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

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

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

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

RECAP

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

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

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

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

EARLY LIFE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ANIMAL RIGHTS & HUNT SABBING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q. Did you ever see a sab react?

‘Yes, I’ve responded myself.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPYCOPS – HN1 ‘MATT RAYNER’

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

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

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

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

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

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

HN26 ‘CHRISTINE GREEN’

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

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

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

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

HN2 ANDY COLES ‘ANDY DAVEY’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She says there wasn’t much emotional intimacy either:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE ANIMAL LIBERATON FRONT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE GREAT HOOKLEY FARM CHICKEN RAID

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘We thought luck was on our side.’

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

THE PRINCESS OF MONACO

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

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

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

He told her she should go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE HORSE & HOUND BALL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

REACTION

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

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

Asked how it felt:

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

Jessica broke down at this point.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She began by noting:

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

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

‘because we need to know the truth.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘and he is a liar.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

RECAP

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

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

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

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

OVERVIEW

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

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

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

SPYCOPS EXAGGERATING AND LYING, AGAIN

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

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

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

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

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

LONDON ANIMAL ACTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

LIVE ANIMAL EXPORTS

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

MISOGYNIST AND LIAR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MISSING MATT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CONCLUSIONS

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

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

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

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

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

Coles is scheduled for 18-20 December 2024.

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

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

RECAP

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

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

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

WHICH SPYCOPS

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

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

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

HUNT SABBING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LIPSCOMB’S LIES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BRIXTON HUNT SABS

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

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

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

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

ALF

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

POLL TAX IMPRISONMENT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AFTER PRISON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HN2 ANDY COLES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TACTICAL EXAGGERATION AND LIES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COLES’S RELATIONSHIPS

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

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

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

FAMILY INTRUSION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Wednesday 4 December, infamous spycop Bob Lambert returned to the Undercover Policing Inquiry for the third time.

He is giving evidence every day this week. We’ll publish detailed reports later, but in the meantime we’re doing quick overviews of the key points every day. (Here are our reports for Monday 2 December and Tuesday 3 December).

Wednesday’s hearing was not livestreamed (or broadcast on iPlayer, for that matter) and it is still unclear if any more of Lambert’s evidence will be or not – there are rumours that some of it will be.

The Inquiry has now uploaded the (edited) transcript of Wednesday’s hearing. There’s plenty more evidence that’s just been published, so is available on the Undercover Policing Inquiry website: over 700 pieces relating to ‘HN10’ (the code for Bob Lambert).

These include transcripts of the interviews carried out with him in 2013-15 as part of ‘Operation Herne’ (an internal police investigation into the spycops’ misconduct), some of which make very interesting reading.

BIZARRE BEHAVIOUR

At the very start of Wednesday’s hearing, David Barr KC, who is questioning Lambert on behalf of the Inquiry, made some comments which helped us understand Lambert’s bizarre behaviour of the day before a little better.

When we heard him say ‘I’ve never been asked that before’, it was in the middle of a conversation about the way that Jacqui (an activist Lambert had deceived into a relationship and had a child with) and ‘TBS’ (their son) had first found out that ‘Bob Robinson wasn’t a real person but was in fact undercover police officer Bob Lambert.

Like everyone else, we thought ‘I’ve never been asked that before’ meant that this was the first time anyone had asked him about the events of that era since they occurred.

What we now think he meant is that the Inquiry hadn’t officially asked him about this subject. They had sent him a ‘Rule 9’ request (this is Rule 9 of the Inquiry Rules 2006 – which allows a public inquiry to send a written request asking for a witness statement or other evidence to be supplied). However, this wasn’t one of the questions asked of him at that time.

It appears that his memory, bad enough at the best of times, couldn’t function without this kind of advance warning. Barr took pity on him, and said on Wednesday morning that he will be sent another such request, and given time to produce a second, ‘supplementary’, witness statement.

The livestream was only suspended once on Wednesday, with even the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, looking confused as to why it happened. After about 15 minutes and an emergency Restriction Order covering a full nine minutes of evidence, everyone returned to their seats, and was told whatever had been said was not a problem after all.

At the time, Lambert was talking about how his ‘predecessor’ in the Special Demonstration Squad had been spying on people involved in organising the big ‘Stop the City’ protests of 1983. This is no huge surprise; at the time everyone knew how keen the police were to find out what was planned.

LYING ABOUT POLICE & MCDONALD’S

Lambert also said that there were ‘no links’ between Special Branch and the McDonald’s corporation, despite these being extensively documented.

McDonald’s Vice President Sid Nicholson was their Head of Security, and as a former Metropolitan Police officer himself, tended to recruit from within the Metropolitan Police ‘family’. Nicholson spent 31 years in the police and rose to the rank of Chief Superintendent. Both he and his side-kick, Terry Carroll, were based at Brixton nick.

It is believed Lambert worked closely with Brixton police during his time in Special Branch’s C Squad, before going undercover to infiltrate London Greenpeace. His denial of any knowledge of contact between the police and the fast food corporation therefore stretches credibility.

There were many points during the day when we marvelled at David Barr KC’s skill – especially when he face to yet another long, rambling collection of words that issued from Lambert’s mouth (calling them ‘sentences’ would be inaccurate, and an insult to grammar) and just reposnded ‘understood’.

Lambert consistently failed to answer even simple questions. And occasionally made unsolicited offers which he obviously had no intention of carrying out. One memorable example was when he told us ‘I won’t launch into anecdotes’, and promptly commenced to share a number of very long and boring anecdotes.

Supposedly somebody once called him ‘the boring man in green’ at an anarchist bookfair. Watchers have realised that he’s taken his method acting so far that he’s really nailed the character of ‘annoying old man’. One person remarked that he ‘is like that bloke you avoid in the pub’.

He is very unwilling to admit that he might have been inspirational in any way, and says something like ‘I can’t really imagine anyone finding me charismatic’. He thinks ‘Bob Robinson’ was regarded as ‘trustworthy’, and ‘reliable in all respects’, someone with a van who was always ‘available’ to help people and animals who needed it’.

UNDERESTIMATING HIMSELF

He also made a point of telling us (again) what a ‘junior’ officer he was during his time in Special Branch’s C Squad. He went on to boast of being described as ‘intelligent’ by Martyn Lowe (who was part of London Greenpeace when first spied on by ‘Bob’) and made sure we knew that he’d failed his 11-plus and not gone on to further education after school. Oh, and he was told he was good on a megaphone. He seemed very proud of this and implied that it gave him a purpose in life.

Mitting interrupted proceedings at one point to let Lambert know that his admitted involvement in various actions constituted active ‘assistance’ in the committing of criminal offences (‘aiding and abetting’ would be the technical term).

We heard a few examples of this, including his role as a ‘getaway driver’. For a man who claims not to have used any of the corrosive etching fluid he asked activists to obtain for him so he could damage windows, he seems to have got through a lot of it.

Things like getting authorisation, or worrying about concepts like legal professional privilege, or doing anything about miscarriages of justice once he’d learned of them, were not a priority.

We note that he has come up with a few new ways to resist Barr’s questions, for example
‘I can’t offer anything that I can remember’, ‘I can’t answer that competently today’, and ‘I cannot really offer anything today’.

There were lots of the usual lies and exaggerations, many of which were skilfully highlighted by Barr. Lambert was forced to admit that:

• he had only met Ronnie Lee once before Lee went to prison (instead of ‘regularly’)
• arson attacks did not in fact enjoy the ‘full support of London Greenpeace’
• for all of Geoff Sheppard’s verbal expressions of a ‘visceral hatred’ of vivisection, he never intended or carried out any actual violence against vivisectors

He fell back to claiming that he made his reports ‘as accurately as I can’. He never admitted to stealing Chris Baillee’s diary, just made up a convoluted and incredible story about how its contents landed in an SDS report, having been somehow passed to Special Branch by ‘local police’.

He spent a long time insisting that activists talked about their criminal activity, and the idea of only speaking about such things on a ‘need to know’ basis was just an ‘aspiration’ that nobody stuck to. Yet if groups of people did talk about actions they’d done at any ‘private gathering’ attended by Lambert, he conspicuously failed to mention this in any of his reports.

It was clear that his role, like that of the other spycops officers, was ‘hoovering up’ any information he could get his hands on. He just added extra dirt to his, to make his work seem more impressive.

HUNT SABOTEURS

Another group he seemed very keen to cast shade on was the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA). He continually spoke of ‘violence on both sides’ and was noticeably unwilling to criticise the violence carried out by hunt supporters.

Jacqui has already told us about her experiences as a young female hunt sab, many of which ‘Bob’ witnessed at the time, but he pretends to have conveniently forgotten all this, leaving many of us wondering if he perhaps has friends in the hunting fraternity, or even takes part himself these days.

He admitted that the HSA’s rules precluded hunt sabs from ever using or provoking violence, but claimed that many people broke these rules, and that others within the HSA welcomed the police’s involvement in dealing with such ‘hot heads’. He also talked about the alleged existence of a notorious ‘Hunt Retribution Squad’ and kept using the phrase ‘visceral hatred’.

He doesn’t recall ever witnessing a police officer make an unlawful arrest of a hunt saboteur. He is unwilling to criticise any of the policing he saw – he thinks they did ‘a difficult job the best they could’.

It’s hard to listen to him and not recall the huge levels of violence meted out to hunt sabs in the 1980s and 1990s. Some of them were seriously injured and even killed while trying to protect the lives of animals. RIP Mike Hill (killed 9 February 1991) & Tom Worby (killed 3 April 1993 at the age of 15).

Some of this violence was detailed in the ‘Public Order, Private Armies: the use of hunt security in the UK and Ireland’ report delivered to the Home Affairs Select Committee at the time. Lambert’s deliberate failure to talk honestly about this era makes all the evidence he gives even less credible.

Tom Fowler broadcast a reaction video at the end of the day’s hearing, as well as a ‘Twitter space’ in the evening.

Lambert speaks so slowly, and there’s so much to ask him, that the Inquiry team have decided that they’ll need to schedule *another* day in order for him to deliver all his evidence. As well as Friday 6 December, he is due to return on Tuesday 10th to complete his evidence for this ‘Tranche’ of hearings.

He is bound to be asked back again for the next ‘Tranche’ (covering 1994 onwards, hearings expected to be in May 2025) as this will cover his time as a Special Demonstration Squad manager and spycops’ handler.

In other news, yesterday the Inquiry published another ruling from Mitting, making clear what we had already suspected about the anonymity applications of 15 other spycops officers, all of whom were part of the SDS’s successor unit, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit. The real names of 14 of these officers will be kept secret and just one name, that of EN107, will become public knowledge.

Notorious spycop Bob Lambert is giving evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry every day this week.

We’ll publish detailed reports later, but in the meantime we’re doing quick overviews of the key points every day. Here’s the one for Monday 2 December.

On Tuesday 3 December, Bob Lambert returned to the Inquiry to give more evidence.

The morning’s hearing was streamed on YouTube (and the BBC’s iPlayer). There was a section immediately after lunch which wasn’t, but the remainder of the afternoon is also available on YouTube.

Lambert faced some tough questions from David Barr KC, and we have some observations about how he responded.

Lambert seems to be a man who is used to being in control of a situation, and has developed a range of techniques over the years to help him ‘manage’ and manipulate people.

In Barr he may have met his match: someone who is not into being ‘managed’ and has come up with some tactics of his own. Those targeted by the spycops reported being happy to see Barr go after Lambert ‘like a terrier’. He was noticeably terse with this witness and his pathetic attempts to evade questions.

Some of Lambert’s favoured tactics include:

• speaking extremely slowly, in what may well be an attempt to bore listeners into losing the will to live

• simply repeating the words of the question, going round in a circle, and not actually providing any answers

• using phrases like ‘I don’t recall’, ‘I have no recollection’ and ‘I can’t assist’

• responding positively about the question and telling Barr that ‘Yes, I can answer that…’ but then actually not doing so

• deflecting the question by saying something completely unrelated to it

• choosing what he is prepared to say – usually prefacing this with ‘What I can say is…’

• saying something like ‘I can tell you more about that, if you want me to’ – in the style of someone who’s really hoping the answer won’t be ‘yes please’

• saying he doesn’t want to name anyone because ‘it’s so important to be certain’

• pretending to be a bit deaf and asking Barr to repeat the question, to give him more time to work out how to reply to it

There are probably plenty more; that’s just a few examples.

One highly effective method of evading any question in the Undercover Policing Inquiry is of course to make what’s called a ‘blurt’. This is the legal term for a witness inadvertently saying something that is meant to be kept private – in this case because the Inquiry has put Restriction Orders in place, that are supposed to protect ‘national security’ the ‘public interest’, or in rarer cases, the anonymity, privacy, safety and/or human rights of those involved.

Lambert made his first such ‘blurt’ early on in his evidence on Monday afternoon, in a move that many said smacked of intention – there was nothing inadvertent about it.

Whenever this happens, it completely derails the Inquiry for a while. The live-stream is switched off, usually for far longer than necessary (leaving everyone who’s not in the room in the dark as all they see is a message on screen telling them the hearing is ‘suspended’) and the Chair usually ‘rises’ (another legal term meaning he gets up and leaves the room for a 5-10 minute break).

He did the same thing even more blatantly on Tuesday, when to universal disgust, he chose to weaponise his own son’s anonymity. The activist Lambert had a son with, and the son himself, have both been granted anonymity at the Inquiry. They are known as ‘Jacqui’ and ‘TBS’.

There was no question in any of the witnesses’ minds about his intention here. Lambert was being asked a series of questions about whether the police discussed informing ‘TBS’ about his true parentage. He was asked if he thought TBS was entitled to know the truth about his parentage, and said he had ‘never been asked this before’. It was clear he did not have his answer prepared.

Witnesses say his speech became more erratic than usual, and he made ‘funny noises and no sense’, immediately before turning with a big smile and after a pause, very clearly saying ‘we did discuss…’ and announcing TBS’s real name out loud to the entire room.

‘TBS’ and his mother ‘Jacqui’, did not find out Lambert’s true identity from him, or the Metropolitan Police, but from the media and from other victims of the spycops’ operations.

There is very little sign of the articulate, charismatic, persuasive Bob that so many previous witnesses have described. However we saw flashes of this more animated version of himself just once: he came across as very keen to talk about the conduct of one former colleague, and blame him for all sorts of things (sexist reporting, bad tradecraft and other mistakes).

This was Mike Chitty, a man who we know Lambert came to blows with on at least one occasion. Chitty sued the police for the post traumatic stress he suffered as a result of his deployment. By this time Lambert was an SDS manager, extremely loyal to the unit and tasked with dealing with this disgruntled ‘dissident’ former spy.

As detailed in the book ‘Undercover’, Lambert spent 18 months pretending to befriend Chitty while at the same time writing a confidential report about him. It is clear that there is absolutely no love lost between these two men, and it’s a pity that Chitty is not planning to engage with this Inquiry.

At the age of 73, Lambert seems keen to play the part of a doddery, frail, aged man, whose faculties are lacking. As the Undercover Research Group have helpfully pointed out, he is still fit and very active, regularly taking part in his local park run and achieving good timings. in the 30-odd 5k runs he’s done this year.

We note that Mitting is much older, but does not appear to be impressed with the man’s character. He intervened at one point, wanting to pin down exactly who in the Met was involved in dealing with Jacqui’s discovery. We can only hope that he won’t be taken for a fool.

On his part, David Barr has been increasingly efficient at dealing with Lambert’s feigns, and snappily suggesting that he write names down whenever he acts unwilling to say them out loud. He’s used Lambert’s own words against him many times, and seems to relish reading them out loud from reports and from old interviews conducted with Lambert for Operaton Herne, the Met’s internal spycops investigatoin in 2013.

He asked some incisive questions, for example, about the source of TBS’s child maintenance payments. Lambert was obviously unwilling to admit that he used police ‘expenses’ to make relatively small payments to the mother of his son.

Barr was not pulling any punches with his most direct questions, such as: Why didn’t you just stop having sex with members of the public? Couldn’t you control yourself? Did you ever question, seven months into your deployment with two sexual relationships and one pregnancy, whether you should continue to be an undercover police officer?

It was noted that despite saying this was his ‘first opportunity to apologise’ to both ‘CTS’ and his first wife, Lambert has failed to actually do so. It’s disingenuous to pretend that he couldn’t possibly have reached out and apologised to them at any point before this, in the thirteen years since his identity was uncovered by activists.

He’s admitted to having had unprotected sex with an overlapping series of much younger women (whilst cheating on his wife), all of whom he accepts would not have consented had they known he was a police officer.

He smirked as he spoke about the way he was able to influence ‘Jacqui’ and her activism. It’s clear that he considered her ‘valuable’ to his mission, but despite claiming to care about her well-being, has consistently disregarded or ‘’forgotten’ many important details about her life and experiences.

At the same time he likes to claim that he was never ‘sexist’ or ‘misogynist’ during his stint in the SDS. His disdain and disrespect for women shines brightly throughout almost everything he says. It’s clear that he comes from a police culture of deeply ingrained institutional sexism, and will never shake off his loyalty to it.

That loyalty was most evident when he was asked to specify which managers were part to which conversations, and who knew about his transgressions, his sexual relationships, ‘Jacqui’s’ pregnancy and ‘TBS’s’ birth.

Almost every single word he has said was carefully considered and calculated, and no-one, not even Barr, believed that it was a coincidence when he finally consented to name those managers, and all the names he dropped were of officers who are deceased. He insisted no living manager had any idea what was going on.

We wait with interest to see what he will say next, on Wednesday 4 December.

Notorious Special Demonstration Squad officer Bob Lambert is giving evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry every day this week.

Here’s a quick recap of his opening appearance on Monday 2 December.

The evidence heard by the Inquiry that afternoon will stay in people’s heads for a long time. Those who witnessed what Helen Steel had to say in the morning, especially her closing remarks, will likely never forget the strength of her words and depth of her feelings.

It’s fair to say that the Inquiry, after all the criticism it has received since the controversial announcement a month ago that many of these ‘Tranche 2’ hearings (covering 1983 to 1992) would not be made publicly accessible, managed to surprise everyone on Monday. As the morning session neared its end, we heard that the afternoon hearing would be broadcast on YouTube.

People were even more shocked to then discover that these proceedings would also be streamed live on the BBC’s iPlayer as they happened (both of these with a ten-minute delay, as a safeguard against any ‘blurts’, i.e. someone saying something that is meant to be kept private).

Bob Lambert, arguably one of the most infamous spycops in this ‘Tranche’ duly appeared on our screens at around 2.30pm, and spent the next few hours giving evidence about his time in Special Branch, especially his role in the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS).

We are not providing a full report of what he said here, as it is available to watch and listen to on Youtube.

But we do want to share some of the observations of those who saw and heard what he had to say on Monday in response to the questioning of David Barr KC, Counsel to the Inquiry.

The public gallery of the hearing room was very full – probably the most people that have attended in person on any date so far – and they were quick to share their suspicions.

According to them, Lambert was ‘playing the part’ of a frail old man, but when he got up to move he didn’t look frail or unsteady at all.

His answers were doggedly slow and ponderous. He appeared to be taking a great deal of care not to answer Barr’s questions too quickly – lest he make any mistakes – and often pretended not to hear, or properly understand, what was being asked of him.

Within minutes of the start, he fell back on phrases we’ve heard before from other spycops officers – ‘I don’t recall’ and ‘I have no recollection’ were his favourites – even with the ‘easy’ questions.

Referring to Lambert’s cannabis onsumption while undercover, one observer commented that ‘All that stuff that he “didn’t inhale” finally caught up with him’.

The live-stream was suddenly cut early on in the hearing, supposedly because Lambert ‘blurted’ something that the Inquiry had ruled should be kept private. Some of those who watched in person believed he’d done this on purpose to derail the session.

It was clear that he often exaggerated things, and made unsubstantiated allegations, ranging from the ‘risk’ animal rights activists would have posed to his family’s safety through to the difficulties an undercover officer would face from activist women continually propositioning him for sex.

The Inquiry repeatedly referred to Lambert’s 2013 account given to Operation Herne, a Metropolitan Police self-investigatoin into spycops, and to his intervew with Channel 4 News the same year.

Tom Fowler commented in a tweet that ‘most of this afternoon has been 2024 Bob Lambert disagreeing with 2013 Bob Lambert about what 1984 Bob Lambert knew’.

There were a few occasions when Barr highlighted such discrepancies and inconsistencies.

For example, Lambert told the Inquiry that he was deployed by his managers to infiltrate the animal rights movement and London Greenpeace, and said that his role was purely to gather intelligence about these groups, the people involved and how they worked.

However, we then heard that back in 2011, in a letter to Spinwatch shortly after his exposure, he claimed that his role as an undercover was to ‘identify and prosecute’. Barr explored this further and Lambert was forced to admit that the unit did not produce evidence that could be used to prosecute anyone, and that he had ‘exaggerated’ to Channel 4.

