Tranche 2, Phase 2, Week 3

4-7 November 2024

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

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

INTRODUCTION

The week was overshadowed by the Inquiry’s shock decision to suspend livestreaming. They say it is in order to prevent any unfounded allegations reaching the wider public.

However, the Inquiry has long used a ten minute delay on its livestreaming, and this has been sufficient to prevent any ‘blurts’ of secret information being broadcast. There is no reason why they couldn’t continue with that. Instead, they exclude the public from a public inquiry.

The Inquiry promised suitably edited transcripts of hearings by lunchtime the next day, and videos within five days. Despite very little of the testimony breaching the orders and needing any editing, they have not kept their word on either point.

All the testimony this week came from activists in London Greenpeace in the mid 1980s.

London Greenpeace was a small organisation, wholly separate from Greenpeace International. It was concerned with a wide range of environmental and social justice issues, opposing greedy exploitation of people, animals and resources.

An open public group with no formal membership, it held weekly meetings, usually attended by 5-25 people. It also held larger meetings with guest speakers, usually attended by 20-50 people.

It was infiltrated by Special Demonstration Squad officers including HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’ and HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’.

Lambert co-authored the group’s ‘What’s Wrong With McDonald’s?’ leaflet. The police gave briefings about the group to McDonald’s, and the corporation threatened to sue five named members of London Greenpeace for libel. Two members, Dave Morris and Helen Steel, fought the case. Known as McLibel, it became the longest trial in English history.

Despite the huge disparity in resources between the two sides – with McDonald’s spending huge sums on barristers while the defendants had to represent themselves – the court found that much of the leaflet’s assertions were true.

The fact of Lambert’s involvement, and of Dines having deceived Steel into an intimate relationship and so being party to her plans for the defence, were kept from the court.

The Undercover Policing Inquiry has found many of the officers’ secret police reports from the time. They are saturated with inaccuracies, exaggerations and outright false allegations about London Greenpeace and its members. The officers have made formal statements to the Inquiry and these too are full of such lies.

CONTENTS

Martyn Lowe

Dave Morris

Chris Baillee

Gabrielle Bosley

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Monday 4 November 2024
Evidence of Martyn Lowe

Click here for video, transcripts and written evidence

Martyn Lowe is a long-term anarcho-pacifist who has been involved in a number of groups over the years. Mr Hudson asked questions on behalf of the Inquiry.

Lowe has provided a written witness statement [UCPI036683], but this still has not been made available on the website.

The hearing began with him confirming his involvement in the Peace Pledge Union, part of War Resisters International (WRI), a pacifist organisation with sections across the world. They are recognised by the United Nations as an organisation which supports and promotes conscientious objection.

Asked to describe what he meant by ‘nonviolence’, he explained that this, for him, was:

‘a pacifist philosophy of not hurting or causing to be hurt or killed or damaged any individual’

He emphasised that he would not be willing to join any group that advocated violence.

The Inquiry is focussing on one of the many groups that Martyn has been part of during his life: London Greenpeace (LGP). This group was infiltrated by members of the Special Demonstration Squad, including HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’.

Lowe recalls getting involved around the time of a London to Paris anti-nuclear march, which took place in 1973, a couple of years after LGP was first founded. He remembers it having a democratic, non-hierarchical structure. The group had a series of shared aims and made decisions together at their weekly meetings.

The Inquiry was keen to learn if the entire group spoke with ‘one voice’ on any issues. Lowe remembers that many of the members at that time were opposed to nuclear testing in the South Pacific. They held demonstrations, for example a die-in outside the French Embassy. They distributed a broadsheet; originally this was published within Peace News.

He explains that the purpose of these demonstrations was to get their ideas across and persuade people that change was necessary. He says public disorder ‘was never on the agenda’ and can’t recall any occurring at LGP demos. In his witness statement, Lowe had mentioned a campaign against the construction of a new nuclear reactor at Torness in Scotland, and the Torness Anti-Nuclear Alliance which formed.

He remembers that the different groups involved in it had an agreement not to sabotage or destroy property on the site during the mass protests there, and different forms of direct action were debated.

He points out that ‘some property should never be produced in the first place, so destroying it I’ve got no problem with’.

He doesn’t consider property damage a ‘violent act’, especially when the aim is to immobilise an item and prevent it being used to cause harm.

The War Resisters International logo features a broken rifle, an apt symbol of their beliefs, but actually breaking a weapon is not as ‘straightforward’ as the image suggests, and he says this kind of action shouldn’t be romanticised. It is not something he’s ever done himself.

We were shown a description of the work of LGP, written for a WRI conference. Lowe recognised this. Asked who had written this text, he explained that a number of different versions were produced over the years, and various people would have been involved in what was a collaborative process. One person might produce a draft and others would contribute ideas and comments. Such texts would be discussed at the group’s meeting and they generally reached agreement about the content of leaflets before printing them.

SPYCOP LAMBERT

Lowe first met HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’ at one of the group’s meetings, and remembers that ‘he just turned up’. He still remembers him as ‘highly intelligent and very amiable’.

We know that Lambert’s deployment began in June 1984. How was Lowe’s relationship with him over those first 6 months? ‘Very friendly’. They tended to go to the pub and drink together on Thursday evenings, after the group’s weekly meetings.

The Inquiry wanted to know more about Lambert’s influence on LGP, and the roles he took on within the group, and how his age compared with other activists.

Lowe recollected that Lambert kept trying to persuade him to get involved in hunt sabotage. He would bring up issues in the group, but didn’t take on any ‘formal tasks’ (such as dealing with finances). They were around the same age as each other (35) and at the time the majority of the group were probably in their late 20s/ early 30s.

He was next asked about the direction taken by LGP over the years. Lowe left LGP in around September 1985, after being involved for over a decade. He recollected an incident which made him notice that the group had ‘really changed’. This was the derailment of a train carrying a nuclear flask in Stratford, East London.

When he first joined LGP, it had been very much an anti-nuclear group, but he encountered ‘disinterest’ in the group when this happened.

ANIMAL RIGHTS

Almost all of the rest of the questioning of Lowe was about Lambert, animal rights and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and non-violence.

Lowe realised that many of the newer people, who he thinks were influenced by Lambert, were more interested in the issue of animal rights:

‘that’s the point at which I really started thinking: why am I here?’

LGP had been interested in a very wide range of issues before then, and although many activists were vegan or vegetarian, the group didn’t focus its attention on animal rights. It had a more holistic understanding of the way that issues were interconnected, e.g. war is not good for the environment, and harms animals just like it harms humans.

Ronnie Lee was a founder of the Animal Liberation Front in the mid-1970s. He was imprisoned in the 1980s for his part in animal rights actions. Lowe remembers coming across him in the peace movement, and then briefly seeing him at LGP meetings in around 1974.

Over the years Lee would occasionally drop in at meetings or demos, as did other people, but never got involved in running the group.

Lowe recalls being ‘somewhat taken aback’ to hear about Lee’s arrest; his main memory is of Lee’s work with an organisation called Vegfam (a charity set up by Christians in 1963 to distribute plant-based food and fruit trees to people in need around the world).

According to Lowe’s witness statement, the issue of animal liberation wasn’t usually brought up at LGP’s meetings, at least not until Lambert showed up.

The Inquiry then displayed some leaflets produced by LGP. One of these leaflets, dated April 1980, sought to address the confusion about the relationship between ‘London Greenpeace’ and the newly-established ‘Greenpeace UK Ltd’. It explained the philosophical, organisational and political differences.

The Inquiry asked if this leaflet was aimed at people involved in animal rights. Lowe explained that at that time, the philosophy behind animal rights and liberation was still developing, but many pacifists were also vegetarians – the two went ‘hand in hand’.

The LGP leafelt said that ’The one group which which we can express political agreement is the Animal Liberation Front’. It described Ronnie Lee as ‘an ex-group activist’.

Lowe explained that the ALF always checked to ensure that nobody was hurt in their actions, and were non-violent.

Did this leaflet not show that LGP was closely aligned with the ALF as early as 1980, before Lambert arrived? Lowe says no, this was just one of many briefings produced in this era to share information about the range of campaigning groups which existed. There was no ‘working relationship’ between the two groups.

An intelligence report [UCPI020790] submitted by HN11 Mike Chitty ‘Mike Blake’ (deployed to spy on animal rights campaigners in South London) in April 1984 tells of a ‘dramatic increase’ in animal rights activity, increased public concern and support for the movement.

Lowe says he wasn’t especially aware of the issue at the time, so can’t comment on the accuracy of this report. This wasn’t an issue that LGP was concerned with – they were busy in the early 1980s producing a range of educational factsheets, campaigning against the Falklands War, and protests against financial institutions including supporting the ‘Stop The City’ series of protests.

The same report suggests an upsurge in direct action:

‘in the main confined to younger anarchist members of the movement, most of whom will be unemployed and prepared to spend some time in police cells.’

Was LGP’s new interest in animal rights driven by the younger people joining at this time? Lowe believes it was in fact driven by Lambert going out and recruiting people who were interested in animal rights to come along to LGP.

In his statement Lowe recalls being suspicious about Lambert’s involvement in opposing the deer cull which took place in Richmond Park over several summers in the 1980s. He clearly remembers sitting in a meeting, listening to Lambert talking about locking the gates of the park, and thinking ‘he knows more about this than he’s saying’ to the group.

LAMBERT FRAMING OTHERS

We moved on, and saw a handwritten notice about a demo which took place outside the AGM of dairy company Unigate, held at the Dorchester Hotel in September 1984. Lowe is absolutely certain that this is Lambert’s handwriting, and so is the leaflet handed out on the day, titled ‘Unigate Murders Animals’.

However a police intelligence report [UCPI020434] submitted by Lambert dated 31 August 1984 says Martyn Lowe was organising ‘support and publicity’ for this demo. Lowe denies doing anything of the sort; he remembers this as a demo organised by Lambert himself.

Another SDS report [UCPI020189], produced after the demo, lists the names of those who attended, and calls Martyn Lowe the ‘organiser of the picket’. All he did was turn up. A picture exists of ‘Bob’ at the demo.

 

In another report [UCPI020220], Lowe is describing as organising another demo that same month, this one a picket to protest fur fashion shows held at Claridge’s Hotel. He is adamant that this is not true, and he didn’t even attend that picket, as he was at work until late that day.

His name crops up in relation to a similar Claridge’s demo in one more report [UCPI020230] and again he denies being involved in any conversations about the planning for this protest, and wonders if names like him were just added later by SDS back-room staff.

This was a point that recurred in the other testimony later in the week – Lambert organising animal rights activities but then writing reports attributing them to others.

According to the report of an LGP meeting, Lowe had also expressed concerns about Stop the City being a ‘potentially violent’ demonstration. He denied this. He didn’t have a problem with Stop the City, and saw it as a way of bringing anti-militarist action out of rural areas and into the city where the arms companies were based.

McDONALD’S

How did LGP come to highlight McDonald’s?

Lowe remembers Lambert making a comment in the pub one night, suggesting that it was time to target fast food companies. As a result, he was inspired to draft a spoof leaflet when he got home, referring to McDonald’s as ‘the sawdust people’. This became the basis for a flyer advertising a day of protest vs McDonald’s in January 1985.

It mentions ecological concerns as well as the treatment of animals. Lowe recalls contributing the lines about sawdust, but can’t be sure who added which other bits.

That demo went ahead on 19 January 1985 and Lowe did not attend it. He says he wasn’t involved in organising it either, but an SDS report [UCPI014460] says that he, Dave Morris and Albert Beale were all involved in this.

After Martyn left the group, ‘Bob’ continued to correspond with him, sending him gossipy letters. Some of these have been provided to the Inquiry as exhibits.

One from April 1986 was shown, it contains lots of encouragement to come back to a LGP meeting sometime, or at least join the group in the pub one night. It also asked about getting hold of a book (‘Big Mac: the Unauthorized Story of McDonald’s’). Lowe worked as a librarian at the time. This showed Lambert’s involvement right at the start of the creation of the ‘Whats Wrong With McDonald’s?’ Factsheet, which later led to the McDonald’s libel action.

Lowe did not see Lambert again in person until LGP members exposed him in October 2011.

WITHDRAWING SUPPORT

After a short break, we returned to hear about a LGP meeting that had taken place in January 1985.

According to the SDS report of it [UCPI014474], Lowe proposed that the group, as an anarcho-pacifist one, ‘withdraw its support for the Animal Liberation Front‘ (ALF), following a number of actions which he did not agree with.

He couldn’t remember the exact words he’d used at the time but clearly still felt the same way about those actions, referring to one as ‘stupid’.

The Inquiry was very keen to explore this issue further, and asked if this implied that LGP had therefore supported the ALF up till this time.

Lowe drew a distinction between the non-violent position of the ALF and the more violent tactics of the Animal Rights Militia (which no-one seemed to know anything about). He went on to claim that the ALF had put out ‘a leaflet or a document’ around this time which he took to mean they now supported the use of some violence.

He knew that many LGP activists were sympathetic towards the ams of the ALF, but had no idea if anyone was actually involved in taking that sort of action.

He went on to say that after attending LGP meetings week after week for so long, he had grown ‘tired of it’. There wasn’t anything specifically objectionable about the group; it was the ‘general attitude’ that he struggled with. He saw punk as a trend and for some people a ‘style statement’.

According to the report, ‘Lowe’s comments were met with derision’. Lowe doesn’t remember derision, or exactly what people said, but remembers that they disagreed with him. He doesn’t recall if Dave Morris argued for the group to continue to support the ALF.

LOWE LEAVING

It is reported [UCPI028493] a full year later that Martyn Lowe has now left the group, in December 1985, following ‘many arguments’ with Dave Morris and others. Lowe is clear that he and Morris often disagreed and argued about politics, but he still liked the man. They just had different approaches. He knows that Morris ‘has always been more in favour of doing direct action’.

Even though the type of action used as an example in this report (some butchers’ windows being broken by ALF activists) might be described as ‘non violent direct action’, it is obvious that this is not a form of action Lowe would choose to take himself. He does not consider it ‘wise’ and is very conscientious, pointing out that someone might have cut themselves on the broken glass.

In his statement to the Inquiry [UCPI035081], Lambert says that the reason he was reporting on Martyn Lowe (someone who had been of interest to Special Branch since at least as far back as 1978) was his involvement in LGP, and that his departure from the group was worth reporting too:

‘if Lowe ceased to be involved in supporting violence, future reporting might not be necessary’

Martyn Lowe is adamant that he has never supported violence:

‘I have been a pacifist all my life’.

Lowe was asked for his views on Class War at this time. They ‘had no qualms about using violence’ says Lowe. He felt they were overly confrontational and ‘gave anarchists a bad name’. He never had these concerns about LGP.

We saw one more letter, sent to Lowe in January 1986. It was read out in full, for some reason. In it Lambert mentions Dave Morris, and says he is now in Amsterdam, having been fined £100 in court for shoplifting ‘booze’ (despite being teetotal). [See below for Dave Morris’s testimony the following day, which tells the interesting story about this.]

Asked by the Inquiry to comment on both of these men, Lowe agrees that Morris was a ‘dominant figure’ in the group, with a ‘strong personality’.

He says that in retrospect he’s seen how Lambert exerted influence in a different way, ‘by being the nice guy, the friendly bloke’ who targeted individuals one by one, adding that ‘I just regret that I didn’t pick up on this at the time’.

LAMBERT’S RELATIONSHIPS

Lambert had a number of sexual relationships while he was undercover. The first was with a woman known in this Inquiry as ‘CTS’. She came along to LGP meetings, and Lowe recalls her turning up for the first time about 6 weeks after ‘Bob’.

He says she was ‘very pleasant, and concerned about, you know, changing the world for the better’, and ‘about 19’ at the time. Lambert was a married man in his 30s.

It soon became obvious that she and ‘Bob’ had become a ‘devoted couple’ sometime that summer, but Martyn can’t be sure of the exact date. We can see from Lambert’s report that she was present at the Unigate demo.

They both came over for dinner, he recalls. Again, he can’t give an exact date, and only has his impressions, of them being ‘devoted to each other’. He saw them together at meetings but doesn’t know how much time they spent together.

Lowe is shown a photograph that he took of the couple at his home. There is a second photograph, taken on the same occasion. Asked what these two images tell us about the nature of their relationship, Lowe gave the same answer both times: they were ‘very close’, and ‘devoted’.

‘CTS’ went off to university in October 1984, and came back to London that Christmas. She and Lowe met up, and he had the impression she was planning to see ‘Bob’.

Lowe is not sure when they broke up, or when he learnt of this. It’s not clear exactly how long the relationship lasted but it seems to have been over by the end of 1984. Almost two years later, in September 1986, Lambert mentioned this young woman in another of his letters, saying ‘let me know instantly’ if you see her.

Next, Lowe was shown Lambert’s own witness statement. His version of events is that he formed ‘a friendship’ with ‘CTS’ during the group’s trips to the pub in around July 1984. He claims this became a ‘short sexual relationship’, lasting just one month, before she left town in late September. He says she came back to visit once, ‘probably early October’ , he can’t remember what they did then but hasn’t seen her since.

Why does Lowe believe Lambert ‘ditched’ her? (the word he used in his statement). Lowe explains that he had got this impression, along with the idea that the ditching took place in December, but doesn’t know for sure who ended the relationship. However he believes that Lambert treated ‘CTS’ ‘really badly’. And is still ‘really upset that anyone could behave that way’.

He recalled that after the relationship ended, ‘CTS’ no longer wanted anything to do with the LGP group.

‘She got badly hurt, that’s the only way I can describe it’

Lowe didn’t see her again for a long time. He tried to track her but wasn’t able to find her.

It was only after she saw a story in the Guardian in 2011 that she got in touch with Martyn, via journalist Rob Evans.

How does he feel now about Lambert’s infiltration of the group?

‘I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed that we’ve had to go through this whole process’

YouTube video of Martyn Lowe’s hearing

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Tuesday 5 and Thursday 7 November 2024
Evidence of Dave Morris

Click here for video, transcripts and written evidence of Tuesday 5 November

Click here for video, transcripts and written evidence of Thursday 7 November

Tuesday morning was due to start with Dave Morris’s evidence, but was instead taken up with an emergency hearing where the Inquiry heard legal objections to the Inquiry Chair’s sudden shock decision to not allow livestreaming of hearings for the next four weeks. A bizarre turn of events for a Public Inquiry.

The Inquiry has, up to now, been livestreaming with a 10 minute delay in case a witness mentions something that shouldn’t be said. This has been deemed necessary to protect police secrets and national security. It has been very successful in that, yet this same method is apparently not enough to prevent personal details leaking out about a few named people. That is, obviously, bollocks.

The Inquiry Chair rejected a proposed range of practical options put forward by Core Participants (CPs) and their lawyers for protecting privacy during livestreaming.

The Chair stuck by his controversial decision, but conceded that CPs, their lawyers and accredited media – but not the wider public – would be able to access a livestream through a special Zoom link. They would need to agree to be bound by any Restriction Orders. This would only start on Thursday.

DAVE MORRIS OVERVIEW

The afternoon session was Dave Morris’s second appearance giving evidence as a witness at the Inquiry. Morris had previously given evidence on 8 July 2024, regarding activities of groups spied upon during the mid-1970s to the early 1980s – eg London Workers Group, Anarchy magazine, Person Unknown defence campaign, Torness anti-nuclear protests, and ‘Stop The City’ events.

In this phase of the Inquiry he was giving evidence about London Greenpeace, the McLibel case, and the Poll Tax/ Trafalgar Square Defendants Campaign.

He had given an Opening Statement to this phase of the Inquiry in October:

ORGANISING IN HIS LOCAL COMMUNITY

Tuesday’s session began by Morris verifying his Witness Statement and Section D of his written Opening Statement. Elements of those have been incorporated in this report.

The Counsel to the Inquiry, Emma Gargitter, posed the questions, initially exploring Morris’s local activism in the North London borough of Haringey in the 1980s. His main activism throughout the decade was with Tottenham Claimants Union (TCU).

Dozens of local Claimants’ Unions had existed throughout the country since the early 1970s, linked through a Federation and regular national conferences. They were made up of people on benefits (pensioners, unemployed, people with disabilities, single parents, etc), supporting each other, promoting solidarity and campaigning for people’s needs.

For example, a May 1988 secret police report detailed a planned protest by the Tottenham Claimants Union protesting against a National Front activist being employed at a local Social Security office. The TCU was based in an Unemployed Centre and then set up their own Haringey Unwaged Centre (which later hosted the local anti-poll tax campaign, featured below at the end of his testimony).

A MAN OF CONVICTION

Note: At the end of his evidence, Morris took the opportunity to respond to a letter that spycop HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’ had sent to Martyn Lowe in 1987 which had been read out during the questioning of Lowe. It had included reference to Morris being fined for shoplifting.

Morris felt he should therefore explain the full story. A member of the Claimants Union with learning difficulties had been able to get a specially protected job at a local Tesco’s.

However, in the run up to Christmas he was sacked ‘due to not working fast enough’. This outraged union members, who launched weekly ‘Reinstate Steve Now’ protests at the supermarket, including members secreting leaflets on the shelves throughout the store.

Just before Christmas, Morris was helping organise a Claimants’ Union Christmas party, and went to buy provisions at the store. He knew Steve would be attending and decided to get him a bottle of cognac as a present. Morris himself is a non-drinker. Due to what had happened to Steve he thought it only fair not to pay for that and hid it in his jacket.

However, a store detective had recognised him from the previous CU protests and was following him around the store in case he was distributing leaflets. Arrest and fine unfortunately followed! In the end the ‘Reinstate Steve’ campaign was unsuccessful.

Morris was also involved in Haringey Community Action, an open collective supporting a wide range of local campaigning. The Inquiry examined a police report about a bulletin HCA supported called ‘Haringey Anarchist News’.

LONDON GREENPEACE

Organising in his local community had been, and continues to be, the primary focus of Morris’s activism, although occasionally getting ‘side-tracked’ for example by the long McLibel court case and campaign in the 1990s. That case came out of his other key focus in the 1980s, London Greenpeace (LGP).

An early police report, using terminology with the disdain typical of the spycops, (mis)characterised Morris’s ‘naivety and childish enthusiasm’ that supposedly allowed him to be accepted by younger activists despite being an ‘old hippy’. Morris simply shrugged this off, noting that he had been 36 and ‘everyone is entitled to their point of view’.

LGP was Europe’s first Greenpeace group which had formed in the early 1970s. It decided to remain independent when Greenpeace International set up a UK branch in 1977.

Morris joined in 1982 during opposition to the Falklands War, as it was one of the few groups in London explicitly opposing both sides in the war – the UK and Argentina. He already knew some members from his campaigning against nuclear power in the late 1970s.

When questioned about the group’s politics and ‘loose’ organisation, Morris emphasised that, despite the lack of formal structure, they were very focused and effective. The group met weekly with an open agenda and replied conscientiously to more than 50 letters from the public every week.

He detailed how LGP produced numerous leaflets and factsheets on various topics, and included them in regular mailouts. The group’s politics centred on anti-militarism and anti-nuclear campaigns up to the early 1980s, and then with an additional focus on environmental issues, anti-capitalism and class struggle in the mid-1980s.

They were always keen to also promote examples of alternative ways people could use to run society themselves – although anarchist ideas were more implicit than explicit. Animal rights campaigns, which had not featured at all in the group in the 1970s, began to feature in the mid-late 1980s.

He explained their open meeting structure, noting that there was nothing to stop a spycop secretly attending and then disappearing – no-one would have noticed. The agenda was formulated by passing around a piece of paper anyone could write on.

INFILTRATION BEGINS

Undercover police officer HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’ infiltrated the group and was felt to be highly influential, using full access to set agenda items, suggest topics for discussion at public meetings, help to write leaflets and organise activities, and network with others outside the group.

Morris noted that Lambert was particularly keen on the regular post-meeting gatherings in the pub (which included people not attending the meetings), though Morris himself didn’t drink and was too busy to attend those.

There was also an office that people in the group used for answering letters and ad hoc meet ups, though Morris rarely visited. Looking back now, Morris concluded that Lambert was manipulating and exploiting for his own ends those who trusted him, both within and outside the group.

When asked about LGP breaking the law, Morris’s witness statement indicated the group generally organised peaceful traditional protests including pickets, leafleting, posters, stickers, sit ins, etc.

Morris was questioned about the role of treasurer, particularly as spycop HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’ had held this position of trust and therefore had access to private information on those making donations.

A secret police report of Lambert’s from January 1985 suggested three ‘leading’ figures in LGP: Martyn Lowe and Albert Beale (both involved since the early years of the group), and Morris.

While Morris acknowledged his influence due to his strong personality and commitment, he emphasised that none of them held any real power, explaining that very many people in the group contributed in different ways and all were equally important.

He described how he brought his priorities of community organising and class struggle to the group while respecting its established nature. In particular, he encouraged the group to reach out to new people as much as possible. This included encouraging the environmental and peace movements to support mining communities during the historic 1984-5 miners’ strike.

Morris noted one ‘very worrying’ report by Lambert, sent to MI5, that had detailed information on his planned visit to Poland to meet anti-government activists there. Morris explained that, bearing in mind the savage repression at the time in Poland, this could have put people there (including some mineworkers he met with who were hoping to link up with miners in Britain) at serious risk.

EXAGGERATION AND FABRICATION

A report by Lambert dated 30 January 1985 (mis)described Morris as ‘a supporter of any action that could be described as anti-establishment’. Morris flatly rejected this, as he judged each activity on its merits.

He emphasised that the fight for a better world wasn’t just about being ‘anti’, but also about finding positive and better alternative ways of doing things, and showing by example.

In the mid-late 1980s numbers attending LGP meetings rose significantly. This, Morris felt, was due to the inclusive and welcoming nature of the group, the many public meetings, and the wide range of issues discussed and campaigns supported.

In a recent interview by the police investigating Lambert’s controversial deployment, Lambert had portrayed Morris as a veteran of LGP and the London anarchist scene, claiming he had a ‘violent anarchist vision’, an assessment Morris disputed.

We’d already heard in Martyn Lowe’s testimony how Lambert exaggerated and invented his descriptions of activists, and it was something we’d hear again too.

Lambert’s reports sometimes alleged the Stop The City protests of 1983 and 1984 to be ‘violent’.

Morris rejected this, explaining they were billed as a ‘carnival against war, oppression and destruction’ and a ‘celebration of life’, and were largely a range of decentralised educational and festive activities and protests to challenge and reclaim the financial district of London.

Despite their almost entirely peaceful nature, the police had seen fit to arrest hundreds of participants in order to try to protect ‘business as usual’.

Lambert’s reports tried to portray Morris and Lowe as at loggerheads, yet Morris noted they agreed on 95% of political issues, and respectfully disagreed on a few points.

Morris criticised the spycops for having what he called a ‘childish view’ of how people operated and how relationships developed, often inventing or stirring up serious personality clashes and power struggles.

The spies fantasies of supposed command structures, and their competition to impress their managers, says more about the officers and the police than it does about the group they’re reporting on.

OPPOSING CRUELTY TO ANIMALS

The Inquiry then spent an hour or more exploring in minute detail London Greenpeace’s connections to the animal rights movement and their campaigning against animal cruelty.

Morris had never been involved in that movement but was somehow expected to answer a raft of questions about it. He noted he’d been vegetarian for nearly 50 years, and only managed to be vegan for a few years in the 1980s ‘out of weakness’.

The Inquiry, just like the establishment and media hysteria at the time, apparently regards the animal rights movement as potentially ‘violent’ or even ‘terrorist’ irrespective of what they actually stood for and actually did.

Morris had at one point attended two hunt sabotage events (shock, horror!) to see what they were all about. One such event involved Bob Lambert’s arrest and release without charge, though Morris couldn’t recall the specific incident.

Morris praised the efforts of thousands of activists going out into the countryside every weekend to try to save the lives of individual foxes being terrorised and killed for supposed sport. He pointed out that these selfless efforts over decades eventually led to such hunting being made illegal.

Animal rights had gradually become one of the key issues in LGP between 1985 and 1988, Morris confirmed. He felt that after the inspiring the Stop The City protests in 1983-4 many new people, especially younger people, became interested in the group’s open and accessible meetings and its radical and non-sectarian ideas.

At one time about 20 people were attending the regular weekly meetings, and 40 or more at public meetings with guest speakers that were monthly.

Lambert – who, like all Special Demonstration Squad infiltrators, was obsessed with identifying sinister ‘leaders’ – implied in a report this influx was down to Morris’s personal ‘vision’.

However, Morris described how many young people at the time, particularly in the ‘punk’ movement, were attracted to DIY politics, veganism, anarchism and pacifism – especially through the widespread influence of the anarchist band Crass. And it was clear that Lambert himself was strongly influencing things.

During this period, LGP was invited to do stalls at punk gigs, reaching a new audience.

Morris now believes LGP served as a platform and ‘a sea to swim in’ for Lambert, who showed particular interest in new attendees.

The Inquiry examined a 1980 leaflet titled ‘Greenpeace, Animal Liberation and the Rest’. At the hearing the day before, Martyn Lowe had explained that he had drafted it in response to Greenpeace International’s recent arrival in the UK, to try to clarify some of the confusion this had created.

The leaflet detailed the distinction between the need for rights for all animals and for veganism, in contrast to Greenpeace UK’s focus on conservation, eg regarding whales.

Morris explained that LGP had for many years supported and sent donations to the Sea Shepherd anti-whaling ship which had split from Greenpeace International over this issue. He also noted that Ronnie Lee, who later helped found the Animal Liberation Front, had briefly attended London Greenpeace meetings in 1974 but didn’t stay involved.

The intense and narrow questioning continued. Morris emphasised that LGP was never directly involved in Animal Liberation Front (ALF) direct action activities, though a few individual members may have been. He highlighted the ALF’s non-violence policy, and that none of its actions were to cause any harm to people or animals.

He described Bob Lambert’s significant influence in LGP, noting his focus on animal rights and his pushing for activists to engage in animal rights activities and direct action.

In reality, the group’s support for the ALF was mainly through including ALF Supporters Group leaflets in their regular paper mailouts, which contained a wide range of political educational literature.

A police report of Lambert’s from January 1985 mentioned some concerns raised at a meeting about the ALF’s direction and the group’s continuing support. Martyn Lowe was said to be leaving LGP after 12 years following ‘many arguments with Dave Morris and other group members’ – Lambert again personalising things inaccurately.

Morris explained there was a duplicator printer in his house that he shared with others, which he taught and encouraged others to use. He said a wide range of materials of all kinds would have been printed there, but he couldn’t recall any printing of specific ALF documents.

Morris repeatedly emphasised that while his lack of involvement in the animal rights movement wasn’t a criticism of it, he simply wasn’t involved, just as he wasn’t involved in the anti-apartheid movement, and so on. He did say that, in that house, someone looked after some rescued laboratory rats for a short while.

Morris estimated that by this point, animal rights issues occupied on average about 10-30% of the time during the group’s meetings. He dismissed outright Lambert’s claims that a majority of LGP members were ‘long-standing ALF activists’, calling it ‘total rubbish’.

In contrast with Lambert’s reports and the Inquiry’s line of questioning, in 2011 Lambert himself described LGP as ‘a peaceful campaigning group’ and apologised to members for his deception.

Morris described how Lambert, as an influential character, was seemingly exploiting and manipulating LGP, its meetings, its office, and related gatherings in pubs for his own agenda. He wanted to promote militant direct action and act as an agent provocateur.

DEBENHAM’S

The Inquiry examined a July 1987 Lambert report about a regular weekly LGP meeting. It followed media news of timed incendiary devices being planted at three Debenham’s shops to trigger sprinkler systems in their fur departments in protest at the chain selling fur.

The report claimed an older pacifist was critical while everyone else supported the ‘arson attacks’.

Morris, in the witness box and in his written statement, disputed that these were ‘arson’ attacks, and felt that most ‘support’ was likely to be for the aims not the tactics employed.

In fact, we now know that there’s a huge amount of evidence that Lambert himself was involved, even the driving force, behind the Debenham’s action.

Throughout the testimony, Morris had emphasised that LGP maintained a broad and inclusive range of concerns and activities despite the spies’ attempts to portray it otherwise.

YET MORE ON ANIMAL RIGHTS

The questioning during the first part of Dave Morris’s second session, two days later, continued to focus on animal rights campaigning.

There seemed to be an unspoken assumption from the Inquiry’s legal team that such campaigning was itself somehow potentially incriminating.

Morris said that he’d always been supportive of animals having rights, and that they shouldn’t be exploited and killed, but he affirmed yet again that he had never been personally active in the movement.

A police report from January 1988 described Morris preparing a draft LGP statement supporting Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke who were by that time on remand for the incendiary device damage to Debenham’s shops.

Sheppard and Clarke were involved in various animal rights groups and had attended some of the LGP meetings.

Morris explained that movements should always support arrested activists going through the judicial process, but it didn’t necessarily mean support for any specific acts alleged or whether defendants were even going to plead guilty.

And, he pointed out, no serious defence campaign could condemn any alleged action of a defendant. Morris said he made a visit to Clarke in prison to offer moral support.

In March 1988, police reported on a LGP public meeting of 43 people with guest speaker Robin Lane, former press officer of the ALF Supporters’ Group. The report claimed that the Debenham’s incendiary campaign was praised.

Morris couldn’t recall the exact meeting but confirmed some speakers occasionally attended LGP meetings to speak in support of the aims of the ALF (and indeed many other issues). He added that he was not in principle opposed to nonviolent direct action that damages property, but it had to be looked at on a case by case basis and at no risk to the public.

In his witness statement he noted how there were now statues of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and the Pankhurst sisters in Westminster unveiled with great acclamation from the government and public, yet their direct action movements (against apartheid, for Indian independence, and for women’s right to vote) had been panned as ‘terrorist’ at the time they were involved.

A police report also claimed that the ALF Supporters Group shared an office with London Greenpeace. Morris wasn’t aware of this at all, and doesn’t remember them having any meetings in the office, though they may have used the address for a time for receiving mail.

Morris was consistent and clear; LGP was entirely open and transparent. Animal rights campaigning by the group was perfectly legitimate and only ever a minority theme of the group’s activities.

McLIBEL

The questioning at last moved on to other matters that Morris had actually been significantly involved in, including the two issues he could most help the Inquiry about – firstly, the anti-McDonald’s campaign, and then the Poll Tax movement (about which Morris is the only witness to testify in the Inquiry).

In the mid-late 1980s London Greenpeace organised a number of anti-McDonald’s events, which largely amounted to talking to the public and handing out leaflets in the street outside a branch of McDonald’s. They focused on McDonald’s as a prime example of what was wrong with the consumer-capitalist worldview. It went down very well with the public.

McDonald’s had been separately criticised by trade unions over workers’ rights, by ecologists for environmental damage, by nutritionists for health impacts, by child welfare campaigners for their advertising targeting kids, and by animal rights organisations for the cruelty inherent in factory farming. But LGP was the first to bring the criticisms together to reveal the bigger picture.

Morris would eventually end up as one of the two defendants in the ‘McLibel’ case. The burger corporation served libel writs on five LGP activists. Faced with a horrendously unfair and expensive uphill battle, three of the five reluctantly ‘apologised’.

