Thread by @copscampaign

The #SpyCopsInquiry is underway. Today's hearing will be entirely taken up by David Barr QC, Counsel to the Inquiry, explaining the remit of the Inquiry

Barr: Not just fsr left groups but groups campaigning for race & sexual equality, nuclear disarmament, & justice campaigns such as the family of Stephen Lawrence

Barr: #SpyCops reported on personal details of Stepehn Lawrence's friend @DuwayneBrooks, including personal relationships & his legal strategy in response to trumped-up charges.

Barr: #SpyCops were invovled in #blacklisting workers. involved'Several' #SpyCops deceived women into long term relationships [it's at least 30, David].

Barr: #SpyCops are accused of serious criminal activity, including Bob Lambert accused of firebombing a Debenheam's store in 1987 while undercover. [The Met investigation into this is still not concluded!] bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi…

Barr: Dead children's identities were stolen by spycops campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2016/11/11/spy…

Barr: #SpyCopsInquiry will make facts public wherever possible, drawing on historic documents and testimony directly to the Inquiry

Barr: SDS was mentioned in media on establishment in 1968. campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2018/03/17/spy…. Mentioned in TV series True Spies in 2003. It's not new [but victims only spoke out in 2010]

Barr: Revelations started with @realspycop giving an interview to the Observer, 6 months before #SpyCops Mark Kennedy was exposed theguardian.com/uk/2010/mar/14…

Barr: #SpyCops used their contacts & skills to go through the revolving door into private corporate spying. This included Mark Kennedy continuing spying in the same activist community for Global Open after he left the police

Barr is now giving a rundown of #SpyCops events of the last 10 years, basically one myopic whitewash report after another, interspersed with increasingly outrageous revelations from activists & journalists until the public inquiry was called.

Barr mentions the Taylor report into what the Home Office knew about #SpyCops. Although the Home Office directly funded #SpyCops for over 20 years, a search of every HO archive found not one single document about it.
#shredderpocalypse
campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2017/03/18/wha…

Barr is now reading out the #SpyCopsInquiry terms of reference, as laid out when it was commissioned in 2015. They're on the @ucpi website in a PDF ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/upl…

OK this is getting a bit weird now. About 15 minutes ago Barr said he's been asked to pause & it's been blank screen & silence ever since. We know the Inquiry loves a needless delay but this is getting silly.

The #SpyCopsInquiry that took years to get a computer system, years to get another one that was actually secure, who can't make a website with a functioning search system, have now got a technical issue with their livestream. £30m they've spent to do this.

https://twitter.com/ucpinquiry/status/1323215536768061442?s=20

One might charitably say it's just incompetence, but surely someone spotted problems. Much of the #SpyCopsInquiry site is pages of dozens of PDFs bearing uninformative titles like ‘Detailed consultation document,’ ‘Chairman’s note on risk assessments,’ & ‘Ruling on undertakings’.

When scrolling through the #SpyCopsInquiry site's PDFs, some with the same name as each other, you find a huge proportion of them are ‘flat’, ie made of pictures of documents rather than searchable text, which means the contents won’t appear in websearches.

And we're back! Chair Sir JohnMitting reintroduces the Counsel to the #SpyCopsInquiry John Barr, who is in the middle of reading out the Terms of Reference. One of the limits mentioned is that it is an inquiry into English & Welsh officers in England & Wales.

Many #SpyCops travelled to other countries, undermining campaigns & violating human rights. There included:
Scotland
Northern Ireland
Ireland
Iceland
Spain
Germany
Denmark
Poland
USA
France
Belgium
Israel
Greece
Netherlands
Thailand
Vietnam

Barr: There are 233 Core Participants at the #SpyCopsInquiry, divided into various categories:
A: Police
B: Government
C: Police officers
D: Political organisations and politicians
E: Trade unions / Blacklist Support Group
F: Relatives of deceased individuals

G: Family of Stephen Lawrence, Duwayne Brooks & Michael Mansfield, QC
H: Individuals in relationships with undercover officers
I: Miscarriages of justice
J: Justice campaigns
K: Political activists
L: Social and environmental activists
M: Families of police officers

Many core participants challenge these, eg some women deceived into relationships regard themselves as activists who were spied on rather than by their relation to #SpyCops.

Barr: Chair will generally be deciding on evidence based on the balance of probabilities, but will deviate from that to mention other things with the specific level of certainty he has.

Barr: Immunity - no document produced at the Inquiry will be used against people in future criminal proceedings (unless it's about giving false evidence to the #SpyCopsInquiry), though documents produced by others for the Inquiry aren't covered by this.

Barr: the #SpyCopsInquiry has told 19 families that their dead children's identities were stolen by #SpyCops. Additionally, 1 family whose living child's ID was stolen has been informed. campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2016/11/11/spy…

Barr: The Inquiry has contacted all regional constabularies to ask for relevant documents. [One of these revealed that Humberside Police spied on Janet Alder @onyxkendyl during the inquest into the police's killing of her brother Christopher]

Barr: When Mitting took over as Chair in 2017, he cited predecessor's desire to discover the truth [that's not necessarily the same as revealing the truth to the public though]

Barr: The Inquiry may take into account the spent convictions of witnesses, despite previous terms of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act that appeared to prevent it.