This Spinwatch letter is full of apologies, and the line:

‘I am grateful to Spinwatch for giving me an opportunity to apologise and also to begin a process on conflict resolution in this difficult and sensitive arena’.

It comes across as a desperate attempt to publicise his latest ‘anti-terrorist’ book at the time, and convince them to continue working with him. Their response was to issue a statement saying that his history meant he was not ‘compatible’ with them.

He also spoke about stealing the identity of a dead child in order to create his cover name, ‘Bob Robinson’. Barr asked if the Home Office knew that SDS officers were using this method, and Lambert said he didn’t know.

However, back in 2013 he appeared in an ‘exclusive interview’ with Channel 4’s Andy Davies (which Andy has also written about) and said otherwise: that the unit and this ‘tradecraft’ was known about in the Home Office, and at the highest levels.

He struggled to explain this on Monday, finally claiming that after ‘further reflection’ what he’d said to Channel 4 was just a ‘general recollection’.

There was some truth in that TV interview. He also said:

‘My reputation is never going to be redeemed for many people, and I don’t think it should be’.

After leaving the police, Lambert re-invented himself as an academic, and there is plenty of footage of him delivering lectures, speaking clearly and fluently. Re-invention is something he excels at.

As the women who were deceived by these men have said, the spycops were professional liars, who were trained, encouraged and incentivised to develop their skills of deception and manipulation.

They were experts at presenting different personalities to suit different audiences, to say the ‘right thing’ in each situation to engineer trust, influence people’s thinking, and sometimes to ‘shit stir’, sow mistrust and ill-feeling,

Over the past few weeks we have heard from a whole string of activists, all of whom were spied on by Lambert. They’ve described him as a confident, exceptionally charismatic, charming man, someone who was very articulate, highly intelligent, and almost always sporting a ‘big smile’. This description does not match the man we saw on Monday.

Which side of Lambert will he choose to show us for the rest of the week?

(You can hear more about what people thought of Monday’s evidence in the Twitter space hosted by Tom Fowler).

INTRODUCTION

From 2nd to 6th December 2024, Bob Lambert will give evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry. Lambert has come to epitomise the spycops scandal.

Using the identity ‘Bob Robinson’, which he stole from a dead child, Lambert is known to have deceived at least four women into sexual relationships and fathered a child whilst undercover from 1983 to 1988. He is accused of having committed a number of serious crimes, and acted as an agent provocateur.

Among a raft of significant accusations, he is said to have been instrumental in the ‘McLibel’ trial and to have abused the judicial system, violating legal professional privilege and giving evidence in a false name.

It is also claimed that while taking part in a secret Animal Liberation Front (ALF) cell, he planted an incendiary device in a Debenhams shop, causing £340,000 worth of criminal damage.

Yet Lambert received police commendations for his work in the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). He was considered the ‘gold standard’ for undercover policing, and after his deployment ended, he was promoted, going on to run the unit and overseeing some of the worst excesses of the SDS in the 1990s.

One of the officers he oversaw, Peter Francis, said of Lambert:

‘He did what is hands down regarded as the best tour of duty ever.’

On his retirement, Lambert received an MBE for ‘services to policing’.

Over the past three weeks at the Inquiry, we have heard evidence from some of the people that Lambert spied on, and some of the women he deceived into intimate relationships. Now we will hear five days of cross examination of the man himself.

This article summarises some of the key issues that have emerged from the evidence so far and highlights some of the questions Lambert will have to answer. We don’t seek to answer those questions here. However, our hope is that we can will aid people following Lambert’s evidence to understand the significance of particular lines of questioning and the answers he gives.

THE CABAL

Criticisms of Lambert have not only come from the people he spied on. During Opening Statements we heard how a number of his contemporaries and fellow officers have described him in none too flattering ways.

The evidence of HN56 ‘Alan Nicholson’, HN109, and HN11 Mike Chitty ‘Mike Blake’ paints a worrying picture. HN10 Bob Lambert, HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’, HN8 and another unnamed undercover officer are described as forming a ‘cabal’ within SDS, of which Lambert was the leader.

HN39 Eric Docker (one of the managers of the SDS) refers to the Detective Superintendent of C Squad, HN99 Dave Short, saying of Lambert:

‘The man’s out of control, you’ve lost him.’

HN56 ‘Alan Nicholson’ described an incident where Bob Lambert and John Dines ordered management out of the room to deal with a disciplinary incident themselves, as some kind of ‘self appointed court of the star chamber’.

HN109 claims to have been physically intimidated and threatened by Lambert. He was granted anonymity in the Inquiry, not because of fears of reprisals from the people he spied on, but from fears that Lambert may still be able to do him harm.

DECEITFUL RELATIONSHIPS & FATHERING A CHILD

Lambert is known to have deceived at least four women into intimate sexual relationships. Two of those women gave live evidence to the Inquiry: Belinda Harvey on Tuesday 26 November and ‘Jacqui’ on Thursday 28 November. We heard in excruciating detail about Lambert’s lies and cruelty in those relationships.

During Belinda’s evidence we learnt that Lambert planned his departure at the end of his deployment a year in advance, yet he continued the relationship with her, effectively putting her life on hold, as she believed they had a lasting relationship despite the fact he was already secretly planning to leave. Both women also testified that Lambert did not use condoms in his relationships with them.

The issue of most obvious concern is the fact that he fathered a child with ‘Jacqui’. She described how he was present for the birth, and he cut the umbilical cord. She pointed out that childbirth is messy and intimate and entails ‘leaving your dignity on the floor’.

Initially he was a good father to ‘TBS’, even after his and Jacqui’s relationship ended, but then he disappeared from her and his son’s life after his deployment ended.

Perhaps most unforgivable, Lambert failed to inform ‘Jacqui’ when, years later, his other children both died suddenly from a genetic heart condition. Jacqui told the Daily Mail how she struggled to take in the awful news. Why hadn’t Bob told her that their son might carry a fatal gene?

Even when he was outed as an undercover officer he still didn’t tell her immediately. This callous disregard isn’t Bob Lambert in the 1980s, it is much more recent, and it illustrates the character of the old man who’ll be giving evidence on 2 December.

‘TBS’, the son ‘Jacqui’ had with ‘Bob Robinson’, is also a core participant in the public inquiry. During Opening Statements we heard from his legal representative about how he has struggled to come to terms with the reality that his understanding of his parentage was based on a lie. TBS highlights the role of the wider police apparatus in that.

In his witness statement he says:

‘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 MPS simply left me alone to deal with all of this, both before and after I learned of Bob Lambert’s true identity’

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 truth together from press reports?

LONDON GREENPEACE

One of the main targets of Lambert’s operation was London Greenpeace (LGP). A key point to be examined will be how it is portrayed in Lambert’s reporting, where he implies that it was largely or entirely an animal rights organisation, sharing office space with the ALF Supporters Group (every witness examined so far has made clear that this was never the case), and somehow acting as something of a ‘respectable’ front group for the ALF.

We have heard from many witnesses that this is a gross misrepresentation. LGP was a very diverse group that campaigned on a great many issues, including nuclear testing and workers rights.

Many witnesses also agree that support for the ALF was a potentially divisive issue in the group and most importantly, all of the witnesses cross examined to date concur that Bob Lambert was one of the loudest proponents of animal rights issues within the group.

Despite having filed many reports at the time that imply LGP supported violence and was likely to cause public disorder, after he was outed in 2011, Lambert publicly described LGP as ‘a peaceful campaigning group’.

The accuracy of Lambert’s reporting is a matter of key importance that we will look at further below.

McLIBEL

A key line of questioning will involve Lambert’s role in writing a fact sheet for LGP entitled ‘What’s Wrong with McDonald’s?’. Many witnesses recall Lambert having been one of a small group that authored the leaflet. Photographic and witness evidence shows that Lambert and other undercover officers distributed the fact sheet in the street outside McDonald’s restaurants and on stalls at book fairs and other events.

In 1990, McDonald’s brought libel proceedings against five London Greenpeace campaigners, including Dave Morris, Helen Steel and Paul Gravett, who have all given evidence to the Inquiry in the past few weeks.

That writ led to the longest trial in English history, where Helen Steel and Dave Morris were forced to represent themselves, with the pro-bono help of Keir Starmer, who at the time was a young barrister, just starting his career.

The Inquiry will be looking at a number of very important issues around the McLibel trial, starting with Lambert’s role in creating the ’libellous’ leaflet, and his activities in the wider McDonald’s campaign.

It will move on to SDS awareness of McDonald’s corporate spies in LGP while the trial was ongoing, the spying on and reporting of Kier Starmer’s confidential and privileged legal advice and the Defendants’ legal strategy.

It will also examine the role of Lambert and the wider police and security services in influencing the contents of the libel writ and sharing information with McDonalds before and during the trial.

And finally, there is the fact that information about the key roles played by several SDS officers was withheld from the courts not only during the original civil trial, but also during subsequent proceedings, where the UK government defended a claim in the European Court of Human Rights.

MISCARRIAGES OF JUSTICE

The McLibel trial is not the only instance in Lambert’s time undercover where it appears that he violated legal professional privilege or mislead the courts. He is believed to have appeared in court both as a defendant and as a witness for the defence.

Lambert was one of those arrested at Murray’s Meat Market, on 7 December 1985. He and four others, including Geoff Sheppard, are recorded as appearing in court and being bound over. He was represented by the same counsel as his fellow defendants, appeared before the Court and is recorded as giving evidence in his cover identity. Contemporary documents show that a senior local police officer was informed of Lambert’s true identity but there is no record that the Court was informed.

Many witnesses describe how Lambert visited and corresponded with prisoners on remand and defendants awaiting trial, and documents show that he reported on the legal advice and strategies of a number of defence campaigns. These will be matters of particular interest to the Inquiry, as one of its roles is to uncover potential miscarriages of justice and refer them back to the courts.

However, even more significantly, it appears that Lambert was in the habit of encouraging direct action, and recruiting vulnerable young people. His role in potential miscarriages of justice therefore goes far beyond simply reporting on legal advice or interfering in defence campaigns, as there is evidence that Lambert incited activists to take part in crime and even committed serious crimes himself, in his undercover role.

Many witnesses describe Lambert as ‘charismatic’ and ‘more of a leader than a follower’. He lied about his age and was significantly older than many of the activists he befriended. Paul Gravett, in his evidence, clearly describes an element of grooming in his relationship with Lambert, who encouraged him to step up his involvement and take radical action.

Jacqui testified that Lambert didn’t just research and write text for the anti-McDonald’s leaflet, he wrote other leaflets too, including one which featured an image of a human baby in a butcher’s shop, used for the demo at Murray’s Meat Market in Brixton for which he and other activists were arrested and tried.

In his evidence to the Inquiry, Geoff Sheppard also described how Lambert made a leaflet that called for ‘economic damage’ to animal abusers. Paul Gravett describes him writing or contributing to text inciting criminal acts, including a leaflet entitled ‘You Are the ALF’, and ‘London ALF News’.

COMMITTING CRIMES

He is also alleged to have been the driver on the night when the window of a butcher’s shop in Roehampton was broken. Chris Baillee (known as ‘RCM’ at the Inquiry) was accused of breaking the window and convicted for criminal damage. He alleges that Lambert knew that it was someone else who broke the window, yet nothing was done to prevent Baillee from being convicted.

Baillee also alleges that Lambert possessed, supplied and smoked cannabis before the action.

Lambert claimed to contemporaries that he carried out an arson attack on the empty home of a director of vivisection company Biorex.

Geoff Sheppard testified that he was acting as a lookout when Lambert pushed something through the letterbox, and Gravett states that ‘Bob Robinson’ admitted the offence to him and chronicled it in ‘London ALF News’.

Many witnesses have provided witness statements in which they describe ‘Bob Robinson’
claiming to have committed other criminal offences in the furtherance of animal rights. These include pouring paint stripper on a car used by a director of Biorex, using corrosive etching fluid to damage the window of a McDonald’s restaurant in Golders Green, and threatening to burn down the headquarters of the Hudson Bay Company furriers.

Lambert’s evidence, in general terms, is that he would have claimed to have committed offences, which he had not actually committed. However some of these offences clearly appear to have happened, as they were reported in the local press at the time.

DEBENHAMS

The most significant allegation levelled at Lambert is that he was an integral part (perhaps even the instigator) of a small ALF cell that planned and carried out a coordinated attack on Debenhams department stores on the night of 11-12 July 1987.

Three stores, in Luton, Harrow and Romford were damaged as a result, the Luton store more or less burnt to the ground. It is claimed that Lambert was one of a group of four activists who built improvised incendiary devices.

Numerous witnesses, including Belinda and Jacqui, have testified to knowing Lambert was involved in the planned action before it took place.

Both Geoff Sheppard (who was later convicted) and Paul Gravett (who was not) admit to having been part of the cell and testify to Lambert’s role, that he was involved from the very start, and that he planted the device in the Harrow store.

Lambert continues to deny that he was directly involved in this action, however some of the discrepancies around this were examined during Opening Statements.

Most shockingly, we heard for the first time that CCTV footage from the Harrow store was handed over to the police who first attended the scene, but it was then snatched by Special Branch officers, and has never been seen since. Lambert will therefore face hard questioning about the Debenhams campaign.

Geoff Sheppard and one other activist are currently appealing against their conviction, based on Lambert’s involvement and undisclosed role. That case is currently before the Court of Appeal.

INACCURATE & MISLEADING REPORTING

A very significant area of questioning will relate to Lambert’s contemporary reporting of the events described above. Witness after witness expressed their incredulity at the inaccuracy of the reports they were shown. Often that simply related to the mischaracterisation of groups such as London Greenpeace (as commented on above).

However, on some occasions it appears that entire groups or series of events were simply made up. This was the case for the creation of groups such as ‘Anarchists for Animals’ or a direct action group to target Biorex. All those reported as being involved in these groups insist they never existed.

Many of these reports do not describe anything particularly criminal and it is unclear why they would be invented, except perhaps to fill a void and justify Lambert’s continued deployment.

Inaccuracies in Lambert’s reporting take on a more sinister dimension when we consider a number of allegations levelled at named individuals. These are often vague and difficult to pin down, however, where it has been possible to address the specifics, witnesses have often stated that not only were they not carrying out the role or attending the meeting concerned, but they have reason to believe that it was in fact Lambert himself who carried out that role.

It appears Lambert often used Helen Steel’s name to replace his own in reporting, to hide his own high level of involvement. This is particularly concerning as she was later targeted by Lambert’s successor, John Dines, and deceived into an intimate and highly abusive relationship, seemingly on the strength of those reports.

Other examples of Lambert using activists’ names to cover his own role have emerged in the questioning of a number of witnesses from both LGP and animal rights campaigns, adding significant weight to the idea that this was a regular practice of his.

There is likely to be particular focus on Lambert’s reporting surrounding the Debenhams action and subsequent incendiary device campaigns, because it is clear from witness evidence that although Lambert knew about the plan in advance, he did not file any detailed reports about it until after the action had taken place. Even then his reports appear to ‘drip feed’ information rather than give full details of what he already knew.

Questions will include how he was getting this information (if, as he claims, he was not part of the cell)? and why he was providing it in such a limited fashion (if, as the evidence suggests, he was at the heart of the plan from the start)?

If he wasn’t responsible for the Harrow fire, why has he let the culprit get away with it?

PROMOTION, COMMENDATIONS & AN MBE

As noted in the introduction, despite the dark clouds that continue to shroud his operation, Lambert received commendations for his work undercover. He was promoted after his deployment ended and went on to run the SDS, and was even awarded an MBE for services to policing.

We understand that this round of questioning will only address his time undercover, and it is expected that he will be asked to return at a later date to give evidence about his subsequent career and his time as manager of the SDS.

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A prevous primer: In 2015, when Lambert was lecturing at two universities and training future spycops, we were part of a campaign to have him sacked from both positions. Here’s a video of a talk we gave at the University of St Andrews taking an overvew of his career. We also published a transcript.

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

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

RECAP

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

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

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

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

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

BACKGROUND

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No, actually that’s one of my regrets, that I was never involved in actually liberating an actual animal. But I could give you an idea as to why that was the case.’

As to whether his animal rights activism ever caused harm to anyone, Sheppard replied:

‘Not physically, no. But possibly to their bank balance… that was a deliberate decision… I wouldn’t have felt comfortable harming anybody.’

He said that he’d only been hunt sabbing on two or three occasions when extra help was required because of potential violence from the hunters. He had become involved in London Greenpeace in part because of its support for animal rights.

DIFFERENT GROUPS, COMMON PURPOSE

The Inquiry showed a secret police report by Lambert (UCPI028517) which said that there was close cooperation between the Animal Liberation Front and London Greenpeace because:

‘The latter is dominated by anarchist Animal Liberation Front activists or supporters, who see the name ‘London Greenpeace’ as a good vehicle for promoting Animal Liberation Front propaganda and actions.’

Sheppard, echoing numerous other witnesses before him, said that simply wasn’t true, and indeed many people in London Greenpeace had no interest in animal rights.

‘I used to attend London Greenpeace quite often and I certainly wasn’t thinking of it as affording me a cloak of respectability, not at all…

I think people attended London Greenpeace such as myself who were interested in animal rights and animal liberation, it was because there were some people there who were interested in those issues.’

It’s one of the major recurring misconceptions we’ve seen in police reports throughout the Inquiry. They imagine activists are looking for ways to hoodwink others into supporting their cause. They seem incapable of believing that people genuinely support the causes and act with integrity. This says much more about those writing the reports than it does about their subjects.

The Inquiry referred to Hackney and Islington Animal Rights Campaign, which Sheppard was involved with in the 1980s and 1990s. He confirmed their meetings were open to the public and held monthly.

‘it was a group that would hold public meetings. It would mainly be at the weekend or on a Saturday going out on the streets handing out leaflets about different aspects of animal abuse. That was the kind of thing that they would do.’

He was shown a range of reports about the group that named him (UCPI02848, 3 January 1986 by Lambert; MPS-074410, 17 March 1992 by HN2 Andy Coles; MPS-074410, 10 April 1992, also by Coles; MPS-0740030, 15 March 1993 by Rayner; MPS-0744116, 12 November 1993, also by Rayner). The last of these said the group was disbanding.

Sheppard disputed the description of him as having a prominent role:

‘Well, I wouldn’t say I was one of the principal organisers. I definitely used to help out to some extent. I seem to remember that for a time I was the person who would go and open up the room if there was a public meeting… I helped in that respect, certainly.’

This is another inaccurate recurring theme of the police reports. The police seem to find it difficult to conceive of loosely affiliated like-minded people acting in concert, and so they try to superimpose a hierarchy on to any groups spied on. They pick members and attribute commanding roles to them. This also helps in making their reports sound like they’ve uncovered secrets.

Additionally, as we’ve especially seen in many of Lambert’s reports, the officers will organise things themselves but attribute it to group members.

IMAGINARY HIERARCHY

Sheppard was then shown a report (MPS-0744109, 20 July 1992, by Matt Rayner and Andy Coles):

‘Geoff Sheppard, the life and soul of the Hackney and Islington Animal Rights Campaign has decided that for the time being the group will confine itself to an educational workshop with public meetings, enlisting the support of guest speakers and videos.’

This makes him not only the central figure but able to unilaterally take decisions on what the group will do. This is not what he was, nor how the group worked.

‘I think these undercover officers tend to exaggerate everything that they say… my nature is not really the life and soul of anything, to be honest.’

The Inquiry turned to the Animal Liberation Front Supporters’ Group (ALFSG), which Sheppard had supported since the mid-1980s and was briefly active in running its finances in the early 1990s. He described the ALFSG as supporting animal rights prisoners, and producing a newsletter.

A 1993 report by Rayner (MPS-0744489) said Sheppard left his role in order to commit himself to more direct animal rights work such as street protests:

‘Sheppard remains convinced that the only really effective way to fight vivisection is through economic sabotage’

This is quite a sensationalist way to describe activities, and also inaccurate, as Sheppard pointed out:

‘I don’t think that was quite right. I would say economic sabotage was certainly one of the ways to fight vivisection, but there were also other good ways to fight vivisection as well, you know, through showing people the reality of vivisection on the streets, with leafleting, back in those days, anyway.’

A 1992 report by Andy Coles (MPS-074225) revealed the supposed command structure of the ALFSG:

‘The central organising figure behind the Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group is Vivien Smith who, despite her incarceration in Holloway Prison, is still able to carry out this role. Smith is assisted by Geoff Sheppard, a regular visitor, who acts as her agent.’

Sheppard rebuffed the whole thing.

‘No, that’s an exaggeration. I remember visiting her in Holloway Prison on one occasion. Just once. So, you know, “regular visiting” is a ridiculous thing to say. It just simply wasn’t true… I certainly have no recollection of acting as her agent, no.’

