Elizabeth Leicester (former member of the Workers Revolutionary Party) Barry Moss (undercover officer 1968, manager 1980-82)
Today was the second day of live witness hearings in the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s current phase examining managers of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) 1968-82.
The first testimony came from Liz Leicester, a former member of the Workers Revolutionary Party.
We also heard the testimony of a central figure in the spycops scandal, Barry Moss, who was an undercover officer in 1968 and then a senior officer responsible for the SDS between 1980 and 1982.
He went on to be Commander of Special Branch during the time that undercover officer Peter Francis was deployed against the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence’s, and several officers under his management had sexual relationships whilst undercover. Frustratingly, questions today were limited to the Tranche 1 era – 1968-82 – by the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting.
Elizabeth Leicester (former member of the Workers Revolutionary Party)
Dad’s Army actor Clive Dunn was among the thespian members of the Workers Revolutionary Party in the 1970s
Leicester lived at White Meadow (aka The Red House), the WRP’s training centre in Derbyshire, between 1975-1978. Her former husband and WRP comrade Roy Battersby was a film director, and also a prominent member of the party.
We heard about Leicester’s involvement in the SLL – she worked in its Clapham office, on its paper, the ‘Workers Press’. Her and her husband were both part of the outer London branch. It was an unusual branch: is well known that Corin and Vanessa Redgrave were members but other prominent actors such as Clive Dunn, Spike Milligan [MPS-0747833] and Frances de la Tour were also involved.
Leicester said the open aim of the WRP was to establish a socialist state. It had a chain of bookshops and a film production company. Like yesterday’s witness Lindsay German, Leicester said that the WRP did not envision themselves being a vanguardist organisation – it was up to the majority of the working class to have a revolution.
She described the many strikes of the 70s, a “real upsurge of workplace democracy” – and made it clear that “we worked as genuine trade unionists” – rather than covertly infiltrating those unions. While they were inspired by the Russian revolution, the WRP used constitutional, non-violent and lawful means to advance their aims.
Amusingly, part of the WRP election manifesto was read out, with an unfortunate slip-up by the Inquiry’s lawyer – who accidentally said ‘conservative’ instead of ‘communist'(!)
WHITE MEADOW
White Meadow, aka The Red House. The WRP’s training centre in the 1970s
Initially purchased by the actor Corin Redgrave supposedly as a “drama and arts centre”. Leicester is asked whether that was ever its real purpose – or was it always going to be a college of Marxist education? She said that the aim was to protect it from adverse attention from fascists – and not to alarm the locals.
A police raid took place at White Meadow on 27th September 1975. This seems to have resulted from a meeting between The Observer Newspaper and Special Branch officers a couple of days previously [UCPI0000034744]. Leicester also recalled that an aerial photo appeared on the front on the Daily Telegraph – presenting the WRP as a serious threat to the public. The WRP sued the editor of The Observer for libel.
A seven-page Special Branch report probably written by ‘Michael Scott‘ (officer HN298, 1971-76) [UCPI0000012240] gives many details on the White Meadow Centre. Dated 25 February 1976, the report describes the founding of White Meadow the previous summer. It also claimed 900 students had attended the centre in the previous six months. Leicester said that the figure was massively exaggerated.
Additionally, the report lists several financial costs associated with the centre. Leicester says there is no way an undercover could have gleaned that information by attending the centre – and suggest the intelligence might have come from ‘Peter Collins‘ (officer HN303, 1973-77) who also infiltrated the party.
SECURITY MEASURES
Understandably, after the police raid, security measures were increased. Leicester and Battersby searched students on entrance to the centre after the police raid. They also worried about electronic surveillance and found many listening devices. During a summer camp set up by the SLL, there was a concern about a police raid. For security Leicester says she took the membership and financial docs to London with her.
Leicester said the measures were to guard against both state and fascist infiltration. Some of the students who attended their centre were from Greece, Portugal and Spain all of which had fascist dictatorships in the early 1970s.
CONCLUSION
The Special Branch report also listed the subjects taught. As you would expect, these revolved around classic Marxist texts. Leicester jokingly wondered how the undercover got on with “Lenin, Vol. 38 – not an easy read!”
Leicester said it was outrageous that her family home – and two children – were spied upon. The WRP were not a public order threat – and the police knew that – and they were spied upon anyway.
She notes that ‘Michael Scott’ (HN298), whose time at White Meadows was described by a senior officer as ‘his swan song’, was ordered not to go there but went anyway. He could have dropped out of attending without raising any suspicion, raising a glaring question Leicester asked aloud:
“So why did he choose to go there?”
Leicester finished by saying that it’s a shame that the WRP are not core participants at the Inquiry, and that Collins’ infiltration is not being investigated more. Former WRP members don’t have the full disclosure they deserve.
Barry Moss (undercover officer 1968, manager 1980-82)
BACKGROUND
Barry Moss was one of the first undercovers of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), deployed for three months in 1968. He used the cover name ‘Barry Morris’. This period was covered in his first witness statement.
On leaving the SDS he took part in the accelerated promotion scheme, moving around all the main Special Branch squads. He also spent time outside of Special Branch in CID before returning in February 1980 to become Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) for the SDS, where he remained for a year before being promoted to Superintendent of ‘S Squad’ with oversight of the SDS.
After a period (1990-1991) as a uniformed Commander with responsibility for North East London, he became a Commander of Special Branch. In 1995 he was Commander of Operations which included responsibility for the SDS. In 1996 he became overall head of Special Branch until he retired in 1999. He helped establish the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, the second major spycops unit after the SDS.
In his capacity as head of Special Branch, Moss gave evidence to the Ellison Inquiry into police corruption surrounding the murder of Stephen Lawrence. He told Ellison that he had no knowledge of the workings of the SDS, a claim that, given his extensive career with the unit, cannot possibly be true.
However, the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, has refused to allow questions about this later period in this evidence, which deals only with his role as an SDS DCI (in the Inquiry’s Tranche 1 Phase 3 period, ie 1968-82).
LEGALITY OF UNDERCOVER POLICING
David Barr QC
The evidence began with David Barr, Counsel to the Inquiry, diving straight into issues raised in the opening statement of Charlotte Kilroy, QC, on behalf of women deceived into relationships by spycops.
Barr wanted to know about the training Moss had received – any on race or sexual equality, or on human rights more generally? None.
What about the powers of entry which police officers had? Moss received some training on this at the beginning of his police career and later while with CID.
Barr sought to explore what grasp a senior commander such as Moss had of basic policing principles. Moss struggled quite a bit to answer on this. There was no sense he had ever given much thought to the reasons for doing things, particularly their necessity or purpose, let alone their lawfulness.
The complete lack of training or guidance given to managers and undercover officers was a recurring theme throughout the day, as was an utter disrespect for, and lack of interest in, the law. It was only from what he had picked up from the Inquiry that he realised they had been breaking the law.
Barr looked at intelligence reports Moss had authored as an undercover officer, including a meeting of Maoists in a private home. Moss admitted he was not given any guidance on the legality of entering a home without a warrant.
“I think my understanding of the rules in normal work would have been fairly clear. I had no idea that this may have been illegal, as I’ve seen from Ms Kilroy’s submission earlier to this Inquiry.
“We were there to garner information (…) it might have been illegal in one way or another, I did not think of it.”
When pressed, Moss admitted there was no consideration given to its legality at all.
INTERPRETING REPORTS & OTHER MATERIALS
The Inquiry also addressed time Moss spent serving with C Squad, the part of the Met’s Special Branch that dealt with left wing activists.
Diane Langford’s Special Branch Registry File index
He was able to say C meant Confidential, S was Secret and SP was Secret ‘Pink’ – meaning material accessible to anyone in Special Branch. He also described a further category, Secret ‘Green’, for top secret material.
He admitted that while at C Squad he had written several threat assessments on demonstrations and described the process by which these were constructed. Asked if he could tell if intelligence reports feeding into the assessment came from the SDS, he replied:
“Yes, the preamble usually gave an indication that it came from SDS, if you understood the system.”
When Barr returned to this point later on, Moss took him through how the intelligence gathered – such as lists of members – fed into constructing a threat assessment. If a group or branch was organising a demonstration, the starting basis was how many people were they, what sort of people were they and what links did they have to bring in other groups or branches which would bring in numbers.
Barr also had Moss explore the SDS’s relationship with C Squad, the part of Special Branch which oversaw operations against left wing groups.
From Moss’ evidence it is clear that C Squad was very important in terms of setting the agenda for the SDS. This included guidance on which groups should be targeted. Moss confirmed that C Squad was as a key ‘customer’ of SDS intelligence, and the main conduit for passing SDS reports on to the Security Service.
There was no regular contact with C Squad, but there did not need to be as, given their long relationship, the SDS was pretty much producing what they wanted anyway. Knowing what to report as an SDS officer was developed for the most part through having been an officer in the wider Special Branch.
MANAGING THE SDS
Moss took over from Mike Ferguson (a former undercover himself) as Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) in what appears to have been an abrupt transition. He received no handover from Ferguson and had to find his own way. He learned on the job, reading reports by undercovers, and relied heavily on his deputy, Detective Inspector Trevor Butler, who had also been deputy under Ferguson, and who Moss described at one point as a “mentor”.
He also relied heavily on his brief time as an undercover, 12 years previously. Asked whether he knew about misbehaviour by a number of previous undercovers, he denied knowing anything other than that Rick Clark had been exposed.
LITTLE CHANGE
Mostly Moss continued with practices that were already in place. The only change of note is that he considered the unit had too much coverage of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and when he became manager he directed a newly deployed undercover (‘Malcolm Shearing‘, officer HN19) to look at a different milieu.
He accepted it was up to him to review the justification of deployments but it was hard, because undercovers were deeply entrenched in groups and difficult to move around. He gave very little consideration to the legality or justification, or alternative ways of gathering the intelligence. As far as he was concerned the system he inherited was a good one:
“The SDS already existed, so why not use it?”
He did not assess the level of intrusion against what was actually produced. As far as he was concerned, it all served some purpose or another.
Asked if operational security was of paramount importance he replied:
“Yes, no other organisation in the country, or even in the world was doing what we were doing.”
This is ironic, given the extensive propaganda criticising political policing in Eastern Bloc countries. There were clearly many agencies doing exactly what they were doing, in dictatorships all over the world.
Socialist Worker, Queen’s silver jubilee edition, June 1977
He was firm that the primary reason for the SDS was to gather intelligence on public order issues, and the intelligence for the Security Service was ‘ancillary’, although he belied some of his points on public order by admitting that putting an undercover into the anarchist newspaper Freedom Press would have been a stepping stone to get to another group.
INTRUSIVE REPORTING
Barr took Moss through a number of reports that he had signed off, and was responsible for as head of the unit.
His response was a mixture of not remembering the details, shifting the responsibility to others – whether individual undercover officers he was overseeing, or the ‘customers’ of the SDS – C Squad, A8 (the Met department delaing with public order) and the Security Service.
Moss did not compile or assess reports, but did sign them off – well, sometimes at least. The reports were disseminated as C squad saw fit, he had no influence on that. The SDS approach was to hoover up as much intelligence as possible, which was to be considered and analysed by others.
In a few, very few, cases (such as a 1980 report on an individual who had just joined the SWP that included his job at the General Post Office, his address and bank account, the fact that he was gay and was an avid reader of Gay News), Moss reluctantly agreed that with hindsight he should have been more cautious in signing it off, as some reporting was not appropriate; but hey, those were different times.
Barr then pulled up a long report dated August 1980, about a woman, her activities, relationships, where she lived, and with whom, Barr read out a long quote:
“In the last week [she] has intimated that she wishes to fall pregnant again, and for this purpose has ceased to take ‘the pill’ on a regular basis. She is however, not quite sure at the present as to who will sire this latest socialist offspring.”
Discussing her political involvement the report says that such:
“would not include an interest in Irish orientated groups … as her main interest, culturally, politically and personally is with the black races and persons of similar ethnic origins”.
Barr asked Moss:
“You signed it, so you would have read it?”
Moss replied:
“Yes.”
And he did think the content was relevant, because this individual would probably ‘settle down’ and be less active in the ‘ultra left’ if she had another child – adding sexism to his racism.
Barr pressed on:
“Did you consider the tone appropriate?”
Moss started stuttering:
“I — I — I thought one of the sentences was — was a bit odd, and I’m not sure I’d — in — in today’s light — I haven’t got it in front of me any more — “
Although Moss said he understood that the tone of this report would be unacceptable now, he was very reluctant to accept that the extraordinary level of detail was inappropriate – insisting that such details were of relevance to the Security Service, and therefore he would pass them on.
STEALING DEAD CHILDREN’S IDENTITIES
Moss said that at the time, he didn’t consider if using the birth certificate of dead children was lawful or not, but he did not see any other way for the undercovers to obtain documents in their cover names. He left it to his officers to create their fake identities, saying he wasn’t personally involved in this himself.
Moss accepted there was a risk, as Richard Clark (officer HN297) had been confronted with the death certificate of Rick Gibson, the dead child whose identity he’d stolen. However he said he thought “the chances of it happening again were probably remote”, because this had only happened once.
FAR RIGHT
The far right were not infiltrated in the same way as the left wing groups.
The SDS did not target them, something Moss says he and Butler discussed, due to a policy decision from a higher level – “because they were too violent, and we were concerned what the officer may have to do to prove his credentials”.
RELATIONSHIP WITH THE SECURITY SERVICE
Moss describes a cordial, good relationship between the Special Demonstration Squad and the Security Service under his management. They had meetings every few months and they appeared to be genuinely grateful for the intelligence supplied, particularly the intelligence on the SWP who in the Security Service’s mind had replaced the Communist Party of Great Britain as the main subversive group. He wanted to be as helpful to the Security Service as possible, provided it did not cut across the public order mandate of the SDS.
In these hearings, and earlier ones, we had heard there was almost no formal training or guidance for undercover officers, but today Barr brought out a syllabus from 1979, for a Special Branch training course that ran over three weeks.
Later in his career Moss held responsibility for organising these courses for Special Branch officers from all over the country, which ran parallel with courses by the Security Service for their staff. In conjunction, they would provide lecturers for a number of topics.
He supposed that the Security Service would have liked to have even more influence over the SDS than they did, saying:
“if we could accede to their requests without detriment to ourselves, then we would oblige them… it wasn’t quite a two way flow of information – we probably gave them more than they gave us”.
Asked if undercover officers took risks in order to gather intelligence for the Security Service, he said he left it to his officers to judge whether the risk was worth it – the priority was to maintain their cover in the group. Much of the communication with the Security Service was mediated by C Squad.
The names of the groups being infiltrated were given to the Security Service. Moss at first claimed that the officers’ cover names would not have been shared, then admitted that this may have happened, claiming their real names certainly weren’t though.
SUBVERSION
Discussion of the Security Service led to a long and technical discussion about the definition of ‘subversion’. It was clear that Moss had given no serious thought to what it meant, and made a lot of assumptions.
The nearest he had to any training on this was during the Security Service induction session for junior Special Branch officers, when there was some discussion of what ‘subversion’ was.
It was pointed out that several Special Branch Annual Reports said SWP were not really a threat, he responded that the Security Service certainly saw them as subversive.
BLAIR PEACH
After anti-fascist Blair Peach was killed by police on a demonstration in April 1979, a police internal investigation identified the officers reponsible, yet none face any charges and the report remained secret. There was a concerted public campaign for truth and justice. As with so many similar justice campaigns, it was spied on by undercover police.
Moss maintained that the main reason for gathering intelligence on the Friends of Blair Peach was the potential risk to public order.
“The culmination of the virulent anti-fascist demonstrations was the death of the Anti-Nazi League supporter Blair Peach and the subsequent campaign against Police.”
Moss admitted that this was “unfortunately phrased” and came from “a rather defensive mindset”.
Barr pointed out that in his own witness statement, Moss had referred to “the SWP piggybacking on to Blair Peach’s death”.
As Peach was an SWP member, Barr asked “wouldn’t it be fairer to recognise that Blair Peach was one of their own?” and further enquired:
“Would you accept that this was a justice campaign which ultimately did secure some justice?
Moss replied:
“I would.”
Moss said the SDS never received any requests for intelligence on the Blair Peach campaign, or any other similar justice campaign. This didn’t stop them from indiscriminately hoovering it up anyway.
THE NATIONAL FRONT
The SDS Annual Report for 1980 shows that the counter demonstrations organised against the fascist National Front were a major theme when Moss was Head of SDS. He claimed there was
“always a matter of debate within the police service how far the police should go to facilitate free speech.”
Moss was of the opinion that “it was the Left that caused the disorder in those circumstances” – and in his dubious logic, he suggested they should be banned from demonstrating:
“So what I’m saying, in rather a lengthy way, is, if the National Front had just been allowed to demonstrate and the left wing hadn’t turned up, there probably wouldn’t have been any disorder, in my opinion.”
Barr asked:
“What would have happened if the left and right had been allowed to appear without a police presence?”
Moss was sure:
“Oh, it would have been mayhem.”
RELATIONSHIPS
Almost all of the officers who were deployed undercover were married, yet their cover identities were of single men. Moss said it never crossed his mind that this might increase the risk of sexual activity occurring.
Was there not a risk of undercovers forming such relationships to protect them from suspicion and enhance their cover stories? In Moss’s view, this would have been such a “silly thing to do” that they wouldn’t have contemplated it, so he never felt the need to give them any advice about this.
We heard about the conversations Moss had with his officers when he met them at the unit’s safe houses (twice a week) – to check in about their welfare and their work. They were able to bring up any issues and discuss anything they wanted. However it seems that Moss never brought up the issue of sexual relationships with them.
We also heard about some significant contradictions in how the SDS dealt with relationship issues. ‘Jim Pickford’ (officer HN300) confessed to falling in love with an activist (who he later married), and was removed from the SDS in the 1970s.
We’d heard earlier about Moss’s feelings about a Special Branch officer who was known to have been unfaithful to his wife – by indulging in an affair with a civilian colleague in New Scotland Yard – who he blocked from joining the unit.
However, when an officer already inside the unit (‘Paul Gray’, HN126) decided to live with his affair partner, another police officer, in the Met’s married quarters, Moss didn’t have a problem with it.
He went so far as to pay a personal visit to the wronged wife of this officer, presumably to put pressure on to keep her quiet, as she’d threatened (in an anonymous letter) to spill the beans about the entire operation of the ‘Hairies’, as the spycops were known.
We heard more about ‘Phil Cooper’ (HN155), and his wife. Moss said he “did not treat her well”, and upon questioning, admitted that there was some kind of domestic abuse going on, and possible violence.
Did that not give him concerns about Cooper’s suitability as an SDS officer?
“It probably should have done – if it was physical, but I can’t remember if it was physical or mental, if I can use that word. He was a larger-than-life-character.”
That chilling apology for domestic abuse ended Day 4 of the current hearings.
Transcript and video of the day’s hearing (Elizabeth Leicester on screen, Barry Moss audio only)
With the current Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings’ opening statements concluding yesterday, today saw the first day of evidential hearings. Testimony came from Dr Lindsey German, a witness who knew several undercover officers from the period covered in Tranche 1 of the Inquiry (1968-82) from her time in the Socialist Workers’ Party.
Dr Lindsey German
Dr Lindsey German was active for 30 years in the International Socialists (later the Socialist Workers’ Party or SWP). She was made a full-time student organiser in 1975, became the District Organiser for Central London in 1977 and was appointed to the Central Committee in 1979. She later helped found and lead the Stop The War Coalition.
However, today’s evidence focused only on the Inquiry’s Tranche 1 period (1968-1982). A detailed account of German’s political background can be found in her written statement to the Inquiry.
At least 24 undercover officers have spied on the SWP, recording such personal details as physical appearances, holiday plans, weddings, sexuality, and childcare arrangements.
INQUIRY OR TRIAL?
Before German’s questioning began, the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, responded to her witness statement, in which she addressed various common misconceptions and preconceptions about the SWP’s aims and tactics.
Mitting was keen to assure her that he and his team do not have any preconceived views. However, their approach to questioning, and their loaded use of the word ‘revolutionary’, showed they clearly do.
At times it seemed like German was on trial, to the extent she observed that:
“A lot of the questions this morning have been about my politics, rather than the role of the undercover police, which is the aim of the Inquiry.”
She was not put off by this, using it as an opportunity to correct the Inquiry and share her views of how a more just and democratic society could come about.
Nevertheless, the Inquiry’s hostile approach to questioning members of the public who were spied upon could put off future witnesses. This concern has been raised by a number of victims of spycops’ abuses, who do not want, and should not have to, defend themselves against the Inquiry’s preconceived views and thinly-veiled attacks.
IMPROVING DEMOCRACY
Under questioning from David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry, German talked about the aim of the SWP to replace Parliament with things like Workers Councils: “a higher version of democracy than we have now”. However, in her opinion, these revolutionary aims were never close to fruition in her time with the SWP.
Barr asked a series of questions about whether the SWP sought to “escalate” industrial disputes and “confront” fascism. He questioned German’s “critical view of the police” and the security measures taken by the SWP at their National Delegate conference [UCPI0000013228] in 1978.
German responded that a more assertive attitude by workers was the best strategy, something that had also been trade union policy, as well as the SWP. She gave context about the growth of fascism and how her relatives had fought fascism in World War Two.
She explained that the SWP’s security stemmed partly from fears of state surveillance and blacklisting – fears, that it turned out, were entirely justified – and added the threat from the far-right.
POLICE BIAS
German explained her views of police bias, in terms of crimes prosecuted and the fact that they are used as a force of repression. These views are backed up by the evidence currently before the Inquiry, which shows the police planning to attack demonstrators and treating the far-right much more favourably than the left. In her view, she confirmed, the institution of the police does not benefit the working class.
Right to Work march at the Conservative Party conference, Brighton, October 1980
Barr made a large jump from that statement to ask if that meant she thought the police were “fair game” for physical violence in the streets. He asked whether if the police outside outside Conservative Party conferences – for example those who policed the Right to Work demonstration outside the one in Brighton in 1980 – [UCPI0000015888], were fair game for protecting the elite? Was it therefore legitimate to push through their cordons?
He pressed this point several times. German calmly argued that the question implied a misconception about whether people planned violence at demonstrations. They didn’t.
We’ve already heard how the spycops of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) targeted youth organisations like SKAN at the Security Service’s direction.
German agreed the SWP was involved in SKAN, however she said that it was a broad front and ‘larger groups’ joined the fight against fascism. The SWP were a minority in that organisation.
Women’s Voice was different, it was not a broad front type organisation, it was an organisation of socialist women. While Rock Against Racism was different yet again, formed by a small group of people in reaction to racist comments made by Eric Clapton.
Barr asked if the SWP had a “surreptitious” approach to “controlling” the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). She dismissed the claim, saying the SWP was open about and localised in its approach to CND.
She did agree that the SWP wanted CND to be “more militant” – not by doing more direct action (something that CND already did, and continue to do, a lot of), but by making more links with trade unions and the working class, and being more collective.
ARMED STRUGGLE
Barr then pressed German on the SWP’s support for “the armed struggle” [UCPI0000015994], particularly in Ireland. She replied that the SWP supported the Provisional IRA’s aims but not their bombing campaigns; she could support attacks on military infrastructure but not the bombings of pubs or other targets.
We were shown another Special Branch report [UCPI0000019543] about a party held at the home of SWP organiser Chris Harman. Somebody who attended the party, a former IMG member who had lived in Belfast, allegedly ‘while somewhat the worse for drink’, spoke of being ‘trusted by’ the Provisional IRA and ‘fully sympathetic to their cause’.
Barr asked how common such views were within the SWP.
German didn’t think this report was true. This person was involved in the H blocks campaign, seeking political status for IRA prisoners, and in supporting the hunger strikers – something that enjoyed wide support at the time.
Ironically, we know that if the SWP really were directly involved with the Provisional IRA, they probably wouldn’t have been spied upon; the SDS’s 1976 Annual Report stated it was policy not to infiltrate groups directly connected with the Provisionals as this would be too dangerous for the spycops.
CONFRONTING FASCISM
After a break, Barr’s questions moved to the relationship between the SWP and the far-right. He started with events in Red Lion Square in June 1974. The fascist National Front had booked Conway Hall for a rally, and a broad range of organisations organised a counter-demonstration to stop them.
At the time German was a student at the nearby London School of Economics, a short walk away. She recalls that journey, and the huge number of police vans she saw on the way:
“I’m not surprised that somebody died on that day. It was very very heavily policed and in a very violent way”.
The police pursued demonstrators, attacking them with truncheons and even throwing some over the railings into the underpass on Theobalds Road. During charges into the crowd by mounted police, Kevin Gately, a young student from Warwick, was killed.
German said:
“We didn’t go looking for trouble, we weren’t the people who created the trouble.”
Rather, the police had put a huge operation in place because they were determined to ensure the fascist event would go ahead.
Barr mentioned Lord Scarman’s inquiry after the event, saying that he “fairly and squarely put the blame on the IMG [International Marxist Group]” who “assaulted the police in an unexpected, unprovoked and viciously violent attack”.
German disagreed: “that’s not an accurate description”, pointing out that Gately was an IMG member, and:
“they were demonstrating perfectly acceptably.”
THE BATTLE OF LEWISHAM
Anti-racist protesters, Lewisham, 13 August 1977 [Pic: Syd Shelton]
Barr next cited a report from a 1976 meeting about racism in Hackney which described how a “negress in the audience” had said that Black people in Brixton were arming themselves with “knives and coshes”.
German pointed out that the “bizarre” report should be taken with a big pinch of salt, especially as there is no other evidence of this. It was down to her (not Barr) to comment on the language used by the author, saying “even in the 70s people didn’t talk like that”.
She also reminded Barr that this was a dangerous time for socialists, as well as Black and Asian people – fascists would attack people on the tube for wearing anti-racist badges. The SWP believed that combatting racists should be done collectively, involving the trade unions and wider groups.
“We were very careful, we didn’t want this to become a kind of individual gang fight between left and right”.
Barr had brought this up because he wanted to ask German about the August 1977 events that became known as the ‘Battle of Lewisham‘, and the SWP Central Committee’s attitude towards the anti-fascist counter-demonstrations that had been planned for that day.
German was at a by-election in Birmingham at the time of the Lewisham demonstration, and was not a member of the SWP’s Central Committee until 1979. Nevertheless, she patiently explained why it was so important to oppose a fascist demonstration that had deliberately chosen to walk through a multicultural community. It was a consciously provocative and intimidating act.
Indeed, not seeking to prevent the fascists marching would have been a mistake, as the consequence of not coming out on the streets (in Lewisham or anywhere else) would be more attacks on Black people – much, much worse.
Pressed, German provided more detail on the SWP’s approach to demonstrations, explaining that the SWP had an extensive stewarding operation:
“We wanted to make sure people could get to marches safely, that they would take place in a collective, disciplined way and not descend to individual fighting. We put a lot of effort into that.”
When asked about their use of obstruction as a tactic, she explained that they would occupy the road in order to prevent fascists from marching into areas where they might cause trouble. There were more than 50 racist murders of Black and Asian people in those years and the SWP felt strongly about this issue. There should have been official recognition that the National Front marches were unacceptable.
Nobody wanted the National Front in Southall – pretty much the entire community there were very clear about not wanting the fascists in their area, yet the police went out of their way to let that rally happen in 1979. There was a huge counter-demonstration, which SWP members attended, and this is when the police killed Blair Peach, who was a member of the Party.
Eventually, the Met banned all National Front marches in 1981.
German also gave examples of successful community resistance to the National Front such as occupying the space at the top of Brick Lane to stop them selling fascist papers there, painting over racist slogans, dealing with racism in ‘low-level ‘ways in workplaces, etc.
SPYCOPS IN THE PARTY
Finally, towards the end of the morning, Barr’s questioning moved to the activities of some of the spycops themselves. German was involved in the Right To Work campaign. In 1981 she spent three weeks on a Right To Work march – as did an undercover officer using the name ‘Colin Clark’ (officer HN80, 1977-1980).
She says that Clark put himself very much at the centre of the operation – “presumably to find out as much information as he could”. He took part in most of the day to day decisions, about money for food, etc, but also important discussions such as how to avoid dangerous situations or prevent young people who joined the protest march from being arrested.
Looking back, German said:
“It’s very disturbing that he was in this position… I feel uncomfortable, it’s disquieting…I find no justification for it whatever.”
After a brief detour to ask his characteristic questions about “trouble” during that Right to Work march (spoiler: there wasn’t any), Barr cited a 1982 report [UCPI0000015888] containing details of donations (including small ones) made to the campaign. This information was meant to be confidential, but it was hoovered up by the SDS.
The Inquiry sought a better understanding of the way the campaign (and the SWP) was organised and how these donations were dealt with. There were a number of questions about the office and headquarters, about the different positions within the SWP structure, and what these levels meant in terms of access to information and involvement in decision-making.
German explained that although some people in leadership roles worked from home, they would also come in to the office. Those who worked in the office would come along to meetings and social events, trips to the pub, etc.
She remembered some of the spycops – she says they attended social events and generally kept a fairly low profile. Some, like ‘Phil Cooper’ (officer HN155, 1979-1984), although not on the SWP’s Central Committee would have had some influence over what was going on. Of most concern, though, is the level of access to information of all kinds – people’s names and personal data, Party finances, etc – that he would have had. [UCPI0000011563]
TRIPE
Barr then moved on to a series of reports from October 1977, 1979 [UCPI0000013669], 1980 [UCPI0000013961], and 1983 [UCPI0000015986], all of which mention German by name.
