COINCIDING with a rare public hearing of the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) this week, ten women who were deceived into relationships with ‘spycops’ have issued the following statement:
Statement by ‘Bea’, Donna McLean, ‘Ellie’, ‘Jenny’, ‘Jessica’, ‘Lindsey’, ‘Lizzie’, ‘Madeleine’, ‘Monica’ and ‘Sara’
‘We are ten women who were deceived into sexual relationships by undercover police officers and have just settled or are bringing civil claims against the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS).
‘Assistant Commissioner Helen Ball, now retired, has acknowledged that each of us is telling the truth and apologised for what happened to us.
‘But she has not acknowledged the institutional sexism which is at the heart of this abuse.
‘This omission is an insult and renders her apology meaningless.
‘How long do we – and all of the affected women – have to wait for a full and open apology from the MPS for the sexism which was the driving force for the abuse?
‘Why can’t the MPS make a straightforward, public commitment to eradicating sexism in all its forms from its culture and to becoming an anti-sexist organisation?
‘Seven other women, represented by Birnberg Peirce, settled claims and secured an apology from the MPS in 2015 which acknowledged that the sexual relationships were abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong.
‘In 2021 the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled in favour of another woman, Kate Wilson, finding that the undercover policing operations against the protest movements were unlawful, discriminatory and identified a “formidable list” of breaches by the Metropolitan Police of fundamental human rights.
‘Despite these public pronouncements of wrongdoing by the MPS, the civil claims process has been deeply traumatic and gruelling for us.
‘We often felt like we were treated as adversaries rather than the innocent victims of institutionally sanctioned abuse.
‘We have still not been able to see the information held on us and we still do not know the reason why we were abused in such a cruel and degrading manner.
‘During the course of the claims process we have found it painful and distressing to again hear in the media yet another senior Metropolitan police officer apologising that yet another serving officer has been able to abuse women because of systemic failings within the Force.
‘We suffer fresh grief and rage over every new story we read; the abuse of the dead bodies of Bibaa Henry and Nicole Smallman; the kidnapping rape and murder of Sarah Everard by MPS officer Wayne Couzens.
‘The unnamed rape victims of MPS officer David Carrick who committed 43 offences across a 17-year period.
‘It has been sickening to witness the accumulation of evidence of the culture of misogyny within the Force.
‘Their decades-long failure to tackle it means the latest police apology about violent misogyny within the Met rings hollow for us.
‘The Met must spell out exactly how it will tackle its culture of festering misogyny.
‘We will be writing to Commissioner Rowley to ask him to do exactly that.’
Sarah McSherry, consultant solicitor with Birnberg Peirce said: ‘ “Bea”, Donna McLean, “Ellie”, “Jenny”, “Jessica”, “Lindsey”, “Lizzie”, “Madeleine”, “Monica” and “Sara” show great strength and selflessness in their continued pursuit, through these cases and in other forums, of truth, accountability and change in the Metropolitan Police Service in an effort to ensure that no member of the public has to suffer this type of abuse again.’
The Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) (Spycops Inquiry), was launched in 2015 following the ‘spycops’ scandal to investigate undercover police operations over five decades.
A three-day virtual hearing comprising closing statements on ‘Tranche 1’ of the inquiry began yesterday and concludes tomorrow.
It is summarising the evidence on undercover policing covering the period from 1968 to 1982 and how governments worked to cover it up.
Most people will have read about the women deceived into relationships by undercover officers, or police spying on the family of Stephen Lawrence or other black justice campaigners.
But the inquiry is not paying as much attention to police spying on trade unions.
Two secret policing units – the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), part of the force’s Special Branch, and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) – spied on supposed ‘subversives’ within British society, including protest groups and left-wing activists.
The spying started with the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in 1968 and continued into the first decade of this century.
Industrial disputes were of key interest to the SDS from the start. Miners, dockers and construction workers were all spied on during strikes in 1972, according to the SDS’s annual reports.
But the police were not merely attending public picket lines and protests.
Undercover police officers with false identities were joining unions.
SDS officers using the cover names ‘David Hughes’ and ‘Barry Tompkins’ joined the Transport & General Workers Union in the 1970s and early 1980s, the inquiry has confirmed.
