Hunt saboteurs running among fox hounds. Pic: Andrew Testa

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’

Hunt Saboteurs Association commemorative patch: ’60 years saving wildlife 1963-2023′.

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gives evidence, and despite it being months since he gave evidence, at the time of writing Walter’s documents are still unpublished.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

Cover of ‘The Traditional Art of Hunt Sabotage: A Tactics Manual’

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.

Spycop HN10 Bob Lambert aka ‘Bob Robinson’ whilr undercover

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

Hunt saboteurs around and on one of their Land Rovers. Pic: Andrew Testa

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.

Hunt saboteur face to face with hunt supporters. Pic: Andrew Testa

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].

Brixton hunt saboteurs inside their Land Rover with grilled windows and CB radio (and furry dice!). Pic: Andrew Testa

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

Brixton Hunt Saboteurs in the field, 25 January 1992. Spycop HN2 Andy Coles aka ‘Andy Davey’ in foreground, indicated with red arrow

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

Spycop HN2 Andy Coles aka ‘Andy Davey’ while undercover in 1991

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.

Hunt saboteur being carried face down by police. Pic: Andrew Testa

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

Spycop HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’ (2nd from left) on a peace march at RAF Fairford, 1991

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

Spycop HN5 John Dines aka ‘John Barker’ in the early 1990s when he was an undercover sergeant in the Special Demonstration Squad

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.

Spycop HN26 ‘Christine Green’ (with hood up) hunt sabbing while undercover

‘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.

Journalist Paul Foot who exposed the Economic League’s industrial blacklist

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.’

Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 12

17 November 2020

Opening statement from Dave Smith

Witness hearings procedural meeting

Dave Smith with his blacklist file

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

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

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

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

Dave Smith
Blacklisted trade unionist

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

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

TRADE UNIONS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN BLACKLISTED

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

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

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

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

THE CONSULTING ASSOCIATION

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

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

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

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

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

INDUSTRIAL SCALE INDUSTRIAL BLACKLISTING

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

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

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

THE HUMAN COST

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

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

Blacklisted workers outside the High Court

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

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

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

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

SPYCOPS BREAK THE LAW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPECIAL BRANCH INDUSTRIAL UNIT

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

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

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

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

SPYCOPS DATABASE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PERSONAL SPYCOPS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ANTI-FASCIST & PROUD

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

SDS officer Mark Jenner

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

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

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

CARLO SORACCHI

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

SDS officer Carlo Soracchi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PETER FRANCIS

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

SDS officer Peter Francis

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

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

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

SYSTEMATIC SHARING

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

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

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

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

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

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

PARTISAN POLICING

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

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

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

BLACKLISTING BEYOND CONSTRUCTION

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

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

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

PRIVATISATION OF STATE SPYING

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

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

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

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

WE UNCOVERED THE TRUTH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TRUTH DENIED

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

Brian Higgins (left) on a UCATT picket

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

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

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

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

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

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

LIES, DELAYS & EXCLUSION

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

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

BBC reporter Dominic Casciani said:

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

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

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

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

DON’T EXPECT JUSTICE

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

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

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

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

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

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

Witness hearings procedural meeting

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

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

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

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

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS

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

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

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

THRASHING IT OUT

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

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

All four lawyers said that was fine with them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

MENON NAMES NAMES

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

Rajiv Menon QC

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

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

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

MENON DE-VOTED

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

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

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

MENON & THE FIRST SPYCOP RELATIONSHIP

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

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

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

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

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

BRANDER: GIVE US TIME

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

Ruth Brander

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

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

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

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

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

BRANDER: EVIDENCE ALREADY SHOWS WE NEED ACCESS

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

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

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

POLICE LAWYERS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MITTING: FEELING BETRAYED

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

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

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

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

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

PROCEDURE DECISION

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

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

MITTING: ALOOF AND REMOTE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

<<Previous UCPI Daily Report (16 Nov 2020)<<

>>Next UCPI Daily Report (18 Nov 2020)>>

Victims walk out of the Undercover Policing Inquiry, 21 March 2018

It’s been such a hectic week in the spycops scandal that nobody can have properly kept up!

In no particular order, here’s a list of twelve key events and revelations in the last six days:

1) Roger Pearce – who was spycops officer ‘Roger Thorley’ – was revealed as having written what the Inquiry called ‘virulently anti-police’ articles for Freedom Newspaper, who have now been granted core participant status at the public inquiry.

2) The announcement of the Secret Spycops Ball, a comedy benefit on 8 July for Police Spies Out of Lives, featuring Stewart Lee, Evelyn Mok, Mark Steel & Rob Newman. Be quick, most tickets have already been sold!

3) A new spycop has been named – Special Demonstration Squad officer ‘Michael Scott’ infiltrated the Young Liberals, Anti-Apartheid Movement, and Workers Revolutionary Party, 1971-76.

