Incidents in the Spycops Inquiry show the importance of public inquiries hearing the evidence in public, writes Donal O’Driscoll.
Behind the scenes of the Undercover Policing Inquiry, a protracted struggle is taking place to ensure the public inquiry is held, well, in public.
The current set up is prohibitively hard to access, and despite numerous representations, the Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting, is effectively ignoring all requests for live streaming of the evidence given by the former undercover officers.
There are many reasons why this is important, public access to the Inquiry in times of Covid not least among them. However, I’d like to draw particular attention to two incidents last week which exemplify just why live streaming of evidence is so crucial.
Currently the system for the wider public is a live transcript (on 10 minute delay) broadcast via YouTube. This effectively removes all body language, pause and tone from the evidence as the following moment illustrates.
DOUG EDWARDS’ CHANGE OF TONE
For those who were not able to see the Inquiry’s barrister questioning HN326, an undercover who went by the name Douglas Edwards, he came across as a very affable, laughing East Londoner, the sort of fellow you’d not mind meeting down the pub. Many of his answers were delivered in the same rolling manner, an old man down playing his role in events he could barely remember.
Then, at one point, the questioning touched on Special Branch’s Industrial Section. The transcript reads as follows:
Inquiry Counsel, David Barr QC, asked:
‘You talk about C Squad’s industrial desk and say that agencies and other people would contact C Squad for information. What I’m interested in is, was it public or private sector organisations, or both, which were contacting C Squad for information about industrial matters and people involved in industrial disputes and union activity?’
Douglas answered:
‘I think they’d got a good source of – surely we’re going beyond the scope of your inquiry now, aren’t we, for me to start talking about branch matters generally?’
What the transcript misses altogether, is just how dramatically his tone changed. The persona fell away as Douglas was no longer joking switched to something much harsher. The inner cop came out in a flash, and what you will not get from just reading the words, is that it was a challenge, an effort to instruct Barr not to chase that point.
As well as raising the issue of what he was so desperate to hide on a point that goes directly to the issue of illegal blacklisting, it also gave a full and proper insight into the true nature of the man giving the evidence. It was one of those moments the public really needed to see.
JOHN GRAHAM DOESN’T CRINGE
The evidence of undercover HN329 ‘John Graham’ gave a different perspective. In his statement, he noted that he had asked a woman from his target group out for dinner.
Given that John was married during his deployment, he was asked what his wife thought about it:
‘My wife has never been interested in what I did for a living, apart from the fact she knew I was a member of Special Branch. I may well have done so. She certainly knows about, as far as this Inquiry is concerned.’
Some of those following the transcript were keen to know if he cringed on being asked that, given the insight it gives to the evidence and issues around sexism. For those curious, he did not cringe, nor show remorse.
MITTING’S TONE
The third incident to highlight was the exchange between Mitting and one of the barristers for the non-police core participants, Rajiv Menon QC.
The subject matter of the exchange is well-covered in a COPS daily report. What those of us watching were able to see was the Chair’s evident anger and hostility that someone was seeking to put questions and elicit points that are of considerable importance to the non-police core participants.
It was shocking to watch and very important for us to see. It went directly to how confident the non-police core participants can be that the judge is able to address issues such as racism and sexism. The transcript alone provides none of this insight, and significant information is lost.
THE WRITE TO BE HEARD
Reading the Inquiry’s flickering live transcription for hours at a time is a test of anyone’s patience and eyeballs. The women of Police Spies Out of Lives, who represent those deceived into relationships by undercover police officers, have taken matters into their own hands and are streaming a simultaneous readalong on their YouTube channel.
It’s an inspired idea, providing a more accessible format whilst highlighting the Inquiry’s failure to do the same. Once again, it has fallen to those abused by spycops to bring the facts to the public as the authorities put obstacles in the way of public understanding.
However, as the readers are reciting words they’re seeing for the first time, though they re-humanise the blinking text they still can’t know if they’re accurately reflecting the delivery of the witness. Words alone don’t tell the story. For that, we need the Inquiry to accede to live streaming of hearings.
THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH
There is a reason why hearings of all forms, from Parliament down to magistrates, have evidence given in person and not just in writing. It’s not only the asking of questions, but seeing and being able to judge the answers that is important.
By not live streaming, and refusing to let the wider public hear, let alone see the evidence being delivered, Mitting is preventing a vital part of the judicial process taking place – that justice needs to be seen to be done.
At the Undercover Policing Inquiry, Monday 16 November was taken up by hearing evidence from two former spycops. Both were deployed between 1969 and 1972. Both have scant memories of key incidents, yet still yielded vital details.
Last week we learned that many of the spycops abuses of power ‘- deceiving people they spied on into relationships, attending family events, spying beyond their jurisdiction – were around from the very earliest days of their unit. Today we added another one to the list – another MP has been confirmed as being spied on by these officers of the counter-democratic political secret police.
SELECTIVE AMNESIA
Tom Fowler, who was spied on in the 2000s by officer ‘Marco Jacobs‘, has been following the hearings and said:
‘Given that the events being talked about are up to 52 years ago, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that memories of the details of many events don’t come to mind.
‘However, it is very telling that all five of the former professional falsifiers had rather good memories on certain matters, generally ones that absolved them of blame, like “it was definitely just one drink one, one time”, only to have blank memories on other issues that might unearth more detail on what kind of operation Conrad Dixon was running with the Special Demonstration Squad, like “my closest colleague acting as a prosecution witness in a case that successfully convicted an innocent man of incitement to riot, based on a leaflet she collected at a meeting I attend with her? I really can’t remember anything”.
‘No one remembers any discussion with any of the colleagues about anything to do with any of their deployments, even ones that overlapped their own undercover roles…
‘A number of the officers remarked that the evidence bundle that had been presented to them was missing an unknown number of reports they had written… [while there are] plenty of others which bear the names of officers who dismiss the contents as “far too eloquent” for anything they might have written.
‘You begin to get the impression that one section of the SDS was putting together all the reports that justified the existence of the unit, whilst the rest of the officers were there to sign off whatever was written, regardless of whether they had picked up the intelligence themselves or not.’
GUERILLA COVERAGE
The Undercover Policing Inquiry still refuses to live-steam its hearings, only giving us a time-delayed on-screen transcript that can’t be paused or rewound. It makes the whole process much harder to follow.
The women from Police Spies Out of Lives, which represents women who were deceived into relationships by spycops, have taken matters into their own hands by doing a live feed of them reading the Inquiry’s transcript.
There is, of course, no reason why the Inquiry can’t provide us with its audio of the hearings. It would be no different to the readalong in terms of security. It’s further evidence of the way regards victims of spycops as marginal and the wider public as an irrelevance.
Once again, it falls to those abused by spycops to do the work to bring the facts to the public. This one doesn’t even have security excuses, it’s just that they feel the public are an irrelevance.
‘Day 11’ of the Undercover Policing Inquiry began with the testimony of officer HN336 – ‘Dick Epps’.
In his time undercover in the Special Demonstration Squad between 1969 and 1972, Epps infiltrated:
Britain Vietnam Solidarity Front
Vietnam Solidarity Campaign
British Campaign for Peace in Vietnam
Stop The Seventy Tour
International Marxist Group
Later, he worked for Special Branch’s Industrial Section and appeared as ‘Dan’ in the 2002 BBC documentary True Spies.
Dick Epps’ testimony touched on several issues, including chauvinistic reporting of targets, Special Branch burglaries, and the connection between Special Branch and the blacklisting of trade unionists.
Counsel to the Inquiry, David Barr, kicked off proceedings by asking the former undercover questions around search warrants – your general police training, pre-Special Branch – did it cover entering private dwellings?
Epps answered that it did so. However, there was no special training regarding attending political meetings – Special Branch officers learned ‘on the job’. This included how to write up reports – he was expected to record who attended meetings (if he could identify them) and admitted that just attending a meeting was enough for someone to be included in a report.
He was given verbal instructions, and provided with general support by his colleagues:
‘I was never sat down in a classroom or a training room and given a training manual, or training lectures… We were all, if you like, being thrown into a maelstrom, and seeking to find some sense of what we were trying to do’
He admitted that there was no actual training or briefing about the groups that were being spied on.
Epps couldn’t recall making a separate report about any person but did talk about how someone might draw attention to themselves at a meeting and this would be recorded.
Epps also described it as a ‘fundamental requirement’ that undercovers report on a group’s plans, activities, discussions and interests. He then spoke about those days being different and added that ‘political correctness’ hadn’t been invented yet. He said that his superiors were always curious about the content of his reports, but didn’t give him much feedback. Reports would be altered and ‘tweaked’ by the SDS office staff to match the ‘style’ used by the unit.
Later he added that his reports would include personal details of any ‘new faces’ he met at these meetings – though he claimed he had no idea if this info was used for vetting or not. However, he had admitted to working within Special Branch for five years before joining the SDS, and knew that most forms went to MI5.
SUBVERSION
As with previous witnesses, he was then asked about his understanding of the term ‘subversion’. Specifically, what he meant by distinguishing (in his written statement) between ‘peaceful genuine protest’ and that which was ‘divisive or venomous’ – was that a personal distinction or an official one?
His answer eventually settled on it being more a personal one:
‘my feeling was, and is, that we existed within a very sophisticated political system that’s evolved over many years, and there is an order to the way that system might be changed. As a parliamentary democracy, it’s through the ballot box.
‘And there were and are those that seek to disturb that balance of matters and subvert that system by other means. And so that would be, in the broadest terms, my understanding of “subversion”.
He was asked how secretive the SDS was within Special Branch – he thought that in the early days some people within the Branch knew of the new unit’s existence, but many did not: ‘you didn’t ask questions’.
Oddly, he has also claimed that he was never actually ‘targeted’ into any specific group or individual, but just went out ‘fishing’ to see what groups he could latch onto. In fact, something that stood out strongly with Epps (as well as some of the other undercovers) is that he seemed to drift aimlessly between one group and another.
BRITAIN VIETNAM SOLIDARITY FRONT
The first group that Epps spied on was the Britain Vietnam Solidarity Front (BVSF) – politically Maoist in belief. They met weekly at the Union Tavern Pub on King Cross Road and the meetings were large enough (20-25 people) that a new person wouldn’t stand out too much.
Epps protested that for the BVSF:
‘I think “infiltration” sounds rather too strong a word. I attended the meetings and I was interested from a professional point of view in terms of learning what their viewpoints were, and also trying to glean anything from that that might take me elsewhere, in time.’
He also said the BVSF provided him with a useful introduction to political nuances and the various factions that existed at the time. He hoped it would be a ‘gateway’ to other groups.
The Union Tavern, Kings Cross Road. London
He said he was never an established member of the group, even if he became ‘an accepted part of the furniture on a Sunday evening’. He saw his task as keeping tabs on people who were seeking to disrupt the status quo.
He was asked about Tariq Ali and Abhimanyu Manchanda, who he described as ‘prominent individuals’. He wasn’t given any briefing about either man by his managers but would report back on them.
Epps later commented on both individuals of being worthy of SDS attention, claiming that their rhetoric, especially that of Ali, could stir-up trouble. However, when pressed, he could not give examples of violence from either group.
Barr then asked him about a deceased member of the SDS, Mike Ferguson, inquiring as to why both officers had infiltrated the BVSF at the same time – and how it came to be there were reports signed in both their names.
Epps explained that he was ‘a new boy’ and this was an opportunity for him to ‘learn a trade, learn a skill that I was going to find useful’. However, he denied collusion with Ferguson: ‘We would not sit down together and compile a report, no’.
He suggested that SDS officers had an advantage over normal Special Branch officers:
‘the fact that your face was known made it possible to sort of glide in and slide into the grouping, rather than stand out as a total stranger. There was always a sensitivity about strange faces.
He tried to stress that the context of the time as a justification for the surveillance:
‘it was a hotbed at that time of — of street activity. And some of it was — was very reasonable in its protest, but some of it was really, really violent… And so there was a need to protect, if you like, as I say, in the wider sense’
Then another nickname for the SDS officers unit emerged – he called them ‘the Hs’, short for ‘Hairies’.
One of his reports from a BVSF meeting included details of two forthcoming marches, one about Palestine and another about women’s equality. Epps was at pains to tell us that his focus was the group, not these issues, even though he reported on them.
Barr asked him bluntly, ‘From what you could see of the BVSF and its members, was it a violent organisation?’
Epps had to concede:
‘No, not compared with other groupings at that time, no.’
CAMDEN VIETNAM SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN
After some time with the BVSF, Epps moved on, to the Camden branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC). Asked why he left the BVSF, he explained that it ‘got to a point where I felt uneasy…there was never finger-pointing, or a moment where any accusations were made’ but he felt that its leader Manchanda was suspicious of him, and read it as the time to move on.
Epps noted that Camden VSC had previously been infiltrated by SDS founder Conrad Dixon. The officer recalled that the group had remembered Dixon as a ‘figure of fun’ recalled by the Camden VSC members as wearing ‘a yachtsman’s outfit’ – he had a ‘big sailor type beard’, a ‘jaunty’ cap and a smock – ‘slightly out of place in Camden, dare I say’.
He described the Camden VSC group as ‘loose-knit and very friendly’, with ‘wide-ranging views’. He developed the impression they ‘had a Communist party leaning’ and they referred to him as a ‘Trot’, and therefore a reformist in their eyes.
Justifying it, Epps said:
‘The whole objective of the penetration of what was going on was to provide your individual persona with credibility.’
He subsequently moved on to target the Kentish Town VSC, but had very few memories of that branch.
BRITISH CAMPAIGN FOR PEACE IN VIETNAM
Next, Epps targeted a north London branch of the British Campaign for Peace in Vietnam (BCPV). This entailed attending meetings that were held in a private house, though he did not recall any reaction from his managers to this.
His witness statement mentioned regularly going out for post-meeting drinks with members of this group throughout the six months that he was infiltrating them.
One of the members was a woman with whom he later went out for a drink. He made sure to state:
‘There was never anything beyond that ordinary conversation. If she had any desire to develop a relationship or a friendship, she didn’t convey that and neither did I.’
He said they just had a ‘nodding acquaintance’ relationship afterwards. He believes going out for drinks with her aided his acceptance and credibility in the group. This obviously foreshadows the use of women to gain access to activist groups.
Later in the hearing, after Barr had finished questioning Epps, barrister Ruth Brander, on behalf of non-state core participants, was also permitted to ask him a couple of questions about this drink with the woman from the BCPV. He confirmed that he could even still recall her name, fifty years later, but brushed away the idea there was any significant reason for this.
STOP THE SEVENTY TOUR (STST)
Epps next targeted the anti-apartheid Stop The Seventy Tour having been introduced to this campaign by a member of the BCPV. (Peter Hain, a member of this group and due to give evidence in the Inquiry next year, recently made an impassioned speech in the House of Lords against the current CHIS Bill, most of which is in a Guardian Column today.)
Peter Hain, arrested at Downing Street, 1969
STST opposed sporting tours of white South African teams in the UK, and British teams going to play in apartheid South Africa. Epps recalled ‘there was a lot of passionate revulsion’ towards the apartheid regime.
His witness statement mentioned two incidents – digging up the pitch at Lords cricket ground and pouring oil over the wickets – but Barr explained that the Inquiry has been unable to find any press coverage of such an event during the STST’s campaign. This issue was later pursued in questions by the Chair himself, and at that point, Epps conceded he had muddled up events.
Epps did talk more about the STST activists, citing an incident at a match he attended with them. STST tried to disrupt these matches, with the aim of delaying play, or better still, causing the entire match to be postponed. The group’s tactic was to ‘rush’ the pitch, upon a given signal. Epps could not recall what this signal was, or who gave it, but says the activists tried to ‘push the police around’, and alleges that one or two of them even threw punches at uniformed officers, something he found hard to watch.
Barr then returned to the undercover officer Mike Ferguson, reminding Epps that he had described Mike as ‘Peter Hain’s right-hand man’ in his statement. Epps now claimed he had meant that as a bit of a joke. He added that you did not have to go as far as Ferguson to do the job – but admitted that he lacked the ‘drive or nouse’ to be as effective as some of the other undercovers.
ANARCHY IN THE UK
On more than one occasion in his written evidence, Epps claimed it was anarchists who were the likely cause of any public disorder. Reasonably, Barr asked why in that case he did not attempt to infiltrate the anarchist groups?
Epps responded with some reminiscing about some ‘spontaneous moments by hair-brained bunches’ including ‘a dozen or so cars set alight in the vicinity of Claridge’s’ when Ronald Reagan visited London in the 1980s.
When pressed Epps said:
‘I don’t know that it ever occurred to me that that was a route that I might find useful. But some of them were, as I say, harebrained and a little overexcited at these moments, and I didn’t feel drawn to that sort of grouping.’
Putting aside the accuracy of Epps opinions about anarchism, this seems wholly at odds with the SDS’ supposed public order remit.
RACIST & SEXIST REPORTING
Again, in regards to his infiltration in the London STST committee, Epps wrote a report about a member of the group:
‘She is, in fact, a somewhat immature, naïve person and it would seem that she was made Secretary of the group because of her clerical experience.’
More worryingly, he went on to describe her physically:
‘Aged about 23 years; height 5’0″; short fair hair; slim build with well-developed bust; slightly Jewish appearance’
Barr asked him to explain this racialised and sexualised reporting, and suggested that the reports were based on stereotypes.
‘Can I say, that’s a modern-day interpretation and not how it would have been viewed then?’
In a similar manner, Epps also described another woman as being ‘attractive’. He was unable to explain how useful either of these descriptions would have been to Special Branch.
Epps was asked more about the STST campaign’s plans. This included a suggestion that they hold a torch-lit midnight procession. Why did the police need to know about an entirely peaceful demo? According to Epps, street demos are ‘still something that the police should be aware of’.
The officer also said he didn’t get to know members of the STST very well, but rather he ‘drifted in and out’.
INTERNATIONAL MARXIST GROUP – BURGLARY
Epps said he does not remember how he first got involved with the International Marxist Group (IMG). They were possibly targeted because they ‘took part in every demonstration going’.
He admitted that he didn’t remember any IMG members being violent or disorderly at demos but claims ‘they were much busier than other groups’ – as if that was justification in itself.
Epps said he was instructed by his managers to make a copy of the IMG’s office keys. He had also mentioned this in True Spies, where he claimed he ‘just happened’ to have clay on him to take the pressing. Today, however, he admitted he had told his boss he had an opportunity to get a pressing of the key and was then told to go ahead, possibly with plasticine provided by them (his oral and written evidence vary on this).
Under questioning, Epps gave more details. He recalled attending an IMG meeting, where they were looking for someone to look after the office. He ‘reluctantly volunteered’ for the task. Epps also intimated that burgling activists offices was not something that Special Branch would do – although there are countless anecdotal reports, spanning many years, of mysterious break-ins of campaign premises where nothing was actually taken.
FALL OUT FROM ‘TRUE SPIES’
Epps said that he lost a lot of good friends as a result of taking part in the BBC TV series True Spies, even though his participation was authorised by Special Branch.
He was ‘still at a loss to understand’ why they were so upset and was disappointed ‘that some seemed to take such exception to rather frivolous comments.’
Barr then asked: Do you think your colleagues were upset because they were concerned you had compromised the operational security of the SDS, or did they regard you as a whistle-blower?
Epps replied:
‘I don’t think they viewed me as a whistleblower. I think it was just a rather shortsighted thing to have said on my part. And maybe they were right in that respect.’
As with all police witnesses to date, he loyally gave his colleagues an absurdly uncritical tribute as a ‘committed bunch of individuals and people I have great admiration for. ‘
However, earlier in the questioning, Epps made some seemingly less than favourable comments about SDS founder, Conrad Dixon – in contrast to previous police witnesses – saying that he was a dominating force in a manner that wasn’t wholly positive.
‘Conrad was a clever man, but also an ambitious and devious man. He saw an opportunity for himself as well as an opportunity to create something useful.
Barr asked Epps to elaborate on this, and he replied:
‘personally, to me, would always come across as a gambler. And I don’t mean that in a well, a chancer. He was brash.’
SPECIAL BRANCH INDUSTRIAL SECTION – AND BLACKLISTING
At the beginning of this part of the questioning, it was revealed that Chief Superintendent Bert Lawrenson, the former head of C Squad in Special Branch, who spied on left-wing union activists, went on to work for blacklisting and union-busting organisation The Economic League after the left the police.
Epps later worked in the ‘industrial section’ of Special Branch. He covered the engineering sector and described the concerns regarding Soviet infiltration of that industry. However, to his knowledge, SDS officers had nothing to do with the Economic League although they ‘swam in the same pond’.
Recalling an induction lecture at Special Branch, ‘I remember being quite alarmed by Lawrenson’s assessment of the infiltration of British groups by the Russians’. Epps claimed that ‘people would come to us’ – suggesting these were trade unionists who were ‘not tainted by communism’. This information was included in True Spies as well.
Barr pressed Epps to confirm that, while at the industrial desk, Epps would have access to Special Branch records – given that if the SDS had reported someone’s trade union activities, that report would have been available to the Industrial Section of Special Branch?
Epps replied, claiming:
‘There would be no overlap between the – whatever was held within the SDS would remain there. I can’t conceive of any situation where SDS information, intelligence would leak into the normal pool of Special Branch records activity.’
This would seem strange, as some, if not all, SDS reports were fed into the enormous Special Branch registry file system. However, he did agree that it was ‘reasonable to assume’ that many of his reports went to MI5.
After Ruth Brander asked her questions about Epps’ drink with a member of the STST committee, Owen Greenall, a barrister appearing on behalf some non-state core participants, asked about the dates of his deployment and the STST’s actions at Twickenham. However, Epps said he didn’t make any written record of these events. There ended a lengthy first session.
In the afternoon, we heard evidence from officer HN340, who infiltrated various groups – including the International Marxist Group (IMG), North London Red Circle and Irish Solidarity Campaign – between 1969 and 1972.
Though it’s not his real name, we’ll call him Bailey in this report for ease of reading.
BEFORE THE SPYCOP
Bailey joined the police in the 1950s. He can’t remember much about the first two years of probationary training, or being told anything much about ethics or standards.
He then joined Special Branch in the 1960s. There was a written exam. He said that he was not required to do any undercover work prior to joining the spycop unit.
Occasionally Special Branch officers would go along to Speakers Corner, in their normal clothes, but he never went to any ‘closed meetings’.
JOINING THE SPYCOPS
After about five years in Special Branch, Bailey was invited to join the Special Demonstration Squad by Phil Saunders. He was only then given an outline of what the unit did, and was told it would involve weekend working.
The unit wasn’t well-known. He said he knew ‘basically, nothing’ about the SDS before joining it. This was, he explained, in keeping with the wider Special Branch ethos of working on a ‘need to know’ basis; ‘you didn’t need to spell it out’.
His written witness statement recounts a conversation with Mike Ferguson, who had already been deployed undercover by the SDS. Ferguson advised Bailey to get a cover name, cover address and cover job.
In today’s hearing, Bailey couldn’t clarify where this conversation had taken place – at first he claimed it had been in the ‘back-office’ at Scotland Yard, but then he admitted that Ferguson would never have visited the building while deployed undercover.
STOP THE SEVENTY TOUR
He claims not to have known much about Mike Ferguson’s role in the Stop the Seventy Tour (STST) campaign, or his position in the anti-apartheid movement – something the Inquiry seems to be asking every officer about.
The Inquiry seems to be focusing on a few ideas that now fit with modern mainstream sensibilities – that apartheid was wrong, or that singling out people for their disabilities is unacceptable – rather than seeing them as part of the SDS’s wider attack on progressive politics and citizens’ personal integrity.
Bailey didn’t create any kind of back-story or ‘legend’ for himself, and in retrospect admitted that this might have been useful later on.
Like all SDS officers, he spent a little time in the ‘back office’ of the unit, ‘probably typing up reports and checking out various bits and pieces’, which will have given him an idea of what would be expected from him when he went undercover.
He doesn’t recall other former or waiting-to-be-deployed undercovers being in the back office at the same time as him (somewhat contradicting his earlier written statement, according to Rebekah Hummerstone, who was asking questions for the Inquiry).
Bailey didn’t recall much preparation, and confirmed that he received no training in undercover work. He said Ferguson told him to ‘play it by ear’:
‘I was hoping he might have given some pearls of wisdom but as I said once you’re out there nobody knows exactly what’s going to turn up next and you’ve got to be prepared for anything’
Bailey’s written statement said that as an undercover you ‘were trusted to use your common sense and good judgement’.
He does not recall receiving any guidance about entering private addresses, even though he did inevitably attend meetings held at activists’ homes.
He would go the SDS flat each day and write up his report of the previous evening’s political meeting. His reports would routinely include details of the group’s plans and events, and personal information, including identifying information, about the individual people he met. They would then be typed up by back-office staff.
Bailey’s memory has a lot of gaps which, after 50 years, isn’t really surprising. Did he see any of his reports after they’d been typed up? Did he see them to sign them? He doesn’t recall.
He expressed surprise that any of his reports are still in existence 50 years later, and is sure the ones he’s seen are only a fraction of the ones he made:
‘there are certain little incidents that I do have vague recollection of, which aren’t contained in the bundle’
Pressed for details on what this meant, after he consulted with another person, he said he remembered the explosion at the Post Office tower, for example.
On 31 October 1971, a bomb went off in the restaurant at the top of the Post Office Tower (now BT tower) in central London. Responsibility was claimed by the IRA, and later by the Angry Brigade anarchist collective.
Bailey had attended a ‘function’ with members of the Irish Solidarity Campaign nearby that evening. Senior officers, who must clearly have been aware of which groups he was infiltrating, asked him if he had any information that might help their enquiries. However he had left the area when the pubs closed and ‘it must have occurred after that’ (the explosion came at 4:30am).
Bailey stated his role was to gather intelligence about forthcoming events, pickets and demonstrations, in order to prevent public order problems. His statement says that Special Branch had no formal role in counter-subversion.
However, he said the SDS (and therefore Special Branch) did collect information about people who were ‘unfriendly towards the State and its institutions and might use criminal methods to undermine it’. In fact he went on to say that this ‘secondary role’ was in fact one of Special Branch’s ‘main functions’.
RED MOLE
The spycops worked weekends; Bailey often stood outside Archway tube station selling Red Mole, a newspaper edited by Tariq Ali that was the voice for many in the International Marxist Group.
Bailey estimated that he only went to his cover accommodation two or three times a week, and only slept there ‘very rarely’.
In contrast, he visited the SDS flat almost every weekday afternoon, as did most of the other spycops at that time, where they would write up their reports. He described this a functional arrangement, and spycops didn’t really discuss their experiences with each other, not even in a ‘sanitised’ way.
His written witness statement suggested that his deployment was very open-ended – and he could be ‘re-tasked’ as necessary.
Bailey said a lack of praise was a continual feature of his work, and that he just made up his methods and activities, and presumed he was doing the right thing unless his managers told him otherwise:
‘If they’d thought it was a waste of time I’m pretty sure they would have said “don’t bother”.’
Managers regularly visited the SDS flat but Bailey doesn’t remember being given many specific instructions by them, or directed to infiltrate any specific groups.
Rebekah Hummerstone, the Inquiry’s barrister carrying out the questioning, said that we know they did step in to give some direction on at least two occasions, telling him – and told him not to become a member of the International Marxist Group, and that he should to attend the Conference for a Red Europe in Brussels in November 1970, organised by the Fourth International (of which the IMG was a part)
He accepts that his attendance of a meeting at Conway Hall must have been on instructions:
‘I must have been told because I wouldn’t have gone off wandering off to Red Lion Square just off my own initiative’
There was a lot of this in his answers – an inability to recall events at all, let alone in detail, but a readiness to accept the accounts and implications of the documents. This contrasts with other officers’ evidence that the reports were often written by their superiors, without their knowledge, or that reports were credited to the person did the typing rather than the one did the spying.
The report of the Conway Hall meeting says Bailey approached and talked with both Tariq Ali and Vanessa Redgrave. They had both spoken at the meeting, he didn’t know anyone else, so did what Ferguson had recommended, he ‘played it by ear’, and went over for a chat. Ali invited him to attend the next meeting of the North London Red Circle.
Bailey didn’t think he had heard of the Red Circle before, he’s not sure if his managers were very aware of the group, they certainly hadn’t tasked him to target it; he fell into it by chance because of this encounter with Ali. He hoped that attending Red Circle meetings would provide him with useful intelligence about ‘potential flash points’.
NORTH LONDON RED CIRCLE
Bailey’s written witness statement described North London Red Circle as a ‘recruiting ground for the International Marxist Group’, with a presumption that the IMG was in itself a serious threat to public safety, so anyone in its orbit was fair game for spying.
Bailey became the Red Circle’s ‘tea club secretary’, on his own initiative, in order to learn the names of group members. Echoing what other spycops have recounted, he said he felt it was best to gather as much information as possible, in case it became useful later.
The reports show the Red Circle was a tiny left-wing discussion group. It held talks on Israel, Black Power, trade unions, the Fourth International, the National Union of Mineworkers, the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders’ dispute, anti-racist campaigning, unemployment, apartheid, and more.
Asked about the content of these meetings, Bailey once again only offered an apologetic blank memory.
SPYING ON WOMEN’S LIBERATION
Another report was about a meeting on the topic of women’s liberation. The speaker talked about attempts to form a union for women night cleaners.
When queried on the relevance of these campaigns and whether Special Branch spied on the trade union and women’s liberation movements, Bailey said he didn’t think he could speak for Special Branch as a whole, and then failed to speak even for the Branch unit he was in.
He agreed that this report was a good example of him writing down everything that might possibly be of interest, and leaving it to the back-office to decide what to include in the final typed-up version.
IRISH POLITICS
An August 1971 report on a Red Circle meeting [UCPI0000008196] describes an unusually large crowd for the group – all of 24 people – were present to hear a talk by a Provisional sympathiser followed by questions.
The speaker said that if the IRA did commence terrorist activities in England, they considered it the ‘duty of all revolutionaries to render whatever assistance was asked’. Bailey can’t remember if any Red Circle attendees agreed with this view.
Thirty people attended a Red Circle meeting in February 1972, according to Bailey’s report [UCPI0000008944], to hear civil rights campaigner Bob Purdie speak about Ireland, in place of a scheduled talk about Spain.
Purdie talked about the Republican movement, explaining that the recent split was due to tactical differences rather than political ones. In answer to a question afterwards, Purdie said extending the armed struggle to England would be politically wrong, but if the Irish movement’s leaders called for assistance, then the IMG line was that revolutionary groups in Britain should support them.
Bailey admitted that the name Bob Purdie rings a bell, but he could not remember much more. Again, he followed his absence of specifics with supposition because on residual understanding of the group:
‘From what I remember I can’t think of any of them now that I would consider to be tending towards any kind of violence”.’
A very faint report from April 1972 shows the Red Circle again having a talk about Ireland because the scheduled speaker (this time on Cuba) couldn’t make the meeting on the day.
The Red Circle ‘was a talking shop’, Bailey said in his written statement to the Inquiry:
‘It did support a revolutionary agenda and was subversive to the extent that it advanced the overthrow of the established political system in the UK, albeit never took any concrete steps… violence would have been the last thing on many of their minds’.
IRISH CIVIL RIGHTS SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN
Bailey also infiltrated the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign (ICRSC). His name appears on a report on the group’s activities filed in September 1970.
He said he attended their meetings ‘almost as a co-opted member of the North London Red Circle’ but struggled to explain why.
Bailey doesn’t remember being ‘tasked’ to attend the ICRSC meetings, it was again more a case of chance, but that it his managers had disapproved he would not have gone.
IRISH SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN
His involvement with the ICRSC resulted in Bailey attending the founding conference of the Irish Solidarity Campaign (ISC) in Birmingham, in October 1970.
It was unusual for an SDS officer to go beyond London. Asked if he got special permission to make the journey to another constabulary’s jurisdiction, he once more failed to remember anything:
‘I must have slept somewhere overnight… but quite honestly I can’t remember where we stayed’
For an SDS officer to go beyond the Met’s area, the unit must have either secured the permission of the local police, in which case they were complicit in what the spycops did, or else it was done without local approval, which is a serious breach of police protocol.
That Irish Solidarity Campaign founding conference was also attended by Bailey’s colleague, SDS officer HN68 ‘Sean Lynch’, whose deployment was mainly focused on Irish solidarity groups. The two tried to avoid any contact – ‘there was no reason that we should know each other, so we didn’t’ – but Bailey thinks it likely they knew of each other’s plans to attend the event in advance.
A report was produced afterwards, with both their names attached to it. Bailey has no recollection of collaborating on this with HN68, but ‘it seems as if it would have been inconceivable that we hadn’t discussed it’. The report contained a long list of all the groups (and ‘fraternal delegates’) who attended the conference.
He explained:
‘They were there and so I reported it; it was then down to the back office to do their filtering, vetting, or whatever you call it.’
The report was sent not just to MI5 but also to the Home Office. The Deputy Assistant Commissioner commended the ‘first class work’ and asked that the officers be praised (though Bailey does not remember receiving or being told about such praise). It will have been obvious to that senior officer that the depth of knowledge in the report can only have come from sustained infiltration.
There is no way to sustain the claim we’ve heard from the Met that the SDS was a rogue unit, so secret that nobody outside really knew what was going on.
It is already clear – and getting even clearer – that the SDS’ work was known and approved of at the highest levels of the Met, as well as its paymasters in the Home Office who have managed to lose every single document about their 21 years of direct funding.
Hummerstone read out the six main aims of the ISC (as laid out in Appendix D of [MPS-0738150]). Would that information have been of interest to Special Branch?
‘At the time I may have thought so, but…,’ he tailed off, unhelpfully.
PAUCITY OF MEMORIES
The Inquiry was then shown a report from January 1971 on a meeting of the central London branch of the ISC. There was mention of tarring and feathering incidents, and the speaker was very critical of the Republican leadership at the time.
Next came a report from the following month, February 1971, about a talk on ‘people’s democracy and the civil rights anti-apartheid movement Northern Ireland’ by Gerry Lawless.
This rung the lonely sound of a bell in Bailey’s memory, who said Lawless was ‘one of the very few names that I remember from then, because he was so active’.
Lawless was described as being involved in the ISC, as well as the IMG, and he additionally sometimes attended Red Circle discussion meetings.
Later in 1971, the Red Circle held a discussion entitled ‘why the Provisionals’. Bailey could not remember anything about what attendees thought of the speaker’s views.
ALDERSHOT
Finally on this theme, a report [UCPI0000008500] dated March 1972, a week or two after the bomb explosion at Aldershot army barracks which killed seven civilian staff. The ISC slogan at the time was ‘Victory to the IRA’.
Bailey was asked if he had any contact with the police investigating this bomb. He replied that ‘off our own bat there’s no way any of us would have had contact with a non-Met police force’.
Even within the Met, Bailey’s description made it appear that the sharing of information was left to managers, if it happened at all. He said that he only had contact with the SDS back-room staff, nobody else. Special Branch’s B Squad dealt with Irish matters, yet Bailey said he had no contact with them at all.
Bailey could not recall ISC members ever taking part in any acts of violence, or any public disorder at any demonstrations organised by the ISC. Again, he elaborated with a suggestion interpreting his lack of specific memory:
‘I’m sure something like that would have stuck in my memory and it definitely doesn’t’.
A few weeks after the Aldershot bombing, then-current and former members of the ISC had their homes raided. It may well have stemmed from Bailey’s reports on them; he professed not to know if that was the case.
BERNADETTE DEVLIN MP
His reports would mention whether or not events were attended by Bernadette Devlin, a young independent Irish republican MP.
According to Bailey:
‘if she was known to be going to attend any meeting or demonstration or whatever, then of course that would increase the likelihood of more people arriving at the demonstration’.
Interestingly, one of the files suggests that there was not yet a Special Branch file opened on Bernadette Devlin at this time.
He said he couldn’t elaborate beyond that because he merely reported, and what happened with the information he gave, or because of it, ‘was not my concern’.
Bernadette Devlin joins the growing list of MPs confirmed as having been spied on by the SDS, the unit that was supposedly formed to monitor those who would overthrow parliamentary democracy.
His reports also contained what was described as an ‘unflattering portrait of Irish solidarity groups’; a report of a conversations between another Northern Ireland political activist Eamonn McCann and others, and of McCann turning up late at a meeting.
SPYING ABROAD
Bailey attended the Conference for a Red Europe in Brussels in November 1970, having secured specific permission to travel abroad from his managers.
As with the ISC conference in Birmingham a month earlier, Bailey says there was no direct contact between him and the other spycop who attended that conference. That other officer was officer HN326 ‘Doug Edwards’, who complained about the trip in his evidence last Friday.
Until last week, it had been thought that Peter Francis’ 1995 visit to an anti-racist gathering in Germany was the first time an SDS officer had gone abroad undercover.
VIETNAM SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN
Although his name is attached to several reports on the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, Bailey said he cannot remember attending any of their meetings.
He said he couldn’t comment on whether spycops would have been more likely to attend a meeting that Tariq Ali attended. Neither could he remember if he already knew the name Piers Corbyn in 1971.
BLACK POWER GROUPS
Bailey also reported on the Black People’s Defence, the Black Defence Committee, and Black Power. Asked if he had been directed to report on anti-racist groups he was, once more, at a loss to say.
END OF DEPLOYMENT
Bailey’s managers had instructed him not to join the International Marxist Group because it was ‘recognised as more of a political party’, something that doesn’t tally with the fact that his contemporary, ‘Doug Edwards’, was not merely a member of the Independent Labour Party but the Tower Hamlets branch treasurer.
Bailey’s undercover career lasted around two years, well in excess of the 12 month maximum stipulated in a document written by SDS founder Conrad Dixon. Bailey can’t understand how 12 months would be enough time to gain the trust to make detailed reporting worthwhile, and can’t imagine many had so short a deployment unless something went wrong. He says he was unaware of the supposed limit until the Inquiry told him about it.
He suffered from headaches, nosebleeds, and migraines, which he attributes to the stress of his job. thought to be caused by stress. He recalls negligible support in the macho world of the spycops, saying ‘you got on with it’.
COPS will be live-tweeting all the Inquiry hearings, and producing daily reports like this one for the blog. They will be indexed on our UCPI Public Inquiry page.
Undercover Policing Inquiry Weekly Report 2 9-13 November 2020
After seven days of opening statements, and six years since it was first announced, the Undercover Policing Inquiry finally started taking evidence from witnesses this week.
This phase of the Inquiry concerned the earliest days of the Metropolitan Police’s spycops unit, the Special Operations Squad (later called the Special Demonstration Squad), for the years 1968-72.
The week began with the final opening statements from the significantly affected people whom the Inquiry has designated ‘core participants’.
HARROWING STORIES
Some came from the women deceived into relationships by officers, many of whom were directly responsible for the uncovering of the spycops who abused them. We touch on their accounts here, but cannot do full justice to these often harrowing stories.
On Wednesday, we heard from the very first witness, Tariq Ali. A 77-year old journalist, writer and broadcaster who has been politically active most of his life, Ali was spied on by many undercovers, right from the inception of the units in 1968 through to the 2000s. And for the first time we heard the undercovers themselves, with three sessions on the finaltwo days from officers who were part of the unit when it was formed.
Given breadth of the hearings, in this report we will focus on bringing out the main themes and highlights of the week, rather than going into specific detail. All of the detailed daily reports can be found on our UCPI public inquiry page.
ONGOING PROBLEMS
The opening statements heard this week powerfully repeated points those who were spied on have been arguing for years.
They put the case that in order to get to the truth, we need to know:
Cover names and real names of the spycops. These have still not been released. Lawyer Heather Williams reiterated that with the Inquiry only giving an identifying number for spycops, it is impossible for spied-upon people to actually know they were spied upon, and be able to come forward and give evidence. We will be left with just the officer’s unchallenged account of their activities.
Information about what they did during their deployments, and which groups they targeted. We know that more than 1000 groups were spied on, yet less than 150 have been named. When they were on holiday with people they spied on, was this ordered or sanctioned by their managers?
Photographs of the spycops, as they looked at the time, as this is likely to have far more effect jogging people’s memories. Tariq Ali said if he had been shown a photo of ‘Dick Epps‘ (who spied on him in the 1960s) he might have been able to recollect more about him. Non-state core participants have provided the Inquiry with personal photographs but the Inquiry has chosen not to publish them.
What is in the files: what data was gathered about individuals and the groups they were part of? The vast majority of non-state core participants have been provided with nothing at all so far. A small number have been given access to the ‘hearing bundle’, but this 5,500 page stack came just five weeks before these hearings began; far too much to comprehend, while still but a fraction of the million pages the Inquiry has.
Another point reinforced was the demand, argued for years now, that the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, urgently needs the assistance of an advisory panel, made up of people with more life experience and expertise than him. It is clear he lacks the understanding to investigate the institutional racism and sexism which lie at the heart of this scandal.
These initial problems with the Undercover Policing Inquiry, and more, are detailed in our report from last week.
NEW PROBLEMS: LIVE STREAMING & REPORTING
Sir John Mitting
Although this was already known about last week, the loss of public access to the live-streaming of the hearings from Wednesday morning has caused even more than the expected difficulties. A few things changed in light of protests from those attending, but there are still significant problems for those present and those prevented from attending.
There is considerable upset that people could only follow it properly by travelling to central London during a pandemic. However, Mitting is still flatly refusing to live-stream the whole thing on ‘security grounds’, even though other inquiries dealing with sensitive material, such as Grenfell and Manchester Arena, are live-streaming their hearings.
It’s clear it’s technically possible; it was done for the seven days of opening statements. Indeed, Mitting is still permitted his own personal live-stream, and two more are in the rooms provided for no more than 60 people to watch proceedings. The rest of the world had to deal with video of a live transcript of what was being said. One core participant trying to follow it described it as watching ‘speeded up Ceefax’.
