It’s a mansplainer’s world: how Peter Moffatt, Justin Webb & Radio 4 told a pesky #spycop survivor how she could “better understand” her own experience

I’ve not blogged in a while, but sometimes something just happens and you have to get it down.

This morning on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme ‘Alison’, who was preyed upon by Metropolitan Police spycop Mark Jenner for five years using his stolen activist identity ‘Mark Cassidy’, criticised the BBC television drama Undercover.

Here is what she said in the brief, prerecorded segment, as it aired:

I think there are things, in the story that are strong. There’s a different story in real life, and the difference is in the banality, if you like, of our experiences. The real life story is about ordinary women who are standing up against injustice. They’re not top lawyers who go on to become the DPP [Director of Public Prosecutions]. And I think that for it to be authentic and believable it needs to link up with some of the real facts. The departure from so many of the key facts has changed the nature of the story.

Pretty straightforward. More detailed critiques have been put up by Police Spies Out Of Lies and The Guardian, which expand on this theme and others.

In response Today had presenter Justin Webb give a soft soap interview to screenwriter Peter Moffatt. This was the result.

Justin Webb: Peter Moffatt is here, writer of Undercover as well as similar programmes, Criminal Justice, Silk, as well.

Peter Moffatt (screenwriter): Morning.

JW: Have you let her down, and other women who in the same position?

PM: I really hope not, and I really hope that when she watches the second half of the series, when Sophie Okonedo’s character Maya discovers who her husband really is, confronts him with all that he’s done, and the shocking truth contained therein, that she’ll have a different and I hope better perspective on the programme. The great advantage of writing a fictional version of something over a documentary is that I can have my characters do or say whatever I want them to. So it is possible for Sophie Okonedo’s character to confront him, accuse him of, for example, raping her, because she’s consented to having sex with somebody other than the person she thought he was. Which interestingly, for example, is a different point of view compared with the real DPP, who says it isn’t possible to bring criminal charges any of these undercover police officers for rape. My fictional DPP doesn’t agree with that, and puts that directly to the protagonist played by Adrian Lester.

JW: One of the things that ‘Alison’ was saying in that clip is that the real life stories are ordinary women who have to stand up to these things, well, first face up to that they happened, and then try and get some kind of justice. Your one is a top lawyer, and that in itself is inauthentic and doesn’t tell anything like the true story of what happened to these women.

PM: Well we know that Stephen Lawrence’s friends were spied on by the police. We know that Janet Alder, whose brother Christopher died on a police station floor in Humberside, left alone there with his trousers and pants round his knees by a group of police officers who paid no attention to his choking to death, and Janet was spied on, afterwards, by police officers who infiltrated the support groups surrounding the campaign that Janet ran on behalf of her dead brother. And I was interested actually in writing about institutional racism in the 1990s, deaths in police custody, the cover-ups that almost always follow on from deaths of that nature in police custody…

JW: Do you regret meeting ‘Alison’ to discuss it? Might it have been better I suppose in retrospect to read what happened in the papers…

PM: We had one meeting, it became clear to me and I think her that we were after different things. I was very clear that I wanted to describe a character who had been married for twenty years to the same person and then discovers that he’s not who she thinks he is. That isn’t her experience. I wanted to write about somebody, a character, Maya Cobbina, who’s in the heart of public life, who’s making big choices and big decisions that matter, and is being undermined by therefore by the establishment and by the police because they know what she’s thinking.

JW: But can you sympathise with ‘Alison’ and others, who are so desperate to have their story told, and told in a way that feels authentic, that this is naturally a disappointment, what you’ve…

PM: Well, Adrian Lester’s character adopts the identity of a dead child – that’s absolutely accurate, it’s usually the way that real undercover police officers functioned. He lies consistently to her. I’m just glad I got the opportunity in this drama to put Adrian Lester’s character on the spot and ask him how is his conscience to do this? How is it, what is it like to have a child with someone who you’re also spying on? I don’t think Bob Lambert and Mark Kennedy or any of the real undercover police officers are going to be talking in public about how their consciences feel.

JW: And fall in love with them, and that’s the other issue you raise, isn’t it?

PM: Yeah. I think that’s a really…

JW: So I can imagine if I were one of the women I’d be quite, I’d find that a very difficult area to go into and I could see why they find that a very discomforting thing.

PM: I really understand that, I really understand that, but I think it’s certainly feasible, certainly plausible, that a man who is spying on someone behaving as badly as he is can also be in love with the subject of his spying.

JW: And you were saying right at the beginning the second half of the series you think will do more, if that’s the right phrase, do more justice to the actual truth of what happened to those women…

PM: Well, she says “You raped me!”, she says “You’ve stolen my life!”, she says “You’re monstrous!”, she says “You’re a murderer!” That really does represent some of the pain and anger that women like ‘Alison’ and Helen Steel who’ve done an amazing job of bringing all of this to the public’s attention. But I really think that they’ll feel a lot better, I really hope so, when they’ve watched the rest of the series.

JW: Peter Moffatt, thank you.

Words fail me (as they seemingly do for Moffatt, too).

Audio here:

TRANSCRIPT – Alison vs Moffatt, Radio 4, 28/4/16

Mayday! Mayday! Help needed to fill in the blanks on spycop Bob Lambert’s timeline…

Hey Dr Bob, on average how big were the lies you told? “About this big…”

Cross-posted on the URG blog

So just what did former spycop, SDS manager and – to borrow a hackneyed media cliché oft wheeled out for Mayday – so-called academic Bob Lambert get up to in the late 1990s?

After spending rather a lot of time working on a series of articles about our old friend Dr Bob for the Undercover Research Group‘s wiki project, it struck me that it’s just not clear what Lambert did between leaving SDS sometime after August 1998, and the establishment of the Muslim Contact Unit in January 2002.

Biographies – which no doubt he himself supplied – indicate that Lambert remained with Metropolitan Police Special Branch since joining it in 1980. For example, the blurb on Lambert following his article ‘Reflections on Counter-Terrorism Partnerships in Britain’  for the Cordoba Foundation magazine Arches issue number 5 (January-February 2007)  notes that “Bob worked continuously as a Special Branch specialist counter-terrorist/counter-extremist intelligence officer from 1980” until the setting up of MCU at the beginning of 2002).

Certainly, no evidence has so far come up to suggest he was involved in, for example, Territorial Policing; that he was transferred to other Special Branch-equivalent units such as the Anti-Terrorist Branch; or that he transferred to a police force other than the Metropolitan Police Service.

By implication, Lambert seems likely to have been working in a different unit or units within MPSB during this time period. The Arches biography mentioned above notes that from beginning in MPSB in 1980 until 2006 or 2007, Lambert had dealt “with all forms of violent political threats to the UK, from Irish republican to the many strands of International terrorism.” Whilst his work on international terrorism at E Squad has already been noted, an involvement in Irish republican matters would suggest time served in B Squad (though it is by no means clear whether that would have occurred at this point of his career or in Lambert’s pre-SDS years).

One further hint at what Lambert got up to in the interregnum between his times at SDS and MCU is in his colourful description of watching the September 2001 attack on the World Trade Center:

As the first twin tower shrunk to the ground, anti-military and anti-globalisation campaigners abandoned a picket of an international arms fair in London’s docklands. Inside New Scotland Yard’s public order control room attention switched from screens with departing protesters to the televised attack on the World Trade Center. No one could quite comprehend the enormity of what was happening in New York and Washington.*

Whilst the passage is written opaquely, it implies that Lambert was himself “inside New Scotland Yard’s public order control room”, surveilling the September 2001 Disarm DSEi protest against a biennial arms fair. Activist groups participating included Campaign Against Arms Trade, the WOMBLES, Earth First!, Reclaim The Streets and others. If Lambert was in the control room watching over the demonstrations, then it would further imply that he may have been working in C Squad, the MPSB body interested in what would now be termed ‘domestic extremism’, or S Squad, the parent unit of SDS which specialised in surveillance and intelligence gathering.

(As an aside, at least two undercover police officers were involved on the ground at the 2001 DSEi protests: ‘Jason Bishop’, believed to be working for Lambert’s old unit SDS, and ‘Rod Richardson’, thought to be one of the first infiltrators to be deployed by the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). According to Rob Branbury, an activist targeted by Bishop, the undercover officer called him that day when news of 9/11 broke to sound him out, “as if he wanted to know what people thought about the attack to the Twin Towers.”)

But anyway, what about Dr Bob?

Come on, hivemind – let’s fill in those missing years 1998-2001!

* Lambert’s claim that “campaigners abandoned a picket” of DSEi in this way is simply not true. American 11 hit 1 WTC at 0846, New York time – around a quarter to two in the afternoon in London. United 175 hit 2 WTC at 0903. 2 WTC collapsed at 0958, and 1 WTC a half-hour later at 1028. Many protesters at DSEi were aware of all this – the news having been broadcast around the site on a soundsystem – and some watched a live feed of the second airplane crashing into the World Trade Center on a screen in a media organisation’s outside broadcast van.