This means political parties targeted by Britain’s political secret police include:

• Liberal Party
• Labour Party
• Green Party
• Socialist Party
• Independent Labour Party
• Socialist Workers Party
• Workers Revolutionary Party
• British National Party

4) Kate Wilson, who was deceived into a relationship by undercover police officer Mark Kennedy, secured an admission from the Met that Kennedy’s managers acquiesced to the relationship. This is surely the death knell for the claim by senior police that such abuse was ‘rogue officers’ acting on their own initiative.

5) In Paris, after ten years the Tarnac defendants have finally come to court. Originally arrested for terrorism after security services linked them to damage to a train line, and an anonymous anarchist book, the accused have garnered huge support in France.

Under public pressure, the terrorism charges have been dropped, but the case still partially rests on unreliable intelligence from British undercover police officer Mark Kennedy. The Canary published secret police files, including excerpts from Kennedy’s notebook.

6) The Undercover Policing Inquiry finally confirmed Andy Coles was a spycop, a year since he was exposed as another one who deceived a woman into a long-term relationship, and was forced to resign as Cambridgeshire’s Deputy Police & Crime Commissioner.

7) Having been officially outed, Andy Coles ended his silence and not only defended his deployment but went full Rolf Harris and simply denied his year-long relationship with Jessica ever happened!

Having resigned from his post as Deputy PCC, he is desperately clinging to his Peterborough City Council seat and school governorship. He must step down from these too – men who abuse their power to sexually exploit the citizens they’re supposed to serve should not be in positions of public trust. Follow the Sack Andy Coles campaign for more info.

8) Victims of spycops and their entire legal team walked out of a hearing of the public inquiry, having told the Chair, Sir John Mitting, that he should resign or get a panel of people who understand the issues. We published the full blistering speech to Mitting by the victims’ counsel, Philippa Kaufmann QC.

9) As organisations who were spied on, both the Fire Brigades Union and Unite the Union issued statements supporting the walkout from the Inquiry.

Doreen Lawrence also gave a strong warning to the Inquiry about Mitting:

‘Theresa May, then-Home Secretary and now Prime Minister promised me a truly thorough, transparent and accountable inquiry. This has turned into anything but that and before any more public money is spent on an Inquiry which does not achieve this, the chair should resign or continue with a panel which is not naive or old fashioned and which understands my concerns about policing and what I went through. Anything less than this will lead me to consider carefully whether I should continue to participate in this inquiry.’

10) The Met finally admitted that Special Branch officers illegally supplied info on political activists for construction industry blacklisting. Thousands of people were denied work for asserting their legal rights, such as union membership or wanting proper safety equipment.

Most major construction firms supplied and used the list, and police added to the blacklist’s files with information on citizens’ political and union activity. It’s has been known for some time that Special Demonstration Squad officer Mark Jenner was an active member of construction union UCATT, and here is Carlo Neri on a construction industry in 2004.

11) A less redacted version of the Special Demonstration Squad’s tradecraft manual was released, a book dripping with disdain for not only those spied upon but every other person that spycops into contact with. Officer Andy Coles was named as the author.

12) Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb, aka the Green Party’s Jenny Jones, challenged the government in the House of Lords about the failure of the public inquiry.

‘the cases we know about are only the ones we have heard about: those are the only police names in the public realm. Until we know all the names of the undercover police we will not know how many victims there were.’

At the end of the busiest week ever in the spycops scandal, with demands for justice coming from ever larger numbers of people, the push for truth has never been stronger.

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

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

Then he boldly asserts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A LAW UNTO THEMSELVES

Mason continues;

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

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

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

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

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

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

UNION BUSTING

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

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

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

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

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

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

TRUTH ISN’T PARANOIA

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHANGE AT THE TOP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DON’T DO WHAT YOU’RE TOLD

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

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

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

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

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

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

People spied upon by Britiain’s political secret police in Scotland are boycotting the forthcoming Scottish review of the issue, saying ‘it cannot be trusted’ and branding it ‘pointless’.

The review by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland (HMICS) was commissioned by the Scottish government. Although most known officers from the disgraced units were active in Scotland, the Home Office has limited the full-scale public inquiry to events in England and Wales. The Scottish government – supported by every party in Holyrood – formally asked for inclusion but were rebuffed in July last year.

The Scottish government responded by asking HMICS to do a review, but only of events in Scotland since 2000.

Now eighteen people have written to HMICS, decrying both the remit and the choice of the body itself.

Most of them were so heavily spied upon that they are among the 200 people designated core participants at the London-based public inquiry. They include several women who were deceived into relationships by undercover officers and have received an abject apology from the Metropolitan Police.

Others were only targeted in Scotland and so cannot be part of that inquiry. Among them are former MSP Frances Curran and climate activist Tilly Gifford who is bringing a case to force a judicial review of Scotland’s exclusion.

Many were also on the illegal construction industry blacklist, despite never having worked in that trade. Several hundred activists were on the list as every constabulary’s Special Branch illegally supplied it with the details of people who were politically active.

‘The HMICS review has none of the muscle it takes to bring the truth to light, even if it were within the remit and was so disposed.

‘There is little point in another report that simply says things were wrong but it has all changed now. We and the Scottish public need proper answers. We want to know the truth of who spied on us, how we were targeted and why police thought they could get away with it. Without that truth there is no path to justice.’