Blair Peach protest
TThe spycops had reported back about her appointment as a new District Organiser, and then her promotion to the SWP Central Committee and role of as ‘Women’s Organiser’. They reported on her attending a Blair Peach demo on the first anniversary of his death.
One exhibit said that the photo they had of her on file was no longer a good likeness, and requested a new one. The last detailed her new address and living arrangements.
Barr wanted German’s reaction to all of these. She described the last report as “tripe”, dismissing it as inaccurate and pointless. She said these reports represented a completely unjustified level of intrusion, and pointed out that much of the information they contained was in the public domain. Events such as the SWP National Conference at Skegness were advertised publicly.
Blair Peach was her neighbour, someone she regularly saw and spoke to. The demo where he was killed was described by someone she knew as “the most violent demonstration he’s ever been on”.
“We know that Peach was murdered by the police”.
That the spycops reported the SWP used his death “for their own ends” was a “complete disgrace”, saying more about the mindset of the undercover police and their attitudes towards those who demonstrated.
German said this Inquiry must address the “appalling way” the police treated “people who were going about perfectly legitimate political activity”.
SPYCOPS AT THE PARTY
After lunch, Barr pulled up more reports, from the Easter rallies the SWP held in Skegness in 1980 [UCPI0000014551] and 1982 [UCPI0000018180].
According to German, these weekend-long events in Skegness were part holiday/ social, part political. Many of those who attended were not party members or politically involved – some “just went there because the wanted a good time” – others accompanied their partners – many people brought their children.
These two reports contain long lists of attendees’ names (running to 50 pages). Barr pointed out the words “no trace” after many of the names – suggesting that Special Branch ran searches on all the names and this was the first time that many of these people had come to their attention. Some of them were only there as paid entertainers, comedians and the like.
German confirmed that these lists of names, as well as other documents displayed by Barr, containing internal Party statistics [UPCI0000016148], and the phone numbers of the SWP secretariat [UCPI0000016582] would have been confidential, as would the level of detail in thereport of the SWP’s 1980 National Delegate conference [UCPI0000016619].
German stated that there was no justification for this level of intrusion from the police. She concluded the police “simply wanted to put the Left in a very bad light.”
Notably, there was no such infiltration of the National Front, an obviously political decision.
Asked for her reflections on the spycops operation, she said it represented a big effort and a lot of public money for very little results.
Mitting had a few questions for her at the end of the day. He noted that electoral candidates – even the National Front – were legally permitted to hold election rallies in public buildings , to make some kind of point:
“I accept that you objected to it, but you knew that the law of the land actually provided that they were entitled to make use of these places?”
The Inquiry’s Chair then thanked her for her time, inviting her back for Tranche 2 – covering 1983-92, expected to occur in 2024 – “health and intellect permitting of course – that goes for both of us”, he laughed.
With that slightly disturbing ‘joke’, suggesting that ongoing delays to the process will continue to result in many witnesses, and perhaps even Mitting himself, being too dead, infirm or mentally incapacitated to take part, Day Four of this round of hearings came to an end.
The third day of the 2022 Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings concerning the management of the Special Demonstration Squad 1968-82 included opening statements from:
Rajiv Menon QC (representing Tariq Ali, Piers Corbyn and Ernie Tate) Dave Morris (activist, Inquiry core participant) Kirsten Heaven (representing Other Non-Police, Non-State Core Participants [through the co-ordinating group])
Summary of Evidence of ‘Madeleine’ and Julia Poynter
Rajiv Menon QC (representing Tariq Ali, Piers Corbyn and the interests of Ernie Tate)
NB: Ernie Tate sadly passed away in 2021, without receiving any meaningful disclosure from the Inquiry.
SECRET HEARINGS AND MASSIVE REDACTIONS
Rajiv Menon QC
First of all, Mr Menon spoke about the secret hearings that have been held during the last year, known as the ‘T1P4 hearings’. In his view, it is “fundamentally wrong and unfair” to conduct closed hearings as part of a so-called ‘Public Inquiry’.
The transcripts of those hearings have been heavily redacted, and we are told that this is being done “in the public interest”. Evidence was taken from five officers in T1P4, but we are not being told their real or cover names. Instead of being supplied with copies of their evidence, we have a document of ‘Unattributed Excerpts‘.
This was especially ridiculous in the case of officer HN21:
“an officer who was perfectly willing 20 years ago to speak openly about his undercover role in the BBC documentary True Spies, is unable to give evidence in open session to a Public Inquiry.”
This is someone who admitted having a sexual relationship with at least one woman, but we have not been permitted to question him or find out more about this.
It is estimated that 50% of the evidence gathered during T1P4 has been redacted, and might therefore remain secret forever. Menon repeated the request he made last year – that the Inquiry reconsider the need for such redactions, and commit to regularly reviewing decisions about disclosure, so that names and information can be made public in future if circumstances change.
POLICE VIOLENCE
Mounted police intimidate protesters, Southall,, 23 April 1979 [Pic: John Sturrock]
This secrecy was also wrong in the case of officer HN41 who is of great importance to understanding what happened at the anti-racist demonstration in Southall on 23rd April 1979, when Blair Peach was murdered by the Met’s Special Patrol Group and Tariq Ali and many others were severely beaten by police officers.
HN41 says that he was warned by senior Special Branch officers not to go with his target group “because the uniform police were going to clamp down on the demonstrations” and “management considered the dangers were more than normal”.
Mr Menon states there is no doubt uniformed police were under secret orders to use violence at anti-fascist demonstrations. Meanwhile intelligence from the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) seemed to heighten a view within the police that all anti-fascist demonstrators were subversives so fair game for police truncheons.
POLITICAL BIAS
According to DI Angus McIntosh (officer HN244), there was a “high level policy decision” not to infiltrate extreme right-wing groups. This confirms what we already knew about the prejudiced nature of SDS surveillance. Yet, given HN41’s observations, who exactly made this decision and why?
Mr Menon asks us to bear in mind that the SDS was an integral part of the secret state. Senior offices and politicians were well aware of the SDS’ existence, something borne out by the disclosure we have had.
He also lets the comments of SDS manager Geoffrey Craft (officer HN34) about “mob rule”, “lefties” and “scruffy, hairy so-and-so’s” speak for themselves, having described it as “classic ‘Reds under the Bed’ stuff with a dose of McCarthyism thrown in for good measure” [Inquiry document number MPS-0747446, not yet published on the Inquiry website].
GOOD – FOR NOTHING?
Following up on his earlier points on HN41, he addresses the claimed success of SDS in combating public disorder by asking:
“Are Red Lion Square, Grunwick, Lewisham and Southall supposed to be police ‘successes’? If so, perhaps this gives the measure of what the police were trying to achieve at the time”.
Really “scraping the justification barrel” is the suggestion that the unit’s usefulness includes working out that some groups pose no threat at all, by infiltrating them for long periods of time (which we see in many of the SDS Annual Reports).
ALTERNATIVE INTELLIGENCE GATHERING METHODS
He next looked at whether there were less harmful ways of collecting intelligence, using the case of SDS officer Roy Creamer and the anarchist scene of the late 60s/ early 70s. DI Creamer was described by noted anarchist Stuart Christie as “the Yard’s dialectician of dissent.”
Creamer was curious as to what made anarchists tick. He was the epitome of what Menon called the ‘direct approach’, as opposed to the ‘oblique approach’ developed by Conrad Dixon and the other spycops.
Instead of going undercover, he established friendly relationships with targets and talked to them. The barrister suggested the ‘direct approach’ was a proportionate and less damaging approach to the gathering of intelligence than the SDS method.
However, we at the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance strongly recommend you never talk to coppers, especially if they seem friendly!
SDS & MI5
Menon next moved to a theme of increasing importance in the Inquiry – the relationship between the SDS and the Security Service (aka MI5) [see Inquiry document MPS-0747446 when they upload it to the Inquiry site].
He emphasised the Security Service’s interest in this new unit from the moment it was founded. They recognised the Squad’s potential value as a long-term intelligence gathering operation against all those it deemed ‘subversive’. If anything;
“MI5 were the organ grinders, and SDS were the monkeys. Only the monkeys did not know to whose tune they were really dancing.”
Even Craft says that: “the Branch were the legs of the Security Service… SDS was only a development of that”, and that the SDS provided the Security Service with “a huge base of information for their vetting activity”.
His name appears in multiple SDS reports released by the Inquiry. He was active in various anarchist and environmental groups:
“I have been involved since 1974 in a range of groups and campaigns trying to encourage the public to support one another and empower themselves where they live and work, to challenge injustice, oppression and damage to the environment, and to make the world a better place for everyone.
“The various groups I have been involved in over the decades have been open and collectively-run, and engaged in the kind of public activities which the public are invited to join in or to replicate for themselves, and which are essential if humanity is to progress and survive.”
These groups challenged the government and powerful companies, as well as ruthless and unaccountable elites which were ‘subversive of society and people’s real needs.’
Morris said:
“I am proud of the many groups and campaigns I have been involved in and believe that such efforts should be supported, not undermined.”
Having noted that the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, had been furnished with an education in Trotskyism from Tariq Ali, Morris correspondingly provided Mitting with a primer on anarchism, explaining that some institutions simply cannot be reformed but must be replaced by genuine democracy.
Morris mentioned one spycop, ‘Tony Williams’ (officer HN20), who became treasurer and secretary of the London Workers Group and whose reporting was no doubt passed on to the Security Service for blacklisting purposes. Apparently the SDS told the Security Service they considered Williams’ withdrawal from the field ‘no great loss’ as he had not been ‘particularly productive’.
Morris criticised the Inquiry for continued delays and other problems to do with the publication of documents – some of which were released so late in the day that there was insufficient time for anyone to process them properly.
Morris was particularly critical of the police and the Inquiry for failing to prioritise the welfare of the spycops’ victims. He made the point that those undercover officers had a duty of care towards the public. The police’s sudden championing of privacy and human rights, when it came to applying for anonymity, was hypocritical and self-serving, and only because they themselves were now being exposed to public scrutiny.
Finally, in a slightly surreal moment, Mitting asked Morris which book he would select from his list if he could only pick one. Dave unhesitantly went for Peter Marshall’s Demanding the Impossible, although he warned that it was a “weighty tome”.
Kirsten Heaven (representing the ‘Non State Non Police Core Participants, through the coordinating group’)
In previous hearings we heard shocking evidence of what Heaven described as “an unjustifiable, unlawful, and profoundly anti-democratic system of surveillance that was fundamentally flawed”.
Managers are now in the spotlight to answer for that regime. However:
“The witness statements disclosed in this Inquiry contain a litany of denials and an apparent unwillingness to accept responsibility or admit knowledge on key decision making and events. The managers appear reluctant to give a full and honest explanation of why things went so badly wrong within the SDS in the Tranche 1 era (1968-1982), and beyond.”
Basically, if they retain a sense of loyalty to the police, it is deeply misplaced, Heaven said, referring to the recent appalling exposures:
“This is an institution which has been found to be institutionally racist, institutionally corrupt and marred by a culture of toxic masculinity, homophobia, misogyny, and sexual harassment.”
OVERSIGHT
These managers emphasised to their funders at the Home Office how robust their supervision of the undercovers was. Yet there was no code of conduct or formal training.
“Did the managers conceal these practices from their political masters or was it – as the non-state co-operating group suspect – that the cover-up went to the highest political level?”
In order to understand the problems of the SDS we must understand who controlled the unit, and the extent to which the SDS was being directed by the likes of other parts of Special Branch and the Security Service, referred to as the ‘customers’.
Worryingly, there is disclosed evidence that although they were aware of the problems, the Home Office and senior police officers all turned a blind eye. This meant there was no effective external oversight of the SDS, or of wider Special Branch.
Police detain man, Lewisham, 13 August1977
Additionally, both the Home Office and the Security Service knew that the SDS activities of the time were unlawful. This was the reason for shrouding it in secrecy, a secrecy that allowed the abuses to flourish.
As raised in other Opening Statements, a problematic definition of ‘subversion’ was used to justify reporting on pretty much anything and anyone. The Security Service was able to exercise its influence over the affairs of Special Branch to shape how the unit operated.
Senior police officers were willing to go along with this, and ignore the lack of public order benefits of these deployments. Claims that the SDS benefited and improved the police’s attitudes to public order simply don’t stand up. Heaven used the events of Red Lion Square, Southall and Lewisham as examples. The Brixton riots of 1981 demonstrated just how useless the unit when it came to predicting or preventing public disorder.
There was no real attempt to evaluate the usefulness of the unit more generally. Annual Reports were written up in order to justify its existence and ongoing funding. It was the duty of the managers “to consider the threat to freedom of speech and democratic principles posed by the SDS”, and they failed to do this.
MANAGEMENT OF THE SDS
Heaven noted that the SDS was managed loosely and wonders whether the early ‘free and easy’ style became the blueprint for the future. Despite claims of close supervision, the managers remained blind to the various sexual relationships, and the sexist banter, of these officers.
As to the standardisation of the lengths of deployments to four years, she wants to know if there was a “positive and considered managerial decision to extend all deployments well beyond twelve months”, adding:
“It is not rocket science that the longer a UCO [undercover officer] is deployed, the greater chance there is of collateral intrusion, the development of close personal ties, sexual and intimate relationships, misconduct and abuse of power and trust”.
The lack of training given to both undercover officers and their managers is concerning. The Inquiry must look at what basic police training was at the time to understand how much they knew about legal principles such as entering private property without a search warrant or conduct issues such as sexual relationships while on duty. How did the managers reconcile this with the activities of the SDS?
DODGY REPORTING
As previously evidenced, there is much reporting which is distressing and inappropriate, peppered as it is with racism and misogyny. Nobody pointed it out at the time. The SDS managers all now say that these reports were produced for others to comment on, evaluate and use.
However, these senior officers were responsible for the unit’s work, and as such have a duty to explain this reporting along with the other practices that took place under their watch.
CONCLUSION
The SDS, as an operation, was never lawful. These abuses were aided by the Home Office sanctioning and maintaining the unit’s secretive existence, leading to a “catastrophic failure of policing at the heart of British democracy”.
The way that the unit acted during this period (1968-1982) paved the way for the abuses committed later – we were told that their “abhorrent practices survived and even flourished following legal reforms.”
These written statements, from two ‘civilian witnesses’, were published in full today. The Inquiry prepared a short summary of each, and read it out loud. We prepared our own, below:
‘Madeleine’
Special Demonstration Squad officer Vince Harvey during his deployment
‘Madeleine’ was deceived into a relationship with an undercover officer known as ‘Vince Miller’ (officer HN354), who infiltrated the Walthamstow branch of the Socialist Workers Party (1976 -1979). Since then Vince’s real surname (Harvey) has been released.
It turns out that he reached the level of Superintendent before retiring from the police, and went on to a top job, National Director at the National Criminal Intelligence Service. The Undercover Research Group have published a summary of Vincent Harvey’s post-undercover career.
In her statement, ‘Madeleine’ recounted the stressful and “excruciating” nature of her live witness testimony at the Inquiry in May 2021, where she suffered “intrusive questioning”.
This was so bad that other women from ‘Category H’ suffered “such significant distress that they were unsure if they would be able to continue their participation in the Inquiry”. This raises serious questions about the treatment of witnesses, who are in effect sexual abuse survivors.
‘Madeleine’ mentioned Vince sending her a postcard at the end of 1979, after he disappeared from her life, giving her false hope about him. She now knows that this was “a cold and cynical tactic”, perpetuated on other women by other undercovers who’d disappeared in similar ways.
MANIPULATED BY THE INQUIRY
She then recounted how she’d generously acceded to the Inquiry’s request not to demand Harvey’s real name, in order to ‘protect’ one of his family members.
However, she then found out more about his long career in policing, which involved many public appearances. She was shocked to learn that while Harvey was its Director, the National Criminal Intelligence Service had responsibility for the Animal Rights National Index (a forerunner of another undercover political policing unit, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit) and the National Domestic Extremism Database:
“I think it is imperative that he is required to provide evidence relating to this role in later tranches.”
Perhaps most disturbing for ‘Madeleine’ was the revelation that Harvey had been in charge of a child sexual abuse investigation, Operation Pragada, saying she felt “physically sick” and “turned her stomach” on finding this out.
‘Madeleine’ now feels manipulated into the decision she made not to demand his real name. The Inquiry would have known about his later senior policing roles. It is a disgrace that they allowed this to happen.
INCOMPLETE RECORD OF REPORTING ON ‘MADELEINE’
Former SDS officer Vince Harvey, 1999
Madeleine has always maintained that the 23 Special Branch reports in her witness pack could not be a complete record of the reporting on her.
Having now come across a report of a meeting that took place at her home, but did not mention her name, she believes that Harvey purposefully omitted her name from the list, due to his involvement with her.
‘Madeleine’ now wants to check all 175 reports produced by Harvey – which the Inquiry has chosen not to publish – to see if they refer to events that she attended with him. All reports thought to have been authored by this officer should be disclosed.
Julia is also a former member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), and knew both ‘Madeleine’ and ‘Vince Miller’ back in the day. She has come forward and was able to collaborate her old comrade’s accounts of the time. Poynter also knew ‘Phil Cooper’ (officer HN155) who infiltrated the SWP (1979-84) after ‘Vince Miller’ had ended his deployment.
Poynter was shocked that the Inquiry held 62 reports which mentioned her name. She described her political trajectory, going from being a disillusioned Labour Party member to joining the SWP in 1975, where her “main focus was anti-racism work through my involvement with the Anti Nazi League”.
MISSED OPPORTUNITY
Poynter says that when she attended a Trade Union Conference on Undercover Policing in November 2019, she saw ‘Vince Miller’s name on a document listing all the undercovers, but did not connect this with the man she knew. If only the Inquiry had released a photo at that time, she would have been able to identify him:
“I could then have provided this evidence to the Inquiry at a much earlier date.”
Two years later, listening to the 2021 hearings, Julia realised that ‘Madeleine’ was an old friend of hers, who she had not seen for many years. She was shocked that Harvey was still maintaining that this had only been a one-night stand:
“It was clear to me at the time that it had been a significant relationship for her.”
‘PHIL COOPER’
Poynter went on to discuss her interactions with ‘Phil Cooper’, who she met through her boyfriend. Cooper and her then-partner set up Waltham Forest Anti Nuclear Campaign (WFANC) in about 1980. Cooper said in his written statement that he had not formed any significant friendships in the group.
However, Poynter recalls that:
“[her boyfriend] and Phil got on very well and were good friends. WFANC would meet at our house and Phil would attend those meetings. My memory of Phil is that he was a real laugh, very much into drinking and having a good time.”
Cooper drank heavily, and smoked weed regularly. On one occasion, she says he was so inebriated that he fell off his chair and broke it.
Poynter addressed many of the Special Branch Reports which mentioned her name. One such report describes a 1981 SWP branch meeting – a fireman contact has offered to help carry out a personal investigation, following a spate of racist attacks on Asians in the area.
According to the report:
“The SWP intend to use this information to stir up further unrest within the Asian community in Walthamstow.”
She does not accept this cynical interpretation – what’s been left out of the report is what had actually happened – in early July petrol had been poured through the door of an Asian household in the area, killing Parveen Khan (28) and her children Kamran (11), Aqsa (10) and Imran (2). She stated:
“The community were rightfully angry and we were reaching out and helping to build alliances in the community. It is offensive that the police were spying on us carrying out this work rather than spending resources identifying the murderers, who as far as I am aware have never been caught.”
The late Barbara Shaw, holding the death certificate of her son Rod Richardson whose identity was stolen by a spycop
The second day of the 2022 Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings concerning the management of the Special Demonstration Squad 1968-82 included opening statements from:
Catherine Brown (representing the Home Secretary) James Scobie QC (representing Lindsey German, ‘Mary’, & Richard Chessum) Fiona Murphy QC (representing ‘Category F’ core participants – families who discovered that the identities of their loved ones had been appropriated by the spycops to construct cover names) Charlotte Kilroy QC (representing ‘Category H’ core participants – women deceived into sexual relationships, as well as a child born as a result of one of those relationships, and one man deceived into a long term close friendship) Charlotte Kilroy QC (representing Diane Langford and ‘Madeleine’) Owen Greenhall (representing Lord Peter Hain, Ernest Rodker and Jonathan Rosenhead) Sam Jacobs (representing Celia Stubbs)
Catherine Brown (representing the Home Secretary)
A very brief appearance, just confirming that the current Home Secretary remains supportive of the Inquiry’s work.
James Scobie QC (representing Lindsey German, ‘Mary’, & Richard Chessum)
‘Mary’ – one of the women who was deceived into a relationship Richard Chessum – associated with Big Flame, Troops Out Movement and other campaigns Lindsey German – Socialist Workers Party / Stop the War campaigner.
Scobie argued that the material disclosed by the Inquiry demonstrates that:
• There was no justification for the spycops’ infiltrations on the grounds of preventing public disorder. The true purpose was political and economic. There was no legal justification and the Government knew this.
• The Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) was really part of a large data-harvesting scheme, run on behalf of MI5, targeting anyone with left-wing politics.
• ‘Public order’ was used as an excuse, to justify the unit’s ongoing existence.
• The Government was aware that these operations were targeting lawful, democratic activities.
• The intelligence gathered by the SDS was used to blacklist law-abiding members of the public and prevent them from being employed in a wide range of jobs.
He pointed out that the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has been mischaracterised in order to justify its being infiltrated (by over 24 SDS officers over the years). In fact, the ‘revolutionary change’ they advocated was democratic in nature, with the aim of creating equality for all. As he put it:
“The aims of revolutionary socialism are to transform society from within, re-addressing the balance of power away from the minority that holds it, to the majority that should. That process has to be democratic by definition.
“They campaigned on issues such as sexual discrimination, racism, low-pay, unsafe working conditions, unemployment and poverty. All of which needed transforming.
“They focused on building a mass movement and broad-based campaigns with the aim of helping to create a better society.”
According to ‘Colin Clark’ (officer HN80), who spent five years embedded within the SWP’s headquarters, the Party:
“were strongly opposed to government policy but were not seeking to subvert the institutions of the state.”
Scobie showed that although the unit had a purely public order remit when it was founded, by the mid-1970s this justification became increasingly contrived, as public disorder was on the decline. Instead, the unit moved towards serving ‘customers’ such as MI5, who “told them what to get and where to get it”. SDS management had regular meetings with the security services.
Between 1968 and 1971, there was an “exponential” increase in the number of SDS reports being produced, from a few hundred to tens of thousands. The vast majority contained personal details of left-wing sympathisers, rather than anything relating to public order. This is an accurate reflection of the true priorities of the spycops, not the ‘skewed’ picture the police now claim it to be. The content of the unit’s Annual Reports back up his assertion.
Right to Work march at the Conservative Party conference, Brighton, October 1980
Even the public order successes claimed by the SDS are misleading. Scobie was able to demonstrate how they did this, in Lindsay German’s experience of the Right to Work campaign.
The SDS exaggerated the potential threat of disorder and then claimed the credit for it not occurring, when in fact it was the campaigners themselves who ensured events were well-stewarded and passed off peacefully.
Scobie highlighted the Metropolitan Police’s refusal to acknowledge the racist nature of many acts of extreme violence, such as the murder in 1978 of Altab Ali. Racially motivated attacks were relatively common, yet those responsible were ignored by the SDS.
The real threats of public disorder and violence came from the far-right, yet Scobie noted that according to Detective Inspector Angus McIntosh (officer HN244), there was a deliberate policy decision, made at a high level, for the SDS not to infiltrate them.
“From the SWP side, it was mostly shouting. From the far right thing, it was mostly physical violence.”
Instead, two Special Branch officers were reportedly (in 1968) sent by their Chief Superintendent to take tea on the lawn of one well-known fascist (later imprisoned for inciting racial hatred), Lady Jane Birdwood, and “thank her” for the information she shared with them.
Next, we heard about the guidelines applied to Special Branch’s work, and therefore to the SDS, and the way ‘subversion’ was interpreted by them. Definitions were left deliberately vague, so that legitimate political and industrial activity could be treated as ‘subversive’ and therefore fair game for the spycops.
This may explain why senior managers (and the Home Office, according to material that’s now been released) were keen to ensure that the existence of the unit remained secret, and the public never found out that these officers had been given unchecked powers to “pry into political opinions and private conduct of law abiding citizens”, and to interfere with freedom of assembly and expression.
At least nine spycops are known to have assumed positions of responsibility within the SWP. These include ‘Colin Clark’ (officer HN80) and ‘Phil Cooper’ (officer HN155), who provided incredibly detailed reports and received commendations for their work. Their reports included a lot of information about trade union activity, an area neither MI5 or Special Branch was officially permitted to investigate. The SDS bent the rules to suit themselves.
The real reason for the systematic ‘hoovering up’ of hundreds of SWP members’ data was political and economic policing. SWP activists were at real risk of being refused work and blacklisted, and this is something Richard Chessum experienced himself. This document from 1975 refers to a ‘close and mutually profitable relationship’ between the police and employers.
Members of Parliament were concerned enough about this issue back in the 1970s to ask questions about trade unionists being targeted, but the police lied to them.
Fiona Murphy QC (representing ‘Category F’ core participants – families who discovered that the identities of their loved ones had been appropriated by the spycops to construct cover names)
NPOIU officer EN32/HN596, who stole Rod Richardson’s identity
Their earlier Opening Statements (in November 2020 and April 2021) described the devastation of losing their loved ones, and the horror they suffered upon learning that their identities had been used in this morally abhorrent way.
This stage of the Inquiry is of particular importance to them as they seek to learn how the practice of using the identities of dead children began and how it came to be normalised by the spycops.
Murphy took a moment to remember Barbara Shaw, who sadly passed away last year. She had been instrumental in pursuing justice for the families affected in this way for the past decade, since learning that her son’s name, Rod Richardson, has been stolen by one of the spycops.
In 2021, the Crown Prosecution Service concluded there was sufficient evidence to bring a criminal prosecution against officer EN32/HN596, but they nonethelss decided not to press charges. They feel it is ‘not in the public interest’ as the officer was only following his unlawful training. The fact that a conviction would be likely is surely enough to prosecute him, and his unlawful mentor – who we now know to be Andy Coles (officer HN2).
The CPS told Rod Richardson’s family of their decision last year, eight years after the truth was revealed, and two weeks after Barbara Shaw had died.
The delays of this Inquiry continue to cause significant distress to the remaining families, who ask that officers now “volunteer the full truth without any ambiguity and without any economy as to that truth”.
There is one family listed whose name has been redacted from the Statement. This is due to a Restriction Order granted by Mitting, awarding both real- and cover-name anonymity to the undercover who used the name of their deceased child. This means that they too are silenced, and cannot speak up in public, cannot seek support, and:
“Against a backdrop of unspeakable trauma, the family feel degraded, humiliated, debased and silenced both in the public domain and in their personal relations. The family have been shut out from the opportunity to scrutinise whether even the process that resulted in the imposition of the restriction took proper account of the ongoing gross interference with their rights.”
The families say that the evidence they heard last year ‘crystallised’ their views, that there was no need for this ghoulish practice to have been adopted in the first place, or maintained for so many years, and they question the need for the spycops operation’s very existence.
As Murphy put it:
“the Special Demonstration Squad (“SDS”) was a secret operation, operating in isolation from and far beyond the moral and legal norms of policing; and they had every confidence that its secrets, including the immorality and illegality at the core of its practices, would remain secret.”
Murphy then provided an overview of the practice, the many contradictions and how mangers sought to justify it.
In the early years of the SDS, only one officer (‘Mike Scott‘, officer HN298) stole the identity of a deceased child. He says he did so on his own initiative. Other undercovers in those years (1968-74) simply created fictitious identities, and this worked fine. They were able to obtain driving licences, library cards, etc, in their invented names, and no deployments were compromised as a result. Regional and National Crime Squad officers continued in this way until at least 1998, again without any problems.
However, we now know that many SDS officers (approximately half of those represented by the Designated Lawyers) chose this method of constructing an identity based on the real name of a deceased child, from 1974 onwards.
It’s been suggested that this became standard procedure due to deployments based on purely fictitious identities being compromised. However there is no evidence of this being the case.
There were spycops who raised concerns about this practice, and about the moral implications, and at least one who is known to have refused to adopt this method of creating a ‘legend’. ‘Colin Clark’ chose to use a fictitious name during his time undercover (1977-82), with a passport issued and no known problems.
When deployments were compromised, this was often due to the officers themselves making mistakes – for example, ‘Graham Coates‘ (officer HN304) accidentally gave his real name when stopped for drink driving.
Richard Clark (officer HN297) was confronted by Big Flame activists with a copy of a death certificate for the person he was pretending to be (‘Rick Gibson’) and had to be pulled out of the field immediately as a result.
Whether or not this tactic originated with The Day of the Jackal book, or the film of the same name, or the KGB (!) remains unknown.
Murphy went on to say that the SDS was “an entirely misguided enterprise”, blaming the unit’s managers for perpetuating this unethical and illegal practice and a “toxic culture” of secrecy. She cited the current temporary MPS Commissioner, who recently spoke out about failures of leadership resulting in institutional toxicity that could not be explained away as just a few ‘bad apples’.
Charlotte Kilroy QC (representing ‘Category H’ core participants – women deceived into sexual relationships, as well as a child born as a result of one of those relationships, and one man deceived into a long term close friendship)
Charlotte Kilroy QC
Kilroy began her oral statement with some very old case law – about the ransacking and seizure of property by the Earl of Halifax, in the home of John Entick, in 1762. The relevance to the Inquiry soon became apparent.
