Tranche 1, Phase 2, Day 3

23 April 2021

Opening Statements from:

Heather Williams QC, representing Category F Core Participants: Relatives of Deceased Individuals
James Scobie QC, representing Richard Chessum and ‘Mary’
Rajiv Menon QC, representing Piers Corbyn
Kirsten Heaven, representing other Non-Police, Non-State Core Participants
Dave Morris

The current round of Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings covers the years 1973-82. This day was the last one of opening statements, from Monday 26th April there will be three weeks of taking evidence from witnesses of the era.

But first the Chair, Sir John Mitting, said a few words about Blair Peach and there was a minute’s silence.

Peach was a committed teacher, socialist and anti-fascist. Some 42 years ago to the day, on 23 April 1979, he was killed by police at an anti-racist demonstration in London. His partner, Celia Stubbs, has campaigned for justice for him ever since. That campaign was targeted by the Special Demonstration Squad.

We also now know that both Blair and Celia were spied on before that, though the Inquiry has not let them see any of the documents pertaining to the time before Blair’s death.

The Met’s own investigation at the time concluded Peach was killed by police, and identified Inspector Alan Murray as the likely culprit.

Yet Mitting could not bring himself to acknowledge these facts. Instead, he glossed over it, not mentioning the police and merely referring to Peach being killed by ‘a blow to the head’. In doing this, he insulted all victims of spycops and underlined his partisan nature that is draining the Inquiry of its potential to get to the truth.

Heather Williams QC
representing Category F Core Participants: Relatives of Deceased Individuals

Heather Williams QC spoke for relatives of dead people whose identities were stolen by Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) officers as the basis for their fake persona.

She is acting on behalf of:

Frank Bennett and Honor Robson, the bereaved brother and sister of Michael Hartley who died on 4 August 1968 at 18 years of age.

Faith Mason, the bereaved mother of Neil Robin Martin who died on 15 October 1969 at 6 years of age.

Liisa Crossland and Mark Crossland, the bereaved stepmother and brother of Kevin John Crossland who died on 1 September 1966 at 5 years of age.

Mr, Mrs and Ms Lewis, the bereaved father, mother and sister of Anthony Lewis who died on 31 July 1968 at 7 years of age.

Barbara Shaw, the bereaved mother of Rod Richardson who died on 7 January 1973 when he was two days old.

Williams said:

‘each of the clients experienced the death of a child; a life event among the most difficult it is possible to suffer. More recently, the families have also suffered the horror of learning that their loved one’s identity was used by an undercover police officer precisely because of their bereavement, because their son or daughter lost their life when a child. How did it start? At what level was it condoned? Were there no alternatives?’

They’ve been waiting for answers for years – Barbara Shaw found out about the theft of her baby son’s identity in 2013. She is now 80 years old, her health is failing, yet still she waits for answers.

NO SECURITY

Did the theft of identities serve any legitimate purpose? There appears no clear rationale, no justification for this repulsive practice. Earlier SDS officers, from 1968-72, simply made up names and none appeared vulnerable to exposure.

There seemed to be no change in circumstances to have made officers deviate from the practice of simply making-up identities. We have looked through the police documents released and there is no evidence for it.

The SDS annual report 1972 confirmed the advantages of using ‘a fictitious name’ that allows officers to return to their real identity at any time. The 1973 annual report talks of having had no ‘irretrievable exposure of any SDS officer’. There was no need to change the tactic to stealing real identities.

One officer was compromised in 1974 when someone who had known him as a uniformed officer recognised him in a meeting. His choice of fictitious identity, rather than a stolen one, played no part in his exposure.

Apart from ‘Michael Scott‘ (HN298, 1971-76) who stole the identity of a living person, it seems fictional identities were normal until a change of management in 1974. The rpactice continued into the late 1990s – the most recent known being ‘Rod Richardson’ (EN32/HN596, 1999-2003).

The 1990s SDS Tradecraft Manual cruelly talks of ‘finding a suitable ex person’ with a ‘natural or unspectacular death’ and the ‘respiratory status’ of the parents.

But from around 1974, undercovers used the identities of dead children and were instructed and/or expected to do so. Officers who queried this were told it was the usual process. They searched for people who had been born around the same time as the SDS officer, preferably with the same first name.

We have not been provided with any evidence that show why it happened, let alone any consideration of the damage to the families involved, and indeed police and policing. They seemed to assume they would never have to answer for it.

Police lawyers said some former officers were uncomfortable with stealing dead children’s identities but thought the families would never know. There is no evidence to show that it helped the officers in their deployments, even before we consider the ethical issues.

The National Crime Squad says none of the Regional Crime Squads they know of who had undercover officers stole dead people’s identities. So, why did the SDS feel it ‘had to’? The spycops say they were going into ‘more security conscious organisations’.

If that were true, why was there no increase in other measures to protect SDS officer’s security? One officer says his identity ‘was not particularly detailed’ as it was largely left to officers to invent it themselves, with little to no guidance. It hardly sounds like security was intense.

Another officer says ‘I made my legend’ up as I went along’ – and it was not tested by managers.

FACT MEETS FICTION

There was no imperative to steal the identity of a dead child. So where did it come from?

Frederick Forsyth’s novel The Day of the Jackal was published in 1971 and the film released in 1973, showing the practice of stealing dead children’s identities in just this way. So, rather than an official police document, was it instead a work of fiction that in fact inspired this ghoulish practice? Whistleblower SDS officer Peter Francis (1993-97) said that the process was known as ‘the jackal run’ among SDS officers.

In last year’s hearings, police lawyers spoke of the ‘essential operational imperative’ to steal real identities. While suspicious comrades might have doubts assuaged by finding a birth certificate, they would surely be alarmed to discover a matching death certificate.

There are plenty of reasons why a birth certificate might not be found (if someone was born abroad, or adopted). There are no reasons why a living person would have a death certificate.

And this is exactly what happened. Members of Big Flame became suspicious of their member ‘Rick Gibson’ (SDS officer Richard Clark, HN297), and found he was legally dead. They confronted him and he ended his deployment. (More detail on this in James Scobie’s section of this report, below).

Clark was one of the first infiltrators to steal a dead child’s identity, and it blew his cover. So why did the practice continue for over 20 years?

Fictitious identities actually offered better cover to spycops than stealing dead people’s identities. There was no justification to start the practice, and none to continue after Clark was exposed.

If security was so important, why did managers not properly prepare their officers and stop them from behaving in a way that compromised them? Why were they given so little direction and so much latitude to make up their own mission?

Very few former SDS officers seemed to have had any qualms of conscience about stealing dead children’s identities, let alone acting immorally in the dead person’s name, deceiving women into relationships, getting arrested and convicted.

One officer, ‘Colin Clark’ (HN80, 1977-82), said:

‘I knew that it would cause distress for the family if it was discovered’.

Did his managers who knew that stop to think? Did his colleagues discuss it? Were the undercovers given any choice?

Clark changed his identity using his own date of birth and a different forename. He went on to have a five year deployment without being discovered, probing that it was eminently possible to be undercover without a verifiable birth certificate.

NOT JUST THE NAME BUT THE PERSON

Another spycop ‘Michael James’ (HN96, 1978-83) instructed to visit Blackpool where the child whose identity he stole was born. The local Special Branch helped him ascertain if the family still lived there. It is hard to imagine this was a one-off. This obviously goes beyond simply stealing names.

‘Desmond/Barry Loader‘ (HN13, 1975-78) was convicted of public order offences in the name of a dead child. Was there any regard for the besmirching of good names, or the impacts on families who may find out?

The callous interference with bereaved families was consistent with the broader culture and practices of the SDS, with not a hint of consideration as to the proportionality of their actions, nor thoughts of consequences on others, and no review of efficacy or risk.
Stealing identities simply became an embedded practice in a unit that lacked accountability and effective supervision.

At the Undercover Policing Inquiry, we are seeing excessive redaction of the undercovers methods and told it is because it ‘may harm policing’. How can it do that if it is an abandoned practice from decades ago? It is the fact of the theft that harms policing. It looks a lot like yet another example of the police not wanting to admit the full awful truth of what they did to citizens and taking the Inquiry for a ride.

We want the Inquiry to check if the Met’s redactions of the evidence that damns them are actually justified, or if it is concealing for other reasons.

It also appears MI5 had helped with fictitious identities and helped with materials to support them. There is nothing to show why the SDS decided to move away from. The reason remains unexplained.

SHYING AWAY FROM THE TRUTH

Heather Williams finished her statement, but COPS adds a few additional comments about police shying away from the truth on this matter:

In 2013, Pat Gallan – then Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Met and head of Operation Herne, the Met’s self-investigation into spycops – told the Home Affairs Select Committee they had only found one case of dead child identity theft.

She said the combined efforts of Herne’s 31 staff had failed to find any more in the subsequent five months. She refused repeated requests to give an apology for the practice.

The Home Affairs Select Committee report insisted on the truth being told about SDS infiltrators stealing dead children’s identities and demanded all affected families be told and given an apology by the end of 2013. The Met simply ignored their publications.

Later in 2013, Operation Herne reported that, contrary to Gallan’s claim of it being isolated and unauthorised, identity theft of dead children was pretty much mandatory in the SDS for 20 years.

The Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe then issued a generalised apology for stealing dead children’s identities, addressed to nobody in particular. That was in 2013. It has fallen to the Inquiry to contact families, years after they had been identified. The Met has still not provided any answers.

It’s also worth asking who else knew about it. Bob Lambert (‘Bob Robinson’ HN10, 1984-89) was a spycop in the 1980s who went on the run the SDS in the 1990s. He told Channel 4 News that the practice of stealing dead children’s identities was ‘well known at the highest levels of the Home Office’.

When the Inquiry was announced, six former Home Secretaries from the period concerned were still alive. The Inquiry has taken so long to get going that only four are still alive, the youngest of whom is now 79 years old. We are not aware of any plans for any of them to be called to give evidence to the Inquiry.

Full opening statement from Heather Williams QC, representing relatives of deceased individuals

James Scobie QC
representing Richard Chessum and ‘Mary’

Scobie did a great job piecing together the career of undercover officer Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76) rising through Troops Out Movement (TOM) seemingly in order to get access to Big Flame – and how he was eventually found out.

Based on SDS reports and the statements of two people he spied on, Richard Chessum and ‘Mary’, Scobie shows that Clark abused his friendship with Chessum and his sexual relationship with ‘Mary’ (and three other women) to reach that goal.

Clark manipulated a democratic organisation to achieve high office and destabilise it. With this, the SDS went far beyond its remit, and the mangers were fully aware of it.

Scobie also explored how Clark’s deployment served to direct subsequent officers to follow his example and take office in organisations they infiltrated.

ANATOMY OF AN INFILTRATION

In December 1974, Richard Chessum and Mary were students at Goldsmiths College in London, studying sociology and teacher training respectively, and they both were in the college’s Socialist Society.

Mary had come from South Africa and campaigned on anti-racist and civil liberties issues. Chessum had been a Methodist lay preacher, and was political officer for his local Labour Party. He protested against war and for civil liberties.

At this time, undercover officer Richard Clark – 29, married with children – was deployed into Goldsmith’s College. He stole the identity of a dead child, Richard Gibson. His target was the Troops Out Movement (TOM).

TOM was advocating self-determination for the people of Ireland and withdrawal of British troops from Ireland. Their methods were lobbying MPs, drafting alternative legislation, and raising awareness with the occasional low-key demonstration, doing talks and film screenings.

TOM had already been infiltrated, as recently as 1974, by ‘Michael Scott‘ (HN298, 1971-76) who concluded that:

‘It had no subversive objectives and as far as I am aware did not employ or approve the use of violence to achieve its objectives.’

So why were they targeted? Richard Clark is dead, so we have no opportunity to question him. But his reports show what he did.

STEP 1 – IDENTIFYING A TARGET ORGANISATION

Clark’s deployment was well planned. He wrote to TOM head office in advance asking for a local branch to join in December 1974, knowing there wasn’t one.

Chessum had been in the Anti-Internment League and so was known to some in the national office of TOM. He had not joined and had no plans to do so, because he was studying hard and had recently been ill. Nonetheless the national office put him in touch with Clark.

By February 1975, using the Socialist Society as a tool, Clark had succeeded in creating an entirely new branch of the Troops Out Movement. There were five founder members of that branch; Mary, Richard Chessum, his partner, another student, and the undercover officer.

Clark had completed Step 1. He was in the Troops Out Movement. But rather than infiltrating a branch, he had actively established one. He generated something to spy on. He encouraged and organised demonstrations, such as the picketing of the local Woolwich barracks and the homes of local MPs.

Neither Mary, Chessum nor his partner had Special Branch files on them until their involvement with Clark. Their lives were then reported to an extent that was both sinister and ridiculous. This information was passed to MI5. Their physical appearances, commentary on their body size, health issues, addresses, theatres visited, holiday destinations, right down to the brand of cigarettes they smoked.

They were no threat to anyone. They were targeted first for their politics, and secondly, because they were useful. And Clark used them.

STEP 2 – DEVELOPING AN IDENTITY & BUILDING TRUST

Clark had no back history. He had just appeared. He needed to develop a place in the social network of political activists. He did that by exploitation. ‘Mary’ is unequivocal: Clark used sexual advances to ingratiate himself.

Clark established a close friendship with Richard Chessum and initiated a sexual relationship with Mary, having been invited into her home. And he had relationships with at least three other activists to gain position and tactical advantage. The other women were Mary’s flatmate, and two activists from the group Big Flame, Clark’s ultimate target. (His story also shows that forming targeted sexual relationships started early in the SDS.)

STEP 3 – TAKING POSITIONS & MOVING UP THE HIERARCHY

As one of the founder members of the South East London branch of TOM, Clark gained access to the national movement, with an astonishing level of ruthlessness.

By March 1975, he had got himself elected as the Secretary – the top position in the branch. He and Richard Chessum were then elected as voting delegates to the TOM Liaison Committee conference.

That move gave Clark access to the national leadership, knowing he’d be accompanied by Richard Chessum, a man with a proven track record of genuine commitment. His cultivated friendship with Richard Chessum gave him credibility.

In April 1975, Clark got himself elected as a delegate to the London Co-ordinating Committee of the Movement and the All London meeting. He pointedly took an opportunity to, in his own words, ‘severely criticise’ another section of the Movement. It was a move that appeared to ensure that he was elected as the branch’s delegate to TOM’s National Co-ordinating Committee.

He saw members of Workers’ Fight coming into the branch and at the national level. This would endanger his access leadership of the Movement. Clark attended a private meeting of senior members of TOM, with leader Gerry Lawless, to discuss Workers Fight’s attempt to take over. There were only ten people at the meeting, all key in supporting Lawless’s position in the national Movement against what they saw as an attempt by Workers Fight and the Revolutionary Communist Group to take control of the organisation.

In his report, he noted Big Flame had also formed an ‘uneasy alliance’ with Lawless.

Mary’s flatmate was in Workers Fight (WF), and she had attended TOM pickets. She attended a large TOM branch meeting stacked with WF members. Clark saw his post under threat. A WF person was elected to go to a London conference that would elect national posts. Clark competed against his supposed friend Chessum for the second post and won by two votes. It’s believed one of them would have been from Mary’s flatmate with whom, conveniently, Clark had recently begun a sexual relationship.

STEP 4 – SECURE A NATIONAL POSITION

It worked – Clark got elected to the Organising Committee for London, a national position. So here we are: a spycop deprived the movement of Chessum, a decent man who supported the movement, and put himself in, with the help of the second woman he just happened to have started a relationship with.

In Oct 1975, Clark resigned as Branch Secretary as, holding national office, he no longer needed the position any more. He says in his report he made a scathing attack on WF, but Chessum said it was nothing of the sort.

Lawless then nominated Clark for a position on the National Secretariat and he got it – he was now one of seven people in charge of the whole of TOM.

He continued to attend meetings at Richard Chessum’s home and reported on him. He recorded that Richard Chessum had started a new job at the London Electricity Board – information that was passed to MI5, something that becomes relevant later. Mary and her flat-mate largely disappeared from Clark’s reporting, now that they had served their purpose.

Clark organised a national TOM rally, but failed to secure the appearance of any of the headline acts. He arranged speakers for meetings and organised steward protection from attacks from fascists. That was a legitimate protective measure against a common threat at the time. Yet we expect to see those from Youth Against Racism in Europe, Anti-Nazi League and the Socialist Workers’ Party, criticised for the same thing in a later part of the Inquiry.

Due to Lawless’s paternity leave, Clark became acting head of TOM for several months. In that time, he cancelled delegations to Ireland. He criticised certain members. At least one prominent organisation withdrew its affiliation. By the time Gerry Lawless returned, two members of the Secretariat had resigned. Remember this was a serving Metropolitan Police officer, working undercover, making day to day decisions for a campaigning organisation.

STEP 5 – SABOTAGE THE ORGANISATION

Clark then turned against Lawless. He held a meeting with Big Flame in his cover flat to organise opposition to Lawless’ leadership, decapitating the Troops Out Movement of its long-time head.

They planned a coup in the next conference. The new leadership proposed was five people including Clark himself. Was this about TOM, or getting in Big Flame’s good books?

Clark also embarked on sexual relationships with two female members of the Big Flame. For him, sexual relationships were a tried and tested tactic of getting exactly where he wanted to go.

However, Clark overplayed his hand and Big Flame rumbled him. We don’t know quite how. Telling different stories to different women and them comparing? Was he seen as Machiavellian? Or was it simply a lack or political authenticity?

It was not unusual for Big Flame to investigate new people who wanted to join if they did not trust them entirely. Members of Big Flame went to the government’s birth and death records archive at Somerset House and they found Rick Gibson’s birth certificate. Then they found his death certificate.

They confronted Clark with both. Richard Chessum tells of how he heard about this confrontation from his friends in Big Flame. How Clark went white and nearly started to cry. His ambitious plot to unseat Gerry Lawless was over.

Clark took flight and disappeared from the political scene altogether. Richard Chessum later saw a dossier that Big Flame had prepared, that included a letter from Clark written to one of the female activists, saying that he ‘had to go away’.

There was no retribution against Clark after his exposure. It stands out that none of the groups infiltrated were interested in violence unless in self defence. This shows the Met’s applications for anonymity for spycops at the Undercover Policing Inquiry inquiry on safety grounds are highly questionable.

HOW HIGH DID IT GO?

Clark’s taking of high office was known to his superiors, all the way up to the Commander of the Metropolitan Police Service. It completely abandons the early principle of the Special Demonstration Squad:

‘members of the squad should be told, in no uncertain terms, that they must not take office in a group, chair meetings, draft leaflets, speak in public or initiate activity’

Equally, the fact that he engaged in sexual relationships with activists was no secret either. Two officers, to date, have been honest enough to disclose that they knew of Clark’s behaviour. One of those officers, ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1976-79), has gone further and admitted that sexual relationships were talked about at the weekly officer meetings and that his supervising officers would have been aware because they were present.

Senior officers knew of Clark’s history of sexual abuse, yet he left the police with a special medal, a Detective Inspector’s pension, and his conduct certified as ‘exemplary’.

There is only one explanation for this. His conduct was deemed acceptable. It continued for years, and dozens, probably hundreds, of women were sexually abused at the hands of these officers.

NOT JUST CLARK

Following Clark’s deployment, spycops taking of positions of responsibility and trust in infiltrated organisations was commonplace. ‘Michael James’ (HN96, 1978-83), started his deployment in the Socialist Workers Party where he was elected to a position on the Hackney District Committee. After two years he moved on into the Troops Out Movement, where Clark had been four years before in top positions.

James is an interesting officer because he gives different accounts of the position he reached. In his Inquiry impact statement – a document arguing the case for him being granted anonymity – he stressed his seniority, saying he was National Secretary of TOM, ie the top role. Once his anonymity was secure, he shifted, and tried to downplay and minimise the importance of his position.

The fact is was the National Membership and Affiliation Secretary of TOM for a good 18 months. He now seems to suggest he just happened to fall into his roles rather than actively pursuing them. But he was on the top level of the organisation, the National Steering Committee, which he occasionally chaired. He was one of nine people with a direct influence over the direction of the movement.

In this era, from Clark onwards, every single spycop took a role in the organisation they infiltrated, except for Graham Coates who was infiltrating anarchists without hierarchy or official roles. In some case officers took national leading roles. What resulted from this was not just information, but also the opportunity to have a say in the direction of the organisation, and ultimately the ability to derail that organisation.

Scobie then listed twelve more spycops who held office in the organisations they spied on in the 1970s. See Scobie’s written Opening Statement for the details.

‘Vince Miller‘ (HN354, 1976-79) was elected District Treasurer and on the social committee of the Outer East London District branch of Socialist Workers Party. He resigned from his position to mark the ‘disorder and ineffectiveness’ within the branch. Resignation combined with strong criticism is deliberately de-stabilising to the organisation.

‘Sandra Davies’ (HN348, 1971-73) has already said that she did not remember being elected to the Executive Committee of the Women’s Liberation Front – the group founded by Diane Langford who also did a strong opening statement yesterday. The undercover officer claimed she did not remember voting to oust the founding leader and create a completely new group, the Revolutionary Women’s Union.

Scobie warned the Inquiry that most undercover officers tend to ‘have forgotten’ the roles they had, or claimed they don’t know how they landed there. Alternatively, they say that the role was not really a position of trust at all. The institutionalised dishonesty creeps into every aspect of their evidence.

LYING ABOUT POINTLESS SPYING

While many spycops accurately described the Socialist Workers Party as not encouraging violence – indeed, expelling violent members – one officer who infiltrated them, ‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-82), has told the Inquiry there was a lot of violence (officers tend to say this to show they’d be at risk if they aren’t granted anonymity). Gray’s claims are undermined by his own reports, which show nothing of the kind. He is lying.

He says his time undercover had no impact whatsoever on his welfare but that answering questions for this Inquiry is impacting on his welfare. That is because he now has to justify the fact that in reality, he busied himself with pointless and personally intrusive reporting.

Gray reported on more children than any other officer. Recording the minutiae of their lives and sending them on to MI5. Almost all of these reports have photographs of the children attached. These children were either the children of Socialist Workers Party members or children who were engaged enough with their society to be part of the School Kids Against the Nazis.

During the course of Gray’s deployment, fascist group Column 88 were threatening to burn down the homes of SWP members. The National Front were attacking Bengalis in Brick Lane, smashing up reggae record shops and vandalising mosques. There was firebombing and murder. Instead of investigating the racist firebombing that killed 13 young black people in New Cross, the Special Demonstration Squad were reporting on school children and providing MI5 with copies of Socialist Workers Party babysitting rotas.

GOVERNMENT & CABINET KNOWLEDGE

Several of the spycops in the era now being examined, 1973-82, refer to visits to the SDS safe-house by the Commissioner of the Met. (This tallies with similar memories of officers both before and after the period).

One refers to congratulatory messages straight from 10 Downing Street. Another, who himself went on to become a Detective Chief Inspector, was told:

‘the continuation of the unit was one of the first decisions that a new Home Secretary had to make’.

The 1976 authorisation for the Special Demonstration Squad’s continued existence was signed off by Robert Armstrong, later Baron Armstrong of Ilminster. He was Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Home Civil Service. It is difficult to imagine a more highly placed civil servant.

MI5’s ‘Witness Z,’ has told the Inquiry:

‘the pressure to investigate these organisations often came from the Prime Minister and Whitehall’.

Put simply, the existence and functioning of the SDS was known of, and authorised, at the very top.

Every annual application for funding refers to the officers fully recognising ‘the political sensitivity’ of the unit’s existence. Authorisation is only ever granted ‘in view of the assurances about security’. In other words, as long as you can promise us we will not get caught, you can carry on.

The Met were protecting the Government from what they referred to in the 1977 Annual Report as ’embarrassment’. There is nothing embarrassing about preventing crime. But the destabilising of democratic movements, the wholesale and widespread intrusion on citizens, and their exploitation for political advantage? That is worth keeping secret.

Scobie ended with a plea:

‘This Inquiry has been set a challenge – to get to the truth. This means asking difficult questions, again and again, to uncover the truth.

‘Ordinary people have been involved in campaigns for a better society, for social equality, anti racism, anti-fascism, against apartheid and for trade union rights. The best of reasons, and the best of traditions.

‘We hope the Inquiry is ready, willing and equipped to meet that challenge. The Inquiry must be fearless and unflinching in the pursuit of the truth. The people of this country expect nothing less.’

Full opening statment from James Scobie QC, representing Richard Chessum & ‘Mary’

Rajiv Menon QC
representing Piers Corbyn

Piers Corbyn is now 74, but has not given up his lifelong activism. He was one of the first people to apply to be a Core Participant in the Inquiry, five years ago. He will give evidence via video next week.

But Rajiv Menon started his opening statement with some more general concerns, making seven points about undercover policing and the material disclosed for the new hearings (Tranche 1 Phase 2, covering 1973-82), and about the Inquiry’s approach to witnesses, redactions, and disclosure.

Firstly. What screams out of the pages is the fact that the SDS was never about protecting parliamentary democracy nor maintaining public order. It was to spy on people and organisations because of their ideas and politics.

The limited public disorder that some spycops describe was largely minor, and certainly did not justify the spying on an industrial scale that was unleashed on the British public in the 1970s or the consequent cost to the public purse.

Just to give two examples. There is a 21 page report on an International Marxist Group (IMG) conference in 1972, and 55 pages on another in 1976. These describe different currents and tendencies within the IMG and summarise debates, as well as details of attendees. What the reports do not include is anything touching upon the protection of parliamentary democracy or the prevention of public disorder.

In short, the SDS was engaged in secret political policing and pure intelligence gathering against the Left, at times Orwellian, at times more Monty Python. Several SDS officers admit gathering as much information as possible, however personal or trivial, because it was for others to decide what was relevant.

Secondly, the most significant document in the current bundle, we believe, is the statement of Witness Z on behalf of the Security Service, MI5, that confirms that the SDS has always been subordinate to MI5.

However, Witness Z is not being called to give evidence, and we cannot understand why this is. Their statement shows they have so much vital knowledge about the roles of the SDS and MI5, and their cooperation. About about MI5’s 1972 definition of subversion as ‘activities threatening the safety or well-being of the State and intended to undermine or overthrow Parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means’, and how most if not all of those spied on by the SDS could not possibly be described as subversive according to this definition.

Thirdly, there are, on our count, 18 SDS officers who were deployed during the relevant period whose cover names have been disclosed and who are alive. But the Inquiry is only calling eight of them to give evidence. The 1970s was a critical period in the history of the SDS, the Inquiry should be hearing from as many spycops as possible.

Fourthly, we are also dismayed that the evidence of seven SDS officers whose real names and cover names have been restricted is not being disclosed. Instead it is redacted, edited and amalgamated into an eight page ‘gist’. We cannot say which officer did what. We need to know what they did individually if their information is any use to anyone at all.

Fifthly, many if not most of the SDS intelligence reports have been destroyed at some stage by the Met. Many of the disclosed reports that have survived are only in existence because copies had been retained by MI5. Interestingly, whilst MI5 is apparently happy to disclose copies of police documents, they are rather more circumspect in disclosing any of their own documents that might reveal the nature and extent of their own spying operations on political activists and others.

Sixthly, redactions. Most frustrating is the redaction of the names of many groups spied on and infiltrated by the SDS between 1969 and 1984. None of this is justifiable. We are looking at 35-50 years ago so what’s the problem? What are they hiding?

The Undercover Research Group compiled a first list of groups spied on according to the Inquiry in 2019. After the first set of hearings of the Inquiry in November 2020, more than 100 groups were added.

The SDS Annual Reports on the years 1969-84 have 130 group names redacted. Why must these remain secret forever, at the insistence of those who did the spying? It’s a betrayal of the purpose of the Inquiry.

Seventh and finally, disclosure. We are not being given enough time to read and digest material by the Inquiry. We were meant to get documents in mid March, but another 2000+ pages have been added in April. Nobody can go through all that in a matter of a couple of weeks.

PIERS CORBYN

Piers Corbyn had no idea of the extent of the spying on him. He has always been open about his politics and has nothing to hide, in contrast with the anonymous spycops who spied on him. Despite having been a Core Participant at the Inquiry for over 5 years, he knew little until recently.

He had only been provided with 53 Special Branch intelligence reports (most of which were relatively unrevealing) and no witness statements from any of the undercover police officers who had spied on him, still less any photographs of those officers to help him recollect these events that took place between 40 and 50 years ago.

Why was Piers Corbyn of interest? Special Branch opened a file on him over 50 years ago, in 1969, and he still can’t see it.

He was President of the Imperial College Union. He attended rallies against the Vietnam War. He joined the International Marxist Group (IMG). He supported Irish civil rights, anti racism, and trade union rights.

He was very active in London squatting in the 1970s. In 1982, he left the IMG and joined the Labour Party. In the 1980s, he was active in the ‘Fare Fight’ campaign to keep down the cost of public transport. In 1986, he became a Labour councillor in Southwark, a position he held for four years.

Piers Corbyn barely learned anything about the spying on him from the new documents disclosed by the Inquiry. He is mentioned in passing in a one report and in the witness statement of two others, who will not be giving evidence. The Inquiry has shown him pictures of some spycops but not the ones who spied on him!

Piers Corbyn was granted Core Participant status by the Inquiry for being one of the main organisers of squatting groups in London between 1972 and 1982, but this barely features in the intelligence reports in which he is named. In short, what is revealed by the disclosure is a damp squib.

What would tell us far more about the secret state’s interest in Piers Corbyn is his Special Branch Registry File. But nobody ever gets to see their Registry File, not even during a public inquiry into undercover policing.

We want to see is his file to see the full nature of why he was spied on. Why won’t they let him see it? Why can’t the Inquiry compel the police to do it? Is it because it’s so tedious and unnecessary that it will embarrass them? Or something else?

Whilst secrecy continues to trump openness, the Inquiry will only scratch the surface, however interesting and revealing some of the documents it is disclosing may be.

The victims of spycops are dismayed at the new delays to the Inquiry. This benefits those who want delay. More documents will be lost and destroyed, more witnesses will die. Justice delayed is justice denied.

Full opening statement from Rajiv Menon QC, representing Piers Corbyn

Kirsten Heaven
representing other Non-Police, Non-State Core Participants

Kirsten Heaven began by expressing the disappointment and anger felt by core participants last week, when they learnt that the next set of hearings, scheduled to take place in October 2021, would be delayed until sometime in the first half of 2022.

The Chair, Sir John Mitting, interrupted her with his reason for this delay – the excuse that the Inquiry want to disclose evidence to a new core participant from the Socialist Workers Party and then collect her witness statement, and says there is so much SWP material that it cannot be done between now and October.

Heaven went on to say that core participants had also just learnt for the first time – in the Counsel to the Inquiry’s Opening Statement two days ago – that the Tranche 2 hearings (covering the years 1983-1992) would no longer be heard in 2022, and would be delayed until at least 2023.

Waiting for another two years is not acceptable for the core participants who have already suffered from many years of delay. She reminded Mitting that his predecessor (Lord Pitchford, the original Chair of this Inquiry) had intended to conclude in 2018.

We are losing crucial evidence with every year that passes, as both officers and witnesses get older. We heard yesterday that, despite being in contact with spycops ‘Alan Bond‘ (HN67, 1981-86) for at least three years, the Inquiry has failed to take a witness statement from him and he is now said to be too ill to provide any evidence.

Heaven recommended that the Inquiry make it an urgent priority to collect statements from all former officers and managers. And that they provide the group with a full list of all Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) managers from the years 1968-82 who are due to give evidence in Phase 3, along with regular updates on their state of health.

The main cause of delay in this Inquiry has been the excessive demands for redactions made by the police and State bodies.

WHO WAS SPIED ON?

Heaven then moved on to analyse some of the facts in the documents recently released by the Inquiry covering the years 1973-82.

It is clear from looking at the newly disclosed evidence just how widespread this political policing was, and the wide range of left-wing groups which were infiltrated and spied upon. This included justice campaigns and defence campaigns, and even their lawyers. Trade unions & mainstream political parties were spied on. There was excessive surveillance of many sections of society, including children and young people. Spycops were involved in criminality, miscarriages of justice, and illegal blacklisting. They had begun stealing the identities of deceased children.

Information – including people’s details – was routinely copied to MI5, meaning the security service. There was deep collaboration between them and the spycops.

She described the SDS’ ‘oblique approach’ – unashamedly described by the unit’s founder Conrad Dixon as “the infiltration of relatively innocuous organisations” as a stepping stone to others.

The women’s liberation movement were targeted, with reports detailing such subversive events as jumble sales & a children’s Christmas party. The youth wing of the Liberal Party was targeted by ‘Michael Scott‘ (HN298, 1971-76) in order to gather intelligence about anti-apartheid activist Peter Hain. The spycops cynically targeted all sorts of non-radical groups, displaying an utter contempt for civil society.

According to a 1973 report from officer HN294, the International Socialists & International Marxist Group made for ‘disappointing’ targets as they did not do anything warranting police interest. It is clear that many of the spycops quickly realised that the groups they’d joined were not a serious threat to public order, or violent in any way. It is also clear that no meaningful risk or threat assessment seems to have been carried out, so how did the SDS know who should be targeted?

We now have a witness statement from ‘Witness Z’ made on behalf of the security services. It contains an admission that subversive organisations were not actually considered a high threat at this time, but that pressure to spy on them often came from the Prime Minister/ Whitehall. No stone should be left unturned in investigating this.

TARGETING JUSTICE

We see the continuation of reporting on lawyers & material that may be subject to legal privilege, often around justice campaigns following police misconduct.

An early example was ‘Alex Sloan‘ (HN347, 1971 reporting on the justice campaign that sprang up in 1971 after the death of teenager Stephen McCarthy (following his arrest and alleged assault by police). Sloan is also known to have taken part in a visit to an asylum seeker being held in Holloway Prison – why was the SDS interested in her case?

Heaven listed a selection of the groups and individuals whose names have appeared in Special Branch’s files or in the latest disclosure:

• Shrewsbury Two Defence Committee
• Roach Family Support Committee
• Stoke Newington and Hackney Defence Campaign
• Persons Unknown Defence Campaign
• Murray Defence Campaign
• Deptford Action Massacre Committee
• Friends of Blair Peach Committee
• Celia Stubbs (partner of Blair Peach and now a Core Participant)
• Graham Smith (another Core Participant)
• Justice for David Ewen Campaign July 1995
• Deborah Coles (Director of INQUEST, set up to monitor deaths in custody and support bereaved families)

It is clear that these justice campaigns were directly targeted by the spycops, despite the denials of police lawyers at the Inquiry.

Another development in this period was that the spycops reporting included children. One report, signed off by very senior officers and copied to MI5, included details about someone’s brother and his wife, and contained a line about the couple having a ‘Mongol child’.

The police’s lawyers say there is no need for concern because reporting on children ‘did not cause any harm’. But it was a gross invasion of privacy and family, and harmful to society.

‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-82) reported extensively on young people (and their teachers), and would send descriptions, details and even photographs of children off to his bosses (and MI5). One of the groups he targeted was School Kids Against the Nazis (SKAN) but none of them are here to speak for themselves, and we have no idea if the Inquiry has tried to contact any of them or not.

Heaven showed the Inquiry a short archival film from 1979 featuring the kids of Hackney SKAN handing out leaflets at schools and talking about racist scapegoating and the need to drive the National Front out.

DIVERSITY OF TARGETS

The next list of groups read out demonstrates the extent to which the SDS’s interests had grown since the unit started:

• Christian Aid
• Fellowship Party (No Racism No Violence say yes to Fellowship)
• Numerous branches of the Labour Party
• Orpington Young Liberals
• Lewisham Humanists
• 6 London Trade Union Councils
• National Union of Students
• Teachers’ unions
• Transport & General Workers Union Legal Workers Branch

There are many examples of intrusive reporting of women:

• Women’s Voice
• Spare Rib Collective
• Women Workers League
• Brixton Black Womens Group
• Greenham Common Women’s Support Group
• Lambeth Women For Peace

One report attributed to ‘Barry Tompkins‘ (HN106, 1979-83), includes details of a woman activist who had an abortion, and speculation about ‘the putative father’. This kind of invasion of privacy cannot be justified.

According to the police’s lawyers, the spycops were politically neutral and did not favour or target one group over another. However this is patently not true. Hundreds of groups and individuals perceived to be on ‘the left’ were targeted, while the rising far-right, who created fear through their use of violence, were not policed in the same way.

The SDS’s annual reports consistently downplayed the threat posed by the far-right.
An earlier statement by the police’s lawyers suggested that there was no need to infiltrate groups like the National Front because they tended to cooperate’ with Special Branch. There appears to be no evidence to support this.

Neither is there any evidence that the police were able (or willing?) to pre-empt or prevent National Front violence and racist public disorder during this period.

This makes for a stark comparison with the lengths the SDS went to in order to infiltrate the left. Heaven referenced one example: ‘Gary Roberts’ (HN353, 1974-78) was enrolled on a degree course as part of his cover. He attended classes four days a week for several years, and got involved in student politics (becoming an NUS vice-president).

BLACKLISTING

Many eyebrows were raised by the police lawyers’ insistence in their November Opening Statement that the SDS did not infiltrate trade unions and were not involved in blacklisting.

The SDS’s own report from 1972 contains references to trade union activity and strikes (the miners, the dockers and building workers), as well as the union-initiated Shrewsbury Two campaign.

‘David Hughes’ (HN299/342, 1971-76) joined the TGWU and attended their meetings. It appears that many of his reports (including those on the Claimants Union) are missing, but the Inquiry has decided that we do not need to hear more from him.

The Blacklisting Support Group are outraged by the police lawyers reference this week to “so-called blacklisting organisations”. There is no doubt that blacklisting occurred and any attempt to belittle it is deeply offensive to its many victims and their families.

Heaven reminded the Inquiry that it was Operation Reuben, the Met’s own investigation, that found:

‘police, including Special Branches and the security services, supplied information to the blacklist funded by the country’s major construction firms, the Consulting Association and other agencies.’

SPYCOPS – FOOTSOLDIERS OF MI5?

The SDS seem to have infiltrated all sorts of groups, even those which posed no threat to law and order, at the behest of MI5, harvesting photographs, bank account details, membership lists, phone numbers etc.

We are told by police lawyers that the SDS was ‘neither an agent nor a servant of MI5’, but at the same time they tell us the SDS was not in a position to challenge MI5 in any way. Which is true? It can’t be both.

It’s the job of this Inquiry to work out who really controlled the SDS, and answer more questions about this relationship.

The Home Office did provide some official guidance to Special Branch in 1967, 1970 and 1984, but these documents do not answer all of the pertinent questions. The SDS and Special Branch were specifically cautioned in 1984 to seek advice from the security services before targeting any alleged ‘subversives’, and warned against undermining ‘the legitimate expression of ideas’ or ‘interfering in the exercise of political and civil liberties’.

INEQUALITY OF INFORMATION

Before finishing her submissions, Heaven moved on to summarise some procedural points.

At the last hearings, the problems around disclosure and only having a live transcript rather than a proper live stream meant many core participants couldn’t participate fully.

Disclosure of documents has been little better this time, but a large number of documents were missing from what was initially disclosed and a month later it seemed that the volume made available to us fell far short of what had been promised.

This reinforces the unfairness and inequality embedded in this Inquiry.

We can see that there was significant cooperation between the spycops and the security services and, once again, we demand disclosure of all Special Branch ‘registry files’ and other information being held about core participants.

We ask for explanation of the file reference numbering systems so we can understand what the files were.

The Inquiry must be more proactive in encouraging members of the public to come forward with evidence. Publishing the cover names used by officers and photographs of them would be helpful.

We ask again for the full list of groups reported on to be published, and for groups’ names not to be redacted from evidence.

We are still extremely concerned about the withholding of some spycops’ cover names.

Are secret ‘closed’ hearings really required for certain officers? At least one of these men appeared in the BBC’s True Spies documentary talking about his career so it is unclear why he cannot give public evidence to the Inquiry.

MORE OFFICERS, MORE EVIDENCE

Out of the eighteen officers from 1973-82 who are still alive, the Inquiry only plans to call eight to give evidence at these hearings.

‘Gary Roberts’ (HN353, 1974-78) initially supplied a statement in 2019. He has left the UK since then, so the Inquiry has decided to only provide a summary of his evidence. He was present at the 1974 Red Lion Square anti-fascist protest when Kevin Gately was killed, and at the Battle of Lewisham, but his reports seem to be missing.

Being abroad is no excuse to exclude him, he could still give evidence via Zoom like the other witnesses are in the UK.

Another officer who is not being called to give evidence or answer questions is ‘David Hughes’ (HN299/342, 1971-76). One of his reports was described on Wednesday by Counsel to the Inquiry as ‘the most disturbing document that we have found’. This referred to one person interrupting a reading group to talk about how TWO million people would be killed ‘when the socialist revolution took place’. The Inquiry needs to be able to better discern rhetoric and overstatement from actual threats.

Another spycop, ‘Bob Stubbs’ (HN301, 1971-76) was also at Red Lion Square, where he was punched in the face by a uniformed officer. We have not been supplied with all of the evidence about this day, the advance intelligence or any debriefing. The lack of them suggests they have been destroyed, making oral evidence all the more important.

‘Barry Tompkins‘ (HN106, 1979-83) denies reports of deceiving a woman into a relationship. We are now told that he will not be giving evidence due to ill health. However we have not seen any evidence that his condition has been properly verified by the Inquiry. There needs to be more transparency about such medical evidence.

RELEASE THE FILES

There was widespread, systematic contempt for the rights of those on the left of the political spectrum, whose common law rights and human rights have both been breached by the actions of the spycops. Any assurances from SDS & MI5 cannot be trusted.

Those who were spied upon must be shown their files so they can appraise what was done and correct the false information they undoubtedly contain. The whole purpose of this Inquiry was to learn from the mistakes of the past, so such human rights abuses would not be repeated in the future.

Heaven ended her submissions by suggesting that the sheer scale of the spycops scandal, the huge number of people spied upon, the apparent lack of accountability, exaggeration of risk, and the obvious political biases of the police all contribute to the belief that these undercover operations were unjustified and illegitimate. Instead they constituted an unlawful enterprise, conducted for political purposes and motivated by a desire to protect the Establishment rather than the wider public interest.

Full opening statement from Kirsten Heaven representing other Non-Police, Non-State Core Participants

Dave Morris

This was Dave Morris’ second opening statement to the Undercover Policing Inquiry, having already made a fuller statement at the November hearings. This one was mainly made in regard to the recently disclosed documents about undercover officer ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1976-79) who used his association with Morris to gain access to the anarchist milieu in London during the mid to late 1970s.

Coates has been said by the Counsel to the Inquiry to have infiltrated the International Socialists/Socialist Workers Party and the collectives who ran Anarchy and Zero Magazines, as well as the ‘Persons Unknown’ defendants solidarity group. He also used a dead child’s identity and visited the area where he was born. We have also been told that in his written statement, he refers to SDS officers jokingly discussing sexual relationships with activists and that management were aware of the practice.

Morris started by reiterating his previous statement, and endorsing Kirsten Heaven’s description of the spycops activity:

‘an unlawful enterprise conducted for political purposes and motivated by the desire to preserve the power of the establishment rather than protect the wider public interest.’

ORIGINS

Morris told how had had come across anarchist/libertarian ideas through a BBC documentary series ‘Open Doors’. In early 1975 he attended Freedom Newspaper collective meetings, and then went to Anarchy Magazine, discussing housing, poverty, feminism, exploitation at meetings of the friendly, sociable, advertised and open group.

He said that printed articles representing a wide range of views, inevitably including some he disagreed with. He was also a postal worker and was local branch secretary of the Union of Postal Workers.

By the end of the 1970s, Morris had begun to get involved with environmental campaigns such as London Greenpeace and, with fellow London Greenpeace member Helen Steel, was one of two defendants in the famous McLibel trial.

A life-long community activist, Morris is currently Secretary of the Haringey Federation of Residents Associations, and Chair of the National Federation of Parks and Green Spaces.

He explained the common thread running through his activism:

‘The essence of my personal motivation and political beliefs has remained constant throughout the last 50 years or so – the desire to tackle injustice, to seek improvements in society in the public interest, and to encourage and empower people to have as much control over their lives as possible.’

TARGETED

Turning to the early spying he’s just been told about, Morris said:

‘Looking back on the surveillance and infiltration of groups I was involved within in the 1970s… and how I was personally targeted, I feel disgust at this cynical and blatant breach of trust. Not just for me but also for the other victims I knew and know – such as the family with young children whose home was where the Anarchy Collective held meetings. Of course, I am outraged not just by the tactics used but also by the very existence and purpose of the whole spying operation. This Stasi-like behaviour is totally unacceptable.’

All of Morris’ activity was standard campaigning activism, albeit at the left of the spectrum. Organising public meetings, social events, protests, defence for people whose rights were infringed. These are rights enshrined in international law and should have the highest protection.

Indeed, a lot of his work has been about upholding rights and the law.

The McLibel trial – the longest running court case in English history – helped defeat McDonald’s attempt to silence critics. Corporations haven’t tried that sort of thing again.

The McLibel 2 then won an additional victory against the UK government at the European Court of Human Rights because the McLibel trial had been unfair.

After the Climate Camp in 2008, Morris won a case against the police and showed that mass stop and search of campaigners was in fact illegal. In both of these legal cases, he rolled back infringements on the rights of people to voice their dissent against oppressive powers.

The spycop Coates has said:

‘anarchists I reported on posed a minimal challenge to public order… didn’t even discuss activities that could be a public order threat… I do not not think any information I provided was significant’.

Coates reported many personal details, naming the area Morris was brought up in, what A levels he did and more – and got all those details are wrong! What less subjective stuff in their reports were they also wrong about? Some spycop reports are written a month after the event described & may have been embellished by officers who weren’t even there.

A spycop report says Morris suggested that the Anarchy Collective should be involved in fire-raising activity on government building in support of a firefighters strike. But he remembers the group deciding to produce stickers and join local picket lines. It’s possible someone may have made an offhand joke, but the police should be able to discern between that and genuine beliefs or intent.

THE REAL THREAT

Morris also said that while the coverage of left-wing activists seemed to be very thorough, those on the far-right of the political system have had little attention.