But Morris and Helen Steel, with the ‘pro bono’ support of young barrister Keir Starmer behind the scenes, refused to do so. So the case went ahead and eventually became the longest and one of the most controversial in English legal history.

The McLibel Support Campaign organised practical support for the defendants, raised funds, helped trace witnesses, generated huge support and much publicity, called a range of ‘days of action’ protests (including a national march) and, perhaps most importantly, launched a coordinated and successful defiance effort to ensure anti-McDonald’s leaflets would continue to be distributed outside McDonald’s stores in their millions all over the UK and throughout the world.

In summary, the McLibel case ran from 1990-2005, encompassing the longest trial in English legal history. Morris and Steel, the ‘McLibel 2’, were denied Legal Aid and jury trial. They represented themselves at 28 pre-trial legal hearings, some lasting as long as 3 days. The trial itself consisted of 313 days from 1994-1997, interspersed with 7 trips to the Court of Appeal.

They again represented themselves at their Appeal in 1999, which lasted 23 days.

The ‘McLibel 2’ finally got legal aid for taking the British Government to the European Court of Human Rights where they were formally represented by Keir Starmer.

In the end it was ruled that McDonald’s:

• ‘exploited children’ with their advertising
• produced ‘misleading’ advertising claiming their food was ‘nutritious’
• regular customers faced an increased risk of heart disease
• were ‘culpably responsible’ for cruelty to animals
• were ‘antipathetic’ to unionisation
• helped to lower wages in the catering industry

It was also ruled that it was true or fair comment to say McDonald’s workers suffered poor pay and conditions.

And in 2005 the European Court ruled that the UK government’s defamation laws had breached Steel and Morris’s fundamental rights to a fair trial and freedom of speech.

But there was also a shocking and sensational hidden story waiting to unravel…

Morris described how in 1984 LGP first produced a short and semi-spoof flyer ‘The Sawdust People’ – shown on the Inquiry screens – calling for protests against McDonald’s.

Morris’s only contribution had been to write by hand the words ‘Campaign for Real Life’ in a corner.

Incredibly, in response, LGP received a letter from McDonald’s threatening legal proceedings if certain statements about McDonald’s weren’t withdrawn. The letter advised the group to contact and take heed of others, including Prince Philip, who had withdrawn criticisms they’d made of the junk food multinational.

LGP ignored this letter and the campaign began to take shape and grow.

A number of spycop HN10 Bob Lambert’s reports of anti-McDonald’s protests were brought up, many fantasising about potential disorder – which never seemed to have materialised.

Morris explained that ‘disorder’ was never intended, and it would have been counterproductive. As history shows, their protests were about distributing leaflets and communicating with the public.

However it was clear a more coherent and detailed leaflet would be needed.

The Inquiry then brought up on screen a personal letter from Lambert to Martyn Lowe, dated 22 April 1986.

In it, Lambert asked Lowe, a librarian, to help him track down a copy of a US book ‘Big Mac: The Unauthorized Story of McDonald’s‘ by Max Boas and Steve Chain. This book was a vital source of information for a new ‘What’s Wrong With McDonald’s? Everything they don’t want you to know’ Factsheet, which Lambert was clearly helping to research and write.

In fact Morris held up the actual book, which had been obtained in 1986, and passed on to him years later for research in the build up to the McLibel trial. He read out a key passage in the book about McDonald’s paper packaging, and showed how it had found its way into the Factsheet almost word for word.

Morris referred to other witnesses who recalled Lambert boasting about and being very proud of his role in writing this Factsheet, usually carrying copies around with him.

Lambert has recently tried to play down his role, but in the extensive interview he gave to Channel 4 TV broadcast in October 2011 after Morris and other members of London Greenpeace had publicly exposed him as an undercover police officer, he openly admitted it.

‘I was certainly a contributing author to the McLibel leaflet. Well I think the one I remember making a contribution to was called ‘What’s Wrong With McDonald’s?’

The campaign became very popular. After Bob Lambert ‘handed over’ his deployment in the group to HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’ – and then disappeared himself – LGP began to be also secretly and shockingly infiltrated over an 18 month period by seven private investigators hired by McDonald’s. Some meetings had as many spies as genuine campaigners.

The Inquiry viewed a report of Dines’s from July 1990, two months before McDonald’s served the McLibel writs, noting that McDonald’s were sending ‘occasional interlopers’ to the meetings. Yet Dines later claimed he only found out about McDonald’s hiring private spies after the writs were served!

Dines admitted, in his internal SDS ‘exit’ interview in December 1991, that he knew in detail about the McDonald’s agents who had infiltrated LGP during 1989-1991. Dines says:

‘McDonald’s made mistakes too. Some of their agents were too old, too heavy; others were in too much of a hurry; all were politically unaware… four or five people, employees of a private detective agency, tried to infiltrate LG, but only the last one, a girl, got close.’

It should be noted that the ‘girl’, Michelle Hooker, was an ex-police officer and had a six month sexual relationship with someone in LGP. She stayed in the group until May 1991, 8 months after the writs had been served.

The Inquiry brought up a clip from the McLibel documentary which had been included because it showed McDonald’s private spy Michelle Hooker distributing the leaflet at a 1989 LGP protest outside McDonald’s HQ in Finchley.

It’s of even more interest now we know it also includes undercover officer John Dines (seen in a red lumberjack shirt at 08:35).

Additionally, Morris revealed, just out of shot in the footage was McDonald’s Vice President Sid Nicholson (an ex-Chief Superintendent of Brixton police) and Special Branch officer Brendon O’Hara standing together at a ‘perch’ in the building watching and chatting about the protesters. This had been established during the evidence in the McLibel trial, as was the fact that Nicholson had taken personal responsibility for the hiring of the McDonald’s spies.

During that trial Steel and Morris had uncovered a small part of the scandal after it was revealed that one of the McDonald’s spies had met twice with a Special Branch officer. They successfully sued the Met in 1999 over that alone, and the police settled the case ‘to avoid a difficult and lengthy trial’. But the police had concealed the full, shocking scale of their own spying and high-level collaboration with McDonald’s.

Writs had been served by McDonald’s in September 1990. The week after, Dines reported on what he called a ‘closed’ meeting of the five people named in the writs. He was apparently aggrandising, trying to impress his superiors with his access to private and legally-privileged information.

Morris pointed out that the material must have come to him via Helen Steel, as Dines had engineered a deceitful relationship with her a short time earlier.

Dines later reported on another meeting that the five LGP members named in the writs had with their lawyers.

In that report, Dines asserts that three of them (including Steel and Morris) had very little to do with the leaflet. It raises the question of how much the police had encouraged McDonald’s to sue, who really chose who to sue, and why.

In the first two years after the service of the writs, the most important period in terms of setting the direction of the case, Dines was living with Steel. He was getting details of all the confidential legal advice and strategy following the private legal meetings she and Morris held with their lawyer Keir Starmer.

As Dines admitted in his recent Witness Statement to the Inquiry:

‘It is accurate to say that I was ‘by the side’ of Helen Steel and Dave Morris in 1991 and relaying the legal advice [ie from Keir Starmer] back to my ‘bosses in the SDS’ .’

Dines then faked a ‘breakdown’ and disappeared supposedly abroad. This greatly distressed his partner Steel. Worried about his wellbeing, she began a long search to find him. It was only after years of trying to find him that she discovered the appalling truth that he was actually a police officer.

SHOCKING MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE

A Special Branch ‘File Note’ from 18 December 2002 was brought up on screen. It revealed the explosive information that Dines’ name had been ‘deliberately omitted from the McDonald’s libel writ list’ to protect the Special Demonstration Squad. This underlined the blatant interference with and manipulation of the legal process.

In September 1995, with the trial in full swing, Bob Lambert was now managing the Squad. He knew that Helen Steel, still searching for the truth about her disappeared partner, had attempted to contact Dines’s real parents and might be about to discover the facts.

The Inquiry showed an ‘SDS only’ briefing note Lambert authored that bordered on panic about the fact that if Steel confirmed Dines was a spycop then ‘they’ (ie Steel, Morris and Starmer):

‘would give serious consideration to subpoena-ing John Dines and/or the Commissioner to give evidence at the McDonald’s libel case.’

Morris said there was no doubt Dines and Lambert could have been either forced to give evidence during the trial, or been joined to the case as ‘co-defendants’ because of their responsibility for the publication of the McDonald’s Factsheet.

The police would have had to reveal the full truth about the role of the SDS and the entire trial may well have had to have been abandoned as a serious abuse of legal process.

Morris said that fundamentally, the Met had collaborated with McDonald’s at a high level and in doing so it had misled not just the defendants and Keir Starmer, but also the High Court, the Court of Appeal, the House of Lords, and the European Court of Human Rights. It was a massive miscarriage of justice organised and covered up by the police.

The damning evidence about McDonald’s and general publicity around the trial made the increasingly controversial lawsuit backfire on McDonald’s spectacularly. It was described as ‘the worst corporate PR disaster in history’. People around the world printed and distributed anti-McDonald’s leaflets in huge numbers, making it probably the most famous and well-distributed leaflet ever published.

In March 1991, a secret police report by Dines said that LGP had then been reduced to mainly just four activists. Morris confirmed that the McLibel trial had taken everybody’s effort and focus and the wider group had significantly dwindled.

This, he said, is one of the reasons that corporations and others sue campaigning groups, to tie them up in long and complicated legal action, to put them out of business, to eradicate criticism. He noted that even Parliament recognised this as there was currently a bill going through to try to prevent vexatious litigation in future.

SNEERING LIES AND CYNICAL ABUSES

By 1989, Morris had become a new parent and so had less time to commit to London Greenpeace. He’d also become very active in the new and fast-growing anti-poll tax movement.

Dines reported that fatherhood had reduced Morris’s activism, claiming he was being forced into ‘occasionally undertaking’ parental responsibilities reluctantly.

Morris was aghast, decrying the description as ‘absolute lies’. It was clear that Dines just couldn’t resist slagging him off for no reason whatsoever. Morris told the Inquiry that he had co-parented for the first two years and then been a single parent for the next 18 years.

During the McLibel trial, supporters organised a rota for childcare for Morris’s son. His next door neighbours did some of that in his house. It just so happens that spycop HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ deceived a woman activist next door into a relationship and was thereby able to access Morris’s home.

At the same time, HN5 John Dines had engineered the shocking long-term fake partnership with Helen Steel and they were living together in a flat that he’d rented in Tottenham. It just so happened to overlook the family home of Winston Silcott who’d been framed for the murder of a police officer during the Broadwater Farm riot/uprising. The family were campaigning for justice, and Winston eventually had his conviction quashed.

It’s a snapshot of the cynical and shocking tactics with which the out-of-control spycops were able to use and abuse people, invading lives and homes.

POLL TAX

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

Morris is the only witness to testify to the Inquiry about the epic and historic struggle to scrap the tax. He helped set up Tottenham Against Poll Tax (TAPT) from 1988. The group organised weekly stalls in the high street and distributed tens of thousands of leaflets door to door.

There were thousands of local groups being established across the country, and TAPT – especially as part of Haringey Anti-Poll Tax Union (HAPTU) – was strong and influential, helping to bring together and coordinate the London and national campaign.

TAPT, with Morris as its delegate, was the secretarial group of the London Federation. Morris and HAPTU activists had a key role in organising the first national meeting of anti-poll tax groups in the summer of 1989.

The movement called on people not to register for or pay the Tax, and council workers not to collect it. There were hundreds of large and angry demonstrations outside local town halls (including 1,000 people in Haringey which set the highest charge to pay in the whole country), and people publicly burning their bills.

Morris was asked about the 200,000-strong demonstration on 31 March 1990, on the eve of the Poll Tax implementation the following day.

Undercover reports revealed that SDS officers had met up to ‘pool’ their ‘intelligence’ and had forecast around 20,000 to attend. It was at least ten times that. This was a massive failure by the SDS, and may well have contributed to what became one of the most significant incidents of public disorder of the 20th century.

Morris explained how it further highlighted the SDS’s inability to comprehend what they infiltrate. They’re obsessed with finding individuals and leaders, and sinister or secret plots. They can’t bring themselves to believe that ordinary people can have genuine valid concerns and then mobilise themselves in huge numbers. Radical groups are, he said, a small but useful support to wider movements, no more and no less.

The peaceful and festive demonstration ended in a riot in Trafalgar Square and the surrounding streets. Morris explained that the general view was that the police had provoked the demonstrators and then completely lost control with police vans and horses driving into demonstrators.

Spycop John Dines was at Trafalgar Square that day too, and was arrested with marbles (apparently to use as missiles, or to throw under police horses so they couldn’t run – a controversial tactic generally opposed by most activists). Morris knew nobody else who’d taken marbles.

Dines boasted to activists about his arrest and wrote an account, openly published at the time, saying he had been ‘beaten up’ by police.

TRAFALGAR SQUARE DEFENDANTS CAMPAIGN

About 500 arrests were made. Morris was active in setting up the Trafalgar Square Defendants Campaign (TSDC) to support those arrested, and to reassure the movement that it wasn’t going to be terrorised or divided by government or media hysteria.

The TSDC played a vital role in maintaining the unity, solidarity and resolve throughout the ever-growing movement in the face of repression of protests and jailings of non-payers (which he recalled was maybe around 2,000 people).

Morris described media attempts to split the movement into ‘radical’ and ‘moderate’ factions, a division he said was false. This also seems to be a classic SDS tactic, if not its very purpose for existing.

At this point in the hearing, Morris paid tribute to Alistair Mitchell, one of the key people who’d set up the TSDC. He had been due to give evidence to the Inquiry but sadly had passed away in 2019.

Mitchell had been arrested at Trafalgar Square for complaining to police who were assaulting a demonstrator. He himself was then assaulted and arrested, and later found guilty of ‘biting a police officer’.

However, this was overturned on appeal as expert evidence proved that the photos of the ‘bite’ showed the teeth marks could not have been Alistair’s – this case achieved notoriety as ‘the only person in British history convicted for biting a police officer with someone else’s teeth’ – presumably the police officer had done it himself to frame Mitchell. Mitchell later qualified as a barrister.

Minutes of the second TSDC legal meeting, held at the Haringey Unwaged Centre on 10 May 1990, were taken by Morris and shown on screen at the hearing. The meeting was well attended by defendants and solicitors in order to discuss legal matters and strategy.

Dines attended as a ‘defendant’ although later documents revealed that a police Commander ‘pulled’ his case to protect the SDS and the case’s documentation was ‘destroyed’. Once again, the SDS perpetrating an abuse of legal process.

At the end of the minutes, which were circulated throughout the whole movement, Morris had written that the TSDC would ‘expose how the police rioted and ran amok in Trafalgar Square, and ensure that protests and non-payment of the Poll Tax will defeat this hated government measure’.

The movement continued to grow. In Haringey there were 20 local neighbourhood-based solidarity groups at one point, every home in the borough was leafleted 3 or 4 times, and 97,000 were refusing to pay despite threats, widespread use of bailiffs, and even jailings of non-payers. Across the country it was estimated that there were 14 million non-payers.

Morris criticised the poor quality of Dines’ reports on the TSDC and the movement. These unprofessional and inaccurate reports, like so many SDS reports, fixated on sneering at and slagging off personalities, and mischaracterised and underestimated the campaigns and movements they were part of. Dines was obviously trying to impress his bosses and MI5, aiming to justify the continuation of the SDS.

The media continued its attacks on the anti-poll tax non-payment movement, and there were calls for a ban on future poll tax demonstrations in central London. The TSDC, however, was determined to defy this pressure and persuaded the London Anti-Poll Tax Federation to organise a march to Brockwell Park on 20 October 1990. 20,000 people attended on the day.

The TSDC itself organised a 1,500-strong protest beforehand at Horseferry Road Court where poll tax cases had been prominent. It was thought to have been one of the largest court pickets of the 20th century, and was followed by a ‘feeder march’ to join the main rally. After the rally the TSDC organised a 3,500-strong march to Brixton prison in solidarity with poll tax prisoners there and elsewhere.

Morris explained that the arrangements had been agreed with the police in advance. He revealed that the Commander of the police operation noted to the organisers that there was ‘talk’ from some police that they (the police) were looking for a ‘re-match’ for what happened at Trafalgar Square. He assured all that this ‘would not be tolerated’.

TSDC took no chances and arranged an unprecedented, sophisticated and full scale monitoring and videoing of the events.

The day had gone to plan until the end when the TSDC march halted outside Brixton prison as agreed. An hour before the large crowd was due to disperse police started to get aggressive.

Morris was the key TSDC coordinator present at this point and tried to find a police commander to restrain his officers – but all senior police personnel had mysteriously disappeared. The police attacked the crowd, including truncheoning Morris on the head. Inevitably this led to a battle and many arrests.

The police issued press statements blaming the demonstrators and there was more predictable hysteria from MPs and the media calling for bans on future demonstrations. But a week later the TSDC held a press conference to reveal a detailed dossier on what had really happened. This got a lot of publicity, and the Met were forced to launch ‘an investigation’.

THATCHER FORCED TO RESIGN

With alarm growing in the Conservative Party about the poll tax, including them losing some ‘safe seats’ due to this issue, Margaret Thatcher was forced to resign in November.

The anti-poll tax movement planned another national march through Westminster on 23 March 1991. The TSDC booked Trafalgar Square. The stakes were very high. This was John Dines take on it all:

‘anarchists and “travellers” alike are just occasionally realistic and recognise that they are unlikely again to create mayhem and destruction in Central London without facing the consequences from a Police Force whom they expect to be buoyed up for retribution’

As Morris explained, aside from showing that the police think in vengeant terms, this ridiculous ‘analysis’ was completely wrong. In fact nobody on any side wanted to get the blame for any breakdown in ‘public order’ and what that might lead to.

Tensions mounted in the weeks before that until, just two days before the march, the Prime Minister, John Major, announced the poll tax was unenforceable and would be scrapped. As a result the demonstration was re-christened a Victory March, much smaller numbers attended, and there were no incidents at all.

TSDC continued in its defence campaign work for the next couple of years, and Morris was then able to properly focus on the McLibel case during its very many pre-trial legal hearings.

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Wednesday 6 November 2024
Evidence of Chris Baillee

Click here for transcripts and written evidence

Chris Baillee gave his evidence remotely, and was questioned by John Warrington. He was in very poor health but was determined to contribute to the Inquiry to help it understand the truth about the issues and how he was manipulated by Lambert.

He has supplied a written witness statement to the Inquiry but this still hadn’t been published before this summary was written.

Baillee has supported animal rights for many years. He became politically active around 1980, handing out leaflets and attending meetings, and later got involved in things like graffiti. He described himself as an anarchist.

As a committed vegan, he was also committed to only taking non violent direct action.
He didn’t want to risk harming any animal (and specified ‘humans are animals too, as far as I’m concerned’) and says he was ‘totally against’ the use of incendiary devices. Everyone knew his views.

In 1986, a Daily Express journalist, Eileen McDonald, published a sensationalised account of her alleged infiltration of a secret Animal Liberation Front (ALF) ‘cell’. HN11 Mike Chitty ‘Mike Blake’ included a story in his report [UCPI021974] about her joining Baillee and others at a demonstration against the use of animals in a circus.

Baillee remembers that he and other animal rights activists had to intervene at some point to prevent this reporter from being beaten up by circus ‘heavies’. He also says the activists realised that she was a reporter pretty early on, and said things ‘to wind her up’.

When he wrote his witness statement, Baillee was asked by the Inquiry to list the groups that he was involved in during this era, and comment on whether or not they advocated or supported public disorder, violence, criminal activity or the overthrow of parliamentary democracy. For the most part they didn’t. They did exercise their right to protest, which led to some ‘low level public disorder’, and might have occasionally obstructed the highway.

Class War was an exception. But Baillee says he never got involved in any of their public disorder or violence. He mostly just wrote articles for their newspaper, and went along to a meeting every few months (in marked contrast to what Lambert says about him going to political meetings and protests seven days a week!).

The Inquiry went through some of the reports they had uncovered relating to these groups.

Another report by Chitty [0746458], about a South London Animal Movement (SLAM) meeting in January 1985, described Chris Baillee as an ‘ageing punk anarchist’. SLAM aimed to raise awareness of the mistreatment of animals, and often leafleted and demonstrated outside slaughterhouses, fast food restaurants like McDonald’s and Wimpy. Baillee said that the police sometimes turned up and ‘stopped people protesting peacefully’.

Chitty also reported on the Streatham Action Group, a small closed group of friends who met up every month or so in each other’s houses. There was a leaflet attached, calling for autonomous, localised ‘Stop the City’ style protests to take place on 30 April 1985.

Bailiee was part of this group for around three years, until he moved away from the area up to North London. He rejected Chitty’s description of it as an ‘anarchist’ group, saying its members had a mixture of politics (some were even Labour Party members!).

They sometimes organised public speaker meetings, they put out a magazine, they advertised demos and political campaigns. He laughed off the report’s suggestion that he was responsible for the line ‘stop business as usual’, saying it came from London Greenpeace:

‘I can’t take the credit for that’

Chitty also reported that Baillee and his ‘girlfriend’ were both very involved in a growing campaign against the Leydon Street Slaughterhouse. He points out that this woman was not his girlfriend, she was just one of his housemates. And he wasn’t ‘part of this team’ coordinating the campaign. He says he wasn’t an ‘activist as such’, he only went along occasionally. He recalled that some of the protests started becoming ‘weird and anti-Muslim’ and this put him off going.

The Fur Action Group (FAG) would organise leafleting and sit-ins at places that hosted fur fashion shows or sold fur products. Baillee sometimes took part. All the group did was sit still but this made it hard for shoppers who wanted to look at the furs, and tended to annoy the fur store owners. The owners soon hired security guards and ‘heavies’ and as a result there were some ‘scuffles’.

HUNT SABOTEURS

We moved on to hear about hunt sabbing, and reports written by HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’. London Greenpeace activists often took part in this lawful form of direct action. Hunt saboteur groups from across South-East England often tried to coordinate their efforts and work together.

As the reports show, the police frequently stopped and searched their vehicles, using road blocks and even a police helicopter to prevent them them from getting near the hunts. ‘Heavies’ associated with the hunts were known for their extreme violence, and as one police report makes clear, had ‘hospitalised’ animal rights activists in the past.

These reports are written in Lambert’s typical style, and contain such unfounded notions about the sabs, such as ‘they might, for once, have shaken off their pacifist inhibitions’. He claims that some ‘chose to carry offensive weapons in their vehicles’ and says that some were arrested for public order offences.

Baillee said that he went sabbing regularly for around two years. Sabs tried to get in the way of the hunt, using scents to distract the hounds. He never saw a hunt sab using any kind of weapon, saying:

‘I would never dream of being associated with anyone who used a weapon at all, because I am very anti-violence’

He was badly beaten by hunt heavies, hired from a local rugby club and armed with sticks, and had to have stitches to his lips in hospital. Baillee rejects Lambert’s suggestion that he knew anything about an incendiary device being planted outside the home of the Master of a controversial hunt.

Baillee was part of a short-lived group called ‘Anarchists for Animals’ (AFA), explaining that it had been set up as a result of some anarcho-punks not feeling at home in some of the more mainstream animal rights groups. He rejects the idea that he was a ‘founder’ though.

LONDON GREENPEACE

He regularly attended London Greenpeace (LGP) meetings. He went to some London Boots Action Group demos against animal testing. He admits to acting on his own initiative and sometime doing graffiti (on butchers and fur shops, for instance) but wouldn’t describe himself as ‘ALF’.

Another report describes Chris Baillee as having ‘close links with Ronnie Lee’, the ALF founder who was on remand at the time. He says he didn’t visit Ronnie in prison, as it claims, but went there to visit someone else. They weren’t close at all.

He is not happy about all these reports, emphasising that you can’t believe what trained liars like Lambert say. However the description of him being ‘one of the most energetic anarchists in London’ may well have been true! He comes across to observers as incredibly sweet and caring.

Chris Baillee was reported on by multiple Special Demonstration Squad spies.

Baillee has a vague memory of the name ‘Mike Blake’ but can’t remember much about him. He now knows this was the cover name used by HN11 Mike Chitty, and thinks he would probably have seen him in the pub after a SLAM meeting. He says he wasn’t aware of the relationship between him and ‘Lizzie’.

He had no memory of anyone called ‘John Barker’ (a name used by another of the undercovers, HN5 John Dines). He knew Helen Steel, but never asked her about her personal relationships, so didn’t know she and John were a ‘couple’.

He remembers HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ quite well. But didn’t know him very well, and had no knowledge of the relationship he had during his deployment, with Liz (or Denise) Fuller. He admits that he never paid much attention to other people’s relationships!

‘I wasn’t very keen on relationships. They come and go’.

He met HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’ at London Greenpeace meetings, at which they were both regulars. ‘Bob’ was involved in many of the same groups as him, and Baillee recalled that ‘he used to take us all over the place in his van’, never asking for money.

He got the impression that ‘Bob’ helped out with the Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group (ALFSG) when Ronnie Lee was away, and says he was always ‘trying to get involved with as many people as possible’. He remembers him as seemingly a ‘likeable character’, but also ‘a very persuasive person’.

As time went on, he ‘became more dominant. He started to suggest things’. One such thing was the idea of demonstrating at Murray’s meat market in Brixton. This led to five activists appearing on trial at Camberwell Magistrates’ Court.

Baillee is listed as having appeared as a witness in this case. ‘Mark Robinson’ (another pseudonym used by Lambert) was one of the defendants. Baillee doesn’t have any recollection of ‘Bob’ giving evidence at this or any any court case.

He does remember ‘Bob’ organising benefits for the ALFSG, including one with the band Chumbawamba.

In 1987, two activists, Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke, were arrested for their involvement in ALF activity, and sent to prison on remand. Many people visited them in prison, and Baillee remembers visiting Clarke. He’s not sure if ‘Bob’ did.

The two men were accused of being part of an incendiary device campaign. Baillee says that he would have been ‘totally against’ such a campaign, and if he’d known about it beforehand, would have tried to talk them out of it. He had no idea that Lambert was involved.

Another report surfaced, this one written by HN5 John Dines in 1988, saying that Baillee had also been to visit Geoff Sheppard. It contains a detailed account of their conversations. However Baillee is adamant that he would not have talked about the case or upcoming trial on these visits, with prison guards listening in.

We moved on to hear about Baillee and other LGP activists handing out ‘What’s wrong with McDonald’s?’ leaflet. He had heard that ‘Bob Robinson’ was involved in formulating these leaflets.

He says again that he didn’t pay much attention to rumours about relationships:

‘I couldn’t care less who was going out with who, really’.

He remembers hearing rumours at the time about ‘Bob’ and a series of women: ‘CTS’, ‘Jacqui’, ‘RLC’ and Belinda Harvey.

He got a laugh from the public gallery when he said:

‘I have enough trouble finding my own girlfriend without looking to other people’s.’

Some of Lambert’s reports name Chris Baillee. We looked at one, about an action taken against deer culling in Richmond Park (a D-lock was used to lock the gates for a short time). Allegedly this was the work of Anarchists for Animals (AFA), and Baillee was involved in reading out a communique from the group, threatening more action, to the media.

He says he was not involved in the action at all, and didn’t know about it at all, before or after it occurred. He then asked who had written this report. When told it was one of Lambert’s, he responded:

‘That explains it. He was a trained liar, basically’.

SET UP FOR ARREST

The same report also claims that Baillee plans to commit criminal damage against the butcher’s where the culled venison would be sold. Asked if he’d planned to do anything to the butcher’s he said it would have been some graffiti, and possibly a broken window later, but nothing ‘more severe’. He freely admits to spray-painting another butcher’s and supergluing the locks, and says ‘Bob’ knew he’d done this.

A few weeks later, ‘Bob’ told Baillee that he ‘wanted to get things sorted with the deer cull and the venison shop’ and gave him the impression he wanted something done quickly.

Baillee and another person (who he calls ‘Person X’ in his witness statement) were both invited around to Bob’s flat one night. When they got there, they were given a meal and ‘lots of strong drink and cannabis’ by Bob.

Bob drank and smoked too, and kept talking about the butcher’s shop, suggesting they ‘do it tonight’. Baillee said they should have a look first, so the three set off in Bob’s van, to see this shop in Roehampton.

Baillee is very clear that he just wanted to see what it was like. He remembers Bob being very insistent that they do something that evening, something ‘drastic’, but when they got there Bob stayed in the van. The other two got out and walked towards the shop.

Baillee remembers seeing lights on above it, and when Person X picked up a ‘boulder’, with Baillee telling him that this wasn’t a good time to do anything. Despite trying to talk him out of it, Person X threw this ‘slab of concrete’ through the shop’s window, and catching sight of a plain-clothes cop approaching, ran back to the van. Baillee couldn’t run as fast and didn’t make it in time. The van sped off.

He was grabbed by this plain-clothes officer (who seems to have been an aikido expert) then taken off to Wandsworth police station by uniformed police. They claimed to have witnesses who’d seen him throw a missile through the window. He was refused police bail, so kept in all weekend.

When searching his home, they came across A-Z maps with schools circled by his wife (who was looking for work in schools at the time) and suggested that he had circled these as some sort of targets. When it got to court the judge threw this part out, saying it was laughable.

However Baillee was fined a substantial amount (£300) for the criminal damage. He maintained his innocence, and told them that it hadn’t been him who broke the window, but was unwilling to give them the name of X – ‘it wasn’t the thing to do, really’.

Baillee saw ‘Bob’ at LGP meetings before and after his trial. He says Bob blamed the arrest on X, saying he couldn’t be trusted, as ‘he was off his head most of the time, on drugs’. He also said the conviction was unfair.

Baillee says that X wasn’t someone he trusted, he was someone who tended to brag about what he had done. He didn’t see X at all between the arrest and the trial, and didn’t try to make contact with him.

However, about six weeks after the trial, X said he had problems with his girlfriend, and nowhere to go, and actually ended up staying in Baillee’s house for several months. Baillee remembers telling him to leave, as ‘he was opening my mail for a start’; and ‘very uncooperative’.

In later statements to the police, Bob Lambert has insisted that he didn’t give cannabis to anyone, or use it himself, while he was working undercover. He says he may have put on a show of smoking it, but never inhaled. He says he never drove his van while under the influence of alcohol or other drugs. He says that going to the butcher’s shop was Baillee’s idea, and he didn’t witness him being arrested that night.

Baillee’s retorted:

‘it’s a complete pack of lies’.

He believes now that Lambert deliberately tried to set him up to be arrested, as he and the SDS would get credit for this. In response to later questions, he confirmed that the van was parked fairly close to the shop, with the windows open, so Lambert would have had a clear line of sight and be able to hear the glass breaking.

Baillee recalls receiving a warning at work about his involvement in animal rights activity. The police had actually written to his employers to tell them that he was part of the ALF. The judge at his trial warned him that if he ended up in court again he might well go to prison.

After his trial he was more careful. He stopped going to LGP meetings:

‘I wasn’t involved any more. I just ditched the whole thing. I didn’t trust anyone really’.

HN5 John Dines filed a report in September 1988 stating that Baillee was then much less active in political campaigns or initiatives, and that his:

‘current activities mainly involve the consumption of large quantities of alcohol and what might be some illegal substances’.

Baillee disagrees with this report’s insulting assertion that he was drinking himself into ‘oblivion’ at this time.

In 1993 HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ submitted a report about Baillee:

‘his affection for alcohol is undiminished’.

Baillee was angry about this. He says he was just an occasional social drinker, and only smoked joints socially, at parties.

One of Lambert’s reports includes a list of names and contact details that seem to have been lifted straight out of Baillee’s address book. The vast majority are family and friends with no involvement in any campaigning. He doesn’t know for sure how Lambert got this data, and assumes he or one of his friends must have stolen this book.

Lambert, in his statement, says he does not know how the police gained access to what he called a ‘diary’, and doesn’t believe it was through him.

There was one more issue that the Inquiry wanted to explore. Baillee worked for British Telecom (BT) for 30 years, in the accounts department of their international section. They wondered if Helen Steel or anyone else had ever asked him to use his work access to help locate her partner ‘John Barker’ (HN5 John Dines) after his disappearance.

No, nobody asked him for such help. If they had, he would have said no – he had signed the Official Secrets Act and knew this would be a breach of his professional obligations. In any case he wouldn’t have had access to consumers’ call records. He mostly worked on ship to shore calls.

Another report reveals that Bob Lambert, by this time a Detective Inspector, was concerned enough about the possibility of Dines being tracked down that he contact BT to check if Baillee might have been able to access any relevant information.

About Lambert, he said:

‘Oh he knew everything. He always asked people questions, probing questions, and he got to know things before I did’.

He ‘never suspected for a moment’ that Lambert was a police spy. Looking back now, Chris Baillee repeatedly says that he is ‘upset and annoyed’ to realise that these undercover officers had infiltrated the groups he was part of.

The Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting, thanked Baillee witness for taking part in the Inquiry. He reminded us that part of his role is to identify any possible miscarriages of justice. He intends to question Lambert in December about his role in Baillee’s arrest in order to make a decision about this. He asked for Baillee’s permission to share details of his health with the court in order to speed up the process of reviewing the case.

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Thursday 7 November 2024
Evidence of Gabrielle Bosley

Click here for video, transcripts and written evidence

Lastly for the week, on Thursday afternoon we heard live evidence from Gabrielle Bosley. Like Dave Morris, she was a ‘member’ of London Greenpeace (LGP) at the time it was infiltrated by HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’.

Unlike Morris, she was not an especially driving force in the group. In fact, for the first part of her questioning it was unclear why she was even mentioned in the spies’ secret reports. She appeared to have done very little that even the most paranoid of spycops could have considered subversive.

It all became clear when the Inquiry started quoting from Lambert’s secret police reports of the time. He had named Bosley as being involved in things she’d never been to, and supporting action she’s never approved of.

Once again, the secret intelligence reports that were the supposed core purpose of the Special Demonstration Squad – the thing that was supposed to justify its intrusion, violation of citizens, criminal activity and all the rest of it – were a load of twaddle.

Were the officers in such a mindset that they genuinely saw fake threats and hidden command structures when none existed? Or did they see the truth but spice it up to please their bosses and validate their deployments? Either way, Bosley’s testimony exposed a catalogue of Bob Lambert’s lies.

The Inquiry’s questioning of Bosley came from the same standpoint as the earlier sessions with Dave Morris, with a solid basis that a belief in animal rights or anarchism was in itself a sinister threat and fair game for state spying.

Bosley first went to LGP meetings in late 1985, and stopped in 1988. She described herself as being in her early 20s and ‘a bit daydreamy’ with an interest in animal welfare and social justice.

LGP meetings were local to her. She liked its diversity of focus as part of an overarching worldview. It was a spontaneous, fluid group with no real structure. Meeting agendas was made on the day collectively.

She’s since gone on to work for various charities.

Bosley often did stints dealing with correspondence before the weekly meetings – administering donations, and responding to questions about the group, inlcuding asking ab out membership (which didn’t formally exist). This was such a common request that the group produced a leaflet entitled ‘Don’t Join Us’, encouraging sympathetic people to form their own small-scale groups.

‘what we wanted to do was to empower and encourage people to do their own thing wherever they lived about the issues that mattered to them’

After meetings many people went to the pub together, but Bosley – having been there early processing letters, and being teetotal – only went once.