LONDON BOOTS ACTION GROUP

They then turned to the formation of London Boots Action Group, another campaign against vivisection. At that time, retail chemist Boots had two of its own vivisection facilities. The Inquiry showed reports from HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’, as well as ones from Andy Coles that mentioned Sheppard.

‘we would stand outside Boots stores, not obstructing the entry or anything like that, but we would be handing out leaflets to people as we were standing outside various Boots stores in and around London. Certainly from my point of view, that’s the main activity that I remember. You know, rather boring hours of activity getting probably quite cold standing outside Boots stores.’

A Matt Rayner report from 1992 (MPS-073939) said:

‘11 members of the London Boots Action Group travelled to Margate to join the national demonstration against Charles River, the parent company of Shamrock Farm near Brighton [breeders of monkeys for vivisection].’

It described a peaceful demonstration and then:

‘In bad temper and some frustration, the London Boots Action Group contingent went into Margate to vent their anger on local branches of Boots and McDonald’s. [privacy] and [privacy] let off a handful of stink bombs in both establishments, while [privacy] and [privacy] entered Boots, loaded baskets with goods which they packed very slowly at the checkout before casually leaving the store without the goods and without paying for them.

‘[Privacy] and [privacy], with [privacy], [privacy] and [privacy] repeated the performance in McDonald’s by ordering huge quantities of food and drink, which they abandoned when produced. These actions cause intense annoyance to the staff and management at both places’

Sheppard confirmed he was at the earlier demo but has no recollection at all of the later events, and said he never did anything like that.

It’s worth mentioning that even if it all happened exactly as described, annoying retail staff is hardly a matter for an elaborate undercover operation with copies of reports being sent to MI5.

Another Rayner report (MPS-074579) said someone at a London Boots Action Group meeting had suggested a protest outside the home of a director of Boots. Sheppard has a vague memory of doing such a protest once which, he pointed out, was legal and quite common at the time.

Several reports described security concerns in the group and that some members, including Sheppard, dismissed them because the group had no secrets. It was open to the public and produced a newsletter about its activities. They said that if anyone wanted to discuss sensitive or illegal matters they shouldn’t do so at the meetings.

Asked to elaborate on the clear implication of this, Sheppard said:

‘London Boots Action Group, in its own right, was not involved in anything like that, but obviously individuals who attended London Boots Action Group may have been, such as myself, involved in direct action.’

HIDDEN TREASURER

Moving on to 1995 and London Animal Action, a Matt Rayner report (MPS-0741078) said the group held two bank accounts. One had Paul Gravett and Sheppard named as signatories, the other had Gravett and Rayner himself.

Though it’s alarming to think of spycops taking on such a pivotal active position in a group, by 1995 it had become standard tradecraft.

As an illustration of how common this was, we had previously learned about these officers’ roles in a single week of Inquiry hearings:

HN354 Vincent Clark ‘Vince Miller’ (1976-79)
Treasurer, SWP Walthamstow branch
Treasurer, SWP Outer East London District

HN80 ‘Colin Clark’ (1977-82)
Treasurer, SWP Seven Sisters & Haringey branch
Treasurer, SWP Lea Valley District
National Treasurer, Right to Work Campaign

HN356/124 ‘Bill Biggs’ (1977-82)
Treasurer, SWP Plumstead branch

HN155 ‘Phil Cooper’ (1979-83)
Treasurer, Waltham Forest Anti-Nuclear Campaign
National Treasurer, Right to Work Campaign

SPYCOPS PASSING OFF THEIR WORK AS HIS

We were then shown reports detailing the formation and function of the Animal Liberation Investigation Unit. It was described as co-ordinating regional groups to support and attend one another’s activities which were specifically described as within the bounds of the law.

Those setting it up had to be personally informed and vouched for. Sheppard said he has no memory of being invited and doesn’t believe it happened. Despite this, the reports named him as the London co-ordinator, and we were treated to an extensive description of the responsibilities that entailed.

Sheppard apologetically responded:

‘I was not in any way involved in the Animal Liberation Investigation Unit. Not as far as I remember, anyway. I am pretty sure that I was not. So that seems to be fabricated, really.’

Asked why Rayner would have said this, Sheppard said:

‘I would like to know whether he was possibly acting in that role, and maybe he was putting my name there instead.’

We next looked at a Special Branch report from outside the Special Demonstration Squad (MPS-073960), concerning Operation Wheelbrace which targeted animal rights activists:

‘Geoff Sheppard has become very much a force unto to himself and is not part of any specific group dealt with under Wheelbrace. He is behind the new British Anti-Vivisection Association.’

Sheppard was categorical in his response:

‘I was certainly not behind it, I had no involvement in setting it up… I wasn’t really involved, other than buying packs of leaflets off them in order to distribute. Possibly I used to go round door to door putting them through letterboxes. That was my involvement, really, with that organisation.’

Asked about all these groups being spied on, he declared:

‘it was totally unnecessary for the undercover police to be doing this. I mean, these groups had no intention of toppling British democracy, they weren’t involved in violence against individuals, and, as I said before, as far as I am aware there were a lot of police informers in the animal rights movement, apparently, so I don’t see why there was any necessity to have undercover police officers involved.’

THE OFFICERS

Having looked at the various campaign groups, the Inquiry moved on to ask Sheppard about the spycops themselves.

They started with HN11 Michael Chitty ‘Mike Blake’. Sheppard has a vague recollection of meeting him once, when Chitty drove a carload of people back to London after attending a trial in Sheffield.

In 2014, Chitty told Operation Herne – the Met’s self-investigation into spycops before the public inquiry was announced – that he’d known Sheppard well. Sheppard himself denied this.

JOHN DINES & WRONGFUL ARREST

Moving on to John Dines, Sheppard remembered him from London Greenpeace, but without much in the way of specifics.

They never socialised together and:

‘The only main thing with this individual was that he threw a bag of flour at an anti-hunt demonstration and I got arrested for it.’

The Inquiry went into this in some detail. It was a Horse and Hounds ball, held at the Grosvenor House Hotel in 1991.

Sheppard described his presence:

‘this was a hunt ball, so these were people attending the ball who were engaged in the practice of hunting wild animals to death and our presence there was to let them know that we very much disagreed with that so-called sport…

‘there were quite a few people there. So possibly 30 or 40 people, perhaps… it could have been 60 people, maybe… as far as I remember, it was just mainly shouting. Holding placards, that kind of thing.

‘I don’t have a memory of seeing the bag of flour being thrown or landing. I probably saw it but I just can’t remember it. All I can remember is my arrest… maybe John Dines was standing behind me, but I never saw who threw it.’

Sheppard was arrested. He was later told that Dines was the one who’d thrown it. Sheppard was tried and convicted.

‘afterwards, outside, John Dines must have come outside with me and I think one of the officers who had been involved in the arrest was coming out and John Dines shouted at him, “Tell the truth in future”. That’s the bit that I remember.’

This makes it a miscarriage of justice – a police officer had evidence that exonerated the accused, but withheld it from the court. This is far from the only time spycops did this. Mark Ellison KC’s 2015 report on spycops and miscarriages of justice says there was evidence of this happening numerous times.

The case that brought the whole spycops scandal to the public eye, the exposure of Mark Kennedy, became common knowledge when prosecuted climate activists asked to see his reports. Rather than hand them over, the state withdrew and in January 2011 the trial collapsed.

It later came out that Kennedy had recorded conversations that exonerated the accused. Had he not been unmasked between the arrests and the trial, there would likely have been wrongful convictions.

Plainly, police withheld evidence in cases that resulted in Geoff Sheppard’s more serious convictions too.

Somewhat bizarrely, the Inquiry asked Sheppard at some length about why he didn’t complain to police about his wrongful prosecution.

John Dines had deceived deceived Helen Steel into an intimate relationship. Sheppard confirmed that he knew Steel from London Greenpeace meetings but he didn’t socialise with her or Dines:

‘I was always rather a standoffish type of person. I didn’t go to a lot of social events, so probably I didn’t have as many opportunities to see them together as other people would have had.’

ANDY COLES

Andy Coles was the next officer discussed. He infiltrated peace and animal rights groups from 1991 to 1995. In that time, he groomed a vulnerable teenager, ‘Jessica’, into a relationship.

‘I knew him very little, but I think he was – people called him Andy Van, because he always had a van available to drive people around or move items around.’

Beyond that, Sheppard’s recollections about Coles were scant. He believes they would have been in London Boots Action Group together.

‘I don’t actually remember him being with me on pickets outside Boots, but he probably was doing that… If you ask me to picture inside my mind right now a meeting of the London Boots Action Group with him sitting there, I don’t think – I can’t really picture him…

‘You know, if you are going to talk about Rayner, then I have much more knowledge, because I was closer to him. I wasn’t very close to this Andrew Coles, he had obviously not been assigned to focus on me, because he didn’t focus on me and I had very little involvement with him.’

One of Coles’ reports from 1992 describes a woman involved in London Greenpeace, London Boots Action Group, and other groups in South London. It says she does not approve of ‘lethal force against animal abusers’ and claims this means she disagrees with ‘her boyfriend, Geoff Sheppard’.

Sheppard rejects this outright.

In an undated document called ‘Six months post-op debrief’ (MPS-0743479), presumably six months after Coles’ deployment ended in 1995, he said he was a close associate of Sheppard’s in the ALF, and that he’d gained the trust and confidence of extremely good security-conscious activists, including Sheppard.

‘Well, that’s just completely incorrect, because he was not… he definitely never gained my trust or confidence. I had very little to do with him…

I had a prison sentence already for the Debenhams act, so maybe it boosted his credibility to make out that he was closer to me than he actually was.’

MATT RAYNER

In contrast, Sheppard remembered HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ well.

‘I don’t even know if you would say we were friends, but I think we developed a situation where we were close associates… And the reason I don’t use the word “friend”, is because I don’t really remember socialising with him all that much, or if at all.’

Speaking to Operation Herne’s investigation into spycops, Rayner described himself and Sheppard as ‘firm friends’.

‘I think that’s a bit too strong. As I said, he was a close associate and that association was all based around animal liberation, based around those issues. I wouldn’t say that we would become firm friends, I think that’s putting it too strongly…

‘I trusted him because he showed a willingness – a great willingness – to be involved in direct action and I was involved with him in direct action on quite a few occasions.’

A police document (MPS-074616) authored by spycops manager HN67 ‘Alan Bond’ in August 1992, not long into Rayner’s deployment, was quoted:

‘Had an informal chat with HN1 [‘Rayner’] – things within his organisation are obviously settling down and he now appears to be progressing steadily.

‘Geoff Sheppard has now taken HN1 under his wing and is telling other comrades that he can vouch for him – almost as if he is acting as HN1’s mentor within the organisation.’

Sheppard called it out as false:

‘I don’t think I started doing direct action with him until some time in 1993. So at that time I wouldn’t have had any idea whether he seemed to be a trusted person or not.’

Sheppard said Rayner visited his home a couple of times.

The first of these he believes was around May 1994, and Rayner was with a woman he had deceived into a relationship, Liz Fuller.

The second was around March 1995, a few weeks before Sheppard was arrested, precipitating his second spell of imprisonment.

‘the thing that has stuck in my mind from that visit is that we were basically we were talking about vivisection, animal experimentation, and the kind of people that were involved in animal experimentation, and we were obviously, you know, very unhappy about these kind of people.

‘And I remember him suddenly dropping into the conversation, “well, if you would like – if you want to shoot the vivisector, then I would be willing to drive you there”. Of course at this time I had already informed him that I was in possession of the shotgun. This was the suggestion that he made to me.

‘My answer to him, because I felt that I was sort of letting him down, because it seemed as if it was something that he wanted to do. I didn’t actually say no. I said to him, “I’ll think about it”, which was my way of kind of gently letting him down. Because I thought – to me it seemed as if I was kind of letting him down by not doing something that he seemed to be interested in doing.’

SPYCOP FACILITATING CRIME

Sheppard remembered Rayner always had a vehicle – at first a van, later a car – that was used to give lifts to activists. This was standard practice for spycops – in a community without much disposable income, and events to go to that were often some distance away, being able to give lifts meant you got told about everything.

Spycops would also use the long drives to get personal information, and drop people at home thus finding out their addresses.

Sheppard said he was with Rayner on many occasions when Rayner was the driver for people committing criminal damage to buildings connected to vivisection. This was after Sheppard’s prison term for the Debenhams actions, and also after a period of several years following his release when he was not involved in criminal activity. He remembers Rayner advocating direct action and responding in agreement.

At this point the hearing took a break for lunch. Despite their earlier promises to publish transcripts of hearings by lunchtime the next day, they have failed to do so on numerous occasions.

At the time of writing, the afternoon transcript is still not online and the Inquiry has not responded to emails asking when we can expect it. This means that we don’t have any extended verbatim quotes for the afternoon session and must work instead from notes and live tweets.

Rayner told Operation Herne that he once appeared in court as a witness after Sheppard had been arrested at an anti-fur protest outside Harrods. Sheppard himself doesn’t even remember the arrest, saying it happened to him so many times they all blur into one.

Sheppard does remember Rayner and his partner Liz Fuller and was well aware they were a couple.

John Dines reported in July 1990 that Sheppard was reluctant to get involved in taking ‘extreme direct action’ following his release from prison that March.

BACK TO ACTION

A 1993 report by Rayner said Sheppard had resumed ‘ALF-style activity’. Sheppard agrees that this is true and says Rayner was ‘putting me in the position he was in’. He explained his resumption as being half due to a residual belief in direct action, and half due to the influence of Rayner:

‘I valued his perception of me… I suppose maybe some part of me wanted to do it to please him’

The report said Sheppard had ‘gathered around him a small group of established, trusted and highly committed activists’.

He says he hadn’t, but that maybe Rayner had done this, and persuaded them all to get involved.

There were 10 to 15 actions, all of them criminal damage (eg breaking windows and throwing paint), all at vivisection institutions. There was no targeting of individuals or homes.

A report dated November 1994 talks about Sheppard developing a new ‘enthusiasm for anti-government public order type confrontation’ and going along to an anti-Criminal Justice Bill protest in October.

These were huge, broad-based protests against planned draconian new laws that criminalised protests and curtailed human rights. The protests had support from most parties except the Conservatives. It was far from ‘anti-government’.

He remembers being in Hyde Park when trouble broke out, and being charged by mounted police officers, one of whom hit him in the head with a baton. He did not break any shop windows that day (as claimed in the report).

INCENDIARY ALLEGATIONS

Sheppard freely admits four of them – including Rayner – were considering an incendiary campaign targeting Boots, but explains he got scared, and only got 95% of the way to producing an effective device. According to an expert who examined the items found at Sheppard’s home in 1995, there were components that could be used to manufacture a timed incendiary device, along with an instruction booklet.

Rayner asked to take away the 95% completed incendiary device that Sheppard had built but couldn’t get any further with. Sheppard agreed. Rayner didn’t take the booklet that detailed how to make these devices, and he assumed Rayner had his own copy.

In his witness statement, Sheppard writes of trying to make a working incendiary device, and deciding to turn it into a ‘dummy’, that would look like an incendiary device but not work as one.

Asked about an incendiary device that was recovered from a branch of Boots in Enfield, Sheppard says that was an action of Rayner’s after Sheppard said he didn’t want to be involved any more. The device found in Enfield was examined and found to be ‘viable’. According to the expert, if it had functioned it would have burnt for several minutes.

After the device was discovered in Enfield, somebody called the store and claimed there was a second device hidden there, and so the shop was evacuated. Somebody also rang the media.

Apart from Rayner and Sheppard, the other two people in the cell were both women. Sheppard didn’t make any anonymous phone calls about devices planted in Boots, so if this was a caller with a male voice, the only other person it could be was Rayner.

SHOTGUN

Sheppard didn’t go out with the intention of purchasing a shotgun. An armed robber he’d made friends with in prison asked him to look after the firearm. They dropped off the ammunition (some live and some not) at the same time as the gun.

They contacted him later from another country saying they were short of money and asked if he would buy it from them. He agreed to do this, thinking it could be useful for things like shooting out lights and cameras, or windows. He never intended to use it against a person. He thinks he paid between £100 and £200.

Asked why he kept the gun and the device/ components in his house, Sheppard says he doesn’t understand what was going on in his head at the time, and wonders if he had some kind of ‘death wish’ to have taken such a risk.

He says he and Rayner went out to Epping Forest together to test the gun.

1995 ARREST

When Sheppard’s home was raided the police recovered a double-barrelled shotgun (with only one working barrel) and some ammunition. We were shown a photo.

The Inquiry was shown a typed and handwritten note by Sheppard that included the paragraph:

‘we should trust our instincts above all else and if they lead us to sympathise with the use of lethal violence against animal torturers, then so be it.’

Sheppard says he wrote it in prison for an article in Arkangel magazine, that ‘maybe’ he would have had sympathy for someone who took lethal action against vivisectors, had it happened, but that he had no such intent himself.

It had the title ‘Follow the Force’. Sheppard explained he was referring to the ‘force within’ and the article ended by telling the reader to be true to themselves, which ‘99.95% of the time’ will tend to mean non-violence.

We were shown an intelligence report from 1 June 1995 attributed to Rayner (who claims it is a composite report, not written solely by him). It said Sheppard’s arrest on 26 May 1995 came as a shock to many animal rights activists, and that Geoff Sheppard intended to murder Professor Colin Blakemore, a neurobiologist and outspoken advocate of vivisection in medical research.

We were also shown the debrief of Rayner where he says Sheppard was looking after a shotgun and he didn’t know what to do with it. Rayner admitted Sheppard never told him that he planned to target Blakemore, but says that Blakemore was ‘public enemy number one within the anti-vivisection movement, there was constant talk by many activists, Geoff Sheppard included, of wanting to do him harm’.

Sheppard later appealed against his 1995 conviction, on the basis of Rayner’s involvement, encouragement and facilitation. In his grounds for appeal, he listed the ways in which Rayner had been involved: actively encouraging him to take part in actions, transporting him and others to actions, encouraging him to buy a shotgun and offering him money towards the purchase. Paul Gravett, Sheppard’s comrade, says he remembers Sheppard telling him about it at the time.

Sheppard now says Rayner didn’t encourage him to buy it, and didn’t even know about it until after it was paid for.

Geoff Sheppard was sentenced to seven years for his possession of a firearm and other items to be used for criminal damage. We were shown an authority document from Special Branch for Rayner to visit Sheppard in prison on the Isle of Wight in November 1996. Rayner also wrote to Sheppard in jail, with a number of letters exchanged.

This ended the questions, but not the questioning. The Inquiry went round in circles for a while, literally asking the exact same questions about the shotgun over and over, occasionally adding the prefix ‘are you sure’. It’s not clear what they thought this would achieve, and eventually they stopped.

Tranche 2, Phase 2, Week 4

11-15 November 2024

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

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

INTRODUCTION

It was the second of (at least) four consecutive weeks without livestreaming. This chaotic and last-minute decision by the Inquiry is because the hearings are covered by multiple Reporting Restriction Orders over private information about civilians named in the evidence (generally understood to be people who don’t want spycops’ lies about them in the public domain).

Reporting restrictions have been known to change at short notice and people reporting live from the hearings have had to delete tweets that the Inquiry considers to be in breach, so we have to err on the side of caution when writing these reports.

The Inquiry does not publish the statements, police reports, photos and other documents its refers to in questioning until after the hearing, further impeding the understanding of those of us watching. It is a public inquiry that actively excludes the public.

In the run-up to hearing evidence from HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’ at the start of December, the Inquiry is focusing on testimony from activists he spied on, largely those involved with London Greenpeace in the mid 1980s.

Other officers were committing similar abuses at the time as Lambert, such as HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’ who’s given a written statement but refused to be questioned, and HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’ who we’ll hear from in mid December.

CONTENTS

Timothy Greene

Albert Beale

Robin Lane

Paul Gravett

Geoff Sheppard

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Monday 11 November 2024
Evidence of Timothy Greene

Click here for video, transcripts and written evidence

Timothy Charles Greene was a solicitor during the period the Inquiry is now examining (1983-1992), and worked as such for 38 years. He is now a Circuit Judge. Perhaps in deference to his status in the legal profession, he was questioned by the Inquiry’s lead barrister, David Barr KC.

This hearing was not livestreamed, and at time of writing (a week after the evidence was heard), despite promises from the Inquiry neither video nor transcripts have been published on the Inquiry website, so this summary is being prepared from notes.

Greene’s written statement was introduced into the evidence. Neither the written statement not any of the underlying documents examined during this hearing have been published by the Inquiry yet.

Greene was asked about his career and he explained that he always had sympathy for rebels and underdogs, and he became a criminal defence lawyer.