The group add that they ‘do not want to be complicit with measures that treat a violation as less serious if it occurs on Scottish soil’.

Citing earlier reviews in England as inadequate, they call for an entirely different approach that puts the abused first, rather than leaving everything to the abusers and their colleagues;

‘the HMICS review should be scrapped and replaced by something that is credible to all sides and to the public at large’.

The full text of the letter:

HM Inspectorate of Constabulary for Scotland
1st Floor West
St Andrew’s House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG

27 April 2017

Dear HMICS,

Re: Review of Undercover Policing in Scotland

We were spied upon by undercover political secret police officers in Scotland. Some of us were spied on to such a significant extent that we are core participants at the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI), yet the same officers committing the same acts against us in Scotland will not be considered by the UCPI. Some of us were only spied upon in Scotland and so are ignored by the UCPI. We all deserve the truth, as do the Scottish public whose democratic rights have been interfered with.

In 2011, when the truth of what had been done to us came to public attention, we were met with denials from senior police, and sham inquiries that were narrow investigations by police officers. We have no faith in police investigating themselves. We said these reviews were not sufficiently transparent, robust or independent to satisfy public concern and would not come close to addressing all of the issues raised. We were proven right.

As the scale of what went on became clearer and the content of many of these reports – including one from your sister body HM Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) – were discredited, more serious action was taken. Mark Ellison’s reviews were followed by the announcement of the UCPI. Its exclusion of events in Scotland is a serious limitation. Most of the exposed officers were active in the country and the truth of what happened in Scotland is just as important as it is in England.

For the Scottish Government to commission a review by HMICS is a retrograde step. It is much like the response we had in 2011; police self-investigating a tiny part of what happened, a fob-off to give the appearance of doing something.

We are far beyond that now. We are not dealing with allegations, but proven abuses. This includes officers initiating and furthering intimate relationships with women in Scotland, which the Metropolitan Police has conceded was a violation of human rights and an abuse of police power. It warrants comprehensive and impartial investigation, which we have no faith HMICS is capable of delivering.

Firstly, there is a mater of trust. HMICS is a body of career police officers investigating their colleagues. On that basis alone, it cannot be trusted.

The proposal to look at two disgraced units that were, at the time in question, overseen by the current chief constable of Scotland (whose wife works for your sister organisation, HMIC). This makes it even harder to feign independence. Additionally, the review is being led by Stephen Whitelock who has been working in and alongside the posts that deployed undercover officers, including authorising Strathclyde’s deployments of the abusive Met officers this review examines. The decision to choose him and HMICS gives the appearance of corruption. We cannot think of anyone less appropriate to be doing this.

Secondly, there is a matter of scope. The HMICS remit is limited to events since 2000, a fraction of the lifetime of the units. Among the many outrages committed was the targeting of women through intimate relationships, the use of stolen identities of dead children and the illegal blacklisting of construction workers, environmental and community campaigners. All of these took place in Scotland before 2000 but the investigation will treat them as if they did not happen. To ignore such a significant part of the pattern of abuses makes the investigation unable to see anything like the whole picture and renders it pointless.

Thirdly, there is the element of HMICS’ power to investigate. We have battled for years to get as far as we have, faced by a police culture that will do anything it can to avoid accountability. We have some hope that the UCPI, with its power to compel witnesses who give testimony under oath, might elicit some truth. The HMICS review has none of the muscle it takes to bring the truth to light, even if it were within the remit and was so disposed.

There is little point in another report that simply says things were wrong but it has all changed now. We and the Scottish public need proper answers. We want to know the truth of who spied on us, how we were targeted and why police thought they could get away with it. Without that truth there is no path to justice. There is also no means for the Scottish public to learn how these undemocratic abuses came about and so put steps in place to ensure they do not happen again.

No police report to date has offered anything like that and there is no reason to believe HMICS could, let alone would, do so.

We believe the Justice Secretary should have spoken to those of us abused by these officers in Scotland before deciding on an appropriate course of action. Instead, he spoke only to police and their satellite bodies and then hired them.

We do not want to be complicit with measures that treat a violation as less serious if it occurs on Scottish soil. The HMICS review should be scrapped and replaced by something that is credible to all sides and to the public at large.

The Scottish public and those abused in Scotland deserve a proper Inquiry into the abuses committed by political undercover policing units, just as those in England and Wales deserved one.

‘Andrea’
‘Alison’
Claire Fauset
Donal O’Driscoll
Dr Nick McKerrell
Frances Curran
Harry Halpin
Helen Steel
Jason Kirkpatrick
John Jordan
Kate Wilson
Kim Bryan
Lindsay Keenan
‘Lisa’
Martin Shaw
Merrick Cork
Olaf Bayer
Tilly Gifford

Bernard Hogan-Howe

Last week the Independent Police Complaints Commission confirmed that the Metropolitan Police destroyed ‘a large number of documents’ from the spycops’ files.