Lambert claimed that hunt saboteurs had clandestine meetings at the LGP office. Bosley was baffled.

‘hunt saboteur actions, people could just phone each other or discuss it at the public meetings, as it wasn’t an illegal activity. It wasn’t something that people were trying to hide’

Asked if London Greenpeace were anarchists, she said that some people may have described themselves as such, some wouldn’t. It wasn’t the purpose of the group, they were based on a more general view that people are at their best when they’re driven by their sense of community responsibility.

A report saying LGP was the only grouping in London with potential to mobilise anarchists in large numbers was dismissed out of hand. It misunderstood the group, anarchism and mobilisation.

Asked if it was accurate for the police to describe the group as anarchist, she took the question head on and then explained how, yet again, the police failed to understand what they were seeing:

‘Well, some people may have described themselves as anarchists. Some people may not have described themselves as anarchists. Personally I didn’t describe myself as an anarchist, and I didn’t have a perspective of viewing events or discussions from a particularly anarchist point of view.

‘I think there was a general feeling within the group that people were at their best when they are driven by their own sense of social justice and compassion and care about the world. And for that reason London Greenpeace did not get involved in party political debates or academic discussions about politics.

‘It was very much a focus on grassroots campaigning, some of which could be defined as anarchist by some people, other people may have just seen it for what it was, which was grassroots campaigning by ordinary people, really.’

Police descriptions of London Greenpeace as ‘dominated by anarchist ALF activists and supporters’ and ‘unreservedly supports the activities of the ALF’ were simply not true, she said.

Another report says the ALF Supporters Group shared the London Greenpeace office. Bosley never heard about that, despite being there weekly. She’s named with others as performing clerical duties of both groups:

‘This is nonsense as far as my role in this. I had no 3 role. I had no connection with it [the ALF]. And I wasn’t aware of it. I don’t know if it even happened. Perhaps it’s 5 just completely made up, I don’t know.’

Asked about Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke – who, along with Bob Lambert, had organised the placing of timed incendiary devices in Debenham’s shops as a protest against the sale of fur – Bosley said she knew nothng about that, that she rarely even saw the two of them in the same meeting and didn’t realise they knew each other well.

A July 1987 report on the London Greenpeace meeting where she heard news of the Debenham’s attacks was also false, she said. Lambert described how one person argued that they shouldn’t support the attacks, but claimed that everyone else rejected this and said the group should support them.

Bosley explained that a lot of people were like her and hadn’t heard or thought about it so wouldn’t have had an opinion to express. She would remember if there was a consensus of support. She doesn’t.

As with Morris, she highlighted this total misunderstanding of how the group worked, that nobody could speak on behalf of the group.

‘anybody could come along and state anything. It wouldn’t mean that everybody else at the meeting agreed with that… I don’t believe there was any agreement with that. I think that’s been made up.’

Lambert’s witness statement says there was:

‘significant overlap between those who attended London Greenpeace meetings and London Greenpeace events, and those who are involved in the Animal Liberation Front’

Bosley was a London Greenpeace regular, and went hunt sabbing so had an overt focus on animal welfare, yet was never approached for the ALF:

‘It certainly wasn’t some kind of recruiting ground, not at all.’

Lambert’s description of open public meetings having ‘dominant characters putting cogent arguments for animal rights’ is also skewed. There was discussion on things, but nobody dominated, Bosley explained. And either way, that’s not the ALF which was a clandestine organisation.

As for Lambert himself, she pointed a finger at his active participation in crime:

‘How can he have known all these ALF activists unless he was involved himself?’

Police reports claim that London Greenpeace received money intended for Greenpeace International and wrongfully kept it. Bosley, who handled admin for a time, said all donations were acknowledged, people were given full and accurate details about the group, and she can’t recall any objections.

The implication that the police find Greenpeace International respectable will no doubt be seen by them as quite ironic, given their commitment to anti-whaling direct action at sea and the long history of police spying and undermining of that organisation. This hasn’t just happened in London but has been and international effort – on 10 July 1985, French secret agents bombed the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, New Zealand, killing photographer Fernando Pereira.

Bosley said a small cheque from pharmaceutical company Ciba Geigy arrived for Greenpeace International and Lambert said it should be cashed and donated to the ALF, and they should tell Ciba Geigy. She’s not sure how serious he was or if it happened.

Lambert pretended to be a friendly, sociable, quite committed person. Bosley was never close to him, but found him appearing enthusiastic and encouraging.

LAMBERT’S PRETEND VERSION OF GABRIELLE BOSLEY

One of Lambert’s reports from November 1986 characterises her as a ‘leading member’ of London Greenpeace and involved in producing the group’s Unilever factsheet. She wasn’t.

Another report from the same time is wholly devoted to her. She’s described as ‘an anarchist animal rights campaigner’. She has never even claimed to be an anarchist.

She was described as a supporter of the ALF who housed animals they rescued. That’s not true. She has only ever had pets or foster animals from registered charities.

She was supposedly the treasurer of a housing co-operative. She wasn’t.

Lambert claimed that there were suspicions about an informer and Bosley took part in a ‘secret investigation’. She put the record straight – she knew nothing about it.

Bosley was apparently prevented from ‘committing serious crime’ because she had 18 pet cats that she was responsible for. She’s never had that many cats, nor the criminal intent:

‘absolutely ridiculous… I don’t know what the less serious crime he’s trying to imply is, but I wasn’t really willing to participate in any crime. So I don’t know why he’s saying “more serious crime”.’

It said Bosley had a leading role in the animal liberation movement. She laughed out loud at this. She readily agreed that she had an interest in animal liberation, but said she also has an interest in architecture and it doesn’t mean she’s a prominent architect.

She was supposedly scheduled to speak on behalf of London Greenpeace at a Campaign Against Police Repression conference:

‘Not true. I never agreed to speak at any CAPR conference at all, ever… What would I speak about?… It wasn’t something I was expert on… Even if I did know quite a bit about the topic, I think I would probably have been lacking in confidence… It just seems bizarre.’

She was supposedly regularly visiting someone in prison for action against Unilever. She went twice as she’d heard this lad in his late teens wasn’t getting any visitors.

It said she had been arrested and convicted in August 1985 at Alconbury air fair.

This was true. Bosley explained that Bob Lambert had announced at a London Greenpeace meeting that there was an arms fair at RAF Alconbury, that he was going and wanted others to come with him. She and a couple of others went in his van.

She had never seen an arrest before. A group of police all jumped on a man, she went over and told them to leave him alone, and was grabbed and arrested. She got a small fine.

Lambert reported that Bosley was the girlfriend of Andrew Clarke (who’d been jailed for the Debenham’s attack that we now know Lambert was up to his neck in):

‘Complete nonsense’

She described how she was in a long-term monogamous relationship at the time and wasn’t affectionate with Clarke.

‘I had no intimate or romantic relationship with Andrew Clarke at all… I never held hands with him, I never hugged him. I had no romantic or intimate relationship with him whatsoever.’

In a 2014 interview with police, Lambert repeated it.

Bosley said the only conclusion is that Lambert has been consistently ‘deliberately trying to mislead’.

ETCHING FLUID

In 1986 Lambert approached her at the end of a London Greenpeace meting and took her to one side. He asked if she’d help with something. She said she was always happy to be helpful so agreed, and he asked her to buy etching fluid from an art supply shop.

She hadn’t heard of it before. It’s a corrosive liquid that affects glass and metal. Lambert said it was for the animal liberation struggle, Bosley presumed it was for graffiti.

‘the way he asked me… I felt like I couldn’t sort of backtrack’

He said that he’d already bought some so didn’t want to go too frequently as it might arouse suspicion.

‘In retrospect I think he was sounding me out and sort of exploring how far I would be willing to go in my campaigning. And that was a cut-off point for me. I certainly wasn’t willing to go any further’

Bosley bought three bottles for him. She refused reimbursement and made it clear that she wouldn’t do it again.

‘I didn’t like it, the fact that it was secretive. Because I don’t like to have to keep secrets or behave in a secretive way’

She spoke about her personality at the time. In her mid teens she and a neighbour had been first on the scene at a catastrophic road collision. She described desperate and traumatic attempts to resuscitate a dead person and reassure people trapped in the car.

A while after, her best friend was murdered by a burglar at her friend’s parents’ house. The lack of support for what we now call post-traumatic stress left her at the mercy of some difficult feelings and changed her demeanour:

‘at the time, people didn’t really talk about that sort of thing. The prevailing attitude was, with traumatic experience, best just to forget about it and not talk about things…

‘it made me a little bit distracted, a little bit more daydreamy than perhaps I would have otherwise been’

She recently read an account by undercover officer who’d worked in drugs and murder gangs who said that when infiltrating:

‘you always look for the most vulnerable person because they are the easiest to manipulate.’

She wonders if this is why Lambert approached her, ie whether he was using her trauma against her. And if so, whether it was not just deliberate but trained tradecraft. It is something that tallies with other officers, such as HN2 Andy Coles targeting Jessica for a relationship.

LAMBERT AND SON

Bosley knew about Lambert’s relationships with women, though wasn’t close to them. She knew he’d got a young son, ‘TBS’, who he had with an activist known as Jacqui.

Bosley saw Lambert with ‘TBS’ at Hopefield animal sanctuary in Essex when a group of volunteers went there to help clear up the site.

‘He obviously felt that we were such a nice gentle bunch of people… it is entirely at odds with the way he’s described us’

She recapped the volatile violent caricature of animal rights activists that Lambert had played on in his reports.

‘if you really believed that you wouldn’t bring your child along to an environment with people like that, would you?’

There was one time when she became suspicious of Lambert’s true role. In Stoke Newington’s Stamford Hill estate, the council wasn’t doing repairs on its housing.

Tenants were leaving, squatters were moving in and not only fixed places up for themselves but were doing repairs for official tenants. There were rumours of undercovers staying on the estate.

The local police station was notorious at the time for racist policing. Indeed, it still is. There was a protest at the police station after another death in custody there.

Someone was talking about it and, on impulse, Bosley jokingly said to Lambert that he would be picking up little brown envelopes of cash as an informer. Rather than finding it funny, as she’d expected, he went bright red. She mentioned it to two group members but they both felt sure he was sound.

She was asked about spycop HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’, who’d got involved with London Greenpeace. He said he’d recently arrived from New Zealand. She was phasing out of the group at the time so didn’t have a lot of interaction. He also pretended to be amiable, relaxed and chatty.

DEBT CRISIS LEAFLET

Dines reported that Bosley had helped to draft a factsheet on the debt crisis in June 1989.

This was true, she said, though of no concern to the police. It had nothing to do with any crime, nor with the animal rights movement they were so preoccupied with. It wasn’t even part of London Greenpeace, who she’d stopped having active involvement with, but just something Bosley hoped the group would take up – which it did.

It was an early instance of growing outrage and campaigning against the so-called debt third world countries were saddled with – campaigns that would become mainstream in the mid-2000s with the likes of Make Poverty History.

The focus was how the banking system – especially the International Monetary Fund and World Bank – caused huge suffering due to loans made to poor countries who were charged interest they could never pay off. This then left them vulnerable to the IMF imposing austerity and other harmful policies. It was a humanitarian crisis.

The leaflet was written in two sessions at Bosley’s home, by her and two other people, one of whom was spycop John Dines. Bosley said that he had ‘invited himself along’ and his role was quite minimal.

She emphasised to the Inquiry that this was a legitimate topic of concern; cruel and unnecessary policies having an egregious effect on people in poorer countries.

She scoffed at a police report of a visit to a World Bank office, correcting Dines’ melodramatic description with the actual facts. 5-7 people went in and had a chat with several employees. It was so polite that one of them said Bosley should come and work for them.

One of the protestors, who had green hair, sat down at an empty desk. When the police arrived they went over to him and asked ‘are these people [the protesters] bothering you, sir?’

At the end, Bosley hit a sentiment we’ve heard from so many people who were spied on and abused by the Special Demonstration Squad:

‘Why would they want to say things about people that weren’t true? What’s to be gained from it?’

Tranche 2, Phase 2, Day 2

15 October 2024

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

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

Opening statements: Day 2

James Wood KC (Albert Beale; Gabrielle Bosley; Jane Hickman; Claire Hildreth; Hilary Moore; Rebecca Johnson; Robin Lane; Dave Morris: Geoff Shepherd; Paul Gravett; Helen Steel; Martyn Lowe)
Rajiv Menon KC (Friends of Freedom Press)
Dave Morris (McLibel Support Campaign)
Peter Weatherby KC (Hunt Saboteurs Association)
Sam Jacobs (Sharon Grant OBE; Stafford Scott)
Owen Greenhall (Joan Ruddock; Diane Abbott)
Fiona Murphy KC (The Category F Core Participants and TBS)
Kirsten Heaven (Non-Police Non-State Core Participants’ Co-ordinating Group)

1) James Wood KC

James Wood KC opens today’s hearing. He is speaking on behalf of 12 individuals represented by Hodge Jones and Allen:

• Albert Beale
• Gabrielle Bosley
• Jane Hickman
• Claire Hildreth
• Hilary Moore
• Rebecca Johnson
• Robin Lane
• Dave Morris
• Geoff Sheppard
• Paul Gravett
• Helen Steel
• Martyn Lowe

Their written Opening Statement goes into much more detail than his abbreviated oral submissions.

Wood began with some strong words about the officers of the Special Demonstration Squad, stating that they had:

‘committed some of the most serious abuses of state power against activists in modern times. They displayed, we say, a complete contempt for the basic rights and dignity of those they spied upon’.

Introductions

Wood went on to introduce those he represents, all of whom had been targeted for their involvement in a wide range of groups, including London Greenpeace, the women’s peace movement, the Trafalgar Square Defendants Campaign and various animal rights groups.

He noted that their political views, and the tactics they chose to use, varied, but made the point that none of them encouraged or promoted any form of direct action that would cause harm to anyone.

He took some time to explain that London Greenpeace was a small, autonomous, group, established in 1971 and completely independent from the much larger Greenpeace organisation that now exists. He provided pen portraits of those who were active in the group in the 1980s and explained a little about their background and interests.

Both Albert Beale and Martyn Lowe could be described as ‘pacifists’ and had long been involved in anti-nuclear, peace campaigning and projects. Albert is due to give evidence on 11 November and Martyn is scheduled to appear on 4 November.

Dave Morris spoke later that morning, about the McLibel case in which he and Helen Steel were involved. Morris was also part of the Trafalgar Square Defendants Campaign, set up in the aftermath of the anti-Poll Tax demonstration that took place in central London in March 1990. He will be providing more evidence on 5 November.

Like Morris, Steel was also involved in a wide range of environmental and social justice groups over the years. She was also one of the women targeted and deceived into a long-term sexual relationship by one of the spycops, and so is part of the ‘Category H’ group. Helen will give evidence on 27 November.

Gabrielle Bosley got involved with London Greenpeace in the mid 1980s. She will give evidence on 7 November.

Paul Gravett became active at the same time. He was particularly interested in animal rights, and Wood went on to give an overview of the main groups that Gravett was involved in. These included Islington Animal Rights, London Boots Action Group (LBAG), and London Animal Action (LAA).

These groups were heavily infiltrated, both by a string of undercover police officers and by corporate spies (sent by the fur trade and vivisection industry). This Inquiry should examine how much information was being shared by the Special Demonstratoin Squad (SDS) with such players. Paul is due to give evidence on 13 November and 14 November.

Claire Hildreth was also passionate about animals, and involved in both LBAG and LAA. Hildreth formed a very close friendship with one of the spycops, HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’. She will appear on 11 December.

Wood turned next to a discussion of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), a name used by people who took direct action to end animal suffering. He highlighted that one of the ALF’s principles was:

‘Reverence for Life: In all actions we take the utmost care that no harm should come to either human or animal life.’

The Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group (ALF-SG) had a press officer and an office, that produced publications. It did not take part in direct action.

Robin Lane served as press officer, and spokesperson for the group, between 1986-88. He has a long history of involvement in campaigning against animal abuse, and will give more evidence on 12 November.

Wood also mentioned Greenham Common women’s peace camp very briefly, as it has largely been covered by the evidence given by Jane Hickman, Hilary Moore and Rebecca Johnson during the Inquiry’s ‘Tranche 1 Phase 1’ hearings earlier this year (which examined spycops 1983-1992 who targeted groups not involved in animal rights).

Wood simply noted that there was no real justification for this SDS targeting; it was done on the ‘apparent whim’ of Margaret Thatcher.

Unsafe convictions

Geoff Sheppard was convicted of two serious offences, and the safety of both convictions is cast in doubt by the conduct of two different undercovers. Geoff will give evidence on 14 November and 15 November.

In July 1987, times incendiary devices were planted at several Debenham’s stores, set to go off overnight when the buildings were locked and empty, with the intention of them triggering the store’s sprinkler systems and thereby causing huge economic damage to the furs that Debenhams controversially still sold at the time. HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’ was closely involved in initiating, planning and carrying out this action.

Sheppard went to prison for his part in the Debenham’s action. By the time he was released, Lambert had been made an SDS manager. However he had trained up a protégé, HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’, who encouraged Sheppard to return to activism and facilitated this by providing transport.

Sheppard’s second conviction, in 1995, was for a firearms offence. Rayner was lauded for providing the intelligence that led to this, but kept quiet about the role he had played in inciting Sheppard.

Had the SDS now decided that securing criminal convictions should be one of their roles? Wood contends that the SDS was ‘completely unsuited’ for this, given that they would always prioritise maintaining their cover over the criminal justice system. The involvement of the spycops was never disclosed to the courts and none of the usual safeguards were in place to ensure fair trials.

Legal privilege

In another issue which has come up in other Opening Statements, Wood explored the SDS’s ‘disdain’ for the criminal justice process, and lack of respect for the principles underpinning fair trial processes. SDS reports are full of details about what should have been considered ‘legally privileged material’.

Bob Lambert frequently visited Sheppard while he was in prison on remand. His reports contain information about the two co-defendants, the meetings they had with their lawyers, legal strategies and interpersonal conflicts.

Officer HN109 has told the Inquiry that he did not have a clear understanding of the concept of ‘legal privilege’ and so did not provide any guidance about to the undercovers he managed. It appears that none of the unit’s managers did, and such information was routinely recorded and retained.

Lambert’s lies

Wood then returned to the Debenham’s story, going into more detail about Bob Lambert’s involvement. Lambert organised the first planning meeting, and argued that all Debenham’s stores, even those that didn’t sell fur, were legitimate targets.

He chose the Harrow branch as his target, and told the others that he had successfully planted a device there. £340,000 of damage was caused as a result. Overall, this anti-fur campaign is estimated to have cost Debenham’s around £4m. They stopped selling fur as a result.

Lambert continues to deny that he was directly involved in this action. Wood highlighted some of the discrepancies around this. Most shockingly, we heard for the first time today that CCTV footage from Harrow had been handed over to the (anti-terrorist) police who first attended the scene. It was then snatched by Special Branch officers, and has never been seen since.

From examining Lambert’s reports, it is clear that he was privy to far more information about these improvised incendiaries than he should have been, and that he curated the content of reports in a way that seems designed to mislead, and hide the extent of his direct involvement.

He claimed that these reports had been ‘sanitised’ by his managers but the relevant managers all deny doing so. The Inquiry has not been able to find all the reports that are believed to have been produced around this time.

However, there are SDS reports, identifying another person, ‘MSW’, as a ‘quartermaster’ for the Debenham’s campaign. ‘MSW’ was politically active between 1979-84, but says he had no knowledge of this serious crime, and did not even know the two men who were convicted or ‘Bob Robinson’ (Lambert) himself.

Lambert also made false, unfounded, allegations about Helen Steel being involved, which she denies. It seems that there may be a pattern of Lambert fabricating such stories to cover up his own deeds, and perhaps to advance his career.

Another witness, Chris Baillie, has come forward and told the Inquiry that Lambert had set him up to be arrested for criminal damage done by a third person to a butcher’s window. He will appear as a witness on 6 November.

It is clear that some people were suspicious about exactly what Lambert was up to, However, according to one of his managers, HN109:

‘the value in his intelligence potentially blinded more senior officers to how it was being obtained.’

Other SDS officers, like HN11 Mike Chitty ‘Mike Blake’, are known to have made similar comments.

Having later become an SDS manager himself, was Lambert able to destroy records relating to his own deployment and misconduct? Did he also ensure documents relating to Geoff Sheppard’s relationship with ‘Rayner’ were destroyed?

Interestingly, Lambert also told some activists that he carried out a similar, incendiary, action in Selfridge’s in August 1988.

The Inquiry will undoubtedly have lots of questions for Lambert when he finally appears between 2-5 December. It is estimated that his evidence will require four full days, longer than anyone else in this set of hearings.

Responding to the State

Wood made some comments about the Opening Statements we heard yesterday, in particular the one delivered by Peter Skelton on behalf of the Metropolitan Police.

Some of the mistakes made by the SDS are repeated, for example a failure to distinguish between various animal rights groups and those involved in them – labelling them all as ‘militant’ – along with attempts to exaggerate the impact of animal rights campaigners on those they protested.

Pickets outside shops, offices and homes may have been annoying or unwelcome, but at the time they were entirely lawful, and represented only a minor inconvenience, not a public order problem, and were hardly ‘terrifying’ in the way the police would have us all believe.

Even Bob Lambert is known to have written:

‘By late 1984, however the public order threat posed by various animal rights groups had all but disappeared.’

He notes that the only clients of his who were convicted of criminal offences had been encouraged and supported to take those actions by undercover officers.

It is clear that the SDS had a motive for portraying animal rights activists as ‘extremists’: this boosted their reputation and annual applications for increased funding. The Met continue to make these allegations because they seek to justify the highly intrusive infiltration of these groups.

What was the point?

These deployments were entirely speculative, and, Wood says, ‘entirely without justification’.

Despite spending years in the field, SDS officers didn’t always produce much useful intelligence in their reports, from the ‘cosy world of middle-class animal right campaigning’. Their deployments were not reviewed regularly.

Out of control

There was a lack of supervision or managerial control. Undercovers were given the freedom to operate as they wished, resulting in impropriety. Some (for example, HN2 Andy Coles ‘Any Davey’) took up positions of responsibility in the groups they targeted; others (like Bob Lambert) are known to have used their dominant personalities to influence the direction and activities of their target groups.

Most of the undercovers were older than those they spied on (having followed the advice they were given to ‘knock a few years off’ their real ages), and as a result younger activists often looked up to these men, and sought their advice about personal issues. There is evidence of them abusing their power, manipulating and ‘grooming’ people.

We heard that Claire Hildreth had confided in HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ about her experiences with ‘creepy’ HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’. He did not report Coles’s predatory behaviour to managers at the time.

This feeling of freedom undoubtedly extended to inciting and committing other serious crimes. The spycops believed they could act with impunity, and that their superiors would always have their backs.

Relationship with the Security Service (MI5)

According to Wood:

‘the evidence shows the Security Service and the SDS working alongside each other in close liason at all times’

The written Statement provides a great deal more detail about this. We know there were weekly meetings between the two. There was ‘intense political interest and influence’ in the units’ targets, including the groups listed above.

Re-traumatising the victims of these violations

The final issue raised by Wood was about the ‘procedural difficulties’ faced by Helen Steel. He explained that she had been finally been given disclosure, but this meant she had been supplied with ‘many thousands of pages of material’ and asked to respond under extreme time pressure.

This material relates to the abuse she suffered, and includes many untrue and unproven allegations made about her by those abusers. Reading this has been extremely distressing and re-traumatising for her, but the Inquiry is not taking a ‘trauma-informed’ approach, and appears not to understand the significant and cumulative effect on Helen.

Her privacy has already been grossly violated by these officers, and now she (like other Non State Core Participants) is being expected to apply for privacy redactions within a very tight and inflexible time-frame.

He reminded the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, that the primary focus of this Inquiry should be to examine police misconduct, rather than unproven allegations made by former officers about their victims. The effectiveness of this Inquiry could well be impacted, by the inability of Helen and others to participate fully and effectively and provide crucial evidence.

A reminder

Wood drew Mitting’s attention to a European Court of Human Rights judgment, ironically from Helen’s own landmark case, Steel and Morris v United Kingdom.

This ruled that:

‘even small and informal campaign groups, such as London Greenpeace must be able to carry on their activities effectively and that there exists a strong public interest in enabling such groups and individuals outside the mainstream to contribute to the public debate by disseminating information and ideas’

He was sure that if the European Court had been aware of the state-sponsored intrusion of London Greenpeace at the time of this case, their words would have been ‘more forceful’. Democratic principles, such as freedom of speech and freedom of expression, do not seem to be recognised by the Met.

He went on to say that the SDS ‘represented the worst in our society’, the police were ‘incapable of properly balancing…civil and democratic rights’ and the unit should not have existed.

Mitting’s response

Having heard all of this, Mitting asked Wood to communicate to Helen that he acknowledges ‘her detailed and informative statement’, saying her evidence ‘is of the greatest assistance to me’.

He went on to add that he is ‘encouraged to hear’ that she will provide oral evidence during these hearings, but wants her to send in the documents she refers to it her witness statement, especially the photos, as soon as possible (before she gives evidence on 27 November).

2) Rajiv Menon KC

Menon spoke again on Tuesday, this time on behalf of the Friends of Freedom Press (FFP).

They provided an Opening Statement and other evidence in the Inquiry’s Tranche 2 Phase 1 hearings earlier this year (Steve Sorba from FFP provided a witness statement and gave oral evidence in Week 2), about the SDS’s spying on the anarchist movement.

In particular HN85 Roger Pearce ‘Roger Thorley’ infiltrated the Freedom collective between 1979 and 1984 and later became a commander of Special Branch.

Today’s additional written Opening Statement addresses the evidence of SDS managers and other recently disclosed material.

Menon began by reiterating core participants’ profound concern that the Inquiry will be holding hearings in closed session, and that evidence will remain hidden from public scrutiny, perhaps forever, to protect the privacy of the officers and their families and the interests of the British state.

He then went on to consider the evidence of SDS managers, which raises important questions about SDS practices, where officers were allowed to cross what should have been operational red lines. Managers turned a blind eye, or sanctioned unconscionable behaviour, pointing out that the position of the Met becomes more and more untenable with every Tranche of Inquiry hearings:

‘the SDS did not serve any proper policing purpose’.

Historical overview

Menon noted that the decade under investigation in this tranche, from 1983 to 1992, is critical. The election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 saw a shift in the political direction of the country. The post-war consensus between organised labour and capital was abandoned, leading to a showdown with the trade unions.

The period was marked by struggles against racism and fascism, and the titanic struggle between the miners and the government. The gloves came off, and the police played a key role as enforcers of government will, known as ‘Maggie Thatcher’s Boot Boys’.

The SDS was an elite squad within Special Branch and they knew their officers would be protected at all costs. That meant attitudes changed.

During the 1980s we see reporting shift from a more old-fashioned objective style, to one that was exaggerated and inaccurate, intrusive, pejorative and laced with scurrilous fantasy. Officers and managers shared jokes inside the intelligence community echo chamber, at the expense of those on whom they spied.

Under the shadowy direction of MI5 the SDS created a culture whereby the supposed public order policing purpose was secondary to the real purpose of the SDS as a secret political police force.

Entitlement and arrests

Menon then examined evidence about the pay and overtime SDS officers felt they were entitled to.

‘SDS officers were overpaid and overvalued. SDS managers colluded in allowing their undercover officers too much independence, Roger Pearce’s mantra was: always defer to the officer in the field. This degree of autonomy spiralled out of control in the 1980s…

‘These undercover officers were likely to have been the highest paid officers in the Met, at least for their rank…

‘undercover officers could claim [overtime] for all their time in the pub or even in bed with an activist, supposedly gathering vital intelligence to protect the state, “Fucking for Queen and country” as Roger Pearce so crudely put it in his first novel.’

Menon also notes that during the Tranche 2 period now being examined (1983-1992), more SDS officers were arrested and ended up in court in their cover names. Although often for relatively minor offences, this was inevitably a stepping stone to more serious criminal involvement by SDS officers, as well as spying on defence lawyers.

It was also in direct contravention of Home Office instructions which unequivocally forbid any use of informants that may result in misleading a court.

None of the SDS managers appeared to regard the reporting on a legal advice as a problem.

Fantasy reporting

He then considered the problems inherent in MI5 using SDS undercover officers as human intelligence sources, often producing ‘fantasy reports for MI5’.

Menon notes evidence that senior managers felt that:

‘being a fantasist was a good trait for a undercover officer.’

‘Productive’ officers like Roger Pearce understood the game. Pearce would sex up his reports with lurid detail that played to the taste of his managers. His reporting style became the new SDS template for the 1980s.

HN115 Detective Chief Inspector Tony Wait says that MI5 received copies of virtually everything that SDS produced. They were ultimately serving the same political masters: a Conservative government, determined to crush the so-called enemy within.

The evidence of HN109 and HN11 Mike Chitty paints a further, worrying picture. HN10 Bob Lambert, HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’, HN8 (names restricted) and another unnamed undercover officer formed a ‘cabal’ within SDS. Lambert was the leader, and Menon notes,

‘There is reference in Eric Docker’s witness statement to the detective superintendent of C Squad, Dave Short, saying of Lambert: “The man’s out of control, you’ve lost him.”’

But was Lambert a rogue officer or was he playing a managed role, a participating agent provocateur? Lambert’s protégé, Dines, expressed the opinion that ‘rules are made to be broken’.

Lambert and Dines were regarded as the elite within a squad, that operated in a culture of impunity.

An inevitable problem

As an anarchist organisation that dates back to the 1880s, Freedom has a long historical memory. They say this is exactly where such state-sponsored spying always ends up, as agent provocateur activity which gets out of control or is carefully orchestrated with appropriate plausible deniability from the people in charge.

And so we come to ‘Operation Sparkler’, the prosecution of two Animal Liberation Front activists after improvised incendiary devices were placed in three Debenham’s stores, where Lambert is suspected of placing the third.

The investigation was taken over by SO12, Special Branch, away from SO13, the anti-terrorist squad. This appears abnormal as SO13 made the arrests. Was Special Branch trying to ensure that certain lines of enquiry were not pursued?

HN39 Eric Docker was promoted to detective chief inspector of SDS in October 1987, the month after the arrests. It was he who wrote up the commendation report for Bob Lambert.

Then, towards the end of the 1980s, things changed again. The Security Service Act was passed and the Service, also known as MI5, came slightly out of the shadows, as its activity was put on a statutory footing for the first time.

Margaret Thatcher was ousted, following the hugely successful anti-Poll Tax campaign in 1990, and MI5 had to do a full re-think. By 1992, there had been a change of focus and approach to ‘domestic extremism’.

This is addressed in the corporate witness statement of ‘Witness Y’. MI5 told Special Branch that they no longer needed all the ‘product’ that the SDS supplied.

This was the exact moment when there should have been a re-think, but instead of disbanding SDS, the Metropolitan Police Service and Special Branch doubled down, expanding their domestic surveillance operations, as we will see in Tranches 3 and 4 looking at later spycops’ activity, when the very officers who were the most responsible for the worst excesses of the SDS – Lambert, Dines and Coles – became the unit’s managers.

Menon ended his statement with the advice that the Inquiry needs to ask some searching questions, especially of those managers who were meant to be supervising the Lambert-Dines cabal:

‘Whether SDS activity was simply immoral or also criminal remains to be fully explored. On behalf of Freedom we suggest that there is now more than sufficient evidence from witnesses and documents for you, sir, to conclude that it was both.’

3) Dave Morris

Next we heard from Dave Morris, the only Core Participant to make oral submissions (as he is appearing as a ‘litigant in person’), on behalf of the McLibel Support campaign.

The McLibel case ended up becoming the longest trial in English legal history. There were just two defendants, Dave Morris and Helen Steel.

Morris explained that Steel had been unable to contribute as much as she might have liked towards the accompanying written Opening Statement, due to the Inquiry’s delays in making disclosure to her and the unreasonable length of time allowed for her to go through this evidence. She has only managed to write a partial personal witness statement, but aims to produce another before giving oral evidence on 27 November.

It made a refreshing change to hear directly from one of the people who had been targeted by the spycops. Morris will give further oral evidence on 5 November.

Introducing the McLibel case

Dave explained some of the background to this infamous legal case. As life-long community activists, he and Steel were both involved in fighting for a better future, they were both involved in London Greenpeace, and along with other campaigners, distributed copies of a leaflet entitled ‘What’s wrong with McDonald’s?’

When the McDonald’s corporation threatened legal action, Steel and Morris refused to back down, and found themselves defending a libel case against a well-resourced, powerful multinational. They had to represent themselves, as legal aid was not available for such cases.

They relied on the help of volunteers to assist them, and received ‘pro bono’ advice from a young barrister named Keir Starmer for around ten years.

As a result of publicity around this ‘David and Goliath’ case, the leaflets which McDonald’s had set out to suppress were widely distributed for many years, all over the world.

We now know that the SDS not only infiltrated the campaign, they also collaborated secretly with McDonald’s before and during the case, something Morris condemned as ‘a serious miscarriage of justice’.

We also now know that one of the undercovers, HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’ engineered a long-term relationship with Steel – they even lived together – and this had been described the day before by the Inquiry’s own Counsel, David Barr KC, as Dines’s

‘cold, calculating emotional and sexual exploitation’

Infiltration

In the 1980s, London Greenpeace was a small group, campaigning about issues that were of widespread public concern, like the treatment of animals and workers and the environment. The trust and privacy of those involved was abused by the infiltration of SDS spies.

HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’ became a prominent and influential activist in what he described himself as ‘a peaceful campaigning group’. During his time undercover, he deceived four women into sexual relationships and fathered a child with one of them.

In 1986, he helped to create and distribute the original 6 page fact-sheet which asked ‘What’s wrong with McDonald’s?’ and provided the reader with a list of answers (everything from nutrition and diet, environmental damage, unethical advertising, worker exploitation, factory farming, global poverty…).

Morris brandished a copy on screen, and explained this was the leaflet that prompted McDonald’s to threaten libel action. A shorter version was produced and given out during the McLibel trial, with at least 3 million copies being printed and distributed in the UK.

When HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’ joined the group, he also helped to produce and distribute these leaflets, organise events and protests, and become the group’s treasurer.

It wasn’t just these two SDS officers who infiltrated London Greenpeace; there were also at least six ‘inquiry agents’, corporate spies sent by McDonald’s to gather information between 1989-91.

McDonald’s hired former police officers for this operation, and one of them had a fraudulent sexual relationship with a member of the group, which lasted for around six months.

As a result of the intelligence gathered by the SDS and these inquiry agents, McDonald’s served libel writs on five named individuals in September 1990.

Three of the group felt they had no option but to pull out of what promised to be an expensive, unfair fight, leaving Morris and Steel to stand up to McDonald’s in court.

The case – including a full appeal – ran until 2005.

The pair went on to win a case against the British Government in the European Court of Human Rights, and were formally represented there by Keir Starmer there (as they received legal aid for this). That court ruled that the state had violated their right to a fair hearing and freedom of expression, but had no idea about the extent of the intrusion they had suffered.