IMPOSSIBLE TO FOLLOW
Another problem was that many of the documents being referred to were not shown, making it near impossible to follow some of the key details. The video feed couldn’t be rewound to check things that had been said. If you missed something, that was it.
This led to outright anger from some of the media, as well as victims’ lawyers. Journalists said it was making it impossible for them to report on issues. Many people trying to follow it from elsewhere were bitterly frustrated with how difficult it had become. These complaints resulted in some minor improvements such as a different video process and the documents being released on the same day.
The Inquiry video venue is also proving problematic for those attending; the two live-stream rooms are windowless and unventilated.
CARLO SORACCHI
Spycop Carlo Soracchi
Another significant issue this week is Mitting’s continuing refusal to let the real name of spycop ‘Carlo Neri’, which is Carlo Soracchi, be used in proceedings. This is on the application of his ex-wife.
Soracchi was deployed 2001-2006, infiltrating trade union, socialist and anti-fascist groups.
Mitting’s ban on anyone saying his real name has affected two of the women he deceived into relationships, and the Blacklist Support Group (BSG).
As a result, Dave Smith of the BSG was unable to give his Opening Statement. This is despite the fact that Soracchi’s name has been out in public for quite some time, reported in newspapers and on social media.
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED IN THE SECOND WEEK OF UCPI HEARINGS?
One of the most shocking facts to emerge this week is that many of the abuses, previously portrayed as the unsanctioned acts of rogue officers that were only perpetrated in recent years, have all been going on since the very beginnings of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). These include:
Relationships with activists. Far from being some recent deviation, spycops were forming deceitful intimate relationships with activists from 1968 onwards. These include a long-term sexual relationship between ‘Mary’ and spycop ‘Rick Gibson’ in 1975, and the strong indication of officer Helen Crampton having a relationship with an activist within weeks of the SDS’ foundation in 1968.
Travel to other countries. Whistle-blower Peter Francis genuinely believed that he was the first spycop to be deployed abroad when he travelled to Germany in 1993. Yet ‘Doug Edwards’ (HN326), who left the job in 1971, stated he ‘went to Brussels with this other officer whose name I can’t even mention’. Evidence also showed that another of the undercovers travelled to Scotland in 1969.
Attending family events of people they were spying on. Birthdays, weddings, and funerals were all attended by spycops as far back as 1969. Not only were the details of private family occasions collected by the State, but memories (and many of the photographs) of them are now marred by the knowledge that one of the people there was the very opposite of a friend.
POLICE FOCUS ON VIOLENCE
A repeated theme this week has entailed barristers for the Inquiry asking about the violent tendencies of protestors, and the protestors emphasising the peaceful nature of most of the groups and campaigns they were part of.
Black Dwarf, June 1968
Back in October 1968, protestors were asked not to bring fireworks and marbles to the demonstration against the Vietnam War, let alone anything else. Tariq Ali edited left-wing magazine Black Dwarf which published an article titled ‘Softly, Softly’ which stressed that, to ensure the protestors’ buses made it to the demonstration, nothing should be carried that could give the police cause to stop them.
A decade later, Ali was the Socialist Unity parliamentary candidate in Southall. During a confrontation between the National Front and anti-racists, local organisers put Ali in a safe house to keep him out of any trouble.
Police raided the house and the occupants, including Ali, were made to run a police gauntlet as they were ejected. Ali was truncheoned so severely that he passed out. The skull of the man he was with was fractured, leaving him in a coma for five months.
That was the same day, and in the same area, that Blair Peach – who we have already heard about in this Inquiry – was killed by the police. When the police unit responsible for killing Peach had its lockers searched, weapons found included a crowbar, metal cosh, whip handle, stock ship, brass handle, knives, American-style truncheons, a rhino whip and a pickaxe handle.
When considering which groups were the most violent and heavily armed, the police – with their arsenal of illegal weapons, aggressive attitude and fatal injuries – were clearly more of a threat than the activists.
Tariq Ali told the Inquiry in a written statement:
‘my strong feeling is that this Inquiry is likely to be a monumental waste of time. This is because the direction of travel is clear from the questions – to dissect the politics of the victims of police spying, and therefore to turn the spotlight away from the actions of the police. This is the politics of “blame the victim”.’
CREDIBLE THREAT OR DAFT IDEAS?
In order to continue operating, the SDS and other undercover officers had to convince superior officers that what they were doing was worthwhile. The groups they were infiltrating had to be seen as a credible threat to society.
Tariq Ali
In some cases, police provocateurs provided evidence by creating it themselves. Tariq Ali described a group of ‘hippy anarchists’ who spent the night in the offices of Black Dwarf. The group made a crude painting of how to make a Molotov cocktail on one of the walls, just in time for it to be ‘found’ during a police raid.
This tactic of provocation is seen over and over again throughout the entire history of the spycops, no matter what acronym they used.
Taking just one spycop that we know of, Bob Lambert, as an example, provocation ranges from writing or co-writing articles, such as the ‘What’s Wrong With McDonald’s?’ leaflet, to allegedly planning and committing arson by placing a timed incendiary device in the Harrow branch of Debenham’s in 1987.
Once again, this behaviour must be contrasted with that of the spied-upon groups; in 1968 the VSC were actively expelling groups that wanted to use violence on the anti-war marches. In many cases it is clear that the police were creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. The factor which made groups a ‘serious, credible threat’ was the spycops themselves.
FROM THE (POLICE) HORSE’S MOUTH
This assessment is borne out by evidence given by several spycops this week. Seemingly unaware that they were undermining their own justifications, various officers described the groups they had infiltrated as ineffectual at best, and deluded at worst.
‘They got an exaggerated idea of their own importance. They sort of had daft ideas’
‘Don de Freitas’, SDS officer HN330, infiltrated Havering International Socialists in 1968. His evidence portrayed a peaceful group, whose aims were not subversive, with most members ‘unwilling to support civil disobedience or terrorism’ (as if the two activities were comparable).
John Graham, who infiltrated Camden Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in the same year, viewed the members as ‘revolutionary’ because, even though they eschewed violence, they sought a change of government by trying to ‘persuade people to their point of view’.
Edwards, who in 1969 reported on the ‘Action Committee Against NATO’, said ‘I do not remember what the group stood for or what they did. I do not remember how I infiltrated the group or why I infiltrated them’. Obviously, it made very little impression on him. This is not what we’d expect from a dangerous group committed to serious disorder, which is what the SDS claims it existed to spy on.
There are many more examples of this attitude and experience from officers in our daily reports.
IF THEIR TARGETS WERE A THREAT, WHY WEREN’T SPYCOPS TRAINED?
Even before the officers’ evidence that the groups were not actually a serious risk to public safety, there is the lack of training to consider. If the spycops were indeed being sent to infiltrate dangerous organisations which threatened society, why weren’t they better prepared?
It was clear from the police statements there was a lack of direction in how to begin approaching their targets, exactly which groups to target, or other ‘fieldcraft’. ‘You had to play it by ear,’ ‘Doug Edwards’ explained.
If we’re to believe the Inquiry when it says spycops must have anonymity because, even now, being named would risk their lives, they need to explain why officers were left to do the job on a whim instead of being given instructions.
Spycop Joan Hillier asserted that SDS officers didn’t really need training as they were all experienced Special Branch officers (despite Hillier herself only joining Special Branch shortly before the SDS was formed):
‘Instinct would tell you what you shouldn’t do and what you should do.’
Officers would instinctively know not to get involved in people’s personal lives, form intimate relationships, commit crime, or appear in court under a fake identity, she said.
What Hillier refers to isn’t actually instinct, it’s personal individual morality. If it allows the officer to spy upon grieving families, undermine anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigns, and sabotage groups working for a healthier global environment – all whilst using the stolen identity of a dead infant – it is corrupt.
The fact that spycops did actually do the things Hillier lists them ‘instinctively’ avoiding, when she was an officer and afterwards over generations of deployments, shows it was not left to the individual, it must have been suggested and encouraged.
INSITUTIONAL RACISM & SEXISM
Undercover political policing’s core traits of institutional racism and sexism aren’t news to anyone who has been following this topic, but the more evidence is heard at the Inquiry, the more inescapably obvious it becomes.
Phillippa Kaufmann QC
Some of the most shocking testimony this week came from the women activists who were deceived into intimate and often long-term relationships by spycops.
Phillippa Kaufmann QC and Heather Williams QC spoke on behalf of over twenty of them; we cover this in detail in Monday’s summary of events. Kaufmann’s written statement gives further details of each woman’s story, and we strongly recommend that you read it.
Kaufmann also highlighted how both opening statements last week by Counsel for the Inquiry and whistle-blower spycop Peter Francis severely understated the role the women have played in exposing the spycops scandal. It was the women who, in the aftermath of their ‘loved one’ disappearing, uncovered the truth. Their unflinching determination cannot be overlooked.
Trying to summarise their evidence in this report cannot do it justice. Many of their experiences, in their own words, are gathered on the Police Spies Out Of Lives site and should be read there.
On Tuesday, the leading focus was the targeting of Black family justice campaigns and groups. In particular, we heard from the barristers representing Doreen and Neville Lawrence, The Monitoring Group, and Mike Mansfield QC. The Inquiry was reminded again of how it has an uphill struggle to even convince these core participants that it is capable of preventing yet further injustice, let alone of tackling the issue of institutional racism.
‘YOU WILL BE SILENCED’
Sir John Mitting, who is so sure of his own lack of bias that he’s refused input from any perspective other than his own, has treated Rajiv Menon QC, barrister for the victims of spycops, very poorly.
Rajiv Menon QC
As the very first police witness gave evidence, Menon wanted to ask a series of questions. Mitting was clearly unhappy with this, describing his own decision to permit Menon questions on a single issue as ‘exceptional, and I do not propose to invite you to ask questions on any other topic’.
Menon tried to protest and explain why it was important for the non-police core participants, at which point Mitting’s hostility became overt, telling Menon to obey or ‘you will be silenced’.
On Wednesday, Menon questioned Tariq Ali about a closed meeting of the Stop the War Coalition steering committee in 2003. As the public were not allowed at this meeting, the report must have come from a committee member or a recording device.
Mitting’s reaction to this simple statement was extraordinary: immediately and forcefully interrupting to warn Menon that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 prohibits any reference to intercepting communications unless Mitting deems it necessary in advance. ‘You will be committing an offence if you persist’, he intoned. ‘I would warn you not to’.
Menon, a barrister of 26 years’ experience and well aware of the law, explained that he was talking about the committee being bugged by a recording device, rather than an interception of communications, and therefore, the Act doesn’t apply. Mitting apologised, but it’s clear that he is giving Menon very little credit, and even less chance to pursue vital lines of questioning.
POLITICAL POLICING
Mitting’s attitude and performance so far fall completely in line with the overarching theme that the State and the spycops are there to support each other in maintaining the norms and values of the current government.
Spying upon anyone who they wanted to spy on was not only justified, but good, simply because they did it. National security, public order, and the convenience of the government of the day were fully interchangeable concepts for them. Any intrusion was justified because every citizen is a potential subversive.
Joan Hillier said that personal details – dates of birth, home addresses, etc – of those not even suspected of anything untoward would be routinely added to Special Branch files ‘in case it was needed in the future’.
By the spycops’ own admission, their aims were hazy, their training ranged from the informal to the non-existent, and they often didn’t feel like they accomplished anything.
‘I understood the role of Special Branch to be carrying out enquiries concerning the security of the State, in other words gathering intelligence on activities that sought to undermine the status quo, the government of the day and the political establishment’.
The conflation of national security with the convenience and policy of the government has always been a central factor in what spycops do. This Inquiry is, thus far, no different from the spycops’ operations.
WHAT NEXT?
There will be three more days of evidence from police (Monday, Wednesday and Thursday), with the possibility of unfinished things being heard on Tuesday and/or Friday.
After that, the Inquiry will take a break to assess what it’s heard. It will be back next year for another batch of hearings covering the SDS 1973-82. That’s currently expected to be around April 2021.
Hearings concerning the SDS 1983-1992 are expected in the first half of 2022, and those examining the SDS 1993-2007 are likely to take place in the first half of 2023.
Some time later there’ll be hearings on the National Public Order Intelligence Unit 1999-2011, then other undercover policing, then mid and senior rank officers, other agencies and government departments.
The Undercover Policing Inquiry has no set end-date, but is expected to perhaps conclude around 2026.
COPS will be live tweeting every hearing, producing a summary every evening, and a weekly report like this one at the weekend. All our daily and weekly reports, and our UCPI FAQ, are linked on our UCPI Public Inquiry page.
The Undercover Policing Inquiry had a full day of police witnesses, and it was a startling day of discovery.
This phase is only covering 1968-72, and today we learned that many of the spycops activities we’d been led to believe came later on were actually there from the start.
If this is what we’re learning from what we’re told, just imagine what is being concealed by the anonymity orders that the Inquiry has granted to most spycops.
SUMMARY DISMISSAL
As with yesterday, one of the most significant exchange didn’t involve a witness, but the Chair’s irate interruptions of the victim’s barrister in order to prevent him from asking questions.
The day started with two short summaries of ‘Don de Freitas’, (referred to by the Inquiry as HN330), ‘William Paul “Bill” Lewis’ (HN321), and officer HN322, whose cover name is unknown.
Doing summaries of the careers of officers who are dead is one thing, but to have a lawyer simply read summaries of statements from living spycops without any apparent opportunity to challenge the evidence or question them is quite another.
Yet again, the Inquiry acts as if the police – whose decades of deceit and abuse are the subject – can be taken at their word, and those of us who were targeted can have no insight that hasn’t already occurred to the Chair, Sir John Mitting, and he can dismiss our objections out of hand.
‘Don de Freitas’
SDS officer HN330
‘Don de Freitas’ served briefly in SDS for a month over September / October 1968, infiltrating the Havering branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC).
As a Special Branch officer he used various cover names and occupation at different times, but his SDS deployment differed in that he used a fixed false identity.
Prior to his time with SDS, he had reported on Tariq Ali, and also Notting Hill VSC – particularly the Powis Square incident where members of the group were arrested.
Conrad Dixon, founder of the SDS
He knew the SDS founder Conrad Dixon socially and was invited to join the unit following a chance meeting in a corridor. He described the SDS as informal in nature.
Other than standard Special Branch training, he received no training or guidance. Operating out of Scotland Yard, he did not change his appearance other than to dress casually.
He initially went to a meeting of Havering International Socialists on 26 September 1968, which had been advertised in a leaflet distributed in Romford Market. He ingratiated himself with speakers and attendees which led to him being invited to join the private committee meetings.
COUPLED
Conrad Dixon suggested he and officer HN334, ‘Margaret White‘, attend the meetings together as a couple to make them less suspicious.
The remit was to find out as much as possible of the group’s plans for the big anti-Vietnam War demonstration of 27 October 1968. He stopped undercover work shortly after this demonstration, on 29 October. While with the group, he reported on their preparations including leaflet distribution and fly-posting, which he took part in.
His evidence gave a picture of a peaceful group, whose aims were not subversive and most members ‘unwilling to support civil disobedience or terrorism’.
ON THE MARCH
At the October demonstration, he marched with the group, chanting pro-Vietnam slogans. His final report is to note the general opinion of Havering VSC that the protest was a ‘complete and utter disaster’.
Among his reports was information on a Labour Party official, who was a member of Havering VSC. The officer notes this was included because MI5 were interested in whether extremists were penetrating what he describes as ‘legitimate left-wing political organisations’.
At one point, he was tasked to investigate information that an individual was seeking ingredients to make a smoke bomb. Another report in his name notes the plans of anarchists from University College Swansea for the October demonstration, but it is unclear how he came by this information.
Three documents, dated after his SDS time, show he was involved in the monitoring of the Anti-Apartheid Movement from July 1960 to June 1970. These were copied to MI5.
‘William Paul “Bill” Lewis’
HN321
‘Bill Lewis‘ now lives abroad and has provided a witness statement. He was deployed from 18 September 1968 to 30 September 1969. Soon after leaving the SDS he resigned from the police as he had ‘tired of the work’.
The majority of his reports focus on the International Marxist Group (IMG).
Prior to the SDS, he was with Special Branch’s B Squad where he would attend public meetings in casual clothes, noting attendees and their activities; he did not have a false identity for this. He was recruited to the SDS because a Special Branch manager had been impressed by the detail in his reports, and he was encouraged to attend a meeting regarding the formation of the squad.
INVITED TO SPY
He recalled going to a meeting of around 30 people in which Conrad Dixon said their work was going to be secret. HN321 accepted the invitation to join. There was no training or guidance; the objective was to gather intelligence on the 27 October demonstration against the Vietnam War.
His cover job was as an instrument and control technician, which he knew enough to talk about if necessary. He used two cover flats – one in Earl’s Court and another in Acton.
He would attend the SDS safe house several times a week, as advised by Dixon, to keep officers engaged during their downtime. The undercovers learned on the job and by sharing experience – for example how to avoid blowing their cover.
Not assigned to a particular group, he initially attended a demonstration and then a meeting, which he discovered was an IMG one. Dixon instructed him to attend further IMG meetings as they were a group of interest to the SDS.
Lewis’ first report covers a public meeting attended by Ernie Tate and the US socialist presidential candidate Fred Halstead. However, after that the IMG reports all cover private events. He also reported on Lambeth and other VSC branches.
On 26 October 1968, he telegrammed Special Branch to alert them to comments made at a South West VSC Ad Hoc Committee meeting in Brixton, that police coaches on Vauxhall Bridge would be sabotaged during the demonstration the following day. His witness statement however notes that he did not think the IMG would carry this out as they were ‘actually quite passive and intellectual’. He did not express this view to his managers, reporting only the facts of what took place at the meetings.
80 PEOPLE FILED
At one point, he was able to record the details of approximately 80 members of the IMG, which were passed on to MI5.
The subject of other reports related to discussions and planned demonstrations around Northern Ireland, the Middle East, the International Congress of the Fourth International, Scottish nationalism and women’s rights. There was also a debrief after the 27 October demonstration.
[This shows that SDS were travelling to Scotland from within the first year of the unit, much earlier than had been previously admitted.]
He states that his only criminal activity while undercover had been obstruction of the highway and perhaps fly-posting. Generally he recalls being advised not to resist arrest if it happened, and that it could be ‘sorted out’ further down the line with charges probably being dropped.
SDS officer HN322
Real name withheld
This individual served in SDS for a short time in its early months and was not deployed undercover. Their real name is being withheld by the Inquiry.
He was approached by Conrad Dixon who personally invited him to join the squad. He was not given much information initially. He had a young family at the time and, once he realised it would mean a lot of time away from them, he asked to be taken off the squad. He went on to have a senior rank in the Metropolitan Police.
In his experience, his time in SDS was much the same as time doing generic Special Branch work – both involved going to meetings and gathering intelligence.
He may have been directed to look at South East London VSC. He recalls being told to attend and report on a few different meetings. Reports show these were Earl’s Court VSC and the South East London Ad Hoc Committee of the VSC.
He wrote reports on behalf of officer HN335, Mike Tyrell, which covered private meetings and planned activities of the British Vietnam Solidarity Front and the Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation.
He notes the lack of direction and supervision within the SDS as compared to the rest of Special Branch. He was advised to go to meetings, but given no direction or guidance about what to do when in attendance, and had a lot of free time.
Joan Hillier SDS officer HN328
Only known before today as officer HN328, Joan Hillier gave evidence under her real name.
In her oral evidence, there was a lot she said she couldn’t remember, and some contradiction of established facts.
Hillier joined the Met in 1958, and moved into Special Branch in March 1968, coincidentally the day after the disorder at a Vietnam War protest outside the American Embassy in London, which spurred the formation of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS).
Hillier said there was little in the way of mentoring compared to when she’d joined the uniformed police. She got the impression that the Home Secretary had ordered that there be no repeat of the anti-war demonstration’s uproar and, in July 1968, Special Branch formed the SDS in response.
She remembers no application process, rather officers were invited from various Special Branch squads.
There was no formal SDS decision making on which groups to infiltrate, they ended to be selected by casual discussion among SDS officers. They were given casual, informal briefings on the politics of people they were going to spy on, rather than any structured lectures. Tactics were planned in detail, rather than targets. She said she did not remember any discussions about the risk of becoming involved in criminality.
PUBLIC ORDER OR POLITICAL POLICING?
At the time, Hillier was under the clear impression that the SDS was concerned with public order issues only, centered on the forthcoming October 1968 protest against the Vietnam War, rather than any wider counter-subversion spying. This is at odds with the fact that most SDS files were copied to MI5, who were not involved in public order policing.
She was shown a paper authored by the SDS founder and boss, Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon, about ‘penetration of extremist groups’ [MPS-0724119, not yet published at the UCPI website]. This was something she said she had no memory of seeing before.
Invited to define extremists, she said it was people who use extreme means – violence, disorder – to get what they want, seemingly without awareness that the threat and use of violence is the basis of the power of uniformed police.
The SDS was just another Special Branch squad, Hillier said, but with the added advantage of being members of targeted groups and so able to go to non-public meetings. And yet, many of Hillier’s reports are of public meetings, both before and after she joined the SDS.
WOMEN UNDERCOVER
Hillier’s written statements said that there were no female undercover officers in the SDS at the start, yet we’ve seen that there was not only herself and Helen Crampton, but officer HN334 whose statement says she had a cover job and address, which is even more involved than Hillier’s activity.
Spycops Helen Crampton (left) & Joan Hillier (right, redacted)
Her statements also described how only male spycops went to private meetings, yet reports show Helen Crampton and female officer HN334 did it.
Hillier accepted the evidence as true and blamed fading memories of things that happened over 50 years ago.
Conrad Dixon wrote a document stating that it was important that targets were unaware of spycops, so if there was the desire to get evidence and arrest someone in an infiltrated group, it is better to send female officers in as he believed they were less likely to be suspected. He followed this with a list of female officers including Hillier.
She said she had no memory of ever doing this, nor of Helen Crampton, with whom she worked as a pair, doing it either.
It was pointed out that in 1969, Crampton gave evidence in a prosecution arising from a meeting she’d attended with Hillier (more about this later). Hillier said she has no memory of this at all.
UNGUIDED
The lack of training and guidance was a major theme. Hillier doesn’t remember any instruction on what to include and exclude in reports. Your reports would contain whatever you thought reports should contain, she explained.
She did confirm that personal details (dates of birth, home addresses, etc) would be routinely added to Special Branch files ‘in case it was needed in the future’.
Hillier said that the SDS was able to obtain information that normal Special Branch officers couldn’t get. She confirmed that superior officers wanted to know in advance who would be at demonstrations, and so there was a desire for the supply of details on anyone involved:
‘Information is never wasted, really’
Reporting everything ‘in case it was needed in future’ because ‘information is never wasted, really’ is properly Orwellian. Watch anyone long enough and you’ll find something.
NO NEED FOR TRAINING
Despite her earlier description of only joining Special Branch shortly before the SDS was formed, Hillier blithely asserted that SDS officers didn’t really need training as they were all experienced special Branch officers:
‘Instinct would tell you what you shouldn’t do and what you should do’
Officers would instinctively know not to get involved in people’s personal lives, form intimate relationships, commit crime of appear in court under a fake identity, she said.
And yet, not only were these things standard practice in the SDS shortly after, we know that her contemporaries were dating people they spied on.
Specifically asked about officer Mike Ferguson, who infiltrate the anti-apartheid movement, Hillier said she only knew he was in that political area. She didn’t know any details, nor what managers knew of his activity.
SECRET PUBLICITY OFFICER
A document was shown a page from the Conrad paper mentioned above, describing the structure of the SDS. It said there was a Chief Inspector at the top, with three Detective Inspectors below them, one of which is tasked with ‘press and liaison’, which seems most peculiar for a secret unit.
Hillier had no idea what it meant, and said she’d never seen the document and doesn’t recognise the command structure it describes.
The same document has a section on ‘scope of activities’ which warned against becoming an agent provocateur:
‘The incompetence of the British left is notorious, and officers must take care not to get into a position where they achieve prominence in an organisation through natural ability. A firm line must be drawn between activity as a follower and a leader, and members of the squad should be told in no uncertain terms that they must not take office in a group, chair meetings, draft leaflets, speak in public or initiate activity.’
Hillier said she had never been warned of this, but she wasn’t undercover after October 1968 anyway, as she moved into the unit’s administrative staff.
AUTHOR OR SCRIBE
Asked about the content of a number of reports she made on meetings elsewhere, Hillier said that although she was the credited reporter, she was in fact merely the typist for the officers who’d done the spying. This certainly makes a change from the traditional amnesiac answers from police.
Hillier explained that spycops would hand her a report in pencil with a list of names, and she would look up the people’s file numbers, type it up, sign it on their behalf and pass it to Chief Inspector Dixon.
Signing for others wasn’t standard Special Branch practice, but was easier for the SDS as being split across two sites and not seeing one another regularly could lead to delays.
In her later administrative role, she described herself as the go-between for information between the SDS’ secret base and Scotland Yard, where no undercover officer could afford to be spotted.
Asked what the SDS was like, she replied:
‘when I joined, it was a very nice unit. It was very happy. Everybody got on well together. They were all going for a common cause. And it was a very happy unit. That’s the only way I can describe it really.’
ENTER MENON
When the Inquiry Counsel finished their questioning of Hillier, Rajiv Menon QC, representing some of the people targeted by spycops, applied to ask questions.
As with yesterday’s hearing, the most significant and instructive part of the day came not from a witness, but from the way the Chair treated the voice of those who were spied on. We’re describing this section in some detail to give a strong flavour of what we’re facing.
Menon said he had a number of points that he wanted to ask about:
Hillier giving evidence in her real name;
An issue relating to the ‘Penetration of Extremist Groups’ paper authored by SDS boss Conrad Dixon;
Hillier & Crampton’s involvement with the Notting Hill branch of the VSC;
Spycops having intimate relationships (the most pertinent one in the list, according to Menon);
An issue about about Highgate & Holloway branch of the VSC;
Inter-relations of the SDS with Special Branch and MI5.
Mitting said that disputes of fact can get questioned, but Menon would not be allowed to put ‘general questions’ of the kind he was suggesting.
Menon replied that all his questions were relevant to matters squarely within the Inquiry’s terms of reference, and will assist the Inquiry in its fundamental aim to get to the truth of undercover policing. He wanted to ask open questions to establish the ground from which he foresaw questions of specific fact emerging.
Menon pointed out that the hearing was ahead of schedule, so there was no pressure of time. He asked for a little latitude in favour of a barrister with 26 years experience, and the precise relevance of his questions would soon become visible. He added that his questions that were submitted to Counsel for the Inquiry in advance hadn’t all been asked, and he would only take ten or fifteen minutes.
NOTTING HILL VSC
Mitting homed in on the dispute of fact about Crampton in Notting Hill VSC. Menon wanted to be circumspect and ask open ended questions to see if it would settle a query as he has information from another source.
Mitting vaporised any chance of that approach by asking what the specific issue was. Menon said it was whether Crampton had a relationship with a leading Notting Hill VSC member.
Mitting asked which member, and Menon replied that it was a George Cochrane, who is named in the reports as Chairman of the branch. This is an important issue as, if true, it shows spycops were deceiving people they spied on into relationships from the very start, contradicting what has been claimed by the officers of that era.
The Inquiry Chair followed up, asking if Cochrane was still alive (and would therefore have privacy issues). Menon did not know, but as Cochrane’s name isn’t redacted in the numerous documents the Inquiry is releasing, it indicates that the latter believes he’s deceased.
Mitting, though continuing to think Menon was impudent for wanting to ask questions at all, relented on this point. However, he imposed very tight parameters, saying ‘this is exceptional and I do not propose to invite you to ask questions on any other topic’.
QUESTIONING THE WITNESS
Menon then got the chance to question Hillier.
He refreshed what had already been said; that Hillier was with Crampton at all the Notting Hill VSC meetings she went to except one. He asked if she knew this particular branch had been disowned by national council of the VSC because of its politics (one of the three that VSC organiser Ernest Tate described yesterday as expelled Maoists).
Rajiv Menon QC
Hillier said she only went to about four meetings and wasn’t on first name terms with anyone. Menon said that, as she marched with the branch at the October 1968 demonstration, she must surely have exchanged names, which she conceded, adding that it would have been a cover name.
Menon asked if, when Hillier had said she didn’t know of any spycops having relationships with people they spied on, if it included going on dates. Hillier said she couldn’t say absolutely that it wouldn’t have happened, but she didn’t know of any instances.
Menon then asked his central question – did Helen Crampton have an intimate relationship with a Notting Hill VSC member? Hillier said she didn’t know for sure, but very much doubted it.
Menon led Hillier through some of the vintage SDS reports. A report of a Notting Hill VSC meeting on 2 October 1968 [MPS-0739188] shows George Cochrane was chairman, and Hillier was there with Crampton, as well as officers HN68 and HN331. Hillier signed the report. She replied that she didn’t remember Cochrane’s name at all.
ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE
Helen Crampton had given evidence in the trial of a man arrested after handing out a leaflet at the Notting Hill VSC meeting on 9 October 1968. Documents [MPS-0739187] show Hillier was at the meeting, along with Crampton, HN68 and HN331. Crampton’s report written the day after the meeting included mention of the leaflet.
Menon pulled up a file which showed the individual being convicted in 1969, on Crampton’s evidence, and given a two year sentence for incitement to riot. This was the only conviction the SDS directly secured in its early phase.
Menon pressed Hillier one whether she really couldn’t remember Crampton being involved, or whether Crampton getting the leaflet and showing it as something worth reporting for further action. Menon asked if Hillier had herself been a witness at the trial to corroborate Crampton’s account, but again she claimed she was drawing a total blank.
Despite her good memories of other events, Hillier had nothing at all to offer on the topic, and Menon could ask no further questions.
Oliver Sanders, one of the police barristers, then asked Hillier about her role in Highgate & Holloway. She’s already said she had no involvement with the branch, and yet there’s a report [MPS-0722098] on the branch that she signed. It has a list of names and addresses, and matches them with their Special Branch file numbers, or else says ‘no trace SB records’.
Hillier said, once more, that she didn’t author the report but merely typed it.
‘Doug Edwards’
SDS officer HN326
The afternoon was devoted to evidence from former spycop HN326, who used the cover name ‘Doug’ or ‘Douglas Edwards‘. (Despite it not being his real name, we’ll call him Edwards in this report for ease of understanding.)
Edwards was undercover in the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) from late 1968 to May 1971. He infiltrated various groups including anarchist groups, as well as the Independent Labour Party, Tri-Continental and Dambusters Mobilising Committee. He provided a witness statement to the Inquiry in 2018, and a further one relating to photographs in 2019.
UNSPECIFIED REMIT
Edwards said he was not given any training about the groups that Special Branch was interested in, or about the meaning of the word ‘subversion’. He was only in Special Branch for a few months, before his Detective Inspector (Saunders) invited him to join the new Squad. It was so secretive that he had no idea what he was being asked to join.
While he was part of the SDS, he understood that his job was to look at the different ‘left-wing groups that were fomenting trouble on the streets’. Inquiry Counsel Warner said ‘that sounds more like public order policing’.
Warner asked if he was collecting information to work out if the groups were ‘subversive’ or not. Edwards said that you needed to identify individuals and try and understand what their political beliefs were. He said there were all sorts of rivalries in political groups (Trotskyists and anarchists were ‘bent on causing violence’, apparently).
He was on probation within Special Branch for that first year, and recalled that ‘you had to do what you were told in those days’. The existence of the SDS was kept very secret.
Edwards said that SDS officers were told not to break the law, probably by DI Saunders and Chief Inspector Dixon. ‘You couldn’t go into a squat for instance’.
FIRST TARGETS
There wasn’t much else in the way of training, how to begin approaching their targets, nor exactly which groups to target, or other ‘fieldcraft’. ‘You had to play it by ear,’ he explained.
Edwards confirmed that he knew SDS officer Roy Creamer, ‘an intellectual and knowledgeable man about left-wing affairs’. He doesn’t recall a specific political briefing.
If the SDS was there to infiltrate groups intending to ‘undermine parliamentary democracy’, one wonders why the Independent Labour Party (ILP), who stood candidates for election, fit the brief. Edwards said he remembers being told to join the ILP, as this would give him a ‘handle to swing’:
‘The man in charge [HN325], he wanted me to look at an anarchist group; and I was told that the way to do this was to go to Piccadilly Circus and sit about there and I would be recruited; and I’d be able to be joining the anarchists. But of course it was a load of rubbish. You know, when I’d done that for a few nights, I thought, “Well, what am I wasting my time for?”‘
His statement describes visiting the place ‘somewhere in the East End’ where long-running anarchist newspaper Freedom was published. The Inquiry was shown a report that refers to a leaflet being printed by Freedom, about the ‘East London libertarians’ who wanted to occupy council houses for homeless families:
‘You couldn’t go into a squat, for instance. You couldn’t get involved with that.’
He agreed that whistle-blower SDS officer Peter Francis’ description of the early undercovers as ‘shallow paddlers’, who didn’t fully immerse themselves with their targets their successors did, is ‘an apt description’.
It’s a relative term, though. As was standard practice, Edwards integrated himself into the personal lives and social communities of the people he was spying on.
Asked about his attendance at the wedding of two activists, he explained, ‘I couldn’t not do it, that was the thing’.
He said he joined in the celebration at the pub afterwards, but didn’t go to the registry office. This meant that he avoided appearing in any of the photos. He even took a gift along for the happy couple (this was a ‘fancy tin opener’, according to an earlier statement!)
He knew in advance that he’d been invited to the wedding, but does not remember what his managers thought about this.
He recalled the difficulty of doing the job, of being matey with his targets while being ‘on edge’ all the time:
‘it wasn’t always easy to maintain your cover. But I did my best and I was successful with it.’
And what exactly was that success in?
WEST HAM ANARCHISTS aka TEENAGE GRAFFITI WRITERS
Edwards was sent to spy on West Ham anarchists, the oldest of whom was 21.
He was asked about the rowdy day at the South African Embassy that he described in a statment was with the West Ham Anarchists:
‘That’s a good question. Do you know, I can’t remember that. I was on a demonstration outside in Trafalgar Square at the South African Embassy, and it got a bit tasty. They started smashing windows and it was violent, and there we are. The mounted police came in then, to try and stop things… I know they were anarchist groups because they were all chanting this “Anarchista!” was the order of the day.’
He said the group definitely committed some minor criminal damage and graffiti – ‘just making a nuisance of themselves locally’ – and this was covered in the local press.
ILP – ANTI-DEMOCRATIC SPYING
Logo of the Independent Labour Party
Edwards didn’t just use the ILP as a gateway into politics, he attended meetings and demonstrations with them, describing them as ‘quite left-wing, pleasant, sociable, wrapped up in a world of intellectual Marxism’.
Edwards was asked how a demonstration might ‘undermine parliamentary democracy’, and struggled to answer. He talked of the fear the police had of the ‘sheer volume’ of people involved in the demonstrations, and their revolutionary ideals. He remains confused about whether these revolutionaries were going for ‘total anarchy’ or a ‘socialist society’ though!
He was in the Tower Hamlets branch of the ILP, and reported them talking about organising an anti-fascist rally and a local rent struggle. There are some reports about the preparations for a debate between the National Front and the ILP. The meetings were very small, literally four or five people.
The closest they appeared to come to political violence was a conflagration in a pub between his ILP comrades and some other left-wing faction (he thinks it might have been the International Socialists, but wasn’t clear).
He chortled dismissively about the size of many of the left-wing groups, saying:
‘They got an exaggerated idea of their own importance. They sort of had daft ideas. And of course, it resulted in this punch up in the pub.’
Edwards seemed unaware that the more feeble and insignificant the group targeted, the more unjustifiable the infiltration.
His fellow undercover officers Phil Saunders and Riby Wilson watched the scrapping from a car on the other side of the street. They later told him they’d have come to his aid if he needed it, but he’s not sure they really would have done.
The Inquiry was shown a larger report containing more about the workings of the ILP, with information from ‘very reliable sources’ (the plural was noted). Edwards said that his intelligence would have been included in this report:
‘It’s a big justification really of them sending me to the ILP.’
Edwards denied influencing the ‘direction of travel’ of the Tower Hamlets ILP branch, saying he just kept quiet and made mental notes of what was going on. This isn’t easy to reconcile with the fact that he became branch treasurer.
Edwards explained that this was a small group, a ‘tin pot organisation’. He remembers setting up a Barclays bank account, and the branch didn’t have much money. Funds were spent on banners, or sent to ‘the Chilean earthquake disaster fund or something like that’.
He said he didn’t remember speaking to his managers about accepting the position of treasurer, or any reaction from them to this development:
‘I can’t truthfully say one way or the other. You know, I’m not going to make answers up.’
‘Of course not,’ the Inquiry counsel said smoothly.
IRISH CIVIL RIGHTS SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN
The Inquiry was shown a report [MPS-0732317] about the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign’s Islington branch, made by Edwards and counter-signed by CI Saunders.
Edwards said that he never went to the group’s meetings, but he knows another spycop did, and he was ‘on observation’ duty for him at least one time.
He said he only went to one demo outside the Ulster Office in Berkeley Street, but apart from that, he didn’t cover any Irish groups – this was done by someone else.
In his witness statement, he said he’s seen two SDS reports ICRSC meetings, from September and October 1970, and he is their credited author. His statement says that he did not in fact write them. In the same statement he described the ICRSC as ‘a front for the IRA’.
He admitted today, that he would have reported finding out that someone was a member or a supporter of such a group.
TRI-CONTINENTAL
The next document [UCPI0000008209] was a November 1969 report about the ‘Action Committee Against NATO’. There had been a meeting of the committee on 5 November – only three people were present.
According to the report, Tri-continental provided money for the deposit, so they could book meeting space at Conway Hall.
Edwards thought that Special Branch files were automatically destroyed after 30 years and seems perturbed that these have been ‘dragged out from somewhere’. He suggested from the ‘hairy cupboard’ (he likes his ‘jokes’).
He suggested that his managers would have been interested in this anti-NATO group, because they were worried about these ‘demonstration people’ targeting something that was ‘vital for the security of the country’.
He said that he can’t remember anything about Tri-continental. Let alone whether they ever did anything unlawful or got involved in public disorder.
DAMBUSTERS MOBILISING COMMITTEE
The Dambusters Mobilising Committee (DMC) was a coalition of groups opposing the proposed construction of the colossal Cahora Bassa dam project in Mozambique. The project was intended to supply electricity to apartheid South Africa.
Edwards was asked if he could remember the Dambusters group buying Barclay’s bank shares so they could attend the AGM. Did the Dambusters commit any serious crimes? Were they violent? Were they involved in any public disorder?
Edwards was even less forthcoming than he had been about Tri-Continental, saying ‘you’re asking me things I can’t answer. I can’t speak for the managers and what they thought’.
‘DMC was concerned with a dam in Mozambique or South Africa and it had something to do with South African politics too. I do not remember what the group stood for or what they did. I do not remember how I infiltrated the group or why I infiltrated them. It may have been something to do with the group being on the fringes of all of the trouble with the movement against apartheid.’
The fact that the officer can’t even remember the politics of a group he was part of, suggests it made very little impression on him. This is not what we would expect to see from membership of a group committed to serious disorder, which is what the SDS claims it existed to spy on. The fact that he thinks it may be allied to undermining the struggle against apartheid compounds the sense of anti-democratic action emanating from his words.
SOCIALIST ALLIANCE AGAINST RACIALISM
An April 1970 report by Edwards on a new socialist anti-racist group, Socialist Alliance Against Racialism (SAAR), was shown to the Inquiry. Once again, Edwards said he didn’t remember them at all.
Mark Kennedy’s injuries after beating by police, 2006
He was asked if it being a ‘campaign against racialism’ would have made it of interest? Or because of the groups involved in founding it? And what his managers’ attitude towards the group was?
He did did not recall much.
There were some questions about the VSC, and a report about their planning meetings before a peaceful demo which took place in the autumn of 1970. He, personally, considered the VSC a front to cause trouble.
He confirmed that he himself was assaulted on a demonstration in Grosvenor Square, by uniformed police armed with truncheons. Asked why the police had gone for him, he said:
‘it’s just the fact you’ve got long hair and a beard and they wallop you, you know, you’re you’re one of them sort of thing. It’s 50 years ago, this was what they were doing. It’s a different attitude to things.’
His faith in the restraint of more modern uniformed officers is quaint. Any number of undercover officers have stories of the brutality of their uniformed colleagues.
At the 2006 Climate Camp at Drax coal-fired power station in North Yorkkshire, spycop Mark Kennedy was so badly beaten by a group of uniformed officers that he reportedly needed surgery on his lower back.
WORKING ABROAD
In complaining about the difficulties of his role, Edwards casually and seemingly unwittingly dropped a bombshell. It had long been thought that SDS officer didn’t go abroad until later on. Peter Francis believed his trip to Germany in the 1990s was the first.
Yet Edwards, who left the job in May 1971, said:
‘I went to Brussels with this other officer whose name I can’t even mention, I suppose, but, you know, the amateurish way that it was done then, it was a strain.’
Whatever the spycops ever did, it seems they always did.
END OF DEPLOYMENT
Edwards was undercover in the SDS for about two years. He finished because:
‘I’d had enough. I’d had enough of going round with a long beard and long hair and being scruffy. It’s quite a strain on the system doing the job, it really is… until you’ve done the job you don’t know what is involved’
Edwards mused about how it had got more difficult later on, for the spycops who came later and got more deeply embedded, for longer periods.
