On 13 December 2024 the Undercover Policing Inquiry questioned a witness known as ‘AFJ’.

He was a hunt saboteur and antifascist activist in London in the early 1990s, and was named in numerous secret police reports by Special Demonstration Squad officer HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’.

He now holds a senior position in a company and his political opinions have altered, so he wanted to be anonymous. He gave evidence remotely, with his voice modulated to disguise it.

He was questioned by one of the Inquiry’s junior counsel, Joseph Hudson.

Political Background

As a teenager, AFJ was into punk music and had been motivated by the Brighton punk scene to become politically active.

He found himself informed and inspired, meeting others who saw that the system was not set up for fairness or justice, and who wanted to create something better for themselves:

‘I enjoyed the camaraderie, like-minded people. As, you know, a teenager you’re looking for a tribe and I think I found that with that group.’

When he was 16, he dropped out of college to get involved in hunt saboteuring. He liked the direct effect of sabbing:

‘It really felt like a good thing to be able to help save the life of a fox and come away from that feeling that you’ve done something, you’ve changed something even if it was reasonably small.’

AFJ was involved in the Brighton hunt sab group between 1989 and 1991, when he moved to London. There were 15-20 people involved in Brighton hunt sabs at the time.

He went out sabbing every Saturday for six months of the year, and helped with coordination. He saw a lot of violence from hunt supporters in co-ordinated attacks, including people beaten unconscious. He never saw anything similar done by sabs.

AFJ explained the importance of transport and vehicles to sabbing. Hunts are in remote places inaccessible by public transport. The driver is essential and at the heart of any group. Drivers were often organisers too.

This is an important point. One spycop after another has been forced to admit they were involved in sabbing and other kinds of direct action but have said they were ‘only the driver’, as if this makes them peripheral instead of a vital core part of the action without which none of it could happen.

AFJ was arrested outside the Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane, London, protesting against a hunters’ ball held there. He was convicted of disorderly conduct.

AFJ moved out of his parents’ house and got more involved in the coordination of the hunt sabbing. He was already aware of the Brixton hunt sabs before he moved to London. He’d met them at hunts and says they seemed a bit louder and a bit more confrontational than other groups. The word ‘Brixton’ played into this, evoking inner city life, with connotations of the 1981 riots:

‘People there were a bit older, they were living in squats and they seemed to be living this kind of radical lifestyle’

Brixton Hunt Saboteurs

AFJ moved to London in June 1991, to a room in a squat where a friend was already living.
He got involved with Brixton hunt sabs and describes how they were split into two distinct parts:

‘The counterculture group, of which I was a part, were living in squats, part of a broader activist lifestyle which included a lot of different areas of politics’

This contrasted with the others:

‘The people who were I would’ve called animal rights activists, only interested in animal rights, were generally living in rented accommodation, working in jobs, students, and living probably, I would’ve thought at the time, a more conventional lifestyle.’

He confirms that spycop Andy Coles was in this second group. Coles was nicknamed ‘Andy Van’ because, like many other spycops, the police had issued him with a van so that he would take a central role in the activities of the groups he was infiltrating.

We’re shown AFJ’s address book from the time [MPS-0744732] which included Andy Van’s contact details.

AFJ says Andy Coles was a frequent attendee of sabbing activities, and was a driver of what he’d assumed was Coles’s own van. He describes Coles as:

‘Quiet, reserved, softly spoken, an observer. Not a kind of big personality or someone who was kind of leading at the front, more someone who was a driver, maybe a bit of a coordinator.’

He says their relationship was ‘very superficial’, they said hello to each other but not much else.

Asked about his broader animal rights activity, he says there was a bit of it when he first moved to London, such as leafleting outside Boots’ shops protesting against their vivisection, but nothing much more than that.

Pressed on whether there was any Animal Liberation Front activity, he says that his squat was given a dog they were told had been rescued from a laboratory, but that’s all. He’s clear that Brixton hunt sabs was a poor choice of gateway into the world of ALF activity.

This is another important point, as the spycops who infiltrated the sabs and other lawful London animal rights groups have been trying to justify it by saying it was just that.

AFJ says just because the formal faction was ‘straight’ did not mean they eschewed radical views. They had very, very strong opinions about animals and might have been willing to break the law. But if they were, he wouldn’t have wanted to know; he was more interested in other issues.

AFJ accepts he was an enthusiastic part of Brixton hunt sabs, but had no organisational role.

We are then shown a spycops report of 30 October 1991 by Andy Coles about AFJ [MPS-0744609]:

‘He is currently the equipment officer for Brixton Hunt Saboteurs group.’

AFJ laughs at this:

‘There was no equipment officer and I certainly wouldn’t have been trusted too much with the equipment!’

Yet again, police are inventing formal structures where none exist, making activists out to be more involved than they are, and portraying groups as much more regimented than they actually are. But it sounds good to their superiors who read the report, and nobody could have checked the veracity even if they’d wanted to.

He disputes Coles’s description of Brixton sabs as ‘fearsome’. They were certainly notorious and irreverent but they wouldn’t have struck fear into anyone. They would defend themselves when attacked, but then so did many other sabs. They inspired more annoyance than terror.

AFJ confirms that sabs sometimes wore face coverings. He dismisses the Inquiry’s suggestion that it was to intimidate hunters, saying it was more about not being recognised and photographed – sabs had concerns about being on the receiving end of intimidation themselves, as well as potential impacts on their employment and academic careers.

Hunt saboteur ‘Callum’ said in his evidence that his (different) hunt sab group deliberately wore matching jackets and masks, in part to look intimidating in the hope it would stop them being attacked. AFJ says Brixton never discussed it in those terms nor any others.

AFJ says that the counterculture faction of Brixton hunt sabs was ‘more rowdy, more irreverent’ and also drawing on broader political motivations:

‘It wasn’t a caring for animals motivation all the time. It was also a bit of wanting to protest against the upper class. So those kind of politics were probably more important in that group. And going out, disturbing and disrupting a hunt was equally important to saving a fox’s life.’

He’s asked about his description of this in his witness statement [UCPI36920]:

‘Our thinking was how can we cause disorder? How can we annoy the ruling class and how could we do it in a way that might get media attention?’

He’s clear that they were always focused on stopping the hunt, and that by being chaotic it was more likely that the hunt would pack up and go home early.

South London Action Group

We’re shown a January 1993 report by Coles about what he calls the South London Anarchist Group (actually the South London Action Group) with the charming acronym SLAG.

AFJ says it only ever had one meeting:

‘It was a failed attempt to become more organised. As a group of kind of anarchist squatters who wanted to pool efforts in areas where we thought we could have an impact. So that might be housing, local protests around local anti-racism issues, protesting I think against the local McDonald’s that was opening up at the time.’

AFJ seems to be chuckling as he recalls how people opposed to authority weren’t always good at turning up to meetings on time, respecting the chair, or even agreeing if there should be a chair.

We’re next shown another Coles report, dated 9 January 1993. It says SLAG would meet every Wednesday at the 121 Centre on Railton Road in Brixton, and that meetings were organised by 56A Infoshop.

AFJ says he was working at 56A Infoshop at the time:

‘So the 56A bookshop was a bit like the 121 Bookshop but it was in Elephant and Castle and it was a place where we sold anarchist books, information about protests, punk rock records. And people would stop in and have a cup of tea, chat about politics and music. It was very sedate but a nice place to spend an afternoon and I worked there with a friend one day every week.’

He goes on to talk about Christopher Jones who organised the Infoshop. Andy Coles later used the name Christopher Andrew Jones when he was arrested sabbing alongside AFJ in November 1994. This is a subject the Inquiry would return to in detail at the end of the hearing.

According to Coles’ report of the meeting:

‘The group is comprised almost exclusively of the Brixton ‘crusties’ ie members of the anarchist squatter community and the meetings are coordinated through the 56A Collective.

Areas of interest for the group include squatting issues, anti-fascist activity, international solidarity protests, anti-state demonstrations and radical animal rights issues (hunt sabotage, inspections of animal housing institutions and Animal Liberation Front activity).’

AFJ completely rejects the reference to ALF activity, saying it wasn’t an issue many people there felt strongly enough about to be involved in. It appears that Coles, tasked to infiltrate the ALF, is simply tagging it on to make it look like he’s succeeding in his job when he’s actually failing.

Asked to define ‘crusty’, AFJ says:

‘People who were unemployed, you know, shabbily dressed, part of a counterculture. You know, for a while at that point I had dreadlocks and we would spend a lot of our time going to punk gigs or raves or, yeah, living an alternative lifestyle and not dressing or washing as often as we could…

It’s a bit pejorative but, you know, it’s not the end of the world.’

The report talks about these crusties using ‘false names… even among close friends’. AFJ says this is misleading – people had nicknames which was part of a friendly subculture. Coles is either trying to make them look nefarious or perhaps, due to his own personal disposition, genuinely sees camaraderie as a form of deviousness.

Coles’s report on the SLAG meeting continues:

‘It is possible that the group will become a recruiting ground for the Brixton-based cell of the Animal Liberation Front.’

Again, AFJ bluntly rejects this allegation.

The report concludes:

‘The SLAG has the potential for becoming a significant threat to public order if it continues to develop with enthusiasm and unity.’

AFJ mocks this with a reality check:

‘We couldn’t agree on a chair so I think the chances of us being a threat to public order were quite small.’

Anti-Fascist Activity

AFJ also took part in anti-fascist activity, trying to stop the National Front and British National Party from organising on the streets.

He says the far right distributing their literature on the street created a climate where racist attacks could happen, and that direct action was the best way to have an impact on that.

At the time he saw the police as sympathetic to the far right, giving fascists an easier ride than the left wing.

He felt that police handling of racist murders demonstrated that, and subsequent inquiries have proved his perspective right.

AFJ says if the anti-fascists heard of a demonstration against racism they would turn up to protect it from attacks by fascists. If they heard of far-right groups leafleting or selling newspapers they would go and confront them:

‘I’m not a strong or a tough person but I would get myself in the mindset to defend myself if there was a physical confrontation. My ideology at the time was that you need to stand up to fascism, to Nazism, and so that I would be prepared to fight back if attacked, or if there was disruption or disorder I would be prepared to respond if provoked.’

AFJ says there is no way to peacefully confront the far right, but that doesn’t necessarily mean his actions were violent:

‘They were disruptive but they were not violent. I was in the way of them [the far right] leafleting but I never carried out an act of violence or did anything violent myself.’

He agrees with the Inquiry’s suggestion of his area of action:

‘We’ve effectively drawn your line in terms of becoming physically very close to members of the far-right without throwing the first punch.’

He explains that it was similar to hunt sabbing, confronting those he opposed en masse. And, like sabbing, they sometimes wore face coverings. And again, as with the questioning about sabbing, he’s asked if people covered faces to intimidate their opponents:

‘I didn’t want the police to see or, you know, if any of these confrontations erupted or were provoked or whatever, I didn’t want that to follow me for the rest of my life.’

He laughs at the irony of it:

‘It turns out I’m still here talking about it, but I didn’t want it to be something I was always known for. I didn’t want it to disrupt my future life.’

For the Inquiry, Hudson asks AFJ to say more about the organised antifascist groups, starting with the Anti-Nazi League. He recalls the kind of demonstrations they would hold:

‘Well, that was a formal group. Closely tied to the Socialist Workers Party, who I very much rejected but I would go along to their protests if it was a big protest or it was in an area where there had been a racist attack and we felt that the BNP would go after that protest.’

As for Anti-Fascist Action, he says that his group generally wouldn’t be invited to their events, which tended to require people of more conventional appearance.

AFJ says before Anti-Fascist Action events there was generally an understanding that this was not a normal protest, it was two groups confronting each other rather than one trying to protect a march. Even then, altercations weren’t inevitable:

‘A lot of the time it happened the presence of the two groups would mean that the police successfully intervened and both groups went home. That happened a lot. But that would be a successful day for Anti-Fascist Action. Because they weren’t there to promote any ideology themselves, just to stop the far-right. So that was successful.’

When police weren’t present it did sometimes kick off:

‘AFJ: There were times when it did go into confrontation but it would generally be skirmishes where people were running towards each other, and it was slightly comical, almost like West Side Story dancing, you know, but not really – occasionally there would be actual fights, yeah, but they would be quite rare.

Q: Is another way to describe that as violent disorder?

AFJ: I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t know the technical term of law. I’ll defer to you guys on that.’

In July 2024, the Inquiry heard from officer HN56 ‘Alan “Nick” Nicholson’ who briefly infiltrated the Loughton branch of the BNP in 1990. He said that in this role, he saw the real risk of violence being antifascists attacking BNP members.

AFJ disputes this, saying there’s endless evidence of BNP members attacking people.

It’s also worth noting that antifascists would only be violent to fascists, whereas fascists were violent to people in many marginalised groups. This isn’t two even sides, only one of them is threatening the community and seeking out ‘untermensch’ to persecute.

AFJ describes the far right coming into a Troops Out march punching and kicking, but on other occasions antifascists averted trouble simply by visibly being there with low regard for their own personal safety.

He’s asked about a specific incident he described in his witness statement. It was around 1993, when the BNP sold their newspapers in Brick Lane on Sundays. The Anti-Nazi League often held protests against it, with police there separating the sides.

One Sunday there was a large turnout and AFJ and his friend decided to pretend to be fascists so the police would allow them through the line:

‘We’re marching along, seig heiling and the like, the police let us through and we managed to then confront the paper sellers who ran off and I think the paper sale was abandoned.’

Hudson says that AFJ describes running towards the fascists which suggests that he was the aggressor in this situation. He responds saying that the fascists ran away – protected by police – and nobody was actually hit. Ending the fascists’ presence was the aim rather than violence.

He and his comrades didn’t carry weapons as such, but did carry soft drinks in glass bottles (‘something you could fit in your pocket easily’ and isn’t an obvious weapon) in case they needed to defend themselves.

Anti-Fascist Protests: The Battle of Waterloo and Welling

AFJ is asked about ‘The Battle of Waterloo’. In November 1992 there was a far-right concert with notorious fascist band Skrewdriver supported by Blood & Honour. These bands couldn’t advertise openly so would have meet-up places and redirection points.

Antifascists went to the redirection point at Waterloo Station. AFJ saw violence from both sides, punching and kicking rather than use of weapons. He had felt it was important ‘to do my bit’ to help stop the gig.

AFJ is next asked about the protest at BNP headquarters in Welling, southeast London, in October 1993. He was no longer squatting by this time. He attended the protest with a small group of friends. AFJ was further back from the disorder but saw some missiles being thrown before his group was cleared out of the area by the police.

We’re shown an earlier report [UCPI0000028278] made by HN78 Trevor Morris ‘Anthony “Bobby” Lewis’ on 26 February 1992. It says that on 22 February, the Rolan Adams family campaign held a march and rally at the BNP headquarters in Welling, southeast London.

Rolan’s father Richard Adams has given evidence to the Inquiry about his family’s attempts to seek justice following his son’s murder.

The organisers of the march told the Anti-Nazi League they didn’t want any violence, so the ANL told their supporters to remain peaceful.

Around 2,000 people attended the march and rally, and AFJ is named in the report as one of them.

AFJ doesn’t actually remember doing so but agrees that it’s likely and speaks of his respect for Richard Adams:

‘My purpose in attending would be sort of add my voice to his, back his call at the time for justice, and also if the far-right did intimidate or attack some of these peaceful protests, as did occur – and I remember one occasion, it may have been that one, where there was a group of far-right activists standing, intimidating, by a church, I know that a church was mentioned in the document – that we would be there to hopefully dissuade them from confrontation.’

According to Morris’s report, AFJ was with a contingent of around 30 anarchists at the rear of the march who were ‘somewhat disappointed’ that there wasn’t a fight with the fascists.

AFJ doesn’t know how Morris could possibly claim to know whether he or the others wanted a physical confrontation, and says he would have been happy that the day passed off peacefully. He points out that Rolan Adams’s family were there, the mood would have been solemn. It was important to show due respect.

Hudson tells him that the spycops have sought to justify their intrusion of such family justice groups by saying there was a risk of violence from people such as himself. AFJ is clear that this is the police trying to deflect blame away from themselves:

‘I don’t think my activities or anything I did were in any way central to the organised activity. These campaigns were legitimate campaigns for justice for people who had had their relatives murdered, potentially by the far-right, and then not had their claims fully investigated properly by the police.’

Good Easter Hunt Saboteur Arrests

We move on to hear about the Good Easter hunt sab event where both AFJ and spycop Andy Coles were arrested.

We’ve heard from earlier witnesses how hunt sabs would sometimes organise a large ‘regional or national hit’, bringing sabs from numerous groups together for a big turnout.

This was usually done in response to incidents of hunt violence against sabs, to show that violence didn’t intimidate the sabs and in fact would make life harder for the hunt. At Good Easter, it was also about defying a new law that criminalised sabbing.

A friend from Brixton hunt sabs rang AFJ and asked if he and some others would ‘come out of retirement’ to help make a hit on the Essex hunt especially large. By this time AFJ had mostly moved on from protesting, but he still supported the cause and readily agreed to go.

It took place on 19 November 1994. AFJ was arrested, charged and convicted for obstructing a police officer and for the brand-new crime of ‘aggravated trespass’, introduced by that month’s Criminal Justice & Public Order Act (CJA).

The CJA was wide-ranging, attacking not just hunt sabbing and other protests but also criminalising Travellers and squatters, while increasing the police’s powers to stop and search, take intimate samples, and draw inference of guilt from people exercising their right to silence on arrest.

AFJ was aware of the Criminal Justice Act and opposed it, attending one of the large protests against it earlier in the year. He was a DJ in the rave scene, and the new law included provisions to ban raves, infamously singling out dance music for criminalisation in section 63 as music:

‘wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.’

AFJ travelled to the hunt from South London, in a van of some kind. He says he would have been with people he knew, from the Brixton hunt sab/squatter milieu. There were probably eight or ten of them, all of whom he would place in the ‘counterculture’ camp:

‘The idea was to do what we had previously done on the hunt sabs, which was to arrive in such numbers that they would hopefully call off the day’s hunting.’

He thinks the hunt was already underway by the time the sabs arrived. The vans stopped in a narrow track and they saw the hunt about 500 metres away.

They went over a stile into the field, and ran towards the hunt. Hudson suggests this was to evade the police but AFJ denies that, saying it was just standard practice on sighting the hunt:

‘If you’re going to have any chance of getting close to it you’d have to move fairly quickly, they’re on horseback.’

Coles says in his witness statement:

‘The intention of the sabs was to cause absolute disruption. The large number of attendees had been organised by the Hunt Saboteurs Association to overwhelm the normal level of policing that was put in place for such events.’

Despite being on opposing sides, AFJ broadly agrees with this:

‘I mean I guess the clue’s in the name, hunt saboteurs, right? You know, that is the aim of the organisation. It’s to sabotage fox hunts by, you know, people arriving en masse peacefully and overwhelming. That was something that had happened over several years previously. This one was a particularly big one and that was because the new law that was being brought in.’

In his witness statement, AFJ says:

‘It was a protest as much about the legislation as about a disruption of the hunt.’

The police had run ahead and were trying to stop the sabs from reaching the hunt:

‘There were not enough police to have a line across the whole field. So at some point a police officer ran in front of me and I stopped…

He struck me with his truncheon and told me to stop going towards the hunt. I was stopped. He struck me several times with his truncheon. It was an extendable truncheon. And then he grabbed me and arrested me.’

AFJ says whilst he was getting hit and arrested, he was aware that someone else near him was getting the same treatment.

Hudson asks about the role of drivers. Coles says he was arrested while running across a field, so Hudson wants to establish whether this rules him out as a driver.

AFJ says the drivers would normally have stayed with the vehicles, and tried to get to a place where the sabs could get another lift if they needed it. It wouldn’t make much sense for a driver to run across a field but, that said, he’s sure it has happened on occasion.

In his intelligence report of the day [MPS-0745541], Coles says there were over 350 sabs present. AFJ says ‘it was half that, maximum’. He agrees with the rest of the report’s details, including that 22 Brixton sabs found a different direction than other sabs from which to approach the hunt.

AFJ gave his real name to the police. He had been arrested before, and given several different names, but would never have used someone else’s real name as it would obviously be detrimental to them.

Coles gave his name as Christopher Andrew Jones and an address in Plato Road that was a squat. He was charged but failed to appear in court, leading to an arrest warrant being issued for Christopher Jones.

As there was a real Christopher Jones in South London anarchist circles, this may well have led to him being arrested and charged. It could also lead to the address he gave being visited by police looking to arrest Jones.

Asked about legal advice, AFJ says that activists usually used solicitors who they knew and trusted to advise correctly. If they were arrested together, they often used the same lawyer. They would refuse to use the duty solicitor at the police station as duty solicitors were felt to be more sympathetic to the police and wouldn’t have the specialist knowledge required to defend activists.

Andy Coles says he called the ‘Hunt Saboteurs Association solicitor’. The Inquiry is keen to know if police officers were part of groups that received legal advice together, as this would breach the principle of clients having confidential contact with their lawyers. However, AFJ doesn’t remember Coles being in any meetings with lawyers.

Miscarriage of Justice?

AFJ was convicted of aggravated trespass and obstructing a police officer. He was fined £175. AFJ asks the Inquiry to consider whether Coles’s involvement means his conviction should be reviewed.

Hudson establishes that Coles did not encourage AFJ, he may have driven him but if he hadn’t someone else would have. AFJ was an experienced sab who ran at the hunt. Taking all this into account, why would the conviction be unsafe?

But the point of reviewing convictions isn’t just about the person’s guilt, it’s about whether they received a fair trial. If the prosecution fails to give the defence all evidence – and with Coles’s secret reports of the day, they most certainly did – then the court was not following its own processes to ensure a fair trial.

The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting asks about AFJ’s actions on the day he was arrested. He seems curious to work out if it was AFJ’s intention not just to demonstrate this opposition to the increased criminalisation of protest and much more, but also to disrupt the fox-hunting. AFJ says it was both. It’s unclear what this means for the safety of his conviction.

AFJ says it’s something he would like ‘further discussion’ about.

The events of 19 November 1994 were AFJ’s final involvement in activism. He had not been involved with anything for a while before that. Despite this, he is recorded in January 1993, April 1993, September 1993 and February 1997 in documents by Operation Wheel Brace, the Met’s investigation into ‘criminally active animal extremists’.

‘I was never an animal extremist. That’s a mischaracterisation of my views and motivations.

I would question whether the amount of criminality justified the amount of resource that was put into monitoring activities of people like myself.’

AFJ says that the spycops deceiving women into relationships is very concerning. They need to abide by strict guidelines. They have to have accountability.

With that, the questioning ends. Mitting thanks AFJ profusely:

‘You have given evidence frankly about what you did. You have also given very helpful evidence about what occurred 30-ish years ago and your participation in it, and you have given me evidence which will go some way to assisting me to determine whether or not the deployment of undercover officers into groups such as the one that you belonged to was justified or not.’

Animal rights activist Paul Gravett returned for a second appearance at the Inquiry. He previously appeared on 13 November 2024, but was only asked to give evidence about HN10 Bob Lambert’s infiltration of London Greenpeace and involvement in an incendiary device campaign that aimed to dissuade Debenhams department stores from selling fur.

Gravett was also reported on by a number of other Special Demonstration Squad officers, including HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’, HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’, and HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ who stole the identity of Kaden Blake’s brother, Matthew Rayner, to create his undercover persona.

The real name of HN1 is not being disclosed to any of his victims, not even the woman he deceived into a sexual relationship during his deployment. This is despite the Inquiry’s earlier promises that these women would always be given the real name of the spycops who abused their rights in this way.

Although Gravett provided a witness statement and over 40 exhibits to the Inquiry last year, but despite the Inquiry’s policies and assurances, at the tmie of writng these still have not been published. However, you can read the transcript of this second hearing.

He was questioned by John Warrington, Deputy First Junior Counsel to the Inquiry.

RECAP

This was the Monday of the ninth week of ‘Tranche 2 Phase 2’, the new round of hearings of the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI). This Phase mainly concentrates on examining the animal rights-focused activities of the Metropolitan Police’s secret political unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, from 1983-92.

The UCPI is an independent, judge-led inquiry into undercover policing in England and Wales. Its main focus is the activity of two units who deployed long-term undercover officers into a variety of political groups; the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS, 1968-2008) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU, 1999-2011). Spycops from these units lived as activists for years at a time, spying on more than 1,000 groups.

Click here for the day’s page on the Inquiry website which should have video, transcripts and written evidence.

ISLINGTON ANIMAL RIGHTS

Gravett was involved in the Islington Animal Rights group, later known as the Hackney and Islington Animal Rights campaign (HIARC), from its formation in 1982 until its disbanding in 1993.

HN5 John Dines described Gravett and Denise Bennett as two of the ‘leading members’ of the group in a 1990 report, a description which Gravett accepts. He says he got more involved in things like producing the group’s newsletter towards the end of the 1980s.

All of HIARC’s activities were lawful. They did a lot of leafleting locally, and attended animal rights demos together. They held monthly public meetings, and also planning meetings (sometimes at the same venue, sometimes at people’s homes). Gravett recalls that most of the group had jobs. He and other members took part in various kinds of direct action, but as individuals, not as HIARC.

The Inquiry heard about some of the demos the group organised. HN10 Bob Lambert had reported that the group organised an entirely peaceful demo outside a central London hotel in September 1986 following reports of mistreatment of a cat. In his report, Lambert said that although most of those who attended were supporters of Animal Aid, ‘a handful of ALF activists were also in attendance’.

In this first report, Lambert claimed that they discussed committing criminal damage at the hotel. Gravett says he does not remember this.

In another report, detailing a HIARC meeting held shortly after this demo, Lambert claimed that Bennett asked everyone else to write letters of complaint and phone the hotel to jam its switchboard. Gravett remembers that they often wrote letters of complaint, but doesn’t recall anything about jamming the switchboard.

He points out that Lambert lied a lot in his reports, and did in fact invite people like Bennett to go out fly-posting with him.

A third Lambert report, dated 1988, lists five pickets planned by the group over the following month. Gravett points out that none of these resulted in arrests.

By 1988, the group was demonstrating at a variety of places, including fur shops, fried chicken outlets and butchers’ shops. The only trouble that ever occurred was when the activists were attacked – for example a woman was head-butted by one of the butchers.

Gravett has a clear memory of another incident, which took place at the same location in May 1988:

‘someone trying to chuck a bucket of blood over you is not something you really forget, even 30 or 40 years later’

HN5 John Dines wrote in his reports about protestors from HIARC repeatedly being on the ‘receiving end of physical attack’ from members of staff at Maldor Furs in Hackney. Gravett remembers that the police were generally very unsympathetic when animal rights activists reported such attacks, and didn’t usually take action against those responsible.

In his reports, Lambert seems to have been keen to highlight any disagreements within groups. He claimed that Gravett was often ‘out on a limb’ because of his ‘uncompromising stance on direct action’, and that one couple of ‘former ALF activists’, disillusioned with the type of actions being taken against the fur trade, resigned from HIARC in early 1988 as a result.

Gravett is clear that there were a ‘variety of opinions’ within HIARC, but says they tended to try to work together on the local issues they could agree on. He says the two individuals named in Lambert’s reports were only part of the group for a short time, and moved on to a different group.

He denies that there was a push to make the group more supportive of, or involved in, direct action at this time. He does remember the group discussing (and agreeing to support) animal rights prisoners. One such prisoner was Geoff Sheppard, a good friend of Gravett’s who was imprisoned thanks to a wrongful conviction secured by Lambert.

Gravett explained that local laboratory Biorex, infamous for carrying out animal experimentation, closed down in 1989. It had been a focus for the group’s campaigning efforts, and after it closed ‘the group started to lose its direction a bit’.

LONDON BOOTS ACTION GROUP

In 1991, HN5 John Dines reported that Gravett was planning to set up a new grass-roots campaigning group, with a focus: London Boots Action Group (LBAG). HN2 Andy Coles attended the inaugural meeting that November. HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ was also involved from the outset.

Gravett explains that this group used ‘civil disobedience’ tactics with the aim of persuading the public not to buy from Boots and therefore reducing the company’s profits.

They held pickets outside the Camden Town branch of Boots every single Sunday, and at other branches mosrt Saturdays, handing out leaflets. These were usually entirely peaceful demos. Arrests were uncommon, but sometimes happened for things like obstruction of the highway.

Those who were part of LBAG sometimes went to other animal rights demos together – the Inquiry was given the example of a demo against live exports at Dover in 1992.

LBAG’s July-August 1992 newsletter was attached to a report by Rayner. On the front page are photographs of six named Boots directors. Gravett cheerfully admits ‘that’s my work’, and points out that these details were publicly available.

John Warrington, the Inquiry’s barrister, asked why these men’s details were included in the group’s newsletter. Gravett explained that these were the men responsible for running Boots, and therefore for the way animals were being abused. He says it was:

‘important to know who is responsible for the company’s actions. There are people behind it. It’s not a faceless, vast faceless corporation. There are real people there. But also you have to put it in context that this was to publicise a picket of the Boots Annual General Meeting.’

Warrington asks if publishing these individual senior directors’ details was done in order to enable people to take personal action against them. Gravett rejects this suggestion and says if LBAG had intended to ‘take it to that level’ they would have found out and published their addresses as well, but never did.

Rayner claimed that the Boots AGM would be ‘a golden opportunity for animal liberationists to express their anger and revulsion’. His next report said that 100 protestors turned up on the day.

They were described as spending two hours hurling abuse outside the meeting. One activist, Brendan McNally, as a Boots shareholder, was able to get inside to ask the company awkward questions.

In 1994, Rayner reported that McNally had now acquired 50 shares in Boots and distributed them so that around 20 activists were able to get inside the AGM that year and disrupt it with a ‘continuous barrage of questions’, despite Boots’ efforts to prevent this.

However, there seems to be no SDS report of the 1993 Boots AGM, even though there was more disruption at this one than at the other two in the years either side of it. Gravett remembers that AGM well, and recalls that ‘tensions were running high’.

Boots had just been forced to withdraw a new drug, Manoplax, due to its side-effects including ‘a significantly increased risk of death’, proving the unreliability of animal testing when it came to safety. The company was having financial difficulties as a result. It wasn’t just the animal rights shareholders who were unhappy with the company and heckling at the meeting.

Gravett remembers that 12-15 LBAG activists were ejected from the meeting, including him. The AGM received a lot of press coverage, and it’s strange that there is no Special Demonstration Squad report of the event. Weren’t ‘Andy Davey’ and ‘Matt Rayner’ there? Gravett says ‘it would be remarkable if they weren’t there’ – this annual demo was the main focus of LBAG.

Anti-Boots demos also took place outside of London. The Inquiry was told about a march and rally in Nottingham which included a visit to the company’s laboratories, where some campaigners reported climbed up to the roof and got inside through a first floor window. Gravett says this wasn’t something that happened at LBAG’s demos in London and was ‘very rare’.

In May 1993, Rayner reported that LBAG were planning a demo at the home of one the Boots directors. Gravett disputes this. ‘Home visits’ were a perfectly lawful style of demonstration in those days, but he says LBAG did not adopt this tactic till much later, when it was part of ‘London Animal Action’ (LAA).

Gravett reminded the Inquiry that ‘Matt Rayner’ did take part in a ‘home visit’ to a director of Selfridges, and Bob Lambert is also known to have attended such demos.

Gravett explained LBAG’s ethos and aims, and what were considered appropriate tactics for the group to discuss and use. The group held lawful demonstrations against Boots, and their policy was to only discuss lawful or ‘low-level unlawful’ activities at LBAG meetings which were after all open to the public, and often included new people.

If any individuals wanted to take other forms of direct action, the expectation was that they would only discuss these with people they knew and trusted, outside of the group’s meetings.

Gravett goes on to explain that LBAG’s ethos was to support ‘ALF-style direct action’ but not carry it out. He explains that this ‘support’ might take the form of carrying reports of ALF actions in the newsletter, putting ALF Supporters Group leaflets on a stall or inviting people like Robin Webb, the ALF press officer, to speak at meetings.

LONDON ANIMAL RIGHTS COALITION

Another new group, the London Animal Rights Coalition (LARC), held at least three meetings in 1994. A police report says 75-100 people attended its inaugural meeting on 13 February of that year.

Robin Lane, ‘EAB’, ‘Andy Davey’ and others are described in reports as ‘organisers’ of LARC. Gravett confirms that ‘Andy Davey’ – now known to be spycop HN2 Andy Coles – was indeed one of the founders of the group.

LARC met in May 1994, then again in August. According to the SDS reports of that month, there was lots of discussion (and some unresolved disagreement) within the animal rights movement about the future of LARC and LBAG. Some people, including Gravett, had suggested amalgamating them, rather than having two separate groups doing pretty much the same thing.

According to one of these reports, someone called ‘Andy’ was said to be responsible for producing both groups’ newsletters, and the proposal to merge the two. Although it described him as ‘SNU’, meaning ‘surname unknown’, the report later suggested that this was in fact ‘Andy Davey’.

LONDON ANIMAL ACTION

Following an LBAG planning meeting in September, Rayner reported that the group had decided to adopt a new name which more accurately reflected their activities and aims: ‘London Animal Action’ (LAA). This enabled them to incorporate the London Anti Fur Campaign (LAFC). The first LAA demo would be a picket of Noble Furs on 3 October.

Like LBAG, LAA held open, public meetings every month. Gravett helped find a venue for these meetings after the Endsleigh Street building was sold off. He also arranged for the group to use the same Caledonian Road office as London Greenpeace.

A year later, LAA was described in a police report as remaining ‘a motivated and coherent group’, with ‘30-50 regular activists’ (and 150 members ‘on paper’).

According to Rayner’s report, the group is well-equipped, and still has over £1000 in the bank thanks to subscriptions and donations at stalls. It goes on to describe LAA as a ‘potent and effective force’ in the national animal rights movement.

Boots sold off its pharmaceutical division to another company in 1995, which meant the end of its direct involvement in vivisection. Gravett attended the AGM that year, to check that this was actually the case. He confirms that on that day, he was approached personally by the Chairman of Boots, James Blyth, who was keen to make sure that this move would signal the end of the animal rights campaigning against the company.

Gravett was LAA’s treasurer. The group’s finances were described in a December 1994 police report as ‘remarkably healthy’. After making a donation to the ALF Supporters Group (ALF-SG) they still had £3000, £1000 of which would be ‘returned to LAFC’.Up to £1000 was to be used for printing and computer equipment (something that many grassroots groups didn’t have in those days).

It is clear that the Inquiry wishes to explore the issue of the ALF-SG’s funding. Gravett is adamant that by the 1990s, there was a very clear policy of keeping the ALF-SG and its funds completely separate from the ALF’s actions.

The donations given by LAA would have been used primarily to support prisoners, and also for the production of the ALF-SG newsletter and promotional materials.

Lots of different people were involved in LAA, and Gravett says that although the group never carried out ‘ALF style direct action’ itself, there was broad support for such activity.
LAA did organise ‘home visits’.

Gravett is then asked about another action, reportedly carried out by two ‘ALF activists’ who poured paint stripper on a car owned by a fur dealer in 1996. Supposedly they saw his address listed in an LAA newsletter. He is asked if LAA ‘appreciated’ that publishing such details meant there was a risk of such actions. Gravett responded by saying that this was someone who made a living out of the ‘torture and murder of millions of animals’.

TARGETING THE ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

In his witness statement, Gravett lists the various animal rights groups that he was involved in, all of which were infiltrated by undercovers. He said:

‘I’m not surprised the State took an interest in the animal rights movement…

‘There were huge vested interests in animal exploitation, in its continuation, and we were a threat to that. I don’t mean a threat in terms of violence; I mean the ideas of animal liberation’

He stood for the idea that animals have inherent worth, and are not merely objects to be used, and pointed out that this species-ist ideology ‘underpins our society’.

Gravett says he was not prepared for the extent to which these groups were infiltrated, spied upon and reported on. He conceded:

‘Maybe I was a little bit naive’

The undercover officers that he knew personally all carried out unlawful actions.

‘These people lived with us and amongst us for years.’

Gravett was involved in organising and setting up many of these groups, and so feels guilty that he therefore played a part in enabling the spycops to make contact with genuine activists.

He is aware of the horrendous impact that both HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ and HN2 Andy Coles had on such people as ‘Jessica’, Geoff Sheppard and Liz Fuller, and says this continues to ‘weigh heavily’ on him.

HN5 JOHN DINES & LONDON GREENPEACE

In the afternoon, the hearing learned more about HN5 John Dines, who stole the identity of John Barker, an eight year old child who died of leukaemia, as the basis of his undercover persona.

Like the other spycops Gravett encountered, Dines formed a sexual relationship with a woman while undercover.

Gravett thinks he first met Dines around 1987 when they were both active in London Greenpeace as well as animal rights and the wider anarchist scene.

In May 1991, Dines reported the details of London Greenpeace’s bank accounts. At the time, Gravett was responsible for the group’s finances – he recalls that Dines was also a signatory on one of these accounts.

Though it’s alarming to think of spycops taking on such a pivotal active position in a group, it had long been standard tradecraft to be treasurer. A few years later, in 1995, a Matt Rayner report (MPS-0741078) gives details of a London Animal Action account on which he and Gravett are signatories.

Gravett remembers that Dines was ‘one of the more active members’ of London Greenpeace. He attended their regular meetings, helped run stalls at events and even organised two benefit gigs for the group in November 1989.

The first-ever Anti-McDonalds Fayre took place in 1988, at Conway Hall. John Dines put his name down on the venue’s ‘contract hire form’ as a contact for the group. Gravett says this illustrates how quickly he had risen to a position of trust.

Gravett did most of the work to organise this first Fayre, but other people helped on the day.

Another exhibit is a list of key tasks, and the names of those responsible for them. Gravett points out that of these six people, two are spies (Dines and a private spy employed by McDonald’s); two are in relationships with spies; and only two (himself and one other activist) are not.

Dines dabbled in graphic design, and it’s possible that he helped produce publicity for the 1989 Fayre.

He produced a flyer for an anti-poll tax demo which took place at Scotland Yard in October 1990, but his most famous poster was the one he made after the 1990 poll tax riot, with the words ‘Disarm Authority – Arm Your Desires’.

How much influence did Dines have in the group? Gravett said Dines was definitely someone whose views would have been listened to:

‘I respected him.’

He recounts how Dines visited him at his home (when he still lived with his parents, and again later), and says they were quite close. Dines entered into a relationship with a friend of Gravett’s, Helen Steel, and socialised with activists.

‘I’d say he was a popular guy. People seemed to like him. He was level-headed, for an anarchist’

Dines often spoke in favour of direct action. He used his van to give people lifts to actions, like grouse shooting in Yorkshire, as well as helping people move house.

In 1989, Dines reported that a booklet called ‘Business as Usual’ was being put together by Gravett and others. This would be similar to the ‘Diary of Action’ that the ALF-SG had previously published, but listing all kinds of direct action rather than being limited to animal rights, and with more incitement than the ALF-SG ever included.

In his witness statement to the Inquiry, Dines has described it as a ‘crude’ and ‘pretty basic’ publication, and claimed his only contribution towards it was the supply of press cuttings relating to animal rights actions. He added that he felt his role was so ‘trivial’ that he didn’t bother telling his SDS managers about it.

This is another example of the now-familiar pattern – spycops who exaggerated things in their police reports because they thought nobody outside the Squad would ever see it, and then understate things in their statements to the Inquiry in order to try to wriggle out of being accountable as liars and agents provocateur.

At the time, the ALF-SG paid for a press cuttings service (which would regularly send press cuttings related to ALF-style actions all over the UK) and Gravett had access to these.

He remembers Dines asking him for this information, and says that as far as he knew, Dines was entirely responsible for the publication – there wasn’t anyone else involved in producing ‘Business As Usual’.

‘He’s underplaying it. As far as I remember, it was his brainchild’

There are other examples of Dines reporting on what Gravett and other activists were doing in those days. Gravett rejects the allegation that he was promoting the use of etching fluid on windows in 1989:

‘He was doing it to make stuff up, wasn’t he? He was just making things up to present people as more threatening or dangerous than they really were. In that case it was me. It could be someone else another time’.

We moved on to hear about the McLibel case, in which the burger corporation sued London Greenpeace for their leaflet ‘What’s Wrong With McDonald’s?’.

Spycop Bob Lambert had helped to write the leaflet, Dines had distributed it, yet neither was named in the writs.

Gravett was served with a writ, but eventually made the decision to back down and apologise to the corporation rather than trying to fight them legally.

Having done this, he was forced to take a deliberate step back from any overt involvement in the campaign, so he is certain that he was not involved in organising public demos in support of the ‘McLibel Two’ (Helen Steel and Dave Morris) in April 1991 – something Dines claimed in his reports.

He believes that it may well have been Dines who organised the demos. Certainly, we’ve seen that Lambert frequently organised things and then wrote police reports attributing his actions to other activists.

Gravett recalls that John Dines was a ‘trusted comrade’, present at many of the conversations and early court hearings. This explains why he was able to report on the legal advice they received and other developments in the case. He had deceived Helen Steel into a relationship and was soon living with her, giving him the closest possible insight into her thinking and strategy for the case.

Later in 1991, some animal rights activists had their homes raided by the police following allegations that there was a plan to contaminate bottles of Lucozade (which was made by pharmaceutical firm SmithKline Beecham in those days).

Gravett remembers that nobody was prosecuted for this. Charges were dropped and some people received compensation as a result. Was it a genuine plan or was it a hoax?