Entick went on to sue for trespass, and the resulting, 260-year old judgement Entick v Carrington is one of the most important pieces of British constitutional case law. It establishes that the state cannot issue “general warrants”, or any kind of speculative or non-specific invasion of private homes in search of evidence of crimes. This, together with the Common Law principles of personal security, liberty and property, underpins much of modern policing.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Fast forward two centuries, to 1968. Following unrest on the March 1968 Grosvenor Square demo, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) was set up by Special Branch and the Home Office, seemingly with any proper legal or political oversight. Very quickly, officers were creating false identities, being provided with accommodation and expenses and being deployed for years on end.
They routinely entered private homes, and were given very little direction about what to report or who to target. They gathered huge amounts of very private information and shared that with other agencies. This plainly conflicted with the bedrock of the law. However, they had a weapon the Earl of Halifax did not have: secrecy.
Charlotte then re-told the now familiar story of officer Mark Kennedy’s unmasking in 2010, which began the unravelling of the secrecy surrounding the SDS and Kennedy’s unit, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit.
It was revealed that they had entered the private homes of thousands of people and that Kennedy was one of dozens of officers who had deceived women into sexual relationships. Some even had children. All this was discovered by accident and it is only because of that accident that this Inquiry exists at all.
THE PROBLEM WITH SECRECY
“Secret surveillance powers characterise the police state and are a menace.”
This was the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in Klass & Others v Germany 1978. Secret surveillance poses a danger of undermining, even destroying democracy, while claiming to defend it. In all democracies governed by the rule of law, covert powers are confined to the most serious threats. Secrecy is always dangerous to democracy. It corrupts, and it encourages abuse.
Freedom of Expression is described as “the primary right” in a democracy, because “without it, an effective rule of law is not possible”. The right to hold and share opinions without interference and without being monitored and placed under surveillance is protected in both common and international law.
The sanctity of the home, the family, and possessions is zealously protected in common law and Article 8 of the Human Rights Act and is considered absolutely sacred, just as every person’s body is considered inviolate. Any interference is considered trespass, and the burden is on the police to justify their trespasses.
Mr Sanders, representing some of the former undercovers, yesterday suggested that everything a public authority does is considered lawful until ruled otherwise by a court. That is untrue. A statutory instrument is presumed lawful, but a trespass is not. Using deception and tricks to gain an invite to someone’s home is no justification, and even where a warrant exists, it is not lawful if it allows discretion as to who the target of the warrant is, or speculative searches for evidence of crime.
THE EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
The primary focus of Ms Kilroy’s submissions is UK Common Law, nevertheless, international law is also relevant. Yesterday the police suggested it was not applicable, and Mitting appeared to agree.
This is wrong for 3 reasons:
1. The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) was applicable law at the time, and the UK was committed to comply with it. Any failure to do that must be relevant to an assessment of the statutory regulation of undercover policing, which is part of the Inquiry’s task. How can the Inquiry conclude the statutory regulation of undercover policing was adequate, if it led to the UK breaking its international human rights commitments?
2. One of the great iniquities of secrecy is that it obstructs accountability. The UK twice changed domestic law in response to ECHR rulings during the 1980s and 90s. If people had been able to raise the practices of the SDS in Strasbourg it would very likely have led to changes in law.
3. The Inquiry is tasked with examining the effects of undercover policing on individuals and the public in general. The large scale breach of people’s Human Rights and the denial of redress due to secrecy is clearly a serious effect.
INVESTIGATORY POWERS TRIBUNAL RULING IN WILSON
This case from 2021 addresses all the rights outlined above in the context of undercover policing. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) ruled that the Met and National Police Chiefs Council had violated Wilson’s rights under Articles 3, 8, 10, 11 & 14. The ruling is summarised here.
The police lawyers yesterday sought to diminish the relevance of this case to the inquiry, by saying that it is based on the facts of that case. That is of course true, but the similarity between the facts and the impact on individuals spied on in that case, and those in Tranche 1 of this Inquiry, is impossible to ignore.
Specifically, the police’s argument – that allowing the police to make proportionate responses to demonstrations is a justification for undercover operations – was rejected by the IPT. Likewise, they cannot be considered to justify trespass.
The findings that the operations violated Wilson’s rights to freedoms of expression and association also have obvious implications for the actions of the SDS.
The IPT also ruled that two senior officers knew about the sexual relationship and others adopted a policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell”. A finding the inquiry must bear in mind when questioning managers in this tranche. The police accepted the judgment, and did not appeal any of the findings.
POLICING BY CONSENT
The whole concept of Policing by Consent is likely to be viewed by most CP;s and as fantasy of the liberal state. Some activist groups have recently declared their withdrawal of any consent.
However, the concept did provide Kilroy with some extra ammunition. For instance, Principle 5 of the Peelian Principles (1829) states that officers are injuncted at all times to uphold the historic tradition that “the police are the public and the public are the police”.
The police are only members of the public paid to give full time attention to duties that are incumbent on every member of the public. Lying and deceiving the public and trespassing on their privacy, property and intimate lives fundamentally undermines this principle.
THE 2005 INQUIRIES ACT
The police submissions yesterday sought to suggest that the applicable legal framework is not relevant to the Inquiry’s task, because Section 2 of the Inquiries Act says the Chair cannot determine individual liability. However that does not mean that the law is not relevant to the Terms of Reference in other ways.
CONCLUSIONS
Managers ought to have been well aware of the risks posed by their operations, yet in the Inquiry’s Tranche 1 period alone (1968-82), at least 6 officers engaged in deceitful relationships with numerous women.
It is a striking feature of all the evidence so far that the common law and human rights of the individuals and the impact of long-term undercover operations on those rights were rarely if ever considered:
• There was no guidance or training on privacy or relationships
• Tasking was broad brush and officers were given free rein to decide who to spy on
• There was no restriction on entering homes
• No guidance was given about what to record, and undercover officers were expected to hoover up as much information as possible
• Very little crime, disorder, or intelligence suggesting a risk to democracy was ever recorded. Usually reports showed an absence of such risks
In conclusion, Kilroy stated that it is the Category H position that these operations were incompatible with all standards of law. Scrutiny, when it finally came, came only by accident. Responsibility for that lies with the senior police officers and Home Office officials who maintained this secrecy for so long. The Police were corrupted by these practices. Their betrayal of the values of truth, integrity and honesty is made particularly clear by their willingness to lie to the courts, attacking the very institutions it was their duty to support.
Why did managers decide to abandon all the tenets of common law and the principles of policing, simply to find out how many officers to send to a demonstration, or whether people’s ideas were “subversive”? Answering this will be an important area of investigation for the inquiry.
Charlotte Kilroy QC (representing Diane Langford and ‘Madeleine’)
The experiences of these two women provide more evidence of the police overreaching their legal powers with open ended, ‘broad brush’ investigations that relied on the spycops’ discretion. Any tests of justification for targeting and reporting on them fail, something particularly egregious given the deception of Madeleine into a relationship.
Diane Langford, New York City, 1996
Diane Langford, a long time political activist, has never taken part in or been arrested for criminal activity. Despite this, at least six undercover officers infiltrated her life, and reported on her, and on private meetings held in her home. These reports contained personal information about her, often accompanied by inappropriate personal comments on her views and domestic arrangements.
Both ‘Sandra Davies’ (officer HN348) and ‘Dave Robertson’ (officer HN45) have admitted that they never witnessed any public disorder or criminal behaviour being committed by Diane or her comrades. It is difficult to see what justified the level of intrusion she suffered or the use of police resources.
Groups like the Women’s Liberation Front were targeted for no reason other than curiosity on the part of the police and/or security services. According to Sandra Davies, the undercovers were not provided with guidance or limits about entering private homes or collecting personal, private details of their targets. Robertson’s remit was likewise to gather as much intelligence as possible on his targets.
In Diane’s case, there is none of the evidence that would be required to justify an overt investigation, never mind a covert operation. This made the surveillance unlawful.
Diane now knows that the files relating to her have not all been disclosed, and requests that this happens so she can fully and properly assist the Inquiry.
Kilroy pointed out that Harvey was allowed to choose his own targets and use his personal judgement when deciding what to include in his reports. He took up positions of trust (such as Secretary and Treasurer) within SWP branches and used these as an opportunity to gather intelligence on party members and activities. He reported personal information expecting it to be of use to the Security Service.
Madeleine was involved in SWP activities which were entirely open and lawful, aiming to create a fairer society. Vince Harvey himself noted that their main interest was in building a working class movement, for all that there was rhetoric around ‘revolution’.
Madeleine’s evidence is confirmed by a new witness in the Inquiry, Julia Poynter, a former SWP member, who attests to both the nature of the local SWP groups and Madeleine’s relationship with Harvey.
Owen Greenhall (representing Lord Peter Hain, Ernest Rodker and Jonathan Rosenhead)
Owen Greenhall
Greenhall opened with the anti-apartheid protest at the Star and Garter Hotel in Richmond, almost 50 years ago today. Activists sought to delay the departure of the British Lions Rugby team on their tour to South Africa.
Among them was a man known as “Mike Scott” (officer HN298). Fourteen activists, including Scott himself were arrested that day and later convicted at trial. This has already been referred to the panel considering miscarriages of justice. It is an affront to justice that he deliberately deceived the defence, prosecution and court to as to his identity and the nature of his role.
There was no prior authorisation for him to participate in a demonstration leading to his arrest; he withheld key factual information that should have acquitted the defendants; the presence of an undercover officer was never disclosed to the arresting officers, the defence, the prosecution or the court; and he breached legal privilege, reporting and recording confidential conversations between defendants and their lawyers.
These concerns have already been articulated in previous statements, however we are now looking the role of SDS managers. It is clear from the evidence at the current Inquiry hearings that this was all done with the full knowledge and encouragement of SDS managers and senior officers in at all levels of the Metropolitan Police.
SDS manager Sergeant David Smith (officer HN103) was present at the first court appearance on 15th May 1972 and SDS managers monitored the case closely. Within days details had been communicated to the highest levels of Special Branch.
Anti-Apartheid Movement poster, early 1970s
Deputy Commissioner Ferguson Smith sent a memo confirming the Assistant Commissioner had been verbally briefed. Senior management were strongly supportive, saying HN298 had acted with “refreshing initiative” and that they should “take advantage of the situation”.
Discussions were had about assisting Scott in maintaining his deception, participating in criminal proceedings in a false identity, and even applying for legal aid. The only concern expressed was about the potential for embarrassment to the police if they ever got found out.
This apparently sent the tone and created a template for a policy of total secrecy, lack of disclosure and complete disregard for legal privilege and the integrity of the criminal justice system.
Like Scott, ‘Desmond/Barry Loader’ (officer HN13) was arrested a number of times, faced trial, and was even found guilty of public order offences. No disclosure was ever made, however the court was told he was “an informant” (not a police officer), and were asked to ensure he did not go to jail.
In both cases, SDS managers at all levels were quickly aware of and complicit in the lies, with Deputy and Assistant Commissioners and even the Commissioner himself involved in decisions to deceive the courts. There is no mention of any concern for the rights of co-defendants or the integrity of the criminal justice system.
The themes of lack of policy, training, guidance and oversight; an overriding need to preserve total secrecy of SDS and prevent reputational damage to the police; and lack of consideration for the rights of those spied upon are echoed in other areas of concern, such as the targeting of political groups, the indiscriminate collection of information and undercover officers taking active roles within political groups.
Greenhall went into some detail about the targeting of the Anti-Apartheid Movement and the Young Liberals and notes that the evidence paints a picture painted of targeting led by the undercover officers themselves, with SDS managers unable to exercise proper control.
He also cited deeply personal details recorded on his clients and their families by the SDS and passed on to the Security Services.
He concluded by citing similar concerns over the indiscriminate recording and retention of information by Special Branch as reflected in a Home Office Paper produced in 1980 which noted that some of the information collected “may not easily be justified”, reflecting that disproportionate data collection was directly related to the lack of clear management guidance and recommending independent oversight and supervision. Yet forty-two years later, here we are.
Celia Stubbs was the partner of Blair Peach, who was killed by a police officer striking a blow to his head during a protest against racism in Southall in April 1979.
The circumstances of the tragic death of Blair Peach and the sustained cover-up that followed it is told in Celia Stubbs’ statement, and was summarised for Part 2 of the Inquiry. Undercover officers reporting on her commenced in the 1970s, and continued at least into the 1990s.
Her statement today, read out by Sam Jacobs, focused on the question how she became a target of the SDS and why intelligence was gathered on her for decades. Importantly, she found out that the Metropolitan Police still withholds information on the death of Peach.
The managers who have given written evidence generally deny any knowledge of why the Blair Peach campaign was reported on. However, when it comes to explaining the reporting on the funeral of Blair Peach, Angus McIntosh says that he would not have known to what use such information would have been put, but his understanding is that it was “for the Security Service, and for vetting, and identification/tracing”.
More was revealed in the summaries of the closed hearings the Inquiry has held. Officer HN21 recalled“one of the management” asked him to attend Blair Peach’s funeral, and it “could have been Geoff Craft [officer HN34].”
Blair Peach’s funeral, June 1979
As to why it was that the SDS wanted to report on the funeral, HN21 describes that “part of the core business was to identify people, individuals who were connected to groups.” In the instance of attending Blair Peach’s funeral, the motive “was just that” and he had not thought that there was any possibility of disorder.
As was mentioned earlier today, SDS managers did not want undercover officers to attend the rally at Southall, as it was known that uniformed officers were planning to “clamp down on the demonstrations” and dangers were “more than normal”.
Undercover officer HN41 also described the “disastrous mistake” in public order planning of closing down part of Southall.
For Celia Stubbs,
“this offers a glimpse into the information likely within the report that may have been profoundly important in exposing the approach of the police to the rally, and the violence which resulted in the death of Blair Peach.”
Crucially, HN41 recalled he was “smuggled in” to Scotland Yard to give a statement as the “Murder Squad” had heard of his presence at Southall. This shows that the officers investigating Blair Peach’s death were well aware of the SDS presence and likely knowledge of events, knowledge that was never revealed in the inquest at the time.
The fact that this has only been dealt with in closed hearings raises concerns about the ability for Stubbs and others to participate effectively in the Inquiry, as without full access it is not possible to question the witnesses properly. As Jacobs emphatically stated:
“This evidence must be revisited by the Chair.”
These revelations only add to Stubbs grief about the ongoing refusal of the Metropolitan Police to be open and honest about its actions. It is painful that time and again, it is up to her to come up with new evidence of the police’s failure. And of the Inquiry’s for that matter.
Like Diane Langford who we heard earlier this week, Stubbs submitted a Subject Access Request and received her Special Branch Registry File and some further documents from the Metropolitan Police that were not disclosed by the Inquiry.
The documents include the first information on her, with a photo attached, her relationship to Peach, and an assault by two members of the National Front for wearing an Anti-Nazi League badges.
One file shows that Special Branch information was collated on all individuals who provided a statement in respect of the killing of Blair Peach. Why was that information collected and put on file?
The disclosed reports – while heavily redacted – reveal the disdain that the Metropolitan Police held towards those seeking to hold police to account. Though she never did achieve justice for Blair Peach, her campaigning was valiant and dignified. To Special Branch, however, she was a mere “propaganda tool” for the “left wing publicity machine.”
Stubbs hopes the Inquiry understands how traumatic discovering this has been:
“I have felt more distressed but also angry. To put it bluntly, police officers took my partner’s life and then concealed the truth. The concluding job of this Inquiry is to uncover the truth.”
Proceedings opened today in the third round of evidential hearings in the Undercover Policing Inquiry, with statements from the Inquiry’s lead barrister, David Barr QC, and lawyers representing the Metropolitan Police Service and individual undercover officers.
Also released were statements from several non-state witnesses, summaries of which can be found below.
Hearings will continue tomorrow with statements on behalf of the Home Office and representatives of some of the victims of police spies, including the statement of Charlotte Kilroy QC which featured heavily in the comments made today.
In addition to the deliberate targeting of school children campaigning against the far right, seemingly at the behest of the Security Service (aka MI5), Barr cited a Special Branch memo that shows police were involved in passing information about trade union activists to private companies:
“some employers plead to be given warning if known agitators seek or obtain employment with them… when a Special Branch officer is himself seeking help from an employer, or from a union official, it is asking a good deal to expect him to insist invariably that he is engaged in a one-way traffic.”
The Inquiry also highlighted an MI5 report pointing out the dangers of vetting amounting effectively to blacklisting:
“The transmission of security information to an employing authority can have serious consequences for the person concerned, leading in extreme cases to purge from the Civil Service or, in other cases, to denial of access to classified information which can have an adverse effect on careers.”
Considerable attention was paid to the relationship between the Metropolitan Police’s undercover political policing unit the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) and MI5. Though complex and changeable, their interaction was involved, and it is clear that the latter was highly influential on spycops’ reporting and activities.
Barr also cited Special Branch annual reports, noting that over five thousand files were opened, mostly on individuals, and over a million entries were made in Special Branch files in 1979 alone.
His statement notes that:
“the SDS reported on the activities of black justice campaigns and infiltrated far left groups which, amongst other things, actively promoted racial equality. SDS reporting on such matters formed a part of a wider Special Branch interest in racial tension”
Barr spent some time on the context of the SDS within Special Branch and how it related to the Security Service and the Home Office, including what defined the undercover unit’s reason for existence – particularly the definition and interpretation of subversion.
Though dry and historical, this will no doubt be of significance for placing any conceivable justification of the SDS in a wider context.
In particular, Barr highlighted the kind of rhetoric the police spies used about their targets and pointedly asked:
“Were revolutionaries behind and exploiting every public demonstration, ‘pop’ festival, or squat or sit-in? Or were Special Branch, even allowing for risks to national security generated by the Cold War, looking for Reds under the bed? Was SDS reporting for public order purposes, in all the circumstances, invaluable?”
He also summarised the results of recent secret, closed hearings where the Inquiry heard further evidence from undercover officers that included candid accounts of sexual relationships officers had with their targets.
This included the use of sex as an operational tactic, and the recognition that the women would not have consented if they had known they were sleeping with a police officer, as well as accounts that certain officers were known by colleagues to be “sexual predators”.
One undercover undermined the manager’s position of claimed ignorance, referring to Rick Gibson, known to have had multiple relationships while undercover, saying:
“Rick had a certain reputation and it gradually came out that he had had a sexual relationship which led to his being compromised, and that was, to my way of thinking, generally well known among the existing SDS officers.”
Finally, in recognition of the fact that the massive delays that have plagued the process have left victims without answers for too long, the Inquiry announced their intention to produce an Interim Report at the end of this first tranche of evidence. The scope and timing of that report are still to be decided.
COORDINATED STATEMENTS FROM THE MET & EX-UNDERCOVER OFFICERS
Peter Skelton QC
In surprisingly defensive and clearly coordinated opening statements, lawyers representing the Met and the designated lawyers for over 100 individual ex-undercover officers claimed that it would be “unfair” to judge the activities of the Special Demonstration Squad without hearing from the officers and agents that the SDS gathered the intelligence for.
Peter Skelton QC, representing the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) suggested the Inquiry should not seek to establish whether the early years of police spying on political groups were justified (despite this being a key part of the Inquiry’s terms of reference), saying that it is “inherently problematic and unfair”.
He went on to say:
“If the Inquiry does intend, however, to make findings about the justification and value of SDS deployments into specific groups, or its reporting on specific individuals, during in the T1 period, then this can only be done fairly by asking former officers of MPSB [Met Police Special Branch] C Squad, A8 Uniform Branch, and the Security Service, directly to explain the justification for seeking intelligence on those groups and individuals, and what value the resulting intelligence had to their work.
“They should also explain why intelligence needed to be sought using undercover deployments, rather than by some other means – for example, open sources such as public meetings and publications, or alternative closed sources such as informants and surveillance.”
This echoes the long-standing demands of campaigners and core participants for a fuller investigation into where ultimate responsibility for the activities of Britain’s secret political police lies.
However, it also reflects a recognition by police core participants in the Inquiry that their undercover operations are difficult (if not impossible) to justify based on any of the evidence they have been able to provide so far. It seems they now wish to imply they were just following orders, and to pass the buck for decision making and justification of the operations further up the chain.
Both former undercover officers (represented by Oliver Sanders QC for their opening statement) and the Met make clear in their statements that the SDS was by no means an autonomous policing unit; it produced intelligence for “customers” on request.
The Met noted the huge volume of reports the SDS provided to the Security Service, often in response to specific requests, while the officers’ lawyers specifically claim that it was the Security Service who were seeking information on school children and that is why the SDS filed those reports.
Far from offering any justification for the operations, both statements raise extremely worrying questions about the extent to which even deeper, darker secret agencies have been allowed to subvert policing resources into unlawful and anti-democratic activities that had no possible legitimate policing end.
WHOSE HISTORY?
Both the Met and ex-undercover officers also repeated calls to know what relevant books the Chair is reading and for “independent, neutral, expert witnesses” to be called to give evidence about the historical context of the time.
They back up their somewhat disingenuous claim that such evidence could be neutral, by claiming that “history is an academic discipline and historians observe certain ethical and professional requirements” but go on to cite Christopher Andrew, the author of ‘Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5‘ as one such possible ‘objective’ expert.
Overall, they appear very concerned that, by present day-standards, what they did is clearly abhorrent, and they seem to hope putting it into the historical context of the sexist, racist policing of the 1970s (like a real-life episode of ‘Life on Mars’) might lead to them being judged in a more favourable light.
SPYCOPS STEALING DEAD CHILDREN’S IDENTITIES
The issue of undercover officers stealing dead children’s identities also came up. Both barristers apologised again for the practice but were keen to point out that it wasn’t really the SDS’s fault. They want Mitting to look at where the practice originated, citing a variety of earlier examples, including the fact it was used by other agencies such as the KGB. Their worry is that the SDS will get all the blame for this ghoulish practice.
Skelton also added that the Security Service had a way of tracking when dead children’s identities were being stolen to generate false passports; this is the first we have heard of this.
At the end of Skelton’s statement, Mitting addressed some of the points he had raised.
He did not accept that the theft of dead children’s identities should be investigated more widely. He was focused on the SDS and was not investigating the Security Service, and he rather pointedly warned the police that they may not want to compare their own practices to those of the KGB:
“I can’t believe that you would want us to think that the KGB were the inspiration for the practice of a domestic police force. I think the less said about that the better, no?”
As far as he was concerned, he did not need the assistance of a historian as during the period the Inquiry covers he was a ‘sentient adult’ interested in political affairs and he feels he is already aware of the political and social circumstances of the time.
If he needs any further information on a particular aspect, he can ask a witness, as, he says, he did in his previous questioning of Tariq Ali on the nature of Trotskyism. He also recognised that historians themselves have widely differing perspectives.
He was equally scathing of the request to let core participants know all the books he had read. Saying that he had a library of over 300 books, he was not going to catalogue them all, or put into the public domain every bit of evidence that had formed his understanding. He was happy to have reading material suggested to him, though.
To his mind, the most useful material he could get were the documents themselves; with most of the senior officers from A8 and the Security Service deceased, that would be his best source – if those documents exist. Apparently, despite calling for the evidence, the Met do not know where their own material, such as the risk assessments sent to A8, might be found…
However, though Mitting is not going to call on junior officers still alive, as they would not have had the full picture either, he is going to ask those who can help to do so.
Nobody pointed out that the Met are actually calling for evidence that only they can provide, and so far have failed to do. In fact, they have produced very little evidence that could put their boys in the SDS in a good light.
WERE SPYCOPS EVEN LEGAL?
The final issue he addressed arising from Skelton’s arguments was the issue of the lawfulness of the SDS itself. This has been raised by Charlotte Kilroy, QC on behalf of the women targeted for relationships – whose statement will be heard tomorrow. Kilroy has advanced a powerful set of arguments challenging the foundation of undercover policing.
Both Skelton and Sanders were clearly worried by this and sought to head some of the arguments off at the pass. Sanders spoke a lot about the ‘values’ and ‘context’ of the 1970s in his defence, and raised the point that it would also affect the likes of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.
Mitting responded that the main issues of lawfulness to his mind related to whether undercover police had the right to enter private homes as part of their work and the distribution of confidential information such bank details without a warrant.
He is open to further submissions on these points which go to the heart of all activities of the undercover policing units, and it is expected Ms Kilroy QC will go deeper into these issues tomorrow at 12:15pm.
His statement clearly showed the SDS are worried they will take the brunt of the blame for the egregious behaviour even though other spies were also at it. He echoed much of Skelton’s points where he could.
Where he did expand on something new, was the request for expert advice from a psychiatric analyst. He was keen to suggest that this would shed light on the undercovers’ activities and give necessary context.
Mitting said no, there is sufficient material on the subject from the 1990s and 2000s, and Sanders’s suggestion went beyond what was reasonable to expect of the Inquiry.
As far as he was concerned, it was already obvious that being undercover had adverse impacts on some of the officers. He also pointed out that if we are going to talk about psychological damage, he would have to investigate the damage done to the victims of the police spies.
ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS
In addition to the oral statements reported above, written statements were also published on the Inquiry website today on behalf of Diane Langford, John Rees and Joan Rudder
DIANE LANGFORD ON THE IMPORTANCE OF SPECIAL BRANCH REGISTRY FILES
Diane Langford, New York City, 1996
Diane Langford was active in the Britain Vietnam Solidarity Front, set up the Women’s Liberation Front, was the partner of Maoist leader Abhimanyu Manchanda, and gave a strong statement during the last set of hearings in May 2021 (and also wrote up how she got involved in the Inquiry).
This year, she submitted an additional statement after finding out that the Metropolitan Police held more information on her, which the Inquiry had failed to find even though it was right in front of them. The Inquiry has something to learn here, from a core participant who would not take no for an answer.
Langford submitted a Subject Access Request to the Metropolitan Police for her Registry File. And, quite extraordinarily, she got it. The 12 pages provided is a heavily redacted copy of her personal file opened by Special Branch, the ‘history sheet’ listing the dates that information was added, and what it entailed.
Unsurprisingly, the Inquiry refused to provide her with all the included reports, saying such was “not proportionate” (read: too much work). Langford subsequently asked for the material linked to 12 specific Registry File entries to which the Inquiry agreed.
They subsequently identified two reports she had not seen previously, but said they did not consider it necessary for her to get them before the current hearings.
Clearly, the history sheet complements the disclosure provided to date by the Inquiry, Langford says:
“It seems to me to be a very simple and proportionate way to identify relevant reporting.”
As it appears to give a more detailed picture of the undercover deployments, she has some useful advice for Mitting:
“If other civilian witnesses are provided with their own history sheets it could help them to assist the Inquiry in its investigations significantly.”
Langford also concludes that the decision to open a Registry File on her was made largely as a result of SDS intelligence. What if the Britain Vietnam Solidarity Front had not been infiltrated in the first place?
This is an important issue for the Inquiry to keep in mind. Infiltrating groups on the left becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: because a spycop is planted next to you, you get ‘mentioned’ in their reports on a regular basis, and a certain amount of ‘mentions’ would become a reason to open a personal file.
The formal designation as ‘a person of interest’ has significant implications, Langford states, blacklisting being an obvious example.
“Did the opening of my Registry File lead to other agencies opening files on me? Did it lead to trade union ‘blacklisting’ agencies spying on me at work?”
Diane Langford has every right to ask these questions, as her Subject Access Request also revealed some heavily redacted reports (not released) on her separation from Manchanda, her union activities, and even on the books she took to work: “frequently seen reading Maoist literature.”
Langford finds this particularly disturbing:
“a clear example of thought policing… how on earth did this information end up in a Special Branch report?”
She wants the Inquiry to tell her who produced the reports and who the information was collected for.
Langford is now 80 years old, and yet the state still holds files on her based on her attendance at political meetings over half a century ago. Her own research has brought to light yet more discrepancies in the work of the Inquiry. It turns out some of the reports listed on her Registry File have been disclosed by the UCPI before, but do not name her. How did the information that she attended end up in her file?
Last but not least, the history sheet of her personal file ends in 1984, and she wonders if this is because Registry Files were computerised in the mid 1980s.
“As I said in my first statement, given that I am as politically active now as I was then, I find it extremely unlikely that the surveillance of me has ever stopped and feel that this is something that is relevant for the Inquiry to investigate.”
CONFRONTING FASCISTS ON THE STREETS – REES AND RUDDER
Rudder worked for the Anti-Nazi League in London and had been present at the ‘Battle of Lewisham’ in August 1977, when the fascist National Front had been confronted and repelled by a huge number of people.
Rees took part in a demonstration in Southall, south London, on 23 April 1979 to protest against a march of the National Front. This protest became notorious after anti-fascist protester Blair Peach was killed by police.
Rees lived with his parents and came to London specifically for the day. He had been active in the Socialist Workers Party at Hull University, but attended this demonstration alone.
The questions the Inquiry asked of these two witnesses were quite revealing, exposing the context of the investigation. The Anti-Nazi League (ANL) and the Socialist Workers Party had put out calls to attend the demonstration, and it seems the Inquiry still hopes they can be held responsible for organising riots. The Inquiry relentlessly probed this line, asking:
“Did the ANL use violence to advance its aims? Did the ANL foresee a time when violence would or would be, necessary to realise its aims? Did the ANL advocate, provoke or approve of public disorder in order to advance its aims? Did the ANL consider it necessary to break the law to advance its aims? If so, please explain.”