His deployment’s peculiar mix of pointless triviality and undermining of fundamental rights is captured in his 2019 witness statement in which he said:
‘I did not have any idea of how I was helping, one way or the other: nobody ever told me or gave me feedback and there was no other way of me knowing’
After his time with the SDS, Edwards returned to work in other areas of Special Branch. He took on a more clerical role in undermining democratic organisations, and began working on the ‘industrial desk’, which spied on trade unions and is thought to have illegally supplied details on union activists to private blacklisting companies. He said he didn’t know what was done with this kind of information – ‘obviously it would go to the security service in the first instance’.
Later in his career he worked in the ‘vetting office’. This was primarily security vetting of new recruits to the police, including members of Special Branch itself, done in conjunction with MI5. They sent the completed from off to MI5, who would respond if they considered somebody a security risk.
THE SECRET WASN’T SECRET
Edwards said he was sure the existence of the SDS wasn’t a secret among the top brass. He noted the way ‘all the management all ended up as top commanders and all the rest of it’, and he reminisced about the time that a senior officer brought a bottle of whisky along to the SDS to say thank you for their work.
In his witness statement, he said it was presented at the SDS safe house by the Commissioner or Assistant Commissioner. Whistle-blower officer Peter Francis said exactly the same thing happened to him after the anti-fascist demonstration in October 1993, when the bottle was presented by the Commissioner himself, Sir Paul Condon.
Edwards repeated and expanded on a line from his witness statement:
‘I was just a small cog in a great big machine and I did my little bit as best I could to help the police and the uniformed police and be a good branch officer. That’s what it’s all about, you know. Loyalty to the Branch’
He then veered into a bitter rant about those who’ve exposed decades of the unit’s counter-democratic action and violation of citizens by the thousand. With no trace of irony, he lamented the pain he feels because those he was close to have betrayed his trust.
‘And of course we’ve not seen now any loyalty from some of these people, and that I find very upsetting. You know, when you can’t trust people. I’ve not been to reunions and things like that, because you don’t know who you can trust any more. People are all talking to the press and everybody else, and can’t keep their traps shut. So I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed. You have a long career and that’s what happens.’
That concluded the second week of the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s evidence hearings. They will continue next week (Monday, Wednesday and Thursday are definite, other days undecided as yet), then there will be a break until around April.
COPS will be live-tweeting all the Inquiry hearings, and producing daily reports like this one for the blog. They will be indexed on our UCPI Public Inquiry page.
The morning was taken up by that first police witness, officer HN 329 aka ‘John Graham’. After many years of waiting, we finally heard a former undercover officer speak from the witness box. Unfortunately, most people could not see or hear as only a near-contemporaneous transcript was broadcast.
‘YOU WILL BE SILENCED’
With the very first police witness giving evidence at the Undercover Policing Inquiry, barrister for the victims of spycops Rajiv Menon QC wanted to ask a series of questions. But the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, cut him off lest it be stressful for the spycop. When Menon tried to debate the matter, Mitting told him to obey or ‘you will be silenced’.
This outburst was just an unruly version of what we’ve seen from Mitting all along – the prioritisation of the comfort of spycops over the desire of victims and the public to know the truth. He ignores the fact that this is an inquiry into police wrongdoing and is clearly affronted at the impudence of those who would challenge a police officer.
Screenshot of UCPI live transcript with Chair telling Rajiv Menon QC: ‘You will be silenced’
Most of the afternoon was devoted to lifelong anti-war and left-wing activist Ernest Tate, on of the organisers of the 1968 demonstrations against the Vietnam War that sparked the founding of the Special Demonstration Squad and, as such, events to which the Inquiry is giving a lot of attention.
At the end of the day, there were summaries of the statements from two former spycops who aren’t giving evidence in person, then brief details about the careers of six deceased officers.
Officer HN 329, aka ‘John Graham’
[Note, throughout this we refer to the officer by his cover name, John Graham].
Graham principally spied upon the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) of whom protest organiser Tariq Ali’s testimony we heard yesterday.
The questions were put by David Barr QC, Counsel To the Inquiry. He began by asking him some questions about joining the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). Specifically, he was asked whether he volunteered or if he volunteered by someone else. He replied that he thought he was told to join the new unit in 1968.
He had joined Special Branch early on, initially working for the ‘naturalisation inquiries’ section, which gave him insight to the sort of reporting Special Branch generally wanted. Senior officers would check over work to ensure nothing ‘irrelevant’ was included.
Prior to joining the SDS, he also worked in ‘C’ Squad in Special Branch – responsible for monitoring communists and this involved ‘normal’ plain-clothes Special Branch work with no undercover name or persona used.
UNDERSTANDING SPECIAL BRANCH
There were a number of questions that Graham could either not help with or gave unhelpfully vague answers. These included what Special Branch’s definition of extremism was.
He was a little more helpful on Special Branch’s duty regarding the ‘Security of the State’ – or at least his earlier written statement was. There he suggested that by collecting information covertly, Special Branch would be able to find out about any violent intent on part of protesters.
Expanding on this line, Barr again referred to the officer’s written statement, eliciting about the Special Branch’s role vis-a-vis policing political groups:
‘I understood the role of Special Branch to be carrying out enquiries concerning the security of the State, in other words gathering intelligence on activities that sought to undermine the status quo, the government of the day and the political establishment’.
The conflation of national security with the convenience and policy of the government has always been a central factor in what spycops do.
TRAINING & ACTIVITIES
On training, he explained that his time in Special Branch had already given him a good idea of what was expected, and what kind of information they would have been interested in collecting. For instance, they would have been interested in personal details, any distinguishing features. It also included info about the dynamics of the group he was reporting on and any analysis that he thought useful. He left any ‘filtering’ of the information to someone else.
Graham explained that there wasn’t much of a difference between normal Special Branch duties and those within the SDS in terms of attending political meetings. As part of the ‘general inquiries’ section of Special Branch, he would attend in plain clothes.
Once he joined the SDS, he would just wear ‘nondescript clothing’. He said that sometimes people who were dressed smartly might be regarded with suspicion (and asked to leave a meeting) but ‘if you were scruffy.. nobody bothered you’.
A REVOLUTIONARY PERSUASION
Graham infiltrated various VSC branches in North West London, attending meetings in Camden, Hampstead, Kilburn, and Willesden. He added that the Camden group was ‘considered prominent as it contained Geoff Richman’. (Geoff and Marie Richman were prominent in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign itself, and Geoff, a medical doctor, was a member of the Socialist Medical Association.)
Graham describes the Richmans as ‘nice people’. A question might have been put here whether this made the officer feel uncomfortable in spying on them. However, there was no hint of regret or remorse at any point in Graham’s oral hearing.
Barr asked Graham about the revolutionary sentiment he found in Camden that was apparently so in need of infiltration and monitoring:
Barr: You describe the Camden VSC in terms which suggest they were revolutionary but they were not going to use violence to try and achieve their ends. Could you describe in what sense you understood them to be revolutionary?
Graham: Well, they – they wanted to change the government.
Barr: And if they were not going to use violence, how were they going to seek a change of government?
Graham: To try and persuade people to their point of view.
Graham said that the Camden VSC group once did a performance in a market, but apart from that they only really went on the big demonstrations. None of the groups he spied on tried to do anything secret, he said.
He confirmed that SDS boss Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon sometimes attended these VSC meetings too. Most of the time Graham was alone at these meetings. However, if more than one SDS officer was in the same meeting, they would play it by ear, and maybe not even acknowledge each other saying.
A PUBLISHED AUTHOR
Next a publication called ‘Red Camden’ (UCPI0000007701) was referred to. This was the journal of the Camden VSC. In one 1969 issue was an article which was attributed to the name ‘John Grahame’, which spoke of him attending a Vietnam Solidarity Campaign Working Committee meeting, where he was expecting political infighting.
Article by spycop ‘John Graham’, 8 June 1969 issue of Red Camden newsletter, a publication of the Camden Vietnam Solidarity Campaign
Graham had no recollection of writing it, but said it was possible that it had been written by Dixon or another SDS colleague, and his name added to it. A clearer copy can be found on the Undercover Research Group’s profile of John Graham.
Another document referred to was a report from a VSC meeting at Conway Hall on 17th September 1968. Barr noted that this was attended by at least seven members of the SDS. As well as John Graham, this list included squad head Chef Inspector Conrad Dixon, DI Saunders, DS Wilson, DS Fisher, DS Creamer and DC Moss.
The obvious question of why so many police attended the same meeting, to which Graham could only reply:
‘It may have been a question of, that there was nothing else on, so people felt that they ought to be doing something.’
Even among the extreme stories of the spycops, this was an extraordinary moment.
Last week police lawyers emphasised that the SDS was established because 1968 was a volatile time with feral subversives everywhere. Today we’re told seven of them went to the same anti-war meeting because of a lack of work. They’d rather spy on the undeserving than not spy at all.
Graham also explained that this might have made it easier for the undercovers’ to remember stuff (as they couldn’t make any notes during the meeting) and to identify attendees (who were numerous). This explanation doesn’t ring true, as if it were it would be common practice.
Graham was asked if he and fellow SDS officers would take part in ballots at meetings, and thereby influence the results? Not understanding the significance of this obvious interference with the political process, Graham just said he voted on motions without giving it much thought:
‘it’s just a question of sticking your hand up with the majority once you knew which way the vote was going to go anyway.’
The next meeting mentioned involved the Anti-Imperialist Solidarity Movement. In this context, Graham was asked why he felt the need to record the ethnic origin of attendees, or use the word ‘coloured’ to do so? Only answering the second part of the question, He said that it was common to do so at the time.
ACTIVE PARTICIPATION
Barr then moved on to the officer’s attendance at a much smaller meeting, of the VSC ‘working committee’ – by this time he had been embedded in the group for many months, and so was able to access these less public discussions, that took place in private homes.
In his first written statement, Graham states that none of these meetings were ‘closed’ – you just had to have had attended a previous open meeting to know about it. He claimed not to recall much about his participation in these meetings – said that he probably just went along with the majority opinion as to the most ‘sensible and safest tactic’ and that no guidance was given about meetings in private homes, or in travelling outside of the Met’s jurisdiction.
MOBILE ESPIONAGE
On this, he said he said he attended an event in Sheffield in May 1969. When asked if it was common for SDS officers to travel to other areas, he said he had ‘no idea’ as ‘everyone was working separately in their groups.’ This illustrates the lack of day-to-day oversight of these early deployments.
A protest of particular note in the evidence was an early 1969, Australians and New Zealanders Against the War in Vietnam organised a meeting at Australia House then marched along the Strand in London to the Savoy Hotel, where the Australian prime minister was staying.
Graham remembered that event as he was punched in the ribs by a security guard while being ejected. He expanded on this, saying the rest of the group had got up to shout in defence of one guy who was being ejected from the building, so Graham felt he had to partake to maintain his cover saying: ‘I thought I better get to my feet and I remember saying ‘let him speak’. He was grabbed and dragged out and recalls he pretended to resist.
DINNER DATES & GHOST WRITERS
The next questions were about Graham inviting a woman activist out to dinner, and going through on it even though by this time he was aware he was being withdrawn as an undercover officer. He said he couldn’t remember why he had done this, or really anything about it at all, though his statement noted he hadn’t wanted to let her down. He denied there was any sexual motivation for the date. This still leaves the puzzle of why he invited her out in the first place, or why he did not cancel it.
When asked about the possibility of signing his name to any reports which he hadn’t written, which had been written by another undercover, Graham said in general ‘I wouldn’t have signed anything I didn’t know to be true.’
More then was asked about the ‘ethos’ of the SDS – ‘were you open with each other or secretive with one another’, to which he replied that ‘In the main, I suppose we were open’. On the stresses and strain of being undercover, Graham was blasé, neither finding his deployment stressful or felt that he needed any special support.
SIMPLY THE BEST
Finally, when asked for his view of those early days of the SDS, Graham said:
‘The original group, from Conrad Dixon down, were the finest representatives of Special Branch. And they were excellent officers who did exactly the proper job.’
This was the end of David Barr’s questions, which were thought unsatisfactory by many watching as issues raised were not followed up in the search for more firm answers.
‘YOU WILL BE SILENCED’
Tariq Ali’s barrister, Rajiv Menon QC, then rose, requesting permission to ask supplementary questions. He wanted to ask Graham about:
1) the political motivations of the VSC in those early days;
2) the selection and targeting of the VSC, and some more detail about what the officer was told to do;
3) the general methodology of the SDS, and what happened at these near-daily or daily meetings at the unit’s ‘safe house’ (the rented flat used by the SDS away from New Scotland Yard to spend their daytime and write up reports, as the political meetings they spied on tended to take place in the evenings)
4) what information the officer had collected that made a difference, particularly resulting in a lower level of public disorder in the October 1968 Vietnam demonstration than there had been in March;
5) the use of ‘Box 500/MI5’ (how much intelligence was passed to the security services)
6) and finally, some questions in relation to one of the documents already exhibited – the meeting attended by 7 SDS officers.
Menon added that the early finishing of Barr’s questions meant there was sufficient time before the next witness. What happened next was truly shocking. Mitting refused Menon’s request, saying it would repeat questions that Barr blatantly had not asked, and that it may be uncomfortable for Graham. Mitting’s words were:
Mitting: ‘That may be so, but I have to keep order in the proceedings and to ensure not merely that this witness is not troubled by questions that have already adequately been covered by Mr Barr and by his statement and by the documents, but also that this does not set a precedent for future such requests.
‘Of the seven topics that you have given to me, one and one only may give rise to a question that can rightly be posed to this witness, and that is the last one: the meeting where the vote was taken about the route that was to be adopted on 27 October. You may ask about that, but not about other topics.’
Some what perplexed, Menon began to ask for clarification:
Menon: ‘But, sir, I’ve highlighted -‘
Instead of giving him a civil reply that the point deserved, a visibly agitated Mitting interrupted:
Mitting: ‘You may ask about that but not other topics. That is my ruling.’
Menon accepted and sought to clarify, saying:
Menon: Very well, sir. Can I make it clear that I cannot understand –
At which point Mitting cut straight across him with a threat of censorship:
Mitting: No, you may not. I’m sorry. You may ask your questions, or you will be silenced.
This outburst from Mitting was met with shock, but for many core participants is symptomatic of the general hostility and downright contempt with which the Chair has treated the non-state participants in both his decision-making and his attitude throughout the Inquiry. Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance have since issued a media release questioning Mitting’s behaviour.
A PERMITTED QUESTION
The only question that Mitting was prepared to allow was the one about the VSC meeting when a vote was taken about the route of the 27 October Grosvenor Square demonstration. Menon asked the officer about the voting that took place at this meeting. His explanation (earlier on) was that if he hadn’t voted, he would have stood out like a sore thumb. So he must have put his hand up but has no recollection of it.
When asked whether this vote discussed later on, back at the flat, Graham claimed not to remember how he’d voted, or any discussions with other undercovers afterwards about how they had voted. He also said that they would have all gone off on their separate ways, and that other SDS officers who were normally back office staff wouldn’t usually have come to the flat anyway.
Asked about whether the information the police spies gathered would have made it into other officers’ reports, he answered ‘it would have assisted at some stage with identifying people’.
After the stormy and frustrating end to the questioning of the first police witness, the Inquiry broke for lunch.
Ernest Tate Political activist
(written statement read in full by Nick Stanage)
Ernie Tate & Jess MacKenzie
Ernest Tate was unable to give evidence in person, his statement was read for him by Nick Stanage QC.
Tate was born in Belfast in 1934. He emigrated to Canada at the age of 21 and worked in mechanical engineering.
Politically active all his life, Tate has written a memoir of his activism in the 1950s and 1960s, relating to his time in the International Group (a section of the Fourth International, as founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938) which, in Britain, became in the International Marxist Group (IMG).
Tate was in Britain for almost five years between 1965 and 1969, and in that time was heavily involved in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC), which was set up in 1966.
Returning to Canada in 1969, he became involved in the trade unions and for many years was Chief Steward and Vice President of a major local of the Canadian Union of Public Employees. He is now retired, and living in Toronto.
ERNEST TATE, FILE 402/66/451
The Undercover Policing Inquiry had sent Tate a ‘Witness Pack’ of 23 Special Branch intelligence reports dated between 8 February1965 and 3 March 1969 in which his name is mentioned. The Inquiry asked him to answer questions about his activity in general and the documents in particular.
The reports were based on on activity of officers of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch’s undercover political unit, founded in 1968 as the ‘Special Operations Squad’ (SOS), and re-named the ‘Special Demonstration Squad’ (SDS) around 1972-3.
Tate’s Special Branch ‘Registry File’ has the reference number 402/66/451, which indicates it was opened in 1966. Such reports were routinely copied to MI5. Like many others targeted by spycops, Tate’s full file remains ‘Top Secret’. The fact that he left the UK over 50 years ago and the groups he was in no longer exists make no difference to the secrecy.
The few reports given to Tate are only a fraction of the secret surveillance files held on him, the International Marxist Group [RF 400/58/152] of which he was a full time organiser, and the
Vietnam Solidarity Campaign [RF 346/65/15], in which he was was also heavily involved.
FEW FACTS, FEWER ANSWERS
The Inquiry has made it harder for Tate to contribute, because it has chosen not to let him see any of the Witness Statements made by any of the SOS officers who spied on him, nor any statements from managers or an appropriate officer who could provide evidence on behalf of a deceased officer.
Additionally, he hasn’t been shown any photographs of officers in their undercover guise, save for one of Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon.
The path to clarity is further obstructed by the failure of the Inquiry to ask the Metropolitan Police to provide Position Statements, which would set out exactly why the SOS was set up, what its operational parameters were, and why it was necessary to begin more intrusive surveillance, including forming intimate relationships with targets.
Tate presumes the State will argue that this clear breach of the basic human right to privacy was justified due to a threat of serious violence from those groups or individuals spied on. In which case, the Met should have to explain why the SOS was allowed to continue to operate after the 27 October 1968 demonstration against the Vietnam War had passed off largely peacefully.
Tate completely refuted the notion that he, the VSC, or the IMG, threatened violence, especially serious violence. Equally, he rejected any suggestion that any of them deserved to be targeted because infiltration would allow the police to monitor others.
He asserted that there is no justification for the gross intrusion by the police into people’s private lives on the basis that a person’s, or group’s politics is frowned upon by the State, unless there is a real, not fanciful, threat of serious violence. The UK had been a signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights for many years by the time the spycop unit was formed, and the Article 8 of the respect for privacy, private and family life, should be applied to any judgment about the legitimacy of its actions.
SECRECY WITHOUT END
Special Branch records from 1887 onward are subject to almost complete secrecy regardless of age. A few documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by journalist Solomon Hughes 10 years ago in an attempt to establish what happened in 1968, and these were put onto the Special Branch Files Project website.
The advent of the Inquiry has seen the release of some spycops’ documents, but it’s a sliver of what was created. It means it’s almost impossible for Tate and other core participants at the Inquiry to counter any narrative given by the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police
Tate then turned to the specific questions the Inquiry had asked him, saying:
‘It is clear in my mind that these questions focus very narrowly on the issue of violence, hence it appears to me that this will be the justification used by those in charge of SDS throughout the period…
‘The other major interested parties, the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office who oversaw the wrongdoing of SOS officers, have full access to every file they want’
He pointed that, in contrast to the clandestine and secretive nature of the British State, he has nothing to hide. The Inquiry, the Police and members of the public can read what he has written about his activities in his two-volume memoir, Revolutionary Activism in the 1950s and 60s, Ernest Tate, A Memoir’ (Volume 1 Canada 1955-65, and Volume 2, Britain 1965-1970).
Tate was asked to clarify his role in the VSC. He was one of its founders in June 1966. He was a member of its National Council and its executive committee, from that date on until April 1969. The executive committee, a sub-committee of the National Council, provided leadership to the VSC between National Council meetings and was responsible for its national functioning on a day-to-day basis. Beyond that, Tate publicly wrote and spoke for the VSC.
A million people perished in the Vietnam War, including 50,000 US soldiers, most of whom were teenagers. Tate explained that the VSC aimed to build a solidarity campaign with the Vietnamese against the American aggression, calling for its immediate end and the withdrawal of all of American forces, and the end of British collusion with the Americans. It also called for support for the Vietnamese National Liberation Front.
It sought to achieve this through building broad united-front coalitions of like-minded organisations and individuals to create mass mobilisations on the streets against the war.
NOTHING TO HIDE
There was no vetting of members, they merely had to agree with the broad aims, provide funds and attend meetings. The political debates were quite open, and as a result, at the founding conference in 1966, a large number of Maoist delegates withdrew to a separate location and formed the rival Britain-Vietnam Solidarity Front (BVSF). The anarchists also held separate conferences, as they wanted to be clear they were ‘neither Washington nor Hanoi’.
There was no secrecy of any kind. All VSC business and policy meetings were open to all members, though not to the general public. They knew the police were interested in what they were doing, but because none of it was illegal they didn’t worry about infiltration. They specifically warned members against pointing fingers of suspicion at anyone, knowing how that had been used in other groups in the past to divide and destroy the movement.
The Inquiry asked if there was violence planned for, or witnessed at, the March 1968 demonstration.
Tate unequivocally affirmed that there was none planned. He described how the march, tens of thousands strong, tried to enter Grosvenor Square, they were met by hundreds, if not thousands, of uniformed police, many on horseback, who in aggressively confronted them in order to prevent anyone getting near the American Embassy. Violence erupted with many police and demonstrators injured and/or arrested, the blame for which Tate lays firmly with the police.
INTERNATIONAL MARXIST GROUP
Tate also described the IMG and his role there. He helped to organize the group and was a member of its National and Political Committees. His primary loyalty was to the IMG, rather than the VSC. The IMG was primarily responsible for the creation of the VSC, its members functioned as an open caucus to prepare for its various conference and activities.
He confirmed that the IMG was a revolutionary group, and gave a series of refreshingly direct and concise answers.
Inquiry: Did the IMG believe that revolution would, or might, require the use
of force?
Tate: Yes.
Inquiry: Did the IMG believe that force should be used to bring about revolution in 1968-1969?
Tate: No.
Inquiry: Did the IMG believe that public disorder would advance its cause?
Tate: No.
Inquiry: Did the IMG believe that breaking any laws was justified or necessary to advance its cause? If so, which laws and for what purposes?
Tate: The IMG did not believe in breaking the law, but if a particular law was oppressive or dangerous to our democratic rights, and there was mass opposition in society to it, then the IMG might have explored ways to challenge that law.
Tate declared the infiltration of the VSC and the IMG and scandalous:
‘It reveals how far democratic tights in Britain have been abused over the past fifty years. It has become the norm, it seems to me, for the State to put the boot to anyone it doesn’t like. If you’re a socialist or Marxist or someone who has different ideas about how the economy and society should be organised, should we expect dirty tricks from those who are supposed to protect us?’
A HANDFUL OF FILES
The Inquiry then ran through the documents it had revealed to Tate, and asked for his opinion on their accuracy. He criticised the selection of documents as a ‘bizarrely selected and highly partisan package of material’ that had the huge absence of the great bulk of contemporaneous relevant documents that must have been created. What have the Met and the Home Office got to hide?
‘if this is really meant to be a Public Inquiry then the public – journalists and academics, historians and those of us who were involved at the time – should be allowed to see the material.’
Tate went through the documents methodically, giving a facinating insight into how much the spycops targeted one person. The documents included:
MPS-0739885: This was a report of a meeting on 8 February 1968.
According to Special Branch officer “David Hughes’ (HN299/342), it was an open public meeting attended by about 70 people at Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel to show the film ‘American War Crimes in Vietnam’. One of the future protests mentioned was against Dow Chemical in Wigmore Street, London, the manufacturers of the notorious substance napalm which burnt people alive and was being extensively used by American forces in Vietnam.
June 8, 1972: Kim Phúc, (centre left) running down a road naked near Trảng Bàng after a South Vietnam Air Force napalm attack
What is interesting is that this routine report is prior to the formation of the covert SOS/SDS unit. This shows that Special Branch were easily able to access the meetings and report on everyone without the need for deeper-cover infiltrators.
Tate highlighted the lack of any witness statement from ‘David Hughes’ in his Witness Pack, in which ‘Hughes’ might have explained the difference between his routine Special Branch duties in monitoring these meetings and his later doing the same thing within SOS/SDS.
No photograph of this officer, who was then presumably in his twenties, has been supplied to assist Tate in trying to recall him and his activities. But ‘Hughes’ has been granted anonymity at the Inquiry.
In a decision typical of the orders that are allowing the overwhelming majority of spycops to get away unnamed, the Inquiry ruled that:
‘publication of his real name would risk unwelcome media attention and the attention of those who maybe disposed towards him within his small community… The interference with his right to respect for his private life which it would risk would not be justified’.
Tate wryly replied:
‘I am pleased to see that the Inquiry is underlining the importance of the right to respect for private and family life. and I trust this same important right will be afforded to the people who were spied on when and if any judgments are reached concerning the gross interference with this right as practiced by the Metropolitan Police Special Branch and others.’
MPS-0739886: Report of a private meeting of 35 people on 15 February 1968, though ‘David Hughes’ was there again to report on it which, said Tate, indicates that it would have been an open meeting for anyone who wanted to be involved in VSC activities.
The report says that towards the end of the meeting some people present said they intended breaking windows at the US embassy and were prepared for a ‘punch up’ with the police; others said they wanted a sit-down protest.
Tate responded:
‘To be clear, VSC policy was always non-violent, we were only too aware that the violence was a particularly strong attribute of the State. The officer’s assessment that a ‘fair amount of violence’ could be expected at the forthcoming solidarity demonstration in March 1968 was not an assessment I would have shared at the time.’
MPS-0730911: This report of the 17 March 1968 demo was submitted by the Special Branch
Commander to the Director of Public Prosecutions. This means that, rather than gathering intelligence, it was explicitly prepared for the sake of supporting prosecutions by the State, presumably of the VSC leadership.
It is surely unusual that Special Branch officers (including the later head of SDS, Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon) were tasked to take ordinary witness statements from members of the public. It would help to have a witness statement explaining the reason for this report too, but there is none.
It details two particular incidents that resulted in the confrontation with police in Grosvenor Square, firstly the initial refusal to allow the letters of protest to be delivered to the Embassy, as had been agreed with the Met beforehand; and secondly the fact that the march was blocked by police at the corner of North Audrey Street, in such a way that the demonstrators were very compressed and so burst forth.
This created panic among the authorities which, in turn, led to the formation of the SOS/SDS in the summer of 1968. And yet the answer to this militancy is given in a leaflet enclosed with the report, which described how the mood and temper of the demonstration was determined by the American aggression, and that it was impossible to remain calm and peaceful before the barbarism of American aggression in Vietnam.
MPS-0722106: This report of 2 April 1968 by Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon, signed off by Chief Superintendent [name redacted, presumably A Cunningham] is another report into the March
1968 VSC demonstration.
Noting that the author was the founder and head of the spycops unit, Tate mused:
‘I think that Conrad Dixon is an important player in the history of the SDS and it is a shame that he is now deceased as I am sure he would have plenty to say. In his 1999 obituary in The Times it is stated that he was the leader and founder of SOS, having been born into an army family, educated at Oxford and joined the Royal Marines. At Special Branch he apparently “specialised in anarchists, Trotskyists and anarcho-syndicalists”.’
When setting up the unit, Dixon had legendarily asked for men, a budget, and a free hand. Tate homed in on this point:
‘I would like to emphasise the words “a free hand” as this suggests a complicity at higher levels with the SDS being allowed to thrive in a culture that broke the rules. I also note that his obituary is quite open about his role in SDS, in contrast to the institutional secrecy of the Metropolitan Police.’
Though Dixon’s report suggests there were proposals for violent action at the demonstration, he also said:
‘it is not possible to use these sources for evidential purposes, and no evidence of violent intentions was obtained by police officers who gained entry to some of these closed meetings.’
Tate laid the contradiction wide open and, having already shown that Special Branch had infiltrated the VSC, speculated that we may have found the real reason the spycops unit was established:
‘This can only mean that there are existing Special Branch reports (perhaps filed in RF 361/68/12 Ad Hoc Committee?) that detail these supposed discussions. I would like to see them… This all sounds like make-believe; Cl Dixon obviously knew what his masters wanted to hear. One wonders if the future creation of SOS/SOS was not out of desperation to try and find this supposed ‘evidence’ that was so sorely lacking.
‘The truth is there was not the slightest evidence that VSC planned any form of violence. VSC only believed in lawful resistance to police violence (i.e. lawful self-defence). It seems clear to me that this Special Branch report is obviously expressing and reflecting the political prejudices of the British government of the day and the police, it is utterly self-serving and the Inquiry should beware of placing too much weight on it.’
Tate said the Inquiry should examine the dossier compiled by the National Council for Civil Liberties, that provided independent observers on the day of the demonstration. This dossier is referred to by Peter Jackson MP in his speech to parliament on 4 April 1968. His account supports Tate’s.
MPS-0741312: Documents, placed in the files in July 1968 for Chief Inspector Dixon to action, are the first that are dated after the creation of the Special Operations Squad. They include copies of the minutes of a VSC Executive meeting held on 5 July 1968, and the VSC National Council on 10 July
1968. There is nothing in these meetings or minutes that was secret.
MPS-0738746: A report of a VSC meeting at Conway Hall on 20 August 1968, seemingly from Detective Sergeant Roy Creamer. Tate noted that Creamer is absent from the Inquiry’s list of officers. Who exactly was he?
The report is was marked ‘Box 500’, meaning it had been copied to MI5. Tate notes that the Registry File numbers have been redacted, as well as what is presumably the word ‘Secret’ at the top of the document.
MPS-0730063: This is another significant report, dated 10 September 1968, by the head of the new SOS unit, CI Conrad Dixon. It written up just a few days after the VSC National Council meeting in Sheffield on 7 September 1968 – about which there is inexplicably no report disclosed – which confirmed the route of the October demonstration.
Tate described it as:
‘an utterly superficial and very opinionated police summary of contemporary British radicalism… very distorted, but just what I would expect from a secret policeman. His characterization of Tariq Ali as a “mob orator” and Ralph Schoenman as a “notorious agitator” and the general tone of the report suggests a policeman with a deep loathing of his subjects: he is perhaps aware that his career is better assisted by producing alarmist reports of this nature for his superiors than more carefully considered ones: the creation of SOS had to be justified.’
‘As for the supposed rumours or reports about the acquisition of (fire)arms and the preparation of Molotov cocktails, these are the product of a febrile imagination; even he admits have no evidential basis. He even accepts that the anarchist conference of 8 September 1968 in London condemned ‘senseless violence’.
‘I believe that there was a deliberate State tactic to foment public hysteria to frighten people away from joining future demonstrations – notwithstanding that the increased publicity may have actually had the opposite effect.’
MPS-0738815: A report of a meeting of the NW London Ad Hoc Committee on 11 September 1968 at the Friends House in NW3. Two officers were present, CI Dixon and a Detective Inspector HN 332 whose identity has still not been disclosed. Tate has no memory of the meeting.
UCPI0000005782: A report of PC Barry Moss and CI Dixon dated 19 September 1968 attaches a report, said to be written by Tate, on the Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation. Unfortunately the copy is almost completely illegible and impossible to read. Whatever was in it, it was sent to MI5.
MPS-0722099: A report on a meeting of 32 people of the VSC Lambeth branch at the ‘Duke of Cambridge’ pub on 26 September 1968, authored by ‘William Paul Lewis’.
Tate agrees with the report detailing his attempts to secure the support of the working class and trade unions for the demonstration. As for ‘Lewis’ himself, Tate observed that the Metropolitan Police applied in July 2017 for his cover name to remain anonymous, despite the fact that this is meant to be a Public Inquiry.
The application said that he did not steal his identity from a deceased child, but aside from this we know nothing. Again, the absence of the officer’s statement in the Witness Pack has constrained Tate’s ability to comment.
‘It is likely that disclosure of his real name would prompt intense and unwelcome media interest in him and so would give rise to serious interference with his and his family’s right to respect for their private life under Article 8 of the European Convention which would not be justifiable under Article 8(2). Closed reasons accompany this note.’
Why would the media be especially interested? What are the ‘closed reasons’ that we’re not allowed to know?
MPS-0730096: Another report by CI Conrad Dixon, this time dated 3 October 1968 and described as a ‘regular weekly report’ on the preparations for the national demonstration three weeks hence. Tate is mentioned as an IMG member and member of the VSC executive.
Interestingly, this document was made public in 2008, obtained by the journalist Solomon Hughes – but paragraph (b) was redacted for some reason; it mentions a supposed attack by London School of Economics (LSE) students on the Stock Exchange and an occupation of the LSE itself.
According to his Times obituary in 1999, Dixon was involved as an undercover officer in that occupation on 25 October and seized the telephone exchange. This is presumably the reason for the redaction.
Dixon said students have provided the bulk of the support for the VSC demonstrations thus far, and ‘their behaviour on demonstrations is largely spontaneous’.
Tate concurred with this assessment, adding that it actually proved his point:
‘there was never any plan for violence from the IMG or the VSC, rather the complete opposite, we wanted a huge but peaceful demonstration. Insofar as the Maoists wanted a more militant approach by confronting police in Grosvenor Square, we in the VSC were opposed to this and the three Maoist-controlled VSC local branches had been disowned by the National Council for this reason.’
Dixon says the Maoist contingent was said to number no more than 100 people. He concludes that it is the people who are not represented on the VSC – anarchists, Maoists and ‘foreign elements’ – who are most likely to use violence and be hostile to the police. In saying this, Dixon completely undermines the supposed reason for infiltrating the VSC at all. If it wasn’t about violence, it must have been about politics.
When all this is considered, it’s pretty clear that police and organisers only expected a tiny number of people who were desirous of a clash with the police, and any such situation that arose would be largely spontaneous. All that undercover policing made not the slightest difference to the
manner in which events transpired on 27 October 1988.
The Times obituary of 1999 gives Dixon credit for advising that the police lines needed to be thicker to prevent demonstrators breaking through. It did not take undercover police, or indeed any police at all, to come up with that idea, it’s just obvious crowd control stuff.
MPS-0730091: This is Cl Dixon’s next weekly report, dated 16 October 1968, and signed off by Chief Superintendent A. Cunningham. It notes both Tate and his partner Jess MacKenzie as being prominent in VSC affairs.
MPS-0730093: This appears to be the definitive police report of the 27 October 1968 VSC demonstration, submitted by Chief Superintendent A. Cunningham.
Tate refuted the claim the VSC was ‘to a considerable extent responsible for the violence which occurred at the demonstrations in London on October 1967, March and July 1968’, and wondered why, if the July demo was of interest to the police, no documents have been shown to him:
‘It is unfair to characterize the approach of the VSC and myself as simply ‘paying lip service’ to
the concept of an orderly demonstration. This is what we wanted. We did disagree with the Maoists and excluded them. His statement that ‘the majority were well disciplined and acted in an orderly manner under the direction of the VSC marshals’ is correct and rather belies his earlier dire warnings of considerable public disorder being likely.’
MPS-0731634: A report on an IMG meeting of about 30 people held in ‘The Earl Russell ‘ pub on Sunday 3 November 1958, to discuss the political situation in Northern Ireland, where Tate is from. ‘William Paul Lewis’ wrote the report, and had presumably become an IMG member. A copy of this report went to MI5 and another copy to ‘B Squad (“Irish Extremism”).
Tate commented:
‘The context was that the first Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) march had
taken place on 24 August 1958 in Dungannon, drawing 4000 people. This passed off peacefully, but on 5 October 1968 another NICRA march was attacked by police officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), this was the start of what became known as The Troubles.’ Once again, the serious violence was from the police not the protesters.’
MPS-0730768: A report by Cl Dixon of a meeting of the VSC at Conway Hall on 11 November 1968. 100 people came to discuss the 27 October demonstration.
Further undercover officers were present:
TN0034, a Detective Sergeant;
HN321 ‘William Paul Lewis’;
HN329 ‘John Graham’;
HN326 ‘Douglas Edwards’.
No witness statements of any of these officers were included in Tate’s Witness Pack.
Tate then returned to the Inquiry’s questions. They asked, having seen the reports, what additional access to the VSC would the use of undercover police officers, as opposed to plain clothes detectives, have given to the police?
Tate said, ‘I don’t know, It probably made it easier for them to steal membership lists.’
The Inquiry went back to the report dated 30 July 1966 (MPS-0738693) in which Tate is described as a ‘dove’ on the question of violence by comparison to the ‘hawk’, ‘Albert’ Manchanda.
Tate’s response was at once exasperated and dismissive:
‘This is gossip I have never heard before. My disagreements with Manchanda were fundamentally political, about what should be the program of the VSC. I did not know at that time what his views were about violence in relation to the Vietnam protest movement, I never ever discussed this issue with him. I never trusted him. He led a splinter group which tried to wreck the founding conference in 1966. The Maoists formed a separate organization, the Britain-Vietnam Solidarity Front (BVSF).’
The Inquiry also highlighted a report’s claim that ‘the more cautious representatives of International Socialism and International Marxist groups paid lip service to the vision of a peaceful demonstration’.
Tate rebuffed the sneering insinuations:
‘This is gossip from sources that were not involved in the campaign. We in the leadership of the VSC and the Ad Hoc Committee, were totally committed to peaceful demonstrations, and if violence took place, it was incidental and outside of our control. This is why we did not go to Grosvenor Square on 27 October 1968. It was mainly a peaceful event, much to the surprise of the police, who by that time had frightened the authorities into a state of panic.
‘I and the rest of the leadership of the VSC suspected the Maoists would make an effort to hijack the demonstration as it made its way past Trafalgar Square; that’s why we stopped the demonstration in the middle of the street when they tried to divert it to Grosvenor Square. We effectively policed our own demonstration.’
Responding to a list of tactics which spycops regarded as having been suggested at branch, but not national level, Tate was equally disparaging:
‘This is the product of the fevered imagination of the security services who seemed to be out to frighten their superiors and the Wilson Labour Government. It looks like every little piece of scary information from whatever source, or whatever they invented, was used for this purpose.
‘We, the organizers of the demonstration, wanted the largest mobilisation possible, one to which the participants could bring their families without the fear of being exposed to violence. That’s why the Ad Hoc Committee adopted a march route that ended up with a rally in Hyde Park. What happened on that day highlights the wisdom of that decision. Over 100,000 people turned out.’
The Inquiry moved on to ask Tate about the impact of the spycops revelations. He cited the Canadian McDonald Commission (1977-81), which had comprehensively dealt with a similar scandal there, while the American Church Committee (1976) had done a similar job with the comparable COINTELPRO affair. At the time these bodies were delivering their damning verdicts, the SDS was escalating its activity in Britain. It’s time for a reckoning.
He summed up his position:
‘The Inquiry has to decide whether it will simply protect the interests of the police and the State, even after all these years, or whether it will come down on the side of civil liberties and the right of people to have a private life free from intrusion by State security forces. I hope that the Inquiry will lead to legislation and public oversight that will limit their ability to harass those who happen to be critical of society or are fighting for social change.’
For the last session of the day, the Inquiry then had one of its own staff present a summary of evidence supplied by two early SDS officers, HN218 (Barry Moss, aka ‘Barry Morris’ or ‘Barry Morse’) and HN334 (‘Margaret White’).
Officer HN 218, aka Barry Moss (summary of evidence)
Moss was in the SDS from its formation in July 1968 until late September 1968. He returned to the SDS as a manager in 1980. His real name is Barry Moss, and while undercover he used Barry Morris or Morse. He had been a detective constable in Special Branch for only several months when he was told by Detective Chief Superintendent Arthur Cunningham that he and a dozen or so others, were joining the newly formed SDS.
He recalls:
‘I didn’t opt into it and I don’t think it occurred to anyone there that we could opt out. There was no formal training or guidance provided for the role.’
He used a cover flat merely as an address to write on attendance lists at meetings. He did not live there. He used his own vehicle registered in his own name to attend those meetings.
He believed the unit had a short term remit, gathering information about the upcoming October 1968 demonstration against the Vietnam War. In his witness statement, Moss noted the only real difference from Special Branch work was actually joining groups instead of just attending meetings.
SDS boss Conrad Dixon told him which groups to spy on, but not how to do it. However, while undercover, he had almost daily contact with his cover officer, Detective Inspector Phil Saunders.
He joined the Maoist Britain-Vietnam Solidarity Front (BVSF). He does not recall joining the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) which was something of a rival group, but reports on the VSC include his name.
The reports mention five different groups; the Joint Committee of Communists, the Committee for Solidarity with Vietnam, the VSC’s Ad Hoc Committee, and two branches of the VSC.
MIXING WITH THE MAOISTS
He remembers people being in several of the groups at the same time and there may have been a shared Maoist ideological connection (even though the VSC had a significant ideological split with Maoists).
His reports show a mix of public and private meetings mostly concerned with planning for the October 27 demonstration, including, banner making and choosing slogans. On 24 September 1968 at a meeting of the October 27 Committee for Solidarity in Vietnam, it was recorded that a decision was made to break away from the main demonstration to target the American Embassy.
Moss confirmed at that some meetings there were SDS officers and ordinary uniformed officers not working together. At other meetings there would be more than one SDS officer, simply because their respective groups had attended the same meeting.
NINE OFFICERS VOTING
At a public meeting of the VSC’s October 27 Ad Hoc Committee, nine police officers are stated to have been present, including the majority of the SDS’s senior officers. According to the report, the significant occurrence at the meeting appears to have been a vote against the proposal made by Maoists to march to Downing Street on 26 October and then to Grosvenor Square (home to the US Embassy) on 27 October 1968. Presumably these nine officers all voted to avoid looking conspicuous.
Moss said some of the meetings raised ‘of particular interest to Special Branch’. Reports have detailed descriptions of branch members, including those with no previous trace or Special Branch record, notes of speakers expressing political opinions, and reporting of contacting journalists to arrange a private meetings.
ANTI-ANTI-APARTHEID
After he left the SDS, Moss wrote a report analysing the support of the Anti-Apartheid Movement.
