The Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) was an undercover unit of Greater London's Metropolitan Police Service (MPS or the Met), set up in 1968 with the approval of the Wilson government, [1] to infiltrate British protest groups. [2] [3] [4] It was part of the Special Branch, and worked closely with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). [5] It operated from 1968 to 2008. [6]
The SDS was established by Special Branch as the Special Operations Squad in March 1968. [7] [8] Formed as a response to the anti-war demonstrations held outside the U.S. Embassy in London, then based at Grosvenor Square, the squad's purpose was to infiltrate "left-wing direct-action groups" using undercover police officers (nicknamed "hairies" because of their hippie appearance), who would liaise with MI5. [7] [9] In 1972 it was renamed the Special Demonstration Squad. It was renamed the Special Duties Squad in 1997 and disbanded in 2008. [10]
The SDS's first operation was surveillance of anti-Vietnam war protesters, the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. For example, nine SDS officers were covertly deployed into a 1968 public meeting of 250 campaigners deciding the route of a major anti-war demonstration. [1] It also spied on pro-Palestinian rights organisations with 'Rob Harrison' infiltrating the International Solidarity Movement from 2004 till 2007. [11]
The SDS used the names of 80 dead children to create false identities for its operatives. [12] Some members of the SDS engaged in sexual relationships with protest organisers in an attempt to gain trust, [13] and in some cases fathered children by them. [14] In 2013, former SDS undercover officer Peter Francis revealed that the SDS investigated the family of Stephen Lawrence in order to seek possible evidence to smear Lawrence with in case of racially motivated public order issues. The revelation of this information led to Home Secretary Theresa May announcing an investigation in Parliament, while Stephen Lawrence's father Neville Lawrence arguing that the allegations merited an independent investigation. [15] In the documentary broadcast as part of Channel 4's Dispatches programme, Francis confirmed that allegations made about officers having relationships with women involved with political protest movements were true. [16]
After its closure in 2008 the role of the SDS was taken up in part by the National Domestic Extremism Unit.
On 23 October 2014, the Metropolitan Police Service agreed to pay £425,000 to a woman called Jacqui whose child was fathered by former SDS operative Bob Lambert; she did not know at the time of their relationship that he was an undercover police officer. The payment was part of an agreement for her to drop her legal action alleging assault, negligence, deceit and misconduct by senior officers. She was a 22-year-old activist at the time of her relationship with Lambert – who was using the pseudonym Bob Robinson – and she gave birth to their son in 1985. When the boy was two years old his father vanished, and she told BBC News she had received psychiatric care after learning the officer's real identity. The unprecedented payment resulted from a legal battle with women who said they were duped into relationships with officers who were spying on them. Scotland Yard said it "unreservedly apologises for any pain and suffering" but added that "the Metropolitan Police Service has never had a policy that officers can use sexual relations for the purposes of policing". Scotland Yard had previously refused to either confirm or deny whether Bob Lambert was an SDS operative, despite his own admissions to journalists. However, it was forced to change its position in August 2014 after a legal ruling. Mr Lambert did not respond to BBC requests for comment on the settlement but had previously said that he wanted to apologise to women with whom he had relationships and that he had made some "serious mistakes". [17]
At the time of the October 2014 settlement there were 12 other legal claims relating to undercover officers still being fought. But Jules Carey of Bindmans lawyers, acting for Jacqui, said the legal battles so far suggested Scotland Yard wanted to maintain a "never say never" stance to sexual relations after the Met's lawyers argued there could be a hypothetical extreme situation where such a tactic was needed. Mr Carey said: "The Metropolitan Police are prepared to criticise the conduct of an individual officer, Bob Lambert. They are even prepared to be critical of the unit he was from – but they refuse to condemn the practice itself. It is time for the commissioner of Metropolitan Police to publicly commit to seeing the end of this shameful and abusive practice". [17]
In December 2018, the High Court ruled against a request that the Crown Prosecution Service should prosecute SDS officer Jim Boyling for the offences of rape, indecent assault, procurement of sexual intercourse and misconduct in public office. [18]
