Hunt saboteurs running among fox hounds. Pic: Andrew Testa

At the Undercover Policing Inquiry, Monday 9 December 2024 was devoted to the evidence of two witnesses, ‘Callum’ and ‘Walter’, who had been involved in hunt saboteur activity in the 1980s.

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

RECAP

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

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

Click here for the day’s page on the Inquiry website which should have video, transcripts and written evidence.

‘WALTER’

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

After hearing from ‘Callum’ in the morning, the Inquiry took evidence from another hunt saboteur, ‘Walter’, in the afternoon. His voice was modulated to disguise it.

Walter has provided the Inquiry with a lengthy witness statement and 60 exhibits. Despite the Inquiry’s stated policy of publishing documents as soon as a witness gives evidence, and despite it being months since he gave evidence, at the time of writing Walter’s documents are still unpublished.

Junior Counsel Rachel Naylor asked him questions on behalf of the Inquiry.

Walter said he was brought up to care about animals, and to side with the underdog. He recalls attending some meetings in Brighton and learning about the cruelty being done to wild animals by hunting them.

He first went hunt sabbing in 1984 and moved to Lewisham, in South London, the following year. He has been active in a number of different local hunt sab groups over the years, including the Brixton hunt sab group.

Asked about ‘non-violent direct action’, he explained that he means intervening in some way to keep the dogs away from whichever wild animal is being hunted at the time, and help it to escape. He emphasised that sabs would avoid physical confrontation whenever possible. They would use self-defence when it was the ‘only option’.

THE HUNT SABOTEURS ASSOCIATION

As well as local sab groups, he also played an active part in the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA), a national organisation that has existed since 1963. It has always held Annual General Meetings, had an (unpaid) executive committee, and – as even spycop Bob Lambert admitted – had been ‘entirely lawful’ in pursuit of its aims: to promote the use of non-violent direct action to protect wildlife, and lobby for legal change.

The HSA relies on donations from the public, and most local sab groups are self-funded. The HSA’s magazine, Howl, comes out several times a year and is sent to individual subscribers and local groups. HSA membership was and is open to everyone opposed to hunting, not just those actively engaged in sabbing.

TACTICS

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

The HSA have always published booklets of tactics that could be used to sabotage different types of hunting. Walter provided the Inquiry with a copy of the 1988 edition [UCPI 0000037140].

Many of these tactics involved using things that would put the hounds off the scent of the animal they were chasing – for example: spray bottles of diluted citronella essential oil, things like ‘Anti-Mate’ (an aerosol spray designed to deter the unwanted attention of male dogs), and ‘scent dullers’.

In the early 1980s some sabs experimented with using dried blood to set false trails, or ‘drags’. Sabs also carried hunting horns and whistles, and used calls to distract or misdirect the hounds.

Walter listed some other items that would be used – for example things to tie up gates and slow down the hunters, CB radios (so the sabs could communicate with each other – there were no mobile phones!).

He explained that some of the tools listed – including ‘rookies’, rook scarers – would only be used in limited circumstances. The sabs took care not to do anything that would scare or harm the horses and hounds. The booklet advised hunt sabs to follow the Countryside Code at all times.

It also recommended that sabs:

‘chat to supporters – do not antagonise them… Avoid tactics which do not directly help the hunted animal, such as interfering with the supporters’ cars, etc’.

Walter thinks that was to avoid any ‘flashpoints’ being created, recalling that:

‘sometimes just our presence could be seen as provocative to the hunt’s people’.

The booklet suggests that it’s best to be polite towards the police – ‘annoying them does not help’ – but always take a note of their numbers.

It advises keeping together and walking away if confronted by the hunt’s heavies:

‘running only encourages them (it probably reminds them of the chase!)’

He considered self defence to be acceptable, and believed that you should do whatever you needed to do to get out of a situation safely.

We learnt that ‘pre-beating’ and ‘pre-spraying’ referred to other tactics adopted by sabs, to either encourage wild animals to leave an area before the hunt began, or to lay scents that would distract the dogs when they showed up.

According to Walter, sometimes a press release would go out, for example before the start of the hunting season or before a big event in the calendar (like the Boxing Day meets), but sab groups didn’t usually advertise their regular actions, just report on them afterwards.

As a broad and lawful organisation, there was little in the way of security precautions. In those days the office was usually in someone’s house. Walter admitted:

‘It was very lax, to be honest’

REPORTING ON THE SABS

Much of the hearing was spent examining secret police reports. As we’ve seen in so many other hearings, undercover officers frequently exaggerated activity in order to make it sound like they were spying on serious criminal plotting.

Walter had been reported on by several spycops. One them, HN87 ‘John Lipscomb’ (known as ‘Hippy John’), said that Walter was wary of speaking openly on the phone, and often used public phone boxes. Walter explained that this wasn’t just to protect him, it was sometimes because of the risks faced by people in the hunting community who shared information with him.

