Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance press release on the publication of the Tranche 1 Interim Report by the Undercover Policing Inquiry, 29 June 2023
The Metropolitan Police’s political ‘spycops’ unit should have been disbanded 50 years ago, its activity was a waste of time and its intrusiveness would have caused outrage if revealed, a public inquiry has found.
Victims of the police spying operations today welcomed the findings of the Undercover Policing Inquiry Interim Report that the notorious undercover policing unit, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), should have been disbanded in the 1970s.
The Metropolitan Police’s secret spying operations targeted around 1,000 campaigning and left wing groups, was sanctioned at the highest level of the police and successive governments, and continued operating until at least 2010.
The Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting, found that, in his view, only three groups were ever ‘a legitimate target’ for undercover policing of any kind.
In his report, Sir John wrote that these issues ‘should have been addressed at the highest level within the MPS and within the Home Office.’
He concluded:
“The question is whether or not the end justified the means […]. I have come to the firm conclusion that, for a unit of a police force, it did not; and that had the use of these means been publicly known at the time, the SDS would have been brought to a rapid end.”
The report does not assign blame, but finds that there were four crucial issues which should have alerted the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office to serious problems:
long-term intrusive relationships by undercover officers
the legality of entering private homes without a warrant or just cause
the theft of dead children’s identities by officers
undercovers taking on positions of responsibility in the groups they were targeting and using that to report on personal details of people engaged in legitimate activities
Public inquiry core participant Zoe Young, who was spied on for her environmental activism, said:
“The police have tried to justify their actions by saying they were targeting subversives and protecting public order. Their own evidence showed this was not the case.
They ignored violent groups such as the National Front in favour of reporting on cake sales and campaigns for free nurseries. While we were on the street calling for an end to racist murders, we now know police were spying on us. They treated as criminal anyone who wanted to change the world for the better.
If there is a subversive organisation in all this, it is the institutionally anti-democratic Metropolitan Police through their systematic attacks on basic human rights.”
Among the most shocking evidence released by the Inquiry are reports showing the Met explicitly targeted police accountability groups in the 1980s.
Over three sets of hearings the Inquiry heard from many former undercover officers, their managers and victims of the spying. Evidence showed a lack of training and direction to the operations, with officers mostly “self tasking”.
Managers admitted they did not try to change things but simply followed what their predecessors did. What emerged was a picture of a political policing organisation that had no meaningful oversight or clear requirements.
A number of reports demonstrated that teenagers were regularly reported on, alongside details of the children of activists. Numerous reports used derogatory and bigoted terms.
‘Lindsey’, a core participant who has been given anonymity, added:
“No doubt many undercovers and managers will be relieved they did not receive stronger criticism, the evidence of their reports speaks for itself. We see racist, sexist and offensive language regularly being signed off. Their reports show the contempt with which they held people trying to make the world a better place.
They had no guard rails, whether reporting on children or making salacious comments on people’s sexual activities. All this was filed away by Special Branch and MI5.”
While Donal O’Driscoll, another victim of spycops, echoed criticisms from many core participants:
“The Inquiry isn’t over and when it looks at later spying it will find these same patterns of abuse went on for decades and got worse, with the founding of a second unit in 1999.
We are outraged by the intrusive tactics used against us and the lack of oversight, but it only demonstrates what we already knew, that the Metropolitan Police is out of control, both then and now.
They remain a deeply sexist, racist and homophobic institution, despite being put in special measures last year. The Inquiry shows these problems have been deeply rooted for decades. We now know that some of the undercovers who abused people, such as Vincent Harvey, went on to hold high-ranking positions in the police.”
This report is just the beginning. As the Inquiry progresses, victims expect more shocking revelations, and call for the issues not dealt with in the Interim Report – such as the central role of MI5, government involvement, targeting of family justice campaigns, blacklisting of trades unionists, and reporting on children – to be properly addressed.
To this end, they continue to press long standing demands. These include the release of all personal files, the names of all the spycops, and a full list of the over 1,000 groups they targeted. They argue that only when this has happened can there be a full and proper debate about the nature of political policing in the UK.
• The Inquiry has cost £64m to date. It has completed one of four tranches of investigations and hearings since it was established in 2015, and is expected to conclude in 2026. Further statistics can be found at https://www.ucpi.org.uk/about-the-inquiry/#costs
• There are over 200 non-state core participants including many women who were deceived into sexual relationships by officers, families of murder victims such as Stephen Lawrence, Rolan Adams and Ricky Reel, as well as the families whose dead children’s identities were stolen by the undercovers.
• The Metropolitan Police conceded earlier this year that, “By modern standards, the SDS’s deployments in this period are unjustifiable, because of the way they were structured – not least because there was a failure to consider intrusion, necessity, and proportionality.”
The Inquiry, now in its eighth year, is expected to publish an interim report at the end of June this year.
After that, the Inquiry will return in 2024 to examine spying from 1983 onwards.
Thanks in no small part to hard work from victims of spycops and campaigners there has been some pretty damning media coverage of the actions of the Metropolitan Police.
While media coverage does not even begin to deliver justice to the victims of the spycops, it does raise awareness of their actions. With little indication that the culture of the Metropolitan Police is changing, forewarned is forearmed for today’s political activists.
There’s a long way to go in the fight for justice and transparency. But while we await the interim report from Judge Mitting, it’s important to recognise the milestones reached so far.
These include:
– The Ellison Review in 2013 into the ‘seriously flawed’ police investigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. The Review made a range of devastating findings against the Met, and the shocking role of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) in targeting the Lawrence family campaign.
– Home Secretary Theresa May’s statement to Parliament on 6th March 2014, saying she was ‘profoundly shocked’ by some of the Ellison Review revelations about the Met and the SDS, and that therefore she was initiating this public inquiry and calling for a ‘change in culture’ in the police.
– The Metropolitan Police’s 2015 apology and payment of compensation to seven women deceived into sexual relationships by SDS officers. In an unprecedented statement, the Met admitted the relationships were ‘a gross violation of personal dignity and integrity’ and ‘abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong’.
– The Investigatory Powers Tribunal’s powerful legal judgment in 2021 in favour of Kate Wilson and against the Metropolitan Police spying operations. They found that spycops had breached ‘a formidable list’ of five of the 14 articles of the European Convention on Human Rights and condemned their ‘disturbing and lamentable failings at the most fundamental levels’. The Tribunal ruled that the undercover policing units did not meet a pressing social need and were not necessary in a democratic society.
– The Inquiry’s own legal team’s finding, in January 2023, that the Metropolitan Police and government had failed to consider the legality and justification of the SDS activities during the 1970’s, and that if they had done so they would have been likely to conclude it should have been closed down.
Instead, the Inquiry asserted, the unit continued despite the fact that it had no tangible achievement in its supposed purpose of preventing public disorder.
UNJUSTIFIABLE
This devastating statement was backed up by the Metropolitan Police’s own admission that none of the SDS deployments looked at in Tranche 1 were justified ‘by modern standards’.
As the Inquiry’s legal team responded, why were these deployments allowed to continue unabated after the introduction of ‘modern standards’ in 2000? We will no doubt find out more about that in the next phase of the Inquiry!
We look forward to seeing and hearing the evidence relevant to Tranche 2 (1983-1992) next year, and the other Tranches after that. For the schedule and other information on the Undercover Policing Inquiry, check out our UCPI FAQ.
The Metropolitan Police can be sure that we, and the thousands of others affected by this unjustifiable and invasive political policing, are not going away.
The legal team working for the public inquiry into Britain’s political secret police recently condemned the controversial spying. Next week – 20th to 22nd February – the government, police and victims will respond.
Next week, (Monday 20th to Wednesday 22nd February) there will be three days of presentations to conclude ‘Tranche 1’ of the Inquiry’s evidence, examining spying from 1968-1982).
The Inquiry will hear closing submissions summing up what has been learned so far about the secret and unlawful operations, the shocking tactics employed from the start, and how this was backed and covered up for decades at the highest level of successive governments.
In a devastating blow to the Metropolitan Police and the reputations of former senior police officers, as well as the Home Office civil servants and politicians who oversaw them, the Inquiry’s own legal team have concluded that the authorities ‘should have decided to disband’ the whole operation decades ago.
NEW HEARINGS
Next week’s hearings will be broadcast live on YouTube, with statements presented by the Inquiry Legal Team, the Secretary of State, the Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, and lawyers acting for the range of non-State non-police Core Participants targeted.
Full details of the schedule for the presentation of the Tranche 1 Closing Statements, 20th to 22nd February, are on the Inquiry website (Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3). The written submissions will be made public on the day they are read out.
The hearings are a watershed moment as it’s a review of what has been achieved so far by this very slow moving, controversial and expensive Inquiry (£60m costs was the last official estimate).
The Inquiry, originally due to finish in 2018, is now due to be completed by 2026, but preliminary conclusions regarding the period 1968-1982 ( ‘Tranche 1’) will be made in an Interim Report by the Chair, Sir John Mitting, later this year (forecast to be this summer).
It has been demonstrated that the entire undercover policing operation since 1968, led by the Metropolitan Police, has been a scandalous politically motivated attack on progressive campaigns and their members, carried out mainly for and at the behest of the Security Service. Recently disclosed documents have revealed even further the institutional racism within the Metropolitan Police.
CATALOGUE OF ABUSE
It has been demonstrated by the evidence presented at the Inquiry that the surveillance was conducted without any ethical considerations regarding the severe impacts it had on freedom of expression or personal privacy.
The tactics included invading people’s homes and lives, the abuse of women, stealing deceased children’s identities, spying on children, infiltrating family justice campaigns , the blacklisting of trade unionists, taking positions of influence and power within organisations targeted, and brazen interference with the justice system which led to unfair trials and wrongful convictions.
We now know that most, if not all, of the Special Branch reports were copied to MI5. These practices were all signed off by senior civil servants and was a closely guarded secret at the highest level of Government.
Thanks to the campaigners, the victims and lawyers who have worked so hard to expose all this, the shocking reality of this surveillance has at last been revealed – the results of the Inquiry so far are devastating for the police, Security Service and Government.
DEMANDING THE TRUTH
A spokesperson from Police Spies Out of Lives, representing the women targeted for abusive relationships (whose closing submissions will be presented on Tuesday), said:
“Thanks to years of efforts by campaigners the authorities are now on the back foot. We love how far we have shifted the official narrative: from ‘neither confirm nor deny’, through ‘just a few bad apples’, to ‘some unlawful operations’, and now ‘an entire force and policing culture that is rotten to the core’ and sanctioned by the State.”
Dave Morris, a campaigner who was targeted for at least 30 years from the mid-1970s onwards, and who will be delivering his own Statement next Tuesday afternoon, said:
“The Inquiry’s official legal team has concluded that the political spycops should have been closed down decades ago. This would have prevented the shocking and unacceptable targeting of over 1,000 organisations and movements backed by millions of people, campaigning against government policy and for a better society.
The nauseating tactics employed including the serial abuse of women show that the scandals currently engulfing the Met over toxic racism and sexism in police culture are nothing new.
We continue to press for full disclosure about these secretive units, a public apology to all those targeted, and a guarantee from the government that such spying will never be allowed again.
In the face of the the many serious challenges humanity is facing, movements for positive social change are needed more than ever.”
The Home Office could shut down the public inquiry into political undercover policing, a senior civil servant told the Home Affairs Select Committee last week.
At a hearing on Wednesday 22 June 2022, Matthew Rycroft CBE, Permanent Secretary to the Home Office, was asked about the inordinate time and cost of the Undercover Policing Inquiry.
The Inquiry was first announced by the Home Secretary in March 2014. It has just finished hearing evidence about the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad’s first 14 years, 1968-82. It will not be having any more hearings until 2024, and those will only concern spycops from 1983 to 1992.
Diana Johnson MP
The Committee’s chair, Diana Johnson MP, told Rycroft that there were witnesses who fear they won’t live to give testimony. A number of victims granted ‘core participant’ status at the Inquiry have already died.
It applies to senior witnesses from the other side too – since the Inquiry was announced, two former Home Secretaries and three former Metropolitan Police Commissioners have died.
Rycroft told the Committee that the Inquiry ‘must get on with it’ and, although it is operationally independent of the Home Office, because it is commissioned and funded by the Home Office there is always the possibility that the Home Secretary could pull the plug.
He said it as something of an aside rather than a threat, but it’s a startling statement nonetheless. The gruelling extended delays have been largely down to the Met’s wilful stalling tactics, and the Inquiry indulging that strategy. The spycops were individually assessed and most of them granted anonymity. The process of excessive redaction of documents has taken further swathes of time.
To talk about positive aspects of shutting down the Inquiry, leaving the thousands of victims without any answers about what was done to them and why, demonstrates that the highest levels of the Home Office have a callous disregard for the harm inflicted on citizens by Britain’s political secret police.
Here is a transcript of the full exchange:
Diana Johnson: I just want to ask you one last question about the Undercover Policing Inquiry, which was supposed to have reported by 2018. It was set up in 2015 by the Home Secretary at that time. It has now been running for seven years, it has spent over £50,000,000 to date and only the first two of six tranches of work have been properly started.
There is no forecast information about the overall expected time it is going to run, nor the cost. Now, I have written to you about that Inquiry. I have had someone who is likely to be a witness to that Inquiry write to me and say that he doesn’t think he’ll be alive to
give evidence because of the time this Inquiry is taking.
The Home Office is the sponsoring Department. What do you have to say about the cost
and the length of time of this Inquiry?
Matthew Rycroft: I very much agree with you that the Inquiry needs to get on with it. It has been going on for a long time. Of course, it is hugely complex work and the Inquiry, as other inquiries, is operationally independent. It is up to them to work out how to fulfil their terms of reference and how to account for their budget, but it is a £50,000,000 budget and it is seven years and counting.
What the Chair has agreed to do, which I welcome, is to set out an interim report that I think will help to demonstrate that there has at least been some progress on some aspects – the things that were heard through that first phase of hearings.
Diana Johnson: Does that mean you just have to keep paying?
Matthew Rycroft: We don’t have to. Obviously, there is a choice, you know. The Home Secretary could choose to close down that Inquiry. Of course, there would be pros and cons to that. I think, as with all things, it’s a balance.
Getting to the truth is really important for that Inquiry and indeed for others, which is why it is taking time. But I think the rather practical consideration that you have mentioned about a potential witness who is presumably getting on in years, and we would all benefit from the Inquiry being able to hear the evidence of that witness before too long.
And so, rest assured that, in our sponsorship role, the Home Office – including myself, but mainly my colleagues – works closely with that Inquiry’s secretary and Chair in order to get a move on.
Video of the full hearing is on the Parliament TV site. The hearing was mostly concerned with treatment of refugees. The question about the Undercover Policing Inquiry is near the end, about 1 hour 42 minutes in.
This was the last day of the 2022 round of the Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, which have examined Special Demonstration Squad managers 1968-82.
