Thread by @copscampaign

Next at the #SpyCopsInquiry is an opening statement from 'Madeleine', deceived into a relationship by #SpyCops office ‘Vince Miller‘ (HN354, 1976-79)

The relationship was summer-autumn 1979. He infiltrated my SWP branch. He claims he only had 4 one night stands, but that's not true. His real name is going to be published, but it should never have been kept secret

We pose no threat to the officers, none of them should have names withheld. Secrecy stops us knowing the full extent of what #SpyCops did.

more than 1000 groups - mostly left wing - have been spied on. The #SpyCops reports paint an unrecognisable picture of my friends & comrades - compassionate decent principled idealistic people, not thugs.

The #SpyCops is the result of policing directed from the highest level.

I've thought long & hard about my past. The bewildering sense of injury is addressed by telling my story. I'm from a working class family, my father was a trade unionist & antifascist, at Olympia 1934 & Cable Street 1936

In 1937 aged 18 my dad fought fascists in the Spanish Civil War & witnessed the bombing of Guernica. Back home, he joined the army to fight the Nazis, evacuated from Dunkirk then went to Burma & was invalided out

My father would also have been regarded as a dangerous extremist. My parents have shaped my politics. I knew every advance for the working class was hard won by collective action, not handed down as gifts from above.

My early activism was organising branch & public meetings inn the SWP. We were open & welcoming with nothing to hide. We operated within the law, democratically. Vince Miller made contact at a street paper sale at the top of Walthamstow Market.

17 #SpyCops were embedded in the SWP, while reinvigorated fascism presented the real threat to public order and safety.

The National Front portrayed Black people as muggers and Asians as unsanitary, with 20k members & ballooning electoral support. Racist murders were commonplace.

The fascists attacked left wing paper sellers and meetings. They celebrated their killings, denied the Holocaust, but the #SpyCops seem to have basically let them go.

After repeated attacks on Brick Lane, protection was organised. We joined in. but Vince Miller calls the area 'heavily policed' even though it wasn't, & describes it as a mere 'territorial dispute' between NF & SWP paper sellers.

Vince Miller knew of an attack on us by fascist Derek Day. Why was that not reported? Why did we have to protect citizens with the police nowhere in sight? Fascist Tindall's speeches were reported in glowing terms, & his exhortations to violence unrecorded.

Uniformed police looked on smirking as fascists threatened me and stole my Socialist Worker newspapers.

My flat received threatening calls, and my flatmate was attacked by fascists. Where are Miller's reports on that? instead, he reports on meetings about William Morris. We cared for Vince, & now know he cared so little for us.

Vince became SWP branch treasurer, was on the Social Committee & in the Industrial Group. He socialised with us. He had plenty of opportunity to plant bugs in many people's houses.

The real subversion uncovered by the #SpyCopsInquiry is the behaviour of the police, and their behaviour should be under scrutiny, not ours.

Miller reported SWP members taking weapons to an antifascist rally in Lewisham & hid bricks for throwing, but it is not true. He contradicts this saying we got away from violence on the day. Another spycop had his arm broken by uniformed officers but that's not in Miller's report

The Battle of Lewisham is now considered a watershed moment in the fight against fascism, the moment when the NF was defeated & went into terminal decline.

In Feb 2020 I got a visit from the #SpyCopsInquiry solicitor. My husband answered the door & asked what it was about. He was told it could only be told to me. I thought it must be some awful tragic news.

During the unreal conversation that followed I told them about my relationship with 'Vince Miller' 40 years ago, as fellow members of our SWP branch. He told me Vince was a #SpyCops officer.

I'd thought of Vince as lovely, but his troubled past made it hard for him to be properly close. The Vince I knew didn't exist. He was a wholly fictional character created by the state. I felt degraded, abused, nauseous & violated.

My trust & values have been betrayed by the state. My principles have been exploited and used against me.

I was reluctant to join the Inquiry as I thought it would be a whitewash. But I was only allowed to see the reports on me if I joined the Inquiry & signed a secrecy order. I ask the Chair, how would you feel if such reports existed but you had no idea what was in them?

I read the reports on me with trepidation & anxiety. It's wrong that other women have been denied to their files & don't know what their abusers reported about them.

Facts turn out to be lies, truth has become falsehood, Vince did not fight with me for a better world but spied on me.

Vince got info about my first marriage, which was before he was deployed. How did he get that? He records personal details. A cold, sexist version of the man is revealed in his reports, very different to the man I knew

The night we got together, he said 'I unexpectedly invited him to my bedroom after drinking'. Is he saying I was drunk & looking for a random man? He had pulled me on to his lap at a party & talked to me for hours before talking me home.

Who else spied on me? What events in my life led to this intrusion? I'm the subject of something redacted - what is that? Am I still spied on? If not when did it stop?

Vince recorded a pregnancy in our branch & the name the baby would be given. Does the child have a file to?

I praise the courage of the other women abused like this in pursuing the truth & exposing this sordid crime. It is outrageous & deeply offensive that relationships were used to invade lives & bodies.

The words describing us shows deep institutional misogyny. How much did Vince contribute to that? Did he supervise other spycops? Did he encourage others to do the same?

I have never been arrested, have no criminal record, I was in an open, legal group, taking lawful democratic activity. Spying undermines democracy.

The secrecy around my documents mean I'm forbidden to discuss it with my husband, cutting off emotional support for us both. I was all reports on me removed from archives & destroyed. The information held on citizens could still be used against us.

Spycops should not be given privacy. They abuse the allowances to protect their feelings and public positions. They are liars. I'm nervous of being cross examined, given that Vince's account contradicts mine. But I hope we get to the truth.

Madeleine ends her statement. Mitting says he will ensure Madeleine is permitted to talk freely to her husband about the evidence she has received.

There will now be a 15 minute break. The Inquiry will resume at 11.50 with the opening statement of Phillippa Kaufmann QC, representing Core Participants who were in relationships with #SpyCops