Thread by @MarkWatts_1

Day 7 of #SpyCopsInquiry – Tranche 1 (Phase 3). Anthony Greenslade tells #SpyCopsInquiry in statement that he “got involved” in the Met’s #spycops unit while working on the bomb squad between 1971 and 1974.

“Morale” on the unit was “low at the time”, he says.

Anthony Greenslade on the head of the #spycops unit at the time, now deceased, but his name is being kept secret: “He virtually ran [the unit] as [a] fiefdom.

“I do not think he was very good at management.”

Anthony Greenslade tells #SpyCopsInquiry that he was brought into train #spycops for promotion exams to improve morale.

He also bought 12 cars for the unit, and found one of its flats to act as a safe house.

He recalls that another officer was brought into help raise morale.

Derek Brice was a detective inspector in the Met’s #spycops unit in 1973-4. He had a role in supervising #spycops.

He tells #SpyCopsInquiry that he knew nothing about three #spycops – a quarter of the squad at the time – being unexpectedly withdrawn just before he joined.

David Brice never considered the risk during his time at the unit that #spycops would engage in sexual relations with targets, he tells #SpyCopsInquiry.

He sometimes acted as chief inspector with responsibility for the #spycops unit in 1973-4.

A file note by a Security Service, or MI5, officer and submitted to the #SpyCopsInquiry reports that a detective chief superintendent from Merseyside Police had confirmed that it was “widely known” in provincial forces that the Met was using “young DCs” as #spycops.

MI5 file note released by #SpyCopsInquiry says that the Merseyside detective chief superintendent told the MI5 officer that the Met’s Special Branch course had “a whole lecture” on its #spycops unit “and its successes”.

A Met officer confirmed to MI5, according to the MI5 file note, that the subject “had once been discussed on one course only” by Conrad Dixon, who had set up the Met’s #spycops unit in 1968.

The discussion “had been a mistake,” the Met officer is said to have added.

Another MI5 file note submitted to the #SpyCopsInquiry records discussions with senior Met officers in 1974 about the handling by MI5 of #spycops reports.

The MI5 officer notes that he “yet again explained how provincial police officers sent in their agent reports.”

This file note of the discussion between Met and Security Service officers says that MI5 had “agents in similar fields” as the Met’s #spycops.

Note: we are only learning of a portion of state spies in various left-leaning political and campaign groups via the #SpyCopsInquiry.

Yet another MI5 file note of discussions in 1973 with senior Met officers reveals that MI5 said that its “primary targets for agent operations” were SLL, IS and IMG.

Namely, Socialist Labour League (I think), International Socialists and International Marxist Group...

MI5 file note re #spycops: “The ideal would be a permanent well-placed employee in each headquarters, not necessarily too high up in the organisation.”

MI5’s requirement from two “secondary targets”, each of which have been redacted, “was virtually only for membership details.”

MI5 and Met Special Branch were, says MI5 file note, “of the opinion that the Alternative Society was so large and amorphous and to a large extent not subversive, that the only way to tackle it was by sampling different parts” to “pinpoint the subversive individuals and groups”.

Met’s Special Branch, according to this MI5 file note of 1973, is using #spycops “to cover the Ultra Left and parts of the Alternative Society.”

A Met document, reporting on the findings of an internal “working party” in 1976 on the #spycops unit, SDS, says: “The contribution made by the SDS to the national interests of the Security Service [MI5] is a very considerable one; a point which is fully acknowledged.”