Morris said that a proper risk assessment of threats to society at the time would have set its sights on other dangers.

London Greenpeace’s opposition to McDonald’s was wide ranging – not just the harm caused in the manufacture of the food, but its workers rights, its subversion of the parent-child relationship and more. Why was this subversion not targeted by the SDS?

Beyond that were fossil fuel companies, tobacco companies, tax havens, car companies, the military intervention in Northern Ireland, and major construction companies who ran an industry blacklist (that both Morris and Helen Steel were added to!). Why didn’t the police, who nominally exist to protect the public, target people organising these serious threats?

He concluded by saying:

‘It was a gross breach of peoples’ trust and human rights, which maybe could have raised an arguable case if targeting active gangs of mass killers but has no shred of legitimacy when it was actually being used to protect those who control society’s wealth and power from the real needs of the public.’

Full opening statement from Dave Morris

Tranche 1, Phase 2, Day 2

22 April 2021

Opening Statements from:

Diane Langford
‘Madeleine’
Phillippa Kaufmann QC, representing Core Participants who had relationships with undercover officers
Matthew Ryder QC, representing three anti apartheid activists (Ernest Rodker, Professor Jonathan Rosenhead & Lord Peter Hain) & Celia Stubbs

The second day of Tranche 1 Phase 2 of the Undercover Policing Inquiry, being the 28th anniversary of the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, began with the Chair, Sir John Mitting, reading out a statement from Neville & Doreen Lawrence about their son.

He spoke of the police failings, of the suspects not being charged, and that the Macpherson report from the public inquiry was a landmark in showing the police’s racist faults. But Stephen’s legacy is ultimately one of hope, reminding us change is much needed, but also possible.

There was a minute’s silence for Stephen.

Diane Langford

The first speaker today was Diane Langford, an activist in groups who were infiltrated by undercover officers in the era that the current hearings are examining (1973-82). She will also give evidence on the afternoon of Monday 26 April.

The contrast between the opening statements of yesterday’s legal representatives of the police, spycops and the establishment compared to the emotional, direct and articulate submission of Diane Langford could not be more marked.

Her statement cut to the heart of everything that is wrong with the Undercover Policing Inquiry. This summary hardly does justice to her powerful speech, which is worth reading in full, or watch on YouTube.

POOR TREATMENT BY THE INQUIRY

Diane Langford has only recently become a Core Participant at the Inquiry. In 2018, the Undercover Research Group (URG) found her story of the exposure of spycop ‘Dave Robertson’ (HN45). Later, URG discovered that the group she had set up, the Women’s Liberation Front, was infiltrated by ‘Sandra Davies’ (HN348), and had let her know.

Her name appeared unredacted in many reports of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) disclosed at the previous Inquiry hearings last November, but it turned out the Inquiry had only reached out to her just beforehand.

‘When I was given copies they ironically came with a legal warning not to show them to anyone else.’

The Inquiry failed to ask her to give evidence, or tell her that she could seek legal representation.

By the time she knew Sandra Davies was giving evidence to the Inquiry it was too late to book a place at the limited screening venue.

Despite the poor treatment she has received from the Inquiry, Diane Langford is grateful to the Chair for, belatedly, granting her Core Participant status. She was perplexed however that, despite her 50 year history of activism, in his ruling, the Inquiry chair, Sir John Mitting, introduced her as ‘the widow of the late Abhimanyu Manchanda’ as if she was merely an appendage. Yet another example of the institutionalised sexism being present in the Inquiry as it was in the spycops.

Langford identified six undercover officers who spied on her:

• ‘Sandra Davies’ (HN348)
• ‘Dave Robertson‘ (HN45)
• ‘Dick Epps‘ (HN336)
• Mike Ferguson (HN135)
• ‘Peter Fredericks‘ (HN345)
• Jill Mosdell (HN346)

Langford expressed solidarity with others targeted by spycops, especially those no longer here to tell their story and push for justice, asking:

‘how many others who were spied on are completely unaware that their names appear in these files?’

‘I’ll never know what career opportunities were denied to me, or what other barriers have been placed in front of me during my life, as a result of the machinations of the Special Demonstration Squad. I’ll never know whether unpleasant incidents – for example, being denied credit or visas, or break-ins at my home – were connected to the surveillance I was being subjected to.’

WITNESS OF INJUSTICE

As a young person Langford saw injustice in Aotearoa/New Zealand where she grew up, including racism, sexism and class discrimination. Her brothers got an education, but she left school at the age of 15. Coming to London at 22, ironically to support her brother who had won a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, opened her eyes. Going to movies, and reading De Beauvoir and Sartre, Barthes, Kristeva, and the Autobiography of Malcolm X after he was killed, opened the way into political activism. She was very much influenced by the events of 1968.

Talking about being part of the women’s liberation movement, Diane Langford said that, as with many others, her commitment was based on personal experience, recognised as political. She gave the example of how, when she was in her early twenties, her flatmate died of an illegal back street abortion, aged nineteen.

‘The memory of her death remains vivid for me still, at the age of 79.’

That the basic goals of the movement remain unachieved and resisted confirms their profound nature.

Langford began her involvement in the Women’s Liberation Front, which believed that patriarchal, racialised capitalism cannot, and will not, meet those goals.

She listed three dramatic events that spring to mind when recalling the period under scrutiny:

– Dave Robertson threatened my friend with violence when she outed him as an undercover.
– Banner Books was burned down by fascists while undercover officers had surveilled and had access, and I believe a man died. This needs investigating.
– Robertson ignored an allegation of attempted rape at a meeting, instead focusing on my domestic arrangements and ridiculing my partner.

WHAT IS THE POINT OF THE INQUIRY NOW?

Langford then connected the spying in the past to the new Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill rushed through Parliament just before the November hearings in 2020, which allows police to self-authorise to commit all crime, which undermines much of the point of the spycops Inquiry.

In January 2020 the current counter-terrorism spycops unit listed peace protesters as extremists. One of them was the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign seeking to uphold international law and to promote peace, yet it is targeted as a problem to be undermined.

In Langford’s activist life, women’s liberation has always been entwined with the Palestinian struggle – there is no liberation for women under the apartheid regime in Palestine. She asked:

‘If I was under surveillance in 1970 as a member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, am I still under surveillance now? I became a busier activist in the 2000s, more than in the 1970s that police have admitted. Where are the files?’

INCAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING

‘Sandra Davies’ (HN348) spied on 77 meetings, of which 55 were related to the women’s liberation movement.

‘Sounds like more than I did! Why is the women’s movement not a focus of the Inquiry? The Inquiry is colluding with the state to limit the search for evidence…

‘To read these reports is to see some of the greatest ideas of our time crushed into the narrow confines of a mentality absolutely lacking in the capacity to comprehend them…

‘We see the callous use of women’s bodies by misogynous male officers who see such abuse as a perk of the job, and, a confluence of the sexist behaviour and patriarchal attitudes of so-called left wing men in socialist groups and that of those spying on them.’

THE REFUGE OF POOR MEMORY

‘This Inquiry reiterates the intrusive processes of surveillance, requiring the victims of spying to explain and justify themselves, when it is the perpetrators of surveillance who should be interrogated and held accountable.

‘Remarkably we witnesses are again being subjected to intrusion into our personal and political lives, as if some retroactive justification could be thereby found for utterly dishonourable and indefensible police actions, whereas the perpetrators of abuse are granted impunity, anonymity or the refuge of poor memory.’

The SDS reports of the 1970s show sexist and racist ideas were endemic.

This was illustrated time and again by HN45 and HN348. For example, a report from August 1, 1972:

‘so-and-so is a member of the Revolutionary Women’s Union. She lives in a council flat at ADDRESS GIVEN with her two children aged 6-and-a-half years and three years and her mother so-and-so. She is a divorced woman and is in receipt of £8.50 per week Social Security. She attends Revolutionary Women’s Union meetings regularly and is particularly interested in agitating for 24-hour nurseries. This woman is on very friendly terms with so-and-so. Her description is: Aged about 23 years, very thin build, medium length fair hair, blue eyes, very pale complexion, poorly clothed but neat and tidy, wears black rimmed glasses, cockney accent.’

The internationally celebrated artist David Medalla, who passed away in January, is described by HN348 like this:

‘Asian features and colouring, dirty appearance, very poorly clad. He is very opposed to the current Government in the Philippines.’

That government was the notorious Marcos dictatorship – just to provide historical context.

Browsing the disclosure provided by the Inquiry, Langford found other disgusting examples of racism and sexism: On 1 June 1978, a report about the Federation of London Anarchist Groups informs the Special Branch that a subject had cut his beard off ‘to reveal that he has a long face, large Jewish nose and full lips.’

A report signed off by Angus McIntosh, about the Women’s Organiser of the International Socialists, dated 22 October 1976, states she has :

‘typically Jewish lilt to her … and rather prominent nose, always scruffily dressed in blue jeans and T-shirt (without a bra).’

‘A negress was in the audience’ according to a July 1976 report of a meeting of Hackney International Socialists that discussed self-defence strategies for victims of physical attacks by the National Front.

What did 1970s undercover officers do to stop the National Front attacking people of colour? They were spying on anti-fascists.

‘These patronising violations of people’s personal space, of suppressing a child’s right to demonstrate against state-sanctioned physical abuse, the racist, anti-Semitic, sexist and judgemental descriptions of people’s personal appearance that filled the notebooks of the secret police may not amount to much in the eyes of the Inquiry. It’s the accretion of them that are the stuff of authoritarian regimes, hence the expression “petty apartheid”.’

ABHIMANYU MANCHANDA

Diane Langford was also very critical of the portrayal of her late former partner, Abhimanyu Manchanda (‘Manu’):

‘HN45 displays a vindictive hatred of Manu and a peculiar obsession with our personal relationship and child-care arrangements. He sent detailed reports to the Special Branch about what he apparently saw as transgressive behaviour – a man looking after his own child – and expressing horror that I was “sent out to work.” He informs his superiors of Manu’s “insufferable anecdotes” about our baby.’

In her Witness Statement, she dealt with the Inquiry’s inappropriate Rule 9 written questions about my personal relationship with Manu – in fact repeating this behaviour.

There is nothing in the reports about them overthrowing the state. Nevertheless, HN45 portrayed Manu as a danger, saying he only went on demos to cause violence. Which is rubbish, he knew you can’t tackle the state head on.

Why is Manu referred to in reports by his surname while others get their full names? That too smacks of imperialism.

FROM NAPALM TO BUNNY GIRLS

‘What did the Inquiry have in mind when they asked me about Dow Chemicals? Is the implication that Dow Chemicals, whose inhuman war crimes have never been accounted for, was under the protection of the British State? It may help the Inquiry to know that Dow Chemicals was the manufacturer of Napalm, a firebomb fuel/gel mixture used by the American military against Vietnamese civilians…

‘The continuum I spoke of earlier, can be perceived in UK state protection being accorded to Israeli arms manufacturers, in particular Elbit, who boast that their equipment is “battle tested” on Palestinians, despite widespread public disgust at the brutal treatment meted out to Palestinian civilians.’

What was behind the Inquiry’s question about picketing the Playboy Club? Does the Inquiry regard The Playboy Club, whose employees are referred to as ‘Bunny Girls,’ as an institution worthy of special protection by the secret police?

HN348 referred to the 1970 Miss World protest as an event that was organised by the Women’s Liberation Front, prior to her deployment. They actually didn’t organise it, but Langford did attended the demonstration.

‘It was a magnificent disruption of an exploitative commercial event degrading to women. It was not a threat to public order or security.’

THERE’S NEVER JUST ONE COCKROACH

Inquiries since the Macpherson Inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence have been devalued by the manner in which they’ve determinedly obstructed genuine ‘inquiry.’

For example, Priti Patel set up an inquiry into the atrocious police violence against women at Clapham Common, an incident that she herself set in train.

‘While the Inquiry is heavily weighted in favour of the State, how are we going to find out when the abuse started? I hope the Inquiry will not be deflected by the myth of “a few rotten apples.”

‘The cynical attitudes of the UCOs as evidenced by their misogynist reporting in the past and current lack of remorse makes it inevitable that any opportunity to take advantage of women would have been taken. There’s never just one cockroach.’

‘Where are these files kept? Who has access to them? Dozens of people, whose names recur in the files I’ve had sight of, have absolutely no idea that the secret police came into their homes under false pretences and spied on them. At the bare minimum anyone whose private space was violated, resulting in them being named in these files, should be informed and invited to be part of the inquiry.’

We need to see the faces of undercover officers, if only to stop suspecting our innocent old comrades of being cops. Why are the officers not compelled to supply contemporaneous photos themselves?

A request for a contemporaneous photograph of HN348 was declined by the Inquiry as they were not holding one in their files. Why not ask HN348 to supply one, as Langford’s legal representative suggested?

‘it bears out the idea that, as Audre Lorde put it, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. It is clear that women, People of Colour and others working for a better world will need to continue with our grassroots campaigning on behalf of ourselves and one another.

‘However, my hope is that this Inquiry will, in fact, prove useful to us in such struggles for justice, human rights and freedom.’

For more, see Diana Langford’s blog and her political memoirs

Full opening statement from Diane Langford

‘Madeleine’

‘Madeleine’ was deceived into a relationship by ‘Vince Miller‘ (HN354) towards the end of his infiltration of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) while undercover from 1976 to 1979.

She had known him for three years by the time the relationship began. The relationship lasted for a short period of time over the summer and early autumn of 1979 until he suddenly disappeared.

Miller has admitted to a total of four sexual relationships during his deployment but insists they were all one-night stands. Despite him admitting that, the Inquiry had previously referred to his deployment as ‘unremarkable’ and granted him anonymity.

Madeleine not only describes a relationship lasting several months, as verified by her diaries, she also emphatically condemns Miller’s account of how they initiated their relationship.

‘the implications of some of the disclosures made by Vince Miller are also deeply offensive and revelatory. Describing the night we first got together he has stated that I “unexpectedly invited him to my bedroom” after we had both been drinking.

‘What exactly is he trying to say? That I was drunk and looking for a random man to have sex with? This is a deliberately untrue misrepresentation of the events of that evening.’

Since Madeleine has come forward to challenge such claims, Mitting has now agreed to release Miller’s real name to Madeleine. But she asserted:

‘HN354 shouldn’t have had his identity protected in the first place. HN354 lost the right to privacy due to his abusive acts and no legitimate reasons have been given for withholding his real name’.

POLITICAL ORIGINS

Madeleine described how her politics stemmed from her family background. She grew up in a large poor working-class family. Her father was a lifelong socialist and an active trade unionist, and both her parents were anti-racists.

Her father was part of the anti-fascist protests at Olympia in 1934 and at Cable Street in 1936 where he joined thousands of East Enders who fought to stop Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists marching into a largely Jewish area to intimidate and attack the community.

Madeleine’s dad went on to join the International Brigades fighting fascists in the Spanish Civil War. He was at Guernica when the Nazis destroyed the city. He came back to the UK and volunteered to join the British Army at the start of the Second World War to continue his fight against fascism.

Madeleine wonders whether her father, a double war hero, would also have been considered a ‘subversive’ and a ‘dangerous extremist’.

The spycops reports just released by the UCPI and branding political activists as ‘subversives’, ‘dangerous extremists’, and ‘troublemakers’ paint a picture of people unrecognisable to Madeleine’s experience as an activist. To find out that the words were written by Miller, someone she trusted and cared about, is doubly painful.

She described the bigger picture, with the stilll-unfolding spycops scandal needing ‘to be understood and framed as the logical expression of the actions of a state and security apparatus wedded to the interests of the ruling class.’

TEENAGE ACTIVISM

Madeleine moved on to her youthful activism with the Socialist Workers Party. She recalled organising branch and public meetings, and endless discussion and debate. The SWP was open and welcoming, and had nothing to hide. It was public, selling the weekly Socialist Worker newspaper and leafleting on the High Street, on housing estates, pickets and demonstrations.

Madeleine said that Miller embedded himself deeply into the life of the SWP branch for three years. He described the branch as a ‘social and inclusive bunch’ – a fact that which he took full advantage of. He became treasurer (which seems to have been a common role for spycops taking office in groups), and was also on the social committee and in the industrial group.

She has found out that:

‘17 spycops were embedded in our party and yet in truth, the biggest threat to democracy in the UK at this time was not from the left but from the reinvigoration of fascism which once more began to emerge from the shadows and reveal its ugly face.’

THE GROWING THREAT OF FASCISM IN THE 1970S

Madeleine spoke about the political and economic backdrop in the UK during this period, which would prove a fertile breeding ground for fascism. Fascists attacked the left with increasing violence, attacking paper sellers, and committing arson against bookshops. In May 1978 a young Asian man, Altab Ali, was stabbed to death in Whitechapel. So where was the monitoring of the far-right by our security services?

The area around The Bladebone pub at the top of Brick Lane in London’s East End was a well-known haunt of the National Front (NF). After repeated attacks on the diverse community, protection was organised and the SWP were part of it. Miller describes the area as ‘heavily policed’ but Madeleine says she only saw that happen when there was active left wing presence. The protection that the community received was from activists like herself, not the police. Miller depicted the confrontations as a mere territorial dispute between the Swp and NF.

Miller’s analysis in his witness statement, describing the SWP and the NF as similar is very telling. Madeleine mentioned that a police report on a speech given by fascist John Tyndall at the NF ‘Battle of Lewisham’ march, describing him speaking in his ‘usual forceful manner’, but his exhortations to violence went unrecorded by spycops.

Madeleine gave another more personal example of police bias towards the far right:

‘I recall one Saturday selling papers at Barking Station in the week following a violent sledgehammer attack on a young female SWP member by a fascist who broke her pelvis. Jeering NF members watched as a tall man who had previously approached us in a friendly manner to buy a paper came up behind me and snatched my papers calling me a ‘red bitch’ and telling me to go away. He then walked over to the police who had witnessed his act and proceeded to laugh and joke with them. When I asked the police if they had seen what he’d done they smirked and told me to go home’

THE BATTLE OF LEWISHAM

On 13 August 1977, 500 NF supporters planned to march from New Cross to Lewisham. There was a huge mobilisation against it. At an anti-racist rally beforehand, a crowd of thousands was addressed by those notorious subversives the Mayor of Lewisham and the Bishop of Southwark.

Police tired to guide the NF marchers but thousands of people blocked them, and there were extended disturbances on the streets. It quickly became known as the Battle of Lewisham.

Madeleine emphatically refutes a claim made by Miller – and repeated in the SDS Annual Report that year – that bricks were stockpiled at various locations by the SWP along the planned NF route and that members of the SWP carried weapons to the march in bags.

‘I was at the demo on the day and can state categorically that no one that I knew had weapons or would have done such a thing. It is an easy assertion for HN354 to make – where is his evidence? Where are the names? Or should this be seen as an attempt to blacken the name of the SWP?’

The police were in reality undermining the efforts to fight fascism and combat racism by the only forces mobilising to protect communities and defeat those evils.

Madeleine continued:

‘The Battle of Lewisham is now rightly considered a watershed moment like Cable Street in the fight against fascism in this country. Unable to control the streets, the NF went into decline and the event is now proudly remembered as the moment when the far right was again defeated. It is now commemorated by the local council and seen as a symbol of a community coming together to say yes to black and white unity and no to the forces of hate.’

A KNOCK AT THE DOOR

All that was over 40 years ago.

Early one Saturday morning at the end of February 2020 Madeleine received an unexpected visit. Like anyone door-stepped early on a Saturday morning by someone with a hand-delivered an official-looking letter, she felt a wave of anxiety and stress.

‘What was I about to be told? Was I about to be given some terrible and tragic news?’

It was a solicitor from the Undercover Policing Inquiry. Madeleine received the news that ‘Vince Miller’ was not a boyfriend and comrade.

She couldn’t think of the man she’d known as a devious abuser. She remembered him as someone who seemed emotionally vulnerable – as she was herself at the time, having just left an abusive partner. This targeting and use of trauma as a means of getting close to surveillance targets is emerging as one of the most common themes within SDS deployments.

‘I now know that the Vince Miller I thought I knew doesn’t actually exist. He is a wholly constructed fiction, a fake identity used as a tool for the purposes of political surveillance sanctioned by the state which infiltrated the most intimate parts of my body and my life…

‘The initial revelation of the true identity of a man with whom I had enjoyed an intimate sexual relationship and shared thoughts and feelings of a deeply private nature left me feeling nauseous and revolted. I felt degraded and abused and continue to feel a real sense of violation. I feel that both my trust and my values have been betrayed by an agent of the state.’

THE TRUTH IS SECRET

Madeleine was told that there were a substantial number of intelligence reports on her and her friends which she could only see if she signed a secrecy agreement not to even discuss the contents with anyone else apart from her lawyer.

‘The knowledge that the state holds secret files on me filled me with anxiety and a sense of paranoia. I wanted to know. What is in those files? What information is held? What details of a personal nature do they contain? And how personal and intrusive are those details?’

For Madeleine, not being able to share this with her husband was especially hard. It cuts off a source of support for both of them as they deal with the impact of the truth.

All the Inquiry’s core participants have been in this position, not being able to share it or discuss it with anyone – even others who’ve been given the same documents.

She condemned the cruelty of the police and Inquiry refusing to hand over documents until just before the Inquiry hearings will discuss them. There are women who have known their partner was a spycop for many years, and who are not due to receive the reports on them for many more years.

Later, at the end of Madeleine’s testimony, Mitting said that he would ask the Inquiry lawyers to see that her husband could see the documents. This is too little too late.

When another core participant had earlier asked whether she could share her disclosure with one other trusted person it was refused. Not being able to discuss these matters with anyone else other than your legal representative adds another layer of trauma and stress for those affected by the actions of the state.

‘The files that I have seen contain information of a very intrusive and personal nature. They reveal detailed physical descriptions of myself and my flatmates and information about my employment, my wages, my address, and the precise time, date, and registry office location of my first marriage which happened before Miller’s deployment but appears in a report written by him.’

CRADLE TO GRAVE SURVEILLANCE?

‘I have also discovered, to my horror, that MI5 has had files on me since 1970 when I was aged 16 more than 6 years before HN354s deployment. This is shameful. Most people would consider a 16-year-old little more than a child and the Inquiry now knows that other children have been spied on too. I was incredibly young when I first became politically active in left-wing groups. We know the SDS was formed in 1968 and that extensive spying was happening at that time. I therefore wonder if I was spied on as early as 13 when I was a schoolgirl?

‘Miller has even reported on the pregnancy of a woman in our branch and the name her baby was to be given. This went straight to MI5. Was this unborn baby given a security service’s file? Was my child given a registry file too? I find it outrageous and deeply offensive to realise that we have been treated as “targets” regarded as “subversive and dangerous extremists” and that relationships have been used as a tool for state surveillance via the invasion of our lives and bodies.’

WHAT’S CHANGED?

Madeleine questions how much has changed in police culture. Did Miller contribute to the prevailing culture within the Metropolitan Police at that time and since, as he later became a senior officer?

She asked for all reports on her to be removed from the archives and destroyed. The SDS has shown us that secret policing, by its unscrutinised nature, is liable to abuse citizens. There is no telling how the information on file may be used against its subjects in future.

We’ve already seen Miller downplay the harm he did to others, and he is far from alone among the spycops in this regard. Madeleine said spycops should be given no leeway for their behaviour because any allowances made to them because of their position or role in society will be exploited by them in order to cover themselves.

As well as today’s opening statement, Madeleine will giving evidence to the Inquiry on Monday 10th May.

Full opening statement from ‘Madeleine’.

 

Phillippa Kaufmann QC
representing Core Participants who had relationships with undercover officers

Kaufmann began by saying it is now clear that in the era being examined by the current UCPI hearings, 1973-82, numerous spycops had sexual relationships with women while using their undercover identities.

Some of these women were the targets of their spying operations, others came into contact with the spycops socially.

We were told in the past that these deceitful relationships only rarely occurred, but the evidence now being published provides a different picture.

It has now been confirmed that at least eight officers entered into such relationships over a five year period. Of these, ‘Jim Pickford‘ (HN300, 1974-76) and perhaps ‘Alan Bond‘ (HN67, 1981-86) had children with women they’d spied on.

The practices and culture established in this period led to what came later. It shows the long running sexism which infected the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS).

WHY WEREN’T WE TOLD?

It’s not just the SDS that’s at fault. The Inquiry only contacted Madeleine in February 2020, and got a lawyer late in the year, yet she was known about when the Inquiry first dealt with the spycop who abused her, ‘Vince Miller‘ (HN354, 1976-79), in 2017.

Why wasn’t she contacted earlier? Why were we assured a woman would be sent to tell her the awful truth, but instead a man went to her home?

Why wasn’t Madeleine put in touch with Police Spies Out of Lives – which represents and supports women deceived into relationships by spycops – as the Inquiry had promised?

In 2017, Miller gave the Inquiry the name of the other Socialist Workers Party member he had sex with. Why did the Inquiry also wait three years before starting to try to to find her?

The Inquiry accepted his version at face value, called his deployment ‘unremarkable’, and ruled that his real name would not be published because he deserved privacy.

The order to protect his name will now be revoked. Why has this changed, apart from the fact that Madeleine is now actively involved in the Inquiry? Why should that make the difference, given his acts remain unchanged? Why was he ever seen as deserving of anonymity?

NOT JUST ACTIVISTS

Miller also admitted to having sex with two other women (who he says he wasn’t sent to spy on) during his deployment. Why didn’t the Inquiry tell us about that straight away?

Those other two women were also deceived by a paid State character who was the opposite of what he claimed to be. This isn’t a private matter for the officer, it’s as relevant to the Inquiry and the public as a relationship with an activist. We have no idea how many other spycops the Inquiry knows about who have also already admitted they had sex with non-activist women while undercover.

The Inquiry must already be well aware that spycops are liable to lie about this subject. Jim Boyling told the Met that Rosa, with whom he ended up having two children, had nothing to do with his target group. It was a bare-faced complete lie. Any instance of a spycop using their identity to deceive women into sex is an abuse of power and a violation of the women. It always needs investigating.

The Counsel to the Inquiry told us yesterday they won’t investigate every relationship, which is one thing. But why isn’t it telling us about ones they know about, and whether it is trying to find the women involved?

Trust is a major issue for these deceived women. The lack of transparency from the inquiry generates gratuitous anxiety, distrust and fear.

Any spycop who deceives someone into sex forfeits their right to anonymity. It was not necessary to their deployment. This practice was gratuitous and a grossly intrusive invasion of private citizens’ lives.

HN21 also admitted, in 2019, that he had sex with 2 women while undercover, yet still has anonymity for both his real and cover names. Why?

SPYCOPS SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS 1973-82

In the era 1973-82, which the Inquiry is currently examining, eight officers are known to have deceived women into sexual relationships.

HN302 (cover name restricted, 1970s), whose deployment began in 1973,admits one sexual encounter with a woman from another group rather than the one he spied on. He said ‘circumstances presented themselves’. He says it wasn’t necessary to his deployment and he didn’t think it important.

Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76) had relationships with ‘Mary‘ and her flatmate in 1975, and two women in Big Flame. He told his cover officer that this had caused his cover to be compromised, which implies that he told these women different stories and they realised.

Big Flame found the birth and death certificates of the child whose identity he’d stolen. Mary and Richard Chessum’s statement to the Inquiry on Friday will give more detail.

‘Jim Pickford‘ (HN300, 1974-76) fell in love and wanted to tell the woman the truth about himself. Another officer helped him tell the SDS managers. His wife found out and their marriage ended. He married the new woman and had a child with her, though that marriage didn’t last and she can’t be found today.

HN21 (cover name restricted, late 1970s-early 1980s) admits to occasional sexual encounters with women he knew from ‘an evening class’ (we don’t know what kind of class that was).

‘Barry Tompkins‘ (HN106, 1979-83) is mentioned in a security liaison note as having a relationship, though he denies it. The Inquiry hasn’t called him to give evidence, so we may never find out more about this.

‘Vince Miller‘ (HN354, 1976-79) deceived Madeleine and three other women into relationships. He’s blamed it on having been drunk every time. He lied to the Inquiry about it. He is adamant that his sexual relationship with Madeleine was a one-off event, but she is very clear that they had an ongoing relationship, for months. She still has a diary showing the dates they spent together, but it is notable that he never stayed overnight.

‘Phil Cooper‘ (HN155, 1979-83) told the Inquiry’s risk assessors he had several relationships, but now denies having said it. The officials he spoke to will be giving evidence.

‘Alan Bond‘ (HN67, 1981-86) lived with Vince Miller before Miller was deployed. He may have had a child while undercover. Despite this, he was promoted, and went on to be second in command of the SDS in the 1990s. This means that he oversaw many of the officers who we know also deceived women into relationships, including John Dines, Matt Rayner, Bobby Lewis and Andy Coles. His attitude to this issue must be explored.

‘Paul Gray’ (HN126, 1977-82) was alleged to have had an affair with a fellow officer, in a letter received by his managers that is thought to be from his wife. His managers found allegations ‘were not totally accurate’. Does that mean the affair was with someone he was spying on, rather than a colleague? None of this is actually mentioned in HN126’s witness statement.

We now know that during those five years, a third of the officers in the unit engaged in sexual relationships while undercover. There may be more. But the Inquiry is only calling one, Vince Miller, for evidence.

The issue of sexual relationships is one of the main reasons for the inquiry’s existence and must be prioritised. At the November hearings, we were provided with extracts from each individual officer’s witness statement (with their cipher number attached).

However, it appears that this time, the Inquiry intends to only supply a short ‘gist’, blending the officers’ accounts together, rather than directly quoting any extracts, or identifying which officers are addressing which points. This makes it impossible to ask any meaningful questions of these officers, and makes the gist almost worthless. There’s no good reason why the inquiry cannot provide individually identifiable extracts like last time.

When these spycops give evidence in secret ‘closed hearings’ we will be demanding that as much of this evidence as possible is published afterwards and only the minimum details necessary are kept confidential..

NOT JUST ACTIVISTS

Sexism was endemic in the SDS – reports rate women’s attractiveness and comment on the size of breasts. No account was taken of the impact of the officers’ behaviour on their wives and families. When Paul Gray’s wife alleged an affair the managers’ only concern was protecting the unit’s secrecy; there was no concern for her welfare.

‘Sandra Davies’ (HN348, 1971-73) the first female SDS officer, had her welfare totally disregarded. She was just a tool, used to spy on women’s groups that were closed to men.

Spycops gave no thought to the dignity of women, to their right to choose who they had sex with, the risk of harm if they found out the truth, or what would happen if they got pregnant. Most officers involved readily admit there was no necessity for these relationships.

Numerous women’s organisations were spied on, despite posing no threat at all to public order. It was just a deep hostility to women’s equality.

With at least a third of officers having sex with women while undercover, management cannot claim ignorance. By 1971 they knew deployments were going to be long, about four years. It was clear spycops were becoming important activists and socialising. Deploying married officers clearly didn’t prevent them deceiving women into sexual relationships.

‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1976-79) reports officers making joke references to sexual relationships in front of managers, who were ‘deliberately blind’. Jim Pickford and Rick Gibson had reputations for chasing women.

Why would Coates be lying? We’ve confirmed the officers Coates names did in fact have such relationships. His account is clearly credible. If he is telling the truth, the other ‘amnesiac’ officers must be lying.

QUESTIONS FOR BOSSES

It appears Rick Gibson may have deliberately targeted women in order to reach an influential position in the group he was infiltrating. This is hugely significant for the management.

The SDS’ 1974 annual report say security is top priority, and the frequent meetings of all spycops keep close tabs on what officers are doing and feeling. Later reports reiterate that there is constant contact with supervisors and very close monitoring of every spycop.

There’s no question that supervisors would have listened carefully to what spycops reported. Officers must be hiding the truth from the Inquiry. We can’t take their word at face value.

We know Pickford and Gibson’s relationships were disclosed to managers, and that they suspected Tompkins of having one. They absolutely knew that this went on, and they did nothing. The message to the spycops was therefore that there’s nothing wrong with the practice Doing nothing to safeguard the women is the result of the police’s institutional sexism.

From the early days, the SDS had a culture of spycops using the bodies of women as a perk of their jobs. A state institution that exists to serve the public they’re abusive. It is deeply misogynistic. And it appears to have become part of the armoury of tactics.

If Alan Bond fathered a child while undercover, this has major implications. But he won’t give evidence to the Inquiry due to ill health. The Inquiry has known of his condition for three years yet has not taken a statement from him.

After all this misogyny in the 1970s, a 1981 Special Branch memo refers to an early spycop named Miss Pelling, who infiltrated the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1921. She remembers colleagues as gentlemen who never took liberties.

The memo says:

‘This, naturally, is as true of the present Branch’s treatment of the fairer sex as it was in Miss Pelling’s day’

WE NEED EACH OTHER’S KNOWLEDGE

The Inquiry needs the help of those who were spied on. They must not just be contacted but given full disclosure of documents relevant to them with plenty of time to read and respond so they can expose the lies.

‘Alison‘, deceived into a relationship by spycop Mark Jenner in the 1990s, has highlighted lies in the reports about her. Jenner’s reports don’t identify her even when she was at events. He appears to have deliberately written both himself and her out of reports. But Alison can shed light and show the lies, and the real impact Jenner had.

There are so many Alisons who could do the same for this phase of the Inquiry but who won’t get a chance to, because the Inquiry is keeping the facts secret.

Spycop Mark Kennedy told the Home Affairs Select Committee that the ‘two’ women he had sex with (real number: at least 11) ‘provided no intelligence at all’.

Yet at this moment, one of those women, Kate Wilson, is at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal abundantly proving she was a main target of Kennedy’s deployment.

Spycops lie, the women they abused can prove this and help to uncover the truth.

The new extra delays to the Inquiry are simply cruel to the people waiting for answers. Women deceived into relationships by spycops should be given their files, and any documents that mention them immediately. The Met have said they’re happy to do this, if the Inquiry decrees it.

The Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting, responded that delays are inevitable, and that ‘perhaps the request cannot be fulfilled’. He gave no reason at all as to why this might be.

Full opening statement from Category H Core Participants (Individuals in Relationships with Undercover Officers)

Matthew Ryder QC
representing three anti-apartheid activists (Ernest Rodker, Professor Jonathan Rosenhead & Lord Peter Hain), & Celia Stubbs

Finally today, an opening statement from Matthew Ryder QC. He represents anti-apartheid activists Ernest Rodker, Professor Jonathan Rosenhead and Lord Peter Hain, as well as Blair Peach’s partner Celia Stubbs.

From the 1960s there was a large, global, anti-apartheid movement. They were right, and their opponents were wrong. The British government appeased and supported a regime it should have opposed.

Ryder stated that It should be a matter of deep regret that spycops targeted anti-apartheid campaigners. The real threat to democracy was the apartheid regime itself.

The Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) was formed in 1959 and was not affiliated with any political party. Peter Hain was part of the ‘Stop The Seventy Tour’ (STST) which campaigned against tours by South African sporting teams.

The Dambusters Mobilising Committee opposed the sanctions-busting Cahora Bassa Dam project in Mozambique, which would directly benefit South Africa’s apartheid system. DMC was also targeted by spycops.

The spycops were partisan; they spied on anti-apartheid groups well into the 1970s, long after the Stop The Seventy Tour, while ignoring the growth of far-right groups. The right-wing intimidation and violence suffered by anti-apartheid groups were seen as regrettable but understandable by the spycops. Those promoting racial equality were seen as the problem, rather than the racists.

The bias was so pronounced that the first spycops infiltration of the far-right National Front came about by accident when an officer infiltrating the Workers Revolutionary Party was asked by his unwitting targets to spy on the NF!

Spycops suffered from ‘mission creep’, spying on not just the ‘ultra-left’ but anyone on the broad left, irrespective of whether they had anything to do with disorder. Spying on any group could be excused as a stepping-stone to a group that was more of interest to the police. This was apparent in the deployment of Doug Edwards (HN326, 1968-70)who infiltrated the (law-abiding) Independent Labour Party.

MURDER IN LONDON

The South African State’s security service was active in London in the 1970s, targeting the African National Congress and Anti-Apartheid Movement. Peter Hain had a letter bomb delivered in 1972, opened by his 14-year-old sister. The incident remains uninvestigated.

Bombings and murders were committed against anti-apartheid campaigners. Military materials were used. Few charges were ever brought. Some of these attacks were later admitted to by South African agents.

The spycops seem to have been wholly uninterested in pro-apartheid violence. Instead, they obsessively collected information on a wide range of left-wing groups who opposed it.

The police lawyers told us yesterday that we needed historical context to understand the spycops. Well, here it is.

Yesterday the police told the Inquiry said they would have behaved identically if a racist campaign had opposed a black sports team touring England. But supporting racism is different from opposing it. Equivocation between the motivations and actions of the left and far-right was apparent in the witness testimony of Madeleine earlier.

This sounds a lot like the police 23 years ago, telling the Macpherson Inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence that it had a colour-blind approach. It is as if they have learned nothing.

It is also a lie, given that there were active violent racist campaigners at the time and the undercovers left them alone. That now, today, they cannot see why this is wrong is highly regrettable.

The SDS officers recorded extraordinary and gross levels of detail. The birth of Ernest Rodker’s son and a note saying that Ernest himself had been admitted to hospital were reported and copied to MI5, as were reports about who was at Peter Hain’s family home including his younger siblings.

This is what a totalitarian regime would do with dissidents. Parents are now having the chilling experience of reading secret police reports on their children.

A 1975 report on Ernest Rodker names elected councillors and their choice of reading material. It was also copied to MI5. The Labour Party conference was reported on by spycops. Peter Hain asks if the Liberal and Conservative conferences were ever spied upon?

If, as is plausible, this information was passed by MI5 to their South African counterparts, it is the very opposite of protecting the public.

The Stop The Seventy Tour was not ‘subversive’. SDS officer Mike Ferguson (HN135) had a key organisational role in the group. He then went on to hold senior positions in the spycops unit, recruiting and advising new officers. It seems his work was perversely viewed as a good example.

WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS

The excuses for targeting anti-apartheid groups need debunking. Contrary to the police version, violence was never an aim or method. Contemporaneous documentation proves it. It was not secret or revolutionary, it simply opposed the cruel and racist South African regime. Mike Ferguson’s reports do not suggest any violence at any time. Officer Dick Epps says at one demo people were told to attack police. This was emphatically denied as a lie by all of the activists involved.

The arrest and prosecution of spycops officer ‘Michael Scott‘ (HN298, 1971-76) at the ‘Star and Garter demonstration’ is a powerful example of how spycops deliberately abused their power and eroded the judicial process.

On 12 May 1972, in the car park of the Star and Garter Pub in Richmond, activists blockaded a coach of rugby players on their way to the airport, about to embark on a tour of South Africa. One of those arrested and convicted was undercover officer ‘Mike Scott’.

As mentioned in yesterday’s hearing, Scott was using the stolen identity of a man who was still alive. Scott spied on privileged legal conversations between lawyers and defendants. He did not correct the police ‘s claim in court that the protesters were on the road, when in fact they were on private land: the car park. Senior officers endorsed his going to court to lie about this.

This is an early example of spycops creating miscarriages of justice.

Home Office guidance in 1969 is unequivocal – undercover agents should avoid misleading courts at all costs. The spycops unit simply ignored this .The SDS tradecraft manual of the 1990s specifically told spycops that they could disregard the usual rules about not lying to courts.

If we conservatively estimate that there was one wrongful conviction per officer per year of service, it means the spycops caused about 600 wrongful convictions. It is a huge scandal that is going relatively unremarked upon.

Another example was the prosecution of ‘Desmond/Barry Loader‘ (HN13, 1975-78) in 1977. He and others were tried for public order offences. Barry’s charges were dismissed while the others were convicted of public order offences. He was arrested again shortly after this, leading to a conviction. However he was only given a small fine and ‘bound over’. Neither the defence nor prosecution was told that he was an undercover officer. It appears that the only disclosure was to ‘a court official’ (name redacted so we have no idea who this was) who fixed the results.

The 2015 Ellison Review of Potential Miscarriages of Justice said that spycops must have withheld evidence from court, including evidence that would have exonerated the defendants.

In 1974, infiltrating the Troops Out Movement, spycop Mike Scott was accused of being a spycop officer by Gerry Lawless. Some spycops chose to accuse genuine activists of being spies to distract attention from themselves. Scott, however,chose a different tactic – of punching Lawless in the face, so hard that he broke a finger. These officers considered themselves to be above the law in many ways.

Mike Ferguson, who infiltrated the Anti-Apartheid Movement, is – uniquely – known by his real name, but his cover name is restricted. This means those he spied on cannot know he was a spy and cannot come forward. This has led to another Mike, a real campaigner called Mike Craft, being accused of being the spycop. Craft’s comrades here emphasise that he was wholly innocent. This is also a reminder to all activists to never accuse comrades of being a police spy without any hard evidence.

Even by the standards of the day, the SDS’ targeting anti-apartheid campaigners was an unjustified, disproportionate, and erroneous political choice. The Inquiry should confirm that as a matter of historical record.

CELIA STUBBS

Ryder then moved on to talk about Celia Stubbs. She is a Core Participant because of her relationship with Blair Peach and led the campaign about his murder by police in 1979. Stubbs recently spoke movingly about it, and spycops, to Channel 4 News.

Peach and Stubbs were both members of the SWP as well as active anti-racist campaigners. Stubbs has campaigned all her life, always to strengthen civil society, and was targeted by the undercovers as a result. Both Stubbs and Peach had spycops files kept on them, opened in 1974 and 1978, long before Peach was killed. We have not seen any of the documents involved that pre-date Peach’s death.

On 23 April 1979, there was a plan to march and sit down at Southall Town Hall protesting at a National Front meeting. Special Patrol Group (SPG) officers piled out of a van and one struck Blair killing him.

All six SPG officers refused to cooperate with the investigation that followed.

Commander Cass’ report at the time confirmed a police officer had killed Peach and identified Inspector Alan Murray as the person most likely to be responsible. Illegal weapons and Nazi regalia were found in the lockers and homes of the SPG officers. Cass’ report was not published until more than 30 years later.

No officer was ever brought to justice for due to a major police cover-up. Officers refused to cooperate with investigations.

The Met told their lawyers to give a knowingly false version of events at Blair Peach’s inquest. They will have seen the Cass report that contained the truth, but still, they lied. The corruption extended beyond the police.

The killing of Blair Peach remains one of the most notorious events in British police history, a national disgrace, and a permanent stain on the Met.

An SDS annual report to the Home Office cites the death of Peach and the ensuing campaign for justice as a key focus for the unit. This is not about subversion or disorder. The Home Office’s response was to renew the SDS’s funding.

The SDS reported on the campaign for promoting actions like writing to MPs and local newspapers, and phoning in to radio shows. Again, this is not public disorder or subversive activity. A number of spycops even attended Blair’s funeral, while police evidence gatherers photographed the attendees for later identification by the SDS.

Combined with the cover-up, it is clear that the infiltration of the Blair Peach campaign was about preventing guilty police officers from being held to account.

THE SPYING HASN’T STOPPED

The spycops units have continued to take an active interest in the Blair Peach campaign ever since. A commemorative event was organised for the twentieth anniversary of his death in 1999, and this was targeted by spycops, with the excuse that such campaigns were ‘anti-police’. Justice campaigns were routinely portrayed as some sort of risk to public order even when they plainly weren’t.

Campaigners for police accountability in cases where the police played a part were a major target for the SDS, and this continued for decades. Police admit undercover officers spied on at least 18 family and justice campaigns, and the true total is likely to be much higher. On our website we name thirteen examples that we are sure of and summarise these cases of police incompetence, arrogance and murder.

Police lawyers told the Inquiry last November that the SDS and NPIOU never directly targeted justice campaigns. But the documents we see in these hearings prove that is untrue. Officers were tasked to spy on the Peach campaign.

Why would the SDS highlight the Peach campaign to the Home Office if it were not a direct focus? Why are some reports only about the Peach campaign? Why were so many other campaigns targeted later? The denials of the police lawyers are simply not plausible. Their statement should be publicly corrected and withdrawn.

The 1979 SDS annual report describes the Peach campaign as a main focus, yet the Inquiry has disclosed suspiciously few documents relating to this.

It is striking that there is so little evidence relating to either the 1979 Southall demonstration where Peach was killed, not the 1974 Red Lion Square anti-racist protest at which Kevin Gately was killed. There is a real concern that reports may have been destroyed by the police in order to cover up the facts around both fatalities.

Earlier in this Inquiry, there were references made to a report about the Southall demonstration at which Peach was killed, This report – key evidence about an extremely important and relevant historical event – has still not been disclosed to us, and we are left wondering if it has been deliberately withheld from the Inquiry, or just not shared with us?

For Stubbs, this conspicuous lack of evidence is just one more obstruction to truth and accountability.

TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH

Celia Stubbs was also involved in the Hackney Community Defence Campaign and Colin Roach Centre, both of which were targeted by spycops. She is extremely disturbed about the fact that her lawyers were put under police surveillance, and Special Branch files were opened on them.

This Inquiry has had police material for years, yet only passes it to witnesses shortly before the hearings, giving us little time to properly analyse and respond. The extremely limited opportunity for victims to question witnesses limits the Inquiry’s ability to get the truth.

Celia Stubbs and Blair Peach sought to bring people together and make a fairer world. They were spied upon. She wants answers and accountability. She does not have to prove her innocence; the state must show why it spied on her.

There is nothing in the police documents disclosed by the UCPI that justifies spying on Celia Stubbs.

Bringing the hearing to an end, Mitting reminded us that tomorrow is the 42nd anniversary of Blair Peach’s death. The Inquiry will resume at 10 am with Mitting speaking briefly about Blair Peach and then there will be a minute’s silence.

Full opening statement from Ernest Rodker, Professor Jonathan Rosenhead and Lord Peter Hain
Full opening statement from Celia Stubbs

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Tranche 1, Phase 2, Day 1

21 April 2021

Opening Statements from:

David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry
Peter Skelton QC, representing the Metropolitan Police Commissioner
Oliver Sanders QC, representing 114 spycops

On 21 April 2021, Tranche 1, Phase 2 of the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) got underway. It will examine the ac tions of the Special Demonstration Squad, 1973-82.