Whilst many reporters swiftly left the site, the anti-arms fair actions continued at the West Gate until at least half past four (more than an hour after the second tower collapsed), when a large group moved off en masse. A smaller group, with a large ‘POLICE AGAINST THE ARMS TRADE’ banner, remained at West Gate until at least 6pm. See, for example, IMC-UK, ‘Fiesta for Life in the Docklands 2001’, Indymedia UK, 11 September 2001; or Andy Robertson, ‘DSEI Arms Fair. September 11 2001’, Squall, September 2001 (accessed via Archive.org).

‘Undercover’ book: lists revisited, and thoughts on a first flick through

So, I have been flicking through Undercover, the spy-cops book by Paul Lewis and Rob Evans. Some interesting stuff in there, much of it unfamiliar – notably the material on Mike Chitty AKA ‘Mike Blake’. They certainly kept him under wraps for a long time.

But first – the numbering issue. The best I can make out is that the Dispatches methodology excludes ‘Rod Richardson’ and both ‘Officer 10’ (who reportedly had a child) and ‘Officer 11’ (who reportedly took on the identity of a child killed in a car crash). This may be on the grounds either that there was not enough corroborating evidence to confirm that they were a police spy (in the case of ‘Richardson’, who in the book is referred to only as a “suspected police officer”), or for other reasons, such as not wanting to implicate a source. ‘Wellings’ appears to be the unnamed tenth officer in silhouette. It may be that there were rights issues over using the existing pictures of him, all of which appear to have been taken by Globalise Resistance people. That takes our twelve down to nine; then we add Chitty/‘Blake’ to take us back up to ten.

Of course, it may be that Chitty/‘Blake’ (presumably the “South African resident” mentioned in the acknowledgements) is either ‘Officer 10’ or ‘Officer 11’ (though more likely the latter than the former given the lack of any reference to a child fathered by him whilst on deployment).

So, the book. Of interest to many will be exactly whom the SDS, NPOIU and other police units were targeting.

In terms of anarchist groups, the book claims (at least) three in the early 1990s – one in the Direct Action Movement (a key component of Anti-Fascist Action, it should be noted), and two in Class War. Peter Francis/‘Pete Black’/‘Peter Daley’/‘Officer A’ was also to have been deployed into the anarchist milieu, but was retasked to anti-fascist/anti-racist groups at the last minute:

As Black prepared to start his covert mission, senior officers in the SDS were deciding on his future undercover role. They were constantly working out which political groups needed infiltrating and which officers would make suitable spies. Initially, Black was lined up to become an anarchist. At least three SDS officers had already been embedded in anarchist groups in the early 1990s. One was in a small anarchist group called the Direct Action Movement (DAM), which had existed since 1979. Its associates believed capitalism should be abolished by workers organising themselves at the grassroots level, a political philosophy known as anarcho-syndicalism dating back to the late 1890s. Oneconfidential Special Branch document states that a detective constable who worked as an SDS spy ‘successfully’ infiltrated DAM between 1990 and 1993.

Another group of interest to the SDS was the better-known Class War, which achieved some notoriety after it was set up in the 1980s.

…The SDS viewed [Ian] Bone and his friends as considerably more sinister. The unit posted at least two undercover police into the group.

There then follows a chortle-worthy reference to former MI5 ‘whistleblower’ David Shayler, who ruffled feathers in the late 1990s with his various claims. Adopting the stance of a courageous campaigner for a more efficient, more effective spy service, Shayler – who along with his girlfriend Annie Machon had worked on the counter-subversion F Branch desk – had characterised Class War as being very much full of crustie-with-a-dog-on-a-string types (suggesting ineffectiveness or dilettantism), whilst at other times claimed it had been riddled with informers.

When those such as Larry O’Hara (and others) have called on him to back up his claims, or asked him to explain the issue of the proven attempts of sometime-fascist Tim Hepple AKA Tim Matthews to infiltrate the orbit of Green Anarchist, and the interconnected targeting of effective Class War organiser Tim Scargill through smears and other such activity, Shayler has never responded satisfactorily.

Anyway, let’s continue with the story:

One was in place in February 1992 when he had a meeting in a London safe house with David Shayler, the MI5 officer later jailed for breaking the Official Secrets Act after leaking details of alleged incompetence in the secret services. Shayler had at that time been assigned to investigate whether Class War posed a threat to British democracy. The SDS officer supplied intelligence to the Security Service, and had become an official MI5 informant, designated the code number M2589.

According to Shayler, the ‘peculiar arrangement’ in which the SDS officer lived the life of an anarchist for six days a week, returning only occasionally to his friends and family, had ‘affected the agent psychologically’. Shayler recounts: ‘After around four years of pretending to be an anarchist, he had clearly become one. To use the service jargon, he had gone native. He drank about six cans of Special Brew during the debrief, and regaled us with stories about beating up uniformed officers as part of his “cover”. Partly as a result, he was “terminated” after the 1992 general election. Without his organisational skills, Class War fell apart.’

According to Black, the true story was a little different. He says the SDS officer in question was a ‘top end’ operative who served the unit well. During the encounter with the MI5 officer, he acted the part of a coarse anarchist because he had little time for Shayler, who was perceived to be a ‘desk wanker’ – though Black concedes that ‘some MI5 desk officers who came out to talk to us were superb and we had a very, very good relationship with them’. A second SDS officer was later sent into Class War, but it became apparent the group was fading out. Rather ignominiously for the anarchists who wanted to tear down the state, the SDS concluded they could no longer justify spending money to infiltrate them.

Ultimately Francis found himself (via the ‘stepping stone’ method) in Militant’s Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE) group. This was at a time when the SWP had resurrected the Anti-Nazi League, and even the Labour Party had its own front, the Anti-Racist Alliance (ARA) (notable for calling for a pointless Trafalgar Square demonstration on the same day that YRE and the ANL announced their ‘Unity’ demo would ‘shut down the BNP bookshop’ in Welling). And, of course, the aforementioned AFA – which was definitely of interest to the state for both its willingness to engage in physical conflict with fascists on the streets and its robust, resolutely working class politics.

There is very little mention of AFA in the book – which is strange, really, considering how effective its record was on the streets at this time, and how much more ‘of interest’ it became when members of Red Action (another constituent part of AFA) were convicted for involvement in Irish Republican bomb campaigns. But then the small mention that there is does seem to be rather illuminating:

The key group the SDS believed was involved in confronting the far right was called Anti-Fascist Action (AFA). Formed in the mid-1980s through a loose alliance of anarchists and left-wingers, the SDS said it was now subject to a political rift. In a trait painfully familiar to radical politics over the decades, there was an alphabet soup of competing organisations campaigning against racists. To make matters more complicated, each group was often just a front, controlled by another political faction.

It doesn’t betray a great deal of understanding of AFA or what was going on in the organisation at the time (for that see Beating The Fascists), but it does give an indication of why Francis was deployed where he was, and what the ultimate objective – in a best case scenario – was.

The book continues:

Black was told he should penetrate Youth Against Racism in Europe, better known by its acronym YRE. It was a front for the revolutionary left-wing group, Militant. The head of the SDS believed there was a new anti-fascist alliance forming ‘within the loose confederation’ of the YRE, a second Trotskyist group and ‘sundry ad-hoc student and Asian youth groups’. The SDS boss identified an obscure anti-fascist group at a further education college in Camden, north London, as a possible stepping stone into the YRE.

The SDS technique was to identify a key individual within a political group and get close to them. In Black’s case, the target was an anti-fascist campaigner at Kingsway College. Black was instructed to attend the college and befriend this particular individual, who had connections with the YRE. ‘This allows an entry into the YRE and possibly AFA,’ his boss wrote.

Again this lends itself to the interpretation that deployments were not defined by a single target organisation, but by political currents. London Greenpeace appears to have been infiltrated in order to build up legends for the spycops involved as much as it was a specific target of interest in itself. From that platform the infiltrators could then explore other groups and tendencies – such as those acting under the ALF banner.

Similarly whilst not doubting the sincerity of YRE activists, and notably their stewards’ group, clearly AFA was an even more prime target – as also suggested by the targeting of DAM. Trying to reach AFA both through having a pedigree within the physical anti-fascist left, and through DAM, seems entirely plausible given the evidence here and elseewhere.

Another intriguing titbit comes directly after this:

If this failed, there was a plan B: Black could penetrate ‘an autonomous group of anarchists’ based in Hackney, east London who had been previously infiltrated by the SDS.

As we have seen, Hackney – and Stoke Newington, and then also Haringey – was a prime hunting ground for the spycops. I feel certain we shall be returning to this issue.

• Edited 1715 to correct factual error (Class War -> Green Anarchist)

• Edited 1800 to add a few more links and tidy things up

Spycops roundup

Following up on the previous spycops post, Paul Lewis has tweeted something approaching an explanation over the numbering issue:

Will try to clarify later but nothing more than C4 has slightly different rules / counting method to the G.