Officer John Dines had a two-year relationship with campaigner Helen Steel while working undercover for the SDS. In 2016, Steel tracked down Dines in Australia; he apologised for the emotional suffering caused. [19]
An independent public inquiry into undercover policing in England and Wales since 1968, the Undercover Policing Inquiry, was announced by Theresa May, the United Kingdom Home Secretary, on 12 March 2015, due to report by 2023. [20] [21] It is chaired by retired judge Sir John Mitting, and started hearing evidence on 2 November 2020. The inquiry will focus on the deployment of about 140 undercover police officers to spy on over 1,000 political groups over more than 40 years. [1] [22]
In early 2014 a television drama series was announced based on the Special Demonstration Squad officers and their long-term relationships with activists upon whom they were spying. The working title was Undercovers with writing to be done by Simon Beaufoy, Alice Nutter, and Franny Armstrong who had previously worked on McLibel . The series was scheduled to be produced by Spanner Films with Tony Garnett as the executive producer. [23] A TV series based on this, along with Stephen Lawrence's family being spied on, was aired in 2016 as Undercover . [24]
McDonald's Corporation v Steel & Morris[1997] EWHC 366 (QB), known as "the McLibel case", was an English lawsuit for libel filed by McDonald's Corporation against environmental activists Helen Steel and David Morris over a factsheet critical of the company. Each of two hearings in English courts found some of the leaflet's contested claims to be libellous and others to be true.
Stephen Lawrence was an 18-year-old black British citizen from Plumstead, southeast London, who was murdered in a racially motivated attack while waiting for a bus on Well Hall Road, Eltham, on the evening of 22 April 1993. The case became a cause célèbre: its fallout included changes of attitudes on racism and the police, and to the law and police practice. It also led to the partial revocation of the rule against double jeopardy. Two of the perpetrators were convicted of murder on 3 January 2012.
Helen Steel is an environmental and social justice activist who is known for her involvement in the McLibel case, an English lawsuit for libel filed by McDonald's Corporation that lasted for 10 years and was eventually taken to the European Court of Human Rights, where Steel and fellow campaigner David Morris won their case against the UK Government on the grounds that they had been denied a fair trial. She is a key figure in the 'Spycops' scandal and subsequent Undercover Policing Inquiry.
Clement Blair Peach was a New Zealand teacher who was killed during an anti-racism demonstration in Southall, London, England. A campaigner and activist against the far right, in April 1979 Peach took part in an Anti-Nazi League demonstration in Southall against a National Front election meeting in the town hall and was hit on the head, probably by a member of the Special Patrol Group (SPG), a specialist unit within the Metropolitan Police Service. He died in hospital that night.
Colin Roach was a 21-year-old black British man who died as a result of a fatal gunshot wound having entered a police-station reception. A subsequent inquest ruled his death was suicide - him having placed the barrel of a shotgun in to his mouth before squeezing the trigger - inside the entrance of Stoke Newington police station, in the London Borough of Hackney, on 12 January 1983. Amid allegations of a police cover-up, the case became a cause célèbre for civil rights campaigners and black community groups in the United Kingdom. The death was made famous by the late civil rights protester and singer Sinéad O'Connor's song "Black Boys on Mopeds".
London Greenpeace was an anarchist environmentalist activist collective that existed between 1972 and 2001. They were based in London, and came to international prominence when two of their activists refused to capitulate to McDonald's in the landmark libel case known as "McLibel". It was not affiliated with Greenpeace International nor with their British branch.
Covert policing in the United Kingdom is employed to enable an officer of the British police to gather intelligence from and about suspects without alerting them that they are under observation.
The Movement for Justice was set up in 1995 by people around the Kingsway College Student Union in the London Borough of Camden to tackle racism in institutional and established forms. The group confronted organised fascism as well as death in custody and wider racism to black people as well as travellers, refugees and asylum seekers. It is also the sister group to the American organization The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration & Immigrant Rights, and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN).