The day began with the Inquiry’s Elizabeth Campbellon reading out summaries of evidence relating to three men who worked in the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) back office towards the end of this period covered by this ‘tranche’.
Richard Reeves Scully (officer HN2152) joined Special Branch in 1968. He’s not entirely sure when he was sent to work in the SDS back office, but it’s thought to have been around 1977. His role was handed over to Paul Croyden in 1979. Witness statement of Richard Reeves Scully
Christopher Skey (officer HN308) was also part of the SDS for around two years, and then spent a year as Liaison Officer between Special Branch and the uniformed public order unit (aka ‘A8’). Skey provided two witness statements, one in 2020 and another in 2021 which added a little more detail about his time as a Liaison Officer.
The Inquiry also published documents relating to two deceased senior officers:
Ken Pryde (officer HN608) was described as “the Detective Chief Inspector in charge of the SDS from November 1977 till early 1978” – although this doesn’t correspond with what the Inquiry has told us elsewhere.
Mike Ferguson (officer HN135) is said to have run the unit from January 1978 until February 1980, having spent time undercover himself ten years earlier (reporting on anti-apartheid campaigners like Peter Hain).
Trevor Charles Butler (officer HN307)
David Barr QC
On this final hearing of 2022 the Inquiry heard oral evidence from one man: Trevor Charles Butler OBE (officer HN307). He was recruited to the unit in 1979 and left in 1982. He was questioned by David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry.
This was a notably reticent witness, who favoured one-word answers (and often that word was “no”).
In his witness statement, Butler referred to True Spies, the 2002 BBC documentary series that detailed the work of the SDS, as:
“an earth-shattering breach of the ‘need to know’ principle”
It’s clear he sees the Inquiry in the same light. Safeguarding a ‘need to know’ principle is his vocation, and he treated the Inquiry as a violation of that.
Butler claimed to remember very little about events that took place in the 1970s, including his time in the SDS and in other parts of Special Branch.
Butler attended police training courses, and learnt about the main principles of police powers, but freely admitted not bothering to consider these while he was in the SDS.
He said that he didn’t think normal police discipline regulations – covering, for example, sexual misconduct – applied to the spycops as they were:
“experienced, trustworthy men, who I had no concerns about.”
He was happy to go along with existing day to day practice, and very happy with the SDS’s method of unfiltered reporting (hoovering up as much information as possible and putting it all on file). He doesn’t seem to have gone out of his way to question anything, to consider doing things differently, or to actively review deployments or assess their value.
He had no qualms about officers stealing dead children’s identities, and said he had no idea that other undercovers had been issued with British Visitor Passports, which did not require a birth certificate.
Butler recalled little contact with the senior managers above him, saying:
“We were left to our own devices”
This was due in part to the move of the SDS office out of New Scotland Yard to Vincent Square. He also professed to be unaware that some of them had previously been involved in running the unit.
He couldn’t recall why the SDS 1979 Annual Report said that “covert policing is being subjected to increasingly close and critical scrutiny” or any concerns at this time about the spycops’ relationship with the Security Service (aka MI5).
There were a lot of subjects that he claimed no recollection of at all.
SUBVERSION
He says that he didn’t receive any training of the type listed in the 1979 ‘Initial Training for Special Branch Officers’ Agenda. He relied on his own “common sense” to guide his understanding of what was or was not ‘subversive’.
According to Butler’s written statement, the main aims of the SDS were public disorder and collecting information to update Special Branch’s files.
Addressing the second of these, Barr asked him to explain why this was so important, and what such information was used for – for example, was this related to public order?
According to Butler, after some waffle, such details weren’t always immediately important, but might have what he called “latent value” – meaning they might
“possibly be relevant at a future date.”
Might the information be used for vetting purposes?
In paragraph 129 of his statement, Butler admits that “parts may seem unacceptable in today’s context” and Barr quoted the whole thing, ending with:
“I do not believe that individuals finding their names on a Special Branch or Security Service file is too high a price to pay for comprehensive intelligence coverage, providing that those individuals were not unlawfully discriminated against because of this.”
Barr asked him to explain what he meant by this, and Butler admitted that he must have been referring to people losing their jobs or being blacklisted – he says this is “unacceptable” but insists that it would only have happened if such information was ‘leaked’ from Special Branch, and he doesn’t believe this happened:
“I’m convinced that Special Branch records were properly maintained and there was no leakage.”
Having established that ‘N/T’ stands for ‘No Trace’ – it is clear that the majority of these names have not already come to the attention of Special Branch. These names were retained for decades and Butler doesn’t see it as a problem.
Asked to explain how gathering intelligence on individuals assisted with public order, he claimed that this would enable the police to make arrests after disorder had occurred. The SDS were quick to claim their public order ‘successes’ but nowhere is this kind of success mentioned.
PLAYING SQUASH WITH THE BOYS
Trevor Butler liked to play squash with his colleagues. Because of something Barr said today, we now know that he also played squash with the guys from the Security Service as well (a minor detail that was redacted – and replaced with the word ‘sport’ – in one of the documents released by the Inquiry).
He says he got to know the officers:
“some of them very well, others not so well, but reasonably well, all of them”
The unit was an all-male environment. Butler remembers banter and jokes. Were any of these of a sexual nature?
“I can’t remember, but probably”
However, he insists that he heard no suggestion of spycops being the subject of sexual advances, and nothing about sexual contact actually occurring. He said he didn’t consider this to be a risk:
“they were married men with a stable background who I trusted not to get involved sexually outside of their marriage.”
He says he never asked them if they had come under “pressure to indulge in sexual activity” never mind asking directly if they’d engaged in any form of sexual contact.
If this is true, then the lack of curiosity exhibited by him and other managers clearly demonstrates a culture of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ within the SDS. He didn’t remind them not to engage in sex on duty, consider setting up ‘cover girlfriends’ or finding other ways of reducing the risk.
Rick Clark (‘Rick Gibson’, officer HN297, 1974-76) is known to have had at least four relationships; he was investigated by the group he infiltrated, Big Flame, and was exposed as a result. Butler claims he can’t remember anything about this.
Similarly, he says he didn’t hear any gossip about ‘Jim Pickford‘ (officer HN300, 1974-77), withdrawn after falling in love with an activist, who he went on to marry.
BARRY’S GIRLFRIEND
Another incident was discussed in more depth. ‘Barry Tompkins‘ (officer HN106, 1979-83), in his witness statement, details a ‘platonic’ relationship with a woman that he met while undercover. He says they were just friends, and he slept in her home – supposedly in her child’s bedroom with a noisy hamster – a few times, rather than driving home drunk.
This woman was often referred to as “Barry’s girlfriend” amongst those he was infiltrating. Tompkins says that he was asked by his manager, Trevor Butler, to account for an intercepted phone call in which an activist had talked about storing “items from Ireland” at “Barry’s girlfriend’s place”.
“I think Trevor said something along the lines of ‘You’re not going to get us in trouble, are you?’ and I simply said ‘no, it’s nothing like that’.”
Butler says he does not recall this at all. He categorically refuses to accept that this may have happened but he forgot about it (like everything else). He is adamant that Tompkins must have confused him and another manager from the office.
Asked what he thinks he might have done if these events had occurred as laid out in Tompkins’ statement, he says “my outlook was probably different then than it is now”, yet goes on to say that he can’t remember what his outlook was then.
Barr was somewhat flummoxed by this and points out that if he doesn’t know what his outlook was before, how does he know it’s changed?
“Now, I think I would have insisted that he ended such a relationship. Then, I might have been more tolerant.”
Butler explained that he has become less tolerant since becoming “older and more disagreeable” (his words, verbatim).
In those days, he goes on, he wouldn’t have been concerned about a platonic relationship like this. Would he have investigated to find out if more was going on?
“That’s a hypothetical question. It didn’t happen.”
But he added:
“I would have investigated very thoroughly.”
Would a sexual relationship have led to disciplinary action? Butler says he would have made sure the officer left the SDS, but agreed that there might have been difficulties taking formal disciplinary action, and that decision would have been ‘above his pay grade’.
Another exhibit was shown: a Security Service note about a visit to the SDS – in the shape of senior managers ‘Sean Lynch‘ (officer HN68) and Dave Short (officer HN99) – in June 1982, after Butler had left. It contains the remarkable line:
“Information on this subject may be bedevilled by the fact that HN106 [‘Barry Tompkins’] has probably bedded [privacy] and has been warned off by his bosses.”
Does he know what this refers to? Is is something he told Dave Short? Unsurprisingly, Butler can’t help with this as, yet again, he can’t recall. (NB: Tomkins himself says that this refers to a different woman, who the Security Service wanted to use as an informant, and who he denies sleeping with).
In his witness statement Butler says that he knew ‘Barry Tompkins’ was married with young children at the time.
“I would have reminded him about his obligations to them and to the job in fairly strong terms if I had even the slightest suspicion that he had or was tempted to stray.”
Barr put it to him that this demonstrated consideration of the possible impact on this marriage, and of the risk to both the SDS and the wider Met, but none for the woman who ‘Barry’ had formed this close friendship with. Butler confirmed that he did not or would not have given her any consideration at all.
“he didn’t give me any reason to suspect that his behaviour was cause for concern.”
He added that Cooper wouldn’t have confessed to doing sex and drugs to Butler anyway as it would have led to trouble for him.
Barr read out a declaration from Butler’s statement:
“As far as I was concerned, then and now, the SDS provided a terrific service’ trouble-free”
Did he still think that, in light of all this evidence?
Butler asserted that:
“I considered I was extremely lucky. I had a couple of years working with a very successful team who presented no problems and I suspected were doing nothing untoward.”
The strength of his loyalty to the SDS is very clear throughout. Pressed about the sexual misconduct that has come to light, the most critical comment he could make was to say that he was “disappointed”.
REPONSIBLE ROLES
Troops Out Movement demonstration at military recruitment office
Butler’s statement refers to undercovers not “crossing the line between acceptable recording and unacceptable direction setting and incitement”, so Barr explored this topic.
In his witness statement, ‘Mike James‘ (officer HN96, 1978-83) said that he’d been advised by colleague ‘Geoff Wallace’ (officer HN296, 1975-78) not to get too involved, or become too prominent, in the groups he was infiltrating.
However, he was elected to the Hackney District Committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and chaired meetings of the Party’s Clapton branch, becoming their ‘District Book Organiser’.
The same officer was then encouraged by his bosses, in around 1980, to get more involved in the Troops Out Movement (TOM), and ended up being elected as TOM’s Membership and Affiliation Secretary.
He didn’t get a chance to discuss this with his managers beforehand – the nomination “came out of the blue” – but says he told them as soon as he could and they were “pleased” with this news.
Butler cannot recall being one of those managers. However he agreed that this would have been seen as “a good thing” as it gave the SDS much more access to information.
He didn’t view this position (which came with a seat on the TOM’s national steering committee) as a problem. He says he wouldn’t have interfered, just trusted the officer’s judgement as to what he felt “comfortable” with.
‘Paul Gray’ (officer HN126, 1977-82) also spied on the SWP, rising beyond branch roles to join its North West London District Committee. This was also “a good thing”, according to Butler.
Surely this meant he could be voting on things and influencing the direction of the group? “I don’t know what they did” was Butler’s response.
Asked if he, as the manager receiving information, he tried to find out what they did, Butler simply answered “no” as a sentence in its own right. Again.
SPYCOPS’ WIVES
Before new undercovers went out into the field, Butler would visit their wives at home. He would explain that their husbands’ working hours and appearance would change, but nothing more about what this “important work” actually entailed.
He says he wanted to ensure they “were happy to support their husband in the role” and “understood the difficulties” – i.e. the disruption to family life caused by long, irregular hours. He agreed that the SDS asked a great deal of these officers’ wives.
ANTI-RACIST ACTIVISM IN 1981
‘Funeral of Winston Rose’ – painting by Denzil Forrester
They were campaigning for a public inquiry into the death in custody of Winston (a 27-year-old boxer, who had been born in Jamaica) a month earlier.
One of the speakers was Fran Eden, of East London Workers Against Racism (ELWAR), a group which Tompkins had infiltrated. Butler was asked what he thought the policing value of this reporting was.
Barr ventured to suggest that sending an undercover officer to spy on such a meeting might not be good optics for the Met, and could risk “doing more harm than good”. If he’d been discovered, might that not have served as a catalyst for the community to take to the streets, as they had done in Brixton and other places around the country already that year?
Butler’s said “that could probably be said of every report that an undercover officer submitted”, doubling down on his opinion that “it was wholly justified and a fine report”.
He had no concerns about Tompkins reporting on a Revolutionary Communist Tendency meeting that took place in Brixton directly after the riots, on 16th April, about setting up South London Workers Against Racism, organising legal defence for members of the local community, involving legal representatives.
Barr suggested that electoral activity isn’t exactly subversive.
But in Butler’s view, if a group’s worth reporting on, then it’s worth reporting on every single thing they do:
“my attitude was always it’s far better to report too much than too little.”
BLAIR PEACH
Blair Peach’s funeral, East London cemetery, 13 June 1979
Just like the other managers we’ve heard from at the hearings, Butler said he barely remembered the events around police killing Blair Peach and the subsequent justice campaign. It is yet another stretch on his credibility.
According to the SDS 1979 Annual Report, there was “a sustained campaign to discredit and criticise the police” after Peach’s murder. Butler admitted that he may well have written this.
The SDS reported on these campaigners, but Butler insisted that the Metropolitan Police’s only interest in such intelligence would be due to potential disorder, nothing to do with collecting information about people who were critical of the police.
Barr pointed out that there was “very little trouble indeed” from the justice campaign, and asked why the Friends of Blair Peach were described in that way.
Butler ended up in another awkward dance, trying to avoid the point that the justice campaign was deliberately targeted for calling for accountability from the police. He did at least concede it was inappropriate to take photographs of mourners at Peach’s funeral.
MESSED-UP PRIORITIES
The SDS 1980 Annual Report said that “anti fascist activity continued to tax the resources” of the police.
Butler explained that when it came to confrontations between the far right and the far left, the police tended to blame the anti-fascists for causing (or as he re-worded it, ‘creating’) serious disorder, for “attacking those they opposed”.
He said the police were also “a good target” for the demonstrators.
He grudgingly admitted that the far right were responsible for lots of serious street violence, but said it wasn’t the SDS’s job to predict or prevent racist attacks, who were “more interested in large scale social disorder”.
His attention drawn to the section of the SDS 1981 Annual Report headed ‘Security’ (on page 7). Operational security is described as always being “of paramount importance” for the unit – both for the “personal protection of the field officers and to prevent embarrassment to the Commissioner by its existence becoming public knowledge” – and the “political sensitivity” around the SDS operations is mentioned.
Squeezing blood from the stone, Barr got Butler to admit that such ’embarrassment’ would stem from the public learning that undercover policing tactics weren’t restricted to drugs gangs and serious criminality, but were also being used in a political way, “to manage public disorder”.