Spycop HN10 Bob Lambert aka ‘Bob Robinson’ whilr undercover

Another of the spycops, HN10 Bob Lambert, reported [MPS-0740065] in 1987 that ‘sixteen Animal Liberation Front (ALF) activists’ had met at someone’s home in Kent on 25 January. This report claimed that ‘all present enjoy a dual role’, and that as well as being ‘leading members’ of various local sab groups, are involved in a ‘criminal campaign’.

Walter flatly rejected the suggestion that he was an ALF activist.

According to Lambert’s report, the HSA was virtually bankrupt at this time and those present agreed that its only useful purpose was ‘in terms of publicity’. Walter says that in those (pre-internet) days the organisation served a vital function in terms of communication between the different local groups.

There was mention of a new ‘South East Anti-Hunt Alliance’ being formed. Why was a ‘regional alliance’ needed? Walter said maybe there were ‘some local politics at play there’.

It’s reported that the sabs were planning to combine forces for a ‘joint hit’ on the ‘infamous Crawley and Horsham Hunt’, as a way to counter the increasing violence of its hired heavies. The date of this coordinated action (28 February 1987) would only be communicated by word of mouth, so the hunt and police were taken by surprise.

Walter is clear that entering into pitched battles is not what sabbing was about, although in the case of this, known as ‘the most volatile hunt in the South’, sabs had to be ready to defend themselves.

In this report Lambert admitted that however ‘determined’ the sabs are, they

‘are unlikely ever to initiate violence, and, secretly, would be extremely pleased to encounter no opposition on the day in question’

In the report Lambert submitted after the event it is clear that there was no violence on the day. Walter recalls that the sabs were all kept away from the hunt by the police (who deployed a roadblock and even a helicopter against the sabs’ convoy of vehicles).

In another report [MPS-0740567], HN87 John Lipscomb alleges that Walter has drawn up a list of names and phone numbers of three individuals attached to the British Field Sports Society and distributed this to other animal rights activists ‘for special attention’. Walter says this is simply not true. He was ‘surprised’ to see this allegation amongst the material disclosed to him by the Inquiry.

The report specifies what is meant by ‘special attention’:

‘making abusive telephone calls, sending unsolicited mail and in some instances, causing criminal damage to property’

Walter recalls that this went both ways – hunt supporters often did these things to hunt sab groups.

THE LEGENDARY BRIXTON HUNT SABS

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

Walter was involved with the Brixton hunt sab group from 1992-1997. He remembers them as ‘legendary’.

It’s clear that they successfully created a legend about themselves and their reputation often went before them. He says they were effective and ‘tactically aware’ – they tried to get to the hounds – rather than just trouble-makers.

The Inquiry has already heard from Brixton hunt sab ‘AFJ’ that the group didn’t ‘proactively pursue’ violence, but were prepared to deal with it if it erupted. Walter says that’s a fair description, the Brixton sabs were ‘robust’.

According to another of the spycops, HN2 Andy Coles, the Brixton group had a ‘fearsome reputation for being violent’. Walter says they weren’t necessarily violent but they did have ‘a fearsome reputation’ and that was that they were ‘not to be messed with’.

Coles has also accused the HSA of being a public order problem and involved in criminality. Walter strongly rejected this suggestion.

(We have illustrated this report with photographs by renowned documentary photographer Andrew Testa, who spent time in the field with the Brixton sab group.)

HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ also reported on hunt sabs in this period, and mentioned confrontations taking place between the ‘harder end’ of the movement and terriermen.

Walter says that there was a mixture of people involved in hunt sabbing. Terriermen considered that they had a ‘carte blanche’ to do what they liked to sabs (and foxes) and the police used to turn a blind eye.

Walter says that the people he knew were prepared to defend themselves, but did not go out looking for violence:

‘at the end of the day they’re there to save the fox’

He recalls ‘running around in fields all day’, getting wet and covered in mud, and points out that nobody joined hunt sab groups and went through all that just in the hope of a punch-up.

DID HUNT SABBING OFFER A ‘GATEWAY’ TO THE ALF?

The Inquiry moved on to examine the relationship between hunt sabs and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in more detail.

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

In one report [MPS-0742170] Lambert has written about an incendiary attack on the home of a prominent member of the Crawley and Horsham hunt, and claimed that all such criminal actions against hunters were the work of hunt sabs, even if carried out under the name of the ALF or the ‘Anti Hunt Militia’.

Walter remembers seeing this attack reported in the media at the time (December 1986). He had no idea who was responsible, and doesn’t see how Bob Lambert could have known either.

This same incident is also mentioned in the other 1987 Lambert report we saw earlier [MPS-0740065]. It contains the names of two individuals who Lambert suspects of being involved. According to him, they were keen to see more actions of this kind, and circulated the addresses of other possible targets. One of the hunt’s heavies is said to be considered a ‘prime target for some form of criminal damage’.

However, Walter was at this meeting, and says he was not aware of people talking about targeting this man’s home address, and if he had, ‘would not have been comfortable’ it.

