Christopher Alder

WHERE: Victoria Square, Hull HU1 3DX

WHEN: 1pm, 31 March 2018

Christopher Alder was born and brought up in Hull. He joined the army at 16, and served in the Parachute Regiment for six years, including the Falklands War.

On March 31 1998, the 37 year old father of two was out in Hull city centre for the evening. At a club, he got into a disagreement which led to the other person being ejected from the venue. That person waited outside and, when it closed at 2am, Christopher was confronted and knocked unconscious.

He later regained consciousness and was taken to hospital. As is common with head concussion, when he came round he was confused and volatile, asking paramedics and nurses “Where am I? What’s happened?”.

Police were called and he was arrested in the small hours of April 1st. Medical staff say he was dragged out, but police claim he walked unaided. He was put into the police van, his hands cuffed behind his back. When he arrived at the police station he was unconscious and his trousers were undone.

He was dragged in and put face down on the lobby floor. The last eleven minutes of his life were captured on the police CCTV. He lay there, choking on his own blood which pooled on the floor in front of his mouth. The police officers stood around, saying he was ‘right as rain’, joking and making made monkey noises.

Christopher’s clothes were subsequently destroyed by a West Yorkshire Police team investigating the death and never subjected to forensic examination.

During the inquest, on more than 150 occasions the five officers involved refused to answer questions. The jury returned a verdict of unlawful killing. When there is an unlawful killing, there is an unlawful killer. Despite this, the Crown Prosecution Service initially refused to bring charges. The officers were finally charged with manslaughter in 2002, but the trial collapsed and the judge ordered the jury to find all five officers not guilty.

In April 2004, the BBC broadcast a leaked copy of the CCTV footage. It was the first time anyone had heard the audio, complete with the jokes and monkey noises. The Home Secretary ordered the Independent Police Complaints Commission to investigate. None of the officers co-operated.

Later in 2004, despite some of them still being in their 30s, four of the five officers were granted early retirement on stress-related medical grounds and received lump-sum compensation payments of £44,000-£66,000. They thus avoided any disciplinary proceedings, and protected their pensions.

In November 2011, Christopher’s body was discovered in the mortuary at Hull Royal Infirmary, eleven years after his family believed they had buried him. It had been used to show police officers autopsy procedures. His family had been given the body of 77 year old Grace Kamara, presumably the only other black person in the morgue at the time.

Christopher’s son Leon Wilson took the Home Office to the High Court in an attempt to get the case reopened, but it was dismissed.

Janet Alder

Christopher’s sister Janet Alder has been an indefatigable campaigner for justice ever since her brother was killed.

In 2013, after it was revealed that spycops had targeted the family of Stephen Lawrence, all forces were instructed to conduct a review of their files for similar acts. Humberside Police admitted spying on Janet.

The Crown Prosecution Service found in 2015 that not only had she and her supporters been spied on during Christopher’s six week inquest, but police had also eavesdropped on conversations with lawyers, breaching lawyer-client confidentiality.

The CPS also found:

‘members of a surveillance team were directed to undertake, and did undertake, surveillance with a broader remit than that allowed for in the authorisations’

They concluded that this surveillance was ‘not properly authorised’.

Piers Arnold, of the CPS’ senior crime and terrorism division, said:

‘It is difficult to see how any such targeted surveillance could have been justified or directed at issues of public order which was the written justification for each of the surveillance authorities.

‘Following the family of an alleged victim of police negligence/brutality and their legal representative instructed for an ongoing inquest into that death, whether or not it involved eavesdropping, would involve a high level of intrusion and require good reasons. No such reasons are discernible from the evidence.’

Despite all this, the CPS refused to bring any charges against any officers involved in spying on Janet.

At the same time, the Undercover Policing Inquiry turned down Janet’s application to be a core participant at the Inquiry. Others who are core participants were, and continue to be, outraged by this. We stand with Janet and her family’s struggle for justice. We have been proud to have her speak at our meetings alongside other victims of spycops.

The IPCC looked into the surveillance and found two officers should face gross misconduct charges. Humberside Police disagreed, but in November 2017 were forced to relent.

Janet reacted, saying:

‘While I welcome this news I still don’t expect much will come out of this. Over the years I may appear pessimistic but I have been right every time.

‘I want to know who it was that gave permission to do this, why they were doing it and what they found out and I want those responsible to be held accountable. I don’t think those in charge are facing any hearing.’

We are still waiting for those hearings to happen.

Janet has called a march in Hull to commemorate Christopher on the 20th anniversary of his death. Please share this information and join us there, in solidarity with Christopher, Janet and all victims of state brutality and spying.

On 21 January we held a Voices of the Spied On public meeting, and videos of the four panellists’ speeches are now on our Youtube channel.

Janet Alder has been a tireless campaigner for justice for her brother Christopher who was killed by Humberside police in 1998. Police admit repeatedly putting her under surveillance, yet she has been denied ‘core participant’ status at the Pitchford inquiry into undercover policing.

Stafford Scott has been a key figure in numerous black community and family justice campaigns. He was co-ordinator of the Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign and is now race advocacy officer at the Monitoring Group.

