Spycops Inquiry
Between the drizzle of the new Labour government’s early daze and the summer of sport you may have missed the Spycops inquiry. The public inquiry, headed by a retired judge, Sir John Mitting, is examining how at least 139 undercover officers spied on more than 1,000 political groups between 1968 and 2010. The surveillance was directed overwhelmingly at leftwing groups. What is being revealed is an astonishing account of completely unhinged amoral activity, planned and directed from the very top.
The inquiry was forced to happen when, back in March 2015, then Home Secretary Theresa May announced a public inquiry into Undercover Policing with the remit: ‘The Inquiry’s purpose is to investigate and report on undercover police operations conducted by English and Welsh police forces in England and Wales since 1968.’ This left out Northern Ireland and Scotland. But we know that officers from Britain’s political secret police units were active in Scotland. Donal O’Driscoll, an environmentalist spied on by Mark Kennedy, commented: “Scotland is not at the periphery of the spycops scandal, but at the heart of it. What we know of undercover policing organisations such as the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) shows us that spycops were active in Scotland and the Scottish police played no small part.”
Rob Evans, writing on the inquiry notes: “One of the main issues under examination is how undercover officers regularly formed intimate relationships with women without disclosing to them their real identities. At least three of the officers had children with activists they met while undercover.”
As the story unfolds, what’s being revealed is not the story of some rogue policemen acting beyond their control, but a huge coordinated effort of completely illegal activity to infiltrate and sabotage progressive movements in Britain.
Paul Lewis and Rob Evans write:
“The police spies initially belonged to the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), which was created to control the restive protests of the late 1960s, including those opposed to the war in Vietnam, but continued to monitor protest groups for a further four decades.”
“The SDS was disbanded in 2008 because, according to one senior officer, the officers had “lost their moral compass”. Yet the techniques of highly intrusive, long-term infiltration of protest groups continued in the unit to which Kennedy belonged: the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU).”
I’m not sure what moral compass there was to lose. At least three of the police spies fathered children with women they met while undercover.
One of the police spies, Bob Lambert, is accused of setting fire to a branch of Debenhams while undercover in the 1980s. Lambert, fathered a child while posing as Bob Robinson. He was promoted to a senior manager role in the SDS and later received an MBE for “services to policing”.
What’s emerging is not just the moral depravity of the British state, but an astonishing account of police violence and the range of campaigns they infiltrated including peaceful environmental groups, Reclaim the Streets, London Greenpeace, Women’s Liberation Front, the anti-apartheid movement and the family campaign of Stephen Lawrence, the teenager murdered by racists. These were not violent insurrectionists, terrorists or bombers, these were ordinary peaceful protests – often engaging in the most crucial issues of the day.
The process is following the usual pattern of British inquiries: appoint biddable senior gent, obfuscate and delay for years, run up huge expense, submit lengthy report, and do nothing at all.
At one point, victims of the scandal walked out of the inquiry, calling for John Mitting to be replaced. They called the 73-year-old “the usual white, upper middle-class, elderly gentleman whose life experiences are a million miles away from those who were spied upon”.
The inquiry reveals the scale of systemic racism and misogyny in the British police, but also how they are comfortable acting way beyond any legal or moral constraint. None of this is new. As I said in 2021 (‘The Watchmen – State Violence in a Democracy‘): “We face a perfect storm of collapse in belief in law and order, real time witnessing of pre-meditated state violence and the introduction of new powers for the police to counter protests against this new legislation.”
The inquiry is being fought tooth and nail by former officers protecting their identities. Unlike the Grenfell Inquiry there is to be no live streaming of the event. Instead those who wish to witness proceedings must sit in a room in a hotel, the Amba, a few miles miles from the venue in south London. Viewers will be shown a carefully restricted broadcast of witnesses giving evidence.
