Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 3

4 November 2020

Evidence from:

Oliver Sanders QC (Designated Lawyer Officers i.e. speaking for 114 spycops)

Richard Whittam QC (Slater & Gordon Clients representing 12 individual undercover officers / managers)

David Lock QC (whistle-blower officer Peter Francis)

Angus McCullough QC (Category M Core Participants – three ex wives of undercover officers)

Rajiv Menon QC (spied-upon core participants represented by Jane Deighton & Richard Parry)

Oliver Sanders QC
(Designated Lawyer Officers)

Oliver Sanders QC

Oliver Sanders QC, representing the majority of former spycops, concluded the opening statement he’d begun at yesterday’s hearing.

Sanders said the main function of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) was to assess public order threats, of which many came from political protests in the period currently being examined by the Inquiry (1968-82). However, he said it’s hard to quantify because few records have been kept and even at the time intelligence was ‘sanitised’ to obscure its source.

He turned to the SDS’ secondary function, providing intelligence on ‘subversion’ to MI5. He conceded that subversion is an amorphous concept and ‘difficult to grasp as a threat to national security’ but insisted it was a real threat then and now. He cited hostile states sponsoring cyber attacks as subversion, as if that has anything to do with those of us targeted by spycops. It was an extension of the previous day’s repeated iterations of ‘undercovers protect us from terrorism and paedophiles’, a tactic which only serves to smear victims of spycops.

MI5’s FOOT SOLDIERS

Sanders was keen to emphasise that the SDS was no aberration in its choice of targets, merely reinforcing the established work of MI5. He cited The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 by Christopher Andrew (2009), which estimated that in the 1970s a quarter of MI5 resources went on counter-subversion.

In 1980s the groups that fell under this category included the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (which had around 250,000 members and was mainstream enough to have its aims included in the Labour Party manifesto), trade unions such as the National Union of Mineworkers, and an array of left wing organisations including the Socialist Workers Party, International Marxist Group, and the Militant Tendency.

He said that MI5 and spycops were so allied that MI5 considered funding the SDS, and they liaised to ensure they didn’t duplicate spying – it would not only have wasted resources but they may have ended up spying on each other’s officers.

Most SDS intelligence reports were not only copied to MI5 but were sent with the file reference numbers of the people/group already added. The partnership was active, with MI5 recommended tips to SDS spycops, and they asked for specific info – though he didn’t mention any instances of the flow of information and directives going the other way. Instead, it seems the SDS was used as the foot-soldiers of MI5. Sanders noted that the SDS weren’t in a position to question MI5’s focus, thinking and efforts.

Sanders was at pains to assert that there was nothing sinister, surprising, or objectionable in this collusion, it’s just what both organisations were tasked to do.

The subtext of Sanders’ explanation was that, because MI5 targeted the same people in the same ways as the SDS, it means the SDS was acceptable rather than both of them being unacceptable.

PART OF THE UNION

Sanders then made a few tenuous claims about the limits of SDS activity. He 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.

Page from undercover officer Mark Jenner’s 1996 diary, showing his attendance at a UCATT meeting

Mr Sanders appears to have short-term memory issues. On Monday this week, David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry, confirmed that in its earliest years, the SDS spied on the Shrewsbury 2 Defence Committee, a group in support of trade union activists who’d been fitted up with charges after their invovlement in the 1972 building workers’ strike.

Peter Francis was in the SDS from 1993-1998, and believes intelligence he gathered was used in construction industry blacklisting.

SDS officer Mark Jenner was a member of construction union UCATT.

Officer Carlo Soracchi was often on picket lines, and was photographed on an RMT picket in 2004 calling for the reinstatement of Steve Hedley.

Hedley went on to become general secretary of the union and is also a core participant at the Inquiry because it’s credibly established that he was spied on for his trade union activity.

Sanders said talk of the SDS spying on thousands of groups is wholly wrong. Once again, he’s arguing with the Inquiry itself, as that is the source of the fact that more than 1,000 groups were targeted. Sanders did not suggest what sort of figure he would like us to believe.

SPYCOPS STEALING DEAD CHILDREN’S IDENTITIES

Sanders then peeled a figurative onion and tried to sound a bit sad as he came to the issue of spycops stealing the identities of dead children to use as the basis of their undercover persona. He said it was invented in an earlier time when people felt differently about death and risk, and doing this to protect people who were still alive would probably have been OK with the families involved.

He said it was done because having a real birth certificate was the only way to prove a person was real. It was lawful, he reckoned, as ‘it didn’t involve quote-unquote theft’ he said. To the rest of the world, taking someone’s identity without the knowledge of them or their family and then using it to pretend to be them is a solid definition of identity theft.

Sanders said that though it was regrettable, if spycops hadn’t stolen dead children’s identities they would have been at greater risk of exposure, or else there would have to be no spycops and the alternative to that was paramilitary police on demonstrations. So, it was an unpalatable choice but obviously the best of a bad bunch.

This lawyer representing UK police officers, a force that supposedly prides itself on policing by consent, is saying anyone wanting to be politically active must put up with being targeted either by spycops violating fundamental rights in our homes or paramilitary police threatening us on the streets.

Spycops, Sanders informed us, understand why stealing dead child’s identity is upsetting, some were even uncomfortable doing it at the time, but they felt there was no choice. There was no pleasure taken in doing it, and the police hope that is of some comfort. He said it happened until the 1990s.

Sanders doesn’t explain why, once spycops were stealing dead kids identities and the Home Office Select Committee demanded families were told in 2013, the Met refused. In the end the Inquiry had to tell them recently.

SPYCOPS DECEIVING WOMEN INTO RELATIONSHIPS

Sanders said a couple of his clients admit to deceiving women into relationships while undercover, and just two of them say it was long-term. But, unable to deny established facts, he conceded that it appears a significant minority of SDS officers entered into such relationships. These shouldn’t have happened and were wrong, he said.

His excuse was that many of the officers who deceived women into relationships were unsuitable for undercover work, and officers who did so were personal failures who’d lost sight of what they were supposed to be doing. This is palpable nonsense; the very opposite is true. Such relationships were standard practice, known to the managers and seen as integral to the job.

Far from being seen as inadequate misfits, several of the officers who perpetrated them were appointed as role models. SDS officer Bob Lambert deceived at least four women he spied on into relationships and had a planned child with one of them. He was promoted to running the SDS, where he deployed numerous officers who did the same. He received an MBE for services to policing.

SDS officer Andy Coles groomed a vulnerable teenager known as Jessica into a year-long relationship when he was undercover in the early 1990s. He went on to be an SDS cover officer, before being appointed to train the first officers of the SDS’ sister unit the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). After that, he moved on to being Head of Training for the Association of Chief Police Officers’ Terrorism & Allied Matters committee, which oversaw the NPOIU.

SECRECY AND FEAR

Sanders then criticised the Inquiry itself. Its remit is too broad in covering 50 years. It’s also too narrow in only examining activity in England & Wales when spycops often went to other jurisdictions (like a stopped clock momentarily telling the right time, that last point is the bit of Sanders’ speech that does indeed have great merit).

Sanders accurately said that we can’t say what would have happened if there hadn’t been spycops. He then said the lack of this knowledge means the Inquiry will be inadequate, and that as we can’t say things would have been better, we can’t really say they were a bad thing overall.

He suggested that demonstrations may have been more violent and, as he did the previous day, invoked the death on protests of Kevin Gately and Blair Peach – both of whom were killed by police at events with heavily spied-on groups.

If Sanders’ reasoning were sound, we would expect any deaths to have been in unknown groups, and those who were infiltrated would have been safely policed. Instead, the very opposite happened. The spycops targeted the groups seen as dangerous threats, as did the most violent uniformed police in public order situations, all leading to the very worst consequences.

Sanders said a further limit on the Inquiry is the anonymity granted to many officers, including 34 out of the 74 he speaks for. This is, of course, the anonymity that officers have actively imposed on the Inquiry. But, Sanders said, if their identities were revealed some would be targeted and possibly killed.

Numerous spycops have been outed for years, including real names and photos. Some of them have outed themselves, appearing at advertised public events and doing media appearances. Many would be very easy to find. None have come to any harm, and it’s frankly insulting to victims to portray them as such a threat.

Neil Woods, a former undercover drugs squad officer scoffed at Sanders on Twitter:

‘I’ve gone public with my real name. And I actually did take down some dangerous people. Ridiculous to suggest that UC’s are at risk having infiltrated London Greenpeace or CND etc. But besides that, I ALWAYS understood that my anonymity was a privilege not a right.’

Sanders said that there was some genuinely dangerous work done by SDS officers, so secret that the Inquiry can’t talk about it, meaning that people will only hear about the pointless and outrageous activity and not have things in balance.

This crooked logic pretends that it’s a balancing act, that if you catch enough bad guys it’s OK to abuse some passers-by. The Met have admitted that spycops deceiving women into relationships is a violation of human rights including the right to freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment. This is an absolute right that no circumstances can ever justify breaching. There is no pair of moral scales in which to put anything that can outweigh the abuses committed by spycops.

Despite all the admissions of abuse we’ve forced out of the Met in recent years, Sanders submitted that the SDS was lawful, effective and working in the public interest when gathering intelligence and helping MI5. ‘The SDS was a politically neutral cog as part of a much larger apparatus,’ he said.

There’s a right of free speech but no right to be heard or force views on others, he said. If we had a right to disrupt things without the police knowing it would have to be a right enjoyed by everyone and there would be mayhem. A lot of the groups targeted by the SDS wanted to promote their own views and suppress the views of opponents. It’s not fair to blame the SDS just because these groups had beliefs that were in conflict with the Met’s neutral job.

The accompanying written opening statement from Oliver Sanders QC on behalf of Designated Lawyer Officers

Richard Whittam QC
(Slater & Gordon Clients)

Richard Whittam QC

Richard Whittam spoke for Slater & Gordon clients, 12 individual undercover officers / managers.

He said that an uninitiated observer may think the Inquiry was just about spycops deceiving women into relationships, but it’s much more than that. However, it isn’t about blaming individual officers. The Inquiry will examine inappropriate deployment and tactics; management and supervisory structure, targeting and authorisation, reporting on justice campaigns, management’s attitude to relationships and commission of crime, the welfare of officers and their families. There are many more issues, Whittam said, but these are of particular importance to the people for whom he speaks.

Whittam said that officers can’t properly justify themselves because those who employed them adhere to the principle of ‘Neither Confirm Nor Deny‘ if anyone is an undercover officer (this tactic has been often been used by police to try to obstruct people getting the truth about spycops). The fact that the Met and Inquiry have confirmed the spycops, using ciphers to protect identity if they feel it necessary, means this assertion is simply not true in this case.

Officers committing crimes while undercover isn’t a problem, Whittam said, because there is some legal basis for allowing it. He expanded, saying the CHIS Bill proves the government see that commission of crime is an essential feature of undercover work in getting to the heart of groups that would cause the public harm. He didn’t pause to define public harm, nor to question whether the current government can be trusted as impartial and infallible moral arbiters.

Whittam turned to the personal well-being of the officers he was speaking for. He told us that their undercover careers and this Inquiry have had a significant impact on their mental health. He lamented that it was supposed to conclude in 2018 yet is only just beginning (neatly sidestepping that the bulk of the delays have come from the police).

Some of the officers he represents are further worried by campaigns to expose their identity. Some deceived women they spied on into relationships but, he said, it’s important not to judge the fact in isolation – one of these relationships continues to this day.

One of Whittam’s spycops, Jim Boyling, deceived several women into relationships. One of them, with a woman known as Rosa, was what Whittam termed “a consensual relationship, albeit with an undercover officer using his cover name, which was not regretted until more than a decade later when his true identity was known”.

Rosa has previously told the BBC:

‘If you put all these things together, you have a team of officers conspiring to rape’.

Boyling faced investigation for sexual offences for what he did. In addition to legal action for rape, he was subject to misconduct proceedings, and was sacked in 2018. Whittam said it’s all a heavy burden for Boyling to bear.

Is it credible that no manager knew about these relationships? Did any of them give approval? Perhaps, he speculated, there are too many for it to be possible to blame individual officers.

We shouldn’t blame them separately for the existence of what was clearly an institutionally accepted and encouraged tactic; for that, we must indeed go to the managers. But we can also certainly blame the undercover officers for perpetrating it.

Whittam mentioned the 2015 apology by the Met to some women deceived into relationships by spycops, in which it was said that such activity was ‘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. So we need to see the Met’s 2015 apology to the women ‘in context’, by which he seemed to mean it should be disregarded.

Perhaps it was justified to have a relationship to build and maintain an undercover persona, Whittam said with the air of someone who hadn’t just cited the occasion on which the Assistant Commissioner of the Met officially and bluntly declared:

‘sexual relationships between undercover police officers and members of the public should not happen. The forming of a sexual relationship by an undercover officer would never be authorised in advance nor indeed used as a tactic of a deployment… I can say as a very senior officer of the Metropolitan Police Service that I and the Metropolitan Police are committed to ensuring that this policy is followed by every officer who is deployed in an undercover role’

The accompanying written opening statement from Richard Whittam QC on behalf of Slater and Gordon Clients

David Lock QC
(Peter Francis)

David Lock QC

Peter Francis was an SDS officer from 1993-98. Like many of his colleagues, he suffered serious mental distress and PTSD after his deployment ended. He sued the Met for lack of psychological care. In 2010, he blew the whistle on spycops with an interview for the Observer. He has been a major source of evidence for researchers and journalists.

