Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police (35 page)

Not much. It is business as usual for the NPOIU, which continues the practice of planting undercover police in protest groups. After the uncomfortable glare of public scrutiny, it seems likely that supervisors will be far more careful to ensure that its agents do not cross the line in the future. During her parliamentary appearance, Patricia Gallan assured MPs that undercover officers no longer use the identities of dead children and are prohibited from developing intimate relationships. ‘I am absolutely clear that such activities should not be authorised or sanctioned,’ she said. ‘It is morally wrong.’ Privately, senior officers say they no longer believe such long-lasting operations are healthy. One recent deployment of an NPOIU spy, suspected to have been directed against animal rights activists in Wales, lasted less than two years and did not, it seems, involve sexual activity.

There have been some other changes. After a number of years based at the Association of Chief Police Officers, where police admit it was not subject to proper scrutiny, the unit was returned to its original home. The NPOIU is now back at New Scotland Yard, under the command of counter-terrorist officers, the very place the whole spy programme was developed by Dixon back in 1968.

Next to nothing has been done to reform the system, or prevent further cases of abuse taking place again, despite a raft
of proposals. Sir Denis O’Connor, the chief inspector of the police brought in to clean up the system after Kennedy was outed, recommended ditching the flawed concept of ‘domestic extremism’ and said police should separate out their investigation into serious criminals, which might justify undercover methods, and the routine policing of protest. He also proposed forcing police to obtain advance authorisation from independent
surveillance
commissioners before deploying undercover officers. As the police’s chief watchdog, O’Connor was a hugely influential bureaucrat. Being a former chief constable, O’Connor rarely liked to rock the boat. When he did, it was for a reason.

Yet more than 12 months after he published his damning report, and despite support from senior officers for many of his key proposals, not a single one of the recommendations has been implemented.

His inquiry was just one of 15 separate official
inquiries
launched into various aspects of undercover policing since Kennedy was exposed. All have been held behind closed doors. None have come close to providing a full and open account of how police have used spies to monitor activists over the last four decades.

The largest inquiry – Operation Herne – is being conducted by the police themselves, with a team of Met officers
conducting
an investigation into their colleagues. Their inquiry into the SDS is supposedly a definitive review that, one day, will atone for past mistakes.

Under the command of a chief constable from Derbyshire police, a staff of 31 investigators are combing through 50,000 classified documents, tracking down former spies, and trying to speak with activists who were spied on. Just over a year into its deliberations, the inquiry has already cost the taxpayer £1.25m. It has not yet made a single disclosure about any undercover
operation. The Met estimates Herne will not be completed until 2016.

But will the public run out of patience? ‘Things have gone badly wrong,’ says Ken MacDonald, a former director of public prosecutions. ‘It seems only a public inquiry, taking stock of the picture both nationally and locally, receiving evidence and advice, and setting standards and mechanisms of control, is capable of rescuing us, and necessary undercover policing, from a steady drip of exposure and seediness.’

That constant flow of revelations will not stop. The 10
undercover
police officers identified so far will not be the last to be exposed. There are around a dozen cases of suspected undercover police who are not mentioned in this book, but are known to be guilty of
similar
misdemeanours, who might be unmasked any moment.

There is no precise number for the total number of police spies who worked for the SDS or NPOIU. However, evidence in documents and testimony from police suggests there have been at least 100 covert officers, and possibly as many as 150. That means fewer than a tenth of the total number of spies have been unmasked so far. The scandal has a long way to go before it runs out of steam.

How many more undercover police who slept with women, used dead children’s identities or lied in court will be exposed in years to come? How many will argue they were not properly looked after by police, deployed for years undercover without
consideration
for their psychological health? Will any of them follow the example set by Black, find the courage to come forward, and tell their story on their own terms?

Needless to say, there are tens of thousands of political
activists
who had police spies as friends, comrades or lovers. Many may now want to go public about the impact on their lives. These campaigners have video footage and photographs, postcards and
letters of people they now suspect were infiltrators who lived in their midst. And, for the first time in almost half a century, they feel emboldened by the knowledge that their suspicions may well be true.

If there is one irony to this story, it is that political activists who had no faith in the state, who were labelled conspiracy
theorists
for claiming they were being watched by secret police, were not nearly paranoid enough. If they were culpable of anything, it was underestimating quite how far police were willing to go in the pursuit of information about their lives. They are unlikely to make that mistake again.