He goes on to say that he doesn’t remember such addresses and details being circulated at any meeting he attended, or any discussion of committing criminal damage at the Parham racecourse used by the hunt for their ‘point to point’ races. He doesn’t know of anyone operating under the banner of the ALF.

WALTER’S HOUSE

HN87 John Lipscomb had provided a ‘pen portrait’ of Walter in an August 1988 report [MPS-0742609].

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

This describes him as ‘one of the most respected animal rights activists in South East London’, and claims he is involved in various other movements, ‘notably squatting’.

Walter isn’t sure why it says this. His house had been a squat in the past, but when he lived there it was managed by a housing association. He knew a fair few squatters, but wasn’t one himself. Again, this seems like a spycop’s exaggeration and lies to make activists seem more detached from mainstream society and acting on the fringes of the law.

Lipscomb’s report also claims that his house is ‘regarded as an open house to activists requiring accommodation’, and ‘has the potential for operating as an ALF cell on its own, as three of its occupants are active campaigners’.

Walter rejects this allegation – yes, it was a vegan household, and they sometimes hosted activists from overseas, but nobody was doing ALF actions from there.

Lipscomb also claimed [MPS-0744157] that it was ‘common practice’ for hunt sabs to give false details to the police if they were stopped or arrested, and they would often use the addresses of Walter’s house and a squat in Sudbourne Road, Brixton for this. Walter says they were generally happy for people to use their address in order to get bail, but this wasn’t as organised (with lists of names being provided to the houses) as Lipscomb alleged.

In the SDS Annual Report of 1995-96 [MPS-0728967], there’s a mention of ‘organised hunt sabotage’ and a special police unit called the Animal Rights National Index. It says the ‘penetration’ of hunt sab groups ‘continues to pay dividends’ and suggests that the intelligence gathered is useful for other police forces, as well as for identifying ALF activists.

Walter says he is aware that the SDS used these reports to try to justify their funding for the following year – this is one of the main reasons they were written. He says it was no secret that the police took an interest in hunt sabs.

HORSE AND HOUND BALL

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

The Inquiry was then told about a demo at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London, where the annual Horse and Hound Ball was being held, on 5 March 1992.

According to a report by HN2 Andy Coles [MPS-0730957], 80-100 people turned up to demonstrate their opposition to hunting. He claimed the demo had been organised by the HSA. Walter says it definitely wasn’t, as they focussed on direct action, i.e. hunt sabbing, not this kind of demo.

He says he took part in some demos at these balls but is not sure if he was at this particular one. He is surprised at the high number of people who are said to have attended. According to the report, several bags of flour were thrown towards attendees of the ball. There were some scuffles and some of the activists (including ‘Jessica’ and Andrea McGann) were arrested.

The next Coles report [MPS-0742251] is of a meeting held at the end of April to prepare for the forthcoming trial of Jessica and one other person. Besides these two defendants, another five people are listed as attending, including Walter, although he doesn’t remember being there then.

In his witness statement [UCPI 0000035074] Coles claims that the group ‘spent the evening working out how best to prepare a defence’ and discussed:

‘how to concoct matching stories of what they could claim to be eye witness testimony where they could contradict police evidence and establish both activists’ innocence of the charges’

Coles says he told the group that he hadn’t seen anything, as he’d been injured himself (hit with a police radio) so was able to avoid acting as a defence witness in the court case.

Walter points out the inconsistencies in Coles’s story – for example, if there had been a lawyer present, it’s highly unlikely that anyone would have talked about concocting false evidence, and in any case this wasn’t commonly done.

CRIMINAL INJUSTICE ACT

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

Andy Coles was arrested at a hunt sab at Good Easter in Essex, just a few weeks after the enactment of the Criminal Justice Act & Public Order Act in November 1994.

This new law criminalised a lot of sab activity – it became a criminal offence to trespass if interfering with a landowner’s activity, and an offence to fail to leave land when directed to do so.

Walter recalls that the Essex police had a reputation for being particularly ‘anti-sab’ so it was assumed that they would be keen to enforce the new Act at the earliest opportunity.

The sabs wanted to show that they planned to continue sabbing and would not be deterred by the introduction of the new crime of ‘aggravated trespass’. They anticipated violence from the hunt and obstruction from the police, and wanted to turn up in mass numbers.

We saw the ‘intelligence’ submitted by Coles after the event [MPS-0745541]. Walter doesn’t agree entirely with its contents: he says the mood was ‘expectant’ rather than ‘confrontational’, and thinks the number of sabs reported as attending (22 from Brixton plus another 350) is inaccurate.

According to the report, Walter was driving one of the Brixton sabs’ vehicles that day. Coles has also claimed that he was driving a Land Rover belonging to the group. Walter says they had a number of Land Rovers, so this is possibly true.

Walter recalls that the Brixton sabs covered their vehicles’ windows with grilles to stop them being broken by hunt supporters. Despite having this small fleet, they often had more people wanting to go out than they had spaces for.