David Lock began by saying that we simply wouldn’t have the Inquiry if it weren’t for Francis. But he’s not a policy maker or politician, he’s only of use here as an ex-spycop.

Those giving evidence at the Inquiry have immunity from prosecution based on what they say at the Inquiry, but this doesn’t extend to revelations made elsewhere.

Francis has had no assurance that he won’t be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act for what he has already revealed. Such a prosecution would leave him open to forfeiture of his pension. He is, declared Lock, hereby asking the Met Commissioner for a cast-iron assurance that he won’t be prosecuted nor have his pension removed because of past disclosures. He wants to receive this before giving evidence to the Inquiry.

On 14 March 2010 Francis began his journey of disclosure because he believes the public have a right to know what is done in their name and with their money. By 2011, the Guardian had published more articles with him using his cover name Peter Black, and in 2013 he unmasked himself. He said he came forward despite threats of prosecution, but he had some confidence that a case would not be brought against a whistle-blower acting in the public interest.

Whistle–blowing is usually of interest not just for the facts, said Lock, but for the failure of the institution to admit the truth early on. Whistle-blowers have inadequate protection, there is no support for those who do it after leaving a job, or release the info to the public domain. Francis faces the additional threat of the Official Secrets Act. Police are effectively banned from whistle-blowing, even if the facts are about public harm. The Met don’t recognise Francis as a whistle-blower, so he has no security.

Although he went public over ten years ago, and the Inquiry was set up more than five years ago, Francis hasn’t been asked to make a statement to the Inquiry, and memories are fading with time. The Inquiry is undermining itself by creating such delays. Under the current timetable, the Inquiry doesn’t intend to take evidence from Francis until 2023.

Lock continued to relay Francis’ thoughts, saying that it’s clear when Francis was undercover in the 1990s that there wasn’t proper governance or oversight to balance the needs of the police with the rights of targets. The Inquiry must decide whether this has changed much, but claims of procedural improvement must be taken with circumspection as they come from professional liars in defence of their position.

The duty of care owed to officers is routinely breached, according to Francis, because the Met doesn’t see the stress of lying and deceiving as part of one’s day job. Those who live untruths for extended periods will find themselves living in the psychological shadows.

Lock said that focus is quite rightly on victims of this barely and badly regulated activity, but dedicated spycops like Francis were badly failed by the state too. He had to resort to litigation, which was settled in 2006. He left the Met with fragile mental health having lost the real Peter Francis from living a lie for so long. There should be long term aftercare for spycops as PTSD is a long term condition.

LOOKING FOR TARGETS

Francis observed that those targeted by the SDS were supposed to be subversives seeking the undermining of the state, but this concept was conflated with the policies and convenience of the government of the day, and of economic interests.

The Vietnam War was the policy of a foreign government, yet opposition to it was seen as so subversive of the British state that the SDS was formed to counter it. None of the original target groups were proscribed. Francis believes it is never justified to spy on non-violent groups.

Such a draconian incursion into the lives of ordinary people expressing peaceable opposition to the government of the day is wholly unjustified, according to Francis. It beggars belief to allege that the Women’s Liberation Movement or Croydon Libertarians posed a threat to society.

Lock said that Francis is clear that undercover policing can destroy lives, both those of the spied upon and those of the officers themselves. It cannot be done lightly. Undercover policing is legitimate in the right circumstances, he says, but policing must be transparent and with the consent of the public.

Obviously, spycops wouldn’t be able to work if they were exposed at the time, but Francis suggests that some time after the deployment people could be told. He’s keen to be clear that he doesn’t have the expertise to speculate about timetables, but there must be a time when the state says who has been lied to and why it was justified, and be entitled to compensation if the targeting was unwarranted. Keeping the lid permanently on the box shouldn’t be an option.

It is an excellent point. The Thirty Year Rule lets us see secret Cabinet papers from 1990, yet we can’t see SDS files from 1970.

The accompanying written opening statement from David Lock QC on behalf of Peter Francis

Angus McCullough QC
(Category M Core Participants: Families of Police Officers)

Angus McCullough QC

If there was any doubt as to how deep the institutional sexism of the spycops goes, look at how they treated their own wives. Angus McCullough represents three women who were wives of SDS officers.

McCullough said the women provide unique insight into the officers and the management. The Inquiry will hear many heart rending stories of betrayal and deceit, he said. The sacrifices of the wives went beyond anything they thought they were taking on. It has shattered their lives.

Each of the women has their own story, he said, but they all felt that being police wives was woven into their identity, as part of the wider police service. They felt pride in their husbands joining Special Branch, thinking they would be keeping people safe. They believed they were supporting their husbands in the fight for the good of the country.

McCullough described how they took on the burden of secrecy and fear of reprisals. They did it without any proper support from the Met. Years later they found out their marriages were based on lies. Their husbands’ jobs, of which they had been so proud, were vehicles for the worst kind of infidelity.

SDS Mark Jenner on holiday in Vietnam with Alison. Jenner is understood to have been in couples counselling with Alison & his wife at the same time, with both thinking they were his only partner

They saw the stress and anger that came with the spycop’s job. One had her husband tell her that they had to relocate the family at short notice, and was visited at home by manager Bob Lambert. She now doubts the necessity of this and other significant family decisions.

None had any idea that their husbands had relationships with women they spied on. All were shocked when they saw the media coverage.

Their children were born into relationships imbued with deceit. They saw them struggle with their fathers’ roles at the time, and had to help them negotiate this, then re–chart the relationships again after the publication of the awful truth. Neither the children nor the women got support.

They were an integral part of the process but also exploited by it. This is a unique position for the Inquiry. They saw close–up the impact on the officers and the lack of support. They occasionally met senior officers and have direct evidence about that and the veracity of what the managers said.

They can testify about the recruitment process into the SDS, including indications they specifically sought married men in order to ‘keep them grounded’ (i.e. outsource the stress relief and psychological care) without consideration of the damage it was likely to cause.

McCullough described how they were vetted as support for their husbands, but no support was offered to them.

SDS officer Carlo Soracchi on holiday in Bologna with Donna McLean

They were told that their husbands were infiltrating groups of serious violent criminals. When they found out the truth about the groups that were infiltrated they were horrified about how they’d been lied to.

They suffered further with the impact of their husbands’ unsocial hours, absences and missions abroad (which they now know included holidays with the women their husbands had deceived into relationships).

McCullough said the managers promised them support, yet this never materialised. With one exception, there has been no support at all since the scandal broke. They received no warnings before stories appeared in the media, even though the Met obviously knew it was going to happen. They had no support before during or after any of it.

McCullough said the women can also testify as to frequency of contact between spycops and managers, which was basically daily and gives the lie to claims managers didn’t know what undercover officers were up to.

The women who were deceived into relationships have received an apology, but not the wives of the same officers. Why has the Met not acknowledged the sacrifice they had to make and damage to them and their families?

McCullough described the women’s anguish as they’ve been left with so many questions unanswered. How much did their support make the officers a safe bet for spycop duty? Why were they encouraged to have kids even as the stresses piled up? What support were officers offered? Was there anything else the women weren’t told about? Why were the requests for support for wives ignored? Who in the SDS knew about spycops deceiving women into relationships? Were they authorised to have those relationships? Why weren’t wives told before they were made public?

Spycops should not deceive people they spy on into relationships. Nobody should be subjected to it, nor families have to deal with it. The wives are have been dismayed by the statements from police lawyers attempting to minimise and justify the abhorrent practice.

The accompanying written opening statement from Angus McCullough QC on behalf of the Category M Core Participants

Rajiv Menon QC
(Core Participants represented by Richard Parry & Jane Deighton)

Rajiv Menon QC

Jane Deighton represents Audrey, Nathan & Richard Adams, the family of teenager Rolan Adams who was murdered by racists in February 1991 & whose campaign was one of those targeted by spycops. Jane also represents Duwayne Brooks, friend of Stephen Lawrence & prime witness to Stephen’s murder.

Richard Parry represents five targeted activists, two of whom – Tariq Ali & Ernest Tate – will supply evidence to the early phase of the hearings covering 1968-72.

Menon opened with a bold and blunt question: Why has it taken 2,065 days for the Undercover Policing Inquiry to start?

The original Chair, Lord Pitchford, hoped to finish it in 2018. Some delay is understandable as Pitchford fell ill and Sir John Mitting took over and had to get up to speed, and of course Covid hasn’t helped, but this only explains a fraction of the delay.

The main reason for the long wait, said Menon, is the police’s attempt to obfuscate, obstruct, undermine and delay. They made 148 applications for anonymity for real and cover names of spycops, they insisted every document be vetted before others involved see it. Meanwhile, some of the witnesses have died.

The applications for anonymity were not justified, said Menon. There is no evidence that officers would be at risk if they were identified – no harm has befallen any former officers, either those outed by activists, or those who have outed themselves. It is ironic that officers who invaded other people’s privacy so intensely now invoke their right to privacy at an Inquiry into their own misdeeds.

Police compounded this with mass shredding of documents. The Inquiry’s indulgence of police whims led victims to walk out of the Inquiry then processes in 2018. Little has improved since. Yet victims are still here, hoping for answers.

The Inquiry’s forerunner, ‘Operation Herne’, admitted some facts but sought to defend them and portray the problems as historic, as we might expect from a police self-investigation.

The choice is stark. Is this Inquiry also going to blame the victims and give the state a ‘get out of jail free’ card? Will it blame a few rogue officers? Or will it admit that, since 1968, the spycops have been rotten from top to bottom?

There are 219 victims who are core participants. There are surely thousands more who fit the criteria. Special thanks are due to the Undercover Research Group who have tried to list who was spied on, as neither the police nor Inquiry will publish the lists they have.

What do the victim core participants have in common? They were spied on due to direct, indirect, or perceived connection to social justice, be it against war, racism, inequality, police wrongdoing, animal cruelty, environmental destruction, the abuse of corporate power, or the exploitation of workers. Some were victimised simply for challenging a police narrative. Then we have families of children whose ID was stolen by spycops, wives of officers and a lawyer targeted.

Menon went on to list ten general points on the subject of the Inquiry.

1 – Incompatibility. Spycops’ activity is incompatible with a truly democratic society, being targeted just for having anti-establishment beliefs.

2 – Focus. The Inquiry wasn’t created by police wanting to confess, but by the work of people the police were abusing. Particularly, the women deceived into relationships, and Duwayne Brooks, Doreen Lawrence and Neville Lawrence. Also Rob Evans and Paul Lewis, whose book Undercover is a must-read on the subject. Political policing must remain the focus of the Inquiry. This wasn’t ‘serious and organised crime’.

3 – Scope. The Inquiry is about human interaction; only in England and Wales; only police not MI5. Any conclusions Inquiry reaches will this be partial and incomplete. MI5’s escape of scrutiny is alarming given that most spycops intelligence was shared with MI5 but the reverse isn’t true. Their role is essential to understand the issue.

4 – Disclosure. We must see the documents for ourselves, and in good time, if we are to properly engage. Giving Tariq Ali & Ernest Tate and their lawyers over 5,263 pages of evidence five weeks before the hearings is not good enough.

The Inquiry says it has over a million documents. How can we participate if we only belatedly see a tiny fraction of what documents are available? The Inquiry should supply all relevant documents, as in a criminal case.

With redactions, we should be told who made them – police or the Inquiry? On security or privacy grounds? Why were they needed? Some of the names of spied-on groups from 1968 were redacted. Why?

5 – Shredding. We feared spycops would do it, and they did. The Inquiry must investigate this. How can there be trust in police who have definitely shredded relevant files?

6 – Racism. The British police have always been permeated with racism at all ranks. The Macpherson Inquiry ruling of ‘institutional racism’ wasn’t news to black people, but it was the first admission from the state itself.

We’re concerned that the Chair presides alone without a diverse panel. The Chair told lawyers that Macpherson’s definition of racism is ‘controversial’. The Inquiry mustn’t reverse the progress made due to the courage of black people who’ve fought racism.

7 – Burden. The burden is on the police to explain spycops, not on the victims to justify their own actions. To dissect the politics of victims, turning the spotlight away from the police, is the politics of victim-blaming.

8 – Responsibility. The Inquiry failed to ask the state participants to supply their position in advance, so we’re only just finding out what the agencies think. Some of these opening statements have defended abuse of women by spycops by talking about undercover work against serious and organised crime. This is a red herring, spycops were never about this.

9 – Participation. After next week, the only Inquiry live-streaming is to the Chair’s home and one limited venue in London for which booking has closed. The Grenfell and Child Sexual Abuse inquiries are live-streamed – even closed hearings get streamed to the core participants, lawyers and accredited journalists via secure lines. The Inquiry’s proposed live transcription is not adequate.

Reading is not equivalent to, or even close to being equivalent to, the experience of seeing and hearing a witness give evidence, either in person or on screen. It is also impractical to expect people to read five to six hours of transcript each sitting.

This is an Inquiry with hearings shrouded in secrecy, with most of the police hidden from the public. A time delay in the streaming would avoid any wrong things being broadcast, as other Inquiries are doing.

Which non-state participants are excluded from coming to the venue to see the live-stream? Those who can’t travel; black, disabled and older people are especially at risk. This is a breach of Equalities Act obligations.