It took place in May 2014, shortly after the Home Secretary had announced the public inquiry into undercover policing, and Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe had promised full co-operation.

It’s well established that, despite being legal, democratic organisations, trade unions were a prime target of spycops. Special Demonstration Squad officer Mark Jenner joined construction union UCATT under his false identity of Mark Cassidy and was a regular on picket lines. This Wednesday sees our Spycops & Strikers event in London, marking the 40th anniversary of the iconic Grunwick strike and the prolonged repression of unions then and since.

Every constabulary’s Special Branch has routinely supplied the construction industry blacklist with personal information about political activists. That activity, like the shredding is police officers actively breaking the law to uphold things they appear to feel are more important, corporate profit and police power.

Bernard Hogan-Howe has a history of covering up the spycops scandal. It’s time he told the truth.

This open letter from union leaders was released this morning.

We the undersigned are outraged at the news that despite court orders to the contrary, the Metropolitan Police Service has destroyed evidence required for use in the Undercover Policing Public Inquiry. State spying on trade unions and political campaigns is a human rights scandal that affects millions of British citizens.

Despite continued reassurances, the Pitchford Inquiry has failed to secure the documents that will be central to the investigation. Trade union core participants are beginning to question whether the Inquiry team has the ability to stop the police from obstructing the pursuit of justice. Lord Justice Pitchford needs to act now to restore our faith.

Gordon Mills, one of the spycops chiefs, is suing workers who spycops helped to illegally blacklist.

The extraordinary move follows a letter from John McDonnell MP to Home Secretary Theresa May concerning Mills giving a Powerpoint presentation to a meeting of corporate bosses and an illegal blacklisting firm.

BLACKLISTING

The Consulting Association ran an illegal blacklist of over 3,000 construction workers until it was raided and closed by the Information Commissioners Office in 2009. It helped firms to filter out job applicants who had a history of being ‘trouble makers’ wanting proper health and safety equipment, union membership, or other things that are their protected rights.

Most of the big name construction firms illegally used the list – Skanska & McAlpine were invoiced for around 14,000 vetting checks in the blacklist’s final year 2008-09 when they were both building Olympic venues – but no firm has yet faced any charges or censure apart from a solitary letter telling them not to do it again.

In 2012 it was realised that some of the information on the files must have come from the police or MI5. The following year the Independent Police Complaints Commission said it seemed every constabulary’s Special Branch had supplied the blacklist with information.

Some of this information bore no relevance to the job, and instead concerned the person’s political opinions or friendships. Around 200 environmental activists had their details given to the Consulting Associationj by police. Another person, a teacher by trade, was on the list for having been seen by police at an anti-racist demonstration.

This is not police officers upholding the law, it is police officers breaking the law to uphold something they presumably feel is more important; upholding corporate power.

NETCU

After the second British political secret police unit, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, was established in 1999, a sister unit was devised in 2004 to support companies that were the subject of protests. The National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit (NETCU) was born.

NETCU was established during the drafting of the 2005 amendment to the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act which made it illegal to ‘interfere with the contractual relations of an animal research organisation’ or to ‘intimidate’ employees of an animal research organisation. Run from Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire, NETCU’s remit was defined as ‘prevention’ and it was tasked with helping companies such as Huntingdon Life Sciences frustrate campaigns waged against them by animal rights activists.

NETCU didn’t just advise corporations about threats to their profits from campaigns, it took a proactive political role in discrediting and undermining those campaigns. Its website linked to the pro-vivisection Research Defence Society, and the unit issued several press releases boasting of activists being prevented from doing street collections.

NETCU’s rapid ‘mission-creep’ saw it move to encompass environmental and climate activists.

SUPPORTING CORPORATIONS IN COURT

After the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 came into force, enterprising lawyer Timothy Lawson-Cruttenden realised that, as well as its intended purpose of protecting vulnerable women from dangerous ex-partners, it could also be used to defend multinational corporations from protest. A large number of injunctions were served against various campaigns, and Lawson-Cruttenden was behind most of them. He developed strong relationships with police officers.

Regfarding the campaign against arms manufacturers EDO and Caterpillar, the Guardian reported that in 2005,

‘Private emails show that Inspector Nic Clay and Jim Sheldrake of NETCU gave Lawson-Cruttenden the names and contact details of officers at two other police forces as he was “keen” to obtain statements about the activities of the campaigners at a third firm.’

On that occasion, the arms firm lost and the judge severely criticised Lawson-Cruttenden for ignoring a court order against receiving confidential police documents. By the time of the Guardian report in 2009 the head of NETCU, Superintendent Stephen Pearl, who had testified in court for many of Lawson-Cruttenden’s corporate clients seeking injunctions, denied that NETCU were involved in any way.

BLACKLISTERS FIGHT BACK

John McDonnell MP has supported the blacklisted workers’ campaign for justice from the start – he hosted the inaugural meeting of the Blacklist Support Group. His prominence meant that he was the chosen recipient for a document leaked in 2014.