That’s not to say everything is now clear – no explicit clarification over whether Chitty/‘Blake’ is either ‘Officer 10’, ‘Officer 11’, or someone else; or whether the silhouette represents ‘Wellings’, ‘Richardson’, or someone else – but at least we seem to be still on track.

Meanwhile, some interesting links related to the theme of spycops and to the Dispatches programme…

Emily Apple from FITwatch has written an intensely personal post on the effect of infiltrators forming close relationships with and then betraying targets like her:

I also can’t express how important it is these revelations are coming out, and the depth of the operation against so many people is being exposed. We need to know who these bastards were, and we need to get their names and faces into the public domain. But it isn’t easy, and the psychological impact is massive.

Radical History of Hackney blog has a brief article pulling together the threads linking the spycops to the borough:

The radical history of Hackney has lead to police spies being active in the Borough.

This is a theme that it will hopefully return to in more detail at some point.

Newham Monitoring Project has released a statement in relation to the vague ‘cops spied on groups that held cops to account’ story it closed the evening with yesterday:

…Whilst the limited information in the Guardian report suggests NMP was never infiltrated directly, it nevertheless raises severe concerns that we do not have the full facts and the confidential nature of our casework might have been compromised. We demand, for the sake of transparency, that the name of the second SDS officer who was responsible for spying on NMP is made public immediately…

The Met’s current muscular Chief Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe has put out a statement of his own on the Lawrence family smears, distancing himself and officers now serving under him from any of the beastly business we’re hearing about, which obviously happened a long, long time ago, if it did happen, and if it did happen then it was only ever the work of a few bad apples, etc:

…Finding out the truth about what happened 20 years ago is not a straightforward task. There are many, many documents and a large number of witnesses which is complicating the review. It has proved difficult to recapture the way in which police officers in this specialist area have operated since the Special Demonstration Squad was formed in the 1960’s…

Of course, the Stephen Lawrence murder was a long time ago, twenty years back, and many lessons were learned, it couldn’t happen again. Oh wait – here’s the Yorkshire Post reporting how police tried to smear the family of Christopher Alder, a former serviceman – and would you believe it, a Black Briton – who died in police custody in 1998:

…As part of their investigation into Mr Alder’s death, Humberside Police obtained social service records dating back to the births of all the Alder children – Christopher, Richard, Emmanuel, Stephen, and Janet, who were brought up in care…

Finally the Guardian is again plugging the imminent release of the Undercover book with another titbit story, this time with the revelation that the National Domestic Extremism Unit (NDEU) tracks nearly 9,000 ‘domestic extremists’ (as those previously deemed worthy of the equally ill-defined label ‘subversive’ are now officially described):

…A total of 8,931 individuals “have their own record” on a database kept by the unit, for which the Metropolitan police is the lead force. It currently uses surveillance techniques, including undercover police, paid informants, and intercepts against political campaigners from across the spectrum.

Senior officers familiar with the workings of the unit have indicated to the Guardian that many of the campaigners listed on the database have no criminal record…

One slightly odd bit: “Francis’s unit, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), was disbanded in 2008, but later replaced with the National Domestic Extremism Unit.”

Yet the NDEU was more a successor unit to the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) which employed Kennedy/‘Stone’. It was one of three units run through the aegis of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) by the National Coordinator for Domestic Extremism, until the #phnat fuck-ups bled into the spycops shitstorm first flaring up in 2010. Then, along with the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (NETCU) and the National Domestic Extremism Team (NDET), NPOIU was transferred over to the Metropolitan Police in 2011, where the three were jointly rebranded NDEU. Exciting stuff I think you will agree.

Twelve become ten? More spycop number confusion…

Tonight’s Dispatches documentary, ‘The Police’s Dirty Secret’ – with The Guardian‘s Paul Lewis fronting it based on the reports filed by him and Rob Evans (and others) over the past couple of years on undercover police infiltrating protest groups – was an interesting watch.

Whilst much of it felt like an extended trailer for the forthcoming book, plus a stage-managed opportunity for star witness ‘Officer A’ AKA ‘Peter Daley’ AKA ‘Pete Black’ to come out from the shadows to call for an independent inquiry under his own name of Peter Francis, it was a powerful film.

Whilst much of it was built around the whistleblower testimony of Francis, it did not dwell on the personalities of the professional liars of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) or the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), but on their actions and the effects of these on their victims.

Three women – Jacqui (AKA ‘Charlotte’), Belinda Harvey (AKA ‘Sarah’), and Helen Steel (AKA ‘Claire’) – bore powerful witness to the lengths Special Branch was prepared to go to in order to maintain a political status quo.

As Belinda put it:

You hear about people having their phones hacked – well that’s nothing compared to what happened to me, and what happened to us, absolutely nothing. It’s like our bodies were hacked. It’s… It’s just unforgivable.

This was echoed just as potently by Jacqui:

For my body to be used to gain intelligence on a protest group, yeah… Well, I feel like I was raped. Multiple times, wasn’t I? It’s like being raped by the state. And I just want it all to go away, and it doesn’t. It doesn’t go away. And the thing is I’m going to have Lambert in my life for a long time because he’s the father of my son.

Both Belinda and Jacqui had been seduced by Bob Lambert, a veteran detective who went undercover in pursuit of the ALF. Animal rights activist Jacqui bore him a son. Belinda was not even involved in politics, and was seemingly a (and I know this sounds distasteful) tactical conquest for Lambert. But she still had her doors kicked in by police on a cover-bolstering search for ‘Bob Robinson’ in the aftermath of the Debenham’s bombings.

All that, plus the spying-on-the-Lawrence-family bombshell dropped earlier in the day, made it a packed three-quarters-of-an-hour programme.

Yet in places it posed more questions than it answered.

Take this curious section from Paul Lewis:

In 2008 the SDS closed its doors. But its work continues in the form of the NPOIU.

Accusations of undercover officers engaging in sexual relations have persisted.

Mark Jenner, who infiltrated left wing groups posing as ‘Mark Cassidy’, reportedly lived with an activist girlfriend for four years.

Jim Boyling is said to have had two serious relationships in his time undercover.

Marco Jacobs, who posed as an anarchist, allegedly also had two unsuspecting girlfriends before he disappeared in 2009.

And Mark Kennedy – outed as a police spy in 2010 – had several relationships with women, all over Europe, the longest lasting six years.

In total, ten undercover officers have been identified; of those, it’s alleged that nine had sexual relationships with people they were spying on.

The graphic above is then shown – from left to right, top row then bottom, we have:

• Peter Francis / ‘Officer A’ / ‘Peter Daley’ / ‘Pete Black’
• Bob Lambert / ‘Bob Robinson’ / Dr Robert Lambert MBE
• Mark Kennedy / ‘Mark Stone’ / ‘Flash’
• Andrew James Boyling / ‘Jim Sutton’
• John Dines / ‘John Barker’
• Mike Chitty / ‘Mike Blake’
• ‘Lynn Watson’
• ‘Mark Jacobs’ / ‘Marco’
• Mark Jenner / ‘Mark Cassidy’
• Unknown

But previously we have established that the Lewis/Evans team has been working with a list of (probably) twelve known – if not publicly identified – undercover officers.

The Dispatches list of ten broadly matches that list, except for the new face on the block, Mike Chitty AKA ‘Mike Blake’, mentioned nowhere else except in the brief photo gallery released a couple of days ago, in which we are told he “infiltrated animal rights campaigners in the 1980s”. This makes him a possible fit for ‘Officer 10’ or ‘Officer 11’.

 

Yet where is ‘Rod Richardson’ or ‘Simon Wellings’ on the list? Both were noted for not having had sexual relationships whilst undercover – which means either would chime with the 1/10 on the Dispatches graphic having been abstinent, if Mike Chitty (in keeping with the SDS tradecraft of the 1980s) was not.

Either way, the pond is getting muddy once more – and not helped by the post-show release of another (peculiarly vague and limp) story telling us one unnamed officer didn’t infiltrate Newham Monitoring Project…

PS Another related story released after the show:

• Trauma of spy’s girlfriend

 

A brief, incomplete but hopefully somewhat illustrative contextual timeline of spycop infiltrations around London Greenpeace and beyond throughout the 1980s and 1990s

Put together purely from information in the public domain. Broadly chronological. A ‘rough cut’.