Even now, the Inquiry can set up a secure link. If the Chair can have this, why can’t others involved.

10 – Objectives. Participants want answers, chapter and verse, not just scraps. Full disclosure, seeing their full files, complete access as Stasi victims had. They want to know when they were spied on, who authorised, who else saw it?

If the Inquiry does have people’s files, why can’t the subjects even see a redacted version? If the Inquiry doesn’t have them, how can they do their job?

WHAT DO WE WANT? WHEN DO WE WANT IT?

Menon concluded his contribution for the day by saying what the people he speaks for want to see as outcomes, and why the defences we’ve heard from police representatives in the last three days should be brushed aside.

We want it publicly declared that spying on us was wrong. We want the full disbanding of the political policing units, and nothing like them to exist ever again.

Since the 1880s, Special Branch has spied on suffragettes, socialists, pacifists, anti-colonialists and more. Ideas are policed; that’s what Special Branch is there for. But in 1968 things changed, and spycops began living undercover as activists for years on end. The SDS were different from other undercovers by gathering intelligence, rather than evidence for use in trials, so their activities went without scrutiny for decades. The SDS was never about detecting crime, but spying on political opponents of the status quo.

The SDS had a clear political orientation to the right of the spectrum. Officers were politically vetted. Targets were initially all on the left. This was secret, anti-democratic political policing. Only in the late 1970s did a couple of far-right groups attract attention.

There appear to have been no safeguards to check if this spying was justified, necessary or proportional, or its methods ethical or lawful. It was given free rein, regardless of norms and values.

Today, the 70th anniversary of the signing of the European Convention on Human Rights, police lawyers are telling the Inquiry ‘don’t judge 1968 by our standards’, as if people in the 60s didn’t care about human rights and liberty.

We have a host of regulations and supposed oversight bodies. So are spycops’ excesses a thing of the past? It would be extremely naive to assume the police have learned and moved on. Note the reluctance of Counsel for the Met to answer Inquiry’s questions about current policing yesterday: The CHIS Bill demolishes our belief in the effectiveness of oversight, placing no limits on state agents from committing crime, and bars victims from seeking legal redress.

Rajiv Menon will conclude his statement on the morning of 5 November.

The accompanying written opening statement from Rajiv Menon QC on behalf of the Core Participants represented by Richard Parry and Jane Deighton

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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>>Next UCPI Daily Report (5 Nov 2020)>>

Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 2

3 November 2020

Evidence from:
Peter Skelton QC (Metropolitan Police Service)
Gerry Boyle QC (National Police Chiefs’ Council)
Richard O’Brien (National Crime Agency)
Nicholas Griffin QC (Home Office)
Oliver Sanders QC (Designated Lawyer Officers, i.e. speaking for 114 spycops)

When the powerful are caught doing the unjustifiable, they follow the same sequence of responses:
– Ignore it
– Deny it
– Delay the reckoning
– Declare too much time has past, it’s a different era, we can’t do anything now

Today was a day of police lawyers’ opening statements at the Undercover Policing Inquiry. ‘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,’ paraphrased over and over again.

The morning had representatives of four agencies basically saying what their agency does. It was like listening to someone reading Wikipedia. Nobody has ever relished hearing the word ‘ninthly’.

There was very little of relevance to the scandal of the political secret police, but lots of stuff about how other undercover work keeps us safe from paedophiles and terrorists, implying that spycops aren’t that bad in the greater scheme of things.

Peter Skelton QC (Metropolitan Police Service)

Peter Skelton QC

Skelton says the Metropolitan Police have ‘absolute commitment’ to the Inquiry, which is news to those of us who’ve seen their myriad delays and obstructions over the years.

He said the Met doesn’t seek to justify but to admit and improve; but undercover policing is important, though must be within legal and ethical boundaries.

He told us that substantial changes have already been made in law and in police structure. We were told this in the past about the Human Rights Act 1998 and Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, but the spycops units just ignored the rules.

Skelton assured us that sexual relationships while undercover are prohibited under new rules. However, the police have been very clear that this was always the case. Similarly, his saying that participation in criminal activity must be ‘necessary and proportionate’ is no comfort, as this too is a long-established and long-ignored standard. The problem is in who defines necessary and proportionate.

Skelton told the Inquiry that the Met is ‘aware of continuing anger and distress of victims of spycops’, though he stopped short of saying they were sorry. He mentioned spycops deceiving women into relationships and quoted at length from the 2015 Met apology to some of these women. He said the Met stands by the 2015 apology, despite the fact that it still won’t actually give any answers or let women see their files, and is still delaying settling civil claims by some of the women.

There was a concession from Skelton that the Met hadn’t cared about the families whose dead children’s identities had been stolen by spycops. This is ambiguous, as he may just mean when the practice was common up to the 1990s, or he could be including the Met’s more recent flat refusal to comply with government demands to tell affected families, waiting until the Inquiry decided to do it.

Spycops’ involvement in crime was downplayed as merely ‘joining in’, seemingly trying to deflect from the fact that they were agents provocateur and took instigating roles.

There ‘may’ be some deployments which were not justifiable, he told us, and cited the spying on Stephen Lawrence’s family. The Met ‘appreciates’ the length of time Stephen Lawrence’s loved ones have waited for answers – the Met has stonewalled them for decades – and Skelton said the Met is grateful for Duwayne Brooks and Doreen Lawrence’s work.

It wasn’t to be the last time this hearing that we were astonished at the gall of the police in talking about a justice campaign they spied on.

LONG AGO & FAR AWAY

Having admitted what is already well established, Skelton lauded the dedication, professionalism and bravery of undercover officers. With his gift for understatement, he described how the Met ‘hasn’t always understood’ how to support the spycops officers – while it basically pushed them into a PTSD generator. They knew full well it damaged officers, and they chewed them up and spat them out knowing there’d be more to replace them.

The SDS Tradecraft Manual from 1995 has a mocking section on dealing with post deployment anguish. Whistleblower officer Peter Francis asked for help, received none, and then sued the Met and received a settlement for his PTSD, 25 years ago. The SDS did not start to work on a welfare policy until the late 1990s.

Skelton moved into the ‘long time ago’ trope, saying policing now is unrecognisable from 1968. This ignores the fact that the spycops continued operating long after 1968, and their activities got more reprehensible as time went on.

There was emphasis on how undercover policing helps combat child abuse, human trafficking, modern slavery and more, so we should recognise the bravery of undercover officers, specifically including those who were in the spycops units that are the focus of the Inquiry.

Skelton treated us to a long ramble about the historic context of the period the Inquiry is about to examine, citing the advent of the pill, legalisation of abortion (as if that didn’t happen after a lot of campaigning and protest), and the assassination of Robert F Kennedy as if they had some relation to policing left-wing groups and peace campaigns in the UK.

He told us it was important not to judge the spycops of the past by modern standards. In doing so, he contradicted a point made yesterday by the Counsel to the Inquiry: he pointed out that in the early days of the SDS, the Home Secretary desperately feared embarrassment if the truth of the unit’s methods came out. This shows they knew it was very much against the morality of the time.

We were told that although some intelligence gathered by spycops may have been ‘retained unnecessarily’ by modern standards, it would have been hard for them to know what would turn out to be useful information until some time later, so gathering anything and everything was fair enough. While individuals named may not be bad, they may know people who are, so we can’t criticise spycops for targeting people and groups who were harmless. Apparently the Met ‘recognises’ the strength of anger felt by such targeted people.

US AGAINST THEM

After painting a picture of benign public servants vs dangerous activists, Peter Skelton QC claimed “a simplistic narrative of ‘us against them’ – whether malign spy vs innocent civilian, or benign public servant vs dangerous activist – does not do justice to anyone”. In doing so, he sidestepped the key factor of institutional power being on one side of those relationships. We’re not talking about a malign spy, but about a malign institution that trained people to act harmfully over a period of decades.

After Peter Skelton finished, the Chair, Sir John Mitting, asked if he was correct in inferring that the Met, and police generally, no longer regard it as part of their task to assist MI5 with investigation of subversion; that it is no longer viewed as part of the police’s role to infiltrate those ‘who would be regarded by the majority as politically extreme’; and that it is no longer part of the police’s task to infiltrate single issue campaigns which cause disruption, but not serious disorder of the kind caused in 1968. And, if this were true, when was that view formed, by whom, and for what reason? (is this an exact quote? Or can it be?)

Skelton had ten minutes to think about it and came back with a ‘neither confirm nor deny’ answer that wouldn’t comment on present arrangements..

Gerry Boyle QC (National Police Chiefs’ Council)

Gerry Boyle QC

Gerry Boyle explained what the National Police Chiefs’ Council is. The NPCC coordinates 43 police forces of England and Wales, doing what the Association of Chief Police Officers did until 2015. It doesn’t act for individual officers. It is involved in the Inquiry because it helps formulate policy and practice for undercover policing.

The NPCC is involved in the redaction of documents for the Inquiry, and has done risk assessments for spycops to see if they need anonymity at the Inquiry. It’s been liaison between the Inquiry and all English and Welsh forces except the Met.

The NPCC has these functions: coordination of national operations; command of counter terrorist policing; coordination of police response to national emergencies; implementing standards and policy as set by College of Policing and government.

It was the successor body to the Association of Chief Police Officers, which oversaw the later spycops unit, the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), from about 2006 until it was subsumed into Counter Terrorism Command in 2011.

In keeping with the pattern of the day, implying that spycops somehow deal with significant threats to life and limb, Boyle didn’t even leave it two minutes before mentioning terrorism.

Boyle said many NPOIU officers had experience of major investigations and usually returned to their original constabulary after their undercover deployments. Because they are more likely to have dealt with terrorism and organised crime than the SDS, more of them need anonymity at the Inquiry.

He went on to praise the role of undercover police in dealing with paedophilia and terrorist atrocities, giving detailed examples of these and other things that have nothing to do with spycops, a speech that only serves to insult spycops’ victims by association.

Undercover work has ‘not been without controversy’ but it’s all so much better now, he assured us.

Boyle laboriously listed all the regulations that govern and constrain undercover work, without reference to why they had been institutionally ignored by the spycops units. He said that inspections under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 ensured compliance with the rules, ignoring all the spycops’ outrages since 2000 that prove otherwise.

Richard O’Brien (National Crime Agency)

The National Crime Agency’s Richard O’Brien, like Gerry Boyle, spent time explaining what the agency he represents does. Once again, the state’s representative talked about undercover work against paedophiles and terrorism and used it as an implied excuse for what the spycops did.

O’Brien managed to say ‘serious and organised crime’ in three consecutive sentences. Shortly afterward he said it twice in a row, as the end of one sentence and the start of the next.

The NCA took over the role previously held by the National Crime Squad, and before that various regional crime squads. The NCA has a wider remit than its predecessors, combating organised crime, cyber crime, human trafficking and more. Undercover operations are key to all that the NCA does.

The NCA’s interest in the Inquiry isn’t due to having any relevant spycops itself – it didn’t even exist at the time the Inquiry is examining – and it doesn’t infiltrate political groups. It is in the Inquiry to learn, and is especially looking at the final Module where recommendations will be made for the future. It won’t really be involved in the first two modules as they look at historic issues.

O’Brien said he wasn’t not allowed to say much about what NCA does with undercover officers but it involves weapons and explosives dealers, human trafficking and paedophiles. He did not say why it was relevant to the spycops. There’s an implication that spycops were also involved in such things, therefore their targets were deserving victims, or if not then it was still a fair price to pay for protection against the serious and organised crime he described.

Nicholas Griffin QC (Home Office)

Nicholas Griffin QC

Griffin began by quoting then-Home Secretary Theresa May telling parliament in 2014 why the Inquiry is needed, which you can see at the start of this video on our YouTube channel.

He then explained that the Home Office is especially interested in role of undercover policing in protection from crime, and the legal and regulatory framework for it.

Although the Home Office directly funded the Special Demonstration Squad for its first 21 years, when Steven Taylor was commissioned to report on the link between the two institutions in 2014, he searched Home Office archives but failed to find a single document about it.

The Taylor report unsurprisingly found little evidence of any Home Secretary knowing about spycops, and no evidence of them having knowledge of the various outrages committed by officers.

Griffin said the Inquiry will bring further scrutiny of Home Office role, and they will cooperate.

Oliver Sanders QC (Designated Lawyer Officers)

Oliver Sanders QC

The final statement for the day came from Oliver Sanders QC, representing 114 mostly ex- (though some current) spycops. They are predominantly from the SDS, but some from the later NPOIU, and they include both undercover and back room staff. Some of them became managers later. In total, it’s around 60% of all SDS staff (around 70% of those still alive).

In contrast to Nicholas Griffin’s brevity, Sanders settled in for a long, repetitive speech. He spoke like someone who is paid by the hour at a very high rate, which is probably the truth of the matter. It was reminiscent of ‘Just A Minute‘, with no comic factor at all. Imagine ‘Just An Hour‘, and no other players.

Sanders basically had three demonstrably untrue points:
– police never intend to harm anyone
– spycops are better than the alternative
– even though they’re bad we can’t judge them because it was a long time ago

He just kept making them over and over with avalanches of pointless details.

Sanders said the SDS was just one cog in much larger machine of security and intelligence, established and overseen by central government, with the Home Office at the top. The Home Secretary sets functions for MI5 as well as overseeing police (the Met in particular). The Commissioner of Met is appointed on Home Secretary’s recommendation. The Home Office mandated Met Special Branch, of which the SDS was a sub-unit. As Nicholas Griffin had already said, the Home Office funded SDS from 1968 to 1989.