In the 1980s he was an associate solicitor with a few years of experience often acting for activists including animal rights campaigners. He worked for Birnberg Peirce (one of the firms now representing core participants in the Inquiry) and he explained that even then the firm had a huge reputation. They didn’t have to do marketing. Clients sought them out.

He was asked about his own views, and the fact that the firm had a subscription to the animal rights magazine Arkangel. He says he would refer to it to see what his clients were up to, and that he was a vegetarian, but not a vegan.

Greene was clearly a very committed defence solicitor, who worked antisocial hours and gave clients his home number, because arrests don’t always happen during office hours.

It was clear from Barr’s questions that ‘intelligence’ from the time included multiple reports about then-solicitor Greene (and that they couldn’t even spell his name).

We saw yet more examples of the Inquiry’s chaotic, fire-fighting approach to people’s privacy, including an embarrassing incident when David Barr selected a paragraph of a document, only to find it had been redacted since he last looked.

Reports attributed to both HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’ and HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’ named Greene, although he has no memory of ever meeting either man in their undercover roles. One report called Greene an ‘oddball’ and alleged he had cemented firm friendships with some of his clients. Asked if this was true, Tim quipped ‘if I’m an oddball?’ to much laughter from the public gallery.

Much of the evidence is covered by Reporting Restriction Orders, so it is not possible to go into many of the details, however, it was clear that the reports contained many shocking lies about Greene and the animal rights activists he represented.

It was evident that Greene had a Special Branch file opened on him. He said he was not surprised, given who his clients had been. Nevertheless he was shocked and concerned that such inaccurate and blatantly untrue information was being recorded and even spread to other agencies.

Some reports were marked ‘Box 500’, which means that they were passed to MI5. We were also shown a Special Branch memo stating that a senior Detective Chief Inspector was going to personally brief the Anti-Terrorism Branch about Timothy Greene.

Another deeply concerning aspect of the reporting was the fact that privileged communications between a client and their legal representative were reported on by undercover police. There were numerous examples of this in relation to criminal proceedings, and the example of the McLibel case also came up.

Greene remembers attending a couple of meetings between the defendants and their lawyer Kier Starmer, and says he would have been shocked and deeply concerned to know that the state was involved in a civil dispute.

There were no further questions for Greene from other lawyers, but after Barr finished his questioning the room was cleared and there was a short additional hearing where he gave evidence behind closed doors.

 

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Monday 11 November 2024
Evidence of Albert Beale

Click here for video, transcripts and written evidence

The afternoon session on 11 November saw lifelong pacifist activist, Albert Beale, being questioned by Joseph Hudson. Beale has made a written witness statement which was introduced into the evidence.

Beale primarily gave evidence about the infiltration of London Greenpeace (LGP). He is one of several witnesses being questioned about the group, which may be the most infiltrated of any small campaign group, having been targeted not only by undercover police officers but also by a succession of corporate spies working for McDonald’s.

London Greenpeace was a small organisation (wholly separate from Greenpeace International). It was concerned with a wide range of environmental and social justice issues, opposing greedy exploitation of people, animals and resources. An open public group with no formal membership, it held weekly meetings, usually attended by 5-25 people.

Before becoming active active with London Greenpeace, Beale was active in anti-militarism, anti-apartheid, feminism, gay rights and atheism, mostly in Brighton.

He spoke in detail about the War Resisters’ International (WRI) network, which is made up of numerous organisations around the world that resist war. He also gave a short history of the publication Peace News, reaching back to the 1930s.

WRI and Peace News were ideological neighbours as well as physical neighbours (they had offices in adjacent buildings) and there was always a crossover of personnel in the campaigns. London Greenpeace was formed in the 1970s by people involved in both groups, and it was launched with an article published in Peace News.

Asked about the general priorities of London Greenpeace during its early years, Beale replied that it was mainly selling a broadsheet publication. The first significant issue it addressed was opposing nuclear tests.

Beale was not hugely involved in LGP in the 1980s but he always went to meetings if he was around. He highlighted the difference between LGP and Greenpeace International:

‘Imperial Greenpeace as I still find it hard not to still call them.’

Beale was asked about whether LGP had an ‘anarchist ethos’. He responded with a clear account of anarchism as a common-sense approach:

‘If you define anarchism as a thing where people voluntarily organise themselves together, then it did have an anarchist ethos in the sense that nobody was telling it what to do. The group came together and we set our own criteria… self-activity and self-decision making on a voluntary basis… is in a sense one definition of anarchism…

‘unfortunately, of course, anarchism – as with many political philosophies where the people who adhere to it want to change the world – is seen very pejoratively. It is quite clear from seeing some of the police reports that they are using anarchism as… a term of abuse. And anarchism as I understand it is highly responsible and highly self-aware…

‘Unfortunately the cloak and dagger bomb throwing image of anarchists that you see in cartoons is all very witty but it doesn’t really have much to do with what anarchism as most of us understand it is all about.’

SO, WAS LONDON GREENPEACE A FRONT FOR THE ALF?

The main drive of Hudson’s questioning, and indeed a recurring theme throughout the past two weeks of evidence hearings, can be summed up as: You were part of London Greenpeace, but… wasn’t it really the Animal Liberation Front (ALF)?

Like all the LGP witnesses before him, Beale very clearly and repeatedly replied ‘no’.

LGP had a very broad range of interests, because of ‘the way the group worked that people with a particular interest might come and inspire others’.

Some people in the group were interested in animal rights, many were not. Within LGP, people’s interests changed over the years and the focus of the group was constantly shifting. There was nothing special about animal rights in that respect. The group always held meetings publicly and anyone could come.

The group was always a mix of generations:

‘It had old codgers and young students in it’.

Beale recognises the popularity animal rights enjoyed among younger people in the 1980s. Asked what he understands by the phrase ‘an ALF activist’, Beale said was someone who has a more radical take on the rights of animals and was in tune with the sort of things the ALF was doing. He confessed to having little understanding of the ALF. Animal issues were not something Beale was very interested in ‘because you can’t do everything’.

In fact, spycop Bob Lambert was one of the people most interested in animal liberation within the group.

Beale recalled that ‘Bob Robinson’ started attending campaign meetings in the 1980s. He was enthusiastic and quickly got involved in activities. He was friendly, willing to write leaflets and he talked about animal liberation issues from the very beginning. His appearance in the group coincided with an increased interest in animal rights.

Beale himself had criticisms of the ALF, and there were concerns within the group. Beale’s LGP comrade Martyn Lowe, who gave evidence a week earlier, is recorded in Lambert’s reporting as raising concerns about the direction LGP was taking.

Beale was sympathetic with Lowe’s position. However, he takes issue with the way those concerns were reported by Lambert, and notes that the issue was not as divisive as the reporting implies. This exaggeration of divisions within a group is a bit of a theme in SDS reporting.

Hudson asked Beale about some of the evidence the Inquiry has of LGP interest in animal rights. Much was made of an ALF leaflet stapled to an LGP newsletter. We were also shown an intelligence report from 13 December 1985 about a public event. The report claims it was addressed by ‘ALF activist’ Steve Boulding, and that most attendees were ALF activists or supporters.

Beale was clear in his answers that LGP organised public events about many different topics, including animal rights. He was directly asked if there was talk of ‘ALF-style’ property damage at London Greenpeace meetings. He says yes, those sort of things were happening at the time and so of course, they were talked about. But talking about actions that are happening is not the same as planning or orchestrating those actions.

BUILDINGS

Hudson asked a series of rather repetitive questions about how buildings were used. Beale was asked to detail the various peace and activist groups that were based in the King’s Cross area, and how they moved around at the time.

London Greenpeace nearly always had an office in one or other of the buildings. Beale was asked about 5 Caledonian Road, which he referred to, ironically, as ‘the Peace News empire’.

The address has long been the home of Housmans bookshop, which is still based there, and it has been used by a vast number of progressive organisations over the years. It even has a COPS blue plaque commemorating the attendance of Special Demonstration Squad spies.

Beale was asked to explain how the letting out of offices was organised, which he did, listing lots of organisations that rented an office in the building over the years.

Hudson also asked about how the London Greenpeace office specifically was used. How often were people there? It was clearly run very informally.

‘I was in and out of that building anyway… There was one guy who I remember took over being one of the cheque signatories and did the sums and did that sort of thing and he popped in, from what I can remember, practically every day.’

Beale described how, in the pre-online era when print and letters were the primary method of disseminating ideas, London Greenpeace would receive huge amounts of correspondence, meaning there was always plenty of work to do responding to everyone.

The reasons for these questions appear to be that the police reporting about the offices imply they were some kind of secret organising hub. One report from 14 April 1987 claimed the ALF Supporters Group (ALFSG) was renting an office at 5 Caledonian Road, and another from 7 July 1987 suggests that London Greenpeace held ‘secret meetings’ there.

Beale batted that description away. There was no ‘secret private cabal meeting’, you have an office, and people drop in: that is not a secret meeting.

‘It is just trying to dramatise normal campaigning work, it seems to me. Of course not everybody is involved in every discussion. It’s not you are trying to make a big secret of it.

‘In fact, if you plan something at a meeting in the office when you are just with a bunch of people, presumably the next week’s normal London Greenpeace meeting presumably you would say, “Oh, we had this great idea and we have planned this and we have done this leaflet or whatever it is”…

‘I can understand, you know, if you are a police spy infiltrating a group, you have got to make the group look more furtive and more wicked to justify what you are doing…

‘the more I see of the police reports, the less serious I find I can take them, even the ones that seem plausible I now have doubts about, because some of them are so obviously absurd.’

James Wood KC took this theme further at the end, asking if Beale personally witnessed any ALF planning at London Greenpeace meetings: ‘No’.

Was there any kind of rental agreement for the ALFSG to have an office at 5 Caledonian Road? ‘No’.

Did Beale witness any planning of ALF actions in any buildings that London Greenpeace used? ‘No”.

Beale was a very good witness. His evidence really conveyed the informal nature of the organising and campaigning, and the importance of solidarity, and made it clear that the sinister way that is portrayed in the police reporting is just wrong.

He confirmed that it is perfectly plausible that ALFSG work could have been done, informally, in the LGP office, by people who were involved in both groups. Challenged by Hudson over whether, as a pacifist, he would have objected to that, Beale answered:

‘[I understand that the ALFSG] was a group whose role was to support people who were imprisoned as a result of Animal Liberation Front activities and things like that. I think there is probably a general support and solidarity with people who are facing prison for things that they have done to follow their own conscience. And one has that basic solidarity with them, even if they are doing things that you would not do yourself…

‘when people are up against the state, sometimes you just know in your gut what side you are on. You know, even if you would rather they hadn’t done it, the people who are on trial, you know where the bigger evil is…

‘It is perfectly possible as a pacifist for me to say, “Whether somebody clobbers one person or somebody drops a bomb on a thousand people, I disagree with each of those 100 per cent. Therefore I disagree with them equally”.

‘Well, yes in one logical sense I do disagree with them equally, but at the same time I can also draw a distinction between the relative demerits of some violence which is far more culpable than others. And in the world we live in, the violence of the state is the worst of all violence. That’s where so much violence in society, the mood of society, emanates from.

‘And much as I disagree with people taking violent action in support of causes, however much I think it is a good cause, I am not going to go out of my way to condemn them in the same way I will condemn the violence of the state. In fact, I may support them, not supporting their actions but supporting what’s happening to them, because they are being prosecuted.’

We were also taken to Beale’s witness statement where he talks about confidentiality being required as the element of surprise was required to make an impact.

‘It doesn’t mean that you are doing something wicked, horrible or illegal if you don’t tell people in advance.’

He explained that the state often tries to stop people doing things that are not illegal. He gave the example of distributing pacifist leaflets to military personnel.

Asked whether ‘violence’ or the tactics of the ALF were up for debate in LGP meetings, Beale replied that debates may have happened but that in his experience:

‘violence, as I define it in my statement – as harming other people, you know, physically attacking people and so on – would simply not be an option’

We were shown a section of a report subtitled ‘violence’, which claimed that someone said in a meeting that vivisectors should be ‘lined up and shot’. Beale is recorded as noting the irony of saying that in the Peace Pledge Union office.

‘it was a turn of phrase, albeit in bad taste… I am sure I would have said something about it. I might well have said something a bit stronger than “noting the irony”…

‘I have to say, some of these reports that are about things at London Greenpeace meetings and some of the ones about me are very, very clearly reports where things are being said that were said at the meeting which are reported very much in the words of the police person doing the reporting…

‘So I wouldn’t take this too literally… I wouldn’t take it as a serious proposal that anybody is sitting there saying people should be lined up and shot in a literal sense’

But, as Beale says, if you’re an undercover police officer you have to make the group you’re infiltrating sound dangerous and subversive to justify what you’re doing. We are increasingly seeing that the consequence of that is that they systematically lied in their reports.

McLIBEL

Beale was also questioned about the McLibel case, when London Greenpeace produced a ‘What’s Wrong With McDonald’s?’ leaflet and were sued by the fast-food giant. Defended by LGP activists Dave Morris and Helen Steel, t became the longest-running trial in English history. The involvement of Special Demonstration Squad officers was not disclosed to the court.

Beale was shown one of LGP’s early anti-McDonald’s leaflets, and asked who might have produced it (specifically whether Lambert was involved).

‘I certainly didn’t type it, it’s not typed well enough… it looks to me like a joint production by a number of people. Bob might or might not have been one of them. I can’t say for sure, I am afraid.’

He described how sometimes you try different campaigns and some just lift off and get a buzz. A similar leaflet they made about Unilever didn’t take off. The McDonald’s campaign ‘did seem to hit a nerve’. As a result, various versions of the flyer were made.

Regarding Lambert’s involvement in writing anti-McDonald’s leaflets, Beale recalled:

‘I think he did some of the writing of them, actually… at that stage Bob was very into the corporate things as well as animal liberation things. That was kind of the two things that he sort of livened up within the group over a period of a few years.

‘So I just have this memory of him, you know, being at a meeting with people looking at leaflet drafts and Bob scribbling away and things. You know, I can’t say what word was written by whom, but he was certainly, he was certainly involved in the McDonald’s leaflets.’

Beale also made the point that LGP became more active during the McLibel trial, and his own role increased:

‘the whole McLibel thing was such an outrage that, that my solidarity with Dave and Helen during the libel case was such that I put a lot more time and energy into things around London Greenpeace.’

Hudson went on to ask about Lambert’s successor, HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’, infiltrating the group.

Beale said he didn’t warm to him as much as Bob. He remembers him monopolising Helen Steel’s attention, which turned out to be a prelude to deceiving her into an intimate relationship.

‘I just remember sitting in a pub one evening… it was kind of all jammed up on a bench in the pub with half a dozen of us from a meeting.

‘I do remember Helen was sitting next to me on one side and every time I tried to talk to her I discovered that John Dines was sitting next to her on the other side and was kind of monopolising her attention a great deal, he was obviously, you know, kind of, anyway, he was talking to her a lot and he was focusing on her a lot.

‘And I just remember that because he was on the other side of Helen from me and I didn’t know Helen very well at that stage, and I was going to ask some things and I didn’t get a word in, you know…which is not like me… I have odd flashes of memory of him.’

This pattern of undercover cops isolating women they targeted for deceitful relationships from other social contact is something we have seen in other cases as well.

Asked whether Dines had been given trusted roles within the group, Beale made it clear that anybody who came to a London Greenpeace meeting could be involved, whether an undercover or not:

‘we were a pretty open and trusting group… if they offered to do some of the work, we would be only too pleased, for goodness’ sake. Because there were times over the years when I felt lumbered with doing most of the admin work because there was nobody else around, you know, prepared to get off their backside and do it. So you were always very grateful when somebody did the work.

‘I don’t know how much work he did. I have no idea. But certainly anybody, anybody who was at the meetings would have every opportunity to take a role in any part of the work they wanted to, pretty much, and would know what was going on and could see the bank statements and things because they would all be there. It was all very open’

The point of these questions? London Greenpeace was infiltrated by more than one SDS undercover officer, and they became very involved in the private lives of people in the group.

The questioning drew out the complete lack of any justification for such intrusiveness, with Beale confirming that there was no information he was privy to a police officer could not have gleaned by simply turning up to a meeting.

Beale concluded by reflecting on the personal impact of these infiltrations. It was heartbreaking to hear him talking about how trusting the group had been:

‘we all have to trust each other as fellow human beings and fellow campaigners. I mean clearly we were silly to do so in retrospect, but you treat people as you want them to treat you, you trust them.’

Beale made the point that some of the overt political policing he has experienced has been bad:

‘I have been on the receiving end of what you might call the political police in this country a few other times beyond London Greenpeace, which in some ways have had more of an effect on me on one level, but in terms of the emotional effect, this is the worst.

‘I mean, having people you sit in the pub with, who are your mates, turning out to do this. It is outrageous.’

 

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Tuesday 12 November 2024
Evidence of Robin Lane

Click here for video, transcripts and written evidence

Some of this day’s evidence is covered by Reporting Restriction Orders, which means that not everything said in the hearing room can be reported outside of it.

However, we can tell you that Robin Lane has provided an 83 page written statement and some exhibits to the Inquiry. If we’re lucky, these will eventually appear on the ‘Day 12’ page of the UCPI website, but please do not hold your breath.

Questions were asked by one of the Inquiry’s Junior Counsel, Rachel Naylor.

Lane has dedicated most of his life to campaigning for animal rights. He has been vegan for over 40 years, and his main focus in recent years has been the promotion of veganism.

He first became politically active in 1980, joining the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). He became a local contact for the British Union Against Vivisection, now called Cruelty Free International, in late 1982.

He was involved in a number of animal rights groups. After the South London Animal Movement (SLAM) and ‘RATS’, he took up the role of press officer with the Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group (ALFSG) in 1986. He served some time in prison, and after his release, set up a new Campaign Against Leather & Fur (CALF) in 1989. In the 90s he was involved in setting up the Animal Rights Coalition London and London Animal Action (LAA).

NON-VIOLENCE

Lane was shown a leaflet from 1983 – attached to a police report [UCPI020446] – which described different forms of Civil Disobedience (referred to as CD). These included such tactics as occupying zebra crossings by walking over them continuously. According to the leaflet: ‘Non violent CD is very important’.

Lane was asked for his thoughts about this, and exactly which forms of non-violent direct action he considered legitimate and acceptable. It is unclear why the available transcript has been so heavily redacted, as nothing he said during the missing 25 minutes contravened any of the Inquiry’s Reporting Restriction Orders.

It was obvious to everyone that Lane was opposed to violence, and cared deeply about the horrific treatment of animals. He doesn’t agree with taking direct action against personal property, homes and cars, but considers it legitimate to protest outside businesses and sites of animal suffering, or to damage items that are used to torture animals.

He felt the actions taken by him and others were ‘perfectly reasonable’, and people could choose to risk arrest if they wanted to. He preferred demonstrations that did not attract a (potentially violent) police presence.

It was evident that he had spent a lot of time thinking about what constituted non-violent direct action. Indiscriminate or ill-planned actions that might lead to other people (especially children) being adversely affected, were not acceptable to him. He made it very clear that he did not support certain types of action.

SOUTH LONDON ANIMAL MOVEMENT (SLAM)

It seems likely that Robin Lane’s name was first recorded by Special Branch when he attended the first meeting of the reincarnated South London Animal Movement (SLAM) in 1983.

He recalls SLAM as a very ‘democratic’, open and law-abiding group. It was non-hierarchical – everyone sat in a circle, and there was nobody in charge – and ‘easy-going’.

He says someone called ‘Mike Blake’ turned up, and became part of the group. This was in fact an SDS officer, HN11 Mike Chitty, whose first report about SLAM [UCPI019336] described Lane as a ‘self-confessed anarchist’. He denies this, and says he was never an anarchist, has always voted in elections, and goes on to talk about the prevalence of punk at the time:

‘a lot of people called themselves anarchists. I don’t ever think they were really anarchists’.

According to Chitty’s secret police reports, there was lots of discussion of ALF-style actions, such as criminal damage, at the group’s meetings, and SLAM would soon start claiming responsibility for such actions in order to ‘put itself on the map’.

It seems improbable that anyone would have discussed this kind of illegal activity at a meeting which was completely open to the public.

Lane was asked if SLAM was in fact a conduit used to recruit people into the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). He tried to get an important point across to the Inquiry – that ‘ALF’ is an action, taken by an individual, not the name of an organisation:

‘There is no “the ALF”.’

In March 1984, there was an ALF raid on the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) in Camberwell, resulting in the liberation of rats that were being experimented on there. Members of SLAM heard about this on the news, and realised that there was vivisection happening in their local area.

They set up a working party to discuss campaigning about this, and a ‘handful’ of interested people met at Lane’s home to talk about their ideas. They organised a demo, which took place in January 1985.

Over 1000 people marched from the Institute all the way to Parliament, held a minute’s silence for the animals, then returned to Denmark Hill in Camberwell, where a large group blocked the traffic.