Both were asked about the violence they witnessed, and both give convincing and detailed accounts of how the police were responsible for most if not all confrontations.
Joan Rudder recalls how she saw many wounded people, most having been beaten on the head. After the police refused them access to the ambulances, she accompanied them to a house made into a make-shift medical centre.
However, they were not allowed to stay there until things had quietened down. They were forcibly evicted:
“As we exited the house we went along a path to the gate, which was obviously open, the police had stationed themselves either side. I am guessing 6 or 8 officers were either side with truncheons drawn ready.
“As we went through the gate we were attacked and beaten. I was beaten on the crown of my head, my head split open. I have got six stitches and the hair has never grown back.”
“My long lasting memory of this event was that the police were out of control. Without doubt. The people I was standing with, nobody had any weapons or anything that could be used as a weapon.
“On the counter demonstration we were being herded around by the police. Their whole mobilisation was to deny our right to peacefully protest, they had riot shields, they were out with the horses, they had their batons drawn and they were long batons they weren’t short ones. Someone somewhere must have authorised their use.”
In this context it is worth repeating the reference made by Barr QC in his opening statement today to secret evidence heard by the Inquiry in closed hearings.
An undercover officer, HN41, was present at the demonstration at Southall at which Blair Peach died, even though his managers had some reservations about him attending “because uniform police were going to clamp down on the demonstrations”. This quite clearly suggests that the police violence in Southall that killed Blair Peach had been planned in advance.
Ahead of next week’s sessions of the public inquiry into Britain’s political secret police, here’s a roundup of what’s happened since last autumn’s hearings.
Campaigners continue to expose the scandal of five decades of secret infiltration of left wing and progressive campaign groups
Kate Wilson, deceived into a relationship by spycop Mark Kennedy, won a historic court victory which slammed all the Met’s political undercover policing as unlawful – not just the relationships, but the spying itself
Spycops managers from the 1970s due to give public evidence in May 2022 at the Undercover Policing Inquiry (May 9th to 20th)
Spycops victims condemn the continuing delays, secrecy and lack of disclosure during the Inquiry
Women deceived into relationship by spycops publish two shocking books
A growing scandal over ‘missing’ Met police reports into their killing of two anti-fascists, Kevin Gately and Blair Peach, on 1970s demonstrations
Head of the Met was forced to resign following public outrage over institutionalised sexism in the force
After the last round of public hearings of the Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings, we learned that it was holding further secret hearings with spycops, from which victims and the wider public were excluded. Our condemnation of it was reported in the Guardian and the Morning Star.
COPS has found out that 43 UK police forces and three specialist police forces were involved in or collaborated with spycops.
The Spycops Info podcast – victims of spycops taking a deep look at the scandal – continue to cover many aspects of the scandal, interviewing people spied on, laying out the organisational structure, and promoting the ongoing campaign for truth and justice. The latest episode previews the upcoming round of public inquiry hearings.
The Undercover Research Group has finished summarising the documents from last year’s hearings and have now started summarising the evidence hearings. This is an enormous task. They will then prepare a report about what has been learned so far about spycops operations. They are in the process of setting up a new Undercover Research Portal site.
COPS held a successful online seminar about spycops as part of the COP26 Climate Coalition events in Glasgow in November 2021.
POLICE ‘LOSE’ FILES ON PEOPLE THEY KILLED
Few significant files or disclosures have been made public by the Inquiry, despite them saying that they would ‘trickle information out’ and promising the full Special Branch Annual Reports. Heavily cut versions of these for 1970-1983 have only recently been disclosed.
A large number of less important files have been published, and it’s plain to see the extraordinary level of detail recorded on activists. Undercover police officers took on formal roles in organisations they were spying on, and all manner of documents – right down to Socialist Workers Party branch babysitting rotas – were copied to MI5.
But the police and Inquiry are now claiming that crucial reports are ‘missing’, of the two anti-fascist demonstrations (Red Lion Square 1974, and Southall 1979) in which police violence killed Kevin Gately and Blair Peach. Officers deployed at the time are claiming they didn’t attend the demonstrations. This is a major scandal. COPS will continue to pressure for full and quick disclosure.
WOMEN DECEIVED BY SPYCOPS PUBLISH STORIES
Women deceived into relationships by spycops have told their own stories in two recent books.
It covers not only the deception, but how the women uncovered the truth. Each of their stories has unique features, but perhaps the most harrowing element is the similarity – these officers were clearly trained and guided in the abuse they inflicted. Far from the ‘rogue officer’ explanation the Met have tried to give, it is abundantly clear that this was all strategy and tactics, taught and honed over decades.
The composite picture exposes the institutional sexism and cynicism of the spycops units, and of the police who continue to cover up and defend them to this day.
SPYCOPS ARE UNLAWFUL, COURT RULES
Kate Wilson finally won her 10-year legal battle when her case went to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) in September 2021. Kate had been deceived into a long-term relationship by undercover officer Mark Kennedy, and her environmental and social justice activism had been spied on by at least five of Kennedy’s colleagues.
The IPT ruled that not only was Kennedy’s intimate abuse unlawful, but crucially the wider spying had no place in a democratic society. The damning judgement declared the entire undercover policing operation unlawful and a breach of five articles of human rights legislation, including violations of the right to protest, the right to a private and family life, and the right to freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Read more about Kate’s case and the IPT ruling on Police Spies Out of Lives, the campaign representing women deceived into relationships by spycops.
UNDERCOVER POLICING INQUIRY HEARINGS
The Undercover Policing Inquiry – the full-scale public inquiry into Britain’s political secret police, which has been dragging on sine 2014 with no end in sight – resumes in London for two weeks starting on Monday 9 May. These will be hearing evidence from managers of the Special Demonstration Squad 1968-82.
Core Participants – people the Inquiry deems profoundly involved in the spying, mostly the victims – will be making a number of powerful public Opening Statements from 9th to 11th May (after the official Inquiry and Police statements), which will be broadcast on the Inquiry’s YouTube channel.
Planning for attendance, events and publicity around the hearings are underway.
In a meeting with Core Participants and lawyers, the Inquiry said that it will not start Tranche 2 of the hearings (covering the years 1983-92) until 2024. It does not expect to conclude before 2026. Given the long record of delays – many deliberately imposed by the Met to avoid accountability – we think it is likely to be even later.
These delays are still a big issue for victims of spycops, especially given that many Core Participants are ageing and in ill-health, and are entitled to disclosure and answers now.
The PCS Bill is going through parliament and has now been knocked back to the House of Commons by the House of Lords. The Bill gives powers to police to outlaw a range of traditional protests, even individual protest.
Along with the CHIS Bill, it appears to be trying to make legal in the present everything illegal and unacceptable that the Undercover Police Inquiry is currently investigating from the past.
The House of Lords can only hold up the Bill, it cannot stop it. We need to continue to oppose the Bill and continue to protest.
Spycop victims accuse Inquiry of misreading public mood over secret hearings, and call for review of anonymity orders granted to former undercover offices, and for no more secret hearings.
Victims of political undercover policing are angry that the Undercover Policing Public Inquiry announced last week that it had just heard evidence from five former undercover police officers in secret.
The Inquiry was set up following the revelation that a unit of Metropolitan Police officers had secretly infiltrated and targeted over 1000 mostly left-wing organisations and campaigns for over 40 years, committing many abuses along the way.
The five officers, known only by numbers, who served in the 1970s and early 1980s, gave evidence before Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting. All the victims and their lawyers were excluded and it can only be guessed which representatives of the state attended.
Such is the extent of the secrecy that the Inquiry will not even give reasons for the hearings nor explain how they will work. Members of the public will not even get to know if evidence is given about them, which is of concern given previous mis-characteristions of groups by other undercover officers at open hearings.
Hence, a number of unknown former police spies have just given secret evidence to a public inquiry about unknown organisations and activities they had secretly targeted.
Victims designated as ‘core participants’ by the Inquiry say that denying them access is a betrayal of the need for fundamental openness within this public inquiry. Once again, they see an undermining of trust in the fairness of of Mitting.
One of the core participants, Lois Austin,pointed out:
“These officers were given anonymity years ago. Given all we have learned about the process and abuses, that anonymity needs to be reviewed immediately. These officers were involved in a unit that abused people and democracy, running unchecked for forty years.
“The idea that any of them are at any kind of risk is simply ridiculous and we do not buy the police line. As far as we are concerned this is all about the police trying to protect senior officers. By contrast, when evidence is given live we get remarkable insight into the institutional sexism and racism of these state-sanctioned units.”
The campaigners’ anger has been exacerbated by the release last month of the real name of undercover officer Vincent Harvey. As “Vince Miller” he was undercover in the 1970s, where he used his position to target women for sexual relationships.
It has since transpired that Harvey went on to become a high ranking officer and a Director of the National Criminal Intelligence Service. Core participants were not given the chance to question him when he gave evidence earlier this year.
Core participant Donal O’Driscoll said:
“It boils down to the State protecting a senior officer. We were denied the right to put important questions to Mr Harvey when he gave evidence. Our worry is how much this pattern is repeating now. With this unnecessary secrecy, how many other important facts are being covered, what further miscarriages of justice are being buried?”
‘Jane’ one of the women targeted for relationships, added:
“These officers, who are having all their evidence heard in secret by the inquiry, spied improperly on people participating in legitimate political protest groups – this has been demonstrated by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal’s recent judgment against the Metropolitan Police in the Kate Wilson case.
“The Inquiry, in the light of this far reaching and extremely critical judgement of undercover policing, has to stop this approach of secrecy and protecting the police. The broad sweeping tactic of sending in undercover officers into the lives of people participating in left-wing politics has been shown to be wrong in the IPT.
The whole sorry debacle of political undercover policing has to be exposed, and the citizens, who have had their right to participate in politics violated, deserve to have the whole truth of what has happened to them.”
Notes:
1. The five undercover officers have the ‘nominals’ HN21; HN41; HN109; HN302, and HN341. Other than that they served during the period 1968-1982, little else is known of them, though one may have had a relationship with a civilian woman, and others are likely to have stolen identities from dead children.
2. The Undercover Policing Inquiry was set up in 2014 by then-Home Secretary Theresa May. It is on track to be one of the biggest and longest public inquiries in history, beset by numerous delays. It began hearing evidence in November 2020, and held a second set of evidence hearings in April 2021. It is expected to conclude around 2026. Campaigners have long pointed to its bowing to excessive police demands for secrecy as the root of its problems.
This summary covers the final week of the four-week 2021 hearings of the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI), examining the activities of the Metropolitan Police’s secret political unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, from 1973-82.
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.
THE DECEIVED AND THE DECEIVER
The UCPI hearings on 10 May and 11 May were notable for the consecutive appearances of an activist who had been deceived into a sexual relationship with an undercover officer, and the actual spycop who had deceived her.
‘Madeleine’ was the only activist we heard from this week. State core participants giving evidence were spycops ‘Vince Miller’ (HN354, 1976-1979), ‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-82), and ‘Michael James‘ (HN96, 1978-83). Summaries of evidence were given for three other spycops, and documents introduced for a fourth, who is now dead.
Owing to the refusal of the Inquiry to release names or photographs of officers, there are many people who may never know if they were spied on. The Inquiry has also refused to call as many spycops as possible to give evidence, so we are unlikely to ever have an accurate picture of their activities.
CONFLICTING ACCOUNTS
Once again, everything we heard this week supported the emerging picture that we do have. People who were spied on gave clear, consistent, and detailed accounts of their actions, including the moral and ethical standpoints that led them to join the groups that were infiltrated.
Spycops gave conflicting accounts of what they did; whether they had intimate relationships with activists, what went on in safe-houses, what their managers were or were not aware of, and even whether or not their work was useful. They contradict each other, and sometimes contradict themselves, whether in different reports or even within the same session of giving evidence.
This was very clearly shown this week when comparing the evidence of undercover ‘Vince Miller’ (HN354, 1976-1979)who infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), and ‘Madeleine’, an SWP member who he deceived into a relationship. Madeleine gave evidence on 10 May, Miller on 11 May. Both took a whole day.
Miller was the first unmarried officer to be deployed by the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). He was in a relationship, however, and this was one of the first things his superiors asked him about.
He believes this was because being married was preferred, as having a wife meant some form of support whilst enduring the stress of an undercover deployment. All the other evidence from spycops this week (and beyond) echoes this statement: family ties would prevent them ‘going rogue’.
‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-1980), giving evidence on May 13, said he thought ‘you had to be married’ to join the squad, as:
‘It led to a secure background, a secure home… I suppose it was good to have somebody at home when you came back after a long weekend or a long day’
It appears that, despite this being a deliberate choice by the SDS, no thought was given to the impact it had on the officers’ wives. Contact phone numbers for their husbands were not given until 1978, when one wife asked for this.
Wives were expected to do everything to help their husbands, up to and including moving house at short notice if their cover was blown. Many of them were left acting as single parents for weeks at a time. They believed their husbands were doing work crucial to the security of the nation.
UNMENTIONED ONE-NIGHT STANDS
Madeleine is one of four women who Miller has admitted to having intimate sexual contact with. Two of the others were not activists, nor were they connected with his target group. He says he simply met them in the pub – whilst undercover and claiming expenses – and had what he describes as ‘one-night stands’ with them. This was very early on in his deployment, when he was still exploring the area he had to infiltrate.
Madeleine’s relationship with Miller described in a friend’s diary, January 1980
Since they were nothing to do with his deployment, Miller chose not to mention them in his ‘impact statement’ to the Inquiry. Even when his solicitor was sent a letter by the Inquiry specifically asking for details of all sexual relationships, Miller remained silent. It was not until a year later – in his witness statement – that he admitted to them.
This alone is enough to bring his overall credibility into question. Everything he says must now be examined through a lens of ‘is this the whole story?’ What would it serve Miller to omit from his evidence?
David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry, seemed to be aware of this as he questioned Miller. Barr kept the pressure on to an extent that made Miller literally sweat, as he contradicted himself repeatedly about matters of procedure and events in the SDS safe house. When questioned about his deception of Madeleine, Miller flushed red and was visibly deeply uncomfortable for the duration of that topic.
On the previous day, Madeleine herself was open and quietly compelling. Miller claims that he only had sex with her once, but she gave the Inquiry a detailed account of their months-long relationship. This is backed up by near-contemporaneous diaries detailing conversations about Miller’s refusal to stay the night after he’d had sex with her.
MANIPULATING PEOPLE BY LYING
Miller told Madeleine his refusal to stay over was psychological, that he didn’t feel safe unless he woke up in his own bed. He also told her he had grown up in a children’s home, and recently had a bad breakup from a toxic relationship. Giving evidence, Miller said it hadn’t occurred to him that his cover story of past pain and not wanting to be hurt again might evoke feelings of sympathy, intimacy and protectiveness.
This is astonishing, given that his entire job consisted of manipulating people by lying to them. Like all the spycops we’ve heard from so far, he says he received little training. However, the ability to gauge people’s reactions to what you tell them is surely a prerequisite for working undercover. For example, Miller was once asked what he was doing for Christmas. To end the topic, he replied that both his parents were dead.
Barricade on Cable Street, 4 October 1936 [Pic: Bishopsgate Institute]
Madeleine’s father had fought fascists all his life. He was at the Battle of Cable Street in 1936 when an alliance of antifascists stopped the British Union of Fascists marching through the Jewish area of London’s East End. He was decorated for his efforts against the Nazis in WWII. It is not inconceivable that there is also a Special Branch Registry File on him.
Madeleine was about 15 when she joined the International Socialists (IS), which later became the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). In 1970, when she was 16, a Special Branch Registry File on her was opened.
Parts of that file are redacted by the Inquiry, which she finds ‘really, really sinister’; what 50-year-old information about her does the Inquiry not want her to see?
AUTOMATIC TARGETS
Miller explained that it was not unusual for 15- and 16-year-olds to be spied on and have files, if they were ‘sufficiently active’. Additionally, it streamlined the paperwork to open a file on someone if they were ‘constantly being referred to in all sorts of practices’.
The inference is that if children were often mentioned in reports on their parents, it was easier for the SDS administration to open a file on them. This is backed up by the evidence of ‘Michael James‘ (HN96, 1978-83).
In a self-fulfilling manoeuvre, children and adults became automatic targets for the State simply because they had a file.
Madeleine had split up with her abusive husband in the autumn of 1978. By this time, she had known Miller as a member of the SWP for over a year. A flatmate’s diaries show he visited their flat in summer 1977. After the breakup, she increasingly regarded him as a friend.
This was the period during which Miller was infiltrating the Walthamstow branch of the SWP. He became treasurer, then district treasurer and social committee organiser for the Outer East London District Branch. Miller organised fund-raising gigs and other social events. As people dedicated to the same ideals, the SWP members’ lives were very enmeshed.
PUBLIC DISORDER PICNIC
The Queen’s Silver Jubilee in June 1977 saw one such social event. It had been declared a one-off bank holiday; in a gentle push-back against the imperial overtones of the occasion, Walthamstow SWP organised an anti-Jubilee family picnic in Epping Forest.
The Inquiry asked if the picnic was likely to involve any public disorder:
‘Absolutely not, no. It was just a picnic. With children, I might add.’
Given some of the things we are expected to believe from other State witness statements this week, the Inquiry not knowing what a picnic involves is the very least of it.
The direct actions of the Walthamstow SWP were not geared towards public disorder either. A report mentions them ‘occupying’ a Sainsbury’s supermarket, but this is untrue:
‘what they probably did was stand outside with banners, handing out leaflets and talking to shoppers… We felt supermarket prices were kept artificially high to extract profit for shareholders.’
It is hard to see why campaigning for lower prices at Sainsbury’s would be a threat to democracy. This explains why the spycops exaggerated in their report, something that happened throughout this period.
There is a paradox here. On the one hand, the undercovers talk about ‘hoovering up’ information indiscriminately for superiors to make use of, never filtering or questioning the value of the intelligence. On the other, the threat factor of small, peaceful groups is repeatedly made out to be far greater than it was.
On the third – because you need three hands to keep track of their contradictions – they describe the groups as harmless, then circle back round to the justification of information possibly being useful in the future. Or being ‘filed and never used again’, according to ‘Michael James‘ (HN96, 1978-83).
STEALING THE IDENTITY OF A DEAD CHILD…
James infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party and Troops Out Movement, occupying a senior role in the latter by the early 1980s. Like most of the spycops from this period, he was given precise instructions to steal the identity of a dead child and had no qualms about this:
‘I had no moral reservations about this at all… And I couldn’t see why it was a moral issue, because it didn’t involve anybody.’
Pressed on why he thought this:
‘No family were injured or caused any distress because of this practice.’
Later, when queried by the Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting, he added:
‘I dismiss what I see in the press about what they say about the stress given to families whose children have been used in the way. I don’t accept that. From my own knowledge that didn’t happen.’
‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-82) said in his written statement that it was the founder of the SDS, Conrad Dixon, who had instigated the use of dead children’s identities. Giving evidence on 13 May, he changed this to say that the practice was inspired by the film The Day of the Jackal.
When pressed by the Inquiry as to which it was, Gray decided on the latter as he had:
‘checked Wikipedia and the film had just come out when we started doing it.’
He was not alone among the spycops in having a cavalier attitude to the truth, but he was particularly blatant about how much being asked about it annoyed him. He often gave obtuse answers to straight-forward questions, and at times refused to answer them outright, despite having sworn to tell ‘the whole truth’ before giving evidence.
Interestingly enough, he took offence at what was said in what is presented as his own written witness statement:
‘I have not written that, not at all, this is not my kind of English. This was written for me.’
His words and attitude confirm something previously suspected – that the statements were worded for the spycops, not by them.
…TO SPY ON LIVING CHILDREN
Returning to Michael James, a May 1979 report he wrote [UCPI0000021293] gives personal details about a member of Clapton SWP and Hackney Women’s Voice. It describes her as divorced, with a six-year-old child. Why report on her marital state, the age of the child or even that she had a child?
‘All I can conclude is that I was trying to paint a picture of an individual that may have been used in the future.’
Would you have been concerned at all about reporting information on children?
‘Well, all I said was she had a daughter of six years. I mean, I’ve not gone into any more detail.’
In August 1979 he reported [UCPI0000013300] on an under-18-year-old SWP member, including the school they went to. He said he wasn’t concerned about having done this.
James gave evidence on 13 May, a long and somewhat torturous process that saw him evading giving answers and instead suggesting questions he thought should be asked. This left Inquiry counsel Steven Gray QC persistently cutting through James’ repeated shambling around answers, for which he is to be applauded.
The Inquiry discussed other examples of intrusive reporting. When pressed to justify various egregious sections in his files, James fell back on the defence that it didn’t really matter. It was just information that mostly went nowhere, kept on the off-chance it might actually be useful one day; but since that was in the future, who knew, so you reported everything.
INTRUSIVE REPORTING
Despite James’ claims that the information would, in his experience, ‘never see the light of day’, many of his reports were passed to the Security Service (MI5). All the files published by the Inquiry with a reference number beginning ‘UCPI000…’ are taken from the Security Service’s existing records.
As Steven Gray QC pointed out:
‘the fact that it wasn’t going to see the light of day again in your experience is not borne out by the fact that we’re looking at it now, is it?’
The theory that the reports would not be looked at until some time in the future could also explain the fictional tendencies of the spycops who wrote them. A practice familiar from SDS reports seen earlier in the hearings was to take the most extreme statement anyone made at a meeting and portray it as the whole group’s real basis. Realistically, most meetings, from business to Brownies, would suffer under that parameter.
A January 1979 report [UCPI0000013063] from Miller also mentions children. School Kids Against the Nazis (SKAN) had been formed when the National Front held a demo outside a school in multicultural East London. About 200 pupils had opposed it, with 15 arrests – all but one of them Black kids.
SCHOOL KIDS AGAINST NAZIS
‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-1980) also reported on SKAN, and seemed preoccupied with one Black boy in particular. Gray reported on his family life, that he spoke at a SKAN meeting, and leafletted schools in a campaign against education cuts, among other things.
Gray claimed this reporting was justifiable from a public order point of view, but then denied that the reports were his [UCPI0000011997], [UCPI0000011380].
Shown a report detailing minor criminal offending of a minor schoolboy, [UCPI0000011994], he was asked if this was the sort of information he would have reported on SKAN?
‘Although SKAN’s members were young, they were just as violent as any other anti-fascist group.’
The Inquiry then showed a short video of SKAN Hackney – an endearing bit of footage with schoolkids, black and white, explaining they were friends and colour did not play a role, and that they were against the NF stirring up tension.
Gray agreed that this was the impression that he had of SKAN at the time, but claimed:
‘the characters that I was aware of were a lot more violent.’
Asked specifically about the child prominently featured in his reports, Gray conceded he had never seen him committing violence at demonstrations, but ‘he was always the first out of the bus at Brick Lane’. It is also notable that he described the boy as having an ‘effeminate manner’. He says he never thought about whether this was appropriate or not.
SUGGESTIONS OF INSURRECTION
Gray said that in fact, the legitimacy of reporting on SKAN at all was never discussed with him by superiors. It was not talked about at the weekly meetings. Nor was the reporting on girls protesting because they were not allowed to wear trousers to school [UCPI0000021267].
Returning to the 1979 report from Miller, this said SKAN:
‘can, with short notice, get large numbers of school students on to the streets, should the need arise.’
The Inquiry asked Madeleine if SKAN were indeed able to suddenly create a mob ready for street violence. Yet again, she had to deflate suggestions of insurrection. SKAN was a self-organising group of kids responding to the upsurge of racism around them:
‘The idea that we would have somehow had to have planted these ideas in their heads is a bit ludicrous really. It was their own experience.’
Madeleine notes other reports are deliberately facetious, and often selectively quote a few individuals’ opinions rather than the general view, even just picking up on comments made by members of the public. She elegantly described it:
‘There’s a little bit of embroidery going on in many of the reports. There would have been people there who would have expressed opinions that we wouldn’t necessarily agree with, but we would discuss and debate and argue with them.’
MADELEINE BELIEVED HERSELF SAFE
In the summer of 1979, Madeleine was 25 and slowly coming out of her shell after years of her husband’s possessive behaviour and abuse. At a house party in Ilford, mainly attended by SWP members, she was happy when her SWP comrade of three years, Vince Miller, pulled her into his lap, and when he later put his arms around her. She was not looking for a relationship, but believed herself safe with him:
‘I thought he was lovely. A really nice guy. I thought he was a genuine, lovely, easy going person, I thought he was sensitive, he had this story of heartbreak and all the rest of it. I felt he was looking for genuine relationships with people.’
After the party, he took her back to her flat and they began a sexual relationship. It was the only time that he stayed the entire night with her, leaving in the morning.
ABSOLUTE BETRAYAL
Asked how she would have felt to discover Miller’s true identity at the time, she said it would have been devastating. She was young and naïve, and would have been profoundly shocked and distraught:
‘I’d made myself very vulnerable to him and I trusted him, and to me it would have been an absolute betrayal… I would have regarded it, as I do regard it now, as rape.’
Miller claims Madeleine invited him up to her room. Questioning Miller, David Barr QC bluntly asked if he went because he wanted sex – despite the fact that he was a serving police officer on duty?
‘I think I’d have to say yes.’
Asked if he thought Madeleine would have had sex with him if she knew who he really was, Miller admitted:
‘if she knew that I was a police officer then almost certainly not… But I’m both a police officer and a person, so she might have seen the person, not the police officer.’
Had she seen the person, she would have also seen that he was in a committed relationship. What she saw instead was a single comrade she’d known for years, who had become a trusted friend, and then lover.
The Inquiry attempted to downplay the impact the relationship would have had if Madeleine hadn’t latterly found out the truth about spycops. This gives no consideration to the reality of the situation as she experienced it at the time.
THE FOCUS OF HER AFFECTIONS
Madeleine hoped that they would become a couple. She didn’t see anyone else, and her feelings for him grew. They met about once a week; always at her house, never his. She was very keen for the relationship to continue, as she was ‘never looking for a one-night stand or casual sex with anyone’, and ‘he seemed very keen on me’.
Their regular dates continued for a couple of months. He was, she says, the focus of her affections. However, towards the end, things changed:
‘He became increasingly distant, and I began to become disappointed that it didn’t seem to be going the way I wanted it to go. And, yeah, I kind of became a bit upset about it.’
Madeleine found herself wondering if it was her fault that Miller was withdrawing his affection. The last time she saw him was at a friend’s house. She hadn’t seen him for about a week. He was sitting on the other side of the room with a woman, and she sensed from their body language that there was something between the two of them. Madeleine now thinks this is the other SWP member that he has admitted deceiving into a relationship.
FEIGNING EMOTIONAL DISTRESS
Miller ignored Madeleine. When he left, she followed him to ask why he was being so distant. He said that he’d already told her that he couldn’t get too involved and that he didn’t want to get hurt again.
She remembers his departure damaging her self-esteem, leaving her feeling upset, disappointed and rejected. She saw it as part of a pattern with her marriage and thought:
‘God, have I made another mistake?’
He said he was going to go to California to ‘find himself’. This is yet another early example of what became standard practice – spycops would cover the end of their deployment by feigning emotional distress and say they were going abroad to sort themselves out.
The emotional turmoil created by some of the later officers had huge impacts on those who loved them. More than one desperate woman deceived into a relationship went searching in the country where her partner was supposedly living, not knowing he was actually back at a desk job in Scotland Yard.
FURTHER TALES OF VINCE
This was not a relationship that had ‘very little impact’, and it was caused by the spycops whether Madeleine knew of them or not. The revelation that the man she knew never really existed has caused more recent impact, undoing the peace that Madeleine eventually made with the end of the relationship.
‘To discover that I didn’t know him at all and that he was a fiction, that’s been quite difficult to get my head around. He doesn’t actually exist, it was all an act, wearing a mask… it’s really chilling and sinister… I just don’t know how people can behave like that.’
It is indeed abhorrent that Miller chose to have sex with a young woman who had no idea of his true identity, and who he knew was emotionally vulnerable. Perhaps even more so that he claims it didn’t cross his mind that she might feel pressured, after being in a relationship with a controlling man.
When asked by the Inquiry about pregnancy concerns, Miller put all the responsibility on Madeleine:
Q. Did you use contraception?
A. Not that I recall.
Q. Did you give any thought to the consequences of fathering a child when you were in fact an undercover police officer?
A. No, I didn’t. I think my perception was that as a full feminist socialist supporter, then if there was any need for protection, then she would have mentioned it. I didn’t see her as some kind of shrinking violet, or something like that. This was a member of the women’s movement, and women had the same right to ask for things and to insist on things as a man. And I would have supported that then. I incidentally still do. So she would have had the right – absolute right to insist, if it was necessary.
Q. But in the absence of any insistence?
A. Then I assumed everything was safe. In contraceptive terms.
Miller’s account of their relationship differs so wildly from Madeleine’s that even the Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting, butted in to question him on it.
AN ESSENTIALLY TRUTHFUL PERSON
Miller repeatedly stated that he had little or no memory of many events during this time. Madeleine has clear recollections of the last time she saw him. Miller said he has no memory of saying goodbye to her before he ended his deployment. However, he maintains that he only had sex with her once, which he now describes as:
‘inappropriate and unprofessional.’
Mitting stressed that Madeleine had impressed him when giving evidence:
‘As a sincere and essentially truthful person, trying to tell me, as best as she could remember, what happened between you and her.’
