Thread by @copscampaign

First up at today's #SpyCopsInquiry is James Scobie QC, speaking for #spyCops victims represented by Paul Heron

Scobie: We represent 2 core particpants - Richard Chessum & Mary - from Tranche 1 (1968-82), & others who were spied on later, covering 1974-2000s. They show SDS tactics were in place from the start & allowed/encouraged to proliferate over the decades

Scobie: The state knew it was impeding democratic organisations, slowing progress towards better lives for citizens. It has violated its citizens. It did not develop over time, nor was it 'rogue officers'.

Scobie: The spycops tactics weren't aberrations, they were systematic & systemic. Tactics used over 4 decades must have been known to government, so to what extent were they endorsed & instigated by the highest authority?

Either spycops were endorsed by government, or successive governments were unable to stop a secret police force working with impunity & no authority. Which of these is the most frightening?

Scobie: The delays victims of spycops suffer has added to their suffering. Still now, there is no disclosure to most core participants. Is the state being deliberately obstructive or just police? Can the state not force it's own police to comply? Or is Inquiry itself failing?

Scobie: We're here despite the almost complete & seemingly deliberate vacuum of info from the state.

Scobie: Police should safeguard citizens & deal with crime. Yet none of our 5 core participants are criminal. Between them they have 2 fines (even then from community minded action) This recurs across the core participants, decent people with a common commitment to helping others

Scobie: Spycops knew they were targeting innocents. It must've been clear to officer Rick Gibson who spied on my clients Richard Chessum & Mary they were antiviolence. Mary was sexually violated by a spycop acting on orders of the state.

Scobie: #Spycops victims were subjected to wholesale manipulation & exploitation by the state using a police force that's meant to deal with crime

Scobie: SDS was conceived as a public order unit in 1968. Even if it were legit at 1st, within a short time it was clearly something else, used to curtail the activities of peaceful democratic organisations whose aims are supported by significant sections of society

Scobie: Troops Out Movement was targeted by #spycops. It argued that the removal of troops was an essential precursor to peace. History has proved it was a just cause.

Scobie: Mary & Richard Chessum campaigned against internment without trial in NI, knowing it acted as a recruiting sergeant to the cause of violence. History have proved them right

Scobie: Richard & Mary campaigned over Bloody Sunday and, decades later, were proven right again. They campaigned against apartheid; again, history has proven it a just cause. They campaigned against institutional racism in the police, something later agreed as fact

Scobie: Yet the state undermined the campaigns & thereby prolonged the violence

Scobie: #spycops targeted organisations that were open, public & posed no threat to anyone, like Troops Out Movement. The difference between them and, say, Shelter, is they opposed a policy of the state.

Scobie: #Spycops used exploitation & deceit to curtail progress of movements opposed to government policy. This wasn't criminal policing, it was political policing

Scobie: #Spycops were overwhelmingly concerned with movements on the left. Mary campaigned against the National Front in the 70s, having seen the state do little or nothing to stop the rise of fascism. She watched the NF smash up a meeting as police looked on

Scobie: It seems over 1,000 groups were targeted by 50 years of #spycops, with about 3 from the right wing. Rather than concentrate on groups that fracture community cohesion, #spycops targeted those wanting better conditions for everyone. Damning indictment of the British state

Scobie: #Spycops held high office in organisations they infiltrated, something that was initially specifically prohibited at the start of the Squad by its founder Conrad Dixon.

Scobie: Dixon said #spycops can only be followers, never leaders; never take office, chair meetings, make leaflets, speak publicly or initiate activity. Designed to prevent police steering movements.

Scobie: All #spycops from pre 1974 have told the Inquiry they didn't hold office in infiltrated groups. Yet 1974-76 Rick Gibson became London Organiser & eventually joint National Secretary for Troops Out Movement, producing promotional material, chairing Big Flame meetings

Here's the @UndercoverNet profile of #spycops officer Rick Gibson powerbase.info/index.php/Rick…

Scobie: #spycops officer Rick Gibson undermined the Troops Out Movement's ability to meet. He gave reports to senior officers, where they were at least passed to Special Branch & MI5. This was at least tacitly sanctioned if not ordered.

Scobie: Suggestions that #spycops intel went no further than police & MI5, were somehow independent of government, are simply not credible.

Scobie: #spycops inhibition of these groups' activity amounts to inhibiting democracy itself.

Scobie: Statement from pre 1974 #spycops say they didn't deceive targeted people into relationships. But that changed by 1974 at the latest.