We saw a photograph [UCPI037136] of this march. It was openly organised, planned with the police, who complimented them on their stewarding, and the relevant local councils. This was the first march Lane had ever organised, and he considered it ‘a great success’.

The group learnt more about one particular vivisector based at the IoP, who conducted tests on baboons and mice, Dr Brian Meldrum. They decided to focus their campaigning on him.

Why focus on an individual rather than the entire institution? The working party did lots of research – he recalls ‘trawling through microfiches’ – and this made them realise the sheer size of the Institute and its experiments. They thought that unwieldy scale meant it made sense to focus on one main scientist and then make the links.

According to another Special Demonstration Squad report [UCPI014770], the group produced leaflets that included a photo of Meldrum and described the kind of experiments he was conducting. SLAM planned to distribute these locally, around the IoP and around Meldrum’s house.

Lane recalls that they’d originally thought about including Meldrum’s home address on it, but decided not to. The report suggested that there was much more disquiet about this campaign within SLAM than Lane remembers, and referred to it as a ’hate campaign’. He says it wasn’t; it was a campaign against vivisection – ‘against the torture, you know, of baboons and mice’.

The group used street theatre to raise public awareness of Meldrum’s controversial experiments (for example those where he used strobe lights to cause the baboons to have epileptic seizures), and sometimes held demonstrations outside his house.

We saw some photographs of this. In one [UCPI037134], a SLAM member is wearing a baboon suit. Lane is pictured shining a torch towards their face, and a local bobby stands watching. Another photo [UCPI037137] shows Lane wearing his Meldrum costume, a stained lab coat.

Attached to another report from spycops Mike Chitty [UCPI021972] is a four-page article written by Lane, which appeared in a new publication (‘The Door’) in 1986. Entitled ‘Looking back’, it describes some of the events held outside this house by the group.

Lane recalls that what they called ‘home visits’ were normal in those days, not seen as a big deal by the police, and entirely legal. There was no criminal offence being committed.

He remembers Meldrum’s wife coming out of the house on one occasion. She wasn’t frightened or intimidated, just angry about them holding a chimps’ tea-party in the driveway on the day of her husband’s 50th birthday party.

Lane said such home visits were widely seen as a legitimate form of campaigning, but the law has changed since then and he probably wouldn’t do these now.

SLAM didn’t tend to advertise these demos widely or in advance, it was just members of the group who turned up. Would spycop Mike Chitty have known about them? Lane has no idea; he doesn’t remember ‘Mike Blake’ being present at any of these home visits, but points out that ‘Mike’ wasn’t around all the time; he was involved in lots of different animal rights groups.

We moved on to hear about another tactic, announced at a SLAM meeting [UCPI021972] which Lane remembers as ‘very good’. Activists made very creative use of Freepost coupons, and as a result, Meldrum received hundreds of catalogues and packages over the course of a month. This constituted ‘a very effective way’ of taking up a vivisector’s time, says Lane.

According to a Polly Toynbee article in the Guardian, around 50% of Meldrum’s time was spent dealing with the campaigning.

The Inquiry then produced an article, ‘The Armchair Activist’, taken from issue 19 of the ALF Supporters’ Group (ALFSG) magazine, attached to a police report of December 1986 [MPS 0745764]. Lane recalled that their solicitor at this time advised against publishing this article, in case it was considered ‘incitement’.

This was around the same time as a number of animal rights activists were facing conspiracy charges in Sheffield. The ALFSG was keen to avoid breaking the law, so rather than distributing the magazine as it was, or reprinting it, they physically ripped those pages out.

Excerpts from the article were read out. It described how some activists had developed the Freepost idea much further, as an easily accessible form of action that could be done by anyone with access to a phone – using it to order goods and services for those they targeted. This was said to cause ‘utter misery’ for the recipients.

Lane pointed out that what SLAM had done was completely different; they just used Freepost; they didn’t order any of these other things (such as skips, scaffolding or funeral directors) for Meldrum, or anyone else.

Lane said that he and ‘Tanya’ (his girlfriend at the time) had both been very involved in campaigning against Meldrum’s cruelty, and had always done so in a legal, above-board way.

He did not agree with more extreme forms of action taken by others, and felt very strongly about this. He considered SLAM’s campaigns to be very successful. This one generated a lot of publicity, locally and nationally. However there were some people in SLAM who didn’t like this.

RATS

He, ‘Tanya’ and two friends all left SLAM as a result, and set up their own small group, calling it RATS (not an acronym).

Their aim was to raise money for animal sanctuaries (places set up to look after various animals after they’d been rescued from labs and other places). They borrowed from the ALFSG to pay for printing their first leaflet, and later on raised funds for them as well.

The ALFSG were always fundraising (including through the sale of magazines and merchandise) so they could support animal rights prisoners. Lane drew a clear distinction between this and actual ALF actions: ‘It had to be completely separate’.

The ALFSG was an organisation, with a bank account and a membership, who made regular donations. Even his mum was a member and yet she was, as far as he knows, not involved in ALF activism!

The first police report which mentions this ‘newly formed (anarchist) animal rights group, RATS’ is dated October 1985 [UCPI021949].

Lane says he was very surprised when he saw the leaflet attached to it, which claims that RATS has been ‘set up to raise money for the Animal Liberation Front’. He does not recognise it at all, and says it definitely wasn’t made by him or the other three people involved in RATS (who were all very close friends; none of them were ‘anarchists’):

‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the powers that be produced this, because I certainly did not… I disassociate myself with this leaflet’.

In contrast, he does recognise the leaflet attached to a report from January 1986 [UCPI021956]. He explains that this one was put out by RATS, to inform the public what ALF was about, and to counter some of the myths and misinformation that appeared in the media about animal rights activism.

In his opinion, ALF activists were ‘amazing people’, who were doing their best to stop animals suffering, and who didn’t deserve the bad press they were getting at this time. This genuine RATS flyer is clear that they’re a ‘fund-rasing group’ who aim to raise money for both the ALFSG and animal sanctuaries.

ANIMAL LIBERATION FRONT SUPPORTERS’ GROUP (ALFSG)

Shortly after this, Lane and ‘Tanya’ both began helping Vivienne Smith at the ALFSG office in Hammersmith. One of Lane’s jobs was responding to letters that had appeared in the press about ALF activities.

After about six months, he was asked to take on the role of press officer and, after Viv went to prison, to run the ALFSG office. He was raided by the police’s anti-terrorist squad a year later, and then stepped down from these roles before his own trial, which took place in Cardiff in the summer of 1988.

He says he was fully supportive of the ALF actions being taken, and welcomed the press officer role as an opportunity to speak out publicly about what was going on in the meat trade, the fur industry, etc. He used a pseudonym for this (having received threats from butchers, and unwelcome media intrusion at his home).

When ALF activists contacted the office, they did so completely anonymously. The job of the press officer was to provide comments to any media outlets who got in touch. In the 1980s there was a lot of ALF activity – he recalls around five actions every day – so he was kept busy.

The magazine and its printing were done by other people. There was a treasurer in Dorset who handled the finances. Lane coordinated the admin done at the office and says his was ‘pretty much a full-time job’.

We saw an example of an ALFSG ‘diary of actions’, a compilation of news about different actions that had taken place around the country over several months. This was included in a report by Bob Lambert [MPS 0744786]. He also included details of the legal advice provided to the ALFSG by their solicitor, information that should have been treated as ‘legally privileged’ by the police.

Lane says he didn’t know Bob that well, and that ‘he definitely did not’ accompany Lane and ‘Tanya’ on a visit to HMP Hull (where ALF founder Ronnie Lee was being held).

Another Lambert report [UCPI028387] purports to contain details of a conversation taking place at the prison between Lane and Lee. There are a number of reports written by Lambert which Lane doesn’t agree with:

‘I think you should take a lot of what HN10 said with a pinch of salt, you know. I think there is a lot of stuff that has made up here’

Lane does remember that the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) made a donation towards the ALFSG, but he was never the group’s treasurer and can’t be sure of its size.

However, he absolutely rejects any suggestion that money given to the ALFSG during his time there was used to fund any ALF actions or criminal activity. Besides covering the costs of printing and admin, the money was used to support activists who had been arrested and/or imprisoned.

He also repudiates the contents of another report [MPS 0742704], and its allegation that he’d made a secret agreement with Lee and another activist, known as ‘GFT’, not to publicly condemn any action carried out under the banner of the ‘Animal Rights Militia’ (ARM) including its ‘bombing campaigns’.

Lane repeated what he’d said earlier about his commitment to non-violence. He never moved away from this pacifism, and never supported any violence. He recalls being very strict as a press officer. He wouldn’t report actions that broke the ALF code, and would disown them if asked about them.

‘in my time there was no connection between ALF and ARM. Absolutely none’.

He wondered at times if ARM really did exist, and notes that its existence would have suited the authorities.

Similarly, he doesn’t recognise the claims in another report [UCPI028517] that he had been encouraging closer ties with London Greenpeace (LGP). He explained earlier that he didn’t have much involvement with LGP as it met in North London and he tended to stay active locally, in the South of the city.

After the Hammersmith office closed down, the ALFSG admin was done at his home. As with all other witnesses asked about the police’s assertion, Lane is adamant that there was no agreement to share the LGP office in Kings Cross.

He did the ALFSG admin alone, after his relationship with ‘Tanya’ ended. He denies the suggestions made in various police reports that Gabrielle Bosley, Helen Steel or ‘Bob Robinson’ were ever involved in the ALFSG. He doesn’t remember Steel having a liaison role, organising printing or attending a meeting with him, ‘Tanya’ and two other activists.

Both LGP and ‘Green Anarchist’ later reprinted the text he’d originally put together for the RATS leaflet, but he wasn’t involved in this. He points out that supporting a group is different to being part of it. Many of those in one group might be sympathetic to or supportive of the aims of another group, but there wasn’t as much crossover between LGP and ALFSG as the secret police reports imply.

He remembers Support Animal Rights Prisoners (SARP) as a ‘very prominent, very good group’. He wasn’t involved in it. SARP’s remit was much wider than the ALFSG’s: they did lots of letter-writing and campaigning around provision of vegan food and toiletries to prisoners.

HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’ (due to give evidence in December) claimed that SARP had been set up in order to support more violent ARM prisoners who wouldn’t qualify for ALFSG support.

‘I think that is nonsense’.

BOB LAMBERT’S LIES

Equally, it is clear that Lane doesn’t believe Bob Lambert’s claims, either those made in his witness statement [UCPI 035081] or the ones which led to him receiving an official police Commissioner’s Commendation [MPS 0726999] for his undercover work.

One of these claims was that he worked ‘at the ALF office’ and monitored their ‘hierarchy’. Lane does not remember ever seeing Bob, or his van, at the ALFSG office, and points out that ‘there was no hierarchy’.

Another was that he’d had meetings with Ronnie Lee and was involved in setting up ALF prisoner support. Lane points out that there were only three or four people involved in the ALFSG, and it’s inconceivable that Lambert could have done any of these things without Lane noticing.

The claim of Lambert’s that the Inquiry spent the most time unpicking was a convoluted story which seems to have been invented to explain how he was able to learn so much about an ALF cell’s future plans, without being part of it.

Lambert is was part of a cell that placed timed incendiary devices in branch’s of Debenham’s department store, in protest at the sale of fur. Lambert is accused of setting the device that burned down the Harrow shop.

This would have been far beyond anything he could justify to his bosses. Unsurprisingly, he denies it. However, he still needs to explain why they trusted him so much.

Lambert apparently suggested that he was going to fulfil some kind of communications role, between the cell (Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke) and the wider animal rights movement, and also the media.

Supposedly they trusted him to explain why they’d adopted these tactics (the use of incendiary devices in shops) to other activists. He said that because he was going to act as some kind of ‘press officer’, they shared information with him about the next set of attacks, that they were planning to carry out in September.

As someone who actually did act as a press officer, explaining ALF actions to the media, Lane was well-placed to offer an expert opinion about this. He points out that he only ever found out about actions after they had happened.

‘I didn’t know about actions beforehand, and it would have been ridiculous for me to have known’.

The ALFSG couldn’t afford the risk of him being done for ‘conspiracy’. He says Lambert ‘must have been part of a cell’ otherwise he would not have been privy to the level of detail about future actions that he claimed.

In his statement, Lambert claimed that by late 1988, he was a ‘trusted colleague of the main Animal Liberation Front activists’ (listing Lee, Smith, Lane and others) and was being considered for a ‘more formal role’ in the ALFSG.

‘I don’t understand what he’s talking about. He was never involved in the Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group so far as I was concerned’.

He says Bob’s fantasy of being considered as his successor was ‘extremely unlikely’.

Asked if Lambert was, as he claimed, Lane’s trusted colleague, the response was unequivocal:

‘Never. In fact, in fact I was suspicious of him.’

Lane recalls a comment Lambert made in a pub after a gig in Brixton (one of the few times they ever socialised in the same place). The subject of undercover cops came up. Lane made a comment about them being the ‘scum of the earth’ and still remembers the way Lambert responded: ‘but Robin, sometimes it’s necessary’.

‘I was always suspicious of him after that’

Lambert reported that he didn’t take up a formal role in the group, but organised transport for prison visits and also for supporters to attend Lane’s trial in Cardiff. However, Lane says this isn’t true. He had some very good friends who came to his trial from London, and they all travelled by train. He doesn’t know who Bob’s talking about.

When the Debenham’s actions happened in July 1987, Lane was the ALF press officer. He had no idea who was responsible, and nobody got in touch with him to claim the attacks.

Although he had nothing to do with it, his house was searched and turned upside down in a very traumatising way, and he was arrested. He remembers giving a ‘no comment’ interview (which lasted five hours) and suffering from panic attacks afterwards. He has no idea why he was targeted.

He also has no knowledge of any internal ‘investigation’ into the possible infiltration of the ALF, something said to have been requested by Andrew Clarke. This is mentioned in a report from November 1987 [MPS 0740488].

LANE’S LEGAL CASE AND RELEASE FROM PRISON

We moved on to hear about Lane’s own trial, in June 1988. He was convicted and sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment. He ended up serving four and a half months. This was for ‘conspiracy to incite others to commit criminal damage’.

The prosecution case centred on the ‘diary of actions’ that we’d seen earlier. There was no disclosure of the fact that an undercover police officer was involved in the case.

There was a party organised to celebrate him getting out of prison at the end of October. This was a small, private event, held at his barrister’s house, with food provided by the family. Only his closest friends, people who had been supporting him while he was inside, were invited.

There was only one gate-crasher: Bob Lambert. Although Robin was, in his own words, ‘slightly peeved to see him there’, he didn’t feel able to exclude him, as he’d tagged along with Belinda Harvey, his girlfriend at the time. One of the tactical advantages of deceiving trusted women into relationships was the way it allowed the officer to piggyback the woman’s social popularity.

In Lambert’s report of the event [MPS 0740647] he claimed that this weekend was a gathering of ALF activists for ‘important tactical and theoretical discussions’, but Lane says ‘this is pure fantasy’ and assures us that it was in fact ‘fun’, a ‘nice time’ and ‘nothing to do with ALF or anything like that’.

He also describes as ‘fantasy’ the bit in Lambert’s report that calls him ‘the perfect illustration of a broken man’. He says he was actually very happy and healthy at this time. He had already decided to step back from the stress of being involved in the ALFSG. He had a new relationship, and got involved in ‘Life Before Profit’ (a pacifist, environmentalist, vegan group).

ARKANGEL MAGAZINE

Lane started a new magazine, Arkangel, and ran it himself, with someone else doing the ‘desk-top publishing’ layout. There was no subscriber list, just a box of index cards, and addresses were written by hand on the envelopes. This was done by him, his new girlfriend and two other helpers (sisters who lived at the sanctuary), nobody else, and certainly not HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’.

However, Coles attached a subscriber list to one of his reports [MPS 0739503], claiming to have compiled this by printing out address labels on the ALFSG computer.

This is a bit baffling. Robin says that the addresses were always hand-written – there weren’t any printed labels – and in any case, the ALFSG computer was never used for Arkangel.

Short of breaking into his house when he wasn’t there, and writing out or photographing these several hundred index cards, Lane can’t see how Coles would have copied the list.

Lane doesn’t remember where or when he first met Coles, but recalls ‘Andy Van’ (as he was called) offering him lifts to Animal Rights Coalition (ARC) meetings in the West Midlands, and to collect Arkangel from the printers in Northampton. He doesn’t remember what they spoke about in Andy’s van, but is clear that they weren’t friends and didn’t socialise together. After making several of these long trips to ARC meetings, Lane suggested setting up the same kind of coalition in London.

ANIMAL RIGHTS COALITION (ARC)

Coles has claimed in his witness statement that another activist, ‘EAB’, had invited him to get involved in ARC London, because of his previous involvement in the ‘South East ARC’.

However, Lane tells a different story. ‘EAB’ was a good friend of his, and he suggested inviting her along to the pair’s planning meetings (held in Andy’s bedsit). He has never heard of a ‘South East ARC’.

ARC London’s first meeting took place in February 1994. It acted as an umbrella organisation, the idea was that it would bring together all the different animal rights groups which existed at the time, to share news and discuss what they were doing.

HN2 Andy Coles offered to produce an ARC London newsletter but neither Lane nor the Inquiry seem to have any copies of it.

The Inquiry does have a pro-forma submitted by Coles that June [MPS 0745749], naming Robin Lane as the organiser (‘under the auspices of Animal Rights Collective London’) of a demo at Christie’s auction house, where a fund-raising auction was being held for the British Field Sports Society (BFSS).

It suggests that thanks to his obtaining a sale catalogue, details of BFSS donors have been circulated in the animal rights movement and they are likely to be ‘targeted’ in some way. Lane says he just picked up a free copy of the catalogue, it was quite heavy, and he had no intention of circulating copies to anyone else.

This pro-forma also mentions him organising a protest at the Serpentine Gallery. Damian Hurst’s art show featured a dead sheep in a glass case. Lane remembers it ‘like it was yesterday’. All they did was hold hands in a circle around this case, and this made visitors unhappy because they weren’t able to get close to it.

He denies there’s any truth in the next Coles’s report [UCPI0746014], about Coles and him being part of a new committee formed to organise an alternative to the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) demo held on World Day for Laboratory Animals. He says he thought that NAVS ‘were doing a good job’ and can’t see why he would have wanted to ‘radicalise’ this annual event.

In his witness statement [UCPI035074], Coles claims that setting up this ARC was ‘core to my strategy’ – it helped him identify and report on potential ALF activists – yet Lane points out that this could have been achieved by any ‘ordinary police officer’ coming along to what were entirely open, public meetings.

LONDON ANIMAL ACTION

In any case, by the end of 1994 London Animal Action (LAA) had been created, and ARC was no longer needed. This new organisation ran until 2005, and was spied on by HN2 and at least two other undercovers (HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ and HN26 ‘Christine Green’). Its meetings were also entirely open to anyone.

The meetings were organised by a small committee, made up of Lane and just four others, and he denies that Coles was involved in this, or as ‘prominent’ as he claims:

‘I think that’s probably an exaggeration on his part’

He accepts that Coles may well have been involved in putting out ‘London Animal Rights News’, although his main memory of collating and mailing out this publication was of doing the work in the Crystal Palace flat of ‘Christine Green’.

We looked at some of the issues that LAA took action on. Lane didn’t go to Shoreham for any of the protests against live exports from the port, but he was involved in the campaign against Hockley Furs, which went on for three years.

According to a report by ‘Matt Rayner’ [MPS 0246082] its proprietor, Michael Hockley, resigned as a direct result of LAA’s campaign. It characterises the demo held on 16 March (a national day of action against the fur trade) as ‘a series of unrelenting skirmishes’. Lane disagrees with this; he remembers simply protesting outside a string of fur shops.

Towards the end of the day, the activists headed for St John’s Wood, where Michael Hockley lived. The police report provides a sensationalised account of this:

‘the full hatred of the activists towards the man who is seen to personify the evil of the fur trade was expressed through a tirade of angry abuse and noise… with levels of anger fast approaching the hysterical, an all-out assault on Hockley’s home was only prevented by a large police presence’

Lane says this is a ‘gross exaggeration’ of what actually happened. ‘Matt Rayner’ was arrested outside Hockley’s home that day, and seems to have told his SDS managers that LAA activists were ‘amused’ by this. Lane was asked if anyone in LAA would have found such as arrest amusing? He said ‘definitely not’.

How did LAA know where Hockley lived? He remembers ‘Christine Green’ suggesting that they find out by following him home from work one day. The two of them did this in her van, following his taxi, no mean feat in central London.

He remembers being very impressed at the time, although as he says now ‘she was obviously a professional driver’, who’d been trained by the police to tail other vehicles.

