The name of Conrad Dixon has featured a lot in the first week of the public sessions of the Spycops inquiry.
He was the senior police officer who set up the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS)and appears to have recruited many of those who worked for it.
He died aged 72 in 1999 and there was a Times obituary
The Times claim the unit was called the ‘Scruffies’ as opposed to the ‘Hairies’ the name referred to in the Inquiry. It also attributes a greater degree of training and professionalism to the members of the unit than appeared to be the case from the evidence given by surviving members.
Interestingly Dixon left the police and pursued an academic career publishing a number of books on seafaring, after police operations involving the prosecution of members of the Free Wales Army and the Angry Brigade.
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