David Barr QC

Counsel to the Inquiry

The first session was taken up by an opening statement by David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry.

The Counsel to the Inquiry questions witnesses (this stops it being like a trial with different lawyers pressurising witnesses from different directions).

In the previous set of hearings last November, Barr’s questioning of undercover officers became notorious for its lack of intent.

As with the opening day of the November hearings, some previously unmentioned groups were named as having been spied upon.

Clear knowledge of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS)’s operations – not only within the Metropolitan Police but at the highest level of the Home Office – was also discussed and confirmed.

A RECAP OF THE EARLY YEARS

However, Barr began with a brief review of what had been presented in terms of the SDS’ first three years (1968-1971), as covered in November’s ‘Phase 1’ hearings.

The SDS was set up in 1968, initially to counter anti-Vietnam War protests.

Barr said that experienced Special Branch officers were recruited for the new unit, and many of the first deployments only lasted a few weeks or months. . Officers began to inveigle themselves into the social lives of activists and, from 1971 onward, deployments tended to last around four years.

Despite the next anti-Vietnam War demo passing without clashes, the police and Home Office jointly decided to keep the new unit, even though the Home Office was anxious to ensure that the public didn’t find out about this deceitful and anti-democratic form of policing.

It was confirmed in November’s inquiry hearings that the SDS enjoyed a close relationship with MI5 – early spycops’ seemingly inconsequential reports were routinely copied to MI5. It seems clear that the Met and Home Office agreed that SDS officers would assist MI5 with ‘counter-subversion’. Officers were increasingly deployed for longer, and into more diverse groups. They targeted some campaigns now considered mainstream, such as anti-racism, and women’s rights.

SDS officers infiltrated groups, not based on any imminent threat, but in case there were any ongoing matters of interest to MI5, with extraordinarily little criminality reported. Despite this, ex-spycops think their intelligence was important and useful, and prevented public disorder.

Highly personal details were recorded of group members. Officers were given a significant degree of latitude, sometimes including the choice of which groups to infiltrate. They reported on events and people on the rather vague premise that they might be of use at some point in the future.

WHAT THE NEW HEARINGS WILL EXAMINE

Phase 2 of the Undercover Policing Inquiry is examining evidence from 29 SDS officers spanning the 10 years between 1973 and 1982. Of these, seven officers have both their real and cover names withheld, and so the Inquiry is limited as to what evidence about them can be made public. ‘Gists’ of their evidence – which, if the last hearings are anything to go by, will consist of extremely brief and non-illuminating summaries – will be published.

Barr said that all but one of the other 22 SDS officers from the era in question have their real names withheld. Officer Richard Clark (HN297), is the only one whose name will be given.

Of the 22 ‘open officers’ whose cover names are public, four are dead, seven provided witness statements and three did not provide any statements. The other eight will give oral evidence in these hearings and documents relating to their deployments will also be published.

During this period, deployments usually lasted for 3-5 years, unless the officer asked to leave, or his identity was compromised. (Unlike the first few years, there were no women spycops throughout this time).

Barr said that the hearings for this period will feature the earliest confirmed cases of spycops deceiving women they spied on into sexual relationships, and the theft of dead children’s identities, and potential miscarriages of justice.

SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS

Undercover officers’ sexual relationships had life-altering impacts on the women they targeted. Barr acknowledges that the Met have apologised for this. This has not stopped them contesting the legal cases brought by such women, many of which have dragged on for years.

The era we will be looking at – 1973-82 – includes the first definite cases of officers deceiving women into relationships. At least five officers this during this period, with at least 12 women, though this is likely to be a dramatic underestimate of the true number.

Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’ HN297, 1974-76) is now deceased. He infiltrated Big Flame and the Troops Out Movement, becoming active and influential in both groups. He was sexually intimate with ‘Mary’ and her flatmate, and at least two other women.

Big Flame’s members became suspicious of Clark and discovered that he was using a fake identity, at which point his deployment was ended. It is mentioned in the 1976 SDS report, and Big Flame is labelled ‘sinister’ even though there is no suggestion of criminality.

‘Jim Pickford‘ (HN300, 1974-76) infiltrated anarchists. His second wife, to whom he was married at the time, says he met a woman while undercover and went on to marry her. They had a child, but the relationship did not last long.

‘Vince Miller‘ (HN354, 1976-79) infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). He said he had four one-night stands, and did not tell his managers about them. However, one of the women he had a relationship with, ‘Madeleine’, says it lasted for a couple of months. She also says that she had split up with her husband the year before, and was devastated by that, and describes herself as:

‘very shy and reserved. I was also quite vulnerable as a result of my marriage ending…. I now think Vince probably saw me as easy pickings’

‘Vince Miller’ disappeared soon after, leaving Madeleine distraught. He has now seen her witness statement but is sticking to his story. Madeleine will be make an opening statement on Thursday 22nd April and give evidence on Monday 10th May.

‘Barry Tompkins‘ (HN106, 1979-83) denies any sexual relationships, but an MI5 document says his managers thought differently, with activists being heard to refer to ‘Barry’s girlfriend’. He will not give evidence due to ill health.

‘Phil Cooper‘ (HN155, 1979-83) also denies sexual interactions, but the risk assessors said he told them he had a few. The issue will be examined by the Inquiry.

Two of the fully anonymous officers, HN302 (who served in the 1970s) and HN21 (who served in the late 1970s and early 1980s), have stated that they had sexual contact with women whilst in their cover identities. HN302 described a ‘brief encounter with one woman’ when, he says, ‘circumstances presented themselves’. He said it was not important to deployment. HN21 describes sexual encounters with two women from an evening class he attended, who were not part of the group he infiltrated. Both officers will give oral evidence in secret hearings of the Inquiry.

The Inquiry will not differentiate between brief and long relationships in a way that dismisses the former, they are all significant. That said, the Inquiry says it does not need to document every instance of sexual contact between spycops and civilians. Some women may not want to participate, and Barr says that on some occasions the need to ‘protect’ a former officer outweighs the need to contact any women he deceived.

The Inquiry has found no documents from this era (1973-82) that instruct spycops officers either to have nor to abstain from sexual relationships. But there was a mention from ‘Graham Coates’ (HN304, 1976-79) that he overheard comments and jokes about relationships from officers, in the presence of spycops managers.

During this time, all of the spycops (and their managers) were male. The SDS went 10 years without any women officers , which may well have had an influence of the unit’s culture. The vast majority of these men were married, and marital status was noted at the time of recruitment, It was perhaps thought that this would help to deter the undercovers from getting too close to their targets, but clearly it didn’t prevent them going so far as to initiate sexual relationships.

STOLEN IDENTITIES

Identity theft (the theft of dead children’s identities in particular) as practiced by many of the spycops in creating their ‘legends’ or cover stories was one of the reasons why this Inquiry was instigated.

Barr seems to suggest that officers started doing this in 1971 and by 1974 all officers were using the technique. No documents exist about this though, except for the Tradecraft Manual which was written in the 1990s.

The 2015 Operation Herne investigation reported that it was:

‘clear that the use of this tactic was sanctioned at the highest level, was deemed as operationally necessary and was one that newly appointed undercover officers were trained in.‘

To add insult to injury, a few spycops visited the place where the dead child whose identity they stole had lived. ‘Michael James’ says he was instructed to do so and was assisted by the local Special Branch to ensure the child’s family had moved away.

A new revelation was that one officer used the identity of a living person, Michael Scott, and committed a criminal offence in his name.

MISCARRIAGES OF JUSTICE

One of the main themes in these hearings is the question of miscarriages of justice. Did undercover officers function as agents provocateurs, withhold evidence, mislead or deceive courts?

In a criminal trial, the defence has a right to see all evidence that may be helpful to them. The police have a duty to ensure that any involvement of undercover officers in events which lead to criminal prosecutions is properly disclosed. There is a real risk of a miscarriage of justice occurring otherwise.

We will be hearing evidence from four people convicted after their involvement in an anti-apartheid demo in the early 1970s.

The Inquiry has anticipated that there will be evidence of miscarriages of justice. A panel has now been set up to examine any suspected miscarriages, with the possibility of then referring these cases on to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. The problem is that this panel is comprised solely of senior members of the police and the Crown Prosecution Service – the kind of people who have a history of deliberately creating these kinds of wrongful convictions in the first place.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The events of 1973-82 are the context for the hearings. Barr took us through a whirlwind tour of the major political events of the period.

The Vietnam War ended in 1975, with no more demonstrations against it involving significant violence after 1968. But the Cold War left a lot of the same tensions. The British Government feared the Soviet bloc sought to foment unrest in the UK, so Special Branch assisted MI5 in ‘counter subversion’. One officer, Barry Tompkins, reported an approach from the KGB Soviet secret police, but this was unique.

Two SDS officers specifically infiltrated Maoist groups. Diane Langford, who was in some of these groups, will make an opening statement on the morning of Thursday 22nd April , and give evidence on the afternoon of Monday 26th.

Special Branch’s interest in groups campaigning about Irish nationalist and civil rights issues is a consistent theme of this era. SDS officer ‘Alex Sloan‘ (HN347, 1971) targeted the Irish National Liberation Solidarity Front, and we will hear evidence from two members.

FASCISTS VS ANTI-FASCISTS

Racism was also a huge issue in the era, and reporting on anti-racist groups was very common indeed. The far-right was on the rise in England, opposed by the left. There were violent confrontations. SDS officers were involved in the fascist protest and anti-fascist counter-protest, known as the ‘Battle of Lewisham’, in August 1977.

Both a BBC film and an Associated Press report were shown from the ‘Battle of Lewisham’. It should be noted that the SDS’ annual report for that year suggested that this was a triumph of SDS intelligence, minimising the clashes and violence.

Even just this film clip, and the fact that the demo is now known as the ‘Battle of Lewisham’, makes this claim in the annual report laughable and casts doubt about the accuracy of the information in these annual reports. It was mentioned that one SDS officer complained that the intelligence supplied in the run-up was ignored by police planning for the demo.

On 23 April 1979, the National Front held a meeting in Southall Town Hall, West London. In the counter-demo Blair Peach – anti-fascist and Socialist Workers Party (SWP) member – was killed by a Metropolitan Police officer belonging to the notoriously violent Special Patrol Group.

The ensuing campaign for justice for Peach was infiltrated by SDS officers. Celia Stubbs, Peach’s partner, will be giving evidence to the Inquiry next week.

In the early 1980s, East London Workers Against Racism – a subgroup of the Revolutionary Communist Party, which supported victims of racist attacks and patrolled areas with racial violence – was infiltrated by SDS officer ‘Barry Tompkins’ (previously, we had been told by the Inquiry that Barry Tompkins infiltrated just one group – the Spartacist League of Britain). This meant that Tompkins reported on the victims of racist violence, apparently explaining this away as accidental or incidental.

Spying on victims of racist violence and the groups supporting them is a pattern that endured and is something we will see when we look at the 1990s and the spying on the family of Stephen Lawrence, Ricky Reel, and many others.

INDUSTRIAL UNREST

Barr said that the late 1970s saw high inflation, mass unemployment and industrial unrest. The Workers Revolutionary Party, International Socialists and Shrewsbury pickets campaign were all spied on.

Trade unions, and references to union membership, are common among SDS officers reporting. ‘David Hughes’ (HN299/342, 1971-76) and ‘Barry Tompkins’ (HN106, 1979-83) both reported being members of the Transport & General Workers Union
This is interpreted as being ‘incidental’, rather than a deliberate targeting of unions, which seems a rather dubious distinction.

The two-year Grunwick Strike of the 1970s was a cause celebre which was extensively reported on by spycops. The Inquiry also showed a news report of a picket and the bussing in of scab labour.

RECRUITMENT

All SDS officers in the era 1973-82 were recruited from Special Branch and all but one was of Detective Constable rank. Two said they had done more than usual ‘plain clothes in meetings’ infiltrations before joining the SDS. There was no formal recruitment process, and no formal training for the job.

By the mid-1970s, it seems to have become established practice that new recruits would spend some time – up to 6 months – in the SDS back office before being deployed themselves. Few record receiving any advice about getting involved in criminal activity (or legal cases) or sexual relationships.

WHO WAS TARGETED

Barr quoted the 1975 SDS annual report, and the claim that officers:

‘concentrated on gathering intelligence about the activities of those extremists whose political views are to the left of the Communist Party of Great Britain’

It is unclear how you could be to the left of the Communist Party of Great Britain – we can only surmise that the police perhaps meant groups who were likely to cause them more trouble than the CPGB? However, given that they also targeted members of groups such as the Liberal Party’s youth wing, this claim is undermined no matter how you interpret it.

The SDS specifically said that schisms among the left were something the police could take advantage of; they did not want these groups to sink their differences and unite, and potentially cause trouble for the State. Having a large number of small separate groups to surveill and spy on meant more work for undercover officers. The SDS annual report of 1975 says though the political disorder is on the wane, they should keep spying on people just in case anything changes.

SDS annual reports always included a list of groups targeted during the year. Apart from one officer spying on the far right (and only because the left-wing group he had been sent to infiltrate then sent him to do this), all the groups are on what can broadly be seen as the left: communist, socialist, anti-nuclear, Irish liberation, women’s rights.

The 1976 SDS annual report said anarchists are a continuing nuisance on demonstrations, and the surveillance is justified by rumours of an Angry Brigade type group emerging.

In 1982, the annual report said SDS information had led to the anarchist Freedom Collective being raided. They say their uniformed colleagues found ‘pamphlets dealing with the manufacture of explosive devices, home-made guns, assassination techniques and booby-traps,’ yet mysteriously there were no arrests.

The 1982 SDS report also mentions the SWP organising a picket of the Tory party conference. Sussex police praised the SDS’s intelligence, although it is unclear what extra preparation the police would need to manage a picket – surely something that they would be able to comfortably manage?

USING THE DEATH OF BLAIR PEACH

A particularly offensive SDS interpretation of political activist’s motivations is made regarding the Blair Peach justice campaign which states:

‘The focal point of much of the extremist activity in 1979 was the General Election held in May with the extreme Left contriving to take advantage of the National Front’s election campaign to provoke hostile confrontation whenever possible. The culmination of the virulent anti-fascist demonstrations was the death of the Anti-Nazi League supporter Blair Peach and the subsequent campaign against the Police.’

This biased interpretation – as unable to conceive of integrity and genuinely held left-wing and anti-fascist beliefs as it is incapable of admitting the police can be in the wrong – is repeated later in the same report:

‘The SWP contrived to make use of all public meetings arranged by the NF to arouse anti-fascist feeling; the death of Blair Peach, an active supporter of the Anti-Nazi League, which was a consequence of a violent anti-fascist demonstration in Southall, provided the extreme left wing with an opportunity to mount a sustained campaign to discredit and criticise the Police.’

Barr at least noted that the reports are defensive about the Blair Peach campaign, seeing it as anti-police.

Notably, the now-published Metropolitan Police report from 1979, though it concedes Peach was killed by a police officer, places the blame for the situation on the protesters.

ONLY INFILTRATING THE RIGHT BECAUSE THE LEFT SAID TO

The officers deployed 1973-82 only infiltrated left-wing organisations. The main group targeted in this era was the International Socialists/ Socialist Workers Party.

One officer, ‘Peter Collins‘ (HN303, 1973-77), infiltrated the Workers Revolutionary Party. Not knowing he was a spy, they asked him, in turn, to infiltrate the National Front.

This infiltration of the National Front is bragged about in the 1974 SDS report, showing a total lack of awareness that the fact that their only foray into infiltrating the far-right was instigated by a left-wing group and done to maintain cover.

It mentions that other areas of Special Branch were spying on right-wing groups.

WHO ELSE APART FROM THE POLICE?

Barr stated that although MI5 is not a subject of investigation for this Inquiry, its relationship with the spycops is. Barr also praised MI5 for helping provide a great quantity of documents and providing a witness statement.

Just nine activists targeted by spycops during this decade will give oral evidence, and three more have given statements. This means that we’ll hear from fewer than one activist per year of these operations.

Barr added that we will see statements from the families of two former undercover officers.

Further, written evidence will be heard from two risk assessors who interviewed ex spycops ahead of the Inquiry, as there’s a dispute of fact about the testimony of officer ‘Phil Cooper’ (HN155) and whether he admitted sexual activity with women he spied on.

OVERSIGHT AND KNOWLEDGE OF THE SDS WENT TO THE TOP

The 1975 SDS annual report emphasises the paramount importance of secrecy about the unit’s existence to avoid ‘an embarrassment for the Commissioner’ as well as maintaining officer security.

Documents were frequently seen, discussed and approved by a Deputy Assistant Commissioner. We have yet another officer – ‘Michael James’ (HN96, 1978-83) – reporting that the Commissioner himself visited the SDS safe house. We’ve previously had this activity confirmed by ‘Doug Edwards’ (HN326, 1968-71) and Peter Francis (1993-97) who both added that their Commissioners presented them with bottles of whisky.

From 1983, there is a programme and briefing pack prepared for a visit to the SDS by Sir Kenneth Newman, the then Met Commissioner. The briefing pack includes a brief profile of each member of the SDS at the time, and was prepared for him ahead of an extended buffet lunch with the SDS officers at what is described as an ‘in-field location’.

It would be nice if the inquiry would question Sir Kenneth about his knowledge of the SDS but he is one of three old ex Commissioners who have died since the Inquiry was announced seven years ago.

But there can be no doubt that this phase of the Inquiry will put the nails in the coffin of senior officers’ claims that the SDS was a rogue unit, totally secret and unknown even to the rest of the Met.

SELF-APPROVAL TO CONTINUE

A 1976 document shows that the SDS set up a group to make the case for continued Home Office funding.

This group looked at whether the spycops unit was still needed or not, and if the intelligence it provided was still useful to MI5/ and uniformed police. It is no surprise that this set of SDS officers unanimously felt that they were still needed, extremely useful to MI5, and these operations must be allowed to continue.

They admitted that political disorder and violence had declined, but apparently subversive issues like ‘abortion, trespass, unemployment, and civil liberties’ had not. This meant there were more groups organising demonstrations, all potentially needing surveillance. Also, the manifold splinter groups would not, for some reason, cooperate with the police.

The annual reports were passed up the chain of command within the Met. They record praise and support coming in from senior officers.

REALLY THOUGH, SHOULD THEY CONTINUE?

The issue of the spycops’ relevance was re-examined in the mid-1980s, when a Home Office civil servant wondered if the unit was still needed for dealing with modern problems as opposed to being a hangover from the situations which arose many years earlier.
The Home Office authorisation for the unit’s 1985funds shows that these discussions had taken place.

Despite these discussions, and the fact that the Home Office directly funded the spycops renewing this funding annually for 20 years, a search of all Home Office archives failed to find a single document. Luckily the police & MI5 haven’t been quite so careless. Barr flagged up that there are more Home Office documents being published by the Inquiry today.

MI5 AND SUBVERSION

Another documents being published is a letter from MI5 to Chief Constables to remind them of Special Branch guidance on the distinction between subversion and mere militancy.

A witness from MI5, known as Witness Z, explained that subversion threatens the safety or well-being of the state whereas militancy is just the use of direct action with aim of, for example, achieving better working conditions. It’s militant to oppose the government, but only subversive if you seek to overthrow representative democracy itself.

A variety of government agencies and ministers did not seem to share this distinction, as demonstrated by the blacklisting scandal. According to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, all Special Branches routinely gave details of politically active people to the construction industry blacklist.

MI5 was extremely interested in subversive groups trying to infiltrate non-subversive groups such as trade unions.
As an illustration of a non-criminal group with subversive elements, Barr cited a 1974 SDS report from ‘David Hughes’ (HN299/342) on a Marxist discussion group. An attendee said that come the English revolution, the two million people who presented a permanent threat to its success would have to be killed (including senior police officers, all big businessmen and members of the Conservative Party). Even the report notes that most people present did not share this person’s opinion.

MI5 occasionally asked the SDS to obtain specific information, and occasionally helped protect the spycops’ security, but they had no significant control over the SDS’s choice of targets.

Some MI5 documents suggest a feeling that the SDS’s tactics enjoyed some advantages over MI5’s usual informants – as the spycops were frequently met and briefed and ‘all options are open’.

AFTER THIS

Barr ended by saying that immediately after these three weeks of hearings, the Inquiry will be conducting secret, ‘closed’ hearings for officers from this era whose identities are protected.

After that will come ‘Tranche 1 Phase 3’, dealing with the unit’s early managers (up till1982). These were scheduled to take place in October but have now been put back to some time in the first half of 2022.

We have also now been told that the Inquiry no longer expects to look at ‘Tranche 2’ (covering the years 1983-1992) next year – this means it is likely to be dealt with in 2023 instead.

Does mean we’ll have to wait until 2024 for Tranche 3 (covering the SDS in 1993-2007), and then even longer for Tranche 4 evidence to come out? (Tranche 4 looks at the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, aka the NPOIU, which deployed the likes of Mark Kennedy).

Peter Skelton QC

representing the Metropolitan Police Commissioner

Skelton began by saying his speech would be short. The first Met opening statement at the Inquiry last year looked at what went wrong in general, and what the value there is in undercover policing. This one is just about the topic in hand, SDS officers 1973-82.

He warned the inquiry to be wary of how it assesses the work of the SDS. We must judge by the standards of the time, not those of today. We don’t have all the reports from the time, nor fresh memories, so cannot have a full picture. Also, remember some the intelligence gathered was intended for MI5, who have secret uses that mere mortals can only imagine but must presume to be wholesome and necessary (I paraphrase slightly).

In the era under examination, 1973-82, the SDS’ work was in response to what government and public thought important – the need to preserve public order & state security, he said.

Skelton then mentioned events of the time with a very broad range of connection to the SDS. Angry Brigade firebombings, Bloody Sunday, IRA bombings in England, the 1972 miners and dockers strikes resulting in a state of emergency. He continued a summing up of strikes, a one-day near-general strike in 1973, the two-year Grunwick strike, and in 1978, the Ford industrial action leading to the ‘Winter of Discontent’ of multiple strikes and other industrial action. Then there were clashes between the National Front & antifascists, including the deaths of Kevin Gately & Blair Peach.

Skelton’s citing of these two killings is quite upsetting. The Met should not refer to the deaths of people killed by them as if they were events that they had no influence on, let alone use it to justify any and all forms of policing.

Skelton said the Inquiry must properly understand all the social context and explain it, otherwise it risks making unfair judgments. Evidence from people involved may be selective and biased, so the Inquiry should rely on expert historical evidence. Such evidence would need to be scrupulously neutral and factual with no contentious assertions. He claimed was done in the Litvinenko inquiry & Birmingham bombings inquests. The Met think it would be of even more use here.

In the era considered, the SDS had 9-12 undercover officer to infiltrate Trotskyists, Maoists/Marxist-Leninists, anarchists, anti-fascists, anti-nuclear and Irish nationalist support groups.

As well as the SDS annual reports glorifying the work of the unit, the Inquiry found documents that show that the unit’s management appraised the continued value of the unit. They concluded that it should continue (as if they might have voted to end their own jobs, because they in fact considered the work of no value at all). These documents also emphasise the importance of ‘negative intelligence’, that knowing an event won’t take place or a group isn’t dangerous is valuable, and that MI5 agreed. This sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which a world without intelligence gathering is unimaginable.

SDS contact with MI5 was frequent and productive, Skelton said. The unit saw the Secret Service as a customer which exercised some influence over the placement of spycops.

STEALING FROM THE DEAD

The SDS stole the identities of dead children to build cover stories for the undercover officers (and ‘Michael Scott’ HN298 stole the identity of a living person in 1971). Skelton kept referring to ‘using’ identities, but by any definition this is identity theft.

Earlier deployments, he explained, had been shorter, perhaps just a few months. But it was soon extended as it seems the quality of information gathered improved with longer deployments. As such, fake identities needed to be able to withstand more scrutiny. It became standard practice for officers to have a flat rented and have specially bought cars.

The police couldn’t insert a fake birth register entry, so they stole real ones. The Met apologises to families of people whose dead relatives’ identity was ‘relied upon in this way’.

SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS, WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS & BLACKLISTING

Spycops should never have had sexual relationships while in undercover persona, no matter how brief. It was not justified in the era being examined and the Met apologises unreservedly. We need to find what managers knew.

Officers had interactions with the criminal justice system. ‘Michael Scott‘ (HN298, 1971-76) was arrested and convicted – using the identity of someone who was still alive – on an anti-apartheid protest. But what the managers knew can’t be decided until we hear from them in the Tranche 1 Phase 3 hearings – which have just been delayed until next year.

Skelton tried to fend off the fact that SDS officers illegally supplied personal details of activists to employment blacklists. He claimed that police got material from far beyond the spycops, so we can’t be sure that what he called ‘so-called blacklisting’ involved information from SDS officers.

Stating this, Skelton seems to ignore that the Information Commissioners Office seized a blacklist of more than 3,200 people at the offices of The Consulting Association, maintained for the construction industry, in 2009.

In 2012 the Information Commissioners Office’s investigations manager David Clancy confirmed that there was information in the files that ‘could only be supplied by the police or the security services’.

In 2013, SDS whistleblower officer Peter Francis said that he believed information he’d reported when undercover in the 1990s had ended up in blacklist files.

Turning to the 1979 killing of Blair Peach by police, and the SDS’ spying on the campaign for justice, including attending the funeral, Skelton reminded the Inquiry that the Crown Prosecution Service said no further investigation is possible, and it is not the Inquiry’s job to investigate the killing.

Skelton conceded that SDS reporting has a lot of personal info on people spied on, some of which might not have been justified to record (eg social events & family members). He tried to wiggle out of taking responsibility for this saying such information was often asked for by Special Branch and MI5, as if that makes it alright.

The Met acknowledges that it might be ‘more detail than necessary’, but then again, you just never know. Some seemingly innocuous information can be connected to useful things later. In the era under examination, the concept of ‘collateral intrusion’ on family members wouldn’t have been considered.

The Met notes that outdated language shouldn’t be judged if it was uncontroversial at the time, unless it was discriminatory, or gratuitously insulting, or with no purpose.

The Met, Skelton concluded, engages with the Inquiry with ‘a willingness to learn and to improve’.

Those of us who fought for ten years to get the Inquiry and drag the Met into it despite all their obstructions, smears, shredding of paperwork and delays will take some persuading on this point.

The Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, then asked Skelton about miscarriages of justice. Mitting said that we may see such things described in these hearings. If there are grounds to believe it, Mitting said he will refer these cases to the review panel set up for it, instead of waiting for the witness hearings of managers which have just been delayed to next year.

The conviction Mitting has in mind was 49 years ago, the people involved are now old and deserve their answer as soon as possible, rather than waiting until after the end of the Inquiry. The clearing of their names should start as soon as possible. Something we can agree on.

Oliver Sanders QC,

Representing 114 spycops

Oliver Sanders QC spoke last, representing 114 spycops.

His opening statement at the first Inquiry hearings in November 2020 was shocking, rowing back on matters of fact and responsibility the Met have long admitted and accepted.

A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE

Sanders reiterated Skelton’s point that without complete evidence there cannot be fully informed findings. Some officers remember reports and events that have no surviving documents. Instead, the Inquiry is heavily reliant on what MI5 retained and have supplied.

Of the fraction of material that survives, a fraction of that, in turn, is to be released to the public, and even then it is redacted (thanks, in part, to the Met lobbying for the greatest possible secrecy), so people will inevitably form the wrong idea about what went on.

The secrecy means the public especially misses some especially important dangerous activities the public can’t be told about, and therefore receive an even more distorted picture.

DANGER LURKS BELOW

Spied-on groups had a spectrum of members, so just because one member testifies to the Inquiry that they were no threat it does not mean that others were not dangerous, or that the group couldn’t be hijacked by dangerous people.

The SWP had a lot of teachers, social workers, etc at the branch level who were moderate and law-abiding, but others were interested in violence and disorder, spoke to the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and wanted to take over other campaigns.

Some people targeted by spycops have extreme anti-police views. Police are seen as the embodiment of the establishment, so it is in some groups’ interests to promote an anti-police narrative.

There are ‘contentious incidents’ such as the deaths of Blair Peach and Kevin Gately (who were both killed by police). We need to be sure we deal with facts, not hearsay.

Police will talk of a threat to public order, but civilian witnesses will dispute it. The spycops say the Inquiry needs to get more contextual evidence rather than simply choose one side to believe.

For example, officer ‘Dick Epps’ (HN336, 1969-70) remembers anti-apartheid activists damaging cricket grounds. No media coverage was found to support that, so the Inquiry suggested that he was confusing it with something else, but in fact, there was a documented event with details as described by Epps (the Chair, Sir John Mitting, really took this point to task at the end).

There are the SDS annual reports prepared for the Commissioner, and there are reports for Special Branch that have now been found and are currently being redacted. Beyond that, we can look at contemporaneous Hansard and media (as if the media are not briefed by police with stories of ‘rentamob’)

Sanders had not only agreed a line of argument with Skelton but drifted into paraphrasing him. Skelton treated the Inquiry to a reiteration of the need for historians to testify to the Inquiry.

WRITE YOUR OWN ANSWERS

Skelton also said the Inquiry should look at contemporaneous publications by the groups that spycops targeted. This sounds fair, but bear in mind that throughout the existence of spycops, officers had written material for the campaigns they infiltrated.

From John Graham writing about the anti-Vietnam War protest in a 1969 edition of Red Camden to Mark Kennedy’s Indymedia posts, via Roger Pearce writing for Freedom, Bob Lambert cowriting the McLibel leaflet and John Dines’ anti-police section of the Poll Tax Riot booklet, it’s been very common practice. To judge the validity of their infiltration on their writings for the groups would be the police marking their own homework.

Skelton refuted the idea that spycops were a waste of police resources. He pointed out that the SDS was only a handful of officers among thousands of Met staff, so it is not like it’d have made much odds to redeploy them into something more useful to the public (such as catching the killers of people whose justice campaigns they spied on and undermined).

Some evidence puts emphasis on the cause being just, such as anti-racist and anti-apartheid campaigns. This is irrelevant to public order policing – order must be maintained no matter the politics of those who threaten it. It does not matter if the police agree or not.

DON’T KNOW RIGHT FROM WRONG

Police cannot be expected to decide which causes were just or will be thought just in the fullness of time. So, them spying on anti-apartheid campaigners Stop The Seventy Tour would have been the same if it were a far-right group (Skelton ignores the fact that spycops barely touched the far right).

Public order is not just an absence of violence – intimidation and obstruction are disorder and liable to escalate. With large events, there’s crowd psychology that can be hijacked by dangerous people. So, a protest being harmless may only be due to the police’s successful handling of it.

It is obvious that if the South African cricket tour had gone ahead, the Stop The Seventy Tour campaign would have had a big impact, so it’s right that they were targeted by spycops. The activists themselves describe how rugby fans hated them for disrupting games. With drinking involved, it is a powder keg waiting for just such a spark.

UNKNOWN RELEVANCE

As for the personal details and irrelevance of much of the information gathered, Skelton explained that every spycop hoovered up all info they could and reported it unfiltered, it was not up to them to discern. Besides, the kind of stuff they reported appears in other Special Branch reports, whether it is from the SDS or others (as if the rest of Special Branch is a beacon of integrity). Plus, MI5 used it and we do not know what was useful to them.

Any reporting on members of groups would inevitably include personal information. It identifies them, and it might be useful to either Special Branch or MI5. Yes, it included details about children, but it does not hurt them really, he explained.

In fact, some activists had children and used that to influence other children. There is a National Union of School Students pamphlet encouraging strikes and disruption. Gotta clamp down hard on that, right?

It is not the spycops’ fault they reported irrelevant things. Why did MI5 retain the seemingly trivial stuff for so long? MI5’s Witness Z should explain.

With that final deflection, Sanders ended his statement. But Mitting was not done with him.

ADMIT WHEN YOU’RE WRONG

Mitting now returns to the claim about the Stop The Seventy Tour ‘attacking cricket grounds’. The spycop concerned, Dick Epps, refers to digging up Lord’s pitch and pouring oil. But Mitting has checked and this never happened.

Mitting suggests Epps confused it with the Third Test at Headingley in 1975, a ‘George Davis is Innocent’ protest. Mitting spoke to Epps a while ago about it, and Epps accepted he may be misremembering.

Mitting sternly told Sanders that if he thinks the Inquiry has something wrong, then re-examine it, but otherwise, do not make such assertions without checking.

Sanders says there was another cricket pitch attack, but still a different place, a different time and with weedkiller rather than oil. So why didn’t Mitting suggest that to the officer instead of the Headingley event? Mitting, like the rest of us, appeared unable to see why saying Epps was wrong made any sort of defence for saying he was right.

And with that, the hearing concluded for the day.

---

The Undercover Policing Inquiry resumes at 10am on Thursday 22 April.

It will hear opening statements from:
Diane Langford (activist)
“Madeleine”(deceived into a relationship)
Phillippa Kaufmann QC, representing people in relationships with spycops
Matthew Ryder QC, representing Stop the Seventy Tour anti-apartheid activists, and Blair Peach’s partner Celia Stubbs.

The UCPI will also pause at 11am for a minute’s silence on Thursday and Friday, the anniversaries of the deaths of Stephen Lawrence and Blair Peach, whose loved ones’ campaigns for justice were targeted by SDS and NPIOU officers.

<<Previous UCPI Daily Report (19 Nov 2020)<<

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Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 14

19 November 2020

Evidence from:

Officer HN 333 (summary of evidence)
Officer HN 339 aka ‘Stewart Goodman’ (summary of evidence)
Officer HN 349 (summary of evidence)
Officer HN 343 aka ‘John Clinton’ (summary of evidence)
Officer HN 345 aka ‘Peter Fredericks’

This was the final day of hearings in the first phase of the Inquiry, looking at the earliest years of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) from its formation in 1968 to around 1972.

We heard evidence from five former undercover officers of the SDS. The Inquiry gave brief summaries of four of their careers, before the fifth, ‘Peter Fredericks’ gave evidence in person for several hours.

Once again the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, locked horns with Rajiv Menon QC, barrister for those who were spied upon. The bias of the Inquiry was set out in even starker terms when we discovered that, in the summary of officer HN339 ‘Stewart Goodman’, it actively hid the officer’s admissions of criminality. It’s as if the Inquiry is more on the police’s side than the police themselves. 

Officer HN 333
(summary of evidence)

Temporary Mystery Man

Very little is known about this officer. Their real and cover names are being restricted, along with details of the groups he targeted.

The reason for restricting real and cover names and target group was previously set out by Mitting as:

“There is, however, a small – in my judgement, very small – risk that if his cover name were to be associated with the valuable duties which he performed subsequent to his deployment, he would be of interest to those who might pose such a threat.”

He was on duty as a plain-clothes Special Branch officer at the large anti-Vietnam War demonstration on 27 October 1968, then joined the SDS shortly afterwards.

According to his witness statement, there was tight secrecy around the SDS. There was also no formal training, though once in the field the undercovers would share their experience and knowledge. He did not use the name of a deceased child, and there was only limited guidance about choosing a cover name.

He was deployed for 9 months, into a now-defunct left wing group. He attended meetings and demonstrations, but said it was a ‘loose association’ rather than a formal organisation, so he did not have any roles of responsibility.

He gave verbal updates to SDS managers at the safe house – he said he was not responsible for writing intelligence reports.

Having become ill, he was withdrawn (via a planned process) in 1969, giving his excuses to the group. He then returned to normal Special Branch duties.

The full witness statement of HN333.

A summary of information about HN333’s deployment can be found on p122 of the Counsel to the Inquiry’s Opening Statement.

Officer HN 339 aka ‘Stewart Goodman’
(summary of evidence)

‘Stewart Goodman’, the Drunk Driver

This officer joined Special Branch in the 1960s, during which time he attended meetings of the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination.

He said “everyone in Special Branch knew about the existence of the SDS”, which contrasts with other officers saying it was a well-kept secret, or something about which there were only vague rumours.

He was married at the time the joined the SDS, but there was no welfare check to discuss the impact of his new job on his family.

He was deployed undercover from 1970 to 1971, initially against the Anti-Apartheid Movement, from which he also reported on the Dambusters Mobilisation Committee. Most of his early reporting relates to this latter organisation, which was a coalition of anti-apartheid groups who opposed the construction of the huge Cabora Bassa dam in Mozambique to supply electricity to South Africa.

He subsequently infiltrated the Lambeth branch of the International Socialists (now the Socialist Workers Party), where he became treasurer (a position more than one of his contemporaries occupied in groups they infiltrated). This put him very close to the branch secretary – ‘effectively his right hand man’. He attended both public and private meetings.

While spying on the IS, much of what Goodman reported on was internal party discussions and political disputes. As well as at Lambeth branch, he also reported on the group’s affairs at a national level – including reporting on a major rift. He went to their national convention at Skegness. It appears IS were targeted because the security services believe they fell within their definition of ‘subversion’.

Goodman also said:

“MPs giving their support to protest movements was potentially of interest to Special Branch”.

The Inquiry also notes that his “intelligence evidences a particular interest on the part of IS in trade union activity”.

He did not use the name of a deceased child and says he did not have any sexual relationships.

INQUIRY COVER-UP

Non-state core participants have been worried about the Inquiry having a lawyer read a summary of an officer’s activity, with no opportunity to question the officer. What we hadn’t anticipated was the Inquiry being even more inclined to cover-up an officer’s wrongdoing than the officer themselves.

Speaking for the Inquiry, Elizabeth Campbell said:

“HN339 recalls being involved in some fly-posting while in his cover identity, but no other criminal activity. Near the end of his deployment, HN339 was involved in a road traffic accident while driving an unmarked police car, which necessitated the involvement of his supervisors on the SDS. HN339 states that he does not remember much about his withdrawal from the field, but suspects that this event may have been a catalyst for the end of his deployment.”

 

Goodman was not merely ‘involved in a road traffic accident’.

For those willing to wade through the statements, on page 18 of Goodman’s witness statement he said:

“I crashed my unmarked police car. I had been at a pub with activists and I would have parked the car away from the pub so as not to arouse suspicion. I drove home while under the influence of alcohol and crashed the car into a tree”.

 

The car was a write-off. When uniformed officers arrived, Goodman breached SDS protocol and broke cover, telling them he was an undercover colleague. Rather than arresting and charging him, they drove him home.

He was eventually charged and went to court, accompanied by his manager Phil Saunders. He believes he was prosecuted under his false identity, and that Saunders briefed the magistrates. He was convicted and fined.

Having been bailed out by his managers, he was withdrawn from his undercover role, but faced no formal disciplinary action.

INQUIRY UNDERMINING ITSELF

It is utterly outrageous that the Inquiry told the public that the only crime Goodman committed undercover was fly-posting and then, literally in the next sentence, referred to a much more serious criminal offence, for which he was convicted (with the complicity of uniformed police and the judiciary).

The Inquiry cannot claim ignorance, as they not only specifically mentioned the incident, but made a conscious choice to turn his statement from an admission of criminal culpability into a more neutral account, with no crime mentioned.

Investigating the often-corrupt relationships between the spycops and the courts is one of the stated purposes of this Inquiry, yet here they are deliberately burying examples of wrong-doing that the officers themselves admit to.

Because Goodman wasn’t called to give evidence to the Inquiry in person, there is no way to question him about the possibility of judicial corruption. Beyond that, we are left wondering what else has been covered up in this way, and lies there among the screeds pages that the Inquiry bulk-publishes after it has finished discussing a given officer’s deployment.

The full witness statement of HN339 ‘Stewart Goodman’.

A summary of information about HN339’s deployment can be found on p138 of the Counsel to the Inquiry’s Opening Statement.

Officer HN 349
(summary of evidence)

The Failed Anarchist

Both the real name and the cover name of this officer has been restricted by the Inquiry. The names of the groups he targeted have also been withheld, which has made it impossible for anyone he spied on to come forward to the Inquiry with their evidence.

He was recruited by another undercover to join the SDS after a short time in Special Branch. He was not given formal training; instead he read reports in the back office and met with other spycops before being deployed.

He grew his hair and beard and started wearing scruffy clothes, but did little else to develop his ‘legend’. His cover story was poorly developed compared to his colleagues (he had no cover job, for instance).

Deployed in the early 1970s, he was apparently not initially tasked to spy on any particular group, instead he went to demonstrations in central London and sought to get to know regulars.

He was eventually asked to target various loose-knit anarchist groups.

While at the safe house he would discuss anything and everything – including details of their deployments – with the other spycops, something other spycops have denied in their evidence to the Inquiry. In his witness statement he said:

“No topic of conversation would be off limits.”

If and when necessary, managers would take an undercover off for private chats, away from the group:

“This happened more frequently for officers who were involved in the more sensitive areas of work.”

The deployment was unsuccessful as the target group were mistrustful of strangers and did not let him build up relationships with them. Consequently, following a meeting with his managers, he was withdrawn after just nine months in the field.

He then spent time in the SDS back office, before returning to other Special Branch duties. He notes he did work with intelligence gathered by SDS undercovers though it was not marked as such. He also made requests for specific information from the SDS while at Special Branch.

HN349 noted that most Special Branch officers were “aware of the SDS and had an idea of the kind of groups they had infiltrated”. He also noted:

“It was also generally accepted by myself and fellow UCOs [undercover officers] that the Security Services provided some of the funding for the SDS.”

The full witness statement of HN349.

A summary of information about HN349’s deployment can be found on p141 of the Counsel to the Inquiry’s Opening Statement.

Officer HN 343 aka ‘John Clinton’
(summary of evidence)

‘John Clinton’ and the Subversive Pickets

This undercover served in the SDS from early 1971 until sometime in 1974. He was deployed into the International Socialists.

Prior to joining the SDS, he had been deployed as a plain-clothes Special Branch officer to report back on public meetings. Whilst in Special Branch, he had heard ‘vague whispers’ of the existence of a secret unit.

He had no formal training. He spent 3-4 months in the SDS back office, reading up on the political landscape. His cover story was basic and he gave his cover job as van driver, in case he was spotted elsewhere in London by his targets. He was give a vehicle as part of his cover.

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISTS

Clinton was tasked by his managers to infiltrate the International Socialists (IS). From October 1971 to March 1972, many of his reports are of the IS’s Croydon branch. However, he explained that the documents do not reflect the totality of his reporting during this period. Rather, he attended various IS meetings and demonstrations across London before focusing on the Hammersmith & Fulham branch.

This branch was chosen as there was “a lot of Irish activity discussed”, which he knew was of great interest to the Met.

He found it easy to join as they were keen for new members; he turned up at meetings and demonstrations, expressing his enthusiasm for the cause. Once in, he used a ‘flaky’ persona to avoid being given responsibility in the group.

He was aware that the SDS was interested in both public order and counter-subversion issues. He said that IS was a “Trotskyist subversive group with links into Irish Groups”. He witnessed public disorder during his time undercover, but noted that any violence was not caused by IS members.

Clinton did consider IS to be subversive, writing in his witness statement:

“I witnessed a lot of subversive activity whilst I was deployed undercover. IS were constantly trying to exploit whatever industrial or political situation that existed in the aim of getting the proletariat to rise up. During industrial disputes they would deploy to picket lines and stand there in solidarity.”

He attended a wide range of public and private events, providing significant reportage of IS’s internal affairs, including details of elections and appointments, and political rifts. He also reported on trade union membership and industrial action taken by IS members. He did not join a trade union, but did go on demonstrations in support of industrial action organised by trade unions.

Other matters covered included campaigns supported by the group, such as women’s liberation, tenants’ rights and the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

Clinton noted that he had considerable discretion as to what he reported on, but was guided by what he knew Special Branch to be interested in generally. He received general tasking and updates at the SDS weekly meetings.

He wrote:

“My remit was to gather intelligence on IS. That was both with a view to public order, but also information that was relevant to counter subversion. What they were doing politically, how they were organised, and the identity of influential individuals was all important information.”

THE DEATH OF KEVIN GATELY

Clinton was infiltrating International Socialists in London in the summer of 1974, yet he made no mention of their involvement in the large anti-fascist demonstration on 15 June 1974 at which a protester, Kevin Gately, was killed.

At 6 feet 9 inches tall, Gately stood out, and his head is readily seen above the level of crowd in photos of the demonstration. This may well be why he was killed. Police charged into the crowd on horseback, lashing out with truncheons. Gately’s body was found afterwards.

The inquest found Gately died from a brain haemorrhage caused from a blow to the head from a blunt instrument. His exceptional height led several newspapers of the time to allege his death was the result of a blow from a mounted police truncheon.

It was the first time anyone had died on a demonstration in Britain for over 50 years. It was a huge cause célèbre for the left. Clinton didn’t mention this, nor any of the vigils for Gately and campaigning that followed among IS and the broader left.

It is a glaring omission that arouses suspicion. He would certainly have known of it and may well have been part of the demonstration and subsequent commemorations and events. Given the SDS’s avid focus on such justice campaigns later on, it would be very odd if their officer in IS didn’t remember it as being significant.

As with Stewart Goodman earlier, because this was an Inquiry lawyer reading out a hasty summary, lawyers for the ‘non-state core participants’ (those who were spied on) weren’t able to question Clinton about any of this.

END OF DEPLOYMENT

Clinton left his deployment in September 1974 as he had enough of being an undercover; this was supported by his managers. In one of the earliest known developed exit strategies, he used a ‘phased withdrawal’, telling the group he was going travelling.

Being undercover permanently changed him, in that it made him very private in his personal affairs.

In late 1980s, he was posted to Special Branch’s C Squad for a few months and would have received intelligence from the SDS in that role, but as it was ‘sanitised’ he would not be privy to full details of the spycops’ doings. He retired from the police after 30 years.

THE MAN WITH THE VAN

It’s interesting to note that he was a van driver, with a van supplied by the SDS. This became a common part of later spycops’ deployments.

As Clinton said, it gave them an excuse if they were spotted somewhere unexpected. It also made them the group’s unofficial taxi: they would drop everyone home after meetings, thereby learning people’s addresses. If a group was planning to go on any political action, they would ask the member with the reliable van first.

It became a standard part of spycops’ fake identities across decades and units. Andy Coles (SDS, 1991-95) was known as ‘Andy Van’.

Later on, Mark Kennedy (National Public Order Intelligence Unit, 2003-2010) was known as ‘Transport Mark’, in charge of logistics for all the Climate Camps.

