, he was left for 12 hours before finally being transferred to hospital where he died.

Brian’s brother Donald Douglas said

‘I fear that the numbers killed in police custody over recent years without redress may have helped to shape the attitude that informed those officers when they brought down that baton on my brother’s skull.’

The campaign was spied on by Special Demonstration Squad officer Peter Francis who has described his subsequent shame.

‘By me passing on all the campaign information – everything that the family was planning and organising through Youth Against Racism in Europe – I felt I was virtually reducing their chances of ever receiving any form of justice to zero. To this day, I personally feel that family has never had the justice they deserved.’

Debenham’s Luton branch, July 1987

Once again, police self-investigations have been contacting activists who were spied on, asking for co-operation.

The latest activity centres around Operation Sparkler/Operation Nitrogen, which is examining evidence that undercover police officer Bob Lambert planted incendiary devices in the Harrow branch of Debenham’s in 1987.

Lambert was one of a group of three animal rights activists who were intent on damaging the stores in protest at their sale of fur. The branches were simultaneously attacked. Two of the activists, Geoff Shepherd and Andrew Clarke, were jailed. Lambert has been named as the third person. It is a charge he strenuously denies.

But if it wasn’t Lambert, who was it? Three people planted devices, so either there was a fourth person in the group whose existence has never been mentioned and who Lambert allowed to get away, or else Lambert is lying and he did it. There appears to be no third option.

Either way, it’s clear that Lambert’s evidence was withheld from the court at the original trial, which means Shepherd and Clarke’s convictions are unsafe in the same way that fifty now-quashed convictions of other spied-upon activists were.

MET FORCED TO INVESTIGATE THEMSELVES

Faced with such strong evidence against Lambert, in April 2016 the Met reopened their investigation.

In January last year it was revealed that over £250,000 had already been spent, nobody had been interviewed under caution, and Met lawyers thought the report would be finished in July 2017. We’re still waiting.

Bob Lambert whilst undercover

Officers have been travelling the country talking to people they think were around Lambert at the time.

Lambert’s unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, was praised by the highest ranks in the Met. When he was undercover, and later when he ran the SDS, Lambert was a hero to other spycops. He had Clarke and Shepherd sent down, but now they are appealing their convictions.

For the Met, defending their targeting of the other two, to be investigating Lambert at the same time is a conflict of interest – if he is to blame then the convictions of the other two must be overturned.

To send police officers to investigate other officers is ludicrously biased. They are marking their friend’s homework. Anything incriminating Lambert may be twisted or suppressed to help shore up the crumbling case against Clarke and Shepherd.

WE CAN’T TRUST THE LIARS

We got the public inquiry, flawed and biased towards the police as even that is, because we didn’t settle for the various self-investigations by police and their satellite bodies such as the Independent Police Complaints Commission and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary.

Our distrust has been vindicated by the buckets of whitewash delivered by these projects. The Met’s dedicated and overpriced investigation into spycops, Operation Herne, made claim after claim that was discredited as soon as it was uttered.

They originally said there was only evidence of one officer stealing a dead child’s identity; now we know half the officers did it and it was mandatory for decades. They released a report saying there was no evidence of spying on Stephen Lawrence’s family on the same day that Mark Ellison QC’s report was published which showed there was.

After more than seven years of victims giving the appalling detail of the deceit and abuse they’ve suffered, and the harsh, enduring personal damage that it has caused, it takes some gall for Met officers to expect to be respectfully taken as independent arbiters.

They have as little regard for the welfare of the victims as the officers who did the spying. One of those visited told us:

‘The first time was seven months ago a man and a woman came round, the second time was two men about three or four months ago.

‘They were trying to get me to say if I knew anyone who was active in that era or did I know anyone, almost did I do anything myself in that respect. They wanted me to make a statement about it, but of course I didn’t. I was active in the 80s and I was convicted of things. I knew a lot of people who were around at the time through SLAM and through London Greenpeace.

‘Then they gave my number and details to this other one, Operation Herne. Both times they came round my house uninvited, harassing me, trying to get me to make some statement, which I refused. The second ones said they were doing an investigation into undercover police officers, which I said was a joke, because how can police officers investigate themselves?

‘I said if I got any more harassment from them I might take legal action against them, either individually or collectively. I said I wasn’t happy with people just turning up on my doorstep, I found it very disturbing.

‘They’re the lowest of the low, these people. It makes me feel ill to think I was in touch with one of them.’

Brandon Spivey was visited out of the blue, in a place that he doesn’t often visit, which he found unsettling in itself. Once faced with the officers, he let them know what he thought of them.

That fact they had travelled 200 miles from London made it clear this was an irregular situation, more about intimidation.

‘The coppers must have known I was going to be there, which was a bit of a shock. It wasn’t my regular address. I spend a lot of time out of the country. I flew in Sunday night, I saw my mum Monday morning and went for a drive with her, and that’s where the coppers had come to ‘doorstep me’. There was no prior warning at all.