Moss was the first spycop to leave the SDS, withdrawing even before the 27 October demonstration the unit had been set up to target, in order to attend an accelerated promotion course. He thinks he may have made up a family incident that required him to leave London as part of his withdrawal strategy.
Before he left, he introduced his replacement – Detective Constable Mike Tyrell HN335 – who he introduced as his “best pal” to a meeting of the Earls Court VSC. Tyrell’s cover name is unknown and he is now deceased. He is absent from the Inquiry’s list of SDS officers.
Moss said he didn’t actually see any subversive activity whilst undercover, stating:
‘The group I joined wasn’t really trying to overthrow the government, they just wanted a big demonstration’
He does recall two pieces of information that ‘were probably passed on for use in policing’ in his two months undercover; the possibility of protestors carrying ball bearings to use on police horses, and women being told to flirt with officers on the frontline to try to win them over.
Moss said that, whilst his reporting alone would not have made a great difference to policing, he does think that the October demonstration was well policed and any disorder at it was controlled as a result of the intelligence provided by the SDS as a whole.
BACK TO MANAGE
He returned to the SDS as a Detective Chief Inspector in February 1980. He was promoted to the rank of Superintendent in early 1981, and left the SDS in December of the same year. In 1995, he became commander of operations in Special Branch, with a remit that included the SDS. He became Head of Special Branch in October 1996.
[Note: Moss will be heard from again in later tranches, not least because he was a pivotal officer in the founding of the National Public Order Intelligence Unit.]
Officer HN 334 aka ‘Margaret White’ (summary of evidence)
The Inquiry has granted anonymity to the real name of HN334 ‘Margaret White’.
Prior to joining the SDS, she was a Detective Constable in Special Branch. She remembers attending the same sort of political meetings, both as an officer serving with Special Branch and with the SDS. The distinction she draws between the two roles is the need for her identity to be completely secret as an undercover officer, unlike with Special Branch where she would give her name, if asked.
Neither her memory nor the documents can say exactly when she joined and left the SDS. Whilst in the unit, she attended meetings of the Havering branch of the VSC between 30 September and 29 October 1968. She does not appear on the list of the unit’s personnel in the document entitled ‘Penetration of Extremist Groups’ dated 26 November 1968 suggesting, in accordance with her recollection, that she left the unit shortly after the 27 October demonstration.
She does not remember having any training for the role. She created her assumed background over a couple of days, altering her appearance by wearing a long haired wig, adopting a cover name and cover employment, and finding a flat where she would stay occasionally. In her witness statement, she said she knew she would be on a short term deployment that concluded with the October demonstration.
DOUBLE TROUBLE
She was deployed to Havering VSC along with fellow SDS undercover HN330 ‘Don de Frietas’. They were instructed to act as a couple, attending all of the meetings together. She describes the group as having no formal membership structure or procedure. She understood that she was to report exactly what she saw and heard. She never attended any meetings alone, nor did she author the police reports.
She was tasked to this particularly group because senior officers thought that it would be a trouble-making group. From what she saw and heard, it was not.
The Inquiry holds reports relating to the branch dated between 30 September and 29 October 1968. They record small private meetings, mainly concerned with preparations for the October demonstration, including discussions about the composition, printing and distribution of leaflets, lines to take with the press, elections for the post of secretary and treasurer and the likely maximum size of the Havering contingent (about 100 people).
Apart from them considering doing some fly posting, she gives is no evidence of any intention to break the law, or a militant attitude.
EXIT STRATEGY
In addition to information about preparations for the October demonstration, the reports record information about political activity of an individual in the Labour Party.
The final report concerning a meeting held on 29 October 1968 contains the officer’s account of the views of her group about the demonstration, that it had been ‘a complete and utter disaster’. The officer used this as an excuse to leave the group. She then withdrew from her service with the SDS and returned to Special Branch.
She only remembers infiltrating the one group during her time. Any other Special Branch reports by her were, she said, the result of specific tasking whilst a member of Special Branch and not in her SDS undercover identity.
One report authored by her in August 1968 concerned an individual and her correspondence in connection with the funding of an art college’s October 25 revolution account. Other reports from the same period have her and another SDS officer HN68 ‘Sean Lynch’, attending a private meeting of the Camden Branch of the International Socialists. The subject of the meeting was ‘Negro struggles in America’, with associated information about activism for racial equality.
Five reports in the hearing bundle relate to her work in Special Branch after leaving the SDS. They relate to groups on which the SDS did report and appear to be examples the SDS working from other sources of information such as informers on those groups, such as the Women’s Liberation Workshop and the anti-apartheid the Stop The Seventy Tour Committee.
Details of Deceased Spycops
Beyond the hearing today, the Inquiry also published documents relating to deployments of six other former SDS officers who are now deceased.
HN 68 – ‘SEAN LYNCH’, REAL NAME NOT PUBLISHED
1968-1974
Also held a managerial position in the SDS 1982-1984.
‘Lynch’ targeted the International Socialists (forerunner of the Socialist Workers Party) and Irish campaign groups, including the Irish Civil Rights Campaign, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association and Sinn Fein. His real name is withheld by the Inquiry to protect the privacy of his widow.
HN 331 – COVER NAME UNKNOWN, REAL NAME NOT PUBLISHED
1968-1969
This officer infiltrated the Notting Hill branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. His cover name is unknown. He was killed in road traffic accident in the 1970s. His real name is withheld by the Inquiry to protect the privacy of his widow.
HN323 – HELEN CRAMPTON, COVER NAME UNKNOWN
Crampton also infiltrated the Notting Hill branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign.
HN327 – DAVID FISHER, COVER NAME UNKNOWN
Fisher infiltrated the Notting Hill and Croydon branches of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign.
HN318 – RAY WILSON, COVER NAME UNKNOWN
Wilson infiltrated various manifestations of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, including the north-west London Ad Hoc Committee, the Notting Hill, Croydon and Earl’s Court branches, plaus the North-West London Ad-Hoc Committee and the October 27 Ad Hoc Committee, as well as the libertarian left. Previously referred to by the Inquiry as ‘back office/ management’ rather than undercover, implying an additional later role. Author of ‘Special Branch: The History 1883-2006’.
HN335 – MIKE TYRELL, COVER NAME UNKNOWN
Tyrell infiltrated Maoist groups, plus the Earls Court branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, the October 27 Committee for Solidarity with Vietnam, the south-east London Ad Hoc Committee, the Britain-Vietnam Solidarity Front, the March 9th Committee for Solidarity with Vietnam, and the Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation.
COPS will be live-tweeting all the Inquiry hearings, and producing daily reports like this one for the blog. They will be indexed on our UCPI Public Inquiry page.
‘This set up does not assist, at a very basic level, reporters to do their job of reporting a *public inquiry* established by the Home Secretary to *answer public concerns* about abuses by some officers’. I can’t type that fast to copy down everything.
‘If I could hear the audio – which we are not allowed to do – I could take down quotes in shorthand. We cannot scroll back to check quotes. 20 years ago at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, we could do that.
‘The transcript is being posted as a document after any deadlines for daily reporting. This means that I and others are going to struggle to report the inquiry contemporaneously for evening deadlines. This basically means, from a practical perspective as a working reporter, that a public inquiry becomes largely impossible to report.’
COPS was among those who were able to live tweet, because the Inquiry has provided live-streaming at a venue in London. It’s a large, unventilated room with no windows containing socially distanced desks without power sockets. The live-stream there has no time delay, but the Chair has imposed a ten minute delay on tweeting what is said.
Core participants of the Undercover Policing Inquiry at the London live-streaming venue, 11 November 2020
If these conditions don’t put you off and you would like to attend, tough. You had to apply weeks in advance, going through the whole process for each individual day you wish to attend. The Inquiry only confirmed who had actually been allocated places in an email sent at 10.16pm last night.
The Inquiry knows that victims are spread across the country, and indeed the world, and need to make travel arrangements. One of them, Tom Fowler, has had to travel from low-Covid Wales to lock-down London to live-tweet the hearings.
There can be no excusing this as being the fault of the emergency measures brought in due to Covid. The Inquiry has had an extra five months to make these arrangements. Today’s inadequacies reflect their original plan, of hearings without live-streaming, in a room that couldn’t even hold half of the significantly affected victims who have been designated ‘core participants’, let alone any interested members of the public. And the Inquiry has consistently rejected the suggestion of live-streaming.
EXCLUSION IS A CHOICE NOT A NECESSITY
Meanwhile, other inquiries such as Grenfell and Manchester Arena, which also have to ensure they don’t inadvertently release any sensitive information, have public live-streams. Why can we watch Grenfell hearings on YouTube yet the UCPI only gives us what amounts to speeded-up Ceefax?
Those who do follow the hearings are blindfolded by the Inquiry’s refusal to publish documents until after each hearing, meaning the transcript is examining and discussing things that those outside cannot see.
These are yet more ways in which this Inquiry demonstrates its belief that the victims are marginal and the public merely an irrelevant afterthought.
The Chair, Sir John Mitting, appears to believe himself capable of understanding it all – we plebs needn’t be bothered until he hands us his report. A man who believes he is impartial yet thinks the Macpherson definition of institutional racism is ‘controversial’. A man who thinks he understands how things work and will see through the lies, yet grants anonymity to spycops because he believes any officer who has been married for a long time is incapable of serious wrongdoing.
Mitting has rebuffed repeated demands for a diverse panel to assist him, something that has been standard at such inquiries for over 20 years, because he thinks himself incapable of significant unconscious bias.
FIRST WITNESS: TARIQ ALI
Tariq Ali
The opening phase of the Inquiry will be witness hearings over five days until the end of next week concerned with the earliest days of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad, 1968-72.
The unit was formed after trouble at a demonstration against the Vietnam War in March 1968, in which windows were broken at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London. The original aim was to have officers live undercover as activists to gather intelligence in order to prevent a repeat of the disturbance at a second demonstration in October of that year.
Tariq Ali is a 77 year old journalist, writer and broadcaster, who has been politically engaged all his life. In 1968 he was a key member of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC), and of the Ad Hoc Committee, which organised the London demonstrations against the war.
The Undercover Policing Inquiry devoted the entirety of this first day to questioning Ali.
This included an account of demonstrators coming very close to entering the US Embassy during the demonstration.
Barr asked Ali to account for his use of the word ‘militancy’. He explained that other groups at the time were demanding peace in Vietnam, but the VSC didn’t want ‘the peace of the graveyard’, they supported the Vietnamese people in their struggle against the American occupation.
Barr QC asked if ‘militancy would include a “shoving through” to get to the embassy?’
‘No,’ Ali replied, the militancy was in reference to political support for the NLF [National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, aka the Viet Cong]’. Ali would not be drawn into the concept that being ‘a militant group’ meant violence, but rather a politically partisan position. In this case, a position that was supported by 25% of the UK population according to the opinion polls of the time.
Ali said that there were plenty of discussions about taking further direct action at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square. He said they had dreamed of taking over the Embassy’s telex machine and sending a message of support to the Viet Cong in Saigon. The VSC discussed the idea of occupying the embassy, but some thought it was ‘foolish’ to imagine that the State wouldn’t try to prevent this.
As someone who had only been in the country for a short time, in the event of arrest Ali faced a risk of deportation as well as imprisonment.
Barr: Would it be true there were official aims and unofficial aims of the VSC?
Ali: Yes
Barr: Kept secret to a small circle? The Ad Hoc Committee?
Ali: Just the ones in London.
Barr: The desire to storm the embassy remained?
Ali: Yes, the first demo had been a missed opportunity.
Barr: Why didn’t you push ahead with the plan? Was it fear of your legal situation?
Ali: Yes.
Barr: So you were going to see on the day?
Ali: Yes.
Ali then recollected the composition of the VSC’s ‘National Committee’. Pat Jordan told the group that ‘every single one of my speeches had been noted and studied by Special Branch’.
OUTSIDE ASSISTANCE
The London VSC group was boosted by the support they received from American activists, politicians, Black organisers, and others. Among the American anti-war activists who were in the UK at the time, some of them dodging the draft, was 21 year old Bill Clinton.
Police on horseback charge demonstrators against the Vietnam War, Grosvenor Square, 17 March 1968
As with many subsequent anti-war demonstrations, the protesters did not have overwhelming public support. Two thirds of the British population were in favour of the war in Vietnam, which was very different to other places like France.
Organisers of the March 1968 demonstration had no idea how many police to expect, but they knew that if they were heavily outnumbered there would be no chance of even a ‘token occupation’ of the American Embassy.
There had been a well-publicised rumour that American Marines were waiting inside the embassy on the day of the protest ready to fire live rounds into the crowd if they breached security.
Barr asked a lot of questions about the chances of violence from the protesters and whether the VSC encouraged it, or was at least unable to prevent it. He said that ‘come armed’ stickers had been put on some leaflets for the demonstration.
Ali dismissed the stickers as ‘childish nonsense’ and said that nobody in the VSC or the other groups active against the War behaved in this way, and that at the time he wondered if these stickers were the work of agents provocateur. Ali said he has a very clear memory of the VSC denouncing these stickers at the time.
MAOISTS & ANARCHISTS
Barr asked about the other groups that existed at the time, for example the Maoists.
Ali explained that he had very little to do with the Maoists – they acted autonomously on the whole, and only ‘grudgingly’ accepted any of the VSC’s ‘discipline’. He recalled an Irish Maoist group led by someone called Ed Davoren, ‘but I do not recall him saying anything particularly outrageous’.
The Maoists, Ali explained, tended to regard the VSC committee as ‘revisionists and class traitors and whatever else’.
He was asked about anarchist groups, but Ali said they were small, hostile to the VSC and often didn’t bother joining in with the demonstrations. The insignificance of these groups was such that Ali can’t even remember their names.
He remembered seeing the anarchist newspaper, Freedom, but felt the anarchists were ‘not too strong’ as they were small in number and apparently easy to identify due to their T-shirts [whatever that means].
EUROPEAN SOLIDARITY
The March 1968 demonstration is described on p.254 of Ali’s aforementioned book. It was, he wrote, ‘a marvelous display of colourful flags and banners’. These were people optimistic about a new world without the kinds of conflict they saw around them. They were aware of the Prague Spring going on, which brought hope of compassionate and effective socialism; there was a feeling that change was possible.
A large contingent from Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund, the Socialist German Student Union, came to London from Berlin to join the demonstration. They had a lot of experience of street demonstrations, and brought helmets and their own banner with them.
Ali described them linking arms as they marched, a display of solidarity that also defended them from police attacks, which the VSC hadn’t seen before. Ali said he had no memory of what exactly the Germans did that day, but doubts that they acted alone, they were all part of a huge protest. The tabloid press were not used to seeing Germans at demonstrations, so gave this a lot of coverage.
There was also a French contingent, but they were not mentioned, perhaps because they didn’t adopt visible identifiers like the helmets.
There were several attempts to break through the police lines that day, and it certainly wasn’t the work of the German students alone, ‘nice English students’ were involved as well. Ali does not think the presence of any one group warranted such emphasis.
Barr: Would the German Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund have followed the official position of the VSC on the protest?
Ali: Yes.
Barr: So if the balances of forces on the day had been right, they would have joined to storm the US embassy?
Ali: Undoubtedly.
LOSING THEIR MARBLES
The square and surrounding streets were full of people, there were scuffles, the police decided to send in the horses. Ali heard people shouting ‘the Cossacks are coming’. Barr questioned Ali about the throwing of marbles at horses. Ali did not witness this, but it was talked about afterwards.
US embassy protest, Grosvenor Square, 17 March 1968, aerial view
He illustrated this with a story about support for the VSC not coming exclusively from the young, they were supported by people of all classes, some of whom supplied funding and valuable advice about more effective ways of dealing with horses (involving a string touching the horse’s knee).
Nonetheless, Barr laboured the point about marbles as well as smoke-bombs and other items that may have been brought to the demonstration by individuals.
Ali saw a small number of fireworks, ‘to increase excitement, not to harm anyone’. Barr countered that the VSC didn’t dissuade people from escalating action, something that wouldn’t have been organisationally possible in such circumstances.
Barr is focusing very directly on the role of the protesters in what was, as the vintage footage shows, a direct and deliberate attack on a crowd by the police.
The lack of any questions about police violence, the injustice of the war in Vietnam, the huge death toll of the war, and so on, show the priorities of the Inquiry. Ali was the only at the hearing one to mention the injuries, some serious, suffered by demonstrators on the day due to police violence.
UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHY
‘We wanted the toppling of regimes in Eastern Europe and their replacement with the Czech model, ‘socialism with a human face’, Ali explained. However, he was realistic.
Barr: Were your ultimate aspirations revolutionary?
Ali: Not in Britain.
Barr: You didn’t think the anti-Vietnam War protest would lead to revolution?
Ali: You’d have to be deranged to think that.
Barr: Given the air of change in the wind, you saw the demonstration as part of piece of the jigsaw for a world wide revolution and world wide socialism?
Ali, laughing: No, not really.
Ali and his comrades felt serious socialism was not possible in western Europe without democracy very firmly attached to it.
When he visited Vietnam, he asked North Vietnamese leaders if international brigades of volunteer troops would be a useful response of solidarity from other parts of the world. ‘This is not the Spanish Civil War. The last thing we want is for people like you to come and die here,’ he was bluntly told. ‘All we want from you is to build movements abroad’ to help to bring the war to an end.
Barr: You say that you thought that Parliament should be replaced by Worker’s Councils, is that true?
Ali: We used to think like that. We wanted something like what the Chartists advocated in the 19th century. We explored all these ideas.
The group’s politics evolved over time, but they were generally in favour of far more direct democracy. The current ‘first past the post’ system distorts election results, delivering a succession of governments who have only received a minority of the votes.
UNLIKELY SUPPORTERS
The first evidence to be shown on the screen was a Special Branch report, prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions, following the demo in March 1968. The group interrupted theater shows to talk about Vietnam.
The audiences were mostly sympathetic to the anti-war cause, but actors were hostile on the whole (with the strange exception of the Black & White Minstrel Show, something so unrelentingly racist that even in 1968 there were petitions to against it).
After the conflict at the March 1968 demonstration, both the VSC and police turned their thoughts to organising for the next demonstration in October. The Met created the what was first called Special Operations Squad, who went to live as anti-war activists.
NEWSPAPERS & PROVOCATEURS
The next picture was of a Guardian article from May 1968, entitled ‘Tariq Ali Talks of New London Demonstration’. There is a reference to Ali saying they planned to occupy the Bank of England. Barr suggest that even if was a joke, only uttered once in the press, it meant that the police were compelled to respond.
Ali’s book, on p.293, quotes an American woman from the Students for a Democratic Society (the third different ‘SDS’ mentioned in this hearing!) who said that the only way to defeat the war machine in her country was to emulate the Viet Cong guerrillas who had attacked the US Embassy in Saigon.
She was suggesting a bombing campaign against the corporations who were profiting from the war in Vietnam by producing chemical weapons and other supplies.
Ali explained that he argued strongly against this tactical approach, calling it ‘suicidal in every sense’. He added, ‘I had to think very hard whether the person who wanted to embark on such a course was deranged or a straightforward provocateur’.
Asked about what he knew at the time about police or Special Branch infiltration, Ali responded, ‘we had no evidence, obviously, but we had no doubt that we were under surveillance – there was hysteria in the press. On one occasion a postman dragged me out of the office and told me that our letters were opened every day’.
BLACK DWARF
Ali’s suspicions about provocateurs seem well founded. On one occasion, some ‘hippy anarchists’ spent the night at the Soho office of Black Dwarf, a socialist newspaper which Ali edited. Ali and the others were horrified to see the next morning that these guests had painted a large diagram of how to make a Molotov cocktail on the wall.
He described their response:
‘We covered their crude artwork with a poster. The very next day, the office was raided by the police – they went straight to the poster and pulled it down to uncover the artwork beneath’.
The office had often been made available as somewhere for comrades visiting from other places to sleep. But after this incident, the Black Dwarf group became more strict about letting people sleep in there.
Black Dwarf, June 1968
Barr, welcoming a return to his recurring theme of violence, asked if Molotov cocktails were ever used at a VSC demonstration. Ali responded emphatically, saying that he had no knowledge of anyone ever proposing or intending to take a Molotov cocktail to a VSC-organised demonstration.
Ali questioned the police’s description of information gathered from infiltrating a national VSC meeting, and pointed out that this intelligence was not particularly ‘valuable’ or secret, there was no need to infiltrate the group in order to get that information.
He challenged the view that it was either vital or necessary. The route of the demonstration was publicly debated, and much contested by various groupings. Some people, he said, ‘wanted a punch-up in Grosvenor Square, which we were opposed to’.
The next document brought up as evidence was a Special Branch report on Black Dwarf, which reproduced a column published on the back page of the magazine in October 1968, entitled ‘Softly Softly’.
Although Ali was editor of Black Dwarf, he was often away traveling so did not personally oversee the content of each issue, just endeavoured to ‘cast an eye’ over it. He agreed that this particular piece was not especially well written.
The main message of the article was that the police should be given no excuse to stop the demonstrators from reaching their intended destination. ‘The coaches must get through!’ was in capital letters. It said not to bring anything that could be construed as suspicious, mentioning the marbles and fireworks that so preoccupied David Barr QC at the hearing.
Barr suggested that the article telling people not to bring things like marbles or fireworks, is in fact, an attempt to suggest people should bring them.
Barr cited contemporaneous leaflets from campaigns advocating provocation. Ali pointed out that ‘it’s one thing to write some nonsense… but a completely different thing to actually carry it out’. It wasn’t forbidden to write things, and at that time people were writing all sorts of things.
VIOLENCE AGAINST TEXTILES
After Barr’s ignoring of the police violence against protesters in March 1968, he seemed surprisingly concerned about violence against small pieces of textiles. He asked Ali about a public meeting that took place before the October protest, specifically whether a plain-clothes police officer would have been able to safely attend. Ali said it was.
Barr: This was peaceful, except for the burning of a flag outside Australia House.
Ali: That is still a peaceful act.
The October 1968 demonstration was planned by the VSC as a ‘peaceful show of strength’:
‘We don’t want mindless militancy. We want this to a be a politically militant demonstration of solidarity, not only with Vietnam but with each other’
Stewards were provided by all the organisations who supported the demo. They would have been briefed ahead of the day, short briefing that morning on the Embankment.
Asked ‘to what extent did the marchers exhibit “revolutionary self-discipline”?’ Ali replied ‘we were so relaxed that we forgot we were passing Downing Street – a police officer had to remind me’. He recollected having to scribble a ‘Dear Harold’ message to the Prime Minister of the day on a scrap of paper.
There was an attempt made to kidnap Ali, by a group of unknown men. They did this the night before the demo, probably with the aim of preventing him from attending it. This was in Carlisle Street in Soho, just outside the Black Dwarf office, and luckily was prevented by his comrades, who had noticed it just in time.
SPECIAL BRANCH REPORT: AUTUMN OFFENSIVE
The next document shown by the Inquiry was a Special Branch report from DI Dixon on the VSC ‘Autumn Offensive’ (i.e. the demo on October 27 1968) and the potential for violence. It describes the VSC as ‘Trotskyist-dominated’ and ‘the most influential’ of the extremist groups.
Ali was scathing and unequivocal, saying ‘it’s completely false. It’s fantasy land’.
Barr wasn’t persuaded. ‘Intelligence reports that show there wasn’t any secret agenda is useful in itself, wouldn’t you agree?’
‘No’ said Ali. ‘It’s not useful and it’s not intelligence’.
Ali was not in Grosvenor Square himself that day. He only got third-hand reports, largely from the press, of the events there. But certainly, it was no surprise to anyone that there would be police there.
The VSC had no authority over those who attended the protests, or how they behaved, and had no way of compelling them to act in a certain way.
Page 11 of the Special Branch report lists the number of arrests made before the demo (26, only three of whom received summonses), during the demo (17), and after the demo (one, someone who threw a bottle at the Embassy). Interestingly, it notes that ‘apart from three fascists, none had hitherto come to notice’.
Page 4 of the same document details some of the arrests made the night before the October 1968 demo. These included one German national arrested at St Pancra’s station with a gas pistol and an unspecified amount of cannabis resin. There was also someone who’d been found trying to gain entry to police stables at Hammersmith, it is thought that he intended tampering with the police horses stabled there. Additionally, ‘two youths stopped by police in Green Street, were found to be in possession of radio-jamming equipment and perspex eye shields’.
Barr, seemingly unaware that he was making a non-sequitur, asks if this proves that the spycops were useful. ‘Not at all,’ Ali replied, ‘this was done by normal police’.
The report self-justifies, saying that, despite the crowd’s wishes, there had been no serious disorder because of the intervention of spycops. Ali flatly refuted this, saying ‘this is false, the crowd didn’t have to follow our lead, they could have run riot, they didn’t’.
VSC ORGANISING
Referring to questions about the national organisation of the VSC, Ali got a chuckle from the room when he said ‘this is an eye-opener – I had no idea there were any Maoists in Nottingham’.
Ali’s book talks on p.329 of 1968 as being the ‘last big assembly of revolutionary forces’. What he thought was needed at the time was a unified youth movement, that united young people from all the different left-wing groups, including those who’d been expelled from the Labour party.
According to the second paragraph, the credentials of both official delegates and accredited observers were checked at the door. Voting cards were issued to delegates only. It was a closed event, not open to the public.
Barr asked if the closed nature of the event meant that a plain-clothes (rather than an undercover) police officer would not have been able to gain entry to this conference.
Another SDS report, on a meeting 52 years ago to the day in Conway Hall, includes long quotes from Ali that ‘a real revolution could have taken place’. Ali dismissed the report out of hand, telling the Inquiry, ‘it’s a fabrication, I would never ever talk in these terms. At best, it’s an extreme exaggeration’.
INTERNATIONAL MARXIST GROUP
In the afternoon session, the Inquiry moved on to other parts of Tariq Ali’s long active life.
He was a member of the International Marxist Group (IMG), a British section of an international organisation known as the Fourth International, created by Trotsky in 1938 after he broke with Stalinism.
The IMG had branches in many towns and cities, including Birmingham, Leicester, Chesterfield, Manchester, London, Nottingham, Hull, Oxford, Norwich, Folkestone, Edinburgh, York, Glasgow, Reading and Crewe, and about 100 members at that time (though some branches may have had but a single member).
Ali explained that the Fourth International grew slowly, and it never became a truly mass movement except in Bolivia and Sri Lanka. In Europe, the French movement was perhaps the largest, with around 50,000 members at its peak.
In the UK, the IMG’s membership grew to a thousand at the most. It aimed to create left-wing Marxist parties to challenge Labour for the loyalties of the working class.
It’s interesting to note the questions that David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry, asks about the group: Did the IMG use violence? Did members of the IMG commit serious criminal offences to further their aims?
Ali had to be emphatic that the IMG’s aims and tactics did not include violence, or any serious criminal activities. He said it was possible that the odd member did, but if that was the case it was certainly not known to him.
SPYING ON TRADE UNIONISTS
Next, the Inquiry was shown a special report, signed by officer ‘HN340’ – a Special Demonstration Squad officer using the name ‘Alan Nixon’- and countersigned by Chief Inspector Saunders.
Ali said he feared that the capitalists would win that particular dispute. He very rarely attended these discussions, which were set up by the Red Mole newspaper and therefore often the first contact people made with the IMG. Paragraph 4 suggests that Ali was present, but he cannot recall this meeting at all.
Ali confirmed that IMG members’ involvement in trade unions was open and unashamed, rather than covert.
SPYING ON ELECTION CAMPAIGNS
On 14 April 1977, the IMG held a meeting at Southall Town Hall as part of their Greater London Council election campaign. About 50 people attended. It was suggested, by the spycops officer who reported on it, that many of the white attendees were not local to Southall.
Ali was asked for his reaction to the discovery that the police had been reporting on this. He said it was so unnecessary, what was going on was no big secret. It was a public meeting, anyone was welcome.
There was then more discussion of the Anti Nazi League (ANL) and its strategies for combatting racism. Ali reminded us of the slogan ‘self defence is no offence’.
SPYING ON A CONCERT IN A PARK
Tom Robinson, Carnival Against the Nazis, April 1978
Another SDS report was shown to the Inquiry, listing 229 names of people identified from the 100,000 people attending the ANL’s Carnival Against the Nazis, a free concert in April 1978 – including Tariq Ali and fellow core participants at the Inquiry, Peter Hain, Colin Clark and Dave Morris.
The free concert featured The Clash, Steel Pulse, X-Ray Spex, and the Tom Robinson Band.
Ali said it was a pleasant day, with lots of children and music, and he could not recall any violence.
The next such report listed 69 named individuals who attended an ANL march and rally on 14 May 1978, including, again, Ali and Dave Morris.
Local organisers were worried about the possibility of racist attacks, and put Ali in a safe house to keep him out of any trouble. He was holed up with reggae band Misty in Roots when the police charged into the house, and pulled everyone out. An estimated £10,000 of damage was done to the contents of the house, including the equipment of Misty in Roots.
Ali and the others were made to run a gauntlet, and he was truncheoned so severely that he passed out. The skull of Clarence Baker, manager of Misty in Roots, was fractured and he was in a coma for five months. Ali woke up in a police vehicle, under arrest. Upon his eventual release, he had to walk home.
He said that the police’s treatment of them that day made him think of a colonial police manual from the days of the Raj. At the trial of one of those arrested, one of the police officers testified that ‘there was no overall direction of the police forces at this time’ and described it as ‘a free for all’. Needless to say, no police officers were charged with anything.
BLAIR PEACH
Blair Peach
That was the same day that Blair Peach – who we have already heard about in this Inquiry – was killed by the police in Southall. When the police unit responsible had its lockers searched, weapons found included a crowbar, metal cosh, whip handle, stock ship, brass handle, knives, American-style truncheons, a rhino whip and a pickaxe handle.
This rather sets Barr’s suggestion that people shouldn’t be caught with marbles on their way to a demo into relief.
Unsurprisingly, the next report was on a meeting called by those campaigning for justice after Blair Peach’s death, which Ali attended.
Barr apologised for being repetitive in his questions, but asked Ali how he felt about being spied on at this event. Ali retorted:
‘What is the point of having a report like this except to keep people in work? Or to make my file heftier than it was, for absolutely no rhyme or reason?’
Ali was invited to speak at a wide range of public meetings over many years. He was involved in many groups on the left.
A much more recent document was produced at the hearing – a report into a meeting of the Stop the War Coalition steering committee on 15 March 2003. Ali’s name is listed, along with MPs including Jeremy Corbyn and George Galloway.
THE PERSONAL IS THE POLITICAL
The final three reports shown to the Inquiry had a more personal nature.
The first was an SDS report, dated 23 January 1980, about a man called Phil Evans. He is described as ‘a long-standing member of the SWP [Socialist Workers Party], who lives at [redacted], a single man, he is employed as a sub editor, at. a publishing firm called Engineering Today Ltd’ and the address is given.
The report continued:
‘Although a committed revolutionary socialist, Evans rarely plays an active part in SWP activities, but conveys his politics by means of cartoons submitted to left wing publications. He has recently completed a series of cartoons to be included in a book written by Tariq Ali, entitled Trotsky for Beginners.’
Despite admitting that Evans had no serious role in the SWP, he was spied on to a degree that the reporting provided details of his employer and landlord, and listed the same info about his partner, a fellow member of the SWP and a primary school teacher in Newham. A photo of Evans was also included.
‘How could that be relevant to anything? It’s perfectly accurate. The IMG bookshop was in trouble, I’d got some royalties from book sales, et cetera, and I gave them a loan. Full stop.
TOTAL FICTION
The final SDS report shown was signed by a Sergeant Fisher of the SDS, countersigned by Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon, founder of the unit. As with the last one, it had been copied to MI5.
Dated October 1968, it reports ‘intimate contact’ between Ali and a young man second year student at a teacher training college, who had been president of his Students’ Union.
Ali was flabbergasted:
‘It is total fiction. I cannot believe it. To suggest that I had intimate contact with a male students’ union president is bizarre. I have never been gay or bisexual; there is no truth to it whatsoever’
Ali was asked if he would like to add anything else, now that he has seen the huge bundle of documents prepared for this ‘tranche’ of Inquiry hearings. These comprise 5,263 pages, and were served five weeks ago. Attempting to read all of them before the start of the Inquiry is roughly equivalent to reading all of Lord of the Rings twice a week for five weeks straight.
These are documents the Inquiry will have had ready to release ahead of the original pre-Covid scheduled start in June. Why were they not released earlier? Why, when the Inquiry says it has a million pages, are core participants seeing such a small fraction, yet served too late to be properly comprehended?
DEPRIVATION THEN DELUGE
It is a pattern familiar to many victims of state injustice. They are first ignored; then the injustice is denied; then disclosure is delayed; then, finally, comes an avalanche of irrelevance to overwhelm and thus deflect those who would hold the state to account.
Ali merely said that, unsurprisingly, ‘I haven’t been able to go through them all as thoroughly as I would like, because as you’ve already demonstrated, a lot of them are quite repetitive or irrelevant.’
Ali then shared an unsettling anecdote.
‘Around 1995 or 1996 I was going for a jog round Hampstead Heath and I was stopped by a person, a male, younger than me, and he “Are you so and so?”, and I said, I am. He said, “I’m sorry to interrupt your running, but I have something important to say to you.”
‘He said, “My wife used to work at GCHQ, and can I just ask you two questions to confirm you are the person? Did you, in 1980, break up with your partner and you had a young daughter, six years old?” I said I did.
‘And he said, “It is you. My wife was detailed to listen to all your phone conversations. And she listened quite a few days to your daughter crying, you crying, you reading stories to her, your daughter pleading with you to come back to your old apartment. And she finally couldn’t take it and said, ‘I didn’t join GCHQ to spy on people,’ and gave in her resignation.”
‘So I said, Well, give her a big hug from me. I’d had no idea that I was still under surveillance.’
The next questions were from Rajiv Menon QC, who sought to let Ali give some explanation of himself and his circumstances.
Menon asked Ali for his memories of the police raid on the Black Dwarf offices in 1968. It was the one mentioned earlier, when the police knew there was a diagram of a Molotov cocktail behind a poster. Ali said the police weren’t there long and did not seize anything.
TRUE SPIES
Menon then reminded Ali of the 2002 BBC spycops documentary True Spies.
Spycop Wilf Knight described a huge political phone tapping operation, and named Ali as a target. Ali said he and his friends knew their phones were tapped. They had even planned a fake rendezvous on the phone and when they checked, the police were there.
The True Spies documentary also revealed that – in addition to being raided, tapped and having his mail opened – Ali was spied upon further, as spycops had keys to the Black Dwarf office. This can only result from a copy being made by someone who was a trusted, integral part of the organisation.
Menon said that we now know that the person who copied the keys used the name ‘Dick Epps‘. However, Ali has no recollection of this person.
THE NEED FOR PHOTOS
Menon asked if seeing a photo of ‘Epps’ might help. Ali said it might well do. The Inquiry has not provided him with one, and so has missed out on any memories he may have.
A long time ago, the Inquiry promised to publish photos of spycops in their undercover guise. After much to-ing and fro-ing, it was provided with a number of such pictures by non state core participants, with all the stipulated copyright authorisations. It then decided not to publish them after all.
OPPOSING THE VIETNAM WAR
Menon asked Ali why he’d opposed the Vietnam War so actively.
Ali replied that it had been given extensive TV coverage, and the scale of violence and torture was obvious and astonishing:
‘What we saw every day was non-stop bombing, use of napalm, use of chemical weapons, the burning out of whole villages, with women and children rushing out screaming in agony. And I remember one CBS reporter Morley Safer describing and filming Marines burning a village, killing people, saying, “And this is what we are fighting for: freedom”.’
Menon returned to the March 1968 demonstration in London. Ali explained that the route had been agreed with police, and included Grosvenor Square, where the American embassy was located.
Ali explained that they were so surprised by the number of people present that they felt the agreed route wouldn’t work and asked the police to take it the other way round the Square, but this was refused.With the backing up of the crowd, people pushed against the lines, scuffles broke out, and the police line was broken.
Menon asked Ali what was different that day compared to earlier protests he had seen. Ali replied:
‘what was new about the March ’68 demonstration was that a very large number of people were insistent on determining their own agenda and not being pushed around. And the violence was actually minimal, compared to what happened later in the poll tax riots, or the Black ghettos. But that was enough to create shock waves, that this was actually happening in Grosvenor Square outside the US Embassy. That’s about it.’
Next, Menon showed a document and asked Ali about Mr A, who had been arrested for handing out a leaflet outside the meeting of the Notting Hill branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and was subsequently charged with incitement to riot.
Ali said he didn’t know Mr A well, but that he’d seen him with a Maoist group and a Black Power group.
SOUTHALL SURVIVOR
Menon asked about the brutality Ali suffered in Southall in 1979. Ali confirmed that he was never given any explanation for the raid on the house where he was sheltering with Misty in Roots, saying:
‘we were never told that, and no police officer felt the need to inform us. I don’t think anyone knew. Basically, I think that they had decided that they had to make an example of the anti-fascist demonstrators.’
Turning to the killing of school teacher Blair Peach on the same day, Menon showed the Inquiry a further Special Branch document, reporting on a public meeting of the Camden Anti-Nazi League entitled ‘Who Killed Blair Peach?’
Menon explained the code next to Ali’s name: “RF” stands for registry file, which means that there was a Special Branch or MI5 file opened on him. The number “65” indicates that that file was opened in 1965. Ali was still a student at Oxford at this time.
One of the other Special Branch reports released today reveals that Ali first came to the notice of police in 1964 when he took part in an anti-apartheid protest in Oxford.
A little further on in the ‘Who Killed Blair Peach?’ report, it shows that Blair Peach himself had a registry file, opened in 1978. It then said ‘the East London Teachers Association has come to the notice of Special Branch on numerous occasions.’ Spycops were targeting Peach and others in their professional capacity as teachers.
BUGS NOT TAPS
Menon returned to the report on the Stop the War Coalition steering committee from March 2003, as seen earlier. He established that, as the meetings weren’t open to the general public, the report must come either from someone on the committee or, perhaps more likely, from a recording device.
Mitting nearly jumped out of his chair. He warned Menon that the Investigatory Powers Act prohibits any reference to the use of intercept unless he deems it necessary in advance. ‘You will be committing an offence if you persist’,’ he intoned. ‘I would warn you not to’.
Menon explained that he was talking about a recording device, a planted bug, rather than an intercept of communications, so the Act doesn’t apply. Mitting apologised and retracted his lawyer-snaring mandibles.
Ali was baffled at why the Stop the War Coalition was so profoundly spied on when it has been completely open in what it’s doing and what its aims are. It was publicly set up, open to all and, as one might expect from a peace campaign, there has been no suggestion of any violence involved.
Concluding, Menon quoted from Ali’s written statement to the Inquiry:
‘my strong feeling is that this Inquiry is likely to be a monumental waste of time. This is because the direction of travel is clear from the questions – to dissect the politics of the victims of police spying, and therefore to turn the spotlight away from the actions of the police. This is the politics of ‘blame the victim’. And no doubt I and others will be declared guilty. Even 50 years on, the State is fighting exactly the same battle it was engaged in in 1968.’
Menon asked if, having been questioned in person today, he felt differently in any way.
Ali replied:
‘when I said “is likely to be a monumental waste of time”, I should have added “for me”, not for any of the other participants. But I don’t think it has been a waste of time for me, I think it’s been quite important, and I hope that the final report reflects the balance as we discussed today, that much of the spying and infiltration, in my opinion, was totally unnecessary.’
Mitting buttered Ali up to assist him further, by asking for a free history lesson on Trotskyism. We stopped tweeting at that point, but if you really want to you can find that bit at the end of today’s official transcript.
The final scheduled day of opening statements at the Undercover Policing Inquiry was centred around the moving stories of people who were spied on as part of justice campaigns. These are mostly families whose loved ones have died at the hands of the police, or whose deaths had investigations that were scandalously inadequate.
Several themes recurred from the spied-upon:
the need for the Inquiry to centre their experience and knowledge;
not taking police statements at face value;
the need for a diverse panel to advise a rich, white, male Chair who cannot properly understand systemic discrimination;
the need for live-streaming the hearings to stop it being a private inquiry, which is being done by other inquiries.
All of it seemed to bounce right off Sir John.
Neither Helen Steel (delayed from yesterday), nor Dave Smith’s statements (delayed from Friday) have been allotted new dates as yet.
Imran Khan QC
(Baroness Doreen Lawrence)
Imran Khan QC
Imran Khan opened proceedings, representing Baroness Lawrence, campaigner and mother of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.
Khan stated that Baroness Lawrence has lost confidence in the ability of the Inquiry to get to the truth of why her family was spied upon. She is also disappointed with the Metropolitan Police’s statement that they have undergone a substantial change in their. She thinks the Met remains institutionally racist.
Ethnic minority people are over policed and under protected. This is illustrated by disproportionate use of stop and search against young Black people today.
The 1998 Macpherson inquiry into Stephen Lawrence’s death should have been the end of it. The Met claimed to have already given all evidence to Macpherson. This was a bare-faced lie.
CORRUPTION AND LIES
In 2012, it was reported that there was detailed evidence of one of the investigating detective’s criminality that was held back from the public, the Lawrence family’s legal team, and the Macpherson inquiry. These revelations led to the Ellison Review, which also found spycops had targeted the Lawrences.
Khan then outlined the well-known background of the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the incompetent and corrupt police investigation that followed. Stephen Lawrence was murdered at just 18 years old in 1993 in South London whist waiting for a bus. Justice was slow and by no means reached. Baroness Lawrence still mourns the death of her son.
Khan said that the same racism that led to the murder of Stephen and let his killers walk free, still exists. All the police involved with the botched initial investigation were promoted or have since retired, not one of them has been disciplined, let alone sacked.