Like a droplet of oil hitting water, Sanders suddenly went wide on the philosophy, history and function of policing. The first duty of police and any police officer is keeping the Queen’s peace, he said. Public order is paramount, key to the functioning of a civilised society. Lord Scarman said maintaining normal society is the very function of police.

This became a motif, making a point then reiterating it, citing what he appeared to feel were impartial sources, who were all senior figures of State such as judges and senior ministers.

The right to protest is in conflict with a right to continuous calm, Sanders explained. Balance must be struck that allows protesters to do their thing without impacting on the majority. Cities don’t exist as blank canvases for protests to be imposed upon. As the police have to deal with many communities and keep the peace, they must have information about what’s going on. Hence intelligence units like the SDS who, unlike other police, don’t make arrests.

Sanders said the Met Special Branch existed mainly to provide public order intelligence to uniform branch, and intelligence on ‘subversives, terrorists and extremists’ to MI5.

So, he asserted with perhaps the most daring understatement of the day, the SDS was just doing normal Special Branch work but in a specialised way. This intelligence then helped police to ‘manage’ major public order events.

THE SOUND OF THE CROWD

Returning to the overarching theory of the role, Sanders told us that police are simply ordinary members of society undertaking public service. No matter the strength of one’s feeling, it doesn’t include the right to attack other citizens just because they’re in uniform.

But crowds can behave in ways that single members wouldn’t; in groups, people are more prone to volatility. Peaceable individuals you wouldn’t have thought worth spying on might decide to get rowdy. Protesters can enjoy the effect as disorder can demonstrate strength of feeling, create public alarm and political attention, and give the opportunity to provoke police in the hope the public will regard it as police brutality.

Public order situations were worsening in 1968 because there was a generation of young adults that hadn’t had a world war or national service, Sanders said with a straight face. In 1968, when the SDS was formed, such eruptions were coming from far left and anarchist organisations, rather than the far right, he claimed.

Sanders explained that most intelligence is necessarily acquired indiscriminately, and its value can only be appraised later on. He did not address the fact that he’d just made the argument for a complete surveillance state, without saying there should be any constraints.

This casual, chilling perspective was reinforced by saying that ‘the question is whether the ends justify the means, rather than judging the means on their own terms’, an excuse any torturer would be able to give.

THEN AND NOW

Like the Met’s representative Peter Skelton QC earlier in the day, Sanders cited the assassinations of Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King, then went on a long detour about life in 1968, telling us a pint of beer was 1 shilling and 2 pence, and there were only three TV channels.

So, of course, policing was different in 1968 too, they had whistles but no training on dealing in public disorder. Laws were different too so, again like Skelton, Sanders said we shouldn’t not judge the spycops by modern standards.

As he well knows, laws against identity theft and sexual assault were long established in 1968.

He said it was a tumultuous time compared to 2020, a conclusion nobody who’s lived through this year could draw with the slightest degree of honesty.

Comparisons with 1968 are a diversion – surely deliberate – to distract from the facts of the spycops’ abuses. The spycops are not an event in that year, that was merely the start of an institutional process that went on for decades and, crucially, got worse as time went on. The spycops in 2010 – long after the supposed new regulatory framework of the Human Rights Act, etc – were, if anything, committing even worse abuses than their 1968 counterparts.

Sanders then went on to explain that spycops weren’t really that bad, as worse policing was possible. He conjured scenarios of water cannons and baton rounds being used because spycops hadn’t collected advance intelligence and warned the uniformed police that a protest might end in trouble.

He justified spying on all manner of groups, because you never knew who’d become worth spying on, or which insignificant group would splinter into one they wanted to monitor, or which group would attract members of target groups. He mentioned members of the Communist Party of Great Britain and Socialist Workers Party joining CND with the aim of ‘taking it over’. He said that Rock Against Racism and others were worthy targets because they were just fronts for the SWP.

These groups had a right to pursue their beliefs, he insisted, but police just wanted to understand what was going on in order to create threat assessments. Sinn Fein made Marxist statements, drawing support from far left groups of interest. Advocating the end of internment without trial was lawful, he acknowledged (ignoring the fact that the internment was itself a violation of human rights).

After 1968 demonstrations increased in number, scale and intensity, he said.

MAKING A KILLING

He then made perhaps the most shocking assertion of the day. Oliver Sanders had the gall to list injuries at protests in the 1970s and singled out the deaths of Kevin Gately and Blair Peach, two men who were killed by police.

Gately was on an anti-fascist demonstration, the organisers of which included the Communist Party of Great Britain, the International Marxist Group, and the International Socialists, three groups Sanders himself cited as main targets for spycops.

Peach was in the Socialist Workers Party, the spycops’ most targeted organisation; there can be no claim that he might have lived if only the spycops had been more involved. The officer who killed Peach has been identified, but was never charged. Peach’s partner, Celia Stubbs, ran a justice campaign after his death which was targeted by spycops. She is a core participant at the Inquiry.

Sanders had been rattling on about the need to use police resources efficiently, yet spycops expended huge resources to undermine dozens of justice campaigns like Blair Peach’s. Resources that should have been spent catching killers were used to obstruct justice.

For Sanders to use the death of Blair Peach this way shows foul and venomous contempt for Blair, Celia, and everyone else involved in groups targeted by spycops.

HOW THE SDS FUNCTIONED

Sanders then spoke a little about the SDS’ internal organisation. The SDS had a back office for organisation, and two safe flats in changing locations where back office and undercovers could meet. Around 10-12 officers deployed at a time in far left, anarchist, Irish and far right groups.

Officers in this period (1968-82) would spend some months in the back office preparing their legend and learning about their targets, arranging cover accommodation and vehicle. Once undercover, they would have twice-weekly meetings in safe flat and daily phone calls. The average deployment in the earlier days was 3-4 years.

The SDS’ roles were intelligence gathering, and counter subversion work for MI5. While it monitored a large number of groups, a much smaller number were actively infiltrated.

Sanders insisted they had to report on ‘softer outer circles’, and at times when little was happening, in order to be in place for more serious events. Some campaigns come up without warning in response to events, so they wanted spycops to be in place already. By its nature this meant infiltrating groups that didn’t seem to be worth it.

Intelligence was recorded in reports then catalogued. As hard copy reporting was slow in the days before electronic communications, much of what the SDS did was face to face or on the phone, rather than written. And much of what was written wasn’t retained. The extant files are a fraction of what was made.

A lot of SDS reports have been retrieved for the Inquiry from copies sent to MI5. However, officers remember certain reports that haven’t been found. It may just be they weren’t sent to MI5, or not retained. MI5 had a big subversion clear-out in the 1980s. Sanders explained that this is nothing untoward, no blame to anyone, it’s just the nature of what happens with documents from so long ago.

Sanders emphatically asserted that there is no basis for the suggestions of deliberate shredding of older SDS files to destroy incriminating evidence. Surely spycops would never do such a thing.

Sanders’ opening statement is on the Inquiry site.

Sanders will complete his opening statement on Wednesday morning, covering the functioning of the SDS itself and its operational contribution to public order and counter subversion.

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.

<<Previous UCPI Daily Report (2 Nov 2020)<<

>>Next UCPI Daily Report (4 Nov 2020)>>

Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon, founder of the Special Demonstration Squad, c.1968

Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 1

2 November 2020

Evidence from:

David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry

The opening day of the Undercover Policing Inquiry was wholly taken up with David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry, spelling out what the Inquiry is, and explaining the foundation and early years of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) undercover political policing unit.

There were some surprises – many new targeted groups were named and several officers’ photos were published. Whilst these are welcomed, leaving it so late it means the people in those groups, or who would recognise the officers, are only just getting a chance to learn they were spied on. As a method of disclosure, it seems designed to exclude affected people from being able to contribute to the Inquiry.

WHAT THE UCPI IS ABOUT & HOW IT WILL WORK

Barr made it clear that while there was a significant focus on left-wing groups, the SDS’s remit went beyond them very early on in its history, encompassing those opposing race and gender discrimination, campaigns for disarmament, and justice campaigns such as the family of Stephen Lawrence. Spycops, Barr confirmed, had been involved in the blacklisting of politically active workers.

Barr said ‘several’ had deceived women into long-term relationships (it’s more than 30, David). Spycops stole the identities of dead children.

Spycops stand accused of being agents provocateur, including Bob Lambert, accused of placing a timed incendiary device in a Debenham’s store in 1987 while undercover. (The Metropolitan Police’s investigation into this, begun in April 2016, four years after the allegation was made, has still not concluded!)

The Inquiry, he assured us, will make facts public wherever possible, drawing on historic documents as well as testimony made directly to the Inquiry.

He then ran through a chronology of the scandal: basically one myopic whitewash report after another, interspersed with increasingly outrageous revelations from activists and journalists until the public inquiry was called. Unfortunately, there was a lack of recognition from him of the activists, notably the women deceived into relationships, who did most of the major work exposing the officers. Without them, none of this would be happening.

Barr ran through the Inquiry’s terms of reference, as laid out when it was commissioned in 2015. One of the limitations mentioned is this is an Inquiry into the actions of police officers in England and Wales, even though the spycops are known to have travelled to around 20 other countries, undermining campaigns and violating human rights.

The immunity of witnesses was mentioned – no document produced at the Inquiry will be used against people in future criminal proceedings (unless it’s about giving false evidence to the Inquiry itself), though documents produced by others for the Inquiry aren’t covered by this.

The Inquiry has told 19 families that their dead children’s identities were stolen by spycops. Additionally, one family whose living child’s identity was stolen has been informed.

THE NEW SCHEDULE

When Sir John Mitting took over as Chair in 2017, he cited his predecessor’s desire to discover the truth – that’s not necessarily the same as revealing the truth to the public though.

The Inquiry is divided into Modules, subdivided into Tranches and Phases, which you can see explained in our UCPI FAQ. Sir John Mitting will preside alone over the evidence, then a panel will be appointed by the Home Secretary for the final module that will look at making recommendations for the future (which the CHIS Bill seemingly makes irrelevant).

Although originally scheduled to report in 2018, the Inquiry is now looking like it’ll finish in about 2026. The pandemic is slowing the delayed process even further, as they say that classified documents can’t be worked on at home.

There was dismay at the new protracted timetable for the Inquiry. Tranche 1 Phase 2 (SDS 1973-82) is now expected to be in March or April 2021. They expect the Tranche 2 (SDS 1983-92) hearings will happen in the first half of 2022, Tranche 3 (SDS 1993-2007) in the first half of 2023. As for Tranches 4 (NPOIU), 5 and 6, who knows?

THE FIRST EVIDENCE HEARINGS

The first evidence hearings (Phase 1 of Tranche 1) will start next week. 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.

There is no evidence in any documents that the earliest SDS officers (1968-72) had sexual relationships with women, nor that it was standard to steal dead children’s identities. However, these things do emerge in Phase 2 (1973-82), the hearings due to take place in early 2021.

Witness statements have been taken from 18 SDS officers for Phase 1 (1968-72), eight of whom will give evidence. For the targeted people, Tariq Ali from the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign will give evidence, and Dr Norman Temple from Irish National Liberation Solidarity Front will have his statement read for him.

The Inquiry will examine documents including Home Office Circular 97/1969, which specifically said spies must never incite crime, and if there’s ever a possibility of misleading a court the spy must be withdrawn (which is cited in our post about spycops and miscarriages of justice).

In covering who was responsible in the early period, Barr listed Home Secretaries and Metropolitan Police Commissioners. It’s worth noting that the huge delays in starting the Inquiry mean that three Met Commissioners (collectively in charge 1977-1993) and two Home Secretaries have died since the Inquiry was announced.

STOPPING THE ‘STOP THE WAR’: HOW THE SDS BEGAN

Special Demonstration Squad officer Dave Fisher, c.1968

A March 1968 demonstration in London against the Vietnam War ended with windows being broken at the American embassy. Eager to avoid a repeat at the October 1968 demo, police came up with the idea of deep-cover intelligence officers, and the Special Demonstration Squad was born.

The Inquiry was then shown a contemporary ITV report of the March protest, featuring lots of pushing at police lines and officers kicking people on the ground, two officers carried away on stretchers, several fireworks and some incidental damage to shrubbery. It was overdubbed with continual crowd noise that doesn’t change when the scene cuts, and a voice-over about the wild violence of protesters in “a riot such has Britain has never before witnessed”.

Internal police reports allege foreign demonstrators were catalysts and agitators, though Barr said that Tariq Ali from the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign contests the accuracy and validity of this focus.

Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon of Special Branch resolved to prevent a repeat. Dixon’s report of April 1968 said no intelligence had shown anyone planning violence at the demo, and yet it happened. Implied in this is a common police belief that things have a rigid command structure similar to their own, and if that can’t be seen it must be because it’s being well hidden.

The Inquiry went through a number of contemporaneous documents. They showed a few that said Special Branch had gone to a degree of effort to find out the scale and nature of the March 1968 demo. One Special Branch document describes Special Branch attending a Vietnam Solidarity Campaign meeting but being recognised and asked to leave. Another attempted to attend a private meeting was aborted due to cops not knowing anyone and dressing like cops. Special Branch clearly felt a problem in not being able to get into meetings of anti-Vietnam War activists.