Breaching legal privilege and spying on Starmer

Dines reported that the leaflet ‘is causing much concern within the corporation’, shortly before the McLibel writs were served. According to him:

‘Arrangements are in hand to monitor events arising from these legal proceedings’.

He went on to report on confidential discussions between the recipients of those writs and their lawyers.

In a later report he boasts:

‘It is accurate to say that I was “by the side” of Helen Steel and Dave Morris in 1991 and relaying the legal advice back to my bosses in the SDS’.

He used to collect Steel after she had attended legal strategy meetings with Starmer.

Secret unlawful collaboration between McDonald’s and the Met

It is clear that information flowed in both directions, between McDonald’s and the SDS.

McDonald’s recruited Sid Nicholson in 1983 as Head of Security. In his prior 31 year police career, he had worked in apartheid South Africa before coming to London and rising to the rank of Chief Superintendent in the Met, covering the Brixton area.

He was responsible for McDonald’s security and ran their spying operations. He brought in other former police officers, such as Terry Carroll (also from Brixton), who was hired as a Security Manager, and admitted in 2013:

‘I was aware that Sid would liaise with Special Branch officers about the protestors’.

He also recalled Sid telling him that there was a ‘Special Branch bloke’ inside London Greenpeace.

In 1990, he had sent Nicholson a memo, promising:

‘I will get onto Special Branch to get an assessment’.

Nicholson testified during McLibel that his security team were ‘all ex-police’, and it’s clear that this strategy meant they were all able to get hold of information from mates who were still on the force. One of the McDonald’s spies held two long meetings with a Special Branch officer in June 1990 to share private information.

Morris noted in passing that Bob Lambert had worked on Special Branch’s C Squad, with special responsibility for the Brixton area, while Nicholson was still in post.

A police ‘file note’ from 2002 (disclosed recently by the Inquiry) reveals that although HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’ was heavily involved in the anti-McDonald’s campaign in 1990, the SDS had made sure that his name

‘was deliberately omitted from the McDonald’s libel writ list’

Morris describes this as ‘blatant manipulation of the legal process’, and calls on the Inquiry to investigate the roles played by undercovers in this web of secret collaboration and subterfuge.

The search for the truth

Dines began cynically faking a mental breakdown in 1991, and finally disappeared from Steel’s life the following year, telling her that he was going abroad. As a result, she suffered heartache and worry, and spent many years trying to find him.

By 1995, Lambert had been promoted to SDS manager, and was worried about the possibility of either Dines or the Commissioner being sub-poenaed to give evidence at the McLibel trial, if Steel were ever to discover the truth about her ex-partner.

By 1998 Steel and Morris knew only that Special Branch had provided their private details to McDonald’s, and successfully sued the police over this. In 2000, the Met offered to make a pay-out of £10,000, plus costs, rather than go through ‘a difficult and lengthy trial’.

Morris says now:

‘Had the true picture been known we may well have not settled the claim.’

The judgments of the High Court and the Court of Appeal found that much of what had been printed in the leaflet was true, and that McDonald’s had breached both employment and animal welfare legislation. However they were never prosecuted. Why not?

Consequences of the case

London Greenpeace never fully recovered after the McLibel case, and its activities gradually fizzled out.

Although the ‘McLibel Two’ won on some points, they also lost on some. As a result, Steel and Morris had damages of £60,000 awarded against them, which they refused to pay. Morris says the case:

‘certainly had real consequences. Not only Helen and myself, but also Keir had to put in years of unpaid and intense work to help defend the action’.

For Steel, the stress of fighting the case was magnified by the trauma of Dines’s fake breakdown, her concern and her efforts to trace him. She then had to deal with the additional trauma of gradually uncovering the shocking truth about his identity.

Morris says this case is another example of the police:

‘showing their utter disregard for the integrity of legal proceedings’.

4) Peter Weatherby KC

Peter Weatherby KC appeared on behalf of the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA).

Before talking about the activities of the HSA, Weatherby made clear:

‘there was no legitimate justification whatsoever for undercover policing targeting it as an organisation or its supporters or its activities or their families or their homes or their private and sexual lives…

‘undercover policing interfered with a fundamental constitutional and convention rights of Hunt Saboteurs Association supporters relating to freedoms to organise, assemble and act as well as their personal rights as autonomous individuals.’

He outlined various transgressions of undercovers, quoting SDS officer HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’:

‘Misleading a court is something done by criminals and government ministers alike – we shouldn’t be squeamish about the ends justifying the means in our own case.’

This casual approach to misleading criminal courts is an affront to the rule of law. Managers knew and consented, and:

‘if ever this Inquiry needed evidence that the SDS was allowed to operate beyond any normal lawful limits, this is it… [SDS] was a political policing unit to which normal lawful limits were simply not recognised or applied.’

The HSA was formed and still exists to prevent the killing of animals in blood sports. Its core activities were and are to take non-violent direct action to prevent such cruelty and to lobby government to enact laws to criminalise and stop activities such as fox-hunting and hare-coursing. Some supporters report illegal hunting to police and provide evidence for prosecutions, there’s nothing inherently unlawful about those core activities.

Opinion polls show the majority of the public is against blood sports and has been throughout at the whole history of the Hunt Saboteurs Association. The Hunting Act passed in 2004, cementing the HSA’s position on the right side of history.

It is a national association with democratic structures, which takes part in national lobbying. Activities against hunts are invariably through local groups.

The HSA has always believed in non-violence. This is a moral and a practical choice. Confrontation or violence are a distraction. To make a hunt ineffective, saboteurs lay false scents, blow hunting horns to draw hounds away, and make noise to cause wild animals to seek safety.

Weatherby notes:

‘Pursuing wild animals with dogs may well not have been unlawful during the period under consideration and neither was disrupting that cruel pursuit in the ways described.’

Conversely, hunt supporters often sought to deter and intimidate saboteurs through organised violence perpetrated by hired thugs. Hunt saboteurs have been killed and sustained serious injuries requiring hospital treatment. This is an important point which Weatherby addressed at some length and in more detail in his written statement.

Violence directed at hunt saboteurs was so severe that the HSA collated these experiences and submitted a written report entitled ‘Public order, private armies: Security guards of British hunts’ to the Home Affairs Select Committee investigating the use of private security firms. There was little subtlety in the campaigns by hunt supporters against hunt saboteurs and the threats were in plain sight.

Undercover officers witnessed the violent attacks on hunt sabs and on occasion reported on where the real threat lay. Managers refer in contemporaneous documentation to the risk of officers being injured by hunt supporters.

HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’ stated:

‘I feared serious assault from terriermen or being shot at by irate farmers more than anything else during my tour.’

In 1992 the British Field Sports Society (BFSS) ran a campaign to encourage hunts to use so-called stewards to deter saboteurs.

In the words of BFSS spokesperson, Nick Herbert:

‘we’re going to start hunting the saboteurs.’

This left little to the imagination.

Herbert went on to become an MP and was policing minister between 2010 and 2012. In that role, he defended undercover officers having sex with women they spied on.

He is now Lord Herbert and chair of the College of Policing, responsible for the authorised professional practice for undercover officers.

In this context, Weatherby examined whether the HSA were a public order threat. An SDS report from 1989 summed it up:

‘From a public order point of view the threat of violence these days comes more from supporters of the hunt rather than from the 20 to 30 saboteurs.’

Why then were the HSA made a target? The answer is politicised bias. Put simply, ‘Those associated with hunting had greater access to the corridors of power than those who opposed hunting.’

Weatherby referred to obvious and key areas of questions the HSA urge the Inquiry to focus on.

Justification

Any such deployments should be subject to precise justification based on a rigorous process, based on evidence properly recorded and regularly reviewed and supervised at a high level.

None of this appears to have occurred. There was no tenable justification for the deployments against the HSA.

Weatherby cited the 1995/1996 SDS annual report:

‘The emphasis that penetration of hunt sabotage groups is a means to an end rather than an end in itself in terms of SDS operations remains valid.’

Thus, from the SDS’s own mouthpiece, it seems their justification for infiltrating the HSA was a speculative attempt to identify people who might be involved in other acts. Could this means to an end infiltration ever be justifiable in principle? The HSA firmly refute that idea.

Proportionality

What proportionality exercises were conducted? Were legitimate aims identified at all? Is there evidence of any significant useful intelligence obtained at the time?

Weatherby notes that even if what he calls the ‘Animal Liberation Front excuse’ were accepted, most so-called ALF activity involved low-level criminal damage caused when rescuing animals or damage perhaps to butchers’ shops.

Instructions and training

What were the instructions to undercover officers? What was their training? What were their limitations, not only generally but on those target activities?

Weatherby pointed to undercover officers taking part in, encouraging or organising serious criminal activities; he notes that a number of the women personally violated in deceitful relationships were hunt saboteurs, and adds:

‘you’ll hear from witnesses who were befriended by undercover officers, they not only went to festivals and abroad with them, but they welcomed them into their own homes and families and introduced them to friends unaware of their true identities.’

Finally, he notes that police bias against hunt sabs often led to unlawful arrests. Many such detentions did not result in charges and not infrequently hunt saboteurs took successful civil claims.

Officers like Lambert, Dines and Coles were also arrested, which raises a number of uncomfortable issues. Did these officers infringe legal privilege? Were these arrests used as a means of enhancing the standing of undercover officers in their deployments? Did undercover officers mislead criminal courts?

‘The Inquiry must not only establish the facts concerning these violations of fundamental rights and affronts to the administration of justice, it must also establish accountability and bring to an end such unacceptable practices.’

5) Sam Jacobs

Sam Jacobs appeared next, on behalf of Sharon Grant OBE (in relation to Bernie Grant) and Stafford Scott (Broadwater Farm Defence Committee)

There is an accompanying written Statement.

Jacobs made a brief oral statement, and referred the Inquiry to wider points made in the opening statement of the co-operating group of non-state non-police core participants, about shocking SDS mismanagement, culture and lack of accountability.

He notes that documents disclosed in this Tranche have important implications for all of his clients, including those whose evidence will be heard in Tranche 3 who, because of restriction orders have not yet had sight of the material.

Targeting

How groups or individuals were selected for targeting by the SDS remains opaque. Managers’ statements shed little light.

Only HN115 offers a detailed account of targets identified by the SDS, following consultation with the Security Service and senior managers from other squads.

Jacobs urges the Inquiry to consider:

‘the interests and concerns of the Metropolitan Police which will have informed the apparently amorphous targeting strategy.’

Like Scobie on Monday, Jacobs gives the example of a Special Branch report from January 1983, ‘Political extremism and a campaign for accountability within the Metropolitan Police’, which makes it plain the police viewed any attempt to bring accountability as subversive in itself.

The subversive aims of the Greater London Council included ensuring the police complaints procedure worked effectively. The report describes attempts to develop monitoring groups as ‘grandiose’, and ‘sinister’ and sought to discredit democratically elected officials as having extremist connections.

Jacobs concludes@

‘It is clear that the very notion of police accountability was viewed as problematic by Special Branch…

‘reporting on these groups and the various justice campaigns in the Tranche 2 period [1983-1992] and beyond was a deliberate objective.’

Sharon Grant OBE

Managers’ witness evidence about reporting on elected officials is inconsistent and has served only to muddy the waters and to raise further concerns.

The 1 June 1988 briefing paper produced for the Security Service’s Management Board on counter subversion refers to F Branch monitoring of various mainstream political groups, including the Labour Party.

This casts doubt on managers’ claims that there should be no active reporting on MPs or that reporting on members of Parliament by the SDS and Special Branch was either discouraged or was simply incidental.

Reports on Bernie Grant and other MPs were frequently supplied to the Security Service. Special Branch had a direct interest in the activities of elected politicians and they did report on their activities.

The 1983 report on police accountability references dozens of elected officials, including Bernie Grant, with (inaccurate) details of their purported political beliefs and allegiances.

The interest of the Metropolitan Police and the SDS appeared to be at its highest when Bernie Grant was critical of policing methods or of the police. The Met is most concerned with its own reputation and using Special Branch reporting to defend itself from criticism.

Sharon Grant has long-held concerns that the Met was the source of unfavourable media stories about her husband and the evidence disclosed to date heightens those concerns.

Stafford Scott

Managers’ evidence has exacerbated Scott’s concerns about why he and the Broadwater Farm Defence Committee were reported on by undercover officers. The Metropolitan Police made it clear that they regarded any campaigns for police accountability and justice to be subversive by their very nature, and Scott was involved in precisely this area of work in his community.

Managers’ statements insist that reporting on such groups was a by-product of reporting on the other political groups, and so was justified in the interests of public order.

However, not one single report on Stafford Scott or of the activities of Broadwater Farm Defence Committee that raises any legitimate concerns about public order, or evidences manipulation of the group by political activists.

Managers approved and submitted reports by undercover officers, yet did not confront or address the racism that was so clearly prevalent. Two of the reports describe speakers at public meetings as ‘negroes’.

HN78 Trevor Morris ‘Anthony “Bobby” Lewis’ is referred to as ‘a coloured potential recruit’.

It is clear that he was regarded as a useful asset, who would be able to obtain access that might not be available to other undercover officers.

HN59 states that managers would edit reports, sometimes removing words or phrases. HN109 states that he had an editorial role over the reports, removing irrelevant or judgmental comments. Yet explicitly racist language was not edited.

Undercovers’ and managers’ constant refrain is that the language used in reports was reflective of its time and should not be judged by today’s standards:

‘yet this is language that is more in tune with the segregated American deep south than London in the 1980s.’

The language and attitude expressed in the reports, which went unchallenged by managers, shows that minorities were regarded as a threat by the Metropolitan Police whenever they sought to organise around issues of justice and accountability.

The opening statement of the Met Commissioner to Tranche 2 Phase 1 described reporting on social justice campaigns, family campaigns and community organisations as ‘indefensible’, resulting from:

‘a critical failure on the part of its managers’.

Scott asks the Chair to be aware that these attitudes and behaviours do not operate in a vacuum, and the critical failures of the SDS managers were also critical failures on the part of the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office, and not just the individuals giving evidence to this Inquiry.

6) Owen Greenhall

Owen Greenhall appeared on behalf of Diane Abbott OBE and Dame Joan Ruddock, who have supplied a written Opening Statement.

Diane Abbott has been a leading anti-racism campaigner for decades. In 1987 she became the first black woman to be an MP, representing Hackney North and Stoke Newington. Re-elected in 2024, she is now the longest-standing continuously serving female MP, the ‘Mother of the House’.

The Right Honourable Dame Joan Ruddock PC is an anti-apartheid campaigner and former chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). She was MP for Deptford from 1987 to 2015 and held several ministerial positions, including Minister for Women, Minister for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Minister for Energy and Climate Change.

Greenhall explained that both Abbott and Ruddock were subject to SDS reporting and they share a number of concerns (expressed in their opening to Tranche 2 Phase 1 earlier this year and expanded here)
(i) The targeting of MPs and the adequacy of disclosure.
(ii) Concerns over racial discrimination in the activities of the SDS.
(iii) Concerns over the use of information gathered by the SDS.
(iv) Procedural issues related to the Inquiry.

The targeting of MPs

Reporting on MPs was a central concern in the creation of this Inquiry, and was debated in Parliament in March 2015.

The response from the Minister for Policing Criminal Justice and Victims, Mike Penning, was that he would:

‘do everything I can to make sure that the documents are released… We have to find out exactly what went on.’

Spying on MPs raises serious concerns over the erosion of the Wilson doctrine against police surveillance of Members of Parliament, inappropriate collection of personal information and interference with the democratic process. Greenhall pointed out:

‘It’s notable that only Labour MPs appear to have been targeted.’

Former undercover officer Peter Francis has revealed that Special Branch files on MPs were typically ‘very extensive’ and often contained personal and private information.

HN78 Trevor Morris ‘Anthony “Bobby” Lewis’ was asked whether he ever saw a file on an elected politician. He replied:

‘I was going to say hundreds. Many, many, many… they are all marked ‘Secret’… probably top secret.’

Trevor Morris published a book ‘Black Ops: The Incredible True Story of a British secret agent’ using the pseudonym Carlton King.

Greenhall quoted from that book:

‘It is the job of the Security Service to vet and assess senior politicians; the Branch assisted with this duty where and when required. When the Branch came across intelligence relating to politicians (through its agents, desk officers or SDS operatives et cetera)… it would pass this intelligence to the Security Service.’

Yet very little of this reporting has actually been disclosed by the Inquiry to date (when questioning Morris they didn’t menton his book and later absurdly said MI5 had forced them not to admit he was in fact Carlton King).

Core participants ask that these discrepancies are investigated to ensure that the Inquiry uncovers the full truth of what took place.

Racial discrimination in the activities of the SDS

Greenhall quoted Home Office guidelines produced right at the start of this Tranche, in 1984:

‘Special Branch investigations into subversive activities in particularly sensitive fields, for example in educational establishments, in trade unions, in industry and among racial minorities, must be conducted with particular care so as to avoid any suggestion that Special Branches are investigating matters involving the legitimate expression of views…

‘It is not the function of the force Special Branch to investigate individuals and groups merely because their policies are unpalatable, or because they are highly critical of the police, or because they want to transform the present system of police accountability.’

Yet there was extensive reporting on racial justice campaigns and police accountability issues.

Indeed, Managers appear to have been unaware of the guidelines. Annual reports for the SDS indicate that campaigns on racial issues were a key aspect of targeting, the Anti-Nazi League, a variety of local anti-racist and anti-fascist groups and predominantly black family justice campaigns regularly feature.

The purported justification – concern that these groups might be taken over by other organisations – is racist, assuming black-led organisations could not preserve their own independence.

The use of information gathered by the SDS

Throughout the Tranche 2 period (1983-1992), the SDS worked hand in glove with the Security Service. One primary purpose of the Security Service was vetting. The SDS played a crucial part in this.

‘Witness Y’ accepts:

‘it is in my view highly likely that some (possibly most) of the information sought from SDS officers was sought in order to be used for vetting purposes’

Security Service influence on targeting is confirmed by SDS managers. HN115 Tony Wait states:

‘The Security Service influenced our targeting decisions quite a lot. Most of our deployments were in agreement with them. We would always seek their views before deciding on new targets.’

Security Service requests were often coupled to political and diplomatic concerns at the time (see our report on the Opening Statement on behalf of CND).

As Carlton King, aka HN78 Trevor Morris, writes:

‘the Branch was only one cog in the British state’s domestic national security apparatus, the Security Service (MI5) was an even more central component, as was the Home Office, the judiciary, the press and of course the politicians, in particular cabinet-level government ministers who sat at the centre of this machine and could therefore tweak it to their advantage.’

That past involvement coming in one of the largest anti-nuclear movements could inhibit the future career of those concerned is reminiscent of the authoritarian regimes which the SDS and Security Services claimed to be fighting against.

Greenhall therefore asked the Inquiry to:

‘fully explore the use that was made of SDS reports for vetting purposes, particularly in relation to politicians and civil servants.’

Procedural issues

Greenhall echoed the concerns raised by many other core participants.

‘The disclosure and Rule 9 process for Tranche 2 has been heavily delayed for the non-state core participants and that has had the effect of marginalising their impact and in many respects excluding them from effective participation.

‘The impact of these delays has almost exclusively been to the detriment of non-state core participants… limitations on attendance at hearings has hindered the engagement of the core participants in the Inquiry…

‘The Inquiry is asked to ensure that procedural issues do not reduce the accountability of those responsible for the SDS… [and] to take steps to minimise the prejudice to non-state core participants affected by the delays.’

7) Fiona Murphy KC

After lunch, we heard from Fiona Murphy KC, representing ‘TBS’ and ‘Category F’ Core Participants (people deceived into relationships by undercover officers)

‘TBS’

Murphy spoke first on behalf of TBS, whose mother ‘Jacqui’ had a long-term sexual relationship with HN10 Bob Lambert.

TBS was born in 1985 and his father, posing as a committed animal rights activist using the name ‘Bob Robinson’ (an identity Lambert stole from a dead child), was involved in his life until 1988. Then he disappeared, abandoning TBS, who did not learn of the true identity of his father for a further 24 years. He has provided a written statement to the Inquiry.

TBS has given powerful testimony, setting out the difficult process of reconciling himself to his biological father’s absence, his tragic attempts to learn more about the fiction that was ‘Bob Robinson’, to identify with that fiction, and how TBS has struggled to come to terms with the reality that his understanding of his parentage was based on a lie.

TBS complains that the treatment of him by the Inquiry has not been fair, has not been consistent, has not been predictable and has not facilitated him in being heard in relation to decisions that affect him.

He aligns with the remarks of other core participants about issues arising from delay and disclosure. The unorthodox approach to the marshalling of evidence taken by this public inquiry runs the significant risk of the truth being obscured.

The Inquiry also chose to limit TBS’s legal funding, locking his lawyers out from considering the evidence of civilian witnesses, including the evidence of his own mother.

‘These experiences have undermined TBS’s confidence in your Inquiry, sir, and he endorses the analysis of the non-state non-police core participants opening statement that this is an Inquiry in crisis.’

The Commissioner’s responsibility

TBS has outlined in his witness statement:

‘The Metropolitan Police Service do not seem as an organisation to accept that … they had responsibility to try to minimise the impact, to hold their hands up, to accept that they had allowed a toxic culture to develop which led to these issues. To acknowledge the wrongs done and to provide resources to help the victims, such as me, to access specialist psychiatric and psychological help.

‘It feels scary that as an organisation the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] were happy for me to go through my whole life without knowing the true identity of my biological father. And if it were not for the work of activists and journalists I would probably never have known the truth or had the chance to meet my biological father.

The Metropolitan Police Service simply left me alone to deal with all of this, both before and after I learned of Bob Lambert’s true identity.’

The Commissioner of the Met apologised to TBS in his opening statement for the distress he has suffered growing up not knowing his true parentage, for the fact that the Metropolitan Police should not have allowed Bob Lambert to behave in the way that he did, and committing to ensure that TBS receives answers to his questions during this Inquiry.

The apology addresses Bob Lambert’s conduct, it does not address the organisational responsibility of those who knew of TBS’s existence in the years and decades following his birth. It does not address the Commissioner’s own failings in relation to TBS in the period leading to and following Bob Lambert’s exposure.

TBS invites the Metropolitan Police to provide a corporate evidential witness statement deposed in full compliance with the Commissioner’s duty of candour, addressing the chronology of the organisation’s awareness of the developing public interest in the SDS in general and Bob Lambert in particular.

When did the Met became aware that there was a significant likelihood that Bob Lambert’s true identity would be disclosed publicly? When was it obvious that Bob Lambert’s identity would become known to TBS? What decisions were taken regarding the need to notify Bob Lambert’s identity to TBS before his mother pieced the evidence together from press reports?

Lambert was exposed on 15 October 2011. He made apologies on 23 October to London Greenpeace and to Belinda Harvey, who he had deceived into a relationship. He made no mention of Jacqui or TBS. He made no effort to contact them.

Eight months later, by chance, Jacqui stumbled on the truth when she saw an article in the Daily Mail on 12 June 2012.

‘It was unconscionable for the Metropolitan Police Service to leave TBS and his mother to find out the truth in the manner in which they did.’

Murphy set out the legal framework on the Rights of the Child, citing pronouncements at the highest judicial level that the best interests of children are not served by the concealment of truth. On the contrary, it causes mental and psychological suffering which does not diminish with age.

Knowledge of one’s true identity positively contributes to personal development, to one’s sense of self and there are also of course important practical consequences, including in relation to knowledge of potential hereditary medical conditions.

Had the Metropolitan Police sought advice at the time of TBS’s birth or at any stage subsequently, they would have been advised that notifying TBS of his true parentage was in his best interests.

TBS will learn facts about his childhood and early development during this Inquiry. The decision to restrict his legal funding is therefore particularly cruel. TBS has had to suppress his identification with the non-existent ‘Bob Robinson’ and to come to terms with the true identity of Bob Lambert.

In his own words:

‘The father that disappeared was a fabrication, and I’ve had to grapple with deconstructing that myth that my life was built around.’

The impact upon TBS of this deception has been profound and it endures to this day.

Murphy highlighted some details from the evidence, such as the decision to obscure Bob Lambert’s identity and whereabouts at the time when ‘Jacqui’ was seeking to have TBS adopted by her new husband, misleading social services and the family courts. The name of the individual who did this has been restricted by the Inquiry, preventing publication.

She also notes:

‘Bob Lambert’s deployment as “Bob Robinson” continued for a further three years after TBS’s birth, but that he was permitted to return in a managerial role. Despite his having demonstrated in these starkest terms that his professionalism and propriety could not be relied upon and that he posed a significant risk of ongoing harm to those among whom he was deployed.’

Murphy then made a chilling appeal to the Inquiry:

‘There is evidence, sir, that we ask you to consider with care that there were other children born of these abusive relationships.

‘At a bare minimum, sir, it is the Commissioner’s responsibility to assure you that no other human being is living a life with the truth obscured from him or her as it was from TBS for more than two decades.’

Families whose loved ones’ identites were stolen

‘Category F’ are the families whose loved ones’ identities were stolen by the Special Demonstration Squad and its officers. They have also provided a written Statement.

The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police publicly apologised to the families on Monday, adding that misconduct by officers while using the dead children’s identities was disrespectful to their memories, and the Commissioner has apologised to all the families for this and for the Metropolitan Police’s failure to stop that misconduct from occurring.

Murphy noted that the apology was welcome, but detailed the inadequacies of the Met’s response:

‘What is apparent is that the risk to families from such events was never considered, although it ought to have been. This is but one example of the SDS’s deplorable myopia.’

Senior officers within the Metropolitan Police were fully aware of the practice but did not take any steps to stop it for two decades, nor to close the SDS.

Few officers turned their minds to the inevitable impact on the families or the devastation that this practice has wrought on their families, already made vulnerable by the premature loss of a child or a young adult, and how the memories they all cherish have been tainted and tarnished by it.

The families participating in this tranche covering the period between 1983 and 1992 are:

• Frank Bennett and Honor Robson in relation to the theft and abuse of their brother Michael Hartley’s identity.
• Faith Mason, in relation to her son Neil Martin.
• Marva and Judy Lewis in relation to their brother Anthony Lewis.
• Kaden Blake, in relation to her brother Matthew Rayner.

They represent only a small proportion of the victims of identity theft by the Metropolitan Police in this period.

The families want to understand the extent of the intrusion into their own lives and how the identities were used.

They are concerned that in taking a child’s identity the officers went on to research and use details from the families’ private and family lives, so as to test their identity choice and to build their ‘legends’.

Meanwhile, no care was given to the risks to which the families were thereby themselves exposed.

Officers went far beyond acceptable conduct, seducing women, inveigling themselves into the lives of others, attending parties and weddings and even celebrating the birthdays of dead children as if they were their own. They committed criminal offences and appeared in court as witnesses or defendants in the names of dead children’s names.

They undermined lawful and legitimate protest movements. For the Marva Lewis and her family it was especially bitter to learn that HN78 Trevor Morris ‘Anthony “Bobby” Lews’ sought to undermine campaigns for racial justice while:

‘pretending to be my brother… he had stolen the identity of a deceased young black boy and his work undercover contributed to undermining the investigation into the racist murder of another black boy, Stephen Lawrence.’

‘The restricted family’

The families registered their regret and disappointment with the Inquiry. They are concerned that onerous restriction orders over historical practices are impeding the Inquiry’s investigations.

Many officers continue to enjoy anonymity, to the dismay of the families. This means it is the dead child’s identity with which their misconduct will be forever associated, and not the identity of the officer who was responsible.

The Chair has said that any attempt to challenge the restrictions, which were applied without reference to the families, is ‘discouraged’ and:

‘would almost certainly result in the existing restrictions being upheld… [and it’s] very unlikely that the Inquiry would extend funding for the purposes of any such scrutiny’.

The families have not been placed on an equal footing to the police core participants, and the Inquiry is failing to comply with the principle of open justice.

These problems are at their most acute in relation to ‘the restricted family’, a family who have been forced to participate in this Inquiry anonymously by reason of a restriction order covering their own name, to protect the identity of the officer who stole it.

They have been silenced and disempowered, denied the opportunity to speak openly about the trauma they have suffered, and their hopes that this Inquiry might expose the truth and achieve a measure of accountability have rapidly faded.

8) Kirsten Heaven

Our last speaker of the day, Kirsten Heaven appeared on behalf of ‘the co-operating group of NPSCPs’ – this means all the Non-Police Non-State Core Participants in this Inquiry, whose lawyers try to work together to represent everyone’s shared interests.

They produced a lengthy written Opening Statement for Tranche 2 Phase 2, in addition to the individual and group statements many of these people have made.

Initial observations

She pointed out that at the same time as making various apologies for the actions of undercover officers and ‘systemic management failings’ in yesterday’s Opening Statement, the Met also sought to persuade Mitting that the Inquiry should really now focus its attention on what they call the ‘primary question’: whether or not the spycops deployments were justified, rather than exploring the way these undercovers behaved.

She said:

‘Put simply, abhorrent behaviour and systemic managerial failure are matters that clearly go to the heart of the question of justification’

The Met are ‘wrong on this issue’, she added.

She then reminded Mitting of how the Investigatory Powers Tribunal dealt with this issue in the case brought by Kate Wilson (one of the women deceived by spycop EN12 Mark Kennedy ‘Mark Stone’).

The ensuing judgment from that case was highly critical of the ‘broad, open-ended authorisations’ used by the spycops units. These deployments were speculative ‘fishing operations’ and resulted in extensive collateral intrusion. They cannot be justified.

‘Abhorrent, abusive, cruel and morally repugnant’

The four undercover officers that we’ll hear most about in this set of hearings have still not shown any real remorse, for the impact of what Heaven described as ‘the most abhorrent, abusive, cruel and morally repugnant behaviour in the history of the SDS’.

For example, HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’ continues to deny that he – as a 32 year old married man – groomed a vulnerable teenager, Jessica, into a sexual relationship, pretending to be much younger than he actually was. The Met accept that ‘Jessica’ has been telling the truth.

The Inquiry must be sceptical about any evidence it hears from these men. Heaven continued by skewering the laughable idea that these spycops might still have reputations worth protecting.

Coles has claimed that ‘Jessica’ had a ‘father issue’ and was ‘obsessed’ with him. Since his identity was uncovered, by activists, multiple women have come forward to report similar stories of his creepy, predatory, ‘sex pest’ behaviour. He has made denigrating comments about some of these women too.

He was a married man, supposedly trying for a baby with his wife at the same time as grooming and sexually abusing a much younger activist.

HN10 Bob Lambert, after leaving the police, tried to reinvent himself as a respectable academic lecturer.

Coles, described as ‘another aspiring novelist’, went on to become a Tory party councillor in Peterborough, Deputy Police & Crime Commissioner for Cambridgeshire, and even a school governor.

At one point he endorsed a campaign to protect young people from sexual exploitation despite being a perpetrator of it himself.

Unlike Lambert, Coles did not receive an MBE or a Police Commendation for his work in the SDS, and is known to have complained about not being given the recognition he felt he deserved for his ‘sacrifice’.

‘An elite undercover officer’

We have heard about a ‘cabal’ centred around Lambert, a group of men who saw themselves as a superior elite group within a special secret squad, fiercely loyal to each other.

By all accounts, Lambert himself is an over-entitled, self-promoting, arrogant man, described by HN109 as a ‘charismatic attention seeker’ and by former undercover colleague HN11 Mike Chitty ‘Mike Blake’ as ‘a professional liar’.

He has shown no remorse for the cruel and abusive deception of ‘Jacqui’, or the three other women he had relationships with, claiming now that he did not intend to ‘target’ them, just succumbed to ‘weakness and irresponsibility’.

The ‘Category H’ Opening Statement suggests that Lambert may well have been motivated by a desire to seek out extra-marital sex with a younger woman, and notes that he has not returned the awards he was given for his contributions to policing.

Lambert has continued to use his skills of ‘deception and duplicity’ in his academic career. Despite stating that the animal rights movement was a ‘very serious business’, suggesting that these were dangerous people, he used to take his baby son along to meetings with these activists.

Lambert is known as a manipulative figure, who has already used a range of tactics to deflect criticism of his unethical behaviour and try to control the narrative. He is likely to go to great lengths to defend his reputation, and may well try to feign contrition. Hopefully Mitting will keep this in mind when he hears Lambert give evidence in December.

Lambert has hinted that he might publish a book about his experiences one day, and Heaven suggests that the Inquiry investigate the existence of a draft.

Rather than seeking to understand the serious impact the spycops’ actions had on those they targeted, Lambert seems to have treated many aspects of the SDS as a big joke. Even HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’, probably his closest friend in the unit, said that you don’t get a pointed answer from Lambert ‘unless you ask him a pointed question’.

Lambert rose through the ranks to become an SDS manager, then left the force in 2007. Sir Ian Blair, the Met’s Commissioner at the time, attended his retirement party. We still don’t know how much he and other senior cops knew about the way that Lambert operated, and if they bothered asking questions to find out how the SDS was obtaining its intelligence.

It’s all very well for police lawyers to turn up at this Inquiry with yet more ‘apologies’ for the spycops’ abuses, but we need to hear evidence from these senior officers.

‘Rules are make to be broken’

Dines and Lambert were very close, and frequently praised each other. They seem to have had a lot in common, including a deep-seated misogyny and lack of respect for activists, especially women, or their own wives.

Other officers say that HN5 John Dines was very competitive, a ‘gong hunter’, who ‘wanted to be a gold star SDS officer’ and sought notoriety. It seems likely that this last wish will be granted.

Dines made many disparaging remarks about his time undercover (saying he found it ‘unpleasant, miserable and boring’) and about those he targeted, including Helen Steel. He professed to be in love with her, but coldly stated that he ‘couldn’t give a rats’ about the impact on her of his deception and the way in which he disappeared from her life.

Like Lambert, Dines received a police commendation. He did not want his wife to attend the ceremony in 1992.

Dines has refused to provide oral evidence to this Inquiry, so will not be appearing during these hearings.

Back in 2003, the Met paid out a huge sum of money to enable Dines to relocate his family from New Zealand to Australia. This was due to their fears that Helen Steel – after years of dogged research on her part – would succeed in tracking him down.

It seems that the police knew enough about his misconduct to realise that this could have resulted in a civil claim against the force. The 2003 BBC ‘True Spies’ documentary series had helped to confirm her suspicions about Dines and his true identity.

As well as demanding money for relocation costs, and compensation for the effect on his new career (as an extremely well paid barrister, who often took on cases defending radical activists in the New Zealand courts) Dines asked his former colleagues at the Yard to write him references and help him find new work in Australia.

The fourth officer discussed by Heaven was HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’. He also deceived a woman, Denise Fuller, into a romantic and sexual relationship that lasted around one year. Denise is due to give evidence on 6 January 2025.

Rayner knew that fellow officer Andy Coles had tried to sexually assault a woman, but did not report this incident to the SDS managers.

Loyalty and lies

We’ll be hearing evidence from some of the unit’s managers later in this Tranche (in January 2025).

When SDS officers have spoken publicly about the unit in the past (for example, in ‘True Spies’) others clearly saw this as a ’betrayal’ of the SDS’s secret status.

Heaven commented earlier about officers being ‘selective’ in their evidence and what they chose to reveal to this Inquiry. It seems that many of them still have a strong sense of loyalty to each other.