It was two handwritten pages from the man who ran the Consulting Association blacklist, Ian Kerr. It documented a meeting at the Bear Hotel, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, attended by Kerr, directors of construction firms using the blacklist and DCI Gordon Mills of NETCU (The Canary has published the original notes). At the meeting, Mills delivered a talk complete with Powerpoint presentation. The police have not released the contents of the presentation.

McDonnell wrote to Home Secretary Theresa May demanding publication of all relevant NETCU files, and an independent inquiry into blacklisting

‘DCI Mills was head of Police Liaison at NETCU and it is alleged that his role was to provide information from the police to companies. NETCU was subsequently subsumed into the National Domestic Extremism Unit of the Metropolitan Police, but despite numerous requests under the Freedom of Information Act for documents relating to NETCU’s activities, the response has been that no documents relating to the meeting of DCI Mills with the association exist.

It appears odd that no report of such an important meeting was written and that no evidence of the meeting is now held by the Metropolitan Police.’

Blacklist Support Group secretary Dave Smith, whose Consulting Association file was 36 pages long, and who recently co-authored the Blacklisted book, added

‘We have been saying for five-and-a half years that the state was involved in blacklisting and we have been told time and time again that is not true and been accused of being paranoid. It is a cover-up. We have a name of a senior police officer, not a rogue constable, who was meeting with them. There must be documentation held by the police and correspondence between the police and the association.’

Many blacklisted workers, and the Blacklisted Support Group itself, are among the 200 people designated core participants at the Undercover Policing Inquiry.

SUING THE PROTESTERS

So it comes as something of a surprise that Mills has, like his NETCU colleague Superintendent Pearl before him, chosen to deny everything. He told the Evening Standard

‘This attack on my integrity by John McDonnell has blighted my life, leaving me unable to move job and fearful for the safety of my family. In the past year I have been called a blacklister, a spy cop, a colluder and an undercover operative — all of which are untrue.’

That’s a bold stance for someone who was one of the officers who ran a spycop unit. The fear for his family is also a somewhat overblown. In five years since the spycops scandal hit the headlines we have learned the names and locations of many officers. Nothing untoward has happened to any of them.

Mills says the ‘highly damaging and serious allegation’ was ‘simply not true,’ adding that he had not even heard of the Consulting Association and its blacklist until he read about it in a newspaper in 2014. He singled McDonnell out for criticism

‘Mr McDonnell has never asked me for my account. I was named with what appears to be no consideration to my personal safety or the safety of my family against an extremist backlash…

With power comes responsibility. Mr McDonnell should think about the horrendous impact this has had on me and my family and apologise for initiating this campaign on an ex-police officer who was simply doing his job.’

A spokesperson for McDonnell replied that he

‘was well within his right to raise with the Home Secretary the matter of a serving police officer meeting an organisation that was involved in the illegal blacklisting of trade unionists, while this officer was working for a unit that kept union activists under surveillance’.

However, Mills is not suing McDonnell. Nor is he suing The Times, who published an interview with Consulting Association boss Ian Kerr (now deceased) who spoke of his links with police and the ‘two way information exchange’.

The sole target of Mills’ legal action is the GMB, who have given extensive legal support to blacklisted workers and helped to organise protests against blacklisters.

A CHANGE OF PLAN

In his claim against the GMB, Mills say it had been his

‘intention to develop and pursue an academic, teaching career exploiting his police experience and training’

In 2013 he published a candid essay aimed at fellow police strategists in entitled The successes and failures of policing animal rights extremism in the UK 2004–2010 as part of his work towards a doctorate. He gained this qualification at London Metropolitan University on a course run by a team including former spycop boss Bob Lambert.

Mills had a part time post at Anglia Ruskin University around that time. The GMB planned a series of demonstrations about blacklisting in March 2015, including one at Anglia Ruskin University. The university’s lawyers wrote to the GMB saying Mills’ employment there had ended in 2014 and there were no plans to renew it. The union framed this in terms of Mills being sacked and alluded to a blacklisting connection, which stretches the truth.

However, it’s clear that any future academic employer of Mills’ policing experience would be subject to demonstrations. Bob Lambert’s post at London Metropolitan University was, at the time, the subject of a campaign of monthly protests, and spycops campaigners had held meetings there and at Lambert’s other employer, the University of St Andrews. These were continued until Lambert resigned from both posts in December 2015. It seems likely that Mills and Lambert discussed all this.

As with Lambert, Mills fears the toll on his prestige and salary if he is held responsible for the unlawful actions of disgraced spycops.

No date has been set for the defamation hearing.

[The Undercover Research Group have produced a profile of Gordon Mills.]

Guest blogger Harvey Duke with the view from Scotland:

——

Support is growing for a Public Inquiry into the activities of undercover police in Scotland. Victims of blacklists, fellow trade unionists, environmentalists, Amnesty International, and politicians across the spectrum believe there should be some kind of Inquiry.

The main demands from campaigners are for an expansion of the Pitchford Inquiry (which is currently limited to England and Wales); or, for the Scottish government to launch a parallel Inquiry. Even the Scottish Tories support the call!