There’s very little contemporaneous documentation of the formation of the Special Demonstration Squad, but it appears to have been founded on 30 or 31 July 1968. Early SDS documents stated its intention as being solely to gather intelligence ahead of the 27 October 1968 Vietnam demo, using publications, informants, technical devices, and undercover police officers.

It rapidly moved from this multi-method narrow-remit approach to the very opposite – just using deep-cover police for a wide, ill-defined range of ‘subversives’.

As the anti-Vietnam War movement factionalised, the SDS infiltrated the various groups. Officers ‘Don de Freitas’ and ‘Margaret White’ posed as a couple to infiltrate a group. One black power leaflet they came across led to prosecution and imprisonment of its distributor, and the officer gave evidence in her real identity.

The spycops had been deployed into a variety of groups, even taking active roles in the organising.

THE OCTOBER 1968 DEMONSTRATION

By the time the October 1968 Vietnam demo came round, Chief Inspector Dixon saw all the factions and anticipated less trouble than had been seen in March. He was correct, but David Barr said that’s not the point. The Inquiry must ask was this necessary? Was it proportionate? Could intelligence have been gained without the use of spycops?

On 29 October 1968, the US ambassador congratulated Special Branch for a less volatile demo than in March. One has to wonder if there would have been such a strong reaction to March demo if it had been at a target that didn’t embarrass the UK in front of the USA.

We were then shown another contemporaneous news report. As with the earlier one, there’s a striking difference between the pictures and the commentary – the ‘Maoists’ / ‘anarchists’ (the words are used interchangably) are violent for linking arms and walking into police, police ‘keep their cool’ throwing punches and kicking.

Again, Barr recounted the police’s narrative seemingly from a position of accepting it as fact, describing how they regarded the comparatively peaceful nature of the Oct 1968 Vietnam demo as a big success for the policing tactics.

It’s unclear if the Inquiry is taking all this at face value. The October 1968 demo was always intended by the organisers to be more peaceful, and the International Marxist Group stopped a large attempted breakaway to the US embassy.

Certainly, it was used as the pretext for making the SDS a permanent arrangement with a much wider scope. Barr talked about the dual role of SDS, covering demonstrations/public order and subversion, but pretty much every organisation seeking any social change could be seen to fit into either category (or both).

The conflation of the former with the latter gave an excuse for state surveillance of almost all protest groups. Within a fortnight of the October demo, spycops boss Chief Inspector Dixon had proposed long term infiltration of the relevant organisations. Funding was requested from the Home Office. Home Office wasn’t overly keen on permanence but paid up anyway.

DEEPER POCKETS, WIDER NET

Special Demonstration Squad officer Helen Crampton, c.1968

The documents make clear that the Home Office reticence wasn’t due to any ethical principles. Rather, Home Secretary Reginald Maudling was very afraid of personal impact of exposure.

The fact that the government was terrified of spycops being public knowledge indicates a belief that the public would be outraged, as indeed they were once the truth came out in 2010. They always knew it was profoundly unethical, that it was abuse of citizens and unwarranted curtailing of political dissent.

Funding was granted for the calendar year in 1970 and 1971, but in 1972 it moved to the financial year, indicating that the old temporary spying on Vietnam War protesters had become permanent and broader. A vague mention of spycops in the press yielded no serious opposition from public or civil liberties groups, leading to increased confidence in making the unit permanent, continuing and expanding their roles.

The SDS was directly funded by the Home Office until the late 1980s, which would have been discussed and presumably they wanted to know what they were getting for their money, yet somehow there are no documents of any kind about the SDS in any of the Home Office archives.

Early 1970s documents show the unit’s stated aims being forecasting the scale and mood of demonstrations, identifying organisers, and ‘gathering information for long-term intelligence purposes’ with people profiled ‘within weeks’ of first expressing interest in ‘extremist ideas’.

WHO WAS TARGETED

David Barr then read out lists of groups targeted according to the SDS’ first few annual reports. Some we knew from the Undercover Research Group/ Guardian list, but almost 50 were new.

Certainly, the breadth of interest was extraordinary. It included groups from Hackney United Tenants Ad-Hoc Committee to Croydon Libertarians, Justice for Rhodesia to the Independent Labour Party. The Undercover Research Group posted the full list.

The reports lamented the ‘obvious problem’ of finding it hard to infiltrate black power movements. “Coloured and foreign organisations, because of their exclusivity, continue to be resistant to penetration”.

The SDS said that the Communist Party and extreme right wing groups weren’t covered by its remit, but was up for doing it if they were told to. This is essentially asking for sanction for mission creep.

Big Flame were among the groups described as “penetrated to a lesser degree”, but this somewhat arbitrary distinction doesn’t mean the involvement is minor. They were targeted by Richard Clark, aka ‘Rick Gibson’, but the group became suspicious of him and discovered that he was using the stolen identity of a dead child. They confronted him and he left. The story was unpublished at the time

Clark deceived at least four women he spied on into relationships. One of them, Mary, gave a powerful statement to the Inquiry in 2018:

“I came from South Africa, thinking I had escaped that kind of interference by the state in the life of its citizens. To find that the police and the state in the UK operate in a similar fashion is very disturbing”.

Chief Inspector Dixon laid down some rules. He wanted recruitment by personal approach, and daily supervision of officers, with a maximum of 12 months (the average ended up being 4-5 years). He was firm that officers should not get actively involved in groups, drafting leaflets, etc. This, as has already been mentioned, wasn’t adhered to even then, and it went right out of the window shortly after.

None of the officers the Inquiry has spoken to recalls formal training. There is little evidence of specific guidance on criminal activity, sexual relationships, breaching legal privilege. Unsurprisingly, most say they didn’t commit any offence when undercover.

The Inquiry then published photos of various officers, all seemingly taken at the same event (one has to suspect the 1968 SDS Christmas party). Most of the officers whose faces are shown were backroom staff, rather than actual undercover officers. The Undercover Research Group posted all the pictures of the 1968 spycops.

EXAMPLE DOCUMENTS

The Inquiry concluded the day by showing a range of documents to illustrate key themes.

A report on large public meeting of Vietnam Solidarity Campaign from 1968:

Routine form for early SDS work reporting on events. It lists all the officers present at the meeting (which included Dixon, the head of the SDS, and Saunders, second in command), all of whom were able to vote at the meeting. The document is noted as having been copied to MI5. It’s a clear illustration of spycops having influence on the organisations they spied on, and that this was known at the very highest levels.

A report from officer ‘John Clinton‘ on the April 1972 International Socialists conference:

Almost 400 people attended, and the report is lengthy. This was followed by another from same officer, on the results of International Socialists national committee election, noting specific person’s politics. These two were the basis for the next document, a cover note saying managers were very pleased about the reports on International Socialists, that it proves the value of the SDS, and reports have been copied to MI5. This is proof that such reporting wasn’t a rogue officer but within the remit of the SDS.

A 1969 report from officer ‘Bill Lewis‘ on the International Marxist Group’s summer camp in Scotland, attended by 42 people. This shows spycops acting across borders and jurisdictions very early on, and makes a mockery of the Home Office limiting the Inquiry to England and Wales.

A 1971 report by ‘David Robertson‘, reporting on a Maoist couple, including personal details about financial affairs, home life and child. This kind of intrusive, unpolitical detail was commonplace in such reports.

A 1968 document from ‘Don de Frietas‘ and ‘Margaret White‘, officers who pretended to be a couple to infiltrate the Havering branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. The report covers a meeting in a pub with details of all nine attendants.

A 1971 report from ‘John Clinton’ on a member of the International Socialists, who wants to get fellow members to work within a trade union. This was followed by another Clinton one from 1973 reporting on membership changes in International Socialists, noting their locality and trade union. These illustrate the attention to trade unions even in the early days of the SDS.

A 1973 report of officer HN338, noting names of three people who’ve asked for information on the International Marxist Group. This shows that one didn’t have to be an activist or even a member of a target group in order to have a spycops file.

A 1971 report also from HN338 on a Black Defence Committee talk entitled ‘Rhodesia and the racist problem in Britain’. Opposing those things was a threat to the political establishment.

A 1971 report by ‘David Robertson’ on Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) meeting addressed by a delegation that had visited China, but includes details of industrial action and remarks about the ethnicity of certain attendees.

A 1971 ‘Robertson’ report, submitting a Women’s Liberation Front leaflet that advocated an end to exploitation and repression of all kinds, equal pay without regard to gender, access to contraception and abortion. The report has been stamped as copied to MI5.

A 1971 report from officer HN338 reporting on a meeting of editorial groups of an activist publication called Indo-China, showing active involvement in steering groups. Numerous spycops wrote articles whilst undercover, encouraging the political activity they were ostensibly there to undermine.

A 1973 report from officer HN338, reporting on meeting about police oppression by International Marxist Group, Socialist Labour League and International Socialists. Example of police regarding well-earned threats to their reputation as seriously as any other threat.

Finally for the example documents, a report from 1974 by ‘John Clinton’ reporting on a Socialist Worker rally for the Shrewsbury 24 and their families. This clearly shows spycops working to defending the reputation of the police against those who’d expose miscarriages of justice.

All documents mentioned have been uploaded to the Inquiry Archive for 2 November 2020.

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.

>>Next UCPI Daily Report (3 Nov 2020)>>

On Monday 2 November, the Undercover Policing Inquiry begins after five years of preliminary work.

The opening session will be a three week set of hearings, divided into two parts. The first half will be the presentation of Opening Statements from the core participants. The second will be the start of the actual hearing of evidence, which we will cover in a later post. For now, we will just look at the Opening Statements and why they are important.

A core participant is a person or organisation which has been accepted as such by the Inquiry. This is because the Chair has agreed that they have a particular interest in the proceedings, in that they are particularly affected by any outcome, or potentially facing criticism.

One of the benefits of being a core participant is that they are consulted on matters and make representations. In theory at least. Many of the Non-Police/ State Core Participants (NPSCPs) feel they are being ignored in favour of the police, something that has caused considerable bitterness (which the Opening Statements will refer to in many places).

One benefit of being a core participant is the right to make an opening statement to the Inquiry prior to the beginning of evidential hearings. The purpose of this statement is to set out your case – your expectations and hopes for the Inquiry, or to challenge where it is going wrong. It is also a place where you can make admissions or defend your position if you are expecting criticisms. As such, they are considered to have considerable importance and watched carefully by all involved.

However, making an opening statement is not a requirement and some NPSCPs have chosen not to do so, as has spycop Mark Kennedy. A number have not made written submissions but will be making oral ones.

Over the next few days we will hear from the barristers representing the Inquiry itself, state agencies, undercovers, other parties such as whistleblower Peter Francis, and the families of undercovers.

Finally, several days will be given over to the NPSCPs, with different days focusing on different classes within them, such as women targeted, family justice campaigns, etc. Several NPSCPs who are representing themselves without lawyers will also be speaking.

The proceedings will be entirely online, live-streamed by the Inquiry, and placed on the UCPI YouTube channel.

As each speaker goes live the text of their written opening statement (if they have made one) will be made public by the Inquiry. However, opening statements will at times be responding to what others have said, so they may differ from the prepared written versions that are published.

TIMETABLE FOR THE UCPI OPENING STATEMENTS

Here is a timetable for Opening Statements.

As things go live, we will add the appropriate links so you can find them easily.

Day 1 (Mon 2 Nov)
10:00 AM: David Barr QC (Counsel to the Inquiry)
2:00 PM: David Barr QC (Counsel to the Inquiry)

Day 2 (Tues 3 Nov)
10:00 AM: Peter Skelton QC (Metropolitan Police Service)
11:30 AM: Gerry Boyle QC (National Police Chiefs’ Council)
12:00 Noon: Richard O’Brien QC (National Crime Agency)
12:30 PM: Nicholas Griffin QC (Home Office)
2:00 PM: Oliver Sanders QC (Designated Lawyer Officers representing undercover officers)

Day 3 (Wed 4 Nov)
10:00 AM: Oliver Sanders QC (Designated Lawyer Officers)
2:00 PM: Richard Whittam QC (Slater & Gordon Clients representing individual undercover officers)
2:30 PM: David Lock QC (Peter Francis)
3:45 PM: Angus McCullough QC (Category M Core Participants)

Day 4 (Thus 5 Nov)
10:00 AM: Rajiv Menon QC (Core Participants represented by Richard Parry & Jane Deighton)
12:15 PM: Matthew Ryder QC (Core Participants represented by Mike Schwarz, Simon Creighton, Tamsin Allen and Jules Carey)
2:00 PM: Mathhew Ryder QC (Core Participants represented by Mike Schwarz, Simon Creighton, Tamsin Allen and Jules Carey)
5:45 PM: Donal O’Driscoll (Category L Core Participant [appearing in person])

Day 5 (Fri 6 Nov)
10:00 AM: James Scobie QC (Core Participants represented by Paul Heron)
12:15 PM: Ruth Brander (Non-Police, Non-State Core Participant Group)
2:00 PM: Lord Hendy QC (Fire Brigades Union and Unite [Category E Core Participants])
3:45 PM: Gareth Pierce (National Union of Mineworkers [Category E Core Participant])
4:15 PM: Dave Smith (Blacklist Support Group [Category E Core Participant])

Day 6 (Mon 9 Nov)
10:00 AM: Phillippa Kaufmann QC (Category H Core Participants represented by Birnberg Peirce, Hickman & Rose and Hodge Jones & Allen)
11:45 AM: Helen Steel (Category H and L Core Participant [appearing in person])
2:00 PM: Heather Williams QC (Category H Core Participants represented by Bindmans)
3:15 PM: Heather Williams QC (Category F Core Participants)
4:30 PM: Phillipa Kaufmann QC (Category H and J Core Participants instructed by Harriet Wistrich [excluding Newham Monitoring Project])

Day 7 (Tue 10 Nov)
10:00 AM: Imran Khan QC (Baroness Doreen Lawrence [Category G Core Participant])
10:30 AM: Heather Williams QC (Neville Lawrence OBE [Category G Core Participant])
12:00 Noon: Imran Khan QC (Mike Mansfield QC [Category G Core Participant])
12:30 AM: Andrew Trollope QC (Azhar Khan [Category I Core Participant])
2:00 PM: Andrew Trollope QC (Azhar Khan [Category I Core Participant])
2:30 PM: Dave Morris (Category L Core Participant [appearing in person])
3:00 PM: Imran Khan QC (The Monitoring Group [Category J Core Participant])
3:45 PM: Pete Weatherby QC (Category J Core Participant [Newham Monitoring Project] and Category K and L Core Participants)

UCPI CORE PARTICIPANT CATEGORIES

Categories are the groups into which the Inquiry divides core participants. Many NPSCPs would argue they are members of more than one category. For instance, many of the women deceived into relationships also consider themselves first and foremost political campaigners. For ease of use, we set them out below:

A: Police
B: Government
C: Police officers
D: Political organisations and politicians
E: Trade unions / Blacklist Support Group
F: Relatives of deceased individuals
G: Family of Stephen Lawrence, Duwayne Brooks & Michael Mansfield, QC
H: Individuals in relationships with undercover officers
I: Miscarriages of justice
J: Justice campaigns
K: Political activists
L: Social and environmental activists
M: Families of police officers

The Inquiry’s website has a list of core participants.