Their relationship was not the only topic where Miller delivered a different version of the truth.
August 1977 saw a key moment in the fight against fascism in Britain. The National Front (NF) were organising a march in Lewisham, and there was a huge counter-demonstration. The collision of the two became known as the ‘Battle of Lewisham‘.
Miller says Walthamstow SWP members checked out the route the night before, and deposited piles of bricks that could be used as weapons the next day. He also claimed they were armed during the march.
Madeleine utterly denies all of this. There is no evidence that anybody ever planted any bricks at all.
BATTLE OF LEWISHAM
This confrontation is now commemorated with a plaque in Lewisham. It was the turning point in the rise of the right wing, and the beginning of the end of the NF.
Miller remembers that everyone who opposed the NF agreed that the far-right had to be stopped from marching through New Cross, a very multicultural area, and that they all organised and planned to stop it.
Miller was an SWP steward for the march. He described the NF as ‘deliberately confrontational’, adding:
‘I don’t think these situations would be allowed to take place now.’
Despite the Met deploying 4,000 uniformed officers, Miller explained that ‘following the march’ was impossible; ‘it was chaos’. The police had no protective gear in those days. In his words:
‘the mounted branch took a complete hammering.’
There were running confrontations all over the area for the rest of the day. Miller described how, after the march was over, members of the far-right were poised to attack the protestors.
Battle of Lewisham plaque, erected on the corner of New Cross Road & Clifton Rise in 2017
Miller said he was ‘too close for my own comfort’ to the confrontations, but that he avoided getting involved in any ‘direct physical violence’ himself.
He remembers phoning up other spycops after the event, to check they had got home safely. A number of them were present that day, because they were infiltrating many of the other groups who attended, not just the SWP. They definitely discussed the event in the safe-house, he confirmed.
We learned from a report dated 23 August 1977 [MPS-0733369] that Special Branch held a debriefing for eighteen of its officers who were present. Miller says he was not one of them, and explained that other Special Branch plain clothes officers would have gone to the march, and that it’s likely that the SDS’s views would have been represented at the meeting by one or two officers, ‘at a high level’.
He notes the SDS undercovers were disappointed that their pre-intelligence had been ignored, resulting in severe violence. Despite that, in the SDS Annual Report for 1977, the Lewisham event is described as a triumph for the unit.
THE DEATH OF BLAIR PEACH
Blair Peach
By way of contrast, we have been told that only one spycop was present at the April 1979 anti-fascist demonstration in Southall where police killed Blair Peach, and he left early because it had turned violent.
The anti-fascist protest was a reaction to a General Election rally held by the National Front in a very multi-cultural area of London. This deliberate baiting by fascists was exactly the kind of event that the SDS should have been reporting on.
Gray said his branch made arrangements for the demo, [UCPI0000021193], but he did not attend, saying he probably had an SDS office meeting if it was on a Monday (which it was not) or had to go to work in his cover deployment (despite stating earlier that he never did any work there).
OBVIOUS LIES
Celia Stubbs, 2021
Gray claimed that he did not hear about what had happened to Blair Peach, apart from what was on the news. Like many of his colleagues, he claims there was never any discussion about it at meetings of the SDS.
This is an obvious lie, not just because it was a fairly significant public order event, but because it was, naturally, discussed at his SWP branch [UCPI0000021218].
Gray also denied knowing Blair Peach’s partner Celia Stubbs (who gave evidence on 6 May 2021), despite having reported on her activities and referring to her as ‘Celia’ during the hearing.
He states he could not remember going to pickets outside Harlesden Court where the inquest into Peach’s death was held, although he reported on it:
‘If there is a report, then I must have gone.’
There were two reports, [UCPI0000013435] and [UCPI0000013498] that show Gray was organising the selling of Socialist Working papers at the event.
Despite a general call-out from the SWP to attend to Blair Peach’s funeral, Gray says he didn’t go. However, photos were taken at the funeral by a separate Special Branch unit. These were collected in an album brought to the office meetings of the SDS for the spycops to identify the people present. It was then used by Gray in standard reporting [UCPI0000013539]. He still says the killing was not discussed.
THE KILLING WAS NOT DISCUSSED
Vince Miller said that demonstrations were discussed during meetings at the safe houses, and there was:
‘informal exchange of information, but also a release so that you could actually talk about things somewhere.’
He too claims that Peach’s death was never talked about.
There are multiple reports from spycops about the 1977 Lewisham and Wood Green demonstrations, both of which featured clashes between fascists, anti-fascists, and the police. There are hardly any about Southall. Every spycop asked about this demonstration has clammed up, even ones who have been quite forthcoming about their other activities.
It is insulting to be expected to believe that neither reports, which were written on the minutiae of people’s lives, nor memories of an event where a member of the public was killed by police, remain within the SDS.
OFFICERS HOLDING OFFICE
There is some contention as to whether spycops were supposed to hold office of any kind, or take influential roles, within the organisations they infiltrated. What is certain is that most of them did.
One of the officers in this era was Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76). He set up a branch of the Troops Out Movement as part of a long-term climb through the ranks to the very top of the organisation, where he then sabotaged it – as we reported earlier.
In the period under examination, from Clark onwards, every single undercover officer took a role in the organisations they infiltrated, except for ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1976-79) who was infiltrating anarchists without hierarchy or official roles.
In some case officers took national leading roles. What resulted from this was not just information, but also the opportunity to have a say in the direction of the organisation, and ultimately the ability to derail that organisation.
This week alone we’ve heard from:
‘Vince Miller’ (HN354, 1976-79)
Treasurer, SWP Walthamstow branch
Treasurer, SWP Outer East London District
Social Committee, SWP Outer East London District
‘Colin Clark’ (HN80, 1977-82)
Treasurer, SWP Seven Sisters & Haringey branch
Treasurer, SWP Lea Valley District
National Treasurer, Right to Work Campaign
Offered a place on SWP Central Committee; turned it down, but did do admin at HQ.
‘Paul Gray‘ (HN126, 1977-82)
Newspaper organiser, SWP Cricklewood branch
Newspaper organiser, SWP North West London District
Acting Chairman, Coordinating Committee, Anti-Nazi League West Hampstead branch (later Camden Against Racism/Anti-Nazi League -West Hampstead & Hampstead Group)
‘Michael James‘ (HN96, 1978-83)
Newspaper organiser, SWP Clapton branch
SWP Hackney District Committee
Membership & Affiliation Secretary, Troops Out Movement
Chair of Steering Committee, Troops Out Movement
‘Phil Cooper’ (HN155, 1979-83)
Treasurer, Waltham Forest Anti-Nuclear Campaign
National Treasurer, Right to Work Campaign
In 1982 and 1983, Cooper was trusted enough to gather the entrance money for the SWP’s annual national delegate conference in Skegness. This provided him with a list of 1,983 attendees, which he included in his report that was passed to MI5 [UCPI0000018180].
It was noted by MI5 that ‘the SDS office [was] still groaning under the weight of Cooper’s report’, which was subsequently considered to be of significant value to the Special Branch and MI5 alike [UCPI0000028728, MPS-0730009, MPS-0735901].
UNRELIABLE WITNESS
Cooper is not being called to give oral evidence due to his current state of health. However, he has previously provided an updated and amended written statement.
A big question is whether Cooper told the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s risk assessors that he engaged in sexual activity whilst he was deployed.
The assessors were employed by the Metropolitan Police to determine the risk to former undercover officers if any aspect of their identity was revealed. Their report from late 2017 recorded Cooper accepting that he had had two or three encounters with women, and the circumstances in which they took place [MPS-0746710].
Both the author, David Reid, and the second risk assessor, Brian Lockie, were left with the impression that Cooper was describing his own experiences whilst deployed [UCPI0000034397].
In contrast, Cooper suggests both misinterpreted his comments, saying that he:
‘was not as clear as I should have been about the dividing line between the specific, factual details of my particular deployment and more hypothetical comments about such deployments more generally.’
Cooper now denies engaging in any sexual relationships while undercover.
The psychological assessors who spoke to Cooper ahead of the Inquiry say that he is not a reliable witness due to being both highly suggestible, and wanting to avoid subjects that would mean revisiting traumatic experiences [UCPI0000034361], [UCPI0000034360].
CHANGING PARAMETERS
The last witnesses to appear at the Tranche 1 Phase 2 hearings of the Inquiry were the two risk assessors in question, David Reid [MPS-0746378] and Brian Lockie [MPS-0747533]. They were called by lawyers representing a number of undercover officers, including Cooper.
Both were asked to explain some alleged factual errors in their risk assessments for other officers. This line of questioning seemed to aim at undermining the accuracy of their recollections of Cooper’s testimony about his sexual encounters.
Both Reid and Lockie reaffirmed that what they recorded Cooper saying was correct, although they conceded that they were ‘not infallible’.
We also learned that the risk assessment process had been an evolving one. The assessors have been learning as they went, and changing their protocols and procedures accordingly.
It is unclear what this means for the earlier risk assessments, which were used to justify secrecy around the names of SDS undercovers.
WHAT NEXT?
May 13 concluded this round of hearings. The next hearings – ‘Tranche 1 Phase 3’, examining SDS managers 1968-82 – are scheduled for some time in the first half of 2022, but there will be no certainty of the dates for some time.
During the first set of hearings in November 2020, the Inquiry disclosed another 126 names of groups that were spied on in 1969-1975. An updated list, with groups named during the current set of hearings, is being put together by the Undercover Research Group (URG) at the moment.
We also hope to receive the verdict in the case of Kate Wilson before the end of this year. Kate was deceived into a relationship by undercover officer Mark Kennedy. Her ten-year legal battle for answers recently culminated in a hearing at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, at which police admitted their spying breached a number of her human rights, including her fundamental right to freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Regardless of the verdict, however, this landmark case and the disclosure resulting from it is bound to have consequences for the Undercover Policing Inquiry, as it reveals details that the police have been trying hard to keep concealed. Watch this space.
‘Spycops Inquiry Give Us Our Files’ banner at the notorious Stoke Newington police station where Colin Roach was killed. [Pic: David Mirzoeff & Artwork: Art Against Blacklisting Collective]
It heard evidence from two undercover officers who infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party, Troops Out Movement, the Right to Work campaign and Waltham Forest Anti-Nuclear Campaign in the late 1970s. Both were elected as treasurers of groups they spied on.
The reporting obtained by the Inquiry shows that Cooper’s initial involvement was with the Waltham Forest Anti-Nuclear Campaign (WFANC), before moving on to the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). With the latter organisation he focused on the Right to Work Campaign, becoming its national treasurer.
Cooper recalls that he joined the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) before October 1979 and spent time working in the back office before being deployed undercover.
The first report which can attributed to him with confidence dates to April 1980 [UCPI0000013893]. It notes, however, his election as treasurer at the inaugural meeting of WFANC in February 1980, which suggests he had been deployed for a period before this date. His deployment ended in January 1984.
PREVIOUS UNDERCOVER WORK
Before joining the SDS, Cooper had undertaken ‘a fair amount’ of undercover police work. This as part of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch’s ‘B’ Squad which covered ‘Irish matters’. This work included adopting a cover identity, aspects of which he utilised within his SDS deployment. His story was that he had grown up in Liverpool and had been in the Merchant Navy.
In advance of his SDS deployment, he recalls visiting Liverpool to build his ‘legend’. Cooper accepts that he is likely to have stolen a deceased child’s identity as it was the usual process at the time, although the Inquiry has not been able to identify the individual it was stolen from.
WALTHAM FOREST ANTI-NUCLEAR CAMPAIGN
Cooper adopted two positions of responsibility within the groups he reported on. The first, treasurer of the Waltham Forest Anti-Nuclear Campaign, was at the very start of his deployment. The second role, also as treasurer for the Right to Work Campaign, came later in January 1982.
It seems likely that through this, Cooper also became involved in the campaign opposing the construction of a nuclear power plant at Torness, Scotland, and probably attended the Torness Alliance conference in Oxford in July 1980 [UCPI0000014093].
Although he doubts that the reports on this subject are necessarily his, it seems likely that he attended a protest at the site in the course of his deployment.
RIGHT TO WORK CAMPAIGN
The first example of an SWP report which bears Cooper’s name is from October 1980 [UCPI0000014591]. He began reporting on the SWP-aligned Right to Work Campaign some months after the start of his deployment. He explains that the campaign:
‘was of interest to the SDS because it involved large numbers of people on marches lasting a number of days. Hundreds or thousands of local activists would join the march along the way, which included Marxists and anarchists…
‘it was important to provide intelligence to allow local constabularies to assess the risk of public disorder and ensure an appropriate police presence.’
A comprehensive report [UCPI0000014610] records the events of the 1980 march from Port Talbot in detail, culminating in a demonstration outside the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton in October, is likely to be attributable to other undercovers, ‘Vince Miller‘ (HN354, 1976-79) and ‘Colin Clark’ (HN80, 1977-82). Clark’s withdrawal appears to have coincided with the start of Cooper’s deployment, and his deployment may have been extended to ensure this overlap took place.
Right to Work march at the Conservative Party conference, Brighton, October 1980
Also of note is an April 1981 report from Cooper concerning a National Front counter-march [UCPI0000016599]. It mentions ‘Madeleine’ who had been targeted by Miller for a relationship and who gave testimony to the Inquiry earlier in the week.
From 1982 onwards, Cooper seems to be the only SDS officer involved in the Right to Work campaign. He became National Treasurer in January 1982, with control over the bank account [UCPI0000018091].
He was able to submit detailed reports on the arrangements for the intended 1982 march, which was latterly modified to become a picket of the Conservative Party Conference, which was attended by 400-500 people.
He managed to obtain private documents and correspondence with the organisers (one of whom was the serving MP Ernie Roberts) [UCPI0000017202], and the personal bank account details of those concerned.
AT THE HEART OF THE SWP
As ‘Colin Clark’ (HN80, 1977-82) had done before him, Cooper rapidly rose through the SWP ranks and gained access to the their headquarters. He provided a detailed floor-plan of the office, including the location of his desk as the Right to Work treasurer.
This also allowed Cooper to provide information to the Security Service (MI5) on the state of SWP membership records, and in 1982 they asked him to pass on any old cards should he get access to them made, [UCPI0000027448]. Similarly, he was able to respond to requests from MI5 for the technical details of the SWP computer and passed on membership details contained therein [UCPI0000016862, UCPI0000016946, UCPI0000020522].
Cooper was also able to provide intelligence on the personal lives and circumstances of members of the SWP Central Committee and those close to them.
He attended the SWP’s annual national delegate conference and rally at Skegness between 1981 and 1983 and provided detailed reports on each occasion. He attended alongside ‘Colin Clark’ in 1981, when both were listed as part of the conference administrative staff.
In 1982 and 1983, Cooper was trusted enough to gather the entrance money which provided him with an 18 page list of 1983 attendees, which he included in his report that was passed to MI5 [UCPI0000018180].
In respect of the 1983 report, it was noted by MI5 that ‘the SDS office [was] still groaning under the weight of Cooper’s report’ and it was subsequently considered to be of significant value to the Special Branch and MI5 alike [UCPI0000028728, MPS-0730009, MPS-0735901]. Cooper thinks he received one of two commendations for this work.
Towards the end of his deployment, in November 1983 Cooper appears to have submitted a report on a former member of the SWP Central Committee who had ‘obtained false employment references which he hopes will hide his political activities from prospective employers’ [UCPI0000020466].
REPORTING ON SCHOOL KIDS
Cooper may have submitted reporting on the National Union of School Students, and school-aged children more generally, in 1981 [UCPI0000016563].
He notes that the fact that this involved reporting on children ‘was not considered at the time, but probably would not have involved myself’. Spying on children appears to have been commonplace.
MI5 TASKINGS
In late 1981, several MI5 ‘notes for file’ record requests were made of SDS managers, asking for information to be acquired by SDS officers who had access to the SWP headquarters [UCPI0000027529, UCPI0000028837, UCPI0000027532, UCPI0000027533]. This is very likely to have been directed towards Cooper or Clark, and represents a clear trend at this time of MI5 requests made of SDS officers.
Similarly, by autumn 1982, Cooper was able to answer a detailed request for information from MI5 on SWP structure and branches.
DEPLOYMENT PROBLEMS
In a meeting with MI5 in July 1982, ‘Sean Lynch’ (HN68, undercover 1968-74 but by then an SDS manager) is recorded as expressing ‘serious doubts about the performance’ of Cooper. This relates to the officer’s failure to pay child maintenance, and an incident when he left his cover vehicle outside his real home address.
‘is still very worried because Cooper’s position within the Right to Work Movement gives him regular access to Ernie Roberts MP and meetings at the House of Commons’.
In contrast, Cooper himself does not recall any contact with Roberts, and considers any involvement must have been limited in nature.
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSESSMENTS
The psychological assessors who spoke to Cooper ahead of the Inquiry say that he is not a reliable witness due to being both highly suggestible, and wanting to avoid subjects that would mean revisiting traumatic experiences [UCPI0000034361], [UCPI0000034360].
We have already heard evidence in this phase of the Inquiry from Cooper’s fellow undercovers ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1975-79) and ‘Vince Miller‘ (HN354, 1976-79). Neither were complementary, with Coates specifically alleging that Cooper fiddled the expenses and Clark saying that he got into ‘all kind of scrapes’.
When it was put to them that Cooper had sex with an activist whilst undercover, they both said that this did not surprise them. Coates said that Cooper was a ‘very charming, easy-going, light-hearted individual’ who found it easy to strike up friendships, and probably would have had ‘small to no’ qualms when it came to ‘accepting an offer of sex’ while undercover.
CAR CRASH
During his deployment, Cooper was involved in a car accident. Documents obtained by the Inquiry suggest he reported this to the police using his cover identity.
In his defence, Cooper said he did so as the car was registered in his cover identity, while he can’t recall if any consideration were given to the lawfulness of this course of action.
FORCED OR PLANNED EXIT?
Cooper’s deployment came to an end at around the time of a telephone call in December 1983 between two members of the SWP [UCPI0000028712]. A transcript of this call says his cover was blown with the group, and that there had previously been suspicions regarding him.
Cooper disputes that this call led to his withdrawal, and claims that it was in fact his exit strategy that caused the conversation to take place. He also recalls some concern from senior managers regarding his possible compromise having an effect on future intelligence and their careers:
‘I felt that some of the senior officers were more concerned about losing intelligence and repercussions for their career rather than concern for my safety or welfare’.
He notes that they were ‘prone to panic when issues [such as this] occurred’, in contrast to his immediate managers and previous unit head ‘Sean Lynch’.
Cooper explains that he went through a divorce during his time in the SDS, and suggests that his deployment was a ‘significant contributory factor in this regard’.
The impact of his deployment does not appear to have ended with his withdrawal. He notes that:
‘The effects are quite deep-rooted and have probably made me more of an insular and secretive person’.
‘PLAYING THE SDS CARD’
Mike Chitty undercover in the 1980s
The Inquiry released a sixty page report from 1994 [MPS-0726956] written by SDS boss Bob Lambert (HN10, undercover 1984-89) concerning undercover officer Mike Chitty (HN11, 1983-87), several years after Cooper had left the Metropolitan Police.
As ‘Mike Blake’, Chitty had infiltrated animal rights groups. Two years after his deployment ended, he returned to the social scene around the animal rights group he’d infiltrated.
Suspended and subject to an investigation, Chitty resorted to threatening to expose the SDS and bring it down if he was disciplined. In his report, Lambert says that Cooper assisted Chitty.
Lambert’s report describes how Cooper himself had ‘played the SDS card’ in 1985 when he was facing dismissal from the police:
‘[Cooper]…was dismissed from the police service for assault. Immediately thereafter he wrote a letter to Commander Operations threatening to expose the SDS operation to the press if the decision was not overturned. Subsequently, the decision was reversed on appeal and [Cooper] left the service with an ill health pension’.
Lambert alleges that Cooper wrote to a Special Branch commander threatening to expose the SDS. Lambert describes this as:
‘the lowest point in the twenty-five-year history of the SDS.’
‘convinced his psychiatrist… that he was suffering from “Stockholm Syndrome”, rather than, say, merely calculated, selfish and devious behaviour.’
He goes on to describe Cooper as:
‘A disgraced former SDS officer who showed a willingness to jeopardize the safe running of the SDS operation… selfish, arrogant, disloyal both professionally and domestically.’
Bob Lambert, 2013
This is a parallel opinion to the SDS’ belief that any group supporting another must be secretly motivated by a selfish and devious takeover bid, rather than actual solidarity. It seems that, living in a world of duplicity, secrecy and power games, spycops and spooks cannot conceive of people acting outside of such urges. So it’s no surprise to see spycop Lambert feels fully confident in dismissing the professional opinion of a psychiatrist and instead imposing the motives that have ruled his own behaviour.
Lambert himself should not be considered a reliable witness in Cooper’s case. Both the letter and threats to expose the SDS are denied by Cooper, who says he never met Lambert, so the report cannot be based on any personal knowledge of him.
SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS
There remains a significant dispute of whether Cooper told the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s risk assessors that he engaged in sexual activity whilst he was deployed.
The Metropolitan Police employed them to assess the risk to former undercover officers if any aspect of their identity was revealed. The risk assessment prepared in late 2017 recorded that Cooper accepted that he had had two or three encounters with women, and the circumstances in which they took place [MPS-0746710].
Both the author, David Reid, and the second risk assessor, Brian Lockie, were left with the impression that Cooper was describing his own experiences whilst deployed [UCPI0000034397].
In contrast, Cooper suggests both misinterpreted his comments, saying that he:
‘was not as clear as I should have been about the dividing line between the specific, factual details of my particular deployment and more hypothetical comments about such deployments more generally.’
Cooper now denies engaging in a sexual relationship within the context of his deployment.
WITNESSES: DAVID REID AND BRIAN LOCKIE (RISK ASSESSORS)
The last witnesses to appear at the Tranche 1 Phase 2 hearings of the Inquiry were the two risk assessors in question, David Reid [MPS-0746378] and Brian Lockie [MPS-0747533]. They were called by lawyers representing a number of other undercover officers, including Cooper.
Questioned by the Inquiry, they gave highly technical accounts of the risk assessment process and of their interview of Cooper.
Both were asked to explain some alleged factual errors they made regarding their risk assessment for other officers. This seemed to aim at undermining the accuracy of their recollections of what Cooper said about the sexual encounters he had.
In essence, both Reid and Lockie’s testimony reaffirmed that what they had recorded Cooper saying was correct, although they conceded that they were ‘not infallible’.
Also of note was that it was learned that the risk assessment process had been an evolving one, with protocols and procedures changing as they went along to react from lessons learned.
It is unclear how this impacts on the earlier risk assessments, which were used to justify restriction orders over the publication of names of SDS undercovers.
‘Michael James‘ (HN96, 1978-83) infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party and Troops Out Movement. He occupied a senior role in the latter organisation in the early 1980s.
James’ evidence was a long and somewhat torturous process, often never quite addressing directly the questions being asked. Rather, he would repeat what the information was, but say he did not know the reason why it was done or recorded.
There was clear frustration as different points were covered and responded to with the same set of stock answers. To add to the annoyance, James often suggested to the Inquiry questions that he felt should be asked. So, while a lot of material was reviewed, insight and facts were often thin on the ground.
We do have to applaud Inquiry counsel Steven Gray for presenting the material in such a way that cut through James’ repeated shambling around answers, and exposed the rambling claims for the nonsense they were.
JOINING THE SDS
James did know of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) before he was asked to join, and applied by expressing interest to Chief Superintendent Geoff Craft, who oversaw the squad. He had an informal face to face interview with Craft, but did not hear anything for a while.
Rather, James discovered by accident that he had been accepted, when running into a colleague going to a police exam. It would be several months before he got the telephone call telling him to report for duty with the SDS. It is his understanding that he was informally checked out, with others in Special Branch being asked about him, including supervising officers:
‘I spoke to some of my colleagues there, who said, “Yes, we’d been asked what sort of chap you were”.’
A PREFERENCE FOR MARRIED MEN
As with almost all his SDS colleagues, James was married when he joined the Squad. The Inquiry was keen to probe the reasons for why the SDS managers preferred married officers as undercovers. James had said in his witness statement that:
‘One of the main dangers of the unit was over-involvement with the role. It was felt that if you had family at home, you would approach the job in a different way to a single man who had nothing other than work in their lives. The thinking was that having a personal life away from the job allowed you to retain an objective distance from your work and the group you were reporting on.’
He learned this from comments from his SDS managers – probably from Mike Ferguson, a former undercover himself.
There began a process which repeated throughout the Inquiry hearing, of long answers not directly addressing the point, and going into abstractions or tangents rather than giving clear factual answers.
For instance, if asked about what might have been management reasons, he would talk of his own approaches. When asked why management might have been interested in some details, he would deflect to his own understanding.
The Inquiry tried to unpick the phrases in the above quote with more specific questions, such as what was meant by ‘over-involvement’ and why single men would approach the job differently – would they’d be more prone to engaging in sexual relationships?
James said the risk was of an officer revealing themselves as an undercover. The preference for married officers as undercovers was rooted in the assumption that they would live a more balanced life and it was:
‘nothing to do with their sexual behaviour whilst doing that work.’
MANAGERS MEET HIS WIFE
James said he had thought it would be beneficial for his managers, Mike Ferguson and Angus McIntosh, to meet his wife. They thought this was a good idea and they met her before he was deployed into the field. It then became accepted practice after this.
They addressed concerns she had around the deployment, particularly in relation to communications. She wanted to be able to reach James when he was in the field, if need be, and was given a contact number.
That such had never been done before and came down to the fact no undercover had ever asked for it.
TRAINING
James appears to have been mentored in Socialist Workers Party infiltrations by another undercover ‘Geoff Wallace’ (HN296, 1975-78). James would catch up with him during the twice weekly meetings at the SDS safe-house to pick his brain and those of other officers.
He agreed that alcohol was occasionally consumed at these meetings; later there was a social as well as professional element to the gatherings.
James claimed there was an ‘unwritten rule’; no talking with other undercovers about their actual deployments. The Inquiry returned to this more than once, at one point referring to the recent testimony of ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1975-79) who painted a different picture of this. James insisted the rule included talking with the other undercover he shared a flat with, even though they were friends.
He was advised not to become too deeply involved in the groups he would infiltrate, not to become a leader, not to become someone who was required to be available a lot:
‘A willing worker rather than a leading light. That was some very sound advice I used the rest of my time.’
On personal relationships with targets, his mentor Wallace said be:
‘friendly and helpful, but not getting too close to members of the group.’
He does not recall conversations on the mechanics of the job and:
‘I was clearly drawing my own conclusions about what the objective of the job was.’
For example, he was not instructed what to put in reports but drew on previous Special Branch experience:
‘I knew how to put a report together. But exactly what was required, I think it was left to my own judgement, my own common sense.’
STOLEN IDENTITY AND A TRIP TO BLACKPOOL
James stole a deceased child’s identity to build his cover story. It was standard practice at that time, and he was given precise instructions on how to do it by senior management.
He never asked why it was considered necessary. He thought it might be to do with the Security Service (MI5) supplying cover documents for those undercover. It was good enough for him that other undercovers had done it before him, and that his bosses approved:
‘So I had no moral reservations about this at all… And I couldn’t see why it was a moral issue, because it didn’t involve anybody.’
Pressed on why he thought this:
‘No family were injured or caused any distress because of this practice.’
Later when queried by the Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting, he added:
‘I dismiss what I see in the press about what they say about the stress given to families whose children have been used in the way. I don’t accept that. From my own knowledge that didn’t happen.’
He visited Blackpool, the birthplace of the child he had chosen, to work on his cover story. To test the identity, he got assistance of local Special Branch and was assured that it would stand up to future attempts to investigate the cover background. The local colleagues also made discreet inquiries on his behalf into the whereabouts of the family and established they were no longer in the area.
PRETEND GIRLFRIEND
James prepared in advance a story of having a girlfriend, to have a reasonable excuse to rebuff advances. This was something he decided to do himself rather being suggested.
In the end, he rarely used the story. He did not divulge much about himself to targets and they were not very curious about him once accepted.
PRETEND HOME
James had several places to stay while undercover. The second one he had to move from as several activists lived nearby. He then looked around and found a suitable flat. As it was larger, he asked ‘Barry Tompkins’ (HN106, 1979-83), with whom he was already friendly, to move in with him. They both felt it would not be detrimental to their undercover work.
This novel idea was agreed to by management and was repeated in the later years of the SDS.
James was careful to prevent activists from visiting, and spent on average two nights a week there. It was not really a place to go and relax and unwind together.
The Inquiry was keen to know if living with Tompkins meant that they chatted. He was adamant that they rarely crossed paths and never discussed the relationships Tompkins had with women in his target groups.
This was somewhat in contradiction with his written statement, which says he had regularly discussed things with Tompkins. After going round the houses, he retreated to the line that the undercovers did not talk about their deployments with each other, adding that Tompkins never mentioned anything of significance in any case.
Evidence in the vintage documents released by the Inquiry suggests that Tompkins was thought to have a sexual relationship at the time. However, James insisted Tompkins:
‘was a professional officer who did his best to do the job he was being required to do – in the most professional way.’
Nevertheless, he is not surprised that Tompkins had such relationships.
REPORTING
James knew the SDS was set up to provide ‘background intelligence’ and information that assisted policing of large public order demonstrations. There was however:
‘no clear direction about what constitutes the information or intelligence that you might acquire.’