According to the report, the Brixton sabs got out of their vehicle at some point and were arrested almost immediately, among them ‘AFJ’ (who gave evidence to the Inquiry the week after Walter). Walter says on the day ‘it was just ridiculous’, with people getting nicked as soon as they left the highway.

The report claims that two of the sabs had beaten a police officer and taken his telescopic truncheon off him. Walter says that this doesn’t sound accurate and he remembers things differently:

‘People were very much thrown by the level of aggression from the police. There wasn’t any pretence of warning going on. They had their truncheons out straight away and were hitting people all over the legs and upper body all the time. It certainly wasn’t my experience that people were singling officers out. Because ultimately they are the police. They are always going to win in those sorts of situations.’

Spycop Andy Coles was arrested that day under his false name of Andy Davey. He gave a false address (Plato Road) as well as a false false name (Chris Jones)!

Walter is asked if he knew the real Chris Jones (who worked at 56a Info-shop) at the time?

‘I may have known them but I wouldn’t have known necessarily their surname’

He recalls that the Brixton sabs faced ‘relentless police interest’, and arrests were almost a ‘daily occurrence’.

‘HIPPY JOHN’ THE SPYCOP

HN87 John Lipscomb was deployed from June 1987 to November 1990. Most of those he spied on knew him as ‘Hippy John’. He went out sabbing with Walter’s local group, and sometimes was among those from the group who slept over at Walter’s house the night before. Walter says most of those involved were in their late teens to early 20s (HN87 was in his 30s).

Asked about the impact this undercover had on his sab group, Walter recalls him putting a vehicle out of action, ‘either by ineptitude or by design’, by borrowing it to take to Cropredy Folk Festival and not topping up its oil and water.

Walter explains that ‘it was useful to have drivers’. It tended to be the older members of the group who drove, as they were more likely to have licences, and the insurance only covered over-25s.

Asked if Lipscomb just drove or also took part in sabbing, Walter replied that he thinks it was both.

The undercover boasted of sitting in a fox-hole and blocking the terriermen from reaching the fox, in order to impress Walter. It seems to have worked – Walter agrees this was a brave thing to do.

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

He says that another sab, someone from Dartford, had a very close, platonic, friendship with ‘Hippy John’ and was ‘devastated’ to discover that this man had in fact been spying on him. According to Walter, that person is now far less ‘easy going’ than he used to be, and far more suspicious of people.

Walter isn’t sure about how much time ‘Hippy John’ spent at the Sudbourne Road squat in Brixton, or how often he slept there.

Asked if he knows of Lipscomb having sexual relationships while undercover, he mentions ‘ELQ’, a woman who was in her early 20s back then. Walter says she was a ‘positive member of the group’, and a good friend of ‘Hippy John’.

Walter reached out to her in the last year for what he describes as ‘a very awkward conversation’. He was concerned that she might still have been unaware of Lipscomb’s true identity, and suspected that they may have been more than just friends. She confirmed that Lipscomb slept over at her house, but he still doesn’t know if anything more happened between them.

Walter says there were various social situations when Lipscomb ‘seemed to be with certain individuals in the group’ – mostly young women – but he doesn’t know for sure what happened between them.

He goes on to add that there were rumours about John and one particularly young woman, but he never spoke to her about these at the time. He recalls that she was very young, maybe under 16, and there were issues around taking her out sabbing, and the need for some form of parental consent.

CREEPY COLES

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

Then there’s HN2 Andy Coles, undercover as ‘Andy Davey’ but known as ‘Andy Van’ by most of the sabs.

Coles claims that he was ‘close friends’ with Walter. Walter says he struggles to recognise him from any of the numerous published pictures.

He’s aware that ‘Andy Van’ existed but only has a ‘sketchy’ recollection of him and finds it hard to think of any memories. He says the Brixton sabs were quite cliquey, and Andy was not in their clique.

He recalls hearing about Coles driving when some chickens were liberated, and the van being stopped by the police but then let go. This prompted some discussion about how lucky the activists involved were.

He says it was very rare that they ever heard about illegal activity committed by activists. He knew that Andy was the driver but not much else about his role in it. He didn’t realise that Jessica was involved in that liberation action until more recently.

He knew Jessica from around 1991 onwards. He remembers that she was friends with someone that he knew well.

Walter was asked how well he knew her in 1992-1993, and if he knew about her being in a relationship with ‘Andy Van’.

He repeated that he wasn’t in the habit of discussing people’s relationships. His clique was ‘rather insular’ and he didn’t tend to socialise much outside of it. He says he was a ‘bit aloof’ and didn’t tend to know much about anyone’s relationship status.

About Coles, he recalls that there were:

‘a number of people who basically thought he was a bit creepy and were uncomfortable around him’.

One of these was Andrea McGann.

After the Inquiry finished asking him questions, his own lawyer, James Wood KC, had a few more. In response, Walter was able to confirm that ‘Andy Van’ also used his own van for sabbing, and took other people in it. But on 19 November 1994, the date when ‘AFJ’ and Coles were both arrested, he drove a vehicle belonging to the Brixton hunt sab group.