Scobie: Richard Chessum worked for his church, Labour Party & CND. He wanted to help people & is a throughly decent, caring person who campaigned for peace & a better live for others. He now helps homeless asylum seekers

Scobie: Richard Chessum was targeted by #Spycops officer Rick Gibson who spied on him, his sister & partner because of an article he wrote. Gibson socialised with him & encouraged the setting up of a local Troops Out Movement branch.

Scobie: #Spycops officer Rick Gibbson exploited & betrayed the trust given to him by a decent man. Why? And why was this done over & over in the decades that followed?

Scobie: Gibson's intel on chessum was passed to Special Branch & MI5 despite the lack of any criminality. Chessum was refused job time & again in the years that followed. From academic posts to postal worker, he was rejected. Employers said they 'weren't at liberty to explain'

Scobie: In 2009 a blacklist was seized with thousands of people on it for their views, which we leaned in 2013 included intel from #spycops theguardian.com/business/2013/…

Scobie: Mary was a student at Goldsmith's & was a member of the Socialist Society, campaigned for student welfare, providing creches, supporting unions. she knew Richard Chessum though Godlsmiths. She supported Troops Out Movement & so was targeted by #spycops officer Rick Gibson

Scobie: spycops Rick Gibson deceived Mary into a sexual relationship, something she would never have done if she knew any of the truth about him. Sex was a tactic of undercover policing.

Scobie: Sexual exploitation was used by the state to disrupt political activity. It is nothing less than state rape. Gibson had at least 4 different sexual relationships with activists, at least 1 of these was long term.

Scobie: Gibson wrote to his long term partner after his deployment ended, lying more. This exit strategy wa sused time & again, hiding the fact of what the state was doing. Sexual exploitation did not start later in #spycops units, nor was it just occasional autonomous officers

Scobie: #spycops had total disregard for the women they abused. Sexual targeting by #spycops started in 1975 at the latest & was part of the DNA of political policing in Britain.

Scobie: #spycops targeted the dead, stealing dead children's identities. Police lawyers call it úsing', saying it's not theft. But this was done dishonestly, permanently staining the memories of dead children without regard to the impact on their families
campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2016/11/11/spy…

Scobie: At the start of the SDS, Commander Dixon refers to officers needing to 'obtain necessary papers', implying the individual #spycops officer had to find them themselves, seemingly with no written guidance

Scobie: The spycops Tradecraft Manual from the 1990s shows stealing dead children's identities was long established & normalised ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/upl…

Scobie: #spycops officer Rick Gibson was unmasked by people finding 'his' death certificate in the 1970s. Rather than change the practice, the unit doubled down to hide what they were doing, and continued the theft.

Scobie: Richard Chessum & Mary both say #spycops officer didn't appear to encourage criminal activity, but by the 90s that had changed. Hannah Sell & Lois Austin joined the Labour Party then, & were leading figures in Militant Labour which became the Socialist Party

Scobie: Austin & Sell helped set up Youth Against Racism In Europe, a mass protest movement advocating peaceful change; jobs & homes not racism. They campaigned against the British National Party which had its HQ in SE London. Racist attacks increased hugely thereafter.

Scobie: There was at least 1 racist murder a year in SE London in the early 90s. That's real crime, that really is a job for the police. YRE campaigned to close down the BNP HQ. They were infiltrated by #spycops officer Peter Francis @realspycop

Scobie: Francis went from YRE to Militant Labour, followed by fellow #spycops officer Carlo Neri [real name Carlo Soracchi]. Both held office in organisations that took them to regional & national conferences. Francis was branch secretary for Hackney Militant Labour

Scobie: Francis & Soracchi infiltrated social groups, both had at least 2 sexual relationships with women they spied on. They also encouraged & even engaged in criminal activity. Sell & Austin argued defeating fascism required patient campaigning

Scobie: #spycops officer Peter Francis repeatedly encouraged YRE members to attaack fascists, contradicting the stated aims of the SDs & purpose of police. Sell has no doubt it was deliberate attempt to try to get them to do things for which they could be arrested.

Scobie: Soracchi took activists to a shop he said was owned by an Italian fascist terrorist group implicated in the 1980 Bologna bombing. Although it was a residential street, Soracchi said they should burn it down. Trying to seriously criminalise people

Scobie: This was far from the first or only time #spycops encouraged arson. Why? To discredit? To justify spycops unit's existence? Maintaining their cover? Has this kind of thing stopped now? Or is this & other tactics still ongoing? The #CHISBill would legitimise all this

Scobie: Is the #CHISBill and attempt to preempt the #SpyCopsInquiry ?