CND protest, London, October 1981
Barr went on to note that the Report says that all infiltrations had to be fully justified on the basis of the Commissioner’s responsibility for the preservation of public order.
Under the heading ‘Coverage’ (on page 4) is a list of groups whose infiltration would be hard to justify on these grounds, such as Womens Voice, the Freedom Collective, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).
Butler claimed not to know who the first two were, but even he couldn’t pretend not to have heard of CND, a hugely popular campaign that held protests hundreds of thousands strong.
Instead, he suggested that CND demonstrations were often ‘infiltrated’ by “extremists”, and then added another explanation for spying on them: that the SDS didn’t have enough undercovers to infiltrate all of the groups, but many of those people attended CND events.
We now know that CND was infiltrated, in its own right, by John Kerry (officer HN65, 1980-84) but Butler claimed he wasn’t involved, saying this must have happened as he was leaving. However Kerry joined the unit in 1980 and Butler didn’t leave until 1982.
HOME OFFICE: PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY
In his statement, Butler recalled meeting for “a beer and a lunch” with a relatively senior Home Office official every month.
His bad memory returned when he was asked about these meetings – he couldn’t remember their purpose or anything about what business was discussed at them, but says that he knew that it had no influence over the unit’s work.
The SDS was set up by the Home Office in 1968, and was directly funded by them for twenty years. Funding had to be applied for and renewed annually.
The 1976 authorisation for the Special Demonstration Squad’s continued existence was signed off by Robert Armstrong, later Baron Armstrong of Ilminster. He was Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service. It is difficult to imagine a more highly placed civil servant.
‘the pressure to investigate these organisations often came from the Prime Minister and Whitehall’.
Put simply, the existence and functioning of the SDS was known of, and authorised, at the very top.
There is nothing embarrassing to the police or Home Office about preventing crime. But the destabilising of democratic movements, the wholesale and widespread intrusion on citizens, and their exploitation for political advantage? That is worth keeping secret.
Every annual application for funding refers to the officers fully recognising ‘the political sensitivity’ of the unit’s existence. Authorisation is only ever granted ‘in view of the assurances about security’. In other words, as long as you can promise us we will not get caught, you can carry on.
There appears to have been a lot of careful work to ensure no proof of the link survives. After the spycops scandal broke, in 2015 former Audit Commission director Stephen Taylor looked into the links between the SDS and the Home Office. His report said the ‘investigation did not identify any retained evidence available in the Department of any correspondence, discussions or meetings on the SDS for the 40 year period’ that the unit existed. Nothing. In the entire Home Office.
Time and again Taylor found reference to a file, catalogue number QPE 66 1/8/5, understood to have covered Home Office dealings with the SDS. It has disappeared. It would have contained material classified Secret or Top Secret, which would have strict protocols around its removal or destruction, yet there is no clue as to what happened to it.
They physically searched all storage facilities in the Home Office. It’s gone. Taylor couldn’t make allegations but rather pointedly said ‘it is not possible to conclude whether this is human error or deliberate concealment’.
Butler appears to be well acquainted with the Home Office’s stipulation that details of their involvement must never come to light.
DRINKING ON THE JOB
Finally, Barr asked Butler some questions on issues raised by the Inquiry’s Non State Core Participants (ie, victims of spycops).
One significant issue had been about the spycops’ consumption of alcohol whilst on duty.
Butler was asked about their expenses claims, and clarified that they were not allowed to claim for alcohol they’d drunk, unless it was as “part of a substantial meal”.
He admitted that they could have claimed for drinks consumed by other people, which would have “been shown as an incidental expense”, but had no recollection of any of them doing so.
In his words, most of the officers “drank regularly but not excessively”. He contradicted other witnesses by saying they “usually had a beer” when they met at the safe house.
He went on to explain that they wouldn’t want to drink so much as to be drunk in their activist group, or be caught drink-driving (as having a driving licence was important for their jobs). This contradicts countless reports from the people who were infiltrated.
He had no concerns about anyone drinking to a level that impaired their judgement or affected their long term welfare.
Was he concerned about them buying lots of drinks for those they were spying on? No. He assumed they would buy rounds when out with activists, but “you wouldn’t buy excessive drinks just because you could afford to.”
DEPARTURE
The last thing we heard about from Butler was about his leaving the SDS. He was told by Commander Wilson that he was being moved on, ostensibly on the grounds that he was getting too close to those he managed and losing his objectivity:
“he said that it was time for me to move on to another role before I unquestioningly took the side of the UCOs [undercover officers] in all matters.”
It seems likely that had something to do with him fighting their corner on the issue of overtime payments, possibly another illustration of his loyalty to the undercovers. He continues to insist that they did an “excellent job”.
WHEN WE MEET AGAIN
The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, then closed this round of hearings with the line:
“When we’ll meet again remains to be seen.”
The next set of evidential hearings (covering ‘Tranche 2’, the SDS 1983-92) are not due to take place until 2024. In the meantime there may be an interim report from the Inquiry to look forward to.
The penultimate day of the 2022 Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, dealing with spycops’ managers 1968-82.
Today, we first heard about Richard Walker (officer HN368), who worked in the SDS back office for over three years. He was not called to give oral evidence, but provided the Inquiry with a witness statement, so a summary of this was read out by a member of the Inquiry team.
The Inquiry then introduced documents relating to Lesley Willingale (officer HN1668), who is now deceased.
Only one witness gave evidence at the hearing: Angus Bryan McIntosh (officer HN244), the Detective Inspector who served as second in command of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) from mid 1976 to late 1979.
Lacking the polished veneer of his colleague Geoffrey Craft (officer HN34) the previous day, Angus McIntosh (inadvertently) gave more insight into the attitudes of the unit towards those it was targeting. A number of his statements caused outrage.
Otherwise, what we encountered was not dissimilar to much of the other live evidence so far. A mixture of truth and dissembling; though more forthcoming than others, he also had inexplicable memory lapses on important issues.
He was a teenager when he joined the police, moved to Special Branch in 1964, and continued to be promoted, up to Commander level – moving to National Coordinator of Ports Policing when it was formed in 1987, and staying in this role until he retired from 11 years later – very much a career Branch man.
TRAINING
Rebekah Hummerstone
Rebekah Hummerstone, barrister for the Inquiry, began by questioning him about his understanding of the law around policing.
McIntosh recalled attending police training courses at Bramshill and Hendon during this time, but these were general, and didn’t cover anything to do with undercover policing.
He was asked how he understood police powers to apply to undercover work, and admitted that they hadn’t given much thought to this at the time.
He suggested that if officers were invited to enter a private home or premises – even if this was under false pretences – they did not need a warrant, and suggested that in fact, not accepting an invitation might raise suspicions and therefore jeopardise their cover story.
He says his role entailed him applying his common sense and instinct – it was about “careful people management” of the individual officers to ensure their morale and safety.
His Special Branch background provided useful knowledge of the groups being targeted, the style in which reports were created, and some of the possible pitfalls. However the unit’s tactics were new to him, and he says there was no manual, and no specific SDS training course in those days.
In his statement he says that he introduced tutoring for SDS officers so they could take their ‘promotions exams’, and felt that his role included providing informal training for them, including the new recruits, who joined the office team first.
He says that he just learnt on the job, as was standard practice in those days, and adopted the unit’s existing practices.
CRAFT WORK?
Yesterday’s witness, Geoff Craft, couldn’t remember working with McIntosh in the SDS. Bizarrely, today McIntosh could not recall working with Craft either. The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, has asked both men to explain why, as the timeline prepared by the Inquiry shows significant overlap.
McIntosh’s only theory to explain this confusion is that he knows that he was away on various training courses for months, during which time someone else – probably Lesley Willingale (officer HN1668) – would have been acting up to cover his Inspector role.
MIKE FERGUSON
Anti-Apartheid Movement demo, London, 1973
He did remember Mike Ferguson (officer HN135). He says that he first learnt the details of what the SDS (or ‘Hairies’ as they were known within the Branch) did from Mike, before he joined the unit himself.
He actually recalled an incident that took place during Ferguson’s undercover deployment, in which he infiltrated the Anti-Apartheid Movement.
Ferguson turned up one day at McIntosh’s home, ‘seeking refuge’ – his wife didn’t recognise him but Angus recognised his voice and let him in.
“He visited my flat in his undercover appearance and clothing before I was part of the SDS. He wanted to be in a safe place and took refuge in my flat. I do not know what it was that he was seeking refuge from, but he wanted to be off the street.”
Later on, when they worked together – Ferguson became Chief Inspector of the unit in early 1978, so was effectively McIntosh’s boss – he remembers them as close, Ferguson as able to give practical advice to the officers, based on his own personal experience of going undercover, and seems to have shared a lot of his knowledge with McIntosh.
THE BLACK FOLDER
Despite saying “there was no training manual”, McIntosh clearly remembered the ‘black loose-leaf folder’ that others have mentioned, which contained SDS tradecraft and knowledge that had built up over the years.
He described it as “full of good advice for the new officers”, but at the same time claimed that he never looked inside himself. Unfortunately, this contradiction was not picked up on.
He was asked if managers ever checked the contents, to ensure that suggestions of bad practice were removed, but seemed to think this wasn’t needed.
TASKING AND SUPERVISION
McIntosh would expect requests for information – including those from the Security Service – to come in via a Special Branch Squad, usually C Squad which dealt with left-wing activism.
The SDS managers met daily with their line manager, an S Squad Superintendent, and such requests could be discussed then. Sometimes they turned them down, if they didn’t have a source in a suitable place.
Referring to A8 (the uniformed public order unit) McIntosh said:
“We fed them; they didn’t feed us”
That is, although the SDS provided them with plenty of information, they didn’t receive any requests from them.
Sometimes this information was delivered via a phone call, especially when it was urgent news about an upcoming demo.
The unit’s managers had a lot of autonomy and made a lot of important decisions without any external input. They would keep the S Squad Superintendent informed, but not always give them all the details. They wouldn’t necessarily report any problems that arose.
NO SPYING ON THE FAR RIGHT
National Front demonstration
McIntosh said he was too junior to have been party to a “high-level policy decision” like the one not to infiltrate the far right. However he recalls that it was thought it would be too difficult and dangerous for an undercover to be sent in, as these groups were so very violent, and prone to criminality.
This is another glaring contradiction. Ever since the spycops scandal broke in 2010, the police have denfended it by saying they had to infltrate groups in case they were planning anything violent or criminal. But McIntosh says it wasn’t safe to infiltrate groups who were violent or criminal, so they focused their attentions elsewhere.
He then added that the police didn’t need to spy on the far right to keep an eye on them; they could obtain good information about them from the left-wing groups who monitored fascist activity, with much less risk to officers.
This is something we learned at one of last year’s hearings. Several spycops said that, despite the far right waging campaigns of violence and murder, they weren’t regarded as much of a problem. Only one SDS officer infiltrated the far right in the 1970s, and he did so inadvertently.
It shows that he and Ferguson attended a meeting in February on behalf of the SDS, and the Security Service were keen for these meetings to become regular monthly events.
HOME LIVES
It was considered essential for undercovers to have stability, an ‘anchor’, and so almost all of them were married men. McIntosh made a point of always visiting the partners of new recruits before deployment. He said the main reason for this was to introduce himself, gain her trust, and ensure she had a way of contacting him if she had any problems. He says hardly anyone ever rang the telephone number they were supplied with.
He would use this opportunity to tell the officer’s partner what to expect: long absences, working evenings and weekends, etc. Although they wanted to asses the officer’s domestic situation, they “certainly didn’t investigate”.
It was left to the officer to ‘use his judgement’ about how to explain his changed appearance and new job to his spouse: “rightly or wrongly, we left it to them to deal with it”.
The welfare of these women was of very little concern to the managers of the SDS, the only thing that mattered to them was maintaining the secrecy around these operations.
He also referred to the wives and families in the context of overtime, saying he was concerned that officers weren’t spending enough time at home, at the same time claiming the long hours of overtime were important for maintaining their cover stories.
He seems genuinely aggrieved by this – not regretting the practice as such, but the fact that it was exposed by activists:
“I think it is most unfortunate that this Inquiry has enabled the poor families and relatives to realise that this has happened. In normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have happened. I mean, it’s extraordinary.”
WELFARE
Undercovers were expected to phone the office before 11am every day to ‘check in’. The meetings at the SDS safehouse also served a social purpose – as we’ve heard before, they offered an opportunity for the officers to relax together and be themselves. One of them would cook lunch, but the office staff did not join the undercovers at the pub.
We have heard about a dysfunctional drinking culture within the SDS. McIntosh was asked of the officers were given any guidance on drinking; he says no beyond no drink-driving.
SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS
Again, as previously, the Inquiry spend considerable time on officers deceiving women they spied on into sexual relationships, as McIntosh oversaw a number of undercovers who did this.
The Inquiry asked about the comments of ‘Graham Coates‘ (officer HN304) about the sexist banter at the meetings. McIntosh remembers the banter but does not recall jokes about Rick Clark’s sexual prowess (see below). He says he was out of earshot most of the time, having individual talks in the other room.
Like Richard Walker (officer HN368), another manager who has given a written statement, McIntosh says that what banter he heard, he did not take particularly seriously.
McIntosh felt he was able to build close relationships with the undercovers and that they could have approached him for help with problems, but if these problems were what he called “self-induced” he suspects they may not have been entirely honest with him as a senior officer. Particularly, he couldn’t see any of them confiding in him about a relationship in the field as this could have affected their career.
Asked if Ferguson was someone they felt they could confide in, he said yes, “he was a man’s man.”
McIntosh was also agreed that the risk of relationships was a real one and meant a serious a security risk to the unit. However, he did not view it as a case of an officer abusing his power; in his view “things happen” and it was a personal, individual matter, security risks aside.
SPECIFIC OFFICERS
The Inquiry then asked McIntosh about a number of officers whose problematic behaviour has been frequently discussed at the hearings.
When joining the SDS, Harvey had been in a long term relationship, but that had ended. McIntosh was not aware of that fact, but would have dealt with it as a matter of welfare.
McIntosh said he was “amazed” at learning of Harvey’s sexual relationships while undercover, which had only come to his attention through the Inquiry.
Had he known, he says he would have taken this to Superintendent level and expects that Harvey would have been withdrawn.
Clark was exposed after the group he infiltrated investigated him and confronted him with his stolen identity. He also had multiple sexual relationships while undercover, which contributed to this exposure. McIntosh recalls Clark being withdrawn from the field, but claimed not to know many of the details.
However he says he was part of the surveillance team who sat outside the pub while Clark was being confronted by his suspicious comrades, just in case things turned nasty for the officer. He thought that Craft was there with him; yesterday Craft testified that he was there, but with Superintendent Derek Kneale (officer HN819).