Barr: In 2018 the #SpyCopsInquiry published a redacted version of the #SpyCops Tradecraft Manual ucpi.org.uk/publications/s…

The #SpyCops Tradecraft Manual credits officer Andy Coles as the author (though it appears to be a cumulative work). Had activists not exposed Coles, he would surely have been granted anonymity by the Inquiry to protect his public life
bbc.com/news/uk-englan…

When he was exposed as an ex #SpyCops officer who'd groomed @Jessica_me2 a vulnerable teenager into a relationship, Andy Coles was Cambridgeshire's Deputy Police & Crime Commissioner. He resigned from that but is still a Tory city councillor in Peterborough. See @sackandycoles

How many more ex-#SpyCops are like Andy Coles, who violated citizens undercover yet are now in positions of civic trust? This is why we need all real names of SpyCops to be published.

Barr: The Inquiry has some contemporaneous photos of #SpyCops [they asked us for them, we supplied them, yet they reneged on their promise to publish them]

Barr: The Inquiry is divided into Modules, subdivided into Tranches & Phases. [You can see all this in our UCPI FAQ: campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2020/01/29/ucp… ]

Barr: The first evidence hearings (which start next week) cover the very earliest days of the #SpyCops from 1968, only 4 managers & 3 people who were targeted.

Barr: Sir John Mitting will preside alone over taking evidence, then a panel will be appointed by the Home Secretary for the final module that will look at making recommendations for the future [which the #CHISBill seemingly makes irrelevant]

Barr: The pandemic is slowing the whole process - classified documents can't be worked on at home. We expect the Tranche 2 (#SpyCops from 1983-92) hearings will happen in the first half of 2022, Tranche 3 (1993-2007) in the first half of 2023.

Barr: Hearings next week (Phase 1 of Tranche 1) will cover the formation of the Special Demonstration Squad in 1968 relating to anti-Vietnam War protests, & why it continued beyond that campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2018/03/17/spy…

Barr: How & why did the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) #SpyCops unit become long term, beyond its intended purpose? Did the unit become generalised political police?

Barr: There is no evidence in any documents of the early SDS (1968-72) of sexual relationships with women, nor that it was standard to steal dead children's identities. But these do come in in Phase 2 (1973-82)

Barr is listing the comprehensive scope of what they'll be examining, 60-odd specific headings from recruitment of #SpyCops, to breaching legal privilege, forming relationships with people they spied on, encouraging crime, record-keeping & management of officers after deployment

Barr: Witness statements have been taken from 18 SDS #Spycops for Phase 1 (1968-72), 8 of whom will give evidence. It's so long ago that a number of officers have died & some won't cooperate

In the hearings next week, Tariq Ali & Ernest Tate from the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign will give evidence, Dr Norman Temple from Irish National Liberation Solidarity Front will have his statement read for him.

Barr: Early SDS documents 1968-72 contradict the public claim of having half a million pounds - accounts excluding salaries run to a few grand

Barr: the Inquiry will examine documents including Home Office Circular 97/1969 [this specifically said spies must never incite crime, & if there's a possibility of misleading a court the spy must be withdrawn. Cited on our post here: campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2017/02/16/law… ]

Barr: The #SpyCopsInquiry will look at documents covering the link between #SpyCops & security services, but may not be able to publish them.

Barr: Any phase 1 documents not published today or during the hearings will be published at the end (timing to be fair to witnesses).

Barr is now setting context for 1968 - Cold War, fear of communism, Vietnam war was highly controversial. May 1968 happened in Paris, & some far left organisations in UK wanted the same here. Antiwar demos included different groups inc [grave voice] anarchists

Barr: 1968-72 included women's liberation, anti apartheid, & Northern Ireland civil rights as popular issues, & campaigns for all were targeted by #SpyCops

Barr: In 1971 British introduced internment without trial in NI, Bloody Sunday followed a few months later. Outrage was felt in GB. #SpyCops infiltrated sectarian and anti-sectarian groups.

Barr: 1972 miners strike caused fear in official circles. No direct evidence of #SpyCops targeting unions at this time but they did note union credentials of people they spied on, it was clearly an issue. Officers' collusion with #blacklisting will be covered later in the Inquiry

Barr is listing the Home Secretaries - who had ultimate control of #SpyCops, & whose ministry directly funded the unit - of the period to be covered in next week's hearings. Worth noting that 2 ex Home Secretaries have died since the #SpyCopsInquiry was announced

Barr is listing Met Commissioners responsible for the early period of #SpyCops. Worth noting that the huge #SpyCopsInquiry delays means that 3 ex Met Commissioners, collectively in charge 1977-1993, have died since the Inquiry was announced.

Barr: in 1975 Lord Harwich defined subversive activities are 'those which threaten the safety or wellbeing of the state'. [If you're campaigning against profits from apartheid or the state's human rights abuses, that's you]

Barr: We aren't investigating the security services, but that has to come into it when investigating the #SpyCops. We will look at what exactly they meant by 'subversive or potentially subversive' [everyone is potentially subversive, David]

Barr: The October 1968 Vietnam War demo in London is when the SDS began, following the March 1968 one that kicked off. Here's a contemporary ITV report

ITV report shows lots of pushing at police lines & officers kicking people on the ground, 2 officers carried away on stretchers, several fireworks & some incidental damage to shrubbery - overdubbed with crowd noise, calling it 'a riot such has Britain has never before witnessed'

Abnormal service has been resumed, there is another technical fault so we can't carry on, and they don't know when we'll be back. And as I type that they say they've given up and gone for lunch until 2pm.