‘It was plain clothes officers, the two who’d been visiting everybody else, apparently. They were nervous. I fronted them out, asking them both their names and to see their identification, which I wrote down in front of them . I made them stand in my mum’s shop, so there’s about half a dozen people on my side looking at them. They said “do you want to speak of this outside?” I said if you want, so we stood outside in the street.

‘They only presented me with the letter when we were stood outside. They made no attempt to explain anything, no “I’m sorry this might be a bit of a shock but…”. It was plain and simple, really quite hostile, them trying to be intimidating. The letter they gave me said it was Operation Sparkler.

‘They said “we want to ask you about something that happened thirty years ago. Do you know anything about incendiary devices at Debenham’s?” I said yeah, I know all about it.

‘They said “can you give us some names?” I said yes, I’ll give you some names; John Dines and Bob Lambert.

‘I said, “I know why you’re here, you know why you’re here, now do me a favour and fuck off”. The two of them walked off in opposite directions, they were so flustered and made no attempt to even reply to my very clear attitude towards them and their bogus visit.’

Others have had advance warning, even if they didn’t know why, as another person told us.

‘They wrote to me in May at my current home address, a letter from Operation Sparkler/Nitrogen saying they believed I might have information about the ALF and people involved in the 1987 Debenham’s attacks, that could help them identify other perpetrators.

‘I was completely mystified. I’ve had no contact with the ALF or animal rights movements at all. I was involved in anarchist circles from 1979 to 1986, and I knew Dave Morris and people through London Workers’ Group. But by 1987 I was politically inactive. Probably the last time I was arrested was at Wapping [strike Jan 1986-Feb 1987], I was cautioned – it wasn’t even a formal caution, they just told me to bugger off.

‘I called them and said I have no idea why you think I might be able to help you, I don’t know anything about it. They said they would like to talk to me anyway and asked where I would like to meet. I said Bethnal Green police station. They said “I don’t want to talk to you in a police station, can’t we have a coffee somewhere?” I wasn’t having that.

‘I googled the Debenham’s attacks, followed my nose to the Undercover Policing Inquiry and, having seen a list of core participants and who was representing them, phoned Mike Schwarz at Bindmans for advice. He said “that’s a coincidence because I was just about to ring you”.

‘Weirdly, he couldn’t tell me why, because it was in connection with a document that he was not able to share – or even describe – because of a confidentiality commitment. However, the inference is that my name is on some kind of list.

‘My hunch is that somewhere along the line some lazy underemployed police spy decided to invent a bunch of shit and plucked my name out of an old spycop file, to fill in a gap in their story.’

It seems to be common for political police to think every group is as hierarchical as the police. If they can’t see a group’s command structure with officers, platoon leaders, quartermasters and whatnot then they presume it must be hidden. Then they start superimposing it on unstructured organisations or groups of people who are just friends.

Undercover officer Mark Kennedy took a key role in Climate Camp and was in the extended two-day meetings every month with details worked out by protracted consensus decision making processes, yet still his bosses gave him a shortlist of imagined commanders to keep tabs on.

LYING ABOUT US, LYING ABOUT THEMSELVES

It raises questions about who has been spied on, and what incorrect information is till on our files. It also has wider implications. The spycops’ files about our activities and any supposed danger we pose is being used to decide whether it’s safe to release the names of those same officers who spied on us.

Helen Steel, who was spied on by Lambert and deceived into a two-year relationship by John Dines, told a preliminary hearing of the public inquiry in November 2017 that not only were her files inaccurate – listing her as involved in campaigns she left twenty years ago- but nothing the spycops say can be taken at face value:

‘I think it is important that you know that from my perspective and the perspective of many of the women, we have seen the lies that these undercover officers are capable of, and just how convincing they are. They are professional liars. And I think that it is really important to bear that in mind when taking into account statements that they may make to you in letters or things that they may say to psychiatrists.’

Alison, who was deceived into a relationship by Mark Jenner, has described how officers from the Met’s Department of Professional Standards met up with her and asked for personal photos and home videos, yet wouldn’t even admit that Jenner was a police officer.

Even now, five years since Jenner’s cover name, real name, photo and profile were made public, and two years since they apologised to Alison, there has still been no official confirmation that he was a police officer.

That is not impartial. It is protecting one side whilst exposing the other. It is also failing to see this as a perpetrator/victim situation. The Operation Sparkler/Nitrogen doorsteppings are more of the same.

The swathe of earlier reports are proof, if it were needed, that police self-investigations must not be trusted. Their persistence and intrusion shows that they do not acknowledge their wrongdoing, nor respect the citizens they abused.

COPS is one of several groups who will be publishing a joint statement warning of these visits, advising those affected not to interact with these agents of our abusers.

The public inquiry into Britain’s political secret police has issued brief notes on applications for anonymity by another cluster of officers. As usual, these former spycops who invaded people’s lives want to have their true identities kept from their victims.

The Inquiry intends to release the cover names of most of them. After last week’s announcement concerning five officers whose real and cover names the Inquiry intends to keep secret, this is a bit of improvement. However there are still some fundamental flaws that undermine the Inquiry’s stated desire of uncovering the truth.