The Inquiry has published its own introduction to the hearings.

Ahead of the Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings beginning next week, many people are dismayed by the Inquiry’s prioritising of the protection of perpetrators’ privacy above the right of victims and the public to know the truth. There seems to be little hope of the Inquiry providing the level of transparency and accountability that we all deserve.

A significant proportion of the 200 victims designated as core participants have signed this general statement on the issue of undercover political policing, calling attention back on to the key issues:

1. In 1968, following huge demonstrations in London’s Grosvenor Square (and around the world) against the widely-condemned Vietnam War, British police set up a Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) to monitor and undermine such street protests.

Since that time, over 1,000 groups campaigning in the UK for a better society and better world have been systematically spied upon, infiltrated, or otherwise targeted by secret and unaccountable political police units.

2. This targeting has included over 140 highly paid police spies living long term as ‘activists’ engaging in the everyday activities of groups and campaigns for equality and justice, for environmental protection, for community and trade union empowerment, and for international solidarity; for rights for women, black and ethnic minorities, workers, LGBTQ people, and for animals; and also targeting those campaigning against war, racism, sexism, corporate power, legal repression, and police oppression and brutality.

Such groups and movements have comprised many millions of people throughout the UK who want to make the world better, fairer and more sustainable for everyone. Thanks to their efforts, many of the ideas spread by such groups have now become mainstream opinion and some campaigns and rights sought eventually resulted in legal and other formal recognition by society.

3. Yet it appears that almost any group that stood up to make a positive difference in questioning or challenging the establishment has been or could have potentially been considered a legitimate target by the UK’s secret political policing units. Any claims that the UK police are a non-political institution are therefore clearly incorrect.

4. These secret policing activities went far beyond investigating what was said in meetings. Individuals within or associated with those campaign groups – most of which had an open membership and active involvement based on trust and co-operation – were subjected to intrusions into their personal lives. Thousands of fake ‘friendships’ were developed, exploited and abused by secret police who continuously lied for their own political ends. Many people, especially women, were deceived into intimate and abusive relationships.

Children have been fathered then abandoned, and the identities of deceased children stolen to provide ‘cover’ names. Police spies took part in and actively influenced groups and activities, and there have been very many arrests and victims of miscarriages of justice as a result. Family campaigns, people seeking justice for loved ones killed by police, were deliberately undermined by these units.

5. To bug a phone is recognised as a controversial breach of someone’s human rights and so police have to apply for a warrant. We’re generally opposed to that and note the public outrage over the phone-hacking scandal a few years ago. However, to hack people’s LIVES is infinitely worse and should be totally unacceptable to everyone.

6. Much of the State response to public anger over these tactics has been to present the spying and the abuses that came with it as an aberration, a mistake, or the fault of rogue officers. We disagree. Based on the evidence, this spying was established and conducted with the full sanction of the State and supported by its apparatus and taxpayer funding. As stated by one of the women deceived into a relationship with a police spy, it was not just a single undercover policeman in her bed but also all those who put the officer in the field and supported them there.

7. No decision about all this was taken in isolation. The Government, senior managers and the handlers may have tried to turn a blind eye to the abuses, or deemed them politically ‘necessary’, but the reality is they were complicit in all of it. They readily accepted the ‘intelligence’ provided, they funded, tasked and oversaw the spycops units, and they set the agenda and ethos according to which these units operated.

8. This had nothing to do with responding to genuine public concern over any real and imminent serious violent threats to public safety and lives. The groups represented in this Inquiry were not terrorist organisations, but were groups pushing for positive social change in an overwhelmingly public and open way. By targeting these groups the police were demonstrating unacceptable and ongoing 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.

9. Over 100 of the Inquiry’s Core Participants summed up the problem here in a previous Collective Statement on 17th October 2017: ‘For us, this Inquiry is about political policing to undermine groups and organisations campaigning for a better society and world.’

10. This police bias was clearly sanctioned at the highest level. We know of no effort to show ‘balance’ by police infiltration or secret targeting of powerful establishment bodies to investigate their crimes and threats to social peace and society.

Such organisations not targeted include greedy and unethical financial corporations, tax-avoiding hedge funds, military elites and their development of weapons of mass destruction, and power-mad establishment political parties. This is despite their continuous and widespread promotion of systematic institutional violence (such as wars, poverty, exploitation of workers, colonialism and environmental destruction) and discrimination on the grounds of race, sex and class, reinforced by Public Relations and manipulation of society for these institutions’ own power and profit.

11. Following the exposure of this undercover policing scandal in 2010, it took five years of investigation, publicity and campaigning by victims and survivors of police infiltration, reinforced by police whistleblowers, for the Government to decide to act. Even then it took the shocking revelations that the family and surviving victim and close friend of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence had themselves been targeted by undercover policing.

12. In July 2015 following widespread public outrage, then-Home Secretary Theresa May tasked the current Undercover Policing Public Inquiry with getting to the truth about this scandal and who authorised it, and recommending action to prevent future police wrong-doing.

13. Since then we have had to suffer five more years of police delays and obstruction. These tactics have resulted in a refusal to release most of the names of the 1,000 organisations spied and reported on, refusal to release the names and photos of most of the police spies, and refusal to release most of the relevant documentation generated by political policing units.

Throughout these five years we and other core participants, despite an imbalance in resources and almost zero access to the documentation held by the police for decades, have worked hard to get the information and justice that we and the wider public are entitled to. We have worked hard and remain determined to bring the whole murky secret political policing operation and its unethical, unacceptable practices into the public spotlight where it belongs.

14. This is supposed to be a public inquiry, but it seems more like a police damage-limitation exercise or cover-up. The hearings are not yet publicly-accessible and nor will they be live-streamed, which is the only way to ensure that the millions of members and supporters of the targeted groups and movements have the opportunity to follow the proceedings as they happen.

15. We call for the Inquiry to recommend that police units targeting campaigners seeking a better society should never have been set up, and should be disbanded in their entirety. We call for full transparency, and release of all the names of the groups targeted, all the names of the police spies, and the full political files police have amassed on such campaign groups.

Only in a spirit of openness and transparency can the grievous police crimes of the past be acknowledged, those responsible at all levels be held accountable, and the many victims start to move forward with the answers they have consistently called for – and are entitled to.

16. When the SDS was formed they aimed to undermine the movements they were spying on. But despite the disgusting police tactics employed, movements for positive change to benefit the public good are still here and growing, and have had many successes on the way. Such movements are needed more than ever in order to address the cumulative and deepening crises into which humanity is being plunged by the current system and its policies. A better world is possible and it’s up to all of us, whoever we are, to ensure support for – and not the undermining of – such movements for positive change.

We endorse the 13 Recommendations discussed and agreed at the People’s Public Inquiry into Secret Political Policing, Conway Hall, London in July 2018:

1. Full disclosure of all names – both cover and real – of officers from the disgraced political police units, accompanied by contemporaneous photographs

2. Release of the names of all groups suspected to have been spied upon

3. Release of all the police’s personal files on activists

4. Extension of the inquiry to all countries where the British spycops are known to have operated

5. The appointment of a diverse panel with experience relevant to victims to assist the chair in making decisions and judgements

6. Inclusion of children and young people who had contact with spycops as Core Participants in the Inquiry

7. Urgent and immediate review of convictions where spycops had involvement in the cases and who misled courts – 50 wrongful convictions have already been overturned and this is likely to be a fraction of the true total

8. The Inquiry must extend its scope to understand political policing and its impact on democracy. This must include a thorough investigation into racist, sexist, anti-working class, anti-democratic behaviour on behalf of the spycops and those that instructed them to operate in this manner. Such political policing and political policing units must be abolished

9. An urgent review into all undercover police activities to investigate whether the bad practice exposed by this Inquiry has been extended to other areas of undercover operations

10. Make available the necessary resources of the judge to be able to do their job in the available time

11. Equalising of resources, the police are spending millions on stonewalling the inquiry, victims have almost nothing

12. Increase the severity of penalties for [police] non-compliance with the Inquiry

13. Investigation into collusion between police and corporate spies

Statement supported by the following Non-State Core Participants in the Undercover Policing Inquiry:

1. Albert Beale
2. Alice Cutler
3. Alice Jelinek
4. ‘AN’
5. Asa Winstanley
6. Atif Choudhury
7. Ben Leamy (aka ‘Mark Morgan’)
8. Ben Stewart
9. Blacklist Support Group
10. Brian Healy
11. Ceri Gibbons
12. Chris Dutton
13. Claire Fauset
14. Claire Hildreth
15. Cllr Shane Collins
16. Dan Glass
17. Danny Chivers
18. Dave Morris
19. Dave Nellist
20. Dave Smith
21. David Kaplowitz
22. Debbie Vincent
23. Dr Donal O’Driscoll
24. Donna McLean
25. Emily Apple
26. Frank Bennett
27. Frank Smith
28. Gabrielle Bosley
29. Gerrah Selby
30. Grainne Gannon
31. Guy Taylor
32. Dr Harry Halpin
33. Hunt Saboteurs Association
34. Indra Donfrancesco
35. Jane Laporte
36. Jason Kirkpatrick
37. John Jordan
38. Professor Jonathan Rosenhead
39. ‘Jane’
40. ‘Jenny’
41. ‘Jessica’
42. Juliet McBride
43. Kate Wilson
44. Ken Livingstone
45. Kirsty Wright
46. Kristina Goodwin-Jones
47. Leila Deen
48. ‘Lindsey’
49. ‘Lisa’
50. Lois Austin
51. London Animal Action
52. London Greenpeace
53. Martin Shaw
54. Martyn Lowe
55. Matt Salusbury
56. ‘MCD’
57. Mel Evans
58. Merrick Cork
59. Reverend Dr Michael Carroll
60. Michael Zeitlin
61. Michael Zeitlin on behalf of Advisory Service for Squatters
62. ‘Monica’
63. Nagakusala Dharmacharin (aka William Frugal)
64. ‘Naomi’
65. Nicola Benge
66. Nicola Benge on behalf of Rhythms of Resistance
67. Olaf Bayer
68. Patrick Gillett
69. Professor Paul Chatterton
70. Paul Gravett
71. Paul Morozzo
72. Robbin Gillett
73. Robert Banbury
74. Robin Lane
75. ‘Sara’
76. Sarah Shoraka
77. Professor Simon Lewis
78. Simon Taylor
79. Spencer Cooke
80. Terence Evans
81. Tom Fowler
82. Tomas Remiarz
83. Trevor Houghton
84. ‘VSP’
85. The Hon. Zoe Young BSc MSc MFA

The public inquiry into Britain’s political secret police is finally going to start. Join us for a socially distanced protest at the Inquiry’s monitoring venue on the first day it’s open, Wednesday 11 November, 8-9am.

Seven years after the Home Secretary promised it, the first phase of hearings will take place over three weeks in November.

Because of measures to restrict the spread of Covid-19, the hearings will not be held in an open venue, but will instead be happening remotely & online.

The first few days, starting on Monday 2 November, will be hearing opening statements from the various parties involved. These will be live-streamed online by the Inquiry.

After that, in order to prevent any secret details from being made public, the hearings will not be live-streamed. Instead, there will be a live transcription with a ten minute time delay.

The Inquiry is also hiring a venue – the Amba Hotel in Marble Arch, central London – where up to 60 people can watch a video stream in real-time with a ten minute delay. In order to be present, people need to register their interest with the Inquiry before 23 October, and even then registration does not guarantee entry.