• The Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) infiltration/provocation programme began in 1968
• London Greenpeace – an avowedly anarchist environmentalist group – is set up in 1971 in opposition to French nuclear testing
• Dave Morris began regularly attending London Greenpeace meetings in 1979
• In the early/mid 1980s, animal rights and environmental activist groups were a high priority target for Special Branch, the SDS and other similar police units
• In 1983 local activists, including Dave Morris, set up the North London anarchist group Haringey Community Action (Steel later joins)
• Special Branch officer Bob Lambert AKA ‘Bob Robinson’ was infiltrated into the London activist scene in 1983 – and almost immediately entered into his first on-deployment long-term sexual relationship, with an activist woman ‘Charlotte’ (she was 22 and he 10 years her senior, and secretly married to another woman)
• Lambert infiltrated London Greenpeace in 1984
• In 1985 ‘Charlotte’ gave birth to a son by Bob Lambert
• In 1985 London Greenpeace begins a non-violent campaign highlighting issues such as animal abuse, advertising, nutrition and labour conditions at McDonald’s.
• In 1986 the initial Animal Rights National Index (ARNI) was set up by Special Branch in Essex – a database tracking animal rights activists and actions
• Activists from London Greenpeace – including Bob Lambert, but not Dave Morris or Helen Steel – wrote the ‘What’s Wrong With McDonald’s’ factsheet in 1986
• In 1987 Bob Lambert knowingly instigated a long-term sexual relationship with a non-activist woman, Karen/’Sarah’/’Jenny’, to further build up his cover
• In 1987 three incendiary devices are set at department stores around south-eastern England as part of an ALF campaign – two men are arrested, prosecuted and convicted based on Bob Lambert’s inside intelligence; subsequently he is accused of having set the third device
• In 1987 Special Branch sergeant John Dines (AKA ‘John Barker’) is sent in to Hackney to infiltrate political groups including London Greenpeace
• Activists from the now winding-down HCA in 1988 set up Tottenham Against The Poll Tax, one of the first English AntiPoll Tax Unions; it is followed by the Hornsey & Wood Green and Green Lanes APTUs, and subsequently all three come together as the Haringey APTU
• By the end of 1988 Lambert comes to the end of his deployment and disengages from his relationship with ‘Sarah’/’Jenny’ – who despite not being an activist had had her home raided by Special Branch purportedly looking for Lambert as part of the ALF firebombing dragnet
• ARNI was further established at Scotland Yard in 1989
  McDonald’s security bosses Sid Nicholson and Terry Carrol – both former senior Met borough officers from Brixton police station – attend meetings with Special Branch in relation to London Greenpeace and anti-McDonald’s protests from 1989, and possibly earlier
• From 1989, McDonald’s contract at least two separate private investigation agencies (Bishops Investigation Bureau/Westhall Services and Kings Investigation Bureau) to infiltrate and spy on the London Greenpeace to ascertain who wrote the ‘What’s Wrong With McDonald’s’ fact sheet; the infiltration continues until at least 1991
• In 1990 McDonald’s issues libel writs against five named London Greenpeace activists, including Morris and Steel, for distributing the fact sheet; three offer apologies and give an undertaking not to further distribute the leaflet but Morris and Steel decide to defend the case
• In 1990 John Dines begins a relationship with ‘Clare’ AKA Helen Steel which will last the rest of his deployment
• In 1991 the remit of ARNI was extended so that it could now act operationally (i.e. it is no longer simply running a database)
• The Earth First!-aligned road protest group Reclaim The Streets emerges in 1991 through the Claremont Road resistance to the M11 Link Road in East London
• Following the success of the anti-Poll Tax campaign, in 1991 the three local groups which comprise HAPTU first use the joint banner ‘Haringey Solidarity Campaign’ and look towards wider community organising; in 1994 the three groups formally come together as HSG, with Dave Morris one of the driving forces
• After a five year period spent infiltrating not just London Greenpeace but also squatter groups, anti-Poll Tax unions and other anti-capitalist groups in Haringey, Hackney, Stoke Newington and elsewhere, in 1992 John Dines is exfiltrated suddenly, to the distress of Helen Steel, who at the time is embarking on the start of the pre-trial period of the McLibel defence campaign
• Stephen Lawrence is murdered in 1993; police infiltrate Peter Francis AKA ‘Peter Daley’ AKA ‘Pete Black’ into anti-racist groups, police watch-style campaigns and leftist politics in the lead up to the October ‘Unity’ demonstration, as well as the M11 anti-roads campaign; he leaves his undercover posting in 1997
• Following several years of legal arguments – which see the defendants denied legal aid or a jury trial – the McLibel trial proper begins in 1994
• Special Branch’s remit is extended to include environmental activists
• In 1995 police officer Mark Jenner AKA ‘Mark Cassidy’ is infiltrated into the north London activist scene; he targets the Colin Roach Centre in an attempt to get close to Red Action/Anti-Fascist Action, as well as the anti-blacklisting Building Workers Group, and the Hackney Community Defence Association – he has a relationship with an unwitting local woman ‘Alison’ from 1996-2000, when he disappears
• RTS starts down a very different road to its previous actions and hosts the first of its street parties in Camden High Street in May 1995, followed swiftly by other ones in Islington and elsewhere
• Special Branch officer Andrew James Boyling AKA Jim Sutton is deployed into the London activist scene in 1995, and starts by working his way into hunt sabotage before finding himself in RTS
• By 1996 the RTS ‘Street Party’ tactic has found itself replicated autonomously across the UK and abroad; the London RTS group reaches out beyond the environmental movement and forges links with the striking Liverpool dockers, militant RMT unionists on the London Underground, and elsewhere – culminating in a two-day long period of solidarity actions in and around the Merseyside Docks where jobs and safety are at stake as the private employer enforces casualisation
• The final submissions to the court in the McLibel case are heard in December 1996 after 313 trial days, leaving the Judge unable to estimate when he will have a ruling
• In early 1997 the repercussions of the McLibel trial are felt elsewhere, with arms fair company COPEX backing down from a libel case threatened against Peace News and Campaign Against Arms Trade, who decide to follow the example of Morris and Steel and not back down; COPEX pay out over £30k in costs
• Similarly by Summer 1997 John Lewis plc backs down from a libel action against the National Anti-Hunt Campaign, who sought advice from the McLibel defence campaign
• The Liverpool dockers and RTS come together again in 1997 for the ‘Reclaim The Ballots’ event in central London where despite police efforts thousands hold an open air party-cum-protest (though not at the planned location and minus much of the propaganda materials)
• The National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) is set up at Scotland Yard in 1998, bringing together ARNI and other similar police intelligence units into a single unit focused on animal rights activists
• In 1998 RTS and the rest of the PGA network coordinate a ‘Global Street Party’ to mark the G7 summit taking place in Birmingham with international protest
• The remit of the NPOIU is extended to include the wider environmental movement in 1999
• 1999 sees more RTS/RMT actions on the London Underground, before the second ‘Global Street Party’, marking the G8 summit in Cologne; in the UK this means the J18 Carnival Against Capitalism – Andrew James Boyling is a driver of an RTS blockade vehicle, which he deliberately fails to secure
• Later in 1999 members of RTS and other groups, including Class War and London Greenpeace, organise the UK end of the third Global Street Party, ‘N30’, marking the World Trade Organisation summit in Seattle; the UK events are more diffuse than previously, with lower numbers, more locations and a more proactive police presence that culminates in the first proper British kettle outside Euston train station
• A longer series of events, actions, meetings and bookfair in London for Mayday 2000 are coordinated by a group including RTS, ending in the ‘Guerilla Gardening’ event on Parliament Square and an attempted kettling; under extreme pressure from police and with the media pursuing ‘organisers’, some from RTS issue a televised statement
• In 2000 Andrew James Boyling leaves his infiltration of RTS, as does Mark Jenner; meanwhile ‘Rod Richardson’ goes in, followed by ‘Simon Wellings’, Mark Kennedy AKA ‘Mark Stone’, ‘Lynn Watson’, ‘Marco Jacobs’ etc…

Edited 24/6/13 to tidy up, add in Peter Francis’ real name

McLibel fact sheet authorship clusterfuck blows up at last: spycop chickens most definitely start coming home to roost

So the spycop story – bubbling away on a low simmer for many months, publicly at least – has boiled over once more.

With Friday’s ‘revelation’ that police infiltrator Detective Inspector Bob Lambert co-wrote the contentious ‘What’s Wrong With McDonald’s’ fact sheet which precipitated the libel action against London Greenpeace finally coming out into the open, The Guardian‘s Rob Evans and Paul Lewis (Lewvans? Evis?) have brought the whole sorry saga back into the public eye.

Whilst not strictly news (after all, the core London Greenpeace activists knew all along who contributed to their leaflet, and Lambert was publicly unmasked in October 2011), the story that a cop effectively set loose the whole McLibel chain of events has had a strong impact. Of course, that impact will be compounded by the Evans/Lewis book Undercover: The True Story Of Britain’s Secret Police due out in early July, and the joint investigation with Channel 4’s Dispatches that will air on Monday night.

However, for me more interesting was the more in-depth article published on Saturday, which didn’t even merit a link at the top of the front page of the Grauniad‘s website: Undercover policemen, undercover lovers.

Tucked away in the Family section, it was an extended excerpt from the book which more effectively ties together the different threads, and shows the patterns in the behaviour of the supposed cops-gone-rogue/few rotten apples/whatever label NSY senior management damage control is running this week.