‘If it hadn’t been for Christine, we wouldn’t have got that address… that protest at his house would never have happened’

Looking back now, Lane believes that she was actually sympathetic to the anti-fur cause. Like HN11 Mike Chitty ‘Mike Blake’ before her, a while after her deployment ended ‘Green’ resumed contact with people she’d spied on, including a romantic relationship. She is understood to still be partners with one of the activists she’d spied on.

HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ reported [MPS 0245378] that many of LAA were openly supportive of ALF style direct action and ‘many are personally involved’ (it is unclear how he could possibly have known this).

According to him, LAA was a ‘potent and effective force in the movement’. Lane agrees with this description. He says that the group was ‘very effective’, it was ‘an incredible group’, ‘full of very committed people’, and he believes it was ‘an inspiration for groups around the country’. For once, it appears that a Special Demonstration Squad officer is telling the truth!

The report is, however, not entirely truthful. Lane disagrees with the inclusion of his name on a list of activists said to be ‘involved in disorder and acts of criminality’. He is clear that at this time in his life, he was being very careful not to take part in any criminality as he had no wish to be arrested again. He thinks the SDS sought to justify their infiltration of LAA by making such allegations.

MORE ABOUT HN11 MIKE CHITTY

Lane was asked more about each of the undercovers he encountered, starting with HN11 Mike Chitty. He remembers meeting ‘Mike Blake’ in 1985, when he started a relationship with ‘Lizzie’, a good friend of Robin and ‘Tanya’. As a result, he was welcomed into a very small social group who would hang out at each others’ homes. He says Mike claimed to be a fan of the Welsh rock group Man that Lane had loved in the 1970s.

In his statement, Lane refers to another woman as Mike’s ‘victim’. Robin believes that Mike’s first relationship undercover was with her. He didn’t know this woman so well and has no idea when this relationship began or how long it lasted. He says ‘she wasn’t an activist’; ‘she was more like Cats Protection League’. She and ‘Lizzie’ were friends, and he believes that Mike met them both at South East London Animal Movement meetings in Catford.

Mike moved on to ‘Lizzie’ sometime in 1985, and their relationship lasted for several years, until his deployment was coming to an end and he told the people he spied on that he was leaving for America in 1987.

Lane believes that Chitty deliberately targeted ‘Lizzie’ in order to get close to ‘Tanya’ and himself. He had his own place, a ‘bedsit somewhere’, and never lived with her. ‘Lizzie’ shared her flat in Brockley with an ex. Lane remembers being shocked to encounter this man and learn that he was a ‘proper policeman, not an undercover one’.

How did ‘Lizzie’ deal with Mike’s departure? Lane describes her as ‘very resilient’. She was very close to

Mike and upset about the end of the relationship, but seemed to recover. He recalls paying a visit to her house a few years later, with Roz, his new girlfriend. Mike was there, and had obviously come to see ‘Lizzie’.

Lane admits that he was ‘surprised’ and ‘a bit disappointed’ that Mike hadn’t made any effort to meet up with him, and wasn’t ‘particularly friendly’. Roz died in July 1991. ‘Lizzie’ wrote to ‘Mike Blake’ to let him know, including Lane’s address in case he wanted to send condolences. He didn’t.

He has no idea if their sexual relationship was rekindled in 1990. He finds it hard to believe that Mike ever proposed marriage to ‘Lizzie’. She was a close friend of his and never mentioned this. She had already been through one unhappy marriage, and he doesn’t think she would have wanted to marry again.

In April 1994, Lane attended a farewell meal for another activist in Streatham. Reports indicate that two spycops, Andy Coles and Mike Chitty, were present, but Lane does not remember this.

We heard a bit more about a trip to Blackpool Zoo, to protest about the treatment of animals. Around eight people from London travelled up there, at spycop Mike Chitty’s suggestion. As well as him, the group included Lane, ‘Tanya’, ‘Lizzie’, Mike’s ex and a woman called Sue Williams.

They stopped off at a vegan event in the Leeds area then camped in the Yorkshire Dales, again suggested by Chitty, who had brought a tent in his car. He also bought ‘tonnes and tonnes of alcohol’ and they all got very drunk. Lane remembers him and Sue pretending to be sheep:

‘It might sound very silly, but we were young’.

They were three miles from the US military base and listening station at Menwith Hill, and at one point a jeep turned up and the occupants told them to go back to their tent. Mike Chitty said there was sexual activity on that night. But Lane is says that there definitely wasn’t.

OTHER UNDERCOVERS

Lane also knew Belinda Harvey. He didn’t know her so well when she got together with ‘Bob Robinson’, and doesn’t remember the couple living together, but considered her a good friend by the time Bob disappeared from her life in early 1989, after Lane’s release from prison.

Lane has no memory whatsoever of HN87 ‘John Lipscomb’. He does remember visiting the squat in Sudbourne Road, Brixton (and says it had ‘a really nice atmosphere’) but no memory of ‘ELQ’ or ‘John’.

‘ANDY VAN’ (HN2 CREEPY ANDY COLES)

In his statement, spycop Andy Coles claimed that near the start of his deployment, he made contact with the Campaign Against Leather and Fur (CALF) to enquire about non-leather work boots. There were only two people involved in CALF; Robin Lane and Roz. It was Roz who imported vegan boots, so she would have dealt with this.

Apart from the van journeys mentioned earlier, Lane didn’t spend much time with ’Andy Van’. He recalls that Andy claimed to like the same kind of music as him, and came round to his flat a few times.

Lane had another girlfriend, a violinist, after Roz. They used to go along to London Vegans events together, and met a French woman there, who was single and looking for love. They set her up to meet ‘Andy Van’ (someone they believed to be perpetually single, and vegan) sometime between 1991 and 1994.

They asked her afterwards how this blind date had gone, and he recalls her feedback:

‘It was OK, it was a bit rough, but she didn’t mind that’

As far as he knows it was a one-night stand and didn’t go any further. Andy never spoke about it.

Lane managed to make contact with this woman recently, after finding out that he had inadvertently introduced her to an undercover police officer. She emailed back, saying she had no recollection whatsoever of that night. She only had one question: was he vegan? Robin doubts it, and reckons he ‘was probably pretending to be’.

We heard more about what ‘Tanya’ thought of ‘Andy Van’. She met him when Robin arranged for him to transport a fridge to her flat. He remembers her saying:

‘I don’t want that man coming around again, he was bit creepy’.

He got the clear impression that she meant creepy in a sexual way:

‘I thought he was bit creepy too, to be honest’.

He says he heard other people say something similar.

Coles claims in his statement that if Lane hadn’t been a target, they might have been friends, but this seems unlikely. Yes, he made use of Andy’s van, but insists they ‘weren’t mates’. He never saw him with a woman, so assumed he was single. He had no knowledge of him his relationship with a vulnerable teenager, ‘Jessica’.

HN1 ‘MATT RAYNER’

In comparison, he thought of HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ as a good friend, someone he liked. He was into classical music and sometimes came to concerts at the Royal Festival Hall with Lane and the violinist.

Lane recalls a trip to the Ritzy cinema in Brixton together. Like other LAA activists, Rayner went to his parties, such as a birthday party in Holborn.

He remembers ‘Rayner’ as an effective campaigner, who had a van, and laughs as he recalls how he asked him to take over the Northampton van run when ‘Andy Davey’ disappeared off the scene. He was, unsurprisingly, happy to help out.

HN26 ‘CHRISTINE GREEN’

What about ‘Christine’? She was an even closer friend, both of Lane and his now-wife. They socialised together a lot throughout her deployment, which ran from 1994 till 1999. They became friends very quickly, she lived near him and often gave him lifts to meetings. He thought she was a ‘nice genuine person’.

In one report [MPS 0745689] we can see Lane’s signature appears as a witness to hers on a tenancy agreement dated June 1996 for her flat in Central Hill, Upper Norwood. At the time, he thought she asked him to do this because he was a close and reliable friend. He now suspects this was ‘just a very clever and devious way of obtaining my signature’.

She lived alone at this cover address, and Lane used to spend a lot of time there. It was where they collated London Animal Rights News and stuffed envelopes. He didn’t know anyone called Thomas Frampton, or Joe Tex. He says Christine was single, and ‘never in a relationship all the time I knew her’.

He remembers their close friendship coming to an end. One of the group, a woman, had become ‘one of those tree people’, protesting about trees being cut down (possibly in Crystal Palace park, where there was a protest camp at that time). Christine blew out a planned cinema trip with Lane in order to spend time with this woman. His feelings were hurt, and he realised she wasn’t such a good friend after all.

IN RETROSPECT

Lane says that over a decade later, in around 2010, he saw a video of Lambert delivering a lecture and recognised him as ‘Bob Robinson’. He says he wasn’t surprised:

‘there was always something strange about him’

However he was ‘devastated’ when he learnt about the undercovers whom he’d considered good friends, ‘Mike Chitty in particular’. He recalls that he ‘felt so tricked’ by them, he ‘turned into a paranoid person’, suspicious of everyone.

Why was he being spied on when he wasn’t committing any crime? He said earlier that he felt that he was treated as a ‘convenient target’ by the police.

How does he feel now about being reported on by seven different officers, and all this information about him being stored by the police and security services? He still doesn’t understand it. His view now of these spycops operations:

‘I think it’s disgusting. I think it’s an outrage and it’s absolutely appalling’

It was close to 6pm by this point, the end of a very long day of evidence from Robin Lane. He managed to make a joke about billing the spycops for the vegan food they consumed.

The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, thanked him for his ‘good humour’ and noted that he had done a better job of avoiding name-dropping people whose identity is supposed to be private than ‘some former undercover officers’.

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Wednesday 13 November 2024
Evidence of Paul Gravett

Click here for video, transcripts and written evidence

Gravett was affected by a number of Special Demonstration Squad deployments, including HN10 Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’, HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’, HN2 Andy Coles ‘Andy Davey’, and HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’.

Gravett had previously been scheduled to give evidence about all of them, over one and a half days, however the Inquiry barrister questioning him, David Barr KC, failed to prepare his questions in time. In the event, Gravett was only questioned about Bob Lambert’s operation, and may be called back to give further evidence at a later date.

Gravett has provided a written witness statement to the Inquiry, which was read onto the record but, at time of writing this, has not yet been uploaded to the Inquiry website.

Previous witnesses have been asked to begin with an account of their wider activist lives, but Barr went straight to the point with Gravett, asking when he first met Bob Lambert.

Gravett first encountered Lambert at an Islington Animal Rights jumble sale, although they didn’t speak at that time. Meaningful connection began at a London Greenpeace public meeting about the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in December 1985.

An intelligence report dated 13 December 1985, written by Lambert himself, documented this first meeting, referring to Gravett as ‘Paul Grottier’ – Gravett testified that this was not an alias, his name had just been misspelt or misheard.

Gravett described how, from the beginning, Lambert made a strong impression. Approximately ten years Gravett’s senior, Lambert was confident and charming. Gravett looked up to him and their friendship developed quickly.

By summer 1986, Lambert was close enough to visit Gravett’s family home, meeting his parents and spending time chatting in Gravett’s room. Lambert hosted parties at his Highgate residence. Gravett recalled he was a drinker who didn’t appear to use other drugs.

Lambert significantly influenced Gravett’s development as an activist and his views on animal rights. Gravett characterized their relationship as having ‘an element of grooming’. While Lambert wasn’t the only influence on his activism, he stood out among others.

‘He brought me along as an activist, increased my confidence a little bit… he stood out [in London Greenpeace] as the person, you know, I think closest to me and willing to help enable me to become a more skilled campaigner’

LONDON GREENPEACE

Barr asked the usual round of questions about the differences between London Greenpeace (LGP) and Greenpeace International (the two were wholly separate), and the links between London Greenpeace and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).

On the latter point, Gravett’s answers confirmed those of other LGP witnesses:

‘So we are talking about early 1986. The group that I joined then was quite a diverse one in terms of the breadth of its activities, more than most other groups. I would describe it as a green or ecological anarchist group. But broadly, the strands of the group that I felt were most, were most apparent to me in those early days, I would call class struggle and animal rights’.

Lambert was well established within LGP when Gravett got involved. He was a key holder for their office at 5 Caledonian Road, and early on invited Gravett to the office and showed him around. Being a key holder gave him full access to the building, though some individual rooms had separate locks.

The LGP office itself was modest, but it served as a crucial organising hub. Gravett recalled a couple of chairs, a telephone, stationery, lots of leaflets on shelves. LGP had a minutes book for the meetings which might also have been kept there.

On Bob Lambert’s politics, Gravett said:

‘He was first and foremost an animal rights campaigner, but he did certainly have knowledge in other areas. You could talk to him on anarchism. He obviously had a knowledge about that.

‘And he wasn’t, he didn’t just confine himself to animal rights. I remember there were other demonstrations that he went on perhaps, but not very frequently. It was in the main his concern was animal rights campaigning’.

By the autumn of 1986, both men were deeply involved in the anti-McDonald’s campaign. We were shown a photograph of Bob Lambert and Paul Gravett giving out leaflets together outside a branch on ‘World Anti-McDonald’s Day’, 16 October. Gravett was 24 years old at the time.

We were also shown an article written by Gravett in March 1987, which advocated unlawful direct action. Barr asked whether the views expressed in the article were influenced by Bob Lambert or were they views that Gravett held entirely independently of anything Lambert said and did?

‘Well, it’s sometimes very difficult to draw the distinction, because obviously you get influenced by those around you, who you are meeting, who you are seeing a lot of’.

Undercover officers like Bob Lambert were not just conducting surveillance, they were participating, and it is impossible to fully understand the influence they had.

THE ALF SUPPORTERS GROUP AND BROADER CONTEXT

Unlike the other witnesses we have heard from LGP, Gravett was one of the LGP activists in the 1980s who was himself very interested in animal rights, and was involved in the ALF Supporters Group (ALFSG) in 1982 and early 1983.

Intelligence reports claimed the ALFSG office moved into the London Greenpeace office, but Gravett testifies that this never happened.

Gravett met with imprisoned ALF founder Ronnie Lee about running the ALFSG, receiving clear instructions that no Supporters Group money should be spent on direct action.

The only times he is aware of this rule being broken involved Lambert himself. On one occasion, Lambert pocketed some money from a fundraiser (which had raised £260 for the ALFSG) ‘to buy more glass etching fluid’.

On another, funds from a benefit gig were reportedly used to build incendiary devices. Intelligence reports claimed Gravett was involved in financial management and strategic planning for the ALFSG, but he is clear that his role primarily involved collecting mail.

INTELLIGENCE REPORTS AND DISPUTED CLAIMS

Throughout the period, Lambert filed numerous intelligence reports, many of which Gravett disputes in his testimony. His criticisms of Lambert’s reporting were particularly compelling because Gravett did not shy away from admitting his own political opinions and actions at the time.

Gravett’s first LGP meeting, in December 1985, was addressed by a speaker talking about the ALF. The report of it describes a discussion about animal rights activists needing to move beyond targeting butcher shops and fur shops to focus on major multinational corporations.

While Gravett couldn’t recall the specific conversation, he acknowledged he wouldn’t have opposed such a strategy.

However, the report also refers to another witness (Geoff Sheppard) saying that ‘all vivisectors should be lined up and shot’. Paul Gravett doesn’t remember this comment. He doesn’t recall Geoff Sheppard ever saying that any animal abuser should receive physical violence, and he doubts it was said.

This recorded exchange about shooting vivisectors was also raised on Monday in the questioning of Albert Beale, who was equally sceptical about the language he was reported as having used.

Another intelligence report, dated 15 April 1986, claimed Gravett was involved in criminal damage against animal abusers’ property – which Gravett admitted was true – but also stated he was assisting with the ALF press office in March 1986. Gravett testified he wasn’t involved with the supporters group at that time and wasn’t at the meeting in question.

An intelligence report from 14 April 1987 claims that the ALFSG had moved into the London Greenpeace office, and that that ALF press officer Robin Lane was a regular visitor. Gravett says none of that is true.

A report from 5 May 1987 about a party held at Brunel University, to celebrate an animal rights activist’s release from prison, lists 65 people as being present. Again, Gravett says he wasn’t there despite being on the list.

A significant report dated 16 July 1986 concerned Biorex, a contract testing laboratory in north London that carried out experiments on animals for cosmetics, chemicals and drugs. The report discussed a proposed ‘Biorex Action Group’ supposedly being started by Geoff Sheppard with Gravett and Helen Steel.

Again, Gravett disputed this, noting there was already a long-standing campaign against Biorex (which conducted peaceful demonstrations throughout the period in question). Geoff Sheppard (whose evidence was heard the following day) was also asked to address this proposed Biorex group and likewise said that he did not think it ever existed.

In all, the evidence has exposed extensive inaccuracies of this kind in Lambert’s reporting, and this raises important questions about what Lambert was doing. It seems possible that he invented things to justify his deployment and perhaps even used other people used to cover for his own actions as an agent provocateur.

McLIBEL

Asked about Lambert’s role in producing the factsheet about McDonald’s, Gravett explained that there was a subgroup that worked on the leaflet and reported back to LGP meetings. Lambert was part of the subgroup, Gravett was not.

The Inquiry honed in on this:

‘Q. As someone who was not a member of the subgroup, does it follow you aren’t able to tell us exactly whether or not Lambert wrote anything, and if so what?

A. …he obviously, as a part of the subgroup, did have a substantial input into it, what was in there, yes. I contributed one sentence.

Q. Right.

A. “Revolution begins in your stomach”.

Q. Right. So we can rule that out for Mr Lambert?

A. Yes, he wasn’t guilty of that.’

DIRECT ACTION

There is no doubt that, during the period in question, animal rights activists were involved in direct action, and Gravett did not shy away from that fact.

It is important to recognise that clear lines were drawn around ALF actions, and they unequivocally said that only ‘actions that promote animal liberation and take all reasonable precautions to avoid harm to both human and non-human life’ could be attributed to the ALF.

Barr seemed to struggle with this distinction at times, and Gravett had to point it out:

‘Q. Is it right that at this point in your career as an activist you were carrying out acts of criminal damage against people you considered to be involved in animal abuse?

A. Well not, you say criminal damage against people, that would be violence, wouldn’t it?

Q. Well, the property.

A. The property. I had carried out some acts of criminal damage, I believe, around 1986’.

Barr pushed Gravett on whether he ever considered the impacts of home visits on the people affected. Gravett replied that:

‘home visits within a campaign are part of the broad spectrum of approaches, the aim of which is to stop someone exploiting and abusing non-human animals, which is very, very, very serious. Sentient creatures being abused and exploited’.

That was the driving force behind all of Gravett’s animal rights activism. As well as examining the role of undercover policing, this public inquiry gives space to people who have a thoughtful ethical code that differs from the mainstream. For example, Gravett and others believe that the law should be broken to damage property that does harm to human and non-human animals.

However, Gravett’s own role in direct action is not the real issue. Of most concern to the Inquiry is the fact that Lambert became increasingly involved in direct action as his operation progressed. He began driving activists to actions in his van, including a visit to the home of a vivisector in Surrey where Lambert chanted and waved a placard, and to hunt sabotage events.

Gravett recalled a large hunt sab where arrests occurred, though specific details escaped his memory. An intelligence report dated 20 September 1986 detailed plans to disrupt the Surrey Union fox hunt’s first seasonal event, with a speaker from the Hunt Saboteurs Association coming to a LGP meeting to discuss new tactics.

More serious actions followed. Lambert admitted to Gravett that he had conducted an arson attack on a property owned by Biorex director (empty and up for sale at the time). He described how he researched the property, confirmed it was not being lived in, and poured flammable liquid through the letterbox.

The spring 1987 edition of London ALF News carried a report, entitled ’A hot night in August’, of this attack. Gravett testified that this report was written by Lambert and the attack itself verified by Geoff Sheppard, who had acted as Lambert’s look-out that night.

Lambert also told Gravett that he had committed other acts of criminal damage: disguising himself as a jogger to pour paint stripper on a Biorex director’s car, and damaging McDonald’s windows with glass etching fluid.

Again, we were taken to intelligence reports about the paint-stripper action that claimed it was conducted by activists, plural, and that Gravett had phoned through details to the ALF press office.

Gravett contested this:

‘He told me he did it on his own… I never telephoned anything to the Animal Liberation Front press office’.

Whether or not these actions really happened is an important question in the run up to Lambert giving evidence. Gravett recalls that the paint-stripper and etching fluid actions were reported in the local media (the Islington Gazette and Hampstead & Highgate Express respectively), and Sheppard confirms that he was look-out when Lambert put something through the letterbox at the Biorex director’s property, although he does not remember seeing flames.

Of the McDonald’s window, Gravett said:

‘Lambert was an enthusiast for the use of glass etching fluid. Particularly in that time-frame, 1986, you know, early 1987. So I wouldn’t have been surprised…

‘I don’t have any reason to doubt, really. Because, firstly, Bob Lambert told me he did it. Then, as it says, there is a report on it in a local paper. So I think, I think it was him that did it’.