OTHER UNDERCOVERS

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

The Inquiry also heard about HN5 John Dines, who used the cover name ‘John Barker’ (deployed 1987-1991). Walter has provided a photo that shows him at a hunt. He is able to describe his physical build and ‘statement’ haircut.

Walter doesn’t remember seeing Dines defend himself physically, but remembers that hunt supporters tended to avoid him ‘because he looked like he could defend himself’.

Walter also remembers HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ (deployed 1991-1996). He doesn’t know if Rayner or Dines drove sabs around as they were involved in other groups, not his.

Finally, he also remembers HN26 ‘Christine Green’ (deployed 1995-1999), both as a ‘fellow sab’ and as the partner of a hunt sab who was a friend of his.

He knew that she was in a relationship with Thomas Frampton (also known as Joe Tax) and recalls them turning up together. He thinks this may have been in late 1996, but isn’t certain. He remembers her asking people lots of questions:

‘She was always inquisitive.’

He described her taking an active part in sabbing as part of the West London sab group, and doesn’t think she stood out much or would have had much impact on the actions of this group.

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

‘Christine Green’ was involved in a controversial raid at Cross Hill mink farm in the New Forest in August 1998. In 2018, the Met apologised to Hampshire police for letting it go ahead and withholding details of those responsible in order to protect Green. Green, in turn, says it’s ‘scandalous’ of the Met to identify her but not the superior officers who did the things they’re apologising for.

Walter heard about ‘Bob Robinson’ – spycop HN10 Bob Lambert – many years ago, and recognised him as someone who had been sabbing. Once he’d been made aware of Lambert’s true identity, he and others quickly realised that there were likely to be other officers from the spycops units who’d infiltrated hunt sab groups.

He was surprised to learn of the extent of this police operation. He has now seen how much information about him (including details of his employment, his shift patterns etc) was collected and recorded.

He believes that he was ‘on the right side of history’ and this is ‘an outrage’; he’s angrier now than he was before.

THE BRITISH ESTABLISHMENT

The Inquiry has heard a lot about the Crawley and Horsham Hunt and how it operated, and how violent it was towards hunt sabs. Walter recalls them hiring thugs from the local rugby club to act as ‘security’ for them. He wryly noted:

‘It was open season on saboteurs’

He recalls that the senior Master of this hunt was an extremely influential member of the Establishment, a personal friend of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and a senior member of the Freemasons.

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

He knows that Thatcher took a great deal of interest in the work of Special Branch and he wants to know if she was involved in the tasking of the spycops at all. It strikes him that the hunt sabs were disrupting a favourite hobby of many of her friends.

The spying also affected Walter personally. It’s long been established that every constabulary’s Special Branch passed personal details of ‘subversives’ to secret employment blacklisting organisations. This wasn’t police upholding the law, it was police breaking the law to maximise corporate profit.

When the largest such organisation, the Economic League, was uncovered in the early 1990s, the list of people that had been blacklisted became known. Walter was shown the list by investigative journalist Paul Foot – his name was on it.

He recalls going for an interview for a librarian role in the 1980s and being asked about his views on hunting. This seemed suspicious at the time, and he has wondered since about Special Branch’s links with the hunting fraternity and their involvement in blacklisting.

He wasn’t offered the job – he says there ‘was a breakdown in trust’ and he walked out of the interview.

He goes on to say that as hunt saboteurs, they always knew that ‘two tier policing’ existed. Hunt sabs were ‘vilified by the Establishment’, frequently attacked, and routinely arrested by the police. The spycops witnessed a great deal of violence suffered by sabs and other activists and did nothing to challenge it.

He talked about the ‘disgusting’ behaviour of the police, and pays tribute to all his fellow hunt sabs, who he calls ‘the bravest, most ingenious, genuine people’.

He went on, even more strongly:

‘The injustice, the rape, and the abuse that the police carried out undercover is a disgrace, one they never thought they would have to answer for.’

Hunt Saboteurs

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

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

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

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

RECAP

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

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

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

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

EARLY LIFE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ANIMAL RIGHTS & HUNT SABBING

Saboteurs from the New Forest and Winchester protect a fox earth from the New Forest Foxhounds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q. Did you ever see a sab react?

‘Yes, I’ve responded myself.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPYCOPS – HN1 ‘MATT RAYNER’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HN26 ‘CHRISTINE GREEN’

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

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

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

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

HN2 ANDY COLES ‘ANDY DAVEY’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She says there wasn’t much emotional intimacy either:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE ANIMAL LIBERATON FRONT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE GREAT HOOKLEY FARM CHICKEN RAID

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘We thought luck was on our side.’

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

THE PRINCESS OF MONACO

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

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

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

He told her she should go.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE HORSE & HOUND BALL

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

Spycop ‘Matt Rayner’ (left) with Paul Gravett, leafleting outside a branch of Boots

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

REACTION

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

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

Asked how it felt:

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

Jessica broke down at this point.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She began by noting:

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

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

‘because we need to know the truth.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘and he is a liar.’

