Stoke Newington police station protest. Racist policing in Hackney: a very long history
Friday afternoon saw a sizeable protest outside Stoke Newington police station demanding that police should not go into schools.
The specific spark for the protest was the strip searching of a young black student by police who was alleged entirely wrongly to have cannabis on her. It was just another appalling act of racist policing and it has a very long history in the area.
The existence of Spycops- undercover police officers who report on and infiltrate left-wing, radical and anti-racist organisations has been happening since at least the 1970s in north-east London. From time to time the role of particular individuals is exposed.
The last round of hearings in the long running (& on its current timescales never ending) Spycops Inquiry in London which covered the period of the 1970s and early 1980s posted on it’s a website a mass of documentation.
One report related to a meeting on 24th August 1983 between an unnamed officer and DCI David Short of the SDS (Special Demonstration Squad):
Security Service note for liaison file concerning meeting between DCI Short and F6 to discuss the method by which HN88 could become established in the Hackney/Stoke Newington and other SDS officer updates
The meeting discussed a replacement for Spycop HCN108 who was to be Spycop HCN88 because of what it describes as ‘continuing problems’ in Hackney and Stoke Newington.
Interest was expressed in 50 Rectory Rd N16 the HQ of the Hackney Community Relations Executive.
According to the report it had ‘let rooms to the subversively controlled Campaign Against the Police Bill’.
As concerning to the officers it noted ‘other coloured groups also meet at the same address’
It was agreed according to the report that Spycop HN88 should find somewhere to live in Stoke Newington and then see ‘whatever subversive undercurrent he could detect’. They’d see how HN88 was getting on at the end of the year.
In short a Spycop was looking to report on and perhaps infiltrate perfectly legal campaign groups and the use of the term ‘coloured’ in the report suggests a high probability of institutional racist intent.
Worth keeping in mind that all this was being paid for by public funds but the activity was certainly unaccountable to the public and it would seem it still. The culture of the Met remains rotten and racist 40 years on.
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