Gravett says he thinks there was ‘some sort of hoax involved’ and believes it’s possible that the whole story was invented by Dines.

Also in 1991, Geoff Sheppard was arrested at a demo outside the Horse and Hound Ball. He was accused of throwing a bag of flour at one of the ball’s attendees, and convicted for this. Gravett knew that he was innocent – the flour had actually been thrown by Dines.
He watched Dines give evidence in court as ‘John Barker’, stating in Sheppard’s defence that someone else had thrown the flour, but not admitting to doing it himself.

Gravett was asked why he and Sheppard didn’t tell the police or Crown Prosecution Service who had actually been responsible. He makes it very clear that neither of them would ever have grassed up a fellow activist.

Like other spycops, Dines included all kinds of sensitive information about people’s personal lives in his reports. One example provided by the Inquiry relates to the accidental death of an animal rights campaigner in 1991. His report lists the names of those who attended her cremation and funeral. This was someone Gravett knew well, and he condemns the reporting as ‘disgusting’.

Dines also reported on Gravett’s personal relationships. Asked how it feels to know that details of his private life had been reported, Gravett says it feels ‘a bit uncomfortable, and ‘a bit invasive’, but points out that

‘what’s happened to me is nothing compared to some of the other people targeted’.

As already mentioned, one of those people was his long-time friend and comrade, Helen Steel, who Dines deceived into a relationship.

Gravett remembers them living together as a couple, happy, affectionate and ‘at ease with each other’. He and his girlfriend went round for dinner at their place.

He also remembers Dines and Steel saying they were going to live in Yorkshire (maybe in late 1991) and going up there to visit them in 1992. However, John wasn’t there. He’d supposedly gone off somewhere, suffering from ‘mental health issues’.

Gravett says he was concerned to hear about this ‘breakdown’, and felt sorry for him. This was someone he liked, trusted and considered a friend.

Dines had presented himself as someone with radical politics, who wanted to change society and take direct action, who got very involved in organising campaigns, and then suddenly vanished.

HN2 ANDY COLES ‘ANDY DAVEY’

Gravett says that in LBAG’s early days he was responsible for running the group and producing its newsletter himself. However, by the summer of 1993, he had a part-time job and was planning to start a university course so decided it would be good to get more people involved. He remembers that Coles offered to help at this time.

He’s recently come across a copy of one of the issues produced by Coles (having lent his own set to a journalist who never returned them). He says it’s noticeable how different it is to the ones he’d made himself in the past. Though it looked a bit more ‘professional’, having been produced on Coles’ computer, Gravett described the content as ‘fairly dull’ and ‘pedestrian’, lacking the ‘buzz’ and ‘excitement’ of earlier issues.

‘If you want to put it in a musical analogy, my newsletter would be more Chumbawamba, his would be more Coldplay!’

In his statement to the Inquiry, Coles has claimed that he didn’t produce this newsletter, but just wrote a couple of articles for it. He says he tried to make them as ‘boring as possible’.

Gravett insists that after the last issue he put out (July-August 1993) Coles was responsible for producing at least four or five issues, and points out that they weren’t well-designed, using an illegibly small font size. But he doesn’t disagree about the content being ‘boring’!

Coles owned a personal computer, and kept it in his bedsit. Gravett recalls spending ‘most of a day’ there in 1994, computerising the LBAG membership list. He says he can’t remember whether Coles suggested doing this, or if he asked Coles to help do it. Either way, the entire list (with everyone’s joining dates as well as their contact info) made it into an SDS report that August.

Coles has also claimed to have been involved in London Animal Action, in producing its newsletter, helping with its membership list, and even organising its meetings. However, his deployment ended soon after LAA began, so Gravett thinks he’s mixed the two groups up.

Coles even produced a report about his alter ego, ‘Andy Davey’, at the end of 1992. Gravett is asked if it’s accurate. He says he was ‘quietish’ in meetings but more talkative outside of them, giving the impression of being ‘too eager to please’.

Also known as ‘Andy Van’, because he had a vehicle, Coles once helped Gravett move house, and so visited two of his homes. He also gave people lifts to protests and actions, which was useful, but the only one Gravett can remember attending was a ‘low level’ action at London Zoo, carried out under the banner of the ‘Animal Liberation Investigation Unit’.

Gravett didn’t particularly like Coles. He remembers feeling sorry for him, and says they weren’t all that close. He didn’t go to the cinema with him or socialise with him in the way that he did with other undercovers that spied on him, and says that, in contrast to HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’, Coles was distinctly unpopular.

When Coles announced his departure from the animal rights scene, he invited people to join him for a farewell dinner in a restaurant. Gravett was the only one who turned up.

THE CREEPY REPUTATION OF ANDY COLES

Gravett remembers meeting ‘Jessica’ when she and a friend came along to a meeting – this was probably in late 1990 or early 1991, he thinks. She was around 18 at the time, and quite shy, but he got to know her and they became friends; he liked her. (Jessica gave evidence to the Inquiry in December.)

Gravett wasn’t aware of her being in a relationship with ‘Andy Van’. However, Geoff Sheppard knew about it because of a letter she’d sent him while he was in prison.

After the undercover policing scandal broke in 2010, activists uncovered more and more spycops. Coles was unmasked in 2017 and Gravett made contact with Jessica via social media. They met up in person to talk more.

He remembers her being in a state of shock, saying ‘he was my first proper boyfriend’ (something he hadn’t realised) and her being ‘very, very, very upset’.

Back in the 1990s, another woman activist had confided in him about an experience that she had with Coles. She’d described him turning up at her flat one night and trying to sexually assault her. This was shocking to Gravett at the time, this kind of behaviour was not normal in the circles they moved in.

‘I regret not knowing more about him at the time’

He says if he’d known about this incident before Coles left, he wouldn’t have gone to the farewell meal, or felt sorry for him at all. As it was, at the time he didn’t feel like he was losing a ‘friend, or anyone who was important to me in that sense’.

He adds that the way Coles has conducted himself

‘since he was outed, has just been totally reprehensible. It’s disgusting’.

HN1 ‘MATT RAYNER’

HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ was deployed from 1992-96, and infiltrated all of the groups that Gravett has spoken about at this hearing.

Gravett remembers exactly when he first encountered HN1. This was 19 November 1991, the very first meeting of LBAG. Gravett has a very clear memory of ‘Matt Rayner’ writing his name down on the attendance sheet along with an unusual location (Salisbury).

He also recalls the same ‘Matt’ turning up to help at an animal rights stall that Gravett was running in Brixton Town Hall, on 7 December 1991.

For the Inquiry, John Warrington asks if he is sure about this, as the Inquiry has some documents which suggest his deployment didn’t start until January 1992. Gravett is extremely clear about the dates.

‘Absolutely, 100%. No doubt.’

When a bank account was opened for London Animal Action in the autumn of 1994 Gravett asked Rayner to be a signatory on it. He continued acting as a signatory until he left the group ‘to go abroad’ in 1996.

‘I got along well with him, I liked him, trusted him. You know, I think we were close friends and we did socialise outside the group as well’.

Gravett recalls trips to the cinema, theatre, and a football match, as well as going to the pub together.

He remembers the farewell party the group held when he left London. They chipped in to buy him a camera, which Gravett presented. He made a speech, and hosted an after-party at his flat. Rayner was there till the morning.

Rayner had a vehicle, and would give people lifts to demos and meetings across the country. Gravett remembers an animal rights meeting in Bristol and a circus protest in Kent.

There was also a trip to Liverpool in 1993, for the Grand National in Aintree. Gravett had talked about this at an LBAG meeting a month earlier, saying there had been a national call-out. He recalls that Rayner’s hand ‘shot up’ to volunteer to go, and a group of eight or nine activists travelled there together in his van.

‘By then he’d been around a long time, one of those people you sort of trusted’.

There was a lot of discussion during the journey about the group’s plans to take direct action in order to disrupt the race. They planned to get inside and run onto the course.

In his witness statement to the Inquiry, Rayner has denied knowing that activists planned to disrupt the race. Gravett says he’s lying. Why else would they be going there?!

Gravett decided he didn’t want to get arrested, and Rayner said he also wanted to avoid arrest as he was driving, so they both stayed outside the track, at the entrance.

There were a number of false starts, then the race was eventually abandoned completely. It’s the only time this has happened due to animal rights protests. It’s been estimated that this action cost the racing / betting industry around £75 million. This was due to the presence of activists from London, who had travelled there in a van provided and paid for by the Special Demonstration Squad.

Those who invaded the course were arrested, but not charged, as what they’d done was only a civil offence. Gravett remembers being in the van with Rayner and another activist, listening to the radio reports and laughing with glee. Gravett has written about the day on his blog.

Gravett didn’t go to demonstrate against the Grand National the following year, but knows that two SDS officers, Rayner and Coles, drove people there. This has been confirmed to him by some of those they drove, and by a woman activist who hosted them locally.

In his witness statement to the Inquiry, Rayner lies about this too, claiming he only went there in 1993.

In 1995, Rayner was arrested in Yorkshire, having travelled there to disrupt grouse-shooting on the ‘Glorious 12th’ of August when the season starts. This time he was driving a car, and its passengers included Gravett and three others from London. They were part of a convoy of dozens of hunt sabs from all over the south of England. Sabs from the north of England were simultaneously targeting grouse-shooting in Cumbria.

Gravett witnessed this arrest, out on the moors. He remembers Rayner getting very involved in ‘a sort of melee’ between the sabs and the local police, quite late in the day. Gravett was the only one of the remaining four who could drive, but he’d never driven this car before. He recalls that it wasn’t easy to reverse off the moor back onto the road, but he managed and drove it to the police station to wait for Rayner’s release.

In his written statement to the Inquiry, Rayner claims that:

(a) because he was the driver, he did not ‘decamp’ from the car
(b) he didn’t get involved in any ‘physical or violent confrontation’
(c) he got ‘caught up in a crowd’, and that everyone present was arrested
(d) he thinks the local police must have driven his car off the moor
(e) he doesn’t know where the activists who he’d given a lift to ended up, or how they got back home to London.

Gravett almost laughs at this series of obvious lies.

He remembers that there was pushing and shoving going on, that Rayner was an active participant in this and it most certainly was a ‘physical’ confrontation. Only a small number of sabs were arrested. He is adamant that they waited for Rayner at the police station and then he drove them back to London very late that night.

GEOFF SHEPPARD’S ARREST

Gravett confirms that he knew fellow animal rights activist Geoff Sheppard well (Sheppard gave evidence to the Inquiry in November 2024, covered in these two reports).

The two had been friends for many years, but Gravett knew nothing about him being in possession of a shotgun or ammunition before he was arrested for this in 1995.

He adds that he wasn’t surprised that Sheppard hadn’t told him about this:

‘He wouldn’t think it right to tell me anything unless I needed to know it’.

He remembers a conversation they’d had years earlier, soon after Sheppard was released from prison in 1990 for his involvement in the Debenhams incendiary device campaign. He said something about being offered a shotgun by someone he’d met inside, but it was a very theoretical conversation; neither of them had any plans to use such an item.

In his statement, Rayner claims that he found out about this shotgun in 1995, and tried (unsuccessfully) to persuade Sheppard to get rid of it. Gravett doesn’t believe this is true.

He points out that Rayner knew what close friends he and Sheppard were, so if he was truly serious about persuading him, he would have spoken to Gravett and asked him to help.

It was Rayner who told Gravett in the summer of 1995 that Sheppard had been arrested. Sheppard was sentenced to a further seven years in prison as a result of this arrest.

Gravett visited him on remand and after sentencing. He thinks Rayner probably visited him too – pointing out that it ‘would have been odd’ if he hadn’t – but they didn’t go to the prison together.

Rayner’s reports also go into detail about Gravett’s love life in 1995. He comments now that the spycops didn’t just report on activists’ personal lives but sometimes interfered in them, including his own.

Gravett first met Liz Fuller in the early days of LBAG. She was quite involved in the group.
He remembers seeing her and Rayner together at a Boots demo in October 1992. He knew for sure that they were a couple in early 1993.

He wasn’t close to them so didn’t know if they lived together or not. Liz has told him they were still together in May 1995, so he believes this sexual relationship with her lasted for more than two years, not the one year Rayner eventually admitted to.

RAYNER’S DEPARTURE WASN’T THE END

The ending of Rayner’s deployment was extremely elaborate and took about 18 months to execute. It began in the summer of 1995 when he said he’d changed jobs and started working for a wine company. A year later, he told a few close friends of his growing disillusionment with activism after being raided by the police and the breakdown of the relationship with his girlfriend.

Then in the autumn of 1996 he said he was moving to Bordeaux, France where his supposed employer had a branch. He undertook a tour of the country saying goodbye to comrades.

After he left, letters arrived from him, postmarked Bordeaux. He suggested to Gravett that he could visit him in France (a possibility noted at the time by Bob Lambert, who by then was an SDS manager) and wrote to him at least three times after leaving London.

Some time later he pretended to move again for work, to Argentina. The letters kept coming.

Gravett says now that he believes these letters, sent from both countries in 1996 and 1997, served various purposes.

‘He was writing to me obviously for the reason that we were close, and he felt he had to do it because it might have seemed strange if he hadn’t. But at the same time those letters were also a method of keeping me under surveillance from afar. And they were also, in them, hints that Special Branch was still watching me.

‘One of them, I think it’s the final one, makes reference to an arrest of some matter with me, non-animal rights’

In that letter posted from Argentina, Rayner said:

‘I was pretty shocked especially when I heard that both you and I think Brendan had been arrested. I haven’t yet heard about what happened at court but obviously I hope you all got off…

‘And what’s this about you being arrested for GBH and mistaken identity? Sounds like you’re becoming a really dangerous person Paul – best you come out here and cool down in Argentina!’

This was a year after Rayner had left London. It’s a lot of effort for the police to go to. Knowing that Rayner was actually a spycop, the details about other arrests do indeed take on a sinister tone and show he was still being watched.

When Gravett first learnt about the existence of the SDS, he wondered about ‘Matt Rayner’. He still had his diaries from that era, which included the dates of his birthday parties, so was able to search for him using this date of birth.

After finding a death certificate for the real Matthew Rayner, he made contact with Liz in 2013 or 2014.

He remembers that ‘she was surprised’.

He had previously found Rayner ‘a very credible person’ and he even stood up for him once, when another activist voiced suspicions about him. He says this person (‘George’) was someone he ‘was inclined not to believe’, who couldn’t provide any evidence to back up their claim that Matt was ‘dodgy’.

Gravett talked about how the impact of finding out that someone he liked and considered a good friend for such a long time was in fact spying on him. He points out that although he now knows the real names of the other undercovers who reported on him, he still doesn’t know the real name of ‘Matt Rayner’. He strongly believes that this should be made public.

HN26 ‘CHRISTINE GREEN’

HN26 used the cover name ‘Christine Green’. Gravett knew her too. She was also very active in LAA, going to demos and meetings. After Rayner left London, Gravett actually asked her to become a signatory on the group’s bank account. He points out that of the five signatories the group had, two were police officers and a third was a private spy.

Green also had a relationship with an activist, albeit one that didn’t follow the trajectory of those of her male colleagues. Thomas Frampton was a hunt sab and, around 1998, drove a coach load of activists to a demo at Hillgrove Farm, a notorious breeder of cats for vivisection.

Gravett knew him, and that he also used the name Joe Tax. He knew that he was in love with Christine, and says ‘it was common knowledge that they were a couple’, and that they often attended LAA meetings together.

Green left the police and is understood to have continued her relationship with Joe as ongoing life partners.

HATEMAIL

There were a few more questions for Gravett before the hearing ended.

Asked how he’d have reacted if he’d discovered at the time that his comrades in the animal rights movement were police officers, he responded:

‘Good question. We’d have thrown them out. I don’t think there would’ve been violence, but they would’ve been excluded’.

He says he obviously can’t speak for everyone, and points out that people’s lives were ‘ruined’ by these undercovers’ actions so it’s impossible to say how everyone would have reacted.

Gravett adds that it’s obvious from the evidence he’s given that he was in routine contact with spycops for most of his adult life, and that their infiltration extended to his private life, not just his public, campaigning life.

He goes on to add that there’s one more issue he raised in his statement, to do with SDS management. In 1994 he had a relationship with a woman activist, which they kept secret, and didn’t tell anyone about. She received an envelope containing a second envelope addressed to him – this contained an anonymous letter signed ‘Friends of the Burger’.

At the time he was nonplussed and had no idea where or who this might have come from. He almost threw it away but is now glad that he didn’t.

He points out that the tone is ‘mocking’, it says ‘long time, no see’ and this, along with the burger reference, has convinced him that it was sent ‘as some sort of sick joke’ by Bob Lambert, who was by then an SDS manager.

He and his partner were both very upset by it at the time.

With his questioning over, Gravett was given the opportunity by his own barrister to add anything else. He urged the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, to allow core participants to see HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ give evidence. He added that even if nobody else is allowed to see him then Liz Fuller, as someone so personally deceived into a relationship by him, should be allowed to.

Mitting says that he will be hearing submissions about it afterwards.

It is as yet still unclear if Gravett will be invited back to give more evidence in Tranche 3 (examining the Special Demonstration Squad 1993-2008), even though he was spied on during this time.

At the Undercover Policing Inquiry, Monday 9 December 2024 was devoted to the evidence of two witnesses, ‘Callum’ and ‘Walter’, who had been involved in hunt saboteur activity in the 1980s.

There were a lot of restrictions on what could be reported in order to protect the identity of the witnesses. They were in the hearing room behind a screen. We’re doing separate reports for them.

RECAP

This was the Monday of the seventh week of ‘Tranche 2 Phase 2’, the new round of hearings of the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI). This Phase mainly concentrates on examining the animal rights-focused activities of the Metropolitan Police’s secret political unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, from 1983-92.

The UCPI is an independent, judge-led inquiry into undercover policing in England and Wales. Its main focus is the activity of two units who deployed long-term undercover officers into a variety of political groups; the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS, 1968-2008) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU, 1999-2011). Spycops from these units lived as activists for years at a time, spying on more than 1,000 groups.

Click here for the day’s page on the Inquiry website which should have video, transcripts and written evidence.

‘WALTER’

After hearing from ‘Callum’ in the morning, the Inquiry took evidence from another hunt saboteur, ‘Walter’, in the afternoon. His voice was modulated to disguise it.

Walter has provided the Inquiry with a lengthy witness statement and 60 exhibits. Despite the Inquiry’s stated policy of publishing documents as soon as a witness gives evidence, and despite it being months since he gave evidence, at the time of writing Walter’s documents are still unpublished.

Junior Counsel Rachel Naylor asked him questions on behalf of the Inquiry.

Walter said he was brought up to care about animals, and to side with the underdog. He recalls attending some meetings in Brighton and learning about the cruelty being done to wild animals by hunting them.

He first went hunt sabbing in 1984 and moved to Lewisham, in South London, the following year. He has been active in a number of different local hunt sab groups over the years, including the Brixton hunt sab group.

Asked about ‘non-violent direct action’, he explained that he means intervening in some way to keep the dogs away from whichever wild animal is being hunted at the time, and help it to escape. He emphasised that sabs would avoid physical confrontation whenever possible. They would use self-defence when it was the ‘only option’.

THE HUNT SABOTEURS ASSOCIATION

As well as local sab groups, he also played an active part in the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA), a national organisation that has existed since 1963. It has always held Annual General Meetings, had an (unpaid) executive committee, and – as even spycop Bob Lambert admitted – had been ‘entirely lawful’ in pursuit of its aims: to promote the use of non-violent direct action to protect wildlife, and lobby for legal change.

The HSA relies on donations from the public, and most local sab groups are self-funded. The HSA’s magazine, Howl, comes out several times a year and is sent to individual subscribers and local groups. HSA membership was and is open to everyone opposed to hunting, not just those actively engaged in sabbing.

TACTICS

The HSA have always published booklets of tactics that could be used to sabotage different types of hunting. Walter provided the Inquiry with a copy of the 1988 edition [UCPI 0000037140].

Many of these tactics involved using things that would put the hounds off the scent of the animal they were chasing – for example: spray bottles of diluted citronella essential oil, things like ‘Anti-Mate’ (an aerosol spray designed to deter the unwanted attention of male dogs), and ‘scent dullers’.

In the early 1980s some sabs experimented with using dried blood to set false trails, or ‘drags’. Sabs also carried hunting horns and whistles, and used calls to distract or misdirect the hounds.

Walter listed some other items that would be used – for example things to tie up gates and slow down the hunters, CB radios (so the sabs could communicate with each other – there were no mobile phones!).

He explained that some of the tools listed – including ‘rookies’, rook scarers – would only be used in limited circumstances. The sabs took care not to do anything that would scare or harm the horses and hounds. The booklet advised hunt sabs to follow the Countryside Code at all times.

It also recommended that sabs:

‘chat to supporters – do not antagonise them… Avoid tactics which do not directly help the hunted animal, such as interfering with the supporters’ cars, etc’.

Walter thinks that was to avoid any ‘flashpoints’ being created, recalling that:

‘sometimes just our presence could be seen as provocative to the hunt’s people’.

The booklet suggests that it’s best to be polite towards the police – ‘annoying them does not help’ – but always take a note of their numbers.

It advises keeping together and walking away if confronted by the hunt’s heavies:

‘running only encourages them (it probably reminds them of the chase!)’

He considered self defence to be acceptable, and believed that you should do whatever you needed to do to get out of a situation safely.

We learnt that ‘pre-beating’ and ‘pre-spraying’ referred to other tactics adopted by sabs, to either encourage wild animals to leave an area before the hunt began, or to lay scents that would distract the dogs when they showed up.

According to Walter, sometimes a press release would go out, for example before the start of the hunting season or before a big event in the calendar (like the Boxing Day meets), but sab groups didn’t usually advertise their regular actions, just report on them afterwards.

As a broad and lawful organisation, there was little in the way of security precautions. In those days the office was usually in someone’s house. Walter admitted:

‘It was very lax, to be honest’

REPORTING ON THE SABS

Much of the hearing was spent examining secret police reports. As we’ve seen in so many other hearings, undercover officers frequently exaggerated activity in order to make it sound like they were spying on serious criminal plotting.

Walter had been reported on by several spycops. One them, HN87 ‘John Lipscomb’ (known as ‘Hippy John’), said that Walter was wary of speaking openly on the phone, and often used public phone boxes. Walter explained that this wasn’t just to protect him, it was sometimes because of the risks faced by people in the hunting community who shared information with him.

Another of the spycops, HN10 Bob Lambert, reported [MPS-0740065] in 1987 that ‘sixteen Animal Liberation Front (ALF) activists’ had met at someone’s home in Kent on 25 January. This report claimed that ‘all present enjoy a dual role’, and that as well as being ‘leading members’ of various local sab groups, are involved in a ‘criminal campaign’.

Walter flatly rejected the suggestion that he was an ALF activist.

According to Lambert’s report, the HSA was virtually bankrupt at this time and those present agreed that its only useful purpose was ‘in terms of publicity’. Walter says that in those (pre-internet) days the organisation served a vital function in terms of communication between the different local groups.

There was mention of a new ‘South East Anti-Hunt Alliance’ being formed. Why was a ‘regional alliance’ needed? Walter said maybe there were ‘some local politics at play there’.

It’s reported that the sabs were planning to combine forces for a ‘joint hit’ on the ‘infamous Crawley and Horsham Hunt’, as a way to counter the increasing violence of its hired heavies. The date of this coordinated action (28 February 1987) would only be communicated by word of mouth, so the hunt and police were taken by surprise.

Walter is clear that entering into pitched battles is not what sabbing was about, although in the case of this, known as ‘the most volatile hunt in the South’, sabs had to be ready to defend themselves.

In this report Lambert admitted that however ‘determined’ the sabs are, they

‘are unlikely ever to initiate violence, and, secretly, would be extremely pleased to encounter no opposition on the day in question’

In the report Lambert submitted after the event it is clear that there was no violence on the day. Walter recalls that the sabs were all kept away from the hunt by the police (who deployed a roadblock and even a helicopter against the sabs’ convoy of vehicles).

In another report [MPS-0740567], HN87 John Lipscomb alleges that Walter has drawn up a list of names and phone numbers of three individuals attached to the British Field Sports Society and distributed this to other animal rights activists ‘for special attention’. Walter says this is simply not true. He was ‘surprised’ to see this allegation amongst the material disclosed to him by the Inquiry.

The report specifies what is meant by ‘special attention’:

‘making abusive telephone calls, sending unsolicited mail and in some instances, causing criminal damage to property’

Walter recalls that this went both ways – hunt supporters often did these things to hunt sab groups.

THE LEGENDARY BRIXTON HUNT SABS

Walter was involved with the Brixton hunt sab group from 1992-1997. He remembers them as ‘legendary’.

It’s clear that they successfully created a legend about themselves and their reputation often went before them. He says they were effective and ‘tactically aware’ – they tried to get to the hounds – rather than just trouble-makers.

The Inquiry has already heard from Brixton hunt sab ‘AFJ’ that the group didn’t ‘proactively pursue’ violence, but were prepared to deal with it if it erupted. Walter says that’s a fair description, the Brixton sabs were ‘robust’.

According to another of the spycops, HN2 Andy Coles, the Brixton group had a ‘fearsome reputation for being violent’. Walter says they weren’t necessarily violent but they did have ‘a fearsome reputation’ and that was that they were ‘not to be messed with’.

Coles has also accused the HSA of being a public order problem and involved in criminality. Walter strongly rejected this suggestion.

(We have illustrated this report with photographs by renowned documentary photographer Andrew Testa, who spent time in the field with the Brixton sab group.)

HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ also reported on hunt sabs in this period, and mentioned confrontations taking place between the ‘harder end’ of the movement and terriermen.

Walter says that there was a mixture of people involved in hunt sabbing. Terriermen considered that they had a ‘carte blanche’ to do what they liked to sabs (and foxes) and the police used to turn a blind eye.

Walter says that the people he knew were prepared to defend themselves, but did not go out looking for violence:

‘at the end of the day they’re there to save the fox’

He recalls ‘running around in fields all day’, getting wet and covered in mud, and points out that nobody joined hunt sab groups and went through all that just in the hope of a punch-up.

DID HUNT SABBING OFFER A ‘GATEWAY’ TO THE ALF?

The Inquiry moved on to examine the relationship between hunt sabs and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in more detail.

In one report [MPS-0742170] Lambert has written about an incendiary attack on the home of a prominent member of the Crawley and Horsham hunt, and claimed that all such criminal actions against hunters were the work of hunt sabs, even if carried out under the name of the ALF or the ‘Anti Hunt Militia’.

Walter remembers seeing this attack reported in the media at the time (December 1986). He had no idea who was responsible, and doesn’t see how Bob Lambert could have known either.

This same incident is also mentioned in the other 1987 Lambert report we saw earlier [MPS-0740065]. It contains the names of two individuals who Lambert suspects of being involved. According to him, they were keen to see more actions of this kind, and circulated the addresses of other possible targets. One of the hunt’s heavies is said to be considered a ‘prime target for some form of criminal damage’.

However, Walter was at this meeting, and says he was not aware of people talking about targeting this man’s home address, and if he had, ‘would not have been comfortable’ it.

He goes on to say that he doesn’t remember such addresses and details being circulated at any meeting he attended, or any discussion of committing criminal damage at the Parham racecourse used by the hunt for their ‘point to point’ races. He doesn’t know of anyone operating under the banner of the ALF.

WALTER’S HOUSE

HN87 John Lipscomb had provided a ‘pen portrait’ of Walter in an August 1988 report [MPS-0742609].

This describes him as ‘one of the most respected animal rights activists in South East London’, and claims he is involved in various other movements, ‘notably squatting’.

Walter isn’t sure why it says this. His house had been a squat in the past, but when he lived there it was managed by a housing association. He knew a fair few squatters, but wasn’t one himself. Again, this seems like a spycop’s exaggeration and lies to make activists seem more detached from mainstream society and acting on the fringes of the law.

Lipscomb’s report also claims that his house is ‘regarded as an open house to activists requiring accommodation’, and ‘has the potential for operating as an ALF cell on its own, as three of its occupants are active campaigners’.

Walter rejects this allegation – yes, it was a vegan household, and they sometimes hosted activists from overseas, but nobody was doing ALF actions from there.

Lipscomb also claimed [MPS-0744157] that it was ‘common practice’ for hunt sabs to give false details to the police if they were stopped or arrested, and they would often use the addresses of Walter’s house and a squat in Sudbourne Road, Brixton for this. Walter says they were generally happy for people to use their address in order to get bail, but this wasn’t as organised (with lists of names being provided to the houses) as Lipscomb alleged.

In the SDS Annual Report of 1995-96 [MPS-0728967], there’s a mention of ‘organised hunt sabotage’ and a special police unit called the Animal Rights National Index. It says the ‘penetration’ of hunt sab groups ‘continues to pay dividends’ and suggests that the intelligence gathered is useful for other police forces, as well as for identifying ALF activists.

Walter says he is aware that the SDS used these reports to try to justify their funding for the following year – this is one of the main reasons they were written. He says it was no secret that the police took an interest in hunt sabs.

HORSE AND HOUND BALL

The Inquiry was then told about a demo at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London, where the annual Horse and Hound Ball was being held, on 5 March 1992.

According to a report by HN2 Andy Coles [MPS-0730957], 80-100 people turned up to demonstrate their opposition to hunting. He claimed the demo had been organised by the HSA. Walter says it definitely wasn’t, as they focussed on direct action, i.e. hunt sabbing, not this kind of demo.

He says he took part in some demos at these balls but is not sure if he was at this particular one. He is surprised at the high number of people who are said to have attended. According to the report, several bags of flour were thrown towards attendees of the ball. There were some scuffles and some of the activists (including ‘Jessica’ and Andrea McGann) were arrested.

The next Coles report [MPS-0742251] is of a meeting held at the end of April to prepare for the forthcoming trial of Jessica and one other person. Besides these two defendants, another five people are listed as attending, including Walter, although he doesn’t remember being there then.

In his witness statement [UCPI 0000035074] Coles claims that the group ‘spent the evening working out how best to prepare a defence’ and discussed:

‘how to concoct matching stories of what they could claim to be eye witness testimony where they could contradict police evidence and establish both activists’ innocence of the charges’

Coles says he told the group that he hadn’t seen anything, as he’d been injured himself (hit with a police radio) so was able to avoid acting as a defence witness in the court case.

Walter points out the inconsistencies in Coles’s story – for example, if there had been a lawyer present, it’s highly unlikely that anyone would have talked about concocting false evidence, and in any case this wasn’t commonly done.

CRIMINAL INJUSTICE ACT

Andy Coles was arrested at a hunt sab at Good Easter in Essex, just a few weeks after the enactment of the Criminal Justice Act & Public Order Act in November 1994.

This new law criminalised a lot of sab activity – it became a criminal offence to trespass if interfering with a landowner’s activity, and an offence to fail to leave land when directed to do so.

Walter recalls that the Essex police had a reputation for being particularly ‘anti-sab’ so it was assumed that they would be keen to enforce the new Act at the earliest opportunity.

The sabs wanted to show that they planned to continue sabbing and would not be deterred by the introduction of the new crime of ‘aggravated trespass’. They anticipated violence from the hunt and obstruction from the police, and wanted to turn up in mass numbers.

We saw the ‘intelligence’ submitted by Coles after the event [MPS-0745541]. Walter doesn’t agree entirely with its contents: he says the mood was ‘expectant’ rather than ‘confrontational’, and thinks the number of sabs reported as attending (22 from Brixton plus another 350) is inaccurate.

According to the report, Walter was driving one of the Brixton sabs’ vehicles that day. Coles has also claimed that he was driving a Land Rover belonging to the group. Walter says they had a number of Land Rovers, so this is possibly true.

Walter recalls that the Brixton sabs covered their vehicles’ windows with grilles to stop them being broken by hunt supporters. Despite having this small fleet, they often had more people wanting to go out than they had spaces for.

According to the report, the Brixton sabs got out of their vehicle at some point and were arrested almost immediately, among them ‘AFJ’ (who gave evidence to the Inquiry the week after Walter). Walter says on the day ‘it was just ridiculous’, with people getting nicked as soon as they left the highway.

The report claims that two of the sabs had beaten a police officer and taken his telescopic truncheon off him. Walter says that this doesn’t sound accurate and he remembers things differently:

‘People were very much thrown by the level of aggression from the police. There wasn’t any pretence of warning going on. They had their truncheons out straight away and were hitting people all over the legs and upper body all the time. It certainly wasn’t my experience that people were singling officers out. Because ultimately they are the police. They are always going to win in those sorts of situations.’

Spycop Andy Coles was arrested that day under his false name of Andy Davey. He gave a false address (Plato Road) as well as a false false name (Chris Jones)!

Walter is asked if he knew the real Chris Jones (who worked at 56a Info-shop) at the time?

‘I may have known them but I wouldn’t have known necessarily their surname’

He recalls that the Brixton sabs faced ‘relentless police interest’, and arrests were almost a ‘daily occurrence’.

‘HIPPY JOHN’ THE SPYCOP

HN87 John Lipscomb was deployed from June 1987 to November 1990. Most of those he spied on knew him as ‘Hippy John’. He went out sabbing with Walter’s local group, and sometimes was among those from the group who slept over at Walter’s house the night before. Walter says most of those involved were in their late teens to early 20s (HN87 was in his 30s).

Asked about the impact this undercover had on his sab group, Walter recalls him putting a vehicle out of action, ‘either by ineptitude or by design’, by borrowing it to take to Cropredy Folk Festival and not topping up its oil and water.

Walter explains that ‘it was useful to have drivers’. It tended to be the older members of the group who drove, as they were more likely to have licences, and the insurance only covered over-25s.

Asked if Lipscomb just drove or also took part in sabbing, Walter replied that he thinks it was both.

The undercover boasted of sitting in a fox-hole and blocking the terriermen from reaching the fox, in order to impress Walter. It seems to have worked – Walter agrees this was a brave thing to do.

He says that another sab, someone from Dartford, had a very close, platonic, friendship with ‘Hippy John’ and was ‘devastated’ to discover that this man had in fact been spying on him. According to Walter, that person is now far less ‘easy going’ than he used to be, and far more suspicious of people.

Walter isn’t sure about how much time ‘Hippy John’ spent at the Sudbourne Road squat in Brixton, or how often he slept there.

Asked if he knows of Lipscomb having sexual relationships while undercover, he mentions ‘ELQ’, a woman who was in her early 20s back then. Walter says she was a ‘positive member of the group’, and a good friend of ‘Hippy John’.

Walter reached out to her in the last year for what he describes as ‘a very awkward conversation’. He was concerned that she might still have been unaware of Lipscomb’s true identity, and suspected that they may have been more than just friends. She confirmed that Lipscomb slept over at her house, but he still doesn’t know if anything more happened between them.

Walter says there were various social situations when Lipscomb ‘seemed to be with certain individuals in the group’ – mostly young women – but he doesn’t know for sure what happened between them.

He goes on to add that there were rumours about John and one particularly young woman, but he never spoke to her about these at the time. He recalls that she was very young, maybe under 16, and there were issues around taking her out sabbing, and the need for some form of parental consent.

CREEPY COLES

Then there’s HN2 Andy Coles, undercover as ‘Andy Davey’ but known as ‘Andy Van’ by most of the sabs.

Coles claims that he was ‘close friends’ with Walter. Walter says he struggles to recognise him from any of the numerous published pictures.

He’s aware that ‘Andy Van’ existed but only has a ‘sketchy’ recollection of him and finds it hard to think of any memories. He says the Brixton sabs were quite cliquey, and Andy was not in their clique.

He recalls hearing about Coles driving when some chickens were liberated, and the van being stopped by the police but then let go. This prompted some discussion about how lucky the activists involved were.

He says it was very rare that they ever heard about illegal activity committed by activists. He knew that Andy was the driver but not much else about his role in it. He didn’t realise that Jessica was involved in that liberation action until more recently.

He knew Jessica from around 1991 onwards. He remembers that she was friends with someone that he knew well.

Walter was asked how well he knew her in 1992-1993, and if he knew about her being in a relationship with ‘Andy Van’.

He repeated that he wasn’t in the habit of discussing people’s relationships. His clique was ‘rather insular’ and he didn’t tend to socialise much outside of it. He says he was a ‘bit aloof’ and didn’t tend to know much about anyone’s relationship status.

About Coles, he recalls that there were:

‘a number of people who basically thought he was a bit creepy and were uncomfortable around him’.

One of these was Andrea McGann.

After the Inquiry finished asking him questions, his own lawyer, James Wood KC, had a few more. In response, Walter was able to confirm that ‘Andy Van’ also used his own van for sabbing, and took other people in it. But on 19 November 1994, the date when ‘AFJ’ and Coles were both arrested, he drove a vehicle belonging to the Brixton hunt sab group.

OTHER UNDERCOVERS

The Inquiry also heard about HN5 John Dines, who used the cover name ‘John Barker’ (deployed 1987-1991). Walter has provided a photo that shows him at a hunt. He is able to describe his physical build and ‘statement’ haircut.

Walter doesn’t remember seeing Dines defend himself physically, but remembers that hunt supporters tended to avoid him ‘because he looked like he could defend himself’.

Walter also remembers HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ (deployed 1991-1996). He doesn’t know if Rayner or Dines drove sabs around as they were involved in other groups, not his.

Finally, he also remembers HN26 ‘Christine Green’ (deployed 1995-1999), both as a ‘fellow sab’ and as the partner of a hunt sab who was a friend of his.

He knew that she was in a relationship with Thomas Frampton (also known as Joe Tax) and recalls them turning up together. He thinks this may have been in late 1996, but isn’t certain. He remembers her asking people lots of questions:

‘She was always inquisitive.’

He described her taking an active part in sabbing as part of the West London sab group, and doesn’t think she stood out much or would have had much impact on the actions of this group.

‘Christine Green’ was involved in a controversial raid at Cross Hill mink farm in the New Forest in August 1998. In 2018, the Met apologised to Hampshire police for letting it go ahead and withholding details of those responsible in order to protect Green. Green, in turn, says it’s ‘scandalous’ of the Met to identify her but not the superior officers who did the things they’re apologising for.

Walter heard about ‘Bob Robinson’ – spycop HN10 Bob Lambert – many years ago, and recognised him as someone who had been sabbing. Once he’d been made aware of Lambert’s true identity, he and others quickly realised that there were likely to be other officers from the spycops units who’d infiltrated hunt sab groups.

He was surprised to learn of the extent of this police operation. He has now seen how much information about him (including details of his employment, his shift patterns etc) was collected and recorded.

He believes that he was ‘on the right side of history’ and this is ‘an outrage’; he’s angrier now than he was before.

THE BRITISH ESTABLISHMENT

The Inquiry has heard a lot about the Crawley and Horsham Hunt and how it operated, and how violent it was towards hunt sabs. Walter recalls them hiring thugs from the local rugby club to act as ‘security’ for them. He wryly noted:

‘It was open season on saboteurs’

He recalls that the senior Master of this hunt was an extremely influential member of the Establishment, a personal friend of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and a senior member of the Freemasons.

He knows that Thatcher took a great deal of interest in the work of Special Branch and he wants to know if she was involved in the tasking of the spycops at all. It strikes him that the hunt sabs were disrupting a favourite hobby of many of her friends.

The spying also affected Walter personally. It’s long been established that every constabulary’s Special Branch passed personal details of ‘subversives’ to secret employment blacklisting organisations. This wasn’t police upholding the law, it was police breaking the law to maximise corporate profit.

When the largest such organisation, the Economic League, was uncovered in the early 1990s, the list of people that had been blacklisted became known. Walter was shown the list by investigative journalist Paul Foot – his name was on it.

He recalls going for an interview for a librarian role in the 1980s and being asked about his views on hunting. This seemed suspicious at the time, and he has wondered since about Special Branch’s links with the hunting fraternity and their involvement in blacklisting.

He wasn’t offered the job – he says there ‘was a breakdown in trust’ and he walked out of the interview.

He goes on to say that as hunt saboteurs, they always knew that ‘two tier policing’ existed. Hunt sabs were ‘vilified by the Establishment’, frequently attacked, and routinely arrested by the police. The spycops witnessed a great deal of violence suffered by sabs and other activists and did nothing to challenge it.

He talked about the ‘disgusting’ behaviour of the police, and pays tribute to all his fellow hunt sabs, who he calls ‘the bravest, most ingenious, genuine people’.

He went on, even more strongly:

‘The injustice, the rape, and the abuse that the police carried out undercover is a disgrace, one they never thought they would have to answer for.’

Ahead of three days of questioning spycop HN2 Andy Coles, the Undercover Policing Inquiry spent a day taking evidence from ‘Jessica‘ who Coles groomed into a year-long relationship when she was a vulnerable teenage animal rights activist in the 1990s.

Over the past few weeks, a lot of evidence has been held back due to privacy issues, but Jessica insisted that an audio stream of her evidence be made publicly available to the public, so you can hear both the morning and afternoon sessions on YouTube.

She did not ask for any of the painful details to be held back, because she wants to ensure that there are no restrictions on the evidence given by Coles. He does not deserve and should not get privacy protection when he gives his evidence.

‘Jessica’ was questioned by Emma Gargitter for the Inquiry. She has produced a written statement [UCPI 37092] which was introduced into the evidence.

RECAP

This was the Thursday of the seventh week of ‘Tranche 2 Phase 2’, the new round of hearings of the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI). This Phase mainly concentrates on examining the animal rights-focused activities of the Metropolitan Police’s secret political unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, from 1983-92.

