Undercover Policing Inquiry resumes again: outrageous behaviours & historical documents
The first public hearings of the very long running Spycops inquiry were held in November 2020. Another round was held in April and May 2021 after a protracted delay a third round of hearing was held in May 2022. Now a three day hearing to ‘sum up’ Tranche 1 from 1968-82 is being held. The next actual evidence hearings will take place in 2024..
A lot of mundane police reports have underlined where officers were wasting their own time. They have 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. Other appalling issues covered include police surveillance of activists seeking to discover the truth about the murder of Blair Peach at an anti-fascist protest in Southall in 1979 and officers spying on school students who opposed the National Front.
The first day of the sum up has heard various attempts to dismiss or minimise police behaviours but also a statement by the KC for the Inquiry that the evidence so far indicates that the Special Demonstration Squad, formed to monitor anti-Vietnam War protests in 1968 should then have been disbanded
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.
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