We will be holding a socially distanced demonstration outside the venue on the first day of the restricted hearings, Wednesday 11 November, from 8-9am.

For more information about the Undercover Policing Inquiry, see our UCPI FAQ.

What is the Undercover Policing Inquiry?

The Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) is an independent, judge-led inquiry into undercover policing in England and Wales.

Its main focus is the activity of two undercover units who deployed long-term undercover officers into a variety of political groups: the Special Demonstration Squad (1968-2008) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (1999-2011).

Officers from these units lived as activists for years at a time. More than 1,000 groups were spied on, though the Inquiry has named less than 100. Activist researchers have produced a more complete list of those targeted.

Beyond collecting information personal details about people’s lives, officers often:

• stole the identities of dead children
• took key roles in the organisations they infiltrated
• encouraged and participated in illegal activity
• formed emotional relationships with children of people they spied on
• supplied personal information for illegal blacklists of politically active workers
• orchestrated wrongful convictions of activists
• deceived women they spied on into long-term intimate relationships

When was the Undercover Policing Inquiry set up?

On 6 March 2014, after more than three years of escalating revelations, the Home Secretary announced in Parliament that there would be a full-scale public inquiry under the terms of the Inquiries Act 2005.

The process began on 28 July 2015, with opening remarks on the purpose, remit and intent from the Chair, Lord Pitchford.

Following Lord Pitchford’s death in October 2017, Sir John Mitting was appointed as Chair. Despite the serious reservations of victims, he remains in the post.

Who will be giving evidence at the Undercover Policing Inquiry?

The witnesses will include officers and people that they spied on. The Inquiry will publish a draft list of witnesses giving evidence at least four weeks before the hearing.

In these first hearings, we’ll be hearing from officers deployed in the Special Demonstration Squad, their managers and some of the people they spied on, from the squad’s inception in 1968 until 1982.

We won’t get to see the files that are going to be cited and discussed in the hearings until the day they are mentioned.

How will the Undercover Policing Inquiry take evidence from witnesses?

The Inquiry tries to avoid being an adversarial format with witnesses feeling cross-examined by hostile lawyers. Instead, all the lawyers involved – representing police, victims and the inquiry itself – hand in questions the would like a witness to answer.

A witness is then questioned by one neutral lawyer, the Counsel to the inquiry. At the end of questioning, there is a short break while Counsel checks with the various lawyers if they feel anything has been missed or needs answering in more detail.

How will the Undercover Policing Inquiry organise its investigation?

The Inquiry’s investigations will be broken into three modules:

Module 1: Examination of the deployment of undercover officers in the past, their conduct, and the impact of their activities on themselves and others.

Module 2: Examination of the management and oversight of undercover officers, including their selection, training, supervision, care after deployments, and the legal and regulatory framework within which undercover policing was carried out.

• Module 2a will involve managers and administrators from within undercover policing units.

• Module 2b will involve senior managers higher in the chain of command as well as police personnel who handled intelligence provided by undercover police officers.

• Module 2c will involve other government bodies with a connection to undercover policing, including the Home Office.

Module 3: Examination of current undercover policing practices and of how undercover policing should be conducted in future.

Module 1 has been broken down into six ‘tranches’.

Tranche 1 hearings will be taking evidence about the activities of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) from its formation in 1968 to 1982.

Tranche 1 has, in turn, been broken into three phases:

Phase 1 examined the SDS from 1968 to 1972.

Phase 2 examined the SDS from 1973 to 1982.

Phase 3 examined SDS managers 1968-1982.

The subsequent tranches will examine:

• Tranche 2 – Special Demonstration Squad officers and managers and those affected by deployments (1983-1992). This is to be split into two phases – Phase 2 will cover animal rights-related campaigns, Phase 1 will examine everything else.

• Tranche 3 – Special Demonstration Squad officers and managers and those affected by deployments (1993-2007)

• Tranche 4 – National Public Order Intelligence Unit officers and managers and those affected by deployments

• Tranche 5 – Other undercover policing officers and managers and those affected by deployments

• Tranche 6 – Management and oversight (including of intelligence dissemination) by mid and senior rank officers, other agencies and government departments

What are the dates for the Undercover Policing Inquiry?

The first hearings of Tranche 1 took place between 2 and 19 November 2020.

Tranche 1 (Special Demonstration Squad 1968-82):

Phase 1, 1968-72. These hearings took place in November 2020.

Phase 2, 1973-82. These hearings took place in April and May 2021.

Phase 3, managers 1968-1982. These hearings took place in May 2022.

Tranche 2 (SDS 1983-1992):

Phase 1 (non-animal rights) hearings tookplace in July and August 2024.

Phase 2 (animal rights) hearings began on 14 October 2024, and expected to run to January 2025.

Tranche 3 (SDS 1993-2007) hearings were scheduled for April 2025. With the delays to Tranche 2 Phase 2, it’s possible that Tranche 3 will be put back further too.

Tranche 4 (NPOIU) hearings were expected in October 2025, but as Tranche 2 Phase 2 and Tranche 3 have been delayed it’s likely Tranche 4 will be too.

Tranche 6 (higher management and oversight) is being done as the other tranches occur.

There is no set completion date for the Inquiry’s final report, but 2027 seems as good a guess as any.

Why are there such large gaps between hearings at the Undercover Policing Inquiry?

The Inquiry is handling hundreds of thousands of vintage files, collated from police, Security Service and other sources. It takes a long time to analyse these formulate lines of enquiry, and decide which people to call as witnesses. The witnesses then have to have the documents to be discussed. Everyone’s lawyers have to feed into the process of producing questions for witnesses.

Then, after the hearings, the evidence gathered has to be analysed and considered so the Inquiry can draw conclusions in their own right, as well as contributing to the approach of the next round of hearings.

How much will the Undercover Policing Inquiry cost?

Up to the end of June 2023, the Inquiry had already cost £68,773,900. This will increase substantially as time goes on.

How long will the Undercover Policing Inquiry last?

The Inquiry was originally expected to publish its final report in summer 2018.

After a huge amount of deliberate delay from the police, the schedule was drastically revised. In May 2018, the Inquiry announced an ‘ambitious’ timeline that planned to deliver the final report to the Home Secretary in late 2023. A redacted version would have been expected to be published some time in 2024.

The Inquiry had already fallen a year behind this schedule before the Covid-19 pandemic. That postponed the initial hearings by five months. Additional delays set it back further, putting it years behind the ‘ambitious timeline’ of 2024.

When we’ll see the final report is anyone’s guess, but 2026 or 2027 seems plausible.

Where will the Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings be held?

Preliminary hearings were held at the Royal Courts of Justice.

Hearings for Tranche 1, phases 1 and 2 were held virtually, with a viewing room at the Amba Hotel Marble Arch in London. Phase 3’s the opening statements were given virtually, and the evidence hearings were held in person at the Amba Hotel Marble Arch.

Tranche 2 hearings are scheduled to take place at the International Dispute Resolution Centre (IDRC), at 1 Paternoster Lane, St. Paul’s, London, EC4M 7BQ.  

Will the Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings be live streamed?

Access to the hearings has varied. For the Tranche 1, phase 3 hearings in May 2022, the opening statment swill be live streamed. After that, the witness statements will be on an audio feed on the Inquiry’s YouTube channel. It will have a ten minute delay so the Inquiry will be able to prevent any unintentionally revealed sensisitve information from being pulished.

A transcript of each day’s hearing will be published on the Inquiry’s website in the evening in weirdly formatted PDFs that are not that easy to read.

Where will I find out what’s going on?

We will be live tweeting on the COPS Twitter account, and publishing daily reports and weekly summaries on our blog, Facebook and email list (which you can join at the bottom of the sidebar on this page). Tom Fowler, an activist who was spied on by undercover officer Marco Jacobs, usually does opinionated live-tweeting too.

We also expect coverage from our friends at Police Spies Out of Lives (who represent women deceived into relationships by spycops) and the Undercover Research Group, with incisive comment and analysis.

In the mainstream media, Rob Evans and Paul Lewis at the Guardian, who have covered the scandal since it began and co-wrote the Undercover book, are highly likely to be doing quality reporting too.

On 25^th March, the Undercover Policing Inquiry will hold its second hearing into how it is affected by the General Data Protection Regulations – GDPR.

It’s more than five years since the Inquiry was announced and we are still quibbling over legal points that require specialist barristers to be brought in. The evidence-hearing phase, arguably the most import section, has been put back yet again, probably to 2020.

From the beginning, those spied on have consistently demanded to see their Special Branch files. Only then would it be possible to understand how the undercovers infiltrated their personal lives, and in too many cases, people’s beds, or destroyed their ability to get jobs.

Sir John Mitting, the Chair of the Undercover Policing Inquiry, has replied, saying it would be too much work and would delay the inquiry further. It’s a slap in the face to all who have waited through years of wilful police delays, which Mitting has readily acquiesced to. Indeed, many find it grimly ironic that he is now talking about wasting resources given the amount squandered on police anonymity orders.

The Non-Police/State Core Participants (NPSCPs), the victims in all this, are treated as second class people. They object to police and ex-police being given access to their files while not knowing what personal content is in there, or how accurate it may be. They object to the Inquiry deciding what is and what is not important in those files and thus what the victims will get to see.

Challenging the Secrecy

From the few released Special Branch files it’s clear that political undercover police misinterpret events, they exaggerate, and they lie. People’s lives are ruined on the basis of biased or false information.

What the Inquiry proposes, is that the people whose files are at the centre of things will be the last to see that material, and even then only part of it – that is, only those bits the Inquiry decides is relevant to its work. The NPSCPs only get a say over how some of it is made public, and even then only after everyone else has had a go first. From the NPSCPs’ point of view, what Mitting is proposing will only increase the emotional stress many of them are already currently subject to.

So, last year, the NPSCPs raised the point that under the new GDPR regulations they did actually have rights over their data in the hands of the Inquiry, and such rights were over all such data, not just what the Inquiry decided was important. What matters is not what the Inquiry wishes but what are the rights protected in law.

The Inquiry clearly realised there was an issue as they quickly ordered a hearing. That took place at the end of January, and it was a bit of a shambles. Only the NPSCPs’ lawyers effectively grasped the issues, necessitating a second hearing to address the legal points that had been raised.

The rest of this article sets out the legal points which will be discussed (links to all submission documents are here). Hopefully, it will assist anyone seeking to follow the arguments on the day and give a quick reference to the various paragraphs and articles which will be cited.

Welcome to the GDPR

The GDPR has a number of articles which set out conditions for processing data, rights over that data and what exceptions to those rights and conditions which may exist. The Data Protection Act 2018 codes all this into UK law, updating previous acts. The regime is tougher and more comprehensive than previous legislation; it is also relatively new, which means interpretation of the finer points still have to be worked out in the courts. Some reliance can be placed on previous case law arising from the 1998 Data Protection Act, but it does not always apply.

There is also the issue of what sort of body the Undercover Policing Inquiry is. It is not a court but is in fact established by a piece of stand-alone legislation, the 2005 Inquiries Act. It may seem like semantics, which for the most part such discussions are, but in this case it is an important question.

So, the GDPR Articles of most relevance for the hearing of 25^th March are:

• 13: Information to be provided where personal data are collected from the data subject.
• 14: Information to be provided where personal data have not been obtained from the data subject.
• 15: Right of access by the data subject.

Several others which might play a role are Articles 16 (the right to correct), 17 (the right to be forgotten) and 18 (the right to restrict processing). These are not likely to be a focus of attention as it is accepted by core participants that to get to the truth, the Inquiry and those involved need to have access to the information gathered by the police as it was, in order to understand the abuses that went on.

A particular complication is how to share documents where more than one person is named. In some cases – such as a small, tight group where everyone knew everyone else – this is not likely to be that much an issue. However, quite a few documents name multiple people, not all of whom will know each other. In the jargon, this is called ‘third party rights’, and can be used to restrict material, for example where giving you your data may cause a third party’s data to be revealed. In this case, you both lose out.

This becomes more focused when looking at what is called ‘special category’ data. This is material considered sensitive and of a highly personal nature – family life, addresses, sexuality and so on. Even political opinions are caught here. It is a balancing exercise, but NPSCPs are aware such material is in police documents, and the prospect of further sharing of them without a chance to check over it is compounding their violation and pain. For this reason, the Inquiry is becoming part of the problem.

Exemptions from Disclosure

The files, whether personal files, intelligence reports, or others, all fall under Article 14 as the Inquiry is processing data it got from the police. Under normal conditions the Inquiry would be required to give the data subjects notice and what data it holds before it can process it, such as passing it on to retired police officers. However, there are exceptions, two of which the Inquiry seems keen to rely on.

Clause 5(b) of Article 14, ‘the paragraph 5 exemption’, says that the data controller (in this Inquiry, Mitting) is exempt from his obligations if ‘the provision of such information proves impossible or would involve a disproportionate effort’. However, it is still required to protect the data rights of the individuals.

The second is known as ‘paragraph 7(2)’, and comes from the Data Protection Act 2018. The Act states the data controller can claim an exemption from complying with the data rights where complying would ‘prejudice the proper discharge’ of the function the data is being processed for. Provided that function is ‘designed to protect members of the public against dishonesty, malpractice or other seriously improper conduct’ and is ‘of a public nature, and is exercised in the public interest’.

The extent to which the Inquiry can rely on these two exemptions are central points for the Inquiry’s hearing on March 25^th.