Baroness Lawrence said:
‘To lose a child is unthinkable. To be fighting for justice for him 27 years later is inexcusable’.
Five years later, in 1998, Macpherson made his findings, which included the fact that police attending to the scene of Stephen’s murder did nothing to try to save him. Khan says it seems ‘the police did not want to get their hands dirty with a Black man’s blood’.
SPYCOPS DIGGING FOR DIRT
In 2013, they learned that police spied on the family’s campaign and ‘sought dirt’ to discredit them and their supporters. Undercover officer Peter Francis said he was just one of four officers tasked with doing so. However, the Lawrence family were law abiding, so there was no dirt for the undercovers to find.
Imran Khan QC & Baroness Doreen Lawrence
Francis was then tasked to find dirt on people more peripheral to the campaign, using names passed on by the family liaison officers purportedly supporting the family. The police officer referred to as HN78 (‘Bobby Lewis’), interviewed in the Ellison Review, and picked up information on the Lawrence campaign.
The Lawrence family’s campaign was one of many such family justice campaigns targeted by undercover police. Police resources that should have been spent catching killers were instead used to obstruct justice in this way.
The Lawrences then wrote to the Home Secretary saying the Met hadn’t given a satisfactory explanation about the allegations of spying. They asked for a public, transparent inquiry. Home Secretary said no, unless the Ellison report recommended it. The report, when it came, did indeed recommend a public inquiry.
Baroness Lawrence said that a public inquiry was the only way to conduct a satisfactory investigation as internal police investigations cannot be trusted. Khan went on to outline the various investigations conducted – and the broken promises made by the police.
The Home Secretary finally ordered the undercover policing public inquiry in 2014, remarking that ‘it is deplorable the family have had to wait so long’. The irony isn’t lost on core participants, finding themselves nearly seven years later at the very start of an Inquiry that has swathed itself in secrecy.
HOLLOW PROMISES
In 2014, the Met Commissioner said all material about the spying on the family would be released. The Lawrence family have received absolutely nothing since then. They still don’t know why they were spied on. Should the police have given these files to the Inquiry in the meantime, Baroness Lawrence wants them to be handed over to her now.
Baroness Lawrence is exhausted by decades of hollow, hypocritical promises that are never delivered on. She wants to know the extent to which the Met’s Commissioner at the time, Paul Condon, knew about, or authorised the spying on the her family. On the one hand, she has been told there was no direct spying, yet on the other the Met have already apologised for it – what is the truth?
The culture of the police has played a part in creating miscarriages of justice and covering up racism. Public apologies aren’t matched by real reform. For instance, the one whistle-blower, Peter Francis, still faces the threat of prosecution for coming forward. While Francis’ spying was reprehensible, the Met’s intransigence and denials are much worse. He must be be given the assurances he seeks about immunity from prosecution.
Baroness Lawrence trusted Mark Ellison’s investigation as he’d secured the convictions of two of Stephen’s killers. His recommendations were clear. In contrast, she said, although the Undercover Policing Inquiry was supposed to be a ‘proper, transparent inquiry, rigorous in pursuit of the truth’ it has turned out to be secretive and ‘we should be able to see every officer who chose to spy on us’.
Khan contrasted the open way that Baroness Lawrence campaigned, despite hostility from the police with the anonymity granted to the police. She didn’t have the luxury of hiding, so neither should the undercover police. The Met, unless forced to do otherwise, will seek to avoid accountability and hide evidence. They can’t be trusted to simply offer it up to the Inquiry.
DIVERSITY OR FAILURE
The Macpherson Inquiry only succeeded with the help of a diverse panel advising. Khan also explained the vital context of the racism surrounding the spying. If the Chair doesn’t understand this, then surely point Baroness Lawrence makes is proven: a diverse panel is therefore needed.
The idea that the Special Demonstration Squad operated lawfully and in the public interest is nonsense. Clearly, there is no good reason to spy on any of Baroness Lawrence’s campaigning.
Khan concluded: ‘We must have the truth’, and then quoted Baroness Lawrence:
‘I was a happy married woman with three gorgeous children. Now I have lost a son and I am divorced, but that’s only a tiny part of what has changed. Unless you’ve lost a child you can’t understand the depth of heartache I’ve felt… and would give up all I have to go back to the seconds before Stephen died. I simply ask for justice’.
Heather Williams opened by saying why she was here and, in a sense, why we were all here.
On 22nd April 1993 Stephen Lawrence was murdered by racists in Eltham while waiting for a bus. He was stabbed by a gang of white youths who used racist language. The initial murder investigation was completely inadequate; during it Dr Lawrence felt as if he was in a constant battle with police.
The Macpherson Inquiry decided that institutional racism was apparent in the police investigation into Stephen’s death and in his family’s treatment by officers. These failings meant that Stephen’s killers largely escaped justice.
This has impacted on all of Dr Neville Lawrence’s life. As the Macpherson Inquiry demonstrated, the police were not on their side. Despite that Inquiry’s historic recognition of institutional racism in the police, Dr Lawrence believes too little progress has been made. He feels the state has failed him.
Against this background, the allegation of police interference with his family has only further undermined his confidence in the police. Intelligence on Dr Lawrence was passed up the chain of command by police, and an undercover officer attended the Macpherson inquiry pretending to be a supporter of the family. The existence of this was also kept secret from Lord Macpherson.
How then can the public have confidence in policing of Black communities if resources are used like this against them? It appears to many that Black lives don’t matter to the police.
LONG TERM SPYING
Williams made it clear that Dr Lawrence doesn’t have confidence in the Inquiry. He wanted to participate in an inquiry capable of finding the truth and stopping these abuses from being repeated in the future. However, he, like so many victims of spycops, has had almost no disclosure of documents.
The Met didn’t just spy on the Lawrence family’s campaign in the immediate aftermath of the murder. Five years later, as the Macpherson Inquiry was heading towards its conclusion, the Met had a spy in the Lawrence family camp – a Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) officer using the name Dave Hagan.
The undercover officer met with Richard Walton who was part of the team who were providing the Commissioner’s response to the Inquiry, feeding them information on the family’s thinking. That meeting was brokered by SDS boss Bob Lambert.
In 2013, we learned from whistle-blower SDS officer Peter Francis that undercover police had targeted Black justice campaigns, including the Lawrences. Alongside that, the family liaison officers were gathering intelligence rather than concerning themselves with the welfare of the family.
However, it was not until 2016 that the truth about undercover police undermining the Macpherson Inquiry was revealed. Walton, by then, was running spycops operations as the head of Counter Terrorism Command. Like many guilty police officers who find themselves under investigation, he resigned to avoid disciplinary charges.
A SPY IN THE FAMILY CAMP
A document from the foundation of the SDS in 1968 says the unit was created to provide information on public order, and related intelligence. Twenty years later it said it was concerned with terrorism and politically motivated crime. Whichever, the grieving, devastated Lawrence family fell under none of these categories. Therefore there was no excuse for snooping around the Lawrences, whether directly or otherwise.
Neville Lawrence
And yet, undercover police were circling the Lawrence family, looking to smear them instead of catching their son’s killers. Macpherson found the Lawrences were treated unfavourably because of their race. The 2014 Stephen Lawrence Review by Mark Ellison QC discovered undercover officer ‘Dave Hagan’ spied on the family campaign at a time when the family was taking legal action against the police. Hagan reported back personal details as well as the Lawrence family’s campaign strategy.
The police’s self-investigation into undercover policing, Operation Herne, started in 2012. Its 2014 report centred on allegations of spying on Lawrences. Like Ellison, they did not find ‘smoking gun’ documentation proving that there was an instruction to spy on the Lawrence family. But, in a unit where creating written evidence was often avoided, we cannot rely on documents. The Inquiry must rely on oral evidence.
SDS officers routinely ‘hoovered up’ all knowledge and retained it, ignoring issues of privacy, the third Operation Herne report was published in 2014. Numerous undercovers have confirmed they received no training on collateral intrusion and that they took no account of the issue.
It’s plain there was no legal authority or justification for the intrusion on the Lawrence family. And, nearly seven years in, we’ve had almost no information from the Inquiry. It appears to have done nothing significant towards its purpose. Dr Lawrence has received no substantive disclosure.
The delays to the UCPI have increased the distress of victims. We are promised disclosure will happen, at an unspecified time, but we cannot properly contribute until that is done.
Dr Lawrence wants to know the full extent to which undercovers spied on him at the time of Stephen’s death and afterward. He has many questions that he wants the Inquiry to answer. He does not think a white family in the same position would have been treated this way.
Williams went on to say that the Ellison Report only focuses on 1993 and 1998, which missed out the period in between, including the time of Stephen’s inquest. This also leaves questions to be answered. For instance, why was Dave Hagan allowed to befriend the family and attend the Macpherson inquiry?
Further, what did Hagan tell Walton at the 1998 meeting? Was this information used at the Macpherson inquiry? Who else saw it? Who knew about the meeting? Lambert was Hagan’s handler, speaking to him several times a day. Dr Lawrence also wants to hear what he has to say, as well as Hagan’s other managers.
DON’T TRUST THE PREPETRATORS
Due to the police’s tendency to destroy records, the Inquiry should take control of all documents rather than trusting the police not to pre-sort the files to avoid incriminating themselves. Williams then went on to speak of Neville’s concern about particular officers being granted anonymity. These are HN109 who was Peter Francis’ manager, HN101 who was also involved in his tasking, HN86 the SDS boss 1993-1996 who gave the order to find dirt on Lawrences, and HN58, the boss 1997-2001 so who will have known about the 1998 meeting with Walton.
Heather Williams made the point that almost all non-state core participants have been making since the Inquiry began: if you give a spied-upon person a cover name, they are more likely to be able to give evidence about that person, but with just a number that is impossible and we only get the officer’s own account.
Williams then quoted Lord Bingham, a senior member of the judiciary: ‘Publicity is a powerful disinfectant’.
Beyond the secrecy, Dr Lawrence is, like Baroness Lawrence, particularly concerned by the lack of a diverse panel in the ‘fact-finding’ part of the Inquiry as well as the anonymity given to the undercover officers.
Where there’s evidence of racism, police must be held to account through the legal system if there’s to be any confidence in that system. Dr Lawrence has been failed badly by institutions over the years, and hopes that he will not be failed again at the Inquiry.
The Inquiry continued with the return of Imran Khan QC, this time speaking for Michael Mansfield QC, who a a core particpant due to his role as a lawyer representing the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.
Khan started with reference to the situation today, saying the State acts with increasing hostility towards the legal profession, with sneering from the Prime Minister about ‘lefty human rights lawyers’ who are ‘hamstringing’ the criminal justice system.
The Home Secretary dismissed lawyers objectións to her similar comments, saying they should ‘get back to work’, even though she was actually objecting to their work.
When the State appears to be having a wholesale attack on lawyers, there are grave consequences.
Khan said:
‘It is chilling to consider that lawyers might have failed to take on cases or acted otherwise in accordance with their duty, in the knowledge that they might attract the unwanted attention of the State and its institutions.’
Mansfield wonders if we’re in an era where the legal profession is imperilled. The State has always tried to silence critics, but the scale of it varies and this moment is especially precarious.
MICHAEL MANSFIELD’S CAREER
Michael Mansfield has long been targeted by undercover police, as he has represented people perceived as a threat since the early 1970s, such as the Angry Brigade.
He continued to represent people who suffered at the hands of the police, e.g. (with Gareth Peirce) the Birmingham 6, families at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, and the families of Jean Charles de Menezes, Pat Finucane and Stephen Lawrence. Among his clients are Ricky Reel’s family, who were targeted by spycops while Ricky’s killers walk free.
If you don’t have lawyers who are willing and able to challenge the State, you remove the right to challenge at all. Yet lawyers that bring such challenges are subjected to attacks and undercover operations.
Undercover surveillance of Mansfield had no justifiable reason. There was no ‘public order’ or ‘public interest’ justification, and no criminality. However, if state sanctioned tactics of unlawful surveillance were designed to intimidate lawyers such as Mansfield, they failed.
LOW EXPECTATIONS OF THE UCPI
He does not have high hopes of this Inquiry, as it is held under the Inquiries Act 2005. Mansfield scathingly descibes the Act as ‘legislation that serves to undermine the rule of law, erode protection of human rights, shake public confidence, and lessen further the independence of the judicial and legal system.’
Furthermore, it was not properly debated, it repealed earlier, more effective laws, and it does not allow parliamentary scrutiny of Inquiry decisions. Also, arbitrary appointments mean such inquiries are never truly independent.
Similarly hasty and equally egregious is the CHIS Bill currently being rushed through Parliament will allow any state agent to be authorised to commit any crime, it’s an open invitation to damage and destroy lives.
RECOMMENDATIONS NOT ACTIONS
In conclusion, Michael Mansfield takes on cases that are uncomfortable to the state, but this should have no bearing on how he is treated. A lawyer is a lawyer. Mansfield is just one of many who have been spied on. This Inquiry must find out the full extent, why it was done, and who authorised it. Mansfield wants a sincere apology to him and to the other core participants.
There is a huge risk that the police will just ignore what they see as yet another set of recommendations. So many hard-won inquiries are just left to gather dust in the Home Office. If the Inquiry fails in this, fear and intimidation could replace fearlessness among lawyers, and we would lose the capacity for challenging state wrongdoing.
Mansfield will not go away quietly. He is clear that for an Inquiry to have real purpose it not only needs powerful and far-reaching guidelines and recommendations, but also their effective implementation. We must criminalise unjustified surveillance of lawyers.
Andrew Trollope QC
(Azhar Khan, Miscarriages of justice)
Andrew Trollope QC
Before lunch, the Inquiry heard from Andrew Trollope QC on behalf of Azhar Khan, a solicitor who was targeted by undercover officers and wrongly prosecuted.
In 2007, the Metropolitan police conceived a covert ‘sting’ operation, culminating in the arrest of Azhar Khan for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. This new and unique operation went beyond covert surveillance, and was a plan for undercover officers to pose as potential criminal clients in order to set him up.
SPYCOPS ENTRAP A SOLICITOR
Azhar Khan began his own solicitor’s practice in 2005, one of the few BAME lawyers to do so.
Settled in a deprived area’of London, he served important local needs, doing mostly legal aid defence work and working for local charities as well. He also worked to encourage BAME men and particularly women to get ahead in the profession.
For some reason police took exception to his work and launched Operation Castration or Castrol. This involved undercover officers posing as criminals to become his clients over a sustained period in order to try to induce him to commit crime. They would have themselves arrested as drug dealers or money launderers then request Khan as their lawyer. The ‘suspects’ were then released on bail.
This sting operation lasted 18 months and involved four spycops and the complicity of six other officers who made the staged arrests, as well as senior officers who reviewed the operation.
Khan’s ‘clients’ offered him the opportunity to launder £50,000, which he refused. They also showed him big bags of tablets, supposedly drugs, offering them to him. Posing as someone from organised crime, one of them kept ringing Khan, seeking meetings and repeatedly tried to lure him into criminal deals.
NO EVIDENCE
By September 2009, there was no evidence of wrongdoing at all. The officer in charge wanted to end the operations. But the spycops trying to dupe Khan said they’d had a meeting where he’d agreed to a crime – this was a complete lie – which led to a renewal of the authorisation.
The spycops were persistently trying to trap Khan into committing crime for a very long period of time, in the face of his impeccable integrity. There were no real grounds, nothing even alleged, that could justify it. It was plainly illegal.
At no stage did Khan agree to any of the various crimes they offered. Nonetheless, police raided his home and office in December 2009, charging him with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
The police later conceded that the staged arrests and procedures at the police stations were designed to deceive Azhar Khan in the course of his professional practice, in order to try and find evidence of criminal conduct by him.
ABUSE OF PROCESS
The objective of the operation was not to investigate any crime of which Azhur Khan was suspected. Rather, it was to ‘integrity test’ his conduct as a criminal defence solicitor by using undercover officers to suggest the commission of crimes to see how he would react’. Over and over again.
Trollope explained that ‘no evidence of any offence on the part of Azhur Khan was gleaned. The clear aim was to put him and his practice City Law Solicitors out of business.’
He continued, ‘one of the most legally and morally objectionable features of the operation was that these attempts were so persistent in the face of Azhur Khan’s repeated failure agree to the suggestions of crime.’
Eventually, the case was thrown out of court, the judge ruling it was abuse of process with no case to answer.
A RACIST OPERATION
The very basis of the operation was racist. As an Asian lawyer, it seems he was singled out in a way that would never have been done if he were white. All the undercover officers in the operation were BAME. Did they think Khan would be more liable to commit crime with them?
Where did they get the idea from? Who else has been treated this way? Which other officers might have given them tactics and advice?
This was spycops acting as agents provocateur, for a long period, against someone for whom there was no evidence of corruption. Khan was a victim of a miscarriage of justice. The Inquiry must find the full extent and justifications of this operation.
Dave Morris
(Social & environmental activists, [appearing in person])
Dave Morris has been a community and political activist for nearly 50 years. He’s best known for being one of the defendants in the ‘McLibel’ Trial along with Helen Steel, but his work encompasses many more issues beyond that.
Just as at the McLibel trial 30 years ago, he has no lawyer covering that period at the Undercover Policing Inquiry and is instead speaking for himself.
Morris opened by outlining his anarchist, workplace, environmental, community, and other activism.
In the 1980s, he was involved in London Greenpeace (a small collective founded in 1971, independent from the later-formed Greenpeace International) which was infiltrated by undercover officers from the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS).
The group began a publicity campaign focused on McDonald’s as an example of what all transnational corporations are doing – opposing their environmental destruction, promotion of junk food, treatment of workers, abuse of animals, exploitation of children, and more. They produced a leaflet called What’s Wrong With McDonald’s. The burger giant sued for libel, presumably expecting them to back down. It was a drastic misjudgement.
McLIBEL
What happened next was the stuff of fiction. Steel and Morris couldn’t afford lawyers and represented themselves in court (assisted behind the scenes by a young barrister prepared to work for free called Keir Starmer) against a large McDonald’s legal team led by a QC charging £2,000 a day. McDonald’s had objected to the whole leaflet, so Steel and Morris had to defend every word. It became the longest trial in English history. In the end there were a number of damning judgements against the fast food giant, and versions of the leaflet were being handed out in millions all over the world.
You can see more about the case in the McLibel documentary and at the campaign website from back in the day McSpotlight.org (which was one of the first of its kind in 1996).
The McLibel Support Campaign around the trial was also infiltrated by spycops. They didn’t know this at the time, so it never came up in court. The spycops weren’t just attending meetings, they played an active part. In 2011, Morris and Steel discovered that ‘Bob Robinson’, who had significantly contributed to the leaflet, was actually undercover police officer Bob Lambert.
PRIVATE SPIES
As well as undercover police infiltrating London Greenpeace, McDonald’s sent at least seven spies into the group, one of whom deceived a genuine member into a six-month relationship.
Sid Nicholson, McDonald’s Vice President and Head of Security, oversaw that spying operation. He’d come to the firm from being the former Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendant in Brixton, following a career in the police in apartheid South Africa. He had stated from the witness box that McDonald’s security department was wholly comprised of ex-police officers. Nicholson had admitted asking friends on the force for information on activists and having a two-way exchange, including home addresses, which was illegal.
Morris referred to footage, obtained from McDonald’s during the McLibel trial and shown in the McLibel documentary, of a London Greenpeace protest at McDonald’s HQ (East Finchley) in 1989. McDonald’s spy Michelle Hooker can be seen handing out anti-McDonald’s leaflets next to spycop John Dines, who scandalously developed a long, intimate relationship with Helen Steel. Sid Nicholson had testified that a Special Branch officer was given ‘a perch’ next to himself at the HQ to jointly observe that very protest in the film. It was later discovered that during the case, yet another spycop Matt Rayner also had an abusive sexual relationship with a woman living next door to Morris in Tottenham.
John Dines and Helen Steel lived together as a couple whilst she, Morris and Keir Starmer made pre-trial preparations. Dines then disappeared. How much privileged legal advice was Dines illegally privy to whilst living with Ms Steel, and what was passed on to McDonald’s?
Steel and Morris sued the Met for sharing their personal information with McDonald’s. The police choose to settle the case out of court, including apologising, paying compensation and committing to inform all London police officers not to do share confidential information to third parties.
The McLibel judgment found that McDonald’s had been responsible for industrial-scale breaches of employment laws and the welfare rights of animals. yet the people who were exposing this were the ones targeted by spycops.
In 2005, the European Court of Human rights found the McLibel case had violated their right to a fair trial and freedom of expression, and they were compensated by the British Government. The Court ruled:
‘The Government had contended that, as the applicants were not journalists, they should not attract the high level of protection afforded to the press under Article 10. However, in a democratic society even small and informal campaign groups, such as London Greenpeace, had to be able to carry on their activities effectively.’
Neither McDonald’s nor the police were ever held to account for any of this.
Since 1968, more than 1,000 groups campaigning in the UK for a better society and world have been spied upon and infiltrated, by secret unaccountable political spycops. They targeted a huge range of groups – environmentalists, trade unions, women’s rights, racial justice, LGBTQ rights, animal rights, as well as campaigning against war, corporate power, repression, and police brutality.
The groups represented in this Inquiry were not terrorists, but were pushing for positive social change in an overwhelmingly public and open way.
Many of the groups spycops targeted have been vindicated by history, their ideas have become mainstream orthodoxy, and some have resulted in legal and other formal recognition by society. Yet any group that challenged the established order seemed to have been deemed a legitimate target of the secret political policing units.
SPYCOPS’ CRIMES
Spycops weren’t merely observing, they infiltrated personal lives. Fake friendships were developed and exploited. Many people, especially women, were deceived into intimate and abusive relationships.
The McLibel 2: Dave Morris & Helen Steel [pic: Spanner Films]
Bugging a phone is recognised as a breach of human rights and police have to apply for a warrant. Spycops hacking people’s lives is infinitely worse and should be totally unacceptable to everyone.
Spycops weren’t aberrations or ‘rogue officers’. This spying was established and conducted with the full sanction of the state and supported by its apparatus and taxpayer funding.
By targeting such groups, spycops show institutional discrimination, racism, sexism and anti-democratic action, including industrial-scale breaches of laws and charters that protect basic human rights and the right to protest.
THE ‘THREAT’ OF SOCIAL JUSTICE, OR RETROSPECTIVE ‘JUSTIFICATIONS’ FOR SPYING?
If spycops are worried about political violence, why were fascists largely left to their own devices while we were spied on? The police plainly have political bias.
Why did the state see social justice as a threat to society? Why didn’t they put spycops into financial corporations, hedge funds, military elites, and power-mad establishment political parties? Such institutions employ and promote daily, mass institutional violence – war, poverty, exploitation of workers, colonialism and environmental destruction – reinforced by PR and manipulation of society for their own selfish ends. There’s your actual threat to public order and well being.
What should we count as ‘extremism’? The Climate Emergency, said Morris, is the most extreme threat we face. In 1968, the American Petroleum Institute commissioned scientists to investigate burning fossil fuels, they discovered ‘there seems to be no doubt that the potential damage to our environment could be severe.’ That was the same time spycops were set up. The oil industry has obstructed efforts to tackle it. Has the oil industry ever been targeted by spycops? If not, why not?
Morris however noted the public outrage at the beginning of 2020 over campaign groups being lumped in with fascist and other terrorist groups in police counter-terrorism documents. This included the Extinction Rebellion (XR) movement which had a few months earlier been blockading roads in central London for over a week calling for action to prevent climate catastrophe. In response to the controversy, the Minister for Security was forced to admit to Parliament that XR was not and should not be categorised as ‘extremist’. So just who are the real extremists?
Morris also tackled MI5’s seemingly dominant role over the secret police spying operations from the very beginning. He stated that MI5 was seeking information about, and the undermining of, groups and movements which are deemed to support ‘subversion of the State’. But Morris said they should look elsewhere – for the last 30 years mass subversion of the State, supported by successive Governments, has been systematically and continuously carried out by unaccountable multinational corporations seeking deregulation of laws protecting society from unrestrained profiteering, and taking over formerly nationalised industries and sectors so that a tiny few can profit from what were once State-run public services.
Adding insult to injury is the deliberate widespread use of ‘tax havens’ and other so-called ‘loopholes’ to annually avoid billions of pounds of taxes due to the State which could have been used for our struggling public services. Millions of people have suffered as a result. But have there been any undercover officers targeting of this serious, industrial-scale daily subversion of the State? He guessed never.
PROTECTING THE PERPETRATORS
Spycop Bob Lambert (right) at McDonald’s handing out the McLibel leaflet he co-wrote, 1986
It took five years of spycops revelations – largely from victims’ own research – to get the promise of the public inquiry, and five more for it to begin. Police and the Inquiry have consistently refused to release lists of officers, or groups targeted, or relevant documents.
Victims of spycops are dismayed by the Inquiry’s prioritising of the protection of the perpetrators’ privacy above the right of victims and the public to know the truth.
As the people who brought this scandal to public awareness, we’ve worked hard to get the justice we and the public are entitled to.
We remain determined to bring the whole murky political policing operation into the public spotlight where it belongs.
DAMAGE LIMITATION
This is supposed to be a public inquiry, but it’s more like a police damage-limitation exercise. The hearings are not yet publicly accessible and nor will they be live-streamed, which is the only way to ensure the public and victims can follow it.
Having covered so much nefarious activity, Morris ended on an optimistic note. Despite being undermined by spycops, movements for positive change are still here and have had many successes. Such movements are needed now more than ever. A better world is possible and it’s up to all of us to support – rather than pay spycops to undermine – efforts for real change.
Imran Khan QC (The Monitoring Group, Justice campaigns)
Imran Khan QC then spoke for the Monitoring Group.
Suresh Grover, founder and director of The Monitoring Group
The Monitoring Group (TMG) was founded by Suresh Grover, who is still a co-director. It is one of the oldest anti-racist organisations in the UK, carrying out advocacy work and supporting struggles for civil rights among ethnic minority groups and migrants. It occupies a unique place within the UK’s social justice network.
The organisation was founded in Southall, London, in the mid-1970s, and originally called the Southall Monitoring Group (SMG). It was inspired by national and global struggles against apartheid. It has made many achievements over 40 years, and has offered trauma support to more than 1,500 victims of racism over the last decade.
Its earliest campaigns were around the murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in June 1976 and Blair Peach, killed during an anti-racist demo in Southall in 1979. Peach’s partner, Celia Stubbs, and her campaign were supported by TMG. It was not until 2010 that the Met released the 1979 report that effectively admitted a police officer had killed Peach.
TMG supported Stephen Lawrence’s family campaign for many years. It also supported the family of Ricky Reel, who was murdered by racists in 1997, and whose family was then targeted by undercover police. Other families supported included that of Michael Menson, also killed in a 1997 attack which, as with Ricky Reel, police wrongly denied was racist in nature. As mentioned earlier in the day, at least 18 such justice campaigns were targeted by undercovers.
Given their involvement with so many spied-on campaigns, the TMG was surely spied upon too. The National Civil Rights Movement (NCRM) was founded by TMG’s Suresh Grover in 1999 to support such campaigns and to push for full implementation of the recommendations from the Macpherson inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence. Undercover police were at the NCRM founding conference. However, Suresh and TMG have had no formal admission they were ever spied on. After five years, they are losing hope that this Inquiry can be transparent and reveal the truth.
POLICE TARGETING OF THE MONITORING GROUP
The first revelation of police surveillance of the Group was made in a 1989 Guardian article. It said, that in 1987 the Southall Monitoring Group was the subject of a report written by Ealing police intelligence officer, PC J.E. Black describing them as a ‘political cell’ set up by the Greater London Council (GLC) to follow an agenda while purporting to be a community organisation.
Police saw anti-racism as being somehow anti-police, and seemed distressed about SMG’s ability to marshal support for causes and cases.
Thereafter, Grover noticed a reluctance from politicians to engage because they did not want to be spied on. There were unexplained burglaries of the office. Grover himself was targeted for arrest. This was not, as the police claimed last week, merely ‘collateral intrusion’ in family justice campaigns. It is a worry then, that Mitting takes the police’s word on that at face value. Operation Herne, the police self-investigation into spycops, effectively treated a lack of surviving files as an implication of innocence – absence of evidence as evidence of absence.
DISLIKE OF RACIAL JUSTICE GROUPS
It’s well established that numerous racial justice groups in the 60s were non-violent yet spied on by the British State fearing civil unrest. That unrest came in 1981, and for the reason the State had feared – ‘racial disadvantage’ was the phrase used by Lord Scarman in his report into the 1981 Brixton disturbances.
Scarman stated:
‘Urgent action is needed if it is not to become an endemic, ineradicable disease threatening the very survival of our society… racial disadvantage and its nasty associate racial discrimination, have not yet been eliminated. They poison minds and attitudes; they are, as long as they remain, and will continue to be a potent factor of unrest’.
The State took none of this on board, instead bringing in Sir Kenneth Newman as Met Commissioner to apply his Northern Ireland experience to Black, Asian and migrant communities in London. There was surely coordination with the Met’s sub-unit of undercover police, the Special Demonstration Squad.
Some people are core participants in the Undercover Policing Inquiry directly because of Newman’s legacy. They were not ‘collateral intrusion’, but deliberately spied upon.
After the 2005 London bombings, TMG worked in Beeston in Leeds, where more than one of the bombers had come from. Grover was twice contacted in the first week by MI5 to discourage him from interacting with the ‘suspect community’.
INQUIRY UNABLE TO INVESTIGATE
As other core participants have mentioned today, Mitting is simply incapable of investigating racism in the police and undercover police if he rejects the Macpherson report’s definition of institutional racism. There must be a diverse panel appointed to help the Chair before the Inquiry starts taking evidence. Otherwise, it cannot fulfil its remit, examining 40 years of undercover police who were guided by bias and discrimination.
Khan recounted psychological studies that show implicit biases even in those who consciously oppose discrimination. An object is more likely to be perceived as a weapon in a Black hand than if it’s in a white one. These studied have proven right those who report subtle discrimination, and people in Mitting’s kind of position would do well to take notice.
Racism does not stand still, it changes size, shape and function. When it becomes institutionalised we are not dealing with prejudice, but power and institutional practices.
By the time this Inquiry reports, it will be nearly 20 years since the Special Demonstration Squad was disbanded. Police will say it is now a historical issue, and that they’ve already learned their lessons. Such assurances cannot be accepted on their own terms, every such claim must be tested by the Inquiry.
To date, TMG has participated in three public inquiries. They initially encouraged people to get involved with this one. They even had the Inquiry’s legal team participate in a public conference they organised. However, the continuing secrecy has been disappointing and damaging to the Inquiry’s credibility.
CREATING ITS OWN PROBLEMS
The Inquiry’s difficulties are of its own makings. It agreed to give spycops anonymity without good reason, and it allowed police and other State bodies to delay it excessively. It has shown remarkable reluctance to address critical areas of racism and sexism because, in reality, it sees them as marginal, issues that are not worthy of its time.
Because of all this, the Inquiry has rejected the chorus of calls for specialist advisers to assist it. In doing all this, the Inquiry has created an uneven playing field tilted in favour of the perpetrators and against their victims.
The Inquiry only exists because of the bravery and tenacity of core participants. It has substance because of the whistle-blower who exposed the skeletons in the first place and journalists who reported the horrors to the public. Its conviction derives from the unshakeable spirit of protestors – Black and white, women and men – who dared to dream for a better world. That dream will live on regardless of the conclusions of this Inquiry.
Pete Weatherby QC
(Newham Monitoring Project [Justice campaigns], & Core Participants who are Political, Social & environmental activists)
Finally, we heard a tremendously powerful and incisive statement from Pete Weatherby QC, speaking for eighteen different core participants.
He began the show with a video clip, of spycop ‘Lynn Watson‘ (EN34) playing the clown.
No, seriously, footage of her being trained up by the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) Leeds, and then taking part in a range of actions with the Clown Army. These included visits to a military recruitment centre, to the US spy-base at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire. It begins in the car park of Hilary Benn MP’s constituency office.
Weatherby asked ‘How on earth was that considered legitimate policing?’
He then showed a picture of spycop ‘Simon Wellings‘ (HN118) wearing a bright orange cardboard ‘tank’ he’d made while infiltrating Globalise Resistance – an anti-war, anti-capitalist network – at an anti-arms trade protest. ‘How was that legitimate policing?’
The absurdity of investing massive resources into groups of this kind illustrated what the debacle of the last fifty years of undercover political policing looks like; farcical yet deeply damaging.
Millions of pounds (which could have been spent on other public budgets) were mis-spent over the decades of State-sanctioned, clandestine activities by the police, monitoring justice campaigns, anti-racism and anti-police violence groups, environmental campaigns, community and solidarity networks, animal rights groups, and the political activism of rebel clowns, musicians, artists, campaigners, and others – the vast majority of them on the political left.
These images do not represent a light-hearted point. There is actually nothing funny to see here. These operations were profoundly sinister, and an affront to democracy itself.
More than five years in to the Inquiry, and none of the groups and individuals he represents have received any meaningful disclosure. It looks likely that they will have to wait until at least 2022 for the Inquiry to deal with their cases.
While ‘Lynn Watson’ and ‘Simon Wellings’ have their rights protected by the Inquiry’s restriction orders, the rights of his clients are treated as secondary. They are all being made to wait.
FACTS WITHOUT DETAILS
For example, the Newham Monitoring Project may have been spied on throughout their thirty year history (from 1980 onwards) but they have yet to be told who spied on them, or when.
His clients include an array of anti-war, anti-arms trade, environmental, anti-hunt, social justice and Palestinian rights activists – some of them know some details of their surveillance and infiltrations, but only because they exposed these undercover activities themselves.
They remain in the dark. The lack of transparency, and the enormous delay, has sapped the trust of non-state core participants, and risks undermining the credibility of the entire Inquiry. This Inquiry, Weartherby declared, needs to do better.
He noted that the live-streaming is due to be switched off tonight for the rest of the five years or so of the Inquiry. Mitting has ruled that ‘in-person access’ will be limited to those core participants who are able to attend in the current circumstances. Everyone else will be left with just a delayed transcript. Other Inquiries have securely broadcast their public hearings, and the refusal to do so here has left people feeling excluded and alienated.
The core participants’ ability to make opening statements has been substantially diminished, by the failure to provide them with even basic facts or disclosure. Did Parliament, when they made the Inquiries Act, ever envisage that an Inquiry would make its core participants blind to what was going on? Of course not.
SECRECY ABOUT SECRETS
Pete Weatherby QC
Weatherby spoke of the palpable imbalance between State and non-state core participants. The former have all the information and the material, the latter have next to none. This is the very reverse of how a healthy public inquiry should be. The State should be compelled to show their hand, but have largely chosen not to.
That an Inquiry established to shed light on the secretive, undercover activities of the police against ordinary citizens, should itself perpetuate secrecy and obfuscation is beyond irony. This undermines trust, and also promotes failure.
Instead of seeking to side-line non state core participants, or to keep them uninformed, this Inquiry should embrace their knowledge and actively seek out their assistance.
Without their scrutiny, their full and effective participation, the Inquiry may assume that the evidence produced by the spycops and their managers is truthful, correct and reliable, and it will fail to get to the truth.
A public inquiry should be independent and rigorous, not deference to a State narrative, especially not one hell-bent on secrecy, on distortion, and on covering up its wrongdoing.
NOT ASKING FOR THE TRUTH
We have asked the Chair – back in 2019, and ever since – to require the State core participants to provide position statements, that ‘set out their stall’, by this stage of the Inquiry, to hold their hands up to what went wrong, and perhaps even apologise.
Sir John Mitting has the power to make such requests, but has refused to do so, despite his legal duty to maximise openness and disclosure (section 18 of the Inquiries Act), to act in the public interest and with candour.
The Chairs of other current Inquiries – including Grenfell and Manchester Arena – have insisted on position statements and specified the issues to be addressed in them.
The Met claimed just last week that “the Met would assist the Inquiry in every way it can”. Yet they do not intend to comment on the evidence until the very end of the process, many more years down the line. This is not assisting, or acting in the public interest; it only serves to defend the Met.
The police have had plenty of time to examine their own behaviour and, by now, really should be able to admit to their wrong-doings.
The Chair could compel the Met to provide a chronology, and more details of the deployments, who was involved and whether the Met now believes they were justified or not – this would save time and resources – but instead he seems to take the police at their word when they say they no longer use spycops for ‘counter-subversion’, and not insist on answers even to his own questions.
SWAGGERING ARROGANCE
How can all this be described as ‘helping the Inquiry’? This is the swaggering arrogance of an institution which cannot see beyond its own interests, a public body that is hopelessly institutionally defensive, that puts its own reputation above the public interest.
Candour is the oxygen of justice. This Inquiry has two choices: it can either back off, and let the police see what they can get away with, or it can step up, be more robust, and demand position statements.
It’s not just Mitting who wants answers; the core participants and the wider public need them, and are entitled to them.
The delays have already caused huge distress to those involved. Why not save time and money by compelling the State bodies to tell us all: Which undercover operations will they defend? Which will they admit were wrong? Taking this common-sense approach could help the Inquiry gain a valuable commodity – the confidence of non state core participants.
WON’T ADMIT WHAT THEY KNOW
During the last five years, the Met must surely have looked into the deceitful relationships that the spycops formed. Why is it so difficult for them to come clean about the extent of this? Why won’t they shine a light on these practices? And why will the Inquiry not require them to do so?
The Met have already conceded that this Inquiry is likely to find that some deployments were ‘not justifiable’. They must have reached this conclusion for themselves, and in that case they should be able to tell us more details.
Let the police provide their justifications. Let them explain to the public why the mass infiltration of campaign groups for over 50 years was justified. Let them tell us why they infiltrated a clown movement, or a samba band. Surely this is the correct starting point for any investigation into these abuses?
The State should be made to tell us what lessons they have learnt, and what they have undertaken never to do again.
Any pretence that ‘political policing’ only began with the Special Demonstration Squad in 1968 is wrong. The pretence that the police are ‘neutral’ is wrong. Political policing doesn’t just happen elsewhere.
The substantial violations of civil and political rights, and the individual human rights of those involved, are the same as we see in authoritarian regimes around the world.
The Inquiry should remind itself of the rhetoric used by repressive regimes around the world, which seek to silence political voices, which challenge the official narrative, while pretending to respect international human rights norms, including freedom of expression and assembly, and respect for personal autonomy.
HISTORIC WRONGS
Last week we learnt that the likes of the Croydon Libertarians and the Women’s Liberation Movement were spied on in the early 1970s, but this does not ‘beggar belief’.
It is well-documented that the women’s suffrage movement was targeted by spycops. Would the police now seek to justify the State’s infiltration of women campaigning for the right to vote, of anti-slavery campaigns in the 19th century, or other suffrage campaigns, from Peterloo to the Chartists?
Why are these more recent protestors – for nuclear disarmament, against fracking, against road-building and against hospital closures – fair game?
Dissenters are often the drivers of social change. Slavery was abolished as a result of mass campaigns, building on and amplifying slave revolts. Protest and radical dissent has always involved friction with the State, and the State uses this form of policing to undermine that dissent.
The suffragettes and the slavery abolitionists were on the right side of history, and so are those who oppose racism, fox-hunting, and illegal or immoral wars today. The institutional racism of the police, identified and campaigned against by the Newham Monitoring Project (NMP), is now broadly recognised. Though, as this Inquiry illustrates, it remains as entrenched as ever.
DISSENT ISN’T MEANT TO BE CONVENIENT
Civil rights don’t exist to protect those who are comfortable complying with the status quo. They’re not needed for that; they’re a bulwark against authoritarianism.
Demonstrations and protests are often perceived to be a nuisance, or inconvenient, or tiresome, by those who are unsympathetic to their aims. However, freedom of expression is a human right. Citizens don’t need the permission of the police to protest.
In response to the claim made at the Inquiry last week by Oliver Sanders QC, representing the majority of former spycops, it is not ‘totalitarian’ to do what the NMP have done: to call out institutional police racism, or to protect their community from racist attacks. The police claim neutrality, but it was mainly progressive, social justice and left-wing groups that were targeted by the spycops units.
It is not for any limb of the State to insert itself into, curtail or spy on political and social justice activists, nor insert itself into the minutiae of peoples’ lives because they disagree with government policy or campaign to change the law or for a better society.
Lord Hoffman stated that ‘civil disobedience on conscientious grounds has a long and honourable history in this country,’ and went on to recognise that history sometimes vindicated such activism. He talked of ‘conventions’ on both sides: ‘protesters behave with a sense of proportion, and police and prosecutors, on the other hand, behave with restraint’. But what restraint have the spycops shown?
Weatherby then explained more about the core participants he represents.
NEWHAM MONITORING PROJECT
Newham Monitoring Project was established in 1980, by Black activists & white anti-racists, to fight racism in East London. This included racism perpetrated by the police, and the police’s failure to properly investigate racist murders, like that of Akhtar Ali Baig.
In NMP’s own words:
“For NMP the term ‘Black’ was a colour of resistance; it included African, Caribbean, Asian and all other ‘people of colour’ in a political sense. Our enemy was a political enemy which oppressed across Black communities. We recognised the nature of that enemy and the need for unity in combatting it. Whilst we did not ignore the cultural differences which these days increasingly appear to divide the community, we rejected the way ethnicity was used to marginalise our communities”.
In its very earliest incarnation NMP was to be purely a resource for the community through which to collate and disseminate information about the nature and scale of racist violence in Newham. This limited role was very quickly overtaken by the political reality of racist violence. Racism and racist violence are politicising phenomena. Those who experience them are not passive recipients of the violence and the hatred. The experience radicalises and politicises.
NMP developed its political analysis, its understanding of how race and class were linked, and grew over the years. They were well-known and respected for their work, which included combatting racist violence around the home, and defending members of the community from criminalisation. Was this what made the spycops take an interest? NMP have no idea, as they have not been provided with any information as yet.