We heard previously from Gabrielle Bosley how Lambert had asked her to buy etching fluid for him, and we heard from Gravett that he was asked to do the same.

The implication of the evidence we heard is that it appears police officer Bob Lambert committed multiple crimes while he was undercover in the animal rights movement and encouraged others to do so, and then reported these crimes to his bosses at Special Branch as if he wasn’t involved.

Whether or not these actions really happened, for Gravett, the fact Lambert confided in him about his role significantly elevated his standing in Gravett’s eyes:

‘That sort of unlawful direct action, it was extremely rare. I mean, as I said, arson itself was extremely rare. And to tell someone you when done that afterwards – again, very rare’.

The significance of Lambert’s status as a self-professed arsonist quickly became clear.

THE DEBENHAM’S CAMPAIGN

The campaign against Debenham’s department stores emerged in early spring 1987, and marked a significant escalation. According to Gravett, Lambert initiated the plan to plant incendiary devices in the shops selling fur:

‘I think he said something along the lines of, you know, “We should escalate the direct action in what we are doing, and involving arson”…

‘if not those exact words, words like them. Like I said “escalate”. There is different stages of direct action and arson comes close to the top. And I had never done anything like that. But he was saying that we should be escalated. So, yes, something on a vastly different scale would not be unreasonable to think something like that was said’.

Gravett is not claiming that Lambert had to persuade him to take action, but he is very clear that the original idea was Lambert’s.

A cell formed, comprising Lambert, Gravett, Andrew Clarke, and Geoff Sheppard. (Sheppard gave evidence himself on 14 and 15 November).

The group held several outdoor meetings to plan their actions, and while decisions were made collectively in keeping with anarchist principles, Gravett identified Lambert as the instigator who led discussions. He recalls that Helen Steel was invited to take part in the meetings but she only came once, and said she couldn’t be involved.

Barr asked multiple questions on the most minor of points about the planning, including a long discussion about train timetables and the reliability of British Rail in the 1980s. We were shown a British Rail passenger timetable from May to October 1987. For a hearing about criminal damage and incendiary devices it was surprisingly dull to follow.

Gravett, for his part, was very honest about his involvement in the planting of the incendiary devices, although he admitted he does not have a clear memory of everything.

The group targeted four Debenham’s stores near London. The plan was to cause small fires to set off the sprinkler systems, which would cause water damage to stock and financial loss for the company. This was designed to avoid causing any harm to any living being, within ALF policy.

Gravett chose the Reading branch of Debenham’s, and conducted reconnaissance weeks before the planned attack.

On the day of action, the four gathered in the afternoon to distribute eight devices – two per person. Gravett recalls remarking that if anyone had told him he’d be doing this seven years ago, he’d have told them they were mad.

He concealed his devices in an opaque carrier bag and headed for Paddington station. However, long queues and delays at Paddington meant Gravett wouldn’t reach Reading before the store closed. He got off the train at Langley and disposed of his devices in a canal, a decision influenced by his familiarity with the area through friends.

The other three reported successfully placing their devices. Gravett remembered meeting that evening, at a Stoke Newington squat, to discuss the outcome.

The impact became clear when Lambert informed the group that the Luton device had resulted in a fire which caused £5 million in damage, far exceeding their intention to merely trigger the sprinkler system. This was because the sprinkler system had been switched off. The group was shocked by the extent of the destruction.

AFTERMATH AND ARRESTS

The four of them decided to plan another attack, and more devices were being built, before Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke were arrested. Events around the arrests moved quickly. Lambert arranged to meet Gravett at a Finsbury Park pub, and told him he had seen a police car at Clarke’s house. Gravett called the house, and someone confirmed that anti-terror police had raided.

There was talk about how Clarke and Sheppard had been caught. It seemed the police had known when to raid and catch them red-handed. However, they were all already known to the police as animal rights activists. Intelligence reports from this time suggest that animal rights activists carried out an internal investigation into possible police infiltration.

A series of intelligence reports also claim there were discussions about using ‘fireball’ devices. The Inquiry redacted the names of the chemicals in the documents, so that no one could use them as a guide to make an improvised incendiary device (which was met with laughter from the public gallery – don’t try this at home, kids!).

In any case, Sheppard and Clarke were arrested in the process of assembling more devices that were no different from those used in the Debenham’s actions. We were read excerpts from the forensic experts who examined the chemicals found in the raid and made clear that they were incendiary, but not explosive in nature.

Gravett says he would never have agreed to using something like a chemically ignited ‘fireball’ device, and he doesn’t believe the others would either. This is just one of a long list of reports, from the period after the arrests of Clarke and Sheppard, which Gravett says he thinks are straightforward lies.

Gravett organised a defence campaign for Clarke and Sheppard, visiting both in prison, with Lambert accompanying him on at least one visit.

Gravett also raised the issue of Lambert setting devices elsewhere, something he’s written about on his blog. He told the hearing that on an occasion when he and Lambert were in the London Greenpeae office, Lambert said he had planted an incendiary device in Selfridges on Oxford Street in August 1988. He said he had sent a press release about it to the ALF Supporters Group.

Gravett collected the ALFSG mail at the time, and sure enough Lambert’s press release arrived a couple of days later.

Hudson’s Bay was the world’s largest fur company and had announced it would be relocating to Hackney. This attracted the attention of animal rights activists. Two months after the Selfridge’s confession, Lambert told Gravett he had sent a statement from the ALF to the Hackney Gazette:

‘We have a very simple and clear message – if the Hudson’s Bay Company moves into the old Lesney toy factory we will burn the building down.’

There was also a campaign by the local animal rights group, and the following year Hudson’s Bay decided to move abroad.

Gravett’s last meeting with Lambert was at a pub, in November 1988. Lambert claimed his residence had been raided, and shortly afterwards vanished from the movement.

In 1985, annual revenue from the fur trade in the UK was about £80m. By 1989 it had plummeted to £4m. This was due to campaigns of all types – some legal, some not – by the animal rights movement. Alongside this, opinion polls showed 70%-80% of the public were against killing animals for their fur.

Gravett’s brave testimony sheds light on a period where the boundaries between state surveillance and active participation in criminal activities became dangerously blurred. Perhaps more than any other undercover deployment examined by the Inquiry to date, Lambert went far beyond observing. He had intimate and sexual relationships with numerous activists, he actively participated in meetings and created content, writing articles and flyers.

What Gravett’s evidence makes clear is that he also played a leading role in not just encouraging but also committing illegal acts.

Perhaps most significantly, the testimony revealed how Lambert’s reports often diverged from reality. He clearly manipulated the information he was putting in his reporting, creating a complex legacy that will be difficult for the Inquiry to unpick.

Gravett’s evidence is not finished. The Inquiry is expected to call him back to give evidence about other undercover operations just as soon as their legal team get their act together to prepare more questions for him.

Meanwhile, Lambert himself is scheduled to give evidence on 2-5 December 2024.

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Thursday 14 & Friday 15 November 2024
Evidence of Geoff Sheppard

Click here for Thursday’s video, transcripts and written evidence

Click here for Friday’s video, transcripts and written evidence

Geoff Sheppard was also questioned by David Barr KC, on Thursday afternoon and again on Friday morning.

Sheppard wants to make a correction to his own witness statement, to reflect his position changing slightly since he wrote it. He wants to make it clear that he did not consider the spycops’ infiltration of the animal liberation movement to be justified.

He thinks he must have met HN10 Bob Lambert sometime before December 1985, but is not completely sure when. He remembers ‘Bob Robinson’ as someone who was ‘very approachable, very friendly, very outgoing’. He was ‘very confident’, not shy. He says he was quite anti-social himself, so didn’t socialise much, and had no idea if Bob took illicit drugs during his deployment.

LONDON GREENPEACE

Sheppard went along to London Greenpeace (LGP) meetings most weeks but tended to sit and listen, but not get involved ‘in producing leaflets or anything like that’. Bob was much more actively involved, and ‘very vocal’ at the meetings. Sheppard recalls him as a ‘leader’ rather than a ‘follower’, with a ‘strong personality’. He was always up for giving people lifts in his van.

Sheppard is asked about a public meeting held by LGP that December, the subject of a Lambert report [UCPI028481]. The topic was ‘Animal Liberation’ and the main speaker someone called Steve Boulding. Sheppard can’t remember if this meeting was organised by Lambert or not. According to the report, Sheppard was very vocal about vivisectors that night and said ‘They should all be lined up and shot’. He admits that he may well have made a comment like this, ‘as a figure of speech, not as an actual plan’, but doesn’t remember doing so.

He was also asked about ‘CTS’ but seemed a bit confused, and it’s not clear that he remembers meeting her at all. He says he didn’t know ‘Jacqui’. (These are the pseudonyms of two of the women that Lambert had sexual relationships with during his deployment).

HUNT SABOTAGE

We next saw a report from February 1987 [MPS 0742173] which lists the names of ‘London Greenpeace activists and anarchist squatters’ who formed the ‘North London Hunt Saboteurs’ (NLHS). His name is listed, and he is described as an ‘experienced Animal Liberation Front activist’, as is Paul Gravett.

Sheppard says he only went sabbing two or three times in his life, and doesn’t know the dates. The report suggests that on this date the sabs have brought along people who are ‘more used to giving than receiving physical violence’.

Sheppard says this ‘doesn’t ring any bells with me’. He only went when the sabs needed extra numbers. He is well aware that ‘they were much more likely to be on the receiving end of violence than dishing it out’ and that at least two sabs had been killed in action.

ANIMAL LIBERATION FRONT

Barr moves on to ask about Animal Liberation Front (ALF) activity. Sheppard confirms that this was not a membership organisation. Individuals and small cells operated autonomously to rescue animals from being abused, and would sometimes cause property damage to prevent further animal abuse. He said that he wasn’t involved in committing any criminal damage to anybody’s home, clarifying that what he meant by ‘home’ did not extend to unoccupied premises.

Barr reads out some examples of tactics said to be endorsed forms of ALF direct action. Sheppard says he was not personally aware of some of these (for example squirting battery acid on fur coats, or setting fire to vehicles) and other actions (for example damaging a vehicle’s tyres, or paintwork) seemed far more likely.

Barr shows us a copy of ‘Interviews with ALF activists’, which was published around 1986 and attached to a police report [UCPI009110]. Sheppard remembers seeing this at the time but not all of the incidents reported in it – for example, six department store vans are said to have been fire-bombed as part of an ‘intensifying campaign against stores which sell fur’ – or all of the ideas for action detailed. He points out that it can’t be assumed that all of these tactics were actually being used at the time just because they were written down in this publication.

The Inquiry has thoughtfully redacted the instructions for making an improvised incendiary device, just in case anyone watching today is tempted to do so!

Later, the same publication describes corrosive etching fluid as a ‘new weapon’ used by ALF in Sheffield (on the windows of House of Fraser shops, as they had fur departments). Sheppard remembers hearing about this technique but never used it himself.

For some reason Barr then highlights a report of an action done at a country house owned by a fox hunter. Animal rights activists appear to have painted the word ‘SCUM’ on a wall. It is reported that etching fluid had been used on the windows and superglue on the locks.

It is unclear why he’s brought this incident up, other than to suggest this was typical of an ALF ‘home visit’ (something Sheppard has never done). Barr even says he’s not suggesting that Sheppard had anything at all to do with this.

Is it fair to say that there was a lot of ALF direct action in those days (the ‘80s)?
Sheppard agrees that yes, compared to now, this was the case. Were there people who were involved in both ALF and LGP? Sheppard points out that he has to say yes, ‘because I was one of them’, but he thinks the vast majority of LGP were not doing ALF-style actions.

The only activists involved in both ALF and LGP that we know of (discounting undercovers like Lambert) are Sheppard and yesterday’s witness (Paul Gravett). They were both asked if the ALF Supporters Group (ALFSG) had ever shared LGP’s office, as alleged in one of Lambert’s reports [MPS 0740079].

They have both denied ever hearing about such an arrangement. Sheppard disagrees with the claim that he went there to help with ALFSG admin. He went to the LGP meetings, which took place elsewhere (in Endsleigh Street) but not the office. His only involvement in the ALFSG was 5-6 years later.

EXISTING CRIMINAL RECORD

The next report we see, from January 1986 [UCPI028483], includes a description of Geoff Sheppard and details of his criminal record up till that time. He points out that he did not in fact assault a police officer outside the Savoy hotel in June 1983. That officer assaulted another demonstrator (breaking his nose) and then arrested Sheppard, saying ‘You’ll do’. However he was convicted of this and given a £10 fine and suspended sentence in November of that year.

He also received a conditional discharge in 1984, and served 150 hours community service in 1985, both for minor criminal damage related to animal rights. In 1986, he and Paul Gravett were arrested together for graffiti on the wall of HMP Holloway that read ‘Free the Unilever Four’. There is another report [UCPI028377] which lists the activists who visited him while he was on remand that April, and refers to this graffiti as one of Sheppard’s ‘lesser crimes’.

Six months later, Sheppard was arrested with another activist, this time for criminal damage at a Hornsey meat trader’s. Lambert’s report of this [MPS 0742721] lays out Sheppard’s thoughts ahead of his upcoming trial (including his plan to plead guilty, having been ‘caught red-handed’, and his sentencing preferences).

Sheppard attended the sentencing of animal rights activists in Sheffield Crown Court in 1987. All ten were sent to prison, but their sentences were not as long as had been feared. He agrees that the report of this [MPS 0740062] mostly matches his memories, bar the part which said that Brendan McNally ‘literally screamed with delight when he was taken from the court’.

This report goes on to say that after this court case, activists would undoubtedly review their operational security measures and be more careful about how they purchased items for actions, or how much they wrote down. Sheppard doesn’t remember any of this; he just remembers his enthusiasm for animal rights being ‘reinforced’ at this time.

ANARCHISTS FOR ANIMALS

In December 1985, Sheppard and other activists were arrested while leafleting at Murrays Meat Market in Brixton. The group used the name ‘Anarchists for Animals’ (AFA) for this demo. Sheppard doesn’t know for sure who made the leaflet (which portrays a butcher holding a cleaver to a human baby) but strongly suspects that both this and the demo itself were organised by ‘Bob Robinson’.

According to Lambert’s reports, the AFA continued to organise. Sheppard, however, casts doubts on this, he thinks this name was just used for that one demo. ‘I didn’t think Anarchists for Animals was a genuine organisation’ he says.

Despite this, another report [MPS 0747119] from August 1986 describes Sheppard as an AFA activist, and claims he is ‘impressed by recent demonstrates outside the homes of vivisectors in Surrey and Sussex’. He doesn’t think this was true. He says he was far more interested in direct action than these kinds of ‘home visit’ demos.

BIOREX CAMPAIGN

Biorex Laboratories was located in Highbury, and vivisection was carried out there. Campaigning and actions (such as Sheppard’s breaking of two windows, something he was convicted of in 1985) were already ongoing long before July 1986. Sheppard says that contrary to what is reported then [MPS 0740016], he had no intention of forming a new ‘Biorex Action Group’.

He remembers going to the national anti-Biorex demo. There was a brief sit-down during it, which was broken up by the police immediately. However, as someone with no interest in home visits, he did not carry out any reconnaissance of Biorex directors’ home addresses.

However he remembers that Lambert planned an action, and came to him to ask for his help. ‘He said he needed someone to act as a lookout’. Sheppard also recalls ‘I used to do a bit of running, you know, running around the local park’; Bob knew this and at some point told him that this made him a ‘good candidate’ for this action.

Lambert drove them both to Barnet in his small van and parked it about quarter of a mile from the house. The area was suburban, and they walked the last bit of the journey. The house was detached from its neighbours. Sheppard took Lambert’s word for it that the house was up for sale, and that he’d phoned the estate agents and been told that it was completely empty.

Bob is said to have given instructions during the van journey about what to do if the police arrived:

‘Basically he said if it was a police officer on his own, then we’ll try and push him over and we make a run for it. But he said that if there were two police officers then we should just give ourselves up due to their, I remember these words now, “due to their superior training”.’

As the look-out, Sheppard spent most of his time looking away from Lambert and the target house. He says he turned round briefly, and saw Lambert seemingly pushing something through the letter-box, but didn’t see any flames. To this day, he doesn’t know for sure if there ever was a fire, and admits ‘it is possible that it was me being hoaxed’.

The following spring, an article about this action (with the title ‘A hot night in August’), appeared in the London ALF newsletter [UCPI037249]. Sheppard did not write this, and he’s not sure if it’s entirely accurate (as it mentions flames, which he never saw) but admits that he would have agreed with the sentiments expressed in it. The only person he ever told about this action afterwards was Paul Gravett.

On Friday, James Wood KC (Sheppard’s barrister) has a few follow-up questions about this incident. He wants to know if Sheppard is certain that the Barnet address (72 Galley Lane) mentioned in the ALF ‘List of actions’ matched the place he visited with Bob Lambert that night.

He produces some stills taken from Google Earth of the street and its houses, and Sheppard says ‘it does seem about right’. However he was never given the address beforehand, and was driven there by Lambert. Wood tries to explore further. Does Sheppard remember exactly where the van was parked, or how far away this was? He can’t remember any more than the distance he estimated before (quarter of a mile).

ETCHING FLUID AND PAINT STRIPPER

London ALF News carried a list of ‘London ALF actions’ that had taken place since the last issue. The same edition included a story of etching fluid being used at the Golders Green branch of McDonald’s in October 1986. Supposedly 3 windows had to be replaced at a cost of £1800. Sheppard says he didn’t know anything about this attack and didn’t see the coverage of it in the local newspaper.

A police report from the time [UCPI028517] suggests that the use of etching fluid is on the rise amongst animal rights activists and more McDonald’s branches will be targeted. The Inquiry have asked a lot of questions about etching fluid during these hearings.

Barr asks Sheppard what he knew about its effectiveness, and about what Lambert reported [MPS 0742721]:

‘In reality “glass etching fluid” is unlikely to weaken a plate glass window, unless it is applied with an implement that scores the glass. This is a fact often ignored by activists, shopkeepers and, of course, glaziers.’

Sheppard never used the stuff so wasn’t able to tell them much.

He is asked about another attack on property belonging to a Biorex director. A November entry on the ‘London ALF List of actions’ says their car had been damaged with paint stripper. He says he heard a story about this (which entailed Lambert dressing up in his jogging gear and throwing the chemical over the car as he jogged past) but as he may well have heard it from Lambert himself, cannot verify its truth.

THE ANONYMITY OF MR X

Sheppard says he first learnt about that somebody was working on making an incendiary device from Lambert – and isn’t sure of the exact date – and he had no practical knowledge of this himself. He doesn’t know where this person got their knowledge or the idea.

This person is not willing to take part in the Inquiry and has asked Sheppard not to use his name. He offers to refer to him as ‘Person X’, and thereafter Barr begins to call him ‘Mr X’. However, obviously irritated by this, Mitting interrupts to tell Sheppard that if this ‘pretence’ around the identity of Mr X is maintained, it will distract and detract from this Inquiry.

It appears that the Chair has decided that only he gets to award anonymity to people who he deems deserving. He tells Sheppard that he doesn’t mind him referring to this person as ‘Mr X’ for the next few hours, but asks him to ‘have one more go at persuading him’ that evening. Sheppard is sceptical that he can change X’s mind, and reports back the next morning that he hasn’t managed to.

Everyone notices that Barr immediately stops using the name ‘Mr X’ after this, which comes across as very disrespectful. We will continue referring to him as ‘Mr X’ throughout this report.

DECIDING ON DEBENHAM’S

According to a report from April [MPS 0740019] Geoff Sheppard is serving a short custodial sentence, and due to prison overcrowding, is currently held in Hendon Police Station. It goes on to claim that his sentence has been a ‘deterrent to others’, that he ‘has been hesitant to return to crime’ but is bound to do so when he is released.

In the witness statement he supplied to ‘Operation Herne’ (an internal police inquiry) back in 2017 [UCPI0737215], Sheppard wrote of being recruited to take part in an incendiary device action by a ‘fourth person’, who he was not willing to name at that time. However we now know that this was Paul Gravett.

Sheppard says his memory of dates is hazy. He remembers that there were four of them who met up, mostly in parks, to discuss their plans, all men (him, ‘Mr X’, Paul and Bob). Did Helen Steel ever attend these meetings? Not to his memory, no.

Barr returns to this question later, on Friday. He produces Steel’s witness statement [UCPI037365]. In it she writes of being invited to a meeting in 1987 to discuss campaigning against the fur trade. They met in a park. She was driven there by Lambert, in his van. She says that she was one of five people present.

After hearing her account, Sheppard accepts that this may have happened, but he still genuinely has no memory of being at a meeting at the same time as her.