Both the Inquiry and, unsurprisingly, the police say they can rely on them, and furthermore they are ‘blanket exemptions’ which cover all cases. So if and when the Inquiry decides they are available to it to use, then it’s effectively game over. The Information Commissioner’s submissions say that the Inquiry can rely on them, but they are not blanket exemptions.

Victims Claim Their Rights

The NPSCPs say it is far more nuanced than that, and even where the exemptions apply, it is only on a case-by-case basis, and does not excuse the Inquiry from all its rights. There are measures it can and should be taking which will alert people to the fact that they may be named in documents – for example through their presence at a certain meeting, or role in a group.

The NPSCPs are also emphatic that they should be seeing their information much earlier on in the process so that they can make representation over sensitive material that might be in the files (and finally get to see what has been said about them).

The Inquiry is arguing that NPSCPs should only see their files only after all the other redactions have been made in terms of national security, protection of police tactics and so on, and that early disclosure to the NPSCPs will delay getting statements back from the undercovers and their managers. This is where it is supposedly disproportionate and would cause delays.

NPSCPs say this is not good enough; it is the Inquiry’s fault for letting the police cause delays for the last three years and now this is being thrown back in in the victim’s faces. It is granting privileges to the police that it doesn’t give to those who were inappropriately spied upon, and implies the latter can be treated with less concern for their rights.

The NPSCPs also do not accept that the work that will have to be done in providing disclosure to them first is disproportionate. Looking at the greater volume of material handled by other public inquiries which also require extensive redactions, it is clear the Inquiry is overstating the impact. Nor does the Undercover Policing Inquiry make the effort to actually justify its claims. The Inquiry simply relies on broad statements with very little supporting material.

The NPSCPs want the Inquiry to succeed, so they accept compromises have to be made; but they want to be respected also. To this end they have accepted a curtailment of their rights and put forward pragmatic proposals that would have some impact on the Inquiry, but bring them into it in a way that will help the Inquiry in the long run. The core of what they propose is a re-arrangement of the order of things, not anything new.

The Judicial Exemption

There is a second route where the Inquiry can argue it is given an exemption from complying with its obligations under the GDPR. If it can successfully be argued that the Chair is not acting in a “judicial capacity” in ’judicial proceedings” then the Inquiry can say it is exempt. Simple, eh?

Well, this is where the lawyers earn their money and it all goes down the technical hill from there. It’s not that straightforward as “judicial proceedings” is not explicitly defined and the meaning of the term itself relies on a lot of case law rather than legal statute. Nor does the Inquiries Act make it clear what the case is.

So, while on the surface the Chair does appear to be acting in a judicial capacity, there are various problems. For instance, an Inquiry is not necessarily judge-led, and unlike other tribunals, it only makes recommendations and deliberately doesn’t have the power to consider liabilities. The key point is that while the Chair will report to the Home Secretary (and may make referrals to other bodies), he does not have the power to make binding decisions and has no powers of enforcement.

Any Rulings are made under the Inquiries Act and are not necessarily court derived, even though they can be judicially reviewed. But then, many decisions not just court ones can be judicially reviewed. And so on.

The good news is that the Information Commissioner agrees with the NPSCPs on this and they have put that in their submissions (see below).

The Submissions to the Inquiry

With the exception of one or two, most of the police / state submissions for the new hearing continue the bare-bones approach that lead to the January debacle. Despite the many thousands of pounds being spent on this, it is clear that barristers are prepared to rely on broad-stroke assertions that make little effort to unpick the arguments. Naturally such an approach suits the police who want to ensure as little as possible reaches light of day.

All brush any sense of nuance under the carpet; their willingness to trust it all to Mitting is indicative of how on side their they clearly consider him to be. Thus there is no attempt to actually consider the non-blanket approach, to reason through the wider obligations presented by the GDPR, which the law requires.

Even where there are exemptions allowed, data rights do not vanish like that; they still exist and so have to be properly considered. That means paying attention to the nuance to develop a working framework that meets everyone’s needs, not just the side of the abusers.

And let us remember, it was the Metropolitan Police who admitted that its officers were engaged in human rights abuses.

Victimising the Victims

The NPSCPs accept the situation is far from ideal but are willing to work with the Inquiry to find a way forward. In not asserting their rights entirely, there needs to be a quid pro quo. Unfortunately, the Inquiry is more determined than ever to keep the victims at arm’s length from the process, treating them as an irritant with little to contribute.

The NPSCPs argument is that it should be the opposite, that the Inquiry is causing itself these problems by this attitude. If instead, it sought to work properly with NPSCPs it could have avoided reaching this point in the first place.

As once core participant told us:

“We have practical and pragmatic solutions that would prevent further pain and contribute to the process, while recognising our legal rights. In sticking to the hypocritical mantra that it would only delay the process, that the police have absolute right to see everything but we only get scraps, Mitting places himself firmly on the side of the police. His farce is our pain”.

If you can, please support the crowdjustice fundraiser for women targeted by spycops to take their cases to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal and the UN.

Marc Wadsworth, spycops People’s Inquiry, 8 July 2018

On 8 July 2018, people targeted by Britain’s political secret police held a ‘people’s inquiry’ at Conway Hall in London.

Exasperated by the state public inquiry’s bias towards secrecy as it drags on for years without even formally starting, the victims of spycops held this theatrical event to envision what an effective inquiry would look like.

It was part of a weekend of activities celebrating 50 years of progressive political campaigns achievements despite being infiltrated by counter-democratic police.

Our Youtube Channel has three short videos from the People’s Inquiry session.

This first one has an overview of the People’s Inquiry event, showing the kind of first-hand testimony that was heard from a diversity of people whose lives were invaded in a wide variety of ways, and it also shows thirst for justice in those present.

One of the people giving testimony was veteran anti-racist campaigner Marc Wadsworth. In the 1980s he led the Labour Party’s black section, and in the 1990s he was leader of the Anti-Racist Alliance.

Asked by Stephen Lawrence’s family to help build their campaign for justice, Marc was targeted by officers from Britain’s political secret police. He is a core participant at the Undercover Policing Inquiry.

At the end of the afternoon the panel gave a list of recommendations for an effective inquiry, a list of demands to remedy what is absent from the increasingly pointless, expensive and secret state inquiry

Our 13 Recommendations following the Peoples Public Inquiry:

1. Full disclosure of all names – both cover and real – of officers from the disgraced political police units, accompanied by contemporaneous photographs

2. Release of the names of all groups suspected to have been spied upon

3. Release of all personal files on activists

4. Extension of the inquiry to all countries where the British spycops are known to have operated

5. The appointment of a diverse panel with experience relevatnt ot victims to assist the chair in making decisions and judgements

6. Inclusion of children and young people who had contact with spycops as Core Participants in the Inquiry

7. Urgent and immediate review of convictions where spycops had involvement in the cases & misled courts – 50 wrongful convictions have already been overturned and this is likely to be a fraction of the true total.

8. The Inquiry must extend its scope to understand political policing and its impact on democracy. This must include a thorough investigation into racist, sexist, anti-working class, anti-democratic behaviour on behalf of the spycops and those that instructed them to operate in this manner. Such political policing and political policing units must be abolished.

9. An urgent review into all undercover police activities to investigate whether the bad practice exposed by this inquiry has been extended to other areas of undercover operations

10. Make available the necessary resources of the judge to be able to do their job in the available time

11. Equalising of resources, the police are spending millions on stonewalling the inquiry, victims have almost nothing

12. Increase the severity of penalties for non-compliance with the inquiry

13. Investigation into collusion between police and corporate spies

Three people spied upon by Britain’s political secret police are bringing a crucial legal case in an attempt to steer the public inquiry away from its bias towards secrecy and protecting abusive police officers.

They have launched a crowdfund appeal to raise the funds.

PUBLIC INQUIRY FAILING VICTIMS

Announced in 2014, the Undercover Policing Inquiry has yet to formally begin. Since the original Chair, Lord Pitchford, stepped down for health reasons in June 2017, it has been under the stewardship of Sir John Mitting. There were concerns about his suitability at the time, especially his background in secret courts that almost invariably find in favour of state spies, but victims gave him the benefit of the doubt.

In September 2017, a group of 13 women deceived into relationships by undercover police officers wrote to the Home Secretary with concerns that Mitting and the Inquiry were not recognising the institutional sexism of the Met’s spycops.

Nearly 200 of the most significantly affected victims of spycops have been granted core participant status at the Inquiry. In October, the majority of them wrote to Mitting expressing their grave fears about the direction in which he was taking the Inquiry.

As one of them, Kim Bryan, explained at the time:

‘As Core Participants we are rapidly losing confidence in the Inquiry and in the abilities of John Mitting. He is rowing back on commitments made by the previous Chair, Christopher Pitchford, who stated the inquiry’s priority is to discover the truth and recognised the importance of hearing from both officers and their victims along with the need for this to be done in public as far as possible.’

None of it has made any difference. Mitting has been granting full anonymity to around 30% of spycops, even when the police’s own risk assessments say there is little danger in publishing the name, and when the officer’s objection rests on fear of embarrassment.

In his first public hearing in November 2017, Mitting said he would not comply with the Met’s dodging tactic of saying they ‘neither confirm nor deny’ any details about undercover deployments. Mitting unequivocally stated:

‘Neither Confirm Nor Deny has no part at all to play in Special Demonstration Squad deployments’

But by February 2018 he was granting full anonymity to officers without explanation, repeatedly telling victims they would ‘meet a brick wall of silence,’ and saying:

‘it is not a Neither Confirm Nor Deny approach. It is stronger than that. It is a flat refusal to say anything about the deployment in the open.’

This led to victims walking out of court and boycotting all subsequent hearings on anonymity for officers.

Sharon Grant – widow of Bernie Grant, one of ten Labour MPs known to have been spied on – accompanied Stephen Lawrence’s father Neville to hand deliver a letter to the Home Secretary demanding change.

It’s plain that Mitting is to gullible and biased to be at the helm of the Inquiry. For the process to function, he needs to be replaced, or at least sit alongside, a panel of people with life experience relevant to the victims.

Phillippa Kaufmann QC, lawyer for the victims, told Mitting of the urgent need for a panel of:

‘individuals who have a proper informed experiential understanding of discrimination both on grounds of race and sex. Two issues that lie absolutely at the heart of this Inquiry…

‘The core participants – the non-state, non-police core participants – do not want this important Inquiry, something that they so richly deserve to have conducted in an efficacious way, to be presided over by someone who is both naive and old-fashioned and does not understand the world that they or the police inhabit.’

Neville Lawrence is clear that the appointment of a panel of people from different backgrounds is make-or-break. If it the Inquiry doesn’t get that, he said:

‘I will withdraw from it. I will leave it alone because it’s a waste of my time. I’ve wasted two years already.’

THE LEGAL CHALLENGE

Three core participants at the Inquiry want to bring a legal challenge to the refusal to appoint a diverse panel. They need to raise £5,000 to get a hearing to apply. If the win that, they will need a further £50,000 to bring the full case.

The three are:

1) The family of Jean Charles de Menezes; a young, innocent Brazilian man, was gunned down at Stockwell tube station on 22 July 2005 by police officers in a botched surveillance operation after he was wrongly deemed to be one of the fugitives involved in failed bombing attempts the previous day.

Over the next decade, the family endured the stress of two IPCC complaint investigations, an inquest, a civil claim, a further complaint and two legal challenges in their quest for justice for their loved one. In 2014, they were devastated to learn that their justice campaign had been spied upon by undercover police. They demand to know why and will not be denied justice again.

2) ‘Jessica’ (a pseudonym) was an inexperienced, vulnerable 19 year old girl with a love of animals. Her first real sexual relationship was, she believed, with Andy Davey,a 24 year old, socially awkward, fellow animal rights activist who shared her values.

Last year she found out that he was Andy Coles, a 32 year old, married, undercover police officer, tasked by his senior officers to spy on her and her friends. Jessica would never have consented to sex or intimacy if she had known his real identity.. She feels violated and humiliated. She wants to know the truth about his deployment and his relationship with her, particularly whether her clear vulnerability made her easy prey.

3) John Burke-Monerville’s 19 year old son, Trevor, was held at Stoke Newington police station in 1987 during which time his family believe he was beaten and in consequence suffered brain damage. A Justice for Trevor campaign was mounted, supported by the Hackney Community Defence Association. Trevor and members of his family were thereafter harassed by the police. Tragically, Trevor and his brother were murdered in separate incidents years apart. No one was prosecuted for the murders because, the family believe, of failures in the police investigation. Mr Burke-Monerville has learned that the justice campaign meetings were subject to surveillance by the Special Demonstration Squad.

The loved ones of Jean Charles de Menezes and Trevor Monerville are just two of 18 such campaigns that the Met admit spying on. Resources that should have caught killers were spent preventing justice.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

The people launching the appeal have spelled out their aim to have an Inquiry that simply fulfils its remit:

‘Our fear is that if it continues in its current trajectory that the Undercover Policing Inquiry will be a whitewash. We have been forced to initiate a legal challenge to the Home Secretary’s decision to refuse to appoint a panel with the skill and diversity required.

‘Our aim is to restore public confidence in the Undercover Policing Inquiry and its ability to get to the truth. Join us by contributing now and sharing this page on social media.’

The Crowdfund page is here.

Please share the link and, if you can afford it, donate.