Their employers, the Met police, have now made it very clear that they consider some of the problems associated with the unit to have been caused by the managers’:

‘failure to lead the SDS properly and effectively’.

They have been admissions of failings in terms of welfare, discipline and misconduct; a lack of proper training; a lack of scrutiny or oversight; a failure to maintain professional standards or to ensure that reporting was appropriate or ethical.

Heaven points out that SDS managers should not allow any perceived loyalty – towards either the Met or the officers they managed – prevent them from providing honest answers to this Inquiry. Some undercovers (including Lambert and Coles) have already made comments critical of their managers, in an attempt to shift blame away from themselves.

One of the managers that we’re due to hear from, at the very end of this set of hearings on 22-23 January 2025, is known to us only as HN109. He applied for anonymity in this Inquiry, and was granted it.

We have since learnt that his reasons for doing so were not any worries about activists tracking him down, but concerns, even in 2023, about the hostility of officers who he had managed, and the risk of them ‘causing trouble’ for him and his family.

We heard evidence about the ‘Scutt incident’ in the Tranche 2 Phase 1 hearings a few months ago. Bob Lambert threatened and physically assaulted HN109, in front of other members of the SDS. It will be interesting to hear what all these managers have to say about each other and how effective or ineffective their individual styles of management were.

Heaven makes it clear that this will be the time for SDS managers to call in the ‘insurance policy’ and make it clear just how much senior officers knew, or didn’t know, about the unit and its officers’ behaviour.

Carlton King, self-styled ‘Black James Bond’

Heaven then moved on to talk about ‘Carlton King’, an image of whom was shown on the screen.

Described as an ‘author and prolific podcaster’, it is unsurprising that a member of the public recognised that this was an alias being used by a man called Trevor Morris, who had been an undercover officer in the SDS, before going on to work in the secret services.

As his costume shows, has cultivated a somewhat ‘glamorous’ image of himself.

As well as producing a regular podcast, he has published a book (‘Black Ops: the Incredible True Story of a British Secret Agent’) which contains an entire chapter about the SDS and more musings about the workings of Special Branch.

He makes no secret of the fact that he infiltrated a number of groups during his deployment, and spied on the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.

The Inquiry presumably knew about this, but chose not to share this decidedly pertinent information with Core Participants, or the wider public, and when questioned, claimed that Morris needed the protection of a Restriction Order.

Since then, Mitting has made a ruling on this, and it is clear that MI5 and/or MI6 have been involved and told Mitting that he can neither confirm nor deny that Trevor Morris and ‘Carlton King’ are in fact the same man.

Heaven pointed out the obvious absurdity of this approach. The book is on sale to the public, and was published with the agreement of the ‘intelligence community’ and Home Office.

‘Carlton King’ has appeared in mainstream media reports sharing his opinions about events such as the Manchester Arena bombing. Comments left below such reports make it obvious that commenters knew of his true identity.

‘Jenny’ and ‘Bea’ have both been clear that they did not consent to sex with Trevor Morris, and consider it rape.

Morris has been utterly unrepentant about deceiving them in this way. It is noted that at no time (in either his book or podcast) has he divulged that he used his false identity to trick women into having sex with him.

Although he has done a great deal of self-promotion and publicly shared a lot of stories about his time as a spy, when Morris gave evidence to this Inquiry he claimed to suffer from problems with his memory and recall of the past.

Heaven pointed out that there is a risk of this Inquiry’s findings being undermined if it is not able to consider all the evidence that exists, and that the impact on the spycops’ victims could be ‘devastating’.

When he appeared in Tranch 2 Phase 1 hearings, Morris made many uncorroborated, outlandish allegations and displayed a degree of indifference towards the women whose human rights he had abused. Heaven suggested that perhaps his ‘nonchalance about such issues can now be understood better’ by his time in the security services. However this post-deployment history has not been officially disclosed to NSCPs, not even to the two women he deceived.

Understanding the ‘customers’

After this, she went on to discuss some other ‘procedural matters’: information that the Non State group recommend that the Inquiry seek to obtain to help it understand the true motivation and utility of SDS reporting (including more information about the ‘customers’ of this intelligence, and the relationships between the SDS/ Special Branch and others) These may include, for example, private companies, employers, foreign governments, other police forces in the UK and elsewhere.

After this, there were a few closing comments, about the delays in disclosure; the concerns raised by many NSCPs about the Inquiry being in a state of ‘crisis’ (which resulted in a recent letter to the Home Office, and request to meet with the Home Secretary).

Those who were spied upon are being told that they will have a very short time frame (potentially as little as two weeks) between receiving hundreds of jumbled pages of disclosure and having to respond to the Inquiry. This is extremely stressful, and inherently unfair.

She finished by asking that the Inquiry laid out the steps it proposed to take to prevent any ’further loss of confidence and trust’ in the process.

PRESS RELEASE

The Undercover Policing Inquiry is back this week to hear much-delayed evidence about some of the most controversial events in the history of the highly criticised spycops unit, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). Live hearings begin this Monday 21 October at 2pm, and will look at deployments from 1983-1992.

Witnesses, victims and campaigners will rally outside the International Dispute Resolution Centre at 1pm and will be available to comment on the upcoming evidence.

These much-awaited hearings were twice postponed by an Inquiry beset by the demands of the police and the Security Service to keep material out of the public gaze.

‘Jessica’ from Police Spies Out of Lives commented:

‘The glimpses we saw during Opening Statements of the evidence to come gives us an idea why the State wants to keep this stuff secret: these officers were sexual predators and Met Police hid the truth from the children they fathered.

‘Undercover officers acted as agent provocateurs. They rigged the justice system and lied to the courts, spying on defence campaigns. They didn’t just report on activists, they reported on lawyers including the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer and Circuit Judge, Timothy Greene.

‘We already know the SDS was out of control, but that reached new heights in the 1980s, and that is the evidence we are about to hear.’

Officers in this tranche of hearings are accused of orchestrating and committing serious crimes. There is compelling evidence that the Metropolitan Police colluded with the highest levels of government to subvert democracy, and they were working with companies like McDonalds, effectively acting as corporate spies.

On 14 October the police issued yet more apologies to victims of their abuses. Both the Met and the Inquiry concede that the police behaviour was unjustifiable. Nevertheless, incredibly the Met have asked the Inquiry to conclude that some of their spying could be justified in this tranche.

For more details read on & follow UCPI T2P2 evidence hearings which will run into January 2025.

Explosive New Evidence

Police officers were sexual predators

Many undercover officers in this era, and all the officers targeting animal rights campaigns, deceived women into sexual relationships during their deployments.

On Monday we heard Counsel to the Inquiry describe officer John Dines‘s ‘cold, calculating emotional and sexual exploitation’ during his deployment.

We also heard from numerous women about the unwanted attentions of spycop Andy Coles. Fellow officer ‘Matt Rayner’ confirmed a woman at the time described Coles to him as ‘creepy’:

‘it felt like she described him with a shudder.’

The Inquiry will hear evidence in this tranche of how 32-year-old Coles (later a Conservative Councillor for Peterborough) groomed and deceived 19-year ‘Jessica’ into her first ever sexual relationship, while he was in his undercover role (a fact accepted by the Metropolitan Police).

Charlotte Kilroy KC, on behalf of women deceived into sexual relationships, described how officers ‘indulged themselves in a wide range of fantasies’ during deployments that ‘unleashed a range of dark behaviour’ for which they faced no real consequences.

Officers fathered children and the Met hid the truth

Bob Lambert notoriously fathered a child whilst undercover. In a deeply moving opening statement on behalf of his son, we heard how ‘TBS’ was born in 1985 and abandoned by Lambert.

Left in the dark about his father’s true identity for 24 years, he tragically sought to learn more about the fiction that was ‘Bob Robinson’.

He said:

‘as an organisation the Metropolitan Police Service were happy for me to go through my whole life without knowing the true identity of my biological father.’

He points to evidence there were other children born of abusive relationships:

‘At a bare minimum, sir, it is the Commissioner’s responsibility to assure you that no other human being is living a life with the truth obscured from him or her as it was from ‘TBS’ for more than two decades.’

Officers committed serious crimes

Numerous witnesses allege undercover officer Bob Lambert placed an improvised incendiary device in the Harrow branch of Debenham’s on the night of 11 July 1987.

On Tuesday, James Wood KC told the Inquiry:

‘CCTV from the Harrow store was recorded as having been obtained by police. The original exhibits officer has a clear recollection of Special Branch officers attending and taking custody of the exhibits in the case. After this point the CCTV appears to have gone missing.’

Did the Metropolitan Police set fire to a department store and conspire to cover it up?

This tranche of the Inquiry will examine evidence of this and multiple other instances of police deceiving the courts, nobbling the criminal justice system to ensure their officers were not brought to trial, posing as friends and supporters to visit defendants in prison, spying on justice and defence campaigns, and violating legal professional privilege to report on strategies for trials.

Police colluded with government to subvert democracy

On Monday James Scobie KC delivered an Opening Statement on behalf of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), highlighting the ‘evidential void’ surrounding the decision to target CND.

At the time, an SDS manager documented CND targeting decisions ‘coming from his masters.’

Those masters were not MI5. National Archives releases from 1983 show a government scared of losing the battle of public opinion on disarmament. The Prime Minister’s office was devising ways of neutralising CND; Special Branch were engaging directly with the highest levels of government and Margaret Thatcher was making direct and specific requests.

It seems MI5 let the government down by rightly refusing to cooperate on party political issues targetting law-abiding groups. The evidence now suggests that the Met Police stepped into that void.

On Tuesday, we also heard from lawyers representing Sharon Grant OBE, Diane Abbott MP and Dame Joan Ruddock about how police also spied on elected Members of Parliament on the Left, raising further concerns about racist discrimination and police interference with the democratic process.

Police acted as corporate spies

Also on Tuesday, the Inquiry heard directly from Dave Morris on behalf of the McLibel Support Campaign about how SDS officer Bob Lambert was a co-author of the original ‘What’s Wrong With McDonald’s?’ flyer, and how the SDS blatantly interfered with the legal process to ensure that Lambert’s successor, John Dines, was not named on the ensuing libel writ.

Dines reported to his bosses Keir Starmer’s confidential legal advice to defendants in what became the longest trial in English history.

James Wood KC also expressed concern at the level of information sharing between undercover officers and corporate spies and the subsequent use of this information in civil proceedings.

Kirsten Heaven KC summed up her statement on behalf of cooperating non-state core participants with a call for the Inquiry to investigate the:

‘more controversial recipients of SDS reporting. These include, for example, private companies, employers and foreign governments… [or] departments of state being customers of SDS reporting such as the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and the office of the Prime Minister.’

Police apologists seek to justify their spying

The Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police issued yet more apologies on Monday, to Bob Lambert’s abandoned son ‘TBS’, and to women deceived into sexual relationships; to the family of Michael Hartley for stealing his identity and to the families of Rolan Adams and Trevor Monerville for targeting black family justice campaigns.

They also apologised for the tone and nature of their reporting; and for the ‘culture of impunity’ created within the SDS.

However, despite apparently accepting that the conduct of their officers was unjustifiable the Met still sought to justify their actions, claiming that although in practice SDS’s deployments were marred by misconduct, there was still a justification for covert infiltration in this tranche, because it included spying on ‘militant animal rights’.

Kirsten Heaven KC made clear in her Opening Statement that the police are wrong:

‘Put simply abhorrent behaviour and systemic managerial failure are matters that clearly go to the heart of the question of justification…SDS managers directed undercover officers to engage in speculative deployments characterized by extensive collateral intrusion.

‘They knew UCOs [undercover officers] were involved in criminal activity and taking on positions of responsibility, that they were cohabiting with activists and engaging in duplicitous sexual relationships.

‘SDS managers even directed undercover officers to mislead the court and facilitate miscarriages of justice. Many of these behaviours have been defended by undercover officers in this Inquiry as being essential to doing their job.’

Invoking the Judgment of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal and the Inquiry’s own Interim Report, Heaven made clear:

‘the widespread fishing expeditions engaged in by [the SDS] could never have been justified even despite the so called “militant aspects” of the animal rights movement.’

Core Participants who were spied on for their involvement in animal rights campaigning have responded with a statement.

---

NOTES:
1. The UCPI was established in 2015. It is investigating undercover policing operations including secret political policing by the SDS and NPOIU, spying on more than 1000 left-wing political groups between 1968 and 2014. Hearings can be attended in person and some will be broadcast on the Inquiry Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@undercoverpolicinginquiry9441/streams

2.  Hearings are being held at the IDRC, 1 Paternoster Ln, London EC4M 7BQ, United Kingdom. Opposite St Paul’s Cathedral. The rally is supported by:
• Police Spies Out of Lives (PSOOL): www.policespiesoutoflives.org.uk
• Undercover Research Group (URG)
• The Monitoring Group (TMG): www.tmg-uk.org
• Blacklist Support Group (BSG): www.hazards.org/blacklistblog/

3.  Read Kilroy’s full Category H Opening Statement here. Women deceived into sexual relationships will give evidence on 26 November 2024 (Belinda Harvey), 27 November 2024 (Helen Steel), 28 November 2024 (‘Jacqui’) and 12 December 2024 (‘Jessica’).

4. Read TBS’s full opening statement here. His mother ‘Jacqui’ will give live evidence on 28 November.

5. Evidence of serious criminality by officers such as Bob Lambert and Matt Rayner will emerge throughout these hearings. Lambert will give evidence himself from 2-5 Dec 2024 and Rayner from 7-9 Jan 2025

6. Read Scobie’s full statement here. The SDS officers involved have refused to give evidence to this Inquiry. Read the full statement for Sharon Grant here and Diane Abbott and Dame Joan Ruddock here.

7. Read the full statement by Dave Morris on behalf of the McLibel Support campaign here. Morris will give evidence on 5 November 2024.

8.  These apologies are added to those made back in July for targeting anti-racist and justice campaigns. You can read the full statement on behalf of the Commissioner here.

9. Read the full statement on behalf of ‘Category F’ families here.

10. Richard Adams and John Burke-Monerville will both be giving evidence on 24 October 2024.

11.  IPT ruling in Wilson v MPS: https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/wilson-v-mps/

12. Undercover Policing Inquiry Tranche 1 Interim report: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/undercover-policing-inquiry-tranche-1-interim-report

A protest and press briefing will be held outside the Inquiry venue on the opening day of in-person hearings, 1pm on 21 October 2024, at International Dispute Resolution Centre, 1 Paternoster Lane, St. Paul’s, London, EC4M 7BQ.

The legal team working for the public inquiry into Britain’s political secret police recently condemned the controversial spying. Next week – 20th to 22nd February – the government, police and victims will respond.

The Undercover Policing Inquiry into the highly controversial and now totally discredited secret undercover policing units that infiltrated or reported on over 1,000 left-wing organisations, black family justice campaigns, trades unions, and social and environmental campaigns since 1968 – has reached an important milestone.

Next week, (Monday 20th to Wednesday 22nd February) there will be three days of presentations to conclude ‘Tranche 1’ of the Inquiry’s evidence, examining spying from 1968-1982).

The Inquiry will hear closing submissions summing up what has been learned so far about the secret and unlawful operations, the shocking tactics employed from the start, and how this was backed and covered up for decades at the highest level of successive governments.

In a devastating blow to the Metropolitan Police and the reputations of former senior police officers, as well as the Home Office civil servants and politicians who oversaw them, the Inquiry’s own legal team have concluded that the authorities ‘should have decided to disband’ the whole operation decades ago.

NEW HEARINGS

Next week’s hearings will be broadcast live on YouTube, with statements presented by the Inquiry Legal Team, the Secretary of State, the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, and lawyers acting for the range of non-State non-police Core Participants targeted.

Full details of the schedule for the presentation of the Tranche 1 Closing Statements, 20th to 22nd February, are on the Inquiry website (Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3). The written submissions will be made public on the day they are read out.

The hearings are a watershed moment as it’s a review of what has been achieved so far by this very slow moving, controversial and expensive Inquiry (£60m costs was the last official estimate).

The Inquiry, originally due to finish in 2018, is now due to be completed by 2026, but preliminary conclusions regarding the period 1968-1982 ( ‘Tranche 1’) will be made in an Interim Report by the Chair, Sir John Mitting, later this year (forecast to be this summer).

It has been demonstrated that the entire undercover policing operation since 1968, led by the Metropolitan Police, has been a scandalous politically motivated attack on progressive campaigns and their members, carried out mainly for and at the behest of the Security Service. Recently disclosed documents have revealed even further the institutional racism within the Metropolitan Police.

CATALOGUE OF ABUSE

It has been demonstrated by the evidence presented at the Inquiry that the surveillance was conducted without any ethical considerations regarding the severe impacts it had on freedom of expression or personal privacy.

The tactics included invading people’s homes and lives, the abuse of women, stealing deceased children’s identities, spying on children, infiltrating family justice campaigns , the blacklisting of trade unionists, taking positions of influence and power within organisations targeted, and brazen interference with the justice system which led to unfair trials and wrongful convictions.

We now know that most, if not all, of the Special Branch reports were copied to MI5. These practices were all signed off by senior civil servants and was a closely guarded secret at the highest level of Government.

Thanks to the campaigners, the victims and lawyers who have worked so hard to expose all this, the shocking reality of this surveillance has at last been revealed – the results of the Inquiry so far are devastating for the police, Security Service and Government.

DEMANDING THE TRUTH

A spokesperson from Police Spies Out of Lives, representing the women targeted for abusive relationships (whose closing submissions will be presented on Tuesday), said:

“Thanks to years of efforts by campaigners the authorities are now on the back foot. We love how far we have shifted the official narrative: from ‘neither confirm nor deny’, through ‘just a few bad apples’, to ‘some unlawful operations’, and now ‘an entire force and policing culture that is rotten to the core’ and sanctioned by the State.”

Dave Morris, a campaigner who was targeted for at least 30 years from the mid-1970s onwards, and who will be delivering his own Statement next Tuesday afternoon, said:

“The Inquiry’s official legal team has concluded that the political spycops should have been closed down decades ago. This would have prevented the shocking and unacceptable targeting of over 1,000 organisations and movements backed by millions of people, campaigning against government policy and for a better society.

The nauseating tactics employed including the serial abuse of women show that the scandals currently engulfing the Met over toxic racism and sexism in police culture are nothing new.

We continue to press for full disclosure about these secretive units, a public apology to all those targeted, and a guarantee from the government that such spying will never be allowed again.

In the face of the the many serious challenges humanity is facing, movements for positive social change are needed more than ever.”

 

CAMPAIGN OPPOSING POLICE SURVEILLANCE [COPS]
www.campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com
POLICE SPIES OUT OF LIVES [PSOOL]
www.policespiesoutoflives.org.uk
UNDERCOVER RESEARCH GROUP [URG]
www.undercoverresearch.net
THE MONITORING GROUP[TMG]
www.tmg-uk.org
BLACKLISTSUPPORT GROUP [BSG]
https://www.hazards.org/blacklistblog/

Tranche 1, Phase 3, Day 3

11 May 2022

The third day of the 2022 Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings concerning the management of the Special Demonstration Squad 1968-82 included opening statements from:

Rajiv Menon QC (representing Tariq Ali, Piers Corbyn and Ernie Tate)
Dave Morris (activist, Inquiry core participant)
Kirsten Heaven (representing Other Non-Police, Non-State Core Participants [through the co-ordinating group])
Summary of Evidence of ‘Madeleine’ and Julia Poynter

Rajiv Menon QC (representing Tariq Ali, Piers Corbyn and the interests of Ernie Tate)

NB: Ernie Tate sadly passed away in 2021, without receiving any meaningful disclosure from the Inquiry.

SECRET HEARINGS AND MASSIVE REDACTIONS

First of all, Mr Menon spoke about the secret hearings that have been held during the last year, known as the ‘T1P4 hearings’. In his view, it is “fundamentally wrong and unfair” to conduct closed hearings as part of a so-called ‘Public Inquiry’.

The transcripts of those hearings have been heavily redacted, and we are told that this is being done “in the public interest”. Evidence was taken from five officers in T1P4, but we are not being told their real or cover names. Instead of being supplied with copies of their evidence, we have a document of ‘Unattributed Excerpts‘.

This was especially ridiculous in the case of officer HN21:

“an officer who was perfectly willing 20 years ago to speak openly about his undercover role in the BBC documentary True Spies, is unable to give evidence in open session to a Public Inquiry.”

This is someone who admitted having a sexual relationship with at least one woman, but we have not been permitted to question him or find out more about this.

It is estimated that 50% of the evidence gathered during T1P4 has been redacted, and might therefore remain secret forever. Menon repeated the request he made last year – that the Inquiry reconsider the need for such redactions, and commit to regularly reviewing decisions about disclosure, so that names and information can be made public in future if circumstances change.

POLICE VIOLENCE

This secrecy was also wrong in the case of officer HN41 who is of great importance to understanding what happened at the anti-racist demonstration in Southall on 23rd April 1979, when Blair Peach was murdered by the Met’s Special Patrol Group and Tariq Ali and many others were severely beaten by police officers.

HN41 says that he was warned by senior Special Branch officers not to go with his target group “because the uniform police were going to clamp down on the demonstrations” and “management considered the dangers were more than normal”.

Mr Menon states there is no doubt uniformed police were under secret orders to use violence at anti-fascist demonstrations. Meanwhile intelligence from the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) seemed to heighten a view within the police that all anti-fascist demonstrators were subversives so fair game for police truncheons.

POLITICAL BIAS

According to DI Angus McIntosh (officer HN244), there was a “high level policy decision” not to infiltrate extreme right-wing groups. This confirms what we already knew about the prejudiced nature of SDS surveillance. Yet, given HN41’s observations, who exactly made this decision and why?

Mr Menon asks us to bear in mind that the SDS was an integral part of the secret state. Senior offices and politicians were well aware of the SDS’ existence, something borne out by the disclosure we have had.

He also lets the comments of SDS manager Geoffrey Craft (officer HN34) about “mob rule”, “lefties” and “scruffy, hairy so-and-so’s” speak for themselves, having described it as “classic ‘Reds under the Bed’ stuff with a dose of McCarthyism thrown in for good measure” [Inquiry document number MPS-0747446, not yet published on the Inquiry website].

GOOD – FOR NOTHING?

Following up on his earlier points on HN41, he addresses the claimed success of SDS in combating public disorder by asking:

“Are Red Lion Square, Grunwick, Lewisham and Southall supposed to be police ‘successes’? If so, perhaps this gives the measure of what the police were trying to achieve at the time”.

Really “scraping the justification barrel” is the suggestion that the unit’s usefulness includes working out that some groups pose no threat at all, by infiltrating them for long periods of time (which we see in many of the SDS Annual Reports).

ALTERNATIVE INTELLIGENCE GATHERING METHODS

He next looked at whether there were less harmful ways of collecting intelligence, using the case of SDS officer Roy Creamer and the anarchist scene of the late 60s/ early 70s. DI Creamer was described by noted anarchist Stuart Christie as “the Yard’s dialectician of dissent.”

Creamer was curious as to what made anarchists tick. He was the epitome of what Menon called the ‘direct approach’, as opposed to the ‘oblique approach’ developed by Conrad Dixon and the other spycops.

Instead of going undercover, he established friendly relationships with targets and talked to them. The barrister suggested the ‘direct approach’ was a proportionate and less damaging approach to the gathering of intelligence than the SDS method.

However, we at the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance strongly recommend you never talk to coppers, especially if they seem friendly!

SDS & MI5

Menon next moved to a theme of increasing importance in the Inquiry – the relationship between the SDS and the Security Service (aka MI5) [see Inquiry document MPS-0747446 when they upload it to the Inquiry site].

He emphasised the Security Service’s interest in this new unit from the moment it was founded. They recognised the Squad’s potential value as a long-term intelligence gathering operation against all those it deemed ‘subversive’. If anything;

“MI5 were the organ grinders, and SDS were the monkeys. Only the monkeys did not know to whose tune they were really dancing.”

Even Craft says that: “the Branch were the legs of the Security Service… SDS was only a development of that”, and that the SDS provided the Security Service with “a huge base of information for their vetting activity”.

Opening statement of Rajiv Menon QC

Dave Morris (representing himself)

This was a relatively short statement from Morris, who has already given several previous opening statements to the Inquiry and a witness statement.

His name appears in multiple SDS reports released by the Inquiry. He was active in various anarchist and environmental groups:

“I have been involved since 1974 in a range of groups and campaigns trying to encourage the public to support one another and empower themselves where they live and work, to challenge injustice, oppression and damage to the environment, and to make the world a better place for everyone.

“The various groups I have been involved in over the decades have been open and collectively-run, and engaged in the kind of public activities which the public are invited to join in or to replicate for themselves, and which are essential if humanity is to progress and survive.”

These groups challenged the government and powerful companies, as well as ruthless and unaccountable elites which were ‘subversive of society and people’s real needs.’

Morris said:

“I am proud of the many groups and campaigns I have been involved in and believe that such efforts should be supported, not undermined.”

One of those campaigns which is now known to have been infiltrated was the Torness Alliance anti-nuclear campaign.

Having noted that the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, had been furnished with an education in Trotskyism from Tariq Ali, Morris correspondingly provided Mitting with a primer on anarchism, explaining that some institutions simply cannot be reformed but must be replaced by genuine democracy.

He helpfully provided a list of books for the Chair to read in order to better understand anarchist thinking:
Anarchism – A Very Short Introduction by Colin Ward
Demanding the Impossible by Peter Marshall
On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky
and just in case Mitting was partial to science fiction, Ursula Le Guin’s classic The Dispossessed.

Morris mentioned one spycop, ‘Tony Williams’ (officer HN20), who became treasurer and secretary of the London Workers Group and whose reporting was no doubt passed on to the Security Service for blacklisting purposes. Apparently the SDS told the Security Service they considered Williams’ withdrawal from the field ‘no great loss’ as he had not been ‘particularly productive’.

Morris criticised the Inquiry for continued delays and other problems to do with the publication of documents – some of which were released so late in the day that there was insufficient time for anyone to process them properly.

Morris was particularly critical of the police and the Inquiry for failing to prioritise the welfare of the spycops’ victims. He made the point that those undercover officers had a duty of care towards the public. The police’s sudden championing of privacy and human rights, when it came to applying for anonymity, was hypocritical and self-serving, and only because they themselves were now being exposed to public scrutiny.

Finally, in a slightly surreal moment, Mitting asked Morris which book he would select from his list if he could only pick one. Dave unhesitantly went for Peter Marshall’s Demanding the Impossible, although he warned that it was a “weighty tome”.

Opening statement of Dave Morris

Kirsten Heaven (representing the ‘Non State Non Police Core Participants, through the coordinating group’)

In previous hearings we heard shocking evidence of what Heaven described as “an unjustifiable, unlawful, and profoundly anti-democratic system of surveillance that was fundamentally flawed”.

Managers are now in the spotlight to answer for that regime. However:

“The witness statements disclosed in this Inquiry contain a litany of denials and an apparent unwillingness to accept responsibility or admit knowledge on key decision making and events. The managers appear reluctant to give a full and honest explanation of why things went so badly wrong within the SDS in the Tranche 1 era (1968-1982), and beyond.”

Basically, if they retain a sense of loyalty to the police, it is deeply misplaced, Heaven said, referring to the recent appalling exposures:

“This is an institution which has been found to be institutionally racist, institutionally corrupt and marred by a culture of toxic masculinity, homophobia, misogyny, and sexual harassment.”

OVERSIGHT

These managers emphasised to their funders at the Home Office how robust their supervision of the undercovers was. Yet there was no code of conduct or formal training.

“Did the managers conceal these practices from their political masters or was it – as the non-state co-operating group suspect – that the cover-up went to the highest political level?”

In order to understand the problems of the SDS we must understand who controlled the unit, and the extent to which the SDS was being directed by the likes of other parts of Special Branch and the Security Service, referred to as the ‘customers’.

Worryingly, there is disclosed evidence that although they were aware of the problems, the Home Office and senior police officers all turned a blind eye. This meant there was no effective external oversight of the SDS, or of wider Special Branch.

Additionally, both the Home Office and the Security Service knew that the SDS activities of the time were unlawful. This was the reason for shrouding it in secrecy, a secrecy that allowed the abuses to flourish.

As raised in other Opening Statements, a problematic definition of ‘subversion’ was used to justify reporting on pretty much anything and anyone. The Security Service was able to exercise its influence over the affairs of Special Branch to shape how the unit operated.

Senior police officers were willing to go along with this, and ignore the lack of public order benefits of these deployments. Claims that the SDS benefited and improved the police’s attitudes to public order simply don’t stand up. Heaven used the events of Red Lion Square, Southall and Lewisham as examples. The Brixton riots of 1981 demonstrated just how useless the unit when it came to predicting or preventing public disorder.

There was no real attempt to evaluate the usefulness of the unit more generally. Annual Reports were written up in order to justify its existence and ongoing funding. It was the duty of the managers “to consider the threat to freedom of speech and democratic principles posed by the SDS”, and they failed to do this.

MANAGEMENT OF THE SDS

Heaven noted that the SDS was managed loosely and wonders whether the early ‘free and easy’ style became the blueprint for the future. Despite claims of close supervision, the managers remained blind to the various sexual relationships, and the sexist banter, of these officers.

As to the standardisation of the lengths of deployments to four years, she wants to know if there was a “positive and considered managerial decision to extend all deployments well beyond twelve months”, adding:

“It is not rocket science that the longer a UCO [undercover officer] is deployed, the greater chance there is of collateral intrusion, the development of close personal ties, sexual and intimate relationships, misconduct and abuse of power and trust”.

The lack of training given to both undercover officers and their managers is concerning. The Inquiry must look at what basic police training was at the time to understand how much they knew about legal principles such as entering private property without a search warrant or conduct issues such as sexual relationships while on duty. How did the managers reconcile this with the activities of the SDS?

DODGY REPORTING

As previously evidenced, there is much reporting which is distressing and inappropriate, peppered as it is with racism and misogyny. Nobody pointed it out at the time. The SDS managers all now say that these reports were produced for others to comment on, evaluate and use.

However, these senior officers were responsible for the unit’s work, and as such have a duty to explain this reporting along with the other practices that took place under their watch.

CONCLUSION

The SDS, as an operation, was never lawful. These abuses were aided by the Home Office sanctioning and maintaining the unit’s secretive existence, leading to a “catastrophic failure of policing at the heart of British democracy”.

The way that the unit acted during this period (1968-1982) paved the way for the abuses committed later – we were told that their “abhorrent practices survived and even flourished following legal reforms.”

Opening statement of Kirsten Heaven

‘Madeleine’ and Julia Poynter: Written statements

These written statements, from two ‘civilian witnesses’, were published in full today. The Inquiry prepared a short summary of each, and read it out loud. We prepared our own, below:

‘Madeleine’

‘Madeleine’ was deceived into a relationship with an undercover officer known as ‘Vince Miller’ (officer HN354), who infiltrated the Walthamstow branch of the Socialist Workers Party (1976 -1979). Since then Vince’s real surname (Harvey) has been released.

It turns out that he reached the level of Superintendent before retiring from the police, and went on to a top job, National Director at the National Criminal Intelligence Service. The Undercover Research Group have published a summary of Vincent Harvey’s post-undercover career.

(‘Madeleine’ had already provided the Inquiry with a written statement in February 2021, and gave compelling evidence in hearings of May 2021. Also see Charlotte Killroy QC’s statement on her behalf this week)

COLD AND CYNICAL TACTICS

In her statement, ‘Madeleine’ recounted the stressful and “excruciating” nature of her live witness testimony at the Inquiry in May 2021, where she suffered “intrusive questioning”.

This was so bad that other women from ‘Category H’ suffered “such significant distress that they were unsure if they would be able to continue their participation in the Inquiry”. This raises serious questions about the treatment of witnesses, who are in effect sexual abuse survivors.

‘Madeleine’ mentioned Vince sending her a postcard at the end of 1979, after he disappeared from her life, giving her false hope about him. She now knows that this was “a cold and cynical tactic”, perpetuated on other women by other undercovers who’d disappeared in similar ways.

MANIPULATED BY THE INQUIRY

She then recounted how she’d generously acceded to the Inquiry’s request not to demand Harvey’s real name, in order to ‘protect’ one of his family members.

However, she then found out more about his long career in policing, which involved many public appearances. She was shocked to learn that while Harvey was its Director, the National Criminal Intelligence Service had responsibility for the Animal Rights National Index (a forerunner of another undercover political policing unit, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit) and the National Domestic Extremism Database:

“I think it is imperative that he is required to provide evidence relating to this role in later tranches.”

Perhaps most disturbing for ‘Madeleine’ was the revelation that Harvey had been in charge of a child sexual abuse investigation, Operation Pragada, saying she felt “physically sick” and “turned her stomach” on finding this out.

‘Madeleine’ now feels manipulated into the decision she made not to demand his real name. The Inquiry would have known about his later senior policing roles. It is a disgrace that they allowed this to happen.

INCOMPLETE RECORD OF REPORTING ON ‘MADELEINE’

Madeleine has always maintained that the 23 Special Branch reports in her witness pack could not be a complete record of the reporting on her.

Having now come across a report of a meeting that took place at her home, but did not mention her name, she believes that Harvey purposefully omitted her name from the list, due to his involvement with her.

‘Madeleine’ now wants to check all 175 reports produced by Harvey – which the Inquiry has chosen not to publish – to see if they refer to events that she attended with him. All reports thought to have been authored by this officer should be disclosed.

Opening statement of ‘Madeleine’

Julia Poynter

Julia is also a former member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), and knew both ‘Madeleine’ and ‘Vince Miller’ back in the day. She has come forward and was able to collaborate her old comrade’s accounts of the time. Poynter also knew ‘Phil Cooper’ (officer HN155) who infiltrated the SWP (1979-84) after ‘Vince Miller’ had ended his deployment.

Poynter was shocked that the Inquiry held 62 reports which mentioned her name. She described her political trajectory, going from being a disillusioned Labour Party member to joining the SWP in 1975, where her “main focus was anti-racism work through my involvement with the Anti Nazi League”.

MISSED OPPORTUNITY

Poynter says that when she attended a Trade Union Conference on Undercover Policing in November 2019, she saw ‘Vince Miller’s name on a document listing all the undercovers, but did not connect this with the man she knew. If only the Inquiry had released a photo at that time, she would have been able to identify him:

“I could then have provided this evidence to the Inquiry at a much earlier date.”

Two years later, listening to the 2021 hearings, Julia realised that ‘Madeleine’ was an old friend of hers, who she had not seen for many years. She was shocked that Harvey was still maintaining that this had only been a one-night stand:

“It was clear to me at the time that it had been a significant relationship for her.”

‘PHIL COOPER’

Poynter went on to discuss her interactions with ‘Phil Cooper’, who she met through her boyfriend. Cooper and her then-partner set up Waltham Forest Anti Nuclear Campaign (WFANC) in about 1980. Cooper said in his written statement that he had not formed any significant friendships in the group.

However, Poynter recalls that:

“[her boyfriend] and Phil got on very well and were good friends. WFANC would meet at our house and Phil would attend those meetings. My memory of Phil is that he was a real laugh, very much into drinking and having a good time.”