McIntosh’s vague memory is incredible, given the severity the threat this represented to the secrecy of the entire unit.
This officer’s compromise doesn’t seem to have prompted any particular evaluation around security and processes. New officers were trained in exactly the same way as Clark, complete with the stolen identity that could lead suspicious comrades to a damning death certificate.
He described Clark as “very outgoing… the type that would brag about anything.”
He said he’d had no idea about Clark getting involved with at least four women while undercover, and sounded quite upset about Clark’s conduct:
“His behaviour has let everyone down.”
Not because of the possible impact on the women though but, extraordinarily, blaming Clark for everything, including this Inquiry being set up and a spotlight being shone into the workings of the SDS.
He sounded genuinely distressed that things had ‘unravelled’ and the unit was no longer a secret, saying:
“One of the proud things of SB was that the SDS was run without the general knowledge of the Branch let alone the police force or anyone else. Now the whole thing’s been exposed, unravelled, and that’s why I think it’s a great shame.”
McIntosh described Pickford as a “strange character” but also claimed to be unaware of his reputation as a womaniser. Another officer has told the Inquiry that Pickford confided in him that he had “fallen in love with” a female activist, prompting him to go straight to one of the unit’s managers (in his words, “the one with a Scottish name”).
This led to Pickford being withdrawn from the field. McIntosh denies being this manager, and insists that he knew nothing, and just thought Pickford’s deployment came to its natural end.
He said that if he had known about this, he would have gone to more senior management, and Pickford would have had to leave the Branch (as this would have affected his vetting status). Craft also denied knowing about this situation at the time.
However, Sir John Mitting said that in the Inquiry’s ‘closed sessions’ where certain officers have given evidence without the public present, he heard very detailed and convincing testimony from an undercover about them telling management about Pickford.
McIntosh expressed surprise that Pickford’s subsequent marriage (to the same activist) saying it was “amazing that rumour control kept it a secret”. He again suggested that this might all have happened while he was away from the unit – perhaps Leslie Willingale had been the manager?
Perhaps conveniently for McIntosh, the Inquiry is unable to check this as Willingale is dead.
THE PRINCIPLE OF SEXUAL DECEPTION
McIntosh didn’t think officers had to be reminded that sexual conduct on the job was a breach of police regulations.
He said he never “probed”, or asked them if they were engaged in such activities it would have been pointless to do so as they were unlikely to tell him, their supervising officer, that they were breaking the rules.
He denied that such relationships equated to an abuse of position or power. He viewed this as “sexual contact between consenting adults”, not something he gave a “green light” to but only because it was against police regulations.
He was asked if he considered this to be deceit:
“I can’t really answer that”
Instead, he posed a counter-question:
“Does everyone say before they have a sexual encounter, what is your occupation? And if it’s a certain one, do they say ‘Definitely not, because you are a policeman, or postman?’ So no.”
Which, again, is starkly reminiscent of what his colleague Craft said yesterday, leaving a strong impression that the managers are coached as to what to say, or got together to straighten out their stories.
SPYING ON BLAIR PEACH’S FUNERAL
The Inquiry has heard that another former undercover was advised by his managers not to attend the April 1979 demonstration against the fascist National Front in Southall, because it was known that the uniformed police was going to ‘clamp down’ on the protesters.
McIntosh denied being that manager, or having any knowledge of this, but understood why the warning would have been passed on:
“Well, we don’t want our officers arrested. We don’t want our officers involved in violence.”
Despite him saying this warning represented a “fairly unusual statement” he was not pressed to explain the rather curious fact that, according to officer HN41, a decision had been taken beforehand to crackdown on the protesters.
Likewise, McIntosh could not remember that the SDS had arranged for an undercover to be smuggled into Scotland Yard to make statement about the death of Blair Peach. Chuckling, he replied:
“Not on this occasion, but we used to smuggle in officers for various reasons”
McIntosh provided his justification for spying on the mourners, claiming it was necessary to “identify disorder” and normal to cover such events of interest:
“because the whole reason of the funeral was for a person involved in extreme left wing politics and demonstrations, that’s all.”
Even HN21 has said that there was no known risk of public disorder at this event. Faced with this, McIntosh dismissed his officer’s professional judgement as a “subjective one”.
Sir John Mitting then intervened, suggesting that:
“many people might think it distasteful for a police officer, whether undercover or not, to attend the funeral of someone who had died in the circumstances we now know and record the names of all of those capable of being identified who have attended it.”
Mitting’s choice of phrasing, ‘died in the circumstances we now know’, is very telling. Blair Peach was killed by police officers. The police investigation showed this at the time, and identified Inspector Alan Murray as being highly likely to have been the killer. Yet even now, Mitting seems incapable of describing it in this way.
At last year’s hearing on the anniversary of Peach’s death, the Inquiry held a minute’s silence. In his preamble, Mitting avoided all mention of the police, and merely referred to Peach being killed by ‘a blow to the head’. In doing this, he insults all victims of spycops and underlines his partisan nature that is draining the Inquiry of its potential to get to the truth.
The comments made by McIntosh in response were the most outrageous yet:
“I can understand some people being upset by it, but, however, in public disorder … I’m quoting Northern Ireland for instance, funerals are often a hotbed of problems, and it wasn’t the friends and relatives of the person whose funeral it was, it was because there was an opportunity of demonstration against… it would be anti-police, in one way or the other.”
It is an extraordinary rant, with the bizarre suggestion that the National Front might have demonstrated at the funeral.
“Unfortunately, sir, I don’t think there’s a lot of respect in those circumstances for the real reason of the occasion.”
In his written statement, McIntosh said that he did not believe they were reported on because they sought to discredit or criticise the police.
However, today he told the Inquiry something different, and was asked to clarify his views – why did he think those people had been reported on?
One of the excuses he gave was that if an undercover was sent to cover an event, they understood it was their duty to report the names of those present, without any filtering. It’s more likely that they would have included activists’ names on the list as the officers are more likely to have recognised those people.
He then claimed to not recall the full details about the demonstration where Blair Peach was killed. Which was maybe the first time ever that a police officer used those words, acknowledging what has actually happened.
The eighth day of the 2022 Undercover Policing Inquiry‘s hearings examining spycops managers 1968-82 was devoted to the evidence of just one man: Geoffrey Craft (officer HN34).
Craft was a Detective Inspector with the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) from May 1974 to October 1976, when he was promoted to head the unit as Detective Chief Inspector, which he remained until October 1977. In 1982 he returned to oversee the spycop unit as Chief Superintendent of ‘S’ Squad.
The pattern of questions remained the same as previous days, starting with his training and understanding of the law. Craft was a much more capable witness than Derek Brice, who gave evidence on the previous day. He was able to responded quickly to questions, many of which clearly irritated him.
On some points he was quite open, but like other officers he suffered inexplicable amnesia about highly significant moments and could not recall the characters of any of the undercovers deployed during his time.
He came across as very much loyal to Special Branch and found little fault with it, and clearly believed that he himself had done nothing wrong, although he did express disappointment in learning about the behaviour of undercovers under his watch. He claims no contemporary knowledge of any of that wrongdoing and appears to characterise himself as naive.
TRAINING AND THE LAW
There was no training or thought given to the lawfulness or ethics of what the SDS was doing, or the intrusion into private life that came from it.
When he joined the SDS, there was no real handover, Craft moved in as second in command to Derek Kneale (officer HN819) who told him what he needed to know. Intelligence was gathered to support public order policing and secondary to that was reporting on subversive activities, material which C Squad – the department concerned with left-wing activists – then channelled to the Security Service (aka MI5). The undercovers’ targets were chosen following discussions on which groups were involved in public order issues at the time.
In an incredible piece of double think, when asked if he had considered back then whether the public would approve of what the SDS was doing, Craft said he had concluded that the public as a whole are happy to live in a parliamentary democracy and public demonstrations were part of that, so the police naturally needed intelligence to ensure appropriate policing.
SUBVERSION
School Kids Against the Nazis badge – this children’s anti-fascist group was a target of spycops
As with previous witnesses, considerable time was devoted to Craft’s understanding of the term subversion. It was clear that he had just gone along with existing practice, and like so many other things had given it little or no consideration.
Basically, he and other Special Branch officers would have absorbed what they needed to know as junior officers and he was comfortable in his own mind what was subversive or not.
This also brought up the issue of spying on school children, covered in previous hearings. Craft’s position was that they would have only been interested in school children if they were involved in one of the organisations they were monitoring for public order purposes.
They would have reported on School Kids Against Nazis because they were supported by the Socialist Workers Party, he said.
This contrasts with the evidence specifically highlighted by lawyers representing ex-undercover officers that this was done at the specific request of MI5 who were interested in ‘subversion’ in schools.
TARGETING
Who an undercover officer should target was a matter for the Chief Superintendent responsible for the SDS, who had to bear in mind it was primarily for public order purposes. However, there would be coordination with the Secret Service (via C Squad) and other squads to avoid duplication, and their views were taken into ‘consideration’ – especially as it was C Squad that had to produce the threat assessments. The SDS was simply a support service in that, albeit a major one.
Craft never considered whether there were alternative ways to get intelligence as that was not ‘S’ Squad’s responsibility – that was down to ‘C’ Squad. Like other managers, he speaks of a cordial relationship with the Security Service, in which the SDS tried to accommodate requests for further information.
Craft was later questioned about the decisions to target a number of specific organisations (see below). What stood out most in his responses was the suggestion that groups were targeted “just in case” and that this was standard practice for the SDS:
“We tried to be ahead of the game, certainly”
USE OF REPORTING
Intelligence gathered by the SDS was passed on to C Squad, who sent it to A8 (Public Order Branch) or the Security Service. In his recollection, a great deal of the intelligence that eventually went to A8 in the form of a C Squad threat assessment was likely to have originated in the SDS. It was unusual for the SDS to have more direct contact, except perhaps at weekends when an undercover may phone in an urgent bit of intelligence during a protest.
A8 and C squad had other sources, but the SDS brought to the public order picture the intentions of the revolutionary groups – especially as those groups tended not to cooperate with the police. Craft repeated the line that it was equally important to reassure A8 that there was not going to be any trouble, to keep policing to a minimum. Otherwise, uniformed police would be pulled off other duties to the detriment of the people of London.
Craft like other mangers said filtering of what intelligence the undercovers provided was not his problem – others decided that. Barr pointedly noted that C Squad, where most of the intelligence went first, did not seem to do a great deal of filtering either. “You’re probably right”, Craft conceded.
Asked why Special Branch wanted reports on individuals, Craft replied it it was for the Security Service. Pushed, he accepted that the intimate personal details recorded were for the Security Service and were not simply a result of lax attitudes. It was not, according to him, used for Special Branch vetting as they only dealt with vetting relating to Irish Republicanism.
FEAR OF THE MEDIA
Craft told the Inquiry that the operational security of the SDS was paramount. This meant that, should the operation become public, the Commissioner needed to have a strong defence: “that the police were acting as the police were sworn to act, in the preservation of the Queen’s peace.”
Asked what he feared, Craft was very clear: the media. More specifically “the attack upon the police by the media, for acting undercover to achieve the result we did.” How he could square that with taking instructions from the Security Service on infiltrating groups that were acting perfectly lawfully but considered ‘subversive’, was a question he failed to answer.
SPILLING THE BEANS
As part of the questioning on the relationship with the Security Service, Barr drew the Inquiry’s attention to document [UCPI0000027451] which discussed the knowledge of the SDS as an undercover unit among other police forces in 1976.
It turns out it was quite well known after a Special Branch course run by the Metropolitan Police Special Branch had included a lecture on the SDS and its successes, given by the unit’s founder Conrad Dixon.
This was later considered have been a mistake and the subject was not supposed to be mentioned again. Craft expressed surprise, saying this was all new to him and he should have known about it.
COVER IDENTITIES
The grave of Mark Robert Robinson whose identity was stolen by spycop Bob Lambert
He claimed that because the SDS was a top secret operation it seemed inconceivable that any family would find out.
In hindsight, of course, that isn’t the case, and he says his view now is that bereaved families had suffered enough:
“anything the SDS did to exacerbate that was very sad.”
Barr, for the Inquiry, reminded him that Richard Clark had been exposed by discovery of the death certificate for his stolen identity. Craft elaborated on how difficult it must have been for the activists to find this. However, he did not revisit the utility of the tactic in light of these events.
SUPERVISION & SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS
The Inquiry came next to the issue of supervision of the undercovers, and – importantly – the managers’ awareness of the sexual relationships. Craft denied knowing anything about the sexual relationships officers had indulged in on his watch.
He was asked about various officers who served under him, many of whom are now known to have engaged in intimate relationships while undercover. Rick Clark (‘Rick Gibson’, officer HN297, 1974-76) and ‘Jim Pickford‘ (officer HN300, 1974-77) came up multiple times during the day, mainly because they were singled out in previous evidence as womanisers who had sexual relationships with women in their target groups.
Craft denied knowing anything of their reputation, and said he did not know any reason why they should not have been undercovers.
Craft claimed not to be aware of their relationships, nor to have had any concerns about their behaviour. Indeed it made him wonder how well he actually got to know the members of his team.
We heard about the great meetings held twice a week, where allegedly everything was discussed, the camaraderie, how they called each other by their first names, and rank was not an issue.
As he saw it, these get-togethers should have served for the spycops to realise they were still in a police operation, although why he felt that a friendly get together where everyone used first names and rank was not an issue would remind officers it was a police operation was not clear.
Pressed on why he never gave any guidance that sexual relationships were off limits given that the undercovers were young men being put into potentially tricky situations (not least Clark being put into Goldsmiths College), he answered:
“The thought just never crossed my mind.”
However, earlier in his evidence he stated that it was drummed into all police officers that sex while on duty was cause for dismissal and he was even able to cite a case going back to 1830 in support of this.
FILTH
Barr asked Craft to elaborate on a point from his statement where he expressed why he was so against undercover officers having sexual relationships. In his answer Craft started with the risk of disease, and then went on to talk about the wife, the family and marriage. Finally, he referred to things they might have let slip while having sex “which could have damaged the operation”.
Pressed on this, he said that the threat to the family he was thinking of was the risk of sexually transmittable disease and the break-up of the marriage.
The matter-of-fact-way that Craft said this brought home the extent to which female campaigners were viewed as filth, merely potential spreaders of sexually transmissible diseases, rather than human beings with their own rights and dignity. It’s the Met’s contempt for political dissent compounded by their institutional sexism.
Asked about consideration for the woman deceived, Craft said he is not happy about the relationships, musing:
“But what is the alternative? Because accepting that rape is not involved, does all sexual activity in terms of modern moral attitude require a legally endorsed exchange of CVs before sexual activity takes place?
“And so, to the extent to which the man concerned is operating under false colours, is that something which one could prevent? I don’t know.”
Specifically, Craft was not happy with Rick Clark (‘Rick Gibson’, officer HN297, 1974-76) and said as much. Clark never said anything to Craft about the multiple sexual encounters he had had while undercover, which – according to what he told contemporaries – had contributed to his exposure.
