SpyCops Inquiry useful to historians but not much else
The first public hearings of the long running Spycops inquiry earlier in November have a lot of mundane police reports where officers were wasting their own time. They also pointed to police activity which was at best of doubtful legality, such as intervening in the internal affairs of trade unions, and some that was simply outrageous such as undercover officers fathering children with activists they were spying on.
As Tariq Ali giving evidence noted, given the Establishment background of the chair, restrictions on questioning witnesses and failure to provide some information it seems unlikely that when the inquiry does eventually conclude it will lead to anything particularly useful in terms of addressing the behaviour of the police and the Secret State.
What has been provided however are partial but considerable volumes of reports on left-wing meetings and groups.
In that sense they provide a useful resource for future historians both in terms of what it was the police thought it worth spying on and also digitised documents which are unlikely to have been otherwise retained for posterity. Whether that justifies the resource and expense involved is another matter.
Some detail around the public hearings
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/15/undercover-police-abuse-new-intelligence-bill
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