The full witness statement of HN343.

A summary of information about HN343’s deployment can be found on p154 of the Counsel to the Inquiry’s Opening Statement.

Five More Spycops

As if these summaries truncated enough, the Inquiry also published without summary documents relating to five former members of the SDS who have not provided witness statements:

– HN346, real name Jill Mosdell, cover name unknown. Spied on Stop the Seventy Tour, the Anti-Apartheid Movement & related groups.

– HN338, real name restricted, cover name unknown. Spied on the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, the International Marxist Group (in particular the Notting Hill and West London branches), and the Anti-Internment League.

– HN1251, real name Phil Saunders, cover name, if any, unknown. Detective Inspector in the SDS, overseeing undercover officers.

– HN332, real name restricted. Cover name, if any, unknown. Detective Inspector and subsequently head of the SDS.

– HN394, real name restricted and cover name, if any, unknown. Detective Sergeant and then Detective Inspector in the SDS.

It wasn’t explained are SDS bosses are not even not giving statements? Are they somehow deemed irrelevant? Are they refusing to cooperate? Have they died?

It’s not clear why there appears to be no mention of HN 394 on the Inquiry website.

Officer HN 345 aka ‘Peter Fredericks’

Only one officer, ‘HN345’, gave ‘live’ evidence at the Undercover Policing Inquiry on Thursday. He was questioned by Counsel for the Inquiry, David Barr QC, and later by Rajiv Menon QC and Ruth Brander on behalf of non-state core participants. Questions were based on his written witness statement.

His mannerisms and tone obviously do not come across in the time-delayed transcript, so it is worth noting that he was usually grinning, poked his tongue in and out whilst speaking, and drew out certain words.

The opening questions are formalities, confirming that he knew the contents of the witness statement he provided, and that they are is true. Even at this, he was cocky. Asked if he was ‘familiar with the contents of the witness statement, he replied ‘slightly’.

He came across as incredibly creepy, and his evidence reiterated a number of now familiar themes: the lack of training or guidance these officers received; the bizarre claim that they all sat together in a flat for hours writing reports without exchanging information or ideas about their deployments; the ‘fishing expedition’ nature of the deployments – where everything and anything was passed on to the managers, who it was assumed would only include the information that they considered important in the final intelligence reports; the inexplicable infiltration of groups involved in political debate and even humanitarian aid; stark and shocking evidence of deep rooted sexism, racism and political prejudice; the fact that the Inquiry has only received a small fraction of the overall reporting; and the ever-present influence of “Box 500”, the code name for MI5.

GOING UNDERCOVER

Fredericks joined the police in the mid 1960s, and in the course of his ordinary policing, was offered the opportunity to do some undercover work. He “thought it sounded more interesting than road traffic duties” and agreed. Fredericks was deployed by the SDS for about six months, in 1971.

He was trained ‘on the job’ to do this ‘ordinary’ (i.e. non-spycop) undercover work. Whilst undercover he came across people involved with political groups – including the anti-apartheid Stop the Seventy Tour campaign, and the “Black Power movement”. He had not been tasked to report on either of these groups, he said it “just happened while I was doing other things”. He sent the information he gathered to his bosses.

Fredericks was asked by Ruth Brander – on behalf of Peter Hain – whether he knew that the information he had gathered about the Stop The Seventy Tour was being given to the Security Services. His lengthy response included the claim that “the system needed to know about it and I was pushing the information up”. And what about the South African security services? He didn’t have much of a response to this, managing only a weak “no”.

He explained that as a result of this intelligence-gathering, he was noticed by both Special Branch and MI5. He was interviewed and invited to join Special Branch, as a member of “C-squad” dealing with ‘domestic extremism’. He was in the section that dealt with Trotskyists and anarchists (as opposed to the one that dealt with the Communist Party of Great Britain and similar groups). He said he could not remember being briefed about any specific groups.

He said he had not heard of what was called the Special Operations Squad (SOS, later the Special Demonstration Squad) at the time. The Inquiry was shown one of Fredericks’ reports [UCPI0000005817] from his time at C-squad, before he became a member of the SOS, about a meeting on the Vietnam war where another non-state CP, Tariq Ali, was speaking.

ANOTHER AMNESIAC SPYCOP

As with most of the other officers who have so far given evidence, he said he remembered what documents proved and little more. Asked about his reporting on Tariq Ali, whose activism was so prominent at the time that his name would be used in headlines, Fredericks said he could only “remember the name very clearly but no more. It’s one of those strange things”.

While part of C-squad, he was also instructed to attend demonstrations.. At one of these demos, about the conflict in East Pakistan/ Bangladesh, he met a woman who was connected to the ‘Operation Omega’ campaign.

He gave an account of an incident he witnessed during another Bangladesh demo. He stated that he and other plain-clothes Special Branch officers had been summoned by radio back to Scotland Yard, and he was near Parliament when he spotted a police communications vehicle on fire and the female officer inside “in distress”. He said he didn’t notice any other serious trouble or violence that day:

“I didn’t notice anything to be worried about. Having said that, of course we did have the fire”.

As a result of his accidentally making connections with various political groups, he seems to have been flagged as a potential recruit for the SOS. He was approached by Ken Pendered, told that the Security Services (MI5) had written a letter commending him and that he would be transferred to this secret squad and given an undercover identity.

He was also questioned about HN326 and HN68 visiting him at his home – he can’t remember exactly when or why this took place, although he and HN326 were already acquainted. However, his pride at having been noticed by “Box” (i.e. MI5) was still evident in his demeanour, fifty years on.

NO FORMAL TASKING OR TRAINING

He confirmed that he was not given any training on the definition of ‘extremism’ or ‘subversion’, giving the somewhat vague answer that:

“what is subversive to one group could be helpful to another, or positive to another”.

He added that he had his own private views on those terms, and he cannot remember any received understanding within Special Branch on this point.

He felt the training he was given when he joined Special Branch was not particularly useful. In contrast, there was no training or guidance when he was transferred to the SOS. “We were left to our own devices”.

He had “no memory” of being instructed on what information was and wasn’t of interest. In his previous undercover work, he had been very selective in what he reported, but in the SOS he tried casting a wide net and gathering as much info as possible, from all sorts of people.

He compared himself to the provenance of antiques – “if I can be seen to be someone who knows a lot of people, different organisations, perhaps I would gain more trust”. He would hand over all the info he gathered. If he made mistakes in his report, someone would correct them. He didn’t type his own reports – there was a typing team for that – and others in the SOS decided what was relevant enough to be included.

As undercover officers, they were quite isolated, although they would have conversations at the ‘safe house’, the SDS flat. “We were on a bit of a learning curve” he explained.

In common with his contemporaries that the Inquiry had already heard from, Fredericks described being given a free rein on how he worked, negligible feedback on his reports, and no indication of what was good or bad in his work.

NEITHER GOOD NOR BAD

Were his bosses ever pleased with the intelligence he provided? “Not pleased, not dis-pleased” he answered. Indeed, the only time he can remember anyone being ‘pleased’ with his work was when that complimentary letter from ‘Box’ turned up right at the start.

Was this SOS work just an extension of the work he’d been doing in Special Branch, then? It appears not. Fredericks explained one of the main differences: “You didn’t go anywhere near the office” at Scotland Yard once you were in the SOS.

However, it should also be noted that Fredericks doesn’t think the Inquiry have seen all of his reports – there are only three reports of political meetings attended by ‘Fredericks’ in the bundle– yet he said he was “fully occupied” during his months with the squad, sometimes attending several meetings in the same day and filing several reports every week.

OPERATION OMEGA – HUMANITARIAN AID

Fredericks did not remember who had tasked him to infiltrate Operation Omega (also known as Action Bangla Desh), although it may have been Ken Pendered again. He doesn’t remember any discussions with his managers about the motivations of these groups, or being directed to infiltrate any groups in particular. He claims not to remember the names of other groups that he reported on, just Operation Omega’.

Asked about the aims and objectives of the police in infiltrating this organisation, he said they were trying “to reduce or eliminate unhelpful behaviour on the part of certain individuals within these various groups”. However, he also admitted that much of the work done by the Operation Omega group was humanitarian. Operation Omega was in fact a very small, London-based group involved in taking humanitarian aid to victims of the war in the Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) as it seceded from the Dominion of Pakistan in 1971.

Fredericks described the group as having plans to build housing for people, who had lost their homes during the war. They met up to stuff envelopes together and talk, and said that decisions were not made in his presence. “It was more admin than anything else” he said and noted that he didn’t have access to the group’s mailing list, but if he had, he would have passed it on to his superiors. He didn’t know the members very well, and he wasn’t “involved in the hierarchy”.

One of the members of the group told him that her family had donated £6,500 to the cause. “That was a great deal of money in those days” Barr suggested [it equates to approx £75,000 today] and some members of the group travelled to East Pakistan to deliver aid; he heard that one of them gave birth while in custody there. He wasn’t invited to go to East Pakistan with them.

Fredericks did attend demonstrations with the group, but can’t remember “anything special about those”. One was in Slough and involved several thousand people but was un-policed and peaceful.

“Would this have been unusual?” asked Barr, who said he was getting the impression that there were no public order concerns that day. Fredericks described them as sort of “a walk in the park on a Sunday”.

Barr said that there don’t appear to be any surviving reports by Fredericks about Operation Omega. Fredericks confirmed that he will have made two or three a week for about six months. We can only speculate as to why this might be.

FLY-POSTING WAS THE ONLY CRIME

Fredericks was also asked about an instance where he apparently went fly-posting with the group. He got no special permission from his managers to do this, he said, but on the other hand, no one was upset that he did it.

He went on to say that fly-posting wasn’t serious – “the authorities have more important things to do”. Barr agreed that it was “at the very very bottom end of the scale of criminal offending”. He was asked if Operation Omega were involved in any other criminal activity. “None at all,” he replied.

We were shown the Special Demonstration Squad’s Annual Report, written at the end of 1971 [MPS-0728971] in which Action Bangla Desh is indeed listed as having been ‘penetrated’ by the spycops, however Operation Omega is not.

When asked if there were any other officers reporting on Action Bangla Desh, or whether this would have been a reference to his work, Fredericks expressed a belief that he was the only officer deployed against Operation Omega. Nevertheless, we were also shown another report on Action Bangla Desh signed by officer HN332.

YOUNG HAGANAH – ‘WIDENING THE GEOGRAPHY’

At Operation Omega events, Fredericks met two women from the ‘Young Haganah’. He said he didn’t ‘join’ or participate in this group, or socialise with them and had no plans to infiltrate them, and no memory of being instructed to do so (by Phil Saunders or any other manager).

When asked about the connection to Israel he said “it just widens the geography”. He then admitted that he doesn’t know anything about the Young Haganah, but knew, from doing some research, that the original Haganah were involved in setting up the state of Israel decades before. The ‘Young Haganah’ were a completely separate group, who “just wanted to help people” he said. “I felt they were OK”.

Despite taking care to be someone who knew people here and there, to make himself less likely to raise suspicions, there came a time when he “knew something was wrong”. He recalled being diplomatically ‘steered away’ from meeting Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and two Labour MPs at a function, by the woman whose family had funded the Operation Omega group’s activities.

BLACK POWER

Rajiv Menon QC, on behalf of the Inquiry’s non-state core participants, pointed out that Fredericks referred to himself as being of ‘mixed heritage’ in his witness statement and asked if, in 1971, his mixed heritage was perhaps more visibly apparent than it is now.

Fredericks batted the question away:

“It’s not for me to judge. I don’t know. I don’t spend that much time looking at myself in the mirror.”

 

Menon asked Fredericks if he thought he was asked to target Operation Omega or the Black Power Movement because of his race.

“No. I never came across anything vaguely associated with that statement,” he replied, as if the police might have sent a white officer to infiltrate Black Power groups.

Fredericks said said he was not directed towards infiltrating the Black Power movement by anyone in the SOS. He had just met a guy at Speakers Corner and “hit it off”. He was then invited to Black Power events & meetings, which led to him meeting activists from the United States.

He knew that any such group would be considered to be of interest to Special Branch, and although he was “on the periphery, by no means at the heart of it”, he “did meet some interesting people” at this time.

Fredericks said he got on “pretty well” with some of the Black Power members, but later that he didn’t get to know them “hugely well”. A lot of his time with them was spent socialising, and playing pool, rather than discussing politics, but he thought this was a good tactic to gain their trust.

THE MANGROVE 9

Fredericks was asked if he remembered the case of the Mangrove 9. ‘Not clearly, no,’ he replied.

The Counsel’s scepticism was clear even on the transcript:

‘It doesn’t ring any bells at all? Let me see if I can help you.’

The Inquiry was then told how, on 9 August 1970 – a few months before Fredericks joined the SDS – there was a demonstration in Notting Hill about the police harassment of the Mangrove restaurant. As a result of that demonstration, nine black activists were arrested and prosecuted for riot.

There was a defence campaign set up, and their trial started at the Old Bailey in October 1971, while Fredericks was in the SDS, undercover in Black power groups.

Fredericks said:

“I was not involved closely with them. I would have read about it in the papers. I would have known something, perhaps.”

As with John Clinton’s failure to mention the death of Kevin Gately, this absence of memory is simply not credible. Even the Counsel knew it:

“And you don’t remember any conversations with any of your SOS colleagues, or anybody else in Special Branch, about this seminal event in the history of the Black Power Movement?”

Fredericks determinedly kept the lid on the can of worms:

“Definitely not. Definitely not.”

REPORTING ON RACIAL JUSTICE GROUPS

The Inquiry was shown one of his reports [UCPI0000026455] of a Black Defence Committee meeting in a pub in September 1971. The speaker was a student from South Africa, described in the report as “coloured”, and talking on the subject of apartheid. There were a dozen people (including Fredericks) in the audience.

There was a second Black Defence Committee meeting [UCPI0000026456] later that month. Solicitor Michael Siefert was the speaker, who was part of the Angela Davies Defence Committee (they were all members of the Communist Party of GB). Fredericks said he couldn’t remember much about that campaign, and he was not given any guidance on the appropriateness of spying on a justice campaign.

THREATENED BY A JOKE

Finally, he was asked about an incident he recounted in his written statement – at a meeting of around 80-90 people on the subject of violent protest, with a speaker from the USA. His witness statement included a description of worrying that he was “going to be kicked to death” after someone suggested that there was an MI5 spy in the room and he thought he was about to be accused.

He recalled the feeling “when you know you’re outnumbered and you’re in deep difficulties” – before he realised that the activists were joking, not serious – and said that he was aware “that I was involved with people who had access to and were prepared to use violence as and when necessary”.

However, when he was asked more generally about the Black Power activists, he stated that he never witnessed any violence, or public disorder, nor had he any memory of the group committing criminal offences. When asked whether they encouraged disorder, he seemed unable to give a coherent reply and said this was “difficult to answer”.

In fact, Fredericks’s recollections of Black Power seemed to amount to very little at all.

When asked if he thought his infiltration of Black Power was the best use of a police resource he replied, “there were times when I thought I was wasting my time, but… there were…people up there, senior people, who knew a lot more about the landscape”, who considered his deployment a good use of resources.

Back in the day, he thought it was worth keeping “an eye on what was going on, to prevent the sort of excessive behaviour that sometimes accompanies these projects”, and his view remains the same now, although he clarified “it’s not something I think about a lot”.

SEXISM

When asked about intimate relationships between undercover officers and the people they spied on, his jaw-dropping response led to gasps of horror from around the room. It is so glaringly sexist that it warrants being repeated verbatim here:

“I have, if you like, a phrase in my head which helps guide me here. If you ask me to infiltrate some drug dealers, you can’t point the finger at me if I sample the product. If these people are in a certain environment where it is necessary to engage a little more deeply, then shall we say, I find this acceptable, but I do worry about the consequences for the female and any children that may result from the relationship”.

It appears that the police lawyers (who hover in the background posing as “technical IT support” for the witnesses) may have had words with him about this during the break, because when pressed on this point later by Ruth Brander, representing non-state CPs, he appeared to recant his earlier statement a little, saying that the situation with these relationships was “hugely confusing”.

Although he admitted “you could call it deception, you could call it anything you like, it can’t be nice”, he also implied that the relationships may not even have happened, saying it is like you are “gazing into a darkened room, looking for a black cat you can’t see that may not be there…”. Speaking of the spycops who committed these abuses, he said “Perhaps – my view is perhaps they had no choice”.

Neil Woods, who was an actual undercover drugs officer, had no time at all for this as he responded on social media:

‘To compare sampling some drugs undercover to having a sexual relationship in a deployment is very twisted indeed. The casual nature of this comparison is revealing. One could argue that it’s as a result of canteen culture, the grim sexism that male dominated culture can produce. But this is beyond mere sexism, it’s disregard to the point of malice. A machine of misogyny.’

POLICE RACISM

Menon asked Frederick about racism, and Fredericks claimed that he did not encounter any hurtful racism in the police, although he talked about how disparaging things were said “with humour. I think it’s called irony”.

Menon then drew his attention to a report [MPS-0739148] (nothing to do with Fredericks) that relates to a conviction at the Central Criminal Court in February 1969.

At this point, as at numerous previous hearings, Menon clashed with the Chair, Sir John Mitting, who said:

“You are about, I think, to ask a witness about a document that is nothing at all to do with him… I’m not conducting an inquiry into racism in the Metropolitan Police for the last 50 years, I’m looking at the SOS.”

Menon pointed out that it was, in fact, an SOS document that he wanted to show.

Mitting relented without changing his position:

“I will let you do it. But this is not to be taken as a precedent for what may happen in the future. I’m really not willing to allow people to question other witnesses about documents that are nothing to do with them.”

This is a further example of Mitting’s refusal to admit the fact of institutional racism and bigotry in the Met, something which, though the Met admitted it more than 20 years ago, Mitting has called a ‘controversial’ view.

Institutional racism and sexism are at the core of the spycops scandal. For Mitting to reduce it to individual actions is a denial of the systemic nature of the abuses committed by spycops.

Allowed to show the document about the court case, Menon drew the Inquiry’s attention to details of the convicted man’s involvement in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and Black Power groups, then states “he has the usual attitude of coloured people towards police and authority”.

Is this the kind of ‘casual banter’ you were referring to, or something more sinister?, asked Menon.

“What I’m reading could be described as an overly wide brush-stroke”, Fredericks responded, adding:

‘we are all human beings, and no group occupies one sort of social or moral space, there is a divergence, and it’s up to us to learn to live together.’

Fredericks recognised that racism has been common in humanity, but was unwilling to agree that it has ever been a particular problem in British society, or in the police.

A FETISH FOR FOREIGN SPIES?

In addition to his obvious pride in recalling his commendation letter from MI5, Fredericks spoke about one woman from the Operation Omega group who appears to have fascinated him, because he believed she was a foreign spy.

He described her as having a “hidden agenda” – he found it hard to explain what he meant by this – he said she seemed different to the others. “She didn’t fit”, he said, but he couldn’t work out why. He was not sure if he could mention which country she was from, and after receiving permission said that she was from the United States, appearing to suggest there was a link with the CIA.

“I could be totally wrong, but it attracted my attention”, and he clearly still remembers the strength of his hunch now. “I don’t know what it was, but this woman knew what she was doing”.

Freericks was in his 20s at the time and remembered that she was older than him, and most of the others in the group. He said he was very careful – listening, and doing as little talking as possible.  “We enjoyed each other’s company,” but there was mutual suspicion.

When asked if they had a romantic relationship, he said, “I’d rather not comment, but no is the answer”.

He said he would certainly have mentioned her in his reports, but didn’t gather any meaningful info (although earlier he said that he discovered her work address). This, like many of Fredericks’s answers hints at a hidden grimness to his operation. But without proper testing of the testimony, that’s all we can say.

His international spying fantasies seem to have come full circle at the end of his deployment, when – after being suddenly removed from the field – it transpired that part of the reason for this was that one of his referees (from the ‘positive vetting’ process carried out when he first joined the police) turned out to have been a Russian spy.

A SUDDEN END

Fredericks’s deployment was ended abruptly – he just stopped attending the meetings – but he said there was no consideration of possible ‘safety concerns’. He said that when he joined the unit he was told that he would be looked after, but when he left there was precious little after-care. His time undercover just ended, and there was no debriefing.

He received no guidance from his bosses about mixing with the activists he had spied on after his deployment had ended.

This led to the recounting of a curious incident in which, long after his deployment ended, Fredericks called round on someone he’d befriended while undercover – “there was no romantic involvement, I just found her interesting as a human being” -only to find out she had committed suicide not long before.

Even if we accept this at face value, it is disturbing, exposing his absence of care about the power wielded by spycops, and the lack of awareness that it is even an issue. There appears to be no part of him that felt this deception was in any way wrong. He thought – and clearly still feels – it was OK to just put his spycop persona back on for his own edification. What other activities do spycops do this for?

BITTER AFTERTASTE

Fredericks summed up his leaving the SDS:

“The way I felt was if I was no longer part of the system, then my existence doesn’t matter, my opinion doesn’t matter, get on with the rest of your life”.

He still seemed bitter about this. He did see a psychiatrist after his deployment ended, however he said he doesn’t know why his managers sent him to see someone who had no understanding of undercover policing: “The whole thing was a waste of time”. He said he did not attend any of the SDS social events or reunions.

Despite expressing the belief that the spycops’ techniques were more effective than normal Special Branch operations, and that being more deeply embedded with the activists meant he was able to gather more info from them. “I have my views,” he said, “but I’m ready to admit that I’m wrong”.

However, his creepy answers, and his unrepentant tone and demeanour throughout the questioning suggest that is not really the case.

 

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COPS has produced a report like this for every day of the Undercover Policing Inquiry hearings. They are indexed on our UCPI Public Inquiry page.

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Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 13

18 November 2020

Evidence from:
Officer HN348 aka ‘Sandra Davies’

The penultimate day of the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s first phase was scheduled to have two people appear.

Helen Steel, a lifelong environmental and social justice activist who was in numerous spied-upon groups and was deceived into a relationship by undercover officer John Dines, was due to deliver her opening statement. However, she was unable to do so.

The rest of the day was given over to evidence from Special Demonstration Squad officer HN348, which seemed something of an odd proposition, given that she appeared to have had about as minor a deployment as is possible for a spycop – long ago, not for long, deployed into one group that doesn’t appear to have warranted spying on even by the police’s standards.

As it turned out, this was the point; her testimony demonstrated the lack of guidance given to officers, and the seemingly total absence of any consideration of the impact of this intrusion on the lives of those targeted.

She infiltrated the Women’s Liberation Front for about two years, 1971-73, using the name ‘Sandra Davies’. A small feminist group with Maoist leanings, its meetings were attended by about 12 people, hosted at one of the member’s homes.

’Davies’ was a full-time spy on them for two years, producing no intelligence of any value, and would have stayed longer if she hadn’t been compromised by another officer. It’s the generalised, hoover-up approach to information gathering, checking on people who pose no threat.

PRIDE OR SHAME?

Davies has been granted anonymity by the Inquiry despite being assessed as having a low risk of any kind of reprisal. In her ‘impact statement’, she said that she wanted anonymity because she would be embarrassed if the group’s main activist found out the truth. She also said her reputation would be tainted if her friends found out she had been a spycop.

It’s an extraordinary display of mental gymnastics – when we question the purpose of spycops, police tell us that they’re doing vital & noble work ensuring the safety of everyone, yet when we question why they want anonymity, they say it would be humiliating to be known as one.

This feat is matched by the idea that although the spycops used the Stasi principle of gathering all information on anyone close to political activity, with the expectation that some of them might turn out to be a problem at some point in the future, this was necessary to protect us from having to live in a repressive Stasi-like State.

MAXINE PEAKE IS A SPYCOP

As the Inquiry persists with the idea that a glitchy live transcript is adequate public access – denying the feel of the witness’ evidence, causing eyestrain for viewers and excluding anyone visually impaired – Police Spies Out of Lives once again provided a read-along on their YouTube channel.

Today, guest star Maxine Peake read the words of ’Sandra Davies’.

 

The read-along’s popularity exceeded the Inquiry’s own ‘viewing’ figures.

There will be another read-along, of HN345‘s evidence, on Thursday 19 November, starting at 11:30.

SANDRA DAVIES WAS ALSO A SPYCOP

HN348 made a written statement to the Inquiry last October.

She recalled using the cover name ‘Sandra’, and having seen some documents listing members of the Women’s Liberation Front that name ‘Sandra Davies’, she conceded this may well have been her. The evidence – which we’ll come to a bit later – seems conclusive, yet she still wouldn’t completely confirm it was her.

It set a pattern for the afternoon, of the documents showing things, and her saying that she was unable to recall anything beyond what the documents showed.

In this report, we’ll call her Davies for ease of reading.

JOINING THE SPYCOPS

Davies was vetted before joining the police, and joined Special Branch in January 1971, having passed an exam and several interviews. She didn’t have any undercover experience before being asked to join the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), and it appears that she did this remarkably quickly – by mid-February.

She was asked if this meant there were only 3-4 weeks before she was recruited into the SDS, She said she couldn’t remember, but thought it was longer, perhaps a few months. However, her first SDS report is dated 17 February 1971.

She explained her motivations for joining Special Branch – these included her career development within the police, which she viewed as a long-term career.

RECRUITED BY HIGH-FLIER IMBERT

Until she was approached by Peter Imbert (who later became Commissioner), she had never heard of the SDS. He was the one who asked her to join, and explained that her job would be to ‘collect and disseminate information about anti-social behaviour’. She understood that intelligence was needed to prevent the police being unprepared for serious public order situations like the demonstration against the Vietnam War in March 1968.

Imbert will not be giving evidence at all, as he is one of the three Metropolitan Police Commissioners who have died since the Inquiry was announced. Between them, Imbert, David McNee, and Kenneth Newman ran the Met from 1977 to 1992. More than that, as Imbert’s recruitment of Davies to the SDS shows, they will have had a lot of relevant knowledge from the time before they became Commissioner.

It’s not enough to know what the officers did. We need to know who authorised and sanctioned these operations. The loss of testimony from those Commissioners, who were ultimately in charge of the SDS for a third of its existence, is one of the effects of the colossal delays the police have inflicted on the Inquiry process.

TRAINING? WHAT TRAINING?

Apart from being advised to keep a ‘low profile’, Davies was given very little training or guidance. She didn’t know how long she would be deployed for. She doesn’t remember any ‘home visit’ from a senior officer.

Asked why she was recruited, she said:

‘perhaps they were just looking for a woman, and in those days there weren’t that many of us! Perhaps there was nobody else.’

The SDS’ annual report of 1971 [MPS-0728971] said:

‘The arrival of a second woman officer has added considerably to the squad’s flexibility and has proved invaluable in the comparatively recent field of women’s liberation.’

The other woman was Jill Mosdell – Sandra confirmed that she knew Mosdell well and they became good friends. Mosdell was deployed into the Anti-Apartheid Movement from 1970-73.

DEPLOYMENT

She described her preparation for going undercover as taking off her wedding ring and make-up, finding a cover address (a shared house in Paddington to which she went only occasionally) and being ready to tell people she was a student at Goldsmiths if they asked (they never did).

She said that she would go to meetings and other events, then a day or two later visit one of the two SDS ‘safe houses’, where she would draft a report. This would then be discussed with her manager, amended, and sent for typing up.

She attended the safe house most days, and would talk to the other officers there, though, she claims, not in any detail about their deployments.

She didn’t have any experience of writing such reports beforehand, and was given little in the way of guidance. Her approach was to report anything she observed. According to her, the spycops were ‘building up a picture of the people who were involved in these various groups’.

PERSONAL INTRUSION

Davies was shown a report she’d made [UCPI0000026387] in August 1971, about a member of the Women’s Liberation Front (WLF) and the North London Alliance in Defence of Workers’ Rights (LADWR) travelling to Albania on holiday. The activist’s photo was attached to the report.

Asked why she’d felt that degree of personal information was necessary, she replied that it might be:

‘to do with the bookshop in North London, and the links with other extreme groups associated with that bookshop’

She said that the Women’s Liberation Front merited investigation by the spycops because ‘of the way they were expressing themselves, and their links’ to other groups of interest.

Most of her reports concern her attending regular meetings, often in people’s homes.

Was she ever given guidance about balancing people’s privacy vs what was needed for ‘effective policing’ – for example was she given guidance about entering people’s homes?

She was told that her job was to “be an observer, not a participant”, that she should avoid being an ‘agent provocateur’ but stick to recording what was said in the meetings she attended.

Her supervisor would accept her hand-written report, she said she didn’t always see the typed version; neither did she know who typed it or where it went. She claimed not to have realised that reports were routinely sent to MI5, but concedes it might have happened (most of the SDS reports that have been published for these hearings are marked as copied to MI5). She said she didn’t think much about this at the time.

SHARING SECRETS

The Inquiry was then shown a document [UCPI0000014736] which is Special Branch’s response to a request for intelligence from ‘Box 500’ – that is to say, the Security Service, MI5.

Two weeks earlier, they had asked Special Branch to find out about a couple of WRU/ LADWR activists’ recent house move.

It appears that Davies (whose name is attached to the report) was tasked to find out where they had gone, and duly supplied the information to her bosses, to send on to the security services. Davies said, again, that she had no memory of this.

She described some of the large women’s liberation meetings that she attended, some of which involved hundreds of women, and said that there were lots of stalls, leaflets being handed out, she didn’t have to work hard to be invited to meetings.

She checked in with her managers to get approval for any meeting she attended.

EXTREMISM & SUBVERSION

Officer HN45, ‘David Robertson’ was already deployed, and he gave her a presentation about the Maoist movement, and Abhimanyu Manchanda who led the Revolutionary Marxist-Leninist League.

Davies said:

‘I can’t remember one word of that presentation, but it was really a group that was opposed to our form of democracy’.

Asked what she was told about ‘subversion’ and ‘extremism’, she repeated:

‘We all understood that these groups were working against our form of democracy’

There was the feeling that she meant something else. Just as previous officers have conflated national security with the convenience of the government of the day, so Davies seemed to use ‘democracy’ to mean the current political hierarchy. As Dave Smith said yesterday, capitalism and democracy are not the same thing.

The SDS was spying on numerous open, democratic organisations, including political parties whose sole function was to participate in our form of democracy. Her close colleague Jill Mosdell was infiltrating the Anti-Apartheid Movement, whose sole objective was to bring democracy to South Africa.

Sandra said that her purpose was to see if the Women’s Liberation Front would ‘take direct action or whether it was just words’.

Asked if direct action was a problem, she said that in our country:

‘we’re entitled to our opinions and we can say what we like, well no, we can’t say exactly what we like but we’ve got Speakers Corner…. people can say what they like as long as they don’t go too far’

She seemed unaware that every regime on earth would describe their system in that way. Davies had a glaring absence of any questioning of the inherent rightness of the morals and intentions of the police and State.

DON’T DO CRIME

The next document was a Home Office circular about informants taking part in crime. Sandra does not recall seeing this before, but felt she understood the principles. She was very clear that she did not get involved in any criminal activities.

‘You’re there to uphold the law not break it… regardless of what role you’re playing’

According to her the police do use informants that are involved in criminality, but police officers shouldn’t get involved in criminality.

Were there rules about forming close relationships with activists?

Davies said she was told to ‘listen, learn and report back’, the spycops were not to get close to their targets. She was confident that officers in her day did not have sexual relationships with the people they spied on:

‘It didn’t need to be discussed specifically, it was something that didn’t happen’

Davies said she hadn’t heard about spycops deceiving people into relationships until she was contacted about this Inquiry, about three years ago. She hadn’t been to any SDS reunions over the years, so hadn’t heard stories from anyone else. She watched a documentary, ‘found it quite shocking’ and didn’t know what to believe.

MANAGEMENT

She described the SDS as being run by two Superintendents, a Chief Inspector, and two Sergeants.

Davies mainly reported to Phil Saunders and, to a lesser extent, HN294. They would have a direct debrief at the safe house.

She wasn’t provided with any back-up or support, she was sent out alone. She actually created her own security arrangements (with her husband) for travelling home late at night.

WOMEN’S LIBERATION

In her written statement, Davies said:

‘Women’s liberation was viewed as a worrying trend at the time.’

It seems clear that this is why she was recruited. Asked who exactly was worried by women’s liberation, she could only vaguely offer ‘all sorts of people’. She hurried to clarify that this didn’t mean those people were worried about the entire movement, just ‘factions within it’.

Counsel to the Inquiry then led her through a set of questions that exposed the hypocrisy and absurdity of Davies’ deployment in the Women’s Liberation Front.

She confirmed that, as a uniformed constable, she’d had the same powers and responsibilities as her male colleagues. However, women officers got 90% of the men’s wage at that time.

She was reminded of an violent confrontation in which she’d helped rescue injured officers and come back covered in blood. She was given no support or aftercare following the incident, beyond being told ‘you joined a man’s job so get on with it’.

According to her statement, the WLF mainly campaigned for equal pay, free contraception, and free nurseries. These are things that seem not just reasonable, but far more in keeping with a fair and just society than the practices of the police who employed her.

The policies and campaigning methods weren’t subversive by any real measure, so why was she sent to infiltrate the women’s movement, and specifically the Women’s Liberation Front?

Davies said it was because the WLF had links with ‘more extreme groups’. Asked if she was told the names of these groups that were supposed to be her true target, she once again became vague, referring to ‘a lot of unrest’ at the time. She mentioned the Angry Brigade, and added that the ‘Irish situation was very volatile’.

Davies’ own statement says the activists she spied on were not breaking any laws, just hosting meetings, leafleting and demonstrating – ‘all within the bounds of the law’ – and that she did not witness or participate in any public disorder during her entire deployment. So what was the point?

‘I was tasked to observe them because Special Branch did not know much about them’

IRISH CONNECTIONS

The Inquiry was shown a report [UCPI0000026992] of a WLF study group on 11 March 1971, comprising of seven people meeting in someone’s home.

Davies reported that one woman present praised the recent actions of the IRA, which she described as ‘a good way to start a revolution’. She’d put the words in quote marks.

We should note that, at this time, the IRA was only attacking British military targets in Northern Ireland. It is extraordinary that this comment on current affairs, made in a private home with no intent for action of any kind, was deemed worthy of reporting and filing by Britain’s political secret police. So much for ‘you are free to express your opinions’.

There seemed to be little else in the way of Davies reporting on the Irish situation she’d suggested as one of her true targets.

CHINESE CONNECTIONS

The next report [UCPI0000026996] was of another meeting of the study group, on 15 April, with 11 people present this time. Davies reported ‘general discussion’ of a ‘The East is Red’ – which she described as a ‘Chinese Revolutionary film’ – which was due to be shown twice that weekend.

Then came a report [UCPI0000026997] on a meeting of the Friends of China, that took place on 27 April. It was held in another private house, the home of Diane Langford, Besides Langford, her partner Abhimanyu Manchanda (a prominent Maoist), and Davies, there were only five other people present. Once again, Davies told the Inquiry that she had no memory of this meeting, but accepts that this report was hers.

According to the report, the Friends of China’s first matter of business was discussing the WLF’s magazine. Someone [their name is redacted] criticised the effort and resources put into it, before two members agreed to each take away 50 copies to sell.

There was more discussion of ‘The East Is Red’, which had been screened again, at the Cameo Poly Theatre in Regent Street. One person said it had shown too much violence, but another replied that there hadn’t been enough. A completely legal discussion about a legal film screened in a public venue.

The next document [UCPI0000027026] was a report of a WLF meeting, dated 8 December 1971. The speaker at the meeting had just returned from a trip to China and was ‘was clearly very impressed by the Chinese system’. This developed into a group discussion about all aspects of everyday life in China, including the use of acupuncture.

The speaker showed photos of life in China and is reported as saying Britain was ‘in desperate need of change,and that the Chinese methods would work here’; in his opinion ‘violent revolution’ was the means of achieving this change.

THE REVOLUTIONARY WOMEN’S UNION

The Women’s Liberation Front held their AGM on 6 February 1972. They agreed to adopt a new constitution (that meant only women could be members) and new aims. There was also a proposal to change the organisation’s name to the Revolutionary Women’s League, but this was left for another meeting

Its new list of aims said it sought:

• ‘To organise women in general, working class women in particular, to fight for the elimination of all exploitation and oppression and for a socialist society.
• ‘To expose the oppression suffered by women and to relate this to capitalist society and to oppose those who confuse the effects of women’s oppression for the real cause, ie the private ownership of the means of production.’

This is entirely lawful, and not anti-democratic unless, like the spycops, you think democracy and capitalism are the same thing.

The group wanted to achieve these things as a path towards things that sound largely moderate and desirable to modern ears:

• ‘To demand equal opportunities in employment and education.
• ‘To fight for equal pay for work of equal value.
• ‘In order that women have real opportunities to take part in social production, we demand that crèches and nurseries are installed at the place of work, education and in the community, wherever there is a need.
• ‘All women should have the right to have children or not. In order to make this right effective, alongside child-care facilities, adequate contraceptive and abortion information and facilities should be made available free on the NHS.
• ‘To demand maternity leave for a definite period with no loss of pay, in the pre-natal and post-natal periods, and the right to return to the same job, guaranteed by law.
• ‘To fight against all discrimination and injustice suffered by women in all realms of society, in laws as regards marriage and divorce, in the superstructure; customs and culture.
• ‘To fight against the discrimination suffered by unmarried mothers and their children.
• ‘To wage a consistent struggle against male chauvinism and to strive to educate and encourage men to participate in all our activities.
• ‘To take our full part in the struggles against the growing attacks on our standard of living and our democratic rights and against the growing racism and fascist policies of the ruling class.
• ‘To mobilise women to support the anti-imperialist struggles of all oppressed peoples for the realisation of our common aim, the ending of the system of exploitation and oppression.’

ANGRY BRIGADE

Having cited the Angry Brigade as one of her true targets, she was asked about her reporting on them.

The Angry Brigade, a left wing group responsible for around 25 bombings in the early 1970s (the term should be qualified with the fact that they were relatively small devices and, between them, caused slight injury to one person).

Davies had reported [UCPI0000008274] attending a women’s liberation conference in 1972. She wrote that one woman associated with the Angry Brigade gave out copies of their ‘Conspiracy Notes’. The ‘Stoke Newington 8’ – a group of people facing serious charges connected with the Angry Brigade – were reaching out to other radical groups at the time for support.

The meeting was reported as chaotic, with calls for better structure to the discussion being heckled by Gay Liberation Front activists.

That appears to be the extent of her reporting on the Angry Brigade.

BLACK POWER CONNECTIONS

One of Davies’ reports [UCPI0000027028] was about a WLF weekly meeting that took place on 18 November 1971 – again in someone’s home – where 15 people attended.

There was a talk by Leila Hassan from the Black Unity and Freedom Party (BUFP)

Asked if Special Branch had asked her to pay special attention to this group, Davies said ‘not to my knowledge, no’.

Was she aware of the trial of the ‘Mangrove Nine’, a group being prosecuted following an incident in the Mangrove restaurant, a venue that had been raided by (racist) police officers many times?

Davies claimed to know absolutely nothing about this case, and nothing of Leila Hassan’s connection with them.

All in all, it seems Davies had done basically nothing about her supposed true target groups, only mentioning them in passing when they came into the orbit of the WLF.

SO WHAT DID SHE ACTUALLY DO?

The reports Davies made show a pattern of weekly WLF meetings held in the evenings at people’s private homes. They were mostly study groups, reading political texts and discussing them. One example [UCPI0000026990] describes reading ‘Lenin Conversation with Clara Zetkin’ which deals with women’s emancipation in 1920.

Asked how she avoided revealing anything personal about herself, Davies said it was easy because she was never asked. Others liked to talk a lot, and liked to be listened to. Yet she also said that she doesn’t remember those soliloquies mentioning any personal details about any of the people in the group.

She was asked if she ever felt uncomfortable spending time with those women every week, knowing that they didn’t knowing her true identity and role:

‘I was doing a job at the time, so I wasn’t – I don’t think I considered that, no. I was just doing my job.’

SUBVERSIVE BAKED GOODS

According to one of Davies’ reports [UCPI0000010932], the Black Unity and Freedom Party was planning a children’s Christmas party in 1971, and they asked the WLF to contribute home-made sweets and cakes.

Asked why the intention to bake was worthy of reporting by police charged with preventing disorder, Davies seemed to suggest it was a ruse to spring some indoctrination on the kids:

‘They were involving themselves with children and the sweets and cakes were an addition. They wanted to get their philosophy across to as many groups as they could. That was their aim’

Another of Davies’ reports [UCPI0000010907] mentions a jumble sale being organised by the WLF. Again, she defended this because:

‘they would have used it as another opportunity for advertising their aims’

Both of these reports were copied to MI5.

At this point, the fact that Davies herself admits the WLF’s aims didn’t warrant intrusion by undercover police is largely obscured by the absurdity of her claim that a jumble sale was a recruiting ground for radical political activist.

IDLE GOSSIP

Davies reported [UCPI0000010931] a letter which criticised an un-named activist for having an affair, and mentioned the termination of the employment of an un-named person (who may or may not be the same person – we can’t tell because of the name’s redacted) at Banner Books.

Why was it necessary to report this personal gossip?

Davies, yet again, didn’t remember, but accepted she had written the report.

Then how would it have helped effective policing of public order situations?

‘It just shows how the group was functioning… giving people an insight into what was happening at the time.’

She said that it wasn’t felt irrelevant by her managers, as it wouldn’t have got as far being typed-up if that were the case.

DIRECT INFLUENCE

Some of Davies’s reports are on meetings of the WLF Executive Committee. This was a group of six people, and the only way she could have been in those meetings is if she was a member. That required holding office in the group and thereby influencing its direction, something that SDS founder Conrad Dixon had specifically forbidden.

The documents show that somebody called Sandra Davies was elected treasurer of the WLF (the same post that ‘Doug Edwards’ took in the Tower Hamlets branch of the Independent Labour Party).

Despite allegedly having no memory at all being on this Executive Committee, or attending any of these meetings, she was remarkably adamant that she didn’t influence the direction or policies of the group in any way.

The Inquiry returned to Davies’ report of the WLF Executive Committee meeting of February 1972 [UCPI0000010906] again.

This meeting appears to mark a change of leadership and a change of direction for the group.

This was when the idea of changing the group’s name to the Revolutionary Women’s Union (RWU) was first formally proposed, and eventually agreed. As part of such a tiny group, how much influence did Davies have? Was she responsible for its adopting a more radical, ‘Revolutionary’ name?

A month later, Davies reported [UCPI0000010911] on an emergency meeting of the RWU’s Executive Committee.

This time, the Committee decided to suspend three members from the wider group for ‘disruptive behaviour’. They agreed to serve them the three with written notices of suspension, and spend three weeks compiling a dossier with details of their ‘disruptive tactics’. These would then be circulated to all members.

Despite this prolonged, controversial and divisive work being agreed and carried out by the small group, Davies says she remembers none of it.

Did she remember that this internal division then led to reduced enthusiasm and drive within the group?

‘I can’t comment on that. I have no idea’.

Six weeks later, on 4 May 1972, Davies attended another Women’s Revolutionary Union meeting at a member’s home.

According to her report [UCPI0000010913], it opened with comments about a general lack of enthusiasm within the group, older members dropping out and not being replaced by new ones. This appears to be a direct consequence of the suspensions Davies had a hand in. One of those present was convinced that her phone was tapped, and warned/ reminded the others not to discuss their WRU activities over the phone.

END OF DEPLOYMENT

Davies’ deployment was terminated in February 1973. There had been ‘an incident’ involving another officer, HN45, ‘David Robertson, with a risk of his cover being blown. As a result, he, Jill Mosdell and Davies were all withdrawn from the field at the same time.

Despite serving in the Met’s elite subversion, demonstration and disorder unit for two years, Davies said in her witness statement:

‘I did not witness or participate in any public disorder whilst serving with the SDS. I do not even recall going on any marches or demonstrations. I did not witness nor was I involved in any violence.’

Looking back, she continued:

‘I do not think my work really yielded any good intelligence, but I eliminated the Women’s Liberation Front from public order concerns’

That is a mitigation that could be applied to thought-crime spying on literally anyone. More to the point, it was a fact that must have been obvious very early on in her deployment. And yet, she was still there, spying full-time on that group, two years later.

There was no suggestion that her managers gave much thought to whether what she was doing was worthwhile. As with other deployments, it seems that once they had their spycops in place, keeping them there was more important to the police than the information they gathered.

The rights of the people being spied on – who had police officers in their lives and homes week after week – didn’t get a look-in.

Had it not been for the incident with HN45, she probably would have stayed on even longer, as there was ‘no indication’ that her managers wanted to withdraw her. Nor is there any indication she would have left:

‘I was submitting my reports and was guided by superior officers’

Davies told the Inquiry that she stood by what she wrote in her statement:

‘In hindsight, I would not have joined the SDS as I was putting myself too much at risk and there were more worthwhile things I could have been doing… I question whether police officers should be undercover at all’

And that remains her view now, 50 years after being deployed herself.

Here ended the Counsel to the Inquiry’s questioning.

ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THAT?

After this, Ruth Brander, representing non-state core participants at the Inquiry (ie people who were spied on), was permitted to revisit three of the topics raised.

First, Brander asked about the SDS officers meeting at the safe house. Davies had said they much of the day was spent waiting around, yet did not discuss much detail of the deployments that they were all immersed in. What did they talk about?

Davies said the spycops would write their draft reports, and wait for their turn to have one-to-one talks with the managers. She said the atmosphere was good and – despite the common values of the times and them being outnumbered by men – the women officers were not subjected to any sexist behaviour.

So, Brander asked, if they didn’t talk about the people they spied on, what were the topics of conversation?

Davies said it was general chat, probably ‘holidays and houses and families’.

Moving on, Brander asked if, although she said she wasn’t aware of any sexual relationships between spycops and people they targeted, there were other emotional involvements, such as going out for dinner or drinks. Davies insisted not.

SPYING ON CHILDREN

Finally, Brander asked about Davies’s report [UCPI0000010928] on a school strike organised by the Schools Action Union in May 1972.

Several North London schools had taken part in the strike with a list of demands that, rather like the Women’s Liberation Front’s calls for an end to gender inequality, appear moderate:

• Teacher-pupil committees to run the schools
• No school uniforms
• No corporal punishment
• Free school meals and milk
• Freedom to leave school during the lunch break

Davies said that she hadn’t been involved in it, she would just have picked up details from what people said.