So, if all that were required was broad verbal support from politicians and others, then an Inquiry would be underway. Yet, so far, there is nothing; and former Home Secretary, and now recently crowned Prime Minister, Theresa May is at the stodgy heart of the inaction.

Left wing Labour MSP Neil Findlay has led the charge within the Scottish Parliament to get the issue of undercover policing in Scotland recognised as a priority for public examination. He has organised two debates in Holyrood.

SATURATION SPYING IN SCOTLAND

At the first of these, in January this year, he made a clear case for action:

We know that at least 120 undercover officers have been deployed by the Special Demonstration Squad since its formation in 1968, but so far only 12 have been exposed, half of whom worked in Scotland. The most infamous of these is Mark Kennedy, who was deployed here 14 times in his seven-year career.

Police officers have been operating in our country under the identity of a dead child to victimise people whose only crime is to want a fairer, cleaner and more just society.

Potentially, there are decades of such activities waiting to be uncovered in Scotland. At the June debate in the Scottish Parliament, Neil Findlay also referred to another spy in Scotland: “We also know of the involvement during the 1984 miners’ strike of Stella Whitehouse, now Dame Stella Remington, the former head of Mi5, who was regularly on the picket line at Polkemmet colliery, not 3 miles from my house, during that period.

Were spycops also on miners picket lines?

Former MSP Tommy Sheridan took up this same theme. His name is on the notorious Blacklist compiled by the Consulting Association, which is known to have used information from spycops. He told us:

The State has always been determined to infiltrate and spy on the labour and trade union movement, peace campaigns and socialist parties. If anyone doubts it, they should waken themselves up by reading the excellent book The Enemy Within.

It is therefore imperative that either the Pitchford Inquiry into undercover policing be extended to Scotland or a separate and independent enquiry involving labour movement figures be established. The Establishment protects its vast interests by constantly undermining and destabilising anyone or anybody which threatens it.

The majority of known spycops worked in Scotland. Mark Kennedy, ‘Lynn Watson‘, ‘Marco Jacobs‘, ‘Jason Bishop‘ and ‘Dave Evans‘ – another suspected Special Demonstration Squad officer – were all at the G8 protests in Scotland in 2005.

Also, as the Undercover Research Group has explained:

Two SDS undercovers John Dines and Mark Jenner were in Scotland as part of their relationships with women being targeted. Kennedy is known to have conducted relationships with at least three women in Scotland, including long term partners. In all cases, this amounts to a breach of their human rights being as well as abuse of police power being committed on Scottish soil.

Addtionally, the recently exposed officer Carlo Neri also travelled to Scotland with his unwitting partner ‘Andrea’.

One of the spycops’ leaders, Bob Lambert, was rewarded with a teaching position in Scotland at the University of St Andrews – until he resigned after pressure from campaigners. Whilst a boss of spycops, Lambert authorised officers who travelled to Scotland as spies.

FACING STASIS

In December last year the Scottish Government, responding to demands raised by supporters of the Blacklist Support Group and others, asked then-Home Secretary Theresa May to expand Pitchford to include Scotland.

Now PM, May is still sitting on the issue seven months later. Yet, waiting for a response seemed to be the main focus of the Scottish Government at the latest debate in Holyrood, on 30th June.

Annabelle Ewing MSP, Scottish Minister for Community Safety and Legal Affairs, said:

we are focused at this point on having the (Pitchford) inquiry extended to activities of the Met in Scotland, if that is where the evidence leads.

This was exactly the type of response given by Annabelle Ewing’s Ministerial predecessor, Paul Wheelhouse MSP, six months previously. There is no commitment yet to a Scottish Inquiry by the Scottish Government should the call for an expanded Pitchford fail.

In January, this led to some goading of the Scottish Government by then-Independent, now Green, MSP John Finnie, who said:

Uniquely on this issue, the Scottish Government seems keen to cede any involvement or control to the UK Government.

It would indeed be a huge lost opportunity to allow the new Tory Prime Minister to have the final say on which cases of injustice are investigated in Scotland.

Following the most recent Scottish debate, Neil Findlay told us:

The debate showed wide-ranging support for a stand alone Scottish inquiry in the event that Theresa May refuses to include Scotland in the remit of the Pitchford inquiry. We now have Labour, Green, Liberal and Tory MPs, MSPs and MEPs supporting this call.

SNP MPs offered support in a motion at Westminster yet not one of their MSPs spoke in my debate or supported my motion at Holyrood. We now need the Justice Secretary to step up to the plate and confirm that he will not allow Scots victims to be denied access to justice.

The current Scottish Government demand is for Pitchford to ‘take account of any activity by Metropolitan Police units that took place in Scotland.’ This could be a step forward – certainly as long as Scottish Police Officers who signed off on such ventures and forces which collaborated with these anti-democratic activities are not shielded or prevented from giving evidence.

The Undercover Research Group has identified four top Scottish police officers who also played key roles in managing spycops. They include:

Phil Gormley, now Scotland’s Chief Constable (who) was in the Met from 2003 to 2007. From 2005, he was head of Special Branch and was on the committee who oversaw the NPOIU (National Public Order Intelligence Unit) and the Special Demonstration Squad.