Known by their HN-numbers, there are 12 ex-spycops in the new list. The Inquiry is still looking into officers HN9 and HN66. Officers HN61 and HN819 are backroom staff, so there are no cover names involved, and presumably we will get their real and cover names.

As for the other eight, the Inquiry does not intend to release any of their real names, but wants to release the cover names of seven. They are all men. Here’s the rundown:

NEW NAMES COMING

HN13 is now dead. He was deployed 1974-78, thought to be infiltrating the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) though the name of the group may be wrong. He was prosecuted twice under his false name, one of these leading to conviction. His widow wants her husband’s memory left in peace. However, the police risk assessor thinks there is no chance of the cover name leading to the real name, so the Inquiry intends to release that.

HN109 is a mystery. Neither the real nor cover name will be made public and we cannot be told why. We just have to trust the veracity of what the police told the Inquiry.

The Undercover Research Group have done a characteristically meticulous job of cross-referencing the new information with what’s already known, and have found that HN109 was around the spying on Stephen Lawrence’s family.

The Inquiry’s Chair, John Mitting, has said getting definitive answers about spying on the Lawrences ‘is one of the central issues which the Inquiry must investigate’, yet he intends to keep this officer completely hidden.

HN296 infiltrated an unnamed left wing group from 1975-75.

HN304 infiltrated ‘a number of non-violent groups’ from 1976-79.

HN339 infiltrated two unspecified groups between 1970 and 1974.

HN340 was deployed against an unnamed group from 1969-72, and reported on others.

HN354 infiltrated an unspecified group 1976-79 and admits to ‘two fleeting relationships’ with women he spied on.

HN356/124. This one was accidentally given two numbers. Now dead, he infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party from 1977-81. He was on the April 1979 anti-racist demonstration in Southall where Blair Peach was killed by police.

NO NAMES, NO TRUTH

Time and again in the new list, the Inquiry says that publication of these officers’ cover names

‘may serve a purpose: to prompt former members of the group against which he was deployed to provide information about his deployment.’

Indeed, it is the only way those who were spied upon can be prompted to come forward. Without a cover name, an officer remains in the dark forever. This is why we are so insistent that all cover names be released.

We have no faith in the self-reporting of officers about their abuses, nor in their ex-colleagues who are carrying out the risk assessments on behalf of the police for the Inquiry. Any public servant should be publicly accountable, let alone one from a covert institution guilty of so many serious abuses that it needed a public inquiry into its misdeeds.

Even those who still find the Met a trustworthy body must accept that the spycops units have no credibility left. Since the scandal broke we have been subjected to a flurry of desperate lies from everyone involved, from the officers themselves right to the top ranks. As one lie gets exposed, they change their story until that, too, falls under the weight of new evidence. So the more they want to hide an officer, the more suspicious the public becomes.

POLICE PERJURY

The Inquiry has said that people who were deceived into sexual relationships by officers deserve the fullest answers, and it will be seen as a reason to release an officer’s real name as well as the cover name. They appear to take a less stringent approach to officers who deceived the judicial system and orchestrated miscarriages of justice.

The one in the new list, HN13, was far from the only spycop to be arrested. The five spycops the Inquiry spoke of two weeks ago – and whose real and cover identities the Inquiry intends to withhold – included two who admit being arrested whilst undercover, one of whom was prosecuted under their false identity. 

There is plenty of evidence that this was common practice throughout the era of the spycops units. When they were arrested alongside people who were convicted, it means their evidence was withheld from the court and the conviction is unsafe.

Undercover officer Mark Kennedy was arrested and involved in cases that led to 49 wrongful convictions that have now been quashed due to his exposure by activists. The detail of his actions also made it clear that the police and Crown Prosecution Service colluded to orchestrate these miscarriages of justice.

Mark Ellison QC’s 2015 report into the issue found many more among the Special Demonstration Squad’s remaining records.

‘Using the SDS Annual Reports it has now been possible to identify 26 SDS officers who were arrested on a total of 53 occasions.’

That’s just what can be deduced from the SDS annual reports. The true total is likely to be higher. It’s notable that Mark Kennedy was from another unit entirely, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, and other officers there, such as as Rod Richardson and Lynn Watson, were repeatedly arrested as well.

All of this contravened strict instructions from the Home Office that officers should be withdrawn if they risked misleading a court.

In 1969, the year after the Special Demonstration Squad was set up, the Home Office issued Circular 97/1969, and it was clear and unequivocal.

‘The police must never commit themselves to a course which, whether to protect an informant or otherwise, will constrain them to mislead a court in subsequent proceedings. This must always be regarded as a prime consideration when deciding whether, and in what manner, an informant may be used and how far, if at all, he is allowed to take part in an offence.

‘If his use in the way envisaged will, or is likely to result in its being impossible to protect him without subsequently misleading the court, that must be regarded as a decisive reason for his not being so used or not being protected.’

The officers cannot feign ignorance. They knew the gravity of the situation and they chose to lie.