James relied on his own experience and assessment. In his witness statement he set out different ways in which information on individuals might be used. This included assisting Special Branch with the identification of people they would spot at an event or a demonstration:
‘Special Branch is an intelligence agency. It collated information about lots and lots and lots of organisations and individuals, much of which was filed and never used again.’
This was another strong theme of James’ throughout much of the rest of his evidence. Whether or not he was the source of intelligence in SDS reports, when pressed to justify various egregious bits of reporting, he fell back on the defence that it didn’t really matter. It was just information that mostly did not go anywhere. It was kept on the off-chance it might actually be useful one day, but since that was in the future, who knew, so you reported everything.
James is in no position to make that claim. Many of his reports were passed to the Security Service, and he can have no idea what was done with the information after that. All the files published by the Inquiry with a reference number beginning ‘UCPI000…’ are taken from the Security Service’s existing records.
James said his reporting was also used for vetting for government positions:
‘I was a Special Branch officer and that was the way that the system worked.’
As such, he asserted, the chances were that information retained on an individual might only have been:
‘looked at if that individual was applying for a post with some sort of security clearance’.
THE LIGHT OF DAY
The Inquiry showed February 1979 report [UCPI0000013171] profiling Socialist Workers Party (SWP) members, one of whom was a probation officer, and asked James what was the purpose of reporting their employment. James dodged straight to his ‘may never have seen the light of day’ argument.
Counsel to the Inquiry replied drily:
‘the fact that it wasn’t going to see the light of day again in your experience is not borne out by the fact that we’re looking at it now, is it?’
Pressed to explain, James brought out another of his evasive tropes:
‘I was just trying to paint a reasonable picture of these people. That what I perceived as being part of my job.’
Next up was report from June 1981 [UCPI0000015384], again detailing and SWP member, this time an inspector in the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS). James admitted the report was solely for noting an SWP member was working there. As far as James was concerned, it was for others to decide what to do with that information:
‘I was an individual who had no control what then happened to that information, apart from my understanding that it was in the records that Special Branch retained.’
It was either used or it wasn’t. There was no clear guidance on what to report, he used his common sense, and no, nobody ever took issue with any of the contents of his intelligence reports.
Though not raised in evidence, it is believed the DHSS inspector is the subject of another report, where it is noted that they did lose their job. In the early 1970s, and again in the 1980s, such information was collected by a secret government committee ‘Subversion in Public Life’.
LEAVE THEM KIDS ALONE
A May 1979 report [UCPI0000021293] gives personal details abouta member of Clapton SWP & Hackney Women’s Voice. It describes how she is divorced with a six year old child, and is living with another SWP activist. Why report on the marital stage, the age of the child or even that she had a child?
‘All I can conclude is that I was trying to paint a picture of an individual that may have been used in the future.’
Would you have been concerned at all about reporting information on children?
‘Well, all I said was she had a daughter of six years. I mean, I’ve not gone into any more detail.’
For all he knew, she may well have been of interest to other parts of the police or Security Service – contradicting his claim that he knew what happened to information he reported. He added the chilling statement:
‘But I also knew that it would not be used in an aggressive or detrimental way if it was of no interest. It would just be filed.’
It was not James’ only instance of reporting on juveniles. In August 1979 he reported [UCPI0000013300] on an under 18 year old SWP member including the school they went to. He said he wasn’t concerned about this, chuckling as he said:
‘Under the age of 18, no. If it was under the age of sort of 12, yes.’
The Inquiry discussed other examples of intrusive reporting and asked him about justification. As far as James was concerned, you never knew when you might need it in the future.
TARGET: SWP
Like most of the undercovers heard from at these hearings, James’ first target was the Socialist Workers Party, with management tasking him to look at its organisation in East London.
He went in ‘cold’, with no briefing on the group or what management wanted him to look for in particular. James was fine with that, as he was an experienced Special Branch officer able to draw his own conclusions and make his own decisions.
Part of the justification for targeting the SWP was that their demonstrations were able to attract large numbers. Asked if the SWP presented a threat to public order, he responded:
‘They had the potential to cause problems to the police.’
He said this was borne out by his experiences undercover, where he saw ‘plenty of scuffles with the police and a few fights with members of the National Front.’
The Inquiry drew attention to a report into a planned Stop the Cuts demonstration in autumn 1979 [UCPI0000013343], at which several hundred people were anticipated, although it would be ‘relatively quiet and peaceful.’ However, he warned that SWP elements could attend. This James agreed was a good summary of his experiences of such protests:
‘The SWP, they weren’t an organisation that went out looking for trouble, but trouble often followed them.’
The Inquiry wanted to know if James could have identified this risk in advance through his infiltration of the SWP. Sometimes yes, he said, if he was in the ‘right place at the right time to get a better view of what would take place.’ He agreed the SWP often cooperated with the police in any case.
The Inquiry pressed on the point, if the main body of the SWP was not the problem, how did his reporting help uniformed police? James retreated to his stock answer, that the SDS were just a cog in a big machine.
There was brief mention of Red Action, a group that did confront fascists physically, and had been expelled from the SWP for this. James reported what he heard about them from other SWP members and was familiar with some of the people in the group. He had no response to the point that the SWP actively distanced themselves from Red Action.
TAKING RESPONSIBILITY WITHIN THE SWP
As with other undercovers we have heard from at the Inquiry hearings, James became active in a local branch, this time Clapton SWP, where he took on looking after paper sales and chaired meetings. In September 1979 he was elected to the Hackney District Committee. This was nine months into his deployment.
Asked why he accepted that role in the face of advice not to take up positions of influence in a group, he danced around the issue. He said he had reluctantly accepted, either because he didn’t feel he had much option to say no, or because it gave him better access.
James repeatedly tried to down play his role and influence in the local party organisation, saying that the decisions he was involved in were minor.
The Inquiry did not raise the point that, in such a role, James would have been seen as a significant local figure by other SWP members, whose voice would carry weight of its own. As as a member of the District Committee he would have been reporting back on national decisions and policy.
However, James’ main concern was that his target group would want to be in contact with him more.
A meeting of Clapton SWP, chaired by James himself, discussed the killing of Blair Peach by police at an anti-fascist protest, and that local SWP members were encouraged to attend a picket of Stoke Newington police station and a demonstration at Hammersmith Coroners Court.
Like so many of his contemporaries, James claims he recalled no discussion of Blair Peach among SDS officers.
The Inquiry drew James’ attention to several reports on the Friends of Blair Peach Campaign. Why was it necessary to include a list of those attending a picket the Stoke Newington police station where the Peach inquest was taking place? [UCPI0000013505].
James saw no reason why he would not have done so and fell back on them being probably SWP members, and the information might be important in the future.
‘It would have been remiss of me not to have identified them.’
A second picket took place in April 1980, a year after Peach was killed, and again James reported a list of those attending [UCPI0000013935]. The Inquiry picked up on the point that there had been no disturbances at these pickets, so there was no real public order issue. Yet again James said that:
‘These are people that… have taken part in this particular picket, they may be of interest in the future.’
In James’ view, the reporting was always about public order, never the individuals themselves, unless they were committing criminal activities. It was also about reporting on the SWP as a whole given what it was doing, and ‘the potential that it had to cause police problems’.
FAMILY JUSTICE CAMPAIGNS
Even if James was not the author of various SDS reports on family justice campaigns of grieving people seeking the truth about what happened to their loved ones, the Inquiry wanted to know whether there was a police purpose to some of the information provided in them.
The Inquiry brought up a July 1980 report on a proposed national coalition between family justice campaigns that Friends of Blair Peach was trying to bring together, with amongst others, the Richard ‘Cartoon’ Campbell Campaign and the Jimmy Kelly campaign [UCPI0000014149]. According to James, he was just being helpful to police trying to build up a picture.
The Inquiry notes that the Blair Peach Commemorative Demonstration of April 1981 is given its own Registry File within Special Branch [MPS-0730184]. James was unable to help with the codes for it.
Colin Roach was a young black man killed in Stoke Newington police station in 1983 and became a major cause celebre. In February 1983, James reported that an SWP member had been a steward at a Roach Family Support Committee demonstration [UCPI0000018700]. Asked to explain, he repeated that it could be of interest in the future either to police or security services.
TROOPS OUT MOVEMENT
At the end of 1980, James was tasked to move from SWP into Troops Out Movement (TOM) as there was no coverage of the group by the SDS at the time. He retained some social contacts with the SWP, frequenting the Hackney trades union bar.
James said that Special Branch was interested in TOM for public order reasons, but also:
‘Though there was an element of concern about whether it was providing support for the Irish Republican groups, who may commit acts of terror.’
Asked to be more precise, he said this was because:
‘Activists who openly supported a Republican organisation that included the IRA could be persuaded at some point to provide logistic support to an active service unit.’
The Inquiry returned to this later, pointing out that TOM’s aims were democratic in nature, but that in a final report on the group James said elements would continue to support unconditionally the armed struggle in Ireland, although he agreed that no practical assistance was given.
The SDS spied on groups who simply supported basic rights in northern Ireland (eg no internment without trial, inquiries into British forces killing unarmed civilians) in case they secretly supported Republican violence. They did not spy on any of the far-right groups who openly supported Loyalist violence.
In May 1981, James took part in a protest at the TUC headquarters over its lack of support around hunger strikers in Ireland, in order to report on it, [UCPI0000015367]. It was a peaceful occupation of a room, draping a banner out a window and addressing the public by megaphone. His senior officers were aware he was present.
TOM MEMBERSHIP & AFFILIATION SECRETARY
At the time, TOM was in a state of flux as a national organisation. The East London branch, based around Hackney which James was in, became a leading and active group. In particular, it set up a steering committee for TOM which effectively acted on a national level.
Troops Out of Ireland poster, 1975
James was appointed TOM’s Membership and Affiliation Secretary. As with the SWP, he repeatedly tried to downplay the importance of his roleto the Inquiry.
However, as with other undercovers, he had placed himself to be the first point of contact for new people and have access to names and addresses of members, as well as an idea of which groups were supporting TOM, points he did not address at the hearing.
He says he would have normally shied way from such a position, but accepted it as it would have given ‘closer insight into the things TOM were doing’. Later he claimed he took the job on ‘not really understanding what it entailed’.
James tried to deny he sat on any kind of central committee for TOM, a point that floundered badly when the Inquiry took him to a May 1982 report [UCPI0000018080] that showed that this was effectively what the Steering Committee was. James was so ‘inactive’ that he ended up chairing meetings of the Committee [UCPI0000018365].
He then tried to say he was not very active ‘in any proper sense’ and though he retained the title:
‘I did very little to further the membership of the Troops Out Movement.’
The Inquiry unfortunately failed to raise that inaction also has effects, and that by ‘doing very little’, he was undermining the group organisation. They did point out that while, due to the intensity of the work, most people stayed on the Steering Committee for only six months, James stayed in power for eighteen months, as a September 1982 report shows [UCPI0000015779].
The Inquiry then turned to a TOM demonstration of 8 May 1982. James was treasurer for the organising committee. People’s family members were coming from Northern Ireland. A meeting report [UCPI0000018026] noted that the group wanted to negotiate a route with the police. James confirmed that TOM ordinarily engaged with the police when it came to significant public events.
James said his purpose in being part of a committee negotiating with police was to establish good intelligence on demonstrations:
‘I was in the right place at the right time to feed into the police service the proposed demonstration of this particular organisation.’
It didn’t seem to matter that there was unlikely to be trouble, or that his action wasn’t being done lawfully.
It has also heard officer Mike Scott describe how he assaulted TOM leader Géry Lawless for suspecting he was in fact a spycop and how, to this day, he doesn’t regard it as a crime because ‘it was acceptable to me’.
Self-justifying, abuse and crime comes naturally to the spycops. They give little reason beyond their self-defined remit. As Mike James so ably yet inadvertently explained, they are truly a law unto themselves.
The Undercover Policing Inquiry hearing of 12 May 2021 gave summaries of three officers from the latter part of the period currently under examination (1973-82), before spending most of the day questioning officer ‘Paul Gray’ who infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party and the Anti-Nazi League.
We Did Not Consent: Police Spies Out of Lives banner at Beachcroft Avenue, Southall, where police killed Blair Peach in 1979 [Pic: Police Spies Out of Lives]
Summary of evidence:
‘Colin Clark’ (HN80, 1977-82)
Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) officer ‘Colin Clark’ (HN80, 1977-82) infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and was also active in the ‘Right to Work’ marches.
He is still alive and, despite the Inquiry’s Chair Sir John Mitting having previously said Clark’s deployment was ‘of significance’, he is not being called to give live evidence in the Inquiry. He has provided a written witness statement.
Before joining the SDS, he worked in other parts of Special Branch, including its ‘C’ and ‘B’ Squads. He says several times that the spycops unit’s existence was secret, even within the Branch. However, he socially knew another undercover, Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76), who persuaded him to volunteer for the SDS.
He knew – from talking to Rick – that the work would be ‘demanding and required high standards of intelligence and initiative’.
He did not realise how much time he would be required to spend away from his wife and young child – something that varied over time.
He recalls Detective Inspector (DI) Geoff Craft telling him that for security reasons his cover name would be classified as secret, and never released into the public domain. He says he had lengthy conversations with Craft, and that his task was to:
‘gather the best information on extreme left-wing activists and groups that I could be involved with’
in order:
‘to protect the public in London, assist the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] to deal with demonstrations and the Security Service in its counter-subversion role. Those three objectives did not change during my deployment, although dealing with terrorism and terrorist supporters came into clearer focus as part of protecting the public.’
TRAINING & GUIDANCE
Clark started working in the SDS office in December 1976, and was then deployed into the field undercover in March 1977. He says he learnt a lot from seeing the documents that came in, but:
‘It was much more a process of familiarisation, both as to the types of information that were useful and how this might be obtained, as well as to the general issues concerning the left-wing.’
His training consisted only of a series of discussions with SDS managers. There was no formal guidance on how much he should become involved in the private lives of the individuals he spied on. He says there was no need for advice on intimate relationships – he was adamant he would never engage in such relationships, because of his ‘strong family values’, saying:
‘I prepared my back story to forestall any advances.’
Likewise, with being arrested:
‘The nature of the unit was such that we were not expected to go to court as police witnesses… no advice was given about attending as a witness in any other respect’.
He was not given advice on becoming privy to legally privileged information or the ethical implications which would apply to him as a police officer in this eventuality.
COVER IDENTITY
Clark’s cover name was chosen following long discussion with Mike Ferguson (HN135, a former undercover who became an SDS manager). It was agreed a nickname would be useful, so he chose ‘CC’ and says he extended this out into ‘Colin Clark’.
Unlike other officers from this period, he refused to steal an identity stolen from a dead child, as the idea of it distressed him, as did the idea of the family finding out. In order to ‘show willing’, he says he located a death certificate, from a ‘Paul Clark’. He insisted on using the cover name ‘Colin Clark’, and giving ‘Colin’ the same birth-date as his own real one. His managers went along with this.
Clark grew his hair and beard. Once he began living in his fake identity he dressed down. He invented a serious, long-term, long-distance relationship with an airline hostess in New Zealand. This gave him an excuse to reject advances, but also facilitated his exit strategy, while protecting his cover identity once he left the field:
‘people would be more willing to believe I was someone else if the Colin Clark they knew had emigrated.’
He said of his wider relationships with people in the groups he targeted:
‘I maintained a friendly distance as much as possible from all of the individuals with whom I had contact during my deployment. While it was not always an easy or comfortable balance to strike, I believe I would have been considered as an “able comrade” or as a friend. I was never anything more than this.’
EMPLOYMENT, ACCOMMODATION & VEHICLE
He initially had short-term cover employment, but that became problematic so he ‘went freelance doing vehicle repairs’.
Clark arranged a bedsit for himself in Muswell Hill. He chose the area as his managers said it would be a good location for making contact with leading left-wingers. Whenever ‘Colin Clark’ went away, he arranged accommodation for himself and avoided sharing with other campaigners.
He had a Morris 1100, and later a Ford Cortina, both provided by the police.
DEPLOYMENT
Clark says he was directed to focus his attentions on ‘the Left’ in Haringey, not any specific groups. He says that there were conversations with his pre-deployment managers – Craft, Ferguson, and Sean Lynch (HN68, 1968-74) – and he was told to use his initiative in order to:
‘find an effective way to get information on extreme left-wing and revolutionary activity.’
He took his time before targeting any groups, ending up gravitating towards the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), and establishing himself slowly.
He had significant discretion in how he operated:
‘the key aspect of this was that I had to act consistently with my cover identity and legend and not compromise my real role as a UCO [undercover officer].’
REPORTING
He naturally attended the events of groups associated with the SWP: the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) and Women’s Voice (WV). He says he had limited contact with the latter due to their radical feminism, but once gave a lecture to a WV group.
Clark says he also came into contact with Troops Out Movement, Labour Party members, assorted trade unionists and others on the left, and ‘Provisional IRA terrorist supporters in North London and the Kilburn area’.
He notes the absence of reports from the second half of his deployment when:
‘I know I was gathering information about links between the extreme left-wing in Britain and Irish terrorist organisations.’
The reports provided to him by the Inquiry do not reflect his memories of what he reported on (often by telephone). He notes that there are no reports at all from the period spanning November 1978 to July 1979.
Clark also reported on industrial disputes:
‘Industrial disputes have an intrinsic risk of public disorder, and so early reporting of these could be of assistance. As far as I was aware, there was no standing instruction to report industrial disputes unless there was potential for violence or disorder.’
He says that simply being able to list those who attended a meeting – not even the details of what was said – was considered ample justification for spying on it. He denies authorship of some of the reports attributed to him.
There is an SDS report from 1982 [UCPI0000017230], which includes a list of contacts (including details for Peter Hain and Celia Stubbs, two of the non-State core participants involved in this Inquiry) from somebody’s personal address book.
Clark says:
‘I never obtained or sought to use anybody’s personal documents for information purposes, such as the address book here. I was more than content, however, to report details contained within any organisational documents that I was given.’
SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY
He struck up conversation with SWP newspaper sellers and was invited to go to a meeting around May 1977. By that summer he had joined his local branch, Seven Sisters & Haringey, and was going to their meetings, paying subs, and generally making himself useful.
He started out selling the Socialist Worker newspaper, steadily becoming more involved at branch level, and then in the organisation’s work more widely. As many of his spycop colleagues, he took the role of treasurer in the organisation he was infiltrating, presumably because it would allow him access to membership details.
He says that he gave talks and yet somehow didn’t try to persuade anyone about any political ideas.
‘I did not push myself forward but I allowed other members to suggest that I take up the branch treasurer role. From there, I went on to be the treasurer for the Lea Valley district organisation… and this meant that I was then required to attend meetings of other branches within the district.
‘The SWP was highly organised and bureaucratic with frequent meetings, and a great deal of cross-over and support to other groups. As my deployment continued, I became involved in lecturing at their request… and also assisted other SWP groups within the region with running their affairs but only ever on a practical level. I never sought to direct their policy or activities.’
One example of this assistance was the help he gave to the Tottenham branch of the party after it ran into problems. He was involved in reforming it, and ended up chairing some of its business meetings on a temporary basis.
Clark reflected on his responsibility in terms of the democracy of those meetings:
‘All this would have entailed was having a vote at district meetings, and I tried to ensure that my vote always followed the majority, and that I never advocated anything which was contrary to good order.
‘As I have described above, my managers trusted me to act appropriately, so I do not believe I was even required to inform them of these developments, although they may have been discussed at some point.’
Having been encouraged to join in with the SWP’s sporting activities, he developed a friendship with leading party activist John Deason, so was able to report on him and his activities too.
INFILTRATING SWP HEADQUARTERS
Clark says that at one point he was asked to join the SWP’s Central Committee, but turned this down with the excuse that he was too busy. He was able to provide high-end intelligence to his managers as he had access to the SWP’s headquarters and a lot of information.
He explains that:
‘as a vehicle mechanic, I helped colleagues out if they had problems with their cars.’
This was extended to activists who who worked at the headquarters that he got to know, and led to him being asked to help the party out with administrative work:
‘because I was self-employed, I agreed. This was not something that I sought out actively but it very conveniently granted me access to the kinds of information that even a district treasurer would struggle to obtain. It was also a good opportunity to understand the dynamics of the organisation.’
This meant that he spent lots of time inside their main office building, around their secretariat.
He says:
‘My access to the SWP headquarters was ad hoc when I was asked to help out. I did not have a totally free run of the building but I was there with varying frequency from 1978 onwards, starting with the preparation for the national delegate conference that year. My managers would have been aware of my involvement at the headquarters from my reports.’
The documents he had access to included the SWP’s weekly internal bulletin, which contained a lot of details of the party’s paper sales, priorities and plans.
Clark was deployed until March 1982. He was not directly succeeded by another undercover, but is aware his deployment was extended to allow ‘Phil Cooper’ (HN155, 1979-83) to establish himself in the field.
He travelled outside of London for events, such as attending the SWP conference in Birmingham and giving a lecture in Liverpool.
He attended the SWP National Delegates Conferences between 1978 and 1981, and worked as a steward or administrator:
‘because of the ad hoc work I was doing around headquarters and because they already relied on me as a helpful and organised “comrade”.’
He received a Deputy Assistant Commissioner’s commendation for his report on the 1979 conference.
RIGHT TO WORK CAMPAIGN
Clark allowed himself to be put forward to help with the admin of the Cardiff-to-Brighton Right to Work (RTW) march:
‘My analysis was that I could just as easily provide relevant information if I was helping with the catering, driving and dealing with donations received en route.
‘I was not tasked to get involved in RTW by my managers. They would only have known about RTW once I became involved. I would have kept them updated once I was invited to assist.
‘My position as National Treasurer enabled me to have access to good quality information without getting involved in policy or organising events, which I felt was consistent with my role as a deployed UCO.
‘I attended the entirety of the 1980 RTW march and drove one of the support vehicles as well as cooking on the evenings that no other arrangements were possible.’
He received another official commendation his contribution to a comprehensive report on the RTW march in 1980 [UCPI0000014610]. Clark’s successor of sorts, ‘Phil Cooper’, also a drove a support vehicle on the 1980 RTW march.
Clark’s witness statement describes the RTW demonstrators being attacked, with Clark himself having to fight off his assailants:
‘I was successful at providing information to my managers before the event and along the route of the march, including detail that large numbers were planning to attend the final picket of the Conservative Party conference in Brighton at the conclusion of the RTW march. This picket turned violent and it was the one occasion that I was not able to stay on the sidelines.
‘As I recall it, the disorder started around me, during the course of which I was badly assaulted around the head and shoulders, receiving severe bruising. It was also the only occasion when I struck out, although only in self-defence.’
This quote is fascinating for the way it fails to attribute the violence. Disorder ‘started around me’ and ‘I was badly assaulted’, but by whom? It won’t have been his comrades, as they would be on his side (and he would surely have specified, SDS officers seem to love the chance to report disorder committed by their target groups). Conservative conference delegates seem a very unlikely option. It would appear that he must be talking about his uniformed colleagues.
Assuming this is the case, it is yet another instance of a spycop being assaulted by police while undercover.
ANTI-NAZI LEAGUE
Clark’s targeting of the Anti-Nazi League was done on his own analysis and initiative. There were many violent clashes between the ANL and fascists in East London. He says:
‘the key thing was to get information to the local police in a very timely fashion given the relatively poor communications compared with today’s.’
He says he avoided getting too involved with his local (Haringey and Enfield) ANL group, or organising anything, but would sometimes attend their events.
Following a question about the reporting of the 1978 ANL Carnival [UCPI0000021653] he states:
‘In my view, it was justifiable and proportionate to report on this organisation, on the basis that the ANL was known to use violence and seek out confrontation. It was important to know where its support came from and was likely to come from in future.’
As well as their back-office at New Scotland Yard, the SDS had two field offices, or safe-houses, in West and South London. The spycops attended meetings at these flats twice a week. This is when they submitted their reports, and expense claims.
Right to Work march outside the Conservative Party conference, Brighton, October 1980
Sometimes they would put together a report about an event, or look at photographs to identify people in them, or ‘de-conflict which officers would attend the bigger events’. These get-togethers also provided opportunities to bring up personal issues with the SDS managers.
Clark says he didn’t enjoy these gatherings, and reduced his attendance to once a week, with his managers’ agreement, as his undercover life got busier. He was concerned that the meetings represented a security risk, and a threat to his cover identity. He only occasionally met up socially with the other spycops, and says that when they did this, they never discussed the details of their deployments.
Clark would call the SDS office every weekday. If there was any emergency, he says he could reach managers at their homes.
OVERTIME
His pay increased significantly because of the huge amount of overtime he did – estimating that this would have added up to many thousands of hours over his five years in the unit. The spycops could be paid for any time they spent maintaining their cover as well as the time they actually spent with target groups. He recalls that there was some kind of upper ceiling on how many hours they could claim for.
A CLOSE CALL
On 7 June 1980 Clark was off-duty, shopping with his wife and child, when he was spotted by some SWP paper sellers. They recognised him, having seen him lecture, and came over to the family. Two of them took his wife aside and one of them:
‘found out my real surname and our home address. It was she who noticed my wife’s engagement and wedding rings on her left hand and told her “you must be married”. My wife confirmed this at the time.’
Worried that this woman would carry out her threat to visit them at home, he says he spent about three months living at his cover accommodation until they managed to move house. He says he sought permission from the Met to live outside the usual 20-mile limit, and was supported by his SDS managers in this, but his application was turned down.
EXIT
‘My exfiltration was planned with my managers but I was responsible for its execution. As mentioned… above, my back story included a long-term, long-distance relationship and I just let it be known that I was going out to New Zealand to spend more time with my partner and start a new life.’
The SWP held a leaving party for him, and John Deason drove him to the airport, having helped him dispose of his minimal possessions.
Clark was one of many spycops who have used a move to another country as part of their exit story.
Until the 2021 hearings started, the Inquiry had said that ‘Barry Tompkins’ (HN106, 1979-83) had infiltrated one main group – the Spartacist League of Britain (SLB) between 1979 and 1983.
While Tompkins did spend time with the SLB it seems groups such as the Revolutionary Communist Tendency, Revolutionary Marxist Tendency, and Workers Against Racism were as much, if not more, of a focus for him.
We are told that his health is deteriorating, and this is why he is not giving live evidence to the Inquiry. However, he did provide a witness statement.
JOINING THE MET – AND THE SDS
Tompkins joined the police in the early 1970s. He did plain clothes work in Special Branch for six months before joining the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). His recollection is that he was told there were vacancies within the SDS and so approached Mike Ferguson, then head of the unit.
Tompkins was asked if he was married, which he was. The SDS preferred to use married officers for this undercover work, thinking they were less likely to ‘go rogue’.
IDENTITY THEFT & BACK STORY
In order to construct his cover identity, he stole the name and date of birth of a deceased child, Lionel Barry Tompkins. Cover employment was as a delivery driver for a garden centre in Greater London. He also had a cover vehicle, which he occasionally used to transport activists.
Tompkins used several cover flats during his time undercover. Towards the end of his deployment he shared his Stoke Newington place with another undercover, Michael James (HN96, 1978-83) – who is giving evidence to the Inquiry on the 13 May.
INFILTRATE ANY GROUP (AS LONG AS IT’S LEFT-WING)
Like other undercovers, Tompkins was allowed considerable latitude about who he targeted.
He was not directed to infiltrate any group in particular, but told to focus on the ‘far left’, albeit with the proviso that major left-wing groups, such as the Socialist Workers’ Party, were already well covered by spycops.
FIRST REPORT: SPYING ON THE BLAIR PEACH CAMPAIGN
Deployed into the field in April 1979, the earliest report identified as being authored by Tompkins is dated 30 May 1979 [UCPI0000021297]. It includes a double-sided leaflet from the Friends of Blair Peach Committee, set up after Peach was killed by police at an anti-fascist demonstration. There are other intelligence reports linked to officer ‘HN109‘ on the subject of this justice campaign.
A report from May 1980 [UCPI0000013961] lists the names of people who attended a Friends of Blair Peach demo.
Another report [UCPI0000014149] mentions a new initiative; Peach’s partner Celia Stubbs and other members Friends of Blair Peach wanted to create a national network of groups campaigning about State brutality (such as the campaigns around Richard ‘Cartoon’ Campbell and Jimmy Kelly).
A July 1979 report [UCPI0000021047] lists some of the attendees at Peach’s – it is signed by SDS chief Mike Ferguson. Last week Celia Stubbs told the Inquiry how angry she felt about Special Branch monitoring her late partner’s funeral. Tompkins says that this was not his reporting, and it does seem likely that this list was compiled from information gathered from more than one spycop.
I‘M SPARTACUS!
Tompkins states that he came across the Spartacist League of Britain (SLB), which he describes as a revolutionary Trotskyist group, because they were active in the part of East London where he’d chosen to base himself.
Tompkins recalls speaking with some SLB members and thinking that they might be of interest to the SDS as they expressed pride at having thrown bricks at police officers during the Miners’ Strike pickets (which would have been seven years previously, in 1972).
He says the Spartacist League did not pose any significant challenge to public order. They were more intellectual than they were active. The Inquiry highlights some of the rhetoric of their weekly newspapers, but Tompkins thinks the only threat posed by the group was a theoretical one.
However, he believes their support for the Provisional IRA may have been of greater concern and thought:
‘The Spartacist League would have been capable of providing low-level support to the Provisional IRA.’
He did not provide further details as to what that might mean.