By way of a flavour, committed but non-violent activist Helen Steel was:

…spied on by three undercover officers – [Boyling], Lambert and John Dines.

First by Lambert, the sexual and emotional predator, a consummate liar and a proven Janus, seasoned Special Branch provocateur turned trainer, teacher of tradecraft, mentor…

Second by Dines, committed political cop, stealing into the feelings of a committed campaigner, conniving to be privy to privileged legal information…

Third by Boyling, Lambert’s protégé, the controlling sociopath sent in to undermine links and interconnections between environmental, labour and social movements.

The cynical abuse of people – just collateral damage in some secretive, ill-defined dirty war on dissent – that is something that leaps out from the relatively brief overview that the article gives, whether we are talking about the SDS, ARNI or NPOIU.

And you know what? It’s simply not cricket. These pricks don’t fight fair. And I think that’s why the McLibel article has had such resonance – this goes beyond cracking hippy heads, or somesuch similar rationalisation. This is as bent as is possible to be.

We know – we know – this is not about ‘isolated instances’ or ‘exceptional circumstances’ or ‘the actions of an inexperienced new recruit’. This was planned, strategised, calculated. This involved malice aforethought, stepped approval processes, the involvement of lawyers both internal and external. Paper trails. Inter-service rivalries. Personality conflicts. All the petty bullshit that these muppets can never keep a lid on indefinitely. And no matter how many internal reviews they instigate, with tightly defined scopes and pre-limited evidence, the truth will out.

Because already we know what it will look like. All that’s really left is to match the shade of shit all over the walls to a colour chart.

PS After reading Friday’s article but before Saturday’s, I started to put together a brief timeline of what was going on with the few infiltrations we do know about in the 1980s and 1990s around London Greenpeace, and to put them into some kind of context. The Saturday article rather took away the need to do that, but I’ll stick it up anyway, as incomplete as it is.

More on the mystery of ‘Officer 10’ and ‘Officer 11’ – a ‘cheesed off’ former spy-cop?

Whilst googling my way around the whole spy-cops thing, I came across this user contribution on The Guardian website from October 2011, relating to the then-imminent publishing of Hogan-Howe’s HMIC report into Kennedy’s shenanigans:

Should be an interesting read then and here’s hoping that HOGAN-HOWE wasn’t helped too much in his ‘review’ by the likes of Peter BLEKSLEY and any of the other so called Undercover Police ‘Experts’.

Speaking of which, here’s is the link to the recent BBC Programme about KENNEDY if anyone needs it again. With only 3 more days to watch it, having first been broadcasted on Monday, 19:30 on BBC One (East Midlands area only)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0161mc6/Power_Struggle

Having now watched it I don’t know what personally winds me up the most hearing and seeing Mark KENNEDY still obviously in his method man role of Mark STONE and therefore evidently lying as easily as any normal person actually finds breathing. Or Peter BLEKSLEY, as ever and yet again, talking out his backside as the so called rent a ‘media expert’ on deep and long-term total undercover Covert Police work.

BLEKSLEY isn’t, never has been and never will be an ‘expert’ on this matter as long as he has got a hole in his arse.

Up until when he was finished and totally burnt out in 1996 he only ever did numerous short-term crime cover Ops for SO10. Allowing him after each and every single short term role he played, to pop back to the local Police station or NSY afterwards to continue playing with his truncheon, gun, blue lights and numerous Police friends.

His ‘expert’ knowledge is like comparing the method actors of long-term deep undercover Policing, on parr with the likes of Christian BALE or Daniel DAY-LEWIS to his own appearance alongside the cast of East Enders.

The same actually goes for another familiar rent a ‘media expert’ on Terrorism. Whom is known by them in the actual real know I.e. former Met Police Special Branch Officers (RIP) as never having spent one day in his entire 30 years Police service involved in counter-terrorism work! Yes you know who you are.

Basically, if you have ‘been there, done it and got the t-shirt ‘ like some of us have, that’s fine and go ahead and spout. Or otherwise, please just keep your gob shut because everyone is laughing at you.

Pete BLACK

Ps: If you are no doubt reading this cheesedoff69 and also watched the above programme. Well just imagine how ‘cheesedoff’ you are going to be when the full Documentary comes out about him! Then followed by the inevitable KENNEDY’S self publizing book and Film. Contact Paul and Rob (for your personal anonymity best by e-mail) who will do their journalistic best to right any perceived wrongs you or indeed anyone else feel strongly enough about.

As you can see, it’s purportedly by ‘Pete Black’, the former spy-cop who blew the whistle on the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) in The Observer in early 2010. He makes some amusing references to ex-undercover Met officer Peter Bleksley, who these days punts himself around as an expert on counter-terrorism and whatever else to the media, as well as writing true crime-style books.

Anyway, it’s the postscript that is most interesting.

A quick search shows that ‘cheesedoff69’ has only ever posted once, in August 2011. That post claims that its author is a former NPOIU employee:

I used to work for the NPOIU and I can say without any fear of being accurately contradicted that the officers accounts and expenditure were always scrupulously examined and overseen by independent accountants. The vast majority of members of the unit were based in London and as such were responsible for subsisting themselves i.e. their own money not the taxpayers. I was based elsewhere and as such if I had to spend the night in London then my evening meal was paid for. Far from how Mark Kennedy portrays it I regularly ate in the Chinese Buffet in Strutton Ground, £10 including a drink. Anyone thinking that is excessive has not eaten in London. The apartment close to Tower Bridge (no view of the bridge) was rented at half the market value because the owners could not get a tenant. Mark would not know this because he had nothing to do with anything other than his own day to day expenses. Cars were leased, again the buying power of the Mets allows a much higher standard of vehicle for the same cost of a basic model, I repeat no money was wasted, the senior officers watched every penny. I had great respect for the work Mark did gathering top class intelligence against the hooligans bent on causing serious damage in the UK and mainland Europe, I find it sad that he has lost the plot despite the Support he was afforded.

So did ‘cheesedoff69’ take the advice proffered by ‘Pete Black’ and contact Paul Lewis and Rob Evans? Is ‘cheesedoff69’ actually ‘Officer 10’, or even ‘Officer 11’? Or someone who was able to make the appropriate connections, act as a conduit, and enable other former undercover officers to spill the beans?

Frankly, all a bit far-fetched. Would ex-spies really take to the comments section of a public news website to exchange exhortations to whistleblow?

When is an undercover police officer not an undercover officer? On The Guardian’s spy-cop arithmetical methodology

In many respects the reporting by Paul Lewis and Rob Evans on the spy-cop story at The Guardian over the past two years has been exemplary.

However, in some areas they can be seen to obfuscate rather than illuminate.

A case in point: in January 2013 Lewis & Evans wrote an article on the legal action brought by women activists against the Met in relation to long term intimate relationships its undercover officers entered into in the course of their operations.

As the journalists put it:

Of the nine undercover police identified by the Guardian over the past two years, eight are believed to have slept with the people they were spying on. In other words, it was the norm.

Note that this was after the January 2012 ‘Officer 10’ revelation (that an undercover who wasn’t Lambert or Boyling had fathered a child by an activist with whom he had had a brief relationship), but before the ‘Rod Richardson’ story broke in February 2013.

The legal action, started back in December 2011, names five officers: Lambert, Kennedy, Boyling, ‘Barker’ (subsequently identified – in February 2013 – as Dines) and ‘Cassidy’. Let us call that five out of five.

Both ‘Watson’ and ‘Jacobs’ had also by this point been accused of sleeping with targets. The tally moves to seven for seven.

‘Pete Black’ has said ‘it was “part of the job” for fellow agents to use “the tool of sex” to maintain their cover and glean intelligence’, though I can’t find any direct admission of having done it himself. Let’s err on the side of ‘Black’ – following in the footsteps of his predecessor libertine cops Lambert and Dines and providing a good operational example to his own mentee Boyling – using “the tool of sex’ in his work. 8/8.

At this stage the only other publicly uncovered undercover was ‘Simon Wellings’. I can find no reference to him sleeping with any targets. That gives us more or less 8 out of 9.

However, The Guardian identified neither ‘Black’ (The Observer) nor ‘Wellings’ (BBC). So let’s scrub them and take the tally back down to 7/7.

So let’s go back to the mystery ‘Officer 10’ – he definitely had sex, insofar as like Boyling and Lambert he fathered a child. We are now back at 8/8.

Now, one of the interesting things with the ‘Rod Richardson’ story that Lewis & Evans gave us in February 2013 is the assertion that “the man calling himself Rod Richardson was an exception” to the ‘rule’ of having sex with targets. If in their January story Lewis & Evans were already working the ‘Richardson’ angle, then this could give us  the magic ‘eight out of nine’.

But then what about the anonymous Special Branch officer Lewis & Evans use to corroborate their ‘Jackal Run’ stories this month (for reference purposes ‘Officer 11’)? Is ‘Officer 11’ the same person as ‘Officer 10’? Or someone who they only became aware of after the January reference to “nine undercover police identified by the Guardian”?