Brander asked if she’d given any consideration to the appropriateness of reporting on school children.

‘I wasn’t reporting on children,’ Davies protested.

‘Well, the report here is about action taken by children, isn’t it?’ Brander pressed her.

Davies, her memory apparently intact now, replied:

‘I don’t know anything about the Schools Action Union, I wasn’t involved in any of that.’

Brander’s eyebrow could be heard raising, even through the silent transcription. She pointed out that it’s quite a lengthy report – running to 13 separate numbered paragraphs of intelligence – with a lot of detail. It named several of the children who’d been arrested.

The fact that the typed report exists means that, as with the others, it was discussed and approved by the spycops’ managers.

The accompanying written witness statement from HN348.

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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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Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 12

17 November 2020

Opening statement from Dave Smith

Witness hearings procedural meeting

Tuesday 17 November was scheduled to be a day off for the Undercover Policing Inquiry, but two items pushed their way onto the schedule.

Dave Smith, blacklisted trade unionist and core participant at the Inquiry, was due to give his opening statement along with everyone else last week. However, it was dramatically withdrawn after a legal challenge to its contents; specifically, that he was going to give the real name of one of the spycops who spied on him, Carlo Soracchi. This came even though the name has been in the public domain for 18 months and you just read it at the end of the previous sentence.

This led to anyone referring to Soracchi (real name of SDS undercover ‘Carlo Neri’) at the Inquiry having to promise not to say his actual name. After that was sorted out, Smith contracted Covid so had a further few days’ delay until today.

The other matter was a meeting of the barristers representing the various core participants at the Inquiry – police and those that were spied on – about the format of questioning witnesses. It followed a couple of grumpy exchanges between the Chair and Rajiv Menon QC, who represents non-state core participants, including the one where Mitting threatened Menon with being silenced.

Dave Smith
Blacklisted trade unionist

Smith explained that he spoke on behalf of the Blacklist Support Group (BSG), representing union members who were unlawfully blacklisted by major construction firms.

When the BSG first spoke about being blacklisted for union activities, they were ignored by the authorities and ridiculed as conspiracy theorists. But it isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s conspiracy fact – and it involves the collusion of the police and the security services.

TRADE UNIONS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN BLACKLISTED

Trade unions arose during time of the industrial revolution and British Empire, Smith said. As dynastic fortunes were made in the slave trade, Parliament – an institution then comprised solely of the very wealthy – was passing the Combinations Acts to make trade unions illegal.

State agents have spied on working class organisation ever since. Hostility towards trade unions – just like racism and sexism – became so deeply ingrained in the mindset of the British establishment that it has carried on through the generations.

In 1834, year of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, a meeting of the Master Builders in London agreed that every craftsman wanting work had to sign ‘the document’, a declaration that they would never join a trade union. Failure to sign meant dismissal or refusal of work which, in turn, meant destitution.

In 1919, a group of Conservative MPs, captains of industry, and ex-military intelligence officers set up the Economic League, ‘a crusade for capitalism’, keeping left wing union activists under surveillance and out of work. They had direct formal and informal links with police and MI5. Thousands of workers lost work.

THE CONSULTING ASSOCIATION

The Undercover Policing Inquiry will find that, after the Economic League closed down in 1993, Cullum McAlpine, director of Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd, bought the construction part of the Economic League’s blacklist to set up The Consulting Association.

This secret body was comprised of major construction companies including: Balfour Beatty, Laing O’Rourke, Costain, Skanska, Kier, Bam, Vinci, AMEC and AMEY. Between them, they illegally orchestrated the blacklisting of construction workers.

The Consulting Association was run by former Economic League employee, Ian Kerr. The Information Commissioner’s Office raided it in 2009, seizing files on 3,213 people. Details in the files included not only names, addresses and National Insurance numbers, but photos, phone numbers, car registrations, and information about the subject’s medical history and family members.

When a blacklisted worker was elected as a union representative, or when they raised concerns about safety on site, submitted an employment tribunal or took part in a protest, it was recorded on their Consulting Association blacklist file.

The Consulting Association didn’t have spies everywhere. Instead, construction companies nominated a contact, usually a director, who received information from managers on site and forwarded it to Ian Kerr.

INDUSTRIAL SCALE INDUSTRIAL BLACKLISTING

Every job applicant on major building projects had their name checked against the Consulting Association blacklist. If there was a match, the worker would be refused work or dismissed.

Each blacklisting name-check cost £2.20. The last set of invoices for Sir Robert McAlpine alone, when the company was building the Olympic Stadium, was for £28,000. This isn’t a few managers chatting after work, it’s industrial-scale, systematic blacklisting of union activists.

Because of blacklisting, in the middle of the 1990s building boom there were highly qualified and experienced workers who found themselves virtually unemployable. While many construction workers took their families on holidays, blacklisted workers defaulted on their mortgages.

THE HUMAN COST

Partners of blacklisted workers had to take two or three jobs to keep the family afloat. One wife of a blacklisted worker has spoken about the painful decision not to have a second child because of the family’s financial hardship. Families lost their homes and there were divorces.

Smith described how, in the 1990s he was a worker and trade union safety representative on the Jubilee Line Extension. Some of his fellow workers who took part in a safety dispute over the lack of fire alarms at London Bridge station ended up being blacklisted.

Some of those workers went on to take their own lives. No one can say that blacklisting was the sole reason for any suicide, but prolonged periods of unemployment and family tensions are not good for anyone’s mental health. Blacklisting has contributed to deaths.

Blacklisting causes workers’ deaths in other ways. When union safety reps are sacked for highlighting unsafe conditions such as asbestos, electrical safety or poor scaffolding, it sends a message to other workers and creates a climate of fear where they’re too scared to report concerns.

As a result, the blacklisting of safety reps is a factor in workplace fatality rates in the construction industry – consistently the sector with the highest number of deaths of any major industry in the UK.

Parliament was so outraged by The Consulting Association that it introduced the Blacklisting Regulations 2010. In 2016, a High Court case was settled when the UK’s biggest building firms made a public apology and paid damages for their blacklisting activities.

SPYCOPS BREAK THE LAW

But the Undercover Policing Inquiry will find that it wasn’t just the major firms who kept union activists under surveillance and contributed to blacklisting – it was the same political police who are at the heart of the Inquiry.

The police’s internal spycops investigation, Operation Herne, produced a report on blacklisting which said:

‘Police, including Special Branches and the Security Services, supplied information to the blacklist funded by the country’s major construction firms, The Consulting Association’

The police investigation found that, prior to The Consulting Association’s foundation in the 1990s:

‘Special Branches throughout the UK had direct contact with the Economic League, public authorities, private industry and trade unions.’

The Undercover Policing Inquiry has already seen that, from the start of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) in 1968, spying on left-wing trade union activists was a central part of the unit’s activities.

Special Branch files were effectively a database for MI5, private firms and others to find out about trade union activists. Indeed, many trade unions had their own dedicated Special Branch files.

SPECIAL BRANCH INDUSTRIAL UNIT

The Special Branch Industrial Unit was established in 1970, just two years after the SDS, ‘with the aim of monitoring trade unionists from teaching to the docks’ and developing a network of industry contacts that included company directors, as well as General Secretaries of trade unions.

The police’s Operation Herne report said the Special Branch Industrial Unit had a dedicated officer as official liaison with Economic League. Industry informers had two-way sharing of info with Special Branch’s Industrial Unit. Intelligence gathered by both undercover and uniformed officers was available to the Industrial Unit and was passed on to both major employers and blacklisting organisations.

SDS spycops often worked for the Industrial Unit, before or after being deployed undercover. One was HN336, who told us yesterday that Chief Superintendent Herbert Guy ‘Bert’ Lawrenson, head of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch’s C Squad in the SDS’s early days, went to work for the Economic League.

For all its admissions, Operation Herne didn’t even mention Lawrenson. Blacklisted workers expect the Inquiry to examine the relationship between officers from the Special Branch Industrial Unit and their former boss, the man who quite possibly hired & trained them, Bert Lawrenson.

SPYCOPS DATABASE

As well as Special Branch files, police intelligence on political activists was kept on the National Domestic Extremism Database (NDED), originally compiled by the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), a sister unit to the SDS and one of the main topics of the Inquiry.

This database holds information on thousands of citizens who the State considers ‘domestic extremists’, many of whom have committed no crime whatsoever. Another unit responsible for the database was the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (NETCU).

Superintendent Steve Pearl, NETCU’s former head, told the Daily Telegraph that the unit was set up to:

‘take over MI5’s covert role watching groups such as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, trade-union activists and left-wing journalists’.

The Consulting Association constitution required companies to send a director to secret quarterly meetings.

In October 2008, Detective Chief Inspector Gordon Mills of NETCU gave a presentation to a secret Consulting Association meeting that included eight senior managers from blacklisting firms. He told them of ‘emerging threats’ from the left wing, for which ‘companies needed to have strong vetting procedures in place’. Bear in mind that this was a police officer helping the Consulting Association, a company whose work was illegal.

In a witness statement compiled for the High Court blacklisting trial, Ian Kerr, Consulting Association CEO, said that NETCU:

‘wanted an output for their information… I gave them the email addresses of the contacts in the construction industry and they would feed them information’

NETCU and the Special Branch Industrial Unit, along with all the spycops units, are now absorbed into the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command. State spying on unions is now classified as counter-terrorism!

Sharing of police intelligence across all sectors of industry continues through Operation Fairway and the National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit’s Industrial Liaison section. In 2010, the National Coordinator for Special Branch urged police forces across the UK to become ‘more proactive’ in putting on Special Branch briefings, to share information with academics and contacts in business and the public sector.

Special Branch clearly know that when they tell an employer someone is on a database of extremists, it will affect lives. It is the only possible result – and, therefore, the only real purpose – of their sharing information on trade unionists.

PERSONAL SPYCOPS

Smith then focused on a small group of union activists on the blacklist of which he was part. From the early 1990s until mid 2000s, they were spied on by three separate SDS officers: Peter Francis, Mark Jenner and Carlo Soracchi.

Mark Jenner infiltrated the construction union UCATT as ‘Mark Cassidy’. Claiming to be a joiner, he attended Hackney Branch of UCATT, and his union subscriptions were paid by a bank account set up by Special Branch.

In his undercover role, Jenner attended picket lines, protests, meetings and conferences. After each meeting, his partner recalled him at their shared home typing up pages of handwritten notes, presumably to be fed back to Special Branch as intelligence reports.

Jenner also infiltrated the Colin Roach Centre, which was home to Hackney Trade Union Resource Centre, and two small union groups in which Jenner actively inveigled himself; the Building Workers Safety Campaign and the Brian Higgins Defence Campaign.

Jenner actually chaired meetings and used his position as ‘a worker fighting for safety at work’ to contact union branch secretaries from unions including UCATT, UNISON, TGWU, RMT, EPIU, NUT and CPSA.

He wrote letters to safety body London Hazards Centre, and to INQUEST, the charity that supports people campaigning over deaths in police custody. Brian Higgins and John Jones were leaders of groups Jenner infiltrated, and both have entries on their blacklist files relating to those campaigns.

Smith personally remembers Jenner being particularly disruptive at meetings they both attended in Conway Hall, London. While spying on picket lines over unpaid wages at Waterloo, Jenner also came into contact and spied on other people, some of whom are now core participants in the Undercover Policing Inquiry.

One of these is Steve Hedley, currently Senior Assistant General Secretary of the RMT rail union. In the 1990s, Hedley was in a union delegation to Northern Ireland as part of the peace process organised by the Hackney Trade Union Resource Centre and the Colin Roach Centre. Mark Jenner was also part of that delegation and stayed at Hedley’s family home during the trip.

ANTI-FASCIST & PROUD

The trade union movement is proud of opposing fascism. At the time of spycops Peter Francis, Carlo Soracchi and Mark Jenner’s deployments, fascists were terrorising communities, planting bombs and committing racist murders. They also targeted union offices.

Construction union activists stewarded labour movement events to protect them from fascist thugs. One loose network, of which Smith was a part, who did this was known as the ‘Away Team’. Spycops Peter Francis, Mark Jenner and Carlo Soracchi all spied on them.

Smith flatly accuses Mark Jenner, and through him the British State, of interfering with the internal democratic processes of an independent trade union. They did it by covertly joining the union UCATT, participating in debates and voting at meetings on policy motions; by distributing literature favouring a particular candidate; by calling for the sacking of an elected union convener; and by creating divisions.

Jenner also deceived ‘Alison’, an activist for the National Union of Teachers, into a five year co-habiting relationship during his deployment (Her account of this was heard on Day 6). Misogynist abuse of women activists is one of the most disgraceful human rights violations of the whole spycops scandal.

CARLO SORACCHI

When Jenner’s deployment was coming to an end, another spycops officer, Carlo Soracchi, using the name ‘Carlo Neri’ was sent to spy on the same group of activists.

On more than one occasion, Soracchi incited Frank Smith, Dan Gilman and Joe Batty to fire bomb a charity shop in North London. Joe Batty was a TGWU union steward. He has been denied core participant status by the Inquiry.

Soracchi claimed the shop in question was run by Roberto Fiore, leader of Italian fascist party Forza Nuova. Fiore fled Italy while being wanted by Italian police in connection with the terrorist bombing of Bologna railway station in 1980 that killed 85 people.

Smith accuses Carlo Soracchi of being an agent provocateur, of deliberately attempting to entrap union members by inciting them to commit arson. The spied-upon activists wanted nothing to do with the idea: they are trade union and anti-fascist activists, not terrorists.

Soracchi also deceived a Transport and General Workers Union rep from a homelessness charity, Donna McLean, into a relationship. She was one of two women he targeted for a relationship, the other being ‘Lindsey’.

Soracchi, having orchestrated a split from Donna, then moved in with Steve Hedley as a lodger. In October 2004, Hedley was victimised and sacked from the Channel Tunnel Rail Link project, a dispute that appears on his blacklisting file. Soracchi turned up on the picket line, spying on union members while supposedly showing solidarity with Hedley.

Smith mused on the bizarre fact that he was prohibited from saying Carlo Soracchi’s real name in this statement. He’s known it for over five years. When he published the book Blacklisted: The Secret War Between Big Business & Union Activists in 2016, he opted not to use Soracchi’s real name.

However, it’s now been in the public domain for 18 months. Four weeks ago Smith had an article published in Tribune in which he referred to Soracchi’s incitement to commit arson, using his real name.

It’s another one of the topsy-turvy aspects of the Inquiry that it, as the body charged with uncovering the truth about spycops, is the one place that we can’t say the spycop’s name.

PETER FRANCIS

Spycops did not merely spy on trade unionists: the intelligence they gathered was passed on to employers and found its way onto the blacklists.

Former spycop Peter Francis admits opening the Special Branch file on Frank Smith in the early 1990s. It included entries about his anti-racist role in the Away Team and his relationship with an American woman, Lisa Teuscher.

Francis says the blacklist file on Frank Smith uses his appraisal and almost his exact words: ‘under constant watch officially and seen as politically dangerous’. It’s laughable to suggest a construction manager could be the source of that.

Francis also gathered intelligence on Lisa Teuscher, primarily because of her role in the anti-racist campaign group Youth Against Racism in Europe. Spycops had her refused Indefinite Leave To Remain in the UK. She has a blacklist file, despite not working in construction at all.

SYSTEMATIC SHARING

No-one is suggesting spycops personally provided info to the blacklist. That was not their job. It was more senior officers from the Special Branch Industrial Unit or NETCU who were tasked with sharing information with ‘industry contacts’.

Another glaring example of information being fed to The Consulting Association blacklist from Special Branch relates to an incident in November 1999. Every Remembrance Day, the fascist National Front lay a wreath at the Cenotaph. That year, Frank Smith, Dan Gilman and Steve Hedley were there at a counter-demonstration.

Operation Herne has confirmed that the three core participants were observed by police on the day and that intelligence about their participation at the Cenotaph was added to Special Branch files. Within a few days, the same information appears on the blacklist, marked as supplied by Costain.

Two senior Costain managers are known to have had close relationships with Special Branch spycops: Dudley Barrett (now retired) and Gayle Burton (currently a senior executive at the Jockey Club).

If the purpose of the spycop units was genuinely, as the police claim, to detect serious criminality or public disorder, why, in over ten years of spying, were none of these people ever charged or prosecuted with a serious criminal offence? This is nothing to do with disorder or crime, it’s purely political policing.

Smith made another accusation: that the Special Branch Industrial Unit and NETCU supplied information to the blacklist.

PARTISAN POLICING

Despite what the police claim, they are not neutral. The State is never neutral in a major dispute between big business and trade unions. Police collusion in blacklisting is not an aberration, or the actions of a rogue unit, it is standard operating procedures for political police.

Seven million people in the UK are members of trade unions. And the unions are simply their members, rather than something separate. To spy on any union members or officials is to spy on the union as a whole. Those seven million deserve to know which of their branches were spied on, and which reps weren’t who they thought they were.

We want the names of the trade unions and all of the 1,000+ political groups that were reported on by the spycops to be released. But we want much more than that. We want the names of the contacts, and the companies that were provided with information about union members.

BLACKLISTING BEYOND CONSTRUCTION

We have found the construction industry’s blacklist, but clearly other industries have their own versions. The BBC kept a Staff Transfer Register (of those vetted by MI5). The Subversion in Public Life database, run by the security services, was used to blacklist civil servants. The retail sector’s National Staff Dismissal Register blacklist was actually funded by a £1million grant from the Home Office!

The 2002 BBC documentary True Spies featured an undercover officer explaining that Ford’s Halewood factory in Liverpool provided Special Branch with a list of all job applicants to vet. One of the spycops featured in it stated:

‘It was very, very important that trade unions were monitored… We were expected to check these lists. You call it blacklisting and that’s what it is. In any war there are always going to be casualties’.

PRIVATISATION OF STATE SPYING

Assistant Chief Constable Anton Setchell was the officer in charge of the UK police ‘domestic extremism’ spycops between 2004 and 2010. He is currently head of global security at Laing O’Rourke, one of the construction firms who worked with spycops to create and maintain the blacklist.

Superintendent Steve Pearl, who ran NETCU, is now a non-executive director at Agenda Security Services. Barrie Gane, the former deputy head of MI6, sits on the Board of Threat Response International. Both companies report on activists for corporate clients.

Control Risks, a private security firm that employs ex-State spies, had a £59,000 contract with Crossrail to keep union activists under surveillance. Those spied on included Frank Morris, first union rep on the publicly funded project, who was sacked within days of being elected.

Given the mass privatisation over the past four decades, has there been a blurring of the lines between State and corporate spying? Which companies got contracts? How much taxpayers’ money have they been given? If State spying is now privatised, what oversight is there?

WE UNCOVERED THE TRUTH

Smith said that the Blacklist Support Group is extremely sceptical about the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s chances of success. Everything we know so far about the spycops scandal in relation to trade unions and blacklisting is known because activists have uncovered it.

Steve Acheson has one of the largest blacklist files in the country and was almost unemployable for nearly a decade, nearly losing his home. It is people like Steve who have helped uncover the truth – not the police.

When the Blacklist Support Group first complained about police involvement in blacklisting in 2012, the Metropolitan Police refused to even accept the complaint! After lawyers got the complaint accepted, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, confirmed that:

‘it is likely that all Special Branches were involved in providing information about prospective employees.’

NETCU, a spycops unit that operated for seven years, now claims that all their files have been destroyed, and not a single page still exists. That is a blatant lie. Not only must their files still exist, I imagine they’re still being accessed.

As the Hillsborough families, the wrongly imprisoned striking miners, the Birmingham 6, and so many others can attest, it’s not name-calling to say police are capable of lying. So why do the police get the benefit of the doubt?

As recently as 2018, the police were telling us, and the Inquiry, that only one spycops officer had joined a union. It was clear then that this was nonsense. Any officer spying on unions without being a member would have stuck out a mile. They’re still lying to us.

We want our police files. But the police say they ‘neither confirm nor deny’ that they have such a file, due to national security.

TRUTH DENIED

In July 2018, the Blacklist Support Group held a meeting with Inquiry team, and specifically requested the release of police files on Brian Higgins and John Jones. This was because those two core participants were both severely ill and in their 70s.

The BSG was given assurances by the Chair of the Inquiry, Sir John Mitting, that everything possible would be done to make this disclosure happen. More than two years later, the files have still not been released. Brian has died.

What possible national security reason can there be for denying a dying man access to his police file from the 1990s? Brian Higgins’ family are outraged at their treatment by the Inquiry.

The Inquiry is relying on reports from the police’s internal investigation, Operation Herne, yet they are selective, partisan publications. What’s striking is their use of language. They qualify terms, such as ‘alleged victimisation’ and ‘supposed blacklisting’, even though they had cast-iron proof in their own files.

There are 74 appendices to Operation Herne’s report – including witness statements with the former Special Branch contact with the Economic League – none of which have been disclosed to the Blacklist Support Group.

The Herne officers called Smith’s book, ‘Blacklisted’, ‘the most comprehensive collection of material on the subject’, a fact that demonstrates the need for accounts from activists who have uncovered the truth to be treated by the Inquiry with as much, if not more, validity as witness statements from the officers.

The 1968-72 spycops’ annual reports that have been published by the Inquiry should be seen for what they are: PR exercises for their bosses. The Inquiry must stop taking police documents as objective.

LIES, DELAYS & EXCLUSION

Rather than being transparent and accessible, the Inquiry has set up as many barriers as possible to prevent core participants, the public and the media from being able to view or listen to proceedings. Seeing the oral evidence is only possible for 60 people who have pre-registered, who must then travel to London during a lockdown to sit in a windowless, unventilated room and watch the proceedings on a TV screen.

The only other way to view evidence is via a transcript feed, which is like being transported back to the 1980s to watch it on Ceefax. This just doesn’t work. People get their news from the media, and the Inquiry’s system makes it impossible for journalists to check quotes which, in turn, means they can’t post reports in time for the TV and radio news.

BBC reporter Dominic Casciani said:

‘from a practical perspective as a working reporter, a public inquiry becomes largely impossible to report’

At the start of each day, the Chair states that:

‘members of the public are entitled to hear the same public evidence as I will hear and to reach your own conclusions about it.’

This is patently not true. Though it’s easily resolvable. The Inquiry could live-stream all of the evidence, exactly as the Grenfell public inquiry is doing. Unfortunately there seems little chance of this, and we seem to be watching a good old-fashioned Establishment cover-up take place before our eyes.

DON’T EXPECT JUSTICE

The treatment of blacklisted workers by the British legal system does not make us optimistic. The multinational corporations that ruined so many lives were literally able to buy themselves out of a High Court trial involving over 700 claimants.

Blacklisted workers do not expect justice from the State investigating itself. Blacklisted workers are participating in the slim hope that some evidence of the anti-union bias, institutional racism, and institutional sexism of the British State’s spying machinery will be exposed.

Keeping this dark underbelly of anti-democratic political policing hidden is against the public interest. It only helps the perpetrators, not the survivors, nor the British public.

The police can claim all they like that they were protecting democracy. But by spying on trade union members and colluding with our blacklisting, spycops are actually just protecting big business and capitalism.

For the avoidance of all doubt: capitalism and democracy are not the same thing.

PDF of the accompanying written opening statement from Dave Smith on behalf of the Blacklist Support Group

Witness hearings procedural meeting

 

The Inquiry then held a meeting of four of the barristers representing core participants, in the hope of agreeing a format for asking questions of witnesses.

All this revolves around the “Rule 10” issue, referring to legislation setting out guidance for how a public inquiry should work. Rule 10 is not permission to ask questions of a witness, but the right to submit them to the Inquiry to have them asked. There is no requirement for the Inquiry to accept those questions to be asked, or to let a non-Inquiry barrister ask the questions – that is all at the discretion of the Inquiry’s Chair.

At the moment, the various lawyers submit their lists of questions to one barrister, the ‘Counsel for the Inquiry’, who then deals with the witness. The idea is that this stops it turning into an ‘adversarial process’ that feels like a criminal trial, with witnesses trying not to be ‘caught out’. It means placing a lot of trust in the impartiality, thoroughness and skill of the Inquiry Counsel.

Over the last week, the barristers for some of the different categories of core participants have been submitting the questions they would like to have asked alongside those being asked by the Inquiry. Some of our questions have been accepted by the Inquiry and asked. This has allowed us to unpick some of the points that matter most to us.

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS

However, there has been an issue with this system. Once a question has elicited an answer, it has not been possible to follow up with another question. We have said all along that our input at this stage would be necessary for the effective examination of witnesses’ evidence. Another issue is the Inquiry’s reluctance to accept questions about the wider issues, such as institutional sexism, rather than about specific ‘facts’, as if the Inquiry is buying the police line that the past is a different country.

Last week, the Inquiry allowed two of the barristers representing non-state core participants to ask questions of witnesses. However, the request to do this from one of those barristers, by Rajiv Menon QC, led to Mittings’ extraordinarily fractious behaviour.

Specifically, SDS undercover and administrator Joan Hillier was asked about the possibility that her close colleague, Helen Crampton, had deceived someone she was spying on into a relationship. The Chair, Sir John Mitting, felt that this question was sprung on Hillier without warning and was therefore not fair.

THRASHING IT OUT

The meeting today included Menon, with Ruth Brander (also working for the non-state core participants), Oliver Sanders QC (representing 114 undercover officers), and Peter Skelton QC (from the Metropolitan Police).

Mitting began by saying that the format for questioning witnesses remains a ‘work in progress’. There will be a meeting in January for those involved, to discuss how it will work for the next round of hearings. These are currently scheduled to take place in March or April 2021.

All four lawyers said that was fine with them.

Mitting said to Menon that Rule 10 is there to allow the Inquiry to control its proceedings. He listed three incidents that he wanted to give Menon a dressing-down for:

1. Tariq Ali, answering a question of Menon’s, had named an individual, breaching a Restriction Order on divulging the name.

“This isn’t a court”, said Mitting. We can’t explore every relevant issue, we have statutory limits. I have to protect people’s rights and privacy.

2. Menon’s question to spycop John Graham (about taking part in a ballot at a political meeting that he had infiltrated) was described by Mitting as ‘unhelpful’. He agreed it did not cause any harm, but he still didn’t like it.

3. Mitting felt that Menon questioning former officer Joan Hillier about her colleague Helen Crampton (who may have had a relationship with someone she was spying on in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, George Cochrane) was bang out of order.

Mitting said witnesses must have significant advance warning of what they’ll be asked about. We can’t let you do this stuff, it’s not a trial, we have different processes than a court.

MENON NAMES NAMES

Menon said that Ali was asked by the Inquiry about a meeting at the Notting Hill branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. A spycops’ report was on the screen, with a redacted name of someone who’d distributed a leaflet. Ali couldn’t comment without knowing the name.

Menon explained that he knew the name. He believed the man to be dead and so unaffected by privacy issues, and hoped that telling Ali the name would help jog his memory. Which, indeed, it did.

It turns out the man in question is not dead. Menon said if he’d known that he wouldn’t have named him, and he apologised. It was also this incident which led him to be more vague when questioning Joan Hillier later on.

Menon emphasised that these mistakes are the inevitable result of having to process thousands of pages of police documents in a short space of time, check the facts and formulate questions. They received 5,500 pages with only four weeks to go before the hearings began.

MENON DE-VOTED

Menon then turned to his questioning of officer John Graham, defending it stoutly. Graham was one of nine undercover officers present at a meeting that voted on the route of a demonstration. Menon said it was directly relevant to the Inquiry, not because the nine might have swung the decision one way or the other, but because we should be told how the police voted.

If, say, they voted with the people wanting a confrontational route, then it’s directly in the Inquiry’s remit – it’s about spycops and public order policing. Either way voting at all is contrary to Special Demonstration Squad founder Conrad Dixon’s document on the ‘penetration’ of groups, which insists they eschew active roles.

Mitting admitted that “no harm whatever had been done by that line of questioning”, and that his doubts about its usefulness were just a “matter of opinion” between him and Menon.

MENON & THE FIRST SPYCOP RELATIONSHIP

Menon then addressed his questioning of Joan Hillier. The issue of officers deceiving people they spied on into relationships is a major theme of the Inquiry, and here we have a strong indication that it was happening from the start. He said Hillier is the only surviving officer who infiltrated the group (Notting Hill branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign), so he would be failing in his professional duty both to his clients and to the Inquiry’s seeking the truth if he didn’t ask questions of the only possible witness.

Menon said he only got the information the night before. He drafted specific questions (albeit without sources) and sent them to the Inquiry lawyers, but they didn’t bother getting back to him. When Counsel to the Inquiry failed to ask about this, he applied to ask these questions himself. At the time, Mitting agreed that this was an important issue, and gave permission for the questions to go ahead, so it’s a bit rich to complain.

Menon stands by his decision to raise this issue, and has suggested that better communication on the Inquiry’s part might prevent problems of this kind arising again.

Mitting said that the outside world doesn’t understand the Covid-times problems of getting documents to everyone who needs them. He recognises that it puts a lot of time pressure on lawyers, but that’s going to be the way it is.

Menon asked if documents could be handed out piecemeal, as soon as they’re redacted and whatever, rather than piling them up and dropping them in a massive stack at short notice. He wants maximum time with as much of the evidence as possible. He requested that materials for the next hearings are made available sooner rather than later (eg in December rather than February), to him and the other non-state lawyers, so they have time to go through the evidence in advance of the next set of hearings.

BRANDER: GIVE US TIME

Ruth Brander (also representing non-state core participants) said it would help to have a proper explanation about exactly what the Inquiry’s delays are. Victims of spycops feel like they’re at the bottom of the list for their input, the last to get the disclosed files, and left with explanations.

She said non-state core participants will be able to give real value to the understanding of documents yet they don’t get to see them until they’re made public, after they’ve been brought up as evidence in the Inquiry. It makes her clients feel repeatedly excluded from the Inquiry. (Non state core participants have repeatedly raised this issue with the Inquiry Legal Team, but been consistently ignored. It is seen as another way in which the Inquiry is skewed in favour of the police, who obviously have access to the files that they themselves made.)

Brander pointed out that if the non-state core participants only see the material “for the first time, as it’s passing by their eyes on the screen, they have virtually no opportunity to feed into the process”,

Mitting said that he asks for questions for witnesses to be handed in a week in advance, and they generally do get asked, so what’s the problem?

Brander said both she and Menon struggle with the seven-day deadline because she’s not allowed to share the disclosed police documents with most of her clients. For most, they first see the evidence as it rolls by on the screen during the hearing. At the end of each day, she receives queries from her clients wondering why certain questions weren’t asked.

Especially, the women deceived into relationships want to know about the origins of the practice, but aren’t allowed to see documents unless they relate to the period that the particular officer was involved in.

BRANDER: EVIDENCE ALREADY SHOWS WE NEED ACCESS

Brander noted that we’ve had two officers this week who admitted going out for dinner and drinks with women they spied on very early in the history of the spycops units, and that they did it to bolster their credibility. This is important and relevant to the women later abused by officers, but they don’t get to suggest questions because they don’t see the material in advance.

Brander made a solid proposal, asking for the remainder of this phase – namely this week – to have ten minutes at the end of witnesses’ evidence for non-state questioning. This will allow her to communicate with clients who’ve come up with questions while following the hearing. She emphasised that this would assist the Chair in his role, not just be some kind of ‘favour’ to her.

She then said she wants to broaden the scope of questioning, not keep it limited to people directly affected by that individual witness. The women deceived into relationships have a lot of knowledge and expertise that others can’t bring to bear on this. Black justice campaigns and others will be in a similar expert position to see the systemic issues and ask the right questions of the witnesses to reveal the over-arching themes.

POLICE LAWYERS

Skelton represents the Metropolitan Police. This is the organisation which tried to strike out court cases brought against them by the women, and caused years of delay to this Inquiry, by applying for every officer to be given total anonymity and every hearing to be conducted in private).

He said ‘the Met hasn’t improperly delayed the disclosure process’. He added that he knew Menon didn’t believe him but his clients hope that the Inquiry does.

That out of the way, Skelton said that Menon’s questioning of Hillier was an ‘issue of fairness’ and suggested that such contentious issues need more consideration. Hillier should have been told she’d be asked about Helen Crampton’s alleged relationship, and seen the evidence if it exists. This can’t be allowed to happen again.

Skelton said the Inquiry is inquisitorial not adversarial, it’s not trying to build a case. Rule 10, under which witnesses are questioned by a single lawyer working for the Inquiry, encourages witnesses to give ‘free and open evidence’ because they feel the questioner is neutral, not hostile. He took the trouble to specify that this was especially important for elderly witnesses like these, who have felt ‘personally under attack’ for many years

Skelton concluded by saying that everyone wants to see their questions asked, but that would have to apply to everyone and would be long-winded and unwieldy (and costly). The Met are satisfied with the current, ‘hybrid’ arrangement, and would like Mitting only to allow extra questions when there are ‘significant factual disputes’.

Sanders, representing a lot of individual officers (including HN328 and HN336), endorsed Skelton’s words. And criticised Menon for asking questions of HN328 last week without Mitting’s express permission. Police witnesses aren’t alleged to have done anything wrong, he said, referring to the subjects of an Inquiry into the wrong-doing of police officers. It unsettles them to be asked things they didn’t expect. Some of the non-state core participants have partisan and hostile views about the officers, he said. The police hate the idea of the non-state legal representatives getting ten minutes to effectively cross-examine them.

David Barr (Counsel to the Inquiry) said Rule 10 avoids delay and repetition, makes it fairer and keeps costs down. It’s more work for lawyers, certainly, but basically worth it.

Mitting said he’d discuss this issue with Barr and get back to everyone.

MITTING: FEELING BETRAYED

Before the break, Brander brought up another issue. The system of suggesting questions in advance cannot work when her clients who would have questions to suggest don’t see the evidence in advance. Either they need access to the evidence in advance, or else they have to be allowed to ask questions at the end. To have neither is “have both hands tied together behind our backs” and shuts us out.

Mitting then made a really insensitive criticism of ‘Rosa‘, one of the women who was deceived into a relationship by spycop Jim Boyling. Mitting said that multiple core participants have asked for a live-stream to their homes, like Mitting has to his. He has only granted this request to one person, ‘Rosa’, because of her exceptional circumstances. When she applied , she said she didn’t want these circumstances to be made public.

Mitting said he was surprised that Phillippa Kaufmann QC’s opening statement last week included a detailed description of Rosa’s story and circumstances, using a lot of the same phrasing that she’d previously wanted kept confidential.

Brander seemed taken aback, unsure of the exact basis of Mitting’s complaint. It wasn’t relevant to the question of seeing evidence in advance, it was more like venting something that had been bothering him for a while. His tone firmly indicated a sense of having been hoodwinked in some way.

Brander said she’d try to speak to Rosa but could certainly affirm that there is no doubt to the truth of Rosa’s statement. Rather it appears she decided it was OK to mention her circumstances in public in the specific context of Kaufmann talking about exactly what spycops did to women they abused.

PROCEDURE DECISION

The Inquiry took a break for Mitting and Barr to discuss the changes to the procedure of questioning witnesses. They came back with the decision that for the rest of this phase – i.e., until Thursday, with only two witnesses – once Counsel for the Inquiry has finished asking the aggregated questions from the various lawyers, the hearing will pause for 10 minutes and the lawyers can tell Mitting if they’ve anything additional to ask.

Mitting spelled out that there is no way this will be the format for the next hearings, but a better system will have been designed by then. Brander and Menon thanked him.

MITTING: ALOOF AND REMOTE

Brander raised Mitting’s querying of Rosa, saying Rosa wants to make a public response as:

‘she was quite alarmed that her integrity was called into question in a public hearing without advance notice’

As for the chronology, Brander explained, Rosa’s refusal to agree to her application being made public was a week before the Opening Statement was finalised, which included a lot of the same details. It was a very difficult and painful process for Rosa to feel she could put her story in a public Opening Statement made to the Inquiry. She took it right to the deadline because it was so unsettling for her.

Mitting said he accepted all that unreservedly, and that he never meant to criticise her integrity:

‘It’s not necessary, frankly, for her to make a public response, but she’d free to do so if she wishes’.

This is yet another example of his absolute failure to understand what he’s dealing with. He treated it as if Rosa had somehow got one over on him, or debased his precious gift of confidentiality. The fact that he brought it up in response to a request for live-streaming speaks volumes too; the subject was public streaming, yet he didn’t talk about that, but went off into something that appears to have stuck in his craw since last week and he can’t shake it.

His final comment, with the dismissively barbed ‘frankly’ jutting out, showed that he has no understanding of the scale of the trauma Rosa and the other women face. Nor, indeed, of the way that trauma in general produces conflicting intense feelings.

Many of those abused by spycops simultaneously feel that they want the world to know their story, but also that they’ve been invaded too much and can’t stand the pain of the slightest thing more being taken from them. When dealing with the huge trauma that comes from having your life violated by spycops, it is hugely important for victims to have some semblance of control over the narrative of their own lives.

Mitting showed more concern for his feeling put-out at having a decision seemingly undermined than for all the unspeakable horror that Rosa has been subjected to and her right to tell of it as she see fit, despite having had it explained to him so unflinchingly and eloquently by Phillippa Kaufmann QC.

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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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Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 11

16 November 2020

Evidence from:

Officer HN336 aka ‘Dick Epps’
Officer HN340 aka ‘Andy Bailey’ or ‘Alan Nixon’

At the Undercover Policing Inquiry, Monday 16 November was taken up by hearing evidence from two former spycops. Both were deployed between 1969 and 1972. Both have scant memories of key incidents, yet still yielded vital details.

Last week we learned that many of the spycops abuses of power ‘- deceiving people they spied on into relationships, attending family events, spying beyond their jurisdiction – were around from the very earliest days of their unit. Today we added another one to the list – another MP has been confirmed as being spied on by these officers of the counter-democratic political secret police.

SELECTIVE AMNESIA

Tom Fowler, who was spied on in the 2000s by officer ‘Marco Jacobs‘, has been following the hearings and said:

‘Given that the events being talked about are up to 52 years ago, it doesn’t seem unreasonable that memories of the details of many events don’t come to mind.

‘However, it is very telling that all five of the former professional falsifiers had rather good memories on certain matters, generally ones that absolved them of blame, like “it was definitely just one drink one, one time”, only to have blank memories on other issues that might unearth more detail on what kind of operation Conrad Dixon was running with the Special Demonstration Squad, like “my closest colleague acting as a prosecution witness in a case that successfully convicted an innocent man of incitement to riot, based on a leaflet she collected at a meeting I attend with her? I really can’t remember anything”.

‘No one remembers any discussion with any of the colleagues about anything to do with any of their deployments, even ones that overlapped their own undercover roles…

‘A number of the officers remarked that the evidence bundle that had been presented to them was missing an unknown number of reports they had written… [while there are] plenty of others which bear the names of officers who dismiss the contents as “far too eloquent” for anything they might have written.

‘You begin to get the impression that one section of the SDS was putting together all the reports that justified the existence of the unit, whilst the rest of the officers were there to sign off whatever was written, regardless of whether they had picked up the intelligence themselves or not.’

GUERILLA COVERAGE

The Undercover Policing Inquiry still refuses to live-steam its hearings, only giving us a time-delayed on-screen transcript that can’t be paused or rewound. It makes the whole process much harder to follow.

The women from Police Spies Out of Lives, which represents women who were deceived into relationships by spycops, have taken matters into their own hands by doing a live feed of them reading the Inquiry’s transcript.

There is, of course, no reason why the Inquiry can’t provide us with its audio of the hearings. It would be no different to the readalong in terms of security. It’s further evidence of the way regards victims of spycops as marginal and the wider public as an irrelevance.

Once again, it falls to those abused by spycops to do the work to bring the facts to the public. This one doesn’t even have security excuses, it’s just that they feel the public are an irrelevance.

Follow the readalong when the hearings are happening on the Police Spies Out of Lives YouTube channel.

Back to the day at the Inquiry:

‘Dick Epps’

SDS officer HN336

‘Day 11’ of the Undercover Policing Inquiry began with the testimony of officer HN336 – ‘Dick Epps’.

In his time undercover in the Special Demonstration Squad between 1969 and 1972, Epps infiltrated:

• Britain Vietnam Solidarity Front
• Vietnam Solidarity Campaign
• British Campaign for Peace in Vietnam
• Stop The Seventy Tour
• International Marxist Group

Later, he worked for Special Branch’s Industrial Section and appeared as ‘Dan’ in the 2002 BBC documentary True Spies.

Dick Epps’ testimony touched on several issues, including chauvinistic reporting of targets, Special Branch burglaries, and the connection between Special Branch and the blacklisting of trade unionists.

Counsel to the Inquiry, David Barr, kicked off proceedings by asking the former undercover questions around search warrants – your general police training, pre-Special Branch – did it cover entering private dwellings?

Epps answered that it did so. However, there was no special training regarding attending political meetings – Special Branch officers learned ‘on the job’. This included how to write up reports – he was expected to record who attended meetings (if he could identify them) and admitted that just attending a meeting was enough for someone to be included in a report.

He was given verbal instructions, and provided with general support by his colleagues:

‘I was never sat down in a classroom or a training room and given a training manual, or training lectures… We were all, if you like, being thrown into a maelstrom, and seeking to find some sense of what we were trying to do’

He admitted that there was no actual training or briefing about the groups that were being spied on.

Epps couldn’t recall making a separate report about any person but did talk about how someone might draw attention to themselves at a meeting and this would be recorded.

Epps also described it as a ‘fundamental requirement’ that undercovers report on a group’s plans, activities, discussions and interests. He then spoke about those days being different and added that ‘political correctness’ hadn’t been invented yet. He said that his superiors were always curious about the content of his reports, but didn’t give him much feedback. Reports would be altered and ‘tweaked’ by the SDS office staff to match the ‘style’ used by the unit.

Later he added that his reports would include personal details of any ‘new faces’ he met at these meetings – though he claimed he had no idea if this info was used for vetting or not. However, he had admitted to working within Special Branch for five years before joining the SDS, and knew that most forms went to MI5.

SUBVERSION

As with previous witnesses, he was then asked about his understanding of the term ‘subversion’. Specifically, what he meant by distinguishing (in his written statement) between ‘peaceful genuine protest’ and that which was ‘divisive or venomous’ – was that a personal distinction or an official one?

His answer eventually settled on it being more a personal one:

‘my feeling was, and is, that we existed within a very sophisticated political system that’s evolved over many years, and there is an order to the way that system might be changed. As a parliamentary democracy, it’s through the ballot box.

‘And there were and are those that seek to disturb that balance of matters and subvert that system by other means. And so that would be, in the broadest terms, my understanding of “subversion”.

He was asked how secretive the SDS was within Special Branch – he thought that in the early days some people within the Branch knew of the new unit’s existence, but many did not: ‘you didn’t ask questions’.

Oddly, he has also claimed that he was never actually ‘targeted’ into any specific group or individual, but just went out ‘fishing’ to see what groups he could latch onto. In fact, something that stood out strongly with Epps (as well as some of the other undercovers) is that he seemed to drift aimlessly between one group and another.

BRITAIN VIETNAM SOLIDARITY FRONT

The first group that Epps spied on was the Britain Vietnam Solidarity Front (BVSF) – politically Maoist in belief. They met weekly at the Union Tavern Pub on King Cross Road and the meetings were large enough (20-25 people) that a new person wouldn’t stand out too much.

Epps protested that for the BVSF:

‘I think “infiltration” sounds rather too strong a word. I attended the meetings and I was interested from a professional point of view in terms of learning what their viewpoints were, and also trying to glean anything from that that might take me elsewhere, in time.’

He also said the BVSF provided him with a useful introduction to political nuances and the various factions that existed at the time. He hoped it would be a ‘gateway’ to other groups.

He said he was never an established member of the group, even if he became ‘an accepted part of the furniture on a Sunday evening’. He saw his task as keeping tabs on people who were seeking to disrupt the status quo.

He was asked about Tariq Ali and Abhimanyu Manchanda, who he described as ‘prominent individuals’. He wasn’t given any briefing about either man by his managers but would report back on them.

Epps later commented on both individuals of being worthy of SDS attention, claiming that their rhetoric, especially that of Ali, could stir-up trouble. However, when pressed, he could not give examples of violence from either group.

Barr then asked him about a deceased member of the SDS, Mike Ferguson, inquiring as to why both officers had infiltrated the BVSF at the same time – and how it came to be there were reports signed in both their names.

Epps explained that he was ‘a new boy’ and this was an opportunity for him to ‘learn a trade, learn a skill that I was going to find useful’. However, he denied collusion with Ferguson: ‘We would not sit down together and compile a report, no’.

He suggested that SDS officers had an advantage over normal Special Branch officers:

‘the fact that your face was known made it possible to sort of glide in and slide into the grouping, rather than stand out as a total stranger. There was always a sensitivity about strange faces.

He tried to stress that the context of the time as a justification for the surveillance:

‘it was a hotbed at that time of — of street activity. And some of it was — was very reasonable in its protest, but some of it was really, really violent… And so there was a need to protect, if you like, as I say, in the wider sense’

Then another nickname for the SDS officers unit emerged – he called them ‘the Hs’, short for ‘Hairies’.

One of his reports from a BVSF meeting included details of two forthcoming marches, one about Palestine and another about women’s equality. Epps was at pains to tell us that his focus was the group, not these issues, even though he reported on them.

Barr asked him bluntly, ‘From what you could see of the BVSF and its members, was it a violent organisation?’

Epps had to concede:

‘No, not compared with other groupings at that time, no.’

CAMDEN VIETNAM SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN

After some time with the BVSF, Epps moved on, to the Camden branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC). Asked why he left the BVSF, he explained that it ‘got to a point where I felt uneasy…there was never finger-pointing, or a moment where any accusations were made’ but he felt that its leader Manchanda was suspicious of him, and read it as the time to move on.

Epps noted that Camden VSC had previously been infiltrated by SDS founder Conrad Dixon. The officer recalled that the group had remembered Dixon as a ‘figure of fun’ recalled by the Camden VSC members as wearing ‘a yachtsman’s outfit’ – he had a ‘big sailor type beard’, a ‘jaunty’ cap and a smock – ‘slightly out of place in Camden, dare I say’.