The UCPI is an independent, judge-led inquiry into undercover policing in England and Wales. Its main focus is the activity of two units who deployed long-term undercover officers into a variety of political groups; the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS, 1968-2008) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU, 1999-2011).

Spycops from these units lived as activists for years at a time, spying on more than 1,000 groups.

Click here for the day’s video, transcripts and written evidence

EARLY LIFE

Emma Gargitter began with questions about Jessica’s early life and involvement in animal welfare. She was adopted as a baby and she was bullied as a result. She recalled how every time she fell out with her friend he would bring it up, saying:

‘what’s wrong with you, even your own mother didn’t want you.’

We were shown a Special Branch report about Jessica from after she met Coles that describes her as

‘first coming to the attention of this Branch in June 1992 when secret information received, reported she is an animal activist.’

That same report notes that they had tried, and failed, to trace her birth details. It was clearly very distressing to her that they tried to do this.

She had an older brother who was killed tragically by a drunk driver while out on his bike. She was 11 years old.

‘It changed everything for all of us… my family was never the same. It destroyed our family…and I had to find my own way through that… Kids can be horrible. I was then bullied because my brother had died.’

Gargitter asked how well 11-year-old Jessica was able to find her own way through that. Jessica replied that, up until more recently, she thought she had kind of done OK. But looking forward to events when she met Coles, she realises how damaged she was.

Would teenage Jessica have appeared vulnerable or more robust? She said that at the time she thought she appeared quite OK. She had learnt that if you seem weak you get bullied more, so she would pretend things didn’t bother her, but looking back she says,

‘I don’t think I was fooling anybody.’

Following the death of her brother she suffered a series of family bereavements that made her very insecure:

‘I didn’t know who would be next. I thought I would die at the same age my brother had. I didn’t want to get close to people because it would be worse when they died. That was my attitude.’

Then she had a breakdown in college. She described suffering from severe social anxiety, she couldn’t go into a room if there were too many people there, and then she was humiliated by a maths teacher for answering a question too quietly.

That she was bullied by an adult was just too much. She stopped going to classes and they threatened to kick her out of school, so she went to the doctor and was given medication. She managed to finish school, but she needed that help.

ANIMAL RIGHTS & HUNT SABBING

Jessica explained that she had lots of pets as a child and she started volunteering at weekends and after school at an animal rescue centre when she was about 13.

She would go to demos with people from the rescue centre and heard people from groups like the British Union Against Vivisection (now known as Cruelty Free International) speak at those demonstrations.

She had seen leaflets from the Hunt Saboteurs Association about hunting and she thought it was appalling. She went hunt sabbing for the first time when she was 13 or 14, to a Boxing Day hunt meet.

She was by far the youngest person there, and she didn’t enjoy it. She felt sick, thinking something was going to get killed, and she was angry at these people who were hell bent on ripping some defenceless animal to bits. Saving that animal was an immediate and worthwhile thing.

After the hunt, the other sabs told her she shouldn’t come back until she was a bit older:

‘No one would take responsibility for me… I was maybe a bit lairy… I had a lot to say for myself.’

However, she returned to sabbing when she was 17 or 18, through her involvement in the Islington Animal Rights Group. She learned to drive when she was 17 and saved up for a car. She had a red Mini and she would pick people up to go sabbing. If there was no one else going she would go alone. Once she and just one other person sabbed the Surrey Union hunt.

In the beginning they used citronella in aerosols or spray bottles to mask the fox’s scent. You would see where the animal ran and then spray across the track to confuse the hounds and give the fox a chance to get away. They also had hunting horns, and the ‘gizmo’ that would play the sound of hounds in cry:

‘You could play it in a field and the whole pack would come running.’

The reaction of the hunters was not good. There was a lot of violence and she has been in quite a few scrapes. Just being there could lead to unprovoked attacks. The worst threat was the riders riding hard at you. One particular rider could make her horse kick, and she would make it rear up and kick people. Jessica saw one woman have her arm broken like that.

One of her friends was ridden down and taken away in an ambulance with broken ribs. The Surry Union hunt master was charged with ABH for riding someone down and causing lacerations to his head. There were a lot of injuries. This was also around the time Mike Hill was killed. The threat was always there.

She pointed out that the sabs never carried weapons. You knew you would be stopped and searched by police, and anything that could be considered a weapon would be taken away.

‘It really wasn’t us who caused it. It got in the way of sabbing. You didn’t want to be fighting with somebody while the hounds were killing.’

Q. Did you ever see a sab react?

‘Yes, I’ve responded myself.’

She explained that the last thing any of them would do is to go out intentionally looking for it, but that just standing there and letting yourself be hit made it worse. She had a friend who was a pacifist and he got a kicking every time.

Gargitter then asked about the Brixton hunt sabs. Coles reported that Brixton had a reputation for being violent. Were they more robust defending themselves?

Jessica said that they weren’t violent. It was mostly about numbers: there were a lot of them, they were city people and they wouldn’t be pushed around. She explained that a lot of it was about reputation.

‘We used to say “what time are Brixton going to get here?” because that would make the hunt worry.’

On a mass hit – where several different sab groups went to the same hunt – you’d get a lot of people showing up and they were all supposedly ‘Brixton’.

HN87 ‘John Lipscomb’ described Brixton sabs damaging hunters’ vehicles. Jessica never saw or knew about anything like that.

SPYCOPS – HN1 ‘MATT RAYNER’

Jessica says she had good friends in the West London hunt sab group, and would sometimes go out sabbing with them. HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ (real name restricted) usually went out sabbing with them too. She remembers being driven in his van, and that he was known by the nickname ‘Chiswick’, but she doesn’t recall anything specific that he did.

Her address book from this time contains Rayner’s name and number. She thinks she probably got his details in order to arrange to be picked up for hut sabs, but is not sure that she ever called him.

She also knew him from London Boots Action Group pickets, handing out leaflets and holding the banner. He wasn’t memorable, he was just one of the group, but she did recall being told not to trust him once. Nothing specific, just ‘be careful, don’t trust him’.

She doesn’t recall thinking he was a police officer, just ‘dodgy’. She thinks she even called him that to his face once. She doesn’t believe he was ever confronted with the suspicion, and the longer he was there, with time, it died down.

She was away working in France when Rayner drove a vanload of animal rights activists to the Grand National horse race. Despite many other years trying, this is the one time activists actually stopped the race – all thanks to a spycop being an agent provocateur!

She also describes some other chicken raids (e.g. Leyden Street where people ran in during a demo and grabbed chickens), saying that both Rayner and Coles may have been involved in these events. Jessica wasn’t involved herself, but people called her to help rehome the chickens.

HN26 ‘CHRISTINE GREEN’

Jessica also came into contact with HN26 ‘Christine Green’ (real name restricted), but not until 2017, after she found out about Coles. Joe Tax (Christine’s partner) was a close friend of Jessica’s and she went to see him to talk about what she had discovered. She hadn’t seen him in years.

She had heard, from other hunt sabs, that Joe and his girlfriend had split up and he’d started a new relationship with a woman who then moved to Spain. Joe went to Spain to find her in around 1997-98. Asked if this was common knowledge Jessica replied

‘If I would’ve known I think anyone would have known.’

She had no idea that ‘Christine’ had been an undercover cop. Joe and ‘Christine’ were still together in 2017.

HN2 ANDY COLES ‘ANDY DAVEY’

Jessica left her parents’ home in early 1992, aged 19. She moved into a shared house in East London with her friend and lived there for about six months. She had the front top bedroom, which was furnished with a small table, and two single divan beds, only one of which had a mattress.

She acquired a dog while she was living there, in August 1992 from the Deptford Urban Free Festival.

‘We went to the festival with one dog, and we came back with two dogs and a pigeon’.

A number of dogs appeared in the reports and photographs, and Jessica told the Inquiry that, if needed, she could still name them all. She also described how she and her housemates would pool their unemployment benefits to feed the cats.

Her friend had the room directly below hers where there was a portable black and white TV. That room became a kind of communal room where people would gather and watch TV even when her friend wasn’t there.

Coles claims there was a TV room in the house, but Jessica thinks he’s actually referring to her friend’s bedroom. There was no spare room, as all the rooms in the house were occupied.

Jessica knew Coles as ‘Andy Van’ as (like numerous spycops) he had a van and was generous in giving lifts. Everyone called him that. She met him in late 1991 whilst she was still living with her parents, but ‘he was just a face in the crowd’.

She started to notice him when he began coming round to her East London address. The house always had people coming and going, but he would come round alone, and always later in the evening.

Jessica had just left home. She was unemployed, money was tight, and neither she nor her friend drank alcohol. Occasionally they would go to the pub and have a lemonade, but mostly they just hung out at home and watched telly, so the chances of finding them at home were high. Coles showed up quite frequently for several weeks, so often that there was a collective sense of ‘here we go again’.

It was inconvenient, because he came round late and stayed for quite a long time so it could be quite awkward. She recalls discussing it among the housemates: who invited him? And it turned out nobody did.

Jessica had no sense that he was romantically interested in her. It just wasn’t something that was on her radar. So, when he kissed her it came completely out of the blue. They were alone, watching TV and

‘I either turned to him or he said something which made me turn to him and then he just lunged straight at me and kissed me…

‘It was so awkward. Had he said something at any point, I would have been able to say I don’t think about you like that, but it was the shock and just the unexpectedness of it.’

It was excruciating hearing Jessica describe something almost all women will recognise from awkward and awful sexual experiences when we were young:

‘My overriding feeling was that I didn’t want to hurt his feelings…

‘I’d like to say now that I would have slapped him. But when I think about it, even now, I still get that awful, awkward feeling. I wish it had been different. I wish that I had done something different’.

After that first kiss, he would stay over, and when he did so it was in her room, in her bed. She never went to his place and didn’t know where he lived. She can’t remember when they first had sex, but she is sure it would have been him that initiated it. She was, and still is, very uncomfortable with physical intimacy.

Coles lied to Jessica about his age, telling her he was 24. In real life he was 32 and married. It never occurred to her that he was older than he said he was.

Jessica described herself as a ‘young 19 year old’:

‘I was naive and quite stupid, to be perfectly honest.’

In his cover identity, Coles was supposed to be 28. Jessica was 19 and looked younger. The fact that he told her he was 24, and told his bosses she was 20-25, shows deliberate effort to cover the age gap. What other reason can there be for him to do this, apart from that he knew it wasn’t right and was trying not to alarm those around him?

Had she known Coles was in his 30s, would she have reacted differently?

‘Yes… that’s not right… there’s no reason to be trying to go out with someone that much younger… it’s creepy. It’s inappropriate… it sounds terrible to say, but, you know, old age… at 19 someone like that is old.’

Coles was Jessica’s first boyfriend. She didn’t talk to her friends about him much. She was embarrassed by him: he was unpopular and awkward and a bit odd.

She says there wasn’t much emotional intimacy either:

‘I can’t remember very much about him. I think I was a pretty awful girlfriend… It was not love’s young dream… it wasn’t how I expected it to be.’

She explained that Coles always used condoms. They did have a conversation about it once:

‘I didn’t quite know what my expectations were of a sexual relationship, I don’t know, I think I just imagined that it would be different and I think I wondered if maybe it was because he was wearing condoms.’

She suggested they try without, but he told her he had to wear them because he had already had one child and wouldn’t risk having another. He told her his daughter was called Sophie, she was around two years old, and he wasn’t allowed to see her.

Jessica was shocked and she had a lot of strong feelings about this. At first she was relieved that he didn’t see his daughter, and then she felt bad because if he wanted to see her, that was sad.

Coles has denied all of this. He claims he stayed over at Jessica’s house, one time on the sofa and then she offered him a mattress in her room (where he stayed 3-4 times). Jessica replied: that never happened. He stayed more than 3-4 times and always in her bed.

Coles also tries to claim that Jessica flirted with him, chased him, and that she once said ‘you can fuck me if you like’. On this she was very clear:

‘He is a liar. An absolute liar… I don’t talk like that. It’s awkward, but also, it’s crass… I wasn’t upset with him, I didn’t throw myself at him, I didn’t chase him. That is lies.’

THE ANIMAL LIBERATON FRONT

Coles has said that Jessica was identified to him as ‘an ALF girl’ by another activist, ciphered as ‘JRA’.

Jessica points out how unlikely this is, and how stupid and dangerous it would be to describe someone as ‘an ALF girl’, even if they were (which she wasn’t). The ALF was involved in illegal activity so there was a culture of secrecy. Activists didn’t brag about it or identify themselves to others.

She says she didn’t really know JRA, although they were on ‘nodding terms’. Asked how she would define the ALF she replied:

‘Someone that regularly breaks the law to rescue animals or sort of non-violent direct action to shops and places that sell fur.’

Jessica doesn’t believe she was associated with people involved in ALF actions. The house where she lived received the ALF Supporters Groups newsletter, so she knew some of the names, but Geoff Sheppard (who had been to prison for planting incendiary devices in Debenhams shops) was the only one she knew personally.

Yet, Coles claims he got close to Jessica because he thought it would get him closer to an ALF cell.

Q. If a police officer was looking to find individuals involved in the ALF, would befriending you be likely to get him access to those people?

‘No.’

Q. Did you have contacts with animal liberationists elsewhere in the UK, outside of London?

‘He’s mischaracterising it. I had friends who were interested in animal rights that were from other places. He’s tarting it up.’

She and a friend got involved in Hackney an Islington Animal Rights, through an advert in Time Out. They went to London to go to the meeting and met Paul Gravett. He was friendly.

She explained that they were younger than everyone else, and most of the older members treated them as kids, but Paul and Geoff always gave them the time of day.

They took part in London Boots Action Group picketing shops protesting against the company’s vivisection, distributing leaflets and sometimes holding a banner, chanting ‘Boots torture beagles’.

They might get in trouble for obstructing the public highway, but basically they were walking up and down outside the shop handing out leaflets. She doesn’t think it was a front for people who wanted to get involved in ALF activity:

‘You would go, and hand out leaflets for hours and then go to the pub.’

We were shown a report from June 1992 that says Jessica had ‘expressed an interest in ALF-style liberations’ and claims that ‘now that she has moved to London and is living with other animal rights activists she is likely to commit criminal acts.’

Coles alleges in his report that she has a ‘radio telephone’ from her dad. She said this is inaccurate. There was a device, an early model carphone, that was used on hunt sabs, but it had nothing to do with her father, and was never at her house. She says she doesn’t think she did express an interest in ALF-style liberations, but she do one once.

THE GREAT HOOKLEY FARM CHICKEN RAID

‘He created a “cell”, if that’s what you want to call it, that I was in…

‘I had to be persuaded to do it. It was nerve wracking and it is nothing I would have done if it weren’t for him.’

Coles organised the action. He was the driver; it was his vehicle; and he asked a lot of people to be involved. He called a meeting, and there were too many people at it so lots of them thought it was silly and dropped out.

‘You wouldn’t do something like that with a big group of people some of whom you didn’t know. But I was in a relationship with him so I and my friend ended up going.’

People wore face coverings, and the aim was not to be discovered. They were given instructions, and told to pass the chickens in bags along a line, in a human chain.

‘I was scared to death… Everything about it is scary, getting caught, doing it, I am quite an anxious person and I was really anxious about everything’

Asked if Coles appeared anxious, she said ‘No’.

We were then shown an article about the action, written Andy Coles, and a photo in which Jessica can be seen liberating chickens. Coles says she is the person on the right, but she clarifies:

‘No I’m the one on the left. I know that because I was the only person stupid enough to wear my favourite jeans… That balaclava is made from a pair of socks.’

She told us how they grabbed chickens and put them in bags and poultry crates until no one could carry any more. Coles claims he was only the driver and photographer on that action (as though that would mean he wasn’t involved).

Jessica explains that is nonsense. Everyone mucked in, because the more hands you had, the more birds you could save. The chickens were loaded into Coles’ van, which was always the plan.

On the way home, they were pulled over by the police, with load of people and about 80 loose chickens in the back. Everyone was panicking and the chickens are making a racket so she and others started coughing in an ill-considered ineffectual attempt to cover it up.

Coles talked to the police, who could clearly see it was a van full of people and chickens, but they let them go.

‘We thought luck was on our side.’

We were shown a report from 4 December 1992 that claims people named in the report were old school friends of Jessica and that they got her involved in the action. Jessica denies this, she says they were not old school friends and it was Coles who got her involved in the action.

THE PRINCESS OF MONACO

In the summer of 1992, Jessica had been in a relationship with Coles for a few months when she received a job offer to to move to France and take care of dogs and cats for the Princess of Monaco. It was a fantastic opportunity.

She consulted with Coles before taking the job, because they were in a relationship.

‘I felt he had a say. I asked him “what do you think I should do?”’

He told her she should go.

‘That may be the one decent thing that he did.’

As far as Jessica understood, they were a couple at that time. The arrangement was that he would come and visit her there, and she can’t remember any formal goodbye.

While she was in France they had a long-distance relationship. They spoke occasionally on the phone, although they didn’t have much to say to each other, and wrote each other letters.

She remembers one his letters was mostly ordinary, about what he had been doing, but it had one line at the bottom that was odd and totally out of character, about oral sex.

‘I remember thinking: “Am I meant to think that’s sexy? ‘Cause it’s not.”’

While Jessica was in France, in September 1992, Special Branch created a Registry File on her, something done for people that are deemed to be worth monitoring in an ongoing way.

The only ALF action she had ever done was Coles’s chicken farm raid. A police note, dated October 1992, says that the photo on file is no longer a good likeness as ‘she now has very short hair and is much less feminine in appearance’.

She points out that this is untrue. She has photos from the time that show her hair was half way down her back, but more importantly, why is Special Branch reporting about a hair cut she never had? It is ridiculous. She wasn’t even in the country at the time. It doesn’t really make sense, unless oles was just trying to find something to report irrespective of whether it was true.

Coles started to complain about her being away and suggested that they ‘start seeing other people’. This made her angry. He wasn’t suggesting that they split up, just that they see other people.

She went back to the UK in December 1992 to see him and stayed at his place in Stanthorpe Road, Streatham for a week. She felt she was being unfair to him by being away:

‘It sounds so gross to say it but it was like he’s a man and it’s not fair on him and he has needs.’

Q. Did he ever say anything that caused you to feel that?

‘I think he had to have done… I couldn’t have come to that by myself.’

We were shown letters Jessica wrote from France to her best friend. One says, ‘it’s really weird but I’m still going out with Andy’.

In another, she tells her friend about how Andy had suggested that they should see other people because otherwise ‘he wouldn’t be getting enough sex.’ It appears to have been over between them by then.

In May 1993 Jessica was injured in France and she returned to the UK in June after spending some time in hospital. Again, she stayed at Coles’s place in Streatham, which she described as quite boring, a bit of an empty box.

In August 1993 her French job ended. She thinks that by then it was over between her and Andy.

She met someone else (at Coles’s house), identified to the Inquiry as ‘NM’. Suddenly she was looking forward to being with someone. There was some kind of chemistry and spark with this new man, and it highlighted for her that it wasn’t right between her and Coles. She told Coles, and he just agreed.

It was a very amicable ending, and she thought they were so grown up. A report of Coles’s from 1993 describes her as having a ‘romantic liaison’ with ‘NM’. Asked how she felt reading that in a police report she replied:

‘What purpose did it serve? It’s just… none of his business.’

A report from March 1994 describes her as ‘NM’’s girlfriend. It suggests that he was involved in ‘illegal ALF activity’. Jessica points out that there is no other reference to this and nothing specific in the report at all:

‘it’s all so vague… it’s just speculation’.

She makes clear that the only activities she and her new partner were involved in were demonstrations and hunt sabotage. Nevertheless, their house was raided by the police after someone who didn’t live there supposedly gave their address when they were arrested on an action they didn’t attend:

‘half a dozen guys in hazmat suits with masks on and like a policeman at the door and like police vans everywhere and they came in and lifted up the floorboards in some rooms… it always felt like there was something a bit suspicious about it.’

They broke things and took items away, including a housemate’s computer with her dissertation on it.

She speculates that it may have been Coles who gave the police their address. He certainly reports on their reactions to it.

THE HORSE & HOUND BALL

The report says the protest was organised by the Hunt Saboteurs Association, that there were 80-100 people in attendance, and that it was ‘loud and aggressive’.

Jessica disagrees with most of what the report says. The HSA didn’t organise things like that. It was a London Animal Rights thing, organised by word of mouth, and there were only 20-30 people there.

It was loud, but not aggressive, and they were packed into a fenced off area. A letter written by Coles at the time about being injured in the line of duty supports Jessica’s version.

He describes 30-40 people and a ‘loud and animated protest’ and describes receiving head injuries from the battery end of a police radio. Jessica doesn’t recall him being there.

Someone threw a bag of flour at people getting out of a limousine, echoing events from the previous year’s ball, where flour was thrown by undercover officer John Dines, leading to the arrest and wrongful conviction of someone else.

Jessica was violently arrested. She recalls being dragged over a crowd-control barrier and landing on her head, then being marched with her arm twisted up behind her back to a van. She doesn’t know what happened. She can only remember the pain. She thought the officer had broken her arm.

She asked to see the police surgeon. He turned up in a tuxedo, having been at the ball. After her release she went to A&E and was diagnosed with torn ligaments in her shoulder, elbow and wrist, and a broken collar bone. In the tradition of people assaulted by police officers, she was charged with assaulting a police officer.

In the run up to her trial, Coles filed reports about their defence strategy, Jessica’s intention to plead not guilty, and a meeting she had with potential witnesses that he describes as being ‘to concoct evidence’. It seems quite common for spycops to be reporting on defence strategies to the prosecution.

In court, she was found guilty and received a suspended sentence. She was told it was a good result that she wasn’t going to prison. However, it was the first time she had appeared in court, she couldn’t believe that the police had blatantly and deliberately lied under oath, and she couldn’t let it go. Despite being given no penalty by the court, the injustice of it outraged her. She appealed her conviction and was acquitted.

REACTION

Asked about her reaction to the discovery in 2017 that Coles had been an undercover police officer, she explained that Paul Gravett alerted her to a report about the infiltration of the groups they were in. Ten minutes after discovering that spycops even existed she found a picture of Andy Coles:

‘It made a lot of sense of our relationship. I didn’t doubt it.’

Asked how it felt:

‘There’s no feeling like it. Huge parts of my life… I didn’t have the control and the agency over them that I thought I did. I’d been steered and manipulated into a relationship that wasn’t really what I wanted but I went along with.’

Jessica broke down at this point.

‘The worst part… was my age, to know that at that age, someone so much older not who he said he was… it made me feel disgusting… it’s disgusting… I can’t come to terms with it properly.’

It has had a significant impact on her mental health that continues to this day.

Jessica has since discovered that her then housemate (now deceased) Andrea McGann and three other women all had unpleasant experiences with Andy. Three of the women describe him ‘lunging’ at them to kiss them, and one woman, peace activist Emily Johns, described him showing up at her house late at night, apparently angling to be invited to stay over for sex.

Robin Lane has also told her, and the Inquiry, that he had set Andy up with one of his friends for a one-night stand, and she described him being ‘a bit rough’.

Jessica pointed out how awful it is that Coles completely denies the entire relationship.

It exacerbates everything, having to prove that she is not lying:

‘Why would anyone want to do this? I have had to sit here. I’ve had to completely humiliate myself… I’m not lying about it. Why would I?’

The fact of him being a school governor and Conservative councillor in a position of power also made it worse:

‘It felt like my responsibility to warn people what he is like… I don’t want anyone else to feel the way that I have felt since finding out.’

After she had finished giving her evidence to the Inquiry, she was thanked by the Chair, Sir John Mitting, who said:

‘Thank you for attending today and giving evidence in circumstances that I know are not easy for you. And that I am aware is a considerable understatement. I know that yesterday’s arrangements were uncoupled and that increased your difficulty. Thank you for surmounting them and giving evidence as clearly as you have done.’

The ‘uncoupled arrangements’ is a reference to the fact that Bob Lambert’s evidence ran over so much that yesterday it was unclear whether Jessica would be able to give her evidence today, and Mitting even threatened not to hear it at all if she didn’t comply with whatever new timetable they same up with. This is as close to an apology as this Inquiry gets.

By the end of the day on Thursday, Jessica was very upset, and when she was asked if there was anything she wanted to add, she replied ‘I just want to get out of here’.

However, by Wednesday of the following week she was feeling a little better and she returned to make her final points.

She began by noting:

‘I found the Inquiry very re-traumatising it’s opened an awful lot of old wounds and personally it’s been quite damaging’

She explained that she has persevered, engaging with the process, and assisting the Inquiry,

‘because we need to know the truth.’

She told the Inquiry that she wishes to see her Special Branch ‘Reference File’. (Those who were spied on have been asking to see their files ever since this process began, and pages from Jessica’s file was referred to on several occasions by Gargitter in her questioning, yet Jessica has not seen the whole file.

Jessica then highlighted Coles’ attitude towards the theft of dead children’ identities. She reminded the Inquiry that her own family lost a child, and read some of the most awful sections of Coles’ Tradecraft Manual, on stealing dead children’s identities, noting ‘that perfectly describes my brother’.

She made the point that one of his recommendations – that it would be best to use the identity of someone who had been adopted and then died in childhood. She notes that Coles passed on his ‘tradecraft’ to futures officers. She noted that Jim Boyling’s identity was based on an adopted child and that Mark Jenner claimed that his father had been killed by a drunk driver, and she specifically asked Mitting to find out whether her brother’s identity ever was used by an undercover officer.

Finally, she told the Inquiry that the Metropolitan Police have accepted there is credible evidence that the sexual relationship between her and Andy Coles did happen.

The Met have apologised to Jessica, and said Coles would be facing the most serious disciplinary charges if he were still a serving officer. Coles refused to answer questions when interviewed under caution, and subsequently told the Peterborough Telegraph that the Met had actually exonerated him.

Jessica ended her evidence to the Inquiry by pointing out that the only person who still disputes the relationship took place is Andy Coles:

‘and he is a liar.’

Jessica has been to Peterborough to give talks and distribute leaflets about Coles’s spycop career and his ongoing denial of the facts.

From today, Wednesday 18 December, ex-spycop Andy Coles will be giving live evidence to the public inquiry into political secret policing.

After spycop Bob Lambert finally finished his seventh day of questioning, it was the turn of activist Claire Hildreth.

Testifying to the Inquiry is particularly impactful for those who were spied on, having to come into a public forum and painfully examine some of the worst things that ever happened to them.

It takes a lot of mental preparation, and Lambert’s stalling tactics meant that for most of the day Hildreth was unsure whether she’d even get to take the stand.

Even now, the spycops are doing what gives them personal advantage and don’t care about the negative consequences for others who’ve done nothing wrong.

RECAP

This was the Wednesday of the seventh week of ‘Tranche 2 Phase 2’, the new round of hearings of the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI). This Phase mainly concentrates on examining the animal rights-focused activities of the Metropolitan Police’s secret political unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, from 1983-92.

The UCPI is an independent, judge-led inquiry into undercover policing in England and Wales. Its main focus is the activity of two units who deployed long-term undercover officers into a variety of political groups; the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS, 1968-2008) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU, 1999-2011).

Spycops from these units lived as activists for years at a time, spying on more than 1,000 groups.

Click here for the day’s video, transcripts and written evidence

OVERVIEW

Hildreth was active in the London animal rights movement in the early 1990s, and was spied on primarily by Special Demonstration Squad officers HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ and HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’.

Hildreth moved to London in 1991. In Jan 1992, she moved to North Kensington as a housing support worker. A colleague took her to a World Day For Laboratory Animals event where she picked up a London Boots Action Group (LBAG) leaflet which called for a boycott of the chain of chemists due to their use of vivisection.

Hildreth was part of the group, whose main activity was leafleting outside Boots shops, until she left London in 1996. She is still committed to the causes of animal welfare, environmentalism and social justice.

SPYCOPS EXAGGERATING AND LYING, AGAIN

Andy Coles infiltrated LBAG, and attended their meetings. One of his reports, dated 16 July 1993, says a new LBAG committee had been formed. Hildreth is named as part of this ‘committee’, title its newsletter officer, assisted by Coles. Hildreth says the term ‘committee’ is overstating the case, it was just basic admin, and the group was essentially self-organising, and they would share tasks like chairing meetings.

Coles claims in his witness statement to the Inquiry that he volunteered to assist, as he had access to the Animal Liberation Front’s computer and also produced their newsletter. Hildreth says there was no ALF computer, and he didn’t create the newsletter. She adds that his report’s mention of Paul Gravett being involved is wrong too.

Coles claimed to run the membership list of LBAG. Hildreth says that’s another lie. She doesn’t remember Coles being involved much at all. He was based in South London and didn’t really come North much.

A report by HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ says Coles was a ‘formal member’ of LBAG, but Hildreth says there was no such thing as formal membership.

However, she says that Rayner, in contrast, was very active. As was standard for Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) officers, Rayner and Coles had been equipped with vans. Rayner made himself useful driving people to demonstrations and related errands.

LONDON ANIMAL ACTION

Hildreth was involved in London Animal Action (LAA) from the group’s founding in October 1994. The group was founded to campaign on all aspects of animal abuse, not just Boots as the previous group had done. Rayner reported on 8 August 1995 says LAA members are ‘openly supportive of ALF action and many are involved’. She says this isn’t true.

At the request of the Inquiry’s Chair, Sr John Mitting, Hildreth defined ALF activity as breaking the law, largely by criminal damage, to draw attention to animal abuse or to liberate animals. Mitting complimented her on being so concise and accurate.

Rayner reported that the LAA attended events over a wide geographical area (because he drove them, Hildreth points out), and that LAA’s presence increased the chance of an ’emotional and confrontational’ response at an event. She says he’s being ludicrously over-dramatic.

LAA shared an office with London Greenpeace, and Rayner reported that Hildreth co-managed the office. Once again, she took issue with the mischaracterisation, as if everything was formalised and regimented. She says the office wasn’t really ‘managed’ as such, LAA would use it, and not much more than that.

Rayner singled Hildreth out in a report as a ‘capable, aggressive and dynamic’ LAA activist who ‘can be considered an ALF activist’. She took especial umbrage at this, explaining that she never threatened anyone, and that being a bit loud isn’t the same thing as being aggressive. Furthermore, she explained, it’s misogynist, he wouldn’t say that about a man with the same disposition.

She added that she wasn’t ALF either. Clearly, the ALF was such a bogeyman to the spycops and the wider establishment that officers were keen to say they’d found the activists.

LIVE ANIMAL EXPORTS

From January to October 1995 the port of Brightlingsea was the scene of large and sustained protests against the export of live animals. A Rayner report on an LAA monthly planning meeting in March of that year described their active support for the protests, and that a rota of drivers had been drawn up to take members there.

One of the listed drivers is Rayner, another is HN26 ‘Christine Green’. Hildreth says she mostly remembers Rayner doing it, and that she can’t really remember Green.

 

Rayner says he was an LAA bank account signatory. Hildreth says she can’t remember if that’s true, but says it’s likely, it fits with what he was like.

We’ve seen from earlier Inquiry hearings that spycops would often take on the role of treasurer in a group. It gave them access to information about who was donating money, and often to subscription and membership lists, along with people’s bank account details. Also, like the van driving, it was a practical role that didn’t require any political knowledge or insight.

The Inquiry showed two reports containing details of Hildreth’s living arrangements . One, from May 1993, said she was about to go on holiday for a month and plans to live in a squat afterwards. She says it’s not true, and indeed it wasn’t something she could have done because she had a residential job at the time. She went on holiday, but not for a month.

That detail and the squat reference seem to be gratuitously making her look like a slacker. Rayner absolutely knew the truth about her address as, ever helpful with his van, he had helped her move house. She points out that as well as being untrue, none of this reporting had any relevance to animal rights.

MISOGYNIST AND LIAR

Andy Coles’ recent witness statement to the Inquiry (para 172) reiterates his claim that he was LAA organiser and newsletter author, shared with Hildreth and one other person. She says he didn’t do either of those things and had minimal involvement in the group. She wouldn’t want to work with him anyway, she tried to avoid him, so it’s possible he did things when she wasn’t there.

Coles also says he held the LAA membership and subscription list. This is yet another exaggeration, Hildreth explains. He had no formal role but, like anyone who spent time in the office, he did have opportunity to get hold of copies of the lists.

Hildreth says she went hunt sabbing with Coles once, but never felt comfortable around him. He was a bit odd, and would say odd things, e.g. a story about his dog: that its original owner had died and the dog had started eating its owner’s body.

She said Coles was a misogynist, and that his witness statement to the Inquiry this year shows he still is. At the time, she warned other women who knew him that he couldn’t be trusted around them.

She was much closer to Rayner, and told him that Coles gave her the creeps and was less respectful of women than other men. Rayner seemed unsurprised. In his witness statement of 2022, he recalls her saying at the time that Coles was creepy; ‘it felt like she described him with a shudder’

Hildreth remembers a night out in Camden with seven or eight other women and them talking about Coles and how unsafe he made them feel.

Asked about ‘Jessica’, who was deceived into a relationship by Coles at the time, Hildreth knew her as a campaigner rather than as a friend. It was clear Jessica was young, in her late teens. Hildreth said it was also clear that Jessica was in a relationship with Coles but she was never close enough a friend to have discussed it.

The Inquiry brought up Hildreth’s 2018 statement to police, in which she said it wasn’t obvious to her that Jessica and Coles were a couple, and suggest her memory has been influenced by subsequent knowledge. Hildreth seemed to concede the point.

Regarding other relationships, a Rayner report of 11 May 1993 said Hildreth had consoled Liz after a traumatic life event. His participation in that was the beginning of his deceiving Liz into a relationship. However, Hildreth can’t remember this at all.

MISSING MATT

Rayner was already in LBAG when Hildreth joined. He was always a generous person and she looked forward to time with him. Beyond their activism, he spent a lot of time with her at her home, and they socialised together.

Rayner’s departure from his deployment was perhaps the most elaborate of any known spycop.

He said he was moving to France and, after a farewell party with comrades in November 1996, took two activists with him to the port, where they saw him get stopped and questioned by Special Branch officers. Presumably this was a stunt to lend credibility to his emigration.

As with other spycops, letters arrived to old friends from the new country, but Rayner kept it up for a year, including a move to Argentina from where a letter arrived saying he had found a new partner. In reality, of course, he’d been back at Scotland Yard the whole time.

Seeing the secret police reports now, Hildreth says it goes far beyond what’s justifiable. After the unmasking of Mark Kennedy in 2010, the first spycop to be publicly exposed, she started to wonder about Rayner. She eventually found out it was true but still couldn’t accept it and was in denial for a long time. It made her feel stupid for being fooled.

Hildreth had missed her friend. She used to Google him, in vain, but always hoped he was doing well and that she’d see him again.

At this point in her testimony, Hildreth stopped, in tears. She then said that Rayner’s recent disclosure, seeing the horrible things he said about people he spied on, had finally made her fully accept the truth.

It was difficult to hear that final part of Hildreth’s evidence, not just for her pain at but because it is so similar to what we’ve heard from other people who were spied on. Whether it was sexual relationships or close friendships, the spycops deliberately created personal bonds that had nothing to do with gathering intelligence.

Finding out someone you were close to was an undercover officer is devastating. It’s a peculiar form of bereavement, the person you loved isn’t just gone but they never actually existed. The person who was actually in your life was only ever a paid actor, tasked to undermine what you hold most dear.

Even more troubling than hearing from people who were spied on describing their loss, we’ve heard one officer after another testify on this and it is clear that it didn’t occur to them what it would do to people when they disappeared. They still seem unable to conceive of what it’s like to genuinely care about someone other than yourself.

Hildreth told the Inquiry that the personal impact is hard to explain to those who haven’t experienced it. Reliving it for the Inquiry has intensified that. The emotional impact is huge. The betrayal of friendship and trust, it’s unacceptable. Truth and the Inquiry have taken a toll on her mental health.

CONCLUSIONS

The Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting, said that they’re learning that retelling these experiences in such a forum is hard for people in her position. He complimented her for being so clear.

With that, Hildreth’s evidence was complete. Her testimony took less than two hours. Lambert had taken a cumulative six days, and Mitting’s final comments alluded to this:

‘If everybody gave answers as directly and in as straightforward a manner as you… my task would be a great deal easier’.

If Mitting wants succinct direct answers then maybe he should stop indulging the tactical ditherers playing Anti Just A Minute wasting hours with hesitation, repetition and deviation. If he interjected more, as other inquiry chairs do, it would keep the whole thing on course.

Rayner is due to give evidence to the Inquiry 15-17 January 2025.

Coles is scheduled for 18-20 December 2024.

At the Undercover Policing Inquiry, Monday 9 December was devoted to the evidence of two witnesses, ‘Callum’ and ‘Walter’, who had been involved in hunt saboteur activity in the 1980s.

There were a lot of restrictions on what could be reported in order to protect the identity of the witnesses. They were in the hearing room behind a screen. We’re doing separate reports for them.

RECAP

This was the Monday of the seventh week of ‘Tranche 2 Phase 2’, the new round of hearings of the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI). This Phase mainly concentrates on examining the animal rights-focused activities of the Metropolitan Police’s secret political unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, from 1983-92.

The UCPI is an independent, judge-led inquiry into undercover policing in England and Wales. Its main focus is the activity of two units who deployed long-term undercover officers into a variety of political groups; the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS, 1968-2008) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU, 1999-2011). Spycops from these units lived as activists for years at a time, spying on more than 1,000 groups.

Click here for the day’s video, transcripts and written evidence

WHICH SPYCOPS

Callum has submitted a 74 page witness statement and 14 exhibits (photos, etc) to the Inquiry.

He started by saying that has been involved in animal rights and hunt sabbing since the early 1980s. Additionally, he was part of the anti poll tax campaign in 1990.

Callum was mostly spied on by officer HN2 Andy Coles, but was also reported on by HN10 Bob Lambert, HN5 John Dines, HN87 ‘John Lipscomb’, and HN17.

HUNT SABBING

He started hunt sabbing aged 17, having seen a Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) advert in the Daily Mirror and then joining his local group.

The HSA was the first animal rights organisation, founded in 1963. It aimed to centralise the movement and share tactics. It was a time long before social media, and the mainstream media didn’t report on it, so street stalls, leaflets, gigs, and zines were the main methods of communication.

The HSA published a magazine, Howl, mostly discussing tactics. The organisation was always very democratic.

Callum explained how sabs would use various methods to distract the hunters’ hounds, such as hunting horns, sprays to cover scent, and recording of hounds in cry to distract.

Sabs did not want to get into confrontations with hunters – to do so would distract from saving the animals. The idea was to stay away from the hunt and observe, so they could accurately judge where to intervene between the hunt and the fox.

Hunters, on the other hand, were often violent to sabs (something that continues to the present day). Callum described how they’d be charged down by horses and whipped. Sometimes hunters would get off and assault sabs. Their terriermen would try to corner sabs and attack them. Hunt supporters also used to get involved, blocking, assaulting, and sometimes hiring people to come and attack sabs.

Callum never saw sabs initiate violence. He was also clear that self defence isn’t violence.

After particularly serious violence or egregious behaviour by a hunt, sabs would call for a ‘joint hit’ – the next time the hunt met, sab groups would come from far and wide to show that such attacks would only mean greater disruption to the hunt.

Sabs didn’t want the police to know their plans in advance because police were invariably on the hunters’ side, and after the Criminal Justice Act 1994 introduced the offence of aggravated trespass, sabs would get pre-emptively arrested.

Callum used to get phone calls from police officers on a Friday telling him if he turned up to a certain hunt that weekend he would be arrested just for being there. This illustrates his point that it wasn’t about what was legal, but that the police took the side of the hunters irrespective of the law.

In private documents the police are clearly aware of which side is the violent one, but all the stuff written for external consumption demonises the sabs. The Special Demonstration Squad’s annual reports to the Home Office talk about ‘serious violence’ happening, implying it’s the sabs committing it rather than the other side.

We’ve already heard from spycop Bob Lambert that the HSA was actually ‘entirely lawful’.

LIPSCOMB’S LIES

Callum and other hunt sabs were spied on by HN87 ‘John Lipscomb,’ and we were shown a report submitted by him [MPS0743621], of a discussion of tactics that took place between around 35 hunt sabs in April 1988.

Under the subheading ‘Violence’, the report says that ‘many of the saboteurs present had recently received a trashing from farm hands hired by the Surrey and Burstow Hunt. Callu advocated that all saboteurs should arm themselves with heavy tsicks every time they entered a wood’.

It goes on to note that Callum ‘frequently carries a 12 inch spanner tucked inside his boot’. Callum dismissed the suggestion of the spanner outright, saying ‘the idea is ridiculous’.

He confirmed that he did recommend carrying sticks when going into woods though. He explained that in open country you can see the hunters and avoid them – ‘get at least a fence between you and them’, he advised – but in woodland you can’t tell if people are close by. Entering unarmed and facing the prospect of coming up against a group of terriermen armed with spades, sabs would be less likely to be attacked if carrying a piece of wood.

Having been hospitalised, had bones broken, been stabbed and shot at by hunters and their supporters, Callum was keen to deter further violence. He re-emphasised that seeking confrontation would only have distracted from the point of being there, to save the hunted animals. Avoidance is the first tactic, a fight is bad tactics.

Lipscomb also wrote an end of season summary of hunt sabbing for Special Branch’s C Squad [MPS0743655, 14 May 1989]. In it, he talks about the decline of one hunt sab group as a ‘boost, from the police point of view’.

