One of these #spycops was HN348, known as 'Sandra Davies', who spied on Diane and her family for two years. The Women's Liberation Front (WLF) held many meetings in private homes and Sandra went along to them.
Sandra said herself that she never witnessed any criminal, subversive, disruptive or violent activity on the part of WLF members. The group was engaged in leafleting, holding meetings and attending demonstrations.
Another officer who reported on Diane was HN45, tasked with infiltrating Maoist groups - he also doesn't remember witnessing public disorder on their or Diane's part.
Both #spycops have suggested that they were tasked with gathering information about these groups simply because the police/ security services didn't know much about them or their members, and wanted to collect as much info as possible - there was little guidance and no limits
We now know that Special Branch already had a file on 'Madeleine' by the time she was 16 years old.
#'spycop
By the time she was 23, Vincent Harvey, one of the #spycops , had infiltrated her life in the covert identity of 'Vince Miller'
He spied on her and other members of the SWP, and reported back regularly on their activities. It turns out that he wasn't actually tasked with infiltrating the SWP or Madeleine or those branches of the party - he chose his own targets
He chose to initiate a sexual relationship with Madeleine in 1979, which lasted approx 2 months.
He has now admitted to indulging in at least 4 such relationships while undercover.
Another SWP member, Julia Poynter, has confirmed the veracity of Madeleine's evidence. They have described the SWP's activities (paper-selling etc) and made it clear that the party was not violent or especially revolutionary.
Vince chose to work 7 days a week, 14 hours a day, and collected plenty of overtime payments for his 'work' as one of the #spycops
He claims that he HAD to have all those sexual relationships because otherwise people would have been suspicious of him. He says he didn't tell his SDS managers about what he was up to.
However he recalls Geoffrey Craft (HN34) telling him not to start a relationship with Julia Poynting.
He didn't bother with safer sex or contraception. That was the women's responsibility (he justifies this by saying they were feminists!)
Madeleine says that Harvey's treatment of her amounted to degrading treatment and a breach of her human rights.
She questions the lack of oversight and management, and says the behaviour of the #spycops put the public at risk.
The SDS managers could have prevented these harms by providing proper guidance and tasking to the #spycops they sent into the field. They should have known what Harvey and co were doing, and stopped them.
Instead, he was only withdrawn from the field in order to be promoted!
And the #spycops continued to violate women's lives and bodies in this way for decades longer...
@LindseyAGerman@SWP_Britain The @ucpinquiry has imposed a ten minute delay on all reporting, and on the youtube stream, which you can watch from 10:10 onwards - at
Dave took a photograph of 'Tony Williams' and supplied a copy to the Inquiry
Regarding the Torness Alliance, this was a UK wide campaign to oppose the building of a new nuclear power station in Scotland.
The main objections were firstly the threat of catastrophic nuclear accidents (as had almost happened in 1979 at Three Mile Island in the US &in 1986 actually happened at Chernobyl in Ukraine resulting subsequently in an est 9-16,000 deaths from air pollution throughout Europe).
@tombfowler First is Rajiv Menon QC, representing Tariq Ali, Ernie Tate and Piers Corbyn.
You can now download their written Opening Statement from ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/upl… #spycops
@tombfowler As Menon says, Ali gave evidence in Nov 2020 and Corbyn in April 2021.
Sadly, Ernie Tate's ill-health meant he was unable to give evidence in person to the @ucpinquiry, and he passed away in February of last year, (without ever receiving any meaningful disclosure)
Shocking revelation from the #SpyCopsInquiry yesterday: The CPS decided there was a good chance of securing a conviction for the officer who stole the identity of the dead infant Rod Richardson, but bringing a prosecution is "not in the public interest" theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/m…
The CPS took its decision last year, 2 weeks after Rod Richardson's mother, Barbara Shaw, had died. It says it is because the officer followed his training. In which case they should prosecute the trainer (Andy Coles, now a Tory councillor in Peterborough sackandycoles.wordpress.com/what-did-andy-…)
The #SpyCops officer was exposed in 2013 by activists suspicious of their former comrade. The Met flatly denied the now-established fact that stealing identities of dead children was standard practice & part of their training.
Mitting is responding to some of the points made - says it would be 'gargantuan' and a waste of public money (?!) to find all of the relevant 'Registry Files' and other documents held by the State.
Kilroy repeats that the #spycops operations were obviously unlawful - Mitting says her submissions are "forceful and well-founded" but he's unwilling to respond immediately on the question of lawfulness...
Another break, before the #SpyCopsInquiry returns, to hear from Owen Greenhall, representing Lord Peter Hain, Professor Jonathan Rosenhead and Ernest Rodker.