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

Andy Coles as Cambridgeshire’s Deputy Police & Crime Commissioner

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

Like his former boss Bob Lambert last week, Coles stands accused of serious misconduct whilst deployed, and he has important questions to answer.

Here is a summary of the issues at stake.

INTRODUCTION

Coles was deployed into peace, animal rights and environmentalist groups in and around London from Spring 1991 to February 1995.

The Undercover Policing Inquiry has already heard from a number of people targeted by Coles about how he deceived at least one woman into a long term sexual relationship, and acquired a reputation as ‘creepy’ for his repeated, unwanted sexual advances to women.

Witnesses told the Unquiry that Coles, in his undercover role as ‘Andy Davey’, set up his own Animal Liberation Front ‘cell’ and organised a raid to on a battery chicken farm.

Like many Special Demonstration Squad officers, he is known to have been arrested in a false name, and lied to the courts.

Andy Coles while underover in 1991

In February 1995, just as his undercover deployment was ending, Coles put pen to paper and authored the Special Demonstration Squad’s Tradecraft Manual, setting out many of these abhorrent practices for future undercover officers to follow.

Like many of the most appalling officers investigated by this inquiry, he was promoted and went on to train and manage police officers, before going into politics.

The truth about Coles’ past was uncovered in May 2017, when his more famous brother, the Reverend Richard Coles, accidentally outed him by describing his brother’s undercover work in his autobiography Fathomless Riches.

Following media exposure, Coles immediately resigned as Deputy Police and Crime Commissioner for Cambridgeshire. However, he refused to resign his roles as a Conservative city councillor for Peterborough and as a school governor, and he remained in that public office until he was voted out in 2024.

He is still President of Peterborough Conservatives.

CREEPY LECH

On Thursday 12 December we heard harrowing evidence from ‘Jessica’ of how she met Andy Coles as a vulnerable and young-for-her-age 19-year-old.

She described how he would just come round to the house she shared with friends inconveniently late at night, and just sit around. She recalled discussion among the housemates: who invited him? And it turned out nobody did. Then one day he just kissed her, completely out of the blue. They were alone, watching TV:

‘he said something which made me turn to him and then he just lunged straight at me and kissed me… It was so awkward. Had he said something at any point, I would have been able to say I don’t think about you like that, but it was the shock and just the unexpectedness of it…

‘My overriding feeling was that I didn’t want to hurt his feelings… I’d like to say now that I would have slapped him. But when I think about it, even now, I still get that awful, awkward feeling. I wish it had been different. I wish that I had done something different’.

After that first kiss he would stay over, and when he did, it was in her room, in her bed. She never went to his place and didn’t know where he lived. Coles was Jessica’s first boyfriend, and she didn’t talk to her friends about him much. She was embarrassed by him: he was unpopular and awkward and a bit odd.

She says there wasn’t much emotional intimacy either:

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

Coles lied to Jessica about his age. In real life he was 32 and married. His undercover identity was that he was 28. Jessica was 19 and looked younger. Yet Coles told Jessica he was 24, and told his bosses that she was 20-25.

It never occurred to her that he was significantly older than he said he was.

She told the Inquiry:

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

Several other women have reported fending off ‘creepy’ and unwanted advances by Coles, often describing similar incidents where he ‘lunged’ at them.

His colleague and contemporary undercover officer HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ has said in his witness statement that he was aware at the time that other activists thought Coles was ‘creepy’.

Coles’s conduct, the ways he described women in his reporting at the time, and even his behaviour and statements on the issue today, all show him to be a misogynist with contempt for women.

OUTRIGHT DENIAL

Coles is unique among the undercover police known to have abused women they spied on, in that he has publicly and flatly denied that the relationship took place.

When interviewed by police under caution about his relationship with Jessica, he refused to answer questions. In February 2020 we learned that the Metropolitan Police had seen enough evidence to convince them Jessica’s complaint was credible.

In July 2023, the Met admitted that the relationship did happen, and that it should never have happened. They unreservedly apologised to Jessica, and have condemned what Andy Coles did to her as:

‘abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong…totally unacceptable and grossly inappropriate… an abuse of police power and caused significant trauma’

The Met said that if Coles were still a police officer he would have been charged with gross misconduct, the highest level of disciplinary charge which, if found guilty, usually results in instant dismissal.

However, Coles told the Peterborough Telegraph he was effectively exonerated because:

‘the Metropolitan Police has taken no further action against me’.

With each piece of evidence that shows he’s lying, Coles has chosen to double down on his denial, compounding the insult and injury to Jessica.

Andy Coles has backed himself into a corner. If he admits the truth, it won’t just be about his abuse of Jessica 30 years ago – he’d also be admitting to having lied to friends, family, colleagues and voters in Peterborough for the last few years.

