Woman was tricked into relationship with undercover police officer until 2015 - four years AFTER conduct of Met Police moles was made public, '#Spycops inquiry hears
I didn't write up any reflections of yesterday's #spycopsinquiry hearing because after five days of live tweeting I was in urgent need of a big bag of cans. But I think it's fair to say that the submissions highlighted some of the worst ways in which #spycops undermined...
... not only the lives of the people they targeted, the causes those people campaigned for, but also for the very society we live in today. The opening statement on behalf of the NUM highlighted the way that the 84/85 strike was subject to the most unrelenting attack not just...
... on the miners, their families and their communities but on the entire working class. It is just one of the moments of British political history fundamentally disrupted by undercover infiltration. Whilst there has been much said about how this person or that group were...
Discovering that they were subject to spying by #spycops has had profound and long lasting impact on many Core Participants and others. They have some limited information about what took place, but many, many unanswered questions remain.
This Inquiry should make clear recommendations to ensure that undercover policing of this kind does not happen again.
Disproportionate, politicised and unregulated undercover surveillance is never acceptable. The horrendous abuses of the rights of these Core Participants –
Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clarke, were convicted of offences including arson committed in July 1987. They were alleged to have been involved in the making and then planting of incendiary devices intended to set off sprinkler systems in Debenhams stores.
At their trial it was alleged that Mr Clarke and Mr Sheppard was connected to the devices which were planted by a third person. What was not revealed was that the third man who participated in this activity with them, planting devices, was, in fact, #spycops officer: Bob Lambert.
Both Mr Clarke and Mr Sheppard served long prison sentences for their part in that activity. Their lives were dramatically changed as a result. In contrast Bob Lambert, the police officer who encouraged them and planted one of the incendiary devices, did not.
Dr Graham Smith and Mark Metcalf: Colin Roach Centre and Hackney Community Defence Association: The Trevor Monerville and ‘Justice for Tunay’ campaigns formed the HCDA, with the aim of providing the victims of police abuses of power with a campaigning voice.
In 1993 Dr Graham Smith & Mark Metcalf were involved in the establishment of the Colin Roach Centre (“CRC”), named after Colin Roach who was shot dead 10 years previously in Stoke Newington police station. The CRC was broken into and its computers were destroyed. #spycops
In 1995 PC Mark Jenner, working undercover as ‘Mark Cassidy’, infiltrated the CRC. He became active in the centre’s political life, including writing its internal bulletin. He attended member’s meetings & was privy to confidential information concerning cases against the police.