This is, inevitably, once again, a cover up and a whitewash. It reveals that the police are vicious, intensely political and completely out of control. None of the inquiry points to the direction that you would think be an adequate response of such disgusting behaviour, and suggests as we have long argued that the British state is irredeemable.
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I think it is important to recognize the myth that pretends nobody outside these small units of secret police knew what was going on, for what it is. My old contemporary-issues-in-British-politics lecturer used to say that British political police sent undercover agents to every public political meeting (I thought that must be an exaggeration at the time but now I wonder). Moreover, our lecturer said that some academic specialists generally knew all kinds of things that the public was ignorant of, and even published their research findings in scholarly journals, but touchy subjects like these were generally not picked up and written about in the press.
We do know that some apparently well-informed parties wrote fictional versions of British political policing, which evaded draconian UK censorship.
What would be enormously useful to know is: just what resources Special Branch, MI5 and all the rest of the political policing apparatus had at their disposal through the years? And then we can work out from that how widespread their activities are likely to have been. That won’t tell us everything: what we learn from these scandals is how much work British secret police do on behalf of other countries; we must assume reciprocal arrangements. So we really also need to know what secret police work other countries have been doing to spy on, infiltrate and act as agents provocateur among British subjects (and that includes all the British imperial territories).
We might find that the British imperial state has been suppressing independence movements in various of its territories with the support of foreign governments. Remember that the playbook during the Cold War (if it ended) was to lump all kinds of dissidents together as alleged tools of the Soviet Union or China or whatever, and the British would do this to get USAmerican assistance and resources, who would devote the largesses of their black budgets to any anti-communist witch-hunt (and they have more constitutional oversight than the Brits).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_budget
And furthermore, what corporate (or other NGO) spying on British subjects has gone on, and what cooperation has the British imperial state supplied? This SpyCops inquiry might just be the tip of the iceberg. David Cameron was ridiculed for calling for a British Stasi, but maybe we already had one.
Ta. Good piece but a bit out of date (if it was written recently) and a bit inaccurate at the end re the hearings – which are broadcast live on youtube. Also there’s been some real victories – the police being forced to backtack and apologise for the sexual abuse of women (at least 60 affected), and for targeting anti-racist and family justice campaigns – and the judge chairing the Inquiry making an interim report concluding the unit shouldve been closed down in the early 1970s.
Full news and details, google campaignopposingpolicesurveillance and access the blog..
@Dave, it is worth noting that some of the undercover officers were women, who presumably were also effective in targeting more patriarchal demographics. I think we should be wary of the gendered assumptions of ‘weaknesses’ in British state exploits (especially given the histories of these state service since WW2 which relied heavily on the professionalism and dedication of women not least in resistance and partisan groups).
I think we only know of 2 women spies so far out of over 140.. And just one black officer.. who actually is giving evidence this afternoon..
@Dave, I should have mentioned undercover officers sent to target all-women groups, such as “Kathryn Lesley (‘Lee’) Bonser” infiltrating the likes of Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp:
https://www.ucpi.org.uk/individuals/hn-33-hn-98/
I think one of the MI5 whistleblowers was a woman, too. There will have been many more paid (or unpaid) informants of various demographics.
When considering state political policing, I think it helps to have *no stereotypes* about who is involved, since that weakens defences against such activities. One should remember that Special Branch (having been set up to deal with Irish targets) was augmented to counter suffragettes over a century ago.
Probably all recruiting groups have their vulnerabilities, as the state services themselves have found out. The Jesuits claimed success in recruiting children, but I’m not sure how many of those were sent undercover. The British authorities, in their colonial dialect, seemed concerned that some of their agents might ‘go native’.
I think it is fair to assume that if British MI5 have a file on you, USAmerican CIA (and more) have a copy (or at least access). In labour terms, these files have been used for blacklisting purposes. That MI5 screened out communists and socialists from the BBC but not sex offenders and extreme misogynists should tell everyone something about the nature of the British imperial state.
Thanks Dave, got some wrong information, will update