Either courts were told it was an agent – meaning it was an unfair trial for other defendants – or else this was perverting the course of justice and perjury. The Inquiry and the wider public should treat this as a negation of police duty and an affront to justice.

Excerpt from officer HN23’s risk assessment

The Undercover Policing Inquiry has announced five new applications for anonymity from former undercover police officers. The police want the real and cover names to be withheld in all five cases, and the Inquiry intends to comply.

The officers’ risk assessments, published in heavily redacted form, cover a number of elements of their deployment. 

The controversial use of dead children’s identities for cover names is addressed, and none of the officers say they did it (one says they didn’t even have a cover name). They are all asked if they had relationships with people they spied on, and none of them admit to this either.

PROFESSIONAL LIARS

The problem is that we’ve seen this before. Officer HN297‘s risk assessment said he didn’t have any known relationships.  His cover name, Rick Gibson, was brought to the attention of the Undercover Research Group by people from the groups he infiltrated. Their subsequent joint investigation found that he had sexual relationships with at least four women that he spied on.

Without us knowing the cover names, we cannot check the veracity of their claims. It is the key prerequisite of us being able to get to the truth of what these trained liars did yet, despite proof of lying, the Inquiry is believing them and keeping cover names from us.

Once again we see inexcusable exceptionalism being granted to police. No other group of proven miscreants gets their answers taken at face value, in secret, then used as the basis for whether their victims get told the truth.

No other institution is allowed to be the custodian and archivist of the files that incriminate them. The Met are asked by a public inquiry to do searches and provide the results. It would be unacceptable even if there wasn’t, as in this case, a history of them destroying the files to avoid culpability.

But with the police we not only take their word, the Inquiry seeks to protect them from feeling upset at being caught. This trait is startlingly clear in the statement of officer N348. In a searing dissection, The Canary described it as ‘already a contender for the most ridiculous thing you’ll read in 2018’.

PROTECTION FROM EMBARRASSMENT

Deployed in 1972-73, N348 is now in her 70s. She says she cannot remember the cover name she used, but is confident it had the first name of Sandra.

She infiltrated the Women’s Liberation Front (affiliated to the Women’s Liberation Movement). A group of no more than 12 people, they met at a member’s house in North London to discuss women’s rights and Maoist ideas.

It seems the infiltration of these groups may have been prompted by an incident mentioned repeatedly in the paperwork, the direct action taken against the 1970 Miss World contest when it was broadcast live from the Royal Albert Hall.

‘N348 described the faction as vocal but aspirational only and taking part in demonstrations with placards and banners. She witnessed no violence displayed by the group’

N348 says she would be ’embarrassed’ if one of the group she spied on found out she was a spycop. Her current work worries her, too.

‘It makes my heart sink to think of my colleagues there knowing.’

The risk assessor concludes that there is no concrete threat from anyone in the Women’s Liberation Front in any way.

‘The risk would likely be confined to harassment and/or intrusion, but would be effective enough to potentially adversely affect her employment status and standing in the community; both would affect her income.’

Why would it affect her employment, unless she is in a job that her employer would think is unsuitable for someone with her history? Why would the community think less of her, unless she has done something wrong?

The risk assessor doesn’t think police can justify what N348 did.

‘It could be argued that the deployment of N348 into such a non-violent group was disproportionate and may feed a media angle.’

N348 says

‘I think we live in a time of an intrusive media… I worry about not being in control of this situation.’

The media attention they fear is the justified interest in the actions of a public servant. Her wish to be shielded from that is not a valid reason to hide her identity.

The risk assessor concedes that if her true identity were disclosed there would be no risk of physical threat and a low risk of interference with her family and personal life, yet they still want her name to be withheld. This is all a further example of spycops seeking freedom from accountability.

There is no human right to protection from embarrassment, yet N348 is effectively being granted one.

PROTECTION FROM PRIDE

Conversely, HN23 says

‘I am very proud of the work that I did and acted with integrity throughout my career. I believe that the work I did had a significant positive impact and I did it knowing that it was not something I could boast about or reveal.’

At last your chance has come to step up and receive the acclaim you so rightly deserve for your flawless and exemplary work, HN23. Let your friends and family see the glory of your true life and share in your pride.

‘I am worried that they will not understand the reasons for this and will see it as a betrayal which will affect both friendships and relationships with family.’

That’s the opposite of HN348’s embarrassment, yet arguing for the exact same secrecy.

POLICE RIGHTS BEAT HUMAN RIGHTS

The police applications for anonymity include a cut & paste paragraph saying that releasing an officer’s name would ‘amount to a disproportionate interference with his/her right to a private and family life,’ and even in one instance adding ‘risk of loss of life or torture, or inhuman or degrading treatment’.

These are the same two human rights the Met admitted were breached by spycops themselves in these deployments.

The police who invaded the lives, homes and families of active citizens are seeking anonymity to avoid intrusion into their own lives and families. They are saying ‘it would breach my right to a private life to be known as the person who breached your right to a private life’. If the arrogance is gobsmacking, the hypocrisy is sickening.

