Monday 1st July 2024
‘Spycops’ Public Inquiry Resumes Today
The Undercover Policing Public Inquiry (UCPI) resumes today, with Opening Statements for ‘Tranche 2’ of evidential hearings delivered online.
The Inquiry is entering a critical phase. New evidence is expected to implicate high-level officials in the expansion of controversial tactics and ‘unjustifiable operations’ by the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) in the 1980s and 1990s.
Live, in-person evidence hearings will begin next week, starting Monday 8th July.
Victims of police abuses will brief the press outside the hearing venue on Monday 8th July at 9am (See below, at end)
‘Unjustifiable’ operations
In July 2023 the UCPI published an 'Interim Report'i which concluded the SDS should have been ‘brought to a rapid end’ in the 1970s, criticising officers unlawfully trespassing into people’s homes, forming deceitful close personal relationships, including sexual relationships, stealing deceased children’s identities, and taking positions of influence and power within the organisations they targeted.ii
Yet a recent Freedom of Information request reveals that the Metropolitan Police, already found to be institutionally racist, sexist and corrupt, and placed under ‘special measures’ in July 2022iii, have spent £62 millioniv on this inquiry, defending operations that even they have been forced to admit were ‘unjustifiable...by modern standards.’v
New Evidence
In this next round of hearings, thousands of secret reports will be revealed, as the Inquiry hears evidence of how the police expanded their operations in the 1980s and 1990s, with increasingly abusive tactics sanctioned by senior police and Home Office officials:
Long-term sexual relationships, including fathering children;
Infiltration of police accountability campaigns (including the Stephen Lawrence Family Campaign);
Surveillance of children;
Illegal blacklisting of trades unionists;
Officers acting as agent provocateurs and committing criminal offences;
Brazen interference with the justice system leading to unfair trials and unsafe convictions
Extensive information sharing with the Security Services (MI5)
In June 2023, in the foreword to his interim report, the Inquiry Chair, Sir John Mitting, said that he had “refrained from expressing any view about…the proposition that the SDS was one of the instruments set up by a conservative state to suppress the aspirations of those who wished to produce radical change by political means.”
However, from Monday 8th July we will hear live testimony from CND, London Greenpeace, Freedom Press, the Socialist Workers Party and campaigns for racial equality and police accountability. (As well as some of the undercover officers who targeted them). This mounting evidence of secret political policing in the UK, which continued even beyond the end of the Cold War, means serious questions about the use of police forces for ideological ends will need to be asked.
Kate Hudson, General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, who will be giving live evidence on 15th July, explained:
"The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was infiltrated by officers from the Metropolitan Police. This should never have happened. CND campaigns for the end of nuclear weapons and is a broad-based mass campaigning organisation for peace. Infiltration, monitoring of and spying on an organisation like CND should not happen in a democratic society. The spycops unit should never have been established, should never have continued in its activities and those involved at the highest levels should be held to account."
This phase of hearings will also see testimony from women that undercover officers deceived into abusive sexual relationships.
However, timetables for evidence about the most controversial deployments in this tranche are yet to be published with hearings postponed until after the Summer, following the Inquiry’s failure to provide victims with disclosure of the underlying documents in time for next weeks start date.
Home Office plunges the Inquiry into Crisis
Excessive secrecy has crippled this inquiry since the beginning. It has taken eight years to hear only a fraction of the evidence. The Home Office are now insisting all remaining Tranches be completed and a final Report published by the end of 2026. The accelerated timetable is putting the integrity of the Inquiry’s work at risk.
Kate Wilson, a core participant in the upcoming tranches 3 and 4 explained:
"Suddenly things are going at a furious pace. The Inquiry is imposing impossible deadlines on everyone, despite missing its own deadlines for disclosure. It is compromising our ability to engage. Many Core Participants have waited years for answers only to find robust investigation and fairness may be sacrificed to a new imperative of finishing quickly at all costs. We urge the incoming Home Secretary next week to take immediate action to ensure the integrity of this Inquiry. The Home Office are themselves under investigation here and it is entirely unacceptable for them to sabotage things in this way."
A protest and press briefing will be held outside the Inquiry venue on the opening day of in-person hearings
July 8, 2024, 9:00-9:30 a.m.
International Dispute Resolution Centre, 1 Paternoster Lane, St. Paul's, London, EC4M 7BQ.
For more information email:
opposingpolicesurveillance@gmail.com
media@policespiesoutoflives.org.uk
Phone: 07386255935
Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance (COPS):
www.campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com
Supported by:
• Police Spies Out of Lives (PSOOL):
www.policespiesoutoflives.org.uk
• Undercover Research Group (URG)
• The Monitoring Group (TMG):
www.tmg-uk.org
• Blacklist Support Group (BSG):
www.hazards.org/blacklistblog/
Background Notes:
The UCPI was established in 2015. It is investigating undercover policing operations including secret political policing by the SDS and NPOIU, spying on 1000 left-wing political groups between 1968 and 2014.
The public can view live proceedings online from July 1, 10:00 AM. You can also register to attend the hearing venue by completing the registration form. Inquiry Schedule:
Phase 1 of Tranche 2 evidence hearings: July 1 - August 2, 2024
Phase 2 of Tranche 2 evidence hearings: Beginning September 30, 2024
This inquiry has already cost an estimated £82.3 millionvi. Only a fifth of that represents victims legal costs. Meanwhile, the Metropolitan police have spent an additional £62m of taxpayers money on secrecy, redactions and their own defence. [See 11.6.2024 response to Freedom of Information request FO1-8602-24-0100-000]
Additional Resources:
BBC podcast series "Undercover":
BBC Sounds - Undercover - Available Episodes
Book: Deep Deception: The story of the spycop network, by the women who uncovered the shocking truth"
Deep Deception
i The UCPI Interim Report, 29th June 2023.
https://www.ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/...Policing-Inquiry-Tranche-1-Interim-Report.pdf On page 96, para 28, the Judge concludes: “The question is whether or not the end justified the means set out above. I have come to the firm conclusion that, for a unit of a police force, it did not; and that had the use of these means been publicly known at the time, the SDS would have been brought to a rapid end.”
ii The spying operations continued for at least another 4 decades, infiltrating or reporting on 1000 mainly left wing and campaigning organisations including social and environmental groups, people groups, trades unions, anti-racist organisations, left-wing parties, black family justice and police accountability campaigns (including the Stephen Lawrence family campaign) and MPs.
iii MPS Special Measures:
Police forces in Engage - His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services
iv Response by the MPS on 11th June 2024 to Freedom of Information Act request number FOI-8602-24-0100-000]
v Metropolitan Police Closing Statement for Tranche 1, 20.2.2023 (Para 152) -
https://www.ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/20230220-CL-T1-Closing_Statement.pdf
vi UCPI official costs:
About - Undercover Policing Inquiry
www.theguardian.com
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