Cooper drank heavily, and smoked weed regularly. On one occasion, she says he was so inebriated that he fell off his chair and broke it.

Poynter addressed many of the Special Branch Reports which mentioned her name. One such report describes a 1981 SWP branch meeting – a fireman contact has offered to help carry out a personal investigation, following a spate of racist attacks on Asians in the area.

According to the report:

“The SWP intend to use this information to stir up further unrest within the Asian community in Walthamstow.”

She does not accept this cynical interpretation – what’s been left out of the report is what had actually happened – in early July petrol had been poured through the door of an Asian household in the area, killing Parveen Khan (28) and her children Kamran (11), Aqsa (10) and Imran (2). She stated:

“The community were rightfully angry and we were reaching out and helping to build alliances in the community. It is offensive that the police were spying on us carrying out this work rather than spending resources identifying the murderers, who as far as I am aware have never been caught.”

Opening statement of Julia Poynter

Transcript of the full day’s hearing

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The current round of Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, focusing on Special Demonstration Squad managers 1968-82, continue until Friday 20 May.

<<Previous UCPI Daily Report (10 May 2022)<<

>>Next UCPI Daily Report (12 May 2022)>>

Tranche 1, Phase 2, Day 3

23 April 2021

Opening Statements from:

Heather Williams QC, representing Category F Core Participants: Relatives of Deceased Individuals
James Scobie QC, representing Richard Chessum and ‘Mary’
Rajiv Menon QC, representing Piers Corbyn
Kirsten Heaven, representing other Non-Police, Non-State Core Participants
Dave Morris

The current round of Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings covers the years 1973-82. This day was the last one of opening statements, from Monday 26th April there will be three weeks of taking evidence from witnesses of the era.

But first the Chair, Sir John Mitting, said a few words about Blair Peach and there was a minute’s silence.

Peach was a committed teacher, socialist and anti-fascist. Some 42 years ago to the day, on 23 April 1979, he was killed by police at an anti-racist demonstration in London. His partner, Celia Stubbs, has campaigned for justice for him ever since. That campaign was targeted by the Special Demonstration Squad.

We also now know that both Blair and Celia were spied on before that, though the Inquiry has not let them see any of the documents pertaining to the time before Blair’s death.

The Met’s own investigation at the time concluded Peach was killed by police, and identified Inspector Alan Murray as the likely culprit.

Yet Mitting could not bring himself to acknowledge these facts. Instead, he glossed over it, not mentioning the police and merely referring to Peach being killed by ‘a blow to the head’. In doing this, he insulted all victims of spycops and underlined his partisan nature that is draining the Inquiry of its potential to get to the truth.

Heather Williams QC
representing Category F Core Participants: Relatives of Deceased Individuals

Heather Williams QC spoke for relatives of dead people whose identities were stolen by Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) officers as the basis for their fake persona.

She is acting on behalf of:

Frank Bennett and Honor Robson, the bereaved brother and sister of Michael Hartley who died on 4 August 1968 at 18 years of age.

Faith Mason, the bereaved mother of Neil Robin Martin who died on 15 October 1969 at 6 years of age.

Liisa Crossland and Mark Crossland, the bereaved stepmother and brother of Kevin John Crossland who died on 1 September 1966 at 5 years of age.

Mr, Mrs and Ms Lewis, the bereaved father, mother and sister of Anthony Lewis who died on 31 July 1968 at 7 years of age.

Barbara Shaw, the bereaved mother of Rod Richardson who died on 7 January 1973 when he was two days old.

Williams said:

‘each of the clients experienced the death of a child; a life event among the most difficult it is possible to suffer. More recently, the families have also suffered the horror of learning that their loved one’s identity was used by an undercover police officer precisely because of their bereavement, because their son or daughter lost their life when a child. How did it start? At what level was it condoned? Were there no alternatives?’

They’ve been waiting for answers for years – Barbara Shaw found out about the theft of her baby son’s identity in 2013. She is now 80 years old, her health is failing, yet still she waits for answers.

NO SECURITY

Did the theft of identities serve any legitimate purpose? There appears no clear rationale, no justification for this repulsive practice. Earlier SDS officers, from 1968-72, simply made up names and none appeared vulnerable to exposure.

There seemed to be no change in circumstances to have made officers deviate from the practice of simply making-up identities. We have looked through the police documents released and there is no evidence for it.

The SDS annual report 1972 confirmed the advantages of using ‘a fictitious name’ that allows officers to return to their real identity at any time. The 1973 annual report talks of having had no ‘irretrievable exposure of any SDS officer’. There was no need to change the tactic to stealing real identities.

One officer was compromised in 1974 when someone who had known him as a uniformed officer recognised him in a meeting. His choice of fictitious identity, rather than a stolen one, played no part in his exposure.

Apart from ‘Michael Scott‘ (HN298, 1971-76) who stole the identity of a living person, it seems fictional identities were normal until a change of management in 1974. The rpactice continued into the late 1990s – the most recent known being ‘Rod Richardson’ (EN32/HN596, 1999-2003).

The 1990s SDS Tradecraft Manual cruelly talks of ‘finding a suitable ex person’ with a ‘natural or unspectacular death’ and the ‘respiratory status’ of the parents.

But from around 1974, undercovers used the identities of dead children and were instructed and/or expected to do so. Officers who queried this were told it was the usual process. They searched for people who had been born around the same time as the SDS officer, preferably with the same first name.

We have not been provided with any evidence that show why it happened, let alone any consideration of the damage to the families involved, and indeed police and policing. They seemed to assume they would never have to answer for it.

Police lawyers said some former officers were uncomfortable with stealing dead children’s identities but thought the families would never know. There is no evidence to show that it helped the officers in their deployments, even before we consider the ethical issues.

The National Crime Squad says none of the Regional Crime Squads they know of who had undercover officers stole dead people’s identities. So, why did the SDS feel it ‘had to’? The spycops say they were going into ‘more security conscious organisations’.

If that were true, why was there no increase in other measures to protect SDS officer’s security? One officer says his identity ‘was not particularly detailed’ as it was largely left to officers to invent it themselves, with little to no guidance. It hardly sounds like security was intense.

Another officer says ‘I made my legend’ up as I went along’ – and it was not tested by managers.

FACT MEETS FICTION

There was no imperative to steal the identity of a dead child. So where did it come from?

Frederick Forsyth’s novel The Day of the Jackal was published in 1971 and the film released in 1973, showing the practice of stealing dead children’s identities in just this way. So, rather than an official police document, was it instead a work of fiction that in fact inspired this ghoulish practice? Whistleblower SDS officer Peter Francis (1993-97) said that the process was known as ‘the jackal run’ among SDS officers.

In last year’s hearings, police lawyers spoke of the ‘essential operational imperative’ to steal real identities. While suspicious comrades might have doubts assuaged by finding a birth certificate, they would surely be alarmed to discover a matching death certificate.

There are plenty of reasons why a birth certificate might not be found (if someone was born abroad, or adopted). There are no reasons why a living person would have a death certificate.

And this is exactly what happened. Members of Big Flame became suspicious of their member ‘Rick Gibson’ (SDS officer Richard Clark, HN297), and found he was legally dead. They confronted him and he ended his deployment. (More detail on this in James Scobie’s section of this report, below).

Clark was one of the first infiltrators to steal a dead child’s identity, and it blew his cover. So why did the practice continue for over 20 years?

Fictitious identities actually offered better cover to spycops than stealing dead people’s identities. There was no justification to start the practice, and none to continue after Clark was exposed.

If security was so important, why did managers not properly prepare their officers and stop them from behaving in a way that compromised them? Why were they given so little direction and so much latitude to make up their own mission?

Very few former SDS officers seemed to have had any qualms of conscience about stealing dead children’s identities, let alone acting immorally in the dead person’s name, deceiving women into relationships, getting arrested and convicted.

One officer, ‘Colin Clark’ (HN80, 1977-82), said:

‘I knew that it would cause distress for the family if it was discovered’.

Did his managers who knew that stop to think? Did his colleagues discuss it? Were the undercovers given any choice?

Clark changed his identity using his own date of birth and a different forename. He went on to have a five year deployment without being discovered, probing that it was eminently possible to be undercover without a verifiable birth certificate.

NOT JUST THE NAME BUT THE PERSON

Another spycop ‘Michael James’ (HN96, 1978-83) instructed to visit Blackpool where the child whose identity he stole was born. The local Special Branch helped him ascertain if the family still lived there. It is hard to imagine this was a one-off. This obviously goes beyond simply stealing names.

‘Desmond/Barry Loader‘ (HN13, 1975-78) was convicted of public order offences in the name of a dead child. Was there any regard for the besmirching of good names, or the impacts on families who may find out?

The callous interference with bereaved families was consistent with the broader culture and practices of the SDS, with not a hint of consideration as to the proportionality of their actions, nor thoughts of consequences on others, and no review of efficacy or risk.
Stealing identities simply became an embedded practice in a unit that lacked accountability and effective supervision.

At the Undercover Policing Inquiry, we are seeing excessive redaction of the undercovers methods and told it is because it ‘may harm policing’. How can it do that if it is an abandoned practice from decades ago? It is the fact of the theft that harms policing. It looks a lot like yet another example of the police not wanting to admit the full awful truth of what they did to citizens and taking the Inquiry for a ride.

We want the Inquiry to check if the Met’s redactions of the evidence that damns them are actually justified, or if it is concealing for other reasons.

It also appears MI5 had helped with fictitious identities and helped with materials to support them. There is nothing to show why the SDS decided to move away from. The reason remains unexplained.

SHYING AWAY FROM THE TRUTH

Heather Williams finished her statement, but COPS adds a few additional comments about police shying away from the truth on this matter:

In 2013, Pat Gallan – then Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met and head of Operation Herne, the Met’s self-investigation into spycops – told the Home Affairs Select Committee they had only found one case of dead child identity theft.

She said the combined efforts of Herne’s 31 staff had failed to find any more in the subsequent five months. She refused repeated requests to give an apology for the practice.

The Home Affairs Select Committee report insisted on the truth being told about SDS infiltrators stealing dead children’s identities and demanded all affected families be told and given an apology by the end of 2013. The Met simply ignored their publications.

Later in 2013, Operation Herne reported that, contrary to Gallan’s claim of it being isolated and unauthorised, identity theft of dead children was pretty much mandatory in the SDS for 20 years.

The Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe then issued a generalised apology for stealing dead children’s identities, addressed to nobody in particular. That was in 2013. It has fallen to the Inquiry to contact families, years after they had been identified. The Met has still not provided any answers.

It’s also worth asking who else knew about it. Bob Lambert (‘Bob Robinson’ HN10, 1984-89) was a spycop in the 1980s who went on the run the SDS in the 1990s. He told Channel 4 News that the practice of stealing dead children’s identities was ‘well known at the highest levels of the Home Office’.

When the Inquiry was announced, six former Home Secretaries from the period concerned were still alive. The Inquiry has taken so long to get going that only four are still alive, the youngest of whom is now 79 years old. We are not aware of any plans for any of them to be called to give evidence to the Inquiry.

Full opening statement from Heather Williams QC, representing relatives of deceased individuals

James Scobie QC
representing Richard Chessum and ‘Mary’

Scobie did a great job piecing together the career of undercover officer Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76) rising through Troops Out Movement (TOM) seemingly in order to get access to Big Flame – and how he was eventually found out.

Based on SDS reports and the statements of two people he spied on, Richard Chessum and ‘Mary’, Scobie shows that Clark abused his friendship with Chessum and his sexual relationship with ‘Mary’ (and three other women) to reach that goal.

Clark manipulated a democratic organisation to achieve high office and destabilise it. With this, the SDS went far beyond its remit, and the mangers were fully aware of it.

Scobie also explored how Clark’s deployment served to direct subsequent officers to follow his example and take office in organisations they infiltrated.

ANATOMY OF AN INFILTRATION

In December 1974, Richard Chessum and Mary were students at Goldsmiths College in London, studying sociology and teacher training respectively, and they both were in the college’s Socialist Society.

Mary had come from South Africa and campaigned on anti-racist and civil liberties issues. Chessum had been a Methodist lay preacher, and was political officer for his local Labour Party. He protested against war and for civil liberties.

At this time, undercover officer Richard Clark – 29, married with children – was deployed into Goldsmith’s College. He stole the identity of a dead child, Richard Gibson. His target was the Troops Out Movement (TOM).

TOM was advocating self-determination for the people of Ireland and withdrawal of British troops from Ireland. Their methods were lobbying MPs, drafting alternative legislation, and raising awareness with the occasional low-key demonstration, doing talks and film screenings.

TOM had already been infiltrated, as recently as 1974, by ‘Michael Scott‘ (HN298, 1971-76) who concluded that:

‘It had no subversive objectives and as far as I am aware did not employ or approve the use of violence to achieve its objectives.’

So why were they targeted? Richard Clark is dead, so we have no opportunity to question him. But his reports show what he did.

STEP 1 – IDENTIFYING A TARGET ORGANISATION

Clark’s deployment was well planned. He wrote to TOM head office in advance asking for a local branch to join in December 1974, knowing there wasn’t one.

Chessum had been in the Anti-Internment League and so was known to some in the national office of TOM. He had not joined and had no plans to do so, because he was studying hard and had recently been ill. Nonetheless the national office put him in touch with Clark.

By February 1975, using the Socialist Society as a tool, Clark had succeeded in creating an entirely new branch of the Troops Out Movement. There were five founder members of that branch; Mary, Richard Chessum, his partner, another student, and the undercover officer.

Clark had completed Step 1. He was in the Troops Out Movement. But rather than infiltrating a branch, he had actively established one. He generated something to spy on. He encouraged and organised demonstrations, such as the picketing of the local Woolwich barracks and the homes of local MPs.

Neither Mary, Chessum nor his partner had Special Branch files on them until their involvement with Clark. Their lives were then reported to an extent that was both sinister and ridiculous. This information was passed to MI5. Their physical appearances, commentary on their body size, health issues, addresses, theatres visited, holiday destinations, right down to the brand of cigarettes they smoked.

They were no threat to anyone. They were targeted first for their politics, and secondly, because they were useful. And Clark used them.

STEP 2 – DEVELOPING AN IDENTITY & BUILDING TRUST

Clark had no back history. He had just appeared. He needed to develop a place in the social network of political activists. He did that by exploitation. ‘Mary’ is unequivocal: Clark used sexual advances to ingratiate himself.

Clark established a close friendship with Richard Chessum and initiated a sexual relationship with Mary, having been invited into her home. And he had relationships with at least three other activists to gain position and tactical advantage. The other women were Mary’s flatmate, and two activists from the group Big Flame, Clark’s ultimate target. (His story also shows that forming targeted sexual relationships started early in the SDS.)

STEP 3 – TAKING POSITIONS & MOVING UP THE HIERARCHY

As one of the founder members of the South East London branch of TOM, Clark gained access to the national movement, with an astonishing level of ruthlessness.

By March 1975, he had got himself elected as the Secretary – the top position in the branch. He and Richard Chessum were then elected as voting delegates to the TOM Liaison Committee conference.

That move gave Clark access to the national leadership, knowing he’d be accompanied by Richard Chessum, a man with a proven track record of genuine commitment. His cultivated friendship with Richard Chessum gave him credibility.

In April 1975, Clark got himself elected as a delegate to the London Co-ordinating Committee of the Movement and the All London meeting. He pointedly took an opportunity to, in his own words, ‘severely criticise’ another section of the Movement. It was a move that appeared to ensure that he was elected as the branch’s delegate to TOM’s National Co-ordinating Committee.

He saw members of Workers’ Fight coming into the branch and at the national level. This would endanger his access leadership of the Movement. Clark attended a private meeting of senior members of TOM, with leader Gerry Lawless, to discuss Workers Fight’s attempt to take over. There were only ten people at the meeting, all key in supporting Lawless’s position in the national Movement against what they saw as an attempt by Workers Fight and the Revolutionary Communist Group to take control of the organisation.

In his report, he noted Big Flame had also formed an ‘uneasy alliance’ with Lawless.

Mary’s flatmate was in Workers Fight (WF), and she had attended TOM pickets. She attended a large TOM branch meeting stacked with WF members. Clark saw his post under threat. A WF person was elected to go to a London conference that would elect national posts. Clark competed against his supposed friend Chessum for the second post and won by two votes. It’s believed one of them would have been from Mary’s flatmate with whom, conveniently, Clark had recently begun a sexual relationship.

STEP 4 – SECURE A NATIONAL POSITION

It worked – Clark got elected to the Organising Committee for London, a national position. So here we are: a spycop deprived the movement of Chessum, a decent man who supported the movement, and put himself in, with the help of the second woman he just happened to have started a relationship with.

In Oct 1975, Clark resigned as Branch Secretary as, holding national office, he no longer needed the position any more. He says in his report he made a scathing attack on WF, but Chessum said it was nothing of the sort.

Lawless then nominated Clark for a position on the National Secretariat and he got it – he was now one of seven people in charge of the whole of TOM.

He continued to attend meetings at Richard Chessum’s home and reported on him. He recorded that Richard Chessum had started a new job at the London Electricity Board – information that was passed to MI5, something that becomes relevant later. Mary and her flat-mate largely disappeared from Clark’s reporting, now that they had served their purpose.

Clark organised a national TOM rally, but failed to secure the appearance of any of the headline acts. He arranged speakers for meetings and organised steward protection from attacks from fascists. That was a legitimate protective measure against a common threat at the time. Yet we expect to see those from Youth Against Racism in Europe, Anti-Nazi League and the Socialist Workers’ Party, criticised for the same thing in a later part of the Inquiry.

Due to Lawless’s paternity leave, Clark became acting head of TOM for several months. In that time, he cancelled delegations to Ireland. He criticised certain members. At least one prominent organisation withdrew its affiliation. By the time Gerry Lawless returned, two members of the Secretariat had resigned. Remember this was a serving Metropolitan Police officer, working undercover, making day to day decisions for a campaigning organisation.

STEP 5 – SABOTAGE THE ORGANISATION

Clark then turned against Lawless. He held a meeting with Big Flame in his cover flat to organise opposition to Lawless’ leadership, decapitating the Troops Out Movement of its long-time head.

They planned a coup in the next conference. The new leadership proposed was five people including Clark himself. Was this about TOM, or getting in Big Flame’s good books?

Clark also embarked on sexual relationships with two female members of the Big Flame. For him, sexual relationships were a tried and tested tactic of getting exactly where he wanted to go.

However, Clark overplayed his hand and Big Flame rumbled him. We don’t know quite how. Telling different stories to different women and them comparing? Was he seen as Machiavellian? Or was it simply a lack or political authenticity?

It was not unusual for Big Flame to investigate new people who wanted to join if they did not trust them entirely. Members of Big Flame went to the government’s birth and death records archive at Somerset House and they found Rick Gibson’s birth certificate. Then they found his death certificate.

They confronted Clark with both. Richard Chessum tells of how he heard about this confrontation from his friends in Big Flame. How Clark went white and nearly started to cry. His ambitious plot to unseat Gerry Lawless was over.

Clark took flight and disappeared from the political scene altogether. Richard Chessum later saw a dossier that Big Flame had prepared, that included a letter from Clark written to one of the female activists, saying that he ‘had to go away’.

There was no retribution against Clark after his exposure. It stands out that none of the groups infiltrated were interested in violence unless in self defence. This shows the Met’s applications for anonymity for spycops at the Undercover Policing Inquiry inquiry on safety grounds are highly questionable.

HOW HIGH DID IT GO?

Clark’s taking of high office was known to his superiors, all the way up to the Commander of the Metropolitan Police Service. It completely abandons the early principle of the Special Demonstration Squad:

‘members of the squad should be told, in no uncertain terms, that they must not take office in a group, chair meetings, draft leaflets, speak in public or initiate activity’

Equally, the fact that he engaged in sexual relationships with activists was no secret either. Two officers, to date, have been honest enough to disclose that they knew of Clark’s behaviour. One of those officers, ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1976-79), has gone further and admitted that sexual relationships were talked about at the weekly officer meetings and that his supervising officers would have been aware because they were present.

Senior officers knew of Clark’s history of sexual abuse, yet he left the police with a special medal, a Detective Inspector’s pension, and his conduct certified as ‘exemplary’.

There is only one explanation for this. His conduct was deemed acceptable. It continued for years, and dozens, probably hundreds, of women were sexually abused at the hands of these officers.

NOT JUST CLARK

Following Clark’s deployment, spycops taking of positions of responsibility and trust in infiltrated organisations was commonplace. ‘Michael James’ (HN96, 1978-83), started his deployment in the Socialist Workers Party where he was elected to a position on the Hackney District Committee. After two years he moved on into the Troops Out Movement, where Clark had been four years before in top positions.

James is an interesting officer because he gives different accounts of the position he reached. In his Inquiry impact statement – a document arguing the case for him being granted anonymity – he stressed his seniority, saying he was National Secretary of TOM, ie the top role. Once his anonymity was secure, he shifted, and tried to downplay and minimise the importance of his position.

The fact is was the National Membership and Affiliation Secretary of TOM for a good 18 months. He now seems to suggest he just happened to fall into his roles rather than actively pursuing them. But he was on the top level of the organisation, the National Steering Committee, which he occasionally chaired. He was one of nine people with a direct influence over the direction of the movement.

In this era, from Clark onwards, every single spycop took a role in the organisation they infiltrated, except for Graham Coates who was infiltrating anarchists without hierarchy or official roles. In some case officers took national leading roles. What resulted from this was not just information, but also the opportunity to have a say in the direction of the organisation, and ultimately the ability to derail that organisation.

Scobie then listed twelve more spycops who held office in the organisations they spied on in the 1970s. See Scobie’s written Opening Statement for the details.

‘Vince Miller‘ (HN354, 1976-79) was elected District Treasurer and on the social committee of the Outer East London District branch of Socialist Workers Party. He resigned from his position to mark the ‘disorder and ineffectiveness’ within the branch. Resignation combined with strong criticism is deliberately de-stabilising to the organisation.

‘Sandra Davies’ (HN348, 1971-73) has already said that she did not remember being elected to the Executive Committee of the Women’s Liberation Front – the group founded by Diane Langford who also did a strong opening statement yesterday. The undercover officer claimed she did not remember voting to oust the founding leader and create a completely new group, the Revolutionary Women’s Union.

Scobie warned the Inquiry that most undercover officers tend to ‘have forgotten’ the roles they had, or claimed they don’t know how they landed there. Alternatively, they say that the role was not really a position of trust at all. The institutionalised dishonesty creeps into every aspect of their evidence.

LYING ABOUT POINTLESS SPYING

While many spycops accurately described the Socialist Workers Party as not encouraging violence – indeed, expelling violent members – one officer who infiltrated them, ‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-82), has told the Inquiry there was a lot of violence (officers tend to say this to show they’d be at risk if they aren’t granted anonymity). Gray’s claims are undermined by his own reports, which show nothing of the kind. He is lying.

He says his time undercover had no impact whatsoever on his welfare but that answering questions for this Inquiry is impacting on his welfare. That is because he now has to justify the fact that in reality, he busied himself with pointless and personally intrusive reporting.

Gray reported on more children than any other officer. Recording the minutiae of their lives and sending them on to MI5. Almost all of these reports have photographs of the children attached. These children were either the children of Socialist Workers Party members or children who were engaged enough with their society to be part of the School Kids Against the Nazis.

During the course of Gray’s deployment, fascist group Column 88 were threatening to burn down the homes of SWP members. The National Front were attacking Bengalis in Brick Lane, smashing up reggae record shops and vandalising mosques. There was firebombing and murder. Instead of investigating the racist firebombing that killed 13 young black people in New Cross, the Special Demonstration Squad were reporting on school children and providing MI5 with copies of Socialist Workers Party babysitting rotas.

GOVERNMENT & CABINET KNOWLEDGE

Several of the spycops in the era now being examined, 1973-82, refer to visits to the SDS safe-house by the Commissioner of the Met. (This tallies with similar memories of officers both before and after the period).

One refers to congratulatory messages straight from 10 Downing Street. Another, who himself went on to become a Detective Chief Inspector, was told:

‘the continuation of the unit was one of the first decisions that a new Home Secretary had to make’.

The 1976 authorisation for the Special Demonstration Squad’s continued existence was signed off by Robert Armstrong, later Baron Armstrong of Ilminster. He was Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service. It is difficult to imagine a more highly placed civil servant.

MI5’s ‘Witness Z,’ has told the Inquiry:

‘the pressure to investigate these organisations often came from the Prime Minister and Whitehall’.

Put simply, the existence and functioning of the SDS was known of, and authorised, at the very top.

Every annual application for funding refers to the officers fully recognising ‘the political sensitivity’ of the unit’s existence. Authorisation is only ever granted ‘in view of the assurances about security’. In other words, as long as you can promise us we will not get caught, you can carry on.

The Met were protecting the Government from what they referred to in the 1977 Annual Report as ’embarrassment’. There is nothing embarrassing about preventing crime. But the destabilising of democratic movements, the wholesale and widespread intrusion on citizens, and their exploitation for political advantage? That is worth keeping secret.

Scobie ended with a plea:

‘This Inquiry has been set a challenge – to get to the truth. This means asking difficult questions, again and again, to uncover the truth.

‘Ordinary people have been involved in campaigns for a better society, for social equality, anti racism, anti-fascism, against apartheid and for trade union rights. The best of reasons, and the best of traditions.

‘We hope the Inquiry is ready, willing and equipped to meet that challenge. The Inquiry must be fearless and unflinching in the pursuit of the truth. The people of this country expect nothing less.’

Full opening statment from James Scobie QC, representing Richard Chessum & ‘Mary’

Rajiv Menon QC
representing Piers Corbyn

Piers Corbyn is now 74, but has not given up his lifelong activism. He was one of the first people to apply to be a Core Participant in the Inquiry, five years ago. He will give evidence via video next week.

But Rajiv Menon started his opening statement with some more general concerns, making seven points about undercover policing and the material disclosed for the new hearings (Tranche 1 Phase 2, covering 1973-82), and about the Inquiry’s approach to witnesses, redactions, and disclosure.

Firstly. What screams out of the pages is the fact that the SDS was never about protecting parliamentary democracy nor maintaining public order. It was to spy on people and organisations because of their ideas and politics.

The limited public disorder that some spycops describe was largely minor, and certainly did not justify the spying on an industrial scale that was unleashed on the British public in the 1970s or the consequent cost to the public purse.

Just to give two examples. There is a 21 page report on an International Marxist Group (IMG) conference in 1972, and 55 pages on another in 1976. These describe different currents and tendencies within the IMG and summarise debates, as well as details of attendees. What the reports do not include is anything touching upon the protection of parliamentary democracy or the prevention of public disorder.

In short, the SDS was engaged in secret political policing and pure intelligence gathering against the Left, at times Orwellian, at times more Monty Python. Several SDS officers admit gathering as much information as possible, however personal or trivial, because it was for others to decide what was relevant.

Secondly, the most significant document in the current bundle, we believe, is the statement of Witness Z on behalf of the Security Service, MI5, that confirms that the SDS has always been subordinate to MI5.

However, Witness Z is not being called to give evidence, and we cannot understand why this is. Their statement shows they have so much vital knowledge about the roles of the SDS and MI5, and their cooperation. About about MI5’s 1972 definition of subversion as ‘activities threatening the safety or well-being of the State and intended to undermine or overthrow Parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means’, and how most if not all of those spied on by the SDS could not possibly be described as subversive according to this definition.

Thirdly, there are, on our count, 18 SDS officers who were deployed during the relevant period whose cover names have been disclosed and who are alive. But the Inquiry is only calling eight of them to give evidence. The 1970s was a critical period in the history of the SDS, the Inquiry should be hearing from as many spycops as possible.

Fourthly, we are also dismayed that the evidence of seven SDS officers whose real names and cover names have been restricted is not being disclosed. Instead it is redacted, edited and amalgamated into an eight page ‘gist’. We cannot say which officer did what. We need to know what they did individually if their information is any use to anyone at all.

Fifthly, many if not most of the SDS intelligence reports have been destroyed at some stage by the Met. Many of the disclosed reports that have survived are only in existence because copies had been retained by MI5. Interestingly, whilst MI5 is apparently happy to disclose copies of police documents, they are rather more circumspect in disclosing any of their own documents that might reveal the nature and extent of their own spying operations on political activists and others.

Sixthly, redactions. Most frustrating is the redaction of the names of many groups spied on and infiltrated by the SDS between 1969 and 1984. None of this is justifiable. We are looking at 35-50 years ago so what’s the problem? What are they hiding?

The Undercover Research Group compiled a first list of groups spied on according to the Inquiry in 2019. After the first set of hearings of the Inquiry in November 2020, more than 100 groups were added.

The SDS Annual Reports on the years 1969-84 have 130 group names redacted. Why must these remain secret forever, at the insistence of those who did the spying? It’s a betrayal of the purpose of the Inquiry.

Seventh and finally, disclosure. We are not being given enough time to read and digest material by the Inquiry. We were meant to get documents in mid March, but another 2000+ pages have been added in April. Nobody can go through all that in a matter of a couple of weeks.

PIERS CORBYN

Piers Corbyn had no idea of the extent of the spying on him. He has always been open about his politics and has nothing to hide, in contrast with the anonymous spycops who spied on him. Despite having been a Core Participant at the Inquiry for over 5 years, he knew little until recently.

He had only been provided with 53 Special Branch intelligence reports (most of which were relatively unrevealing) and no witness statements from any of the undercover police officers who had spied on him, still less any photographs of those officers to help him recollect these events that took place between 40 and 50 years ago.

Why was Piers Corbyn of interest? Special Branch opened a file on him over 50 years ago, in 1969, and he still can’t see it.

He was President of the Imperial College Union. He attended rallies against the Vietnam War. He joined the International Marxist Group (IMG). He supported Irish civil rights, anti racism, and trade union rights.

He was very active in London squatting in the 1970s. In 1982, he left the IMG and joined the Labour Party. In the 1980s, he was active in the ‘Fare Fight’ campaign to keep down the cost of public transport. In 1986, he became a Labour councillor in Southwark, a position he held for four years.

Piers Corbyn barely learned anything about the spying on him from the new documents disclosed by the Inquiry. He is mentioned in passing in a one report and in the witness statement of two others, who will not be giving evidence. The Inquiry has shown him pictures of some spycops but not the ones who spied on him!

Piers Corbyn was granted Core Participant status by the Inquiry for being one of the main organisers of squatting groups in London between 1972 and 1982, but this barely features in the intelligence reports in which he is named. In short, what is revealed by the disclosure is a damp squib.

What would tell us far more about the secret state’s interest in Piers Corbyn is his Special Branch Registry File. But nobody ever gets to see their Registry File, not even during a public inquiry into undercover policing.

We want to see is his file to see the full nature of why he was spied on. Why won’t they let him see it? Why can’t the Inquiry compel the police to do it? Is it because it’s so tedious and unnecessary that it will embarrass them? Or something else?

Whilst secrecy continues to trump openness, the Inquiry will only scratch the surface, however interesting and revealing some of the documents it is disclosing may be.

The victims of spycops are dismayed at the new delays to the Inquiry. This benefits those who want delay. More documents will be lost and destroyed, more witnesses will die. Justice delayed is justice denied.

Full opening statement from Rajiv Menon QC, representing Piers Corbyn

Kirsten Heaven
representing other Non-Police, Non-State Core Participants

Kirsten Heaven began by expressing the disappointment and anger felt by core participants last week, when they learnt that the next set of hearings, scheduled to take place in October 2021, would be delayed until sometime in the first half of 2022.

The Chair, Sir John Mitting, interrupted her with his reason for this delay – the excuse that the Inquiry want to disclose evidence to a new core participant from the Socialist Workers Party and then collect her witness statement, and says there is so much SWP material that it cannot be done between now and October.

Heaven went on to say that core participants had also just learnt for the first time – in the Counsel to the Inquiry’s Opening Statement two days ago – that the Tranche 2 hearings (covering the years 1983-1992) would no longer be heard in 2022, and would be delayed until at least 2023.

Waiting for another two years is not acceptable for the core participants who have already suffered from many years of delay. She reminded Mitting that his predecessor (Lord Pitchford, the original Chair of this Inquiry) had intended to conclude in 2018.

We are losing crucial evidence with every year that passes, as both officers and witnesses get older. We heard yesterday that, despite being in contact with spycops ‘Alan Bond‘ (HN67, 1981-86) for at least three years, the Inquiry has failed to take a witness statement from him and he is now said to be too ill to provide any evidence.

Heaven recommended that the Inquiry make it an urgent priority to collect statements from all former officers and managers. And that they provide the group with a full list of all Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) managers from the years 1968-82 who are due to give evidence in Phase 3, along with regular updates on their state of health.

The main cause of delay in this Inquiry has been the excessive demands for redactions made by the police and State bodies.

WHO WAS SPIED ON?

Heaven then moved on to analyse some of the facts in the documents recently released by the Inquiry covering the years 1973-82.

It is clear from looking at the newly disclosed evidence just how widespread this political policing was, and the wide range of left-wing groups which were infiltrated and spied upon. This included justice campaigns and defence campaigns, and even their lawyers. Trade unions & mainstream political parties were spied on. There was excessive surveillance of many sections of society, including children and young people. Spycops were involved in criminality, miscarriages of justice, and illegal blacklisting. They had begun stealing the identities of deceased children.

Information – including people’s details – was routinely copied to MI5, meaning the security service. There was deep collaboration between them and the spycops.

She described the SDS’ ‘oblique approach’ – unashamedly described by the unit’s founder Conrad Dixon as “the infiltration of relatively innocuous organisations” as a stepping stone to others.

The women’s liberation movement were targeted, with reports detailing such subversive events as jumble sales & a children’s Christmas party. The youth wing of the Liberal Party was targeted by ‘Michael Scott‘ (HN298, 1971-76) in order to gather intelligence about anti-apartheid activist Peter Hain. The spycops cynically targeted all sorts of non-radical groups, displaying an utter contempt for civil society.

According to a 1973 report from officer HN294, the International Socialists & International Marxist Group made for ‘disappointing’ targets as they did not do anything warranting police interest. It is clear that many of the spycops quickly realised that the groups they’d joined were not a serious threat to public order, or violent in any way. It is also clear that no meaningful risk or threat assessment seems to have been carried out, so how did the SDS know who should be targeted?

We now have a witness statement from ‘Witness Z’ made on behalf of the security services. It contains an admission that subversive organisations were not actually considered a high threat at this time, but that pressure to spy on them often came from the Prime Minister/ Whitehall. No stone should be left unturned in investigating this.

TARGETING JUSTICE

We see the continuation of reporting on lawyers & material that may be subject to legal privilege, often around justice campaigns following police misconduct.

An early example was ‘Alex Sloan‘ (HN347, 1971 reporting on the justice campaign that sprang up in 1971 after the death of teenager Stephen McCarthy (following his arrest and alleged assault by police). Sloan is also known to have taken part in a visit to an asylum seeker being held in Holloway Prison – why was the SDS interested in her case?