Given that they are journalists who have ploughed this furrow largely alone in the mainstream media, Lewis and Evans are clearly in a position where they must protect their sources. It is notable that they appear to have gained the trust of the SDS whistleblower ‘Pete Black’, who initially only featured in stories co-bylined by The Observer‘s Tony Thompson.

To this end, it is conceivable that ‘Officer 10’ is also ‘Officer 11’, or that either or both is also ‘Mark Cassidy’, or even ‘Simon Wellings’ or ‘Marco Jacobs’, and that Lewis and Evans have deliberately blurred the details in each mention of their anonymous sources.

In the case of ‘Wellings’ and ‘Jacobs’ this is unlikely without knowingly publishing false information. ‘Officer 10’ bore a child from a target relationship, and no one has come forward to indicate that either ‘Wellings’ and ‘Jacobs’ became spy-parents. ‘Officer 11’ is described as an SDS infiltrator – and the SDS was supplanted in 1999 by the NPIOU. ‘Wellings’ first appeared in 2001, and ‘Jacobs’ in 2005 – so we may reasonably discount both of them.

The are other elements which muddy the water. When ‘Watson’ was identified in the wake of the Kennedy story in January 2011 in a pair of stories by Lewis and Evans co-written with Northern Editor Martin Wainwright – first tangentially and then directly – The Guardian gave her a pseudonym and sat on pictures of her. This was:

At the request of intelligence officials, the Guardian has agreed to withhold identifying details about the woman, who is still a serving officer, and will refer to her only as “Officer A”.

It was three days after the first mention of the female undercover officer on 10 January 2011 that The Guardian published a pixelated photo of ‘Watson’ (story by Lewis, Evans and Crime Correspondent Vikram Dodd). It would not be until 19 January – a full nine days on from the original story – before her cover name was used, in a story attributed to Rajeev Syal, who covers the Whitehall beat, and Wainwright. Note that her undercover name and photos of her were already circulating via IndyMedia from at least 13 January.

A similar situation came about on 15 January 2011 with the initial unmasking of ‘Marco Jacobs’ – again without naming or picturing him:

The latest officer, whose identity has been withheld amid fears for his safety in other criminal operations, worked for four years undercover with an anarchist group in Cardiff.

That story was bylined to Lewis, reporter Matthew Taylor and Syal. Again, his ‘true fake identity’ and picture were not published until 19 January 2011 (story by Syal), despite his details being published on FITwatch (14 January), IndyMedia (15 January) and elsewhere before then.

These are clearly not issues relating to the protection of sources: this was a favour extended to the Met, ostensibly to facilitate the safe exfiltration of ‘Watson’ and ‘Jacobs’ from the undercover operations they were then engaged in.

And if nurturing and protecting sources is so important, why in 2009 did Lewis give assurances to his source that the CO11 spotter card he had been shown in confidence would not be published in full if he could not deliver on that promise?

Of course we all make mistakes. But to stonewall straightforward requests to elucidate on opaque reporting is not the way to remedy them.

ETA:

Paul Lewis has clarified in a series of tweets [1, 2, 3] that the ‘eight of nine identified undercover officers slept with targets’ reference takes into consideration all those identified publicly, with ‘Simon Wellings’ the only abstinent (and not for want of trying):

Ha. Well. The nine are all those who have been identified in public, by us and others.

Doesn’t include Rod, or the others we know of/have spoken to, but not yet identified. Includes Black and Wellings.

PS: Blog post is right: Wellings is the one who didn’t have sex. (Though he often complained he wasn’t getting any)

That means the “nine undercover police identified…over the past two years” when that particular report was published in January 2013 are:

1. ‘Pete Black’
2. Mark Kennedy
3. ‘Lynn Watson’
4. ‘Marco Jacobs’
5. Jim Boyling
6. ‘Simon Wellings’
7. Bob Lambert
8. John Dines
9. ‘Mark Cassidy’

…And that “eight are believed to have slept with the people they were spying on

1. ‘Pete Black’
2. Mark Kennedy
3. ‘Lynn Watson’
4. ‘Marco Jacobs’
5. Jim Boyling
6. Bob Lambert
7. John Dines
8. ‘Mark Cassidy’

He also confirms that ‘Officer 10’ and ‘Officer 11’ are different people:

They’re not the same person.

With the subsequent ‘Jackal Run’ articles of February which revealed ‘Rod Richardson’, and the confirmation above of the existence of ‘Officer 10’ and ‘Officer 11’ as separate individuals, this indicates that the ‘Dirty Dozen’ list I posted up yesterday is accurate.

That certainly clears up some of the confusion. Thanks Paul.

A dirty dozen, and then some more… Just how many spy-cops did Scotland Yard infiltrate into protest groups?

It’s a question that bears asking. Ever since ‘Mark Stone’ was publicly exposed within activist circles as Constable Mark Kennedy back in October 2010, there has been a drip-drip-drip of revelations, as groups around the country have identified further infiltrators.

Below is a list of twelve people. We have the real names of only four of them, and cover names for ten. Two of them we know only what the journalists Paul Lewis and Rob Evans of The Guardian choose to tell us, and we have no way of verifying whether they are any of the others named or even each other – though the scant details provided indicate they are not.

1. ‘Pete Black’ AKA ‘Officer A (Observer)’ – infiltrated Militant’s Youth Against Racism in Europe (YRE) and also the M11 link road roads protest, 1993-1997 whilst working for the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). ‘Black’ came forward in March 2010 in interviews with Tony Thompson of The Observer. Previously worked for two years in Special Branch.
2. ‘Mark Stone’ AKA ‘Flash’ AKA PC Mark Kennedy – infiltrated mostly environmental groups (but then also tried anti-fascist and animal rights networks) in the UK and across Europe between 2003-2010. He joined the City of London Police in 1990 and then the Met in 1994, was recruited to an undercover training course in 1996, before being transferred to the Animal Rights National Index (ARNI) – which subsequently became the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPIOU) – in 2002. His involvement included anti-G8 actions at Gleneagles in 2005 and the abortive Ratcliffe-on-Soar protest in 2009. He was outed on IndyMedia in October 2010 and then in mainstream news media from January 2011. In December 2011 he was named as one of five officers who participated in long term intimate relationships with women targets whilst undercover, in a legal action initiated on behalf of eight such women.
3. ‘Lynn Watson’ AKA ‘Officer A (Guardian)’ – infiltrated various political networks between 2003-2008, including Aldermaston peace camp, the UK Action Medics Collective, the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA) and the Common Place social centre. She was identified as an undercover police officer in the aftermath of the Kennedy outing, something confirmed in the mainstream media in January 2011.
4. ‘Marco/Mark Jacobs’ AKA ‘Officer B’ – attempted to infiltrate groups first in Brighton and then in Cardiff between 2005-2009, including Cardiff Anarchist Network, activist gatherings, anti-G8 Dissent! network and climate change group Rising Tide. Like Kennedy he also went on trips to Europe in the guise of an activist. Outed and identified in January 2011 in much the same way as and at the same time as ‘Watson’.
5. ‘Jim Sutton’ AKA PC Andrew James Boyling – infiltrated Reclaim The Streets (RTS) and other groups between 1995-2000, before disappearing. He resurfaced a year later, and entered into a relationship with an activist, whom he married in around 2005, having eventually confessed to her that he was a cop and made her change her name by deed poll. They divorced in 2009, having had two children together. His identity and role as a police spy were publicly revealed in the mainstream media in January 2011 along with ‘Watson’ and ‘Jacobs’, in reports which claimed he was still a serving officer with SO15 (Counter Terrorism Command), the successor unit to Special Branch. He was one of five officers who participated in long term intimate relationships with women targets whilst undercover and so named in a legal action initiated on behalf of eight such women in December 2011.
6. ‘Simon Wellings’ – infiltrated the SWP’s Globalise Resistance group between 2001-2005, travelling also to Europe and the US, before inadvertently exposing himself to a member of the group by accidentally dialling their answerphone whilst being debriefed by another officer. After being confronted by the group, ‘Wellings’ disappeared. Globalise Resistance released details of the incident to the mainstream media in March 2011.
7. ‘Bob Robinson’ AKA Detective Inspector Bob Lambert AKA Dr Robert Lambert MBE – infiltrated London Greenpeace as well as the wider environmental and animal liberation movement between 1984-88, engaged in long term intimate relationships with women activists, fathered a child by one of them, and arranged for a non-activist lover (who was unaware he was a police officer) to be raided by Special Branch to add to his credibility. By the late 1990s he had moved up within Special Branch to take charge of SDS operations, supervising other undercover officers within those networks, including Jim Boyling and Pete Black. Between 2002-2007 he ran the Muslim Contact Unit (MCU) for Special Branch, through which he fostered relationships with Muslim groups and individuals variously described as Salafis, Islamists or ‘radicals’. During this period he began to develop a twin career as an academic specialising in engagement with Islamists, and since leaving Special Branch he has continued this, with involvement at both the University of St Andrews and Exeter University. He was exposed as a police infiltrator by London Greenpeace in October 2011, with the mainstream media quickly picking up on the story. Lambert was one of the five undercover officers named in December 2011 in a legal action on behalf of eight women with whom they had had long term intimate relationships.
8. ‘John Barker’ AKA PS John Dines – infiltrated ‘anti-capitalist’ groups between 1987-1992 for the SDS whilst a Special Branch sergeant. He engaged in a long term intimate relationship with at least one activist woman, with whom he lived for two years. Following exfiltration he was given a desk job in Scotland Yard. Having over the years pieced together small clues, by 2010 the woman had come to realise that ‘John Barker’ was an undercover police officer who had assumed the identity of a dead child. In December 2011 Dines was named under his assumed identity as one of five officers who participated in long term intimate relationships with women targets whilst undercover, in a legal action initiated on behalf of eight such women. He was identified as Sergeant John Dines in mainstream media reports in February 2013.
9. ‘Mark Cassidy’ – like John Dines (under his ‘John Barker’ identity), in December 2011 ‘Cassidy was named as one of five officers who participated in long term intimate relationships with women targets whilst undercover, in a legal action initiated on behalf of eight such women.
10. ‘Officer 10’ – an unnamed undercover officer who is referred to in a January 2012 report as having had a child with a woman activist following a brief intimate relationship.
11. ‘Officer 11’ – the anonymous second SDS source (alongside ‘Pete Black’) for the February 2013 ‘Jackal Run’ stories in The Guardian.
12. ‘Rod Richardson’ – infiltrated a number of anti-capitalist groups between 2000-2003, including Movement Against the Monarchy (MA’M) and White Overall Movement Building Effective Libertarian Struggle (WOMBLES), participated in summit-hopping activism across Europe, and lived in an activist house in Nottingham where Mark Kennedy would subsequently stay. ‘Rod Richardson’ was named by Jules Carey, a lawyer representing the family of the real Rod Richardson, whose identity the undercover policeman assumed, in evidence before the Home Affairs Committee in February 2013, with The Guardian following this up in more depth in an article in the ‘Jackal Run’ series.