For any police spies currently deployed in protest groups, that must be a chilling thought. Undercover policing is never easy – one misplaced step, one slipped word, and the officer can be found out. Operatives deployed in protest groups today are
working
in an environment in which all activists are on the lookout for the next spy cop, in the knowledge that they do, after all, exist, and they could be anywhere.

The consequences for those spies who are exposed in the future are laid bare by the mixed fortunes of the officers in this book. Black continues to speak out about his days in the SDS, and believes he has found some closure in coming clean about the excesses of his deployment. He is campaigning for a public inquiry into the undercover policing of protest. If such an inquiry is ordered, he is committed to giving evidence to it without any disguise.

Those who have met Kennedy since his exposure say he seems profoundly unhappy. He has struggled to rebuild his life since he was outed and recently announced his intention to sue the Met police for £100,000 in compensation, claiming that, like Black and Chitty, he suffered post-traumatic stress disorder. He works for the Densus Group, an American security firm that specialises in spying on activists, and also provided some assistance to the
Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. He recently took on a role at a leisure company. He has confided in some friends that he would like to work for the FBI. Recently, after around a year adopting the clean-cut look of his days in uniform, he grew back his stubble and long hair.

But of all the police spies, it is Bob Lambert who faces the most uncertain future. He still faces questions over his role in the arson attacks on Debenhams in the 1980s, his role in the writing of the infamous McLibel leaflet, which gave rise to the court case with McDonald’s, and his relationships with women, including the one which resulted in the birth of his son, an episode he says he kept secret from his bosses and his family for more than 20 years.

For some time, Lambert is known to have tried to win over Charlotte, the mother of his child, persuading her that he was not at fault. He has talked of selling their story to Hollywood. His approaches have been rather persistent, and Charlotte’s lawyer has threatened to take out a harassment order against Lambert unless he ceases contact. For better or worse, he has also
established
a relationship with the son he never knew.

Lambert’s professional life has taken a turn for the worse. Many of the invitations to make speeches appear to have dried up and Lambert has been obliged to leave an academic post as co-director of the European Muslim Research Centre at Exeter University. It was a major setback; he had been at the beginning of a decade-long programme of research. He retains his lecturing job at St Andrews where, embarrassingly, students staged a protest at one of his seminars, condemning his ‘reprehensible’ behaviour.

In one sense, Lambert always had the most to lose. He was a skilled manipulator, almost too accomplished for his own good. Having risen through the ranks of the SDS, he now knows he will be held to account for the misdemeanours of the spies who operated under his command. Lambert still socialises with these
officers – his old team from back in the day. But even they must have detected a change in their old boss. He recently confided in friends that he planned to convert to Islam.

Lambert will need all of the spiritual guidance he can get in the days ahead. He knows he is the author of his own misfortune. His decision to pursue a new career as an academic, posing as a progressive liberal with a heart, meant that his downfall, when it came, was from an especially high pedestal.

Lambert knew the game was up in October 2011 – the day he was confronted by activists who turned up uninvited to one of his speeches in London. It was a humiliating start to his downfall. As activists handed out leaflets to the audience, entitled ‘The Truth About Bob Lambert and his Special Branch Role’, he left the stage and slipped out of a side entrance.

His heart must have sunk when he saw he was being pursued down the street by Helen Steel and Dave Morris, the tenacious London Greenpeace activists who took on McDonald’s in the McLibel court case.

The ensuing chase was a curious event: Lambert at the front, scurrying along, pretending to ignore Steel and Morris and the camera they were pointing in his face. Saturday afternoon
shoppers
parted, as the former police spy and his activist friends made their way through the street.

‘Come on, Bob. We would like to talk to you about your infiltration of London Greenpeace,’ said Steel.

‘All you have got to do is have a chat,’ said Morris. ‘What are you ashamed of?’

Lambert crossed the road and started running. Steel and Morris picked up their pace to stay in tow.

‘Would you like to say sorry to any of the other women who had relationships with your undercover officers?’ asked Steel. ‘Are you proud of what you did?’

‘It is all going to come out, yeah,’ said Morris. ‘All the
infiltrators
are being unmasked. Everyone knows that it’s disgusting, yeah, using Stasi tactics against campaign groups.’

Lambert carried on walking.

‘All you have to do is stop and say, “OK, it was wrong,”’ Morris said.

‘That it was abusive to people,’ added Steel. ‘It was damaging.’

It was clear that Lambert was not going to say a word. The procession continued along the street. He smiled, awkwardly.

‘All you have got to do is stop and have a chat,’ said Morris. ‘You know us. We are good people. You knew us for five years.’

