Thread by @copscampaign

Finally at the #SpyCopsInquiry, we'll hear the opening statement from Rajiv Menon QC, on behalf of core participants represented by Jane Deighton & Richard Parry. We'll live tweet the statement in this thread.

Jane Deighton represents Audrey, Nathan & Richard Adams, the family of teenager Rolan Adams who was murdered by racists in February 1991 & whose campaign was one of those targeted by #SpyCops.
campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2018/02/14/whi…

Jane also represents @DuwayneBrooks, friend of Stephen Lawrence & prime witness to Stephen's murder. Duwayne has twice been prosecuted on wholly trumped up charges that were thrown out of court as an abuse of process.

Jane Deighton said she has never heard of this happening to the same person more than once. Police also bugged meetings with Jane & Duwayne. We're nearly 30 years on and still Duwayne has not been given answers.

Richard Parry represents 5 targeted activists, two of whom - Tariq Ali & Ernest Tate - will give evidence to the early phase of the hearings covering 1968-72. He also represents Michael Zeitlin, Piers Corbyn, Norman Blair, Advisory Service for Squatters & Friends of Freedom Press

Menon: Why has it taken 2.065 days for the #SpyCopsInquiry since being established? Original Chair Lord Pitchford hoped to deliver it in 2018. some delay is understandable when Pitchford fell ill & Mitting took over, & Covid hasn't helped

Menin: main reason for delay is police attempt to obfuscate, obstruct, undermine & delay. Making 148 applications for anonymity for real & cover names of #SpyCops; insisting every document be vetted before others involved see it. Meanwhile, some witnesses have died

Menon: Police have given no evidence #SpyCops would be at risk if they were identified - it hasn't happened to any outed by activists. Ironic that officers who invaded privacy so intensely invoke their right to privacy at the Inquiry

Menon: Police compounded this with mass shredding of documents, The Inquiry's indulgence of police whims led victims to walk out of the Inquiry in 2018 campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2018/03/22/spy…

Meon: Little has improved since. Yet victims are still here hoping for answers. Previous investigation Operation Herne admitted some facts but sought to defend them & portray it as historic, as befits a police self-investigation

Menon: Is the Inquiry going tom blame the victims & give the state a get out of jail free card? Will it blame a few rogue officers? Or admit that 1968 the #Spycops have been rotten from top to bottom? The choice is stark.

Menon: There are 219 victims who are core participants. There are surely thousands more who fit the criteria. Special thanks are due to @UndercoverNet who have tried to list who was spied on, as neither the police or Inquiry will publish the list they have.

Menon: What to the victim core participants have in common? They were spied on due to direct, indirect, or perceived connection to social justice - eco, anti racism, abuse of corporate power, workers rights and more.

Menon: Some were victimised simply for challenging a police narrative. Then we have families of children whose ID was stolen by spycops, wives of officers & a lawyer targeted

Menon: general points:
1 - incompatibility. Spycops activity is incompatible with a truly democratic society just for having anti-establishment beliefs

Menon:
2 - focus. Inquiry started because of courage & determination of those targeted, esp the women deceived into relationships, & Duwayne Broks, Doreen Lawrence & Neville Lawrence. Also Rob Evans & Paul Lewis whose book Undercover is a must read on the subject

Menon: Political policing must remain the focus of the Inquiry. This wasn't 'serious & organised crime'.
3 - scope. Inquiry is about human interaction; only in England & Wales; only police not MI5. Any conclusions Inquiry reaches will be partial & incomplete.

MI5's escape of scrutiny is alarming given that most Spycops intel was shared with MI5 but the reverse isn't true. Their role is essential to understand the issue

Menon:
4 - disclosure. 5 years in, >90% of core participants have had no disclosure of any kind. Why? Ali & Tate were given some docs but no witness statements or photos, which made it all but impossible to talk about the spycops that spied on them

Menon: Giving Ali, Tate and their lawyers over 5000 pages of evidence a few weeks before the hearings is not good enough. The Inquiry says it has over a million documents. How can we participate if we don't see what documents are available?