NMP also countered fascist attacks; less organised, ‘casual’, racist violence from white football gangs; and police racism and violence, including stop and search and the replacement of the ‘sus’ laws with low level Public Order Act prosecutions. Was this the reason they were infiltrated? Because they challenged the police’s wrong-doing?
They articulated and exposed the institutional racism of the police (and other public bodies) long before the Macpherson Inquiry. They highlighted police corruption, they called out police racism. Were they infiltrated because their work threatened to damage the police’s reputation? Were they targeted because they were a Black-led organisation?
Every annual report produced by NMP was sent to the local Newham Commander. These should have already been supplied to this Inquiry, if the Met have upheld their disclosure duties.
Like other non state core participants, NMP are deeply frustrated about the lack of disclosure. What might it show? Did the spycops infiltrate NMP in order to gather information about other justice campaigns? They were connected to many campaigns, some of which are also core participants, like the Lawrence family.
The local police disliked, even hated, NMP. They exposed ‘community policing’ as a lie, at odds with the truth how racialised communities were policed. In the 1980s and 1990s there was an “extraordinary” lack of police accountability, and police violence was routine. The Black Lives Matter movement of this century shows that the structural issues highlighted by NMP haven’t gone away. To what extent is that due to spycops undermining the work of groups like NMP?
HUNT SABOTEURS ASSOCIATION
The Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) has campaigned against bloodsports since 1963, mainly by disrupting hunts.
Seemingly vindicated by the Hunting Act 2004, which banned the hunting of wild mammals with dogs, the HSA’s work has been forced to continue due to widespread flouting of the ban, and the badger cull.
The reasons why the HSA was targeted by spycops remain unclear. Was this due to political pressure, given the quintessentially ‘Establishment’ activity of fox hunting, and the status of those who support it? Or was it because the police sought to conflate the disruption of hunts – civil disobedience – with ‘violent extremism’?
There is a long history of violence, including serious violence, and harassment from hunt supporters against HSA activists. Even the SDS Tradecraft Manual contains a complaint from one undercover officer about the way in which his uniformed colleagues treated animal rights activists.
No fewer than nine spycops are now confirmed to have infiltrated the HSA, in the 19 years between 1983 and 2002. “The HSA doubt that they have been spared the attentions of the police before and after this time.
The targeting of a group like the HSA, who tended to use lawful tactics, cannot be justified. There is widespread public support for their main aim, which is why the law was eventually changed.
Why were they infiltrated by spycops? Was this done to disrupt and derail their efforts to change the law? Or to provide “n easy gateway for spycops to spy on other groups and individuals? Is this justifiable?
Another issue raised was miscarriages of justice. It appears that information supplied by spycops led to the arrests of hunt saboteurs. They failed to prevent (or prosecute) violence on the part of hunt supporters.
Were undercover officers told to look the other way? Was their involvement covered up? Did they encourage illegal activity as agents provocateurs? Did they supply hunt sabs’ personal details for illegal blacklisting?
Some of the officers who infiltrated hunt sab groups also deceived women into intimate relationships, and other activists into close personal ‘friendships’, even holidaying abroad with them (presumably under their false aliases, using false passports).
EMILY APPLE
Emily Apple has been an activist all of her adult life, involved in numerous campaigns. She was a founding member of the Network for Police Monitoring (Netpol) and of FITwatch (set up to counter the police’s ‘Forward Intelligence Teams’).
She has been arrested countless times, typically without basis. She was involved in campaigning against the arms trade (including the biannual DSEI arms fair), against war, and for environmental causes (including the Earth First! network).
She has encountered at least seven spycops while active in these groups. There are serious issues related to Apple’s arrests and legal privilege.
Apple was not just spied on by these police officers. During her time working with the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, she was also reported on by Martin Hogbin, a corporate spy, employed by BAe Systems.
RHYTHMS OF RESISTANCE/ NICOLA BENGE
Nicola Benge is a core participant in her own right, as well as being part of Rhythms of Resistance (RoR), a samba band that played at numerous protests in the 2000s. RoR still have no idea who spied on them, nor when, but suspect that they too might have been considered an easy gateway for spycops who wished to target other groups.
Benge was involved in other groups that are known to have been spied on in some way, for example the Advisory Service for Squatters’. But, like RoR, they have not yet been given any disclosure or details by this Inquiry either. She remains completely in the dark, as do the other musicians.
GLOBALISE RESISTANCE/ GUY TAYLOR
Guy Taylor worked as an organiser for Globalise Resistance between 2001-07. Founded with the aim of bridging the gap between the trade union movement and other activists, this network was infiltrated by HN118, known to them as ‘Simon Wellings‘.
Spycop Simon Wellings
Wellings deceived Taylor into what he believed to be a close personal friendship. As well as making the orange tank, Wellings got himself elected onto the group’s steering committee, and acted as the group’s photographer (presumably an ideal opportunity for his handlers to collect photos of many activists)
He travelled to other countries to attend protests with the group – including the United States, Spain and France – making a mockery of this Inquiry’s remit being limited to events in England and Wales.
He had access to, and influence over, Globalise Resistance itself but also other connected campaigns and groups. What did he feed back about trade unions – including the Communications Workers Union and Unison – and the Green Party? What was the justification for this? Why was he allowed to assume such a prominent role in the organisation? To what extent did he influence and derail the group? Why was he permitted to travel overseas?
Ultimately, Wellings was exposed by his own error – he mistakenly left a message on an activist’s phone, with a recording of a conversation between him and his spycops handlers.
Despite making several ‘Subject Access Requests’ to the Met, Taylor still has no disclosure relating to Wellings, which casts significant doubt on the police’s disclosure integrity.
‘NRO’
‘NRO’ is a medical professional and an academic. He is a deeply committed and life-long campaigner on matters related to social justice and freedom of expression. He wants to know why he was targeted.
Spycop Jackie Anderson
In the 2000s, he was part of a broadly anti-capitalist group known as the WOMBLES (a distinctive presence at protests, they wore white overalls, padding & helmets to protect them from police violence). He knows that he was spied on by EN32 (‘Rod Richardson‘) and HN77 (‘Jackie Anderson‘) during his time with the WOMBLES.
‘NRO’ was also involved with Aktivix, who provide web services for activists, and Indymedia, an open, independent reporting/ publishing network used by activists.
Indymedia was set up as an alternative to the corporate media. At its peak, the network consisted of around 150 local collectives, spread across the globe. UK Indymedia had its servers repeatedly seized by the police.
‘NRO’ has questions – about spycops’ involvement in these server seizures, about the online surveillance of activists, about the spycops’ use of platforms such as Indymedia. Spycops used to post news and comments on Indymedia, and it is believed that spycops used Indymedia to post fake news stories (prsumably to undermine campaigns, or perhaps justify their deployments) , as well as to gather information.
INDRA DONFRANCESCO, MEGAN & MORGANA DONFRANCESCO
Indra Donfranceso has been active in environmental groups, including Earth First!, for most of her adult life. Morgana and Megan are her daughters; they attended numerous protests, campaigns, meetings, and related social events, throughout their childhood.
Mark Kennedy befriended the family in 2003, and was close to all three of them. He volunteered to be the photographer at her wedding in 2007, and they shared a 40th birthday party with others two years later. What happened to the photos?
Megan and Morgana both thought of ‘Mark Stone’ as an uncle figure. Learning that he was in fact an undercover officer has affected them badly. One of the women Kennedy deceived into a relationship, ‘Lisa‘, was a close friend of Indra’s.
How was befriending a family, including young children, justifiable? Are these the actions of a responsible, accountable police force?
Such corrupt and depraved behaviour shames not just the officer but those who organised and those who facilitated the system, as well as those who still seek to make excuses for the spycops now.
CLANDESTINE INSURGENT REBEL CLOWN ARMY (CIRCA)/ JENNIFER VERSON
Spycop ‘Lynn Watson’
This network was formed in 2003, by writers, educators, performing artists and other activists, in response to a State visit by George W Bush, and the war in Iraq. They obtained Arts Council funding to tour the UK and put on performances and workshops. They used humour and performance to make their points and sometimes mock the police.
For three years, Jennifer Verson was involved in training up new clowns, including at least one spycop, EN34, known as ‘Lynn Watson‘. CIRCA had close links with other groups, including RoR and the Dissent Network (opposing the G8 Summit in 2005).
How on earth could anyone believe that infiltrating a performing arts group was justified? It may seem obvious to us that this was a huge waste of public funds, but the fact that this was not obvious to those running the spycops unit must not be overlooked.
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT (ISM)
The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a Palestinian-led group, with branches around the world. ISM sends volunteers with the privilege of a foreign passport to Palestine, to bear witness and document, and where possible protest Palestinians from human rights violations, harassment and persecution.
Spycop Rob Harrison
The group’s activities in England and Wales just involved leafleting and stalls. What was the justification for surveillance? There is a suspicion that information gathered by the spycops may well have been passed to foreign agencies.
Asa Winstanley, an investigative journalist who writes about Palestine, got involved in ISM in 2004. Atif Choudhury and ‘MCD’ were also associated with the London ISM group. All three were devastated and deeply traumatised to learn about the infiltration of the group by spycop HN118 ‘Rob Harrison‘.
Choudhury considered ‘Harrison’ a close friend – he even DJed at the wedding of Choudhury’s sister. Harrison’s depravity did not stop there. He used his connection to Choudhury to deceive a young neighbour, ‘Maya’, into a sexual relationship, as we heard yesterday.
MCD’s activism has been motivated by her Quaker faith and commitment to active pacifism. All three of these core participants struggle to understand how this intrusion into their lives could possibly be justified.
‘VSP’
Spycop ‘Marco Jacobs’
‘VSP’ has been involved in many campaigns and groups, including the Cardiff Anarchist Network (CAN). She has been arrested many times, and has been targeted by both overt and covert policing. She has been strip-searched, and mocked and jeered by officers whilst naked, and as a result has received several settlements from the police.
She was spied on by ‘EN1’ (Marco Jacobs) and Mark Kennedy. ‘Jacobs’ became close to VSP and her family, and initiated two sexual relationships with female friends of hers. He sowed so much disruption and division within CAN that the group stopped functioning.
He often put himself forward to travel abroad (sometimes alongside Kennedy) and represent CAN at activist meetings. Did they sabotage these meetings?
WHEN DO WE GET ANSWERS?
The victims have given up significant details of their lives and activities, in their core participancy applications, and in the written Opening Statement. However, none of them are mentioned in the Opening Statements of the police or the Counsel to the Inquiry, and they have yet to be provided with any further details of the spying on them. How much longer must they wait?
There was, and is, no justification for the undercover operations which intruded into their lives, their families and careers, nor is there any justification for the Inquiry to delay them being provided with information.
The Newham Monitoring Project pull no punches in their written Annex:
“It is essential that it be appreciated that we have no faith in this Inquiry. Characterised as it is by extraordinary secrecy, a total lack of accountability and transparency, all aggravated by the absence of adequate representation and constant delay, we are confident this is not a forum through which the actions of the police can be properly explored and scrutinised.
“Those quaintly described as ‘core participants’ are engaged, tantalised, and seduced by the promise of disclosure. This interest will, we believe, remain wholly unrequited. Any meaningful disclosure is unlikely to materialise in any real sense because the overriding priority appears to be the protection of those officers deployed. In any event, we have no faith that the relevant records have not already been destroyed. Yet the illusion must be maintained because the continued involvement of the ‘core participants’ adds infinitely to the credibility of a process that is already bankrupt.”
Phillippa Kaufmann QC (Women deceived into relationships by spycops, represented by Birnberg Peirce, Hickman & Rose and Hodge Jones & Allen)
Heather Williams QC (People in relationships with spycops, represented by Bindmans)
Heather Williams QC (Relatives of deceased people whose identity was stolen by spycops)
Phillippa Kaufmann QC (Women deceived into relationships by spycops, and justice campaigns, instructed by Harriet Wistrich [excluding Newham Monitoring Project])
Helen Steel, who was in numerous spied-on groups and deceived into a relationship by an undercover officer, was also due to speak, but her opening statement is to be rescheduled.
The penultimate day of opening statements mainly heard the harrowing stories of women who were deceived into long-term intimate relationships by undercover police officers. There were also contributions of behalf of people whose children have died and whose identity was, or may have been, stolen by spycops.
Prior to the first speaker, Mitting had a meeting with Dave Smith and two of the lawyers representing women deceived by undercover police officer ‘Carlo Neri’ (real Name Carlo Soracchi). This was due to an objection made to the Inquiry regarding the use of Soracchi’s surname, which prevented Dave Smith giving his open statement on Friday afternoon.
The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, decided that even though the name Carlo Soracchi has been in the public domain for a long time, he will ban anyone from saying it at the Inquiry until further notice.
Phillippa Kaufmann QC
(Women deceived into relationships by spycops, represented by Birnberg Peirce, Hickman & Rose and Hodge Jones & Allen)
Phillippa Kaufmann QC
Phillippa Kaufmann QC started proceedings, speaking on behalf of 21 different women who were deceived by spycops. Her written statement gives details of each woman’s story, but there are too many to include in detail in the oral statement.
This fact alone underlines the importance of what she says, and the fact that this abuse of women was absolutely systemic. Her oral statement focused mainly on the common issues and themes that the written statement addresses.
She began by saying that we now know of more than 30 women who were deceived in this way – some of them are represented by other lawyers in this Inquiry – with the earliest case that we know of dating back to 1975 (‘Mary’ and ‘Rick Gibson‘).
It is likely that there are still other women out there who have yet to discover that their personal lives were infiltrated in this way. The extensive anonymity given to former spycops by this Inquiry means that these women will continue to be denied the truth. In turn, this will also hamper the inquiry from reaching the truth.
Most of the women who were deceived were involved to some degree in political or campaigning activity – which is protected by law – challenging oppression and injustice, and seeking a better, more sustainable world. However, some of the women were not themselves political, they just happened to be useful to officers giving them ‘cover’ to gain entry to, or maintain ties with, political groups.
To the extent that there was any ‘legitimate policing interest’ at all in the groups with which the women were involved, it is out of all proportion to the devastation inflicted by the infiltration of their bodies, emotional lives, families and homes.
THE MOST COMPLETE INVASION OF PRIVACY
These relationships amounted to the most serious violations of the women’s human rights, including their rights to privacy, to freedom of expression and association, and most significantly, their right not to be subject to inhuman or degrading treatment. It is the most complete invasion of privacy that it is possible for the state to enact.
Kaufmann made it very clear: there was – and could be – no lawful excuse for such seriously abusive relationships. It is frankly insulting to suggest otherwise.
Talk then turned to the ‘institutional sexism’ that drove this practice – itself a reflection of deeply sexist attitudes that pervaded the police in general, and the spycops units in particular. The women were treated as objects, as props to shore up the officers’ fake identities, without any concern for the impact on their lives.
Kaufmann’s statement had profound power as it detailed so many women who have been so deeply, personally and cynically abused by undercover police officers. It is impossible for this report to summarise effectively, and we urge you to read the opening pages of the full written statement.
AN OVERVIEW OF SOME OF THE WOMEN’S STORIES
This began with ‘Lizzie‘ who met Mike Chitty and began a relationship in 1985 He disappeared suddenly, ‘to Florida’, then reappeared and tried to restart the relationship. It appears that he had finished his deployment and, without his managers’ knowledge, was returning to the people he’d spied on for social reasons.
Belinda Harvey had a two-year relationship with ‘Bob Robinson’ – spycop Bob Lambert – starting in May 1987. During this time, he confided in her and she tried to persuade him not to take part in the burning down of a Debenham’s shop in 1987. Lambert had her flat raided by Special Branch on the pretext of looking for ‘Robinson’.
Helen Steel was deceived into a relationship by undercover officer John Dines in 1990. She’s previously described it, saying:
“In a short space of time I fell absolutely madly in love with him in a way I had never fallen in love with anyone before or since. He said he wanted us to have kids”.
Helen spent years looking for John Dines after he vanished from her life.
‘Denise’ had a relationship with ‘Matt Rayner‘ between 1991-94. Although the officer has admitted it, the Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting, has reneged on the promise to tell all the deceived women the real names of the officers who abused them.
‘Bea’ had a relationship with ‘Bobby Lewis’ in 1992-93. She did not find out until 2019 that he had been one of the spycops.
‘Jessica‘ was just 19 when she was groomed into a year-long relationship by Andy Coles. He was her first serious partner. She thought he was a 24 year old single activist, but he was a 32 year old married police oficer with children. Coles is now a Conservative Party councillor in Peterborough.
‘Alison‘ was involved in anti-fascist and trade union politics when she met Mark Cassidy. They lived together for five years and he completely integrated himself into her life and family.
‘Monica‘ and ‘Ruth‘ were both involved in Reclaim the Streets when they were deceived into relationships by ‘Jim Sutton’, aka Jim Boyling.
‘James Straven‘ deceived three women into relationships: Wendy, Sara and Ellie. He has lied to this Inquiry not once but twice about his contact with Ellie.
Kaufmann also represents five of the women who were deceived into relationships by ‘Mark Stone’ – who we now know to be Mark Kennedy. This includes Kate Wilson, ‘Lisa‘ (who had a committed six-year relationship with him and uncovered his true identity in 2010), ‘Naomi‘, ‘Jane‘, and ‘C’. By the time ‘C’ got involved with Kennedy, he had already started working for a private security firm, Global Open.
‘Maya’ met ‘Rob Harrison‘ and began a relationship in May 2006 in which he was manipulative and controlling. He disappeared from her life but then reappeared much later in 2015, long after the spycops scandal was common knowledge and the public inquiry had been called, seemingly just to have sex with her once more before disappearing forever.
To illustrate the lengths and depths the undercover officers went to deceive and use the women, and the profound life-changing affects it has had on those women, Kaufmann went into some detail about ‘Rosa’ and her relationship with SDS officer Jim Boyling, who used the name ‘Jim Sutton’, as well as Rosa’s extraordinary investigatory efforts to get to the truth the State was denying her.
Rosa was deceived into a relationship by Boyling, who she met as a fellow activist in the urban environmental group Reclaim the Streets and became deeply involved with him in 1999. He disappeared suddenly from her life in the summer of 2000, after behaving erratically and sometimes abusively. He had appeared to be in a fragile mental state and told her that he was going to go off travelling alone, to Turkey, to find himself.
Boyling phoned Rosa and sent her a postcard. She was so worried about his safety that she contacted the Foreign Office. Rosa turned detective and tracked down some phone numbers Jim had called, but the men who answered seemed alarmed by her seeking Jim. She searched for years, but could not find any trace of the history of ‘Jim Sutton’. He continued to manipulate her by asking that she continue writing to him – in retrospect, Rosa thinks so he and his handlers could track her.
ROSA’S INVESTIGATIONS
She used all her savings trying to identify him. She went to South Africa, searching where he said he’d gone. But the digital fingerprints of his emails suggested he was actually in London, so she returned. She worked out his real name, Jim Boyling, and found his school records. Her weight dropped and her health suffered. Just as Rosa was getting close to the truth, Jim was sent back into her life as suddenly as he had vanished. Her relief after all her searching was overwhelming. He now told Rosa that he was an undercover officer, but also told her that he now hated the police and needed her help to escape them. Within two weeks of their reunion, she was pregnant.
She was already suffering serious psychological trauma, which he exploited. He convinced her to change her name by deed poll, oversaw the destruction of her address book, and pressured her to sever ties with her activist friends. Despite his promises, he continued working for the police, alongside Bob Lambert at the Muslim Contact Unit.
THREATS FROM THE MET
Boyling told Rosa that her old activist community was riddled with spycops. He told her about Helen Steel’s being spied on by multiple officers, including Steel’s partner John Dines. Boyling said that any attempt to tell people about it would be spotted before she managed to do anything. He told her she couldn’t be sure which of her old friends were who they said they were.
Jim Boyling whilst undercover in the 1990s
Rosa wanted to work out a way of getting a message to Helen Steel. Boyling’s behaviour had become worse, more erratic, more abusive, but Rosa felt trapped – she now had two children and Women’s Aid said that, as she was fleeing a police officer, they could not guarantee that their ‘safe house’ would offer enough protection.
Things only got worse after Boyling arranged for them to marry at a registry office. The children were both diagnosed with degenerative health conditions. As she watched her children lose their ability to communicate, she was angry that their brightest years had been stolen by the paranoia, fear and abuse that Boyling had inflicted.
Suddenly Rosa received a ‘welfare visit’ from two of Boyling’s police colleagues. One of them was Boyling’s manager Bob Lambert, the other was an unpleasant character called ‘Noel’. He had previously told her to call him if she needed any support. Now he told her that any attempt to reveal the truth would fail because she was up against the full might of Special Branch. She realised his previous offer of help had actually been manipulating her into giving him early warning of any intention on her part to leave.
ESCAPE TO THE TRUTH
Rosa finally felt able to flee in 2007. She got a letter passed to Helen Steel in 2010 and was finally able to meet up with activists later that year. Boyling remained a police officer until 2018, when he was eventually sacked by a disciplinary tribunal because of his relationship with Rosa.
The tribunal itself highlighted some of the lies and inconsistencies told by Boyling, to his managers as well as Rosa. He claimed in his defence that she was ‘an apolitical waitress’ when they met, while in reports made while undercover he described her as a ‘political organiser’.
Rosa wonders to what extent will this Inquiry be able to understand the abuses committed by these spycops units?
THE IMPORTANCE OF ACTIVISTS TO THE INQUIRY
Kaufmann went on to highlight just how important activists, and in particular the women who had the relationships, were in bringing the spycops scandal into the public domain. She highlighted how both opening statements last week statements by Counsel for the Inquiry and Peter Francis had severely underplayed their role.
For instance, Mark Kennedy’s cover was blown by ‘Lisa‘. She thought she was in a relationship with ‘Mark Stone’, but then she found a passport in his real name, and emails from children calling him ‘dad’. Having heard from other protestors about the doubts and suspicions around their comrades ‘Jim Sutton’, ‘Lynn Watson‘ and ‘Rod Richardson‘, Lisa gathered a small team of friends to do more research to uncover who he really was.
Some research had already been done by Rosa and Helen Steel, both of whom had figured out the truth about their relationships with spycops.
Helen spent long years trying to find Dines, and even travelled to New Zealand as part of her search. She worked out that he must have been a police officer, but people told her she was paranoid, ‘that such a thing would never happen in this country’.
These women used their persistence and skill, and their own resources. They uncovered information that brought them to the truth. That included ‘Rosa’ and Helen and ‘Lisa’, but also Belinda and ‘Alison’. In 2011, they and three other women began legal proceedings.
PATTERN OF ABUSE
The women clearly see that the catalogue of similarities in their cases proves that this wasn’t the work of individual officers lacking adequate supervision. The women are the ones who did the investigations, who are the most familiar with the details, and so are best placed to spot the patterns. This is why this Inquiry must allow them to participate meaningfully in the process and get to the truth.
Kate Wilson has brought a case in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), the court that deals with surveillance infringing on human rights. She has had to do this alone, as women abused before the Human Rights Act 1998 cannot bring a case, nor can the seven women to whom the Met apologised in 2015, as the settlement bans them from further legal action on the issue.
Wilson’s IPT case shows how important the activist perspective is to get to the truth.
She pointed out that:
‘I have no criminal convictions, even for minor offences, and the only reason that these officers entered my life at all was because I was expressing my political views and exercising my right to protest.’
She has only received a fraction of the 10,000 pages the Met admit having on her, and even then it’s been heavily redacted. Yet still, she says:
‘even that tiny and over-redacted sample has answered more of my burning questions than seven years of police defence statements and admissions… it was not simply a lack of supervision, there was active collusion by management in the relationship and direct manipulation of my political activity.’
These were social and environmental campaigners, not terrorists. However, even if these women had been terrorists there is no justification in law for the practice of forming relationships. It inherently sexist, degrading, and cannot be justified.
Kate Wilson and Mark Kennedy
These women fell in love with men who were seemingly perfect. The exit strategies used by spycops officers were cruel, caused huge amounts of worry and fear, and all of these women have been left dealing with massive trauma.
‘Lisa’ said that Mark Kennedy was placed into my life to deceive me by an employer who would inevitably one day pull him out. Finding this out has broken my heart, devastated my life and shattered my trust in people.’
The women all describe the deep pain caused by these officers, many years later. They talk about losing their trust, their sense of self, their sadness and grief, their anger, the debilitating effects, how this news has affected them, and the impossibility of finding closure.
When the state has put an imposter in your life that is hugely destabilising. Almost all of the women no longer feel able to participate in the campaigns and movements that were once such an important part of their lives.
These abuses have had an impact on their ability to form and maintain relationships ever since, and an impact on their families and friends, and especially on their children.
REFLECTIONS OF MANIPULATION
The spycops used a range of techniques to deceive and manipulate these women, including ‘mirroring’, a form of emotional manipulation where the deceiver pretends to have the same interests and experiences to initiate a coercive and abusive relationship.
Andy Coles told some of ‘Jessica’s’ friends that he had been adopted (like her); Mark Kennedy claimed to have grown up in Battersea (like Kate) when seeking a relationship with her, yetwhen courting ‘C’ he told her that when he was growing up he had spent time at the same local park in Norwich thatshe had gone to as a child. There are also indications that spycops shared knowledge about individuals with one another in order to facilitate mirroring.
Almost universally, the undercover officers told life stories of loss and bereavement, playing on the women’s emotions.
METROPOLITAN POLICE – DODGING ACCOUNTABILITY
Kaufmann also revealed the utter hypocrisy of the Met’s repeated claims that they’re keen to cooperate with this Inquiry (and connected court cases). In reality, they have deployed every obstructive and delaying tactic at their disposal. This has, as they are surely aware, prolonged and compounded the damage to the women they have abused.
Kate Wilson outside the Royal Courts of Justice, 3 October 2018
In 2011, Kate Wilson, ‘Lisa’ and ‘Naomi’ brought a claim and the Met agreed to give disclosure of documents. They said it was a problem of ‘rogue officers’, who had not been authorised to do what they did.
Then in June 2012, the Met rescinded their promise of documents and tried to have the claim struck out. They said that the officers were authorised after all, as a way of taking the case out of open courts and putting it into the jurisdiction of the secret courts of the IPT.
In the same month, the Met replied to five more women saying that they’d just remembered they have an absolute policy of ‘Neither Confirm Nor Deny’ on anything to do with undercover work.
The Met then applied to strike out both cases on the grounds that ‘Neither Confirm Nor Deny’ (NCND) was an inviolable principle. Helen Steel, one of the five, performed a forensic dissection of that assertion, showing it to be a blatant lie, made to protect abusers and avoid accountability.
WHEN IS A SPYCOP NOT A SPYCOP?
It was pointed out that many officers had given media interviews confirming themselves to be spycops, and the Met Commissioner himself had confirmed Jim Boyling was a Met officer. The Met backed itself into the absurd position of admitting Boyling was one of their officers, but refusing to confirm he was an undercover officer, as if he might be a uniformed bobby who did all that activism under a false identity as some kind of hobby.
In 2014, the Met put forward their defence, that the relationships were the result of ‘mutual attraction and genuine personal feelings’ with no deceit involved, They said such relationships were neither unlawful nor even an abuse of power. And they still refused to admit John Dines and Mark Jenner were spycops.
The Met didn’t formally admit Mark Kennedy was a spycop until May 2015, more than four years after his press agent got him a front page feature in the Mail on Sunday.
Even the Met’s extraordinary apology to seven women in 2015 seems aimed to deny the plain fact they were routinely using relationships. Specifically, the apology said the relationships were not authorised in advance, nor would they ever be used as a tactic of a deployment; yet four years later, in the IPT, they were forced to disclose evidence and that led to far wider admissions.
The lawyers for some of the former undercover officers, Slater & Gordon, have continued to claim that such relationships may be justifiable, especially if they are ‘casual’. A fact which says more about those officers than they would want us to know. The Met continues to try to avoid going to court with the women, and to prevent any disclosure.
INVESTIGATORY POWERS TRIBUNAL
However, they have now admitted – in the IPT – that Kennedy’s cover officer knew about his relationship with Kate Wilson and acquiesced to it. From Kate Wilson’s IPT case, we know that to get to the truth, we need to force the police’s hand regarding disclosure. The women must be given personal police files, so they are able to unpick the stories they contain .
Kate has now received around 2000 heavily-redacted pages for her case – estimated to be about 20% of the material the IPT has on her – and she has already spotted many inaccuracies, examples of mismanagement, and police prejudices in the material. Everyone who comes into contact with the groups being spied on is almost automatically considered fair game for this kind of intrusion – in a submission to the IPT earlier this year, Kate said:
[the police] ‘appear to have adopted a ‘thought crime’ approach to breaching people’s rights… repeatedly stating that anyone they considered to be a “like-minded individual” was a legitimate target’.
It has now been established that Kate’s Article 8 Rights (to a private and family life) were breached by the spycops – not just by her relationship with Kennedy but by the less intimate spying of at least six other officers who spied on and reported on her. The implication is that potentially thousands of other people’s human rights have been breached in the same way. Yet here she is, ten years into her legal battle, with no clear answers.
It all adds up to a picture of the police as an organisation that is desperate not to account, let alone to account publicly, for the terrible damage it has permitted its officers to do to the women. It cannot be right that this is the organisation that dictates what information gets released, how quickly, and to whom.
THE NEED FOR ANSWERS
The women’s need for answers is no less burning now than it was when they first suspected or learned the truth. They no longer believe the Inquiry is fit to do that, but they persevere here because they desperately need definitive answers (about what was done to them and why; who authorised, condoned, or acquiesced to it; who knew about it; what information was shared and recorded about them; and what will be done to stop it happening to others).
They need to know whether personal information about their most intimate lives is still on a file somewhere. They need to know that it will not happen again.
The lack of disclosure has served to compound the trauma suffered by the spycops victims. Kaufmann noted the self-pity of Boyling mentioned in last week’s submissions from the police, where he complained of the heavy burden of being investigated for sexual offences. She says he, and the others should consider themselves lucky that criminal law views rape through a patriarchal lens.
The women have waited for over five years for answers. The extent and scope of the anonymity orders granted to spycops means that the women are never likely to know the full extent of the intrusion into their lives, nor even how many spycops were involved in their lives.
At the heart of what happened to these women lies institutional sexism. This is a complex issue that requires an exploration not just of the mind-set of the men involved in the undercover units but also of the institutional culture that developed and operated, and how the two are inter-related.
IS MITTING FIT FOR PURPOSE?
The women of the campaign group Police Spies Out of Lives endorse the concerns expressed by others last week that the institutional racism and institutional sexism that led to these abuses must be explored by people with the expertise and skills to do so.
For this reason, the Chair should accept the assistance of a diverse panel. The point was forcefully made that the Chair’s limited and privileged life experience mean that he cannot possibly understand the evidence he is presented with and gain a thorough understanding of the truth.
The women have had to discuss deeply personal matters with lawyers over the years. They have had an incredibly stressful experience participating in these cases and in this Inquiry. Their concerns also stem from the Inquiry’s a lack of sensitivity in failing to recognise the urgency of the need for disclosure about the relationships; in the manner in which ‘Lizzie’ and ‘Sara’ were notified that men they had intimate relationships with were spycops; in the way it put pressure on the women who had relationships with Carlo Soracchi not to disclose his real name; and in the stark contrast between the care shown for the privacy and concerns of spycops compared with that afforded to their victims.
As stated, the women remain involved because they are impelled to know the truth and stop this happening again to other women. To make sure this never happens again, the women want the Inquiry to recommend that the law is changed to prohibit undercover officers from engaging in sexual relationships while in their undercover persona, and that the police be required to suspend an officer and inform anyone deceived into a relationship by an undercover officer as soon as they become aware of the relationship.
Heather Williams QC (People in relationships with spycops, represented by Bindmans)
Heather Williams QC
Heather Williams QC, speaking for individuals in relationships with undercover officers who are represented by Bindmans.
Williams began by plainly stating that the people she represents have had their lives turned upside down as a result of spycops engaging in sexual and other intimate relationships, on a thoroughly deceptive and completely illegitimate basis.
There was never any operational justification for this grossly irresponsible and manipulative conduct, and the damage which it caused is profound. The officers created an illusion of genuine intimacy – via the projection of their fake identities – tricking, betraying and abandoning those who they used.
WHO WILLIAMS SPEAKS FOR
Williams first spoke about ‘Lindsey’, who was deceived into entering into a long-term sexual relationship with an officer the Inquiry refers to as HN104; he used the name ‘Carlo Neri‘, but his real name is Carlo Soracchi.
Soracchi was deployed by the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), 2002-06. He infiltrated the Socialist Party/Militant and No Platform/ Antifa. He then developed a focus on trade union activity.
Secondly, Williams speaks for Sarah Hampton, who was deceived into entering into a long-term sexual relationship with ‘Mark Stone’ – actually Mark Kennedy of the National Public Order Intelligence Unit – in 2005/6.
Thirdly, three members of the Cardiff Anarchist Network (CAN) – Tom Fowler, and two women known as ‘AJA’ and ‘ARB’ – a group which was infiltrated between 2005-09 by officer EN12, using the name ‘Marco Jacobs‘. AJA and ARB were deceived into having sexual relationships with him. Tom Fowler was deceived into believing that he was his best friend.
Lastly, Williams speaks for a man known as ‘TBS’ whose position is, as yet, unique at the Inquiry. TBS’s mother, Jacqui, had a long-term sexual relationship with undercover SDS officer Bob Lambert, posing at the time as an animal rights activist under the cover name ‘Bob Robinson‘.
Born on 23 September 1985, TBS is Bob Lambert’s son, who he abandoned when he “disappeared” in late 1988.
ABUSIVE, DECEITFUL, MANIPULATIVE & WRONG
The unsuspecting activists would never have agreed to or countenanced these intimacies if they had know the true identities of these men. The spycops pretended to be committed and like-minded activists.
“there are and never have been any circumstances where it would be appropriate for such covertly deployed officers to engage in intimate sexual relationships with those they are employed to infiltrate and target. Such an activity can only be seen as an abject failure of the deployment, a gross abuse of their role and position as a police officer and an individual and organisational failing.”
“…there are some lines that police officers must not cross… We do not believe that officers should enter into intimate, physical sexual relationships while using their false identities undercover without clear, prior authorisation, which should only be given in the most exceptional circumstances.
“In particular, it is unacceptable that a child should be brought into the world as a result of such a relationship and this must never be allowed to happen again. We recommend that future guidance on undercover operations should make this clear beyond doubt.”
It took until 2015 for the Met to accept that these sexual relationships were “abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong”, and a breach of the women’s human rights.
In the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s opening statements last week, lawyers speaking for the police mostly accepted that these relationships were wrong but, in contrast, the officers represented by Slater & Gordon have continued to downplay, deny and dismiss their wrongdoing, in contradiction to the long- established position of the Metropolitan Police.
Those who have been victims of such fundamental deceit feel compelled to try to participate in this Inquiry. They are driven by a strong sense of responsibility to those whose lives have been intruded upon without justification and to the new generation of activists – protesting against climate change racial injustice – to ensure that they are not subjected to similar abuse.
The Inquiry must respect their commitment, and not shirk from its responsibility to hold police officers properly to account for the improper discharge of their public functions. It must not allow its task to be overwhelmed by practices ingrained within undercover policing, of protecting their own from legitimate exposure and attendant accountability.
This doesn’t just concern the Met – the Home Office, the National Crime Agency and the College of Policing – should all be called to account, and to answer the questions we raise.
‘LINDSEY’
‘Lindsey’ met Carlo Soracchi through mutual friends in the Socialist Party. The relationship was fun and sociable at first; Carlo said he worked as a locksmith (and used this as pretext for changing activists’ locks, in order to ‘improve their security’!). Carlo was the first to use the word ‘love’ in their relationship, and he made her believe that he was committed to her in the long-term.
She was shown the evidence that Carlo had been an undercover officer in October 2015. Since then, she has suffered sleeplessness, and feelings of anger and vulnerability. She has questioned her own judgment and suffered intense embarrassment. She has dwelt on other friendships and relationships, and doubted the motives and genuineness of people she knows.
SARAH HAMPTON
Sarah Hampton had a relationship with Kennedy. He acted romantically and attentively, and gave her the impression that this was a serious emotional relationship.
When she found out Kennedy’s true identity in 2010 she was shocked. She suffered huge stress, insomnia, flashbacks and severe depression. She suffered intense paranoia, she felt destabilised, and she felt guilty for introducing Mark to fellow activists and friends.
‘MARCO JACOBS’
Spycop Marco Jacobs
After an aborted deployment in Brighton, National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) officer ‘Marco Jacobs’ moved to Cardiff in 2006, and integrated himself into a group of activists involved in Cardiff Anarchist Network.
Years later, the group worked out that he’d been a spy after Mark Kennedy was outed, and they noticed striking similarities in the extraction and other strategies used by the spycops.
Marco initiated a relationship with a younger activist, ‘AJA’. The relationship was built on a close friendship that had developed over the previous few years. Marco suggested that they take their relationship further, just two months before they travelled together to protest at the G8 summit in Germany, in the summer of 2007.
When she discovered the truth about his identity, AJA felt extremely betrayed and violated. She was physically sick. She remains plagued by intrusive recollections and a loss of self-worth in having been deceived by him.
INVADING FAMILIES
‘ARB’ (who also uses the pseudonym ‘Deborah’) first met Marco at a CAN meeting in 2005, when she was 26. She got the impression that he was attracted to her and she found him to be warm, funny, and attentive. They became close friends and would often meet for a drink after her work.
ARB was in a long term relationship with Tom Fowler when her father became terminally ill with cancer. Having woven himself into Fowler’s life as a best friend and confidante, Marco took the opportunity of ARB’s father’s illness to put make himself a great support, belittle Fowler, and sow discord.
Marco met ARB’s parents on a number of occasions, including her father when he was visiting Cardiff for cancer treatment. On another occasion he comforted ARB’s mother when she confided in him regarding the extent of her husband’s illness. He attended ARB’s father’s funeral.
Around the same time, in late 2006, Marco’s NPOIU colleague Mark Kennedy attended the funeral of Lisa’s father. Did the two spycops compare notes, evaluate the value and create a strategy for this?
Like many spycops, Marco gained sympathy and trust by claiming to have had a disturbed upbringing. When ARB’s father died, Marco told a detailed story about his mother dying when he was young and his own father dying more recently. She was made to feel guilty for not supporting him.
Marco then propositioned ARB for a sexual relationship. She turned him down but he persisted. Believing she was about to begin a serious relationship with the ‘truck driver’, she broke up with Fowler, only for Marco to suddenly lose interest.
It seems it was Marco’s remit to sow discord among the group, inevitably causing long term damage to friendships and the people who were in them.
Marco was exposed as a spycop in January 2011. It took more than four years of legal action before the Met even admitted Marco was an undercover officer (at a hearing presided over by Sir John Mitting, coincidentally).
TBS: SON OF A SPYCOP
Bob Lambert holds his new born son TBS, September 1985
‘Bob Robinson’ – SDS officer Bob Lambert – attended the birth of TBS in 1985, and lived with him and his mother, Jacqui, for the first few years of TBS’s life.
Lambert disappeared in late 1988. Having being involved in a group of animal rights activists, and apparently burning down Debenham’s in Harrow himself – he pretended to be an animal rights activist on the run from the police.
When Jacqui’s next partner wanted to formally adopt TBS, inquiries were made by the authorities. They said they’d found a former flatmate of Lambert’s and that, as a suspected criminal who’d fled the country, he wasn’t expected back. But who was the flatmate? Was this the police and security still lying to cover Lambert’s tracks – and so obviously knowing all about TBS’s existence – years after his deployment ended?
It was only by chance that Jacqui saw a news report about Lambert in 2012 and told TBS the truth she had just learned. She said what happened to her and the other women was:
“like being raped by the state. We feel that we were sexually abused because none of us gave consent”.
TBS is preoccupied with the fact that the Met were apparently prepared to let him go his whole life without learning the truth and having the opportunity to get to know his father. Jacqui said that she believes Lambert would have taken the secret with him to his grave.
TBS brought a claim for damages against the Met. As with the women deceived into relationships, the police did not seek to heal the harm they caused but instead tried to have the claim struck out. In a pattern familiar to so many who have suffered injustice at the hands of the state, he has suffered a second injustice of delays, denials and obstacles from the guilty institutions.
THE DAMAGE DONE
Those who were deceived into sexual and other intimate relationships have suffered intense psychological impacts, from which many will never recover. As well a pervading sense of violation and loss of dignity, they all have a paranoia and insecurity that has permeated every aspect of their private and personal lives.
They have suffered the anguish of being the unwitting conduit for these officers’ credibility among their friends and comrades.
All of these victims remember the way in which the spycops manipulated their emotions – they presented themselves as kind, attentive, helpful and full of empathy, the friend with endless patience for shared problems and confidences. They cynically ‘mirrored’ their victims’ interests, tastes and backgrounds. They went as far as making up stories of personal loss and grief to ‘mirror’ genuine tragedy suffered by the activists. This was all done with a total disregard for the well-being of those they targeted. The victims have suffered intense psychological harm, from which many will never recover.
Having quoted from the flippant, offensive advice given in the SDS’ 1995 Tradecraft Manual to have ‘fleeting, disastrous’ relationships, Williams pointed out that these relationships were anything but fleeting. They were constructed over time, painstakingly creating deep emotional commitment on the part of the victim, and often endured for a substantial part of a spycop’s deployment.
Mark Kennedy told the Home Affairs Select Committee in 2013 that his managers always knew his whereabouts (he even carried a tracking device), and that other spycops and informants would have been reporting back on him. Senior managers must have known what was going on and, at the very least acquiesced to it.