Heaven listed a selection of the groups and individuals whose names have appeared in Special Branch’s files or in the latest disclosure:

• Shrewsbury Two Defence Committee
• Roach Family Support Committee
• Stoke Newington and Hackney Defence Campaign
• Persons Unknown Defence Campaign
• Murray Defence Campaign
• Deptford Action Massacre Committee
• Friends of Blair Peach Committee
• Celia Stubbs (partner of Blair Peach and now a Core Participant)
• Graham Smith (another Core Participant)
• Justice for David Ewen Campaign July 1995
• Deborah Coles (Director of INQUEST, set up to monitor deaths in custody and support bereaved families)

It is clear that these justice campaigns were directly targeted by the spycops, despite the denials of police lawyers at the Inquiry.

Another development in this period was that the spycops reporting included children. One report, signed off by very senior officers and copied to MI5, included details about someone’s brother and his wife, and contained a line about the couple having a ‘Mongol child’.

The police’s lawyers say there is no need for concern because reporting on children ‘did not cause any harm’. But it was a gross invasion of privacy and family, and harmful to society.

‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-82) reported extensively on young people (and their teachers), and would send descriptions, details and even photographs of children off to his bosses (and MI5). One of the groups he targeted was School Kids Against the Nazis (SKAN) but none of them are here to speak for themselves, and we have no idea if the Inquiry has tried to contact any of them or not.

Heaven showed the Inquiry a short archival film from 1979 featuring the kids of Hackney SKAN handing out leaflets at schools and talking about racist scapegoating and the need to drive the National Front out.

DIVERSITY OF TARGETS

The next list of groups read out demonstrates the extent to which the SDS’s interests had grown since the unit started:

• Christian Aid
• Fellowship Party (No Racism No Violence say yes to Fellowship)
• Numerous branches of the Labour Party
• Orpington Young Liberals
• Lewisham Humanists
• 6 London Trade Union Councils
• National Union of Students
• Teachers’ unions
• Transport & General Workers Union Legal Workers Branch

There are many examples of intrusive reporting of women:

• Women’s Voice
• Spare Rib Collective
• Women Workers League
• Brixton Black Womens Group
• Greenham Common Women’s Support Group
• Lambeth Women For Peace

One report attributed to ‘Barry Tompkins‘ (HN106, 1979-83), includes details of a woman activist who had an abortion, and speculation about ‘the putative father’. This kind of invasion of privacy cannot be justified.

According to the police’s lawyers, the spycops were politically neutral and did not favour or target one group over another. However this is patently not true. Hundreds of groups and individuals perceived to be on ‘the left’ were targeted, while the rising far-right, who created fear through their use of violence, were not policed in the same way.

The SDS’s annual reports consistently downplayed the threat posed by the far-right.
An earlier statement by the police’s lawyers suggested that there was no need to infiltrate groups like the National Front because they tended to cooperate’ with Special Branch. There appears to be no evidence to support this.

Neither is there any evidence that the police were able (or willing?) to pre-empt or prevent National Front violence and racist public disorder during this period.

This makes for a stark comparison with the lengths the SDS went to in order to infiltrate the left. Heaven referenced one example: ‘Gary Roberts’ (HN353, 1974-78) was enrolled on a degree course as part of his cover. He attended classes four days a week for several years, and got involved in student politics (becoming an NUS vice-president).

BLACKLISTING

Many eyebrows were raised by the police lawyers’ insistence in their November Opening Statement that the SDS did not infiltrate trade unions and were not involved in blacklisting.

The SDS’s own report from 1972 contains references to trade union activity and strikes (the miners, the dockers and building workers), as well as the union-initiated Shrewsbury Two campaign.

‘David Hughes’ (HN299/342, 1971-76) joined the TGWU and attended their meetings. It appears that many of his reports (including those on the Claimants Union) are missing, but the Inquiry has decided that we do not need to hear more from him.

The Blacklisting Support Group are outraged by the police lawyers reference this week to “so-called blacklisting organisations”. There is no doubt that blacklisting occurred and any attempt to belittle it is deeply offensive to its many victims and their families.

Heaven reminded the Inquiry that it was Operation Reuben, the Met’s own investigation, that found:

‘police, including Special Branches and the security services, supplied information to the blacklist funded by the country’s major construction firms, the Consulting Association and other agencies.’

SPYCOPS – FOOTSOLDIERS OF MI5?

The SDS seem to have infiltrated all sorts of groups, even those which posed no threat to law and order, at the behest of MI5, harvesting photographs, bank account details, membership lists, phone numbers etc.

We are told by police lawyers that the SDS was ‘neither an agent nor a servant of MI5’, but at the same time they tell us the SDS was not in a position to challenge MI5 in any way. Which is true? It can’t be both.

It’s the job of this Inquiry to work out who really controlled the SDS, and answer more questions about this relationship.

The Home Office did provide some official guidance to Special Branch in 1967, 1970 and 1984, but these documents do not answer all of the pertinent questions. The SDS and Special Branch were specifically cautioned in 1984 to seek advice from the security services before targeting any alleged ‘subversives’, and warned against undermining ‘the legitimate expression of ideas’ or ‘interfering in the exercise of political and civil liberties’.

INEQUALITY OF INFORMATION

Before finishing her submissions, Heaven moved on to summarise some procedural points.

At the last hearings, the problems around disclosure and only having a live transcript rather than a proper live stream meant many core participants couldn’t participate fully.

Disclosure of documents has been little better this time, but a large number of documents were missing from what was initially disclosed and a month later it seemed that the volume made available to us fell far short of what had been promised.

This reinforces the unfairness and inequality embedded in this Inquiry.

We can see that there was significant cooperation between the spycops and the security services and, once again, we demand disclosure of all Special Branch ‘registry files’ and other information being held about core participants.

We ask for explanation of the file reference numbering systems so we can understand what the files were.

The Inquiry must be more proactive in encouraging members of the public to come forward with evidence. Publishing the cover names used by officers and photographs of them would be helpful.

We ask again for the full list of groups reported on to be published, and for groups’ names not to be redacted from evidence.

We are still extremely concerned about the withholding of some spycops’ cover names.

Are secret ‘closed’ hearings really required for certain officers? At least one of these men appeared in the BBC’s True Spies documentary talking about his career so it is unclear why he cannot give public evidence to the Inquiry.

MORE OFFICERS, MORE EVIDENCE

Out of the eighteen officers from 1973-82 who are still alive, the Inquiry only plans to call eight to give evidence at these hearings.

‘Gary Roberts’ (HN353, 1974-78) initially supplied a statement in 2019. He has left the UK since then, so the Inquiry has decided to only provide a summary of his evidence. He was present at the 1974 Red Lion Square anti-fascist protest when Kevin Gately was killed, and at the Battle of Lewisham, but his reports seem to be missing.

Being abroad is no excuse to exclude him, he could still give evidence via Zoom like the other witnesses are in the UK.

Another officer who is not being called to give evidence or answer questions is ‘David Hughes’ (HN299/342, 1971-76). One of his reports was described on Wednesday by Counsel to the Inquiry as ‘the most disturbing document that we have found’. This referred to one person interrupting a reading group to talk about how TWO million people would be killed ‘when the socialist revolution took place’. The Inquiry needs to be able to better discern rhetoric and overstatement from actual threats.

Another spycop, ‘Bob Stubbs’ (HN301, 1971-76) was also at Red Lion Square, where he was punched in the face by a uniformed officer. We have not been supplied with all of the evidence about this day, the advance intelligence or any debriefing. The lack of them suggests they have been destroyed, making oral evidence all the more important.

‘Barry Tompkins‘ (HN106, 1979-83) denies reports of deceiving a woman into a relationship. We are now told that he will not be giving evidence due to ill health. However we have not seen any evidence that his condition has been properly verified by the Inquiry. There needs to be more transparency about such medical evidence.

RELEASE THE FILES

There was widespread, systematic contempt for the rights of those on the left of the political spectrum, whose common law rights and human rights have both been breached by the actions of the spycops. Any assurances from SDS & MI5 cannot be trusted.

Those who were spied upon must be shown their files so they can appraise what was done and correct the false information they undoubtedly contain. The whole purpose of this Inquiry was to learn from the mistakes of the past, so such human rights abuses would not be repeated in the future.

Heaven ended her submissions by suggesting that the sheer scale of the spycops scandal, the huge number of people spied upon, the apparent lack of accountability, exaggeration of risk, and the obvious political biases of the police all contribute to the belief that these undercover operations were unjustified and illegitimate. Instead they constituted an unlawful enterprise, conducted for political purposes and motivated by a desire to protect the Establishment rather than the wider public interest.

Full opening statement from Kirsten Heaven representing other Non-Police, Non-State Core Participants

Dave Morris

This was Dave Morris’ second opening statement to the Undercover Policing Inquiry, having already made a fuller statement at the November hearings. This one was mainly made in regard to the recently disclosed documents about undercover officer ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1976-79) who used his association with Morris to gain access to the anarchist milieu in London during the mid to late 1970s.

Coates has been said by the Counsel to the Inquiry to have infiltrated the International Socialists/Socialist Workers Party and the collectives who ran Anarchy and Zero Magazines, as well as the ‘Persons Unknown’ defendants solidarity group. He also used a dead child’s identity and visited the area where he was born. We have also been told that in his written statement, he refers to SDS officers jokingly discussing sexual relationships with activists and that management were aware of the practice.

Morris started by reiterating his previous statement, and endorsing Kirsten Heaven’s description of the spycops activity:

‘an unlawful enterprise conducted for political purposes and motivated by the desire to preserve the power of the establishment rather than protect the wider public interest.’

ORIGINS

Morris told how had had come across anarchist/libertarian ideas through a BBC documentary series ‘Open Doors’. In early 1975 he attended Freedom Newspaper collective meetings, and then went to Anarchy Magazine, discussing housing, poverty, feminism, exploitation at meetings of the friendly, sociable, advertised and open group.

He said that printed articles representing a wide range of views, inevitably including some he disagreed with. He was also a postal worker and was local branch secretary of the Union of Postal Workers.

By the end of the 1970s, Morris had begun to get involved with environmental campaigns such as London Greenpeace and, with fellow London Greenpeace member Helen Steel, was one of two defendants in the famous McLibel trial.

A life-long community activist, Morris is currently Secretary of the Haringey Federation of Residents Associations, and Chair of the National Federation of Parks and Green Spaces.

He explained the common thread running through his activism:

‘The essence of my personal motivation and political beliefs has remained constant throughout the last 50 years or so – the desire to tackle injustice, to seek improvements in society in the public interest, and to encourage and empower people to have as much control over their lives as possible.’

TARGETED

Turning to the early spying he’s just been told about, Morris said:

‘Looking back on the surveillance and infiltration of groups I was involved within in the 1970s… and how I was personally targeted, I feel disgust at this cynical and blatant breach of trust. Not just for me but also for the other victims I knew and know – such as the family with young children whose home was where the Anarchy Collective held meetings. Of course, I am outraged not just by the tactics used but also by the very existence and purpose of the whole spying operation. This Stasi-like behaviour is totally unacceptable.’

All of Morris’ activity was standard campaigning activism, albeit at the left of the spectrum. Organising public meetings, social events, protests, defence for people whose rights were infringed. These are rights enshrined in international law and should have the highest protection.

Indeed, a lot of his work has been about upholding rights and the law.

The McLibel trial – the longest running court case in English history – helped defeat McDonald’s attempt to silence critics. Corporations haven’t tried that sort of thing again.

The McLibel 2 then won an additional victory against the UK government at the European Court of Human Rights because the McLibel trial had been unfair.

After the Climate Camp in 2008, Morris won a case against the police and showed that mass stop and search of campaigners was in fact illegal. In both of these legal cases, he rolled back infringements on the rights of people to voice their dissent against oppressive powers.

The spycop Coates has said:

‘anarchists I reported on posed a minimal challenge to public order… didn’t even discuss activities that could be a public order threat… I do not not think any information I provided was significant’.

Coates reported many personal details, naming the area Morris was brought up in, what A levels he did and more – and got all those details are wrong! What less subjective stuff in their reports were they also wrong about? Some spycop reports are written a month after the event described & may have been embellished by officers who weren’t even there.

A spycop report says Morris suggested that the Anarchy Collective should be involved in fire-raising activity on government building in support of a firefighters strike. But he remembers the group deciding to produce stickers and join local picket lines. It’s possible someone may have made an offhand joke, but the police should be able to discern between that and genuine beliefs or intent.

THE REAL THREAT

Morris also said that while the coverage of left-wing activists seemed to be very thorough, those on the far-right of the political system have had little attention.

Morris said that a proper risk assessment of threats to society at the time would have set its sights on other dangers.

London Greenpeace’s opposition to McDonald’s was wide ranging – not just the harm caused in the manufacture of the food, but its workers rights, its subversion of the parent-child relationship and more. Why was this subversion not targeted by the SDS?

Beyond that were fossil fuel companies, tobacco companies, tax havens, car companies, the military intervention in Northern Ireland, and major construction companies who ran an industry blacklist (that both Morris and Helen Steel were added to!). Why didn’t the police, who nominally exist to protect the public, target people organising these serious threats?

He concluded by saying:

‘It was a gross breach of peoples’ trust and human rights, which maybe could have raised an arguable case if targeting active gangs of mass killers but has no shred of legitimacy when it was actually being used to protect those who control society’s wealth and power from the real needs of the public.’

Full opening statement from Dave Morris

Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 7

10 November 2020

Evidence from:

Imran Khan QC (Baroness Doreen Lawrence)

Heather Williams QC (Neville Lawrence OBE)

Imran Khan QC (Michael Mansfield QC)

Andrew Trollope QC (Azhar Khan, Miscarriages of justice)

Dave Morris (Social & environmental activists, [appearing in person])

Imran Khan QC (The Monitoring Group, Justice campaigns)

Pete Weatherby QC (Newham Monitoring Project [Justice campaigns], & Core Participants who are Political, Social & environmental activists)

The final scheduled day of opening statements at the Undercover Policing Inquiry was centred around the moving stories of people who were spied on as part of justice campaigns. These are mostly families whose loved ones have died at the hands of the police, or whose deaths had investigations that were scandalously inadequate.

Several themes recurred from the spied-upon:

• the need for the Inquiry to centre their experience and knowledge;
• not taking police statements at face value;
• the need for a diverse panel to advise a rich, white, male Chair who cannot properly understand systemic discrimination;
• the need for live-streaming the hearings to stop it being a private inquiry, which is being done by other inquiries.

All of it seemed to bounce right off Sir John.

Neither Helen Steel (delayed from yesterday), nor Dave Smith’s statements (delayed from Friday) have been allotted new dates as yet.

Imran Khan QC
(Baroness Doreen Lawrence)

Imran Khan opened proceedings, representing Baroness Lawrence, campaigner and mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.

Khan stated that Baroness Lawrence has lost confidence in the ability of the Inquiry to get to the truth of why her family was spied upon. She is also disappointed with the Metropolitan Police’s statement that they have undergone a substantial change in their. She thinks the Met remains institutionally racist.

Ethnic minority people are over policed and under protected. This is illustrated by disproportionate use of stop and search against young Black people today.

The 1998 Macpherson inquiry into Stephen Lawrence’s death should have been the end of it. The Met claimed to have already given all evidence to Macpherson. This was a bare-faced lie.

CORRUPTION AND LIES

In 2012, it was reported that there was detailed evidence of one of the investigating detective’s criminality that was held back from the public, the Lawrence family’s legal team, and the Macpherson inquiry. These revelations led to the Ellison Review, which also found spycops had targeted the Lawrences.

Khan then outlined the well-known background of the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the incompetent and corrupt police investigation that followed. Stephen Lawrence was murdered at just 18 years old in 1993 in South London whist waiting for a bus. Justice was slow and by no means reached. Baroness Lawrence still mourns the death of her son.

Khan said that the same racism that led to the murder of Stephen and let his killers walk free, still exists. All the police involved with the botched initial investigation were promoted or have since retired, not one of them has been disciplined, let alone sacked.

Baroness Lawrence said:

‘To lose a child is unthinkable. To be fighting for justice for him 27 years later is inexcusable’.

Five years later, in 1998, Macpherson made his findings, which included the fact that police attending to the scene of Stephen’s murder did nothing to try to save him. Khan says it seems ‘the police did not want to get their hands dirty with a Black man’s blood’.

SPYCOPS DIGGING FOR DIRT

In 2013, they learned that police spied on the family’s campaign and ‘sought dirt’ to discredit them and their supporters. Undercover officer Peter Francis said he was just one of four officers tasked with doing so. However, the Lawrence family were law abiding, so there was no dirt for the undercovers to find.

Francis was then tasked to find dirt on people more peripheral to the campaign, using names passed on by the family liaison officers purportedly supporting the family. The police officer referred to as HN78 (‘Bobby Lewis’), interviewed in the Ellison Review, and picked up information on the Lawrence campaign.

The Lawrence family’s campaign was one of many such family justice campaigns targeted by undercover police. Police resources that should have been spent catching killers were instead used to obstruct justice in this way.

The Lawrences then wrote to the Home Secretary saying the Met hadn’t given a satisfactory explanation about the allegations of spying. They asked for a public, transparent inquiry. Home Secretary said no, unless the Ellison report recommended it. The report, when it came, did indeed recommend a public inquiry.

Baroness Lawrence said that a public inquiry was the only way to conduct a satisfactory investigation as internal police investigations cannot be trusted. Khan went on to outline the various investigations conducted – and the broken promises made by the police.

The Home Secretary finally ordered the undercover policing public inquiry in 2014, remarking that ‘it is deplorable the family have had to wait so long’. The irony isn’t lost on core participants, finding themselves nearly seven years later at the very start of an Inquiry that has swathed itself in secrecy.

HOLLOW PROMISES

In 2014, the Met Commissioner said all material about the spying on the family would be released. The Lawrence family have received absolutely nothing since then. They still don’t know why they were spied on. Should the police have given these files to the Inquiry in the meantime, Baroness Lawrence wants them to be handed over to her now.

Baroness Lawrence is exhausted by decades of hollow, hypocritical promises that are never delivered on. She wants to know the extent to which the Met’s Commissioner at the time, Paul Condon, knew about, or authorised the spying on the her family. On the one hand, she has been told there was no direct spying, yet on the other the Met have already apologised for it – what is the truth?

The culture of the police has played a part in creating miscarriages of justice and covering up racism. Public apologies aren’t matched by real reform. For instance, the one whistle-blower, Peter Francis, still faces the threat of prosecution for coming forward. While Francis’ spying was reprehensible, the Met’s intransigence and denials are much worse. He must be be given the assurances he seeks about immunity from prosecution.

JUSTICE DELAYED, JUSTICE DENIED

It is 27 years since Stephen’s murder, yet the senior police officers involved in the investigation were only referred for the possibility of misconduct charges last week.

Baroness Lawrence trusted Mark Ellison’s investigation as he’d secured the convictions of two of Stephen’s killers. His recommendations were clear. In contrast, she said, although the Undercover Policing Inquiry was supposed to be a ‘proper, transparent inquiry, rigorous in pursuit of the truth’ it has turned out to be secretive and ‘we should be able to see every officer who chose to spy on us’.

Khan contrasted the open way that Baroness Lawrence campaigned, despite hostility from the police with the anonymity granted to the police. She didn’t have the luxury of hiding, so neither should the undercover police. The Met, unless forced to do otherwise, will seek to avoid accountability and hide evidence. They can’t be trusted to simply offer it up to the Inquiry.

DIVERSITY OR FAILURE

The Macpherson Inquiry only succeeded with the help of a diverse panel advising. Khan also explained the vital context of the racism surrounding the spying. If the Chair doesn’t understand this, then surely point Baroness Lawrence makes is proven: a diverse panel is therefore needed.

The idea that the Special Demonstration Squad operated lawfully and in the public interest is nonsense. Clearly, there is no good reason to spy on any of Baroness Lawrence’s campaigning.

Khan concluded: ‘We must have the truth’, and then quoted Baroness Lawrence:

‘I was a happy married woman with three gorgeous children. Now I have lost a son and I am divorced, but that’s only a tiny part of what has changed. Unless you’ve lost a child you can’t understand the depth of heartache I’ve felt… and would give up all I have to go back to the seconds before Stephen died. I simply ask for justice’.

The accompanying written opening statement from Imran Khan QC on behalf of Baroness Doreen Lawrence

Heather Williams QC
(Neville Lawrence OBE)

Heather Williams opened by saying why she was here and, in a sense, why we were all here.

On 22nd April 1993 Stephen Lawrence was murdered by racists in Eltham while waiting for a bus. He was stabbed by a gang of white youths who used racist language. The initial murder investigation was completely inadequate; during it Dr Lawrence felt as if he was in a constant battle with police.

The Macpherson Inquiry decided that institutional racism was apparent in the police investigation into Stephen’s death and in his family’s treatment by officers. These failings meant that Stephen’s killers largely escaped justice.

This has impacted on all of Dr Neville Lawrence’s life. As the Macpherson Inquiry demonstrated, the police were not on their side. Despite that Inquiry’s historic recognition of institutional racism in the police, Dr Lawrence believes too little progress has been made. He feels the state has failed him.

Against this background, the allegation of police interference with his family has only further undermined his confidence in the police. Intelligence on Dr Lawrence was passed up the chain of command by police, and an undercover officer attended the Macpherson inquiry pretending to be a supporter of the family. The existence of this was also kept secret from Lord Macpherson.

How then can the public have confidence in policing of Black communities if resources are used like this against them? It appears to many that Black lives don’t matter to the police.

LONG TERM SPYING

Williams made it clear that Dr Lawrence doesn’t have confidence in the Inquiry. He wanted to participate in an inquiry capable of finding the truth and stopping these abuses from being repeated in the future. However, he, like so many victims of spycops, has had almost no disclosure of documents.

The Met didn’t just spy on the Lawrence family’s campaign in the immediate aftermath of the murder. Five years later, as the Macpherson Inquiry was heading towards its conclusion, the Met had a spy in the Lawrence family camp – a Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) officer using the name Dave Hagan.

The undercover officer met with Richard Walton who was part of the team who were providing the Commissioner’s response to the Inquiry, feeding them information on the family’s thinking. That meeting was brokered by SDS boss Bob Lambert.

In 2013, we learned from whistle-blower SDS officer Peter Francis that undercover police had targeted Black justice campaigns, including the Lawrences. Alongside that, the family liaison officers were gathering intelligence rather than concerning themselves with the welfare of the family.

However, it was not until 2016 that the truth about undercover police undermining the Macpherson Inquiry was revealed. Walton, by then, was running spycops operations as the head of Counter Terrorism Command. Like many guilty police officers who find themselves under investigation, he resigned to avoid disciplinary charges.

A SPY IN THE FAMILY CAMP

A document from the foundation of the SDS in 1968 says the unit was created to provide information on public order, and related intelligence. Twenty years later it said it was concerned with terrorism and politically motivated crime. Whichever, the grieving, devastated Lawrence family fell under none of these categories. Therefore there was no excuse for snooping around the Lawrences, whether directly or otherwise.

And yet, undercover police were circling the Lawrence family, looking to smear them instead of catching their son’s killers. Macpherson found the Lawrences were treated unfavourably because of their race. The 2014 Stephen Lawrence Review by Mark Ellison QC discovered undercover officer ‘Dave Hagan’ spied on the family campaign at a time when the family was taking legal action against the police. Hagan reported back personal details as well as the Lawrence family’s campaign strategy.

The police’s self-investigation into undercover policing, Operation Herne, started in 2012. Its 2014 report centred on allegations of spying on Lawrences. Like Ellison, they did not find ‘smoking gun’ documentation proving that there was an instruction to spy on the Lawrence family. But, in a unit where creating written evidence was often avoided, we cannot rely on documents. The Inquiry must rely on oral evidence.

SDS officers routinely ‘hoovered up’ all knowledge and retained it, ignoring issues of privacy, the third Operation Herne report was published in 2014. Numerous undercovers have confirmed they received no training on collateral intrusion and that they took no account of the issue.

A 2016 Independent Police Complaints Commission report said Lambert and Walton would face disciplinary charges if they were still serving. It was at this point that Lambert finally resigned from his academic posts. Walton is now working for an opaquely funded right-wing think tank that calls Extinction Rebellion extremists.

WHEN WILL WE GET THE TRUTH?

It’s plain there was no legal authority or justification for the intrusion on the Lawrence family. And, nearly seven years in, we’ve had almost no information from the Inquiry. It appears to have done nothing significant towards its purpose. Dr Lawrence has received no substantive disclosure.

The delays to the UCPI have increased the distress of victims. We are promised disclosure will happen, at an unspecified time, but we cannot properly contribute until that is done.

Dr Lawrence wants to know the full extent to which undercovers spied on him at the time of Stephen’s death and afterward. He has many questions that he wants the Inquiry to answer. He does not think a white family in the same position would have been treated this way.

Williams went on to say that the Ellison Report only focuses on 1993 and 1998, which missed out the period in between, including the time of Stephen’s inquest. This also leaves questions to be answered. For instance, why was Dave Hagan allowed to befriend the family and attend the Macpherson inquiry?

Further, what did Hagan tell Walton at the 1998 meeting? Was this information used at the Macpherson inquiry? Who else saw it? Who knew about the meeting? Lambert was Hagan’s handler, speaking to him several times a day. Dr Lawrence also wants to hear what he has to say, as well as Hagan’s other managers.

DON’T TRUST THE PREPETRATORS

Due to the police’s tendency to destroy records, the Inquiry should take control of all documents rather than trusting the police not to pre-sort the files to avoid incriminating themselves. Williams then went on to speak of Neville’s concern about particular officers being granted anonymity. These are HN109 who was Peter Francis’ manager, HN101 who was also involved in his tasking, HN86 the SDS boss 1993-1996 who gave the order to find dirt on Lawrences, and HN58, the boss 1997-2001 so who will have known about the 1998 meeting with Walton.

Heather Williams made the point that almost all non-state core participants have been making since the Inquiry began: if you give a spied-upon person a cover name, they are more likely to be able to give evidence about that person, but with just a number that is impossible and we only get the officer’s own account.

Williams then quoted Lord Bingham, a senior member of the judiciary: ‘Publicity is a powerful disinfectant’.

Beyond the secrecy, Dr Lawrence is, like Baroness Lawrence, particularly concerned by the lack of a diverse panel in the ‘fact-finding’ part of the Inquiry as well as the anonymity given to the undercover officers.

Where there’s evidence of racism, police must be held to account through the legal system if there’s to be any confidence in that system. Dr Lawrence has been failed badly by institutions over the years, and hopes that he will not be failed again at the Inquiry.

The accompanying written opening statement from Heather Williams QC on behalf of Neville Lawrence OBE

Imran Khan QC
(Michael Mansfield QC)

The Inquiry continued with the return of Imran Khan QC, this time speaking for Michael Mansfield QC, who a a core particpant due to his role as a lawyer representing the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.

Khan started with reference to the situation today, saying the State acts with increasing hostility towards the legal profession, with sneering from the Prime Minister about ‘lefty human rights lawyers’ who are ‘hamstringing’ the criminal justice system.

The Home Secretary dismissed lawyers objectións to her similar comments, saying they should ‘get back to work’, even though she was actually objecting to their work.

When the State appears to be having a wholesale attack on lawyers, there are grave consequences.

Khan said:

‘It is chilling to consider that lawyers might have failed to take on cases or acted otherwise in accordance with their duty, in the knowledge that they might attract the unwanted attention of the State and its institutions.’

Mansfield wonders if we’re in an era where the legal profession is imperilled. The State has always tried to silence critics, but the scale of it varies and this moment is especially precarious.

MICHAEL MANSFIELD’S CAREER

Michael Mansfield has long been targeted by undercover police, as he has represented people perceived as a threat since the early 1970s, such as the Angry Brigade.

He continued to represent people who suffered at the hands of the police, e.g. (with Gareth Peirce) the Birmingham 6, families at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, and the families of Jean Charles de Menezes, Pat Finucane and Stephen Lawrence. Among his clients are Ricky Reel’s family, who were targeted by spycops while Ricky’s killers walk free.

If you don’t have lawyers who are willing and able to challenge the State, you remove the right to challenge at all. Yet lawyers that bring such challenges are subjected to attacks and undercover operations.

The United Nations Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers say that states must ensure equal access to lawyers of people’s choosing, who must be able to work without intimidation or hindrance.

Undercover surveillance of Mansfield had no justifiable reason. There was no ‘public order’ or ‘public interest’ justification, and no criminality. However, if state sanctioned tactics of unlawful surveillance were designed to intimidate lawyers such as Mansfield, they failed.

LOW EXPECTATIONS OF THE UCPI

He does not have high hopes of this Inquiry, as it is held under the Inquiries Act 2005. Mansfield scathingly descibes the Act as ‘legislation that serves to undermine the rule of law, erode protection of human rights, shake public confidence, and lessen further the independence of the judicial and legal system.’

Furthermore, it was not properly debated, it repealed earlier, more effective laws, and it does not allow parliamentary scrutiny of Inquiry decisions. Also, arbitrary appointments mean such inquiries are never truly independent.

Similarly hasty and equally egregious is the CHIS Bill currently being rushed through Parliament will allow any state agent to be authorised to commit any crime, it’s an open invitation to damage and destroy lives.

RECOMMENDATIONS NOT ACTIONS

In conclusion, Michael Mansfield takes on cases that are uncomfortable to the state, but this should have no bearing on how he is treated. A lawyer is a lawyer. Mansfield is just one of many who have been spied on. This Inquiry must find out the full extent, why it was done, and who authorised it. Mansfield wants a sincere apology to him and to the other core participants.

There is a huge risk that the police will just ignore what they see as yet another set of recommendations. So many hard-won inquiries are just left to gather dust in the Home Office. If the Inquiry fails in this, fear and intimidation could replace fearlessness among lawyers, and we would lose the capacity for challenging state wrongdoing.

Mansfield will not go away quietly. He is clear that for an Inquiry to have real purpose it not only needs powerful and far-reaching guidelines and recommendations, but also their effective implementation. We must criminalise unjustified surveillance of lawyers.

The accompanying written opening statement from Imran Khan QC on behalf of Michael Mansfield QC

Andrew Trollope QC
(Azhar Khan, Miscarriages of justice)

Before lunch, the Inquiry heard from Andrew Trollope QC on behalf of Azhar Khan, a solicitor who was targeted by undercover officers and wrongly prosecuted.

In 2007, the Metropolitan police conceived a covert ‘sting’ operation, culminating in the arrest of Azhar Khan for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. This new and unique operation went beyond covert surveillance, and was a plan for undercover officers to pose as potential criminal clients in order to set him up.

SPYCOPS ENTRAP A SOLICITOR

Azhar Khan began his own solicitor’s practice in 2005, one of the few BAME lawyers to do so.
Settled in a deprived area’of London, he served important local needs, doing mostly legal aid defence work and working for local charities as well. He also worked to encourage BAME men and particularly women to get ahead in the profession.

For some reason police took exception to his work and launched Operation Castration or Castrol. This involved undercover officers posing as criminals to become his clients over a sustained period in order to try to induce him to commit crime. They would have themselves arrested as drug dealers or money launderers then request Khan as their lawyer. The ‘suspects’ were then released on bail.

This sting operation lasted 18 months and involved four spycops and the complicity of six other officers who made the staged arrests, as well as senior officers who reviewed the operation.

Khan’s ‘clients’ offered him the opportunity to launder £50,000, which he refused. They also showed him big bags of tablets, supposedly drugs, offering them to him. Posing as someone from organised crime, one of them kept ringing Khan, seeking meetings and repeatedly tried to lure him into criminal deals.

NO EVIDENCE

By September 2009, there was no evidence of wrongdoing at all. The officer in charge wanted to end the operations. But the spycops trying to dupe Khan said they’d had a meeting where he’d agreed to a crime – this was a complete lie – which led to a renewal of the authorisation.

The spycops were persistently trying to trap Khan into committing crime for a very long period of time, in the face of his impeccable integrity. There were no real grounds, nothing even alleged, that could justify it. It was plainly illegal.

At no stage did Khan agree to any of the various crimes they offered. Nonetheless, police raided his home and office in December 2009, charging him with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

The police later conceded that the staged arrests and procedures at the police stations were designed to deceive Azhar Khan in the course of his professional practice, in order to try and find evidence of criminal conduct by him.

ABUSE OF PROCESS

The objective of the operation was not to investigate any crime of which Azhur Khan was suspected. Rather, it was to ‘integrity test’ his conduct as a criminal defence solicitor by using undercover officers to suggest the commission of crimes to see how he would react’. Over and over again.

Trollope explained that ‘no evidence of any offence on the part of Azhur Khan was gleaned. The clear aim was to put him and his practice City Law Solicitors out of business.’

He continued, ‘one of the most legally and morally objectionable features of the operation was that these attempts were so persistent in the face of Azhur Khan’s repeated failure agree to the suggestions of crime.’

Eventually, the case was thrown out of court, the judge ruling it was abuse of process with no case to answer.

A RACIST OPERATION

The very basis of the operation was racist. As an Asian lawyer, it seems he was singled out in a way that would never have been done if he were white. All the undercover officers in the operation were BAME. Did they think Khan would be more liable to commit crime with them?

Where did they get the idea from? Who else has been treated this way? Which other officers might have given them tactics and advice?

This was spycops acting as agents provocateur, for a long period, against someone for whom there was no evidence of corruption. Khan was a victim of a miscarriage of justice. The Inquiry must find the full extent and justifications of this operation.

The accompanying written opening statement from Andrew Trollope QC on behalf of Azhar Khan

Dave Morris
(Social & environmental activists, [appearing in person])

Dave Morris has been a community and political activist for nearly 50 years. He’s best known for being one of the defendants in the ‘McLibel’ Trial along with Helen Steel, but his work encompasses many more issues beyond that.

Just as at the McLibel trial 30 years ago, he has no lawyer covering that period at the Undercover Policing Inquiry and is instead speaking for himself.

Morris opened by outlining his anarchist, workplace, environmental, community, and other activism.

In the 1980s, he was involved in London Greenpeace (a small collective founded in 1971, independent from the later-formed Greenpeace International) which was infiltrated by undercover officers from the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS).

The group began a publicity campaign focused on McDonald’s as an example of what all transnational corporations are doing – opposing their environmental destruction, promotion of junk food, treatment of workers, abuse of animals, exploitation of children, and more. They produced a leaflet called What’s Wrong With McDonald’s. The burger giant sued for libel, presumably expecting them to back down. It was a drastic misjudgement.

McLIBEL

What happened next was the stuff of fiction. Steel and Morris couldn’t afford lawyers and represented themselves in court (assisted behind the scenes by a young barrister prepared to work for free called Keir Starmer) against a large McDonald’s legal team led by a QC charging £2,000 a day. McDonald’s had objected to the whole leaflet, so Steel and Morris had to defend every word. It became the longest trial in English history. In the end there were a number of damning judgements against the fast food giant, and versions of the leaflet were being handed out in millions all over the world.

You can see more about the case in the McLibel documentary and at the campaign website from back in the day McSpotlight.org (which was one of the first of its kind in 1996).

The McLibel Support Campaign around the trial was also infiltrated by spycops. They didn’t know this at the time, so it never came up in court. The spycops weren’t just attending meetings, they played an active part. In 2011, Morris and Steel discovered that ‘Bob Robinson’, who had significantly contributed to the leaflet, was actually undercover police officer Bob Lambert.