The Met go further, saying it is not only for the benefit of their officers but ‘in the public interest’. The state infiltrating political groups who pose no threat to public safety is not just abuse of the citizens that were spied on. It is a counter-democratic attack on freedom of association and expression. It is plainly against the public interest.

Naming anyone for anything obviously increases the chance of press interest and vigilante action, yet the media (often supplied by police) give out people’s details every day. It is not seen as a breach of the right to a private life.

TIME TO ANSWER

Officers from secret police units around the world have been reluctant to come clean. None imagined having to face the people they undermined and betrayed.

But their desire for comfort pales beside their victims’ right to the truth and the public’s right to justice. They did this in our name. We all deserve answers.

It’s been a long time coming and the officers of the Special Demonstration Squad know that better than anyone. Though it was never on the scale of the Stasi, Britain’s political secret police’s purpose and methods were startlingly similar to their East German counterparts.

As Paul Lewis & Rob Evans described in Undercover: The True Story of Britain’s Secret Police

‘A team of undercover police officers had spent the evening drinking and chatting in the London apartment. It was late one night in 1994.

‘They turned on the television to catch a news report from Germany. Tens of thousands of Germans were trawling through secret files compiled on them before the Berlin Wall came down… The TV report showed the distraught face fo a woman in Berlin who had discovered the man she had loved for years was a spy.

‘There was a silence in the lounge. Then one of the undercover police officers said what the others must have been thinking. “You do realise, this is going to happen to us one day,” he said.’

The Undercover Policing Inquiry is not here to extend the abusers’ belief that they would never get caught. It exists to reveal the truth. Police officers act as public servants and should be publicly accountable.

A cloak of anonymity for the officers would also fall across the facts and justice itself. It’s absurd for them to ask for such secrecy, and outrageous that the Inquiry wants to grant it.

Andy Coles then and now

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

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

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

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

Transcript of Jessica’s Speech

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

16 September 2017

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

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

Then he boldly asserts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A LAW UNTO THEMSELVES

Mason continues;

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

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

‘The police must never commit themselves to a course which, whether to protect an informant or otherwise, will constrain them to mislead a court in subsequent proceedings.’

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

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

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

UNION BUSTING

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

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

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

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

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

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

TRUTH ISN’T PARANOIA

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHANGE AT THE TOP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DON’T DO WHAT YOU’RE TOLD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Helen Steel at the Royal Courts of Justice

The Metropolitan Police are demanding £7,000 from a woman they paid damages to after she discovered that her long-term partner was a police spy. The claim is part of their ongoing campaign for secrecy around political undercover police units who have committed human rights abuses.

Helen Steel has been a lifelong social justice campaigner. In the 1990s she was one of the defendants in the McLibel trial, which arose after McDonald’s sued campaigners for libel over a leaflet produced by London Greenpeace. McDonald’s spent millions on the case, but a public support campaign meant the trial was dubbed ‘the greatest corporate PR disaster in history’.

POLICE SPIES AND CORPORATE SPIES

At the trial it was revealed that London Greenpeace had been infiltrated by several corporate spies hired by McDonald’s. But it was only years later that it emerged the group was also infiltrated by undercover police officers from the now-disgraced Special Demonstration Squad. One of them, Bob Lambert, co-wrote the What’s Wrong With McDonald’s leaflet that caused the trial, though this fact was kept from the court. Another officer in the group, John Dines, deceived Steel into a two-year relationship. They lived together, discussed starting a family and planned to spend the rest of their lives with one another. Then Dines feigned a breakdown and disappeared from Steel’s life back into his police career.

In 2011, Steel was one of a group of eight similarly deceived women who brought a legal case against the Metropolitan Police for abuse by five undercover officers. The Met spent many years and huge sums of public money obstructing the case.

NEITHER CONFIRM NOR DENY

After almost three years of the Met claiming they could ‘neither confirm nor deny’ (NCND) that anyone was an undercover officer – a tactic Steel forensically dismantled at a later public inquiry hearing – in 2014 the courts forced their hand.

The women challenged the police use of NCND. In July 2014 they won an important victory when the High Court ruled that there was no legitimate public interest in the Met Police asserting NCND in respect of the allegations that officers had engaged in long term intimate sexual relationships while undercover.

The Court also ruled that as Bob Lambert and Jim Boyling had already been publicly confirmed as undercover officers, the police could no longer maintain NCND in respect of their identities.

MET POLICE CONTINUE TO HIDE THE TRUTH

However, regarding Mark Jenner and John Dines, the Judge said that although the evidence amassed by the women was overwhelming, and it was surely only a matter of time until they were confirmed, he could not force the naming of people who hadn’t outed themselves.

As Steel said at the time

‘It is very disappointing that despite the overwhelming evidence our former partners John Dines and Mark Jenner were also undercover SDS officers, the Judge has allowed the Met to continue to hide the truth about them.’

Steel put in an appeal against this decision. These men were not private individuals, they had been acting as public servants, so the public had a right to know.