The similarity of the experiences from people across such a spread of time, distance and police units indicates the existence of a shared pool of knowledge, understanding, training or guidance that officers were all party to.
SO MANY QUESTIONS
Why did the spycops create these relationships?
Were they prompted by a twisted logic that they were necessary for maintaining cover? Were they a means of accessing and gathering “intelligence”? Were they for sexual gratification? Or a combination of all three?
How common was it for spycops to behave in this way?
To what extent were those who monitored and supervised these deployments aware of these relationships? What safeguards were in place?
Were officers either encouraged or discouraged from forming such relationships? If they were encouraged to do so, why was this?
What consideration, if any, was given to the collateral impact on family members and friends of the women?
Insofar as the spycops didn’t have to comply with the rules governing other areas of undercover policing, who made these decisions and what was the rationale?
How many children were fathered as a result of spycops’ deceitful sexual relationships with those that they spied on?
What, if any, guidance, training or instruction were they given about this possibility?
Was any consideration given to the impact upon a child who, as their father knew all along, would be abandoned as a toddler when the deployment ended? Were the interests of the child even considered?
If fathering a child was not an approved tactic, then what steps were taken against officers who did it? It doesn’t seem to have led to disciplinary action. On the contrary, after TBS was born, Bob Lambert was promoted. He went on to manage the SDS in the 1990s, overseeing the deployments of a number of the other abusive officers we’ve heard about today, including Jim Boyling, Andy Coles, and Mark Jenner.
When he left the police, Lambert was awarded an MBE for services to policing. He then held several academic posts, which he had to resign from after the truth about his career was made public in 2011.
PUBLIC SECRETS
The Inquiry’s first Chair, Lord Pitchford, said that women deceived into relationships by undercover officers deserved the fullest answers. His successor, Sir John Mitting, has failed to keep the spirit of that in the case of Carlo Soracchi. He has told the women the name and appealed to their ‘judgment and humanity’ not to upset Soracchi’s family by publicising it.
Despite Soracchi’s name being in the public domain for quite some time, Mitting is insisting that nobody can say it at the Inquiry, to the frustration and disappointment of Lindsey and others.
In the case of ‘Marco Jacobs’, Mitting has not even stuck to the letter of Lord Pitchford’s assurance. The officer has been granted anonymity by the Inquiry, and the women remain in the dark, despite the Met having admitted that these relationships happened and paid compensation.
Like fellow spycop Andy Coles, Jacobs knows his behaviour is unjustifiable, so he is flatly refusing to admit it despite the great swathes of proof.
The people represented by Heather Williams want a reliable official record of the chronology of events, and acknowledgment of the gross violation of their human rights and the impact that it had. It is one of the most serious breaches of human rights ever seen in this country. They don’t just want the state to learn meaningful lessons, but the implementation of tangible protections against future abuse.
Williams then added her clients’ voices to the chorus of affronted dismay that the Inquiry is still refusing to give public access to this public inquiry. It other inquiries can create a secure live stream, so can this one.
Heather Williams QC
(Relatives of deceased people whose identity was stolen by spycops)
One of the most difficult events to bear is the death of a child. Heather Williams’ clients were horrified to hear – years later – that the identity of their loved one had been stolen to provide a false identity for an undercover police officer.
With this strong observation, Heather Williams QC started her opening statement. She represents several people who have found out that the identity of a close member of their family had been used, and two who suspect they have been:
Frank Bennett and Honor Robson, are the bereaved brother and sister of Michael Hartley. He died on 4 August 1968 at 18 years of age, when he went overboard a fishing trawler. They found out in April 2018 that Michael’s identity had been stolen by HN12. The officer appropriated Michael’s identity between 1982 and 1985 when he infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party and the Revolutionary Communist Group. He is known to have committed crimes, and to have engaged in a sexual relationship.
Faith Mason is the bereaved mother of Neil Robin Martin. He died on 15 October 1969 at the age of six. His mother was only 22 at the time and brought up her remaining three children alone. The officer known as HN122 appropriated aspects of Neil’s identity and infiltrated Class War and the Revolutionary Communist Party between 1989 and 1993 as Neil Robin Richardson. She was informed by the Inquiry in January 2019.
She found the information impossible to absorb and at a subsequent meeting with the Inquiry team she found what she heard incapable to believe.. It felt like losing Neil all over again. She has lost sleep and is pre-occupied with distressing thoughts.
The Chair has granted anonymity to HN122 so his real name is not known. So far we only know he was deployed to spy on two un-named groups. According to his application for privacy, HN122 claims that releasing his real name would risk ‘interference in his public life’. Faith observes that the possibility that he is now prominent figure points in favour of openness and transparency, rather than against it.
Mr, Mrs and Ms Lewis, who are the father, mother and sister of Anthony Lewis. He died on 31 July 1968 at seven years of age. The officer whose cypher is HN78, used Anthony Lewis’s identity between 1991 and 1995 to infiltrate the Anti-Nazi League and the International Socialists/Socialist Workers Party. He was generally known as ‘Bobby’.
The Lewis family are appalled by what they have learnt so far. It has been revealed that HN78 had at least two sexual relationships and was involved in spying on the Lawrence family – as they were grieving and campaigning following the racist murder of their son.
The undercover officer who used Anthony’s identity was black, as are the Lewis family. The boy died of sickle cell anaemia; an illness that occurs predominantly in people of African and/or Caribbean descent; the family would later lose another child to it. The family wants to know how HN78 went about to find the identity of a black child: did he specifically for deaths attributable to sickle cell illness? Or did he rely on some other method to target black children?
Liisa Crossland and Mark Crossland are the stepmother and brother of Kevin John Crossland. He died on 1 September 1966 aged five in a plane crash. The officer known as HN16 used his name to infiltrate the Animal Liberation Front and the Brixton and Croydon Hunt Saboteurs between 1997 and 2002. The family only learnt details of this identity theft in June 2018.
The Crosslands now know of arrests for crimes committed during HN16’s undercover deployment, a misconduct investigation and a promotion (to Detective Sergeant). Also, of how he first refused to answer questions about sexual relationships, and subsequently lied to the Inquiry about having been involved with at least two women – “Ellie” and “Sara” – of whom we heard about this morning. Liisa and Mark are very upset by the Inquiry’s continued denial of their “moral right” to know the true identity of the officer who appropriated Kevin’s identity.
Not mentioned today, was the fact that HN16 had not one, but two covert identities. As an activist he was known as “James Straven” – a name that was invented for him by the SDS, while the one set up with the birth certificate seems not to have been used at all while he was undercover in animal rights groups.
Barbara Shaw is the bereaved mother of Rod Richardson. He died on 7 January 1973, when he was two days old.
Barbara Shaw, holding the death certificate of her son Rod Richardson
The officer known as EN321 used Rod’s identity between 1999 and 2003, to infiltrate Class War and the Movement Against the Monarchy.
She was the first person to discover that her son’s identity had been used by the spycops units, after she was contacted by Rob Evans from The Guardian. In response to a police complaint, she received a heavily-redacted report that horrified her.
She was told by the police they would “Neither Confirm Nor Deny” as they needed to protect the tactic and the officer. Mrs Shaw complained to the Independent Police Complaint Commission but despite them upholding part of the complaint, she has yet to get any answers, let alone justice.
Gordon Peters is the father of Benjamin De Witt who died at a very young age of one week old, on 23 September 1979. He learnt about the undercover police practice of using dead children’s identities in 2014, and wrote to the Metropolitan Police to check if this had happened in his case. The police are yet to provide a meaningful answer.
“RDCA” is the mother of Jed Lacey Morris who died in April 1971, when he was one year old. She also wrote to the police, in 2013, asking for confirmation that her child’s identity hadn’t been used in this way. Her baby had been unlawfully killed by a driver in 1971. She was “surprised to learn that the MPS was unwilling to confirm the use of her son’s identity or alternatively to assuage her concerns” – it makes her feel “quite sick”.
There were differences between the children whose name was stolen – Michael Hartley was 18 years old when he died, Rod Richardson was just a few days old – but their relatives have very similar questions. They all want to better understand what was done by the officers using their identities
In 2013, the Commissioner issued an apology expressing regret for relying upon the identities of deceased children in general. No specific apologies to affected families families were forthcoming, again on the grounds that such communications would reveal the UCOs’ covert identities. (Though they have since been confirmed in multiple cases.)
Heather Williams QC stated that her clients feel the appropriate time for a formal apologies would be after the police have answered their questions. And they have many.
NOT USED AT FIRST, & NOT ALL THE TIME
The first question is: why would the police use this method? We do not believe there was any operational necessity for this disgusting practice. Williams explained that this practice was not used at first.
A memo from SDS supervisory officer, Detective Inspector HN294, dated 21 February 1973 stated:
‘one of the main… advantages…of a field officer assuming a fictitious name, using a cover address and employment and radically altering his appearance is that – unlike an informant – he can resume his proper identity and appearance at any time and immediately be “lost” to the extremists.’
In a July 2013 report, the Metropolitan Police’s Operation Herne identified 42 SDS officers who had relied upon the identity details of a deceased child, but also 45 spycops who had developed entirely fictitious covert identities.
Efforts to phase out the practice on grounds of operational ineffectiveness from 1995, but it was never the only thing available. Operation Herne identified an early instance where an officer had used an aunt’s surname instead.
Strikingly, the practice continued long after it had been discredited and obvious viable alternatives developed: HN16 and EN32 were deployed using the stolen identities of Kevin Crossland and Rod Richardson in as late as 1997 and 1999 respectively.
HOW SPYCOPS CREATED IDENTITIES
This practice concerned the collecting and storing of extensive personal details relating not only to the identity of the deceased children, their dates and places of birth, the dates and causes of their deaths, but also to the names, occupations and addresses of their parents and other family members.
The officers would have tried to gain familiarity with the child’s family, their home and sometimes even visited the area to get acquainted to it. Some of the bereaved detest the idea that they have been spied on themselves.
According to whistle-blower spycop Peter Francis, it was common practice to ‘weave one’s own memories with that of the child’. He acknowledged that in doing so, he ‘felt that he was stamping on their memory’. He also told Operation Herne that he had ‘no choice, either he used the identity or he would have had to leave the unit.’
The flippant and demeaning language used in the SDS’ Tradecraft Manual reveal a striking lack of insight and sensitivity.
– The officer’s task was characterised as one of “finding a suitable ex person, usually a deceased child…”
– Officers were advised to find a death that was “natural or otherwise unspectacular”.
– Checking whether the deceased child had living relatives was referred to as identifying their “respiratory status”.
– And the action of adopting a dead child’s identity was referred to as “assume squatters’ rights over the unfortunate’s identity”.
The text reveals an absence of any consideration for the relatives’ traumatic loss of a child or the potential consequences for them, senior officers have now admitted.
WILL WE LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO GET ANSWERS?
In July 2016, the families were told it would not take too long.
Four years later, in February this year, the Inquiry said that the investigations were still ongoing and that the Chair would provide an update as soon as he could. Asked for a clear timeline again on 15th September, the Chair responded that the review of cover names used by SDS officers was close to completion, but that they would then start on the ones used by the NPOIU.
Again, no clear timeline was provided.
This is completely unsatisfactory, Williams said. Our clients have been left waiting for a further unspecified period, with no certainty that they will ever receive a substantive answer from the Inquiry; and with the police playing a potentially decisive role in that determination.
Those of our clients who are elderly are concerned they may not live long enough to receive answers.
Heather Williams then set out a lengthy and detailed list of questions which they felt the police and Inquiry needed to answer first, if justice was to be done. Many of them focused on who knew about the tactic and how the practice was allowed to continue so long and across units. And what wrong doing was done in the name of their beloved ones.
THE FAMILIES WANT IT OUTLAWED
The secret use of identities of children who had died was done without any meaningful authorisation, without consideration of their rights or the possible consequences, without checks dan balances, and with an absolute absence of any (individual or institutional) accountability.
“We are incredulous that this was done without operational justification, and without any consideration for us.”
Heather Williams concluded: “Our clients seek a detailed public accounting for this abhorrent practice:
– including a formal record of how the practice was permitted to develop and continue;
– the full extent of the intrusion they suffered and the culture that surrounded it;
– together with a detailed historical record of the wrong that has been done to them and its impact.
They seek not only the learning of meaningful lessons, but also the implementation of tangible protections against future abuse, so that this can never again be permitted to become established policing practice.
Phillippa Kaufmann QC
(Women deceived into relationships by spycops, and justice campaigns, instructed by Harriet Wistrich [excluding Newham Monitoring Project])
Phillippa Kaufmann QC made her second opening statement of the day.
This time, she was appearing for John Burke-Monerville, Patricia Armani Da Silva and Marc Wadsworth, Core Participants who have been put into the Inquiry’s ‘Category J: Justice campaigns’.
Kaufmann opened by saying:
“All three were active in campaigns against police violence and racism and corruption. All three have reason to believe they or their campaigns were subject to undercover policing. But they have received no details of this. They are very concerned about the number of justice campaigns spied upon. They all want the Inquiry to confront the patterns that emerge from the repeated reporting on justice campaigns and the issues of institutional, structural and individual racism that underpin them. It is remarkable that the MPS [Metropolitan Police Service] made no mention of racism in their opening statement.
“Given the clear benefit to the police of having information with which to undermine groups campaigning against police violence, racism and corruption, the Inquiry is asked to scrutinise very carefully, with a penetrating sceptical gaze, the purported explanations of the police.”
The Inquiry is urged to examine the use to which any information gathered was or might have been put; and to assess the role that racism, both individual and institutional, played in the undercover policing of justice campaigns. Kaufmann then went on to speak about her individual clients.
JOHN BURKE-MONERVILLE
After a long, hard-working life, John Burke-Monerville should now be enjoying his retirement with his wife, children, grandchildren and indeed great-grandchildren. Instead, he finds himself in a public inquiry fighting to discover why he and his family were spied on by the Metropolitan Police.
John’s son, Trevor, disappeared in suspicious circumstances at the very beginning of 1987 and was found unconscious in a car. After that he was arrested, roughly treated at the police station and then remanded. On 4 January 1987, he suffered fits and, on 6 January 1987, he was transferred to hospital for emergency surgery to remove a blood clot from his brain. On the same day, the Crown Prosecution Service dropped all charges against him.
His family and friends set up a campaign to find out what had happened to him. Trevor never regained his memory, before being stabbed and killed in 1994. Family members (including Mr Burke-Monerville’s then-79 year old father and 73 year old mother) were persecuted and harassed by the police. John’s wife was arrested and charged, then subsequently acquitted. She successfully sued the police for malicious prosecution. Another of their sons, Joseph, was shot and killed in 2013 – a tragic case of mistaken identity. A third son, David, was fatally stabbed outside his home in North London.
In 2014, Trevor was approached by Operation Herne, the police’s self-investigation into spycops, and told that they’d found evidence that his family justice campaign had been spied on.
He now says:
“I feel a responsibility to my sons, myself, my family and my community to ensure that this Inquiry comes through with some sort of answers about why we were spied on by the police. We have not been told the truth by anybody in authority about anything all along… I have no reason to be hopeful about the Inquiry. No one in authority has given me that.”
Movingly, he adds:
“I do remain hopeful. It is, though, my last hope and I am tired. I don’t want my surviving children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to go through what we are going through.”
PATRICIA ARMANI DA SILVA
Patricia Armani Da Silva is the first cousin of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian man who was shot and killed by police at Stockwell underground station on 22 July 2005, when he was mistaken for a suicide bomber. Patricia has been campaigning for justice ever since his death. His family have had to continually correct the false narrative that Jean Charles contributed in some way to his own death.
The police have sought to deflect, distract and mislead the public. We know that they have leaked false stories to the media ever since they shot him. Later, Harriet Wistrich, the de Menezes family solicitor, received a call from a police officer saying that the police had leaked an allegation of rape against Jean-Paul – which was later to be proved false.
To this day, Patricia cannot prove that the police was the source of all of the false information (e.g. that Jean Charles was an illegal immigrant), but Peter Francis reported that undercover police were routinely tasked with finding info with which to discredit family campaigns like hers.
In 2014, her family was shown five intelligence reports by Operation Herne. These included information about individuals’ political beliefs. She was told that she could submit a request to the Metropolitan Police for details, but this was subsequently refused. Patricia has not, to date, been provided with any further information as to how or why the campaign for justice for Jean Charles de Menezes was the subject of undercover policing.
MARC WADSWORTH
Marc Wadsworth is a journalist, historian and campaigner. In 1991, he founded and led the Anti-Racist Alliance – Europe’s largest black-led anti-racism movement – that comprised faith groups, civil organisations, MPs from all the main parties, and trade unions. He had branches throughout the UK. It was seen by the police as a thorn in their side.
In 1993, Marc assisted the family of Stephen Lawrence to set up their campaign for justice and introduced them to the lawyer Imran Khan QC. He also facilitated a meeting between the Lawrence family and Nelson Mandela. He has made FOIA and SAR requests to the Metropolitan Police for the data held on him. So far, all he has received are one redacted document and one report.
Once again, the police have refused to either confirm or deny whether the ARA or its members were subjected to surveillance. All three of these Core Participants have an overwhelming need to know the truth: not just about how, why and by whom they were spied upon; but about the deeper systemic truths about the SDS.
They want to know the truth about Peter Francis’ allegations of the targeting of justice campaigns; and they want the racism inherent in the view of justice campaigns as trouble-makers to be recognised and addressed. The issue of racism as a motivation for some aspects of the SDS’ reporting and deployments must be at the heart of the Inquiry’s investigation, including in respect of the ‘direct penetration’ or ‘close monitoring’ of the Justice for Trevor Monerville Campaign.
WHY DID THEY DO IT?
Kaufmann questioned whether the spying was motivated by a desire to derail and discredit the campaigns, as they attempted to bring racist police brutality and harassment to light (as John Burke-Monerville fears)?
Or was it, as the police maintain, a case of so-called ‘collateral intrusion’, a by-product of the targeting of ‘extreme’ left-wing groups, who the SDS suspected of using the family justice campaigns (such as the Justice for Trevor Campaign) for their own ends?
She said:
“It will be impossible for the Inquiry to assess where the truth lies in respect of these competing motivations, without considering the underlying circumstances. The family have always suspected from the fragments they have been able to piece together, that Trevor was restrained and assaulted during his time in police custody- suggesting that the police has a motive for keeping tabs on the campaign’s search for the truth.”
The third Operation Herne report, from March 2014, identified 17 Black justice campaigns that were reported on. They are listed in SDS records covering the years between 1970 and 2005.
“Had I found out anything detrimental – and newsworthy – about the Lawrence family, the police, using the media then, would have used that information to smear the family. My superiors were after any intelligence of that order.”
The absence of written records makes it hard to get to the truth. Mark Ellison QC carried out a review, and in his report said: “In light of the limited records available, little weight can be attached to the absence of a record.” We know that many instructions were delivered to undercover police verbally, rather than put in writing.
Given the context, an absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence. The Inquiry has largely excluded non-state core participants from meaningful participation: by restricting cover names; by compartmentalising non-state CPs into narrow categories of ‘direct interest’, determined by the Inquiry; and by holding, at least, the initial hearings in circumstances where only a tiny number of non-state CPs and members of the public will be able to see and hear the evidence.
INSTITUTIONAL RACISM
Another huge issue for these clients has been the Inquiry’s ability to explore and assess the issue of institutional racism. There can be few people nowadays, including in the field of dispensing justice, who have not heard of the term ‘unconscious bias’. Many different types of biases have been identified, but some are of particular importance concerning the issues, of racial and sexual inequality and political policing, which arise in this Inquiry. ‘Ingroup bias’ (meaning that we tend to unfairly favour someone from our own group) is informed by the wider social and cultural forces at work.
At a meeting with Burke-Monerville in December 2018, the Chair’s response to these concerns of conscious or unconscious bias illustrated precisely his lack of awareness of how his background and life experiences shape the way he sees the world.
Mitting claims that he will take the “approach of a historian”. But Marc Wadsworth, himself a historian, has grave concerns about this view of historical analysis as an objective process, not shaped by the culture and society in which the historian was raised.
Kaufmann accused the Chair:
“You have displayed a lack of understanding of these issues and refused to recognise your own biases. Despite a lack of knowledge of Burke-Monerville’s case, you made a huge assumption by saying you broadly accepted the police’s own narrative of ‘collateral intrusion’.”
Burke Monerville commented:
“It is painful for me to read about my own children being killed. I read that you don’t need a panel to help you understand racism properly. You do not know much about racism…I’ve read some of the comments that you made about racism. I think you need additional people to look at the evidence with you and to help you make decisions especially relating to racism….I would like to know why you think you can do this without help when you have no experience of racism and no discrimination training.”
Mitting’s response at that meeting provided yet another illustration of his deep lack of understanding – he likened the family’s losses to deaths in wartime.
“Whilst well-meaning, the Chair’s analogy with wartime loss misses such a critical aspect of Mr Burke-Monerville’s loss – that it did not occur in conditions of war, but on the streets of London, where he and his family ought to be able to expect a reasonable level of protection and police investigations capable of identifying suspects and bringing them to trial; but he does not have that, because of the colour of his skin”
“For all of these reasons, Mr Burke-Monerville, Ms Armani Da Silva and Mr Wadsworth wish formally to record that they hold out little hope for this Inquiry’s ability to get to the truth.”
Mitting made yet another patronising and insensitive comment, saying that of all the CPs, Burke-Monerville has the “largest cross to bear”, and ended today’s hearing.
COPS will be live-tweeting all the Inquiry hearings, and producing daily reports like this one for the blog. They will be indexed on our UCPI Public Inquiry page.
Undercover Policing Inquiry Weekly Report 1 2-6 November 2020
After five years of waiting, the Undercover Policing Inquiry finally got off the ground in earnest this week. This first round of hearings will be split in two parts. First, Opening Statements from all the core participants. Second will be actual evidence for the period 1968 to 1972.
The Opening Statements are a chance for the various parties to essentially lay out how they view things. They began with the Counsel to the Tribunal, David Barr QC, presenting a general overview of where we stand.
This was followed by barristers for police and those who were once in the world of police but are no longer. Finally came the non-state/police core participants, whose statements will continue into this coming week. In this report we will try to summarise what was a lot of material, and reflect upon the words of the lawyers.
Barr noted that much of what the spycops did during their deployment is already public knowledge:
• deceived more than 30 women into long-term intimate relationships
• fathered children with some of these activists
• stole the identities of dead children to provide convincing cover stories
• deceived grieving families, and worked to prevent them learning the truth
• undermined anti-fascist, anti-racist, environmental, and other social justice campaigns
• were responsible for the blacklisting of thousands of workers for wanting safe working conditions or being politically active
Despite acknowledging this, it is disappointing that Mr Barr failed to properly credit the activists. The women deceived into relationships were a fundamental part of exposing the spycops. The existence of this Inquiry is based on their work.
This phase will also look at various documents and hear evidence from 1968–1972. It does not cover the actions of spycops while outside England and Wales, despite them being active in around 20 other countries during their deployment.
There were also some surprising pieces of previously undisclosed information, and statements from people previously unheard from.
How and why was the Special Demonstration Squad set up?
Police on horseback charge demonstrators against the Vietnam War, Grosvenor Square, London, 17 March 1968
Following the windows of the US Embassy being broken during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration in March 1968, Special Branch attempted to gather information on the next demo. Their usual tactics being unsuccessful, they created the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) who went deep undercover, living as activists among various anti-war groups.
The next demo in October 1968 was less volatile, and this was taken as a sign of the new unit’s success. Mr Barr has stressed that the Inquiry must decide not if it was successful, but if it was a necessary or disproportionate response.
The SDS rapidly widened its scope and began investigating subversion and demonstrations and disruptions of public order. Any organisation seeking social change could easily be said to be covered by their remit. By the early 1970s, the SDS was aiming to profile anyone ‘within weeks’ of first showing interest in ‘extremist ideas’.
One of the police barristers, Oliver Sanders QC (representing 114 spycops, the majority of former and current undercovers), stated that the main function of the SDS was to assess public order threats. In the period currently being examined by the Inquiry, 1968-72, many of these came from political protests. Their secondary function was providing intelligence on ‘subversion’ to MI5.
What was the role of MI5 and the Home Office?
Since the story of the spycops surfaced, the events have been framed as the work of one rogue officer, then several rogue officers, then rogue units. Those higher up unfailingly point the finger at those lower down.
It is now clear that from the very beginning, the SDS was funded by the Home Office and reported to MI5.
Sanders provided new information:
• MI5 and spycops were so allied that MI5 considered funding the SDS
• They liaised to ensure they didn’t duplicate spying, which might have resulted in spying on each other’s officers
• MI5 recommended tips to SDS spycops, and they asked for specific info
• Most SDS intelligence reports were copied to MI5 with the file reference numbers of the people / group already added
• the SDS weren’t in a position to question MI5’s focus, thinking and efforts, but were just following orders. ‘The SDS was a politically neutral cog as part of a much larger apparatus,’ he said.
Despite the Home Office directly funding the unit for over 20 years, a 2014 report commissioned on the link between the two institutions noted the key file was suspiciously missing. However, a lot of SDS reports have been retrieved for the Inquiry from copies sent to MI5.
How are the police lawyers attempting to portray the actions of the SDS?
It is now clear the various police lawyers are switching tactics and actually trying to justify the actions of the SDS. They describe the spycops as a benevolent and useful group, indispensable to the safety of the public, who only wanted political information so that demonstrations could be effectively policed.
Claim: Police never intend to harm anyone, including the women deceived into relationships
Peter Skelton QC, for the Metropolitan Police, told the Inquiry that the Met is ‘aware of continuing anger and distress of victims of spycops’. He said the Met stands by its 2015 apology to women deceived into relationships by spycops (despite the fact that it still won’t let women see their files, and is delaying civil claims by some of them).
Richard Whittam QC, representing a smaller group of undercovers and managers, also mentioned the apology naming such activity as ‘abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong’. But, he said, spycops committing crime is essential for national security and the prevention and detection of other people committing crime. The apology should be seen ‘in context’, by which he seemed to mean it should be disregarded.
This echoed other police lawyers, who have implied that it was acceptable to abuse people because times were different then, and it was all done for the greater good.
Claim: Spycops are better than the alternative
Blair Peach
Repeatedly, police noted that people have been killed on protests – citing two cases from the 1970s, Blair Peach and Kevin Gately – and there would be more death and injuries if it wasn’t for the undercovers ensuring demos were policed properly.
Contemptuously, they failed to mention that Blair Peach and Kevin Gately actually both been killed by the police; Gately in 1974 on an anti-fascist protest organised by heavily spied-on groups, and Peach in 1979 as a member of the most spied-on group of all, The Socialist Workers Party, on an anti-racist protest.
Discussing spycops stealing of dead children’s identities, Sanders said that though it was regrettable, it was necessary to prevent risk of exposure. The alternative to spycops with stolen identities was paramilitary police on demonstrations, he said. This is a patently ridiculous excuse.
Claim: Intelligence must be gathered indiscriminately
Spied-upon groups which were newly named this week include Justice for Rhodesia, Croydon Libertarians, and the St Pancras & Camden United Tenants Association. This contrasts strongly with police insistence that spycops saved the public from violent riots, murder and mayhem by infiltrating these groups; that it was necessary to spy on people who were committing no crimes in order to get to the ‘real criminals’.
The SDS essentially turned belonging to groups such as Hackney United Tenants Ad-Hoc Committee into a valid reason for the state to target you for surveillance. A report from 1973 gives the names of three people who had merely asked about the International Marxist Group.
They did, however, say they found it difficult to infiltrate black power movements; a rather telling sign that they were lacking in Black police officers.
Claim: Even though they’re bad, we can’t judge them because it was a long time ago
Essentially, police lawyers found various ways to say ‘what the spycops did may have been bad but it was a long time ago, lessons have been learned, it’s different now, nobody need lose their job or pension, move on, there’s nothing to see here’.
This directly contradicts documents that make clear the government was aware from the very beginning that what they were doing was deeply unethical, and would cause public outrage if discovered. Even by the standards of 1968, the spycops’ behaviour was blatantly immoral.
This refrain was accompanied by police barristers stating that other types of undercover work keep the public safe from paedophiles and terrorists. This is of little relevance to the activities of political secret police.
It ignores that the spycops of 2010 – long after the supposed new regulatory framework of the Human Rights Act, and Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act – were, if anything, committing even worse abuses than their 1968 counterparts.
The Inquiry also heard from representatives of the groups and individuals who were spied on
Families of the dead children whose identities were stolen
The Grave of Mark Robert Robinson whose identity was stolen by spycop Bob Lambert
Sanders said this procedure was invented in an earlier time when people felt differently about death and risk (once again using the ‘it was a long time ago’ excuse), yet the practice continued until the 1990s.
Additionally, one family whose living child’s identity was stolen has been informed.
Justice campaigns of grieving families, represented by Richard Parry and Jane Deighton
These were families in mourning who just wanted answers about what had happened to their loved ones so that they could have at least some closure; in many cases the parents and relatives of people who were barely more than children, and died violent deaths under traumatic circumstances.
Instead, their efforts were blocked and police were openly hostile to them and spycops infiltrated their campaigns for the truth. Police resources that should have been spent catching killers were instead spent on obstructing justice.
As a teenager in 1993, Duwayne Brooks survived a racist attack in which his best friend Stephen Lawrence was murdered. Brooks was spied upon in an attempt to discredit his evidence. He said this week that he won’t testify unless he can see his whole police file first.
Skelton said the Met is ‘grateful’ for Duwayne Brooks’ and Stephen’s mother Doreen Lawrence’s work.
Workers with trade unions and/or politically active workers who were blacklisted
Dave Smith
Reports show that trade unions were targeted and spied on from as far back as 1973. Yet, Sanders unequivocally stated that the SDS did not have any involvement in industrial blacklisting.
It did not target justice campaigns, members of parliament or trade unions directly, it was merely inevitable collateral collection while spying on other things, he claimed. These are lies, with ‘collateral damage’ as an excuse. Whether accidental or deliberate, it’s still spying.
Three wives (now ex-wives) of spycops, represented by Angus McCullough QC
For all but one of the wives of the undercover officers, it is the first time their words have been heard. In most cases they are now ex-wives, such was the stress their relationships were subjected to due to the activities of their husbands.
There can be no doubt that they were deceived and abused as badly as any other victim of the spycops. They were told that their husbands were gone for long periods in the interests of national security, not that they were on holiday in Thailand or Crete with women they’d manipulated into believing were the loves of their lives.
McCullough described how although they were vetted as support for their husbands, the wives and their children were offered no support during the periods of deployment. Nor were they years later, when the Met knew that the stories were about to hit the press and yet did not deign to warn them.
The officers themselves were flatly told that there would be very little support during deployment. They were given no prior warning of the psychological impact that going deep and long-term undercover would have on them. They received even less support than they’d been promised.
Skelton admitted the Met ‘hasn’t always understood’ how to support the spycops officers. Their wives, all of whom are mothers with children to care for, were used by the SDS and the Met as free, unqualified, in-house emotional support and therapy for their officers.
Peter Francis, represented by David Lock QC
SDS whistle-blower Peter Francis
Peter Francis, the only spycop whistle-blower to have come forward, was an SDS officer from 1993-98.
This week he requested a cast-iron guarantee from the Metropolitan Commissioner of immunity to prosecution for information about spycops he revealed prior to the Inquiry starting. Under the Inquiry’s terms, witnesses including Peter Francis cannot be prosecuted for anything that he says during the proceedings.
However, he could be charged under the Official Secrets Act for his previous public statements. His pension hangs in the balance, and he will not testify without absolute confirmation he will not be charged.
It should be obvious that without his evidence, this cannot be a properly informed inquiry. Under the current timetable, the Inquiry doesn’t intend to take evidence from Francis until 2023.
People from a vast range of groups targeted for their political beliefs and activism, overwhelmingly from the left
This week, they revealed the previously unknown names of just 44 of them. This comes too late for members of those groups to ascertain which of their friends or intimate partners never really existed, let alone participate in their only current chance for some kind of justice.
New photos of SDS officers published
The Inquiry also published previously unseen photos of various officers. Only one was a spycop; the rest were mostly back office staff, apparently all at the same festive event in 1968.
People are excluded from the Inquiry, including core participants
Lawyers for the non-police side noted that without names and photos of spycops it is impossible to reach all the people who were their victims. It is grossly unjust that they will not be represented through the deliberate choice of the Inquiry to exclude them.
There are a great many people who, even though they know they were spied on and have come forward, will also be excluded. Another deliberate choice by the Inquiry is to refuse to livestream the proceedings.
After this week, the hearings will be conducted in secret. Despite that fact that secure livestreams have been set up due to Covid-19, only the text will be made available after the proceedings have finished.
As already stated, over five years into the Inquiry many victims still have no documents. Many more have no names or photographs that would answer otherwise impossible, unanswerable questions.
People giving evidence who were spied on during this time were only provided with relevant documents – a total of 5,263 pages – five weeks ago. Attempting to read all of them before the start is roughly equivalent to reading all of Lord of the Rings twice a week for five weeks straight.
No diversity, no understanding
Sir John Mitting
The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, is not just preventing the victims’ access to full understanding, he’s determined to prevent his own. From the very beginning, calls have been made for a diverse panel of people with relevant life experience to advise and guide the Inquiry. This is standard practice for other inquiries, yet Mitting refuses to follow precedent.
The goal of this Inquiry should be to unflinchingly and honestly deal with institutional sexism, racism, and attacks on workers’ rights and the conditions of the disadvantaged. As an old white cis male Knight of the Realm who is a member of the men-only Garrick Club and finds the Macpherson definition of institutional racism ‘controversial’, comprehending these realities is beyond him.
As Ruth Brander, representing the Non Police/ State Core Participants, told him this week, ‘With respect, the concern is you, sir’.
A wise and impartial man would ask for help. Instead, Mitting refuses the offer of information that would increase the chances of a fair conclusion to the proceedings.
What next?
After two more days of opening statements from victims of spycops, the Inquiry’s first evidence hearings (Phase 1 of Tranche 1) will start on Wednesday 11 November. They will cover the formation of the Special Demonstration Squad in 1968, in response to protests against the war in Vietnam, and why it continued beyond that. They will continue until Friday 20 November.
The next set of hearings after that, taking evidence of events from 1973 to 1982, are expected in spring 2021. The Undercover Policing Inquiry has no set end-date, but is expected to perhaps conclude around 2026.
COPS will be live tweeting every hearing, producing a summary every evening, and a weekly report like this one at the weekend.
For more information including an FAQ, see the links on our UCPI Public Inquiry page.
Rajiv Menon QC(Core Participants represented by Richard Parry and Jane Deighton)
Matthew Ryder QC (Core Participants represented by Mike Schwarz, Simon Creighton, Tamsin Allen & Jules Carey)
Donal O’Driscoll (Category L [Social and environmental activists] Core Participant, appearing in person)
Rajiv Menon QC (Core Participants represented by Richard Parry and Jane Deighton)
Rajiv Menon QC speaking for some of the spied-on people, finished the statement he started yesterday.
He spoke of two people who were spied on during the very early years of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) 1968-72, the period that will be the focus of this phase of the hearings.
TARIQ ALI & ERNIE TATE
Tariq Ali
Tariq Ali, activist for over 50 years, will be the first to give witness evidence next week. Ernie Tate was due to give evidence but is now too ill. He is yet another victim of the delays to the Inquiry.
Tariq Ali was born in Punjab in colonial times and is now 76. He’s been in many political and campaigning organisations including the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC), International Marxist Group, and Stop the War. He has written more than a dozen books on history and politics. He was President of the Oxford Union in 1965 when Special Branch opened their file on him.
Ernie Tate was born in Northern Ireland. Tate was a founder of the original target of the SDS, the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, and was on its national council until 1969 when he emigrated to Canada.
The fact that the VSC was an open, non-violent organisation did not stop it from being targeted. Tate was also a founder of the International Marxist Group where he became a friend of Tariq Ali. He’s said he’s always been open about his politics, so there was no need for subterfuge to reveal his views or activities.
In the VSC, Tate and Ali organised the 1968 demos against the Vietnam war that led to the foundation of the SDS.
Menon said that the Inquiry had viewed TV news reports of the March 1968 protest that ended in trouble, but the pro-police commentary is at odds with the visuals. Instead of steering the demonstration along its agreed route, police corralled the head of the march near the US Embassy. Police then failed to contain the crowd – who fanned out across the green – and the police ended up sending in the horses.
The injuries that were caused were the result of the police’s actions. The demonstrators were prevented from handing in a letter to the US embassy even though that had been agreed with the police in advance. This was all explained at a VSC press conference the following day.
It has become already become a oft-repeated fable at the Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings that trouble at the March 1968 demo was due to a failure of intelligence. This lie was the original sin that led to the founding of the SDS.
The lack of trouble at the subsequent VSC demonstration in October 1968 was claimed as a success by the new unit, but it was really due to better stewarding, and the intentions of the protesters. This is not mere speculation on our part, the press at the time reported this.
But credit was given where credit was not due. Commissioner Waldron gave a bottle of champagne to SDS officers.
A PERMANENT ARRANGEMENT
The SDS expected to be disbanded after the anti-war protest in October 1968, but MI5 saw the value of spycops having a permanent and much wider remit. The Home Office gave the scheme their blessing and successive governments provided funding year after year.
There should be no mistake. Whilst this squad was kept secret from the public, it was completely integrated into the established security apparatus of the British state, with a chain of command through the senior ranks of the police to the highest levels of government. Documents show the Prime Minister and Home Secretary expected advance reports on the Vietnam demos. The spycops were secret from the public but well known to government.
The SDS spread its attention to other ‘subversive’ groups. Police bragged that new entrants to groups were being identified and reported on within weeks. They were told to cast a wide net.
Their objective was to prevent positive social change, keep people in their places, and allow the established order to thrive.
If people are persuaded that socialism is a better alternative to rampant capitalism, should they not be allowed to exercise their democratic right to pursue such politics without being spied on? The State would say an unequivocal ‘no’.
The International Marxist Group grew to around a thousand members. Its office was burgled by the SDS after spycop ‘Dick Epps‘ was trusted with the keys and made copies.
Only one SDS officer, ‘Alan Nixon‘, admits to brief interactions with Tariq Ali. Ali wants to hear condemnation of the unwarranted spying, but expects instead to hear justification.
Ali is proud to be a revolutionary. He is a proud socialist for peace but is unashamed to say that violence is justifiable if, say, you are a Vietnamese person fighting invaders or a British soldier fighting the Nazis. This does not make him a valid target for spycops.
PIERS CORBYN
Piers Corbyn is in his 70s and still protesting. He has always been open about his politics and has nothing to hide. He attended VSC rallies in the late 1960s and joined the IMG in 1971. He also joined antifascist, Irish and trade union causes, but it seems squatting is what got him spied on.
Police claim they don’t know what cover name the relevant officer (code number HN338) used! Why was Corbyn asked about spycop Alan Nixon, yet officers aren’t asked about him? Corbyn can’t say how he was spied on because neither police nor the Inquiry will say who the spies were.
ADVISORY SERVICE FOR SQUATTERS
The Advisory Service for Squatters (ASS) has been advising people on housing rights since 1975 and has sold more than 150,000 copies of the Squatters Handbook since 1976. Squatting in residential buildings was criminalised in England and Wales in 2012, but ASS was spied on long before that.
Tenants and housing groups seem to have been spied on since at least 1971. SDS called squatting ‘the nursery of extremists’. The ASS say the state spying on them was indefensible. They have only been given two documents by the Inquiry and have no details of why or how they were spied on.
FRIENDS OF FREEDOM PRESS
Freedom Press is the largest anarchist publisher in the UK, and the oldest in the world. It was set up, with the blessing of William Morris, in the 19th century. It was constantly raided by police during world wars for producing Freedom anarchist newspaper.
Spycop Roger Pearce infiltrated Freedom Press from 1979 to 1984. He was actively involved, writing articles for them. Pearce later went on to manage the SDS (and write cheesy police-based novels). Another spycop, ‘Doug Edwards‘, also attended Freedom Press meetings.
Freedom Press’s headquarters was firebombed by fascists in 1993. Did spycops know about it? Did they know it was coming and decide not to stop it?
Freedom Press have had 11 intelligence reports from 1974-77. They have not been asked for a witness statement, nor been officially told which officers spied on them, so cannot possibly comment properly.
One stalwart Freedom Press member died last year, another person failed by Inquiry delays.
JUSTICE CAMPAIGNS
ROLAN ADAMS’S FAMILY
Rolan Adams
South London couple Richard and Audrey Adams’s oldest son Rolan was studious, about to take GCSEs, and a talented footballer scouted by West Ham, and also passionate about writing music.
In February 1991, racist attacks were on the rise in the area since the British National Party moved their headquarters to the area in 1989. One evening a gang of 12-15 racists chased and stabbed Rolan. His brother Nathan escaped and returned later to find Rolan dying. The gang called themselves Nazi Turnouts. Police knew who they were, and allowed them to walk free.
Neither the police nor the CPS admitted the crime was racist, an ongoing problem of British institutions dealing with such violence. They had a racist stereotype of there being no innocent black boys. Instead of being treated as a victim of crime, Nathan was instead harassed and criminalised by police, repeatedly arrested and searched.
The CPS frequently uses ‘joint enterprise’ against groups of people involved in a crime, yet didn’t prosecute any other attackers with murder. One attacker was sent to jail, and the judge asserted that the crime was indeed racially motivated.
Rolan’s parents started a campaign for justice. They made links with others in similar circumstances. Police were hostile to the campaign, intercepting people coming to the Adams’ house, clearly with advance knowledge of the visits. The family were being harassed but got no protection. They had to leave their home for their own safety three months after Rolan was killed. If police had focussed on the attackers rather than the family perhaps this could have been avoided.