Menon: The Inquiry should give all relevant documents, as in a criminal case.
Redactions - who made them? Police or inquiry? Security or privacy grounds? Some of the list of spied-on groups from 1968 were redacted. Why?

Menon:
5. Shedding. We feared spycops would do it, & they did
metro.co.uk/2020/03/18/met…
The Inquiry must investigate this. How can there be trust in police who have definitely shredded relevant files?

Menon:
6 racism: police have always been permeated with racism at all ranks. The Macpherson ruling of 'institutional racism' wasn't news, but it was the first admission from the state itself.

Menon: we're concerned that you sit as Chair alone without a diverse panel. You told lawyers that Macpherson's definition of racism is controversial. The Inquiry mustn't reverse the progress made due to the courage of black people who've fought racism

Menon:
7 - Burden - the burden is on the police to explain spycops, not on the victims to justify their actions. To dissect the politics of victims, turning the spotlight away from the police, is the politics of victim blaming.

Menon:
8 - responsibility. Inquiry failure to ask state participants to supply position in advance, we're only finding out now what the agencies think.

Some of these opening statements have defended abuse of women by spycops by talking about undercover work against serious & organised crime. This is a red herring. spycops was never about this.

Menon:
9 - after enxt week, only Inquiry livestreaming is to the Chair's home and 1 venue in london. Grenfell & CSA are streamed - even closed hearings get streamed to core participants, lawyers & accredited journalists via secure lines. Inquiry's live transcript is not adequate

Meon: This is an Inquiry with hearings shrouded in secrecy, with most of the police hidden from the public. A time delay in the streaming would avoid any wrong things being broadcast, as other Inquiries are doing

Menon: Which on-state particpants are excluded? Those who can't travel; black, disabled & older people are especially at risk; this is a breach of Equalities Act. Even now, the Inquiry can set up a secure link. If the Chair can have this, why can't others invovled

Menon:
- 10 objectives: participants want answers, chapter and verse not just scraps. Full disclosure, seeing their files. Full access like Stasi victims. They want to know when, who authorised, who else saw it? MI5 holds files on hundreds of thousands of people

Menon: If the Inquiry has people's files, why can't the subjects even see a redacted version? If the Inquiry doesn't have them, how can they do their job?

Menon: We want full disbanding of the political policing units, and nothing like them to happen ever again. Special Branch has spied since 1880s on suffragettes, socialists, pacifists, anticolonialist and more. Ideas are policed; that's what Special Branch is there for.

Menon: But 1968 changed things - spycops living undercover as activists for years on end. It began to undermine opposition to the Vietnam War
campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2018/03/17/spy…

Menon: Police lawyers allege an upsurge in protest violence in Britain 1968-82 was mainly inflicted on police by protesters, but the opposite is true.

Menon: SDS #SpyCops were different from other undercovers by gathering intelligence, rather than evidence for use in trials, so their activities went without scrutiny for decades. The SDs was never about detecting crime, but spying on political opponents of the status quo

Menon: The SDS had a clear political orientation to the right of the spectrum. Officers were politically vetted. Targets initially all on the left. This was secret, anti-democratic political policing. Only in the late 70s did a couple of far right groups attract attention

Menon: There appears to have been no safeguards to check if spying was justified, necessary or proportional, or its methods ethical or lawful. It was given free rein regardless of norms & values

Menon: on the 70th annivesary of the signing of the decalration of human rights, police lawyers tell the Inquiry 'don't judge 1968 by our standards' as if people in the 60s didn't care about rights and liberty

Menon: We have a host of regulations & supposed oversight bodies. So are excesses of spycops a thing of the past? It would be extremely naive to assume the police have learnt & moved on. Note reluctance of Counsel for the Met to answer Inquiry's questions about current policing

Menon: The #CHISBill demolishes our belief in the effectiveness of oversight, placing no limits on state agents from committing crime, and bars victims from seeking legal redress.

Menon will give the conclusion of his opening statement tomorrow at 10am. It will be streamed here ucpi.org.uk/hearing/openin…
We will live tweet it, and produce a summary report of the day's evidence in the ending for our website.