Thread by @MarkWatts_1

Today, finally, #spycops inquiry is due to start hearing evidence, but it is not being live streamed to public.

We have been hearing core participants’ opening statements since last week. There may still be one or two more of those today before evidence begins.

Despite suggestion by Sir John Mitting yesterday that we would hear one or two further opening statements this am (we still have not heard from Dave Smith, a blacklisted construction worker, and Helen Steel, one of the McLibel 2), #spycops inquiry is going straight into evidence.

Sir John Mitting, chairman of #spycops inquiry, clarifies that Dave Smith cannot give his opening statement because he has contracted coronavirus.

Helen Steel cannot give hers because of unspecified different reasons. They may give their statements at some later point.

Tariq Ali is affirmed as the first witness in #spycops inquiry.

Tariq Ali warns in his written statement to undercover policing inquiry that deployment of #spycops “into people’s private lives” cannot be assumed to be justified on the basis of their “occasionally lurid and inaccurate reports of threats of serious violence.”

Tariq Ali notes that #spycops even had a file on the TUC – the Trades Union Congress.

They had a file on the National Front, although its file number suggests that it was not opened until as late as 1979.

On infiltration of #spycops into campaigns for justice for Blair Peach and Stephen Lawrence, Tariq Ali says: “The Met clearly wished to protect their organisation and their officers from criticism, even when they knew one of their officers had murdered someone [referring to BP].”

Inquiry publishes an example of a #spycop report on Tariq Ali, re his “intimate contact” in 1968 with a second-year student at a teaching college, where he had recently been president of the Students Union.

“Send copy to Box 500,” is written on the bottom – a reference to MI5.

Inquiry also publishes a #spycop report from 2003 on “celebrity contacts” of Omar Waraich of Global Resistance.

Names redacted, but include “television actress and film actress” [as if it is not obvious].

He had twice “gone out for dinner” with two celebrities and Tariq Ali.

Sir John Mitting, #spycops chairman, is very, very jumpy as Tariq Ali is asked by his own barrister about the surveillance of a meeting of the steering committee of the Stop the War Coalition…

Sir John Mitting warns Tariq Ali’s barrister, Ravid Menon, that it is illegal to refer to the use of intercepts, only for Menon to say that he was in fact talking about the use of a secretly-placed recording device.

Mitting admits that he interrupted too quickly.

Tariq Ali was the subject of 80 secret police reports between March 1968 and November 2003, and was spied on by at least 14 #spycops, undercover policing inquiry hears.

Good report on first day of evidence to inquiry from The Guardian:

theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/n…

Having read the hearing transcript, I see that Tariq Ali was asked about the #spycop report in 1968 on his “intimate contact” with a male second year student at a teaching college.

Ali responded: “It is total fiction… I can’t believe it… I have never been gay or bisexual.”