James Wood KC also raises this on Friday, pointing out that at one point in his witness statement [MPS 037104] Sheppard refers to a meeting that he attended with four other people in early 1987. It says that four of the group decided to work toward a future action, but the fifth person present decided not to be involved. Sheppard says ‘I think I must be referring there to Helen Steel’.

How did they reach the decision to target Debenham’s? He recalls an ongoing campaign around the country to persuade Debenham’s to stop selling fur. He was ‘enthusiastic’ about taking direct action against the fur trade.

IMPROVISED INCENDIARY DEVICES

We moved on to find out more about the tactic they chose to use for this campaign: improvised incendiary devices (IIDs).

They decided to put these devices in the stores towards the end of the day, just before they closed. The IID was set up to work with a 9-10 hour delay, so it would go off during the night, when nobody was there, and set off the sprinkler system, causing the shop’s stock to be damaged by the water.

The plan was for coordinated attacks, all on one night. They each picked a ‘convenient’ branch that they would be responsible for, and carried out their own reconnaissance in advance. They met up after this to share information; he remembers talking in the street somewhere.

He reported back to the group that he hadn’t found a fur department in ‘his’ branch (Romford). He recalls being unsure about what to do. He remembers Lambert being very insistent that as it was a Debenham’s store, it was still a legitimate target, and going along with that. He doesn’t know for sure what he would have done otherwise, but says Lambert persuaded him to continue with the action in Romford.

WHO DID WHAT

‘It wasn’t like the military’ he explains to Barr that nobody was ‘assigned roles’ as such – they each decided what they were able and willing to do. Barr asks if this was ‘agreed in the anarchist way – without a hierarchy’? Sheppard says there was nothing especially ‘anarchist’ about it. He doesn’t know the source of the components used in the first batch of devices.

All four members of the ‘cell’ were up for placing these devices in shops. He offered to help with the manufacture of the devices, but neither Gravett nor Lambeth got involved in this work. Sheppard says he never questioned this, and nothing was said about it.

Mitting picks up on this, and at the end of Friday’s hearing asks some questions of his own about why Lambert, who seemed to either be ‘a leader’ or ‘the leader’ in this plan, had nothing to do with the devices’ construction?

Sheppard replies that Bob certainly could have helped, if he’d wanted to, with the same kind of ‘menial’ tasks that he’d taken on, such as cutting out ventilation holes in the devices, and attaching (‘do not touch!’) warning stickers on the outside. He suggests that perhaps Lambert was trying to ‘distance himself a little bit’?

Asked if anyone in the group claimed more expertise in this manufacturing process, Sheppard says ‘there is no doubt that Person X was more expert’.

THE DAY OF DEBENHAM’S

On 11th July 1987, Sheppard went on foot to collect two of these devices from a house in Tottenham. This wasn’t the home of any of the four ‘cell’ members, but Mr X was there.

He remembers that the devices were on a table, but not which room this was in. He doesn’t remember how many devices were there when he arrived. He just picked up two and put them in his jacket pockets.

He thinks he went straight to Romford from that house, possibly by train. It was sometime in the afternoon. He placed the devices on two different floors of the shop, then travelled home. He doesn’t remember what he did that evening, but believes he stayed at home, alone.

AFTERWARDS

He isn’t sure when he met up with the others again. ‘Maybe a week later’ he suggests. He doesn’t actually remember all four of them meeting up; he may just have met with Lambert. Where? He has a vague memory of this being indoors. Didn’t they plan to hold a debrief as a group? He can’t remember.

What did Lambert first say when you met him afterwards? He said that he’d been able to place one of his two devices at the Harrow store, but not the second. There was no explanation for this.

He also remembers talking to Gravett afterwards. He recalls Gravett telling him that ‘his hands felt very sticky, his fingers felt sticky’ (maybe caused by the label coming off?)
and that he’d thrown both of his devices in a canal, instead of planting them in the Reading store. Sheppard remembers feeling annoyed. Not angry, just annoyed.

‘To put it bluntly, did you think he’d bottled it?’ asked Barr.

‘That thought did go through my mind, yes’

What did the other two think? He can’t remember what Mr X thought, but does recall telling Lambert that he didn’t think Gravett should be involved in any such actions in future.

He remembers Lambert getting ‘very serious, and it wasn’t the smiley Bob Lambert anymore’, he became ‘quite angry’ and ‘quite aggressive’ and told Sheppard: ‘No, no, he must remain involved’. Sheppard backed down.

The Luton branch’s sprinkler system did not work, so the damage there was far worse than the group had expected or intended. Did they really not discuss this ‘striking event’?

‘Mr X, as we’re finding out now, is a cagey person… I can’t remember him saying anything about it, or leaping with joy or anything like that’.

An SDS report from this time [MPS 0735386] claims that Mr X (a ‘leading ALF activist’) is ‘delighted with the success’ of these incendiary devices’ and believes their design makes them ‘far more reliable’ than those used elsewhere. It also says that he has cleaned his room of any forensic traces and intends to squat a different house in order to manufacture more. This report was written by Bob Lambert.

Sheppard doesn’t know what Mr X thought of his devices or what he was planning next, and points out that Lambert may not have known either, and ‘may have just been making it up for himself’.

He then goes on to say:

‘He obviously needed the second event to happen. I have a suspicion that there may have been a degree of persuasion going on from Bob Lambert. He didn’t need to persuade me, because at that time, at that time I was still very, very committed’.

According to an article in the ‘Victims of Conscience’ newsletter [MPS 0649477] the costs of the damage caused to these three Debenham’s stores was calculated before Sheppard’s trial. Calculated as £8,731,296 in Luton, £350,000 in Harrow and £205,000 in Romford, this night of ALF action could be said to be one of the biggest ever in terms of economic impact.

Sheppard is clear that he has no regrets. He points out their reconnaissance included considering if anybody would be harmed in the event of an accidental ‘full-scale fire’.

In response, Barr plays BBC news footage from the Luton Arndale centre. According to the voice-over, the roof of the shopping centre was badly damaged in the fire. Didn’t this expose fire-fighters to risk? Not if there was nobody inside the area of the fire for them to rescue. Barr clarifies that he is referring to the risk of the weakened ceiling falling onto them later.

He also brings up the issue of asbestos. According to the forensic scientist who gave evidence at the criminal trial, it was not possible to fully examine the scene inside the store the following day, because of asbestos particles in the air. Barr suggests that this ‘gives rise to a risk to life’. Sheppard points out that many things could represent a risk to life, including driving.

Mitting has one question of his own before we finished for the day. A phone call was made claiming this action at around 3am, and a recording of this played at the trial. Had there been any discussion about this beforehand? Sheppard can’t remember.

WHAT THE ‘CELL’ DID NEXT

According to an intelligence report [MPS 0748765] ALF activists have decided to set a deadline by which Debenham’s must stop selling fur in all their stores. Supposedly a ‘trusted’ journalist at ‘Time Out’ will be used to communicate this to the company, and their department stores will be ‘monitored’ to see if they have complied.

Sheppard doesn’t remember this deadline, or know who was involved in setting it. However it seems that ‘Time Out’ did publish the cell’s only press statement, in full.

Lambert also reported [MPS 0735383] that Mr X has ’revealed’ that he manufactured these devices at his home, and planted the Luton one, and that the other two were planted by ‘two close and trusted comrades’ of his. Barr suggests that Lambert is being ‘extremely coy’ here, and Sheppard agrees that he seems to be ‘drip-feeding the information’.

‘Without a Trace’ was a booklet published by Hooligan Press in 1986, containing advice about foiling forensic investigations. Clarke is said to be ‘confident’ that the devices will provide no clues to police investigating these attacks, but aware that a very thorough search of his house might be problematic. Barr asks if either of them had this pamphlet? Did they talk about forensics? Sheppard does not recall doing so.

In order to prevent this being an issue in future, Mr X is said to be planning to manufacture more devices elsewhere, in a squatted house in Tottenham, that will be available at the end of August. It says the process of assembling them will be much quicker than last time, and take around three days and nights, but Sheppard has no memory of this.

Lambert’s report says the cell plans to carry out another incendiary attack, on the provisional date of 26th September. It has a short-list of possible targets in the West End (not Debenham’s) and will soon choose one. Sheppard doesn’t remember if, how or when they did this, but confirms that they have a list of shops engaged in the fur trade.

Barr asked:

‘Just to be clear, how is it that Bob Lambert is able to report all of this detail?’

Sheppard replied:

‘Well, I mean the answer to that is quite simple, which is that he was an integral part of this cell’

CHANGING PLANS

The next report [MPS 0735382] describes this ‘active London cell’ of four people, meeting in two dates in August, and Mr X as this ALF cell’s ‘effective leader’. It says that he has given up his job as a Haringey Council gardener, and for this reason, the date of the group’s next incendiary action will be brought forward to 29 August. The target will be Harrods of Knightsbridge, and devices will be left on four different floors in order to maximise the damage.

Sheppard doesn’t believe this was true. He remembers that every time Harrods was mentioned, ‘it was immediately dropped’. People knew that it contained a pet store, so there would be innocent animals inside overnight. He doesn’t remember this being discussed, the idea of using four devices on different floors, or anything about changing the date.

It also suggests that a new person (who does not know Mr X) will be brought in to help plant the devices. And that neither Mr X or Sheppard himself (who will be helping with the manufacture) will be involved in that aspect of the operation. Sheppard doesn’t recognise this plan at all. Yes, he planned to help make the devices. But he thought there would be four devices, one for each of the four of them, and nobody else would be involved.

Barr asked why allocate just one device per person now, instead of the two each had used for the Debenham’s attack? Sheppard thought this might have been a reflection of their perceived reliability. Barr wondered if there were only four devices this time, did this mean they could be planted by just two people?

He also asks if the group had – as suggested in this report – gone to Debenham’s in Oxford Street on 1 October to check if they had complied with the ALF demands? Sheppard didn’t know.

According to a Special Branch briefing note [MPS 0735381] the cell was put under surveillance, and on Saturday 22 August, Mr X was seen collecting a white bag from an address in Bow E3 and being driven to Sheppard’s house.

A ‘secret and reliable source’ (police code for one of their undercover officers, in this case HN10 Bob Lambert) has provided information about the contents of this bag (components for IIDs) and the identity of the man who lives at this address in Bow (‘MSW’) along with the allegation that ‘he is believed to be performing the role of “quartermaster” in this affair’. Sheppard says they didn’t have a quartermaster.

A week later, Lambert’s next report [MPS 0735376] says the group’s plans have been delayed, due to Mr X finding out more about the physical layout of Harrods, and the fact that live animals are kept there. Sheppard remembers visiting other shops to see if they sold fur, but he doesn’t know if anyone went to Harrods at this time to look at its layout. Another possible reason is offered for this delay: that there are currently 200 liberated laboratory rats staying at the home of Mr X’s girlfriend. The new action date is said to be 11 September.

It is reported that Sheppard is storing the components for making these improvised incendiary devices (IIDs) in a ‘well hidden place’ in his home. He remembers this, but has no memory of the planned targets. How many people knew about these plans? Sheppard is very clear that there were only ever four of them involved, and he can’t speak for the others, but knows that he didn’t mention this to anyone else.

THE ARREST, SEPTEMBER 1987

Another week later, on 4 September, it is reported [MPS 0735374] that Mr X is ‘known to favour’ Friday 11 September, but that the date won’t be confirmed until after the weekend. Why not? Were they planning to meet and discuss it that weekend? Sheppard has no recollection.

It is said that it took Mr X two full days to manufacture 10 devices for the night of action in July. This report states that ‘it is anticipated that they will need a full day to make five devices’ this time. Sheppard doesn’t remember any discussion about how long it would take. He insists that their plan was for ‘four people, one device each’, and these devices would be identical to those used before.

A report dated 7 September [MPS 0735373] mentions that a drugs raid took place at Mr X’s address on Thursday 3. The police searched the room of one his housemates, but not that of X. It says that the action is likely to go ahead on Friday 11th, and the necessary devices will be assembled at Sheppard’s home, on either Wednesday 9th or Thursday 10th.

It goes on to say that Mr X is ‘flattered’ to have been approached by Manchester activists wanting him to make more of these devices, ‘considered to be the best within the movement’, known for their reliability and effectiveness.

Sheppard doubts this, as (a) people did not talk openly about ALF activities or such devices & (b) Mr X is ‘cagey’ and unlikely to have welcomed such discussion. He points out that activists wouldn’t spread information ‘far and wide’ especially about stuff like this.

Barr insinuates that there were ‘mechanisms’ for ALF activists to be put in touch with one another. Sheppard rejects this idea. Were plans or photos of these devices sent to anyone? (another claim made in this report). Sheppard shakes his head, he doesn’t know anything about this.

Sheppard is asked if he ever kept a large kitchen knife near his bed? (as noted in block capitals in this latest report) He says he may well have done and recalls the reason why: an ‘unsettling’ incident one night that summer, when he disturbed someone who was trying to climb through his (ground floor) bedroom window.

Sheppard was arrested in his room, along with Mr X, on 9th September. At the time they were in the process of assembling IIDs. The police smashed the door open and injured his arm badly in the process; he had to be taken to hospital.

SPARE DEVICES OUT IN THE WILD?

Lambert began circulating rumours that there were ‘five viable devices’ unaccounted for, that had been made before the men were arrested, and never found by the police.

The first such report of this [MPS 0740045] dates back to October 1987. It claims that these haven’t been used yet, and are being stored by activists with no connection to either Sheppard or Mr X.

‘I think that’s probably fabricated’ says Sheppard. He doesn’t think any extra devices were made (and moved) before his arrest; they were still in the middle of making them when the police interrupted them.

Another report, from the following summer [MPS 0740509], repeats this claim, saying these five devices are still in the possession of ‘ALF activists’ and ‘under the control’ of one of them. Sheppard repeats his doubts about this being true. He knows he wasn’t involved in making any extra devices so Mr X would have had to do this alone and never told him about it.

The two men were held on remand until their trial the following summer. They sometimes shared a prison cell during this period. However Sheppard doesn’t think that his co-defendant would have disclosed the existence or location of any remaining devices to him.

One more report, from August 1988 [MPS 0740511] makes it apparent that these rumours are false. This report claims that Sheppard was involved in making these five extra devices; it wasn’t something Mr X did alone.

PRISON VISITS

We see a report from November 1987 [MPS 0740050]. It lists the real names of activists who are known to have visited Sheppard and his co-defendant while they were inside (usually giving false names when they did so). There’s a second such report from February 1988 [MPS 0740020].

‘Bob Robinson’ is listed as visiting in both reports. Sheppard remembers him bringing a gift with him one time (a pamphlet about ‘philosophical egoism’, which he explains is a kind of ‘individualism’). He doesn’t remember Belinda Harvey coming with him.

Did ‘Bob’ discuss the upcoming trial with him? Sheppard thinks it’s likely that he did, but doesn’t remember what was said. As far as he knew, Lambert was involved in the defence campaign. He never looked up at the public gallery during his trial, but thought he was there.

Lambert describes ‘friction’ between the two men in his report of May 1988 [MPS 0740498]. It says that Mr X is obsessing about the trial and trying to persuade Sheppard to plead guilty to some of the charges. Sheppard, on the other hand, is said to be planning to plead not guilty and then remain silent. He confirms that this is quite accurate, yes.

The report goes on to allege that Mr X had conversations with visitors about the five missing devices. He doesn’t want them to be used for any ALF actions before his trial lest it affect the outcome. Sheppard says that nobody consulted him about whether or not any such devices should be used, and he is still ‘dubious’ that they even existed.

Later on we hear about a report [MPS 0740492] of ‘recent fire bomb attacks’, said to have been ALF actions, at Oxford St department stores, in November 1987. Sheppard says he heard about these on the radio but not beforehand. He doesn’t know who carried them out. It is unclear if this is linked to the ‘missing devices’ or not.

INFILTRATION SUSPECTED

How come the police turned up at Sheppard’s house precisely when he had all the components for these devices there, on that date in September? He says there is still a huge question mark about this.

He says he heard ‘there was some kind of investigation going on’, but he wasn’t involved, didn’t initiate it, saying ‘maybe I wasn’t far enough up the hierarchy…’ and didn’t know much about its form or any outcome.

It appears that there was a burglary at Tottenham Magistrates Court in September 1988, which appeared to target search warrants, including the one used to arrest Sheppard. He denies any knowledge of this.

NEW TYPE OF DEVICE

Barr then introduces a report [MPS 0735383] describing a new type of device, that would work differently from the first ones. This entailed a mixture of chemicals which would react violently and become a ‘lethal firebomb’. According to the report, these would be sealed into Jiffy bags and posted through the letter-boxes of a range of targets..

Another report [MPS 0735376] claims that Sheppard and Mr X plan to scope out possible targets in the City of London over the weekend, with a view to then launching a ‘Jiffy bag campaign’. Sheppard remembers checking out various shops involved in the fur trade.

Indeed, in a Special Branch report [MPS 0735365] the two men are said to have visited furriers and other shops in the West End on 5 September. This report says that surveillance will be in place for the planned dates of their next action:

‘full 24-hour coverage of the two addresses has been arranged’.

The same report that we saw earlier, dated 7 September [MPS 0735373] claims that the pair met up to test their new devices on the following day (Sunday 6 September) and planned to deliver Jiffy bags to approx 20 addresses at the end of the month. In contrast, Sheppard says ‘there was talk of a new device but it never really got beyond that’.

We are shown a report [MPS 0736879] detailing exactly what was found in Sheppard’s room by the police on 9 September. He doesn’t dispute the items listed, but does not remember how they came to be there. He points out that the idea of making a new style of device still hadn’t been put into practice, and he and X were engaged in making more of the original design when the raid occurred.

Even the police’s expert witness, Linda Jones (who was called in to identify the various liquids, powders and crystals) is reported [MPS 0736878] to have advised that none of these chemicals are explosive. She states that they could potentially be blended to produce an incendiary mix, but it is clear to her that ‘none of the chemicals have been mixed’. Sheppard agrees with this finding.

Yet again, the Inquiry team has taken the trouble to redact some of the names of the chemicals found during this raid. They do not want the public to find out how to make such ‘lethal firebombs’ from reading one of their lengthy transcripts (the only way to get any information at present, as no new documentary evidence has appeared on the website since Martyn Lowe’s exhibits).

LAMBERT’S INFLUENCE

At the very end of Friday’s hearing, Sheppard’s own barrister, James Wood KC, asks him to provide more details about how Bob Lambert operated, and the influence he had over the activists he spied on.

In his witness statement [MPS 0737215], Sheppard has mentioned a LGP meeting which took place in the first half of 1987, possibly in the group’s office rather than at Endsleigh Street. It was attended by 5-6 people, they all sat on the floor and he remembers Lambert occupying the raised section.

Sheppard recalls this was a ‘generalised’ meeting about people who wanted to take action about animal abuse. There was no specific target in mind, and nothing ‘concrete’ was arranged.

He thinks it may well have been called by Lambert, and he has a very clear memory of Helen Steel looking at Bob at one point, ‘with a very quizzical expression on her face’, and suggests ‘she was wondering: who is this bloke?’ at the time. He didn’t often see her at meetings but remembers her at this one. He thinks Paul Gravett was there too.

How often did he meet with ‘Bob Robinson’? Maybe 10-20 times. Most of these were meetings of the four ‘cell’ members, discussing their plans to use incendiary devices against Debenham’s. They didn’t take minutes of their meetings or have a Chair.

What was Lambert’s role in these discussions? Sheppard remembers Bob ‘pushing these plans forward’. He says he was ‘very enthusiastic’ himself in those days. He didn’t socialise much with Lambert outside of meetings. Their relationship was about taking direct action.

Wood is very keen that the witness share his impressions of Lambert and his role during this ‘crucial period’. He was ‘definitely very keen, definitely very active’. He remembers ‘Bob Lambert was a forceful character. Charismatic, I suppose’. Sheppard recalls that Lambert wanted the actions to happen. He ‘was a kind of a leader rather than a follower’. He finds it hard to remember more than this.

Wood asks: How does Sheppard describe his own role? Leader or follower? A mixture of the two. Sheppard says that he was very passionate about animal rights, but his nature was to be more of a follower.

The hearing ends at lunch-time. Mitting thanks Sheppard for giving evidence over the past two days (something he noticeably did not do yesterday).

Geoff Sheppard’s evidence this week has been very focussed on just one of the undercovers, HN10 Bob Lambert. Many observers have wondered why the Inquiry have chosen not to continue asking him about his experiences of undercover officers on Friday afternoon.

It appears that the only reason not to do so is Barr’s failure to prepare, and/or unwillingness to let anyone else ask questions. This represents a waste of hearing time and expense as the venue is paid for by the day.

Geoff Sheppard returned to give a final day of evidence to the Inquiry on Monday 25 November. Here is our report of that.