He described the Camden VSC group as ‘loose-knit and very friendly’, with ‘wide-ranging views’. He developed the impression they ‘had a Communist party leaning’ and they referred to him as a ‘Trot’, and therefore a reformist in their eyes.

Justifying it, Epps said:

‘The whole objective of the penetration of what was going on was to provide your individual persona with credibility.’

He subsequently moved on to target the Kentish Town VSC, but had very few memories of that branch.

BRITISH CAMPAIGN FOR PEACE IN VIETNAM

Next, Epps targeted a north London branch of the British Campaign for Peace in Vietnam (BCPV). This entailed attending meetings that were held in a private house, though he did not recall any reaction from his managers to this.

His witness statement mentioned regularly going out for post-meeting drinks with members of this group throughout the six months that he was infiltrating them.

One of the members was a woman with whom he later went out for a drink. He made sure to state:

‘There was never anything beyond that ordinary conversation. If she had any desire to develop a relationship or a friendship, she didn’t convey that and neither did I.’

He said they just had a ‘nodding acquaintance’ relationship afterwards. He believes going out for drinks with her aided his acceptance and credibility in the group. This obviously foreshadows the use of women to gain access to activist groups.

Later in the hearing, after Barr had finished questioning Epps, barrister Ruth Brander, on behalf of non-state core participants, was also permitted to ask him a couple of questions about this drink with the woman from the BCPV. He confirmed that he could even still recall her name, fifty years later, but brushed away the idea there was any significant reason for this.

STOP THE SEVENTY TOUR (STST)

Epps next targeted the anti-apartheid Stop The Seventy Tour having been introduced to this campaign by a member of the BCPV. (Peter Hain, a member of this group and due to give evidence in the Inquiry next year, recently made an impassioned speech in the House of Lords against the current CHIS Bill, most of which is in a Guardian Column today.)

STST opposed sporting tours of white South African teams in the UK, and British teams going to play in apartheid South Africa. Epps recalled ‘there was a lot of passionate revulsion’ towards the apartheid regime.

His witness statement mentioned two incidents – digging up the pitch at Lords cricket ground and pouring oil over the wickets – but Barr explained that the Inquiry has  been unable to find any press coverage of such an event during the STST’s campaign. This issue was later pursued in questions by the Chair himself, and at that point, Epps conceded he had muddled up events.

Epps did talk more about the STST activists, citing an incident at a match he attended with them. STST tried to disrupt these matches, with the aim of delaying play, or better still, causing the entire match to be postponed. The group’s tactic was to ‘rush’ the pitch, upon a given signal. Epps could not recall what this signal was, or who gave it, but says the activists tried to ‘push the police around’, and alleges that one or two of them even threw punches at uniformed officers, something he found hard to watch.

Barr then returned to the undercover officer Mike Ferguson, reminding Epps that he had described Mike as ‘Peter Hain’s right-hand man’ in his statement. Epps now claimed he had meant that as a bit of a joke. He added that you did not have to go as far as Ferguson to do the job – but admitted that he lacked the ‘drive or nouse’ to be as effective as some of the other undercovers.

ANARCHY IN THE UK

On more than one occasion in his written evidence, Epps claimed it was anarchists who were the likely cause of any public disorder. Reasonably, Barr asked why in that case he did not attempt to infiltrate the anarchist groups?

Epps responded with some reminiscing about some ‘spontaneous moments by hair-brained bunches’ including ‘a dozen or so cars set alight in the vicinity of Claridge’s’ when Ronald Reagan visited London in the 1980s.

When pressed Epps said:

‘I don’t know that it ever occurred to me that that was a route that I might find useful. But some of them were, as I say, harebrained and a little overexcited at these moments, and I didn’t feel drawn to that sort of grouping.’

Putting aside the accuracy of Epps opinions about anarchism, this seems wholly at odds with the SDS’ supposed public order remit.

RACIST & SEXIST REPORTING

Again, in regards to his infiltration in the London STST committee, Epps wrote a report about a member of the group:

‘She is, in fact, a somewhat immature, naïve person and it would seem that she was made Secretary of the group because of her clerical experience.’

More worryingly, he went on to describe her physically:

‘Aged about 23 years; height 5’0″; short fair hair; slim build with well-developed bust; slightly Jewish appearance’

Barr asked him to explain this racialised and sexualised reporting, and suggested that the reports were based on stereotypes.

‘Can I say, that’s a modern-day interpretation and not how it would have been viewed then?’

In a similar manner, Epps also described another woman as being ‘attractive’. He was unable to explain how useful either of these descriptions would have been to Special Branch.

Epps was asked more about the STST campaign’s plans. This included a suggestion that they hold a torch-lit midnight procession. Why did the police need to know about an entirely peaceful demo? According to Epps, street demos are ‘still something that the police should be aware of’.

The officer also said he didn’t get to know members of the STST very well, but rather he ‘drifted in and out’.

INTERNATIONAL MARXIST GROUP – BURGLARY

Epps said he does not remember how he first got involved with the International Marxist Group (IMG). They were possibly targeted because they ‘took part in every demonstration going’.

He admitted that he didn’t remember any IMG members being violent or disorderly at demos but claims ‘they were much busier than other groups’ – as if that was justification in itself.

Epps said he was instructed by his managers to make a copy of the IMG’s office keys. He had also mentioned this in True Spies, where he claimed he ‘just happened’ to have clay on him to take the pressing. Today, however, he admitted he had told his boss he had an opportunity to get a pressing of the key and was then told to go ahead, possibly with plasticine provided by them (his oral and written evidence vary on this).

Under questioning, Epps gave more details. He recalled attending an IMG meeting, where they were looking for someone to look after the office. He ‘reluctantly volunteered’ for the task. Epps also intimated that burgling activists offices was not something that Special Branch would do – although there are countless anecdotal reports, spanning many years, of mysterious break-ins of campaign premises where nothing was actually taken.

FALL OUT FROM ‘TRUE SPIES’

Epps said that he lost a lot of good friends as a result of taking part in the BBC TV series True Spies, even though his participation was authorised by Special Branch.

He was ‘still at a loss to understand’ why they were so upset and was disappointed ‘that some seemed to take such exception to rather frivolous comments.’

Barr then asked: Do you think your colleagues were upset because they were concerned you had compromised the operational security of the SDS, or did they regard you as a whistle-blower?

Epps replied:

‘I don’t think they viewed me as a whistleblower. I think it was just a rather shortsighted thing to have said on my part. And maybe they were right in that respect.’

As with all police witnesses to date, he loyally gave his colleagues an absurdly uncritical tribute as a ‘committed bunch of individuals and people I have great admiration for. ‘

However, earlier in the questioning, Epps made some seemingly less than favourable comments about SDS founder, Conrad Dixon – in contrast to previous police witnesses – saying that he was a dominating force in a manner that wasn’t wholly positive.

His written witness statement said:

‘Conrad was a clever man, but also an ambitious and devious man. He saw an opportunity for himself as well as an opportunity to create something useful.

Barr asked Epps to elaborate on this, and he replied:

‘personally, to me, would always come across as a gambler. And I don’t mean that in a well, a chancer. He was brash.’

SPECIAL BRANCH INDUSTRIAL SECTION – AND BLACKLISTING

At the beginning of this part of the questioning, it was revealed that Chief Superintendent Bert Lawrenson, the former head of C Squad in Special Branch, who spied on left-wing union activists, went on to work for blacklisting and union-busting organisation The Economic League after the left the police.

Epps later worked in the ‘industrial section’ of Special Branch. He covered the engineering sector and described the concerns regarding Soviet infiltration of that industry. However, to his knowledge, SDS officers had nothing to do with the Economic League although they ‘swam in the same pond’.

Recalling an induction lecture at Special Branch, ‘I remember being quite alarmed by Lawrenson’s assessment of the infiltration of British groups by the Russians’. Epps claimed that ‘people would come to us’ – suggesting these were trade unionists who were ‘not tainted by communism’. This information was included in True Spies as well.

Barr pressed Epps to confirm that, while at the industrial desk, Epps would have access to Special Branch records – given that if the SDS had reported someone’s trade union activities, that report would have been available to the Industrial Section of Special Branch?

Epps replied, claiming:

‘There would be no overlap between the – whatever was held within the SDS would remain there. I can’t conceive of any situation where SDS information, intelligence would leak into the normal pool of Special Branch records activity.’

This would seem strange, as some, if not all, SDS reports were fed into the enormous Special Branch registry file system. However, he did agree that it was ‘reasonable to assume’ that many of his reports went to MI5.

After Ruth Brander asked her questions about Epps’ drink with a member of the STST committee, Owen Greenall, a barrister appearing on behalf some non-state core participants, asked about the dates of his deployment and the STST’s actions at Twickenham. However, Epps said he didn’t make any written record of these events. There ended a lengthy first session.

PDF of the accompanying written witness statement of HN336 ‘Dick Epps’

‘Andy Bailey’ or ‘Alan Nixon’

SDS officer HN340

In the afternoon, we heard evidence from officer HN340, who infiltrated various groups – including the International Marxist Group (IMG), North London Red Circle and Irish Solidarity Campaign – between 1969 and 1972.

He is now known to have used the cover names ‘Alan Bailey’ and ‘Alan Nixon’. Here’s his Undercover Research Group profile.

Though it’s not his real name, we’ll call him Bailey in this report for ease of reading.

BEFORE THE SPYCOP

Bailey joined the police in the 1950s. He can’t remember much about the first two years of probationary training, or being told anything much about ethics or standards.

He then joined Special Branch in the 1960s. There was a written exam. He said that he was not required to do any undercover work prior to joining the spycop unit.

Occasionally Special Branch officers would go along to Speakers Corner, in their normal clothes, but he never went to any ‘closed meetings’.

JOINING THE SPYCOPS

After about five years in Special Branch, Bailey was invited to join the Special Demonstration Squad by Phil Saunders. He was only then given an outline of what the unit did, and was told it would involve weekend working.

The unit wasn’t well-known. He said he knew ‘basically, nothing’ about the SDS before joining it. This was, he explained, in keeping with the wider Special Branch ethos of working on a ‘need to know’ basis; ‘you didn’t need to spell it out’.

His written witness statement recounts a conversation with Mike Ferguson, who had already been deployed undercover by the SDS. Ferguson advised Bailey to get a cover name, cover address and cover job.

In today’s hearing, Bailey couldn’t clarify where this conversation had taken place – at first he claimed it had been in the ‘back-office’ at Scotland Yard, but then he admitted that Ferguson would never have visited the building while deployed undercover.

STOP THE SEVENTY TOUR

He claims not to have known much about Mike Ferguson’s role in the Stop the Seventy Tour (STST) campaign, or his position in the anti-apartheid movement – something the Inquiry seems to be asking every officer about.

The Inquiry seems to be focusing on a few ideas that now fit with modern mainstream sensibilities – that apartheid was wrong, or that singling out people for their disabilities is unacceptable – rather than seeing them as part of the SDS’s wider attack on progressive politics and citizens’ personal integrity.

Bailey didn’t create any kind of back-story or ‘legend’ for himself, and in retrospect admitted that this might have been useful later on.

Like all SDS officers, he spent a little time in the ‘back office’ of the unit, ‘probably typing up reports and checking out various bits and pieces’, which will have given him an idea of what would be expected from him when he went undercover.

He doesn’t recall other former or waiting-to-be-deployed undercovers being in the back office at the same time as him (somewhat contradicting his earlier written statement, according to Rebekah Hummerstone, who was asking questions for the Inquiry).

Bailey didn’t recall much preparation, and confirmed that he received no training in undercover work. He said Ferguson told him to ‘play it by ear’:

‘I was hoping he might have given some pearls of wisdom but as I said once you’re out there nobody knows exactly what’s going to turn up next and you’ve got to be prepared for anything’

Bailey’s written statement said that as an undercover you ‘were trusted to use your common sense and good judgement’.

He does not recall receiving any guidance about entering private addresses, even though he did inevitably attend meetings held at activists’ homes.

He would go the SDS flat each day and write up his report of the previous evening’s political meeting. His reports would routinely include details of the group’s plans and events, and personal information, including identifying information, about the individual people he met. They would then be typed up by back-office staff.

Bailey’s memory has a lot of gaps which, after 50 years, isn’t really surprising. Did he see any of his reports after they’d been typed up? Did he see them to sign them? He doesn’t recall.

He expressed surprise that any of his reports are still in existence 50 years later, and is sure the ones he’s seen are only a fraction of the ones he made:

‘there are certain little incidents that I do have vague recollection of, which aren’t contained in the bundle’

Pressed for details on what this meant, after he consulted with another person, he said he remembered the explosion at the Post Office tower, for example.

On 31 October 1971, a bomb went off in the restaurant at the top of the Post Office Tower (now BT tower) in central London. Responsibility was claimed by the IRA, and later by the Angry Brigade anarchist collective.

Bailey had attended a ‘function’ with members of the Irish Solidarity Campaign nearby that evening. Senior officers, who must clearly have been aware of which groups he was infiltrating, asked him if he had any information that might help their enquiries. However he had left the area when the pubs closed and ‘it must have occurred after that’ (the explosion came at 4:30am).

Bailey stated his role was to gather intelligence about forthcoming events, pickets and demonstrations, in order to prevent public order problems. His statement says that Special Branch had no formal role in counter-subversion.

However, he said the SDS (and therefore Special Branch) did collect information about people who were ‘unfriendly towards the State and its institutions and might use criminal methods to undermine it’. In fact he went on to say that this ‘secondary role’ was in fact one of Special Branch’s ‘main functions’.

RED MOLE

The spycops worked weekends; Bailey often stood outside Archway tube station selling Red Mole, a newspaper edited by Tariq Ali that was the voice for many in the International Marxist Group.

Bailey estimated that he only went to his cover accommodation two or three times a week, and only slept there ‘very rarely’.

In contrast, he visited the SDS flat almost every weekday afternoon, as did most of the other spycops at that time, where they would write up their reports. He described this a functional arrangement, and spycops didn’t really discuss their experiences with each other, not even in a ‘sanitised’ way.

His written witness statement suggested that his deployment was very open-ended – and he could be ‘re-tasked’ as necessary.

Bailey said a lack of praise was a continual feature of his work, and that he just made up his methods and activities, and presumed he was doing the right thing unless his managers told him otherwise:

‘If they’d thought it was a waste of time I’m pretty sure they would have said “don’t bother”.’

Managers regularly visited the SDS flat but Bailey doesn’t remember being given many specific instructions by them, or directed to infiltrate any specific groups.

Rebekah Hummerstone, the Inquiry’s barrister carrying out the questioning, said that we know they did step in to give some direction on at least two occasions, telling him – and told him not to become a member of the International Marxist Group, and that he should to attend the Conference for a Red Europe in Brussels in November 1970, organised by the Fourth International (of which the IMG was a part)

He accepts that his attendance of a meeting at Conway Hall must have been on instructions:

‘I must have been told because I wouldn’t have gone off wandering off to Red Lion Square just off my own initiative’

There was a lot of this in his answers – an inability to recall events at all, let alone in detail, but a readiness to accept the accounts and implications of the documents. This contrasts with other officers’ evidence that the reports were often written by their superiors, without their knowledge, or that reports were credited to the person did the typing rather than the one did the spying.

The report of the Conway Hall meeting says Bailey approached and talked with both Tariq Ali and Vanessa Redgrave. They had both spoken at the meeting, he didn’t know anyone else, so did what Ferguson had recommended, he ‘played it by ear’, and went over for a chat. Ali invited him to attend the next meeting of the North London Red Circle.

Bailey didn’t think he had heard of the Red Circle before, he’s not sure if his managers were very aware of the group, they certainly hadn’t tasked him to target it; he fell into it by chance because of this encounter with Ali. He hoped that attending Red Circle meetings would provide him with useful intelligence about ‘potential flash points’.

NORTH LONDON RED CIRCLE

Bailey’s written witness statement described North London Red Circle as a ‘recruiting ground for the International Marxist Group’, with a presumption that the IMG was in itself a serious threat to public safety, so anyone in its orbit was fair game for spying.

Bailey became the Red Circle’s ‘tea club secretary’, on his own initiative, in order to learn the names of group members. Echoing what other spycops have recounted, he said he felt it was best to gather as much information as possible, in case it became useful later.

The reports show the Red Circle was a tiny left-wing discussion group. It held talks on Israel, Black Power, trade unions, the Fourth International, the National Union of Mineworkers, the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders’ dispute, anti-racist campaigning, unemployment, apartheid, and more.

Asked about the content of these meetings, Bailey once again only offered an apologetic blank memory.

SPYING ON WOMEN’S LIBERATION

Another report was about a meeting on the topic of women’s liberation. The speaker talked about attempts to form a union for women night cleaners.

When queried on the relevance of these campaigns and whether Special Branch spied on the trade union and women’s liberation movements, Bailey said he didn’t think he could speak for Special Branch as a whole, and then failed to speak even for the Branch unit he was in.

He agreed that this report was a good example of him writing down everything that might possibly be of interest, and leaving it to the back-office to decide what to include in the final typed-up version.

IRISH POLITICS

An August 1971 report on a Red Circle meeting [UCPI0000008196] describes an unusually large crowd for the group – all of 24 people – were present to hear a talk by a Provisional sympathiser followed by questions.

The speaker said that if the IRA did commence terrorist activities in England, they considered it the ‘duty of all revolutionaries to render whatever assistance was asked’. Bailey can’t remember if any Red Circle attendees agreed with this view.

Thirty people attended a Red Circle meeting in February 1972, according to Bailey’s report [UCPI0000008944], to hear civil rights campaigner Bob Purdie speak about Ireland, in place of a scheduled talk about Spain.

Purdie talked about the Republican movement, explaining that the recent split was due to tactical differences rather than political ones. In answer to a question afterwards, Purdie said extending the armed struggle to England would be politically wrong, but if the Irish movement’s leaders called for assistance, then the IMG line was that revolutionary groups in Britain should support them.

Bailey admitted that the name Bob Purdie rings a bell, but he could not remember much more. Again, he followed his absence of specifics with supposition because on residual understanding of the group:

‘From what I remember I can’t think of any of them now that I would consider to be tending towards any kind of violence”.’

A very faint report from April 1972 shows the Red Circle again having a talk about Ireland because the scheduled speaker (this time on Cuba) couldn’t make the meeting on the day.

The Red Circle ‘was a talking shop’, Bailey said in his written statement to the Inquiry:

‘It did support a revolutionary agenda and was subversive to the extent that it advanced the overthrow of the established political system in the UK, albeit never took any concrete steps… violence would have been the last thing on many of their minds’.

IRISH CIVIL RIGHTS SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN

Bailey also infiltrated the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign (ICRSC). His name appears on a report on the group’s activities filed in September 1970.

He said he attended their meetings ‘almost as a co-opted member of the North London Red Circle’ but struggled to explain why.

Bailey doesn’t remember being ‘tasked’ to attend the ICRSC meetings, it was again more a case of chance, but that it his managers had disapproved he would not have gone.

IRISH SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN

His involvement with the ICRSC resulted in Bailey attending the founding conference of the Irish Solidarity Campaign (ISC) in Birmingham, in October 1970.

It was unusual for an SDS officer to go beyond London. Asked if he got special permission to make the journey to another constabulary’s jurisdiction, he once more failed to remember anything:

‘I must have slept somewhere overnight… but quite honestly I can’t remember where we stayed’

For an SDS officer to go beyond the Met’s area, the unit must have either secured the permission of the local police, in which case they were complicit in what the spycops did, or else it was done without local approval, which is a serious breach of police protocol.

That Irish Solidarity Campaign founding conference was also attended by Bailey’s colleague, SDS officer HN68 ‘Sean Lynch’, whose deployment was mainly focused on Irish solidarity groups. The two tried to avoid any contact – ‘there was no reason that we should know each other, so we didn’t’ – but Bailey thinks it likely they knew of each other’s plans to attend the event in advance.

A report was produced afterwards, with both their names attached to it. Bailey has no recollection of collaborating on this with HN68, but ‘it seems as if it would have been inconceivable that we hadn’t discussed it’. The report contained a long list of all the groups (and ‘fraternal delegates’) who attended the conference.

He explained:

‘They were there and so I reported it; it was then down to the back office to do their filtering, vetting, or whatever you call it.’

The report was sent not just to MI5 but also to the Home Office. The Deputy Assistant Commissioner commended the ‘first class work’ and asked that the officers be praised (though Bailey does not remember receiving or being told about such praise). It will have been obvious to that senior officer that the depth of knowledge in the report can only have come from sustained infiltration.

There is no way to sustain the claim we’ve heard from the Met that the SDS was a rogue unit, so secret that nobody outside really knew what was going on.

It is already clear – and getting even clearer – that the SDS’ work was known and approved of at the highest levels of the Met, as well as its paymasters in the Home Office who have managed to lose every single document about their 21 years of direct funding.

Hummerstone read out the six main aims of the ISC (as laid out in Appendix D of [MPS-0738150]). Would that information have been of interest to Special Branch?

‘At the time I may have thought so, but…,’ he tailed off, unhelpfully.

PAUCITY OF MEMORIES

The Inquiry was then shown a report from January 1971 on a meeting of the central London branch of the ISC. There was mention of tarring and feathering incidents, and the speaker was very critical of the Republican leadership at the time.

Next came a report from the following month, February 1971, about a talk on ‘people’s democracy and the civil rights anti-apartheid movement Northern Ireland’ by Gerry Lawless.

This rung the lonely sound of a bell in Bailey’s memory, who said Lawless was ‘one of the very few names that I remember from then, because he was so active’.

Lawless was described as being involved in the ISC, as well as the IMG, and he additionally sometimes attended Red Circle discussion meetings.

Later in 1971, the Red Circle held a discussion entitled ‘why the Provisionals’. Bailey could not remember anything about what attendees thought of the speaker’s views.

ALDERSHOT

Finally on this theme, a report [UCPI0000008500] dated March 1972, a week or two after the bomb explosion at Aldershot army barracks which killed seven civilian staff. The ISC slogan at the time was ‘Victory to the IRA’.

Bailey was asked if he had any contact with the police investigating this bomb. He replied that ‘off our own bat there’s no way any of us would have had contact with a non-Met police force’.

Even within the Met, Bailey’s description made it appear that the sharing of information was left to managers, if it happened at all. He said that he only had contact with the SDS back-room staff, nobody else. Special Branch’s B Squad dealt with Irish matters, yet Bailey said he had no contact with them at all.

Bailey could not recall ISC members ever taking part in any acts of violence, or any public disorder at any demonstrations organised by the ISC. Again, he elaborated with a suggestion interpreting his lack of specific memory:

‘I’m sure something like that would have stuck in my memory and it definitely doesn’t’.

A few weeks after the Aldershot bombing, then-current and former members of the ISC had their homes raided. It may well have stemmed from Bailey’s reports on them; he professed not to know if that was the case.

BERNADETTE DEVLIN MP

His reports would mention whether or not events were attended by Bernadette Devlin, a young independent Irish republican MP.

According to Bailey:

‘if she was known to be going to attend any meeting or demonstration or whatever, then of course that would increase the likelihood of more people arriving at the demonstration’.

Interestingly, one of the files suggests that there was not yet a Special Branch file opened on Bernadette Devlin at this time.

He said he couldn’t elaborate beyond that because he merely reported, and what happened with the information he gave, or because of it, ‘was not my concern’.

Bernadette Devlin joins the growing list of MPs confirmed as having been spied on by the SDS, the unit that was supposedly formed to monitor those who would overthrow parliamentary democracy.

His reports also contained what was described as an ‘unflattering portrait of Irish solidarity groups’; a report of a conversations between another Northern Ireland political activist Eamonn McCann and others, and of McCann turning up late at a meeting.

SPYING ABROAD

Bailey attended the Conference for a Red Europe in Brussels in November 1970, having secured specific permission to travel abroad from his managers.

As with the ISC conference in Birmingham a month earlier, Bailey says there was no direct contact between him and the other spycop who attended that conference. That other officer was officer HN326 ‘Doug Edwards’, who complained about the trip in his evidence last Friday.

Until last week, it had been thought that Peter Francis’ 1995 visit to an anti-racist gathering in Germany was the first time an SDS officer had gone abroad undercover.

VIETNAM SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN

Although his name is attached to several reports on the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, Bailey said he cannot remember attending any of their meetings.

He said he couldn’t comment on whether spycops would have been more likely to attend a meeting that Tariq Ali attended. Neither could he remember if he already knew the name Piers Corbyn in 1971.

BLACK POWER GROUPS

Bailey also reported on the Black People’s Defence, the Black Defence Committee, and Black Power. Asked if he had been directed to report on anti-racist groups he was, once more, at a loss to say.

END OF DEPLOYMENT

Bailey’s managers had instructed him not to join the International Marxist Group because it was ‘recognised as more of a political party’, something that doesn’t tally with the fact that his contemporary, ‘Doug Edwards’, was not merely a member of the Independent Labour Party but the Tower Hamlets branch treasurer.

Bailey’s undercover career lasted around two years, well in excess of the 12 month maximum stipulated in a document written by SDS founder Conrad Dixon. Bailey can’t understand how 12 months would be enough time to gain the trust to make detailed reporting worthwhile, and can’t imagine many had so short a deployment unless something went wrong. He says he was unaware of the supposed limit until the Inquiry told him about it.

He suffered from headaches, nosebleeds, and migraines, which he attributes to the stress of his job. thought to be caused by stress. He recalls negligible support in the macho world of the spycops, saying ‘you got on with it’.

PDF of the accompanying written witness statement of HN340 ‘Andy Bailey’/ ‘Alan Nixon’

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Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 10

13 November 2020

Evidence from:

Officer HN330 aka ‘Don de Freitas’ (summary of evidence)
Officer HN321 aka ‘William Paul “Bill” Lewis’ (summary of evidence)
Officer HN322 (real name withheld) (summary of evidence)
Officer HN328 Joan Hillier
Officer HN326 ‘Doug Edwards’

The Undercover Policing Inquiry had a full day of police witnesses, and it was a startling day of discovery.

This phase is only covering 1968-72, and today we learned that many of the spycops activities we’d been led to believe came later on were actually there from the start.

An officer having a sexual relationship with someone they spied on in 1968. An officer spying on a political group in Scotland in 1969. Officers pretending to be a couple to seem credible to the groups they infiltrated in 1968. An officer attending the wedding of someone he spied on around 1970. Officers going beyond the UK in their undercover persona before 1972. It seems that what the spycops units ever did, they always did.

If this is what we’re learning from what we’re told, just imagine what is being concealed by the anonymity orders that the Inquiry has granted to most spycops.

SUMMARY DISMISSAL

As with yesterday, one of the most significant exchange didn’t involve a witness, but the Chair’s irate interruptions of the victim’s barrister in order to prevent him from asking questions.

The day started with two short summaries of ‘Don de Freitas’, (referred to by the Inquiry as HN330), ‘William Paul “Bill” Lewis’ (HN321), and officer HN322, whose cover name is unknown.

Doing summaries of the careers of officers who are dead is one thing, but to have a lawyer simply read summaries of statements from living spycops without any apparent opportunity to challenge the evidence or question them is quite another.

Yet again, the Inquiry acts as if the police – whose decades of deceit and abuse are the subject – can be taken at their word, and those of us who were targeted can have no insight that hasn’t already occurred to the Chair, Sir John Mitting, and he can dismiss our objections out of hand.

‘Don de Freitas’
SDS officer HN330

‘Don de Freitas’ served briefly in SDS for a month over September / October 1968, infiltrating the Havering branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC).

As a Special Branch officer he used various cover names and occupation at different times, but his SDS deployment differed in that he used a fixed false identity.

Prior to his time with SDS, he had reported on Tariq Ali, and also Notting Hill VSC – particularly the Powis Square incident where members of the group were arrested.

He knew the SDS founder Conrad Dixon socially and was invited to join the unit following a chance meeting in a corridor. He described the SDS as informal in nature.

Other than standard Special Branch training, he received no training or guidance. Operating out of Scotland Yard, he did not change his appearance other than to dress casually.

He initially went to a meeting of Havering International Socialists on 26 September 1968, which had been advertised in a leaflet distributed in Romford Market. He ingratiated himself with speakers and attendees which led to him being invited to join the private committee meetings.

COUPLED

Conrad Dixon suggested he and officer HN334, ‘Margaret White‘, attend the meetings together as a couple to make them less suspicious.

The remit was to find out as much as possible of the group’s plans for the big anti-Vietnam War demonstration of 27 October 1968. He stopped undercover work shortly after this demonstration, on 29 October. While with the group, he reported on their preparations including leaflet distribution and fly-posting, which he took part in.

His evidence gave a picture of a peaceful group, whose aims were not subversive and most members ‘unwilling to support civil disobedience or terrorism’.

ON THE MARCH

At the October demonstration, he marched with the group, chanting pro-Vietnam slogans. His final report is to note the general opinion of Havering VSC that the protest was a ‘complete and utter disaster’.

Among his reports was information on a Labour Party official, who was a member of Havering VSC. The officer notes this was included because MI5 were interested in whether extremists were penetrating what he describes as ‘legitimate left-wing political organisations’.

At one point, he was tasked to investigate information that an individual was seeking ingredients to make a smoke bomb. Another report in his name notes the plans of anarchists from University College Swansea for the October demonstration, but it is unclear how he came by this information.

Three documents, dated after his SDS time, show he was involved in the monitoring of the Anti-Apartheid Movement from July 1960 to June 1970. These were copied to MI5.

‘William Paul “Bill” Lewis’
HN321

‘Bill Lewis‘ now lives abroad and has provided a witness statement. He was deployed from 18 September 1968 to 30 September 1969. Soon after leaving the SDS he resigned from the police as he had ‘tired of the work’.

The majority of his reports focus on the International Marxist Group (IMG).

Prior to the SDS, he was with Special Branch’s B Squad where he would attend public meetings in casual clothes, noting attendees and their activities; he did not have a false identity for this. He was recruited to the SDS because a Special Branch manager had been impressed by the detail in his reports, and he was encouraged to attend a meeting regarding the formation of the squad.

INVITED TO SPY

He recalled going to a meeting of around 30 people in which Conrad Dixon said their work was going to be secret. HN321 accepted the invitation to join. There was no training or guidance; the objective was to gather intelligence on the 27 October demonstration against the Vietnam War.

His cover job was as an instrument and control technician, which he knew enough to talk about if necessary. He used two cover flats – one in Earl’s Court and another in Acton.

He would attend the SDS safe house several times a week, as advised by Dixon, to keep officers engaged during their downtime. The undercovers learned on the job and by sharing experience – for example how to avoid blowing their cover.

Not assigned to a particular group, he initially attended a demonstration and then a meeting, which he discovered was an IMG one. Dixon instructed him to attend further IMG meetings as they were a group of interest to the SDS.

Lewis’ first report covers a public meeting attended by Ernie Tate and the US socialist presidential candidate Fred Halstead. However, after that the IMG reports all cover private events. He also reported on Lambeth and other VSC branches.

On 26 October 1968, he telegrammed Special Branch to alert them to comments made at a South West VSC Ad Hoc Committee meeting in Brixton, that police coaches on Vauxhall Bridge would be sabotaged during the demonstration the following day. His witness statement however notes that he did not think the IMG would carry this out as they were ‘actually quite passive and intellectual’. He did not express this view to his managers, reporting only the facts of what took place at the meetings.

80 PEOPLE FILED

At one point, he was able to record the details of approximately 80 members of the IMG, which were passed on to MI5.

The subject of other reports related to discussions and planned demonstrations around Northern Ireland, the Middle East, the International Congress of the Fourth International, Scottish nationalism and women’s rights. There was also a debrief after the 27 October demonstration.

His last reports on the IMG were regarding the IMG’s 1969 education camp in Dunbartonshire, which he attended, giving a lift to three IMG members in his cover vehicle.

[This shows that SDS were travelling to Scotland from within the first year of the unit, much earlier than had been previously admitted.]

He states that his only criminal activity while undercover had been obstruction of the highway and perhaps fly-posting. Generally he recalls being advised not to resist arrest if it happened, and that it could be ‘sorted out’ further down the line with charges probably being dropped.

SDS officer HN322
Real name withheld

This individual served in SDS for a short time in its early months and was not deployed undercover. Their real name is being withheld by the Inquiry.

He was approached by Conrad Dixon who personally invited him to join the squad. He was not given much information initially. He had a young family at the time and, once he realised it would mean a lot of time away from them, he asked to be taken off the squad.  He went on to have a senior rank in the Metropolitan Police.

In his experience, his time in SDS was much the same as time doing generic Special Branch work – both involved going to meetings and gathering intelligence.

He may have been directed to look at South East London VSC. He recalls being told to attend and report on a few different meetings. Reports show these were Earl’s Court VSC and the South East London Ad Hoc Committee of the VSC.

He wrote reports on behalf of officer HN335, Mike Tyrell, which covered private meetings and planned activities of the British Vietnam Solidarity Front and the Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation.

He notes the lack of direction and supervision within the SDS as compared to the rest of Special Branch. He was advised to go to meetings, but given no direction or guidance about what to do when in attendance, and had a lot of free time.

Joan Hillier
SDS officer HN328

Only known before today as officer HN328, Joan Hillier gave evidence under her real name.

In her oral evidence, there was a lot she said she couldn’t remember, and some contradiction of established facts.

Hillier joined the Met in 1958, and moved into Special Branch in March 1968, coincidentally the day after the disorder at a Vietnam War protest outside the American Embassy in London, which spurred the formation of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS).

Hillier said there was little in the way of mentoring compared to when she’d joined the uniformed police. She got the impression that the Home Secretary had ordered that there be no repeat of the anti-war demonstration’s uproar and, in July 1968, Special Branch formed the SDS in response.

She remembers no application process, rather officers were invited from various Special Branch squads.

There was no formal SDS decision making on which groups to infiltrate, they ended to be selected by casual discussion among SDS officers. They were given casual, informal briefings on the politics of people they were going to spy on, rather than any structured lectures. Tactics were planned in detail, rather than targets. She said she did not remember any discussions about the risk of becoming involved in criminality.

PUBLIC ORDER OR POLITICAL POLICING?

At the time, Hillier was under the clear impression that the SDS was concerned with public order issues only, centered on the forthcoming October 1968 protest against the Vietnam War, rather than any wider counter-subversion spying. This is at odds with the fact that most SDS files were copied to MI5, who were not involved in public order policing.

She was shown a paper authored by the SDS founder and boss, Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon, about ‘penetration of extremist groups’ [MPS-0724119, not yet published at the UCPI website]. This was something she said she had no memory of seeing before.

Invited to define extremists, she said it was people who use extreme means – violence, disorder – to get what they want, seemingly without awareness that the threat and use of violence is the basis of the power of uniformed police.

The SDS was just another Special Branch squad, Hillier said, but with the added advantage of being members of targeted groups and so able to go to non-public meetings. And yet, many of Hillier’s reports are of public meetings, both before and after she joined the SDS.

WOMEN UNDERCOVER

Hillier’s written statements said that there were no female undercover officers in the SDS at the start, yet we’ve seen that there was not only herself and Helen Crampton, but officer HN334 whose statement says she had a cover job and address, which is even more involved than Hillier’s activity.

Her statements also described how only male spycops went to private meetings, yet reports show Helen Crampton and female officer HN334 did it.

Hillier accepted the evidence as true and blamed fading memories of things that happened over 50 years ago.

Conrad Dixon wrote a document stating that it was important that targets were unaware of spycops, so if there was the desire to get evidence and arrest someone in an infiltrated group, it is better to send female officers in as he believed they were less likely to be suspected. He followed this with a list of female officers including Hillier.

She said she had no memory of ever doing this, nor of Helen Crampton, with whom she worked as a pair, doing it either.

It was pointed out that in 1969, Crampton gave evidence in a prosecution arising from a meeting she’d attended with Hillier (more about this later). Hillier said she has no memory of this at all.

UNGUIDED

The lack of training and guidance was a major theme. Hillier doesn’t remember any instruction on what to include and exclude in reports. Your reports would contain whatever you thought reports should contain, she explained.

She did confirm that personal details (dates of birth, home addresses, etc) would be routinely added to Special Branch files ‘in case it was needed in the future’.

Hillier said that the SDS was able to obtain information that normal Special Branch officers couldn’t get. She confirmed that superior officers wanted to know in advance who would be at demonstrations, and so there was a desire for the supply of details on anyone involved:

‘Information is never wasted, really’

Reporting everything ‘in case it was needed in future’ because ‘information is never wasted, really’ is properly Orwellian. Watch anyone long enough and you’ll find something.

NO NEED FOR TRAINING

Despite her earlier description of only joining Special Branch shortly before the SDS was formed, Hillier blithely asserted that SDS officers didn’t really need training as they were all experienced special Branch officers:

‘Instinct would tell you what you shouldn’t do and what you should do’

Officers would instinctively know not to get involved in people’s personal lives, form intimate relationships, commit crime of appear in court under a fake identity, she said.

And yet, not only were these things standard practice in the SDS shortly after, we know that her contemporaries were dating people they spied on.

Specifically asked about officer Mike Ferguson, who infiltrate the anti-apartheid movement, Hillier said she only knew he was in that political area. She didn’t know any details, nor what managers knew of his activity.

SECRET PUBLICITY OFFICER

A document was shown a page from the Conrad paper mentioned above, describing the structure of the SDS. It said there was a Chief Inspector at the top, with three Detective Inspectors below them, one of which is tasked with ‘press and liaison’, which seems most peculiar for a secret unit.

Hillier had no idea what it meant, and said she’d never seen the document and doesn’t recognise the command structure it describes.

The same document has a section on ‘scope of activities’ which warned against becoming an agent provocateur:

‘The incompetence of the British left is notorious, and officers must take care not to get into a position where they achieve prominence in an organisation through natural ability. A firm line must be drawn between activity as a follower and a leader, and members of the squad should be told in no uncertain terms that they must not take office in a group, chair meetings, draft leaflets, speak in public or initiate activity.’

Hillier said she had never been warned of this, but she wasn’t undercover after October 1968 anyway, as she moved into the unit’s administrative staff.

AUTHOR OR SCRIBE

Asked about the content of a number of reports she made on meetings elsewhere, Hillier said that although she was the credited reporter, she was in fact merely the typist for the officers who’d done the spying. This certainly makes a change from the traditional amnesiac answers from police.

Hillier explained that spycops would hand her a report in pencil with a list of names, and she would look up the people’s file numbers, type it up, sign it on their behalf and pass it to Chief Inspector Dixon.

Signing for others wasn’t standard Special Branch practice, but was easier for the SDS as being split across two sites and not seeing one another regularly could lead to delays.

In her later administrative role, she described herself as the go-between for information between the SDS’ secret base and Scotland Yard, where no undercover officer could afford to be spotted.

Asked what the SDS was like, she replied:

‘when I joined, it was a very nice unit. It was very happy. Everybody got on well together. They were all going for a common cause. And it was a very happy unit. That’s the only way I can describe it really.’

ENTER MENON

When the Inquiry Counsel finished their questioning of Hillier, Rajiv Menon QC, representing some of the people targeted by spycops, applied to ask questions.

As with yesterday’s hearing, the most significant and instructive part of the day came not from a witness, but from the way the Chair treated the voice of those who were spied on. We’re describing this section in some detail to give a strong flavour of what we’re facing.

Menon said he had a number of points that he wanted to ask about:

• Hillier giving evidence in her real name;
• An issue relating to the ‘Penetration of Extremist Groups’ paper authored by SDS boss Conrad Dixon;
• Hillier & Crampton’s involvement with the Notting Hill branch of the VSC;
• Spycops having intimate relationships (the most pertinent one in the list, according to Menon);
• An issue about about Highgate & Holloway branch of the VSC;
• Inter-relations of the SDS with Special Branch and MI5.

Mitting said that disputes of fact can get questioned, but Menon would not be allowed to put ‘general questions’ of the kind he was suggesting.

Menon replied that all his questions were relevant to matters squarely within the Inquiry’s terms of reference, and will assist the Inquiry in its fundamental aim to get to the truth of undercover policing. He wanted to ask open questions to establish the ground from which he foresaw questions of specific fact emerging.

Menon pointed out that the hearing was ahead of schedule, so there was no pressure of time. He asked for a little latitude in favour of a barrister with 26 years experience, and the precise relevance of his questions would soon become visible. He added that his questions that were submitted to Counsel for the Inquiry in advance hadn’t all been asked, and he would only take ten or fifteen minutes.

NOTTING HILL VSC

Mitting homed in on the dispute of fact about Crampton in Notting Hill VSC. Menon wanted to be circumspect and ask open ended questions to see if it would settle a query as he has information from another source.

Mitting vaporised any chance of that approach by asking what the specific issue was. Menon said it was whether Crampton had a relationship with a leading Notting Hill VSC member.

Mitting asked which member, and Menon replied that it was a George Cochrane, who is named in the reports as Chairman of the branch. This is an important issue as, if true, it shows spycops were deceiving people they spied on into relationships from the very start, contradicting what has been claimed by the officers of that era.

The Inquiry Chair followed up, asking if Cochrane was still alive (and would therefore have privacy issues). Menon did not know, but as Cochrane’s name isn’t redacted in the numerous documents the Inquiry is releasing, it indicates that the latter believes he’s deceased.

Mitting, though continuing to think Menon was impudent for wanting to ask questions at all, relented on this point. However, he imposed very tight parameters, saying ‘this is exceptional and I do not propose to invite you to ask questions on any other topic’.

QUESTIONING THE WITNESS

Menon then got the chance to question Hillier.

He refreshed what had already been said; that Hillier was with Crampton at all the Notting Hill VSC meetings she went to except one. He asked if she knew this particular branch had been disowned by national council of the VSC because of its politics (one of the three that VSC organiser Ernest Tate described yesterday as expelled Maoists).

Hillier said she only went to about four meetings and wasn’t on first name terms with anyone. Menon said that, as she marched with the branch at the October 1968 demonstration, she must surely have exchanged names, which she conceded, adding that it would have been a cover name.

Menon asked if, when Hillier had said she didn’t know of any spycops having relationships with people they spied on, if it included going on dates. Hillier said she couldn’t say absolutely that it wouldn’t have happened, but she didn’t know of any instances.

Menon then asked his central question – did Helen Crampton have an intimate relationship with a Notting Hill VSC member? Hillier said she didn’t know for sure, but very much doubted it.

Menon led Hillier through some of the vintage SDS reports. A report of a Notting Hill VSC meeting on 2 October 1968 [MPS-0739188] shows George Cochrane was chairman, and Hillier was there with Crampton, as well as officers HN68 and HN331. Hillier signed the report. She replied that she didn’t remember Cochrane’s name at all.

ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE

Helen Crampton had given evidence in the trial of a man arrested after handing out a leaflet at the Notting Hill VSC meeting on 9 October 1968. Documents [MPS-0739187] show Hillier was at the meeting, along with Crampton, HN68 and HN331. Crampton’s report written the day after the meeting included mention of the leaflet.

Menon pulled up a file which showed the individual being convicted in 1969, on Crampton’s evidence, and given a two year sentence for incitement to riot. This was the only conviction the SDS directly secured in its early phase.

Menon pressed Hillier one whether she really couldn’t remember Crampton being involved, or whether Crampton getting the leaflet and showing it as something worth reporting for further action. Menon asked if Hillier had herself been a witness at the trial to corroborate Crampton’s account, but again she claimed she was drawing a total blank.

Despite her good memories of other events, Hillier had nothing at all to offer on the topic, and Menon could ask no further questions.

Oliver Sanders, one of the police barristers, then asked Hillier about her role in Highgate & Holloway. She’s already said she had no involvement with the branch, and yet there’s a report [MPS-0722098] on the branch that she signed. It has a list of names and addresses, and matches them with their Special Branch file numbers, or else says ‘no trace SB records’.

Hillier said, once more, that she didn’t author the report but merely typed it.

‘Doug Edwards’
SDS officer HN326

The afternoon was devoted to evidence from former spycop HN326, who used the cover name ‘Doug’ or ‘Douglas Edwards‘. (Despite it not being his real name, we’ll call him Edwards in this report for ease of understanding.)

Edwards was undercover in the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) from late 1968 to May 1971. He infiltrated various groups including anarchist groups, as well as the Independent Labour Party, Tri-Continental and Dambusters Mobilising Committee. He provided a witness statement to the Inquiry in 2018, and a further one relating to photographs in 2019.

UNSPECIFIED REMIT

Edwards said he was not given any training about the groups that Special Branch was interested in, or about the meaning of the word ‘subversion’. He was only in Special Branch for a few months, before his Detective Inspector (Saunders) invited him to join the new Squad. It was so secretive that he had no idea what he was being asked to join.

While he was part of the SDS, he understood that his job was to look at the different ‘left-wing groups that were fomenting trouble on the streets’. Inquiry Counsel Warner said ‘that sounds more like public order policing’.

Warner asked if he was collecting information to work out if the groups were ‘subversive’ or not. Edwards said that you needed to identify individuals and try and understand what their political beliefs were. He said there were all sorts of rivalries in political groups (Trotskyists and anarchists were ‘bent on causing violence’, apparently).

He was on probation within Special Branch for that first year, and recalled that ‘you had to do what you were told in those days’. The existence of the SDS was kept very secret.

Edwards said that SDS officers were told not to break the law, probably by DI Saunders and Chief Inspector Dixon. ‘You couldn’t go into a squat for instance’.

FIRST TARGETS

There wasn’t much else in the way of training, how to begin approaching their targets, nor exactly which groups to target, or other ‘fieldcraft’. ‘You had to play it by ear,’ he explained.

Edwards confirmed that he knew SDS officer Roy Creamer, ‘an intellectual and knowledgeable man about left-wing affairs’. He doesn’t recall a specific political briefing.