PRIVATE SPIES

As well as undercover police infiltrating London Greenpeace, McDonald’s sent at least seven spies into the group, one of whom deceived a genuine member into a six-month relationship.

Sid Nicholson, McDonald’s Vice President and Head of Security, oversaw that spying operation. He’d come to the firm from being the former Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendant in Brixton, following a career in the police in apartheid South Africa. He had stated from the witness box that McDonald’s security department was wholly comprised of ex-police officers. Nicholson had admitted asking friends on the force for information on activists and having a two-way exchange, including home addresses, which was illegal.

Morris referred to footage, obtained from McDonald’s during the McLibel trial and shown in the McLibel documentary, of a London Greenpeace protest at McDonald’s HQ (East Finchley) in 1989. McDonald’s spy Michelle Hooker can be seen handing out anti-McDonald’s leaflets next to spycop John Dines, who scandalously developed a long, intimate relationship with Helen Steel. Sid Nicholson had testified that a Special Branch officer was given ‘a perch’ next to himself at the HQ to jointly observe that very protest in the film. It was later discovered that during the case, yet another spycop Matt Rayner also had an abusive sexual relationship with a woman living next door to Morris in Tottenham.

John Dines and Helen Steel lived together as a couple whilst she, Morris and Keir Starmer made pre-trial preparations. Dines then disappeared. How much privileged legal advice was Dines illegally privy to whilst living with Ms Steel, and what was passed on to McDonald’s?

Steel and Morris sued the Met for sharing their personal information with McDonald’s. The police choose to settle the case out of court, including apologising, paying compensation and committing to inform all London police officers not to do share confidential information to third parties.

The McLibel judgment found that McDonald’s had been responsible for industrial-scale breaches of employment laws and the welfare rights of animals. yet the people who were exposing this were the ones targeted by spycops.

In 2005, the European Court of Human rights found the McLibel case had violated their right to a fair trial and freedom of expression, and they were compensated by the British Government. The Court ruled:

‘The Government had contended that, as the applicants were not journalists, they should not attract the high level of protection afforded to the press under Article 10. However, in a democratic society even small and informal campaign groups, such as London Greenpeace, had to be able to carry on their activities effectively.’

Neither McDonald’s nor the police were ever held to account for any of this.

TARGETED FOR BEING PROGRESSIVE

Morris based most of the rest of his speech to the Inquiry on a statement on undercover policing signed by 90 of the Inquiry’s core participants, nearly half of all those in the non-police/state groups.

Since 1968, more than 1,000 groups campaigning in the UK for a better society and world have been spied upon and infiltrated, by secret unaccountable political spycops. They targeted a huge range of groups – environmentalists, trade unions, women’s rights, racial justice, LGBTQ rights, animal rights, as well as campaigning against war, corporate power, repression, and police brutality.

The groups represented in this Inquiry were not terrorists, but were pushing for positive social change in an overwhelmingly public and open way.

Many of the groups spycops targeted have been vindicated by history, their ideas have become mainstream orthodoxy, and some have resulted in legal and other formal recognition by society. Yet any group that challenged the established order seemed to have been deemed a legitimate target of the secret political policing units.

SPYCOPS’  CRIMES

Spycops weren’t merely observing, they infiltrated personal lives. Fake friendships were developed and exploited. Many people, especially women, were deceived into intimate and abusive relationships.

Children have been fathered and then abandoned, identities of dead children stolen to provide ‘cover’ names. Spycops actively influenced groups. Many arrests were made that resulted in miscarriages of justice. Family campaigns, people seeking justice for loved ones killed by police, were deliberately undermined by spycops.

Bugging a phone is recognised as a breach of human rights and police have to apply for a warrant. Spycops hacking people’s lives is infinitely worse and should be totally unacceptable to everyone.

Spycops weren’t aberrations or ‘rogue officers’. This spying was established and conducted with the full sanction of the state and supported by its apparatus and taxpayer funding.

By targeting such groups, spycops show institutional discrimination, racism, sexism and anti-democratic action, including industrial-scale breaches of laws and charters that protect basic human rights and the right to protest.

THE ‘THREAT’ OF SOCIAL JUSTICE, OR RETROSPECTIVE ‘JUSTIFICATIONS’ FOR SPYING?

If spycops are worried about political violence, why were fascists largely left to their own devices while we were spied on? The police plainly have political bias.

Why did the state see social justice as a threat to society? Why didn’t they put spycops into financial corporations, hedge funds, military elites, and power-mad establishment political parties? Such institutions employ and promote daily, mass institutional violence – war, poverty, exploitation of workers, colonialism and environmental destruction – reinforced by PR and manipulation of society for their own selfish ends. There’s your actual threat to public order and well being.

What should we count as ‘extremism’? The Climate Emergency, said Morris, is the most extreme threat we face. In 1968, the American Petroleum Institute commissioned scientists to investigate burning fossil fuels, they discovered ‘there seems to be no doubt that the potential damage to our environment could be severe.’ That was the same time spycops were set up. The oil industry has obstructed efforts to tackle it. Has the oil industry ever been targeted by spycops? If not, why not?

Morris however noted the public outrage at the beginning of 2020 over campaign groups being lumped in with fascist and other terrorist groups in police counter-terrorism documents. This included the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement which had a few months earlier been blockading roads in central London for over a week calling for action to prevent climate catastrophe. In response to the controversy, the Minister for Security was forced to admit to Parliament that XR was not and should not be categorised as ‘extremist’. So just who are the real extremists?

Morris also tackled MI5’s seemingly dominant role over the secret police spying operations from the very beginning. He stated that MI5 was seeking information about, and the undermining of, groups and movements which are deemed to support ‘subversion of the State’. But Morris said they should look elsewhere – for the last 30 years mass subversion of the State, supported by successive Governments, has been systematically and continuously carried out by unaccountable multinational corporations seeking deregulation of laws protecting society from unrestrained profiteering, and taking over formerly nationalised industries and sectors so that a tiny few can profit from what were once State-run public services.

Adding insult to injury is the deliberate widespread use of ‘tax havens’ and other so-called ‘loopholes’ to annually avoid billions of pounds of taxes due to the State which could have been used for our struggling public services. Millions of people have suffered as a result. But have there been any undercover officers targeting of this serious, industrial-scale daily subversion of the State? He guessed never.

PROTECTING THE PERPETRATORS

It took five years of spycops revelations – largely from victims’ own research – to get the promise of the public inquiry, and five more for it to begin. Police and the Inquiry have consistently refused to release lists of officers, or groups targeted, or relevant documents.

Victims of spycops are dismayed by the Inquiry’s prioritising of the protection of the perpetrators’ privacy above the right of victims and the public to know the truth.
As the people who brought this scandal to public awareness, we’ve worked hard to get the justice we and the public are entitled to.

We remain determined to bring the whole murky political policing operation into the public spotlight where it belongs.

DAMAGE LIMITATION

This is supposed to be a public inquiry, but it’s more like a police damage-limitation exercise. The hearings are not yet publicly accessible and nor will they be live-streamed, which is the only way to ensure the public and victims can follow it.

Morris endorsed the 13 recommendations from the People’s Public Inquiry into Secret Political Policing, Conway Hall, London in July 2018 which, among other things, call for the release of all officers’ names & political files, an admission of institutional discrimination, and the permanent disbanding of the political secret police.

Having covered so much nefarious activity, Morris ended on an optimistic note. Despite being undermined by spycops, movements for positive change are still here and have had many successes. Such movements are needed now more than ever. A better world is possible and it’s up to all of us to support – rather than pay spycops to undermine – efforts for real change.

The accompanying written opening statement from Dave Morris

Imran Khan QC
(The Monitoring Group, Justice campaigns)

Imran Khan QC then spoke for the Monitoring Group.

 

The Monitoring Group (TMG) was founded by Suresh Grover, who is still a co-director. It is one of the oldest anti-racist organisations in the UK, carrying out advocacy work and supporting struggles for civil rights among ethnic minority groups and migrants. It occupies a unique place within the UK’s social justice network.

The organisation was founded in Southall, London, in the mid-1970s, and originally called the Southall Monitoring Group (SMG). It was inspired by national and global struggles against apartheid. It has made many achievements over 40 years, and has offered trauma support to more than 1,500 victims of racism over the last decade.

Its earliest campaigns were around the murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in June 1976 and Blair Peach, killed during an anti-racist demo in Southall in 1979. Peach’s partner, Celia Stubbs, and her campaign were supported by TMG. It was not until 2010 that the Met released the 1979 report that effectively admitted a police officer had killed Peach.

TMG supported Stephen Lawrence’s family campaign for many years. It also supported the family of Ricky Reel, who was murdered by racists in 1997, and whose family was then targeted by undercover police. Other families supported included that of Michael Menson, also killed in a 1997 attack which, as with Ricky Reel, police wrongly denied was racist in nature. As mentioned earlier in the day, at least 18 such justice campaigns were targeted by undercovers.

Given their involvement with so many spied-on campaigns, the TMG was surely spied upon too. The National Civil Rights Movement (NCRM) was founded by TMG’s Suresh Grover in 1999 to support such campaigns and to push for full implementation of the recommendations from the Macpherson inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence. Undercover police were at the NCRM founding conference. However, Suresh and TMG have had no formal admission they were ever spied on. After five years, they are losing hope that this Inquiry can be transparent and reveal the truth.

POLICE TARGETING OF THE MONITORING GROUP

The first revelation of police surveillance of the Group was made in a 1989 Guardian article. It said, that in 1987 the Southall Monitoring Group was the subject of a report written by Ealing police intelligence officer, PC J.E. Black describing them as a ‘political cell’ set up by the Greater London Council (GLC) to follow an agenda while purporting to be a community organisation.

Police saw anti-racism as being somehow anti-police, and seemed distressed about SMG’s ability to marshal support for causes and cases.

Thereafter, Grover noticed a reluctance from politicians to engage because they did not want to be spied on. There were unexplained burglaries of the office. Grover himself was targeted for arrest. This was not, as the police claimed last week, merely ‘collateral intrusion’ in family justice campaigns. It is a worry then, that Mitting takes the police’s word on that at face value. Operation Herne, the police self-investigation into spycops, effectively treated a lack of surviving files as an implication of innocence – absence of evidence as evidence of absence.

DISLIKE OF RACIAL JUSTICE GROUPS

It’s well established that numerous racial justice groups in the 60s were non-violent yet spied on by the British State fearing civil unrest. That unrest came in 1981, and for the reason the State had feared – ‘racial disadvantage’ was the phrase used by Lord Scarman in his report into the 1981 Brixton disturbances.

Scarman stated:

‘Urgent action is needed if it is not to become an endemic, ineradicable disease threatening the very survival of our society… racial disadvantage and its nasty associate racial discrimination, have not yet been eliminated. They poison minds and attitudes; they are, as long as they remain, and will continue to be a potent factor of unrest’.

The State took none of this on board, instead bringing in Sir Kenneth Newman as Met Commissioner to apply his Northern Ireland experience to Black, Asian and migrant communities in London. There was surely coordination with the Met’s sub-unit of undercover police, the Special Demonstration Squad.

Some people are core participants in the Undercover Policing Inquiry directly because of Newman’s legacy. They were not ‘collateral intrusion’, but deliberately spied upon.

After the 2005 London bombings, TMG worked in Beeston in Leeds, where more than one of the bombers had come from. Grover was twice contacted in the first week by MI5 to discourage him from interacting with the ‘suspect community’.

INQUIRY UNABLE TO INVESTIGATE

As other core participants have mentioned today, Mitting is simply incapable of investigating racism in the police and undercover police if he rejects the Macpherson report’s definition of institutional racism. There must be a diverse panel appointed to help the Chair before the Inquiry starts taking evidence. Otherwise, it cannot fulfil its remit, examining 40 years of undercover police who were guided by bias and discrimination.

Khan recounted psychological studies that show implicit biases even in those who consciously oppose discrimination. An object is more likely to be perceived as a weapon in a Black hand than if it’s in a white one. These studied have proven right those who report subtle discrimination, and people in Mitting’s kind of position would do well to take notice.

Racism does not stand still, it changes size, shape and function. When it becomes institutionalised we are not dealing with prejudice, but power and institutional practices.

By the time this Inquiry reports, it will be nearly 20 years since the Special Demonstration Squad was disbanded. Police will say it is now a historical issue, and that they’ve already learned their lessons. Such assurances cannot be accepted on their own terms, every such claim must be tested by the Inquiry.

To date, TMG has participated in three public inquiries. They initially encouraged people to get involved with this one. They even had the Inquiry’s legal team participate in a public conference they organised. However, the continuing secrecy has been disappointing and damaging to the Inquiry’s credibility.

CREATING ITS OWN PROBLEMS

The Inquiry’s difficulties are of its own makings. It agreed to give spycops anonymity without good reason, and it allowed police and other State bodies to delay it excessively. It has shown remarkable reluctance to address critical areas of racism and sexism because, in reality, it sees them as marginal, issues that are not worthy of its time.

Because of all this, the Inquiry has rejected the chorus of calls for specialist advisers to assist it. In doing all this, the Inquiry has created an uneven playing field tilted in favour of the perpetrators and against their victims.

Like Dave Morris, TMG endorses the 13 recommendations from the People’s Public Inquiry into Secret Political Policing of July 2018.

The Inquiry only exists because of the bravery and tenacity of core participants. It has substance because of the whistle-blower who exposed the skeletons in the first place and journalists who reported the horrors to the public. Its conviction derives from the unshakeable spirit of protestors – Black and white, women and men – who dared to dream for a better world. That dream will live on regardless of the conclusions of this Inquiry.

The accompanying written opening statement from Imran Khan QC on behalf of The Monitoring Group

Pete Weatherby QC
(Newham Monitoring Project [Justice campaigns], & Core Participants who are Political, Social & environmental activists)

Finally, we heard a tremendously powerful and incisive statement from Pete Weatherby QC, speaking for eighteen different core participants.

He began the show with a video clip, of spycop ‘Lynn Watson‘ (EN34) playing the clown.

No, seriously, footage of her being trained up by the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) Leeds, and then taking part in a range of actions with the Clown Army. These included visits to a military recruitment centre, to the US spy-base at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire. It begins in the car park of Hilary Benn MP’s constituency office.

 

Weatherby asked ‘How on earth was that considered legitimate policing?’

He then showed a picture of spycop ‘Simon Wellings‘ (HN118) wearing a bright orange cardboard ‘tank’ he’d made while infiltrating Globalise Resistance – an anti-war, anti-capitalist network – at an anti-arms trade protest. ‘How was that legitimate policing?’

The absurdity of investing massive resources into groups of this kind illustrated what the debacle of the last fifty years of undercover political policing looks like; farcical yet deeply damaging.

Millions of pounds (which could have been spent on other public budgets) were mis-spent over the decades of State-sanctioned, clandestine activities by the police, monitoring justice campaigns, anti-racism and anti-police violence groups, environmental campaigns, community and solidarity networks, animal rights groups, and the political activism of rebel clowns, musicians, artists, campaigners, and others – the vast majority of them on the political left.

These images do not represent a light-hearted point. There is actually nothing funny to see here. These operations were profoundly sinister, and an affront to democracy itself.

More than five years in to the Inquiry, and none of the groups and individuals he represents have received any meaningful disclosure. It looks likely that they will have to wait until at least 2022 for the Inquiry to deal with their cases.

While ‘Lynn Watson’ and ‘Simon Wellings’ have their rights protected by the Inquiry’s restriction orders, the rights of his clients are treated as secondary. They are all being made to wait.

FACTS WITHOUT DETAILS

For example, the Newham Monitoring Project may have been spied on throughout their thirty year history (from 1980 onwards) but they have yet to be told who spied on them, or when.

His clients include an array of anti-war, anti-arms trade, environmental, anti-hunt, social justice and Palestinian rights activists – some of them know some details of their surveillance and infiltrations, but only because they exposed these undercover activities themselves.

They remain in the dark. The lack of transparency, and the enormous delay, has sapped the trust of non-state core participants, and risks undermining the credibility of the entire Inquiry. This Inquiry, Weartherby declared, needs to do better.

He noted that the live-streaming is due to be switched off tonight for the rest of the five years or so of the Inquiry. Mitting has ruled that ‘in-person access’ will be limited to those core participants who are able to attend in the current circumstances. Everyone else will be left with just a delayed transcript. Other Inquiries have securely broadcast their public hearings, and the refusal to do so here has left people feeling excluded and alienated.

The core participants’ ability to make opening statements has been substantially diminished, by the failure to provide them with even basic facts or disclosure. Did Parliament, when they made the Inquiries Act, ever envisage that an Inquiry would make its core participants blind to what was going on? Of course not.

SECRECY ABOUT SECRETS

Weatherby spoke of the palpable imbalance between State and non-state core participants. The former have all the information and the material, the latter have next to none. This is the very reverse of how a healthy public inquiry should be. The State should be compelled to show their hand, but have largely chosen not to.

That an Inquiry established to shed light on the secretive, undercover activities of the police against ordinary citizens, should itself perpetuate secrecy and obfuscation is beyond irony. This undermines trust, and also promotes failure.

Instead of seeking to side-line non state core participants, or to keep them uninformed, this Inquiry should embrace their knowledge and actively seek out their assistance.

Without their scrutiny, their full and effective participation, the Inquiry may assume that the evidence produced by the spycops and their managers is truthful, correct and reliable, and it will fail to get to the truth.

A public inquiry should be independent and rigorous, not deference to a State narrative, especially not one hell-bent on secrecy, on distortion, and on covering up its wrongdoing.

NOT ASKING FOR THE TRUTH

We have asked the Chair – back in 2019, and ever since – to require the State core participants to provide position statements, that ‘set out their stall’, by this stage of the Inquiry, to hold their hands up to what went wrong, and perhaps even apologise.

Sir John Mitting has the power to make such requests, but has refused to do so, despite his legal duty to maximise openness and disclosure (section 18 of the Inquiries Act), to act in the public interest and with candour.

The Chairs of other current Inquiries – including Grenfell and Manchester Arena – have insisted on position statements and specified the issues to be addressed in them.

The Met claimed just last week that “the Met would assist the Inquiry in every way it can”. Yet they do not intend to comment on the evidence until the very end of the process, many more years down the line. This is not assisting, or acting in the public interest; it only serves to defend the Met.

The police have had plenty of time to examine their own behaviour and, by now, really should be able to admit to their wrong-doings.

The Chair could compel the Met to provide a chronology, and more details of the deployments, who was involved and whether the Met now believes they were justified or not – this would save time and resources – but instead he seems to take the police at their word when they say they no longer use spycops for ‘counter-subversion’, and not insist on answers even to his own questions.

SWAGGERING ARROGANCE

How can all this be described as ‘helping the Inquiry’? This is the swaggering arrogance of an institution which cannot see beyond its own interests, a public body that is hopelessly institutionally defensive, that puts its own reputation above the public interest.

Candour is the oxygen of justice. This Inquiry has two choices: it can either back off, and let the police see what they can get away with, or it can step up, be more robust, and demand position statements.

It’s not just Mitting who wants answers; the core participants and the wider public need them, and are entitled to them.

The delays have already caused huge distress to those involved. Why not save time and money by compelling the State bodies to tell us all: Which undercover operations will they defend? Which will they admit were wrong? Taking this common-sense approach could help the Inquiry gain a valuable commodity – the confidence of non state core participants.

WON’T ADMIT WHAT THEY KNOW

During the last five years, the Met must surely have looked into the deceitful relationships that the spycops formed. Why is it so difficult for them to come clean about the extent of this? Why won’t they shine a light on these practices? And why will the Inquiry not require them to do so?

The Met have already conceded that this Inquiry is likely to find that some deployments were ‘not justifiable’. They must have reached this conclusion for themselves, and in that case they should be able to tell us more details.

Let the police provide their justifications. Let them explain to the public why the mass infiltration of campaign groups for over 50 years was justified. Let them tell us why they infiltrated a clown movement, or a samba band. Surely this is the correct starting point for any investigation into these abuses?

The State should be made to tell us what lessons they have learnt, and what they have undertaken never to do again.

Any pretence that ‘political policing’ only began with the Special Demonstration Squad in 1968 is wrong. The pretence that the police are ‘neutral’ is wrong. Political policing doesn’t just happen elsewhere.

The substantial violations of civil and political rights, and the individual human rights of those involved, are the same as we see in authoritarian regimes around the world.

The Inquiry should remind itself of the rhetoric used by repressive regimes around the world, which seek to silence political voices, which challenge the official narrative, while pretending to respect international human rights norms, including freedom of expression and assembly, and respect for personal autonomy.

HISTORIC WRONGS

Last week we learnt that the likes of the Croydon Libertarians and the Women’s Liberation Movement were spied on in the early 1970s, but this does not ‘beggar belief’.

It is well-documented that the women’s suffrage movement was targeted by spycops. Would the police now seek to justify the State’s infiltration of women campaigning for the right to vote, of anti-slavery campaigns in the 19th century, or other suffrage campaigns, from Peterloo to the Chartists?

Why are these more recent protestors – for nuclear disarmament, against fracking, against road-building and against hospital closures – fair game?

Dissenters are often the drivers of social change. Slavery was abolished as a result of mass campaigns, building on and amplifying slave revolts. Protest and radical dissent has always involved friction with the State, and the State uses this form of policing to undermine that dissent.

The suffragettes and the slavery abolitionists were on the right side of history, and so are those who oppose racism, fox-hunting, and illegal or immoral wars today. The institutional racism of the police, identified and campaigned against by the Newham Monitoring Project (NMP), is now broadly recognised. Though, as this Inquiry illustrates, it remains as entrenched as ever.

DISSENT ISN’T MEANT TO BE CONVENIENT

Civil rights don’t exist to protect those who are comfortable complying with the status quo. They’re not needed for that; they’re a bulwark against authoritarianism.

Demonstrations and protests are often perceived to be a nuisance, or inconvenient, or tiresome, by those who are unsympathetic to their aims. However, freedom of expression is a human right. Citizens don’t need the permission of the police to protest.

In response to the claim made at the Inquiry last week by Oliver Sanders QC, representing the majority of former spycops, it is not ‘totalitarian’ to do what the NMP have done: to call out institutional police racism, or to protect their community from racist attacks. The police claim neutrality, but it was mainly progressive, social justice and left-wing groups that were targeted by the spycops units.

It is not for any limb of the State to insert itself into, curtail or spy on political and social justice activists, nor insert itself into the minutiae of peoples’ lives because they disagree with government policy or campaign to change the law or for a better society.

Lord Hoffman stated that ‘civil disobedience on conscientious grounds has a long and honourable history in this country,’ and went on to recognise that history sometimes vindicated such activism. He talked of ‘conventions’ on both sides: ‘protesters behave with a sense of proportion, and police and prosecutors, on the other hand, behave with restraint’. But what restraint have the spycops shown?

Weatherby then explained more about the core participants he represents.

NEWHAM MONITORING PROJECT

Newham Monitoring Project was established in 1980, by Black activists & white anti-racists, to fight racism in East London. This included racism perpetrated by the police, and the police’s failure to properly investigate racist murders, like that of Akhtar Ali Baig.

In NMP’s own words:

“For NMP the term ‘Black’ was a colour of resistance; it included African, Caribbean, Asian and all other ‘people of colour’ in a political sense. Our enemy was a political enemy which oppressed across Black communities. We recognised the nature of that enemy and the need for unity in combatting it. Whilst we did not ignore the cultural differences which these days increasingly appear to divide the community, we rejected the way ethnicity was used to marginalise our communities”.

In its very earliest incarnation NMP was to be purely a resource for the community through which to collate and disseminate information about the nature and scale of racist violence in Newham. This limited role was very quickly overtaken by the political reality of racist violence. Racism and racist violence are politicising phenomena. Those who experience them are not passive recipients of the violence and the hatred. The experience radicalises and politicises.

NMP developed its political analysis, its understanding of how race and class were linked, and grew over the years. They were well-known and respected for their work, which included combatting racist violence around the home, and defending members of the community from criminalisation. Was this what made the spycops take an interest? NMP have no idea, as they have not been provided with any information as yet.

NMP also countered fascist attacks; less organised, ‘casual’, racist violence from white football gangs; and police racism and violence, including stop and search and the replacement of the ‘sus’ laws with low level Public Order Act prosecutions. Was this the reason they were infiltrated? Because they challenged the police’s wrong-doing?

They articulated and exposed the institutional racism of the police (and other public bodies) long before the Macpherson Inquiry. They highlighted police corruption, they called out police racism. Were they infiltrated because their work threatened to damage the police’s reputation? Were they targeted because they were a Black-led organisation?

Every annual report produced by NMP was sent to the local Newham Commander. These should have already been supplied to this Inquiry, if the Met have upheld their disclosure duties.

Like other non state core participants, NMP are deeply frustrated about the lack of disclosure. What might it show? Did the spycops infiltrate NMP in order to gather information about other justice campaigns? They were connected to many campaigns, some of which are also core participants, like the Lawrence family.

The local police disliked, even hated, NMP. They exposed ‘community policing’ as a lie, at odds with the truth how racialised communities were policed. In the 1980s and 1990s there was an “extraordinary” lack of police accountability, and police violence was routine. The Black Lives Matter movement of this century shows that the structural issues highlighted by NMP haven’t gone away. To what extent is that due to spycops undermining the work of groups like NMP?

HUNT SABOTEURS ASSOCIATION

The Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) has campaigned against bloodsports since 1963, mainly by disrupting hunts.

Seemingly vindicated by the Hunting Act 2004, which banned the hunting of wild mammals with dogs, the HSA’s work has been forced to continue due to widespread flouting of the ban, and the badger cull.

The reasons why the HSA was targeted by spycops remain unclear. Was this due to political pressure, given the quintessentially ‘Establishment’ activity of fox hunting, and the status of those who support it? Or was it because the police sought to conflate the disruption of hunts – civil disobedience – with ‘violent extremism’?

There is a long history of violence, including serious violence, and harassment from hunt supporters against HSA activists. Even the SDS Tradecraft Manual contains a complaint from one undercover officer about the way in which his uniformed colleagues treated animal rights activists.

No fewer than nine spycops are now confirmed to have infiltrated the HSA, in the 19 years between 1983 and 2002. “The HSA doubt that they have been spared the attentions of the police before and after this time.

The targeting of a group like the HSA, who tended to use lawful tactics, cannot be justified. There is widespread public support for their main aim, which is why the law was eventually changed.

Why were they infiltrated by spycops? Was this done to disrupt and derail their efforts to change the law? Or to provide “n easy gateway for spycops to spy on other groups and individuals? Is this justifiable?

Another issue raised was miscarriages of justice. It appears that information supplied by spycops led to the arrests of hunt saboteurs. They failed to prevent (or prosecute) violence on the part of hunt supporters.

Were undercover officers told to look the other way? Was their involvement covered up? Did they encourage illegal activity as agents provocateurs? Did they supply hunt sabs’ personal details for illegal blacklisting?

Some of the officers who infiltrated hunt sab groups also deceived women into intimate relationships, and other activists into close personal ‘friendships’, even holidaying abroad with them (presumably under their false aliases, using false passports).

EMILY APPLE

Emily Apple has been an activist all of her adult life, involved in numerous campaigns. She was a founding member of the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) and of FITwatch (set up to counter the police’s ‘Forward Intelligence Teams’).

She has been arrested countless times, typically without basis. She was involved in campaigning against the arms trade (including the biannual DSEI arms fair), against war, and for environmental causes (including the Earth First! network).

She has encountered at least seven spycops while active in these groups. There are serious issues related to Apple’s arrests and legal privilege.

Apple was not just spied on by these police officers. During her time working with the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, she was also reported on by Martin Hogbin, a corporate spy, employed by BAe Systems.

RHYTHMS OF RESISTANCE/ NICOLA BENGE

Nicola Benge is a core participant in her own right, as well as being part of Rhythms of Resistance (RoR), a samba band that played at numerous protests in the 2000s. RoR still have no idea who spied on them, nor when, but suspect that they too might have been considered an easy gateway for spycops who wished to target other groups.

Benge was involved in other groups that are known to have been spied on in some way, for example the Advisory Service for Squatters’. But, like RoR, they have not yet been given any disclosure or details by this Inquiry either. She remains completely in the dark, as do the other musicians.

GLOBALISE RESISTANCE/ GUY TAYLOR

Guy Taylor worked as an organiser for Globalise Resistance between 2001-07. Founded with the aim of bridging the gap between the trade union movement and other activists, this network was infiltrated by HN118, known to them as ‘Simon Wellings‘.

Wellings deceived Taylor into what he believed to be a close personal friendship. As well as making the orange tank, Wellings got himself elected onto the group’s steering committee, and acted as the group’s photographer (presumably an ideal opportunity for his handlers to collect photos of many activists)

He travelled to other countries to attend protests with the group – including the United States, Spain and France – making a mockery of this Inquiry’s remit being limited to events in England and Wales.

He had access to, and influence over, Globalise Resistance itself but also other connected campaigns and groups. What did he feed back about trade unions – including the Communications Workers Union and Unison – and the Green Party? What was the justification for this? Why was he allowed to assume such a prominent role in the organisation? To what extent did he influence and derail the group? Why was he permitted to travel overseas?

Ultimately, Wellings was exposed by his own error – he mistakenly left a message on an activist’s phone, with a recording of a conversation between him and his spycops handlers.

Despite making several ‘Subject Access Requests’ to the Met, Taylor still has no disclosure relating to Wellings, which casts significant doubt on the police’s disclosure integrity.

‘NRO’

‘NRO’ is a medical professional and an academic. He is a deeply committed and life-long campaigner on matters related to social justice and freedom of expression. He wants to know why he was targeted.

In the 2000s, he was part of a broadly anti-capitalist group known as the WOMBLES (a distinctive presence at protests, they wore white overalls, padding & helmets to protect them from police violence). He knows that he was spied on by EN32 (‘Rod Richardson‘) and HN77 (‘Jackie Anderson‘) during his time with the WOMBLES.

‘NRO’ was also involved with Aktivix, who provide web services for activists, and Indymedia, an open, independent reporting/ publishing network used by activists.

Indymedia was set up as an alternative to the corporate media. At its peak, the network consisted of around 150 local collectives, spread across the globe. UK Indymedia had its servers repeatedly seized by the police.

‘NRO’ has questions – about spycops’ involvement in these server seizures, about the online surveillance of activists, about the spycops’ use of platforms such as Indymedia. Spycops used to post news and comments on Indymedia, and it is believed that spycops used Indymedia to post fake news stories (prsumably to undermine campaigns, or perhaps justify their deployments) , as well as to gather information.

INDRA DONFRANCESCO, MEGAN & MORGANA DONFRANCESCO

Indra Donfranceso has been active in environmental groups, including Earth First!, for most of her adult life. Morgana and Megan are her daughters; they attended numerous protests, campaigns, meetings, and related social events, throughout their childhood.

Mark Kennedy befriended the family in 2003, and was close to all three of them. He volunteered to be the photographer at her wedding in 2007, and they shared a 40th birthday party with others two years later. What happened to the photos?

Megan and Morgana both thought of ‘Mark Stone’ as an uncle figure. Learning that he was in fact an undercover officer has affected them badly. One of the women Kennedy deceived into a relationship, ‘Lisa‘, was a close friend of Indra’s.

How was befriending a family, including young children, justifiable? Are these the actions of a responsible, accountable police force?

Such corrupt and depraved behaviour shames not just the officer but those who organised and those who facilitated the system, as well as those who still seek to make excuses for the spycops now.

CLANDESTINE INSURGENT REBEL CLOWN ARMY (CIRCA)/ JENNIFER VERSON

This network was formed in 2003, by writers, educators, performing artists and other activists, in response to a State visit by George W Bush, and the war in Iraq. They obtained Arts Council funding to tour the UK and put on performances and workshops. They used humour and performance to make their points and sometimes mock the police.

For three years, Jennifer Verson was involved in training up new clowns, including at least one spycop, EN34, known as ‘Lynn Watson‘. CIRCA had close links with other groups, including RoR and the Dissent Network (opposing the G8 Summit in 2005).

How on earth could anyone believe that infiltrating a performing arts group was justified? It may seem obvious to us that this was a huge waste of public funds, but the fact that this was not obvious to those running the spycops unit must not be overlooked.

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT (ISM)

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a Palestinian-led group, with branches around the world. ISM sends volunteers with the privilege of a foreign passport to Palestine, to bear witness and document, and where possible protest Palestinians from human rights violations, harassment and persecution.

The group’s activities in England and Wales just involved leafleting and stalls. What was the justification for surveillance? There is a suspicion that information gathered by the spycops may well have been passed to foreign agencies.

Asa Winstanley, an investigative journalist who writes about Palestine, got involved in ISM in 2004. Atif Choudhury and ‘MCD’ were also associated with the London ISM group. All three were devastated and deeply traumatised to learn about the infiltration of the group by spycop HN118 ‘Rob Harrison‘.

Choudhury considered ‘Harrison’ a close friend – he even DJed at the wedding of Choudhury’s sister. Harrison’s depravity did not stop there. He used his connection to Choudhury to deceive a young neighbour, ‘Maya’, into a sexual relationship, as we heard yesterday.

MCD’s activism has been motivated by her Quaker faith and commitment to active pacifism. All three of these core participants struggle to understand how this intrusion into their lives could possibly be justified.

‘VSP’

‘VSP’ has been involved in many campaigns and groups, including the Cardiff Anarchist Network (CAN). She has been arrested many times, and has been targeted by both overt and covert policing. She has been strip-searched, and mocked and jeered by officers whilst naked, and as a result has received several settlements from the police.

She was spied on by ‘EN1’ (Marco Jacobs) and Mark Kennedy. ‘Jacobs’ became close to VSP and her family, and initiated two sexual relationships with female friends of hers. He sowed so much disruption and division within CAN that the group stopped functioning.

He often put himself forward to travel abroad (sometimes alongside Kennedy) and represent CAN at activist meetings. Did they sabotage these meetings?

WHEN DO WE GET ANSWERS?

The victims have given up significant details of their lives and activities, in their core participancy applications, and in the written Opening Statement. However, none of them are mentioned in the Opening Statements of the police or the Counsel to the Inquiry, and they have yet to be provided with any further details of the spying on them. How much longer must they wait?

There was, and is, no justification for the undercover operations which intruded into their lives, their families and careers, nor is there any justification for the Inquiry to delay them being provided with information.

The Newham Monitoring Project pull no punches in their written Annex:

“It is essential that it be appreciated that we have no faith in this Inquiry. Characterised as it is by extraordinary secrecy, a total lack of accountability and transparency, all aggravated by the absence of adequate representation and constant delay, we are confident this is not a forum through which the actions of the police can be properly explored and scrutinised.

“Those quaintly described as ‘core participants’ are engaged, tantalised, and seduced by the promise of disclosure. This interest will, we believe, remain wholly unrequited. Any meaningful disclosure is unlikely to materialise in any real sense because the overriding priority appears to be the protection of those officers deployed. In any event, we have no faith that the relevant records have not already been destroyed. Yet the illusion must be maintained because the continued involvement of the ‘core participants’ adds infinitely to the credibility of a process that is already bankrupt.”

 

The accompanying written opening statement from Pete Weatherby QC on behalf of Newham Monitoring Project & Core Participants who are Political, Social & environmental activists

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