BUILDING UP CREDIBILITY
Tompkins thinks that he began buying the SLB newspaper and then began attending their meetings. He described his preparations, going to some general left-wing and Labour Party events and making sure to get a good grounding in Marxist/Trotskyist literature.
He feels the SLB were initially cautious, but gradually accepted him. Tompkins says he would not have been considered a member but instead as a relatively trusted supporter. The SLB is the main subject of intelligence reports attributed to him until mid-1980.
Actual offences committed are thin on the ground. Tompkins says that this did not go beyond low-level criminality such as spraying graffiti on Bow Bridge in London – where he acted as look-out so avoided active participation.
REVOLUTIONARY LABOUR LEAGUE
Tompkins’ reports from summer 1980 include some – [UCPI0000014134 & UCPI0000014148] – about the Revolutionary Labour League (RLL), a tiny group, whose members sometimes also attended Spartacist League meetings.
REVOLUTIONARY MARXIST TENDENCY
The Revolutionary Marxist Tendency (RMT) was ‘effectively a sister organisation’ to the SLB, and mentioned in some of Tompkins’ reports. It was allegedly formed by a merger between the RLL and some people who had left the Revolutionary Communist Tendency (RCT) in mid-1980. There is also mention of a ‘Leninist Tendency’ and lots of overlap between all of these groupings.
TOMPKINS’ OWN THREE-PERSON FACTION
Tompkins describes his own involvement in a brand-new activist group. He says that he – along with two disaffected individuals who he’d met through the SLB and/or RMT – started their own splinter group (whose name is unknown). He says these two people are the ones that he got closest to, and they would socialise together two or three times a week.
It is hard to imagine what the interest of Special Branch could be in a group consisting of three people – including Tompkins himself. Although this speaks to the sheer absurdity of SDS activity, it should not obscure just how out of control the unit was.
REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST TENDENCY
The majority of Tompkins’ reporting from 1980 onwards concerned the Revolutionary Communist Tendency (RCT) and Workers Against Racism (which was connected to it). The RCT changed its name in 1981, and was then known as the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) until 1996.
BARRY TOMPKINS & THE SOVIET ATTACHÉ
Given that the deployments that have been examined between 1973 and 1982 occurred at the height of the Cold War, there has been surprisingly little talk of connections between the infiltrated groups and ‘hostile’ foreign powers.
Tompkins’ deployment contains one, or possibly two, exceptions to this. He describes what he believes to have been an attempt by a Soviet embassy attaché to recruit him as a courier. He says he was told at a meeting in a Hackney pub that he would have to go to Russia for training. He told them that he needed time to think, and consulted his managers. However, they didn’t allow him to go, fearing that his cover identity wouldn’t stand up to the possible scrutiny.
Tompkins states that he had no further contact after telling this alleged KGB officer that he wasn’t seriously interested. He says that he saw a story in a newspaper later, suggesting that this officer was expelled for trying to recruit sailors in Plymouth.
His intelligence reports record this Russian as attending two RCP meetings in 1982 [UCPI0000018248]. The Inquiry has obtained contemporaneous documents from the Security Service (MI5) which largely corroborate his account [UCPI0000028784, UCPI0000028795].
Tompkins believes that he came into contact with another foreign security service. He says that he and his faction-of-three were in contact with an individual who was very keen to hear about any anti-apartheid activity, and paid them ‘money estimated to be in the hundreds in total’ in exchange for ‘little bits of information’.
This is not recorded in any of the intelligence reports and we are left to imagine what these little bits of information might have been.
WORKERS AGAINST RACISM & BLACK JUSTICE CAMPAIGNS
Many of the spycops focused on anti-racist campaigning – including that of Black family-led justice campaigns. Back in 2018, we compiled a list of these campaigns.
Workers Against Racism (WAR) was set up by the SBL/RCT/RCP, and attracted more supporters as you didn’t have to be a communist to join WAR, just against racism.
Through spying on East London Workers Against Racism (ELWAR), Tompkins came into contact with victims of racist violence and specific justice campaigns. One of his reports records a visit by a delegation of 17 ELWAR members to a housing estate in Walthamstow to garner ‘physical support’ from residents for a family who was being racially harassed [UCPI0000018095].
Tompkins justifies this reporting, with the amazing reasoning:
‘If I came into possession of information that people were being attacked and racially abused, I would have thought this should be passed on to the police.’
Tompkins was involved with ELWAR’s campaigning during the Greater London Council elections of May 1981. He recalls being tasked by his managers with assessing the accuracy of a Daily Mail article that year which suggested that ELWAR was a militant organisation.
Tompkins reported on an ELWAR meeting in April 1983 [UCPI0000019008] and included details of the group’s involvement in the case of a 13-year-old boy who had been beaten up and stabbed by police officers in Notting Hill, whose case had been turned down by a law firm. He was asked whether this incident would have the same ‘agitative effect’ as the case of Colin Roach, whose killing in a police station had led to a campaign for a public inquiry.
Tompkins also reported on the Hackney Legal Defence Committee and Newham 8 Defence Campaign [UCPI0000015892]. This report also names noted lawyer Gareth Peirce. His other reporting on justice campaigns included the New New Cross Massacre Action Committee [UCPI0000017186], and the Winston Rose Action Campaign [UCPI0000015540].
A November 1981 report [UCPI0000016706] summarises the contents of a WAR document entitled ‘Racist Violence and Police Harassment’, referring to a number of families in the Brixton area who have suffered ‘brutal treatment at the hands of police’ and of ‘racist attacks where the police have taken no action or obtained no result’.
Tompkins states that such campaigns were not a particular focus of the SDS – although the evidence suggests otherwise.
SENSITIVE INFORMATION
Tompkins said he reported all of the information available to him, and his reports bear this out. They include personal information about individuals, including addresses, telephone numbers, occupations, employer details and car descriptions together with registration numbers. The reports also contain more specific personal information, such as details of the subject’s partner and family, information about who group members live with, etc. One example is this report from September 1979 [UCPI0000013345].
REPORTING ON SEXUAL ACTIVITY & EVERYTHING ELSE
Even more intrusive is a report of September 1980 [UCPI0000014258]. It not only records that the subject of the report was ‘presently indulging in a sexual relationship’ but also contains the comment that:
‘Judging by the depressing regularity with which [redacted] suffers from attacks of cystitis, neither is permitting [redacted]’s tenuous position in the United Kingdom to interfere with more immediate needs.’
Another report from the same month [UCPI0000014543] details how an RMT member had been suspended by them for misappropriating party funds, and the theft was to pay off a sex worker. It also superfluously and cruelly adds that the person had a ‘physical deformity’.
Equally troubling is an April 1983 report [UCPI0000018782] which records that someone:
‘Recently had an abortion at a South London ‘day abortion’ clinic. Whilst the identity of the putative father is not certain it is known that [redacted] previously had a relationship with [redacted].’
In his written statement, Tompkins doubts that he authored many of these reports and/or included many of the personal details cited above.
SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS – NONE, ONE OR TWO?
Tompkins was interviewed by Operation Herne (the internal police investigation into the spycops scandal circa 2014) regarding a possible relationship with an activist.
Tompkins understands this was due to a Security Service document [UCPI0000027446] of July 1982. It says that Tompkins has been ‘warned off’ a [redacted group], as he has ‘probably bedded’ a woman – who presumably had a connection to the anonymised group.
Tompkins denies this accusation – and says he has no clear memory of who this person is – yet states that the only reason he remembers her is because she had a ‘party trick’ of lactating on demand and demonstrated this to activists on a couple of occasions.
However, Tompkins does concede that he developed a very close relationship with a different woman – an ex-partner of an activist whom he’d been spying on. Tompkins says he ‘bumped into’ her a few months after she had split up with this partner. He says a purely platonic friendship developed, and they would meet up for drinks, he would stay over at her house (but according to him, he would sleep in one of the children’s rooms and the children would share with her).
As a result, some activists began to refer to her as ‘Barry’s girlfriend’. Tompkins states that he did not correct them as it was helpful for his cover for people to think he had a girlfriend.
Trevor Butler, a manager in the SDS, asked to speak to him about an intercepted (bugged) telephone call that had mentioned ‘potentially storing items from Ireland at Barry’s girlfriend’s place’. Tompkins thinks Trevor Butler said something to him along the lines of:
‘You’re not going to get us into trouble are you?’
To which he replied:
‘No, it’s nothing like that.’
Tompkins wrote that he was ‘sad when he had to disappear’ from this woman’s life. What he does not explain is why he formed such a close relationship in his cover identity with someone who was not an activist – and by his own account was not a target of surveillance.
TOMPKINS INTELLIGENCE USED FOR DEPORTATION?
Tompkins describes how, about five years after he left the SDS, he was contacted by Tony Waite, who he believes was the Inspector in charge of the SDS at the time. He asked Tompkins about the accuracy of his reporting concerning a particular individual, which he confirmed. This was in connection with a possible deportation.
DEBRIEF
Unlike some of the earlier spycops we’ve heard from, Tompkins says he was fully debriefed following his deployment. There is a document [UCPI0000034280] from October 1983, which appears to have been created by MI5 to collate his intelligence about the RCP.
Tompkins has told the Inquiry that he never joined any trade unions whilst undercover, but this report says he joined the TGWU, at the behest of the RCP (who wanted him to go on to get involved in Trades Councils), and was a member for a while, until he allowed this to lapse.
The report offers an interesting insight into the party’s structure, rules, discipline and the standards/ level of commitment expected from members. It refers to the:
‘grindingly boring nature of average RCP activity.’
PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR
One issue which the Core Participants wanted the Inquiry to explore was whether undercovers took their knowledge and skills to the private sector after leaving the police. The Inquiry is only asking one very narrow question about this – specifically asking if they did any more undercover work after retiring from the police – rather than a broader question about them using their inside knowledge, ‘tradecraft’ or other expertise.
Tompkins says that for a period in the 1990s, he worked as a private investigator. He describes one occasion when he was asked to carry out a check for a company that was considering investing in a business proposition. To do so he pretended to be a potential investor, using a fake name.
Note: The Inquiry was intending to request a supplementary statement from Tompkins, to address new documents that have come out and other matters in his written statement, but has not done so due to his deteriorating health.
The Inquiry also states that photographs of Tompkins have been shown ‘privately’ to ‘civilian witnesses’. We do not know which civilian witnesses they have been shown to as no former members of the groups that Tompkins infiltrated have been granter Core Participant status at the Inquiry. One former member of SLB applied for such status and was refused.
‘Bill Biggs‘ (HN356/124, 1977-82) infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party in South East London and subsequently Brixton, from February 1978 to February 1981. He also reported on the Anti-Nazi League, the Right to Work Campaign, and the Greenwich and Bexley branches of the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism.
It’s likely that he additionally reported on the Brixton Defence Campaign, set up to support those arrested in the 1981 Brixton Riots. He is notable for the extent to which he reported on anti-racism work.
Biggs joined the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) in October 1977 and was married throughout his deployment.
He replaced Roger Harris (HN200, 1974-1977) and another unnamed undercover being deployed in SWP. This other officer is presumably one of the spycops for whom the Inquiry has chosen to restrict all details.
SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY
Biggs is one of many undercovers who targeted the SWP in London. He focused on the south east branches of Plumstead and Greenwich initially.
Like a number of his contemporaries in the SDS, such as Vince Miller (HN354, 1976-79), Biggs was active around the ‘Battle of Lewisham’ anti-fascist demonstration on 13 August 1977. However, this appears to be before he joined the SDS, so probably must have been present as a standard Special Branch plain clothes officer. If so, he is one of the eighteen Special Branch officers cited as being on duty that day.
One report [MPS-0733365] notes that Biggs telephoned Special Branch to say that at 14.55 on the day SWP ‘heavies’ would go to Church Street in Deptford, ready to attack the National Front marchers. This information was passed straight to the public order branch’s operations room.
It is around five months after Lewisham that we find the first report [UCPI0000011713] attributed to him as an SDS undercover. It is for a meeting of 24 January 1978 of the SWP’s South East District.
After this, Biggs regularly reported on the Plumstead branch meetings. Membership stood at seven people in March 1979, and attendance was often between five and ten people. In December 1978, Biggs chaired at least one meeting, his name given as ‘William Biggs’ [UCPI0000013021].
The Inquiry notes the tone of some of this reporting is dismissive, giving an extract from a February 1978 report as an example [UCPI0000011814]:
‘After a meaningless tirade on the exploitation of women, “gays” etc. and a brief discussion, the meeting was finally brought to a close.’
TREASURER & PAPER SALES ORGANISER
Biggs quickly rose to prominence in the organisations he infiltrated. He was elected treasurer of Plumstead branch of the SWP by April 1978 [UCPI0000011996] and in December 1978 became Branch Organiser for the Socialist Worker newspaper [UCPI0000013021] subsequently resigning as treasurer [UCPI0000013029].
In taking these positions, Biggs mirrors many of the other undercovers in the SWP from the era. Treasurer and membership secretary seem to have been common positions for spycops, presumably as they give access to the personal details of all members.
In September 1979, Plumstead merged with Greenwich branch [UCPI0000013398] but this was short-lived. Plumstead reformed in November 1979, as shown in a report with five people meeting at a private address, [UCPI0000013614]. This report notes that the Plumstead branch is also coming under criticism from the district organisation for being lax in its paper sales. The Inquiry noted that Biggs was paper sales organiser for almost year.
ANTI-RACISM CAMPAIGNS
On 12 December 1979, William Biggs of Plumstead was a guest speaker at the Greenwich SWP branch, giving a short speech on the political climate in apartheid South Africa. It is reported that he was able to speak of his ‘personal experiences regarding workings of apartheid’, which prompted a lengthy discussion [UCPI0000013688]. The Inquiry does not know if he did indeed have links or spent time in South Africa.
The Inquiry then draw attention to a report where he chaired a meeting of Greenwich SWP on 25 June 1980, which was addressed by the secretary of the Greenwich branch of the Indian Workers Association [UCPI0000014053]. The latter spoke on racism and fascism, and the oppression experienced by Asians in Woolwich and Greenwich.
In light of this, the Inquiry raised the point:
‘For the question is whether SDS officers, infiltrating the SWP, were tasked to use that position as a stepping stone to involvement with and infiltration of anti-racist groups.’
There are five reports on meetings of the South East London District of the SWP attributed to Biggs. They record financial and membership matters, union representation, newspaper sales, and liaison with SWP affiliated groups such as the Anti-Nazi League, Women’s Voice and Bexley Campaign Against Racism and Fascism.
MOVE TO BRIXTON AFTER THE RIOTS
Biggs’ reporting on the Plumstead SWP continued to at least March 1981, but by June 1981 he was infiltrating the Brixton branch. The Inquiry notes that this was not long after the Brixton Riots which had taken place in April that year.
Biggs was at the inaugural meeting of the Brixton SWP branch in June, attended by nine people. He was, true to form, elected treasurer of the branch [UCPI0000015441].
In October, Biggs was one of thirteen at an SWP meeting to discuss the Brixton Defence Campaign, which had been set up to support those arrested in the Brixton Riots [UCPI0000016622]. They agreed to organise pickets of courts in support.
WIDE-RANGING REPORTING
The Inquiry notes that Biggs’ reporting covers a variety of protests on different topics, from local policing, the Right to Work Campaign, harassment of SWP paper sellers by the National Front, support for Irish hunger strikers, and a picket of Eltham Police Station on second anniversary of death of Blair Peach, who had been killed by police at an anti-fascist demonstration in 1979.
There is also reference to a May 1980 march organised by local Trades Councils in south east London and the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers. Among those listed as attending is MP Guy Barnett [UCPI0000013983], which is another example of the SDS breaching the ‘Wilson Doctrine’, a rule that MPs should be informed if they are subjected to State surveillance.
As with other undercovers, Biggs reported on individuals as well as groups. An August 1979 report [UCPI0000011422] singles out someone who is an active shop steward in construction union UCATT who apparently boasts of contacts with the Provisional IRA. Another, in April 1978, states that a Plumstead SWP branch member was a porter and secretary of the hospital branch of the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) [UCPI0000011911].
In June 1981, Biggs reports on a gay member of Brixton SWP for whom a photograph is supplied [UCPI0000015431].
BEXLEY ANTI-NAZI LEAGUE & OTHER CAMPAIGNS
As interest in anti-racism campaigns among the left was growing, Biggs’ reporting repeatedly touched on the issue. This includes the SWP affiliated Anti-Nazi League (ANL) from 1978 to 1981 and, through his involvement with them, other issues too.
Anti Nazi League ‘Never Again’ poster, 1978
One report is of the September 1978 inaugural meeting of Bexley ANL, at which the Assistant General Secretary of NUPE is a speaker on anti-racist activities within trade unions [UCPI0000011472].
Biggs attended other Bexley ANL meetings, and reports on a picket they organised in aid of the Blair Peach Memorial [UCPI0000013500].
The Inquiry also pulled up a report of February 1981 [UCPI0000016486] when the ANL protested at Deptford Police Station to highlight police inaction in investigating the New Cross Massacre, when thirteen young black people died in a fire at a house party thought to be an act of arson.
Biggs also reported on both the Greenwich and Bexley Campaigns against Racism and Fascism (CARAF). He was at the inaugural meeting of Greenwich CARAF in March 1978 [UCPI0000011917] and recorded who attended a July 1978 event protesting against racist attacks in Lewisham [UCPI0000011330].
REQUESTS FROM MI5
Towards the end of his deployment there were requests for information from MI5 on SWP groups in south London, including on particular individuals. For instance, a 1981 memo [UCPI0000028839] notes the Security Service’s interest in:
‘[the SWP’s] future policy direction, particularly as regards blacks.’
The Inquiry says it will be investigating the degree to which the Security Service influenced SDS deployments.
QUESTIONABLE VALUE
The Inquiry notes three annual appraisals of Biggs by his managers for 1978 [MPS-0743908], 1979 [MPS-0743907], and 1980 [MPS-0743906], calling his work ‘useful’ and noting he is well regarded.
‘Although some of HN356’s reporting seems likely to have been of some use to the policing of public order, other reports, taken in isolation at least, appear to us to be of questionable policing value.’
Most of the day was taken up with evidence in person from ‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-82) who infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party and Anti-Nazi League.
Unlike the other former spycops we’ve heard from so far, Gray’s evidence was only audio-streamed to the live hearing room, so those who attended were not able to see his facial reactions (or, inexplicably, those of the Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting, and the lawyers).
What did come through the audio was his irritation and exasperation at being asked all these questions by the Counsel for the Inquiry. He failed to answer many of them, and often gave obtuse replies to straightforward questions. There were multiple discrepancies between what he’d put in his written statement, and what he said today (as recorded in the transcript).
There was a pattern to Gray’s questioning. He was taken back to his own witness statement to refresh his memory, and would then be shown a series of reports to illustrate or, more often, contradict what he had written.
He used a wide variety of defence mechanisms to fend off questions and avoid answering them, including one that we are very familiar with now: (selective) memory loss, ‘I can’t remember’, ‘I don’t recall’, ‘it’s 45 years ago’.
He interrupted the Counsel for the Inquiry with complaints that she had misread or misunderstood things, even when she hadn’t. He complained about being ‘confused’ by his own words, and came across as both evasive and pedantic, sometimes just responding with things like:
‘If I wrote that, it must have been what I thought at the time… If it says so in the report, that is what happened.’
Gray also denied accountability for or authorship of a number of reports, on the grounds that his signature wasn’t on it (although it had been signed by Chief Inspector Mike Ferguson, who was in charge of the SDS at the time), or that he wasn’t ostensibly a member of the target group on the date of the report.
His strangest excuse was that he wasn’t responsible for his own witness statement – saying several times things along the lines of:
‘I can’t remember writing this. You’ve got to remember that this was written for me, and not all of it is in my type of English.’
This confirms what has long been suspected – that the State’s lawyers ‘helped’ the former spycops to write their statements for the Inquiry.
Counsel for the Inquiry responded:
‘Alright, but this is a statement that you had a chance to review before signing it; is that right?’
We note that Gray had begun his testimony by confirming his written statement as ‘true and accurate to the best of my knowledge and belief’, shortly after making an oath on the Bible to tell the whole truth, so it’s surprising that he doesn’t appear to have read it closely at all.
Gray worked in the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch for nine years before joining the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). We know that he spent at least one of those years in ‘C Squad’, whose remit included gathering intelligence on left-wing groups.
According to his police service record, Gray was posted to its ‘Industrial section’. However, he now disputes this official record, claiming that he didn’t work on C Squad at all until after the SDS, when he joined it as a ‘senior officer’. He also seemed to deny having anything to do with the Industrial section.
He remained within the Branch for the rest of his career in the police. He described the Branch in his statement:
‘it was a small, collegiate work environment, everyone knew everyone else, and we all called one another by our first names.’
He says he was first invited to join the SDS by an undercover, who was a friend of his:
‘He said that I would be absolutely ideal for the job, and that I should join up.’
Gray explains that he didn’t take up the suggestion at that time, due to personal circumstances, but decided to join the spycops a few years later, in September 1977. By then, this friend had left the SDS and moved back to other Special Branch duties.
However, Gray says that he was familiar with the SDS supervisors of the time, as well as the senior officer (thought to be Ken Pryde, HN608) who formally offered him the job, after a short interview.
He says he remembers little of that half-hour interview, but is adamant that he was told his anonymity would always be protected.
MARITAL STATUS
Gray wasn’t asked about his marital status, going on to say:
‘Most of my colleagues, including those who were already in the office of the SDS, knew my home arrangements, and we all used to socialise together, with wives, many times. So yes, they did; they were aware.’
Asked why he’d said ‘I thought that you had to be married’, he explained that he’d assumed that all of the spycops were, until he was deployed and met one who wasn’t.
Having ‘a secure background, a secure home’ and ‘someone to come back to, after a long weekend or a long day’ was considered important, ‘so that you didn’t go round the bend, quite honestly.’
He doesn’t think that anyone spoke to his wife about the possible impact of this new role on her and his family life. He doesn’t recall what he was allowed to tell her, though she and other wives of undercovers did know the squad was nicknamed ‘the Hairies’.
A LETTER FROM HIS WIFE
The Inquiry then displayed an astonishing piece of evidence – a letter sent anonymously to then Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir David McNee, in 1980 [MPS-0726912]. It contained accusations about the sexual conduct of SDS officers, on police property, makes mention of the National Front, and is signed ‘an ex-friend of the Hairies’. The police opened an investigation into the letter.
By this time, Gray had met, and moved in with, a colleague from the Yard, and divorce proceedings were underway. The police suspected that his wife was responsible for the letter, so ‘discreetly obtained’ a sample of her handwriting to analyse. The report says it is ‘highly probable’ that she was the author, and describes a visit being paid to her home.
The Met’s main concern is avoiding her taking these allegations elsewhere, and revealing the existence of the secret spying unit, rather than their veracity or the impacts on her.
Gray says that following this, he offered to resign, but his senior officers (then Barry Moss and Ray Wilson) persuaded him not to. He says they were fully aware of his new relationship; they all knew the woman, and that he had moved in with her. He later married her.
Did he have any sexual relationships in his undercover identity?
‘Absolutely not… It was something I would never have done. And none of my colleagues at that time were expected to.’
STOLEN IDENTITY
Like other recruits to the SDS, Gray spent some months in the back-office before being deployed.
He got to know ‘Bill Biggs‘ (HN356/124, 1977-82), who was a few months ahead of him in the process, and learnt a lot from him. One of these things was the SDS’ preferred method of creating a false identity – locating the birth certificate of a child who had died at a young age.
Gray says he was instructed (by Chief Inspector Ken Pryde) to go to the government’s birth registry at St Catherine’s House and find a name to use, and Biggs was sent to help him. He chose to steal the name of ‘Paul Gray’, whose birth date was close to his own.
He does not remember any discussion about this practice, or being given any other options.
Gray explained:
‘We’d all watched “The Day of the Jackal” a couple of years earlier, when it came out, and that’s how the identity was done in that.’
Frederick Forsyth’s best-selling book including identity theft of dead children had come out in 1971, the film in 1973.
However, in his written statement, Gray suggested that this practice had been ‘thought up’ by the unit’s founder, Conrad Dixon.
Asked again about this at the end of the day, he said he’d looked up the film on Wikipedia and now assumed that was the source of this particular tradecraft.
All in all, he remains of the view that this practice was:
‘a sensible precaution, just in case someone decided to look you up.’
The undercover says that he didn’t do any research into the family of the real ‘Paul Gray’, and didn’t give much thought to the possibility that they might find out about his identity’s theft. Asked if he felt uncomfortable about it:
‘I don’t think it ever crossed my mind after it had all been okayed with the people in the office.’
Although he created a detailed back-story for ‘Paul Gray’, he says he never needed to use it:
‘I probably would have bluffed my way through the conversation had anyone asked about my background.’
He said nobody ever ‘tested’ his false identity.
EXPOSURE
Gray’s belief that identity theft was ‘sensible’ is at odds with the fact that it could fail spectacularly. Though it provided the spycop with a real birth certificate in case suspicious comrades checked, it also meant they had a death certificate that was just as easily found. And it happened.
Just before Gray’s deployment began, SDS officer Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76) was presented with a copy of the real Richard Gibson’s death certificate:
‘It was very much in all our minds when we joined the Squad.’
He said that he had heard rumours about why Rick had ‘come off in a hurry’, but was reassured by the SDS office staff:
‘That it would be okay; and there were other parts of his deployment that I would never have gone into, so in my mind it didn’t matter.’
It became clear that Gray had come to believe that it was the relationships Clark had had whilst undercover that caused him to be confronted.
However at the very end of the day, when asked to clarify this matter, Gray contradicted what he had said before. He now claimed that he only heard these rumours prior to joining the SDS, while he was working in the wider Special Branch. He went on to say that by the time he joined:
‘Everybody had forgotten about it at that time… we were all getting on with our postings and we were making sure we didn’t make the same mistake.’
The Inquiry asked how they were sure they were not making the same mistake unless everybody knew what had gone wrong, the only thing Gray had to say was:
‘We knew we should try and not have intercourse with somebody … who was one of the subject of ours undercover.’
He remains convinced that his contemporaries were all aware of the rumours, as many of them had been in the SDS with Clark.
TRAINING & GUIDANCE
During his time in the SDS back-office before going undercover, Gray read reports including those from deployed officers. He also attended the regular meetings at the SDS safe house (twice a week by that time), where he talked to them about their experiences and was given advice on what he should be doing once in the field.
‘After the meetings I would go and have a pint in a local pub with the officers who were undertaking deployments in groups similar to the one that I would be deployed into. If they did not drink, they would just have a chat with me at the end of the meeting at the SDS cover flat. They would give me advice on what I should be doing when I went into the field.’
According to him, this was the usual way for SDS officers to learn – from those who had already been deployed.
At this time, his managers included two former undercovers: Mike Ferguson and ‘HN68’ (who had used the cover name ‘Sean Lynch’ in his deployment).
There was no formal training, and he was not provided with any kind of manual or handbook. Indeed, Gray claimed he was surprised anyone might think there would be any formal training or rules to follow:
‘We were police officers. We were expected to use our common sense and judgement. You learnt on the job.’
The only guidance Gray can recall being given is to telephone the back-office if he was ever arrested. He wasn’t told avoid committing any crimes, and says he tried to avoid any violence at demonstrations.
He does not believe he ever saw the 1969 Home Office Circular, which prohibited undercover officers from being involved in legal cases, nor did he receive any formal guidance on other legal or ethical issues.
Despite going on to far more senior roles in the police, Gray said he had no understanding at all of the phrase ‘legal professional privilege’ – meaning confidentiality between lawyers and clients, which should not be spied on by police – and added that this didn’t exist in his day, which is untrue.
What about relationships (in the widest sense, including friendships) with those he spied on?
‘I was allowed to get close.’
Gray was explicit about the spycops being encouraged to socialise with those they spied on; it was recognised as an excellent way of gathering information.
He also talked of people getting lifts in his cover van and that he visited some people’s homes and being invited in for cups of tea, for example when dropping off copies of the ‘Socialist Worker’ newspaper.
‘I was never aware of anybody who worked at the same time as me having a sexual relationship.’
He wasn’t told not to though:
‘It was never mentioned that we were not able to have relationships, but there again, it was not expected… And I’m sure if I’d heard about anyone else who was having a relationship, I’m afraid I would have had reported it to the office.’
Gray cheerfully admitted to drink-driving while on duty, claiming that this was just ‘common sense’:
‘If you’re going to go to the pub after a meeting, or a lot of the meetings were held in pubs, you would have a couple of pints, and that you were going to drive home. You had to deliver all the people in your branch back to where they lived. So that’s as far as breaking the law was concerned.’
He went on to make excuses for this criminality on the grounds that the beer was very weak in those days. He then said he had his cover job as a driver as an excuse to leave the pub early if he wanted to.
Later on, Gray made a comment about how people tended to buy their own drinks in those days, rather than rounds, making it easy to hide how much or little one was drinking. However he didn’t say that he actually did this himself.
CLOSE & COSY WITH SENIOR MANAGERS
It also emerged that Gray had a particularly cosy relationship with the unit’s managers, in particular Mike Ferguson and ‘Sean Lynch’. In his statement he said they were:
‘absolutely brilliant, very experienced, they would always be there if you needed them.’
Speaking to the Inquiry, he clarified what he meant – they had experience of being undercover (rather than of being managers), which they passed on to him and the others – and called them ‘good all-round officers’.