A few months after this appeal was lodged the Met held talks with the women to seek a settlement for their civil claims. Just before Christmas 2014 the Met agreed to apologise to the women, though it wasn’t finalised and published for another 11 months.

On 31^st December 2014, the Appeal Court agreed that NCND was an important issue and Steel’s argument was well-grounded. They granted her leave to appeal.

COURT GRANTS APPEAL, MET CLAIMS DECEPTION

The Met, with their tactic of trying anything to undermine those they have victimised, attempted to get the appeal struck out. They claimed Steel had misled the appeal court by not informing them that a settlement had been agreed. This was an underhanded trick, given that the settlement hadn’t been finalised, she was unrepresented for the appeal, and the events happened over the Christmas period when people are generally not focussed on legal proceedings.

Steel argued that it was in the public interest to name those responsible for the abuses. A hearing for the Met’s strike-out application took place in July 2015. Steel was unrepresented, and mentally exhausted from the long battle for the truth. She reluctantly acceded to the court’s twofold advice.

Firstly, if she lost the appeal she would be liable to pay the Met’s legal costs, which could wipe out her entire damages in the main claim. Secondly, the forthcoming public inquiry would provide a safer route to argue about the use of NCND and the release of spycops’ names as there were no costs risks.

STEEL DROPS APPEAL, MET CLAIMS £10,000 COSTS

Despite the hearing lasting only about an hour, the police then claimed over £10,000 costs. Although later reduced to £7,000, the ludicrous amounts charged act as a deterrent, intimidating members of the public seeking accountability for wrongdoing committed by police officers. The threat of such an award can be used by the police as a means to intimidate people out of seeking redress.

The police’s whole argument – that a settlement was agreed – rested on them issuing an apology admitting these men were Met officers who inexcusably abused women. The Met concede they were wrong, and that the women who were deceived into relationships were blameless. Why should officers who have abused members of the public be allowed to hide behind a wall of secrecy?

The apology came with damages for the harm caused by the extreme deception. The Met are now trying to claw money back from a woman they victimised because she tried to get them to do something that they should have done anyway.

PARTIAL CONFIRMATION, MORE DENIAL

The Undercover Policing Inquiry eventually confirmed that Dines was a police officer in December 2016 – a grudging and minimal admission that Steel excoriated. To this day, the police won’t admit Mark Jenner was the undercover officer Mark Cassidy, even though he’s been publicly identified since January 2011.

Women deceived into intimate relationships by undercover police officers want to ensure that these human rights abuses never happen to anyone else. This requires the Met to stop protecting the identities of the abusers. It also requires a legal system that allows funding to enable those who have been abused to challenge their abusers without the risk of becoming bankrupt or losing their homes.

For the Met to have abused these women is horrific enough. For them to inflict the second injustice of legal tricks and obstructions compounds their cruelty. To then to go after Helen Steel for money is an utterly outrageous further leap into the shameless bullying and corruption that has driven their response to the spycops scandal from the start.

Former undercover police officer Andy Coles will not be investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the watchdog announced earlier this month.

He was referred to the IPCC after his exposure as an ex-member of the disgraced Special Demonstration Squad in May, which included details of how he groomed a teenager known as Jessica into a sexual relationship during his time infiltrating animal rights and peace groups.

She described it in a statement:

‘Although I was 19, I had never been in a proper relationship before. Events in my life had taught me it’s best to keep people at arm’s length. So, I didn’t know how to react when he made advances towards me, I was embarrassed, awkward, and what truly makes me feel sick now, is that I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I look back now and realise I was naive, idealistic, unsophisticated and a very young 19.

‘Appallingly I also now know my new “boyfriend” was a 32 year old, married undercover policeman working for the SDS, Special Demonstration Squad. I had believed him to be about 24 at the time…

‘Although not legally underage, I feel that my youth and vulnerability were used to target me. I was groomed by someone much older, and far more experienced (he had been an acting police officer for 10 years) and I was manipulated into having a sexual relationship with him.’

The Undercover Policing Inquiry, which is examining the misdeeds of Britain’s political secret police, recently designated Jessica as a core participant, a status given to less than 200 of the most significantly targeted people.

Three days after being publicly exposed on Channel 4 News, Coles resigned as Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner for Cambridgeshire, despite being less than a year into the £28,000pa part-time role.

But now the Independent Police Complaints Commission, a body largely comprised of people who, like Coles, are ex-police officers, have decided there is nothing worth looking at, just as they did with other abusive spycops. They did not consult Jessica, nor any of the other women Coles sexually abused. Nothing has been investigated.

However, in some ways it does not need to be, because the issue rests on three simple and indisputable facts.

1 – Andy Coles was the Special Demonstration Squad officer known as Andy Davey

2 – He deceived Jessica into a relationship

3 – This was an abuse of police power, a violation of her human rights and far beyond anything police could ever justify

Although that last point is strongly worded, it is the emphatic and unequivocal position of the Met themselves, as explained by Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt

‘it has become apparent that some officers, acting undercover whilst seeking to infiltrate protest groups, entered into long-term intimate sexual relationships with women which were abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong.