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

However, lying to the Inquiry under oath is a criminal offence. Coles’ account to date has been implausible and inconsistent, and we hope that the Inquiry will use these three days of questioning to vigorously challenge his version of events.

INVENTING THE ALF

Last week the Inquiry also heard from ‘Callum’ that Coles’ claim that he ‘slogged his guts out’ to become second in command of the Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group was nonsense. There was no hierarchy, and Coles had a minor informal admin role.

He would have seen address labels when he was doing the quarterly envelope stuffing for the newsletter. That was the limit of his work. In any case, the ALF-SG was a public, wholly law abiding group. Coles basically spent three years watching Callum do legal activity.

Having apparently failed to find any bona fide ALF activity to report on, Coles decided to create some. The Inquiry heard how he called a large and bizarre meeting where he invited people to take part in an illegal action (most of them very sensibly declined). He then went on to organise a raid at Great Hookley Farm to rescue battery chickens.

He was described as ‘central to the action’. He drove people, assigned them roles and encouraged Jessica and her friend to attend. He also took photographs and wrote an article that was used to encourage people to take further, similar actions.

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

Like other undercover officers, ‘Andy Van’ would regularly drive people to and from planned demonstrations, hunt sabs and other actions where it was anticipated illegal activity would occur.

There is evidence of Coles’s involvement in numerous petty crimes, as well as lying to the police and the courts. He will have to be examined on all of these allegations over the next three days.

MISLEADING COURTS

Coles is known to have reported on meetings discussing defence strategy for criminal trials; withheld evidence from the defence; failed to report police violence against protesters that he witnessed; given the name of another activist to the police when he was arrested, and lied to the courts.

Home Office instructions expressly forbid undercover officers from being involved in anything that is likely to lead to a court being deceived. If officers do find themselves in such a situation, the Home Office unequivocally orders that they must be exposed or have their deployment ended.

However, in his post-deployment debrief Coles is quoted as as saying:

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

TRAINING AND TRADECRAFT

Perhaps the most damning evidence against Coles is the fact that he personally wrote the now infamous ‘Special Demonstration Squad ‘Tradecraft Manual’, including tips on how to conduct the sexual relationships that Coles now claims he never had.

He wrote deeply offensive instructions to undercover officers on how to assume ‘squatters rights’ over the identities of dead children for their cover and ‘establish the respiratory status of the dead person’s family, if any, and, if they were still breathing, where they were living’ in order to shore up their backstory.

Another section contains advice on having ‘fleeting and disastrous’ relationships with the opposite sex, where he notes that ‘[i]n the past emotional ties to the opposition have happened and caused all sorts of difficulties, including divorce, deception and disciplinary choices.’

The damage done to the victims of these deceitful relationships is not mentioned in his text.

As a councillor, Andy Coles promoted the Children’s Society’s ‘Seriously Awkward’ campaign to protect older teenagers from sexual exploitation even though he was a perpetrator of it when he was undercover

Coles’s career and the contents of the Tradecraft Manual are particularly significant because he is known to have gone on to train not only future SDS officers but also the first recruits to its successor organisation, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit.

This new secret police unit employed officers such ‘Rod Richardson’ who, on Coles’s instructions, stole the identity of a dead child, and Mark Kennedy and Marco Jacobs who deceived multiple women into abusive sexual relationships.

Until 2011, Coles was Head of Training for the Association of Chief Police Officers’ Terrorism and Allied Matters committee, which oversaw the deployment of Kennedy.

FURTHER CAREER

After leaving the police, Coles became a Conservative city councillor for the South Bretton and Fletton & Woodston wards of Peterborough, and the Deputy Police & Crime Commissioner for Cambridgeshire.

When the truth came out in May 2017, Coles resigned as Deputy Police & Crime Commissioner within hours. He refused to explain why.

He only admitted even having been an undercover officer a year later, when the public inquiry had named him.

He lost his council seat in the local elections in May of this year. However, he is still the President of Peterborough Conservatives.

Men who abuse their public roles to violate women should not be in positions of civic trust. Men who lie about it, doubly so. He must resign.

Claire Hildreth

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

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

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

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

RECAP

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

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

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

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

OVERVIEW

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

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

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

SPYCOPS EXAGGERATING AND LYING, AGAIN

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

Spycop ‘Matt Rayner’ (left) with Paul Gravett, leafleting outside a branch of Boots

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

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

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

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

LONDON ANIMAL ACTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

LIVE ANIMAL EXPORTS

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

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

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

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

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

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

MISOGYNIST AND LIAR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MISSING MATT

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

Spycop ‘Matt Rayner’ on a farewell visit to people he knew in northwest England with Claire Hiildreth, 1996

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CONCLUSIONS

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

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

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

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

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

Coles is scheduled for 18-20 December 2024.