These were the main political secret police units.

BUILDING THE PRESSURE

Nick McKerrell, a law lecturer in Glasgow, was active in an anti-poverty campaign during the G8 protests in 2005. He recently found that his name was on the Consulting Association’s blacklist, purely because of these activities. We asked him for his views on attempts to gain a public inquiry into undercover policing in Scotland. He said:

Every day seems to throw up a new revelation on the undercover policing scandal. It is clear the Special Demonstration Squad operated way beyond their jurisdictional boundaries of England and Wales.

The setting up of the Pitchford Inquiry was a major concession by the British state but currently its remit is very limited. For us in Scotland it has been shown that people were monitored (and blacklisted) for at least 20 years.

Further actual undercover cops were actually on active duty in Scotland throughout the same period, for example in the G8 demos in Perthshire in 2005.

Pitchford needs to be expanded into Scotland – where the links between Scottish police forces and the undercover work can be fully explored. Neil Findlay MSP has been campaigning hard on this issue as have MPs in Westminster and nominally the Scottish Government also support this position. It needs to be pushed though and if not carried through we urgently need a Scottish Inquiry.

Some of the most horrific aspects of the spycops scandal involve the way in which undercover police deliberately targeted women, and developed intimate relationships to aid their cover story, only to later abandon the women activists, with devastating psychological effects.

We spoke to Sinead Daly about this. Sinead is a leading socialist in Scotland who is also an expert in supporting women victims of abuse. She told us:

As a socialist, trade unionist and women’s rights activist in Scotland, I believe it’s essential that the Pitchford Inquiry is extended to Scotland; or failing that the Scottish Government order a separate independent Inquiry.

I am particularly concerned at the sexual abuse of women by undercover police officers over many years. The trauma that these women must be feeling is unimaginable. The law is very clear about consent with regards to sexual activity. The Sexual Offences Act 1956 states that consent cannot be given if ‘The complainant was deceived as to the identity of the person with whom (s)he had intercourse.’

It is undeniable that these women were sexually assaulted and abused. I truly hope that all of these women who have been sexually violated get the justice and support they deserve.

But we in Scotland also need to be assured that such actions will be investigated thoroughly to ensure accountability and that this never happens again!

In order to push forward demands for justice in Scotland, COPS is working with Scottish activists to organise a series of public events. Lois Austin from COPS (who was spied on by spycops whilst an activist in Youth against Racism in Europe), stressed how important it is to build the campaign in Scotland.

Undercover police who sought to undermine all kinds of campaigns did not care about national borders. They went wherever their targets went: across Europe, and very often in Scotland. Only by having a full Public Inquiry into what spycops did in Scotland, will we get to the truth.

It is hoped that the planned campaign events will give opportunities for people across Scotland to come together and hear about the experience of trade unionists, environmentalists and others who were spied upon by undercover police. We will also discuss the best way to make sure that a Public Inquiry is set up and looks at these issues as soon as possible.

Neil Findlay MSP addresses the Scottish parliament, 30 June 2016

Last week the Scottish Parliament had a second debate about Britain’s political secret police.

Although the majority of exposed officers from the disgraced units concerned – the Special Demonstration Squad and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit – were in Scotland, the forthcoming public inquiry is set to only cover events in England and Wales.

It has been six months since the first debate, which came shortly after the Scottish government formally asked to be included in the Pitchford Inquiry, and nothing seems to have happened.

Once again, the issue was brought to the floor by Neil Findlay MSP. In the intervening time he has marshalled a call from Scottish parliamentarians from the Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Green parties for the inquiry to include Scotland and, if this doesn’t happen, for Scotland to mount its own investigation. The SNP supports the first but not, as yet, the second point.

Findlay pressed the issue in Parliament

I know that the police, the judiciary and others will pressure the cabinet secretary to resist. Those are the very same forces that pressured politicians not to go near the Lawrence case, the Birmingham and Guildford cases, and the Hillsborough case, but brave decisions were made in the interests of truth and justice.

So, I urge the Minister for Community Safety and Legal Affairs and the cabinet secretary to do the right thing: take the brave and right decision to initiate an independent public inquiry in Scotland, should it prove to be not possible to extend Pitchford.

The call was endorsed by Green and Conservative MSPs. Speaking for the government, the SNP’s Annabelle Ewing affirmed

the Scottish Government absolutely agrees that the inquiry should look at events that took place in Scotland if that is where the evidence leads. A single, comprehensive inquiry that was able to gather all the evidence in a coherent manner would best serve the public interest on this occasion. An inquiry that was limited to England and Wales would risk doing a disservice to those who believe that they have been adversely affected by the operations of Metropolitan Police units in Scotland.

However, she simply ignored the issue of the Home Office stalling for six months and what to do if Scotland is shut out of the inquiry. Neil Findlay seized on the omission, asking

Is the minister saying that, if the Home Secretary does not expand the Pitchford inquiry, there will be no Scottish inquiry? If that is the case, can she say very clearly today that victims in Scotland will have no route to justice? Let us be up front and straight about it. Let us not be choosy with our language; let us make it very clear what she means.