‘I acknowledge that these relationships were a violation of the women’s human rights, an abuse of police power and caused significant trauma. I unreservedly apologise on behalf of the Metropolitan Police Service… relationships like these should never have happened. They were wrong and were a gross violation of personal dignity and integrity…

‘none of the women with whom the undercover officers had a relationship brought it on themselves. They were deceived pure and simple. I want to make it clear that the Metropolitan Police does not suggest that any of these women could be in any way criticized for the way in which these relationships developed.’

Coles has promoted himself as a figure of civic credibility, becoming governor at two schools, being the opening speaker at this year’s annual conference of Link to Change (an organisation supporting young people facing sexual exploitation). He personally endorsed the Children’s Society’s Seriously Awkward campaign to protect older teenagers from abuse and sexual exploitation.

He must have known all this was richly hypocritical but hoped that he would be able to keep his past secret. As soon as he was unmasked, his position as Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner became instantly untenable and he resigned.

COUNCIL CANCELLED

Despite all this, Coles is retaining his position as a Conservative member of Peterborough City Council, defying cross-party calls for him to step down from that post too.

Human Rights Abuser Andy Coles banner made by Jessica, Peterborough Town Hall, 19 July 2017

Dozens of people attended a protest outside the council meeting on 19 July. Hundreds of leaflets about Coles were given out to those passing or entering the Town Hall. The protest included spycops campaigners alongside LibDem councillors, and representatives of Peterborough’s Labour and Green parties.

The council refused to consider a question, submitted by Jessica, on Coles’ suitability for his role. A banner she made was hung from the public gallery. The Mayor refused to continue the meeting until it was taken down; protesters refused to remove it while Coles was present; he refused to leave. After an hour of this stalemate, the Mayor abandoned the meeting.

IF YOU’VE NOTHING TO HIDE YOU’VE NOTHING TO FEAR

Council leader John Holdich OBE told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire that Coles was ‘not allowed to make a comment about it’, but this is not true. Several exposed spycops have given statements and interviews. It is Coles’ choice not to speak, which is odd if he feels his position were in any way defensible.

Holdich went on to defend Coles’ refusal to resign from the council.

‘Until you’re proved guilty, why should you get out? That’s a sign of your guilt, isn’t it, if you resign?’

But this was two months after Coles had resigned as Deputy Police & Crime Commissioner for Cambridgeshire. What was that then, if not a sign of his guilt?

Coles said he was unable to comment on the matter, pending the IPCC’s decision. But now there is to be no criminal trial that could be influenced, he is free to come forward and explain. If it’s possible for him to exonerate himself in the way his fellow Conservative – and an outlier LibDem – councillors say they expect, why isn’t he doing it?

He knows no denial is possible. He knows there is no doubt that if he had been unmasked sooner, he would have been among those that the Met already condemned and apologised for. He behaved in the same way as other sexually abusive officers. There is no excuse. There is no justification.

He grossly abused a position of trust while in public office. He has no place in a public body with any measure of integrity.

There is a meeting of Peterborough City Council on 11 October. If Coles is still a councillor, there will be a protest outside.

Troops Out Movement demonstration at military recruitment office

The public inquiry into undercover political policing has published three new names of spycops and, for the first time, they’re new names rather than just confirming what activists, whistleblowers and journalists had already revealed.

However, among the hefty tranche of new papers from Inquiry Chair Sir John Mitting are grave indications of that he is seeking to prevent the full truth coming to light.

Having dragged out the process of beginning the inquiry for years, earlier this year the Metropolitan Police were given a firm timetable for applying for ‘restriction orders’ for the anonymity of undercover officers.

As expected, the Met are pushing for maximum secrecy, arguing that it would make officers worried and sad to be publicly known for what they’ve done. The Met also argue that the officers would be at risk of violent reprisal, despite nothing of the kind happening to the swathe of officers who have been very publicly exposed since 2010. With deadlines passing, the Met have had their hand forced and, finally, we are getting a small measure of new information from the Inquiry.

THREE NEW SPYCOPS

As had been suggested by some victims, the new names are all from the early days of the Special Demonstration Squad in the late 1960s and early 1970s. With those involved being of advanced age, there’s some merit in tackling these cases first. Indeed, one of the three newly named officers is already dead.

We’ve been given only the officers’ cover names, but not their real identity. These three releases have major redactions, including whether the officer had intimate relationships or was arrested. Given the long history of SDS officers having such abusive relationships and instigating miscarriages of justice, these are very serious omissions.

‘John Graham‘ was deployed in 1968, the first year of the Special Demonstration Squad, to infiltrate the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (Kilburn and Willesden Branch), and says the worst thing anyone in the group ever suggested doing was jumping on the back of a police officer. He also spied on the Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation.

In 1969 his deployment was cut short when he refused a senior officers instruction to attend a certain meeting, feeling it would have exposed him. He was moved to other duties shortly after. The Undercover Research Group have produced a profile of John Graham.