The report talks of discord between groups, attributed to Callum’s violence. In fact, Callum explained, one person at another group had done a deal with police not wear masks or carry hound whips to steer hounds. Callum’s group didn’t see the benefit, and anyway no group can make agreements on behalf of others. His group still worked with many others.

Lipscomb’s witness statement to the Inquiry says the group sought out violence and were a public order issue wherever they went.

Callum dismissed the claim. He recalled that the sabs needed to find ways to reduce the hunts’ violence, so they would try to counter the impression that all sabs were weedy, feeble vegans, incapable of defending themselves.

They got camouflage jackets and masks to look identical, which didn’t just make them look a bit more intimidating, it also meant the hunters couldn’t easily tell which sabs were women, and they were reluctant to hit women so would err on the side of caution. It also made it hard to identify individual sabs for arrest.

He recounted one incident of him being badly wounded by masked hunt supporters. The police arrived and even the ambulance driver had to tell them to leave Callum alone. The police didn’t take any action or even investigate, until Callum wrote to his MP about this matter.

Callum had seen the unmasked face of one of these attacker, someone he recognised as one of two ‘whippers in’ employed by a Hunt. The police brought the other whipper-in to an identity parade. Callum addressed the man by name and explained why he was innocent. He named the guilty man, but nothing happened. The police never arrested anyone, let alone charged them.

BRIXTON HUNT SABS

Brixton sabs were renowned for their supposed aggression in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Other groups used this reputation, telling sketchy hunters that Brixton were coming, and it made the hunters back off. They were trying to reduce violence, and it worked.

HN87 ‘John Lipscomb’ says in his witness statement that Brixton sabs would trash cars and were a constant threat to public order because of their hatred of rich people and the hunt, and general desire for violence.

Callum scoffed at this. If those things happened it would have been reported, yet there are no such press reports. He says it was all ‘smoke and mirrors’.

In reality, it was just another hunt sab group, no different from the rest. But the word ‘Brixton’ had resonances for hunters. It implied criminality, drugs, city living, Black people – all things that scared rural bigots.

ALF

Hunt sabs were described by police as ‘the link’ between the animal rights movement in general and the Animal Liberation Front.

Callum says there was certainly a link, animal rights was a new community and quite amorphous. Sabbing wasn’t a gateway to the ALF though. One again at the Inquiry, it’s clear the police see movements as being like them, with specialist units and assigned ranked roles. Activism isn’t like that at all.

We were shown a Special Demonstration Squad briefing note written by HN2 Andy Coles, possibly with contributions from others [MPS0245213]. It claims most ALF activists come through the HSA because sabbing is a ‘fertile training ground for militant activism’.

Yet Callum was the only sab in his ALF group, so it’s really not much of a ‘fertile ground’.

He said that his motivation was to save animals and change people minds. He saw ALF raids – going into farms or labs in the dead of night and taking animals away – were very effective. His first two arrests had been for simply leafleting. Being peaceful and law abiding didn’t preclude arrest, so he thought he might as well do more radical action, directly saving lives and with less risk of arrest.

Callum emphasised that it was non-violent. They did the minimum damage to get access, rescued as many animals as they had homes for, then went back in and did graffiti and damage as ‘economic sabotage’. He said that if that counts as ‘violence ‘then the RSPCA kicking a door in to save a trapped dog is also violence.

If they had just taken animals and not done the graffiti as well, a battery chicken farmer might not even have noticed the 100 missing chickens from the thousands at the farm, and it would be no loss as they were only worth pennies each.

They never confronted anyone, if they saw security patrols then they called it all off.

POLL TAX IMPRISONMENT

Callum said that, frustrated at the police’s refusal to act against a hunter who’d severely assaulted him, he intended to use incendiary devices to damage the hunter’s vehicle in the dead of night. This plan would later prove to be his undoing.

The Poll Tax was one of the most unfair and hated policies of the Thatcher government. The Prime Minister had called it her ‘flagship policy’. It replaced local council rates – taxation based on property value – and replaced them with a fixed charge per person. A family of four adults in a terraced house would pay four times as much as a single person living in a mansion.

A police report on the huge protest against the Poll Tax in March 1990 says Brixton hunt sabs were there having ‘opportunist’ involvement in fighting with police.

Callum says it’s just further demonisation of the Brixton group. Again, the police are thinking regimentally. In reality, he was there on his own, not with sabs. He remembers the march as well-mannered. But at Trafalgar Square police surrounded the protesters and closed in.

HN5 John Dines – who was arrested undercover on the day – says people were punching, kicking and throwing stuff before the police waded in. Callum laughed at the gall of the claim, it’s well established that the police provoked the protesters, and he pointed out that a BBC documentary had proved that.

The police were doing snatch squads, darting into crowds and pulling someone out for arrest, attacking those nearby with truncheons. Callum saw a sergeant knock a woman to the ground and continue to beat her.

Callum got between them, the officer swung for Callum, who punched him back. In the ensuing retaliation and arrest Callum sustained a bruised head and cut hand. He was not arrested on the Poll Tax march, but was arrested months later at home. His home was searched and the incendiary devices found. Like so many arrested for the Poll Tax protest, he was given a lengthy prison sentence.

HN87 ‘John Lipscomb’ thinks he identified Callum from photos of the protest he was shown at an SDS meeting. We were shown the SDS annual report 1990-91 that claims that it was evidence from their officers that led to the arrest.

Callum says the spycops’ reporting on him would have had a significant impact on his sentencing, if that had been revealed in court. One again, police withheld evidence from a court case that the defence had a right to see. This is a miscarriage of justice.

AFTER PRISON

He remembers getting a lot of mail sent to him when he was inside, ten letters a day, books and magazines, and a massive pile of Christmas cards. That feeling of solidarity was essential for his mental health.

After getting out, his natural instinct was to ‘pay back’ this support by helping others in the same way.

He pointed out that if you look at any progressive movement there is always some illegality. Even if you don’t agree 100% with what someone’s done, it’s important for their movement to look after them when they’re in prison.

Callum says he has never done anything illegal since coming out of prison. He had a son, and started a career. He wanted to pay back the support he had in prison, so started helping out with the ALF Supporters Group (ALFSG).

He explained that the ALFSG was fundamentally about supporting ALF prisoners. Sections of the constitution were read aloud that make that clear. They tried to raise enough money to support animal rights prisoners in a wide range of ways, such as helping them access vegan food and toiletries while they were inside, money for travel expenses, phone calls, postage, etc.

The £24 a year membership was a lot at the time, so most of their members were older people with good jobs.

They produced a newsletter, but had it carefully vetted by lawyers to ensure there was nothing that could be seen as incitement.

HN2 ANDY COLES

Callum has supplied a photo of a party held to celebrate his release from prison. HN2 Andy Coles is in the photo, and Callum thinks this is the first time they met. However he doesn’t recall speaking to him on this occasion.

Callum first spoke to Coles on an animal rights info stall when Coles, as was standard for spycops, had a van and offered the use of it as a way to ingratiate himself. Callum said this was very useful transporting all the merchandise for stalls, or making the lengthy trip to London to collect the ALFSG newsletter from the printer.

We were shown a report by Coles [MPS0745986] saying Callum had returned to hunt sabbing now his probation over, and he was ‘itching to have a go at hunt heavies’ and wants to be generally violent.

Coles’s witness statement to the Inquiry [UCPI035074 page 106, para 224] said he ‘slogged his guts out’ to become second in command of the ALFSG, doing the admin and keeping the membership records with a computer bought from campaign funds.

Callum says Coles is lying about all of this. There was no hierarchy with a second in command, nor a computer bought by the Group. At most, Coles would have seen address labels when he was doing the quarterly envelope stuffing for the newsletter. That was the limit of his admin work.

Coles claims to have helped write the ALFSG newsletter, Callum says that’s nonsense. He could have submitted an article like anyone else, but doesn’t remember that he did.

It’s apparent that Coles lied about other things too – for example he’s reported that ALF activists informed people that they planned to do actions before actually doing them.

Callum was very clear that there was a ‘very strict security culture’ amongst animal rights activists at this time. Nobody talked about the actions they had done, never mind those they hadn’t even done yet. And those, like him, who weren’t actively involved did not need or want to know!

The ALFSG had initially been set up just to support ‘ALF’ prisoners, but mergedtheir prisoner list with the Support Animal Rights Prisoners (SARP) one, and broadened itssupport to include hunt sabs and other animal rights prisoners. The ALFSG was a public, wholly law abiding group. Coles basically spent three years watching Callum do legal activity.

‘I’m surprised he wasn’t pulled out after 12 months because it’s not telling them anything about me… I’m sort of an absence in his reports, which is odd, you know, you think he’d be saying lots about me, what I was doing, but there’s very little about me actually, because I wasn’t doing anything which could bring me to the attention of the police.’

TACTICAL EXAGGERATION AND LIES

Coles said he visited animal rights prisoner Robin Lane with Robin’s wife. It was actually Callum who went. Once again, we see undercover officers taking real events and putting the wrong name in – either claiming they did something so they appear more involved, or else doing something criminal and then attributing to others.

This is now looking like tradecraft rather than many individuals stumbling on the same tactic. Either way, it must’ve felt so easy for them, how would the bosses ever know what was true (unless a public inquiry eventually put the documents to the people involved)? Three of the officers we’ve seen who did a lot of this – Bob Lambert, Roger Pearce and Andy Coles – were promoted to Special Branch management roles where they had long and successful careers.

Coles reported a list of people contacting the ALFSG wanting to find out how to become ALF activists. Callum says this is talking as if they were applying to be members of the ALF, which is risible. He said there was only the occasional person doing anything like that, and that they used to politely decline. They couldn’t have done that even if they wanted to. Also, the enquirer’s sense of security was so poor you wouldn’t want to work with them anyway!

Coles reported that a group of people who were planning an attack on a meat facility asked if they’d have ALFSG support if they were imprisoned for it. Callum says that too was ridiculous on several levels. Firstly, they’d already know that prisoners were supported.

But more to the point, for security reasons, activists did not tell people in advance about actions. The ALFSG could only find out who did an action after it happened, if the people were arrested and imprisoned. Again, there was a very strict security culture for everybody’s sake. They didn’t want to know who did what!

Coles claims he was given an ALF spycatcher role, and talked of a prospective trip to Belfast to investigate a suspected mole. Police records show that management declined permission, saying it was too risky for him to go.

Callum says there was no ‘spycatcher’ involved in the case, let alone any chance of Coles going. In reality, eight people had been arrested for ALF action. They’d been badly abused in the cells with beatings and being burned with cigarettes. One of them had given full statement incriminating others in order to protect themselves and get a lesser sentence.

The ALFSG did not support ‘grasses’. Callum went to find out what happened and agreed the ALFSG would not support that prisoner. This person was not an ‘informer’, just someone who grassed very readily in order to protect themselves and get a lesser sentence.

Once again, a spycop exaggerates what’s going on and takes credit for someone else’s deeds in order to seem important.

Callum was frequently stopped by the police at the time, presumably because the police thought he was still an ALF activist. Coles was ideally placed to tell the police that he wasn’t, but doing so would have undermined the stories he was telling his bosses.

COLES’S RELATIONSHIPS

Callum was asked about Coles claiming at the time that he’d had a one night stand with a known animal rights activist. Callum hadn’t previously noticed Coles having any romantic or sexual interest in anyone, and he’d thought Coles might be gay. This was the only time he heard anything sexual from Coles.

Callum says Coles never told him about being any kind of ongoing relationship. He’d said he was a delivery driver, who moved around a lot, and being single fitted with his lifestyle. He didn’t seem interested in a relationship.

Here’s an officer spying for years who didn’t appear to Callum to ever have a relationship, and Callum thought that was fine. So much for other officers saying having relationships was vital to establish credibility and acceptance.

FAMILY INTRUSION

Coles visited Callum at his home and at his parents’ home. He says it was totally unnecessary for Coles to name and report on his young son, who was under six when Coles left. His excuse was that it was to identify Callum’s partner.

We were shown a long, hand written letter, supposedly sent from Budapest on 1 January 1996, from Andy to Callum, his partner and child.

It says he was glad to hear Callum was well, as he said he was going to leave the country with little detail.

He says he didn’t believe it when, years later, he was told Andy Coles was a spycop. Even when he was shown photos he couldn’t quite accept that this man who came over their house, walked their dog, and played with their son had been doing it all as a paid police role.

Callum highlighted the fact that Andy Coles doesn’t really report anything much about him or his partner. What was he doing in spending so much time with them? How can he justify befriending a young family for three years?

‘it’s a betrayal of a friendship… this is somebody we considered a friend, he came to our house, we walked our dogs together, he played with our son and we had no ill feelings about him whatsoever, there was nothing we can say “oh yeah Andy, he was a bit of a twat” or something, you know, it was a case of he’s a nice guy, helped us out and then went abroad…

Now it’s all tainted… it changes the view of your life.’

At the Undercover Policing Inquiry, Monday 25 November was devoted to animal rights Geoff Sheppard completing his evidence, which he did remotely.

For yet another week, there was no livestreaming of Inquiry hearings, and once again the public relied entirely on live tweeting from Tom Fowler and ourselves.

RECAP

This summary covers Monday of the fifth week of ‘Tranche 2 Phase 2’, the new round of hearings of the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI). This Phase mainly concentrates on examining the animal rights-focused activities of the Metropolitan Police’s secret political unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, from 1983-92.

The UCPI is an independent, judge-led inquiry into undercover policing in England and Wales. Its main focus is the activity of two units who deployed long-term undercover officers into a variety of political groups; the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS, 1968-2008) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU, 1999-2011). Spycops from these units lived as activists for years at a time, spying on more than 1,000 groups.

This was the third day of Geoff Sheppard’s evidence – for his earlier evidence, see our report from the previous hearing.

Having already covered his involvement with HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’, this hearing was intended to focus on the other spycops who targeted him.

Click here for the day’s video, transcripts and written evidence

BACKGROUND

In 1995, Sheppard was set up by spycop HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ and received a seven year sentence. Rayner’s boss at the Special Demonstration Squad was Bob Lambert who, in his earlier career undercover in the 1980s, had ensured Sheppard got a four year prison sentence.

‘Matt Rayner’ hasn’t had the same level of attention as some other spycops, but he is one of the central figures in the infiltration of animal rights campaigning in the 1990s.

He stole the identity of a dead child, had a long-term relationship with activist Denise Fuller, broke the law many times and was convicted under his false identity, and set Geoff Sheppard up with a wrongful conviction.

Sheppard got into animal rights activism in 1980 when he watched a documentary on factory farming and became a vegan, though he didn’t know the term at the time.

He went on his first demo in 1981 and got involved in direct action in 1984, giving the example of breaking windows of butchers’ shops or burger chains.

Asked if he was ever involved in liberating animals, he said:

‘No, actually that’s one of my regrets, that I was never involved in actually liberating an actual animal. But I could give you an idea as to why that was the case.’

As to whether his animal rights activism ever caused harm to anyone, Sheppard replied:

‘Not physically, no. But possibly to their bank balance… that was a deliberate decision… I wouldn’t have felt comfortable harming anybody.’

He said that he’d only been hunt sabbing on two or three occasions when extra help was required because of potential violence from the hunters. He had become involved in London Greenpeace in part because of its support for animal rights.

DIFFERENT GROUPS, COMMON PURPOSE

The Inquiry showed a secret police report by Lambert (UCPI028517) which said that there was close cooperation between the Animal Liberation Front and London Greenpeace because:

‘The latter is dominated by anarchist Animal Liberation Front activists or supporters, who see the name ‘London Greenpeace’ as a good vehicle for promoting Animal Liberation Front propaganda and actions.’

Sheppard, echoing numerous other witnesses before him, said that simply wasn’t true, and indeed many people in London Greenpeace had no interest in animal rights.

‘I used to attend London Greenpeace quite often and I certainly wasn’t thinking of it as affording me a cloak of respectability, not at all…

I think people attended London Greenpeace such as myself who were interested in animal rights and animal liberation, it was because there were some people there who were interested in those issues.’

It’s one of the major recurring misconceptions we’ve seen in police reports throughout the Inquiry. They imagine activists are looking for ways to hoodwink others into supporting their cause. They seem incapable of believing that people genuinely support the causes and act with integrity. This says much more about those writing the reports than it does about their subjects.

The Inquiry referred to Hackney and Islington Animal Rights Campaign, which Sheppard was involved with in the 1980s and 1990s. He confirmed their meetings were open to the public and held monthly.

‘it was a group that would hold public meetings. It would mainly be at the weekend or on a Saturday going out on the streets handing out leaflets about different aspects of animal abuse. That was the kind of thing that they would do.’

He was shown a range of reports about the group that named him (UCPI02848, 3 January 1986 by Lambert; MPS-074410, 17 March 1992 by HN2 Andy Coles; MPS-074410, 10 April 1992, also by Coles; MPS-0740030, 15 March 1993 by Rayner; MPS-0744116, 12 November 1993, also by Rayner). The last of these said the group was disbanding.

Sheppard disputed the description of him as having a prominent role:

‘Well, I wouldn’t say I was one of the principal organisers. I definitely used to help out to some extent. I seem to remember that for a time I was the person who would go and open up the room if there was a public meeting… I helped in that respect, certainly.’

This is another inaccurate recurring theme of the police reports. The police seem to find it difficult to conceive of loosely affiliated like-minded people acting in concert, and so they try to superimpose a hierarchy on to any groups spied on. They pick members and attribute commanding roles to them. This also helps in making their reports sound like they’ve uncovered secrets.

Additionally, as we’ve especially seen in many of Lambert’s reports, the officers will organise things themselves but attribute it to group members.

IMAGINARY HIERARCHY

Sheppard was then shown a report (MPS-0744109, 20 July 1992, by Matt Rayner and Andy Coles):

‘Geoff Sheppard, the life and soul of the Hackney and Islington Animal Rights Campaign has decided that for the time being the group will confine itself to an educational workshop with public meetings, enlisting the support of guest speakers and videos.’

This makes him not only the central figure but able to unilaterally take decisions on what the group will do. This is not what he was, nor how the group worked.

‘I think these undercover officers tend to exaggerate everything that they say… my nature is not really the life and soul of anything, to be honest.’

The Inquiry turned to the Animal Liberation Front Supporters’ Group (ALFSG), which Sheppard had supported since the mid-1980s and was briefly active in running its finances in the early 1990s. He described the ALFSG as supporting animal rights prisoners, and producing a newsletter.

A 1993 report by Rayner (MPS-0744489) said Sheppard left his role in order to commit himself to more direct animal rights work such as street protests:

‘Sheppard remains convinced that the only really effective way to fight vivisection is through economic sabotage’

This is quite a sensationalist way to describe activities, and also inaccurate, as Sheppard pointed out:

‘I don’t think that was quite right. I would say economic sabotage was certainly one of the ways to fight vivisection, but there were also other good ways to fight vivisection as well, you know, through showing people the reality of vivisection on the streets, with leafleting, back in those days, anyway.’

A 1992 report by Andy Coles (MPS-074225) revealed the supposed command structure of the ALFSG:

‘The central organising figure behind the Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group is Vivien Smith who, despite her incarceration in Holloway Prison, is still able to carry out this role. Smith is assisted by Geoff Sheppard, a regular visitor, who acts as her agent.’

Sheppard rebuffed the whole thing.

‘No, that’s an exaggeration. I remember visiting her in Holloway Prison on one occasion. Just once. So, you know, “regular visiting” is a ridiculous thing to say. It just simply wasn’t true… I certainly have no recollection of acting as her agent, no.’

LONDON BOOTS ACTION GROUP

They then turned to the formation of London Boots Action Group, another campaign against vivisection. At that time, retail chemist Boots had two of its own vivisection facilities. The Inquiry showed reports from HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’, as well as ones from Andy Coles that mentioned Sheppard.

‘we would stand outside Boots stores, not obstructing the entry or anything like that, but we would be handing out leaflets to people as we were standing outside various Boots stores in and around London. Certainly from my point of view, that’s the main activity that I remember. You know, rather boring hours of activity getting probably quite cold standing outside Boots stores.’

A Matt Rayner report from 1992 (MPS-073939) said:

‘11 members of the London Boots Action Group travelled to Margate to join the national demonstration against Charles River, the parent company of Shamrock Farm near Brighton [breeders of monkeys for vivisection].’

It described a peaceful demonstration and then:

‘In bad temper and some frustration, the London Boots Action Group contingent went into Margate to vent their anger on local branches of Boots and McDonald’s. [privacy] and [privacy] let off a handful of stink bombs in both establishments, while [privacy] and [privacy] entered Boots, loaded baskets with goods which they packed very slowly at the checkout before casually leaving the store without the goods and without paying for them.

‘[Privacy] and [privacy], with [privacy], [privacy] and [privacy] repeated the performance in McDonald’s by ordering huge quantities of food and drink, which they abandoned when produced. These actions cause intense annoyance to the staff and management at both places’

Sheppard confirmed he was at the earlier demo but has no recollection at all of the later events, and said he never did anything like that.

It’s worth mentioning that even if it all happened exactly as described, annoying retail staff is hardly a matter for an elaborate undercover operation with copies of reports being sent to MI5.

Another Rayner report (MPS-074579) said someone at a London Boots Action Group meeting had suggested a protest outside the home of a director of Boots. Sheppard has a vague memory of doing such a protest once which, he pointed out, was legal and quite common at the time.

Several reports described security concerns in the group and that some members, including Sheppard, dismissed them because the group had no secrets. It was open to the public and produced a newsletter about its activities. They said that if anyone wanted to discuss sensitive or illegal matters they shouldn’t do so at the meetings.

Asked to elaborate on the clear implication of this, Sheppard said:

‘London Boots Action Group, in its own right, was not involved in anything like that, but obviously individuals who attended London Boots Action Group may have been, such as myself, involved in direct action.’

HIDDEN TREASURER

Moving on to 1995 and London Animal Action, a Matt Rayner report (MPS-0741078) said the group held two bank accounts. One had Paul Gravett and Sheppard named as signatories, the other had Gravett and Rayner himself.

Though it’s alarming to think of spycops taking on such a pivotal active position in a group, by 1995 it had become standard tradecraft.

As an illustration of how common this was, we had previously learned about these officers’ roles in a single week of Inquiry hearings:

HN354 Vincent Clark ‘Vince Miller’ (1976-79)
Treasurer, SWP Walthamstow branch
Treasurer, SWP Outer East London District

HN80 ‘Colin Clark’ (1977-82)
Treasurer, SWP Seven Sisters & Haringey branch
Treasurer, SWP Lea Valley District
National Treasurer, Right to Work Campaign

HN356/124 ‘Bill Biggs’ (1977-82)
Treasurer, SWP Plumstead branch

HN155 ‘Phil Cooper’ (1979-83)
Treasurer, Waltham Forest Anti-Nuclear Campaign
National Treasurer, Right to Work Campaign

SPYCOPS PASSING OFF THEIR WORK AS HIS

We were then shown reports detailing the formation and function of the Animal Liberation Investigation Unit. It was described as co-ordinating regional groups to support and attend one another’s activities which were specifically described as within the bounds of the law.

Those setting it up had to be personally informed and vouched for. Sheppard said he has no memory of being invited and doesn’t believe it happened. Despite this, the reports named him as the London co-ordinator, and we were treated to an extensive description of the responsibilities that entailed.

Sheppard apologetically responded:

‘I was not in any way involved in the Animal Liberation Investigation Unit. Not as far as I remember, anyway. I am pretty sure that I was not. So that seems to be fabricated, really.’

Asked why Rayner would have said this, Sheppard said:

‘I would like to know whether he was possibly acting in that role, and maybe he was putting my name there instead.’

We next looked at a Special Branch report from outside the Special Demonstration Squad (MPS-073960), concerning Operation Wheelbrace which targeted animal rights activists:

‘Geoff Sheppard has become very much a force unto to himself and is not part of any specific group dealt with under Wheelbrace. He is behind the new British Anti-Vivisection Association.’

Sheppard was categorical in his response:

‘I was certainly not behind it, I had no involvement in setting it up… I wasn’t really involved, other than buying packs of leaflets off them in order to distribute. Possibly I used to go round door to door putting them through letterboxes. That was my involvement, really, with that organisation.’

Asked about all these groups being spied on, he declared:

‘it was totally unnecessary for the undercover police to be doing this. I mean, these groups had no intention of toppling British democracy, they weren’t involved in violence against individuals, and, as I said before, as far as I am aware there were a lot of police informers in the animal rights movement, apparently, so I don’t see why there was any necessity to have undercover police officers involved.’

THE OFFICERS

Having looked at the various campaign groups, the Inquiry moved on to ask Sheppard about the spycops themselves.

They started with HN11 Michael Chitty ‘Mike Blake’. Sheppard has a vague recollection of meeting him once, when Chitty drove a carload of people back to London after attending a trial in Sheffield.

In 2014, Chitty told Operation Herne – the Met’s self-investigation into spycops before the public inquiry was announced – that he’d known Sheppard well. Sheppard himself denied this.

JOHN DINES & WRONGFUL ARREST

Moving on to John Dines, Sheppard remembered him from London Greenpeace, but without much in the way of specifics.

They never socialised together and:

‘The only main thing with this individual was that he threw a bag of flour at an anti-hunt demonstration and I got arrested for it.’

The Inquiry went into this in some detail. It was a Horse and Hounds ball, held at the Grosvenor House Hotel in 1991.

Sheppard described his presence:

‘this was a hunt ball, so these were people attending the ball who were engaged in the practice of hunting wild animals to death and our presence there was to let them know that we very much disagreed with that so-called sport…

‘there were quite a few people there. So possibly 30 or 40 people, perhaps… it could have been 60 people, maybe… as far as I remember, it was just mainly shouting. Holding placards, that kind of thing.

‘I don’t have a memory of seeing the bag of flour being thrown or landing. I probably saw it but I just can’t remember it. All I can remember is my arrest… maybe John Dines was standing behind me, but I never saw who threw it.’

Sheppard was arrested. He was later told that Dines was the one who’d thrown it. Sheppard was tried and convicted.

‘afterwards, outside, John Dines must have come outside with me and I think one of the officers who had been involved in the arrest was coming out and John Dines shouted at him, “Tell the truth in future”. That’s the bit that I remember.’

This makes it a miscarriage of justice – a police officer had evidence that exonerated the accused, but withheld it from the court. This is far from the only time spycops did this. Mark Ellison KC’s 2015 report on spycops and miscarriages of justice says there was evidence of this happening numerous times.

The case that brought the whole spycops scandal to the public eye, the exposure of Mark Kennedy, became common knowledge when prosecuted climate activists asked to see his reports. Rather than hand them over, the state withdrew and in January 2011 the trial collapsed.

It later came out that Kennedy had recorded conversations that exonerated the accused. Had he not been unmasked between the arrests and the trial, there would likely have been wrongful convictions.

Plainly, police withheld evidence in cases that resulted in Geoff Sheppard’s more serious convictions too.

Somewhat bizarrely, the Inquiry asked Sheppard at some length about why he didn’t complain to police about his wrongful prosecution.

John Dines had deceived deceived Helen Steel into an intimate relationship. Sheppard confirmed that he knew Steel from London Greenpeace meetings but he didn’t socialise with her or Dines:

‘I was always rather a standoffish type of person. I didn’t go to a lot of social events, so probably I didn’t have as many opportunities to see them together as other people would have had.’

ANDY COLES

Andy Coles was the next officer discussed. He infiltrated peace and animal rights groups from 1991 to 1995. In that time, he groomed a vulnerable teenager, ‘Jessica’, into a relationship.

‘I knew him very little, but I think he was – people called him Andy Van, because he always had a van available to drive people around or move items around.’

Beyond that, Sheppard’s recollections about Coles were scant. He believes they would have been in London Boots Action Group together.

‘I don’t actually remember him being with me on pickets outside Boots, but he probably was doing that… If you ask me to picture inside my mind right now a meeting of the London Boots Action Group with him sitting there, I don’t think – I can’t really picture him…

‘You know, if you are going to talk about Rayner, then I have much more knowledge, because I was closer to him. I wasn’t very close to this Andrew Coles, he had obviously not been assigned to focus on me, because he didn’t focus on me and I had very little involvement with him.’

One of Coles’ reports from 1992 describes a woman involved in London Greenpeace, London Boots Action Group, and other groups in South London. It says she does not approve of ‘lethal force against animal abusers’ and claims this means she disagrees with ‘her boyfriend, Geoff Sheppard’.

Sheppard rejects this outright.

In an undated document called ‘Six months post-op debrief’ (MPS-0743479), presumably six months after Coles’ deployment ended in 1995, he said he was a close associate of Sheppard’s in the ALF, and that he’d gained the trust and confidence of extremely good security-conscious activists, including Sheppard.

‘Well, that’s just completely incorrect, because he was not… he definitely never gained my trust or confidence. I had very little to do with him…

I had a prison sentence already for the Debenhams act, so maybe it boosted his credibility to make out that he was closer to me than he actually was.’

MATT RAYNER

In contrast, Sheppard remembered HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ well.

‘I don’t even know if you would say we were friends, but I think we developed a situation where we were close associates… And the reason I don’t use the word “friend”, is because I don’t really remember socialising with him all that much, or if at all.’

Speaking to Operation Herne’s investigation into spycops, Rayner described himself and Sheppard as ‘firm friends’.

‘I think that’s a bit too strong. As I said, he was a close associate and that association was all based around animal liberation, based around those issues. I wouldn’t say that we would become firm friends, I think that’s putting it too strongly…

‘I trusted him because he showed a willingness – a great willingness – to be involved in direct action and I was involved with him in direct action on quite a few occasions.’

A police document (MPS-074616) authored by spycops manager HN67 ‘Alan Bond’ in August 1992, not long into Rayner’s deployment, was quoted:

‘Had an informal chat with HN1 [‘Rayner’] – things within his organisation are obviously settling down and he now appears to be progressing steadily.

‘Geoff Sheppard has now taken HN1 under his wing and is telling other comrades that he can vouch for him – almost as if he is acting as HN1’s mentor within the organisation.’

Sheppard called it out as false:

‘I don’t think I started doing direct action with him until some time in 1993. So at that time I wouldn’t have had any idea whether he seemed to be a trusted person or not.’

Sheppard said Rayner visited his home a couple of times.

The first of these he believes was around May 1994, and Rayner was with a woman he had deceived into a relationship, Liz Fuller.

The second was around March 1995, a few weeks before Sheppard was arrested, precipitating his second spell of imprisonment.

‘the thing that has stuck in my mind from that visit is that we were basically we were talking about vivisection, animal experimentation, and the kind of people that were involved in animal experimentation, and we were obviously, you know, very unhappy about these kind of people.

‘And I remember him suddenly dropping into the conversation, “well, if you would like – if you want to shoot the vivisector, then I would be willing to drive you there”. Of course at this time I had already informed him that I was in possession of the shotgun. This was the suggestion that he made to me.

‘My answer to him, because I felt that I was sort of letting him down, because it seemed as if it was something that he wanted to do. I didn’t actually say no. I said to him, “I’ll think about it”, which was my way of kind of gently letting him down. Because I thought – to me it seemed as if I was kind of letting him down by not doing something that he seemed to be interested in doing.’

SPYCOP FACILITATING CRIME

Sheppard remembered Rayner always had a vehicle – at first a van, later a car – that was used to give lifts to activists. This was standard practice for spycops – in a community without much disposable income, and events to go to that were often some distance away, being able to give lifts meant you got told about everything.

Spycops would also use the long drives to get personal information, and drop people at home thus finding out their addresses.

Sheppard said he was with Rayner on many occasions when Rayner was the driver for people committing criminal damage to buildings connected to vivisection. This was after Sheppard’s prison term for the Debenhams actions, and also after a period of several years following his release when he was not involved in criminal activity. He remembers Rayner advocating direct action and responding in agreement.

At this point the hearing took a break for lunch. Despite their earlier promises to publish transcripts of hearings by lunchtime the next day, they have failed to do so on numerous occasions.

At the time of writing, the afternoon transcript is still not online and the Inquiry has not responded to emails asking when we can expect it. This means that we don’t have any extended verbatim quotes for the afternoon session and must work instead from notes and live tweets.

Rayner told Operation Herne that he once appeared in court as a witness after Sheppard had been arrested at an anti-fur protest outside Harrods. Sheppard himself doesn’t even remember the arrest, saying it happened to him so many times they all blur into one.

Sheppard does remember Rayner and his partner Liz Fuller and was well aware they were a couple.

John Dines reported in July 1990 that Sheppard was reluctant to get involved in taking ‘extreme direct action’ following his release from prison that March.

BACK TO ACTION

A 1993 report by Rayner said Sheppard had resumed ‘ALF-style activity’. Sheppard agrees that this is true and says Rayner was ‘putting me in the position he was in’. He explained his resumption as being half due to a residual belief in direct action, and half due to the influence of Rayner:

‘I valued his perception of me… I suppose maybe some part of me wanted to do it to please him’

The report said Sheppard had ‘gathered around him a small group of established, trusted and highly committed activists’.

He says he hadn’t, but that maybe Rayner had done this, and persuaded them all to get involved.

There were 10 to 15 actions, all of them criminal damage (eg breaking windows and throwing paint), all at vivisection institutions. There was no targeting of individuals or homes.

A report dated November 1994 talks about Sheppard developing a new ‘enthusiasm for anti-government public order type confrontation’ and going along to an anti-Criminal Justice Bill protest in October.

These were huge, broad-based protests against planned draconian new laws that criminalised protests and curtailed human rights. The protests had support from most parties except the Conservatives. It was far from ‘anti-government’.

He remembers being in Hyde Park when trouble broke out, and being charged by mounted police officers, one of whom hit him in the head with a baton. He did not break any shop windows that day (as claimed in the report).

INCENDIARY ALLEGATIONS

Sheppard freely admits four of them – including Rayner – were considering an incendiary campaign targeting Boots, but explains he got scared, and only got 95% of the way to producing an effective device. According to an expert who examined the items found at Sheppard’s home in 1995, there were components that could be used to manufacture a timed incendiary device, along with an instruction booklet.

Rayner asked to take away the 95% completed incendiary device that Sheppard had built but couldn’t get any further with. Sheppard agreed. Rayner didn’t take the booklet that detailed how to make these devices, and he assumed Rayner had his own copy.

In his witness statement, Sheppard writes of trying to make a working incendiary device, and deciding to turn it into a ‘dummy’, that would look like an incendiary device but not work as one.

Asked about an incendiary device that was recovered from a branch of Boots in Enfield, Sheppard says that was an action of Rayner’s after Sheppard said he didn’t want to be involved any more. The device found in Enfield was examined and found to be ‘viable’. According to the expert, if it had functioned it would have burnt for several minutes.

After the device was discovered in Enfield, somebody called the store and claimed there was a second device hidden there, and so the shop was evacuated. Somebody also rang the media.

Apart from Rayner and Sheppard, the other two people in the cell were both women. Sheppard didn’t make any anonymous phone calls about devices planted in Boots, so if this was a caller with a male voice, the only other person it could be was Rayner.

SHOTGUN

Sheppard didn’t go out with the intention of purchasing a shotgun. An armed robber he’d made friends with in prison asked him to look after the firearm. They dropped off the ammunition (some live and some not) at the same time as the gun.

They contacted him later from another country saying they were short of money and asked if he would buy it from them. He agreed to do this, thinking it could be useful for things like shooting out lights and cameras, or windows. He never intended to use it against a person. He thinks he paid between £100 and £200.

Asked why he kept the gun and the device/ components in his house, Sheppard says he doesn’t understand what was going on in his head at the time, and wonders if he had some kind of ‘death wish’ to have taken such a risk.

He says he and Rayner went out to Epping Forest together to test the gun.

1995 ARREST

When Sheppard’s home was raided the police recovered a double-barrelled shotgun (with only one working barrel) and some ammunition. We were shown a photo.

The Inquiry was shown a typed and handwritten note by Sheppard that included the paragraph:

‘we should trust our instincts above all else and if they lead us to sympathise with the use of lethal violence against animal torturers, then so be it.’

Sheppard says he wrote it in prison for an article in Arkangel magazine, that ‘maybe’ he would have had sympathy for someone who took lethal action against vivisectors, had it happened, but that he had no such intent himself.

It had the title ‘Follow the Force’. Sheppard explained he was referring to the ‘force within’ and the article ended by telling the reader to be true to themselves, which ‘99.95% of the time’ will tend to mean non-violence.

We were shown an intelligence report from 1 June 1995 attributed to Rayner (who claims it is a composite report, not written solely by him). It said Sheppard’s arrest on 26 May 1995 came as a shock to many animal rights activists, and that Geoff Sheppard intended to murder Professor Colin Blakemore, a neurobiologist and outspoken advocate of vivisection in medical research.

We were also shown the debrief of Rayner where he says Sheppard was looking after a shotgun and he didn’t know what to do with it. Rayner admitted Sheppard never told him that he planned to target Blakemore, but says that Blakemore was ‘public enemy number one within the anti-vivisection movement, there was constant talk by many activists, Geoff Sheppard included, of wanting to do him harm’.

Sheppard later appealed against his 1995 conviction, on the basis of Rayner’s involvement, encouragement and facilitation. In his grounds for appeal, he listed the ways in which Rayner had been involved: actively encouraging him to take part in actions, transporting him and others to actions, encouraging him to buy a shotgun and offering him money towards the purchase. Paul Gravett, Sheppard’s comrade, says he remembers Sheppard telling him about it at the time.

Sheppard now says Rayner didn’t encourage him to buy it, and didn’t even know about it until after it was paid for.

Geoff Sheppard was sentenced to seven years for his possession of a firearm and other items to be used for criminal damage. We were shown an authority document from Special Branch for Rayner to visit Sheppard in prison on the Isle of Wight in November 1996. Rayner also wrote to Sheppard in jail, with a number of letters exchanged.

This ended the questions, but not the questioning. The Inquiry went round in circles for a while, literally asking the exact same questions about the shotgun over and over, occasionally adding the prefix ‘are you sure’. It’s not clear what they thought this would achieve, and eventually they stopped.

Tranche 2, Phase 2, Week 4

11-15 November 2024

This summary covers the fourth week of ‘Tranche 2 Phase 2’, the new round of hearings of the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI). This Phase mainly concentrates on examining the animal rights-focused activities of the Metropolitan Police’s secret political unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, from 1983-92.

The UCPI is an independent, judge-led inquiry into undercover policing in England and Wales. Its main focus is the activity of two units who deployed long-term undercover officers into a variety of political groups; the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS, 1968-2008) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU, 1999-2011). Spycops from these units lived as activists for years at a time, spying on more than 1,000 groups.

INTRODUCTION

It was the second of (at least) four consecutive weeks without livestreaming. This chaotic and last-minute decision by the Inquiry is because the hearings are covered by multiple Reporting Restriction Orders over private information about civilians named in the evidence (generally understood to be people who don’t want spycops’ lies about them in the public domain).

Reporting restrictions have been known to change at short notice and people reporting live from the hearings have had to delete tweets that the Inquiry considers to be in breach, so we have to err on the side of caution when writing these reports.

The Inquiry does not publish the statements, police reports, photos and other documents its refers to in questioning until after the hearing, further impeding the understanding of those of us watching. It is a public inquiry that actively excludes the public.

In the run-up to hearing evidence from HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’ at the start of December, the Inquiry is focusing on testimony from activists he spied on, largely those involved with London Greenpeace in the mid 1980s.

Other officers were committing similar abuses at the time as Lambert, such as HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’ who’s given a written statement but refused to be questioned, and HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’ who we’ll hear from in mid December.

CONTENTS

Timothy Greene

Albert Beale

Robin Lane

Paul Gravett

Geoff Sheppard

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Monday 11 November 2024
Evidence of Timothy Greene

Click here for video, transcripts and written evidence

Timothy Charles Greene was a solicitor during the period the Inquiry is now examining (1983-1992), and worked as such for 38 years. He is now a Circuit Judge. Perhaps in deference to his status in the legal profession, he was questioned by the Inquiry’s lead barrister, David Barr KC.

This hearing was not livestreamed, and at time of writing (a week after the evidence was heard), despite promises from the Inquiry neither video nor transcripts have been published on the Inquiry website, so this summary is being prepared from notes.

Greene’s written statement was introduced into the evidence. Neither the written statement not any of the underlying documents examined during this hearing have been published by the Inquiry yet.

Greene was asked about his career and he explained that he always had sympathy for rebels and underdogs, and he became a criminal defence lawyer.

In the 1980s he was an associate solicitor with a few years of experience often acting for activists including animal rights campaigners. He worked for Birnberg Peirce (one of the firms now representing core participants in the Inquiry) and he explained that even then the firm had a huge reputation. They didn’t have to do marketing. Clients sought them out.

He was asked about his own views, and the fact that the firm had a subscription to the animal rights magazine Arkangel. He says he would refer to it to see what his clients were up to, and that he was a vegetarian, but not a vegan.

Greene was clearly a very committed defence solicitor, who worked antisocial hours and gave clients his home number, because arrests don’t always happen during office hours.

It was clear from Barr’s questions that ‘intelligence’ from the time included multiple reports about then-solicitor Greene (and that they couldn’t even spell his name).

We saw yet more examples of the Inquiry’s chaotic, fire-fighting approach to people’s privacy, including an embarrassing incident when David Barr selected a paragraph of a document, only to find it had been redacted since he last looked.