In Kennedy’s self-serving account to the Daily Mail, he claimed that he knew of fifteen other officers carrying out similar work throughout his time undercover, “at least four” of whom remained in place when he left.

Elsewhere (infuriatingly I have temporarily lost the reference) he mentions that there were ten officers undercover at any one time.

He also claims that he was paid £250,000 per year.

That adds up to a lot of money, and a lot of undiscovered or unidentified undercover cops roaming around.

(Thanks to Merrick for inspiring this post)

Fourth spy-cop ‘John Barker’ named as PS John Dines; five more to go (and then the rest)

The Guardian today published a number of disturbing stories [1, 2, 3] related to the massive Metropolitan Police operation to infiltrate spy-cops into protest movements over a period of decades, and named the ‘fourth man’ as Police Sergeant John Dines from Special Branch. They also published pictures of him.

Dines, previously known only by his assumed identity of ‘John Barker’, is one of five police officers who entered into long-term, intimate relationships with eight women on whom they spied who are now bringing legal action against the police and individuals concerned. A further three complainants are represented in a similar action.

The other officers are former Police Constable Mark Kennedy, AKA ‘Mark Stone’; former Police Constable Andrew James ‘Jim’ Boyling, AKA ‘Jim Sutton’; former Detective Inspector Dr Robert Lambert MBE, AKA ‘Bob Robinson’; and an undercover police officer known only as ‘Mark Cassidy‘.

A number of other police officers who infiltrated protest groups, social justice groups and political organisations over the years have also been unmasked in recent times, including ‘Lynn Watson‘, who targeted the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army; ‘Mark/Marco Jacobs‘, who disrupted the Cardiff Anarchist Network; and ‘Simon Wellings‘, who reported on Globalise Resistance.

Another ex-infiltrator, ‘Pete Black’, came out in 2010 to spill the beans on the Met’s Special Demonstration Squad, which later morphed into the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). He backs up the claims in today’s Guardian stories that undercover officers are trained to adopt the identities of dead children.

Edited 2:38 for clarity with regards the legal action.

Judge rules that ‘spy cops’ hearing should be held in secret, cites James Bond

Mr Justice Tugenhadt has found in favour of the Metropolitan Police’s application to have the case relating to its undercover cops sleeping with their political activist targets heard in secret.

The High Court has today granted an application by the Metropolitan Police for a secret hearing over the claims brought against them under the Human Rights Act, arising from undercover officers engaging in intimate long term relationships with women whilst undercover. The Claimants, who were involved in protest movements, were deceived into intimate sexual relationships by officers, including Mark Kennedy. One relationship lasted six years and all the Claimants suffered significant psychological damage as a consequence of those officers intruding deeply into their private lives. Lawyers for the women said that their clients are “outraged” at the High Court’s decision today that the claims should be heard in the secret Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

The Judge even used the fictional character James Bond to back up his ruling…

James Bond is the most famous fictional example of a member of the intelligence services who used relationships with women… fictional accounts (and there are others) lend credence to the view that the intelligence and police services have for many years deployed both men and women officers to form personal relationships of an intimate sexual nature (whether or not they were physical relationships) in order to obtain information or access.

That James Bond also routinely and summarily kills people would perhaps be a future ‘out’ for any actions brought against intelligence or security officers embroiled in torture or murder claims.

More details at the Police Spies Out Of Lives campaign website.

Judge to rule whether spy cop sex-by-deception case is held in secret

See blogs passim for more on this topic – for now, here’s today’s Guardian story:

A high court judge is due to announce on Thursday morning whether police chiefs have won a controversial case involving undercover spies they infiltrated into political campaigns.

The police are being sued by 10 women who say they were duped into forming long-term, intimate relationships of up to six years with the spies.

In the first round of the legal action, lawyers for the police have been attempting to have the main lawsuit heard in a secretive tribunal rather than in the open at the high court.

In his judgment, Mr Justice Tugendhat is due to reveal whether he has granted the police’s application.

…Also part of the legal action is a man who says he had a close friendship with a police spy who had a sexual relationship with his girlfriend.

The women and man have accused the police of trying to hide away the potentially embarrassing lawsuit in the obscure investigatory powers tribunal “when they have been guilty of one of the most intrusive and complete invasions of privacy that can be imagined”.

…At the preliminary hearing in November, Phillippa Kaufmann and Heather Williams, QCs for the women and man, told Tugendhat that the spies had used the relationships to collect intelligence or for their own “personal gratification”, while pretending to support them emotionally.

Monica Carss-Frisk, the QC for the police, argued that their application was merely to determine the most appropriate forum to hear the main part of the lawsuit.

Three of the women taking legal action had intimate relationships with Mark Kennedy, the police officer who infiltrated the environmental movement for seven years. Two other women had sexual relationships with one of Kennedy’s colleagues, who used the alias Mark Jacobs.

He claimed to be a truck driver when he spied on a small anarchist group in Cardiff.

On cop-spies and paid betrayers (1.3): Lambert of the Yard and the mystery of his ‘suburban terror bunker’ trading address

Following the recent update on the travails of Dr Robert Lambert MBE, formerly of The Yard, I have dug up a little bit more information relating to the north-west London address to which a number of companies associated with him have been registered.

Since 1985 the owner of 54 Anson Road – then described as in Willesden – has been Mohamed Ahmed Kagzi. Yet since 2005, Watford-based General Electric subsidiary GE Money Mortgages has loaned on the property.

Mr Kagzi does not have a very wide footprint across company registration; his name throws up only one directorship, Management Ventures, set up in January 2011 and giving 54 Anson Road as its address. Yet Mohammed Ahmed Kagzi only became a director of that company on February 8 – one day after the resignation of the founding director. And who was that? Well, our old friend Graham Michael Cowan – he of paperwork-filling on IMPACT’s registration.

There are at least two other companies trading from 54 Anson Road which have had Graham Michael Cowan as director: Agha Interiors (registered October 2009) and Minerva & Indigo Consultants (registered May 2012).

Anyway, let’s not make mountains out of molehills, and instead move back to Mohammed. Mr Kagzi and his Cricklewood property earned a brief moment in the sunshine in June 2006, when no less an organ of the fourth estate than the Watford Observer Hendon Times* reported that 54 Anson Road had “been labelled a sophisticated charitable front with links to Al-Qa’ida.”

The article notes that the property was the registered office of Sanabel Relief Agency, “a charity which had its Manchester and Birmingham offices raided by anti-terrorist police last Wednesday” (i.e. 24 May 2006). The Al-Qa’ida connection comes via a February 2006 US Treasury Department report claiming Sanabel’s main work was fundraising for the Bin Laden-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. In addition, Sanabel found itself listed by the UN’s Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee for its purported LIFG links. The assets of five British-based Libyans, including Sanabel volunteer Tahir Nasuf, three Sanabel-linked property companies (Ozlam and Sara in Liverpool, and Meadowbrook Investments in Bristol) and Sanabel itself, which had had charitable status since 2000, were frozen worldwide due to the claims.