Craft also did not like the fact he had not picked up on that at the time – clearly seeing it as a his own failure, though only in hindsight. At the very end of the day, in further questioning, he was asked how come he didn’t have the same opinion of Rick Clark, and another officer, ‘Jim Pickford‘ (officer HN300, 1974-77) that other witnesses have shared with the Inquiry?
His response may have actually contained some truth:
“People that are good at putting up a front can sometimes confuse one.”
In this, he is effectively claiming that both men had concealed their misconduct from their bosses, and blaming his own naïvety.
He claims no memory of Vince Harvey (‘Vince Miller’, officer HN354, 1976-79) coming to him for advice about the “amorous” attentions of an Socialist Workers Party member.
BOB LAMBERT
Even more unlikely, he stated that he never came across Bob Lambert (‘Bob Robinson’, officer HN10, 1983-88).
One of Lambert’s colleagues, whistleblower Peter Francis, has spoken of the unparalleled regard Lambert was held in long after his undercover deployment:
“He did what is hands down regarded as the best tour of duty ever”
Lambert later went on to run the SDS in the 1990s, deploying other officers to act similarly.
‘Who is Bob Lambert?’ – talk given by COPS, March 2015
Bob Lambert is one of the pre-eminent figures in SDS history, and his exposure in October 2011 was one of the pivotal moments in the spycops scandal.
Craft said:
“I wouldn’t recognise the man.”
He also says he was shocked to discover that Lambert had fathered a child with an activist:
“One wonders how he had the time.”
Asked what he would have done had he learned about an undercover having sex, Craft confidently declared he would have removed the undercover from the field.
At this point the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, intervened, asking whether the undercover would have been formally disciplined. Craft answered in theory yes, but there would have had to be a hearing, which would potentially expose the secret unit, so probably not.
WIVES & WELFARE
The thinking behind using married officers, according to Craft, is that the home life gave them something stable to return to, away from the stress of undercover life. It was all about stability, not about preventing sexual relationships.
Craft was asked about the officers’ wives. He said he didn’t always visit the wives of new recruits; they were invited to Christmas parties. He admitted that – despite the importance of these officers being married and enjoying stable home lives – there was no ongoing monitoring of their marriages, and not much care and attention paid to their wives. In retrospect, he sees that the job would have had an impact on them, and says the police should have done more to look after them.
He explained the reason for deployments tending to last four years, and said that the concerns he had about lengthy deployments were about the officers’ well-being but not because he considered any risk to family life, or an increased risk of what he termed “transgressions”.
POSITIONS OF RESPONSIBILITY
Special Demonstration Squad officer Vince Harvey aka ‘Vince Miller’ while undercover
Craft claimed that undercovers he was supervising did not rise high in the ranks of the groups they were targeting. However, it quickly became clear that they did.
Richard Clark rose through the ranks of the Troops Out Movement (TOM) to become National Convener. Craft said he would not have approved of this.
Clark got involved in factional in-fighting – why wasn’t that stopped? Craft doesn’t know, and he can’t explain why he did nothing.
However he does seem to have approved of Vince Harvey (‘Vince Miller’, officer HN354, 1976-79) becoming both Treasurer and Secretary of Socialist Workers Party branches – agreeing that this represented a “fantastic opportunity” as “it clearly gave him access to all the membership”.
‘Phil Cooper‘ (officer HN155, 1979-84) and ‘Colin Clark’ (officer HN80, 1977-82) – also held “significant positions” within the Party and had access to the Party’s headquarters.
Would Craft have considered it proper or improper for someone to take or copy documents?
“Proper” was his prompt response – it was a “jolly good thing” – he would have completely approved and seen their work as very valuable; he still doesn’t consider that anything these officers did was illegal.
‘Gary Roberts‘ (officer HN353, 1974-78), in his witness statement, tells how he got involved in the student union at Thames Polytechnic, becoming Vice President, and attended National Union of Students conferences as an official delegate. Why didn’t Craft tell him not to take up this position?
Craft’s only respoded:
“It had happened so we were stuck with it.”
POLICE ARRESTED
We heard about a number of officers who were arrested during Craft’s tenure. ‘Desmond “Barry” Loader’ (officer HN13, 1975-78), was arrested and prosecuted on two occasions.
Loader’s first arrest (described on page 12 of this ‘Minute sheet’) took place on an anti-fascist march from Ilford to Barking in September 1977, which he attended with his ‘comrades’ from the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist). He was arrested under the Public Order Act, allegedly while “shielding two children” from the police, and is said is have been “somewhat battered”.
The case was complicated by an arresting officer having served with this undercover years earlier. This led to concerns about him being recognised in court, blowing his cover.
Craft went along to Barking Magistrates for a conversation with this Constable and met with a magistrate and a “helpful” clerk. Later entries show the SDS remained in contact with these officials. The trial eventually took place in 1978 – by this time Craft had moved on, and his successor, Ken Pryde, was in post.
We also heard about ‘Michael Hartley‘ (officer HN12, 1982-85) being arrested for fly posting on Holloway Road, alongside a ‘comrade’ from the Revolutionary Communist Group (RCG).
Craft denied remembering this case, or considering the fairness of the other RCG member being prosecuted. This report was signed off by Craft and sent to the Commander of Operations.
UNDER CONSTANT REVIEW?
In a covering letter attached to the 1976 annual report we see the claim that the SDS was engaged in “constant review”, with reference to a small working party examining the unit’s work in detail, and increasing its effectiveness as well as shrinking the number of personnel required (to 12 deployments, which is said to be the minimum required to gather the necessary level of intelligence).
This working party was the only formal review of the SDS that Craft can recall. Barr pointed out that it was therefore a bit of an exaggeration to call it constant review. “I think it’s painting a slightly strong picture” admitted Craft
After seeing some letters of thanks and appreciation – such as one from Lancashire police following a demo in September 1976 and another one from 1977 – we heard more about the results of the Watts working party in 1976. The review found that, though public disorder at protests had declined since the SDS’s formation, police and the Security Service thought the SDS should continue its work.
WHAT WAS THE POINT?
Why couldn’t the police just monitor open sources and talk to activists? Craft claimed that undercover tactics were essential because the people they were spying on would never have told the police what they were up to.
“Accurate, timely intelligence was vital for proportionate policing and for keeping the peace”.
He insists that the SDS made a considerable difference to the policing of public order. The benefits for the Security Service are described as ‘off-spin’.
Craft was promoted in mid 1981, to run S Squad, and so had oversight of the SDS for the next three years – he calls it a “fairly close” relationship and says he sometimes visited the office and had discussions with those in the field.
What did they talk about? Just general stuff.
Does he recall any problems or welfare issues arising? What about new officers? Were you involved in discussing deployments? Probably not – Craft claims this would probably have been a conversation between the SDS and C Squad
RED LION SQUARE
Barr read an excerpt from the unit’s 1974 Annual Report (paragraph 20 on page 13) – about the death of Kevin Gately on 15 June during mounted police charges into a crowd at an anti-fascist demo at Red Lion Square, London.
Craft may have written this paragraph, but he isn’t sure. It mentions the SDS giving the uniformed police:
“forewarning of both the size of the demonstration and the possible disorder which might occur.”
However, while Craft knows that the SDS had undercovers deployed in most of the left-wing groups involved, he can’t remember any specifics about what intelligence the unit was able to contribute, nor how they did so. The Inquiry has failed to find any other evidence relating to this.
WHO TO SPY ON?
Anti-Apartheid Movement demonstration, London, 15 July 1973
A number of Barr’s questions examined the motives behind the targeting of specific groups or events.
In reference to the far-right, Craft spoke about how “essential” it was to collect intelligence about extreme groups at both ends of the spectrum if the police were to successfully keep the peace between them. He confirmed that he did offer the SDS’ services for this purpose, but ultimately it was C Squad who decided.
When it came to the anti-racist groups, he said those who cooperated with the police were of no concern; those who didn’t were seen as a problem.
Asked why the Anti-Apartheid Movement was reported on (before his time in the unit) he said they were involved in disorder and criminal damage, referencing the direct action taken by the Stop the Seventy Tour campaign.
He admitted that the group had been “very thoroughly infiltrated” as a result of a reputational “hangover”, even though it was run by Young Liberals, rather than ‘ultra Left’ types.
Barr also asked about the Troops Out Movement (referenced in the SDS’s 1976 Annual Report). Craft admitted that TOM wasn’t seeking to overthrow the State and wasn’t really a public order threat. He attempted to justify their infiltration – describing them as “an umbrella movement” who might be infiltrated or ‘manipulated’ by the ‘ultra Left’, or attract Irish Republican support – it was here that he expressed the opinion that it was best to infiltrate them “just in case”.
Craft said he was “happy to bow to Roy Creamer’s expert knowledge” rather than attempt to distinguish between the various groups – it was “quite beyond me”.
In 1976 Richard Clark’s cover was compromised. The group he was infiltrating, Big Flame, is listed on page 4 of the Annual Report, described as a “sinister” organisation, albeit one with no known illegality. It is reported that members are “well-educated” and have links to the Angry Brigade. It is also credited with “practical ingenuity” in the field of security consciousness, compared to other ultra-Left groups:
“There is little doubt that this organisation has more to hide, and hence more to fear, from the police than some of the others”.
Craft says he’s “hesitant” to talk more about this paragraph now. This was possibly a reference to his slip-up, saying something that should have been restricted, earlier in the day.
DUBIOUS DEPLOYMENT DECISIONS
Blair Peach’s funeral, June 1979. Spycops were among the mourners, reporting names of others who attended
Was it Craft who instructed one of the undercovers to attend the funeral of Blair Peach, who was killed by police on an anti-fascist demonstration in 1979?
He doubts it, but can’t be sure. He agrees that Peach’s death and inquest were “bad news for the Met police” (the inquest found that Peach had been killed by a police officer). Did the SDS take a special interest in the campaign? Only in that it would have been wise to keep an eye on them in case of disorder, Craft asserts.
Why was the Campaign for Nucelar Disarmament (CND) targeted? Obviously a male officer couldn’t have infiltrated the women’s peace camp at Greenham Common – in Craft’s words, they needed “a lady” for this.
Craft claims this is the only time that the SDS had any interest in CND, however the Inquiry already knows that John Kerry (officer HN65, 1980-84) infiltrated CND itself.
What about animal rights – why were you interested in spying on them? Craft talked about firebombs, attacks on research centres, “quite akin to terrorism”. He went on to say that he thought this whole thing “started with one policeman in Essex who was keeping an index” and the Branch took this over, realising the movement was “dangerous”.
The SDS’s 1974 Annual Report describes the Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) as a “highly disciplined organisation” that has not caused any public order problems (paragraph 28, page 15). Their interest in “industrial unrest” is mentioned, and Craft openly admitted that this would have been purely for the benefit of the Security Service.
Several spycops infiltrated the WRP but these deployments ended in Craft’s time – does he recall why? He doesn’t, but imagines they were no longer considered a threat to public order. (Former WRP member Liz Leicester gave evidence to the Inquiry last week.)
The Inquiry noted that Craft signed off on every Annual Report during this era, and always endorsed them in glowing terms, in the knowledge that these went to the Home Office and were instrumental in securing the go-ahead (and funding) for the spycops operations to continue.
PRAISE FROM THE HIGHEST LEVEL
Sir Kenneth Newman, Met Commissioner 1982-87, congratulated the spycops
Craft still believes in the immense value of the SDS’s work. He remembers the Commissioner visiting the SDS while he was running the unit – he visited the safe house, met the undercovers, ate lunch with them – “he was chatting to everybody”. Craft remembers “it was good for morale”.
He was similarly positive about another visit paid to the SDS safe house by the Home Secretary, accompanied by the Met Commissioner, Sir Kenneth Newman, while he was at S Squad.
This means the Inquiry has now heard that every Commissioner from the squad’s inception in 1968 until 1993 was personally involved and approved.
1968-72 – John Waldron Rajiv Menon QC told the Inquiry Waldron gave officers champagne after an October 1968 Vietnam War protest
1982-87 – Kenneth Newman
Geoff Craft told the Inquiry Newman visited with the Home Secretary
1987-93 – Peter Imbert
Imbert was previously a Special Branch officer, spycop ‘Sandra Davis’ told the Inquiry Imbert personally recruited her to the SDS
Additionally, before the Inquiry began, whistleblower officer Peter Francis described how the Commissioner he served under (Paul Condon, 1993-2000) visited the safe house and gave out bottles of whisky as a token of his gratutude.
This completely demolishes the Met’s earlier claims that the SDS was some kind of ‘rogue unit’ that senior officers were unaware of.
However, the Inquiry will not be hearing evidence from Sir Kenneth Newman, nor David McNee or Peter Imbert. All three of them have died since the Inquiry began.
It’s not enough to know what the spycops did. We need to know who authorised and sanctioned these operations. We need to know why. The loss of testimony from those Commissioners, who were ultimately in charge of the SDS for a third of its existence, is one of the effects of the colossal delays the police have inflicted on the Inquiry process.
“despite his misdemeanours, Cooper has not been withdrawn as an SDS source”.
‘Lynch’ is said to be worried:
“because Cooper’s position in the Right To Work movement gives him regular access to Ernie Roberts MP and meetings at the House of Commons”.
We know that ‘Cooper’ was having marital difficulties at this time; it sounds as though anything about his work becoming public could have had serious consequences, and been highly embarrassing for all concerned. Craft agrees that he too would have been concerned – this was “too close” to what he calls “legitimate politics”.
Craft was asked if he had ever heard the term “Wearies” – used to refer to the activists spied on by the SDS – and he denied ever hearing it, then or since, adding “I don’t even know what it means”.
There was one final lasting confusion. Craft does not recall Angus McIntosh (officer HN244) working in the SDS office as his deputy. But as far as the Inquiry knows, their time in the unit definitely overlapped. We’re due to hear McIntosh’s evidence tomorrow, on Day 9, so perhaps this mystery will be cleared up then. Craft has repeatedly said he’s “confused” by this:
“It’s amazing – I know him very well – but have no recollection at all of working with him in the SDS”
Today’s hearing of the Undercover Policing Inquiry saw only one live witness, Derek Brice (officer HN3378), who deserves a prize for most evasive answers in the Inquiry so far.
It also featured the publication of written evidence from Anthony Greenslade (officer HN2401) who was apparently brought in to boost “low morale” among the spycops of the Special Demonstration Squad.
Derek Brice (officer HN3378)
Brice was a Detective Inspector in the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), from around May 1973 to October 1974.
Brice had been allocated an entire day as he is the only SDS manager of his era who is alive and in sufficient health to give evidence – or so it was thought. His tenure covered a number of important aspects – it is the period of the first known sexual relationships between undercover officers and people they spied on, the early use of dead children’s identities and the significant public order event that was the 1974 anti-fascist protest at Red Lion Square that resulted in the death of Kevin Gately.