The exposure of undercover police adds a new sinister dimension to the state repression he has devoted himself to opposing, with campaigns being infiltrated and undermined by officers.

Kate Wilson is an environmental and social justice activist who was deceived into a long-term relationship by undercover police officer Mark Kennedy. This, her first UK public talk on the subject, came five days after she won a gruelling four year legal battle to have the Metropolitan Police held accountable for Kennedy’s abuse.

Jules Carey is a human rights lawyer at Bindmans of London, representing many of the people targeted by Britain’s political secret police.

His clients include Jacqui, the first case the Met settled with a woman deceived into a relationship by an undercover officer, and other similar clients whose cases are ongoing. He also represents Barbara Shaw, mother of Rod Richardson, a dead child whose identity was stolen by an undercover police officer.

Here he talks about the forthcoming Pitchford Inquiry into undercover policing.

As the scandal of Britain’s political secret police continues to grow, and with a full scale public inquiry imminent, come and hear from those who were targeted by spycops and are leading the fight for justice.

On Thursday 21 January we are hosting a public meeting in London.

On the panel are:

Kate Wilson
The first UK public talk by this social justice activist who was deceived into a long-term relationship by undercover officer Mark Kennedy.

Wilson is one of eight women who collectively took legal action against the police. In doing so they demonstrated that these were not ‘rogue officers’, but the similarity of their experiences proves that what happened to them was accepted strategy.

Their tenacity forced the Met to issue an extraordinary apology in November. Wilson’s case continues.

Janet Alder
Tireless campaigner for justice for her brother Christopher who was killed by police in 1999. Despite the inquest’s finding of unlawful killing, no officers were convicted.

Christopher’s body was subjected to a series of indignities, police admit to repeatedly spying on her and attempting to spy on her lawyer, they snooped into her past to smear her, and despite all this she has been denied ‘core participant’ status at the public inquiry.

Stafford Scott
A key figure in numerous black community and family justice campaigns, formerly co-ordinator of the Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign, Scott is now race advocacy officer at the Monitoring Group.

The exposure of undercover police adds a new sinister dimension to the state repression he has devoted himself to opposing, with campaigns being infiltrated and undermined by officers.

Jules Carey
A human rights lawyer at Bindmans, Carey represents many of the people targeted by spycops.

His clients include Jacqui, the first case the Met settled with a woman deceived into a relationship by an undercover officer, and other similar clients whose cases are ongoing.

He also represents Barbara Shaw, mother of a dead child whose identity was stolen by an undercover police officer.

Chair: The meeting will be chaired by Lois Austin, ex chair of Youth Against Racism in Europe, who were also infiltrated by undercover police.

WHEN: Thursday 21 January, 6.30-8.30pm

WHERE: Diskus Room, Unite the Union, 128 Theobalds Road, London WC1X 8TN

FREE ADMISSION

There will be plenty of time for questions from the floor.

Cherry Groce in hospital after being shot by police

Once again Operation Herne – the police’s self-investigation into the political secret police units – proves its irrelevance.

After the admission earlier this year that police spied on the Stephen Lawrence family campaign, the new report, the third from the Herne team, concedes that for at least 20 years police gathered intelligence on 18 more families who had justice campaigns for their loved ones, including Jean Charles de Menezes and Cherry Groce.

The report (PDF here) plainly says this had no operational purpose in preventing crime. Clearly, then, it is about undermining people who might embarrass the police by exposing what they have done.

The report’s author, Chief Constable Mick Creedon, claims that the intelligence was not searched for, it was incidentally gathered by officers infiltrating other campaigns and then kept for no particular reason. This accident happened to one campaign after another over a span of decades. He acknowledges that even he knows this is an unlikely explanation, admitting it ‘must seem inexplicable’.

Equally implausibly, he says that it appears the Special Demonstration Squad were just amassing information and there is no solid documented evidence of sending infiltrators into the families.

Firstly, much of the secret police’s information was never written down. Secondly, a great deal of the material that did make it onto paper has been shredded. Indeed Creedon concedes that, had proper procedures been followed, the evidence of spying on the families would have been shredded.

It leaves a simple question – why would the infiltrator unit be gathering information on people who weren’t targets for infiltration?

The whistleblower Special Demonstration Squad officer Peter Francis has described his infiltration of justice campaigns. After his revelations, police threatened him with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. Most of the information is not on paper, only in the minds of the people who did it. The truth can only come out if former officers are compelled to give evidence under oath without fear of self-incrimination.

We know that these 18 families are not the only ones. It also raises the question of how many other bereaved families seeking justice have been spied on. Police have already released details of their surveillance of on Janet Alder whose brother was unlawfully killed by police officers. Several Hillsborough families are certain they were spied on. When it’s happening on this scale over such a prolonged period it’s hard to see it as anything other than an active policy.

For Operation Herne to once again rely solely on what surviving papers it can find proves that it is little more than a police damage control exercise, admitting a few of the smaller outrages in order to shore up the denial of the larger ones. The forthcoming public inquiry is clearly a more serious and rigorous proposition. The public inquiry supercedes Herne, leaving it without any purpose apart from perpetuating the extra injustice of focusing on reputation protection instead of facing the facts.