Reports attributed to both HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’ and HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’ named Greene, although he has no memory of ever meeting either man in their undercover roles. One report called Greene an ‘oddball’ and alleged he had cemented firm friendships with some of his clients. Asked if this was true, Tim quipped ‘if I’m an oddball?’ to much laughter from the public gallery.

Much of the evidence is covered by Reporting Restriction Orders, so it is not possible to go into many of the details, however, it was clear that the reports contained many shocking lies about Greene and the animal rights activists he represented.

It was evident that Greene had a Special Branch file opened on him. He said he was not surprised, given who his clients had been. Nevertheless he was shocked and concerned that such inaccurate and blatantly untrue information was being recorded and even spread to other agencies.

Some reports were marked ‘Box 500’, which means that they were passed to MI5. We were also shown a Special Branch memo stating that a senior Detective Chief Inspector was going to personally brief the Anti-Terrorism Branch about Timothy Greene.

Another deeply concerning aspect of the reporting was the fact that privileged communications between a client and their legal representative were reported on by undercover police. There were numerous examples of this in relation to criminal proceedings, and the example of the McLibel case also came up.

Greene remembers attending a couple of meetings between the defendants and their lawyer Kier Starmer, and says he would have been shocked and deeply concerned to know that the state was involved in a civil dispute.

There were no further questions for Greene from other lawyers, but after Barr finished his questioning the room was cleared and there was a short additional hearing where he gave evidence behind closed doors.

 

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Monday 11 November 2024
Evidence of Albert Beale

Click here for video, transcripts and written evidence

The afternoon session on 11 November saw lifelong pacifist activist, Albert Beale, being questioned by Joseph Hudson. Beale has made a written witness statement which was introduced into the evidence.

Beale primarily gave evidence about the infiltration of London Greenpeace (LGP). He is one of several witnesses being questioned about the group, which may be the most infiltrated of any small campaign group, having been targeted not only by undercover police officers but also by a succession of corporate spies working for McDonald’s.

London Greenpeace was a small organisation (wholly separate from Greenpeace International). It was concerned with a wide range of environmental and social justice issues, opposing greedy exploitation of people, animals and resources. An open public group with no formal membership, it held weekly meetings, usually attended by 5-25 people.

Before becoming active active with London Greenpeace, Beale was active in anti-militarism, anti-apartheid, feminism, gay rights and atheism, mostly in Brighton.

He spoke in detail about the War Resisters’ International (WRI) network, which is made up of numerous organisations around the world that resist war. He also gave a short history of the publication Peace News, reaching back to the 1930s.

WRI and Peace News were ideological neighbours as well as physical neighbours (they had offices in adjacent buildings) and there was always a crossover of personnel in the campaigns. London Greenpeace was formed in the 1970s by people involved in both groups, and it was launched with an article published in Peace News.

Asked about the general priorities of London Greenpeace during its early years, Beale replied that it was mainly selling a broadsheet publication. The first significant issue it addressed was opposing nuclear tests.

Beale was not hugely involved in LGP in the 1980s but he always went to meetings if he was around. He highlighted the difference between LGP and Greenpeace International:

‘Imperial Greenpeace as I still find it hard not to still call them.’

Beale was asked about whether LGP had an ‘anarchist ethos’. He responded with a clear account of anarchism as a common-sense approach:

‘If you define anarchism as a thing where people voluntarily organise themselves together, then it did have an anarchist ethos in the sense that nobody was telling it what to do. The group came together and we set our own criteria… self-activity and self-decision making on a voluntary basis… is in a sense one definition of anarchism…

‘unfortunately, of course, anarchism – as with many political philosophies where the people who adhere to it want to change the world – is seen very pejoratively. It is quite clear from seeing some of the police reports that they are using anarchism as… a term of abuse. And anarchism as I understand it is highly responsible and highly self-aware…

‘Unfortunately the cloak and dagger bomb throwing image of anarchists that you see in cartoons is all very witty but it doesn’t really have much to do with what anarchism as most of us understand it is all about.’

SO, WAS LONDON GREENPEACE A FRONT FOR THE ALF?

The main drive of Hudson’s questioning, and indeed a recurring theme throughout the past two weeks of evidence hearings, can be summed up as: You were part of London Greenpeace, but… wasn’t it really the Animal Liberation Front (ALF)?

Like all the LGP witnesses before him, Beale very clearly and repeatedly replied ‘no’.

LGP had a very broad range of interests, because of ‘the way the group worked that people with a particular interest might come and inspire others’.

Some people in the group were interested in animal rights, many were not. Within LGP, people’s interests changed over the years and the focus of the group was constantly shifting. There was nothing special about animal rights in that respect. The group always held meetings publicly and anyone could come.

The group was always a mix of generations:

‘It had old codgers and young students in it’.

Beale recognises the popularity animal rights enjoyed among younger people in the 1980s. Asked what he understands by the phrase ‘an ALF activist’, Beale said was someone who has a more radical take on the rights of animals and was in tune with the sort of things the ALF was doing. He confessed to having little understanding of the ALF. Animal issues were not something Beale was very interested in ‘because you can’t do everything’.

In fact, spycop Bob Lambert was one of the people most interested in animal liberation within the group.

Beale recalled that ‘Bob Robinson’ started attending campaign meetings in the 1980s. He was enthusiastic and quickly got involved in activities. He was friendly, willing to write leaflets and he talked about animal liberation issues from the very beginning. His appearance in the group coincided with an increased interest in animal rights.

Beale himself had criticisms of the ALF, and there were concerns within the group. Beale’s LGP comrade Martyn Lowe, who gave evidence a week earlier, is recorded in Lambert’s reporting as raising concerns about the direction LGP was taking.

Beale was sympathetic with Lowe’s position. However, he takes issue with the way those concerns were reported by Lambert, and notes that the issue was not as divisive as the reporting implies. This exaggeration of divisions within a group is a bit of a theme in SDS reporting.

Hudson asked Beale about some of the evidence the Inquiry has of LGP interest in animal rights. Much was made of an ALF leaflet stapled to an LGP newsletter. We were also shown an intelligence report from 13 December 1985 about a public event. The report claims it was addressed by ‘ALF activist’ Steve Boulding, and that most attendees were ALF activists or supporters.

Beale was clear in his answers that LGP organised public events about many different topics, including animal rights. He was directly asked if there was talk of ‘ALF-style’ property damage at London Greenpeace meetings. He says yes, those sort of things were happening at the time and so of course, they were talked about. But talking about actions that are happening is not the same as planning or orchestrating those actions.

BUILDINGS

Hudson asked a series of rather repetitive questions about how buildings were used. Beale was asked to detail the various peace and activist groups that were based in the King’s Cross area, and how they moved around at the time.

London Greenpeace nearly always had an office in one or other of the buildings. Beale was asked about 5 Caledonian Road, which he referred to, ironically, as ‘the Peace News empire’.

The address has long been the home of Housmans bookshop, which is still based there, and it has been used by a vast number of progressive organisations over the years. It even has a COPS blue plaque commemorating the attendance of Special Demonstration Squad spies.

Beale was asked to explain how the letting out of offices was organised, which he did, listing lots of organisations that rented an office in the building over the years.

Hudson also asked about how the London Greenpeace office specifically was used. How often were people there? It was clearly run very informally.

‘I was in and out of that building anyway… There was one guy who I remember took over being one of the cheque signatories and did the sums and did that sort of thing and he popped in, from what I can remember, practically every day.’

Beale described how, in the pre-online era when print and letters were the primary method of disseminating ideas, London Greenpeace would receive huge amounts of correspondence, meaning there was always plenty of work to do responding to everyone.

The reasons for these questions appear to be that the police reporting about the offices imply they were some kind of secret organising hub. One report from 14 April 1987 claimed the ALF Supporters Group (ALFSG) was renting an office at 5 Caledonian Road, and another from 7 July 1987 suggests that London Greenpeace held ‘secret meetings’ there.

Beale batted that description away. There was no ‘secret private cabal meeting’, you have an office, and people drop in: that is not a secret meeting.

‘It is just trying to dramatise normal campaigning work, it seems to me. Of course not everybody is involved in every discussion. It’s not you are trying to make a big secret of it.

‘In fact, if you plan something at a meeting in the office when you are just with a bunch of people, presumably the next week’s normal London Greenpeace meeting presumably you would say, “Oh, we had this great idea and we have planned this and we have done this leaflet or whatever it is”…

‘I can understand, you know, if you are a police spy infiltrating a group, you have got to make the group look more furtive and more wicked to justify what you are doing…

‘the more I see of the police reports, the less serious I find I can take them, even the ones that seem plausible I now have doubts about, because some of them are so obviously absurd.’

James Wood KC took this theme further at the end, asking if Beale personally witnessed any ALF planning at London Greenpeace meetings: ‘No’.

Was there any kind of rental agreement for the ALFSG to have an office at 5 Caledonian Road? ‘No’.

Did Beale witness any planning of ALF actions in any buildings that London Greenpeace used? ‘No”.

Beale was a very good witness. His evidence really conveyed the informal nature of the organising and campaigning, and the importance of solidarity, and made it clear that the sinister way that is portrayed in the police reporting is just wrong.

He confirmed that it is perfectly plausible that ALFSG work could have been done, informally, in the LGP office, by people who were involved in both groups. Challenged by Hudson over whether, as a pacifist, he would have objected to that, Beale answered:

‘[I understand that the ALFSG] was a group whose role was to support people who were imprisoned as a result of Animal Liberation Front activities and things like that. I think there is probably a general support and solidarity with people who are facing prison for things that they have done to follow their own conscience. And one has that basic solidarity with them, even if they are doing things that you would not do yourself…

‘when people are up against the state, sometimes you just know in your gut what side you are on. You know, even if you would rather they hadn’t done it, the people who are on trial, you know where the bigger evil is…

‘It is perfectly possible as a pacifist for me to say, “Whether somebody clobbers one person or somebody drops a bomb on a thousand people, I disagree with each of those 100 per cent. Therefore I disagree with them equally”.

‘Well, yes in one logical sense I do disagree with them equally, but at the same time I can also draw a distinction between the relative demerits of some violence which is far more culpable than others. And in the world we live in, the violence of the state is the worst of all violence. That’s where so much violence in society, the mood of society, emanates from.

‘And much as I disagree with people taking violent action in support of causes, however much I think it is a good cause, I am not going to go out of my way to condemn them in the same way I will condemn the violence of the state. In fact, I may support them, not supporting their actions but supporting what’s happening to them, because they are being prosecuted.’

We were also taken to Beale’s witness statement where he talks about confidentiality being required as the element of surprise was required to make an impact.

‘It doesn’t mean that you are doing something wicked, horrible or illegal if you don’t tell people in advance.’

He explained that the state often tries to stop people doing things that are not illegal. He gave the example of distributing pacifist leaflets to military personnel.

Asked whether ‘violence’ or the tactics of the ALF were up for debate in LGP meetings, Beale replied that debates may have happened but that in his experience:

‘violence, as I define it in my statement – as harming other people, you know, physically attacking people and so on – would simply not be an option’

We were shown a section of a report subtitled ‘violence’, which claimed that someone said in a meeting that vivisectors should be ‘lined up and shot’. Beale is recorded as noting the irony of saying that in the Peace Pledge Union office.

‘it was a turn of phrase, albeit in bad taste… I am sure I would have said something about it. I might well have said something a bit stronger than “noting the irony”…

‘I have to say, some of these reports that are about things at London Greenpeace meetings and some of the ones about me are very, very clearly reports where things are being said that were said at the meeting which are reported very much in the words of the police person doing the reporting…

‘So I wouldn’t take this too literally… I wouldn’t take it as a serious proposal that anybody is sitting there saying people should be lined up and shot in a literal sense’

But, as Beale says, if you’re an undercover police officer you have to make the group you’re infiltrating sound dangerous and subversive to justify what you’re doing. We are increasingly seeing that the consequence of that is that they systematically lied in their reports.

McLIBEL

Beale was also questioned about the McLibel case, when London Greenpeace produced a ‘What’s Wrong With McDonald’s?’ leaflet and were sued by the fast-food giant. Defended by LGP activists Dave Morris and Helen Steel, t became the longest-running trial in English history. The involvement of Special Demonstration Squad officers was not disclosed to the court.

Beale was shown one of LGP’s early anti-McDonald’s leaflets, and asked who might have produced it (specifically whether Lambert was involved).

‘I certainly didn’t type it, it’s not typed well enough… it looks to me like a joint production by a number of people. Bob might or might not have been one of them. I can’t say for sure, I am afraid.’

He described how sometimes you try different campaigns and some just lift off and get a buzz. A similar leaflet they made about Unilever didn’t take off. The McDonald’s campaign ‘did seem to hit a nerve’. As a result, various versions of the flyer were made.

Regarding Lambert’s involvement in writing anti-McDonald’s leaflets, Beale recalled:

‘I think he did some of the writing of them, actually… at that stage Bob was very into the corporate things as well as animal liberation things. That was kind of the two things that he sort of livened up within the group over a period of a few years.

‘So I just have this memory of him, you know, being at a meeting with people looking at leaflet drafts and Bob scribbling away and things. You know, I can’t say what word was written by whom, but he was certainly, he was certainly involved in the McDonald’s leaflets.’

Beale also made the point that LGP became more active during the McLibel trial, and his own role increased:

‘the whole McLibel thing was such an outrage that, that my solidarity with Dave and Helen during the libel case was such that I put a lot more time and energy into things around London Greenpeace.’

Hudson went on to ask about Lambert’s successor, HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’, infiltrating the group.

Beale said he didn’t warm to him as much as Bob. He remembers him monopolising Helen Steel’s attention, which turned out to be a prelude to deceiving her into an intimate relationship.

‘I just remember sitting in a pub one evening… it was kind of all jammed up on a bench in the pub with half a dozen of us from a meeting.

‘I do remember Helen was sitting next to me on one side and every time I tried to talk to her I discovered that John Dines was sitting next to her on the other side and was kind of monopolising her attention a great deal, he was obviously, you know, kind of, anyway, he was talking to her a lot and he was focusing on her a lot.

‘And I just remember that because he was on the other side of Helen from me and I didn’t know Helen very well at that stage, and I was going to ask some things and I didn’t get a word in, you know…which is not like me… I have odd flashes of memory of him.’

This pattern of undercover cops isolating women they targeted for deceitful relationships from other social contact is something we have seen in other cases as well.

Asked whether Dines had been given trusted roles within the group, Beale made it clear that anybody who came to a London Greenpeace meeting could be involved, whether an undercover or not:

‘we were a pretty open and trusting group… if they offered to do some of the work, we would be only too pleased, for goodness’ sake. Because there were times over the years when I felt lumbered with doing most of the admin work because there was nobody else around, you know, prepared to get off their backside and do it. So you were always very grateful when somebody did the work.

‘I don’t know how much work he did. I have no idea. But certainly anybody, anybody who was at the meetings would have every opportunity to take a role in any part of the work they wanted to, pretty much, and would know what was going on and could see the bank statements and things because they would all be there. It was all very open’

The point of these questions? London Greenpeace was infiltrated by more than one SDS undercover officer, and they became very involved in the private lives of people in the group.

The questioning drew out the complete lack of any justification for such intrusiveness, with Beale confirming that there was no information he was privy to a police officer could not have gleaned by simply turning up to a meeting.

Beale concluded by reflecting on the personal impact of these infiltrations. It was heartbreaking to hear him talking about how trusting the group had been:

‘we all have to trust each other as fellow human beings and fellow campaigners. I mean clearly we were silly to do so in retrospect, but you treat people as you want them to treat you, you trust them.’

Beale made the point that some of the overt political policing he has experienced has been bad:

‘I have been on the receiving end of what you might call the political police in this country a few other times beyond London Greenpeace, which in some ways have had more of an effect on me on one level, but in terms of the emotional effect, this is the worst.

‘I mean, having people you sit in the pub with, who are your mates, turning out to do this. It is outrageous.’

 

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Tuesday 12 November 2024
Evidence of Robin Lane

Click here for video, transcripts and written evidence

Some of this day’s evidence is covered by Reporting Restriction Orders, which means that not everything said in the hearing room can be reported outside of it.

However, we can tell you that Robin Lane has provided an 83 page written statement and some exhibits to the Inquiry. If we’re lucky, these will eventually appear on the ‘Day 12’ page of the UCPI website, but please do not hold your breath.

Questions were asked by one of the Inquiry’s Junior Counsel, Rachel Naylor.

Lane has dedicated most of his life to campaigning for animal rights. He has been vegan for over 40 years, and his main focus in recent years has been the promotion of veganism.

He first became politically active in 1980, joining the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). He became a local contact for the British Union Against Vivisection, now called Cruelty Free International, in late 1982.

He was involved in a number of animal rights groups. After the South London Animal Movement (SLAM) and ‘RATS’, he took up the role of press officer with the Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group (ALFSG) in 1986. He served some time in prison, and after his release, set up a new Campaign Against Leather & Fur (CALF) in 1989. In the 90s he was involved in setting up the Animal Rights Coalition London and London Animal Action (LAA).

NON-VIOLENCE

Lane was shown a leaflet from 1983 – attached to a police report [UCPI020446] – which described different forms of Civil Disobedience (referred to as CD). These included such tactics as occupying zebra crossings by walking over them continuously. According to the leaflet: ‘Non violent CD is very important’.

Lane was asked for his thoughts about this, and exactly which forms of non-violent direct action he considered legitimate and acceptable. It is unclear why the available transcript has been so heavily redacted, as nothing he said during the missing 25 minutes contravened any of the Inquiry’s Reporting Restriction Orders.

It was obvious to everyone that Lane was opposed to violence, and cared deeply about the horrific treatment of animals. He doesn’t agree with taking direct action against personal property, homes and cars, but considers it legitimate to protest outside businesses and sites of animal suffering, or to damage items that are used to torture animals.

He felt the actions taken by him and others were ‘perfectly reasonable’, and people could choose to risk arrest if they wanted to. He preferred demonstrations that did not attract a (potentially violent) police presence.

It was evident that he had spent a lot of time thinking about what constituted non-violent direct action. Indiscriminate or ill-planned actions that might lead to other people (especially children) being adversely affected, were not acceptable to him. He made it very clear that he did not support certain types of action.

SOUTH LONDON ANIMAL MOVEMENT (SLAM)

It seems likely that Robin Lane’s name was first recorded by Special Branch when he attended the first meeting of the reincarnated South London Animal Movement (SLAM) in 1983.

He recalls SLAM as a very ‘democratic’, open and law-abiding group. It was non-hierarchical – everyone sat in a circle, and there was nobody in charge – and ‘easy-going’.

He says someone called ‘Mike Blake’ turned up, and became part of the group. This was in fact an SDS officer, HN11 Mike Chitty, whose first report about SLAM [UCPI019336] described Lane as a ‘self-confessed anarchist’. He denies this, and says he was never an anarchist, has always voted in elections, and goes on to talk about the prevalence of punk at the time:

‘a lot of people called themselves anarchists. I don’t ever think they were really anarchists’.

According to Chitty’s secret police reports, there was lots of discussion of ALF-style actions, such as criminal damage, at the group’s meetings, and SLAM would soon start claiming responsibility for such actions in order to ‘put itself on the map’.

It seems improbable that anyone would have discussed this kind of illegal activity at a meeting which was completely open to the public.

Lane was asked if SLAM was in fact a conduit used to recruit people into the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). He tried to get an important point across to the Inquiry – that ‘ALF’ is an action, taken by an individual, not the name of an organisation:

‘There is no “the ALF”.’

In March 1984, there was an ALF raid on the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) in Camberwell, resulting in the liberation of rats that were being experimented on there. Members of SLAM heard about this on the news, and realised that there was vivisection happening in their local area.

They set up a working party to discuss campaigning about this, and a ‘handful’ of interested people met at Lane’s home to talk about their ideas. They organised a demo, which took place in January 1985.

Over 1000 people marched from the Institute all the way to Parliament, held a minute’s silence for the animals, then returned to Denmark Hill in Camberwell, where a large group blocked the traffic.

We saw a photograph [UCPI037136] of this march. It was openly organised, planned with the police, who complimented them on their stewarding, and the relevant local councils. This was the first march Lane had ever organised, and he considered it ‘a great success’.

The group learnt more about one particular vivisector based at the IoP, who conducted tests on baboons and mice, Dr Brian Meldrum. They decided to focus their campaigning on him.

Why focus on an individual rather than the entire institution? The working party did lots of research – he recalls ‘trawling through microfiches’ – and this made them realise the sheer size of the Institute and its experiments. They thought that unwieldy scale meant it made sense to focus on one main scientist and then make the links.

According to another Special Demonstration Squad report [UCPI014770], the group produced leaflets that included a photo of Meldrum and described the kind of experiments he was conducting. SLAM planned to distribute these locally, around the IoP and around Meldrum’s house.

Lane recalls that they’d originally thought about including Meldrum’s home address on it, but decided not to. The report suggested that there was much more disquiet about this campaign within SLAM than Lane remembers, and referred to it as a ’hate campaign’. He says it wasn’t; it was a campaign against vivisection – ‘against the torture, you know, of baboons and mice’.

The group used street theatre to raise public awareness of Meldrum’s controversial experiments (for example those where he used strobe lights to cause the baboons to have epileptic seizures), and sometimes held demonstrations outside his house.

We saw some photographs of this. In one [UCPI037134], a SLAM member is wearing a baboon suit. Lane is pictured shining a torch towards their face, and a local bobby stands watching. Another photo [UCPI037137] shows Lane wearing his Meldrum costume, a stained lab coat.

Attached to another report from spycops Mike Chitty [UCPI021972] is a four-page article written by Lane, which appeared in a new publication (‘The Door’) in 1986. Entitled ‘Looking back’, it describes some of the events held outside this house by the group.

Lane recalls that what they called ‘home visits’ were normal in those days, not seen as a big deal by the police, and entirely legal. There was no criminal offence being committed.

He remembers Meldrum’s wife coming out of the house on one occasion. She wasn’t frightened or intimidated, just angry about them holding a chimps’ tea-party in the driveway on the day of her husband’s 50th birthday party.

Lane said such home visits were widely seen as a legitimate form of campaigning, but the law has changed since then and he probably wouldn’t do these now.

SLAM didn’t tend to advertise these demos widely or in advance, it was just members of the group who turned up. Would spycop Mike Chitty have known about them? Lane has no idea; he doesn’t remember ‘Mike Blake’ being present at any of these home visits, but points out that ‘Mike’ wasn’t around all the time; he was involved in lots of different animal rights groups.

We moved on to hear about another tactic, announced at a SLAM meeting [UCPI021972] which Lane remembers as ‘very good’. Activists made very creative use of Freepost coupons, and as a result, Meldrum received hundreds of catalogues and packages over the course of a month. This constituted ‘a very effective way’ of taking up a vivisector’s time, says Lane.

According to a Polly Toynbee article in the Guardian, around 50% of Meldrum’s time was spent dealing with the campaigning.

The Inquiry then produced an article, ‘The Armchair Activist’, taken from issue 19 of the ALF Supporters’ Group (ALFSG) magazine, attached to a police report of December 1986 [MPS 0745764]. Lane recalled that their solicitor at this time advised against publishing this article, in case it was considered ‘incitement’.

This was around the same time as a number of animal rights activists were facing conspiracy charges in Sheffield. The ALFSG was keen to avoid breaking the law, so rather than distributing the magazine as it was, or reprinting it, they physically ripped those pages out.

Excerpts from the article were read out. It described how some activists had developed the Freepost idea much further, as an easily accessible form of action that could be done by anyone with access to a phone – using it to order goods and services for those they targeted. This was said to cause ‘utter misery’ for the recipients.

Lane pointed out that what SLAM had done was completely different; they just used Freepost; they didn’t order any of these other things (such as skips, scaffolding or funeral directors) for Meldrum, or anyone else.

Lane said that he and ‘Tanya’ (his girlfriend at the time) had both been very involved in campaigning against Meldrum’s cruelty, and had always done so in a legal, above-board way.

He did not agree with more extreme forms of action taken by others, and felt very strongly about this. He considered SLAM’s campaigns to be very successful. This one generated a lot of publicity, locally and nationally. However there were some people in SLAM who didn’t like this.

RATS

He, ‘Tanya’ and two friends all left SLAM as a result, and set up their own small group, calling it RATS (not an acronym).

Their aim was to raise money for animal sanctuaries (places set up to look after various animals after they’d been rescued from labs and other places). They borrowed from the ALFSG to pay for printing their first leaflet, and later on raised funds for them as well.

The ALFSG were always fundraising (including through the sale of magazines and merchandise) so they could support animal rights prisoners. Lane drew a clear distinction between this and actual ALF actions: ‘It had to be completely separate’.

The ALFSG was an organisation, with a bank account and a membership, who made regular donations. Even his mum was a member and yet she was, as far as he knows, not involved in ALF activism!

The first police report which mentions this ‘newly formed (anarchist) animal rights group, RATS’ is dated October 1985 [UCPI021949].

Lane says he was very surprised when he saw the leaflet attached to it, which claims that RATS has been ‘set up to raise money for the Animal Liberation Front’. He does not recognise it at all, and says it definitely wasn’t made by him or the other three people involved in RATS (who were all very close friends; none of them were ‘anarchists’):

‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the powers that be produced this, because I certainly did not… I disassociate myself with this leaflet’.

In contrast, he does recognise the leaflet attached to a report from January 1986 [UCPI021956]. He explains that this one was put out by RATS, to inform the public what ALF was about, and to counter some of the myths and misinformation that appeared in the media about animal rights activism.

In his opinion, ALF activists were ‘amazing people’, who were doing their best to stop animals suffering, and who didn’t deserve the bad press they were getting at this time. This genuine RATS flyer is clear that they’re a ‘fund-rasing group’ who aim to raise money for both the ALFSG and animal sanctuaries.

ANIMAL LIBERATION FRONT SUPPORTERS’ GROUP (ALFSG)

Shortly after this, Lane and ‘Tanya’ both began helping Vivienne Smith at the ALFSG office in Hammersmith. One of Lane’s jobs was responding to letters that had appeared in the press about ALF activities.

After about six months, he was asked to take on the role of press officer and, after Viv went to prison, to run the ALFSG office. He was raided by the police’s anti-terrorist squad a year later, and then stepped down from these roles before his own trial, which took place in Cardiff in the summer of 1988.

He says he was fully supportive of the ALF actions being taken, and welcomed the press officer role as an opportunity to speak out publicly about what was going on in the meat trade, the fur industry, etc. He used a pseudonym for this (having received threats from butchers, and unwelcome media intrusion at his home).

When ALF activists contacted the office, they did so completely anonymously. The job of the press officer was to provide comments to any media outlets who got in touch. In the 1980s there was a lot of ALF activity – he recalls around five actions every day – so he was kept busy.

The magazine and its printing were done by other people. There was a treasurer in Dorset who handled the finances. Lane coordinated the admin done at the office and says his was ‘pretty much a full-time job’.

We saw an example of an ALFSG ‘diary of actions’, a compilation of news about different actions that had taken place around the country over several months. This was included in a report by Bob Lambert [MPS 0744786]. He also included details of the legal advice provided to the ALFSG by their solicitor, information that should have been treated as ‘legally privileged’ by the police.

Lane says he didn’t know Bob that well, and that ‘he definitely did not’ accompany Lane and ‘Tanya’ on a visit to HMP Hull (where ALF founder Ronnie Lee was being held).

Another Lambert report [UCPI028387] purports to contain details of a conversation taking place at the prison between Lane and Lee. There are a number of reports written by Lambert which Lane doesn’t agree with:

‘I think you should take a lot of what HN10 said with a pinch of salt, you know. I think there is a lot of stuff that has made up here’

Lane does remember that the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) made a donation towards the ALFSG, but he was never the group’s treasurer and can’t be sure of its size.

However, he absolutely rejects any suggestion that money given to the ALFSG during his time there was used to fund any ALF actions or criminal activity. Besides covering the costs of printing and admin, the money was used to support activists who had been arrested and/or imprisoned.

He also repudiates the contents of another report [MPS 0742704], and its allegation that he’d made a secret agreement with Lee and another activist, known as ‘GFT’, not to publicly condemn any action carried out under the banner of the ‘Animal Rights Militia’ (ARM) including its ‘bombing campaigns’.

Lane repeated what he’d said earlier about his commitment to non-violence. He never moved away from this pacifism, and never supported any violence. He recalls being very strict as a press officer. He wouldn’t report actions that broke the ALF code, and would disown them if asked about them.

‘in my time there was no connection between ALF and ARM. Absolutely none’.

He wondered at times if ARM really did exist, and notes that its existence would have suited the authorities.

Similarly, he doesn’t recognise the claims in another report [UCPI028517] that he had been encouraging closer ties with London Greenpeace (LGP). He explained earlier that he didn’t have much involvement with LGP as it met in North London and he tended to stay active locally, in the South of the city.

After the Hammersmith office closed down, the ALFSG admin was done at his home. As with all other witnesses asked about the police’s assertion, Lane is adamant that there was no agreement to share the LGP office in Kings Cross.

He did the ALFSG admin alone, after his relationship with ‘Tanya’ ended. He denies the suggestions made in various police reports that Gabrielle Bosley, Helen Steel or ‘Bob Robinson’ were ever involved in the ALFSG. He doesn’t remember Steel having a liaison role, organising printing or attending a meeting with him, ‘Tanya’ and two other activists.

Both LGP and ‘Green Anarchist’ later reprinted the text he’d originally put together for the RATS leaflet, but he wasn’t involved in this. He points out that supporting a group is different to being part of it. Many of those in one group might be sympathetic to or supportive of the aims of another group, but there wasn’t as much crossover between LGP and ALFSG as the secret police reports imply.

He remembers Support Animal Rights Prisoners (SARP) as a ‘very prominent, very good group’. He wasn’t involved in it. SARP’s remit was much wider than the ALFSG’s: they did lots of letter-writing and campaigning around provision of vegan food and toiletries to prisoners.

HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’ (due to give evidence in December) claimed that SARP had been set up in order to support more violent ARM prisoners who wouldn’t qualify for ALFSG support.

‘I think that is nonsense’.

BOB LAMBERT’S LIES

Equally, it is clear that Lane doesn’t believe Bob Lambert’s claims, either those made in his witness statement [UCPI 035081] or the ones which led to him receiving an official police Commissioner’s Commendation [MPS 0726999] for his undercover work.

One of these claims was that he worked ‘at the ALF office’ and monitored their ‘hierarchy’. Lane does not remember ever seeing Bob, or his van, at the ALFSG office, and points out that ‘there was no hierarchy’.

Another was that he’d had meetings with Ronnie Lee and was involved in setting up ALF prisoner support. Lane points out that there were only three or four people involved in the ALFSG, and it’s inconceivable that Lambert could have done any of these things without Lane noticing.

The claim of Lambert’s that the Inquiry spent the most time unpicking was a convoluted story which seems to have been invented to explain how he was able to learn so much about an ALF cell’s future plans, without being part of it.

Lambert is was part of a cell that placed timed incendiary devices in branch’s of Debenham’s department store, in protest at the sale of fur. Lambert is accused of setting the device that burned down the Harrow shop.

This would have been far beyond anything he could justify to his bosses. Unsurprisingly, he denies it. However, he still needs to explain why they trusted him so much.

Lambert apparently suggested that he was going to fulfil some kind of communications role, between the cell (Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke) and the wider animal rights movement, and also the media.

Supposedly they trusted him to explain why they’d adopted these tactics (the use of incendiary devices in shops) to other activists. He said that because he was going to act as some kind of ‘press officer’, they shared information with him about the next set of attacks, that they were planning to carry out in September.

As someone who actually did act as a press officer, explaining ALF actions to the media, Lane was well-placed to offer an expert opinion about this. He points out that he only ever found out about actions after they had happened.

‘I didn’t know about actions beforehand, and it would have been ridiculous for me to have known’.

The ALFSG couldn’t afford the risk of him being done for ‘conspiracy’. He says Lambert ‘must have been part of a cell’ otherwise he would not have been privy to the level of detail about future actions that he claimed.

In his statement, Lambert claimed that by late 1988, he was a ‘trusted colleague of the main Animal Liberation Front activists’ (listing Lee, Smith, Lane and others) and was being considered for a ‘more formal role’ in the ALFSG.

‘I don’t understand what he’s talking about. He was never involved in the Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group so far as I was concerned’.

He says Bob’s fantasy of being considered as his successor was ‘extremely unlikely’.

Asked if Lambert was, as he claimed, Lane’s trusted colleague, the response was unequivocal:

‘Never. In fact, in fact I was suspicious of him.’

Lane recalls a comment Lambert made in a pub after a gig in Brixton (one of the few times they ever socialised in the same place). The subject of undercover cops came up. Lane made a comment about them being the ‘scum of the earth’ and still remembers the way Lambert responded: ‘but Robin, sometimes it’s necessary’.

‘I was always suspicious of him after that’

Lambert reported that he didn’t take up a formal role in the group, but organised transport for prison visits and also for supporters to attend Lane’s trial in Cardiff. However, Lane says this isn’t true. He had some very good friends who came to his trial from London, and they all travelled by train. He doesn’t know who Bob’s talking about.

When the Debenham’s actions happened in July 1987, Lane was the ALF press officer. He had no idea who was responsible, and nobody got in touch with him to claim the attacks.

Although he had nothing to do with it, his house was searched and turned upside down in a very traumatising way, and he was arrested. He remembers giving a ‘no comment’ interview (which lasted five hours) and suffering from panic attacks afterwards. He has no idea why he was targeted.

He also has no knowledge of any internal ‘investigation’ into the possible infiltration of the ALF, something said to have been requested by Andrew Clarke. This is mentioned in a report from November 1987 [MPS 0740488].

LANE’S LEGAL CASE AND RELEASE FROM PRISON

We moved on to hear about Lane’s own trial, in June 1988. He was convicted and sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment. He ended up serving four and a half months. This was for ‘conspiracy to incite others to commit criminal damage’.

The prosecution case centred on the ‘diary of actions’ that we’d seen earlier. There was no disclosure of the fact that an undercover police officer was involved in the case.

There was a party organised to celebrate him getting out of prison at the end of October. This was a small, private event, held at his barrister’s house, with food provided by the family. Only his closest friends, people who had been supporting him while he was inside, were invited.

There was only one gate-crasher: Bob Lambert. Although Robin was, in his own words, ‘slightly peeved to see him there’, he didn’t feel able to exclude him, as he’d tagged along with Belinda Harvey, his girlfriend at the time. One of the tactical advantages of deceiving trusted women into relationships was the way it allowed the officer to piggyback the woman’s social popularity.

In Lambert’s report of the event [MPS 0740647] he claimed that this weekend was a gathering of ALF activists for ‘important tactical and theoretical discussions’, but Lane says ‘this is pure fantasy’ and assures us that it was in fact ‘fun’, a ‘nice time’ and ‘nothing to do with ALF or anything like that’.

He also describes as ‘fantasy’ the bit in Lambert’s report that calls him ‘the perfect illustration of a broken man’. He says he was actually very happy and healthy at this time. He had already decided to step back from the stress of being involved in the ALFSG. He had a new relationship, and got involved in ‘Life Before Profit’ (a pacifist, environmentalist, vegan group).

ARKANGEL MAGAZINE

Lane started a new magazine, Arkangel, and ran it himself, with someone else doing the ‘desk-top publishing’ layout. There was no subscriber list, just a box of index cards, and addresses were written by hand on the envelopes. This was done by him, his new girlfriend and two other helpers (sisters who lived at the sanctuary), nobody else, and certainly not HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’.

However, Coles attached a subscriber list to one of his reports [MPS 0739503], claiming to have compiled this by printing out address labels on the ALFSG computer.

This is a bit baffling. Robin says that the addresses were always hand-written – there weren’t any printed labels – and in any case, the ALFSG computer was never used for Arkangel.

Short of breaking into his house when he wasn’t there, and writing out or photographing these several hundred index cards, Lane can’t see how Coles would have copied the list.

Lane doesn’t remember where or when he first met Coles, but recalls ‘Andy Van’ (as he was called) offering him lifts to Animal Rights Coalition (ARC) meetings in the West Midlands, and to collect Arkangel from the printers in Northampton. He doesn’t remember what they spoke about in Andy’s van, but is clear that they weren’t friends and didn’t socialise together. After making several of these long trips to ARC meetings, Lane suggested setting up the same kind of coalition in London.

ANIMAL RIGHTS COALITION (ARC)

Coles has claimed in his witness statement that another activist, ‘EAB’, had invited him to get involved in ARC London, because of his previous involvement in the ‘South East ARC’.

However, Lane tells a different story. ‘EAB’ was a good friend of his, and he suggested inviting her along to the pair’s planning meetings (held in Andy’s bedsit). He has never heard of a ‘South East ARC’.

ARC London’s first meeting took place in February 1994. It acted as an umbrella organisation, the idea was that it would bring together all the different animal rights groups which existed at the time, to share news and discuss what they were doing.

HN2 Andy Coles offered to produce an ARC London newsletter but neither Lane nor the Inquiry seem to have any copies of it.

The Inquiry does have a pro-forma submitted by Coles that June [MPS 0745749], naming Robin Lane as the organiser (‘under the auspices of Animal Rights Collective London’) of a demo at Christie’s auction house, where a fund-raising auction was being held for the British Field Sports Society (BFSS).

It suggests that thanks to his obtaining a sale catalogue, details of BFSS donors have been circulated in the animal rights movement and they are likely to be ‘targeted’ in some way. Lane says he just picked up a free copy of the catalogue, it was quite heavy, and he had no intention of circulating copies to anyone else.

This pro-forma also mentions him organising a protest at the Serpentine Gallery. Damian Hurst’s art show featured a dead sheep in a glass case. Lane remembers it ‘like it was yesterday’. All they did was hold hands in a circle around this case, and this made visitors unhappy because they weren’t able to get close to it.

He denies there’s any truth in the next Coles’s report [UCPI0746014], about Coles and him being part of a new committee formed to organise an alternative to the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) demo held on World Day for Laboratory Animals. He says he thought that NAVS ‘were doing a good job’ and can’t see why he would have wanted to ‘radicalise’ this annual event.

In his witness statement [UCPI035074], Coles claims that setting up this ARC was ‘core to my strategy’ – it helped him identify and report on potential ALF activists – yet Lane points out that this could have been achieved by any ‘ordinary police officer’ coming along to what were entirely open, public meetings.

LONDON ANIMAL ACTION

In any case, by the end of 1994 London Animal Action (LAA) had been created, and ARC was no longer needed. This new organisation ran until 2005, and was spied on by HN2 and at least two other undercovers (HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ and HN26 ‘Christine Green’). Its meetings were also entirely open to anyone.

The meetings were organised by a small committee, made up of Lane and just four others, and he denies that Coles was involved in this, or as ‘prominent’ as he claims:

‘I think that’s probably an exaggeration on his part’

He accepts that Coles may well have been involved in putting out ‘London Animal Rights News’, although his main memory of collating and mailing out this publication was of doing the work in the Crystal Palace flat of ‘Christine Green’.

We looked at some of the issues that LAA took action on. Lane didn’t go to Shoreham for any of the protests against live exports from the port, but he was involved in the campaign against Hockley Furs, which went on for three years.

According to a report by ‘Matt Rayner’ [MPS 0246082] its proprietor, Michael Hockley, resigned as a direct result of LAA’s campaign. It characterises the demo held on 16 March (a national day of action against the fur trade) as ‘a series of unrelenting skirmishes’. Lane disagrees with this; he remembers simply protesting outside a string of fur shops.

Towards the end of the day, the activists headed for St John’s Wood, where Michael Hockley lived. The police report provides a sensationalised account of this:

‘the full hatred of the activists towards the man who is seen to personify the evil of the fur trade was expressed through a tirade of angry abuse and noise… with levels of anger fast approaching the hysterical, an all-out assault on Hockley’s home was only prevented by a large police presence’

Lane says this is a ‘gross exaggeration’ of what actually happened. ‘Matt Rayner’ was arrested outside Hockley’s home that day, and seems to have told his SDS managers that LAA activists were ‘amused’ by this. Lane was asked if anyone in LAA would have found such as arrest amusing? He said ‘definitely not’.

How did LAA know where Hockley lived? He remembers ‘Christine Green’ suggesting that they find out by following him home from work one day. The two of them did this in her van, following his taxi, no mean feat in central London.

He remembers being very impressed at the time, although as he says now ‘she was obviously a professional driver’, who’d been trained by the police to tail other vehicles.

‘If it hadn’t been for Christine, we wouldn’t have got that address… that protest at his house would never have happened’

Looking back now, Lane believes that she was actually sympathetic to the anti-fur cause. Like HN11 Mike Chitty ‘Mike Blake’ before her, a while after her deployment ended ‘Green’ resumed contact with people she’d spied on, including a romantic relationship. She is understood to still be partners with one of the activists she’d spied on.

HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ reported [MPS 0245378] that many of LAA were openly supportive of ALF style direct action and ‘many are personally involved’ (it is unclear how he could possibly have known this).

According to him, LAA was a ‘potent and effective force in the movement’. Lane agrees with this description. He says that the group was ‘very effective’, it was ‘an incredible group’, ‘full of very committed people’, and he believes it was ‘an inspiration for groups around the country’. For once, it appears that a Special Demonstration Squad officer is telling the truth!

The report is, however, not entirely truthful. Lane disagrees with the inclusion of his name on a list of activists said to be ‘involved in disorder and acts of criminality’. He is clear that at this time in his life, he was being very careful not to take part in any criminality as he had no wish to be arrested again. He thinks the SDS sought to justify their infiltration of LAA by making such allegations.