A good 90% of the hearing was an exhausting litany of failures to remembering anything, even the basics, interspersed with monosyllabic answers and claims that he had no awareness of stuff going on around him at the time.
After several years on Special Branch he was brought in as an officer with considerable expertise, although he had not been involved in any undercover work personally. He had served on the Bomb Squad, set up to investigate the Angry Brigade where he had been on the surveillance team – along with Greenslade. He continued to do work for the Bomb Squad after he was appointed to the SDS.
Conrad Dixon, founder of the SDS, 1968
However, the exact relationship between the SDS and the Bomb Squad is not clear, and Brice did not leave us any the wiser. He stated that Conrad Dixon had been a senior manager at the Bomb Squad yet claimed not to know that Dixon had set up the SDS, nor – being shown a handwritten organisational chart [MPS-0737402] – that both teams were being jointly supervised at that time.
Of his time at the SDS he said he was asked to join but not interviewed, that he never received any guidance from the then-head of the SDS, officer HN294 (1970-1973), on what the team was about or what his job entailed. As with the undercover officers, he said he learned on the job.
Describing his work as ‘welfare officer’ (or ‘quartermaster’ in his statement) he failed to explain what that entailed. Making sure the officers felt safe on the job, and had not reached the stage of having enough of it yet – that was about it.
CONVENIENT AMNESIAC
He claimed not to have known about the use of dead children’s birth certificates as the basis of the false identity adopted by undercovers. This stretches credulity, especially as many officers prepared their cover story while he was serving on the squad. Brice simply cant recall much discussion about this.
Among the many things he could not recall or was not aware of was the SDS’s relationship with C Squad, which monitored the left wing more generally. Nor was he aware of how information was transferred to A8 – the public order branch of the Met Police.
Things became slightly ridiculous when Brice said he was unaware of the close relationship with the Security Service (aka MI5). He was shown a document [MPS-0735753] which put him at a meeting with the Security Service, where the latter spoke about setting up a new department (F6) to also gather intelligence on left wing groups and subversion.
The SDS was asked for support, to share information and to help out if secret agents would get in conflict with the law. Brice had no recollection.
ANOTHER PUSH FOR ANSWERS
Despite the frustrating evidence, there were a few hints here and there which led to follow up questions at the end of the session, many put in by the other legal teams present.
There was a bit of exploration about officer HN294, now deceased, who Brice served under. HN294 is a key figure in the unit as it was in his time that many of the unit’s abuses first appear. Theway he appears to have run the unit and its relationship to the rest of Special Branch remains obscure and unexplained.
Brice let it slip that HN294’s successors were more approachable. It had also been noted that HN294 ran the SDS as his own ‘fiefdom’. Pressed on this, Brice admitted that that HN294 was “fairly dour” and “kept things to himself”. We are given an insight into a manager who kept to himself and apparently did not even visit the undercovers at their safehouse.
He had previously denied that two undercovers of the era, Rick Clark (‘Rick Gibson’, officer HN297) and ‘Jim Pickford‘ (officer HN300) were widely known as womanisers. Asked about whether such a reputation would have affected their selection for undercovers, Brice says he never thought about the risk of officers forming inappropriate relationships. He thought that (inadvertently) the practice of forming the relationships was lowered by recruiting married men.
However, when pressed over whether knowing that officers had a reputation as “womanisers” would have impacted on his own thinking regarding recommendation for being an undercover, he was unwilling to say it would have ruled them out.
RED LION SQUARE
The last question came directly from the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting. He drew attention back to the events of Red Lion Square and summoned the 1974 SDS Annual Report [MPS-07930906] to point out the line:
“Fortunately, the SDS gave forewarning of both the size of the demonstration and the possible disorder which might occur.”
Only One Died by Tony Gilbert; the 1975 book critiquing the public inquiry into the killing of Kevin Gately
Red Lion Square was the biggest public order event of its era and the first death on a protest in decades. The Chair noted that Brice was the only senior SDS officer alive from the time and asked for help in understanding the claim in the Annual Report.
Brice’s position is that it was at the end of his time in the SDS (actually he still had four months to serve in the unit when Kevin Gately was killed) and, in line with the rest of the day, he said he couldn’t be of assistance as he barely remembered the event.
Mitting noted the Inquiry also can’t find any written evidence to back up the SDS’ claim – and wonders would the information have been communicated orally? Brice confirms that such information would have been committed in a written report.
With this mystery left unsolved, the day finally came to an end. As with the missing material around the anti-fascist demonstration in Southall and the death of Blair Peach five years later, the SDS seems to have made big claims but the evidence to support it’s reason for existing is remarkably lacking – a topic which the Inquiry and core participants on all sides will no doubt return to.
The day also saw the publication of the written evidence of Anthony Greenslade (officer HN2401). He joined the police in the mid-1950s, and Special Branch in 1960.
He worked at Britain’s seaports, and after a spell in Anguilla, returned to London in 1970 to work in a section that was concerned with Black Power for around a year. He said Conrad Dixon wanted to get rid of him from the Black Power desk.
BOMB SQUAD & SDS ADMINISTRATOR
He was then posted to the Bomb Squad from 1971-74, and during this time had dealings with the SDS, in late 1973 (for six months) but did not at first consider himself a member of the unit.
At this time the Bomb Squad was conducting surveillance of the Angry Brigade; he worked alongside Brice (see below). He served the unit as a DI towards the end of 1973, working in an admin role. He helped the SDS by purchasing 12 cars for the undercovers to use and setting up second safe house for the spycops.
SDS RECRUITS – BOTTOM OF THE CLASS
It seems that the SDS ‘Class of 73’ had a problem with passing exams. as Greenslade was tasked with improving the spycops promotions exam record – he ran weekly classes for them at the safe house that lasted 3-4 hours. Only three of his six students passed these exams.
Interestingly, he states that low morale was a known issue in the SDS, and he was not the only officer brought in to help solve this problem.
‘KINGPIN’
He says people were recruited in a random way, at the time by HN294 who he describes as the unit’s ”kingpin”, running the unit as a “fiefdom”.
He says he wasn’t involved in choosing targets or the officers’ reporting, or any liaison with outside agencies like the Security Service.
He says he doesn’t know about many of the other key issues we’ve heard former officers being questioned about this week, such as the use of deceased children’s identities, sexual relationships with targets (which he thinks would have been unacceptable), or tradecraft. He knew nothing about the any ‘incidents’ in the SDS.
He said that personal details were routinely included in Special Branch reporting – there was nothing unusual about the material that the SDS were including in theirs.
Greenslade simply repeats that the SDS contribution to policing was that they provided advance warning in demonstrations, something that Roy Creamer brought into doubt yesterday.
He said:
“Information about trade unions would have been reported because of the effect of trade unions on the economy.”
About overtime, he noted that members of the SDS received fairly high overtime payments, and remembers that ‘Phil Cooper‘ (officer HN155) was the “highest paid” Detective Seargent in the Met at the time”. However, he doesn’t think this money affected the length of time they spent on the unit or their reporting.
Greenslade retired in 1987 at the rank of Chief Superintendent.
Probably the most interesting thing in Greenslade’s statement is his negative view of undercover policing:
“The only matter I want to add is that I wish to add if that I disagree fundamentally disagree with the principal of Undercover Policing, it was damaging to individuals many suffered from the work, and some left the police afterwards. I think some people are psychologically unsuited to that kind of work, as I am.”
The sixth day of the Undercover Policing Inquiry hearing evidence concerned with the Special Demonstration Squad’s managers 1968-82 began with a summary of William Furner’s statement being read out. He was a founding member of the Squad in the summer of 1968.
This was followed by live evidence from David Smith (officer HN103). The afternoon was taken up by Roy Creamer (officer HN3093), present by video link.
The Inquiry also published many documents today relating to other early managers who are now deceased: Conrad Dixon (officer HN325, founder of the Squad), Phil Saunders (officer HN1251), and Riby Wilson (officer HN1748).
Bill Furner
In his first statement, Bill Furner (officer HN3095), a founding member of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) had helped the Inquiry to identify people in photos taken at the SDS Christmas party in 1968. His second statement dealt with his job in the back office of the SDS.
Anti-apartheid activists block the coach taking the Springbok rugby team to Twickenham, December 1969
Furner supported the first group of undercover officers, who infiltrated left wing groups preparing for the October 1968 demonstration against the war in Vietnam. Based at Scotland Yard, his job was administrative.
For instance, he checked officers’ expenses against their diaries, made sure they “paid their rents and that it was all genuine and above board”. He did not deal with cover identities, cars or houses.
He was present at the meetings held at the undercover flat, which all officers came to in order to hand over their diaries and reports, and to talk about who was attending upcoming events.
Occasionally, he also attended meetings and demonstrations, remembering ones at Trafalgar Square and at Twickenham. For these, he was simply part of the audience to make notes; he did not change his appearance other than to wear a scruffy coat.
In his written statement, asked what the SDS achieved for the benefits of policing, his response was that these deployments:
“meant that we had the people under observation and different organisations completely and utterly tapped. They did not make a move that we did not know about. The obvious benefit is that we knew what their aims were.
“For example there was one group that decided to chain themselves to the rugby posts at Twickenham when South Africa were playing. We knew about this, and uniformed police were told to be present with bolt cutters.”
Bill Furner is one of the few officers who says that information from the Security Service (aka MI5) came into their office, implying it was not a one-way street. The next sentence in his statement was gisted as “Reading this information was a major part of my job.”
The SDS had a very close liaison with the Security Service – “we helped each other”.
As Furner added:
“Special Branch were the arm to make enquiries… [we] had the power to effect arrest… The Security Service was divorced from police work.”
The appearance of David Smith (officer HN103) as a witness was marked by his ability to recall seemingly mundane administrative details about the SDS and an equal inability to recall anything which might be controversial.
He spent considerable time in his post as back-office sergeant in the SDS – from 1970 to 1974, giving him substantial knowledge of the unit’s administrative side.
Like almost all other police witnesses, Smith claimed he knew nothing about the sexual relationships that officers had whilst undercover. When queried on this – and characteristic of the roundabout way he answered questions – he started musing about there being fewer women involved in radical groups in those days, with the exception of the Women’s Liberation movement.
In his witness statement, Smith was more critical, saying it was “wrong and foolish”, as it posed a risk to the Squad – and obviously had an impact on the other parties.
“Some more wrong than others, but it was wrong, full stop.”
Unlike some of the witnesses we have (and will) hear from in this set of hearings, Smith was adamant that the SDS decided which groups they would target – and that the Security Service did not tell them what to do. He suggested that there was not much interference from outside the SDS. “We knew what we had to do” – “in many ways” the operation ran itself.
Special Branch relied heavily on the two senior SDS managers to oversee the unit – they decided on who was targeted, according to Smith. Unfortunately he wasn’t pressed on this topic, even when he contradicted himself, saying that Special Branch’s C squad advised on tasking.
Later, Smith said he often took Special Branch Registry files about individuals to the safe house, with a note asking the officer in the field if they could assist with information about these people.
Smith also says that right wing organisations weren’t appropriate targets for the SDS at that period in time, not worth infiltrating. However, by the time he had become a Chief Inspector in C Squad in the late 1970s and early 1980s and was responsible for right-wing and animal rights groups, that had changed and he had “put up” an argument for spying more on far-right organisations. Any final decision about targeting would have been made by the Chief Superintendent or similar.
“COMMON SENSE”
As with most officers, when asked whether there was any proactive attempt to advise officers not to become sexually involved with their targets, Smith said it was simply “common sense” not to do so. Obviously, not for everyone.
While there was no official training, Smith said the main thing that was “hammered home” to SDS officers was to avoid being an agent provocateur:
“We wanted them to be a fly on the wall not to be taking a leading part in things.”
He also said there were some organisations which were “pretty common throughout” meaning they were always spied on), then others “sort of came and went”. They adjusted their coverage accordingly, with “the advice of the rest of the Branch … it naturally evolved”.
Most of the undercovers had already spent three or four years in the Branch, so had a good idea about the organisations being infiltrated. He described their “rolling programme” – those whose deployments were ending could give very valuable advice to those whose time undercover was about to start.
The SDS was well-established by the time he joined in 1970: it had become a permanent unit subject to annual review. He was not worried about it being curtailed, saying:
“I thought it would go on as long… as it remained a secret”.
In Smith’s view, if a tactic is proven to be effective, you do not get rid of it.
ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS?
Smith said the SDS was necessary because it ‘sharpened’ things to get accurate numbers on demos to inform public order policing levels.
He then explained that joining a less extreme group, such as the Young Liberals, could provide a useful “stepping stone” and give some “street cred”, which would enable an officer to join more radical groups without seeming suspicious.
One officer, ‘Michael Scott‘ (officer HN298, 1971-76) did so and went on to infiltrate anarchist and Irish groups and the Workers Revolutionary Party, for example.
Next, Smith was asked how SDS reports were processed. He told the hearing that he received bundles of handwritten reports from the spycops. Sometimes information also came into the office by telephone. His job was to collate and put them in the standard format for typing up by the typing pool (which was next door).
Kevin Gately in Red Lion Square, London, shortly before he was killed, 15 June 1974. Smith is the latest spycop to suffer selective amnesia about this event
He denied doing any “sanitising” or analysing – he says he was aware enough to recognise if anything “needed to be expedited.”
The next moment he said that sometimes he did “slightly sanitise” reports, getting rid of some specific details and making them “less precise” in order to send them to A8, which was outside of Special Branch. He said this was his “common sense” – nobody needed to tell him to do this, he just “instinctively knew”.
C Squad, the part of Special Branch which oversaw operations against left wing groups, prepared threat assessments for A8, which dealt with public order. The Inquiry suggests that they did 600-700 of these per year – this would have equated to 10+ every week. Smith was not surprised by these figures.
SDS intelligence would have been “woven into” these assessments – he says the unit helped by “padding out the juicy bits,” and being able to provide more precision in terms of numbers and the likelihood of violence. (The role of Special Branch Liaison officer was created at some point around this time, to “help A8” understand enough and act appropriately, while protecting the source of the information.)
Smith thought that about 50-60 SDS reports would have been written in the course of a week, of which around 75-80% went to the Security Service, adding “we didn’t send them the Irish stuff”.
He agreed with Geoff Craft (who we will hear from on Wednesday) that no other police officers were more closely monitored than the SDS officers. Monitored for what exactly? we may ask!
Unconvincingly, Smith says he cannot recall what happened at Red Lion Square in 1974. He was slightly too fast to say the name rang a bell, but that was all. It is quite unlikely that he can’t remember the death of Kevin Gately at a demonstration against the fascist National Front. Gately was the first person to die on a demonstration in England for decades – and to prevent such public order problems was the SDS’ ultimate reason for existing.