‘Rick Gibson‘ spied on left wing groups between 1974 and 1976. He infiltrated socialist feminist campaign/newspaper Big Flame, and became a prominent member of the south-east London branch of the Troops Out Movement which campaigns to end British involvement in Northern Ireland.

The police say that in 1976 Gibson was confronted by a Big Flame activist who had become suspicious of him and discovered that he was – as was standard for spycops at the time – using the identity of a dead child. Gibson said that he was indeed using a false identity as he was on the run from the police, and his comrades could not be certain that he was a spy. His deployment was ended shortly afterwards. He is now dead.

‘Doug Edwards‘ was one of the earliest Special Demonstration Squad officers, deployed between 1968 and 1971. He infiltrated anarchist groups, and says that ‘some of them were quite nasty pieces of work’. He then moved on to the Dambusters Mobilising Committee, a coalition opposed to the huge Cabora Bassa dam project in the then-Portuguese colony of Mozambique, a collaboration between apartheid South Africa, Rhodesia and Portugal to supply electricity to South Africa.

Like so many of his colleagues, he was very active in groups he infiltrated, becoming treasurer of Cuban-founded group Tricontinental. He also describes going to a wedding, showing that ‘collateral intrusion’ into the lives of those around the spied-upon has always been part of how spycops work.

He continues

‘Some of the people in these groups were really nice, pleasant, intelligent people. They were different politically in their views, but in this country you can have different political views.’

He says

‘I think the whole thing has been blown out of proportion… I don’t have anything to hide and I’ll answer all questions, I won’t mind’

But then he immediately backtracks with

‘I don’t want all this dragging up though when it was 50 years ago… I don’t want the interference at my stage of life.’

These three bring the total of exposed undercover officers to 23 out of a total of at least 144.

DOORS CLOSING BEFORE THEY OPEN

The three newly named spycops are among 28 whose anonymity has been considered by the inquiry. The Inquiry has published a brief profile of each of them, with a position on their anonymity.

Of the 25 still unnamed:

• 2 aren’t being named yet but the Chair intends to release the cover names soon
• 3 are dead with no known cover name, their real names will be published later
• 2 have no known cover name and the Inquiry won’t release the real name
• 3 have both cover and real names known and the Chair intends to withhold both
• 1 has already had the cover name confirmed, and the Chair intends to withhold the real name
• 3 are undecided pending further information
• 3 are having secret hearings with the Inquiry before a decision is made
• 1 has been given more time to apply for anonymity
• 7 were backroom staff so had no cover name, their real names will be published later

Put another way, they have taken decisions on eight officers and are withholding the cover names of three. This is not a good ratio. Without the publication of the overwhelming majority of cover names we cannot know who was spied on, so we cannot hear from victims and establish the truth.

Mitting is giving a lot of weight to the possible psychological impacts on spycops if they are named, but since when are abusers given protection because exposure would be detrimental to them?

As Pitchford Watcher’s analysis of Mitting’s statement explained

‘In one case, that of ‘HN7’, he has already given a unilateral order for anonymity on the basis of HN7’s mental health. For others, he is accepting that the minimal risk of press intrusion may be sufficient for such anonymity orders, even when there is no risk to safety. In another instance, his main concern is the effect on the widow of an undercover.

‘He also appears to be of the opinion that he can do what he needs to meet the terms of reference of the Inquiry, just by reference to cyphers and cover names, an approach that increases secrecy and further limits participation by those targeted by the undercovers. These core participants believe that in doing this, he is completely disregarding their needs and that they are being denied the right to the truth.’

THE LAWRENCE FAMILY SPY

Of the three officers applying for full anonymity who will have secret hearings before a decision, one is officer N81, who spied on Stephen Lawrence’s family as they campaigned for justice for their murdered son.

Doreen Lawrence has been very clear about the need to know who spied on her, telling the Guardian in 2015

‘They were doing the deception. Why should they be allowed to be anonymous while people like me had their faces all over the newspapers? These people were not innocent. They knew what they were doing.’

This is the key issue at the moment for many of the people targeted. The cover names of the officers and the names of the groups they spied on are not optional or incidental. They are the sole foundation on which the truth can be established. Whether to publish them should not be an issue to wrestle with, it should not be the focus of the discussion, it should be a given.

Inquiry core participant Carolyn Wilson told Pitchford Watcher

‘The police tend to tell us “If you’ve nothing to hide, then you’ve got nothing to fear”. People are trying to come to terms with the very real trauma of finding out they’d been deceived into intimate relationships with cops from these secret units. They are desperate for information so they can deal with what’s happened, and heal their lives.

‘How dare those same cops now have the nerve to claim that they face being “traumatised” by details of their past activities being brought out in public? If they haven’t done anything wrong, why would they be embarrassed about their neighbours and families finding out about it all?’

This inquiry is not about arbitrating between equals. It is about establishing the full truth about the known abuses of power committed by these disgraced units against citizens and democracy. If it does not publish the overwhelming majority of cover names it defies its purpose, protects the guilty and betrays the victims.