MORE ABOUT HN11 MIKE CHITTY

Lane was asked more about each of the undercovers he encountered, starting with HN11 Mike Chitty. He remembers meeting ‘Mike Blake’ in 1985, when he started a relationship with ‘Lizzie’, a good friend of Robin and ‘Tanya’. As a result, he was welcomed into a very small social group who would hang out at each others’ homes. He says Mike claimed to be a fan of the Welsh rock group Man that Lane had loved in the 1970s.

In his statement, Lane refers to another woman as Mike’s ‘victim’. Robin believes that Mike’s first relationship undercover was with her. He didn’t know this woman so well and has no idea when this relationship began or how long it lasted. He says ‘she wasn’t an activist’; ‘she was more like Cats Protection League’. She and ‘Lizzie’ were friends, and he believes that Mike met them both at South East London Animal Movement meetings in Catford.

Mike moved on to ‘Lizzie’ sometime in 1985, and their relationship lasted for several years, until his deployment was coming to an end and he told the people he spied on that he was leaving for America in 1987.

Lane believes that Chitty deliberately targeted ‘Lizzie’ in order to get close to ‘Tanya’ and himself. He had his own place, a ‘bedsit somewhere’, and never lived with her. ‘Lizzie’ shared her flat in Brockley with an ex. Lane remembers being shocked to encounter this man and learn that he was a ‘proper policeman, not an undercover one’.

How did ‘Lizzie’ deal with Mike’s departure? Lane describes her as ‘very resilient’. She was very close to

Mike and upset about the end of the relationship, but seemed to recover. He recalls paying a visit to her house a few years later, with Roz, his new girlfriend. Mike was there, and had obviously come to see ‘Lizzie’.

Lane admits that he was ‘surprised’ and ‘a bit disappointed’ that Mike hadn’t made any effort to meet up with him, and wasn’t ‘particularly friendly’. Roz died in July 1991. ‘Lizzie’ wrote to ‘Mike Blake’ to let him know, including Lane’s address in case he wanted to send condolences. He didn’t.

He has no idea if their sexual relationship was rekindled in 1990. He finds it hard to believe that Mike ever proposed marriage to ‘Lizzie’. She was a close friend of his and never mentioned this. She had already been through one unhappy marriage, and he doesn’t think she would have wanted to marry again.

In April 1994, Lane attended a farewell meal for another activist in Streatham. Reports indicate that two spycops, Andy Coles and Mike Chitty, were present, but Lane does not remember this.

We heard a bit more about a trip to Blackpool Zoo, to protest about the treatment of animals. Around eight people from London travelled up there, at spycop Mike Chitty’s suggestion. As well as him, the group included Lane, ‘Tanya’, ‘Lizzie’, Mike’s ex and a woman called Sue Williams.

They stopped off at a vegan event in the Leeds area then camped in the Yorkshire Dales, again suggested by Chitty, who had brought a tent in his car. He also bought ‘tonnes and tonnes of alcohol’ and they all got very drunk. Lane remembers him and Sue pretending to be sheep:

‘It might sound very silly, but we were young’.

They were three miles from the US military base and listening station at Menwith Hill, and at one point a jeep turned up and the occupants told them to go back to their tent. Mike Chitty said there was sexual activity on that night. But Lane is says that there definitely wasn’t.

OTHER UNDERCOVERS

Lane also knew Belinda Harvey. He didn’t know her so well when she got together with ‘Bob Robinson’, and doesn’t remember the couple living together, but considered her a good friend by the time Bob disappeared from her life in early 1989, after Lane’s release from prison.

Lane has no memory whatsoever of HN87 ‘John Lipscomb’. He does remember visiting the squat in Sudbourne Road, Brixton (and says it had ‘a really nice atmosphere’) but no memory of ‘ELQ’ or ‘John’.

‘ANDY VAN’ (HN2 CREEPY ANDY COLES)

In his statement, spycop Andy Coles claimed that near the start of his deployment, he made contact with the Campaign Against Leather and Fur (CALF) to enquire about non-leather work boots. There were only two people involved in CALF; Robin Lane and Roz. It was Roz who imported vegan boots, so she would have dealt with this.

Apart from the van journeys mentioned earlier, Lane didn’t spend much time with ’Andy Van’. He recalls that Andy claimed to like the same kind of music as him, and came round to his flat a few times.

Lane had another girlfriend, a violinist, after Roz. They used to go along to London Vegans events together, and met a French woman there, who was single and looking for love. They set her up to meet ‘Andy Van’ (someone they believed to be perpetually single, and vegan) sometime between 1991 and 1994.

They asked her afterwards how this blind date had gone, and he recalls her feedback:

‘It was OK, it was a bit rough, but she didn’t mind that’

As far as he knows it was a one-night stand and didn’t go any further. Andy never spoke about it.

Lane managed to make contact with this woman recently, after finding out that he had inadvertently introduced her to an undercover police officer. She emailed back, saying she had no recollection whatsoever of that night. She only had one question: was he vegan? Robin doubts it, and reckons he ‘was probably pretending to be’.

We heard more about what ‘Tanya’ thought of ‘Andy Van’. She met him when Robin arranged for him to transport a fridge to her flat. He remembers her saying:

‘I don’t want that man coming around again, he was bit creepy’.

He got the clear impression that she meant creepy in a sexual way:

‘I thought he was bit creepy too, to be honest’.

He says he heard other people say something similar.

Coles claims in his statement that if Lane hadn’t been a target, they might have been friends, but this seems unlikely. Yes, he made use of Andy’s van, but insists they ‘weren’t mates’. He never saw him with a woman, so assumed he was single. He had no knowledge of him his relationship with a vulnerable teenager, ‘Jessica’.

HN1 ‘MATT RAYNER’

In comparison, he thought of HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ as a good friend, someone he liked. He was into classical music and sometimes came to concerts at the Royal Festival Hall with Lane and the violinist.

Lane recalls a trip to the Ritzy cinema in Brixton together. Like other LAA activists, Rayner went to his parties, such as a birthday party in Holborn.

He remembers ‘Rayner’ as an effective campaigner, who had a van, and laughs as he recalls how he asked him to take over the Northampton van run when ‘Andy Davey’ disappeared off the scene. He was, unsurprisingly, happy to help out.

HN26 ‘CHRISTINE GREEN’

What about ‘Christine’? She was an even closer friend, both of Lane and his now-wife. They socialised together a lot throughout her deployment, which ran from 1994 till 1999. They became friends very quickly, she lived near him and often gave him lifts to meetings. He thought she was a ‘nice genuine person’.

In one report [MPS 0745689] we can see Lane’s signature appears as a witness to hers on a tenancy agreement dated June 1996 for her flat in Central Hill, Upper Norwood. At the time, he thought she asked him to do this because he was a close and reliable friend. He now suspects this was ‘just a very clever and devious way of obtaining my signature’.

She lived alone at this cover address, and Lane used to spend a lot of time there. It was where they collated London Animal Rights News and stuffed envelopes. He didn’t know anyone called Thomas Frampton, or Joe Tex. He says Christine was single, and ‘never in a relationship all the time I knew her’.

He remembers their close friendship coming to an end. One of the group, a woman, had become ‘one of those tree people’, protesting about trees being cut down (possibly in Crystal Palace park, where there was a protest camp at that time). Christine blew out a planned cinema trip with Lane in order to spend time with this woman. His feelings were hurt, and he realised she wasn’t such a good friend after all.

IN RETROSPECT

Lane says that over a decade later, in around 2010, he saw a video of Lambert delivering a lecture and recognised him as ‘Bob Robinson’. He says he wasn’t surprised:

‘there was always something strange about him’

However he was ‘devastated’ when he learnt about the undercovers whom he’d considered good friends, ‘Mike Chitty in particular’. He recalls that he ‘felt so tricked’ by them, he ‘turned into a paranoid person’, suspicious of everyone.

Why was he being spied on when he wasn’t committing any crime? He said earlier that he felt that he was treated as a ‘convenient target’ by the police.

How does he feel now about being reported on by seven different officers, and all this information about him being stored by the police and security services? He still doesn’t understand it. His view now of these spycops operations:

‘I think it’s disgusting. I think it’s an outrage and it’s absolutely appalling’

It was close to 6pm by this point, the end of a very long day of evidence from Robin Lane. He managed to make a joke about billing the spycops for the vegan food they consumed.

The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, thanked him for his ‘good humour’ and noted that he had done a better job of avoiding name-dropping people whose identity is supposed to be private than ‘some former undercover officers’.

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Wednesday 13 November 2024
Evidence of Paul Gravett

Click here for video, transcripts and written evidence

Gravett was affected by a number of Special Demonstration Squad deployments, including HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’, HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’, HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’, and HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’.

Gravett had previously been scheduled to give evidence about all of them, over one and a half days, however the Inquiry barrister questioning him, David Barr KC, failed to prepare his questions in time. In the event, Gravett was only questioned about Bob Lambert’s operation, and may be called back to give further evidence at a later date.

Gravett has provided a written witness statement to the Inquiry, which was read onto the record but, at time of writing this, has not yet been uploaded to the Inquiry website.

Previous witnesses have been asked to begin with an account of their wider activist lives, but Barr went straight to the point with Gravett, asking when he first met Bob Lambert.

Gravett first encountered Lambert at an Islington Animal Rights jumble sale, although they didn’t speak at that time. Meaningful connection began at a London Greenpeace public meeting about the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in December 1985.

An intelligence report dated 13 December 1985, written by Lambert himself, documented this first meeting, referring to Gravett as ‘Paul Grottier’ – Gravett testified that this was not an alias, his name had just been misspelt or misheard.

Gravett described how, from the beginning, Lambert made a strong impression. Approximately ten years Gravett’s senior, Lambert was confident and charming. Gravett looked up to him and their friendship developed quickly.

By summer 1986, Lambert was close enough to visit Gravett’s family home, meeting his parents and spending time chatting in Gravett’s room. Lambert hosted parties at his Highgate residence. Gravett recalled he was a drinker who didn’t appear to use other drugs.

Lambert significantly influenced Gravett’s development as an activist and his views on animal rights. Gravett characterized their relationship as having ‘an element of grooming’. While Lambert wasn’t the only influence on his activism, he stood out among others.

‘He brought me along as an activist, increased my confidence a little bit… he stood out [in London Greenpeace] as the person, you know, I think closest to me and willing to help enable me to become a more skilled campaigner’

LONDON GREENPEACE

Barr asked the usual round of questions about the differences between London Greenpeace (LGP) and Greenpeace International (the two were wholly separate), and the links between London Greenpeace and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).

On the latter point, Gravett’s answers confirmed those of other LGP witnesses:

‘So we are talking about early 1986. The group that I joined then was quite a diverse one in terms of the breadth of its activities, more than most other groups. I would describe it as a green or ecological anarchist group. But broadly, the strands of the group that I felt were most, were most apparent to me in those early days, I would call class struggle and animal rights’.

Lambert was well established within LGP when Gravett got involved. He was a key holder for their office at 5 Caledonian Road, and early on invited Gravett to the office and showed him around. Being a key holder gave him full access to the building, though some individual rooms had separate locks.

The LGP office itself was modest, but it served as a crucial organising hub. Gravett recalled a couple of chairs, a telephone, stationery, lots of leaflets on shelves. LGP had a minutes book for the meetings which might also have been kept there.

On Bob Lambert’s politics, Gravett said:

‘He was first and foremost an animal rights campaigner, but he did certainly have knowledge in other areas. You could talk to him on anarchism. He obviously had a knowledge about that.

‘And he wasn’t, he didn’t just confine himself to animal rights. I remember there were other demonstrations that he went on perhaps, but not very frequently. It was in the main his concern was animal rights campaigning’.

By the autumn of 1986, both men were deeply involved in the anti-McDonald’s campaign. We were shown a photograph of Bob Lambert and Paul Gravett giving out leaflets together outside a branch on ‘World Anti-McDonald’s Day’, 16 October. Gravett was 24 years old at the time.

We were also shown an article written by Gravett in March 1987, which advocated unlawful direct action. Barr asked whether the views expressed in the article were influenced by Bob Lambert or were they views that Gravett held entirely independently of anything Lambert said and did?

‘Well, it’s sometimes very difficult to draw the distinction, because obviously you get influenced by those around you, who you are meeting, who you are seeing a lot of’.

Undercover officers like Bob Lambert were not just conducting surveillance, they were participating, and it is impossible to fully understand the influence they had.

THE ALF SUPPORTERS GROUP AND BROADER CONTEXT

Unlike the other witnesses we have heard from LGP, Gravett was one of the LGP activists in the 1980s who was himself very interested in animal rights, and was involved in the ALF Supporters Group (ALFSG) in 1982 and early 1983.

Intelligence reports claimed the ALFSG office moved into the London Greenpeace office, but Gravett testifies that this never happened.

Gravett met with imprisoned ALF founder Ronnie Lee about running the ALFSG, receiving clear instructions that no Supporters Group money should be spent on direct action.

The only times he is aware of this rule being broken involved Lambert himself. On one occasion, Lambert pocketed some money from a fundraiser (which had raised £260 for the ALFSG) ‘to buy more glass etching fluid’.

On another, funds from a benefit gig were reportedly used to build incendiary devices. Intelligence reports claimed Gravett was involved in financial management and strategic planning for the ALFSG, but he is clear that his role primarily involved collecting mail.

INTELLIGENCE REPORTS AND DISPUTED CLAIMS

Throughout the period, Lambert filed numerous intelligence reports, many of which Gravett disputes in his testimony. His criticisms of Lambert’s reporting were particularly compelling because Gravett did not shy away from admitting his own political opinions and actions at the time.

Gravett’s first LGP meeting, in December 1985, was addressed by a speaker talking about the ALF. The report of it describes a discussion about animal rights activists needing to move beyond targeting butcher shops and fur shops to focus on major multinational corporations.

While Gravett couldn’t recall the specific conversation, he acknowledged he wouldn’t have opposed such a strategy.

However, the report also refers to another witness (Geoff Sheppard) saying that ‘all vivisectors should be lined up and shot’. Paul Gravett doesn’t remember this comment. He doesn’t recall Geoff Sheppard ever saying that any animal abuser should receive physical violence, and he doubts it was said.

This recorded exchange about shooting vivisectors was also raised on Monday in the questioning of Albert Beale, who was equally sceptical about the language he was reported as having used.

Another intelligence report, dated 15 April 1986, claimed Gravett was involved in criminal damage against animal abusers’ property – which Gravett admitted was true – but also stated he was assisting with the ALF press office in March 1986. Gravett testified he wasn’t involved with the supporters group at that time and wasn’t at the meeting in question.

An intelligence report from 14 April 1987 claims that the ALFSG had moved into the London Greenpeace office, and that that ALF press officer Robin Lane was a regular visitor. Gravett says none of that is true.

A report from 5 May 1987 about a party held at Brunel University, to celebrate an animal rights activist’s release from prison, lists 65 people as being present. Again, Gravett says he wasn’t there despite being on the list.

A significant report dated 16 July 1986 concerned Biorex, a contract testing laboratory in north London that carried out experiments on animals for cosmetics, chemicals and drugs. The report discussed a proposed ‘Biorex Action Group’ supposedly being started by Geoff Sheppard with Gravett and Helen Steel.

Again, Gravett disputed this, noting there was already a long-standing campaign against Biorex (which conducted peaceful demonstrations throughout the period in question). Geoff Sheppard (whose evidence was heard the following day) was also asked to address this proposed Biorex group and likewise said that he did not think it ever existed.

In all, the evidence has exposed extensive inaccuracies of this kind in Lambert’s reporting, and this raises important questions about what Lambert was doing. It seems possible that he invented things to justify his deployment and perhaps even used other people used to cover for his own actions as an agent provocateur.

McLIBEL

Asked about Lambert’s role in producing the factsheet about McDonald’s, Gravett explained that there was a subgroup that worked on the leaflet and reported back to LGP meetings. Lambert was part of the subgroup, Gravett was not.

The Inquiry honed in on this:

‘Q. As someone who was not a member of the subgroup, does it follow you aren’t able to tell us exactly whether or not Lambert wrote anything, and if so what?

A. …he obviously, as a part of the subgroup, did have a substantial input into it, what was in there, yes. I contributed one sentence.

Q. Right.

A. “Revolution begins in your stomach”.

Q. Right. So we can rule that out for Mr Lambert?

A. Yes, he wasn’t guilty of that.’

DIRECT ACTION

There is no doubt that, during the period in question, animal rights activists were involved in direct action, and Gravett did not shy away from that fact.

It is important to recognise that clear lines were drawn around ALF actions, and they unequivocally said that only ‘actions that promote animal liberation and take all reasonable precautions to avoid harm to both human and non-human life’ could be attributed to the ALF.

Barr seemed to struggle with this distinction at times, and Gravett had to point it out:

‘Q. Is it right that at this point in your career as an activist you were carrying out acts of criminal damage against people you considered to be involved in animal abuse?

A. Well not, you say criminal damage against people, that would be violence, wouldn’t it?

Q. Well, the property.

A. The property. I had carried out some acts of criminal damage, I believe, around 1986’.

Barr pushed Gravett on whether he ever considered the impacts of home visits on the people affected. Gravett replied that:

‘home visits within a campaign are part of the broad spectrum of approaches, the aim of which is to stop someone exploiting and abusing non-human animals, which is very, very, very serious. Sentient creatures being abused and exploited’.

That was the driving force behind all of Gravett’s animal rights activism. As well as examining the role of undercover policing, this public inquiry gives space to people who have a thoughtful ethical code that differs from the mainstream. For example, Gravett and others believe that the law should be broken to damage property that does harm to human and non-human animals.

However, Gravett’s own role in direct action is not the real issue. Of most concern to the Inquiry is the fact that Lambert became increasingly involved in direct action as his operation progressed. He began driving activists to actions in his van, including a visit to the home of a vivisector in Surrey where Lambert chanted and waved a placard, and to hunt sabotage events.

Gravett recalled a large hunt sab where arrests occurred, though specific details escaped his memory. An intelligence report dated 20 September 1986 detailed plans to disrupt the Surrey Union fox hunt’s first seasonal event, with a speaker from the Hunt Saboteurs Association coming to a LGP meeting to discuss new tactics.

More serious actions followed. Lambert admitted to Gravett that he had conducted an arson attack on a property owned by Biorex director (empty and up for sale at the time). He described how he researched the property, confirmed it was not being lived in, and poured flammable liquid through the letterbox.

The spring 1987 edition of London ALF News carried a report, entitled ’A hot night in August’, of this attack. Gravett testified that this report was written by Lambert and the attack itself verified by Geoff Sheppard, who had acted as Lambert’s look-out that night.

Lambert also told Gravett that he had committed other acts of criminal damage: disguising himself as a jogger to pour paint stripper on a Biorex director’s car, and damaging McDonald’s windows with glass etching fluid.

Again, we were taken to intelligence reports about the paint-stripper action that claimed it was conducted by activists, plural, and that Gravett had phoned through details to the ALF press office.

Gravett contested this:

‘He told me he did it on his own… I never telephoned anything to the Animal Liberation Front press office’.

Whether or not these actions really happened is an important question in the run up to Lambert giving evidence. Gravett recalls that the paint-stripper and etching fluid actions were reported in the local media (the Islington Gazette and Hampstead & Highgate Express respectively), and Sheppard confirms that he was look-out when Lambert put something through the letterbox at the Biorex director’s property, although he does not remember seeing flames.

Of the McDonald’s window, Gravett said:

‘Lambert was an enthusiast for the use of glass etching fluid. Particularly in that time-frame, 1986, you know, early 1987. So I wouldn’t have been surprised…

‘I don’t have any reason to doubt, really. Because, firstly, Bob Lambert told me he did it. Then, as it says, there is a report on it in a local paper. So I think, I think it was him that did it’.

We heard previously from Gabrielle Bosley how Lambert had asked her to buy etching fluid for him, and we heard from Gravett that he was asked to do the same.

The implication of the evidence we heard is that it appears police officer Bob Lambert committed multiple crimes while he was undercover in the animal rights movement and encouraged others to do so, and then reported these crimes to his bosses at Special Branch as if he wasn’t involved.

Whether or not these actions really happened, for Gravett, the fact Lambert confided in him about his role significantly elevated his standing in Gravett’s eyes:

‘That sort of unlawful direct action, it was extremely rare. I mean, as I said, arson itself was extremely rare. And to tell someone you when done that afterwards – again, very rare’.

The significance of Lambert’s status as a self-professed arsonist quickly became clear.

THE DEBENHAM’S CAMPAIGN

The campaign against Debenham’s department stores emerged in early spring 1987, and marked a significant escalation. According to Gravett, Lambert initiated the plan to plant incendiary devices in the shops selling fur:

‘I think he said something along the lines of, you know, “We should escalate the direct action in what we are doing, and involving arson”…

‘if not those exact words, words like them. Like I said “escalate”. There is different stages of direct action and arson comes close to the top. And I had never done anything like that. But he was saying that we should be escalated. So, yes, something on a vastly different scale would not be unreasonable to think something like that was said’.

Gravett is not claiming that Lambert had to persuade him to take action, but he is very clear that the original idea was Lambert’s.

A cell formed, comprising Lambert, Gravett, Andrew Clarke, and Geoff Sheppard. (Sheppard gave evidence himself on 14 and 15 November).

The group held several outdoor meetings to plan their actions, and while decisions were made collectively in keeping with anarchist principles, Gravett identified Lambert as the instigator who led discussions. He recalls that Helen Steel was invited to take part in the meetings but she only came once, and said she couldn’t be involved.

Barr asked multiple questions on the most minor of points about the planning, including a long discussion about train timetables and the reliability of British Rail in the 1980s. We were shown a British Rail passenger timetable from May to October 1987. For a hearing about criminal damage and incendiary devices it was surprisingly dull to follow.

Gravett, for his part, was very honest about his involvement in the planting of the incendiary devices, although he admitted he does not have a clear memory of everything.

The group targeted four Debenham’s stores near London. The plan was to cause small fires to set off the sprinkler systems, which would cause water damage to stock and financial loss for the company. This was designed to avoid causing any harm to any living being, within ALF policy.

Gravett chose the Reading branch of Debenham’s, and conducted reconnaissance weeks before the planned attack.

On the day of action, the four gathered in the afternoon to distribute eight devices – two per person. Gravett recalls remarking that if anyone had told him he’d be doing this seven years ago, he’d have told them they were mad.

He concealed his devices in an opaque carrier bag and headed for Paddington station. However, long queues and delays at Paddington meant Gravett wouldn’t reach Reading before the store closed. He got off the train at Langley and disposed of his devices in a canal, a decision influenced by his familiarity with the area through friends.

The other three reported successfully placing their devices. Gravett remembered meeting that evening, at a Stoke Newington squat, to discuss the outcome.

The impact became clear when Lambert informed the group that the Luton device had resulted in a fire which caused £5 million in damage, far exceeding their intention to merely trigger the sprinkler system. This was because the sprinkler system had been switched off. The group was shocked by the extent of the destruction.

AFTERMATH AND ARRESTS

The four of them decided to plan another attack, and more devices were being built, before Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke were arrested. Events around the arrests moved quickly. Lambert arranged to meet Gravett at a Finsbury Park pub, and told him he had seen a police car at Clarke’s house. Gravett called the house, and someone confirmed that anti-terror police had raided.

There was talk about how Clarke and Sheppard had been caught. It seemed the police had known when to raid and catch them red-handed. However, they were all already known to the police as animal rights activists. Intelligence reports from this time suggest that animal rights activists carried out an internal investigation into possible police infiltration.

A series of intelligence reports also claim there were discussions about using ‘fireball’ devices. The Inquiry redacted the names of the chemicals in the documents, so that no one could use them as a guide to make an improvised incendiary device (which was met with laughter from the public gallery – don’t try this at home, kids!).

In any case, Sheppard and Clarke were arrested in the process of assembling more devices that were no different from those used in the Debenham’s actions. We were read excerpts from the forensic experts who examined the chemicals found in the raid and made clear that they were incendiary, but not explosive in nature.

Gravett says he would never have agreed to using something like a chemically ignited ‘fireball’ device, and he doesn’t believe the others would either. This is just one of a long list of reports, from the period after the arrests of Clarke and Sheppard, which Gravett says he thinks are straightforward lies.

Gravett organised a defence campaign for Clarke and Sheppard, visiting both in prison, with Lambert accompanying him on at least one visit.

Gravett also raised the issue of Lambert setting devices elsewhere, something he’s written about on his blog. He told the hearing that on an occasion when he and Lambert were in the London Greenpeae office, Lambert said he had planted an incendiary device in Selfridges on Oxford Street in August 1988. He said he had sent a press release about it to the ALF Supporters Group.

Gravett collected the ALFSG mail at the time, and sure enough Lambert’s press release arrived a couple of days later.

Hudson’s Bay was the world’s largest fur company and had announced it would be relocating to Hackney. This attracted the attention of animal rights activists. Two months after the Selfridge’s confession, Lambert told Gravett he had sent a statement from the ALF to the Hackney Gazette:

‘We have a very simple and clear message – if the Hudson’s Bay Company moves into the old Lesney toy factory we will burn the building down.’

There was also a campaign by the local animal rights group, and the following year Hudson’s Bay decided to move abroad.

Gravett’s last meeting with Lambert was at a pub, in November 1988. Lambert claimed his residence had been raided, and shortly afterwards vanished from the movement.

In 1985, annual revenue from the fur trade in the UK was about £80m. By 1989 it had plummeted to £4m. This was due to campaigns of all types – some legal, some not – by the animal rights movement. Alongside this, opinion polls showed 70%-80% of the public were against killing animals for their fur.

Gravett’s brave testimony sheds light on a period where the boundaries between state surveillance and active participation in criminal activities became dangerously blurred. Perhaps more than any other undercover deployment examined by the Inquiry to date, Lambert went far beyond observing. He had intimate and sexual relationships with numerous activists, he actively participated in meetings and created content, writing articles and flyers.

What Gravett’s evidence makes clear is that he also played a leading role in not just encouraging but also committing illegal acts.

Perhaps most significantly, the testimony revealed how Lambert’s reports often diverged from reality. He clearly manipulated the information he was putting in his reporting, creating a complex legacy that will be difficult for the Inquiry to unpick.

Gravett’s evidence is not finished. The Inquiry is expected to call him back to give evidence about other undercover operations just as soon as their legal team get their act together to prepare more questions for him. UPDATE: They did this, and he gave a second day of evidence on 13 January 2025.

Meanwhile, Lambert himself is scheduled to give evidence on 2-5 December 2024.

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Thursday 14 & Friday 15 November 2024
Evidence of Geoff Sheppard

Click here for Thursday’s video, transcripts and written evidence

Click here for Friday’s video, transcripts and written evidence

Geoff Sheppard was also questioned by David Barr KC, on Thursday afternoon and again on Friday morning.

Sheppard wants to make a correction to his own witness statement, to reflect his position changing slightly since he wrote it. He wants to make it clear that he did not consider the spycops’ infiltration of the animal liberation movement to be justified.

He thinks he must have met HN10 Bob Lambert sometime before December 1985, but is not completely sure when. He remembers ‘Bob Robinson’ as someone who was ‘very approachable, very friendly, very outgoing’. He was ‘very confident’, not shy. He says he was quite anti-social himself, so didn’t socialise much, and had no idea if Bob took illicit drugs during his deployment.

LONDON GREENPEACE

Sheppard went along to London Greenpeace (LGP) meetings most weeks but tended to sit and listen, but not get involved ‘in producing leaflets or anything like that’. Bob was much more actively involved, and ‘very vocal’ at the meetings. Sheppard recalls him as a ‘leader’ rather than a ‘follower’, with a ‘strong personality’. He was always up for giving people lifts in his van.

Sheppard is asked about a public meeting held by LGP that December, the subject of a Lambert report [UCPI028481]. The topic was ‘Animal Liberation’ and the main speaker someone called Steve Boulding. Sheppard can’t remember if this meeting was organised by Lambert or not. According to the report, Sheppard was very vocal about vivisectors that night and said ‘They should all be lined up and shot’. He admits that he may well have made a comment like this, ‘as a figure of speech, not as an actual plan’, but doesn’t remember doing so.

He was also asked about ‘CTS’ but seemed a bit confused, and it’s not clear that he remembers meeting her at all. He says he didn’t know ‘Jacqui’. (These are the pseudonyms of two of the women that Lambert had sexual relationships with during his deployment).

HUNT SABOTAGE

We next saw a report from February 1987 [MPS 0742173] which lists the names of ‘London Greenpeace activists and anarchist squatters’ who formed the ‘North London Hunt Saboteurs’ (NLHS). His name is listed, and he is described as an ‘experienced Animal Liberation Front activist’, as is Paul Gravett.

Sheppard says he only went sabbing two or three times in his life, and doesn’t know the dates. The report suggests that on this date the sabs have brought along people who are ‘more used to giving than receiving physical violence’.

Sheppard says this ‘doesn’t ring any bells with me’. He only went when the sabs needed extra numbers. He is well aware that ‘they were much more likely to be on the receiving end of violence than dishing it out’ and that at least two sabs had been killed in action.

ANIMAL LIBERATION FRONT

Barr moves on to ask about Animal Liberation Front (ALF) activity. Sheppard confirms that this was not a membership organisation. Individuals and small cells operated autonomously to rescue animals from being abused, and would sometimes cause property damage to prevent further animal abuse. He said that he wasn’t involved in committing any criminal damage to anybody’s home, clarifying that what he meant by ‘home’ did not extend to unoccupied premises.

Barr reads out some examples of tactics said to be endorsed forms of ALF direct action. Sheppard says he was not personally aware of some of these (for example squirting battery acid on fur coats, or setting fire to vehicles) and other actions (for example damaging a vehicle’s tyres, or paintwork) seemed far more likely.

Barr shows us a copy of ‘Interviews with ALF activists’, which was published around 1986 and attached to a police report [UCPI009110]. Sheppard remembers seeing this at the time but not all of the incidents reported in it – for example, six department store vans are said to have been fire-bombed as part of an ‘intensifying campaign against stores which sell fur’ – or all of the ideas for action detailed. He points out that it can’t be assumed that all of these tactics were actually being used at the time just because they were written down in this publication.

The Inquiry has thoughtfully redacted the instructions for making an improvised incendiary device, just in case anyone watching today is tempted to do so!

Later, the same publication describes corrosive etching fluid as a ‘new weapon’ used by ALF in Sheffield (on the windows of House of Fraser shops, as they had fur departments). Sheppard remembers hearing about this technique but never used it himself.

For some reason Barr then highlights a report of an action done at a country house owned by a fox hunter. Animal rights activists appear to have painted the word ‘SCUM’ on a wall. It is reported that etching fluid had been used on the windows and superglue on the locks.

It is unclear why he’s brought this incident up, other than to suggest this was typical of an ALF ‘home visit’ (something Sheppard has never done). Barr even says he’s not suggesting that Sheppard had anything at all to do with this.

Is it fair to say that there was a lot of ALF direct action in those days (the ‘80s)?
Sheppard agrees that yes, compared to now, this was the case. Were there people who were involved in both ALF and LGP? Sheppard points out that he has to say yes, ‘because I was one of them’, but he thinks the vast majority of LGP were not doing ALF-style actions.

The only activists involved in both ALF and LGP that we know of (discounting undercovers like Lambert) are Sheppard and yesterday’s witness (Paul Gravett). They were both asked if the ALF Supporters Group (ALFSG) had ever shared LGP’s office, as alleged in one of Lambert’s reports [MPS 0740079].

They have both denied ever hearing about such an arrangement. Sheppard disagrees with the claim that he went there to help with ALFSG admin. He went to the LGP meetings, which took place elsewhere (in Endsleigh Street) but not the office. His only involvement in the ALFSG was 5-6 years later.

EXISTING CRIMINAL RECORD

The next report we see, from January 1986 [UCPI028483], includes a description of Geoff Sheppard and details of his criminal record up till that time. He points out that he did not in fact assault a police officer outside the Savoy hotel in June 1983. That officer assaulted another demonstrator (breaking his nose) and then arrested Sheppard, saying ‘You’ll do’. However he was convicted of this and given a £10 fine and suspended sentence in November of that year.

He also received a conditional discharge in 1984, and served 150 hours community service in 1985, both for minor criminal damage related to animal rights. In 1986, he and Paul Gravett were arrested together for graffiti on the wall of HMP Holloway that read ‘Free the Unilever Four’. There is another report [UCPI028377] which lists the activists who visited him while he was on remand that April, and refers to this graffiti as one of Sheppard’s ‘lesser crimes’.

Six months later, Sheppard was arrested with another activist, this time for criminal damage at a Hornsey meat trader’s. Lambert’s report of this [MPS 0742721] lays out Sheppard’s thoughts ahead of his upcoming trial (including his plan to plead guilty, having been ‘caught red-handed’, and his sentencing preferences).

Sheppard attended the sentencing of animal rights activists in Sheffield Crown Court in 1987. All ten were sent to prison, but their sentences were not as long as had been feared. He agrees that the report of this [MPS 0740062] mostly matches his memories, bar the part which said that Brendan McNally ‘literally screamed with delight when he was taken from the court’.

This report goes on to say that after this court case, activists would undoubtedly review their operational security measures and be more careful about how they purchased items for actions, or how much they wrote down. Sheppard doesn’t remember any of this; he just remembers his enthusiasm for animal rights being ‘reinforced’ at this time.

ANARCHISTS FOR ANIMALS

In December 1985, Sheppard and other activists were arrested while leafleting at Murrays Meat Market in Brixton. The group used the name ‘Anarchists for Animals’ (AFA) for this demo. Sheppard doesn’t know for sure who made the leaflet (which portrays a butcher holding a cleaver to a human baby) but strongly suspects that both this and the demo itself were organised by ‘Bob Robinson’.

According to Lambert’s reports, the AFA continued to organise. Sheppard, however, casts doubts on this, he thinks this name was just used for that one demo. ‘I didn’t think Anarchists for Animals was a genuine organisation’ he says.

Despite this, another report [MPS 0747119] from August 1986 describes Sheppard as an AFA activist, and claims he is ‘impressed by recent demonstrates outside the homes of vivisectors in Surrey and Sussex’. He doesn’t think this was true. He says he was far more interested in direct action than these kinds of ‘home visit’ demos.

BIOREX CAMPAIGN

Biorex Laboratories was located in Highbury, and vivisection was carried out there. Campaigning and actions (such as Sheppard’s breaking of two windows, something he was convicted of in 1985) were already ongoing long before July 1986. Sheppard says that contrary to what is reported then [MPS 0740016], he had no intention of forming a new ‘Biorex Action Group’.

He remembers going to the national anti-Biorex demo. There was a brief sit-down during it, which was broken up by the police immediately. However, as someone with no interest in home visits, he did not carry out any reconnaissance of Biorex directors’ home addresses.

However he remembers that Lambert planned an action, and came to him to ask for his help. ‘He said he needed someone to act as a lookout’. Sheppard also recalls ‘I used to do a bit of running, you know, running around the local park’; Bob knew this and at some point told him that this made him a ‘good candidate’ for this action.

Lambert drove them both to Barnet in his small van and parked it about quarter of a mile from the house. The area was suburban, and they walked the last bit of the journey. The house was detached from its neighbours. Sheppard took Lambert’s word for it that the house was up for sale, and that he’d phoned the estate agents and been told that it was completely empty.

Bob is said to have given instructions during the van journey about what to do if the police arrived:

‘Basically he said if it was a police officer on his own, then we’ll try and push him over and we make a run for it. But he said that if there were two police officers then we should just give ourselves up due to their, I remember these words now, “due to their superior training”.’

As the look-out, Sheppard spent most of his time looking away from Lambert and the target house. He says he turned round briefly, and saw Lambert seemingly pushing something through the letter-box, but didn’t see any flames. To this day, he doesn’t know for sure if there ever was a fire, and admits ‘it is possible that it was me being hoaxed’.

The following spring, an article about this action (with the title ‘A hot night in August’), appeared in the London ALF newsletter [UCPI037249]. Sheppard did not write this, and he’s not sure if it’s entirely accurate (as it mentions flames, which he never saw) but admits that he would have agreed with the sentiments expressed in it. The only person he ever told about this action afterwards was Paul Gravett.

On Friday, James Wood KC (Sheppard’s barrister) has a few follow-up questions about this incident. He wants to know if Sheppard is certain that the Barnet address (72 Galley Lane) mentioned in the ALF ‘List of actions’ matched the place he visited with Bob Lambert that night.

He produces some stills taken from Google Earth of the street and its houses, and Sheppard says ‘it does seem about right’. However he was never given the address beforehand, and was driven there by Lambert. Wood tries to explore further. Does Sheppard remember exactly where the van was parked, or how far away this was? He can’t remember any more than the distance he estimated before (quarter of a mile).

ETCHING FLUID AND PAINT STRIPPER

London ALF News carried a list of ‘London ALF actions’ that had taken place since the last issue. The same edition included a story of etching fluid being used at the Golders Green branch of McDonald’s in October 1986. Supposedly 3 windows had to be replaced at a cost of £1800. Sheppard says he didn’t know anything about this attack and didn’t see the coverage of it in the local newspaper.

A police report from the time [UCPI028517] suggests that the use of etching fluid is on the rise amongst animal rights activists and more McDonald’s branches will be targeted. The Inquiry have asked a lot of questions about etching fluid during these hearings.

Barr asks Sheppard what he knew about its effectiveness, and about what Lambert reported [MPS 0742721]:

‘In reality “glass etching fluid” is unlikely to weaken a plate glass window, unless it is applied with an implement that scores the glass. This is a fact often ignored by activists, shopkeepers and, of course, glaziers.’

Sheppard never used the stuff so wasn’t able to tell them much.

He is asked about another attack on property belonging to a Biorex director. A November entry on the ‘London ALF List of actions’ says their car had been damaged with paint stripper. He says he heard a story about this (which entailed Lambert dressing up in his jogging gear and throwing the chemical over the car as he jogged past) but as he may well have heard it from Lambert himself, cannot verify its truth.

THE ANONYMITY OF MR X

Sheppard says he first learnt about that somebody was working on making an incendiary device from Lambert – and isn’t sure of the exact date – and he had no practical knowledge of this himself. He doesn’t know where this person got their knowledge or the idea.

This person is not willing to take part in the Inquiry and has asked Sheppard not to use his name. He offers to refer to him as ‘Person X’, and thereafter Barr begins to call him ‘Mr X’. However, obviously irritated by this, Mitting interrupts to tell Sheppard that if this ‘pretence’ around the identity of Mr X is maintained, it will distract and detract from this Inquiry.

It appears that the Chair has decided that only he gets to award anonymity to people who he deems deserving. He tells Sheppard that he doesn’t mind him referring to this person as ‘Mr X’ for the next few hours, but asks him to ‘have one more go at persuading him’ that evening. Sheppard is sceptical that he can change X’s mind, and reports back the next morning that he hasn’t managed to.

Everyone notices that Barr immediately stops using the name ‘Mr X’ after this, which comes across as very disrespectful. We will continue referring to him as ‘Mr X’ throughout this report.

DECIDING ON DEBENHAM’S

According to a report from April [MPS 0740019] Geoff Sheppard is serving a short custodial sentence, and due to prison overcrowding, is currently held in Hendon Police Station. It goes on to claim that his sentence has been a ‘deterrent to others’, that he ‘has been hesitant to return to crime’ but is bound to do so when he is released.

In the witness statement he supplied to ‘Operation Herne’ (an internal police inquiry) back in 2017 [UCPI0737215], Sheppard wrote of being recruited to take part in an incendiary device action by a ‘fourth person’, who he was not willing to name at that time. However we now know that this was Paul Gravett.

Sheppard says his memory of dates is hazy. He remembers that there were four of them who met up, mostly in parks, to discuss their plans, all men (him, ‘Mr X’, Paul and Bob). Did Helen Steel ever attend these meetings? Not to his memory, no.

Barr returns to this question later, on Friday. He produces Steel’s witness statement [UCPI037365]. In it she writes of being invited to a meeting in 1987 to discuss campaigning against the fur trade. They met in a park. She was driven there by Lambert, in his van. She says that she was one of five people present.

After hearing her account, Sheppard accepts that this may have happened, but he still genuinely has no memory of being at a meeting at the same time as her.

James Wood KC also raises this on Friday, pointing out that at one point in his witness statement [MPS 037104] Sheppard refers to a meeting that he attended with four other people in early 1987. It says that four of the group decided to work toward a future action, but the fifth person present decided not to be involved. Sheppard says ‘I think I must be referring there to Helen Steel’.

How did they reach the decision to target Debenham’s? He recalls an ongoing campaign around the country to persuade Debenham’s to stop selling fur. He was ‘enthusiastic’ about taking direct action against the fur trade.

IMPROVISED INCENDIARY DEVICES

We moved on to find out more about the tactic they chose to use for this campaign: improvised incendiary devices (IIDs).

They decided to put these devices in the stores towards the end of the day, just before they closed. The IID was set up to work with a 9-10 hour delay, so it would go off during the night, when nobody was there, and set off the sprinkler system, causing the shop’s stock to be damaged by the water.

The plan was for coordinated attacks, all on one night. They each picked a ‘convenient’ branch that they would be responsible for, and carried out their own reconnaissance in advance. They met up after this to share information; he remembers talking in the street somewhere.

He reported back to the group that he hadn’t found a fur department in ‘his’ branch (Romford). He recalls being unsure about what to do. He remembers Lambert being very insistent that as it was a Debenham’s store, it was still a legitimate target, and going along with that. He doesn’t know for sure what he would have done otherwise, but says Lambert persuaded him to continue with the action in Romford.