If the SDS was there to infiltrate groups intending to ‘undermine parliamentary democracy’, one wonders why the Independent Labour Party (ILP), who stood candidates for election, fit the brief. Edwards said he remembers being told to join the ILP, as this would give him a ‘handle to swing’:

‘The man in charge [HN325], he wanted me to look at an anarchist group; and I was told that the way to do this was to go to Piccadilly Circus and sit about there and I would be recruited; and I’d be able to be joining the anarchists. But of course it was a load of rubbish. You know, when I’d done that for a few nights, I thought, “Well, what am I wasting my time for?”‘

His statement describes visiting the place ‘somewhere in the East End’ where long-running anarchist newspaper Freedom was published. The Inquiry was shown a report that refers to a leaflet being printed by Freedom, about the ‘East London libertarians’ who wanted to occupy council houses for homeless families:

‘You couldn’t go into a squat, for instance. You couldn’t get involved with that.’

He agreed that whistle-blower SDS officer Peter Francis’ description of the early undercovers as ‘shallow paddlers’, who didn’t fully immerse themselves with their targets their successors did, is ‘an apt description’.

It’s a relative term, though. As was standard practice, Edwards integrated himself into the personal lives and social communities of the people he was spying on.

Asked about his attendance at the wedding of two activists, he explained, ‘I couldn’t not do it, that was the thing’.

He said he joined in the celebration at the pub afterwards, but didn’t go to the registry office. This meant that he avoided appearing in any of the photos. He even took a gift along for the happy couple (this was a ‘fancy tin opener’, according to an earlier statement!)

He knew in advance that he’d been invited to the wedding, but does not remember what his managers thought about this.

He recalled the difficulty of doing the job, of being matey with his targets while being ‘on edge’ all the time:

‘it wasn’t always easy to maintain your cover. But I did my best and I was successful with it.’

And what exactly was that success in?

WEST HAM ANARCHISTS aka TEENAGE GRAFFITI WRITERS

Edwards was sent to spy on West Ham anarchists, the oldest of whom was 21.

He reported on a meeting of eight of them, intending to produce leaflets for a forthcoming by-election with the slogan ‘don’t vote, all parties lie’. He reported the personal details of at least one member to be put on file.

He was asked about the rowdy day at the South African Embassy that he described in a statment was with the West Ham Anarchists:

‘That’s a good question. Do you know, I can’t remember that. I was on a demonstration outside in Trafalgar Square at the South African Embassy, and it got a bit tasty. They started smashing windows and it was violent, and there we are. The mounted police came in then, to try and stop things… I know they were anarchist groups because they were all chanting this “Anarchista!” was the order of the day.’

He said the group definitely committed some minor criminal damage and graffiti – ‘just making a nuisance of themselves locally’ – and this was covered in the local press.

ILP – ANTI-DEMOCRATIC SPYING

Edwards didn’t just use the ILP as a gateway into politics, he attended meetings and demonstrations with them, describing them as ‘quite left-wing, pleasant, sociable, wrapped up in a world of intellectual Marxism’.

Edwards was asked how a demonstration might ‘undermine parliamentary democracy’, and struggled to answer. He talked of the fear the police had of the ‘sheer volume’ of people involved in the demonstrations, and their revolutionary ideals. He remains confused about whether these revolutionaries were going for ‘total anarchy’ or a ‘socialist society’ though!

He was in the Tower Hamlets branch of the ILP, and reported them talking about organising an anti-fascist rally and a local rent struggle. There are some reports about the preparations for a debate between the National Front and the ILP. The meetings were very small, literally four or five people.

The closest they appeared to come to political violence was a conflagration in a pub between his ILP comrades and some other left-wing faction (he thinks it might have been the International Socialists, but wasn’t clear).

He chortled dismissively about the size of many of the left-wing groups, saying:

‘They got an exaggerated idea of their own importance. They sort of had daft ideas. And of course, it resulted in this punch up in the pub.’

Edwards seemed unaware that the more feeble and insignificant the group targeted, the more unjustifiable the infiltration.

His fellow undercover officers Phil Saunders and Riby Wilson watched the scrapping from a car on the other side of the street. They later told him they’d have come to his aid if he needed it, but he’s not sure they really would have done.

The Inquiry was shown a larger report containing more about the workings of the ILP, with information from ‘very reliable sources’ (the plural was noted). Edwards said that his intelligence would have been included in this report:

‘It’s a big justification really of them sending me to the ILP.’

Edwards denied influencing the ‘direction of travel’ of the Tower Hamlets ILP branch, saying he just kept quiet and made mental notes of what was going on. This isn’t easy to reconcile with the fact that he became branch treasurer.

Edwards explained that this was a small group, a ‘tin pot organisation’. He remembers setting up a Barclays bank account, and the branch didn’t have much money. Funds were spent on banners, or sent to ‘the Chilean earthquake disaster fund or something like that’.

He said he didn’t remember speaking to his managers about accepting the position of treasurer, or any reaction from them to this development:

‘I can’t truthfully say one way or the other. You know, I’m not going to make answers up.’

‘Of course not,’ the Inquiry counsel said smoothly.

IRISH CIVIL RIGHTS SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN

The Inquiry was shown a report [MPS-0732317] about the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign’s Islington branch, made by Edwards and counter-signed by CI Saunders.

Edwards said that he never went to the group’s meetings, but he knows another spycop did, and he was ‘on observation’ duty for him at least one time.

He said he only went to one demo outside the Ulster Office in Berkeley Street, but apart from that, he didn’t cover any Irish groups – this was done by someone else.

In his witness statement, he said he’s seen two SDS reports ICRSC meetings, from September and October 1970, and he is their credited author. His statement says that he did not in fact write them. In the same statement he described the ICRSC as ‘a front for the IRA’.

He admitted today, that he would have reported finding out that someone was a member or a supporter of such a group.

TRI-CONTINENTAL

The next document [UCPI0000008209] was a November 1969 report about the ‘Action Committee Against NATO’. There had been a meeting of the committee on 5 November – only three people were present.

According to the report, Tri-continental provided money for the deposit, so they could book meeting space at Conway Hall.

Edwards thought that Special Branch files were automatically destroyed after 30 years and seems perturbed that these have been ‘dragged out from somewhere’. He suggested from the ‘hairy cupboard’ (he likes his ‘jokes’).

He suggested that his managers would have been interested in this anti-NATO group, because they were worried about these ‘demonstration people’ targeting something that was ‘vital for the security of the country’.

He said that he can’t remember anything about Tri-continental. Let alone whether they ever did anything unlawful or got involved in public disorder.

DAMBUSTERS MOBILISING COMMITTEE

The Dambusters Mobilising Committee (DMC) was a coalition of groups opposing the proposed construction of the colossal Cahora Bassa dam project in Mozambique. The project was intended to supply electricity to apartheid South Africa.

Edwards was asked if he could remember the Dambusters group buying Barclay’s bank shares so they could attend the AGM. Did the Dambusters commit any serious crimes? Were they violent? Were they involved in any public disorder?

Edwards was even less forthcoming than he had been about Tri-Continental, saying ‘you’re asking me things I can’t answer. I can’t speak for the managers and what they thought’.

His witness statement from February 2019 was somewhat more expansive but no more specific:

‘DMC was concerned with a dam in Mozambique or South Africa and it had something to do with South African politics too. I do not remember what the group stood for or what they did. I do not remember how I infiltrated the group or why I infiltrated them. It may have been something to do with the group being on the fringes of all of the trouble with the movement against apartheid.’

The fact that the officer can’t even remember the politics of a group he was part of, suggests it made very little impression on him. This is not what we would expect to see from membership of a group committed to serious disorder, which is what the SDS claims it existed to spy on. The fact that he thinks it may be allied to undermining the struggle against apartheid compounds the sense of anti-democratic action emanating from his words.

SOCIALIST ALLIANCE AGAINST RACIALISM

An April 1970 report by Edwards on a new socialist anti-racist group, Socialist Alliance Against Racialism (SAAR), was shown to the Inquiry. Once again, Edwards said he didn’t remember them at all.

He was asked if it being a ‘campaign against racialism’ would have made it of interest? Or because of the groups involved in founding it? And what his managers’ attitude towards the group was?

He did did not recall much.

There were some questions about the VSC, and a report about their planning meetings before a peaceful demo which took place in the autumn of 1970. He, personally, considered the VSC a front to cause trouble.

He confirmed that he himself was assaulted on a demonstration in Grosvenor Square, by uniformed police armed with truncheons. Asked why the police had gone for him, he said:

‘it’s just the fact you’ve got long hair and a beard and they wallop you, you know, you’re you’re one of them sort of thing. It’s 50 years ago, this was what they were doing. It’s a different attitude to things.’

His faith in the restraint of more modern uniformed officers is quaint. Any number of undercover officers have stories of the brutality of their uniformed colleagues.

At the 2006 Climate Camp at Drax coal-fired power station in North Yorkkshire, spycop Mark Kennedy was so badly beaten by a group of uniformed officers that he reportedly needed surgery on his lower back.

WORKING ABROAD

In complaining about the difficulties of his role, Edwards casually and seemingly unwittingly dropped a bombshell. It had long been thought that SDS officer didn’t go abroad until later on. Peter Francis believed his trip to Germany in the 1990s was the first.

Yet Edwards, who left the job in May 1971, said:

‘I went to Brussels with this other officer whose name I can’t even mention, I suppose, but, you know, the amateurish way that it was done then, it was a strain.’

Whatever the spycops ever did, it seems they always did.

END OF DEPLOYMENT

Edwards was undercover in the SDS for about two years. He finished because:

‘I’d had enough. I’d had enough of going round with a long beard and long hair and being scruffy. It’s quite a strain on the system doing the job, it really is… until you’ve done the job you don’t know what is involved’

Edwards mused about how it had got more difficult later on, for the spycops who came later and got more deeply embedded, for longer periods.

His deployment’s peculiar mix of pointless triviality and undermining of fundamental rights is captured in his 2019 witness statement in which he said:

‘I did not have any idea of how I was helping, one way or the other: nobody ever told me or gave me feedback and there was no other way of me knowing’

After his time with the SDS, Edwards returned to work in other areas of Special Branch. He took on a more clerical role in undermining democratic organisations, and began working on the ‘industrial desk’, which spied on trade unions and is thought to have illegally supplied details on union activists to private blacklisting companies. He said he didn’t know what was done with this kind of information –  ‘obviously it would go to the security service in the first instance’.

Later in his career he worked in the ‘vetting office’. This was primarily security vetting of new recruits to the police, including members of Special Branch itself, done in conjunction with MI5. They sent the completed from off to MI5, who would respond if they considered somebody a security risk.

THE SECRET WASN’T SECRET

Edwards said he was sure the existence of the SDS wasn’t a secret among the top brass. He noted the way ‘all the management all ended up as top commanders and all the rest of it’, and he reminisced about the time that a senior officer brought a bottle of whisky along to the SDS to say thank you for their work.

In his witness statement, he said it was presented at the SDS safe house by the Commissioner or Assistant Commissioner. Whistle-blower officer Peter Francis said exactly the same thing happened to him after the anti-fascist demonstration in October 1993, when the bottle was presented by the Commissioner himself, Sir Paul Condon.

Edwards repeated and expanded on a line from his witness statement:

‘I was just a small cog in a great big machine and I did my little bit as best I could to help the police and the uniformed police and be a good branch officer. That’s what it’s all about, you know. Loyalty to the Branch’

He then veered into a bitter rant about those who’ve exposed decades of the unit’s counter-democratic action and violation of citizens by the thousand. With no trace of irony, he lamented the pain he feels because those he was close to have betrayed his trust.

‘And of course we’ve not seen now any loyalty from some of these people, and that I find very upsetting. You know, when you can’t trust people. I’ve not been to reunions and things like that, because you don’t know who you can trust any more. People are all talking to the press and everybody else, and can’t keep their traps shut. So I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed. You have a long career and that’s what happens.’

 

That concluded the second week of the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s evidence hearings. They will continue next week (Monday, Wednesday and Thursday are definite, other days undecided as yet), then there will be a break until around April.

 

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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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Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 9

12 November 2020

Evidence from:

Officer HN 329 aka ‘John Graham’
Ernest Tate, anti-war & Marxist activist (written statement read in full by Nick Stanage)
Officer HN 218 aka Barry Moss (summary of evidence)
Officer HN 334 aka ‘Margaret White’ (summary of evidence)

The morning was taken up by that first police witness, officer HN 329 aka ‘John Graham’. After many years of waiting, we finally heard a former undercover officer speak from the witness box. Unfortunately, most people could not see or hear as only a near-contemporaneous transcript was broadcast.

‘YOU WILL BE SILENCED’

With the very first police witness giving evidence at the Undercover Policing Inquiry, barrister for the victims of spycops Rajiv Menon QC wanted to ask a series of questions. But the Inquiry’s Chair, Sir John Mitting, cut him off lest it be stressful for the spycop. When Menon tried to debate the matter, Mitting told him to obey or ‘you will be silenced’.

This outburst was just an unruly version of what we’ve seen from Mitting all along – the prioritisation of the comfort of spycops over the desire of victims and the public to know the truth. He ignores the fact that this is an inquiry into police wrongdoing and is clearly affronted at the impudence of those who would challenge a police officer.

Most of the afternoon was devoted to lifelong anti-war and left-wing activist Ernest Tate, on of the organisers of the 1968 demonstrations against the Vietnam War that sparked the founding of the Special Demonstration Squad and, as such, events to which the Inquiry is giving a lot of attention.

At the end of the day, there were summaries of the statements from two former spycops who aren’t giving evidence in person, then brief details about the careers of six deceased officers.

Officer HN 329, aka ‘John Graham’

[Note, throughout this we refer to the officer by his cover name, John Graham].

Graham principally spied upon the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) of whom protest organiser Tariq Ali’s testimony we heard yesterday.

The questions were put by David Barr QC, Counsel To the Inquiry. He began by asking him some questions about joining the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). Specifically, he was asked whether he volunteered or if he volunteered by someone else. He replied that he thought he was told to join the new unit in 1968.

He had joined Special Branch early on, initially working for the ‘naturalisation inquiries’ section, which gave him insight to the sort of reporting Special Branch generally wanted. Senior officers would check over work to ensure nothing ‘irrelevant’ was included.

Prior to joining the SDS, he also worked in ‘C’ Squad in Special Branch – responsible for monitoring communists and this involved ‘normal’ plain-clothes Special Branch work with no undercover name or persona used.

UNDERSTANDING SPECIAL BRANCH 

There were a number of questions that Graham could either not help with or gave unhelpfully vague answers. These included what Special Branch’s definition of extremism was.

He was a little more helpful on Special Branch’s duty regarding the ‘Security of the State’ – or at least his earlier written statement was. There he suggested that by collecting information covertly, Special Branch would be able to find out about any violent intent on part of protesters.

Expanding on this line, Barr again referred to the officer’s written statement, eliciting about the Special Branch’s role vis-a-vis policing political groups:

‘I understood the role of Special Branch to be carrying out enquiries concerning the security of the State, in other words gathering intelligence on activities that sought to undermine the status quo, the government of the day and the political establishment’.

The conflation of national security with the convenience and policy of the government has always been a central factor in what spycops do.

TRAINING & ACTIVITIES

On training, he explained that his time in Special Branch had already given him a good idea of what was expected, and what kind of information they would have been interested in collecting. For instance, they would have been interested in personal details, any distinguishing features. It also included info about the dynamics of the group he was reporting on and any analysis that he thought useful. He left any ‘filtering’ of the information to someone else.

Graham explained that there wasn’t much of a difference between normal Special Branch duties and those within the SDS in terms of attending political meetings. As part of the ‘general inquiries’ section of Special Branch, he would attend in plain clothes.

Once he joined the SDS, he would just wear ‘nondescript clothing’. He said that sometimes people who were dressed smartly might be regarded with suspicion (and asked to leave a meeting) but ‘if you were scruffy.. nobody bothered you’.

A REVOLUTIONARY PERSUASION

Graham infiltrated various VSC branches in North West London, attending meetings in Camden, Hampstead, Kilburn, and Willesden. He added that the Camden group was ‘considered prominent as it contained Geoff Richman’. (Geoff and Marie Richman were prominent in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign itself, and Geoff, a medical doctor, was a member of the Socialist Medical Association.)

Graham describes the Richmans as ‘nice people’. A question might have been put here whether this made the officer feel uncomfortable in spying on them. However, there was no hint of regret or remorse at any point in Graham’s oral hearing.

Barr asked Graham about the revolutionary sentiment he found in Camden that was apparently so in need of infiltration and monitoring:

Barr: You describe the Camden VSC in terms which suggest they were revolutionary but they were not going to use violence to try and achieve their ends. Could you describe in what sense you understood them to be revolutionary?

Graham: Well, they – they wanted to change the government.

Barr: And if they were not going to use violence, how were they going to seek a change of government?

Graham: To try and persuade people to their point of view.

Graham said that the Camden VSC group once did a performance in a market, but apart from that they only really went on the big demonstrations. None of the groups he spied on tried to do anything secret, he said.

He confirmed that SDS boss Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon sometimes attended these VSC meetings too. Most of the time Graham was alone at these meetings. However, if more than one SDS officer was in the same meeting, they would play it by ear, and maybe not even acknowledge each other saying.

A PUBLISHED AUTHOR

Next a publication called ‘Red Camden’ (UCPI0000007701) was referred to. This was the journal of the Camden VSC. In one 1969 issue was an article which was attributed to the name ‘John Grahame’, which spoke of him attending a Vietnam Solidarity Campaign Working Committee meeting, where he was expecting political infighting.

Graham had no recollection of writing it, but said it was possible that it had been written by Dixon or another SDS colleague, and his name added to it. A clearer copy can be found on the Undercover Research Group’s profile of John Graham.

Another document referred to was a report from a VSC meeting at Conway Hall on 17th September 1968. Barr noted that this was attended by at least seven members of the SDS. As well as John Graham, this list included squad head Chef Inspector Conrad Dixon, DI Saunders, DS Wilson, DS Fisher, DS Creamer and DC Moss.

The obvious question of why so many police attended the same meeting, to which Graham could only reply:

‘It may have been a question of, that there was nothing else on, so people felt that they ought to be doing something.’

Even among the extreme stories of the spycops, this was an extraordinary moment.

Last week police lawyers emphasised that the SDS was established because 1968 was a volatile time with feral subversives everywhere. Today we’re told seven of them went to the same anti-war meeting because of a lack of work. They’d rather spy on the undeserving than not spy at all.

Graham also explained that this might have made it easier for the undercovers’ to remember stuff (as they couldn’t make any notes during the meeting) and to identify attendees (who were numerous). This explanation doesn’t ring true, as if it were it would be common practice.

Graham was asked if he and fellow SDS officers would take part in ballots at meetings, and thereby influence the results? Not understanding the significance of this obvious interference with the political process, Graham just said he voted on motions without giving it much thought:

‘it’s just a question of sticking your hand up with the majority once you knew which way the vote was going to go anyway.’

The next meeting mentioned involved the Anti-Imperialist Solidarity Movement. In this context, Graham was asked why he felt the need to record the ethnic origin of attendees, or use the word ‘coloured’ to do so? Only answering the second part of the question, He said that it was common to do so at the time.

ACTIVE PARTICIPATION

Barr then moved on to the officer’s attendance at a much smaller meeting, of the VSC ‘working committee’ – by this time he had been embedded in the group for many months, and so was able to access these less public discussions, that took place in private homes.

In his first written statement, Graham states that none of these meetings were ‘closed’ – you just had to have had attended a previous open meeting to know about it. He claimed not to recall much about his participation in these meetings – said that he probably just went along with the majority opinion as to the most ‘sensible and safest tactic’ and that no guidance was given about meetings in private homes, or in travelling outside of the Met’s jurisdiction.

MOBILE ESPIONAGE

On this, he said he said he attended an event in Sheffield in May 1969. When asked if it was common for SDS officers to travel to other areas, he said he had ‘no idea’ as ‘everyone was working separately in their groups.’ This illustrates the lack of day-to-day oversight of these early deployments.

A protest of particular note in the evidence was an early 1969, Australians and New Zealanders Against the War in Vietnam organised a meeting at Australia House then marched along the Strand in London to the Savoy Hotel, where the Australian prime minister was staying.

Graham remembered that event as he was punched in the ribs by a security guard while being ejected. He expanded on this, saying the rest of the group had got up to shout in defence of one guy who was being ejected from the building, so Graham felt he had to partake to maintain his cover saying: ‘I thought I better get to my feet and I remember saying ‘let him speak’. He was grabbed and dragged out and recalls he pretended to resist.

DINNER DATES & GHOST WRITERS

The next questions were about Graham inviting a woman activist out to dinner, and going through on it even though by this time he was aware he was being withdrawn as an undercover officer. He said he couldn’t remember why he had done this, or really anything about it at all, though his statement noted he hadn’t wanted to let her down. He denied there was any sexual motivation for the date. This still leaves the puzzle of why he invited her out in the first place, or why he did not cancel it.

When asked about the possibility of signing his name to any reports which he hadn’t written, which had been written by another undercover, Graham said in general ‘I wouldn’t have signed anything I didn’t know to be true.’

More then was asked about the ‘ethos’ of the SDS – ‘were you open with each other or secretive with one another’, to which he replied that ‘In the main, I suppose we were open’. On the stresses and strain of being undercover, Graham was blasé, neither finding his deployment stressful or felt that he needed any special support.

SIMPLY THE BEST

Finally, when asked for his view of those early days of the SDS, Graham said:

‘The original group, from Conrad Dixon down, were the finest representatives of Special Branch. And they were excellent officers who did exactly the proper job.’

This was the end of David Barr’s questions, which were thought unsatisfactory by many watching as issues raised were not followed up in the search for more firm answers.

‘YOU WILL BE SILENCED’

Tariq Ali’s barrister, Rajiv Menon QC, then rose, requesting permission to ask supplementary questions. He wanted to ask Graham about:

1) the political motivations of the VSC in those early days;
2) the selection and targeting of the VSC, and some more detail about what the officer was told to do;
3) the general methodology of the SDS, and what happened at these near-daily or daily meetings at the unit’s ‘safe house’ (the rented flat used by the SDS away from New Scotland Yard to spend their daytime and write up reports, as the political meetings they spied on tended to take place in the evenings)
4) what information the officer had collected that made a difference, particularly resulting in a lower level of public disorder in the October 1968 Vietnam demonstration than there had been in March;
5) the use of ‘Box 500/MI5’ (how much intelligence was passed to the security services)
6) and finally, some questions in relation to one of the documents already exhibited – the meeting attended by 7 SDS officers.

Menon added that the early finishing of Barr’s questions meant there was sufficient time before the next witness. What happened next was truly shocking. Mitting refused Menon’s request, saying it would repeat questions that Barr blatantly had not asked, and that it may be uncomfortable for Graham. Mitting’s words were:

Mitting: ‘That may be so, but I have to keep order in the proceedings and to ensure not merely that this witness is not troubled by questions that have already adequately been covered by Mr Barr and by his statement and by the documents, but also that this does not set a precedent for future such requests.

‘Of the seven topics that you have given to me, one and one only may give rise to a question that can rightly be posed to this witness, and that is the last one: the meeting where the vote was taken about the route that was to be adopted on 27 October. You may ask about that, but not about other topics.’

Some what perplexed, Menon began to ask for clarification:

Menon: ‘But, sir, I’ve highlighted -‘

Instead of giving him a civil reply that the point deserved, a visibly agitated Mitting interrupted:

Mitting: ‘You may ask about that but not other topics. That is my ruling.’

Menon accepted and sought to clarify, saying:

Menon: Very well, sir. Can I make it clear that I cannot understand –

At which point Mitting cut straight across him with a threat of censorship:

Mitting: No, you may not. I’m sorry. You may ask your questions, or you will be silenced.

This outburst from Mitting was met with shock, but for many core participants is symptomatic of the general hostility and downright contempt with which the Chair has treated the non-state participants in both his decision-making and his attitude throughout the Inquiry. Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance have since issued a media release questioning Mitting’s behaviour.

A PERMITTED QUESTION

The only question that Mitting was prepared to allow was the one about the VSC meeting when a vote was taken about the route of the 27 October Grosvenor Square demonstration. Menon asked the officer about the voting that took place at this meeting. His explanation (earlier on) was that if he hadn’t voted, he would have stood out like a sore thumb. So he must have put his hand up but has no recollection of it.

When asked whether this vote discussed later on, back at the flat, Graham claimed not to remember how he’d voted, or any discussions with other undercovers afterwards about how they had voted. He also said that they would have all gone off on their separate ways, and that other SDS officers who were normally back office staff wouldn’t usually have come to the flat anyway.

Asked about whether the information the police spies gathered would have made it into other officers’ reports, he answered ‘it would have assisted at some stage with identifying people’.

After the stormy and frustrating end to the questioning of the first police witness, the Inquiry broke for lunch.

The accompanying first written witness statement of officer EN329 and the second written witness statement of officer EN329

Ernest Tate
Political activist
(written statement read in full by Nick Stanage)

Ernest Tate was unable to give evidence in person, his statement was read for him by Nick Stanage QC.

Tate was born in Belfast in 1934. He emigrated to Canada at the age of 21 and worked in mechanical engineering.

Politically active all his life, Tate has written a memoir of his activism in the 1950s and 1960s, relating to his time in the International Group (a section of the Fourth International, as founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938) which, in Britain, became in the International Marxist Group (IMG).

Tate was in Britain for almost five years between 1965 and 1969, and in that time was heavily involved in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC), which was set up in 1966.

Returning to Canada in 1969, he became involved in the trade unions and for many years was Chief Steward and Vice President of a major local of the Canadian Union of Public Employees. He is now retired, and living in Toronto.

ERNEST TATE, FILE 402/66/451

The Undercover Policing Inquiry had sent Tate a ‘Witness Pack’ of 23 Special Branch intelligence reports dated between 8 February1965 and 3 March 1969 in which his name is mentioned. The Inquiry asked him to answer questions about his activity in general and the documents in particular.

The reports were based on on activity of officers of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch’s undercover political unit, founded in 1968 as the ‘Special Operations Squad’ (SOS), and re-named the ‘Special Demonstration Squad’ (SDS) around 1972-3.

Tate’s Special Branch ‘Registry File’ has the reference number 402/66/451, which indicates it was opened in 1966. Such reports were routinely copied to MI5. Like many others targeted by spycops, Tate’s full file remains ‘Top Secret’. The fact that he left the UK over 50 years ago and the groups he was in no longer exists make no difference to the secrecy.

The few reports given to Tate are only a fraction of the secret surveillance files held on him, the International Marxist Group [RF 400/58/152] of which he was a full time organiser, and the
Vietnam Solidarity Campaign [RF 346/65/15], in which he was was also heavily involved.

FEW FACTS, FEWER ANSWERS

The Inquiry has made it harder for Tate to contribute, because it has chosen not to let him see any of the Witness Statements made by any of the SOS officers who spied on him, nor any statements from managers or an appropriate officer who could provide evidence on behalf of a deceased officer.

Additionally, he hasn’t been shown any photographs of officers in their undercover guise, save for one of Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon.

The undercover officers who have been identified as having spied on him are:
• TN0039 Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon
• HN299/342 ‘David Hughes‘ (despite the Inquiry website saying he was only deployed from 1971, more than a year after Tate had left the country)
• HN321 ‘William Paul “Bill” Lewis‘
• HN329 ‘John Graham‘
• HN326 ‘Douglas Edwards‘
• HN332 whose details do not yet appear on the Inquiry website

The path to clarity is further obstructed by the failure of the Inquiry to ask the Metropolitan Police to provide Position Statements, which would set out exactly why the SOS was set up, what its operational parameters were, and why it was necessary to begin more intrusive surveillance, including forming intimate relationships with targets.

Tate presumes the State will argue that this clear breach of the basic human right to privacy was justified due to a threat of serious violence from those groups or individuals spied on. In which case, the Met should have to explain why the SOS was allowed to continue to operate after the 27 October 1968 demonstration against the Vietnam War had passed off largely peacefully.

Tate completely refuted the notion that he, the VSC, or the IMG, threatened violence, especially serious violence. Equally, he rejected any suggestion that any of them deserved to be targeted because infiltration would allow the police to monitor others.

He asserted that there is no justification for the gross intrusion by the police into people’s private lives on the basis that a person’s, or group’s politics is frowned upon by the State, unless there is a real, not fanciful, threat of serious violence. The UK had been a signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights for many years by the time the spycop unit was formed, and the Article 8 of the respect for privacy, private and family life, should be applied to any judgment about the legitimacy of its actions.

SECRECY WITHOUT END

Special Branch records from 1887 onward are subject to almost complete secrecy regardless of age. A few documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by journalist Solomon Hughes 10 years ago in an attempt to establish what happened in 1968, and these were put onto the Special Branch Files Project website.

The advent of the Inquiry has seen the release of some spycops’ documents, but it’s a sliver of what was created. It means it’s almost impossible for Tate and other core participants at the Inquiry to counter any narrative given by the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police

Tate then turned to the specific questions the Inquiry had asked him, saying:

‘It is clear in my mind that these questions focus very narrowly on the issue of violence, hence it appears to me that this will be the justification used by those in charge of SDS throughout the period…

‘The other major interested parties, the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office who oversaw the wrongdoing of SOS officers, have full access to every file they want’

He pointed that, in contrast to the clandestine and secretive nature of the British State, he has nothing to hide. The Inquiry, the Police and members of the public can read what he has written about his activities in his two-volume memoir, Revolutionary Activism in the 1950s and 60s, Ernest Tate, A Memoir’ (Volume 1 Canada 1955-65, and Volume 2, Britain 1965-1970).

Tate was asked to clarify his role in the VSC. He was one of its founders in June 1966. He was a member of its National Council and its executive committee, from that date on until April 1969. The executive committee, a sub-committee of the National Council, provided leadership to the VSC between National Council meetings and was responsible for its national functioning on a day-to-day basis. Beyond that, Tate publicly wrote and spoke for the VSC.

A million people perished in the Vietnam War, including 50,000 US soldiers, most of whom were teenagers. Tate explained that the VSC aimed to build a solidarity campaign with the Vietnamese against the American aggression, calling for its immediate end and the withdrawal of all of American forces, and the end of British collusion with the Americans. It also called for support for the Vietnamese National Liberation Front.

It sought to achieve this through building broad united-front coalitions of like-minded organisations and individuals to create mass mobilisations on the streets against the war.

NOTHING TO HIDE

There was no vetting of members, they merely had to agree with the broad aims, provide funds and attend meetings. The political debates were quite open, and as a result, at the founding conference in 1966, a large number of Maoist delegates withdrew to a separate location and formed the rival Britain-Vietnam Solidarity Front (BVSF). The anarchists also held separate conferences, as they wanted to be clear they were ‘neither Washington nor Hanoi’.

There was no secrecy of any kind. All VSC business and policy meetings were open to all members, though not to the general public. They knew the police were interested in what they were doing, but because none of it was illegal they didn’t worry about infiltration. They specifically warned members against pointing fingers of suspicion at anyone, knowing how that had been used in other groups in the past to divide and destroy the movement.

The Inquiry asked if there was violence planned for, or witnessed at, the March 1968 demonstration.

Tate unequivocally affirmed that there was none planned. He described how the march, tens of thousands strong, tried to enter Grosvenor Square, they were met by hundreds, if not thousands, of uniformed police, many on horseback, who in aggressively confronted them in order to prevent anyone getting near the American Embassy. Violence erupted with many police and demonstrators injured and/or arrested, the blame for which Tate lays firmly with the police.

INTERNATIONAL MARXIST GROUP

Tate also described the IMG and his role there. He helped to organize the group and was a member of its National and Political Committees. His primary loyalty was to the IMG, rather than the VSC. The IMG was primarily responsible for the creation of the VSC, its members functioned as an open caucus to prepare for its various conference and activities.

He confirmed that the IMG was a revolutionary group, and gave a series of refreshingly direct and concise answers.

Inquiry: Did the IMG believe that revolution would, or might, require the use
of force?

Tate: Yes.

Inquiry: Did the IMG believe that force should be used to bring about revolution in 1968-1969?

Tate: No.

Inquiry: Did the IMG believe that public disorder would advance its cause?

Tate: No.

Inquiry: Did the IMG believe that breaking any laws was justified or necessary to advance its cause? If so, which laws and for what purposes?

Tate: The IMG did not believe in breaking the law, but if a particular law was oppressive or dangerous to our democratic rights, and there was mass opposition in society to it, then the IMG might have explored ways to challenge that law.

Tate declared the infiltration of the VSC and the IMG and scandalous:

‘It reveals how far democratic tights in Britain have been abused over the past fifty years. It has become the norm, it seems to me, for the State to put the boot to anyone it doesn’t like. If you’re a socialist or Marxist or someone who has different ideas about how the economy and society should be organised, should we expect dirty tricks from those who are supposed to protect us?’

A HANDFUL OF FILES

The Inquiry then ran through the documents it had revealed to Tate, and asked for his opinion on their accuracy. He criticised the selection of documents as a ‘bizarrely selected and highly partisan package of material’ that had the huge absence of the great bulk of contemporaneous relevant documents that must have been created. What have the Met and the Home Office got to hide?

‘if this is really meant to be a Public Inquiry then the public – journalists and academics, historians and those of us who were involved at the time – should be allowed to see the material.’

Tate went through the documents methodically, giving a facinating insight into how much the spycops targeted one person. The documents included:

MPS-0739885: This was a report of a meeting on 8 February 1968.

According to Special Branch officer “David Hughes’ (HN299/342), it was an open public meeting attended by about 70 people at Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel to show the film ‘American War Crimes in Vietnam’. One of the future protests mentioned was against Dow Chemical in Wigmore Street, London, the manufacturers of the notorious substance napalm which burnt people alive and was being extensively used by American forces in Vietnam.

What is interesting is that this routine report is prior to the formation of the covert SOS/SDS unit. This shows that Special Branch were easily able to access the meetings and report on everyone without the need for deeper-cover infiltrators.

Tate highlighted the lack of any witness statement from ‘David Hughes’ in his Witness Pack, in which ‘Hughes’ might have explained the difference between his routine Special Branch duties in monitoring these meetings and his later doing the same thing within SOS/SDS.

No photograph of this officer, who was then presumably in his twenties, has been supplied to assist Tate in trying to recall him and his activities. But ‘Hughes’ has been granted anonymity at the Inquiry.

In a decision typical of the orders that are allowing the overwhelming majority of spycops to get away unnamed, the Inquiry ruled that:

‘publication of his real name would risk unwelcome media attention and the attention of those who maybe disposed towards him within his small community… The interference with his right to respect for his private life which it would risk would not be justified’.

Tate wryly replied:

‘I am pleased to see that the Inquiry is underlining the importance of the right to respect for private and family life. and I trust this same important right will be afforded to the people who were spied on when and if any judgments are reached concerning the gross interference with this right as practiced by the Metropolitan Police Special Branch and others.’

MPS-0739886: Report of a private meeting of 35 people on 15 February 1968, though ‘David Hughes’ was there again to report on it which, said Tate, indicates that it would have been an open meeting for anyone who wanted to be involved in VSC activities.

The report says that towards the end of the meeting some people present said they intended breaking windows at the US embassy and were prepared for a ‘punch up’ with the police; others said they wanted a sit-down protest.

Tate responded:

‘To be clear, VSC policy was always non-violent, we were only too aware that the violence was a particularly strong attribute of the State. The officer’s assessment that a ‘fair amount of violence’ could be expected at the forthcoming solidarity demonstration in March 1968 was not an assessment I would have shared at the time.’

MPS-0730911: This report of the 17 March 1968 demo was submitted by the Special Branch
Commander to the Director of Public Prosecutions. This means that, rather than gathering intelligence, it was explicitly prepared for the sake of supporting prosecutions by the State, presumably of the VSC leadership.

It is surely unusual that Special Branch officers (including the later head of SDS, Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon) were tasked to take ordinary witness statements from members of the public. It would help to have a witness statement explaining the reason for this report too, but there is none.

It details two particular incidents that resulted in the confrontation with police in Grosvenor Square, firstly the initial refusal to allow the letters of protest to be delivered to the Embassy, as had been agreed with the Met beforehand; and secondly the fact that the march was blocked by police at the corner of North Audrey Street, in such a way that the demonstrators were very compressed and so burst forth.

This created panic among the authorities which, in turn, led to the formation of the SOS/SDS in the summer of 1968. And yet the answer to this militancy is given in a leaflet enclosed with the report, which described how the mood and temper of the demonstration was determined by the American aggression, and that it was impossible to remain calm and peaceful before the barbarism of American aggression in Vietnam.

MPS-0722106: This report of 2 April 1968 by Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon, signed off by Chief Superintendent [name redacted, presumably A Cunningham] is another report into the March
1968 VSC demonstration.

Noting that the author was the founder and head of the spycops unit, Tate mused:

‘I think that Conrad Dixon is an important player in the history of the SDS and it is a shame that he is now deceased as I am sure he would have plenty to say. In his 1999 obituary in The Times it is stated that he was the leader and founder of SOS, having been born into an army family, educated at Oxford and joined the Royal Marines. At Special Branch he apparently “specialised in anarchists, Trotskyists and anarcho-syndicalists”.’

When setting up the unit, Dixon had legendarily asked for men, a budget, and a free hand. Tate homed in on this point:

‘I would like to emphasise the words “a free hand” as this suggests a complicity at higher levels with the SDS being allowed to thrive in a culture that broke the rules. I also note that his obituary is quite open about his role in SDS, in contrast to the institutional secrecy of the Metropolitan Police.’

Though Dixon’s report suggests there were proposals for violent action at the demonstration, he also said:

‘it is not possible to use these sources for evidential purposes, and no evidence of violent intentions was obtained by police officers who gained entry to some of these closed meetings.’

Tate laid the contradiction wide open and, having already shown that Special Branch had infiltrated the VSC, speculated that we may have found the real reason the spycops unit was established:

‘This can only mean that there are existing Special Branch reports (perhaps filed in RF 361/68/12 Ad Hoc Committee?) that detail these supposed discussions. I would like to see them… This all sounds like make-believe; Cl Dixon obviously knew what his masters wanted to hear. One wonders if the future creation of SOS/SOS was not out of desperation to try and find this supposed ‘evidence’ that was so sorely lacking.

‘The truth is there was not the slightest evidence that VSC planned any form of violence. VSC only believed in lawful resistance to police violence (i.e. lawful self-defence). It seems clear to me that this Special Branch report is obviously expressing and reflecting the political prejudices of the British government of the day and the police, it is utterly self-serving and the Inquiry should beware of placing too much weight on it.’

Tate said the Inquiry should examine the dossier compiled by the National Council for Civil Liberties, that provided independent observers on the day of the demonstration. This dossier is referred to by Peter Jackson MP in his speech to parliament on 4 April 1968. His account supports Tate’s.

MPS-0741312: Documents, placed in the files in July 1968 for Chief Inspector Dixon to action, are the first that are dated after the creation of the Special Operations Squad. They include copies of the minutes of a VSC Executive meeting held on 5 July 1968, and the VSC National Council on 10 July
1968. There is nothing in these meetings or minutes that was secret.

MPS-0738746: A report of a VSC meeting at Conway Hall on 20 August 1968, seemingly from Detective Sergeant Roy Creamer. Tate noted that Creamer is absent from the Inquiry’s list of officers. Who exactly was he?

Since the Inquiry started, it has posted this report and one other document by Creamer, as well as a photo of him that it did not send to Tate in its Witness Pack.

The report is was marked ‘Box 500’, meaning it had been copied to MI5. Tate notes that the Registry File numbers have been redacted, as well as what is presumably the word ‘Secret’ at the top of the document.

MPS-0730063: This is another significant report, dated 10 September 1968, by the head of the new SOS unit, CI Conrad Dixon. It written up just a few days after the VSC National Council meeting in Sheffield on 7 September 1968 – about which there is inexplicably no report disclosed – which confirmed the route of the October demonstration.

Tate described it as:

‘an utterly superficial and very opinionated police summary of contemporary British radicalism… very distorted, but just what I would expect from a secret policeman. His characterization of Tariq Ali as a “mob orator” and Ralph Schoenman as a “notorious agitator” and the general tone of the report suggests a policeman with a deep loathing of his subjects: he is perhaps aware that his career is better assisted by producing alarmist reports of this nature for his superiors than more carefully considered ones: the creation of SOS had to be justified.’

‘As for the supposed rumours or reports about the acquisition of (fire)arms and the preparation of Molotov cocktails, these are the product of a febrile imagination; even he admits have no evidential basis. He even accepts that the anarchist conference of 8 September 1968 in London condemned ‘senseless violence’.

‘I believe that there was a deliberate State tactic to foment public hysteria to frighten people away from joining future demonstrations – notwithstanding that the increased publicity may have actually had the opposite effect.’

MPS-0738815: A report of a meeting of the NW London Ad Hoc Committee on 11 September 1968 at the Friends House in NW3. Two officers were present, CI Dixon and a Detective Inspector HN 332 whose identity has still not been disclosed. Tate has no memory of the meeting.

UCPI0000005782: A report of PC Barry Moss and CI Dixon dated 19 September 1968 attaches a report, said to be written by Tate, on the Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation. Unfortunately the copy is almost completely illegible and impossible to read. Whatever was in it, it was sent to MI5.

MPS-0722099: A report on a meeting of 32 people of the VSC Lambeth branch at the ‘Duke of Cambridge’ pub on 26 September 1968, authored by ‘William Paul Lewis’.

Tate agrees with the report detailing his attempts to secure the support of the working class and trade unions for the demonstration. As for ‘Lewis’ himself, Tate observed that the Metropolitan Police applied in July 2017 for his cover name to remain anonymous, despite the fact that this is meant to be a Public Inquiry.

The application said that he did not steal his identity from a deceased child, but aside from this we know nothing. Again, the absence of the officer’s statement in the Witness Pack has constrained Tate’s ability to comment.

The Inquiry’s decision to grant ‘Lewis’ anonymity has some curious elements:

‘It is likely that disclosure of his real name would prompt intense and unwelcome media interest in him and so would give rise to serious interference with his and his family’s right to respect for their private life under Article 8 of the European Convention which would not be justifiable under Article 8(2). Closed reasons accompany this note.’

Why would the media be especially interested? What are the ‘closed reasons’ that we’re not allowed to know?

MPS-0730096: Another report by CI Conrad Dixon, this time dated 3 October 1968 and described as a ‘regular weekly report’ on the preparations for the national demonstration three weeks hence. Tate is mentioned as an IMG member and member of the VSC executive.

Interestingly, this document was made public in 2008, obtained by the journalist Solomon Hughes – but paragraph (b) was redacted for some reason; it mentions a supposed attack by London School of Economics (LSE) students on the Stock Exchange and an occupation of the LSE itself.

According to his Times obituary in 1999, Dixon was involved as an undercover officer in that occupation on 25 October and seized the telephone exchange. This is presumably the reason for the redaction.

Dixon said students have provided the bulk of the support for the VSC demonstrations thus far, and ‘their behaviour on demonstrations is largely spontaneous’.

Tate concurred with this assessment, adding that it actually proved his point:

‘there was never any plan for violence from the IMG or the VSC, rather the complete opposite, we wanted a huge but peaceful demonstration. Insofar as the Maoists wanted a more militant approach by confronting police in Grosvenor Square, we in the VSC were opposed to this and the three Maoist-controlled VSC local branches had been disowned by the National Council for this reason.’

Dixon says the Maoist contingent was said to number no more than 100 people. He concludes that it is the people who are not represented on the VSC – anarchists, Maoists and ‘foreign elements’ – who are most likely to use violence and be hostile to the police. In saying this, Dixon completely undermines the supposed reason for infiltrating the VSC at all. If it wasn’t about violence, it must have been about politics.

When all this is considered, it’s pretty clear that police and organisers only expected a tiny number of people who were desirous of a clash with the police, and any such situation that arose would be largely spontaneous. All that undercover policing made not the slightest difference to the
manner in which events transpired on 27 October 1988.

The Times obituary of 1999 gives Dixon credit for advising that the police lines needed to be thicker to prevent demonstrators breaking through. It did not take undercover police, or indeed any police at all, to come up with that idea, it’s just obvious crowd control stuff.

MPS-0730091: This is Cl Dixon’s next weekly report, dated 16 October 1968, and signed off by Chief Superintendent A. Cunningham. It notes both Tate and his partner Jess MacKenzie as being prominent in VSC affairs.

MPS-0730093: This appears to be the definitive police report of the 27 October 1968 VSC demonstration, submitted by Chief Superintendent A. Cunningham.

Tate refuted the claim the VSC was ‘to a considerable extent responsible for the violence which occurred at the demonstrations in London on October 1967, March and July 1968’, and wondered why, if the July demo was of interest to the police, no documents have been shown to him:

‘It is unfair to characterize the approach of the VSC and myself as simply ‘paying lip service’ to
the concept of an orderly demonstration. This is what we wanted. We did disagree with the Maoists and excluded them. His statement that ‘the majority were well disciplined and acted in an orderly manner under the direction of the VSC marshals’ is correct and rather belies his earlier dire warnings of considerable public disorder being likely.’

MPS-0731634: A report on an IMG meeting of about 30 people held in ‘The Earl Russell ‘ pub on Sunday 3 November 1958, to discuss the political situation in Northern Ireland, where Tate is from. ‘William Paul Lewis’ wrote the report, and had presumably become an IMG member. A copy of this report went to MI5 and another copy to ‘B Squad (“Irish Extremism”).

Tate commented:

‘The context was that the first Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) march had
taken place on 24 August 1958 in Dungannon, drawing 4000 people. This passed off peacefully, but on 5 October 1968 another NICRA march was attacked by police officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), this was the start of what became known as The Troubles.’ Once again, the serious violence was from the police not the protesters.’

MPS-0730768: A report by Cl Dixon of a meeting of the VSC at Conway Hall on 11 November 1968. 100 people came to discuss the 27 October demonstration.

Further undercover officers were present:
TN0034, a Detective Sergeant;
HN321 ‘William Paul Lewis’;
HN329 ‘John Graham’;
HN326 ‘Douglas Edwards’.

No witness statements of any of these officers were included in Tate’s Witness Pack.

Tate then returned to the Inquiry’s questions. They asked, having seen the reports, what additional access to the VSC would the use of undercover police officers, as opposed to plain clothes detectives, have given to the police?

Tate said, ‘I don’t know, It probably made it easier for them to steal membership lists.’

The Inquiry went back to the report dated 30 July 1966 (MPS-0738693) in which Tate is described as a ‘dove’ on the question of violence by comparison to the ‘hawk’, ‘Albert’ Manchanda.