PICKFORD AND CLARK
‘Jim Pickford‘ (officer HN300) and Rick Clark (officer HN297) were both recruited as Smith was leaving the unit. Both men were known as ‘womanisers’ within Special Branch. Had he known at the time, he would have advised against recruiting them to the SDS, he now says.
Asked for his view about the sort of person who was suitable for undercover work, Smith said they needed to have a “balanced, calm disposition.” Otherwise, he kept his opinions about the spycops he worked with to himself.
Smith wasn’t hugely concerned about spycops being arrested and going to court – it didn’t happen very often – he can only recall one incident of an officer ending up in court and testifying under a false name. He agreed that “technically” this did constitute misleading the court, but also talked about “different degrees” – and drew upon an unconvincing analogy about speeding to suggest it was not all that serious.
Smith returned for some supplementary questions after lunch but said nothing of consequence.
Roy Creamer (officer HN3903) was an eagerly anticipated witness in this phase of the Inquiry. Originally, the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, had not planned to call Creamer to give live evidence. But after representations were made by non-state core participants (ie victims of spycops) Mitting relented and agreed that we should hear from him.
Though the former Special Branch manager is in his 90s, Creamer was well able to provide a detailed account of his time, his memory often better than younger colleagues.
He was questioned by Counsel to the Inquiry, David Barr QC.
BACKGROUND
Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon, founder of the Special Demonstration Squad, 1968
Creamer was involved in the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) at its formation in 1968, when he worked closely with Conrad Dixon. He was later active with the Bomb Squad, where he is best known for having investigated and arrested alleged members of the Angry Brigade. This topic was not touched on today. Later, he returned to C Squad (which deals with left wing activists) as a Detective Inspector. He retired in 1980.
Whereas, so far, many witnesses were relatively new to Special Branch when they encountered the Special Demonstration Squad, Creamer was already an experienced officer of ten years before the SDS was set up in 1968.
He spent much of the decade prior to the founding of the SDS, working on the left wing desks (B / C Squad). This work involved being sent to meetings, to report back on what was heard and look for the next opportunity to report on. At that time, the main focus was on the Communist Party of Great Britain, not the ‘ultra Left’ groups, which were not seen as much of a threat or considered worthy of police attention. This changed as those groups grew in size and strength.
ANARCHISTS
Albert Meltzer in his bookshop [pic: Phil Ruff]
Creamer was particularly interested in the anarchist milieu. Rather than just reporting, he actively went out to talk to them and find out what they were about. In his justification, he said that anarchists openly boast about assassinating leaders, so it was important to find out who might be likely to try that. This interest led to him being called the ‘dialectician of dissent’ by a leading anarchist of his time, Stuart Christie.
The officer talked about his open approach to talking to anarchists, not hiding that he was from Special Branch. This lead to uneasy relationships with Christie, Albert Meltzer and others. He visited Meltzer’s bookshop to read the notices in the window on upcoming anarchist activities.
Creamer said that in his conversations he got very little on the anarchists themselves, but what he did learn about was their attitude to other groups which provided insight into how the different politics intersected with each other.
Barr noted that while the Angry Brigade was clearly of interest to Special Branch, what about Freedom Press, the anarchist publishers? Creamer was clear they were not targets for public order purposes. They were not a force to be reckoned with and were not really up for a fight.
There were ‘so-called anarchists’ who he considered hooligans, who didn’t want to obey anyone including protest organisers and so were a public order issue. He summed up anarchists as difficult to keep an eye on:
“I don’t think we were up for it. They were cleverer than us in many ways.”
TROTSKYISTS & THE ‘EXTREME LEFT’
Next, Barr explored Trotskyists groups such as the International Marxist Group (IMG), International Socialists (IS, later Socialist Workers’ Party) and the Socialist Labour League (SLL, later Workers Revolutionary Party).
Creamer described them in terms of how disciplined they were and their ability to discipline their members or the protests they organised. They could be difficult to infiltrate, but if you did you would learn a lot about what was going on. Other groups were easier to infiltrate but one learned less.
The SLL were the most disciplined group which actually meant they were much less of a public order issue. On the other hand, the IMG were not prepared to discipline themselves and did not have the will or numbers to particularly marshal their protests. The IS were a threat to public order, but only in the sense they were prepared to organise large demonstrations – which is what mattered from a policing point of view.
On the Maoists, he said that some of them were from the Far East themselves, and there was an uncertainty about their cultural norms. They could be quite loud and emotional on protests, but how much that came from anger over injustice or how much was their natural way was unclear. Given their numbers were small, he wrote that they were noisy and boisterous, but not dangerous, suggesting that a competent group of police could handle any of their demonstrations.
PRE-SDS PRACTICE
He briefly spoke of the far-right in his pre-SDS work. Then they were a mostly discredited group of little interest. Their demonstrations only received attention when attacked by the left.
Barr asked Creamer about the right of entry into a private home, a recurring legal issues in these hearings. Creamer admitted that in normal police work an officer would not go into a house without a warrant. This was the official line, including when Special Branch officers were sent to monitor meetings. Sometimes it did happen that a plain clothes officer got in, but it happened so rarely people did not think about it as an issue.
They next moved on to an extensive exploration of the usefulness of infiltrating many groups on the left. Creamer in his written statement had been quite critical of the role of the SDS and the unrealistic nature of what it was being asked to in terms of identifying public order issues.
Overall, it was Creamer’s assessment that prior to 1967, the standard Special Branch approach to public order and answering Security Service queries was sufficient, especially given the culture of the time. He was critical of the inefficient organisation and thought the lacklustre reporting back on protests was very weak. The latter was something Creamer actively tried to improve.
In particular, he noted that following a demonstration at the house of the Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, his commanding officer Victor Gilbert was slammed for not being able to identify those responsible and explain their motivations. Something Creamer resolved.
He also took on Gilbert’s request to improve the quality of intelligence being sent to A8 (the uniformed police’s public order division):
“I felt it was my mission to do that.”
He sought out ways to write reports that would give A8 the correct impression, while noting that it was not possible to quantify the information they wanted, without offending them. For instance, if he thought a protest was going to be ‘lively’, he would up the estimated numbers so there would be sufficient police.
Special Branch’s attitude towards protests changed after the March 1968 anti-Vietnam War protest, which led to the founding of the Special Demonstration Squad.
SPECIAL DEMONSTRATION SQUAD
Creamer was hand-picked by SDS founder Conrad Dixon to play a part at the very beginning of this new Squad. His was almost exclusively a back office role – he says that he refused to be sent undercover, because he preferred to do things in an open way and because he clearly could not have got away with it, being known and recognisable to so many on the left.
He described Conrad Dixon as someone who took on setting up the SDS as an adventure, to Dixon it was difficult work but something he felt he could do. Creamer, in his words, was there to restrain him from ‘doing anything stupid’ – this was a tacit agreement between them.
Creamer helped Dixon with the reports and attended bigger meetings so he had the big picture – which meant that Dixon could tell those higher up the right answer:
“I knew what I had to, and he knew what to expect from me.”
Barr wanted to know if Dixon took legal advice on operating an undercover unit. Creamer was certain he that didn’t and it wouldn’t have been in his nature to do so:
“[Dixon] saw this as a challenge and he didn’t want to be inhibited by any scruples that other people might have because he trusted himself to be scrupulous as the situation demanded, no more and no less, and to be honest, that’s the situation.”
As to his role within the SDS, Creamer did admit that he looked out for the undercovers and helped them with advice. He particularly wanted them to avoid getting arrested, taking drugs, or contracting illnesses (in his words).
Though he conceded the subject was serious, Creamer spoke of the levity the spycops enjoyed as they spied on people and undermined campiagns:
“when we were in that squad, it was a lark in many ways, it was an adventure, and there was no ill will towards the people we were penetrating or whatever. It was an experiment to see if it could be done. That was the theme of Conrad’s police.”
REPORTS
Barr took him through a number of reports which bore his name. Creamer said that while reports were signed by him, that might be a cover for the undercover sourcing the material. Barr pointed out on that the language in the report on the Anti-Imperialist Solidarity Movement was very much the language used by Creamer.
Of a report which noted that the attraction of the Maoist leader Abhimanyu Manchanda was based on him being willing to take the most revolutionary line, he said that he had to pass on the ‘germ of the ideal’. In fact he thought it would not lead to much, but at that point in time the people around Manchanda fell under the list of groups capable of ‘doing a mischief’.
One unusual report that discussed internal political divisions within the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign coalition remains a bit of a mystery. It was not from an undercover, or an informer, but by a source who knew what was going on. Creamer didn’t want to say more about it, though he clearly knew the origins. He also noted that was of a much higher standard than either he or Dixon could have produced.
VALUE OF THE SDS
The SDS had been established after the police were unprepared for the disorder at a March 1968 demonstration against the Vietnam war. The unit was established to gather intelligence and prevent any repeat in a further demonstration in October 1968.
Police on horseback charge demonstrators against the Vietnam War, Grosvenor Square, 17 March 1968
Barr asked if undercover policing made a difference to the handling of the October demonstration. Creamer was of the opinion that it did in the run up to the day, as A8 received a higher standard of information. But on the day itself, no. It mainly came down to reassuring the powers that be that there was not going to be a violent protest.
Creamer’s most trenchant criticism, both in statement and orally was that the SDS were being sent out to look for evidence of pre-planned violence, which was never going happen. It was an unrealistic request.
He was firm that the SDS should have packed up after October 1968. As far as he was concerned, the unit was ‘hedged around’ with all sorts of difficult problems. Instead, management should have started again properly, picking out the good bits and getting rid of the bad bits. In any case, in his eyes the ‘battle had been won’ in October 1968.
However, the problem was the police were very reluctant to cancel demos outright – it was viewed as more trouble than it was worth. So protests were going to happen in any case. That attitude did not change until the violence at the August 1977 ‘Battle of Lewisham‘ clash between fascists and anti-fascists – which clinched it for Creamer that undercovers were no longer needed.
LATER LINKS WITH THE SDS
After leaving the unit, Creamer had little to do with the SDS directly. He did accept, however, that in his time as a Detective Inspector on the left wing desk in C Squad, he received intelligence that he recognised as emanating from the undercover unit.
Creamer is clear that C Squad did not influence the tasking of SDS undercovers – they had influence, and perhaps a veto, but to the best of his knowledge, C Squad did not use it.
Though he had his own thoughts on how things should be or could be improved, Creamer notes multiple times that any interference from him wouldn’t have been welcomed, so he stayed in his lane. He didn’t want to make waves and didn’t dare interfere with what the later SDS was doing; a fact that’s very iluminating about about Special Branch culture at the time.
Elizabeth Leicester (former member of the Workers Revolutionary Party) Barry Moss (undercover officer 1968, manager 1980-82)
Today was the second day of live witness hearings in the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s current phase examining managers of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) 1968-82.
The first testimony came from Liz Leicester, a former member of the Workers Revolutionary Party.
We also heard the testimony of a central figure in the spycops scandal, Barry Moss, who was an undercover officer in 1968 and then a senior officer responsible for the SDS between 1980 and 1982.
He went on to be Commander of Special Branch during the time that undercover officer Peter Francis was deployed against the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence’s, and several officers under his management had sexual relationships whilst undercover. Frustratingly, questions today were limited to the Tranche 1 era – 1968-82 – by the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting.
Elizabeth Leicester (former member of the Workers Revolutionary Party)
Dad’s Army actor Clive Dunn was among the thespian members of the Workers Revolutionary Party in the 1970s
Leicester lived at White Meadow (aka The Red House), the WRP’s training centre in Derbyshire, between 1975-1978. Her former husband and WRP comrade Roy Battersby was a film director, and also a prominent member of the party.
We heard about Leicester’s involvement in the SLL – she worked in its Clapham office, on its paper, the ‘Workers Press’. Her and her husband were both part of the outer London branch. It was an unusual branch: is well known that Corin and Vanessa Redgrave were members but other prominent actors such as Clive Dunn, Spike Milligan [MPS-0747833] and Frances de la Tour were also involved.
Leicester said the open aim of the WRP was to establish a socialist state. It had a chain of bookshops and a film production company. Like yesterday’s witness Lindsay German, Leicester said that the WRP did not envision themselves being a vanguardist organisation – it was up to the majority of the working class to have a revolution.
She described the many strikes of the 70s, a “real upsurge of workplace democracy” – and made it clear that “we worked as genuine trade unionists” – rather than covertly infiltrating those unions. While they were inspired by the Russian revolution, the WRP used constitutional, non-violent and lawful means to advance their aims.
Amusingly, part of the WRP election manifesto was read out, with an unfortunate slip-up by the Inquiry’s lawyer – who accidentally said ‘conservative’ instead of ‘communist'(!)
WHITE MEADOW
White Meadow, aka The Red House. The WRP’s training centre in the 1970s
Initially purchased by the actor Corin Redgrave supposedly as a “drama and arts centre”. Leicester is asked whether that was ever its real purpose – or was it always going to be a college of Marxist education? She said that the aim was to protect it from adverse attention from fascists – and not to alarm the locals.
A police raid took place at White Meadow on 27th September 1975. This seems to have resulted from a meeting between The Observer Newspaper and Special Branch officers a couple of days previously [UCPI0000034744]. Leicester also recalled that an aerial photo appeared on the front on the Daily Telegraph – presenting the WRP as a serious threat to the public. The WRP sued the editor of The Observer for libel.
A seven-page Special Branch report probably written by ‘Michael Scott‘ (officer HN298, 1971-76) [UCPI0000012240] gives many details on the White Meadow Centre. Dated 25 February 1976, the report describes the founding of White Meadow the previous summer. It also claimed 900 students had attended the centre in the previous six months. Leicester said that the figure was massively exaggerated.
Additionally, the report lists several financial costs associated with the centre. Leicester says there is no way an undercover could have gleaned that information by attending the centre – and suggest the intelligence might have come from ‘Peter Collins‘ (officer HN303, 1973-77) who also infiltrated the party.
SECURITY MEASURES
Understandably, after the police raid, security measures were increased. Leicester and Battersby searched students on entrance to the centre after the police raid. They also worried about electronic surveillance and found many listening devices. During a summer camp set up by the SLL, there was a concern about a police raid. For security Leicester says she took the membership and financial docs to London with her.
Leicester said the measures were to guard against both state and fascist infiltration. Some of the students who attended their centre were from Greece, Portugal and Spain all of which had fascist dictatorships in the early 1970s.
CONCLUSION
The Special Branch report also listed the subjects taught. As you would expect, these revolved around classic Marxist texts. Leicester jokingly wondered how the undercover got on with “Lenin, Vol. 38 – not an easy read!”
Leicester said it was outrageous that her family home – and two children – were spied upon. The WRP were not a public order threat – and the police knew that – and they were spied upon anyway.
She notes that ‘Michael Scott’ (HN298), whose time at White Meadows was described by a senior officer as ‘his swan song’, was ordered not to go there but went anyway. He could have dropped out of attending without raising any suspicion, raising a glaring question Leicester asked aloud:
“So why did he choose to go there?”