WHO DID WHAT

‘It wasn’t like the military’ he explains to Barr that nobody was ‘assigned roles’ as such – they each decided what they were able and willing to do. Barr asks if this was ‘agreed in the anarchist way – without a hierarchy’? Sheppard says there was nothing especially ‘anarchist’ about it. He doesn’t know the source of the components used in the first batch of devices.

All four members of the ‘cell’ were up for placing these devices in shops. He offered to help with the manufacture of the devices, but neither Gravett nor Lambeth got involved in this work. Sheppard says he never questioned this, and nothing was said about it.

Mitting picks up on this, and at the end of Friday’s hearing asks some questions of his own about why Lambert, who seemed to either be ‘a leader’ or ‘the leader’ in this plan, had nothing to do with the devices’ construction?

Sheppard replies that Bob certainly could have helped, if he’d wanted to, with the same kind of ‘menial’ tasks that he’d taken on, such as cutting out ventilation holes in the devices, and attaching (‘do not touch!’) warning stickers on the outside. He suggests that perhaps Lambert was trying to ‘distance himself a little bit’?

Asked if anyone in the group claimed more expertise in this manufacturing process, Sheppard says ‘there is no doubt that Person X was more expert’.

THE DAY OF DEBENHAM’S

On 11th July 1987, Sheppard went on foot to collect two of these devices from a house in Tottenham. This wasn’t the home of any of the four ‘cell’ members, but Mr X was there.

He remembers that the devices were on a table, but not which room this was in. He doesn’t remember how many devices were there when he arrived. He just picked up two and put them in his jacket pockets.

He thinks he went straight to Romford from that house, possibly by train. It was sometime in the afternoon. He placed the devices on two different floors of the shop, then travelled home. He doesn’t remember what he did that evening, but believes he stayed at home, alone.

AFTERWARDS

He isn’t sure when he met up with the others again. ‘Maybe a week later’ he suggests. He doesn’t actually remember all four of them meeting up; he may just have met with Lambert. Where? He has a vague memory of this being indoors. Didn’t they plan to hold a debrief as a group? He can’t remember.

What did Lambert first say when you met him afterwards? He said that he’d been able to place one of his two devices at the Harrow store, but not the second. There was no explanation for this.

He also remembers talking to Gravett afterwards. He recalls Gravett telling him that ‘his hands felt very sticky, his fingers felt sticky’ (maybe caused by the label coming off?)
and that he’d thrown both of his devices in a canal, instead of planting them in the Reading store. Sheppard remembers feeling annoyed. Not angry, just annoyed.

‘To put it bluntly, did you think he’d bottled it?’ asked Barr.

‘That thought did go through my mind, yes’

What did the other two think? He can’t remember what Mr X thought, but does recall telling Lambert that he didn’t think Gravett should be involved in any such actions in future.

He remembers Lambert getting ‘very serious, and it wasn’t the smiley Bob Lambert anymore’, he became ‘quite angry’ and ‘quite aggressive’ and told Sheppard: ‘No, no, he must remain involved’. Sheppard backed down.

The Luton branch’s sprinkler system did not work, so the damage there was far worse than the group had expected or intended. Did they really not discuss this ‘striking event’?

‘Mr X, as we’re finding out now, is a cagey person… I can’t remember him saying anything about it, or leaping with joy or anything like that’.

An SDS report from this time [MPS 0735386] claims that Mr X (a ‘leading ALF activist’) is ‘delighted with the success’ of these incendiary devices’ and believes their design makes them ‘far more reliable’ than those used elsewhere. It also says that he has cleaned his room of any forensic traces and intends to squat a different house in order to manufacture more. This report was written by Bob Lambert.

Sheppard doesn’t know what Mr X thought of his devices or what he was planning next, and points out that Lambert may not have known either, and ‘may have just been making it up for himself’.

He then goes on to say:

‘He obviously needed the second event to happen. I have a suspicion that there may have been a degree of persuasion going on from Bob Lambert. He didn’t need to persuade me, because at that time, at that time I was still very, very committed’.

According to an article in the ‘Victims of Conscience’ newsletter [MPS 0649477] the costs of the damage caused to these three Debenham’s stores was calculated before Sheppard’s trial. Calculated as £8,731,296 in Luton, £350,000 in Harrow and £205,000 in Romford, this night of ALF action could be said to be one of the biggest ever in terms of economic impact.

Sheppard is clear that he has no regrets. He points out their reconnaissance included considering if anybody would be harmed in the event of an accidental ‘full-scale fire’.

In response, Barr plays BBC news footage from the Luton Arndale centre. According to the voice-over, the roof of the shopping centre was badly damaged in the fire. Didn’t this expose fire-fighters to risk? Not if there was nobody inside the area of the fire for them to rescue. Barr clarifies that he is referring to the risk of the weakened ceiling falling onto them later.

He also brings up the issue of asbestos. According to the forensic scientist who gave evidence at the criminal trial, it was not possible to fully examine the scene inside the store the following day, because of asbestos particles in the air. Barr suggests that this ‘gives rise to a risk to life’. Sheppard points out that many things could represent a risk to life, including driving.

Mitting has one question of his own before we finished for the day. A phone call was made claiming this action at around 3am, and a recording of this played at the trial. Had there been any discussion about this beforehand? Sheppard can’t remember.

WHAT THE ‘CELL’ DID NEXT

According to an intelligence report [MPS 0748765] ALF activists have decided to set a deadline by which Debenham’s must stop selling fur in all their stores. Supposedly a ‘trusted’ journalist at ‘Time Out’ will be used to communicate this to the company, and their department stores will be ‘monitored’ to see if they have complied.

Sheppard doesn’t remember this deadline, or know who was involved in setting it. However it seems that ‘Time Out’ did publish the cell’s only press statement, in full.

Lambert also reported [MPS 0735383] that Mr X has ’revealed’ that he manufactured these devices at his home, and planted the Luton one, and that the other two were planted by ‘two close and trusted comrades’ of his. Barr suggests that Lambert is being ‘extremely coy’ here, and Sheppard agrees that he seems to be ‘drip-feeding the information’.

‘Without a Trace’ was a booklet published by Hooligan Press in 1986, containing advice about foiling forensic investigations. Clarke is said to be ‘confident’ that the devices will provide no clues to police investigating these attacks, but aware that a very thorough search of his house might be problematic. Barr asks if either of them had this pamphlet? Did they talk about forensics? Sheppard does not recall doing so.

In order to prevent this being an issue in future, Mr X is said to be planning to manufacture more devices elsewhere, in a squatted house in Tottenham, that will be available at the end of August. It says the process of assembling them will be much quicker than last time, and take around three days and nights, but Sheppard has no memory of this.

Lambert’s report says the cell plans to carry out another incendiary attack, on the provisional date of 26th September. It has a short-list of possible targets in the West End (not Debenham’s) and will soon choose one. Sheppard doesn’t remember if, how or when they did this, but confirms that they have a list of shops engaged in the fur trade.

Barr asked:

‘Just to be clear, how is it that Bob Lambert is able to report all of this detail?’

Sheppard replied:

‘Well, I mean the answer to that is quite simple, which is that he was an integral part of this cell’

CHANGING PLANS

The next report [MPS 0735382] describes this ‘active London cell’ of four people, meeting in two dates in August, and Mr X as this ALF cell’s ‘effective leader’. It says that he has given up his job as a Haringey Council gardener, and for this reason, the date of the group’s next incendiary action will be brought forward to 29 August. The target will be Harrods of Knightsbridge, and devices will be left on four different floors in order to maximise the damage.

Sheppard doesn’t believe this was true. He remembers that every time Harrods was mentioned, ‘it was immediately dropped’. People knew that it contained a pet store, so there would be innocent animals inside overnight. He doesn’t remember this being discussed, the idea of using four devices on different floors, or anything about changing the date.

It also suggests that a new person (who does not know Mr X) will be brought in to help plant the devices. And that neither Mr X or Sheppard himself (who will be helping with the manufacture) will be involved in that aspect of the operation. Sheppard doesn’t recognise this plan at all. Yes, he planned to help make the devices. But he thought there would be four devices, one for each of the four of them, and nobody else would be involved.

Barr asked why allocate just one device per person now, instead of the two each had used for the Debenham’s attack? Sheppard thought this might have been a reflection of their perceived reliability. Barr wondered if there were only four devices this time, did this mean they could be planted by just two people?

He also asks if the group had – as suggested in this report – gone to Debenham’s in Oxford Street on 1 October to check if they had complied with the ALF demands? Sheppard didn’t know.

According to a Special Branch briefing note [MPS 0735381] the cell was put under surveillance, and on Saturday 22 August, Mr X was seen collecting a white bag from an address in Bow E3 and being driven to Sheppard’s house.

A ‘secret and reliable source’ (police code for one of their undercover officers, in this case HN10 Bob Lambert) has provided information about the contents of this bag (components for IIDs) and the identity of the man who lives at this address in Bow (‘MSW’) along with the allegation that ‘he is believed to be performing the role of “quartermaster” in this affair’. Sheppard says they didn’t have a quartermaster.

A week later, Lambert’s next report [MPS 0735376] says the group’s plans have been delayed, due to Mr X finding out more about the physical layout of Harrods, and the fact that live animals are kept there. Sheppard remembers visiting other shops to see if they sold fur, but he doesn’t know if anyone went to Harrods at this time to look at its layout. Another possible reason is offered for this delay: that there are currently 200 liberated laboratory rats staying at the home of Mr X’s girlfriend. The new action date is said to be 11 September.

It is reported that Sheppard is storing the components for making these improvised incendiary devices (IIDs) in a ‘well hidden place’ in his home. He remembers this, but has no memory of the planned targets. How many people knew about these plans? Sheppard is very clear that there were only ever four of them involved, and he can’t speak for the others, but knows that he didn’t mention this to anyone else.

THE ARREST, SEPTEMBER 1987

Another week later, on 4 September, it is reported [MPS 0735374] that Mr X is ‘known to favour’ Friday 11 September, but that the date won’t be confirmed until after the weekend. Why not? Were they planning to meet and discuss it that weekend? Sheppard has no recollection.

It is said that it took Mr X two full days to manufacture 10 devices for the night of action in July. This report states that ‘it is anticipated that they will need a full day to make five devices’ this time. Sheppard doesn’t remember any discussion about how long it would take. He insists that their plan was for ‘four people, one device each’, and these devices would be identical to those used before.

A report dated 7 September [MPS 0735373] mentions that a drugs raid took place at Mr X’s address on Thursday 3. The police searched the room of one his housemates, but not that of X. It says that the action is likely to go ahead on Friday 11th, and the necessary devices will be assembled at Sheppard’s home, on either Wednesday 9th or Thursday 10th.

It goes on to say that Mr X is ‘flattered’ to have been approached by Manchester activists wanting him to make more of these devices, ‘considered to be the best within the movement’, known for their reliability and effectiveness.

Sheppard doubts this, as (a) people did not talk openly about ALF activities or such devices & (b) Mr X is ‘cagey’ and unlikely to have welcomed such discussion. He points out that activists wouldn’t spread information ‘far and wide’ especially about stuff like this.

Barr insinuates that there were ‘mechanisms’ for ALF activists to be put in touch with one another. Sheppard rejects this idea. Were plans or photos of these devices sent to anyone? (another claim made in this report). Sheppard shakes his head, he doesn’t know anything about this.

Sheppard is asked if he ever kept a large kitchen knife near his bed? (as noted in block capitals in this latest report) He says he may well have done and recalls the reason why: an ‘unsettling’ incident one night that summer, when he disturbed someone who was trying to climb through his (ground floor) bedroom window.

Sheppard was arrested in his room, along with Mr X, on 9th September. At the time they were in the process of assembling IIDs. The police smashed the door open and injured his arm badly in the process; he had to be taken to hospital.

SPARE DEVICES OUT IN THE WILD?

Lambert began circulating rumours that there were ‘five viable devices’ unaccounted for, that had been made before the men were arrested, and never found by the police.

The first such report of this [MPS 0740045] dates back to October 1987. It claims that these haven’t been used yet, and are being stored by activists with no connection to either Sheppard or Mr X.

‘I think that’s probably fabricated’ says Sheppard. He doesn’t think any extra devices were made (and moved) before his arrest; they were still in the middle of making them when the police interrupted them.

Another report, from the following summer [MPS 0740509], repeats this claim, saying these five devices are still in the possession of ‘ALF activists’ and ‘under the control’ of one of them. Sheppard repeats his doubts about this being true. He knows he wasn’t involved in making any extra devices so Mr X would have had to do this alone and never told him about it.

The two men were held on remand until their trial the following summer. They sometimes shared a prison cell during this period. However Sheppard doesn’t think that his co-defendant would have disclosed the existence or location of any remaining devices to him.

One more report, from August 1988 [MPS 0740511] makes it apparent that these rumours are false. This report claims that Sheppard was involved in making these five extra devices; it wasn’t something Mr X did alone.

PRISON VISITS

We see a report from November 1987 [MPS 0740050]. It lists the real names of activists who are known to have visited Sheppard and his co-defendant while they were inside (usually giving false names when they did so). There’s a second such report from February 1988 [MPS 0740020].

‘Bob Robinson’ is listed as visiting in both reports. Sheppard remembers him bringing a gift with him one time (a pamphlet about ‘philosophical egoism’, which he explains is a kind of ‘individualism’). He doesn’t remember Belinda Harvey coming with him.

Did ‘Bob’ discuss the upcoming trial with him? Sheppard thinks it’s likely that he did, but doesn’t remember what was said. As far as he knew, Lambert was involved in the defence campaign. He never looked up at the public gallery during his trial, but thought he was there.

Lambert describes ‘friction’ between the two men in his report of May 1988 [MPS 0740498]. It says that Mr X is obsessing about the trial and trying to persuade Sheppard to plead guilty to some of the charges. Sheppard, on the other hand, is said to be planning to plead not guilty and then remain silent. He confirms that this is quite accurate, yes.

The report goes on to allege that Mr X had conversations with visitors about the five missing devices. He doesn’t want them to be used for any ALF actions before his trial lest it affect the outcome. Sheppard says that nobody consulted him about whether or not any such devices should be used, and he is still ‘dubious’ that they even existed.

Later on we hear about a report [MPS 0740492] of ‘recent fire bomb attacks’, said to have been ALF actions, at Oxford St department stores, in November 1987. Sheppard says he heard about these on the radio but not beforehand. He doesn’t know who carried them out. It is unclear if this is linked to the ‘missing devices’ or not.

INFILTRATION SUSPECTED

How come the police turned up at Sheppard’s house precisely when he had all the components for these devices there, on that date in September? He says there is still a huge question mark about this.

He says he heard ‘there was some kind of investigation going on’, but he wasn’t involved, didn’t initiate it, saying ‘maybe I wasn’t far enough up the hierarchy…’ and didn’t know much about its form or any outcome.

It appears that there was a burglary at Tottenham Magistrates Court in September 1988, which appeared to target search warrants, including the one used to arrest Sheppard. He denies any knowledge of this.

NEW TYPE OF DEVICE

Barr then introduces a report [MPS 0735383] describing a new type of device, that would work differently from the first ones. This entailed a mixture of chemicals which would react violently and become a ‘lethal firebomb’. According to the report, these would be sealed into Jiffy bags and posted through the letter-boxes of a range of targets..

Another report [MPS 0735376] claims that Sheppard and Mr X plan to scope out possible targets in the City of London over the weekend, with a view to then launching a ‘Jiffy bag campaign’. Sheppard remembers checking out various shops involved in the fur trade.

Indeed, in a Special Branch report [MPS 0735365] the two men are said to have visited furriers and other shops in the West End on 5 September. This report says that surveillance will be in place for the planned dates of their next action:

‘full 24-hour coverage of the two addresses has been arranged’.

The same report that we saw earlier, dated 7 September [MPS 0735373] claims that the pair met up to test their new devices on the following day (Sunday 6 September) and planned to deliver Jiffy bags to approx 20 addresses at the end of the month. In contrast, Sheppard says ‘there was talk of a new device but it never really got beyond that’.

We are shown a report [MPS 0736879] detailing exactly what was found in Sheppard’s room by the police on 9 September. He doesn’t dispute the items listed, but does not remember how they came to be there. He points out that the idea of making a new style of device still hadn’t been put into practice, and he and X were engaged in making more of the original design when the raid occurred.

Even the police’s expert witness, Linda Jones (who was called in to identify the various liquids, powders and crystals) is reported [MPS 0736878] to have advised that none of these chemicals are explosive. She states that they could potentially be blended to produce an incendiary mix, but it is clear to her that ‘none of the chemicals have been mixed’. Sheppard agrees with this finding.

Yet again, the Inquiry team has taken the trouble to redact some of the names of the chemicals found during this raid. They do not want the public to find out how to make such ‘lethal firebombs’ from reading one of their lengthy transcripts (the only way to get any information at present, as no new documentary evidence has appeared on the website since Martyn Lowe’s exhibits).

LAMBERT’S INFLUENCE

At the very end of Friday’s hearing, Sheppard’s own barrister, James Wood KC, asks him to provide more details about how Bob Lambert operated, and the influence he had over the activists he spied on.

In his witness statement [MPS 0737215], Sheppard has mentioned a LGP meeting which took place in the first half of 1987, possibly in the group’s office rather than at Endsleigh Street. It was attended by 5-6 people, they all sat on the floor and he remembers Lambert occupying the raised section.

Sheppard recalls this was a ‘generalised’ meeting about people who wanted to take action about animal abuse. There was no specific target in mind, and nothing ‘concrete’ was arranged.

He thinks it may well have been called by Lambert, and he has a very clear memory of Helen Steel looking at Bob at one point, ‘with a very quizzical expression on her face’, and suggests ‘she was wondering: who is this bloke?’ at the time. He didn’t often see her at meetings but remembers her at this one. He thinks Paul Gravett was there too.

How often did he meet with ‘Bob Robinson’? Maybe 10-20 times. Most of these were meetings of the four ‘cell’ members, discussing their plans to use incendiary devices against Debenham’s. They didn’t take minutes of their meetings or have a Chair.

What was Lambert’s role in these discussions? Sheppard remembers Bob ‘pushing these plans forward’. He says he was ‘very enthusiastic’ himself in those days. He didn’t socialise much with Lambert outside of meetings. Their relationship was about taking direct action.

Wood is very keen that the witness share his impressions of Lambert and his role during this ‘crucial period’. He was ‘definitely very keen, definitely very active’. He remembers ‘Bob Lambert was a forceful character. Charismatic, I suppose’. Sheppard recalls that Lambert wanted the actions to happen. He ‘was a kind of a leader rather than a follower’. He finds it hard to remember more than this.

Wood asks: How does Sheppard describe his own role? Leader or follower? A mixture of the two. Sheppard says that he was very passionate about animal rights, but his nature was to be more of a follower.

The hearing ends at lunch-time. Mitting thanks Sheppard for giving evidence over the past two days (something he noticeably did not do yesterday).

Geoff Sheppard’s evidence this week has been very focussed on just one of the undercovers, HN10 Bob Lambert. Many observers have wondered why the Inquiry have chosen not to continue asking him about his experiences of undercover officers on Friday afternoon.

It appears that the only reason not to do so is Barr’s failure to prepare, and/or unwillingness to let anyone else ask questions. This represents a waste of hearing time and expense as the venue is paid for by the day.

Geoff Sheppard returned to give a final day of evidence to the Inquiry on Monday 25 November. Here is our report of that.

 

Tranche 2, Phase 2, Day 2

15 October 2024

This summary covers the second day of ‘Tranche 2 Phase 2’, the new round hearings of the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI), examining the animal rights-focused activities of the Metropolitan Police’s secret political unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, from 1983-92.

The UCPI is an independent, judge-led inquiry into undercover policing in England and Wales. Its main focus is the activity of two units who deployed long-term undercover officers into a variety of political groups; the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS, 1968-2008) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU, 1999-2011). Spycops from these units lived as activists for years at a time, spying on more than 1,000 groups.

Opening statements: Day 2

James Wood KC (Albert Beale; Gabrielle Bosley; Jane Hickman; Claire Hildreth; Hilary Moore; Rebecca Johnson; Robin Lane; Dave Morris: Geoff Shepherd; Paul Gravett; Helen Steel; Martyn Lowe)
Rajiv Menon KC (Friends of Freedom Press)
Dave Morris (McLibel Support Campaign)
Peter Weatherby KC (Hunt Saboteurs Association)
Sam Jacobs (Sharon Grant OBE; Stafford Scott)
Owen Greenhall (Joan Ruddock; Diane Abbott)
Fiona Murphy KC (The Category F Core Participants and TBS)
Kirsten Heaven (Non-Police Non-State Core Participants’ Co-ordinating Group)

1) James Wood KC

James Wood KC opens today’s hearing. He is speaking on behalf of 12 individuals represented by Hodge Jones and Allen:

• Albert Beale
• Gabrielle Bosley
• Jane Hickman
• Claire Hildreth
• Hilary Moore
• Rebecca Johnson
• Robin Lane
• Dave Morris
• Geoff Sheppard
• Paul Gravett
• Helen Steel
• Martyn Lowe

Their written Opening Statement goes into much more detail than his abbreviated oral submissions.

Wood began with some strong words about the officers of the Special Demonstration Squad, stating that they had:

‘committed some of the most serious abuses of state power against activists in modern times. They displayed, we say, a complete contempt for the basic rights and dignity of those they spied upon’.

Introductions

Wood went on to introduce those he represents, all of whom had been targeted for their involvement in a wide range of groups, including London Greenpeace, the women’s peace movement, the Trafalgar Square Defendants Campaign and various animal rights groups.

He noted that their political views, and the tactics they chose to use, varied, but made the point that none of them encouraged or promoted any form of direct action that would cause harm to anyone.

He took some time to explain that London Greenpeace was a small, autonomous, group, established in 1971 and completely independent from the much larger Greenpeace organisation that now exists. He provided pen portraits of those who were active in the group in the 1980s and explained a little about their background and interests.

Both Albert Beale and Martyn Lowe could be described as ‘pacifists’ and had long been involved in anti-nuclear, peace campaigning and projects. Albert is due to give evidence on 11 November and Martyn is scheduled to appear on 4 November.

Dave Morris spoke later that morning, about the McLibel case in which he and Helen Steel were involved. Morris was also part of the Trafalgar Square Defendants Campaign, set up in the aftermath of the anti-Poll Tax demonstration that took place in central London in March 1990. He will be providing more evidence on 5 November.

Like Morris, Steel was also involved in a wide range of environmental and social justice groups over the years. She was also one of the women targeted and deceived into a long-term sexual relationship by one of the spycops, and so is part of the ‘Category H’ group. Helen will give evidence on 27 November.

Gabrielle Bosley got involved with London Greenpeace in the mid 1980s. She will give evidence on 7 November.

Paul Gravett became active at the same time. He was particularly interested in animal rights, and Wood went on to give an overview of the main groups that Gravett was involved in. These included Islington Animal Rights, London Boots Action Group (LBAG), and London Animal Action (LAA).

These groups were heavily infiltrated, both by a string of undercover police officers and by corporate spies (sent by the fur trade and vivisection industry). This Inquiry should examine how much information was being shared by the Special Demonstratoin Squad (SDS) with such players. Paul is due to give evidence on 13 November and 14 November.

Claire Hildreth was also passionate about animals, and involved in both LBAG and LAA. Hildreth formed a very close friendship with one of the spycops, HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’. She will appear on 11 December.

Wood turned next to a discussion of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), a name used by people who took direct action to end animal suffering. He highlighted that one of the ALF’s principles was:

‘Reverence for Life: In all actions we take the utmost care that no harm should come to either human or animal life.’

The Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group (ALF-SG) had a press officer and an office, that produced publications. It did not take part in direct action.

Robin Lane served as press officer, and spokesperson for the group, between 1986-88. He has a long history of involvement in campaigning against animal abuse, and will give more evidence on 12 November.

Wood also mentioned Greenham Common women’s peace camp very briefly, as it has largely been covered by the evidence given by Jane Hickman, Hilary Moore and Rebecca Johnson during the Inquiry’s ‘Tranche 1 Phase 1’ hearings earlier this year (which examined spycops 1983-1992 who targeted groups not involved in animal rights).

Wood simply noted that there was no real justification for this SDS targeting; it was done on the ‘apparent whim’ of Margaret Thatcher.

Unsafe convictions

Geoff Sheppard was convicted of two serious offences, and the safety of both convictions is cast in doubt by the conduct of two different undercovers. Geoff will give evidence on 14 November and 15 November.

In July 1987, times incendiary devices were planted at several Debenham’s stores, set to go off overnight when the buildings were locked and empty, with the intention of them triggering the store’s sprinkler systems and thereby causing huge economic damage to the furs that Debenhams controversially still sold at the time. HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’ was closely involved in initiating, planning and carrying out this action.

Sheppard went to prison for his part in the Debenham’s action. By the time he was released, Lambert had been made an SDS manager. However he had trained up a protégé, HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’, who encouraged Sheppard to return to activism and facilitated this by providing transport.

Sheppard’s second conviction, in 1995, was for a firearms offence. Rayner was lauded for providing the intelligence that led to this, but kept quiet about the role he had played in inciting Sheppard.

Had the SDS now decided that securing criminal convictions should be one of their roles? Wood contends that the SDS was ‘completely unsuited’ for this, given that they would always prioritise maintaining their cover over the criminal justice system. The involvement of the spycops was never disclosed to the courts and none of the usual safeguards were in place to ensure fair trials.

Legal privilege

In another issue which has come up in other Opening Statements, Wood explored the SDS’s ‘disdain’ for the criminal justice process, and lack of respect for the principles underpinning fair trial processes. SDS reports are full of details about what should have been considered ‘legally privileged material’.

Bob Lambert frequently visited Sheppard while he was in prison on remand. His reports contain information about the two co-defendants, the meetings they had with their lawyers, legal strategies and interpersonal conflicts.

Officer HN109 has told the Inquiry that he did not have a clear understanding of the concept of ‘legal privilege’ and so did not provide any guidance about to the undercovers he managed. It appears that none of the unit’s managers did, and such information was routinely recorded and retained.

Lambert’s lies

Wood then returned to the Debenham’s story, going into more detail about Bob Lambert’s involvement. Lambert organised the first planning meeting, and argued that all Debenham’s stores, even those that didn’t sell fur, were legitimate targets.

He chose the Harrow branch as his target, and told the others that he had successfully planted a device there. £340,000 of damage was caused as a result. Overall, this anti-fur campaign is estimated to have cost Debenham’s around £4m. They stopped selling fur as a result.

Lambert continues to deny that he was directly involved in this action. Wood highlighted some of the discrepancies around this. Most shockingly, we heard for the first time today that CCTV footage from Harrow had been handed over to the (anti-terrorist) police who first attended the scene. It was then snatched by Special Branch officers, and has never been seen since.

From examining Lambert’s reports, it is clear that he was privy to far more information about these improvised incendiaries than he should have been, and that he curated the content of reports in a way that seems designed to mislead, and hide the extent of his direct involvement.

He claimed that these reports had been ‘sanitised’ by his managers but the relevant managers all deny doing so. The Inquiry has not been able to find all the reports that are believed to have been produced around this time.

However, there are SDS reports, identifying another person, ‘MSW’, as a ‘quartermaster’ for the Debenham’s campaign. ‘MSW’ was politically active between 1979-84, but says he had no knowledge of this serious crime, and did not even know the two men who were convicted or ‘Bob Robinson’ (Lambert) himself.

Lambert also made false, unfounded, allegations about Helen Steel being involved, which she denies. It seems that there may be a pattern of Lambert fabricating such stories to cover up his own deeds, and perhaps to advance his career.

Another witness, Chris Baillie, has come forward and told the Inquiry that Lambert had set him up to be arrested for criminal damage done by a third person to a butcher’s window. He will appear as a witness on 6 November.

It is clear that some people were suspicious about exactly what Lambert was up to, However, according to one of his managers, HN109:

‘the value in his intelligence potentially blinded more senior officers to how it was being obtained.’

Other SDS officers, like HN11 Mike Chitty ‘Mike Blake’, are known to have made similar comments.

Having later become an SDS manager himself, was Lambert able to destroy records relating to his own deployment and misconduct? Did he also ensure documents relating to Geoff Sheppard’s relationship with ‘Rayner’ were destroyed?

Interestingly, Lambert also told some activists that he carried out a similar, incendiary, action in Selfridge’s in August 1988.

The Inquiry will undoubtedly have lots of questions for Lambert when he finally appears between 2-5 December. It is estimated that his evidence will require four full days, longer than anyone else in this set of hearings.

Responding to the State

Wood made some comments about the Opening Statements we heard yesterday, in particular the one delivered by Peter Skelton on behalf of the Metropolitan Police.

Some of the mistakes made by the SDS are repeated, for example a failure to distinguish between various animal rights groups and those involved in them – labelling them all as ‘militant’ – along with attempts to exaggerate the impact of animal rights campaigners on those they protested.

Pickets outside shops, offices and homes may have been annoying or unwelcome, but at the time they were entirely lawful, and represented only a minor inconvenience, not a public order problem, and were hardly ‘terrifying’ in the way the police would have us all believe.

Even Bob Lambert is known to have written:

‘By late 1984, however the public order threat posed by various animal rights groups had all but disappeared.’

He notes that the only clients of his who were convicted of criminal offences had been encouraged and supported to take those actions by undercover officers.

It is clear that the SDS had a motive for portraying animal rights activists as ‘extremists’: this boosted their reputation and annual applications for increased funding. The Met continue to make these allegations because they seek to justify the highly intrusive infiltration of these groups.

What was the point?

These deployments were entirely speculative, and, Wood says, ‘entirely without justification’.

Despite spending years in the field, SDS officers didn’t always produce much useful intelligence in their reports, from the ‘cosy world of middle-class animal right campaigning’. Their deployments were not reviewed regularly.

Out of control

There was a lack of supervision or managerial control. Undercovers were given the freedom to operate as they wished, resulting in impropriety. Some (for example, HN2 Andy Coles ‘Any Davey’) took up positions of responsibility in the groups they targeted; others (like Bob Lambert) are known to have used their dominant personalities to influence the direction and activities of their target groups.

Most of the undercovers were older than those they spied on (having followed the advice they were given to ‘knock a few years off’ their real ages), and as a result younger activists often looked up to these men, and sought their advice about personal issues. There is evidence of them abusing their power, manipulating and ‘grooming’ people.

We heard that Claire Hildreth had confided in HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ about her experiences with ‘creepy’ HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’. He did not report Coles’s predatory behaviour to managers at the time.

This feeling of freedom undoubtedly extended to inciting and committing other serious crimes. The spycops believed they could act with impunity, and that their superiors would always have their backs.

Relationship with the Security Service (MI5)

According to Wood:

‘the evidence shows the Security Service and the SDS working alongside each other in close liason at all times’

The written Statement provides a great deal more detail about this. We know there were weekly meetings between the two. There was ‘intense political interest and influence’ in the units’ targets, including the groups listed above.

Re-traumatising the victims of these violations

The final issue raised by Wood was about the ‘procedural difficulties’ faced by Helen Steel. He explained that she had been finally been given disclosure, but this meant she had been supplied with ‘many thousands of pages of material’ and asked to respond under extreme time pressure.

This material relates to the abuse she suffered, and includes many untrue and unproven allegations made about her by those abusers. Reading this has been extremely distressing and re-traumatising for her, but the Inquiry is not taking a ‘trauma-informed’ approach, and appears not to understand the significant and cumulative effect on Helen.

Her privacy has already been grossly violated by these officers, and now she (like other Non State Core Participants) is being expected to apply for privacy redactions within a very tight and inflexible time-frame.

He reminded the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, that the primary focus of this Inquiry should be to examine police misconduct, rather than unproven allegations made by former officers about their victims. The effectiveness of this Inquiry could well be impacted, by the inability of Helen and others to participate fully and effectively and provide crucial evidence.

A reminder

Wood drew Mitting’s attention to a European Court of Human Rights judgment, ironically from Helen’s own landmark case, Steel and Morris v United Kingdom.

This ruled that:

‘even small and informal campaign groups, such as London Greenpeace must be able to carry on their activities effectively and that there exists a strong public interest in enabling such groups and individuals outside the mainstream to contribute to the public debate by disseminating information and ideas’

He was sure that if the European Court had been aware of the state-sponsored intrusion of London Greenpeace at the time of this case, their words would have been ‘more forceful’. Democratic principles, such as freedom of speech and freedom of expression, do not seem to be recognised by the Met.

He went on to say that the SDS ‘represented the worst in our society’, the police were ‘incapable of properly balancing…civil and democratic rights’ and the unit should not have existed.

Mitting’s response

Having heard all of this, Mitting asked Wood to communicate to Helen that he acknowledges ‘her detailed and informative statement’, saying her evidence ‘is of the greatest assistance to me’.

He went on to add that he is ‘encouraged to hear’ that she will provide oral evidence during these hearings, but wants her to send in the documents she refers to it her witness statement, especially the photos, as soon as possible (before she gives evidence on 27 November).

2) Rajiv Menon KC

Menon spoke again on Tuesday, this time on behalf of the Friends of Freedom Press (FFP).

They provided an Opening Statement and other evidence in the Inquiry’s Tranche 2 Phase 1 hearings earlier this year (Steve Sorba from FFP provided a witness statement and gave oral evidence in Week 2), about the SDS’s spying on the anarchist movement.

In particular HN85 Roger Pearce ‘Roger Thorley’ infiltrated the Freedom collective between 1979 and 1984 and later became a commander of Special Branch.

Today’s additional written Opening Statement addresses the evidence of SDS managers and other recently disclosed material.

Menon began by reiterating core participants’ profound concern that the Inquiry will be holding hearings in closed session, and that evidence will remain hidden from public scrutiny, perhaps forever, to protect the privacy of the officers and their families and the interests of the British state.

He then went on to consider the evidence of SDS managers, which raises important questions about SDS practices, where officers were allowed to cross what should have been operational red lines. Managers turned a blind eye, or sanctioned unconscionable behaviour, pointing out that the position of the Met becomes more and more untenable with every Tranche of Inquiry hearings:

‘the SDS did not serve any proper policing purpose’.

Historical overview

Menon noted that the decade under investigation in this tranche, from 1983 to 1992, is critical. The election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 saw a shift in the political direction of the country. The post-war consensus between organised labour and capital was abandoned, leading to a showdown with the trade unions.

The period was marked by struggles against racism and fascism, and the titanic struggle between the miners and the government. The gloves came off, and the police played a key role as enforcers of government will, known as ‘Maggie Thatcher’s Boot Boys’.

The SDS was an elite squad within Special Branch and they knew their officers would be protected at all costs. That meant attitudes changed.

During the 1980s we see reporting shift from a more old-fashioned objective style, to one that was exaggerated and inaccurate, intrusive, pejorative and laced with scurrilous fantasy. Officers and managers shared jokes inside the intelligence community echo chamber, at the expense of those on whom they spied.

Under the shadowy direction of MI5 the SDS created a culture whereby the supposed public order policing purpose was secondary to the real purpose of the SDS as a secret political police force.

Entitlement and arrests

Menon then examined evidence about the pay and overtime SDS officers felt they were entitled to.

‘SDS officers were overpaid and overvalued. SDS managers colluded in allowing their undercover officers too much independence, Roger Pearce’s mantra was: always defer to the officer in the field. This degree of autonomy spiralled out of control in the 1980s…

‘These undercover officers were likely to have been the highest paid officers in the Met, at least for their rank…

‘undercover officers could claim [overtime] for all their time in the pub or even in bed with an activist, supposedly gathering vital intelligence to protect the state, “Fucking for Queen and country” as Roger Pearce so crudely put it in his first novel.’

Menon also notes that during the Tranche 2 period now being examined (1983-1992), more SDS officers were arrested and ended up in court in their cover names. Although often for relatively minor offences, this was inevitably a stepping stone to more serious criminal involvement by SDS officers, as well as spying on defence lawyers.

It was also in direct contravention of Home Office instructions which unequivocally forbid any use of informants that may result in misleading a court.

None of the SDS managers appeared to regard the reporting on a legal advice as a problem.

Fantasy reporting

He then considered the problems inherent in MI5 using SDS undercover officers as human intelligence sources, often producing ‘fantasy reports for MI5’.

Menon notes evidence that senior managers felt that:

‘being a fantasist was a good trait for a undercover officer.’

‘Productive’ officers like Roger Pearce understood the game. Pearce would sex up his reports with lurid detail that played to the taste of his managers. His reporting style became the new SDS template for the 1980s.

HN115 Detective Chief Inspector Tony Wait says that MI5 received copies of virtually everything that SDS produced. They were ultimately serving the same political masters: a Conservative government, determined to crush the so-called enemy within.

The evidence of HN109 and HN11 Mike Chitty paints a further, worrying picture. HN10 Bob Lambert, HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’, HN8 (names restricted) and another unnamed undercover officer formed a ‘cabal’ within SDS. Lambert was the leader, and Menon notes,

‘There is reference in Eric Docker’s witness statement to the detective superintendent of C Squad, Dave Short, saying of Lambert: “The man’s out of control, you’ve lost him.”’

But was Lambert a rogue officer or was he playing a managed role, a participating agent provocateur? Lambert’s protégé, Dines, expressed the opinion that ‘rules are made to be broken’.

Lambert and Dines were regarded as the elite within a squad, that operated in a culture of impunity.

An inevitable problem

As an anarchist organisation that dates back to the 1880s, Freedom has a long historical memory. They say this is exactly where such state-sponsored spying always ends up, as agent provocateur activity which gets out of control or is carefully orchestrated with appropriate plausible deniability from the people in charge.

And so we come to ‘Operation Sparkler’, the prosecution of two Animal Liberation Front activists after improvised incendiary devices were placed in three Debenham’s stores, where Lambert is suspected of placing the third.

The investigation was taken over by SO12, Special Branch, away from SO13, the anti-terrorist squad. This appears abnormal as SO13 made the arrests. Was Special Branch trying to ensure that certain lines of enquiry were not pursued?

HN39 Eric Docker was promoted to detective chief inspector of SDS in October 1987, the month after the arrests. It was he who wrote up the commendation report for Bob Lambert.

Then, towards the end of the 1980s, things changed again. The Security Service Act was passed and the Service, also known as MI5, came slightly out of the shadows, as its activity was put on a statutory footing for the first time.

Margaret Thatcher was ousted, following the hugely successful anti-Poll Tax campaign in 1990, and MI5 had to do a full re-think. By 1992, there had been a change of focus and approach to ‘domestic extremism’.

This is addressed in the corporate witness statement of ‘Witness Y’. MI5 told Special Branch that they no longer needed all the ‘product’ that the SDS supplied.

This was the exact moment when there should have been a re-think, but instead of disbanding SDS, the Metropolitan Police Service and Special Branch doubled down, expanding their domestic surveillance operations, as we will see in Tranches 3 and 4 looking at later spycops’ activity, when the very officers who were the most responsible for the worst excesses of the SDS – Lambert, Dines and Coles – became the unit’s managers.

Menon ended his statement with the advice that the Inquiry needs to ask some searching questions, especially of those managers who were meant to be supervising the Lambert-Dines cabal:

‘Whether SDS activity was simply immoral or also criminal remains to be fully explored. On behalf of Freedom we suggest that there is now more than sufficient evidence from witnesses and documents for you, sir, to conclude that it was both.’

3) Dave Morris

Next we heard from Dave Morris, the only Core Participant to make oral submissions (as he is appearing as a ‘litigant in person’), on behalf of the McLibel Support campaign.

The McLibel case ended up becoming the longest trial in English legal history. There were just two defendants, Dave Morris and Helen Steel.

Morris explained that Steel had been unable to contribute as much as she might have liked towards the accompanying written Opening Statement, due to the Inquiry’s delays in making disclosure to her and the unreasonable length of time allowed for her to go through this evidence. She has only managed to write a partial personal witness statement, but aims to produce another before giving oral evidence on 27 November.

It made a refreshing change to hear directly from one of the people who had been targeted by the spycops. Morris will give further oral evidence on 5 November.

Introducing the McLibel case

Dave explained some of the background to this infamous legal case. As life-long community activists, he and Steel were both involved in fighting for a better future, they were both involved in London Greenpeace, and along with other campaigners, distributed copies of a leaflet entitled ‘What’s wrong with McDonald’s?’

When the McDonald’s corporation threatened legal action, Steel and Morris refused to back down, and found themselves defending a libel case against a well-resourced, powerful multinational. They had to represent themselves, as legal aid was not available for such cases.

They relied on the help of volunteers to assist them, and received ‘pro bono’ advice from a young barrister named Keir Starmer for around ten years.

As a result of publicity around this ‘David and Goliath’ case, the leaflets which McDonald’s had set out to suppress were widely distributed for many years, all over the world.

We now know that the SDS not only infiltrated the campaign, they also collaborated secretly with McDonald’s before and during the case, something Morris condemned as ‘a serious miscarriage of justice’.

We also now know that one of the undercovers, HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’ engineered a long-term relationship with Steel – they even lived together – and this had been described the day before by the Inquiry’s own Counsel, David Barr KC, as Dines’s

‘cold, calculating emotional and sexual exploitation’

Infiltration

In the 1980s, London Greenpeace was a small group, campaigning about issues that were of widespread public concern, like the treatment of animals and workers and the environment. The trust and privacy of those involved was abused by the infiltration of SDS spies.

HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’ became a prominent and influential activist in what he described himself as ‘a peaceful campaigning group’. During his time undercover, he deceived four women into sexual relationships and fathered a child with one of them.

In 1986, he helped to create and distribute the original 6 page fact-sheet which asked ‘What’s wrong with McDonald’s?’ and provided the reader with a list of answers (everything from nutrition and diet, environmental damage, unethical advertising, worker exploitation, factory farming, global poverty…).

Morris brandished a copy on screen, and explained this was the leaflet that prompted McDonald’s to threaten libel action. A shorter version was produced and given out during the McLibel trial, with at least 3 million copies being printed and distributed in the UK.

When HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’ joined the group, he also helped to produce and distribute these leaflets, organise events and protests, and become the group’s treasurer.

It wasn’t just these two SDS officers who infiltrated London Greenpeace; there were also at least six ‘inquiry agents’, corporate spies sent by McDonald’s to gather information between 1989-91.

McDonald’s hired former police officers for this operation, and one of them had a fraudulent sexual relationship with a member of the group, which lasted for around six months.

As a result of the intelligence gathered by the SDS and these inquiry agents, McDonald’s served libel writs on five named individuals in September 1990.

Three of the group felt they had no option but to pull out of what promised to be an expensive, unfair fight, leaving Morris and Steel to stand up to McDonald’s in court.

The case – including a full appeal – ran until 2005.

The pair went on to win a case against the British Government in the European Court of Human Rights, and were formally represented there by Keir Starmer there (as they received legal aid for this). That court ruled that the state had violated their right to a fair hearing and freedom of expression, but had no idea about the extent of the intrusion they had suffered.

Breaching legal privilege and spying on Starmer

Dines reported that the leaflet ‘is causing much concern within the corporation’, shortly before the McLibel writs were served. According to him:

‘Arrangements are in hand to monitor events arising from these legal proceedings’.

He went on to report on confidential discussions between the recipients of those writs and their lawyers.

In a later report he boasts:

‘It is accurate to say that I was “by the side” of Helen Steel and Dave Morris in 1991 and relaying the legal advice back to my bosses in the SDS’.

He used to collect Steel after she had attended legal strategy meetings with Starmer.

Secret unlawful collaboration between McDonald’s and the Met

It is clear that information flowed in both directions, between McDonald’s and the SDS.

McDonald’s recruited Sid Nicholson in 1983 as Head of Security. In his prior 31 year police career, he had worked in apartheid South Africa before coming to London and rising to the rank of Chief Superintendent in the Met, covering the Brixton area.

He was responsible for McDonald’s security and ran their spying operations. He brought in other former police officers, such as Terry Carroll (also from Brixton), who was hired as a Security Manager, and admitted in 2013:

‘I was aware that Sid would liaise with Special Branch officers about the protestors’.

He also recalled Sid telling him that there was a ‘Special Branch bloke’ inside London Greenpeace.

In 1990, he had sent Nicholson a memo, promising:

‘I will get onto Special Branch to get an assessment’.

Nicholson testified during McLibel that his security team were ‘all ex-police’, and it’s clear that this strategy meant they were all able to get hold of information from mates who were still on the force. One of the McDonald’s spies held two long meetings with a Special Branch officer in June 1990 to share private information.

Morris noted in passing that Bob Lambert had worked on Special Branch’s C Squad, with special responsibility for the Brixton area, while Nicholson was still in post.

A police ‘file note’ from 2002 (disclosed recently by the Inquiry) reveals that although HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’ was heavily involved in the anti-McDonald’s campaign in 1990, the SDS had made sure that his name

‘was deliberately omitted from the McDonald’s libel writ list’

Morris describes this as ‘blatant manipulation of the legal process’, and calls on the Inquiry to investigate the roles played by undercovers in this web of secret collaboration and subterfuge.

The search for the truth

Dines began cynically faking a mental breakdown in 1991, and finally disappeared from Steel’s life the following year, telling her that he was going abroad. As a result, she suffered heartache and worry, and spent many years trying to find him.

By 1995, Lambert had been promoted to SDS manager, and was worried about the possibility of either Dines or the Commissioner being sub-poenaed to give evidence at the McLibel trial, if Steel were ever to discover the truth about her ex-partner.

By 1998 Steel and Morris knew only that Special Branch had provided their private details to McDonald’s, and successfully sued the police over this. In 2000, the Met offered to make a pay-out of £10,000, plus costs, rather than go through ‘a difficult and lengthy trial’.

Morris says now:

‘Had the true picture been known we may well have not settled the claim.’

The judgments of the High Court and the Court of Appeal found that much of what had been printed in the leaflet was true, and that McDonald’s had breached both employment and animal welfare legislation. However they were never prosecuted. Why not?

Consequences of the case

London Greenpeace never fully recovered after the McLibel case, and its activities gradually fizzled out.

Although the ‘McLibel Two’ won on some points, they also lost on some. As a result, Steel and Morris had damages of £60,000 awarded against them, which they refused to pay. Morris says the case:

‘certainly had real consequences. Not only Helen and myself, but also Keir had to put in years of unpaid and intense work to help defend the action’.

For Steel, the stress of fighting the case was magnified by the trauma of Dines’s fake breakdown, her concern and her efforts to trace him. She then had to deal with the additional trauma of gradually uncovering the shocking truth about his identity.

Morris says this case is another example of the police:

‘showing their utter disregard for the integrity of legal proceedings’.

4) Peter Weatherby KC

Peter Weatherby KC appeared on behalf of the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA).

Before talking about the activities of the HSA, Weatherby made clear:

‘there was no legitimate justification whatsoever for undercover policing targeting it as an organisation or its supporters or its activities or their families or their homes or their private and sexual lives…

‘undercover policing interfered with a fundamental constitutional and convention rights of Hunt Saboteurs Association supporters relating to freedoms to organise, assemble and act as well as their personal rights as autonomous individuals.’

He outlined various transgressions of undercovers, quoting SDS officer HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’:

‘Misleading a court is something done by criminals and government ministers alike – we shouldn’t be squeamish about the ends justifying the means in our own case.’

This casual approach to misleading criminal courts is an affront to the rule of law. Managers knew and consented, and:

‘if ever this Inquiry needed evidence that the SDS was allowed to operate beyond any normal lawful limits, this is it… [SDS] was a political policing unit to which normal lawful limits were simply not recognised or applied.’

The HSA was formed and still exists to prevent the killing of animals in blood sports. Its core activities were and are to take non-violent direct action to prevent such cruelty and to lobby government to enact laws to criminalise and stop activities such as fox-hunting and hare-coursing. Some supporters report illegal hunting to police and provide evidence for prosecutions, there’s nothing inherently unlawful about those core activities.

Opinion polls show the majority of the public is against blood sports and has been throughout at the whole history of the Hunt Saboteurs Association. The Hunting Act passed in 2004, cementing the HSA’s position on the right side of history.

It is a national association with democratic structures, which takes part in national lobbying. Activities against hunts are invariably through local groups.

The HSA has always believed in non-violence. This is a moral and a practical choice. Confrontation or violence are a distraction. To make a hunt ineffective, saboteurs lay false scents, blow hunting horns to draw hounds away, and make noise to cause wild animals to seek safety.

Weatherby notes:

‘Pursuing wild animals with dogs may well not have been unlawful during the period under consideration and neither was disrupting that cruel pursuit in the ways described.’

Conversely, hunt supporters often sought to deter and intimidate saboteurs through organised violence perpetrated by hired thugs. Hunt saboteurs have been killed and sustained serious injuries requiring hospital treatment. This is an important point which Weatherby addressed at some length and in more detail in his written statement.

Violence directed at hunt saboteurs was so severe that the HSA collated these experiences and submitted a written report entitled ‘Public order, private armies: Security guards of British hunts’ to the Home Affairs Select Committee investigating the use of private security firms. There was little subtlety in the campaigns by hunt supporters against hunt saboteurs and the threats were in plain sight.

Undercover officers witnessed the violent attacks on hunt sabs and on occasion reported on where the real threat lay. Managers refer in contemporaneous documentation to the risk of officers being injured by hunt supporters.

HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’ stated:

‘I feared serious assault from terriermen or being shot at by irate farmers more than anything else during my tour.’

In 1992 the British Field Sports Society (BFSS) ran a campaign to encourage hunts to use so-called stewards to deter saboteurs.

In the words of BFSS spokesperson, Nick Herbert:

‘we’re going to start hunting the saboteurs.’

This left little to the imagination.

Herbert went on to become an MP and was policing minister between 2010 and 2012. In that role, he defended undercover officers having sex with women they spied on.

He is now Lord Herbert and chair of the College of Policing, responsible for the authorised professional practice for undercover officers.

In this context, Weatherby examined whether the HSA were a public order threat. An SDS report from 1989 summed it up:

‘From a public order point of view the threat of violence these days comes more from supporters of the hunt rather than from the 20 to 30 saboteurs.’

Why then were the HSA made a target? The answer is politicised bias. Put simply, ‘Those associated with hunting had greater access to the corridors of power than those who opposed hunting.’

Weatherby referred to obvious and key areas of questions the HSA urge the Inquiry to focus on.

Justification

Any such deployments should be subject to precise justification based on a rigorous process, based on evidence properly recorded and regularly reviewed and supervised at a high level.

None of this appears to have occurred. There was no tenable justification for the deployments against the HSA.

Weatherby cited the 1995/1996 SDS annual report:

‘The emphasis that penetration of hunt sabotage groups is a means to an end rather than an end in itself in terms of SDS operations remains valid.’

Thus, from the SDS’s own mouthpiece, it seems their justification for infiltrating the HSA was a speculative attempt to identify people who might be involved in other acts. Could this means to an end infiltration ever be justifiable in principle? The HSA firmly refute that idea.

Proportionality

What proportionality exercises were conducted? Were legitimate aims identified at all? Is there evidence of any significant useful intelligence obtained at the time?

Weatherby notes that even if what he calls the ‘Animal Liberation Front excuse’ were accepted, most so-called ALF activity involved low-level criminal damage caused when rescuing animals or damage perhaps to butchers’ shops.

Instructions and training

What were the instructions to undercover officers? What was their training? What were their limitations, not only generally but on those target activities?

Weatherby pointed to undercover officers taking part in, encouraging or organising serious criminal activities; he notes that a number of the women personally violated in deceitful relationships were hunt saboteurs, and adds:

‘you’ll hear from witnesses who were befriended by undercover officers, they not only went to festivals and abroad with them, but they welcomed them into their own homes and families and introduced them to friends unaware of their true identities.’

Finally, he notes that police bias against hunt sabs often led to unlawful arrests. Many such detentions did not result in charges and not infrequently hunt saboteurs took successful civil claims.

Officers like Lambert, Dines and Coles were also arrested, which raises a number of uncomfortable issues. Did these officers infringe legal privilege? Were these arrests used as a means of enhancing the standing of undercover officers in their deployments? Did undercover officers mislead criminal courts?

‘The Inquiry must not only establish the facts concerning these violations of fundamental rights and affronts to the administration of justice, it must also establish accountability and bring to an end such unacceptable practices.’

5) Sam Jacobs

Sam Jacobs appeared next, on behalf of Sharon Grant OBE (in relation to Bernie Grant) and Stafford Scott (Broadwater Farm Defence Committee)

There is an accompanying written Statement.

Jacobs made a brief oral statement, and referred the Inquiry to wider points made in the opening statement of the co-operating group of non-state non-police core participants, about shocking SDS mismanagement, culture and lack of accountability.

He notes that documents disclosed in this Tranche have important implications for all of his clients, including those whose evidence will be heard in Tranche 3 who, because of restriction orders have not yet had sight of the material.

Targeting

How groups or individuals were selected for targeting by the SDS remains opaque. Managers’ statements shed little light.

Only HN115 offers a detailed account of targets identified by the SDS, following consultation with the Security Service and senior managers from other squads.

Jacobs urges the Inquiry to consider:

‘the interests and concerns of the Metropolitan Police which will have informed the apparently amorphous targeting strategy.’

Like Scobie on Monday, Jacobs gives the example of a Special Branch report from January 1983, ‘Political extremism and a campaign for accountability within the Metropolitan Police’, which makes it plain the police viewed any attempt to bring accountability as subversive in itself.

The subversive aims of the Greater London Council included ensuring the police complaints procedure worked effectively. The report describes attempts to develop monitoring groups as ‘grandiose’, and ‘sinister’ and sought to discredit democratically elected officials as having extremist connections.

Jacobs concludes@

‘It is clear that the very notion of police accountability was viewed as problematic by Special Branch…

‘reporting on these groups and the various justice campaigns in the Tranche 2 period [1983-1992] and beyond was a deliberate objective.’

Sharon Grant OBE

Managers’ witness evidence about reporting on elected officials is inconsistent and has served only to muddy the waters and to raise further concerns.

The 1 June 1988 briefing paper produced for the Security Service’s Management Board on counter subversion refers to F Branch monitoring of various mainstream political groups, including the Labour Party.

This casts doubt on managers’ claims that there should be no active reporting on MPs or that reporting on members of Parliament by the SDS and Special Branch was either discouraged or was simply incidental.

Reports on Bernie Grant and other MPs were frequently supplied to the Security Service. Special Branch had a direct interest in the activities of elected politicians and they did report on their activities.

The 1983 report on police accountability references dozens of elected officials, including Bernie Grant, with (inaccurate) details of their purported political beliefs and allegiances.

The interest of the Metropolitan Police and the SDS appeared to be at its highest when Bernie Grant was critical of policing methods or of the police. The Met is most concerned with its own reputation and using Special Branch reporting to defend itself from criticism.

Sharon Grant has long-held concerns that the Met was the source of unfavourable media stories about her husband and the evidence disclosed to date heightens those concerns.

Stafford Scott

Managers’ evidence has exacerbated Scott’s concerns about why he and the Broadwater Farm Defence Committee were reported on by undercover officers. The Metropolitan Police made it clear that they regarded any campaigns for police accountability and justice to be subversive by their very nature, and Scott was involved in precisely this area of work in his community.

Managers’ statements insist that reporting on such groups was a by-product of reporting on the other political groups, and so was justified in the interests of public order.

However, not one single report on Stafford Scott or of the activities of Broadwater Farm Defence Committee that raises any legitimate concerns about public order, or evidences manipulation of the group by political activists.

Managers approved and submitted reports by undercover officers, yet did not confront or address the racism that was so clearly prevalent. Two of the reports describe speakers at public meetings as ‘negroes’.

HN78 Trevor Morris ‘Anthony “Bobby” Lewis’ is referred to as ‘a coloured potential recruit’.

It is clear that he was regarded as a useful asset, who would be able to obtain access that might not be available to other undercover officers.

HN59 states that managers would edit reports, sometimes removing words or phrases. HN109 states that he had an editorial role over the reports, removing irrelevant or judgmental comments. Yet explicitly racist language was not edited.

Undercovers’ and managers’ constant refrain is that the language used in reports was reflective of its time and should not be judged by today’s standards:

‘yet this is language that is more in tune with the segregated American deep south than London in the 1980s.’

The language and attitude expressed in the reports, which went unchallenged by managers, shows that minorities were regarded as a threat by the Metropolitan Police whenever they sought to organise around issues of justice and accountability.

The opening statement of the Met Commissioner to Tranche 2 Phase 1 described reporting on social justice campaigns, family campaigns and community organisations as ‘indefensible’, resulting from:

‘a critical failure on the part of its managers’.

Scott asks the Chair to be aware that these attitudes and behaviours do not operate in a vacuum, and the critical failures of the SDS managers were also critical failures on the part of the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office, and not just the individuals giving evidence to this Inquiry.

6) Owen Greenhall

Owen Greenhall appeared on behalf of Diane Abbott OBE and Dame Joan Ruddock, who have supplied a written Opening Statement.

Diane Abbott has been a leading anti-racism campaigner for decades. In 1987 she became the first black woman to be an MP, representing Hackney North and Stoke Newington. Re-elected in 2024, she is now the longest-standing continuously serving female MP, the ‘Mother of the House’.

The Right Honourable Dame Joan Ruddock PC is an anti-apartheid campaigner and former chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). She was MP for Deptford from 1987 to 2015 and held several ministerial positions, including Minister for Women, Minister for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Minister for Energy and Climate Change.

Greenhall explained that both Abbott and Ruddock were subject to SDS reporting and they share a number of concerns (expressed in their opening to Tranche 2 Phase 1 earlier this year and expanded here)
(i) The targeting of MPs and the adequacy of disclosure.
(ii) Concerns over racial discrimination in the activities of the SDS.
(iii) Concerns over the use of information gathered by the SDS.
(iv) Procedural issues related to the Inquiry.

The targeting of MPs

Reporting on MPs was a central concern in the creation of this Inquiry, and was debated in Parliament in March 2015.

The response from the Minister for Policing Criminal Justice and Victims, Mike Penning, was that he would:

‘do everything I can to make sure that the documents are released… We have to find out exactly what went on.’

Spying on MPs raises serious concerns over the erosion of the Wilson doctrine against police surveillance of Members of Parliament, inappropriate collection of personal information and interference with the democratic process. Greenhall pointed out:

‘It’s notable that only Labour MPs appear to have been targeted.’

Former undercover officer Peter Francis has revealed that Special Branch files on MPs were typically ‘very extensive’ and often contained personal and private information.

HN78 Trevor Morris ‘Anthony “Bobby” Lewis’ was asked whether he ever saw a file on an elected politician. He replied:

‘I was going to say hundreds. Many, many, many… they are all marked ‘Secret’… probably top secret.’

Trevor Morris published a book ‘Black Ops: The Incredible True Story of a British secret agent’ using the pseudonym Carlton King.

Greenhall quoted from that book:

‘It is the job of the Security Service to vet and assess senior politicians; the Branch assisted with this duty where and when required. When the Branch came across intelligence relating to politicians (through its agents, desk officers or SDS operatives et cetera)… it would pass this intelligence to the Security Service.’

Yet very little of this reporting has actually been disclosed by the Inquiry to date (when questioning Morris they didn’t menton his book and later absurdly said MI5 had forced them not to admit he was in fact Carlton King).

Core participants ask that these discrepancies are investigated to ensure that the Inquiry uncovers the full truth of what took place.

Racial discrimination in the activities of the SDS

Greenhall quoted Home Office guidelines produced right at the start of this Tranche, in 1984:

‘Special Branch investigations into subversive activities in particularly sensitive fields, for example in educational establishments, in trade unions, in industry and among racial minorities, must be conducted with particular care so as to avoid any suggestion that Special Branches are investigating matters involving the legitimate expression of views…

‘It is not the function of the force Special Branch to investigate individuals and groups merely because their policies are unpalatable, or because they are highly critical of the police, or because they want to transform the present system of police accountability.’

Yet there was extensive reporting on racial justice campaigns and police accountability issues.

Indeed, Managers appear to have been unaware of the guidelines. Annual reports for the SDS indicate that campaigns on racial issues were a key aspect of targeting, the Anti-Nazi League, a variety of local anti-racist and anti-fascist groups and predominantly black family justice campaigns regularly feature.

The purported justification – concern that these groups might be taken over by other organisations – is racist, assuming black-led organisations could not preserve their own independence.

The use of information gathered by the SDS

Throughout the Tranche 2 period (1983-1992), the SDS worked hand in glove with the Security Service. One primary purpose of the Security Service was vetting. The SDS played a crucial part in this.

‘Witness Y’ accepts:

‘it is in my view highly likely that some (possibly most) of the information sought from SDS officers was sought in order to be used for vetting purposes’

Security Service influence on targeting is confirmed by SDS managers. HN115 Tony Wait states:

‘The Security Service influenced our targeting decisions quite a lot. Most of our deployments were in agreement with them. We would always seek their views before deciding on new targets.’

Security Service requests were often coupled to political and diplomatic concerns at the time (see our report on the Opening Statement on behalf of CND).

As Carlton King, aka HN78 Trevor Morris, writes:

‘the Branch was only one cog in the British state’s domestic national security apparatus, the Security Service (MI5) was an even more central component, as was the Home Office, the judiciary, the press and of course the politicians, in particular cabinet-level government ministers who sat at the centre of this machine and could therefore tweak it to their advantage.’

That past involvement coming in one of the largest anti-nuclear movements could inhibit the future career of those concerned is reminiscent of the authoritarian regimes which the SDS and Security Services claimed to be fighting against.

Greenhall therefore asked the Inquiry to:

‘fully explore the use that was made of SDS reports for vetting purposes, particularly in relation to politicians and civil servants.’

Procedural issues

Greenhall echoed the concerns raised by many other core participants.

‘The disclosure and Rule 9 process for Tranche 2 has been heavily delayed for the non-state core participants and that has had the effect of marginalising their impact and in many respects excluding them from effective participation.

‘The impact of these delays has almost exclusively been to the detriment of non-state core participants… limitations on attendance at hearings has hindered the engagement of the core participants in the Inquiry…

‘The Inquiry is asked to ensure that procedural issues do not reduce the accountability of those responsible for the SDS… [and] to take steps to minimise the prejudice to non-state core participants affected by the delays.’

7) Fiona Murphy KC

After lunch, we heard from Fiona Murphy KC, representing ‘TBS’ and ‘Category F’ Core Participants (people deceived into relationships by undercover officers)

‘TBS’

Murphy spoke first on behalf of TBS, whose mother ‘Jacqui’ had a long-term sexual relationship with HN10 Bob Lambert.

TBS was born in 1985 and his father, posing as a committed animal rights activist using the name ‘Bob Robinson’ (an identity Lambert stole from a dead child), was involved in his life until 1988. Then he disappeared, abandoning TBS, who did not learn of the true identity of his father for a further 24 years. He has provided a written statement to the Inquiry.

TBS has given powerful testimony, setting out the difficult process of reconciling himself to his biological father’s absence, his tragic attempts to learn more about the fiction that was ‘Bob Robinson’, to identify with that fiction, and how TBS has struggled to come to terms with the reality that his understanding of his parentage was based on a lie.

TBS complains that the treatment of him by the Inquiry has not been fair, has not been consistent, has not been predictable and has not facilitated him in being heard in relation to decisions that affect him.

He aligns with the remarks of other core participants about issues arising from delay and disclosure. The unorthodox approach to the marshalling of evidence taken by this public inquiry runs the significant risk of the truth being obscured.

The Inquiry also chose to limit TBS’s legal funding, locking his lawyers out from considering the evidence of civilian witnesses, including the evidence of his own mother.

‘These experiences have undermined TBS’s confidence in your Inquiry, sir, and he endorses the analysis of the non-state non-police core participants opening statement that this is an Inquiry in crisis.’

The Commissioner’s responsibility

TBS has outlined in his witness statement:

‘The Metropolitan Police Service do not seem as an organisation to accept that … they had responsibility to try to minimise the impact, to hold their hands up, to accept that they had allowed a toxic culture to develop which led to these issues. To acknowledge the wrongs done and to provide resources to help the victims, such as me, to access specialist psychiatric and psychological help.

‘It feels scary that as an organisation the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] were happy for me to go through my whole life without knowing the true identity of my biological father. And if it were not for the work of activists and journalists I would probably never have known the truth or had the chance to meet my biological father.

The Metropolitan Police Service simply left me alone to deal with all of this, both before and after I learned of Bob Lambert’s true identity.’

The Commissioner of the Met apologised to TBS in his opening statement for the distress he has suffered growing up not knowing his true parentage, for the fact that the Metropolitan Police should not have allowed Bob Lambert to behave in the way that he did, and committing to ensure that TBS receives answers to his questions during this Inquiry.

The apology addresses Bob Lambert’s conduct, it does not address the organisational responsibility of those who knew of TBS’s existence in the years and decades following his birth. It does not address the Commissioner’s own failings in relation to TBS in the period leading to and following Bob Lambert’s exposure.

TBS invites the Metropolitan Police to provide a corporate evidential witness statement deposed in full compliance with the Commissioner’s duty of candour, addressing the chronology of the organisation’s awareness of the developing public interest in the SDS in general and Bob Lambert in particular.

When did the Met became aware that there was a significant likelihood that Bob Lambert’s true identity would be disclosed publicly? When was it obvious that Bob Lambert’s identity would become known to TBS? What decisions were taken regarding the need to notify Bob Lambert’s identity to TBS before his mother pieced the evidence together from press reports?

Lambert was exposed on 15 October 2011. He made apologies on 23 October to London Greenpeace and to Belinda Harvey, who he had deceived into a relationship. He made no mention of Jacqui or TBS. He made no effort to contact them.

Eight months later, by chance, Jacqui stumbled on the truth when she saw an article in the Daily Mail on 12 June 2012.

‘It was unconscionable for the Metropolitan Police Service to leave TBS and his mother to find out the truth in the manner in which they did.’

Murphy set out the legal framework on the Rights of the Child, citing pronouncements at the highest judicial level that the best interests of children are not served by the concealment of truth. On the contrary, it causes mental and psychological suffering which does not diminish with age.

Knowledge of one’s true identity positively contributes to personal development, to one’s sense of self and there are also of course important practical consequences, including in relation to knowledge of potential hereditary medical conditions.

Had the Metropolitan Police sought advice at the time of TBS’s birth or at any stage subsequently, they would have been advised that notifying TBS of his true parentage was in his best interests.

TBS will learn facts about his childhood and early development during this Inquiry. The decision to restrict his legal funding is therefore particularly cruel. TBS has had to suppress his identification with the non-existent ‘Bob Robinson’ and to come to terms with the true identity of Bob Lambert.

In his own words:

‘The father that disappeared was a fabrication, and I’ve had to grapple with deconstructing that myth that my life was built around.’

The impact upon TBS of this deception has been profound and it endures to this day.

Murphy highlighted some details from the evidence, such as the decision to obscure Bob Lambert’s identity and whereabouts at the time when ‘Jacqui’ was seeking to have TBS adopted by her new husband, misleading social services and the family courts. The name of the individual who did this has been restricted by the Inquiry, preventing publication.

She also notes:

‘Bob Lambert’s deployment as “Bob Robinson” continued for a further three years after TBS’s birth, but that he was permitted to return in a managerial role. Despite his having demonstrated in these starkest terms that his professionalism and propriety could not be relied upon and that he posed a significant risk of ongoing harm to those among whom he was deployed.’

Murphy then made a chilling appeal to the Inquiry:

‘There is evidence, sir, that we ask you to consider with care that there were other children born of these abusive relationships.

‘At a bare minimum, sir, it is the Commissioner’s responsibility to assure you that no other human being is living a life with the truth obscured from him or her as it was from TBS for more than two decades.’

Families whose loved ones’ identites were stolen

‘Category F’ are the families whose loved ones’ identities were stolen by the Special Demonstration Squad and its officers. They have also provided a written Statement.

The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police publicly apologised to the families on Monday, adding that misconduct by officers while using the dead children’s identities was disrespectful to their memories, and the Commissioner has apologised to all the families for this and for the Metropolitan Police’s failure to stop that misconduct from occurring.

Murphy noted that the apology was welcome, but detailed the inadequacies of the Met’s response:

‘What is apparent is that the risk to families from such events was never considered, although it ought to have been. This is but one example of the SDS’s deplorable myopia.’

Senior officers within the Metropolitan Police were fully aware of the practice but did not take any steps to stop it for two decades, nor to close the SDS.

Few officers turned their minds to the inevitable impact on the families or the devastation that this practice has wrought on their families, already made vulnerable by the premature loss of a child or a young adult, and how the memories they all cherish have been tainted and tarnished by it.

The families participating in this tranche covering the period between 1983 and 1992 are:

• Frank Bennett and Honor Robson in relation to the theft and abuse of their brother Michael Hartley’s identity.
• Faith Mason, in relation to her son Neil Martin.
• Marva and Judy Lewis in relation to their brother Anthony Lewis.
• Kaden Blake, in relation to her brother Matthew Rayner.

They represent only a small proportion of the victims of identity theft by the Metropolitan Police in this period.

The families want to understand the extent of the intrusion into their own lives and how the identities were used.

They are concerned that in taking a child’s identity the officers went on to research and use details from the families’ private and family lives, so as to test their identity choice and to build their ‘legends’.

Meanwhile, no care was given to the risks to which the families were thereby themselves exposed.

Officers went far beyond acceptable conduct, seducing women, inveigling themselves into the lives of others, attending parties and weddings and even celebrating the birthdays of dead children as if they were their own. They committed criminal offences and appeared in court as witnesses or defendants in the names of dead children’s names.

They undermined lawful and legitimate protest movements. For the Marva Lewis and her family it was especially bitter to learn that HN78 Trevor Morris ‘Anthony “Bobby” Lews’ sought to undermine campaigns for racial justice while:

‘pretending to be my brother… he had stolen the identity of a deceased young black boy and his work undercover contributed to undermining the investigation into the racist murder of another black boy, Stephen Lawrence.’

‘The restricted family’

The families registered their regret and disappointment with the Inquiry. They are concerned that onerous restriction orders over historical practices are impeding the Inquiry’s investigations.

Many officers continue to enjoy anonymity, to the dismay of the families. This means it is the dead child’s identity with which their misconduct will be forever associated, and not the identity of the officer who was responsible.

The Chair has said that any attempt to challenge the restrictions, which were applied without reference to the families, is ‘discouraged’ and:

‘would almost certainly result in the existing restrictions being upheld… [and it’s] very unlikely that the Inquiry would extend funding for the purposes of any such scrutiny’.

The families have not been placed on an equal footing to the police core participants, and the Inquiry is failing to comply with the principle of open justice.

These problems are at their most acute in relation to ‘the restricted family’, a family who have been forced to participate in this Inquiry anonymously by reason of a restriction order covering their own name, to protect the identity of the officer who stole it.

They have been silenced and disempowered, denied the opportunity to speak openly about the trauma they have suffered, and their hopes that this Inquiry might expose the truth and achieve a measure of accountability have rapidly faded.

8) Kirsten Heaven

Our last speaker of the day, Kirsten Heaven appeared on behalf of ‘the co-operating group of NPSCPs’ – this means all the Non-Police Non-State Core Participants in this Inquiry, whose lawyers try to work together to represent everyone’s shared interests.

They produced a lengthy written Opening Statement for Tranche 2 Phase 2, in addition to the individual and group statements many of these people have made.

Initial observations

She pointed out that at the same time as making various apologies for the actions of undercover officers and ‘systemic management failings’ in yesterday’s Opening Statement, the Met also sought to persuade Mitting that the Inquiry should really now focus its attention on what they call the ‘primary question’: whether or not the spycops deployments were justified, rather than exploring the way these undercovers behaved.

She said:

‘Put simply, abhorrent behaviour and systemic managerial failure are matters that clearly go to the heart of the question of justification’

The Met are ‘wrong on this issue’, she added.

She then reminded Mitting of how the Investigatory Powers Tribunal dealt with this issue in the case brought by Kate Wilson (one of the women deceived by spycop EN12 Mark Kennedy ‘Mark Stone’).

The ensuing judgment from that case was highly critical of the ‘broad, open-ended authorisations’ used by the spycops units. These deployments were speculative ‘fishing operations’ and resulted in extensive collateral intrusion. They cannot be justified.

‘Abhorrent, abusive, cruel and morally repugnant’

The four undercover officers that we’ll hear most about in this set of hearings have still not shown any real remorse, for the impact of what Heaven described as ‘the most abhorrent, abusive, cruel and morally repugnant behaviour in the history of the SDS’.

For example, HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’ continues to deny that he – as a 32 year old married man – groomed a vulnerable teenager, Jessica, into a sexual relationship, pretending to be much younger than he actually was. The Met accept that ‘Jessica’ has been telling the truth.

The Inquiry must be sceptical about any evidence it hears from these men. Heaven continued by skewering the laughable idea that these spycops might still have reputations worth protecting.

Coles has claimed that ‘Jessica’ had a ‘father issue’ and was ‘obsessed’ with him. Since his identity was uncovered, by activists, multiple women have come forward to report similar stories of his creepy, predatory, ‘sex pest’ behaviour. He has made denigrating comments about some of these women too.

He was a married man, supposedly trying for a baby with his wife at the same time as grooming and sexually abusing a much younger activist.

HN10 Bob Lambert, after leaving the police, tried to reinvent himself as a respectable academic lecturer.

Coles, described as ‘another aspiring novelist’, went on to become a Tory party councillor in Peterborough, Deputy Police & Crime Commissioner for Cambridgeshire, and even a school governor.

At one point he endorsed a campaign to protect young people from sexual exploitation despite being a perpetrator of it himself.

Unlike Lambert, Coles did not receive an MBE or a Police Commendation for his work in the SDS, and is known to have complained about not being given the recognition he felt he deserved for his ‘sacrifice’.

‘An elite undercover officer’

We have heard about a ‘cabal’ centred around Lambert, a group of men who saw themselves as a superior elite group within a special secret squad, fiercely loyal to each other.

By all accounts, Lambert himself is an over-entitled, self-promoting, arrogant man, described by HN109 as a ‘charismatic attention seeker’ and by former undercover colleague HN11 Mike Chitty ‘Mike Blake’ as ‘a professional liar’.

He has shown no remorse for the cruel and abusive deception of ‘Jacqui’, or the three other women he had relationships with, claiming now that he did not intend to ‘target’ them, just succumbed to ‘weakness and irresponsibility’.

The ‘Category H’ Opening Statement suggests that Lambert may well have been motivated by a desire to seek out extra-marital sex with a younger woman, and notes that he has not returned the awards he was given for his contributions to policing.

Lambert has continued to use his skills of ‘deception and duplicity’ in his academic career. Despite stating that the animal rights movement was a ‘very serious business’, suggesting that these were dangerous people, he used to take his baby son along to meetings with these activists.

Lambert is known as a manipulative figure, who has already used a range of tactics to deflect criticism of his unethical behaviour and try to control the narrative. He is likely to go to great lengths to defend his reputation, and may well try to feign contrition. Hopefully Mitting will keep this in mind when he hears Lambert give evidence in December.

Lambert has hinted that he might publish a book about his experiences one day, and Heaven suggests that the Inquiry investigate the existence of a draft.

Rather than seeking to understand the serious impact the spycops’ actions had on those they targeted, Lambert seems to have treated many aspects of the SDS as a big joke. Even HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’, probably his closest friend in the unit, said that you don’t get a pointed answer from Lambert ‘unless you ask him a pointed question’.

Lambert rose through the ranks to become an SDS manager, then left the force in 2007. Sir Ian Blair, the Met’s Commissioner at the time, attended his retirement party. We still don’t know how much he and other senior cops knew about the way that Lambert operated, and if they bothered asking questions to find out how the SDS was obtaining its intelligence.

It’s all very well for police lawyers to turn up at this Inquiry with yet more ‘apologies’ for the spycops’ abuses, but we need to hear evidence from these senior officers.

‘Rules are make to be broken’

Dines and Lambert were very close, and frequently praised each other. They seem to have had a lot in common, including a deep-seated misogyny and lack of respect for activists, especially women, or their own wives.

Other officers say that HN5 John Dines was very competitive, a ‘gong hunter’, who ‘wanted to be a gold star SDS officer’ and sought notoriety. It seems likely that this last wish will be granted.

Dines made many disparaging remarks about his time undercover (saying he found it ‘unpleasant, miserable and boring’) and about those he targeted, including Helen Steel. He professed to be in love with her, but coldly stated that he ‘couldn’t give a rats’ about the impact on her of his deception and the way in which he disappeared from her life.

Like Lambert, Dines received a police commendation. He did not want his wife to attend the ceremony in 1992.

Dines has refused to provide oral evidence to this Inquiry, so will not be appearing during these hearings.

Back in 2003, the Met paid out a huge sum of money to enable Dines to relocate his family from New Zealand to Australia. This was due to their fears that Helen Steel – after years of dogged research on her part – would succeed in tracking him down.

It seems that the police knew enough about his misconduct to realise that this could have resulted in a civil claim against the force. The 2003 BBC ‘True Spies’ documentary series had helped to confirm her suspicions about Dines and his true identity.

As well as demanding money for relocation costs, and compensation for the effect on his new career (as an extremely well paid barrister, who often took on cases defending radical activists in the New Zealand courts) Dines asked his former colleagues at the Yard to write him references and help him find new work in Australia.

The fourth officer discussed by Heaven was HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’. He also deceived a woman, Denise Fuller, into a romantic and sexual relationship that lasted around one year. Denise is due to give evidence on 6 January 2025.

Rayner knew that fellow officer Andy Coles had tried to sexually assault a woman, but did not report this incident to the SDS managers.

Loyalty and lies

We’ll be hearing evidence from some of the unit’s managers later in this Tranche (in January 2025).

When SDS officers have spoken publicly about the unit in the past (for example, in ‘True Spies’) others clearly saw this as a ’betrayal’ of the SDS’s secret status.

Heaven commented earlier about officers being ‘selective’ in their evidence and what they chose to reveal to this Inquiry. It seems that many of them still have a strong sense of loyalty to each other.

Their employers, the Met police, have now made it very clear that they consider some of the problems associated with the unit to have been caused by the managers’:

‘failure to lead the SDS properly and effectively’.

They have been admissions of failings in terms of welfare, discipline and misconduct; a lack of proper training; a lack of scrutiny or oversight; a failure to maintain professional standards or to ensure that reporting was appropriate or ethical.

Heaven points out that SDS managers should not allow any perceived loyalty – towards either the Met or the officers they managed – prevent them from providing honest answers to this Inquiry. Some undercovers (including Lambert and Coles) have already made comments critical of their managers, in an attempt to shift blame away from themselves.

One of the managers that we’re due to hear from, at the very end of this set of hearings on 22-23 January 2025, is known to us only as HN109. He applied for anonymity in this Inquiry, and was granted it.

We have since learnt that his reasons for doing so were not any worries about activists tracking him down, but concerns, even in 2023, about the hostility of officers who he had managed, and the risk of them ‘causing trouble’ for him and his family.

We heard evidence about the ‘Scutt incident’ in the Tranche 2 Phase 1 hearings a few months ago. Bob Lambert threatened and physically assaulted HN109, in front of other members of the SDS. It will be interesting to hear what all these managers have to say about each other and how effective or ineffective their individual styles of management were.

Heaven makes it clear that this will be the time for SDS managers to call in the ‘insurance policy’ and make it clear just how much senior officers knew, or didn’t know, about the unit and its officers’ behaviour.

Carlton King, self-styled ‘Black James Bond’

Heaven then moved on to talk about ‘Carlton King’, an image of whom was shown on the screen.

Described as an ‘author and prolific podcaster’, it is unsurprising that a member of the public recognised that this was an alias being used by a man called Trevor Morris, who had been an undercover officer in the SDS, before going on to work in the secret services.

As his costume shows, has cultivated a somewhat ‘glamorous’ image of himself.

As well as producing a regular podcast, he has published a book (‘Black Ops: the Incredible True Story of a British Secret Agent’) which contains an entire chapter about the SDS and more musings about the workings of Special Branch.

He makes no secret of the fact that he infiltrated a number of groups during his deployment, and spied on the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.

The Inquiry presumably knew about this, but chose not to share this decidedly pertinent information with Core Participants, or the wider public, and when questioned, claimed that Morris needed the protection of a Restriction Order.

Since then, Mitting has made a ruling on this, and it is clear that MI5 and/or MI6 have been involved and told Mitting that he can neither confirm nor deny that Trevor Morris and ‘Carlton King’ are in fact the same man.

Heaven pointed out the obvious absurdity of this approach. The book is on sale to the public, and was published with the agreement of the ‘intelligence community’ and Home Office.

‘Carlton King’ has appeared in mainstream media reports sharing his opinions about events such as the Manchester Arena bombing. Comments left below such reports make it obvious that commenters knew of his true identity.

‘Jenny’ and ‘Bea’ have both been clear that they did not consent to sex with Trevor Morris, and consider it rape.

Morris has been utterly unrepentant about deceiving them in this way. It is noted that at no time (in either his book or podcast) has he divulged that he used his false identity to trick women into having sex with him.

Although he has done a great deal of self-promotion and publicly shared a lot of stories about his time as a spy, when Morris gave evidence to this Inquiry he claimed to suffer from problems with his memory and recall of the past.

Heaven pointed out that there is a risk of this Inquiry’s findings being undermined if it is not able to consider all the evidence that exists, and that the impact on the spycops’ victims could be ‘devastating’.

When he appeared in Tranch 2 Phase 1 hearings, Morris made many uncorroborated, outlandish allegations and displayed a degree of indifference towards the women whose human rights he had abused. Heaven suggested that perhaps his ‘nonchalance about such issues can now be understood better’ by his time in the security services. However this post-deployment history has not been officially disclosed to NSCPs, not even to the two women he deceived.

Understanding the ‘customers’

After this, she went on to discuss some other ‘procedural matters’: information that the Non State group recommend that the Inquiry seek to obtain to help it understand the true motivation and utility of SDS reporting (including more information about the ‘customers’ of this intelligence, and the relationships between the SDS/ Special Branch and others) These may include, for example, private companies, employers, foreign governments, other police forces in the UK and elsewhere.

After this, there were a few closing comments, about the delays in disclosure; the concerns raised by many NSCPs about the Inquiry being in a state of ‘crisis’ (which resulted in a recent letter to the Home Office, and request to meet with the Home Secretary).

Those who were spied upon are being told that they will have a very short time frame (potentially as little as two weeks) between receiving hundreds of jumbled pages of disclosure and having to respond to the Inquiry. This is extremely stressful, and inherently unfair.

She finished by asking that the Inquiry laid out the steps it proposed to take to prevent any ’further loss of confidence and trust’ in the process.