Today was the last day of the #spycopsinquiry for a while. The last evidence hearing of the this tranche of the inquiry was one of the more illuminating of the all the questioning of former #spycops officers so far. Though there was just as many lapses of memory for HN345 as...
... previous officers, he was more forthcoming than most. The blanket denial of any knowledge of the Mangrove Nine (subject of the recent #SmallAxe film) by the only #spycops officer who had infiltrated Black Power groups in the UK in 1971 is so completely ridiculous...
... as to suggest that he was lying about everything else he had 'forgot' too. But when the man who called himself
"Peter Fredericks" did remember things, he claimed to remember them fairly well. But it was the opinions and attitudes that he displayed which last in the mind...
... He is someone who describes themselves as "mixed heritage" but dismissed what he called the "not exactly complimentary" racist culture within the unit because he "didn't feel any hurt" whilst working to undermine anti racist groups which he admitted were purely "interested...
... in the wellbeing of those who were suffering". But the most shocking comment he came out with was his very last to the counsel to the inquiry when he was asked about fellow officers engaging in sexual relationships in their undercover identity. Likening the sexual abuse...
... of women to the sampling of a product. Reading the words from the transcript is bad enough, but when you see it delivered with a wide grim, tongue darting in & out of the mouth, with the final " it shouldn't be done" tacked onto the end with a complete lack of sincerity...
... it reveals an extreme misogyny as well as a certain sadism; a psychopathic willingness to use people for political ends, whilst enjoying it at the same time. The whole thing really is very disturbing. I expect we will hear plenty more abhorrent views from the former...
... secret political police officers when the inquiry returns in the Spring, but I wonder how many more flashes of honesty we will see.
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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...