He knew both men before joining the SDS. It sounds like he socialised and played squash with them regularly:
‘It is difficult to separate what I learnt from them on the squash court rather than in the office. I mean, we were big friends.’
Asked if the other undercovers had a similarly close and supportive relationship with the SDS management, he said:
‘I’d like to think so, but I don’t know.’
OTHER SPYCOPS – IGNORANCE IS BLISS
Gray attended the spycops’ weekly gatherings every week starting when he was working in the back office. Since the evidence of ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1976-79), who vividly described what amounted to a sexist culture at the SDS, the Inquiry has been asking other spycops about their experience with this kind of ‘jokes’ and ‘banter’.
Gray claimed he didn’t experience any of this offensive language, either at the safe-house or in the pub afterwards, saying:
‘I wouldn’t have approved of it and I quite honestly can’t imagine any of the colleagues that I knew doing anything of that sort.’
He also claims not to have known about anyone at that time indulging in sexual relationships. The Inquiry noted that he served alongside ‘Vince Miller’ (HN354, 1976-1979) who had admitted to at least four sexual encounters. Gray says he was surprised about this, and denied all knowledge:
‘I never knew what was going on, but then again, I wasn’t in his circle.’
He went on to claim that he didn’t even know that ‘Vince’ had infiltrated the same target group as himself, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).
In his statement, Gray described the work of his fellow spycops in glowing terms, saying they did an ‘exemplary job.’ Asked if he considered this still to be the case, now that he’s learnt about ‘Vince’ and the way he abused his position, Gray said yes.
When questioned about a number of other undercovers who deployments overlapped with his, he denied ever hearing anything untoward. Rather, they didn’t talk about what they actually did in their deployments:
‘I hadn’t a clue what the other officers were doing… even the ones who were in the same group as me. It wasn’t something that was talked about a lot.’
Asked more about his contemporaries, and who he was closest with during that time, Gray recalled sometimes going out for curries together in a group:
‘We would try to carry on normal life as much as we could away from our undercover jobs. We would never talk about our undercover jobs when we met like that, unless you needed some advice from someone who had done it before. Generally, you would have absolutely no idea what the others were doing.’
HIS ROLE AT GRUNWICK
Another inconsistency emerged between Gray’s written and oral evidence when he spoke of the long-running Grunwick industrial dispute. According to his statement:
‘Several of my SDS colleagues attended and reported on the Grunwicks disputes.’
How did he know this, if they never spoke about what they were doing?
He kept ducking the question, causing the Counsel to ask it three times. He eventually conceded that it was possible that Grunwick had been discussed at the spycops’ get-togethers but insisted that he ‘didn’t see their reports’.
This strained his credibility, especially as he said:
‘One of the reasons that I was moved to that particular part of London was to replace an officer who had in the past reported on Grunwick. You have got to remember, Grunwick went on for two years, every day, and I don’t think I submitted any reports, because most of the work done with myself was going to the early morning pickets of the Grunwick factory and giving detail beforehand to the office of how how many people were likely to be on the streets, whether it was going to be a big one or a small one, and that was all done by telephone. That’s why probably I say I don’t recall submitting any reports.’
Police press back pickets as buses of strike breakers arrive, Grunwick dispute, London, July 1977
Gray kept saying that he didn’t write any reports about Grunwick himself as his reporting was all done by telephone.
He added:
‘I didn’t know what my colleagues were doing. You might see one of them. We’re talking about 7 o’clock in the morning when the Grunwick employees were being bussed in. On some days, it was a big punch up, on other days there were hardly any pickets there at all. But the pickets came from all over the country, and quite notable people were attending.’
VISITS FROM THE TOP BRASS
The spycops were visited in their safe-house by senior police officers, including a Deputy Assistant Commissioner (probably Robert Bryan), and on one occasion by an Assistant Commissioner for Crime.
Gray recalled that the latter:
‘was very shocked by seeing us and hadn’t a clue what we were doing. But we gave him lunch and he went away happy.’
He noted such visits were ‘always treated with a little bit of humour’ and explained:
‘Because if you’re working in a situation in Scotland Yard where everybody looks the same and they’re all doing their job, and you then come out, to a not-very-tidy flat in the middle of nowhere, and meet ten chaps who are smelly, hairy, not very nice, and you are told that they’re your officers, it was a bit of a shock, I think, and that happened on a couple of occasions.’
He assumed that the senior SDS office staff briefed these visitors.
Asked if the shocked Assistant Commissioner for Crime was Gilbert Kelland (1977 – 1984), he said the name of the visitor he remembered was Mastel. The latter was a contemporary Assistant Commissioner, but for A Division – not C – and that is peculiar as he was not in the line of command of the SDS.
THE REPORTING PROCESS
Gray has complained that many of his reports he remembers making are not in the bundle of evidence that the Inquiry has provided him with. If he had anything urgent to report – including information for the Met’s public order department (A8) – he tended to telephone it in.
However, he also submitted many written reports, and it is clear that many of them are missing:
‘There are a hell of a lot of bloody meetings that I reported on that are not in my bundle.’
He says that he would draft what he called ‘current reports’ and then give them to the office staff to finish off, and maybe collate with others. Earlier he said that Special Branch – beyond the Special Demonstration Squad – would sometimes consolidate intelligence from different spycops into single reports.
At the end of his deployment, Gray was asked to bring the files of various individuals up to date before he left the unit. He described this as ‘topping and tailing’ reports, by writing down everything that was known about the subject; where they lived, how much spare time they had, what they did with it, how often they had people over, how much involvement they had with campaigning, etc.
The Inquiry illustrated this May 1982 report on a member of Kilburn SWP and West Hampstead CND [UCPI0000018134].
Even the notion that people were politically inactive for years was seen as an important input to an ‘up-to-date’ report, and these files would be retained (for example [UCPI0000018131]).
Gray complained that the examples shown today were ‘not representative of an ordinary up-to-date report’, and Mitting promised to examine the others.
REGISTRY FILES
He explained the significance of the numbers that appear on the sides of these reports: these were Registry File reference numbers added by office staff, after they’d run a check on the names of any individuals and groups mentioned.
Gray also clarified that the police had a special photography unit, who took photos at demos and meetings. Sometimes an album of these photographs would be shown around at the safe-house, for anyone there to help with identifying the people in them.
‘SUBVERSION’ & THE SWP
Gray was sent to North West London, as another undercover had just left the area:
‘probably because at that time, we were having a lot of trouble with getting the right numbers of police officers on the streets in the mornings at Grunwick.’
He also stated:
‘I was not tasked beyond being told to infiltrate the SWP’
In his witness statement he said that the SWP:
‘was a revolutionary group which was involved in demonstrations. They were willing to achieve that by whatever means possible, and did not believe that the ballot box was the only way. They were dedicated to the downfall of the government at the time.’
He accused them not just of being ‘subversive’, but also of presenting a ‘challenge to public order’ and being ‘involved in criminal activities.’
The Inquiry sought to clarify what he meant by these assertions. How did he know they were ‘subversive’? Did he ever witness the SWP or its members doing anything to ‘bring down the system of government in this country’?
His answer was frankly bizarre; he began talking about their participation in anti-fascist demonstrations and the ensuing conflict in Brick Lane on Sundays, when members of the fascist National Front would confront SWP newspaper sellers, saying it was ‘quite violent’ and ‘very, very unpleasant’.
When asked if that had anything to do with subversion, he replied:
‘It could be. Whatever subversion is, I don’t know.’
We were shown a report from September 1979 [UCPI0000013385], of a meeting of the SWP’s NW London District Committee. According to this, the SWP was ‘at an all-time low’, with only 3800 members nationwide, to be suffering from apathy, and low circulation figures for the Socialist Worker newspaper. Gray said he did not remember this, nor any discussion with his managers about his continued deployment in the group.
In his statement, he says:
‘it was the role of Special Branch to report on subversive activity, but it was the role of the security services to deal with it, not the police. The main role of the SDS was intelligence gathering to assist with public order policing.’
He knew that the Security Service (MI5) was interested in the spycops’ work, pointing out that they were sent a copy ‘of everything that we produced’ and explaining the ‘Box 500’ stamp in the corner of the copies seen by the Inquiry indicates this.
We saw examples of ‘Box 500’ requesting information, including a document dated January 1980 [UCPI0000013713] which contains personal details about a member of the SWP’s Kilburn branch being treated in hospital following a car crash.
Did he ever think of the SDS – or the Met police more widely – as being subordinate to MI5?
‘It never crossed my mind.’
RACISTS & VIOLENCE
In his statement, Gray said that there was ‘always a sub-group’ who were looking for trouble, but that he chose to stick with the people who chose to avoid aggravation so, as a result, was never caught up in violence or injured at any demonstrations.
Asked if he ever considered confining his reporting to those who were getting involved in the violence, rather than the peaceful ones, he said he didn’t. Although he admits that many SWP members were entirely peaceful and law-abiding, his excuse was that he had to report on the group as a whole.
Later on in his written statement, he wrote:
‘I suspect that all of them had run-ins with the police’
However, he said he didn’t know if any of them were arrested. He defined ‘run-ins’ in an unusual way – describing groups of activists running at police lines to break though them – but denied taking part in this practice himself, saying that all he got involved in was:
‘linking arms and trying to stick together with my comrades.’
Why did he describe the SWP as ‘a leading group in the public order field?’
Gray said their newspaper sales were prolific, and still are. They were active, they went to a lot of demonstrations and pickets. There was disorder. In his written statement, he claimed that they were involved in criminality, and he frequently saw them engage in violence.
When questioned more about this, the only example he could provide was the violence he saw at Brick Lane in East London. He spoke about them throwing missiles – ‘bricks, rubbish bins, anything that was going’ at the National Front (NF).
Despite admitting that the NF deliberately chose that place to demonstrate because it was a predominantly Asian area, and the NF ‘wanted to get rid of them’, and ‘the Bangladeshi restaurants and shops would get smashed up’ by the NF. Yet he also insisted that the violence he saw ‘was provoked by both sides, and the police had to keep them apart.’
There are no reports on any violence of this kind in his entire deployment. Gray claimed this was because the spycops provided ‘pre-emptive intelligence’ so were able to prevent such violence from taking place.
In response to this, the Inquiry laid out some other examples of his reporting, which were not ‘pre-emptive’ at all, but about things which had already occurred.
One such report concerned a car being used by a local Anti Nazi League (ANL) group who went around painting over racist graffiti [UCPI0000011447]. Gray said the security services would have been ‘very interested’ in the details of the car and its owner.
In contrast, it appears that the police weren’t interested in taking action against the NF, and the SDS did not infiltrate them. This was confirmed by Gray, in his own words, when talking about that letter written by his wife, in which she mentions spycops infiltrating the extreme right wing, he said:
‘She didn’t get it from me, because we weren’t, in those days.’
UPWARD MOBILITY IN THE SWP
The Inquiry traced Gray’s journey through the SWP’s hierarchy, with the help of some more documents.
The first SWP meeting he attended and reported on seems to have been a meeting of the Cricklewood branch in February 1978 [UCPI0000011859]. He explained that this was the only branch of the party in the area at the time, but again failed to answer the Inquiry’s question: did the SDS view infiltrating the SWP as a ‘stepping stone’ to other groups?
The next report [UCPI0000011354] was from a much smaller meeting of the Cricklewood Branch Committee, in July 1978. This took place in someone’s home, and elections for the Committee took place. Gray was voted in as a committee member – he is listed as the ‘Socialist Worker Organiser’.
He now claims that he had no idea this election was due to take place, and that he was nominated from the floor, and had no way of excusing himself or contacting the office for authorisation before accepting it. He suggests that the reason for his nomination was that access to a vehicle was essential for the role of moving a lot of newspapers. In any case, he believes he was a trusted member of the group by then, and his managers were happy about this.
In January 1979 he was elected to the North West London District Committee [UCPI0000013111]. He is adamant that he did not volunteer for this either, but he knew in advance that he would be appointed, and says this:
‘It’s better not attract attention by putting up your hand.’
A week later, at a meeting of seven District Committee members [UCPI0000013123], Gray became the District Organiser responsible for newspaper distribution. He was tasked with organising regular meetings with Branch Organisers across the wider area. Partly, it seems, because he had a van.
He explained that he would turn up at their Branch meetings and talk to them about their paper sales. This meant he could gather a lot more intelligence, about a lot more people. Asked if this gave him more influence over Branch Organisers, he responded by talking about how hard it was to collect money for papers sold.
When asked if joining the District Committee could be considered a step up in the SWP hierarchy, Gray claimed he ‘never thought of it that way’ and repeatedly claimed that he had little influence over decisions, he just transported papers around.
We saw a few more reports about paper sales and party members being exhorted to sell more. A National Organiser came to the District Committee meeting in September 1979 [UCPI0000013435], and proclaimed that selling the ‘Socialist Worker’ was the most important duty of any party member, and told Gray he should be doing more to boost sales, including spot checks on the branches in his patch, causing an ‘embarrassed silence’ in the room. Gray himself did something similar in April 1979 [UCPI0000021170] just before the General Election.
After some discussion about the his position in the party structure and how it compared with others, for example that of Branch Secretary – during which Gray absurdly claimed that there weren’t ‘any hierarchies around’ in the SWP – we saw a report [UCPI0000014064] of him chairing a District Committee meeting in June 1980.
Paragraph 5 of this report makes interesting reading:
‘The meeting was informed that it was feared Acton SWP had been infiltrated by a “spy”… it was decided that he was too inefficient to be a member of the Special Branch, but was probably from the National Association for Freedom.’
Gray claims to have no recollection of attending this meeting at all. Not unreasonably, Counsel to the Inquiry asked:
‘Was it not memorable that you were present as an undercover officer from Special Branch at a meeting at which it was being speculated that somebody else might be an infiltrator from Special Branch?’
He insisted that he has no recollection, and told Counsel to ask the office people about this as well.
ANTI NAZI LEAGUE
According to Gray, all members of the SWP were expected to join the ANL. When asked if he was sent to target them, he snapped:
‘When I was first deployed, there was no ANL.’
This is untrue. The ANL was launched (at the House of Commons no less, thanks to some Labour MPs) in November 1977, just as Gray was being prepared for deployment.
He was shown a report [UCPI0000011970] about an ANL meeting that he attended on 23 March 1978, just one month after his first SWP meeting.
The ANL quickly mushroomed into a massive grass-roots movement, with 250+ groups across the country, which played a part in the eventual demise of the NF.
According to Gray though:
‘It was a recruiting tool for the SWP and it was very successful.’
He felt that spying on the ANL was completely justified for this reason, falsely claiming that ‘most of them had dual membership’. The ANL was a much larger, wider organisation, so joining it meant he came into contact with activists who weren’t SWP members.
Rock Against Racism (RAR) had already launched in 1976, and put on hundreds of gigs, bringing together punk, reggae and other types of music, with a strong anti-racist, political message. In 1978, they put on two huge RAR carnivals in London.
The first was held in the East End’s Victoria Park, at the end of April. The Tom Robinson Band reportedly stole the show in a line-up that included X-Ray Spex, Steel Pulse, the Ruts, Misty in Roots, the Clash and others.
The second was in Brixton’s Brockwell Park, in September 1978. The line-up there included Stiff Little Fingers from Belfast (a replacement for Sham 69, who felt forced to drop out after receiving death threats from right-wingers), Elvis Costello, and Aswad.
Both carnivals were preceded by marches from central London, which attracted 80,000 and 100,000 people respectively.
Further carnivals took place in other cities, and RAR went on to announce a 23-date ‘Militant Entertainment’ tour in 1979, before the General Election, ‘aimed at racialist candidates of whatever party’.
Local ANL groups, like the Kilburn & Queens Park branch, organised similar events, albeit on a much smaller scale.
We saw a July 1978 report [UCPI0000011301] about this branch’s organising committee meeting to plan a multi-racial music festival in Kilburn Grange park on 23 July.
‘Paul Gray’ from West Hampstead ANL is listed as attending this meeting. He claims no recollection of the meeting or anything to do with the organising of the music festival, or even membership of the West Hampstead branch.
The Inquiry respond by showing document [UCPI0000011497], a report of the West Hampstead ANL Organising Committee meeting from September 1978. Despite Paul Gray named as attending, he still refuses to admit membership of the ANL:
‘I don’t know. I can’t – can’t really say I was in the Anti-Nazi League. I can’t remember which – which branch it was.’
The next report was from the following month [UCPI0000012960]. There was discussion about merging two groups: West Hampstead ANL and a local branch of Camden Against Racism (CAR), to form ‘Camden Against Racism/ Anti Nazi League – West Hampstead and Hampstead Group’ – about which Gray chuckled, and made a comment referencing Monty Python.
Again, we see Gray’s name listed – he was elected as a delegate from the group at CAR Central Committee meetings. He nit-picked about the Inquiry’s choice of words when they mention him being elected, interrupting to say he was ‘delegated’. Counsel confirmed that he was elected to act as a delegate, and pointed out that he ended up on the committee of every single group he has spent time around.
Gray said, by way of explanation, that this meant he could do his job better. He would know even more about who was involved, and be able to gather information for both Special Branch and the Security Service. He says he avoided taking on any responsibility in these committee roles.
Before moving on, we note that the first three general meetings of this new amalgamated group were chaired by ‘Paul Gray’, who explained this is because it was made a rotating role, and he was first on the rota. He also chaired the group’s general meetings, for example one held in November 1978 [UCPI0000013002], when he reported back from a recent meeting at Brent Trade and Labour Hall.
According to another report [UCPI0000013135], meetings of the group were still being chaired by ‘Paul Gray’ in January 1979. This particular meeting agreed that Gray should accompany another member to the ANL’s NW London Coordinating Committee meetings in future to ‘assist’ her. Gray insisted that he didn’t think he would have influenced the ANL’s activities.
The Inquiry drew attention to Gray’s statement, were he described the ANL as ‘an anti-fascist group rather than than a subversive group’, that attended many of the same demos as other left-wing groups. And that both the SWP and ANL would ‘get involved in public disorder and violence, particularly when the NF turned up’. Asked about this, Gray confirmed that he regarded members of both groups as targets.
Attached to a report from August 1978 [UCPI0000011380] is a newsletter produced by West Hampstead ANL. This includes a piece describing the NF’s activities in and around Brick Lane in the East End, saying:
‘This area has been the scene of two brutal racial murders, frequent attacks on Bengali’s by gangs of NF thugs, and a regular presence by gangs of paper sellers pushing the most provocative and disgusting racist propaganda…
‘If we can peacefully occupy the area every Sunday morning between now and the general election, we can destroy their credibility amongst the elements that might be impressed by their success.’
Gray was sceptical about this:
‘I don’t know if they used the word ‘peaceful’.’
Counsel pointed out that it’s there in black and white, in the leaflet that Gray himself had included in the report.
‘Well, there you are, yeah.’
The last report in this section was another from August 1978 [UCPI0000011355]. This is about two members of the Kilburn & Queens Park ANL, who are living in a squat.
An article is attached, from ‘Women’s Voice’ – another SWP publication – entitled ‘Organise your street against the Nazis’. Why report on this? Because they were planning to hold meetings in Kilburn High Street – which, to Gray, is ‘all to do with public order. That’s what our remit was.’
He claimed to be trying to provide as full a picture of ‘Women’s Voice’ as possible for Special Branch’s C Squad (which spied on left wing activists) and MI5. He also says that organising against Nazis equates to them ‘sliding sideways’.
BLAIR PEACH
Blair Peach
The next report from the SWP NW London District in April 1979 [UCPI0000021193] lists counter-demonstrations organised to protest the NF’s election rallies. The Front had booked town halls as venues for these meetings, despite strong local opposition to their race-hate.
The community in Southall had tried to get the NF rally at their Town Hall cancelled, but when that failed they sent a call-out for anti-fascists, trade unionists and others to come to Southall on 23 April to protest outside the NF meeting.
ANL and SWP member Blair Peach was one of the thousands who responded to that call. He was killed when he was hit over the head with a weapon a member of the police’s Special Patrol Group that day.
Like so many of his colleagues, Gray claims he didn’t go to Southall that day:
‘I didn’t attend because I was either at the office meeting on a Monday, or I was at my employment.’
This seems implausible, as we’ve already heard that SDS officers would skip the safe-house meetings if something important was going on.
As for the possibility of him begin at his cover employment, Gray appears to have forgotten telling us in his written statement:
‘I never did any actual work for him.’
It would have been nice to see the Inquiry ask more about this sort of discrepancy.
According to him, there was no discussion of Southall at all amongst the spycops, and none of them were there that day:
‘all I heard about the death of Blair Peach was what I saw on the television news’
This was a major case of public disorder, with 200 arrests and many injured, so it seems vanishingly unlikely that a police unit dedicated to demonstrations and disorder wouldn’t talk about it.
Even more unbelievably, Gray claims that he didn’t hear this case being discussed within the ANL or SWP either, despite that fact that he wrote reports detailing exactly that [UCPI0000021218].
He claimed complete ignorance of the entire campaign for justice started by Peach’s partner and long-standing SWP member Celia Stubbs and the Friends of Blair Peach Committee, and even Stubbs herself (although he referred to her by first name only, which seems a little familiar). However, another of his reports, from June 1979 [UCPI0000021313], is all about the Committee.
Likewise, Gray denies joining the thousands of people who attended Blair Peach’s funeral in June 1979. Having been told it was a Wednesday, he didn’t use the excuse of the SDS meeting, but said:
‘I was probably at work.’
Again, the Inquiry did not ask him what other work he could possibly have been doing that day.
We saw some other reports, believed to be written by Gray, that refer to the door-to-door leafleting and peaceful vigils held outside Kilburn and Harlesden police stations on the eve of the first inquest into Peach’s death. Gray eventually admitted that he must have been present at these, in order to produce a list of names of those who attended [UCPI0000013435] and [UCPI0000013498].
Another report of Gray’s from October 1979 [UCPI0000013520] includes copies of a photo that was published in the ‘Kilburn Times’. It shows an activist attending the vigil at Kilburn police station. Why do this with a photo that’s freely available?
Gray’s tone became snappy in response:
‘It’s not freely available at Scotland Yard and at the Security Service’
He claimed that he was just a ‘conduit’ and the fact that they kept it on file for all these years somehow proves the value of his ‘intelligence’.
Another photo is shown, [UCPI0000013539], of a woman at the Peach funeral, and Gray confirmed that the SDS played a role in identifying people in photographs of this kind.
REPORTING ON SCHOOL KIDS
It was made clear from a series of documents that Gray reported extensively on children, and had quite a preoccupation with one of them.
There is a photograph of a schoolboy attached to a report dated 19 May 1978 [UCPI0000011275]. According to Gray, this child is a member of the Finchley & Barnet SWP branch and is just fifteen years old, but:
‘I remember that he had a lengthy criminal record for violence at demonstrations.’
He claimed the boy ‘often instigated violence’.
We are not supplied with any details of these alleged previous offences, but it seems likely that he was a victim of the Met’s institutional racism and the prejudice of its officers – he is also Black, six foot tall and ‘well built’.
The same ‘very active’ boy is mentioned in other intelligence reports, including one from 20 April [UCPI0000011970] highlighting his role as an ANL Organiser in NW London. Another report from 27 April [UCPI0000011997] describes him speaking at a meeting of School Kids Against the Nazis (SKAN).
The Inquiry pointed out that in the 20 April report, the words ‘no trace’ appear by his name, indicating that Special Branch has not already begun a Registry File on him.
In the 27 April report, the word ‘mentions’ appears by his name, and Gray explained how this system worked. A number of mentions would trigger a new file being created about that individual.
By 19 May, this boy had been assigned his own file number. Does this mean that Gray is responsible for a Special Branch file being opened on this school child? No, he squirmed. He says this would only have happened after a certain number of ‘mentions’, and other spycops must have mentioned him too.
Referring to the boy’s supposed list of crimes, Gray said:
‘I think he was quite proud of the fact he had a record.’
Asked about this ‘lengthy criminal record’ and whether this might have led to a Special Branch Registry File being opened, Gray said it wouldn’t as criminal records were stored on a separate system.
In November 1978 [UCPI0000012951], the boy was is arrested for obstructing a police officer outside an NF rally. Gray admits this was typical of what he’d have reported on the boy, however, it is not what he means when he said the teenager had a lengthy record for violent offences.
A further report from Gray concerning this boy was filed in June 1979 [UCPI0000021004]. According to this, the boy had left his family home:
‘after a long period of family unrest ending in a serious fist-fight with his brother… having been “thrown out” by his parents.’
Basically, it reports on a family row.
Gray eventually conceded that he never witnessed this boy committing any violence, but recalled ‘he was the first one out of the bus’ at Brick Lane and in the face of the National Front, ‘he had that sort of temperament’.
The final report we see of this enthusiastic teenaged anti-fascist’s activity, dated October 1979 [UCPI0000020068], mentions that he has booked a mini-bus to take a group of National Union of School Students members around schools to distribute leaflets about planned education cuts.
Asked how was this significant for public order, Gray responds that school students were ‘very unruly sort of people’ and claimed handing out these leaflets:
‘It would have been quite unpleasant for the schools who were being leafleted and for children trying to go in and come out. I have no evidence of this other than this was what he was boasting about.’
SCHOOL KIDS AGAINST THE NAZIS
One of the groups this teenager was involved with was School Kids Against the Nazis (SKAN). In his statement, Gray had alleged:
‘Although SKAN’s members were young they were just as violent as any other anti-fascist group.’
He later clarified that he meant the SWP and ANL. He considered reporting on them was entirely justifiable.
We saw some reports of SKAN events, including a meeting they held in Shepherds Bush in April 1978 [UCPI0000011997] – where they talked about what was going on in their schools, and planned to travel together to the upcoming Rock Against Racism Carnival. There is no indication that the group is planning any disorder, never mind violence.
Another schoolboy is the subject of an April 1978 report of Gray’s [UCPI0000011994]. He was a member of Finchley SKAN and the SWP.
Is this the sort of report he would send in? By this stage Gray was increasingly defensive, claiming that these kids were all SWP/ANL.
Next the Inquiry played him some film footage of SKAN from 1978, then asked if this was consistent with his memories of the group at the time.
Gray was forced to agree that the footage – featuring the group’s slogan: ‘We are black, we are white, we are dynamite’ – did not give the impression of a violent group, but to his defence suggested that this film was deliberately made to ‘bolster’ the group’s image:
‘I would say that the characters that I was aware of were a lot more violent than those youngsters there.’
Gray filed reports about the activities of other school-children, for example about a group of pupils at one school in Barnet going on ‘strike’, as a protest about girls having to wear skirts rather than trousers at school [UCPI0000021267]. He doesn’t understand why his reports are problematic, claiming that the strike would have made the national news (it didn’t) and so this made it ‘of interest to Special Branch’.
This same report focussed on a 15-year old boy who spoke about the strike at the SWP’s annual Easter rally in Skegness. The boy is described as having an ‘effeminate manner’.
The Inquiry asked why Gray thought this was an appropriate thing to include in a report. He could only respond by saying that none of his managers criticised this at the time, so he thought his reporting was fine.
OTHER TARGETS
Gray said that he didn’t join any trade unions during his time undercover, but may have attended a few SWP-supported pickets.
However, the Inquiry produced a number of his reports about trade unionists, including one from May 1978 [UCPI0000021645] details an individual who worked at General Motors and was active in his trade union, as well as the Troops Out Movement.
The next report was from August 1978 [UCPI0000011379] about the secretary of Barnet Trades Council, whose employment (as a lecturer at Hendon College of Technology) is detailed, along with his membership of the National Association of Teachers in Further & Higher Education.
A further report dated March 1979 [UCPI0000013201] is of an ambulance driver, who was also a NUPE (National Union of Public Employees) shop steward at his hospital.
Finally on the union spying, a December 1981 report [UCPI0000016795] was about a carpenter who worked on a building site, and was also a shop steward forconstruction union UCATT.
Gray was unable to help the Inquiry whether reporting on trade union activity fell within the SDS’s public order remit, or their subversion one. All four people reported on were members of the SWP, and he seems to insist that this alone may have been enough of a reason to report on them.
He claims to be not aware of anyone losing their jobs as a result of involvement in groups like the SWP, or in trade union activity. Neither has he heard of anyone being ‘blacklisted’, even though the Metropolitan Police now admit that Special Branch officers supplied information to illegal employment blacklists.
Gray claims that he was never specifically tasked with reporting on trade union activity, but would include such information to give his reports:
‘a full, rounded idea of what somebody was up to.’
A report dated November 1980 [UCPI0000015145] was about a member of the SWP’s Kilburn branch, who is also said to be:
‘a supporter of the Gay Liberation Movement and an avid reader of “Gay News”.’
It also includes his home address, details of his bank account and that he has a Northern Irish accent.
Gray says he’s not sure that this report was his, even though it is dated 1980, when he was spying on Kilburn SWP, but explains that recording the man’s sexual interest in men was:
‘something that would have… identified him in future.’
Other reports attributed to Gray include a highly-redacted one from August 1981 [UCPI0000015536], which contained details of an SWP member’s ‘private sexual activities’.
The final report [UCPI0000018100], was about a former SWP member suffering from schizophrenia. Gray disputed the authorship of this as it is dated 13 May 1982, after his deployment ended. The Inquiry pointed out this was only very shortly after he was withdrawn from the field. It is also around the time when he was in the SDS office writing post-deployment reports.
And so ended a long day for someone who clearly did not want to answer for his actions.
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