Hunt Saboteurs Association vintage badge

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

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

RECAP

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

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

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

WHICH SPYCOPS

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

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

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

HUNT SABBING

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

Fox hunters’ Land Rover wth a sign saying ‘if the fox didn’t enjoy it he wouldn’t join in’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The cover of Hunt Saboteurs Association magazine Howl, issue 39, Spring 1988

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

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

LIPSCOMB’S LIES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BRIXTON HUNT SABS

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

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

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

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

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

ALF

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

POLL TAX IMPRISONMENT

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

Poll Tax protest (Pic: Dave Sinclair)

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

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

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

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

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

Poll Tax Prisoners News newsletter, September 1991

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

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

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

AFTER PRISON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HN2 ANDY COLES

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

Spycop HN2 Andy Coles at the prison release party for ‘Callum’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TACTICAL EXAGGERATION AND LIES

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

Support Animal Rights Prisoners newsletter, August 1991

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

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

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

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

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

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

Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group newsletter, autumn 1993

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

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

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

COLES’S RELATIONSHIPS

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

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

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

FAMILY INTRUSION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spycop Bob Lambert while undercover in the 1980s

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

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

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

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

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

BIZARRE BEHAVIOUR

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

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

Bob Lambert (far left) with baby son TBS at Hopefield animal sanctuary

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

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

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

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

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

LYING ABOUT POLICE & MCDONALD’S

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

Sid Nicholson, police officer in apartheid South Africa and Brixton before becoming McDonald’s head of security

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

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

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

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

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

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

UNDERESTIMATING HIMSELF

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

Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HUNT SABOTEURS

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

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

Tom Worby, murdered aged 15 near Gravesley in Cambridgeshire when a hunters’ van drove at him and dragged him along the road.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spycop Bob Lambert, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some of Lambert’s favoured tactics include:

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

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

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

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

• deflecting the question by saying something completely unrelated to it

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Barr KC at the Undercover Policing Inquiry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spycop HN11 Mike Chitty ‘Mike Blake’ at a camp in Devon protesting against government plans to kill badgers in 1986.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bob Lambert giving evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry, 2 December 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Barr KC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spycop Bob Lambert, undercover and after exposure.

INTRODUCTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE CABAL

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

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

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

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

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

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

DECEITFUL RELATIONSHIPS & FATHERING A CHILD

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

Spycop Bob Lambert ‘Bob Robinson’ and Belinda Harvey

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

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

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

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

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

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

In his witness statement he says:

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

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

When was it obvious that Bob Lambert’s identity would become known to TBS? What decisions were taken regarding the need to notify Bob Lambert’s identity to TBS before his mother pieced the truth together from press reports?

LONDON GREENPEACE

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

The grave of Mark Robert Robinson whose identity was stolen by spycop Bob Lambert

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

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

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

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

McLIBEL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MISCARRIAGES OF JUSTICE

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

The McLibel 2, Helen Steel and Dave Morris, at the Royal Courts of Justice. It was the longest trial in English history, but the court was never told that a spycop had cowritten the leaflet (Pic: Nick Cobbing)

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMMITTING CRIMES

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

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

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

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

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

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

DEBENHAMS

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

Firefighter in the wreckage of Debenham’s Luton store after 1987 timed incendiary device

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

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

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

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

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

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

INACCURATE & MISLEADING REPORTING

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PROMOTION, COMMENDATIONS & AN MBE

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

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

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

Geoff Sheppard (left) and Paul Gravett in the 1980s

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

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

RECAP

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

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

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

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

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

BACKGROUND

Spycop HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ while undercover, February 1994

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DIFFERENT GROUPS, COMMON PURPOSE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

IMAGINARY HIERARCHY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sheppard rebuffed the whole thing.

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

LONDON BOOTS ACTION GROUP

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

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

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

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

It described a peaceful demonstration and then:

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

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

Spycop HN1 ‘Matt Rayner’ leafleting at an anti-vivisection protest outside a branch of Boot’s

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

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

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

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

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

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

HIDDEN TREASURER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SPYCOPS PASSING OFF THEIR WORK AS HIS

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

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

Sheppard apologetically responded:

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

Asked why Rayner would have said this, Sheppard said:

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

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

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

Sheppard was categorical in his response:

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

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

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

THE OFFICERS

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

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

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

JOHN DINES & WRONGFUL ARREST

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

They never socialised together and:

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

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

Sheppard described his presence:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spycop HN5 John Dines ‘John Barker’ while undercover

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

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

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

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

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

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

ANDY COLES

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sheppard rejects this outright.

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

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

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

MATT RAYNER

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sheppard called it out as false:

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

Sheppard said Rayner visited his home a couple of times.

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

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

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

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

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

SPYCOP FACILITATING CRIME

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

SDS officer John Dines whilst undercover as John Barker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BACK TO ACTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

INCENDIARY ALLEGATIONS

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

The real Matthew Rayner in his father’s arms. He died of leukaemia aged four, and spycop HN1 stole his identity

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

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

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

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

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

SHOTGUN

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

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

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

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

1995 ARREST

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

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

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

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

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

The cover of Arkangel issue 8, 1992

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

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

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

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

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

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