‘You were quite happy to chat to us in the pub 15, 20 years ago,’ said Steel.

Lambert stood by the road and hailed a taxi. Steel and Morris were still beside him, like apparitions from a previous life.

‘So, nothing to say about abusing women campaigners?’ said Steel.

‘Will you apologise for the whole police operation against campaign groups?’ said Morris.

The veteran spy said nothing. He entered the taxi and slammed the door. He would have heard the final shouts from those familiar faces, the people he had called his friends all those years before.

‘Shame on you!’ they shouted. ‘Shame on you!’

For two years we have delved into a particularly secretive part of the secret state. It is not possible, for obvious reasons, to
acknowledge
in public the many people who went out of their way to enable this story to be told. They know who they are. There were some, however, who did not help at all. Mark Kennedy did not co-operate with this book. On the occasions he or his family are quoted, the remarks are taken from published interviews with the
Mail on Sunday, Guardian
, BBC and
Rolling Stone
. The Metropolitan Police officially refused to co-operate and answered virtually none of our questions. We asked for an interview with a senior officer who could give the official view of these undercover operations, or assistance ‘on background’, which is almost always provided for projects on this scale. The force refused, saying undercover policing ‘is by definition a covert activity and it is imperative that we safeguard our working practices and certain aspects of our decision making, to protect the men and women who undertake this dangerous work.’

In the face of official obstruction, we relied on the courage of confidential sources. A number of ‘insiders’, past and present, have helped us, but we owe particular thanks to Pete Black. This book could never have been written without his bravery. Pete has not received any payment for this book. At his request, a portion of the royalties is being donated to a local branch of the mental
health charity, Mind. We thank Tony Thompson for introducing us to Pete, who was at the time known as Officer A.

A number of people spoke on the condition of anonymity, either to protect their privacy or because they feared retribution from police. As a rule, all references to people by first names only (e.g. ‘Megan’) are pseudonyms. We are grateful to the many other activists who agreed to break with tradition to be named on the record.

Our book was made possible by senior executives at the
Guardian
who allowed us the time and freedom to investigate these stories and then turn them into a book. Particular thanks to Alan Rusbridger, Ian Katz, Dan Roberts, Dan Sabbagh, Jan Thompson, Sara Montgomery and Katie Roden. We would like to thank our main researcher, Sorcha Pollack, and three reporters who helped along the way: Rowenna Davis, who worked briefly at the
Guardian
, and Meirion Jones and Richard Watson, from BBC
Newsnight
. Thanks also to our friends at ITN Productions.

We’re grateful to three solicitors who represent the targets of the undercover operations – Mike Schwarz, Jules Carey and Harriet Wistrich – and two media lawyers who facilitated
publication
, Sean McTernan and Gill Phillips. We are also indebted to the careful skill of Lindsay Davies, who edited the manuscript, and Tom Lewis, whose advice early on helped shape it.

We have in places been greatly helped by journalists and researchers who have gone before us. In chapter two, we quoted from Peter Taylor’s BBC 2002 series on MI5 and the Special Branch, and his accompanying
Guardian
article of October 23 2002, which disclosed the existence of the Special Demonstration Squad. We also drew from a BBC
Newsnight
programme on May 28 2008 on the policing of the 1968 anti-Vietnam war protests. Solomon Hughes passed on documents he had uncovered in the National Archives in Kew, London, about those protests. We also
quoted from a BBC Radio Four
File on Four
programme broadcast on October 2 2012 and, in chapter five, drew on two books:
McLibel – Burger Culture on Trial
by John Vidal (Macmillan, 1997) and
Secret Manoeuvres in the Dark – Corporate and Police Spying on Activists
by Eveline Lubbers (Pluto Press, 2012).

Authors regularly acknowledge the tolerance of their partners while they disappear for some time. We are no different. Rob would like to thank his wife Caroline for her forbearance and support. She may have got bored of him talking about undercover police, but she did not show it. Paul would like to thank Kay for encouraging him to pursue his obsessions. She was unwaveringly supportive, right from when the story first broke.

Finally, like all journalism, this book is merely a first draft of the history. We recognise we have only scratched the surface. If you can help us improve the record, then we would urge you to get in touch via [email protected] or Paul.Lewis@ guardian.co.uk. We hope this book will be an incentive, in
particular
, to the South African resident, the Scottish hotelier, the pensioner in Lincolnshire and the second spy who learned the consequences of fathering a child undercover.

Paul Lewis and Rob Evans, May 2013