The National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) was run by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), a private company connected to United Kingdom police intelligence, and was set up in 1999 to track green activists and public demonstrations. It has been found that much of the Unit's work was against "activists working on social justice, anti-racist, and environmental campaigns" and legitimate dissent, rather than extremist groups, with more than 1,000 political groups having been subjected to surveillance by covert officers. The work of the group has been accused as having hobbled Climate-related protest in the late 2000s in the United Kingdom and more widely.
The 2009 G20 London summit protests occurred in the days around the 2 April 2009 G20 London summit. The summit was the focus of protests from a number of groups over various long-standing and topical issues. These ranged from disquiet over economic policy, anger at the banking system and bankers' remuneration and bonuses, the continued war on terror and concerns over climate change.
The National Domestic Extremism Team was a police unit set up in 2005 within the association of chief police officers to provide a dedicated response to tackling extremism. It co-ordinated operations and investigations nationally, working closely in England and Wales with the Crown Prosecution Service which had a complementary network of prosecutors with specialist expertise in domestic extremism.
Mark Kennedy, undercover name Mark Stone, is a former London Metropolitan Police officer who, whilst attached to the police service's National Public Order Intelligence Unit, (NPOIU) infiltrated many protest groups between 2003 and 2010 before he was unmasked by political activists as an undercover policeman on 21 October 2010 and his identity was confirmed by the media three days later. During his time under cover he manipulated and deceived several women into having sexual relationships with him with the knowledge of his superiors. An Investigatory Powers Tribunal found his actions to be an "abuse of the highest order" and had "grossly debased, degraded and humiliated" one of his victims.
The National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit is a national police unit of the National Police Chiefs' Council within the Metropolitan Police Service Specialist Operations Group.
Robert Lambert is a British former undercover police officer and academic. He served in the controversial Special Demonstration Squad and posed as a left-wing animal rights activist from 1983 to 1988. While undercover, he had sexual relationships with four women, fathering a child with one of them, all of whom were unaware of his true identity. The child and the child's mother needed psychiatric treatment after discovering Lambert's identity much later, and both were awarded damages against the Police. He has also been accused of involvement in an arson attack while undercover, which Lambert denies, as well as giving false evidence in court.
Louise Wallis is an English DJ, singer, and writer who is also known for her animal advocacy. She lived in London, England, and now resides in South Wales.
Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police is a 2012 book by The Guardian journalists Rob Evans and Paul Lewis.
Around the end of 2010 and during 2011, it was disclosed in UK media that a number of undercover police officers had, as part of their 'false persona', entered into intimate relationships with members of targeted groups and in some cases proposed marriage or fathered children with protesters who were unaware their partner was a police officer in a role as part of their official duties. Various legal actions followed, including eight women who took action against the Metropolitan Police and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), stating they were deceived into long-term intimate relationships by five officers, including Mark Kennedy, the first officer to be identified as such, who was publicly identified on 21 October 2010 as infiltrating social and environmental justice campaigns, and Mark Kennedy himself who claimed in turn that he had been incompetently handled by his superiors and denied psychological counselling. According to The Guardian, Kennedy sued the police for ruining his life and failing to "protect" him from falling in love with one of the environmental activists whose movement he infiltrated.
The Undercover Policing Inquiry is an independent statutory inquiry into undercover policing in England and Wales. It was announced by Theresa May, the then Home Secretary, on 6 March 2014, and its terms of reference were published on 16 July 2015. The Inquiry has been chaired by Sir John Mitting since July 2017, following the resignation due to ill-health of Sir Christopher Pitchford.
Lakhvinder "Ricky" Reel, a 20-year-old British man, died in October 1997 in London, United Kingdom. He was last seen alive in the early morning of 15 October and on 21 October his body was recovered from the River Thames near Down Hall Road, in the town centre of Kingston upon Thames.
Andy Coles is a former English police officer and politician known for his undercover work in the 1990s and subsequent political career.
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