The Adamses family are still angry and grieving. They are angry at the lack of charges, and at the culture of denial of the racist culture that led to Rolan’s murder. If police had taken decisive action, and used intelligence against racists rather than justice campaigns, perhaps they could have prevented later racist murders in the area. Instead, as racist murders rose, more young black men were arrested.
Richard Adams says the Inquiry appears to be a damage limitation exercise for spycops. There is no good reason for the ongoing refusal to live stream the future hearings. The family are cncerned that the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Moitting, is not assisted by a diverse panel. Whose side is the criminal justice system on?
DUWAYNE BROOKS
Duwayne Brooks
Duwayne Brooks was 18 in 1993, living in South East London, training to be an electrical engineer. Stephen Lawrence was his close friend. In April 1993 they were attacked by racists and Stephen was murdered.
His courage exposed the racist nature of the attack, yet police were hostile to him. Whistle-blower SDS officer Peter Francis has described combing through hours of footage of demonstrations and vigils to see if he could find something with which to charge Brooks.
It mirrored the Adamses’ experience; a racist attack with victims treated like criminals and subjected to spycops surveillance. Brooks did everything asked of him. He assisted three investigations. He gave evidence in court when medically unfit. Brooks has since helped numerous police bodies with their work on racism.
Despite – or because – of this, Brooks has been targeted by the police. He was prosecuted on trumped-up charges, a meeting with his lawyer was bugged by the Met, and he has had to face the truth trickling out over many long years. He has received more information than most about his spying, but has received nothing at all from this Inquiry.
Brooks won’t get to see the hearings via live-streaming. The Chair sits without a diverse panel to advise him.
When Brooks is given FULL disclosure he will address the Inquiry, but not before. He refuses to be treated like a suspect all over again, answering the Inquiry’s questions in advance, as if the burden is on him to establish that there was no good reason for the police spying on him.
KEN LIVINGSTONE
Ken Livingstone
Ken Livingstone led the Greater London Council (GLC) from 1981 until its abolition by Margaret Thatcher, but was active long before. He joined the Labour Party in 1969, and soon held office locally, focusing on housing issues.
Livingstone has received limited disclosure from the Inquiry, but has not been told why he was spied on. As soon as he was elected Leader of the GLC he faced relentless vilification from his opponents and in the press.
Special Branch had intelligence of threats to his safety. Having said there’d be no peace in Northern Ireland without a negotiated settlement, he was told that an Ulster Defence Association assassin had been sent to kill him but was called off at the last minute. Livingstone says this is an example of a legitimate use of undercover policing, dealing with a proscribed organisation involved in serious and violent crime.
After the GLC was abolished, Livingstone entered parliament in 1987, something he described as ‘like working in the Natural History Museum except not all the exhibits are stuffed’. Whistle-blower spycop Peter Francis named Livingstone as one of the people he knows was spied upon when they were an MP. Like the other spied-on MPs, he wants to see his file.
Livingstone has been involved in mainstream political life for 50 years, always in public. He can’t see any justification for targeting by spycops, either before or after he was elected.
WHY WERE THE SPYCOPS THERE?
The SDS was a weapon in the arsenal of the state from 1968-2008, with other units doing the same things after, to keep people in their place and allow the established order to thrive. Its unofficial motto was ‘by any means necessary’ but, to address a point made by the police lawyers, the ends DO NOT justify the means.
The victims of spycops aren’t just those who were spied on. In the broader sense, all who want to see an open, democratic, and fair society have suffered for what the spycops did.
We’re here to try to shine a light, let the world see into the dark den of police spies. We hope our participation will allow people to see at least a little of the truth.
In 1962, Martin Luther King said the guardians of the status quo are always on hand with oxygen tents to keep the old order alive. We hope the Undercover Policing Inquiry will not prove to be such a guardian.
(Core Participants represented by Mike Schwarz, Simon Creighton, Tamsin Allen and Jules Carey)
Matthew Ryder QC
Matthew Ryder QC speaks for lawyers representing the majority of non-state core participants, more than a hundred individuals and groups whose targeting by spycops was inappropriate, improperly regulated, and abused their rights. They were spied on over a period of more than 40 years, and range from community activists to a Peer who was once a Secretary of State. They all deserve answers. Officers must be called to account, as must the system that permitted it.
Spycops weren’t just out of control. They had political bias that affected the whole process. It included racial bias, and we expect an assiduous exploration of that in the Inquiry.
Spycops targeted many groups who did not seek to overthrow the ‘established democratic order’ unless we take it to mean basically any political or social change. It’s the antithesis of what political culture should be about.
SDS founder Conrad Dixon said a ‘firm line must be drawn between follower and leader’: that spycops mustn’t speak in public, take office, draw leaflets or anything else active in a campaign. These instructions were swiftly ignored. Spycops got deeply involved in stimulating the very groups they were meant to be surveilling, influencing the direction they took and the means of protest they employed.
We’ll never know the true cost of diverting and hindering the targeted campaigns. Voices that should have been amplified because their cause was right were selected for silencing. So many anti-racists, environmentalists and others who were spied on have been vindicated over the years by history and science.
Many were wrongfully convicted, encouraged into acts by spycops whose involvement hidden from the courts.
Most people who were spied on have not seen any documents from the Inquiry, which is a disgrace. Victims are keen to know the life-changing details that have been kept hidden for so long. They want fullest disclosure. They’ve had basically none so far.
Four of the people Ryder speaks for are in Tranche 1 of the Inquiry, which looks at 1968-82. Three of them were anti-apartheid campaigners. The fourth is Celia Stubbs, partner of Blair Peach, an anti-racist campaigner killed by police in 1979, who was spied on for her justice campaign.
ANTI-APARTHEID CAMPAIGNERS
Anti-apartheid campaigners opposed one of the most repulsive racist regimes of the 20th century. Yet the SDS targeted those who opposed apartheid, not its often-violent supporters.
The anti-apartheid movement was mentioned in the first annual report of the SDS. Black power groups were also of particular interest to the new unit. Sporting boycotts were a key part of protesting against apartheid, and were therefore targeted by spycops.
Three core participants – Ernest Rodker, Jonathan Rosenhead, and Peter Hain – were active in the Stop The Seventy Tour (STST) campaign opposing the all-white South African rugby and cricket teams. They made a real contribution to wider anti-racist movement.
Anti-apartheid campaigns helped to bring democracy to South Africa. In December 2015, STST’s role was recognised at the highest level by the South African government when they awarded Peter Hain the Tambo National Award in Silver for his excellent contribution to the freedom struggle.
Yet the police lawyer’s opening statement to the Inquiry this week talked of target groups having ‘totalitarian objectives’.
The three anti-apartheid campaigners were seemingly targeted by spycop Mike Ferguson, but we don’t know for sure because the Inquiry is protecting his identity even though he’s dead. As a Cabinet Minister in the 2000s, Peter Hain has been entrusted with the most serious secret information of state, yet is still not being told which spycops targeted him in his own home 50 years ago.
We do know that Mike Ferguson wasn’t a rogue officer. His colleagues knew about him and have testified about what he did. This wasn’t police using informants, this was police trying to take control of a political movement, a serving officer placed in the group to help direct activity.
We may yet hear explanations from police at the Inquiry. But it appears spycops retro-fit excuses for their surveillance. If there aren’t records to support a given justification the Inquiry should remain sceptical.
Ryder then spoke about some other core participants.
LONDON GREENPEACE
Bob Lambert handing out the McLibel leaflet, McDonald’s Oxford St, 1986
London Greenpeace (LGP) was founded in 1971 to encourage people to take action to preserve the ecosystem.
LGP initially promoted home composting, turning off lights not in use, putting bricks in cisterns to save water, and planting trees. It remained a small, leaderless group and encouraged others to create similar networks. A 1981 LGP leaflet describes itself as nonviolent and libertarian.
In the 1980s Bob Lambert infiltrated LGP. Lambert’s behaviour is truly shocking. He had multiple relationships with women he spied on including fathering a child. He encouraged activists to join actions, and even drove them there. He was still undercover in 1987 when fellow spycop John Dines joined the group.
Dines became LGP treasurer, gave lifts to members (in order to find out their addresses), and deceived one member, Helen Steel, into a long-term cohabiting relationship. Lambert deceived more than one woman into a relationship while he was in LGP. It was unjustifiable by any measure.
People who were part of LGP are concerned about spycops steering the direction of the group, including towards the anti-McDonald’s campaign, which Lambert vigorously encouraged.
The way intelligence was collected was a serious infringement of the subject’s life, and they have no idea what was gathered and how it was used. But we do know it was shared with private companies such as McDonald’s.
Some LGP members are on the construction industry blacklist despite never having worked in the industry. Were their details supplied by the spycops?
It can’t be claimed it was necessary for Lambert to infiltrate LGP to prevent serious crime, when Lambert himself admits they weren’t involved in any such activity. It was a violation of democratic rights.
Former SDS officer Peter Francis says that Lambert’s undercover career was ‘regarded as hands down the best tour of duty’ in the history of the unit. After his deployment he was promoted to running the SDS.
We don’t know which other officers infiltrated LGP, but a Cabinet report suggests it was being spied on in the late 1970s, long before Lambert arrived. So LGP calls for all files to be opened and all officers’ cover names published so those who were spied on can realise what happened and give evidence to the Inquiry.
RECLAIM THE STREETS
Reclaim The Streets was founded in the late 1990s to challenge the noise, pollution, and dominance of cars in our public spaces, and many of the group’s ideas have now been taken up across society. It shows the role of protest groups in inspiring progressive change in society.
Reclaim The Streets was infiltrated by spycops Jim Boyling, Jason Bishop and Jackie Anderson. There may well be others. During the infiltration, spycops were arrested and prosecuted under their false identities.
Reclaim the Streets, London 1995
Boyling was arrested for a protest in 1996 in support of striking tube workers, occupying the office of London Transport office. He and Bishop were both arrested on the Mayday 2000 anti-capitalist protest.
It appears Bob Lambert was Jim Boyling’s direct supervisor. Many of Lambert’s tactics in LGP were used by his charges: active involvement in steering campaigns, sharing intelligence with private firms, and abusing women.
Boyling had at least 3 relationships while undercover, with huge impact, and went on to have two children with Rosa. There can be no justification for this tactic. The fact that it echoes Lambert’s treatment of women shows it was institutional.
From 1999-2005, Bishop was very actively involved in campaigning against the DSEI arms fair. Again, this was a case of an undercover officer encouraging and steering a group.
ALDERMASTON WOMEN’S PEACE CAMP
For the last 35 years, Aldermaston Women’s Peace Camp (AWPC) has been based at the UK’s main nuclear weapons factory. It is a purely political campaign against militarism. It’s one of the few women-only protest spaces in the UK. Spycop Lynn Watson infiltrated AWPC in the years 2003-2004.
Lynn Watson was at Aldermaston at the same time as other groups, and we have to presume that she would have reported on them, espeically as she attempted to infiltrate some of then. However they have been refused core participant status at the public inquiry.
CLIMATE CAMP
In 2006, the first Climate Camp took place at Drax coal-fired power station in North Yorkshire.
There were further camps until 2010, all sited near high-carbon locations, such as power stations and airports, bringing hundreds of campaigners together to educate each other and protest.
Spycops officer Mark Kennedy was deeply involved in planning Climate Camp, attending five of them and being arrested twice. He was in the secret planning group that made the earliest and largest decisions about the Camps, as well as organising all logistics.
Spycop Lynn Watson also attended and helped organise the first Climate Camp, where she engaged in sexual activity with an activist. Like Kennedy, she was part of a secret group which organised the occupation of the site, and gave briefings to the group in her living room in Leeds.
DR HARRY HALPIN
Dr Harry Halpin is a global academic expert in infomatics who worked at MIT. He travels the world, giving talks to the likes the UN, the OECD and the European Parliament.
Halpin is also an environmentalist, who was spied on at the Kingsnorth and London Climate Camps in the late 2000s, since when he’s had repeated problems when travelling, including being detained under terrorism legislation.
It’s plain to see that Harry Halpin has been blacklisted for his environmentalism at events infiltrated and organised by British spycops.
CARDIFF ANARCHIST NETWORK
Mark ‘Marco’ Jacobs
Cardiff Anarchist Network was a group of about 20 people active from 2005 to 2010. The network consisted of autonomous collectives in opposition to all forms of exploitation and capitalism. Their campaign tactics included direct action.
It was infiltrated by spycop ‘Marco Jacobs’, who got involved in the group’s administrative tasks. He caused discord and fractiousness among the group, and deceived two women into relationships.
Jacobs formed close friendships, attending funerals of family members of the people he spied on. It was a gross invasion of their personal lives.
DEFEND THE RIGHT TO PROTEST
Defend The Right to Protest aimed to respond to the criminalisation of young protesters after the anti-cuts and student protests around 2010. It was an identified target of the National Domestic Extremism Unit. Spycop Simon Wellings was deployed 2001-07.
Wellings spent four years as part of the controlling group of Globalise Resistance. He outed himself by accidentally dialling one of the group while in a police meeting identifying the people he spied on, where he could be heard sharing personal information about activists in photographs he was showing to another officer.
MARK KENNEDY INCITING AND TRAVELLING
In 2009, spycop Mark Kennedy approached anti-militarist campaigner Kirk Jackson to organise UK activists going to Germany.
Jason Kirkpatrick was spied on by Kennedy on numerous occasions between 2005 and 2009, at his home in Berlin and in several other countries as he toured to give talks about protests against the G8 Summits. Politicians in some of these places – Germany, Ireland, Northern Ireland – have called for answers, but the Inquiry seems likely to disregard these as its remit only covers the spycops’ activities in England and Wales.
POLITICAL POLICING WITHOUT LIMITS
This was political policing. There was no constraint to comply with the law, not even the basic rights of those targeted. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 did not restrain spycops – we’ve seen how they carried on well into the 2000s.
The collection, retention and use of data is a major concern. This went on with no legal framework in mind. There was no meaningful system of oversight. Courts and prosecutors were deceived even as they carried out legal processes.
Senior officers either failed to control, or gave approval to, inexcusable acts. This continued for decades under various managers. It was institutional.
The Inquiry limiting access to data – and even the names used by the infiltrators – means victims are prevented from engaging meaningfully with the Inquiry meaningfully.
RACIAL JUSTICE CAMPAIGNS
Spycops targeted family justice campaigns and community organisations. The preponderance of black campaigns shows how their race was part of the threat they were seen to pose.
Celia Stubbs’s partner Blair Peach was killed by police in 1979. Lee Lawrence’s mother Cherry Groce was shot by police in 1985. Myrna Simpson’s daughter, Joy Gardner, died after restraint by police in 1993. Bernard Renwick’s brother died in 1999, again after being restrained.
Beyond those killed by police, Sukhdev and Tish Reel lost Ricky Reel after he was attacked by racists. Michael Menson died after being set alight by white youths.
Other core participants here are Winston Silcott, who was wrongly convicted of the murder of PC Blakelock, and Stafford Scott, who supported those arrested in the aftermath of the Broadwater Farm disturbances in 1985.
Sharon Grant’s late husband, MP Bernie Grant, supported many such campaigns, and was spied on. All these people were merely seeking justice over police malpractice.
CELIA STUBBS
Blair Peach
Blair Peach was a teacher and trade unionist who attended a protest against the racist National Front in 1979.
Eleven witnesses saw six police get out of a van and one of them give Peach a fatal blow to the head. The determined cover-up that followed lasted decades. Police officers refused to answer questions. Commander Cass’ investigation said officers were ‘clearly obstructing’ the investigation.
Cass was clear that a police officer had killed Peach, but officers wanted to maintain the cover-up. All officers present claimed not to remember details. Cass’ report was kept from the inquest and went unpublished for 31 years, until 2010.
The coroner wrote to politicians before the inquest had even finished, saying the idea Peach was killed by police was a political lie. He therefore indicated to the Home Office that the investigation was biased. Blair’s partner, Celia Stubbs, knew none of this.
Stubbs says it can’t be expressed how exhausting it is to suffer bereavement then face such official intransigence. The guilty officer has been identified. Nobody has ever been charged.
Stubbs helped to establish Inquest for people in similar positions. Stubbs knew her phone was tapped but never suspected she was being spied on in person by undercover police. There would have been no justification for it. There were no secret meetings.
She finds it especially distressing that there was undercover reporting at Blair’s funeral.
Stubbs says spycops lost all sense of the fact that Blair was killed by police. His loved ones’ distress was criminalised. Stubbs has had no explanation for why she was spied on, nor why it was kept secret – no officer blew the whistle.
Spying on the Blair Peach campaign was a gross abuse of the trust given to police. They wanted to stay one step ahead of the campaign to assist the police in frustrating the attempts to secure accountability.
Stubbs got an apology from the police in 2015. It is not enough, it must just be a starting point.
The opening statement by police lawyer Oliver Sanders on Tuesday cited the deaths of Kevin Gately and Blair Peach. This was an offensive comment. Peach was not killed by protest or protesters. His killing does not stand as justification for spycops. Blair was killed BY police, and the truth covered up for decades.
What would have saved him was restraint of police brutality against a campaigner against racism. It’s an outrageous way to start the Inquiry.
LEE LAWRENCE
Cherry Groce
In 1985, Lee Lawrence saw his mother Cherry Groce shot by police at their home by Officer Lovelock. She used a wheelchair for the rest of their life.
In 2014, an inquest found that the shooting had contributed to her death.
Mr Lawrence has sat on advisory boards helping police improve tactics. His positive attitude has built bridges, yet he was spied on.
MYRNA SIMPSON
Joy Gardner
In 1993, Joy Gardner was at home with her three year old son when there was a raid by police and immigration. Her hands were bound to her sides, her legs strapped together, and 13 feet of tape was wrapped round her head. She was asphyxiated.
Three officers were acquitted of manslaughter.
Joy Garner’s mother Myrna Simpson was spied on by the SDS. We do not know why.
RICKY REEL
Lakhvinder ‘Ricky’ Reel
Ricky Reel’s family have been campaigning for an investigation into his racist murder in 1997, which police treated as an accident. The police investigation disregarded the racial harassment of Ricky Reel immediately prior to his death. They decided it was accidental death before the investigation was complete.
The police investigation was subject to two inquiries, but the reports are confidential. The family were told in 2013 that they had been spied on by the SDS.
For the Reel family to find out they were spied on on top of Ricky’s death and the failed police investigation has had a horrific impact. Resources weren’t available to investigate the death, but were available for spying on those who were left behind.
MICHAEL MENSON
Michael Menson
On 21 January 1997, Michael Menson, a 30-year old black man, was discharged from hospital where he had received treatment for mental health matters. A week later he was found in the street, having been set alight. He was taken to hospital where he said he’d been attacked. He died of his injuries on 13 February 1997.
Police treated it as self-immolation; the family said it should be murder. The inquest ruled it an ‘unlawful killing’.
In 1999, three men were convicted of the murder in two separate trials. A Cambridgeshire police investigation found negligence and racism, with one police officer saying ‘I don’t know why they’re so worried, this only concerns a fucking black schizophrenic’.
Michael Menson’s family was told in 2014 that the SDS had spied on their campaign. They saw heavily redacted files. The family grieved for Michael, and were let down by the police investigation. To this day, they don’t know the full truth.
ROGER SYLVESTER
Roger Sylvester
On 11 January 1999, Roger Sylvester was acutely unwell with a mental health episode. He was taken away by police and was restrained in a way that killed him.
The inquest jury ruled it an unlawful killing, but this was overturned by the High Court.
Roger Sylvester’s family have seen redacted reports on the funeral. Why was that even reported on, and what was redacted?
WINSTON SILCOTT & BROADWATER FARM
Winston Silcott
In October 1985, a few weeks after police shot Cherry Groce, police entered the North London home of Cynthia Jarrett, and she died from a heart attack. People on the Broadwater Farm estate felt unsafe in their own homes. A protest the next day developed into a disturbance, and PC Keith Blakelock was stabbed to death.
Winston Silcott was convicted of the murder, despite not even being at the scene. Officers had fabricated incriminating notes.
Spycop John Dines lived in a house overlooking the Silcott family home as Winston’s appeal was pending. Alcott’s conviction was quashed in 1991. He was spied on for up to ten years afterwards.
After the Broadwater Farm disturbance, Stafford Scott worked to support people arrested. Scott was arrested during the investigation into the death of Blakelock, and the police later had to compensate him for their mistreatment. He has devoted his life to supporting victims of police malpractice.
The Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign suffered a series of ‘burglaries’ and it is thought spycops are responsible. Spycop John Dines attended at least one protest in support of the Campaign.
HACKNEY COMMUNITY DEFENCE ASSOCIATION
Dr Graham Smith was part of the Hackney Community Defence Association in the 1980s and 90s, along with Mark Metcalf They supported victims of police brutality and abuses of power.
In 1993, Smith and Metcalf established the Colin Roach Centre, which hosted anti-racist, police accountability, civil rights and trade union activists. It too was burgled, and its computers destroyed.
In 1995, spycops officer Mark Jenner infiltrated the Colin Roach Centre. He became very active in it, including writing for its bulletin.
Jenner was privy to confidential information about cases against the police. He then turned his attention to trade union activity, even becoming chair of one group. He also deceived a woman known as Alison into a long-term relationship.
SHARON & BERNIE GRANT
Bernie & Sharon Grant with Tony Benn, 1994
Sharon Grant is the widow of Bernie Grant, MP for Tottenham 1987-2000. In 1987, Bernie was one of three black MPs elected, the first time such a thing had happened in the UK. He supported some of the cases mentioned including the Broadwater Farm Defence Campaign. He challenged police stop and search practice, he opposed apartheid, and frequently travelled abroad for his anti-racist work.
As well as being Bernie’s wife, Sharon was his office manager and an activist in her own right. Was she also targeted by spycops? What justification was even given at the time for spying on an MP? Who else saw the intelligence – the press who vilified him?
DIANE ABBOTT
Diane Abbott was elected at the same time as Bernie Grant, the first black woman in the Commons. She’s been a leading anti racism campaigner for decades, supporting many campaigns including those of Blair Peach and Stephen Lawrence. Whistle-blower spycop Peter Francis says Abbott was spied on while an MP.
Joan Ruddock has supported many progressive causes and was an MP and minister. She too was spied on whilst an MP.
Unjustified, unregulated political policing like this distorts the ability of the public to engage with the political process.
None of these campaigns should have been spied on, nor the MPs. It wasn’t merely insensitive to grieving families. It was police shielding other officers from legitimate criticism and exposure of police wrongdoing.
The targeting of black campaigns and MPs mirrors the very complaints community campaigns were making. For simply seeking accountability by lawful means, they were subjected to the kind of intrusive spying people would think was reserved for serious and violent criminal activity.
Victims were treated as perpetrators. We want to know not just who did it, but who sanctioned it? What level approved or failed to prevent it?
This has a particularly disturbing aspect: unaccountable police undermining campaigns for police accountability. All the people I speak for, irrespective of their own ethnicity, want the Inquiry to be unflinching in exposing the racism of this policing.
MISCARRIAGES OF JUSTICE
Spycops took part in direct action protests and caused miscarriages of justice. They influenced and planned actions, including encouraging unlawful activity for which participants were convicted and even jailed. This was entrapment.
Managers who should have been providing oversight were tolerating, even encouraging this unlawful behaviour. Courts weren’t told. Proper disclosure and integrity of evidence were disregarded. It’s not only contempt for the spied-upon but for the legal process and rule of law .
Home Office guidance was clear – undercover officers mustn’t be agents provocateur, nor ever mislead a court [as cited in our post about spycops and miscarriages of justice]
The SDS Tradecraft Manual actively discouraged spycops from admitting their real identity to arresting police. Spycops arrested on protests were party to defence meetings with their lawyers, breaching legal privilege.
Spycop ‘Mike Scott‘ infiltrated a 1972 anti-apartheid demo, and was arrested and convicted under his fake identity. It is described here by one of those wrongly convicted, Professor Jonathan Rosenhead:
‘Mike Scott’ withheld evidence that exonerated the activists convicted – he knew they weren’t on a public highway as his uniformed colleagues had alleged. The spycops Tradecraft Manual itself warns of the risk of being ‘fitted up’ by uniformed officers.
ANDREW CLARKE & GEOFF SHEPPARD
Andrew Clarke and Geoff Sheppard were animal rights activists in the 1980s and 90s. Sheppard was convicted three times, and each a spycops officer was involved.
Clarke and Sheppard were convicted of planting incendiary devices intended to set off sprinklers in Debenham’s.
At their trial, Clarke and Sheppard had been convicted of joint enterprise, even though they may not have planted all the devices. There was no evidence of Clarke planting any. The Crown said a third person planted one.
In 2011, they found out the third person in their group, ‘Bob Robinson’, was actually spycop Bob Lambert, and appealed their convictions.
Clarke and Sheppard served long sentences. Lambert’s role was kept secret. He went on to run the SDS and get an MBE for services to policing.
Spycop John Dines was involved in Sheppard’s second conviction, when flour was thrown at a hunters’ ball. After that, spycop Matt Rayner encouraged Sheppard to acquire a shotgun, for which he was then convicted.
It seems that neither prosecutors nor the courts were aware of any spycops’ involvement. These officers had access to the defendants’ legal activity. This is secret police overriding the rule of law with nobody approving it but themselves.
Allegations of Bob Lambert’s involvement in the 1987 burning of Debenham’s in Harrow were first made in 2012. Four years later the Met said they were undertaking a criminal investigation. Four more years later, in October 2020, and the Met said they still haven’t finished their investigation.
STOP HUNTINGDON ANIMAL CRUELTY
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) was a group campaigning to close Huntingdon Life Sciences vivisection labs. Several activists were convicted of blackmail in 2013. Numerous spycops, including Rod Richardson and Mark Kennedy, were involved, plus a corporate spy called Adrian Radford.
Spycops gave witness statements to court for Debbie Vincent’s trial, and we believe it happened in Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty trials as well.
JOHN JORDAN
John Jordan was convicted in 1997 for a Reclaim the Streets action – all other defendants including spycops officer Jim Boyling were acquitted.
Jordan’s conviction was quashed in 2014 but without disclosure of any evidence. The judge said it would come out at the current Inquiry.
RATCLIFFE CLIMATE TRIAL
In April 2009, 114 climate activists were arrested planning a protest to shut down Ratcliffe on Soar power station. Eventually, 26 were charged with conspiracy. In a first trial, 20 admitted the plan but said it was justified, and they were convicted in 2010.
In a second trial, six people denied being part of the conspiracy. Just before their trial began, they discovered that their fellow-arrestee ‘Mark Stone’ was actually spycop Mark Kennedy. They asked the prosecution to comply with their obligation to hand over all evidence, including Kennedy’s reports. On the day the trial was due to start in January 2011, the Crown Prosecution Service dropped all charges.
The Ratcliffe 20 then had their convictions quashed. The judge said future inquiries such as the current one would make everything clear.
DRAX CLIMATE TRIAL
A year before the Ratcliffe arrests, in 2008, 29 climate activists were arrested for stopping a coal train on its way to Drax coal-fired power station in North Yorkshire. The activists acted totally peacefully and with impeccable health and safety considerations. They were convicted.
In 1996, hunt saboteurs went to Good Easter in Essex. They were stopped and searched on the way, and several were arrested. In a similar instance nearby, another person was arrested after being stopped by police.
The police were extremely aggressive. This treatment of animal rights activists chimes with spycop Andy Coles’ contribution to the SDS Tradecraft Manual. In it, he told of the low opinion he’d developed of uniformed officers dealing with animal rights activists, saying it was ‘often out of proportion to your behaviour’.
Those arrested later received compensation. But one of the other ‘activists’ present was in fact a spycop, Jim Boyling. Boyling gave a witness statement about the police’s unlawful behaviour, but as this was believed to be coming from just another hunt sab, it carried no weight.
FAIRFORD COACHES
NPOIU officer known as Rod Richardson
Protesters travelling on coaches to RAF Fairford to protest against the start of the Iraq War were turned back by police, who then shut off all exits from the motorway to London. They said it was because a protester group known as WOMBLES were on the coaches, allegedly intent on disorder.
One of the passengers, Jane Laporte, brought a judicial review which found in her favour and against the police. This went to the High Court and House of Lords. Police had said they had ‘no basis for distinguishing between passengers’.
But spycop Rod Richardson was on one of the coaches. He knew who was on there, and their intentions. He would also have known who was and wasn’t in the WOMBLES. Spycop Jason Bishop had helped organise the coaches, and would also have known about the passengers.
Police misled the highest appeal court in the land, claiming not to have intelligence they clearly had.
LONDON ANIMAL ACTION
London Animal Action was a collective of animal rights groups founded in 1994. Numerous spycops joined; Andy Coles, Matt Rayner, Christine Green, Dave Evans, and possibly more. Bob Lambert was manager of some of these. All but Evans are known to have had intimate relationships with people they spied on.
We know corporate spies infiltrated London Animal Action. Did they get intelligence passed to them from spycops?
THE COMMON PLACE
In 2005, The Common Place social centre was founded in Leeds. Its first treasurer was spycop Lynn Watson. She complied with the legal obligation to file accounts – but did so under her false name. After she left and this was realised, the centre had to close.
HOW MANY MORE?
Mark Ellison and Alison Morgan’s 2015 report found spycops routinely withheld evidence from courts when they were involved in cases.
All spycops miscarriages of justice cases that have been reviewed have been the result of those convicted raising concerns, not from the police coming clean
Ellison & Morgan’s report also said that the lack of surviving records means we can’t tell what evidence once existed that would have changed court cases.
Ellison & Morgan identified 26 SDS officers arrested on 52 occasions. But it couldn’t identify all potential miscarriages of justice. This is extremely disturbing – the secrecy of the spycops means the facts of what they did were deliberately withheld from courts and some miscarriages of justice can never be rectified.
The refusal of police and the Inquiry to release documents, and pictures of spycops, are obstacles to discovering more.
Those spied upon, who have done better than police or CPS on this issue, must be given a central role at the Inquiry.
WHY WE NEED THE TRUTH
Core participants targeted by spycops are not confident the Inquiry will reach the truth. After years of asking, they’ve been told almost nothing. It makes it hard for them to properly contribute.
Speaking for the police at the Inquiry, Oliver Sands QC said criticism of spycops misses the point because if there were a right to be heard without the police knowing in advance, it would have to apply to everyone regardless of their politics, and that result in ‘pandemonium’.
We think the right to be heard without police knowing in advance is a human right of freedom of expression, it should not apply to those whose politics are deemed officially acceptable.
The behaviour of the spycops was consistent with what they were told was acceptable and encouraged to do; it was systemic, not rogue officers.
Exposing the truth about spycops has come at huge human cost. The spied-on did the work themselves to find out the truth, which is traumatic in itself. But it’s made harder because of the obstructions by police.
Had it been left to the police alone, we would never have heard of it. Discovering for themselves they have been spied on has had profound, long lasting and damaging impacts on the activists themselves.
One of the core participants who exposed Mark Kennedy said:
‘It was worse than a bereavement. When a loved one merely dies they go away forever but, unlike a spycop, they don’t undo all the shared experiences that made you love them when they were here. He should never have been in our lives and families. But more than that, we should not have had to find the truth for ourselves, and by chance…
‘But speaking to others who can’t be sure which of their friends were spycops, I realise I have been spared something even more damaging. The thing worse than knowing is not knowing.’
Undercover policing of this kind must never happen again. Even at this early stage of the inquiry, we should be looking for what changes the Inquiry will recommend for the future. We want to know what the purpose of the spying? Was it tainted by racism or other prejudices? Is the purpose a retrospective excuse that can’t be verified?
What framework did the spycops work to, and is there any evidence of it being adhered to? If it existed at all, why did it fail to protect victims?
The Inquiry itself is a test of whether an inquiry process can deliver justice and explanations to the wronged. It must deliver the truth we all deserve and have waited so long to hear.
Donal O’Driscoll
(Category L [Social and environmental activists] Core Participant
Donal is representing himself at the Inquiry. He was involved in numerous campaigns targeted by spycops, and is a researcher for the Undercover Research Group. This is a summarised version of his statement, you can read the full thing on their site.
It appears the Inquiry believes it can do its work without the non-state non-police core participants if needed, that it can interpret the moments and movements we were part of by hearing the words of those whose core training was to lie, people who were willing to pervert the course of justice.
Disclosure of material the police had years to pore over, we are given at the eleventh hour, with insufficient time to process properly.
Trauma, pain and injustice are at the heart of the matter. The undercover policing scandal has its impact because this is what it caused, in myriad different ways. People were abused. Democracy was attacked by ideologically motivated units, yet we are told they are the ones who need protecting with anonymity. The police committed serious crimes, and are clearly approaching the Inquiry as an adversarial process. The constant prioritising of police’s desires exacerbates the pain we all feel.
I’ve seen some of the information spycops police kept on us. I know how extensive, personal and vile it is, and the lies and inaccuracies within. The Inquiry will not get through the layers of deception where the police have covered their tracks, leaving documents that deliberately obscure the truth if they left any record at all.
I grew up in Northern Ireland aware of state sponsored murder gangs and shoot to kill policies. We knew what the British state is capable of and what it is willing to cover up or justify to itself.
So, I come to this with no illusions. However, I will not stand by when the Inquiry tells me it can get to the truth without letting me know the names of the undercovers who spied on me. When the Inquiry insists on withholding those basic facts from myself and others, it is not getting to the truth, it is helping cover it up.
In 1998, I was hospitalised, pushed under a moving car by a police officer during a demonstration, a deeply traumatising moment that still affects me. In the subsequent months I was targeted by police which furthered that trauma. I now believe spycop Christine Green would have been around for that. I want to know what reporting she and other undercovers made in relation to that period, and how that impacted on the civil claim I was then preparing against the police.
PERSONAL HISTORY
In the late 1990s I was placed on construction industry blacklisters The Consulting Association’s so-called ‘greenlist’ of environmental activists and experienced the impact of that, having job offers withdrawn last minute.
In the 2000s, I was involved in defending animal rights groups against civil injunctions that sought to undermining their right to protest. I now know that not only were the domestic extremism units overtly active around this, they were covertly active as well, including one corporate spy now known to have passed material to police. I want to know to what extent undercovers active at the time, at least one close to me, were disrupting our legal defences and who sanctioned that.
During one of the injunction cases, it emerged that Superintendent Stephen Pearl head of the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (NETCU), a sister unit to the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), handed over to lawyers representing a number of private companies the names, details and convictions of 52 individuals including myself.
It was clear that this type of assistance was done as a matter of course and the practice only emerged when they sought to formalise it for proceedings. I managed to successfully intervene on that occasion, but the question remains as to how much other material, including that gathered by undercovers, was being passed over to private companies.
Superintendent Pearl went on to become a director of a vetting and security firm, Agenda. It raises the question of just how seriously should we take claims of risk facing NPIOU officers when, as of yesterday, he was listing his NETCU role and business interests on LinkedIn, along with a photograph of himself.
Around 2010, I was with Debbie Vincent talking to the pharmaceutical giant Novartis, negotiating in good faith regarding their injunction. However, we were not talking to Novartis as we’d been led to believe, but to undercover officer James Adams. I was arrested for conspiracy to blackmail, something I believe was done to undermine my work on the injunctions more generally. The charges were later dropped.
A PROUD ACTIVIST
I would like to make it clear that, as an animal rights activist, environmentalist, anarchist and anti-fascist, I remain proud of all I have been involved in and continue to be committed to those causes. I regret very little. I am sure the state will happily label me a criminal, but that does not bother me.
I have always fought for and been motivated by a sense of justice. It is at the core of who I am, that one does not stand idly by in the face of cruelty or oppression. Positive change comes only through people standing up to the powerful. I will not accept such criticism from a state that gives its agents, unchecked powers to abuse, rape, even murder, and will spend millions to cover for them. Whatever I have done that some might find disagreeable, it is nothing compared to the police.
In October 2010 I was among the first to get the phone call, a friend telling me they had just confirmed my friend Mark Stone was in fact the undercover Mark Kennedy. Over the next few months I watched the pain and tears. I watched good friends and colleagues being broken. I knew a number of those he had relationships with, and could only try to console them as they processed that horror.
In the last decade I have spoken to over 150 people who had been targeted, from all forms of campaigns and groups. Probably better than most, I know how far and deep the emotional scars of this scandal go.
Campaigning is hard enough, causes enough burnout and trauma in itself, without knowing there are those working alongside you to directly undermine all you are seeking to achieve.
It is apparent the undercovers had access to medical records and were willing to use health issues to facilitate access to people. They were close to people suffering serious medical trauma and inserting themselves in their lives and care.
SPYCOPS TRAUMATISING CHILDREN
In a number of cases, spycops were involved in the lives of children of activists. I have listened parents tell of the guilt at leaving their loved ones in the care of people who didn’t really exist, the doubt about their own judgement, and the anger toward the police that sanctioned this.
I’m also very aware of how much it impacted those children, some having to live with parents processing the trauma, others damaged by the knowledge that someone they thought was a friend was lying to them about everything.
Spycops pointed the fingers at other people, alleging them to be police or informers. How many people were wrongly accused in this way, effectively driven out and denied their ability to partake? This is a profoundly cynical, destructive and anti-democratic thing to do, and the interference with their rights should not be glossed over. None of any of these were one-off cases.
INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSIBILITY
The spycops units were not rogue. They were known of at the highest levels and their activities condoned. Many went on to senior management which tells us that knowledge permeated the police. Any investigation must find how far that knowledge went, but also how much there was wilful blindness to the abuses.
The police want to focus on the alleged criminality of protestors to justify the undercover deployments. But these units were ideologically motivated, individually and systemically racist and sexist, with little interest in the rights of those they targeted.
They didn’t send the officers in to tackle the alleged criminality of one or two people, they targeted groups wholesale for exercising their rights to protest and seeking positive social change. In doing so, they effectively criminalised these communities, and once that was accepted practice, it became reason enough to justify everything else.
The notion of “collateral intrusion” has no place in this Inquiry. These units saw nobody as collateral, but reported on everyone regardless.
Even if it management claim they did not know of individual abuses, they do not escape responsibility for creating a culture where anything went and they were content to fund it, and signed off on the choice of targets.
We know that undercovers and their managers went on to work for private firms, taking their knowledge and experience with them. In doing so they perpetuated the same intrusion and abuses they carried out as undercovers. It is not simply a matter of whether they worked undercover subsequently, but whether they also took information with them or used contacts back into Special Branch to obtain that information.
Ironically, many of the spycops make out it is they who are at risk. What they are most worried about is being held responsible. Hiding behind anonymity orders is a cowardly refusal to acknowledge they had no right to carry out their political, sexist, racist and anti-democratic policing.
There is no doubt it is still going on. We know domestic extremism units continue to exist and monitor protests to this day. The fact that they remain embedded in Counter Terrorism Command shows nothing has fundamentally changed in how they view campaigners.
Changing unit names has not altered the ideological foundation that gave rise to the abuses in the first place. These counter terrorism units are merely a rebranding of Special Branch while their Special Project Teams continue to deploy undercovers. The spycop scandal is not an issue of the past; it remains relevant right up the current moment.
People cannot and will not be fobbed off. Growing up aware of the injustice of the Widgery Tribunal’s whitewashing of the Bloody Sunday massacre in itself is, in part, is why I am here today. As with Shrewsbury, Orgreave, blacklisting, and so many family justice campaigns, the issue of spycops will not go away until answers are had, in public.
COPS will be live-tweeting all the Inquiry hearings, and producing daily reports like this one for the blog. They will be indexed on our UCPI Public Inquiry page.
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Incidents in the Spycops Inquiry show the importance of public inquiries hearing the evidence in public, writes Donal O’Driscoll.
He admitted that he didn’t remember any IMG members being violent or disorderly at demos but claims ‘they were much busier than other groups’ – as if that was justification in itself.
The Inquiry seems to be focusing on a few ideas that now fit with modern mainstream sensibilities – that apartheid was wrong, or that singling out people for their disabilities is unacceptable – rather than seeing them as part of the SDS’s wider attack on progressive politics and citizens’ personal integrity.
However, he said the SDS (and therefore Special Branch) did collect information about people who were ‘unfriendly towards the State and its institutions and might use criminal methods to undermine it’. In fact he went on to say that this ‘secondary role’ was in fact one of Special Branch’s ‘main functions’.
Bailey attended the Conference for a Red Europe in Brussels in November 1970, having secured specific permission to travel abroad from his managers.
Undercover Policing Inquiry
Mitting vaporised any chance of that approach by asking what the specific issue was. Menon said it was whether Crampton had a relationship with a leading Notting Hill VSC member.
Tate was asked to clarify his role in the VSC. He was one of its founders in June 1966. He was a member of its National Council and its executive committee, from that date on until April 1969. The executive committee, a sub-committee of the National Council, provided leadership to the VSC between National Council meetings and was responsible for its national functioning on a day-to-day basis. Beyond that, Tate publicly wrote and spoke for the VSC.
Barr asked Ali to account for his use of the word ‘militancy’. He explained that other groups at the time were demanding peace in Vietnam, but the VSC didn’t want ‘the peace of the graveyard’, they supported the Vietnamese people in their struggle against the American occupation.
Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 7
What happened next was the stuff of fiction. Steel and Morris couldn’t afford lawyers and represented themselves in court (assisted behind the scenes by a young barrister prepared to work for free called Keir Starmer) against a large McDonald’s legal team led by a QC charging £2,000 a day. McDonald’s had objected to the whole leaflet, so Steel and Morris had to defend every word. It became the longest trial in English history. In the end there were a number of damning judgements against the fast food giant, and versions of the leaflet were being handed out in millions all over the world.
Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 6
Despite Soracchi’s name being in the public domain for quite some time, Mitting is insisting that nobody can say it at the Inquiry, to the frustration and disappointment of Lindsey and others.
Undercover Policing Inquiry
Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 4