Tate’s response was at once exasperated and dismissive:

‘This is gossip I have never heard before. My disagreements with Manchanda were fundamentally political, about what should be the program of the VSC. I did not know at that time what his views were about violence in relation to the Vietnam protest movement, I never ever discussed this issue with him. I never trusted him. He led a splinter group which tried to wreck the founding conference in 1966. The Maoists formed a separate organization, the Britain-Vietnam Solidarity Front (BVSF).’

The Inquiry also highlighted a report’s claim that ‘the more cautious representatives of International Socialism and International Marxist groups paid lip service to the vision of a peaceful demonstration’.

Tate rebuffed the sneering insinuations:

‘This is gossip from sources that were not involved in the campaign. We in the leadership of the VSC and the Ad Hoc Committee, were totally committed to peaceful demonstrations, and if violence took place, it was incidental and outside of our control. This is why we did not go to Grosvenor Square on 27 October 1968. It was mainly a peaceful event, much to the surprise of the police, who by that time had frightened the authorities into a state of panic.

‘I and the rest of the leadership of the VSC suspected the Maoists would make an effort to hijack the demonstration as it made its way past Trafalgar Square; that’s why we stopped the demonstration in the middle of the street when they tried to divert it to Grosvenor Square. We effectively policed our own demonstration.’

Responding to a list of tactics which spycops regarded as having been suggested at branch, but not national level, Tate was equally disparaging:

‘This is the product of the fevered imagination of the security services who seemed to be out to frighten their superiors and the Wilson Labour Government. It looks like every little piece of scary information from whatever source, or whatever they invented, was used for this purpose.

‘We, the organizers of the demonstration, wanted the largest mobilisation possible, one to which the participants could bring their families without the fear of being exposed to violence. That’s why the Ad Hoc Committee adopted a march route that ended up with a rally in Hyde Park. What happened on that day highlights the wisdom of that decision. Over 100,000 people turned out.’

The Inquiry moved on to ask Tate about the impact of the spycops revelations. He cited the Canadian McDonald Commission (1977-81), which had comprehensively dealt with a similar scandal there, while the American Church Committee (1976) had done a similar job with the comparable COINTELPRO affair. At the time these bodies were delivering their damning verdicts, the SDS was escalating its activity in Britain. It’s time for a reckoning.

He summed up his position:

‘The Inquiry has to decide whether it will simply protect the interests of the police and the State, even after all these years, or whether it will come down on the side of civil liberties and the right of people to have a private life free from intrusion by State security forces. I hope that the Inquiry will lead to legislation and public oversight that will limit their ability to harass those who happen to be critical of society or are fighting for social change.’

The accompanying written witness statement of Ernest Tate

For the last session of the day, the Inquiry then had one of its own staff present a summary of evidence supplied by two early SDS officers, HN218 (Barry Moss, aka ‘Barry Morris’ or ‘Barry Morse’) and HN334 (‘Margaret White’).

Officer HN 218, aka Barry Moss
(summary of evidence)

Moss was in the SDS from its formation in July 1968 until late September 1968. He returned to the SDS as a manager in 1980. His real name is Barry Moss, and while undercover he used Barry Morris or Morse. He had been a detective constable in Special Branch for only several months when he was told by Detective Chief Superintendent Arthur Cunningham that he and a dozen or so others, were joining the newly formed SDS.

He recalls:

‘I didn’t opt into it and I don’t think it occurred to anyone there that we could opt out. There was no formal training or guidance provided for the role.’

He used a cover flat merely as an address to write on attendance lists at meetings. He did not live there. He used his own vehicle registered in his own name to attend those meetings.

He believed the unit had a short term remit, gathering information about the upcoming October 1968 demonstration against the Vietnam War. In his witness statement, Moss noted the only real difference from Special Branch work was actually joining groups instead of just attending meetings.

SDS boss Conrad Dixon told him which groups to spy on, but not how to do it. However, while undercover, he had almost daily contact with his cover officer, Detective Inspector Phil Saunders.

He joined the Maoist Britain-Vietnam Solidarity Front (BVSF). He does not recall joining the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) which was something of a rival group, but reports on the VSC include his name.

The reports mention five different groups; the Joint Committee of Communists, the Committee for Solidarity with Vietnam, the VSC’s Ad Hoc Committee, and two branches of the VSC.

MIXING WITH THE MAOISTS

He remembers people being in several of the groups at the same time and there may have been a shared Maoist ideological connection (even though the VSC had a significant ideological split with Maoists).

His reports show a mix of public and private meetings mostly concerned with planning for the October 27 demonstration, including, banner making and choosing slogans. On 24 September 1968 at a meeting of the October 27 Committee for Solidarity in Vietnam, it was recorded that a decision was made to break away from the main demonstration to target the American Embassy.

Moss confirmed at that some meetings there were SDS officers and ordinary uniformed officers not working together. At other meetings there would be more than one SDS officer, simply because their respective groups had attended the same meeting.

NINE OFFICERS VOTING

At a public meeting of the VSC’s October 27 Ad Hoc Committee, nine police officers are stated to have been present, including the majority of the SDS’s senior officers. According to the report, the significant occurrence at the meeting appears to have been a vote against the proposal made by Maoists to march to Downing Street on 26 October and then to Grosvenor Square (home to the US Embassy) on 27 October 1968. Presumably these nine officers all voted to avoid looking conspicuous.

Moss said some of the meetings raised ‘of particular interest to Special Branch’. Reports have detailed descriptions of branch members, including those with no previous trace or Special Branch record, notes of speakers expressing political opinions, and reporting of contacting journalists to arrange a private meetings.

ANTI-ANTI-APARTHEID

After he left the SDS, Moss wrote a report analysing the support of the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

Moss was the first spycop to leave the SDS, withdrawing even before the 27 October demonstration the unit had been set up to target, in order to attend an accelerated promotion course. He thinks he may have made up a family incident that required him to leave London as part of his withdrawal strategy.

Before he left, he introduced his replacement – Detective Constable Mike Tyrell HN335 – who he introduced as his “best pal” to a meeting of the Earls Court VSC. Tyrell’s cover name is unknown and he is now deceased. He is absent from the Inquiry’s list of SDS officers.

Moss said he didn’t actually see any subversive activity whilst undercover, stating:

‘The group I joined wasn’t really trying to overthrow the government, they just wanted a big demonstration’

He does recall two pieces of information that ‘were probably passed on for use in policing’ in his two months undercover; the possibility of protestors carrying ball bearings to use on police horses, and women being told to flirt with officers on the frontline to try to win them over.

Moss said that, whilst his reporting alone would not have made a great difference to policing, he does think that the October demonstration was well policed and any disorder at it was controlled as a result of the intelligence provided by the SDS as a whole.

BACK TO MANAGE

He returned to the SDS as a Detective Chief Inspector in February 1980. He was promoted to the rank of Superintendent in early 1981, and left the SDS in December of the same year. In 1995, he became commander of operations in Special Branch, with a remit that included the SDS. He became Head of Special Branch in October 1996.

[Note: Moss will be heard from again in later tranches, not least because he was a pivotal officer in the founding of the National Public Order Intelligence Unit.]

Officer HN 334 aka ‘Margaret White’
(summary of evidence)

The Inquiry has granted anonymity to the real name of HN334 ‘Margaret White’.

Prior to joining the SDS, she was a Detective Constable in Special Branch. She remembers attending the same sort of political meetings, both as an officer serving with Special Branch and with the SDS. The distinction she draws between the two roles is the need for her identity to be completely secret as an undercover officer, unlike with Special Branch where she would give her name, if asked.

Neither her memory nor the documents can say exactly when she joined and left the SDS. Whilst in the unit, she attended meetings of the Havering branch of the VSC between 30 September and 29 October 1968. She does not appear on the list of the unit’s personnel in the document entitled ‘Penetration of Extremist Groups’ dated 26 November 1968 suggesting, in accordance with her recollection, that she left the unit shortly after the 27 October demonstration.

She does not remember having any training for the role. She created her assumed background over a couple of days, altering her appearance by wearing a long haired wig, adopting a cover name and cover employment, and finding a flat where she would stay occasionally. In her witness statement, she said she knew she would be on a short term deployment that concluded with the October demonstration.

DOUBLE TROUBLE

She was deployed to Havering VSC along with fellow SDS undercover HN330 ‘Don de Frietas’. They were instructed to act as a couple, attending all of the meetings together. She describes the group as having no formal membership structure or procedure. She understood that she was to report exactly what she saw and heard. She never attended any meetings alone, nor did she author the police reports.

She was tasked to this particularly group because senior officers thought that it would be a trouble-making group. From what she saw and heard, it was not.

The Inquiry holds reports relating to the branch dated between 30 September and 29 October 1968. They record small private meetings, mainly concerned with preparations for the October demonstration, including discussions about the composition, printing and distribution of leaflets, lines to take with the press, elections for the post of secretary and treasurer and the likely maximum size of the Havering contingent (about 100 people).

Apart from them considering doing some fly posting, she gives is no evidence of any intention to break the law, or a militant attitude.

EXIT STRATEGY

In addition to information about preparations for the October demonstration, the reports record information about political activity of an individual in the Labour Party.

The final report concerning a meeting held on 29 October 1968 contains the officer’s account of the views of her group about the demonstration, that it had been ‘a complete and utter disaster’. The officer used this as an excuse to leave the group. She then withdrew from her service with the SDS and returned to Special Branch.

She only remembers infiltrating the one group during her time. Any other Special Branch reports by her were, she said, the result of specific tasking whilst a member of Special Branch and not in her SDS undercover identity.

One report authored by her in August 1968 concerned an individual and her correspondence in connection with the funding of an art college’s October 25 revolution account. Other reports from the same period have her and another SDS officer HN68 ‘Sean Lynch’, attending a private meeting of the Camden Branch of the International Socialists. The subject of the meeting was ‘Negro struggles in America’, with associated information about activism for racial equality.

Five reports in the hearing bundle relate to her work in Special Branch after leaving the SDS. They relate to groups on which the SDS did report and appear to be examples the SDS working from other sources of information such as informers on those groups, such as the Women’s Liberation Workshop and the anti-apartheid the Stop The Seventy Tour Committee.

Details of Deceased Spycops

Beyond the hearing today, the Inquiry also published documents relating to deployments of six other former SDS officers who are now deceased.

HN 68 – ‘SEAN LYNCH’, REAL NAME NOT PUBLISHED
1968-1974
Also held a managerial position in the SDS 1982-1984.

‘Lynch’ targeted the International Socialists (forerunner of the Socialist Workers Party) and Irish campaign groups, including the Irish Civil Rights Campaign, the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association and Sinn Fein. His real name is withheld by the Inquiry to protect the privacy of his widow.

HN 331 – COVER NAME UNKNOWN, REAL NAME NOT PUBLISHED
1968-1969

This officer infiltrated the Notting Hill branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. His cover name is unknown. He was killed in road traffic accident in the 1970s. His real name is withheld by the Inquiry to protect the privacy of his widow.

HN323 – HELEN CRAMPTON, COVER NAME UNKNOWN

Crampton also infiltrated the Notting Hill branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign.

HN327 – DAVID FISHER, COVER NAME UNKNOWN

Fisher infiltrated the Notting Hill and Croydon branches of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign.

HN318 – RAY WILSON, COVER NAME UNKNOWN

Wilson infiltrated various manifestations of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, including the north-west London Ad Hoc Committee, the Notting Hill, Croydon and Earl’s Court branches, plaus the North-West London Ad-Hoc Committee and the October 27 Ad Hoc Committee, as well as the libertarian left. Previously referred to by the Inquiry as ‘back office/ management’ rather than undercover, implying an additional later role. Author of ‘Special Branch: The History 1883-2006’.

HN335 – MIKE TYRELL, COVER NAME UNKNOWN

Tyrell infiltrated Maoist groups, plus the Earls Court branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, the October 27 Committee for Solidarity with Vietnam, the south-east London Ad Hoc Committee, the Britain-Vietnam Solidarity Front, the March 9th Committee for Solidarity with Vietnam, and the Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation.

 

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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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Tranche 1, Phase 1, Day 8

11 November 2020

Evidence from:
Tariq Ali, activist and writer

Today, after seven days of opening statements from the participants, the Undercover Policing Inquiry finally started to take evidence from witnesses.

And, after seven days of live-streaming, the hearings have moved to a format that excludes those trying to follow.

THE PRIVATE PUBLIC INQUIRY

Instead of a live-streaming the speakers, there is a live transcript that moves quickly and cannot be paused or rewound.

BBC reporter Dominic Casciani explained his exasperation:

‘This set up does not assist, at a very basic level, reporters to do their job of reporting a *public inquiry* established by the Home Secretary to *answer public concerns* about abuses by some officers’. I can’t type that fast to copy down everything.

‘If I could hear the audio – which we are not allowed to do – I could take down quotes in shorthand. We cannot scroll back to check quotes. 20 years ago at the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, we could do that.

‘The transcript is being posted as a document after any deadlines for daily reporting. This means that I and others are going to struggle to report the inquiry contemporaneously for evening deadlines. This basically means, from a practical perspective as a working reporter, that a public inquiry becomes largely impossible to report.’

COPS was among those who were able to live tweet, because the Inquiry has provided live-streaming at a venue in London. It’s a large, unventilated room with no windows containing socially distanced desks without power sockets. The live-stream there has no time delay, but the Chair has imposed a ten minute delay on tweeting what is said.

If these conditions don’t put you off and you would like to attend, tough. You had to apply weeks in advance, going through the whole process for each individual day you wish to attend. The Inquiry only confirmed who had actually been allocated places in an email sent at 10.16pm last night.

The Inquiry knows that victims are spread across the country, and indeed the world, and need to make travel arrangements. One of them, Tom Fowler, has had to travel from low-Covid Wales to lock-down London to live-tweet the hearings.

There can be no excusing this as being the fault of the emergency measures brought in due to Covid. The Inquiry has had an extra five months to make these arrangements. Today’s inadequacies reflect their original plan, of hearings without live-streaming, in a room that couldn’t even hold half of the significantly affected victims who have been designated ‘core participants’, let alone any interested members of the public. And the Inquiry has consistently rejected the suggestion of live-streaming.

EXCLUSION IS A CHOICE NOT A NECESSITY

Meanwhile, other inquiries such as Grenfell and Manchester Arena, which also have to ensure they don’t inadvertently release any sensitive information, have public live-streams. Why can we watch Grenfell hearings on YouTube yet the UCPI only gives us what amounts to speeded-up Ceefax?

Those who do follow the hearings are blindfolded by the Inquiry’s refusal to publish documents until after each hearing, meaning the transcript is examining and discussing things that those outside cannot see.

These are yet more ways in which this Inquiry demonstrates its belief that the victims are marginal and the public merely an irrelevant afterthought.

The Chair, Sir John Mitting, appears to believe himself capable of understanding it all – we plebs needn’t be bothered until he hands us his report. A man who believes he is impartial yet thinks the Macpherson definition of institutional racism is ‘controversial’. A man who thinks he understands how things work and will see through the lies, yet grants anonymity to spycops because he believes any officer who has been married for a long time is incapable of serious wrongdoing.

Mitting has rebuffed repeated demands for a diverse panel to assist him, something that has been standard at such inquiries for over 20 years, because he thinks himself incapable of significant unconscious bias.

FIRST WITNESS: TARIQ ALI

The opening phase of the Inquiry will be witness hearings over five days until the end of next week concerned with the earliest days of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad, 1968-72.

The unit was formed after trouble at a demonstration against the Vietnam War in March 1968, in which windows were broken at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London. The original aim was to have officers live undercover as activists to gather intelligence in order to prevent a repeat of the disturbance at a second demonstration in October of that year.

Tariq Ali is a 77 year old journalist, writer and broadcaster, who has been politically engaged all his life. In 1968 he was a key member of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC), and of the Ad Hoc Committee, which organised the London demonstrations against the war.

The Undercover Policing Inquiry devoted the entirety of this first day to questioning Ali.

MILITANCY OF HEART

David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry, began by reading excerpts from Ali’s autobiography, Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties, that cover the events of 22 October 1967.

This included an account of demonstrators coming very close to entering the US Embassy during the demonstration.

Barr asked Ali to account for his use of the word ‘militancy’. He explained that other groups at the time were demanding peace in Vietnam, but the VSC didn’t want ‘the peace of the graveyard’, they supported the Vietnamese people in their struggle against the American occupation.

Barr QC asked if ‘militancy would include a “shoving through” to get to the embassy?’

‘No,’ Ali replied, the militancy was in reference to political support for the NLF [National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, aka the Viet Cong]’. Ali would not be drawn into the concept that being ‘a militant group’ meant violence, but rather a politically partisan position. In this case, a position that was supported by 25% of the UK population according to the opinion polls of the time.

Ali said that there were plenty of discussions about taking further direct action at the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square. He said they had dreamed of taking over the Embassy’s telex machine and sending a message of support to the Viet Cong in Saigon. The VSC discussed the idea of occupying the embassy, but some thought it was ‘foolish’ to imagine that the State wouldn’t try to prevent this.

As someone who had only been in the country for a short time, in the event of arrest Ali faced a risk of deportation as well as imprisonment.

Barr: Would it be true there were official aims and unofficial aims of the VSC?

Ali: Yes

Barr: Kept secret to a small circle? The Ad Hoc Committee?

Ali: Just the ones in London.

Barr: The desire to storm the embassy remained?

Ali: Yes, the first demo had been a missed opportunity.

Barr: Why didn’t you push ahead with the plan? Was it fear of your legal situation?

Ali: Yes.

Barr: So you were going to see on the day?

Ali: Yes.

Ali then recollected the composition of the VSC’s ‘National Committee’. Pat Jordan told the group that ‘every single one of my speeches had been noted and studied by Special Branch’.

OUTSIDE ASSISTANCE

The London VSC group was boosted by the support they received from American activists, politicians, Black organisers, and others. Among the American anti-war activists who were in the UK at the time, some of them dodging the draft, was 21 year old Bill Clinton.

As with many subsequent anti-war demonstrations, the protesters did not have overwhelming public support. Two thirds of the British population were in favour of the war in Vietnam, which was very different to other places like France.

Organisers of the March 1968 demonstration had no idea how many police to expect, but they knew that if they were heavily outnumbered there would be no chance of even a ‘token occupation’ of the American Embassy.

There had been a well-publicised rumour that American Marines were waiting inside the embassy on the day of the protest ready to fire live rounds into the crowd if they breached security.

Barr asked a lot of questions about the chances of violence from the protesters and whether the VSC encouraged it, or was at least unable to prevent it. He said that ‘come armed’ stickers had been put on some leaflets for the demonstration.

Ali dismissed the stickers as ‘childish nonsense’ and said that nobody in the VSC or the other groups active against the War behaved in this way, and that at the time he wondered if these stickers were the work of agents provocateur. Ali said he has a very clear memory of the VSC denouncing these stickers at the time.

MAOISTS & ANARCHISTS

Barr asked about the other groups that existed at the time, for example the Maoists.

Ali explained that he had very little to do with the Maoists – they acted autonomously on the whole, and only ‘grudgingly’ accepted any of the VSC’s ‘discipline’. He recalled an Irish Maoist group led by someone called Ed Davoren, ‘but I do not recall him saying anything particularly outrageous’.

The Maoists, Ali explained, tended to regard the VSC committee as ‘revisionists and class traitors and whatever else’.

He was asked about anarchist groups, but Ali said they were small, hostile to the VSC and often didn’t bother joining in with the demonstrations. The insignificance of these groups was such that Ali can’t even remember their names.

He remembered seeing the anarchist newspaper, Freedom, but felt the anarchists were ‘not too strong’ as they were small in number and apparently easy to identify due to their T-shirts [whatever that means].

EUROPEAN SOLIDARITY

The March 1968 demonstration is described on p.254 of Ali’s aforementioned book. It was, he wrote, ‘a marvelous display of colourful flags and banners’. These were people optimistic about a new world without the kinds of conflict they saw around them. They were aware of the Prague Spring going on, which brought hope of compassionate and effective socialism; there was a feeling that change was possible.

A large contingent from Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund, the Socialist German Student Union, came to London from Berlin to join the demonstration. They had a lot of experience of street demonstrations, and brought helmets and their own banner with them.

Ali described them linking arms as they marched, a display of solidarity that also defended them from police attacks, which the VSC hadn’t seen before. Ali said he had no memory of what exactly the Germans did that day, but doubts that they acted alone, they were all part of a huge protest. The tabloid press were not used to seeing Germans at demonstrations, so gave this a lot of coverage.

There was also a French contingent, but they were not mentioned, perhaps because they didn’t adopt visible identifiers like the helmets.

There were several attempts to break through the police lines that day, and it certainly wasn’t the work of the German students alone, ‘nice English students’ were involved as well. Ali does not think the presence of any one group warranted such emphasis.

Barr: Would the German Sozialistische Deutsche Studentenbund have followed the official position of the VSC on the protest?

Ali: Yes.

Barr: So if the balances of forces on the day had been right, they would have joined to storm the US embassy?

Ali: Undoubtedly.

LOSING THEIR MARBLES

The square and surrounding streets were full of people, there were scuffles, the police decided to send in the horses. Ali heard people shouting ‘the Cossacks are coming’. Barr questioned Ali about the throwing of marbles at horses. Ali did not witness this, but it was talked about afterwards.

He illustrated this with a story about support for the VSC not coming exclusively from the young, they were supported by people of all classes, some of whom supplied funding and valuable advice about more effective ways of dealing with horses (involving a string touching the horse’s knee).

Nonetheless, Barr laboured the point about marbles as well as smoke-bombs and other items that may have been brought to the demonstration by individuals.

Ali saw a small number of fireworks, ‘to increase excitement, not to harm anyone’. Barr countered that the VSC didn’t dissuade people from escalating action, something that wouldn’t have been organisationally possible in such circumstances.

Barr is focusing very directly on the role of the protesters in what was, as the vintage footage shows, a direct and deliberate attack on a crowd by the police.

The lack of any questions about police violence, the injustice of the war in Vietnam, the huge death toll of the war, and so on, show the priorities of the Inquiry. Ali was the only at the hearing one to mention the injuries, some serious, suffered by demonstrators on the day due to police violence.

UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHY

‘We wanted the toppling of regimes in Eastern Europe and their replacement with the Czech model, ‘socialism with a human face’, Ali explained. However, he was realistic.

Barr: Were your ultimate aspirations revolutionary?

Ali: Not in Britain.

Barr: You didn’t think the anti-Vietnam War protest would lead to revolution?

Ali: You’d have to be deranged to think that.

Barr: Given the air of change in the wind, you saw the demonstration as part of piece of the jigsaw for a world wide revolution and world wide socialism?

Ali, laughing: No, not really.

Ali and his comrades felt serious socialism was not possible in western Europe without democracy very firmly attached to it.

When he visited Vietnam, he asked North Vietnamese leaders if international brigades of volunteer troops would be a useful response of solidarity from other parts of the world. ‘This is not the Spanish Civil War. The last thing we want is for people like you to come and die here,’ he was bluntly told. ‘All we want from you is to build movements abroad’ to help to bring the war to an end.

Barr: You say that you thought that Parliament should be replaced by Worker’s Councils, is that true?

Ali: We used to think like that. We wanted something like what the Chartists advocated in the 19th century. We explored all these ideas.

The group’s politics evolved over time, but they were generally in favour of far more direct democracy. The current ‘first past the post’ system distorts election results, delivering a succession of governments who have only received a minority of the votes.

UNLIKELY SUPPORTERS

The first evidence to be shown on the screen was a Special Branch report, prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions, following the demo in March 1968. The group interrupted theater shows to talk about Vietnam.

The audiences were mostly sympathetic to the anti-war cause, but actors were hostile on the whole (with the strange exception of the Black & White Minstrel Show, something so unrelentingly racist that even in 1968 there were petitions to against it).

After the conflict at the March 1968 demonstration, both the VSC and police turned their thoughts to organising for the next demonstration in October. The Met created the what was first called Special Operations Squad, who went to live as anti-war activists.

NEWSPAPERS & PROVOCATEURS

The next picture was of a Guardian article from May 1968, entitled ‘Tariq Ali Talks of New London Demonstration’. There is a reference to Ali saying they planned to occupy the Bank of England. Barr suggest that even if was a joke, only uttered once in the press, it meant that the police were compelled to respond.

Ali’s book, on p.293, quotes an American woman from the Students for a Democratic Society (the third different ‘SDS’ mentioned in this hearing!) who said that the only way to defeat the war machine in her country was to emulate the Viet Cong guerrillas who had attacked the US Embassy in Saigon.

She was suggesting a bombing campaign against the corporations who were profiting from the war in Vietnam by producing chemical weapons and other supplies.

Ali explained that he argued strongly against this tactical approach, calling it ‘suicidal in every sense’. He added, ‘I had to think very hard whether the person who wanted to embark on such a course was deranged or a straightforward provocateur’.

Asked about what he knew at the time about police or Special Branch infiltration, Ali responded, ‘we had no evidence, obviously, but we had no doubt that we were under surveillance – there was hysteria in the press. On one occasion a postman dragged me out of the office and told me that our letters were opened every day’.

BLACK DWARF

Ali’s suspicions about provocateurs seem well founded. On one occasion, some ‘hippy anarchists’ spent the night at the Soho office of Black Dwarf, a socialist newspaper which Ali edited. Ali and the others were horrified to see the next morning that these guests had painted a large diagram of how to make a Molotov cocktail on the wall.

He described their response:

‘We covered their crude artwork with a poster. The very next day, the office was raided by the police – they went straight to the poster and pulled it down to uncover the artwork beneath’.

The office had often been made available as somewhere for comrades visiting from other places to sleep. But after this incident, the Black Dwarf group became more strict about letting people sleep in there.

Barr, welcoming a return to his recurring theme of violence, asked if Molotov cocktails were ever used at a VSC demonstration. Ali responded emphatically, saying that he had no knowledge of anyone ever proposing or intending to take a Molotov cocktail to a VSC-organised demonstration.

Ali questioned the police’s description of information gathered from infiltrating a national VSC meeting, and pointed out that this intelligence was not particularly ‘valuable’ or secret, there was no need to infiltrate the group in order to get that information.

He challenged the view that it was either vital or necessary. The route of the demonstration was publicly debated, and much contested by various groupings. Some people, he said, ‘wanted a punch-up in Grosvenor Square, which we were opposed to’.

The next document brought up as evidence was a Special Branch report on Black Dwarf, which reproduced a column published on the back page of the magazine in October 1968, entitled ‘Softly Softly’.

Although Ali was editor of Black Dwarf, he was often away traveling so did not personally oversee the content of each issue, just endeavoured to ‘cast an eye’ over it. He agreed that this particular piece was not especially well written.

The main message of the article was that the police should be given no excuse to stop the demonstrators from reaching their intended destination. ‘The coaches must get through!’ was in capital letters. It said not to bring anything that could be construed as suspicious, mentioning the marbles and fireworks that so preoccupied David Barr QC at the hearing.

Barr suggested that the article telling people not to bring things like marbles or fireworks, is in fact, an attempt to suggest people should bring them.

Barr cited contemporaneous leaflets from campaigns advocating provocation. Ali pointed out that ‘it’s one thing to write some nonsense… but a completely different thing to actually carry it out’. It wasn’t forbidden to write things, and at that time people were writing all sorts of things.

VIOLENCE AGAINST TEXTILES

After Barr’s ignoring of the police violence against protesters in March 1968, he seemed surprisingly concerned about violence against small pieces of textiles. He asked Ali about a public meeting that took place before the October protest, specifically whether a plain-clothes police officer would have been able to safely attend. Ali said it was.

Barr: This was peaceful, except for the burning of a flag outside Australia House.

Ali: That is still a peaceful act.

The October 1968 demonstration was planned by the VSC as a ‘peaceful show of strength’:

‘We don’t want mindless militancy. We want this to a be a politically militant demonstration of solidarity, not only with Vietnam but with each other’

Stewards were provided by all the organisations who supported the demo. They would have been briefed ahead of the day, short briefing that morning on the Embankment.

Asked ‘to what extent did the marchers exhibit “revolutionary self-discipline”?’ Ali replied ‘we were so relaxed that we forgot we were passing Downing Street – a police officer had to remind me’. He recollected having to scribble a ‘Dear Harold’ message to the Prime Minister of the day on a scrap of paper.

There was an attempt made to kidnap Ali, by a group of unknown men. They did this the night before the demo, probably with the aim of preventing him from attending it. This was in Carlisle Street in Soho, just outside the Black Dwarf office, and luckily was prevented by his comrades, who had noticed it just in time.

SPECIAL BRANCH REPORT: AUTUMN OFFENSIVE

The next document shown by the Inquiry was a Special Branch report from DI Dixon on the VSC ‘Autumn Offensive’ (i.e. the demo on October 27 1968) and the potential for violence. It describes the VSC as ‘Trotskyist-dominated’ and ‘the most influential’ of the extremist groups.

Ali was scathing and unequivocal, saying ‘it’s completely false. It’s fantasy land’.

Barr wasn’t persuaded. ‘Intelligence reports that show there wasn’t any secret agenda is useful in itself, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘No’ said Ali. ‘It’s not useful and it’s not intelligence’.

Ali was not in Grosvenor Square himself that day. He only got third-hand reports, largely from the press, of the events there. But certainly, it was no surprise to anyone that there would be police there.

The VSC had no authority over those who attended the protests, or how they behaved, and had no way of compelling them to act in a certain way.

Page 11 of the Special Branch report lists the number of arrests made before the demo (26, only three of whom received summonses), during the demo (17), and after the demo (one, someone who threw a bottle at the Embassy). Interestingly, it notes that ‘apart from three fascists, none had hitherto come to notice’.

Page 4 of the same document details some of the arrests made the night before the October 1968 demo. These included one German national arrested at St Pancra’s station with a gas pistol and an unspecified amount of cannabis resin. There was also someone who’d been found trying to gain entry to police stables at Hammersmith, it is thought that he intended tampering with the police horses stabled there. Additionally, ‘two youths stopped by police in Green Street, were found to be in possession of radio-jamming equipment and perspex eye shields’.

Barr, seemingly unaware that he was making a non-sequitur, asks if this proves that the spycops were useful. ‘Not at all,’ Ali replied, ‘this was done by normal police’.

The report self-justifies, saying that, despite the crowd’s wishes, there had been no serious disorder because of the intervention of spycops. Ali flatly refuted this, saying ‘this is false, the crowd didn’t have to follow our lead, they could have run riot, they didn’t’.

VSC ORGANISING

Referring to questions about the national organisation of the VSC, Ali got a chuckle from the room when he said ‘this is an eye-opener – I had no idea there were any Maoists in Nottingham’.

Ali’s book talks on p.329 of 1968 as being the ‘last big assembly of revolutionary forces’. What he thought was needed at the time was a unified youth movement, that united young people from all the different left-wing groups, including those who’d been expelled from the Labour party.

We saw a secret police report of the VSC’s 1969 national conference. Well, we almost saw it, it was a lot of fuzz on our screen. Even Ali complained that it was near-impossible to read this document as it was very faded.

According to the second paragraph, the credentials of both official delegates and accredited observers were checked at the door. Voting cards were issued to delegates only. It was a closed event, not open to the public.

Barr asked if the closed nature of the event meant that a plain-clothes (rather than an undercover) police officer would not have been able to gain entry to this conference.

Another SDS report, on a meeting 52 years ago to the day in Conway Hall, includes long quotes from Ali that ‘a real revolution could have taken place’. Ali dismissed the report out of hand, telling the Inquiry, ‘it’s a fabrication, I would never ever talk in these terms. At best, it’s an extreme exaggeration’.

INTERNATIONAL MARXIST GROUP

In the afternoon session, the Inquiry moved on to other parts of Tariq Ali’s long active life.

He was a member of the International Marxist Group (IMG), a British section of an international organisation known as the Fourth International, created by Trotsky in 1938 after he broke with Stalinism.

The IMG had branches in many towns and cities, including Birmingham, Leicester, Chesterfield, Manchester, London, Nottingham, Hull, Oxford, Norwich, Folkestone, Edinburgh, York, Glasgow, Reading and Crewe, and about 100 members at that time (though some branches may have had but a single member).

Ali explained that the Fourth International grew slowly, and it never became a truly mass movement except in Bolivia and Sri Lanka. In Europe, the French movement was perhaps the largest, with around 50,000 members at its peak.

In the UK, the IMG’s membership grew to a thousand at the most. It aimed to create left-wing Marxist parties to challenge Labour for the loyalties of the working class.

It’s interesting to note the questions that David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry, asks about the group: Did the IMG use violence? Did members of the IMG commit serious criminal offences to further their aims?

Ali had to be emphatic that the IMG’s aims and tactics did not include violence, or any serious criminal activities. He said it was possible that the odd member did, but if that was the case it was certainly not known to him.

SPYING ON TRADE UNIONISTS

Next, the Inquiry was shown a special report, signed by officer ‘HN340’ – a Special Demonstration Squad officer using the name ‘Alan Nixon’- and countersigned by Chief Inspector Saunders.

The report describes discussions among North London Red Circle about the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders industrial dispute. Barr asked about a line that read ‘it was important that IMG activity within the unions ensured they could better exploit any future revolutionary situation’.

Ali said he feared that the capitalists would win that particular dispute. He very rarely attended these discussions, which were set up by the Red Mole newspaper and therefore often the first contact people made with the IMG. Paragraph 4 suggests that Ali was present, but he cannot recall this meeting at all.

Ali confirmed that IMG members’ involvement in trade unions was open and unashamed, rather than covert.

SPYING ON ELECTION CAMPAIGNS

On 14 April 1977, the IMG held a meeting at Southall Town Hall as part of their Greater London Council election campaign. About 50 people attended. It was suggested, by the spycops officer who reported on it, that many of the white attendees were not local to Southall.

Ali was asked for his reaction to the discovery that the police had been reporting on this. He said it was so unnecessary, what was going on was no big secret. It was a public meeting, anyone was welcome.

There was then more discussion of the Anti Nazi League (ANL) and its strategies for combatting racism. Ali reminded us of the slogan ‘self defence is no offence’.

SPYING ON A CONCERT IN A PARK

Another SDS report was shown to the Inquiry, listing 229 names of people identified from the 100,000 people attending the ANL’s Carnival Against the Nazis, a free concert in April 1978 – including Tariq Ali and fellow core participants at the Inquiry, Peter Hain, Colin Clark and Dave Morris.

The free concert featured The Clash, Steel Pulse, X-Ray Spex, and the Tom Robinson Band.

Ali said it was a pleasant day, with lots of children and music, and he could not recall any violence.

The next such report listed 69 named individuals who attended an ANL march and rally on 14 May 1978, including, again, Ali and Dave Morris.

KNOCKED OUT IN SOUTHALL

We then heard about a demonstration against the National Front in Southall on 23 April 1979. At the time, Ali was the Socialist Unity parliamentary candidate in that constituency.

Local organisers were worried about the possibility of racist attacks, and put Ali in a safe house to keep him out of any trouble. He was holed up with reggae band Misty in Roots when the police charged into the house, and pulled everyone out. An estimated £10,000 of damage was done to the contents of the house, including the equipment of Misty in Roots.

Ali and the others were made to run a gauntlet, and he was truncheoned so severely that he passed out. The skull of Clarence Baker, manager of Misty in Roots, was fractured and he was in a coma for five months. Ali woke up in a police vehicle, under arrest. Upon his eventual release, he had to walk home.

He said that the police’s treatment of them that day made him think of a colonial police manual from the days of the Raj. At the trial of one of those arrested, one of the police officers testified that ‘there was no overall direction of the police forces at this time’ and described it as ‘a free for all’. Needless to say, no police officers were charged with anything.

BLAIR PEACH

That was the same day that Blair Peach – who we have already heard about in this Inquiry – was killed by the police in Southall. When the police unit responsible had its lockers searched, weapons found included a crowbar, metal cosh, whip handle, stock ship, brass handle, knives, American-style truncheons, a rhino whip and a pickaxe handle.

This rather sets Barr’s suggestion that people shouldn’t be caught with marbles on their way to a demo into relief.

Unsurprisingly, the next report was on a meeting called by those campaigning for justice after Blair Peach’s death, which Ali attended.

Barr apologised for being repetitive in his questions, but asked Ali how he felt about being spied on at this event. Ali retorted:

‘What is the point of having a report like this except to keep people in work? Or to make my file heftier than it was, for absolutely no rhyme or reason?’

Ali was invited to speak at a wide range of public meetings over many years. He was involved in many groups on the left.

A much more recent document was produced at the hearing – a report into a meeting of the Stop the War Coalition steering committee on 15 March 2003. Ali’s name is listed, along with MPs including Jeremy Corbyn and George Galloway.

THE PERSONAL IS THE POLITICAL

The final three reports shown to the Inquiry had a more personal nature.

The first was an SDS report, dated 23 January 1980, about a man called Phil Evans. He is described as ‘a long-standing member of the SWP [Socialist Workers Party], who lives at [redacted], a single man, he is employed as a sub editor, at. a publishing firm called Engineering Today Ltd’ and the address is given.

The report continued:

‘Although a committed revolutionary socialist, Evans rarely plays an active part in SWP activities, but conveys his politics by means of cartoons submitted to left wing publications. He has recently completed a series of cartoons to be included in a book written by Tariq Ali, entitled Trotsky for Beginners.’

Despite admitting that Evans had no serious role in the SWP, he was spied on to a degree that the reporting provided details of his employer and landlord, and listed the same info about his partner, a fellow member of the SWP and a primary school teacher in Newham. A photo of Evans was also included.

Then we saw a report written by a Chief Inspector of the SDS, detailing a loan Ali had made to the IMG bookshop. It is stamped ‘BOX 500’, code for it having been copied to MI5.

Ali was confounded:

‘How could that be relevant to anything? It’s perfectly accurate. The IMG bookshop was in trouble, I’d got some royalties from book sales, et cetera, and I gave them a loan. Full stop.

TOTAL FICTION

The final SDS report shown was signed by a Sergeant Fisher of the SDS, countersigned by Chief Inspector Conrad Dixon, founder of the unit. As with the last one, it had been copied to MI5.

Dated October 1968, it reports ‘intimate contact’ between Ali and a young man second year student at a teacher training college, who had been president of his Students’ Union.

Ali was flabbergasted:

‘It is total fiction. I cannot believe it. To suggest that I had intimate contact with a male students’ union president is bizarre. I have never been gay or bisexual; there is no truth to it whatsoever’

Ali was asked if he would like to add anything else, now that he has seen the huge bundle of documents prepared for this ‘tranche’ of Inquiry hearings. These comprise 5,263 pages, and were served five weeks ago. Attempting to read all of them before the start of the Inquiry is roughly equivalent to reading all of Lord of the Rings twice a week for five weeks straight.

These are documents the Inquiry will have had ready to release ahead of the original pre-Covid scheduled start in June. Why were they not released earlier? Why, when the Inquiry says it has a million pages, are core participants seeing such a small fraction, yet served too late to be properly comprehended?

DEPRIVATION THEN DELUGE

It is a pattern familiar to many victims of state injustice. They are first ignored; then the injustice is denied; then disclosure is delayed; then, finally, comes an avalanche of irrelevance to overwhelm and thus deflect those who would hold the state to account.

Ali merely said that, unsurprisingly, ‘I haven’t been able to go through them all as thoroughly as I would like, because as you’ve already demonstrated, a lot of them are quite repetitive or irrelevant.’

Ali then shared an unsettling anecdote.

‘Around 1995 or 1996 I was going for a jog round Hampstead Heath and I was stopped by a person, a male, younger than me, and he “Are you so and so?”, and I said, I am. He said, “I’m sorry to interrupt your running, but I have something important to say to you.”

‘He said, “My wife used to work at GCHQ, and can I just ask you two questions to confirm you are the person? Did you, in 1980, break up with your partner and you had a young daughter, six years old?” I said I did.

‘And he said, “It is you. My wife was detailed to listen to all your phone conversations. And she listened quite a few days to your daughter crying, you crying, you reading stories to her, your daughter pleading with you to come back to your old apartment. And she finally couldn’t take it and said, ‘I didn’t join GCHQ to spy on people,’ and gave in her resignation.”

‘So I said, Well, give her a big hug from me. I’d had no idea that I was still under surveillance.’

The next questions were from Rajiv Menon QC, who sought to let Ali give some explanation of himself and his circumstances.

Menon asked Ali for his memories of the police raid on the Black Dwarf offices in 1968. It was the one mentioned earlier, when the police knew there was a diagram of a Molotov cocktail behind a poster. Ali said the police weren’t there long and did not seize anything.

TRUE SPIES

Menon then reminded Ali of the 2002 BBC spycops documentary True Spies.

Spycop Wilf Knight described a huge political phone tapping operation, and named Ali as a target. Ali said he and his friends knew their phones were tapped. They had even planned a fake rendezvous on the phone and when they checked, the police were there.

The True Spies documentary also revealed that – in addition to being raided, tapped and having his mail opened – Ali was spied upon further, as spycops had keys to the Black Dwarf office. This can only result from a copy being made by someone who was a trusted, integral part of the organisation.

Menon said that we now know that the person who copied the keys used the name ‘Dick Epps‘. However, Ali has no recollection of this person.

THE NEED FOR PHOTOS

Menon asked if seeing a photo of ‘Epps’ might help. Ali said it might well do. The Inquiry has not provided him with one, and so has missed out on any memories he may have.

A long time ago, the Inquiry promised to publish photos of spycops in their undercover guise. After much to-ing and fro-ing, it was provided with a number of such pictures by non state core participants, with all the stipulated copyright authorisations. It then decided not to publish them after all.

OPPOSING THE VIETNAM WAR

Menon asked Ali why he’d opposed the Vietnam War so actively.

Ali replied that it had been given extensive TV coverage, and the scale of violence and torture was obvious and astonishing:

‘What we saw every day was non-stop bombing, use of napalm, use of chemical weapons, the burning out of whole villages, with women and children rushing out screaming in agony. And I remember one CBS reporter Morley Safer describing and filming Marines burning a village, killing people, saying, “And this is what we are fighting for: freedom”.’

Menon returned to the March 1968 demonstration in London. Ali explained that the route had been agreed with police, and included Grosvenor Square, where the American embassy was located.

Ali explained that they were so surprised by the number of people present that they felt the agreed route wouldn’t work and asked the police to take it the other way round the Square, but this was refused.With the backing up of the crowd, people pushed against the lines, scuffles broke out, and the police line was broken.

Menon asked Ali what was different that day compared to earlier protests he had seen. Ali replied:

‘what was new about the March ’68 demonstration was that a very large number of people were insistent on determining their own agenda and not being pushed around. And the violence was actually minimal, compared to what happened later in the poll tax riots, or the Black ghettos. But that was enough to create shock waves, that this was actually happening in Grosvenor Square outside the US Embassy. That’s about it.’

Next, Menon showed a document and asked Ali about Mr A, who had been arrested for handing out a leaflet outside the meeting of the Notting Hill branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and was subsequently charged with incitement to riot.

Ali said he didn’t know Mr A well, but that he’d seen him with a Maoist group and a Black Power group.

SOUTHALL SURVIVOR

Menon asked about the brutality Ali suffered in Southall in 1979. Ali confirmed that he was never given any explanation for the raid on the house where he was sheltering with Misty in Roots, saying:

‘we were never told that, and no police officer felt the need to inform us. I don’t think anyone knew. Basically, I think that they had decided that they had to make an example of the anti-fascist demonstrators.’

Turning to the killing of school teacher Blair Peach on the same day, Menon showed the Inquiry a further Special Branch document, reporting on a public meeting of the Camden Anti-Nazi League entitled ‘Who Killed Blair Peach?’

Menon explained the code next to Ali’s name: “RF” stands for registry file, which means that there was a Special Branch or MI5 file opened on him. The number “65” indicates that that file was opened in 1965. Ali was still a student at Oxford at this time.

One of the other Special Branch reports released today reveals that Ali first came to the notice of police in 1964 when he took part in an anti-apartheid protest in Oxford.

A little further on in the ‘Who Killed Blair Peach?’ report, it shows that Blair Peach himself had a registry file, opened in 1978. It then said ‘the East London Teachers Association has come to the notice of Special Branch on numerous occasions.’ Spycops were targeting Peach and others in their professional capacity as teachers.

BUGS NOT TAPS

Menon returned to the report on the Stop the War Coalition steering committee from March 2003, as seen earlier. He established that, as the meetings weren’t open to the general public, the report must come either from someone on the committee or, perhaps more likely, from a recording device.

Mitting nearly jumped out of his chair. He warned Menon that the Investigatory Powers Act prohibits any reference to the use of intercept unless he deems it necessary in advance. ‘You will be committing an offence if you persist’,’ he intoned. ‘I would warn you not to’.

Menon explained that he was talking about a recording device, a planted bug, rather than an intercept of communications, so the Act doesn’t apply. Mitting apologised and retracted his lawyer-snaring mandibles.

Ali was baffled at why the Stop the War Coalition was so profoundly spied on when it has been completely open in what it’s doing and what its aims are. It was publicly set up, open to all and, as one might expect from a peace campaign, there has been no suggestion of any violence involved.

Concluding, Menon quoted from Ali’s written statement to the Inquiry:

‘my strong feeling is that this Inquiry is likely to be a monumental waste of time. This is because the direction of travel is clear from the questions – to dissect the politics of the victims of police spying, and therefore to turn the spotlight away from the actions of the police. This is the politics of ‘blame the victim’. And no doubt I and others will be declared guilty. Even 50 years on, the State is fighting exactly the same battle it was engaged in in 1968.’

Menon asked if, having been questioned in person today, he felt differently in any way.

Ali replied:

‘when I said “is likely to be a monumental waste of time”, I should have added “for me”, not for any of the other participants. But I don’t think it has been a waste of time for me, I think it’s been quite important, and I hope that the final report reflects the balance as we discussed today, that much of the spying and infiltration, in my opinion, was totally unnecessary.’

Mitting buttered Ali up to assist him further, by asking for a free history lesson on Trotskyism. We stopped tweeting at that point, but if you really want to you can find that bit at the end of today’s official transcript.

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