Scobie: #spycops Peter Francis & Carlo Soracchi infiltrated a political party rather than just pressure groups. This is interference in democracy. Other officer targeted Labour, the official opposition party

Scobie: @davenellist was Labour MP for Coventry SE 1983-92. He had one of the highest voting records in parliament. He only kept part of his salary, taking the average Coventry skilled worker's wage. He organised opposition to MP pay rises, unpopular with colleagues

Scobie: Nellist was expelled from Labour in 1992 for opposition to the Poll Tax, the year he won Backbencher of the Year! He helped launch the Socialist Party afterward. But when he was a serving MP, he was targeted by #spycops.

Scobie: MI5 encouraged a #spycops officer to be planted with Dave Nellist's office. He wasn't targeted for a campaigning group but for his party & beliefs as a serving MP in forthright opposition to the government of the day.

Scobie: Peter Francis says he outed an MI5 officer spying on Militant/Socialist Party. Why is the state putting agents into political parties? Their remit is to protect us, *we* should choose who *we* want to elect

Scobie: 1984 Cabinet papers show MI5 had concerns of Militant supporters in the civil service union, the CPSA (now the CPS), of which Lois Autin is now an officer. Thatcher said the state should be 'very ready' to sack subversive employees.

Scobie: MI5 asked West Midlands police to spy on @davenellist. How were WMP in a position to do this, putting a spy into an MP's constituency office? The Chief Constable must have been asked. Whom was the #spycops officer accountable to? Authorised by police? Home Office?

Scobie: Which Home Secretary authorised the spying on @davenellist when he was an MP? Did they do it without recourse to the Prime Minister? Was there really a rogue secret Home Secretary, or does it go higher than that?

Scobie: At the start, #spycops were directly funded by the Home Office. We know the Home Secretary at the time was put under pressure 'from above'' to set it up. We know the Home Secretary feared public exposure about spycops
campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2017/03/18/wha…

Scobie: Outed #spycops were told to say they were responsible for themselves and deny the chain of authority

Scobie: Outed #spycops officer David Robinson has been withdrawn from testifying from the inquiry, even though he was visited by Deputy Commissioner & head of Special Branch in person to tell him to deny the chain of command. We're told he has 'health reasons'.

Scobie: The disclosure from the Inquiry has only been police files, nothing from government. What has the Inquiry done to find out how high up government this went? You're not going to get accountability by asking the police for the material

[No docs about SDS exist in Home Office archives, despite 20 years of direct funding]

Scobie: If #spycops were working closely with MI5 as the police say, & MI5 infiltrated unions & could ask West Mids police to spy on an MP (& the links between MI5 & Home Office), these things must have been #spycops targets. Are #spycops being made to carry the can for it all?

Scobie: We *can* find how much the government interfered with trade unions - the @Shrewsbury24C has unearthed documents proving it without anything like the resources of the #SpyCopsInquiry

Scobie: in the 5 years since the #SpyCopsInquiry was announce, most core participants haven't had a single document on what was done to them. Even the imminent tranche participants haven't been given relevant witness statements that we know exist

Scobie: giving people names of #spycops from decades ago isn't enough to jog memories. Names fade, we need contemporaneous photos, yet the Inquiry is choosing not to do this. how can it expect to have proper engagement if they won't give us the material we need?

Scobie: The disclosure we've had is heavily redacted intelligence reports; why haven't we seen anything about policy. If the Inquiry doesn't have it, why not? What does that tell us about the police & government have toward the Inquiry? Why isn't there independent oversight?

Scobie: How many innocent people have been spied upon, had their lives changed irrevocably, because the state didn't like their politics? #spycops worked on an industrial scale, yet hardly anyone spied on has been asked? We're sworn to secrecy over the documents.

Scobie: How is this an open inquiry? We haven't been told the name & number of groups spied on. How can the public understand the scale of this sate abuse this way?

Scobie: We must see more than a few #spycops cut loose & rendered expendable to save the necks of those higher up. We must concentrate on victims & properly include them otherwise the Inquiry mirrors the disdain of the spycops themselves.

Scobie: The #SpyCopsInquiry must properly investigate with whom the responsibility lies, dealing with the state's fear of accountability for #spycops. We must see not just a condemnation of methods but an end to all political policing.

Mitting says the 'health issues' #spycops officer David Robinson WILL be giving evidence

Scobie concludes. There will now be a break until 12.15, when the #SpyCopsInquiry will hear from Ruth Brander, speaking for the Non-Police, Non-State Core Participant Group.

The accompanying written opening statement from James Scobie QC on behalf of the Core Participants represented by Paul Heron is available as a PDF on the @ucpinquiry site:
ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/upl…