Another undercover officer, Mark Jenner (cover name ‘Mark Cassidy’), infiltrated the construction union, UCATT.
From 1995 until 2000, when he ‘disappeared’, Jenner regularly attended meetings of the Hackney branch, participated in the union’s decision-making processes and played a leading role in a safety campaign for workers.
He also deceived ‘Alison’, a teacher and union member, into a five-year relationship during his undercover deployment.
Missed opportunities or refusal to investigate include the two-year Grunwick dispute beginning in 1976 in north London.
It came out that at least seven undercover officers, three of whom have been granted anonymity by the inquiry, attended the Grunwick pickets.
Special Branch sent officers as ‘spotters’ to gather the names of people who took part, and the SDS infiltrated left-wing political groups that joined the picket lines.
The National Archives files show that reports about Grunwick, based on intelligence gathered by undercover police officers, went all the way up to the Home Secretary of the day and sometimes even the Prime Minister.
In a 1974 meeting with then Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, Labour MPs, including John Prescott, raised the issue of Special Branch spying on unions. They asked for an inquiry into infiltration and the exchange of information about potential troublemakers between police and employers.
Documents disclosed by UCPI show Jenkins denied the police spying, telling the MPs: ‘There was no question of Special Branch infiltration into trade unions directly or indirectly’. Prescott countered that ‘he felt sure there was such infiltration’.
Successive prime ministers knew about the existence of an undercover Metropolitan Police unit which spied on left-wing activists, campaigners have said.
The Undercover Policing Inquiry into the unit’s activities will hear closing submissions in the first stage or Tranche One of its evidence, which looks at practices in the Special Demonstration Squad between 1968 and 1982, early next week.
The inquiry has been told women’s groups, political parties, unions, teachers and students were monitored by undercover officers engaged in ‘political policing’ that targeted those perceived to be left-wing.
It has also heard sexual activity between undercover police officers and members of the public who did not know their true identities was ‘not uncommon’ from the mid-1970s.
One woman is said to have been tricked into a relationship with an undercover officer until 2015.
An online press conference held by campaigners last Friday was told civil servants, the Home Office, Cabinet Office and prime ministers were aware of the spying.
Lawyer Lydia Dagostino, who is the co-ordinator for the campaigners’ legal representatives, said: ‘Successive prime ministers knew of this unit.
‘It was approved and funded with the knowledge of our senior politicians and civil servants, and was a tool by the state to spy on the left and anyone deemed subversive.’
Trade unionist Dave Smith of the Blacklist Support Group said the information supplied was sold to ‘major employers’ including the NHS, Post Office, BBC, civil service and British Steel.
He said former Tory Prime Minister Edward Heath was ‘aware of this information’ and had used it in discussions with senior civil servants.
He said requests were made about ‘vetting’ which ‘is a euphemism for blacklisting,’ adding: ‘What has been disclosed in Tranche One is Cabinet Office papers that have explained that at PM level Edward Heath was aware of this information-sharing between major employers.
‘Some of this information has been disclosed by the public inquiry and some of it hasn’t. Information is already in the National Archives.
‘There were Labour governments this was going on under and we have no doubt Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and other Labour PMs were given it as well.’
He also said that at one point ‘concerns’ were raised about the attitude of an incoming Labour prime minister to the unit which eventually proved unfounded.
One woman who had a relationship with an undercover officer, who referred to herself as Alison, called the unit ‘instinctively sexist and racist’ and said a direct line can be traced from the undercover policing scandal to current ones affecting the Metropolitan Police.
The woman, who is a campaigner for the Police Spies Out of Lives group, said undercover officers talked about sexual ‘conquests’, made racist remarks about a Jewish campaigner’s nose, one had sex with four women and another had ‘a couple of relationships’ with women while undercover.
She said: ‘The deployments were unlawful and unjustified, these officers trespassed into our homes, women were considered to be commodities to be exploited.
‘We didn’t consent to have intimate sexual relationships with undercover police and the police knew this.
‘One woman was asked whether she would have slept with someone she knew to be an undercover police officer and she replied “no.”
‘A culture of misogyny was clearly established in the 1970s and 1980s.
‘Today we are seeing the consequences of this misogynistic culture in some of the appalling scandals recently.
‘We are frustrated, angry and disturbed as are most people.’