But, again, Ewing avoided answering the question and repeated that they were concentrating on inclusion in Pitchford. Conservative MSP Douglas Ross asked the question for a third time, and Ewing simply repeated her previous point once more. Labour’s Claire Baker asked it a fourth time and was also subjected to repetition of a point that did not answer the question.

The session was not entirely fruitless, however. Findlay didn’t just highlight the stasis regarding the Pitchford Inquiry, he also put sensational new information into the public domain.

Today, under the privilege that this Parliament gives me, I can name Gayle Burton, who is a former head of human resources at the Costain construction company, who now works for the Jockey Club and who has been identified as the key link between the construction industry, the Consulting Association and Special Branch. Her name is identified as the source of information on files of blacklisted Scottish workers.

We also know of the involvement during the 1984 miners’ strike of Stella Whitehouse, now Dame Stella Rimington, the former head of MI5, who was regularly on the picket line at Polkemmet colliery, not 3 miles from my house, during that period.

The illegal links between police, private surveillance and big business underpin much of the spycops’ targeting of political activists. It is as great an injustice whether perpetrated in England or Scotland, so all its victims deserve the truth.

As we said last month, it does not take six months to make a simple alteration to the terms of the Pitchford Inquiry. The start date looms ever closer and it is beginning to look like the Home Office is stonewalling and that the lack of a response will effectively become a refusal once the inquiry begins.

If the Scottish government – along with the German, Northern Irish and others who have made similar demands – do not set a deadline soon, they are effectively accepting this. They are running the increasing risk of being left behind, unable to secure the truth for their citizens abused by English spycops.

Video of Thursday’s debate is on our Youtube channel, and a full transcript can be found here.

More than six years since the construction industry blacklist was exposed, firms involved have paid out millions to affected workers.

More than 3,000 people were on the illegal list run by the Consulting Association and most of the big construction companies would use it to vet applicants for jobs. Trade unionism, political activity, even just wanting the legal minimum health and safety standards was enough to get people barred from work.

Every constabulary’s Special Branch assisted by routinely supplying the blacklist with details of political activists.

In the 2000s the spycop unit NETCU – National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit – met with the Consulting Association. The exact nature of the meetings has yet to be confirmed, but it clearly wasn’t to criticise or arrest the people running it.

The total compensation for blacklisting was about £75m for 771 claimants, with legal costs on both sides estimated at £25m. It will be paid by eight companies; Carillion, Balfour Beatty, Costain, Kier, Laing O’Rourke, Sir Robert McAlpine, Skanska UK and Vinci.

Dave Smith, secretary of the Blacklist Support Group which has spearheaded the campaign for justice, said

‘Despite all of the denials and attempts to cover up their secret conspiracy, the largest multinationals in the construction sector have been forced to pay out millions in compensation.

‘Make no mistake, the High Court action is a historic victory for the trade union movement against the vicious face of free market capitalism.’

The legal action was led by the GMB whose general secretary Tim Roache added:

‘For decades household-name construction companies implemented an illegal blacklisting system, which denied a generation of trade union activists and health and safety reps an opportunity to provide for themselves and their families. Finally they have been held to account in public and at great cost to them financially and reputationally.

‘Preventing 3,213 workers earning a living to support their families was a gross injustice, and government and employers’ organisations must never forget this sordid episode. Without strong regulation and penalties holding them to account, employers will always be tempted to put profit above people.’

The settlement comes six months after the companies finally apologised in the High Court. The British legal system only measures damages in money, and so claims can be forcibly settled by wrongdoers with payouts to prevent them having to disclose details of their deeds in court.

It mirrors November’s settlement with women who brought a case against the Metropolitan Police after being deceived into intimate relationships. After years of denials and obstructions from their abusers, there was a cheque and an apology but no answers.

As Jacqui, the first woman to settle such a case with the Met, noted at the time

‘The amount of money [in the settlement] shows there is a cover-up. It says the more we dig the dirtier it gets. All they want to do is concrete it in – put it in a box and make it go away. If I had a choice – less money and more truth, I obviously would have gone for that.

As with other victims of spycops, the truth about blacklisted construction workers has had to be revealed by the victims. It has been comprehensively documented in Dave Smith and Phil Chamberlain’s book Blacklisted: The Secret War Between Big Business and Union Activists.

For the blacklisted construction workers, after October’s apology Dave Smith declared

‘The blacklisting wretches have run up the white flag. They are guilty as sin and this is a desperate attempt to to try and avoid the spectacle of a High Court conspiracy trail. Personally, I want to see the directors of this national scandal given evidence under oath about their involvement in this systematic human rights abuse. Real justice would see those responsible for ruining so many lives sent to jail.

‘Unfortunately the British legal system is unlikely to provide real justice but we will continue to push for full disclosure of the evidence that has been deliberately concealed and a public inquiry to expose the full extent of this national scandal.’

Accountability has been established. The fight for the truth will continue.