Leicester finished by saying that it’s a shame that the WRP are not core participants at the Inquiry, and that Collins’ infiltration is not being investigated more. Former WRP members don’t have the full disclosure they deserve.
Barry Moss (undercover officer 1968, manager 1980-82)
BACKGROUND
Barry Moss was one of the first undercovers of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), deployed for three months in 1968. He used the cover name ‘Barry Morris’. This period was covered in his first witness statement.
On leaving the SDS he took part in the accelerated promotion scheme, moving around all the main Special Branch squads. He also spent time outside of Special Branch in CID before returning in February 1980 to become Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) for the SDS, where he remained for a year before being promoted to Superintendent of ‘S Squad’ with oversight of the SDS.
After a period (1990-1991) as a uniformed Commander with responsibility for North East London, he became a Commander of Special Branch. In 1995 he was Commander of Operations which included responsibility for the SDS. In 1996 he became overall head of Special Branch until he retired in 1999. He helped establish the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, the second major spycops unit after the SDS.
In his capacity as head of Special Branch, Moss gave evidence to the Ellison Inquiry into police corruption surrounding the murder of Stephen Lawrence. He told Ellison that he had no knowledge of the workings of the SDS, a claim that, given his extensive career with the unit, cannot possibly be true.
However, the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, has refused to allow questions about this later period in this evidence, which deals only with his role as an SDS DCI (in the Inquiry’s Tranche 1 Phase 3 period, ie 1968-82).
LEGALITY OF UNDERCOVER POLICING
David Barr QC
The evidence began with David Barr, Counsel to the Inquiry, diving straight into issues raised in the opening statement of Charlotte Kilroy, QC, on behalf of women deceived into relationships by spycops.
Barr wanted to know about the training Moss had received – any on race or sexual equality, or on human rights more generally? None.
What about the powers of entry which police officers had? Moss received some training on this at the beginning of his police career and later while with CID.
Barr sought to explore what grasp a senior commander such as Moss had of basic policing principles. Moss struggled quite a bit to answer on this. There was no sense he had ever given much thought to the reasons for doing things, particularly their necessity or purpose, let alone their lawfulness.
The complete lack of training or guidance given to managers and undercover officers was a recurring theme throughout the day, as was an utter disrespect for, and lack of interest in, the law. It was only from what he had picked up from the Inquiry that he realised they had been breaking the law.
Barr looked at intelligence reports Moss had authored as an undercover officer, including a meeting of Maoists in a private home. Moss admitted he was not given any guidance on the legality of entering a home without a warrant.
“I think my understanding of the rules in normal work would have been fairly clear. I had no idea that this may have been illegal, as I’ve seen from Ms Kilroy’s submission earlier to this Inquiry.
“We were there to garner information (…) it might have been illegal in one way or another, I did not think of it.”
When pressed, Moss admitted there was no consideration given to its legality at all.
INTERPRETING REPORTS & OTHER MATERIALS
The Inquiry also addressed time Moss spent serving with C Squad, the part of the Met’s Special Branch that dealt with left wing activists.
Diane Langford’s Special Branch Registry File index
He was able to say C meant Confidential, S was Secret and SP was Secret ‘Pink’ – meaning material accessible to anyone in Special Branch. He also described a further category, Secret ‘Green’, for top secret material.
He admitted that while at C Squad he had written several threat assessments on demonstrations and described the process by which these were constructed. Asked if he could tell if intelligence reports feeding into the assessment came from the SDS, he replied:
“Yes, the preamble usually gave an indication that it came from SDS, if you understood the system.”
When Barr returned to this point later on, Moss took him through how the intelligence gathered – such as lists of members – fed into constructing a threat assessment. If a group or branch was organising a demonstration, the starting basis was how many people were they, what sort of people were they and what links did they have to bring in other groups or branches which would bring in numbers.
Barr also had Moss explore the SDS’s relationship with C Squad, the part of Special Branch which oversaw operations against left wing groups.
From Moss’ evidence it is clear that C Squad was very important in terms of setting the agenda for the SDS. This included guidance on which groups should be targeted. Moss confirmed that C Squad was as a key ‘customer’ of SDS intelligence, and the main conduit for passing SDS reports on to the Security Service.
There was no regular contact with C Squad, but there did not need to be as, given their long relationship, the SDS was pretty much producing what they wanted anyway. Knowing what to report as an SDS officer was developed for the most part through having been an officer in the wider Special Branch.
MANAGING THE SDS
Moss took over from Mike Ferguson (a former undercover himself) as Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) in what appears to have been an abrupt transition. He received no handover from Ferguson and had to find his own way. He learned on the job, reading reports by undercovers, and relied heavily on his deputy, Detective Inspector Trevor Butler, who had also been deputy under Ferguson, and who Moss described at one point as a “mentor”.
He also relied heavily on his brief time as an undercover, 12 years previously. Asked whether he knew about misbehaviour by a number of previous undercovers, he denied knowing anything other than that Rick Clark had been exposed.
LITTLE CHANGE
Mostly Moss continued with practices that were already in place. The only change of note is that he considered the unit had too much coverage of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and when he became manager he directed a newly deployed undercover (‘Malcolm Shearing‘, officer HN19) to look at a different milieu.
He accepted it was up to him to review the justification of deployments but it was hard, because undercovers were deeply entrenched in groups and difficult to move around. He gave very little consideration to the legality or justification, or alternative ways of gathering the intelligence. As far as he was concerned the system he inherited was a good one:
“The SDS already existed, so why not use it?”
He did not assess the level of intrusion against what was actually produced. As far as he was concerned, it all served some purpose or another.
Asked if operational security was of paramount importance he replied:
“Yes, no other organisation in the country, or even in the world was doing what we were doing.”
This is ironic, given the extensive propaganda criticising political policing in Eastern Bloc countries. There were clearly many agencies doing exactly what they were doing, in dictatorships all over the world.
Socialist Worker, Queen’s silver jubilee edition, June 1977
He was firm that the primary reason for the SDS was to gather intelligence on public order issues, and the intelligence for the Security Service was ‘ancillary’, although he belied some of his points on public order by admitting that putting an undercover into the anarchist newspaper Freedom Press would have been a stepping stone to get to another group.
INTRUSIVE REPORTING
Barr took Moss through a number of reports that he had signed off, and was responsible for as head of the unit.
His response was a mixture of not remembering the details, shifting the responsibility to others – whether individual undercover officers he was overseeing, or the ‘customers’ of the SDS – C Squad, A8 (the Met department delaing with public order) and the Security Service.
Moss did not compile or assess reports, but did sign them off – well, sometimes at least. The reports were disseminated as C squad saw fit, he had no influence on that. The SDS approach was to hoover up as much intelligence as possible, which was to be considered and analysed by others.
In a few, very few, cases (such as a 1980 report on an individual who had just joined the SWP that included his job at the General Post Office, his address and bank account, the fact that he was gay and was an avid reader of Gay News), Moss reluctantly agreed that with hindsight he should have been more cautious in signing it off, as some reporting was not appropriate; but hey, those were different times.
Barr then pulled up a long report dated August 1980, about a woman, her activities, relationships, where she lived, and with whom, Barr read out a long quote:
“In the last week [she] has intimated that she wishes to fall pregnant again, and for this purpose has ceased to take ‘the pill’ on a regular basis. She is however, not quite sure at the present as to who will sire this latest socialist offspring.”
Discussing her political involvement the report says that such:
“would not include an interest in Irish orientated groups … as her main interest, culturally, politically and personally is with the black races and persons of similar ethnic origins”.
Barr asked Moss:
“You signed it, so you would have read it?”
Moss replied:
“Yes.”
And he did think the content was relevant, because this individual would probably ‘settle down’ and be less active in the ‘ultra left’ if she had another child – adding sexism to his racism.
Barr pressed on:
“Did you consider the tone appropriate?”
Moss started stuttering:
“I — I — I thought one of the sentences was — was a bit odd, and I’m not sure I’d — in — in today’s light — I haven’t got it in front of me any more — “
Although Moss said he understood that the tone of this report would be unacceptable now, he was very reluctant to accept that the extraordinary level of detail was inappropriate – insisting that such details were of relevance to the Security Service, and therefore he would pass them on.
STEALING DEAD CHILDREN’S IDENTITIES
Moss said that at the time, he didn’t consider if using the birth certificate of dead children was lawful or not, but he did not see any other way for the undercovers to obtain documents in their cover names. He left it to his officers to create their fake identities, saying he wasn’t personally involved in this himself.
Moss accepted there was a risk, as Richard Clark (officer HN297) had been confronted with the death certificate of Rick Gibson, the dead child whose identity he’d stolen. However he said he thought “the chances of it happening again were probably remote”, because this had only happened once.
FAR RIGHT
The far right were not infiltrated in the same way as the left wing groups.
The SDS did not target them, something Moss says he and Butler discussed, due to a policy decision from a higher level – “because they were too violent, and we were concerned what the officer may have to do to prove his credentials”.
RELATIONSHIP WITH THE SECURITY SERVICE
Moss describes a cordial, good relationship between the Special Demonstration Squad and the Security Service under his management. They had meetings every few months and they appeared to be genuinely grateful for the intelligence supplied, particularly the intelligence on the SWP who in the Security Service’s mind had replaced the Communist Party of Great Britain as the main subversive group. He wanted to be as helpful to the Security Service as possible, provided it did not cut across the public order mandate of the SDS.
In these hearings, and earlier ones, we had heard there was almost no formal training or guidance for undercover officers, but today Barr brought out a syllabus from 1979, for a Special Branch training course that ran over three weeks.
Later in his career Moss held responsibility for organising these courses for Special Branch officers from all over the country, which ran parallel with courses by the Security Service for their staff. In conjunction, they would provide lecturers for a number of topics.
He supposed that the Security Service would have liked to have even more influence over the SDS than they did, saying:
“if we could accede to their requests without detriment to ourselves, then we would oblige them… it wasn’t quite a two way flow of information – we probably gave them more than they gave us”.
Asked if undercover officers took risks in order to gather intelligence for the Security Service, he said he left it to his officers to judge whether the risk was worth it – the priority was to maintain their cover in the group. Much of the communication with the Security Service was mediated by C Squad.
The names of the groups being infiltrated were given to the Security Service. Moss at first claimed that the officers’ cover names would not have been shared, then admitted that this may have happened, claiming their real names certainly weren’t though.
SUBVERSION
Discussion of the Security Service led to a long and technical discussion about the definition of ‘subversion’. It was clear that Moss had given no serious thought to what it meant, and made a lot of assumptions.
The nearest he had to any training on this was during the Security Service induction session for junior Special Branch officers, when there was some discussion of what ‘subversion’ was.
It was pointed out that several Special Branch Annual Reports said SWP were not really a threat, he responded that the Security Service certainly saw them as subversive.
BLAIR PEACH
After anti-fascist Blair Peach was killed by police on a demonstration in April 1979, a police internal investigation identified the officers reponsible, yet none face any charges and the report remained secret. There was a concerted public campaign for truth and justice. As with so many similar justice campaigns, it was spied on by undercover police.
Moss maintained that the main reason for gathering intelligence on the Friends of Blair Peach was the potential risk to public order.
“The culmination of the virulent anti-fascist demonstrations was the death of the Anti-Nazi League supporter Blair Peach and the subsequent campaign against Police.”
Moss admitted that this was “unfortunately phrased” and came from “a rather defensive mindset”.
Barr pointed out that in his own witness statement, Moss had referred to “the SWP piggybacking on to Blair Peach’s death”.
As Peach was an SWP member, Barr asked “wouldn’t it be fairer to recognise that Blair Peach was one of their own?” and further enquired:
“Would you accept that this was a justice campaign which ultimately did secure some justice?
Moss replied:
“I would.”
Moss said the SDS never received any requests for intelligence on the Blair Peach campaign, or any other similar justice campaign. This didn’t stop them from indiscriminately hoovering it up anyway.
THE NATIONAL FRONT
The SDS Annual Report for 1980 shows that the counter demonstrations organised against the fascist National Front were a major theme when Moss was Head of SDS. He claimed there was
“always a matter of debate within the police service how far the police should go to facilitate free speech.”
Moss was of the opinion that “it was the Left that caused the disorder in those circumstances” – and in his dubious logic, he suggested they should be banned from demonstrating:
“So what I’m saying, in rather a lengthy way, is, if the National Front had just been allowed to demonstrate and the left wing hadn’t turned up, there probably wouldn’t have been any disorder, in my opinion.”
Barr asked:
“What would have happened if the left and right had been allowed to appear without a police presence?”
Moss was sure:
“Oh, it would have been mayhem.”
RELATIONSHIPS
Almost all of the officers who were deployed undercover were married, yet their cover identities were of single men. Moss said it never crossed his mind that this might increase the risk of sexual activity occurring.
Was there not a risk of undercovers forming such relationships to protect them from suspicion and enhance their cover stories? In Moss’s view, this would have been such a “silly thing to do” that they wouldn’t have contemplated it, so he never felt the need to give them any advice about this.
We heard about the conversations Moss had with his officers when he met them at the unit’s safe houses (twice a week) – to check in about their welfare and their work. They were able to bring up any issues and discuss anything they wanted. However it seems that Moss never brought up the issue of sexual relationships with them.
We also heard about some significant contradictions in how the SDS dealt with relationship issues. ‘Jim Pickford’ (officer HN300) confessed to falling in love with an activist (who he later married), and was removed from the SDS in the 1970s.
We’d heard earlier about Moss’s feelings about a Special Branch officer who was known to have been unfaithful to his wife – by indulging in an affair with a civilian colleague in New Scotland Yard – who he blocked from joining the unit.
However, when an officer already inside the unit (‘Paul Gray’, HN126) decided to live with his affair partner, another police officer, in the Met’s married quarters, Moss didn’t have a problem with it.
He went so far as to pay a personal visit to the wronged wife of this officer, presumably to put pressure on to keep her quiet, as she’d threatened (in an anonymous letter) to spill the beans about the entire operation of the ‘Hairies’, as the spycops were known.
We heard more about ‘Phil Cooper’ (HN155), and his wife. Moss said he “did not treat her well”, and upon questioning, admitted that there was some kind of domestic abuse going on, and possible violence.
Did that not give him concerns about Cooper’s suitability as an SDS officer?
“It probably should have done – if it was physical, but I can’t remember if it was physical or mental, if I can use that word. He was a larger-than-life-character.”
That chilling apology for domestic abuse ended Day 4 of the current hearings.
Transcript and video of the day’s hearing (Elizabeth Leicester on screen, Barry Moss audio only)
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The Metropolitan Police’s political ‘spycops’ unit should have been disbanded 50 years ago, its activity was a waste of time and its intrusiveness would have caused outrage if revealed, a public inquiry has found.
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