Whilst, as the Observer Times* notes, Mohammed Ahmed Kagzi was not named in the US document, and nor was he arrested during the countrywide dragnet, in addition to owning 54 Anson Road, he was also reportedly the registered auditor for Sanabel Relief Agency. It certainly makes him an interesting choice of business partner, and his property an unusual location for your business premises – as the former Special Branch Chief Inspector Bob Lambert did, when he registered his consultancy there little more than two years after it was raided by anti-terrorism cops.

Oh my, Bob, what have you got yourself mixed up in?

* Amended 16/8/13 following information from newspaper reporter Lawrence Marzouk that the ‘suburban charity with Al-Qa’ida ties’ story was actually written for the Hendon Times, rather than the Watford Observer (which is an entirely separate title, but part of the same Newsquest group) as originally stated here. In his words: “No reason for it to appear on Watford Obs web.” Many thanks for the clarification, Lawrence.

On cop-spies and paid betrayers (1.2): Doctor Bob Lambert, his academic friends and the tightening purse-strings

So, let us return to Bob Lambert, AKA animal activist Bob Robinson, AKA academic Dr Robert Lambert MBE, AKA Detective Inspector Lambert of Special Branch.

We have not heard much about him since June, when Green MP Caroline Lucas used Parliamentary privilege to repeat allegations that whilst infiltrating animal activist circles in the 1980s, Lambert was personally responsible for setting off an incendiary device that partially destroyed a Debenham’s department store in Harrow, causing £340,000 worth of damage.

It is interesting to note that where formerly (certainly in January 2012 when I wrote my original piece) he was listed on the staff page of the University of Exeter’s European Muslim Research Centre (EMRC), now only his co-director Dr Jonathan Githens-Mazer is named.

Could it be that the EMRC’s work with Muslims was being disrupted by the very public suggestion that Lambert had a long history as a seducer, infiltrator and provocateur?

Of course, there is nothing in the newly-censored EMRC profile page that suggests Lambert is not still wholly entwined with the project. They are simply not advertising it.

Lambert’s relationship with Githens-Mazer is worth looking at. The EMRC profile page suggests he is from Baltimore, but with familial connections to Ireland. He hints at having (Irish) republican-with-a-small-r leanings; how that sits with him working as a wingman for someone whose career was focused on detailed, long-term betrayal whilst at an organisation set up specifically to deal with Irish republicanism is not clear.

According to his LinkedIn profile, after graduating from the private liberal arts college Swarthmore near Philadelphia, Githens-Mazer then pitched up in London to work on a PhD at the LSE, which he completed in 2005. He then took up a professorship at the University of Exeter, and assumed co-directorship of the EMRC in September 2009. Whilst working on his PhD, he lectured at the University of London’s Queen Mary College (2003-4), and from 2005-6 he also lectured at Nottingham Trent.

The EMRC webpages indicate that Githens-Mazer and Lambert began collaborating in October 2007. Since then Githens-Mazer has worked closely with Lambert over a number of years, clocking up co-authorship credits on an academic article [July 2010], two website articles [(i) February 2010; (ii) June 2011], a pair of EMRU research reports [January 2010], a book chapter [2009] and seven Comment is Free pieces in The Guardian [(i) April 2009; (ii) October 2009 ; (iii) October 2009; (iv) December 2009 ; (v) January 2010; (vi) June 2010; (vii) July 2010]. Busy scribblers indeed.

Besides their work together in the EMRC, in March 2009 Lambert also recruited Dr Githens-Mazer (plus his wife Gayle) to the company which he had set up in August 2008, Lambert Consultancy And Training. That company was dissolved in March 2010, having filed no accounts.

Curiously, LC&T was registered to a large, 6 bedroom semi-detached house at 54 Anson Road in Cricklewood, north-west London (estimated value: £650,000), which subsequently appears to have been turned into a multi-occupancy dwelling (that’s developer jargon for ‘divided into bedsits and flats’). One wonders whose property it was then, and indeed whose it is now.^[1]

Since December 2010, the Githens-Mazers have been living in a quarter-million pound house in Penryn, Cornwall – somewhat closer to Exeter, where they both work (him at the Uni, her at Peninsula College of Medicine & Dentistry), than Anson Road in leafy NW2. Lambert, in addition to his work at the EMRC in Exeter, as previously noted also puts in the hours as an online lecturer on the Terrorism Studies course run by the Centre for Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV) at the University of St Andrews; so it seems unlikely the ex-copper has the time (or indeed money) for a £650k pied à terre in The Smoke when he lives and works in the toes of England and spends a significant amount of his time Skyping with students up in Scotland.

To make things even more interesting, between May 2008 and November 2009, Lambert was a consultant to another company, Strategy To Reach Empower and Educate Teenagers (STREET UK). He was appointed to STREET on 18 May, twelve days after it was registered. The next day Dr Abdul Haqq Baker – a colleague of Lambert’s from the CSTPV, and according to his biography, the person who initiated STREET – was named as director. In addition, Mohammed Alyas Karmani was added as director in April 2010. The registered address of STREET is… 54 Anson Road in Cricklewood – the same as Lambert Consultancy And Training.^[2]

Things now get a bit confusing. According to a paper produced by the Fourth Freedom Forum‘s Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation, ‘A Case Study in Government-Community Partnership and Direct Intervention to Counter Violent Extremism‘ (written by Jack Barclay^[3], December 2011), STREET “was created and is run largely by members of a Muslim community in south London” and was “[L]aunched in 2006”. The south London location is re-emphasised a number of times: “…Brixton, the immediate south London locale where STREET is based…strong connections to the south London Salafi community…youth in Lambeth and other parts of south London…” and so on. The paper does name Dr Baker as STREET’s founder and managing director, and also names ‘Alyas Karmani’ as a co-director “who joined the programme three years after its inception”.

Are you keeping up? Well, Mohammed Alyas Karmani, AKA Alyas Karmani, AKA Mohammed Karmani, is based in Bradford, where he is now a city councillor for George Galloway’s Respect Party, having beaten the incumbent Labour candidate (and previously the Leader of the council) in the May 2012 local elections. In coverage at the time of the campaign, Karmani was described as “director of Street, a national project working with at-risk young people“. He’s also co-director of a Bradford-registered company called The Diversity Project, along with Saima Butt.

Getting back to the CGCC report… So we have both current directors of STREET quoted in it. We then have a surprise guest appearance by none other than “Robert Lambert, a former head of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) Muslim Contact Unit”. No mention is made of his directorship with STREET, though the author claims that he “has had more than 10 years of close contact with STREET and the south London Salafi community, both as a police officer and subsequently as a scholar at [EMRC]”. How the numbers on that are supposed to work I am not sure, but we’ll let it slide.

Of more interest within the article are two things in particular: (i) the framing of STREET as predating the government’s own Prevent – the prevention workstream of the over-arching CONTEST counterterrorism strategy – whilst also pursuing similar goals; and (ii) Lambert’s comments that “I have seen some very well-meaning Muslims who want to challenge violent extremism who give it a go and fail because they’re not equipped; they don’t have the street credibility. I’ve also seen Muslims who have that street credibility but lack the requisite religious position.”

In light of this observation perhaps it is not so odd that Lambert – a ‘former’ cop-spook of extremely long standing – would have resigned as a director of STREET.

Let’s move on. Firebug Bob – or Mr Robert Lambert MBE as he prefers to style himself for the purpose of Companies House registrations – is also director and company secretary of Siraat, set up in January 2009 and based on Coldharbour Lane in Brixton. Hmmm, Brixton, you say? In south London? Why is this ringing bells? His fellow directors are Carey Anderson and Raymond Boakye. Who they? Well, I’d like to know too. The web yields not a lot about Siraat^[4] or them, except for a gem of a Telegraph story from February 2011, very Telegraphically entitled ‘Counter-terrorism projects worth £1.2m face axe as part of end of multiculturalism‘:

The first to be hit is the Street project, which is associated with Brixton Mosque in South London. The project has received more than £500,000 in three years from the government.

The Daily Telegraph has learned that the Home Office has told the project it will have its money withdrawn this year in the first step towards switching funding away from strains of Islam with which the government disagrees.

The Street project is likely to be only the first to feel the effect of the new policy, with other organisations including Siraat, a £500,000 prison-based mentoring project across southern England and Impact^[5] that has received £280,000 and is based in Hounslow, West London, both facing closure.

…[STREET] currently employs 12 staff and received £326,990 in 2009-2010 and £191,310 from 2010 until October this year.

It caters for Muslims from across South London, providing sports and social activities at the mosque youth centre and running classes on Islamic religious precepts, social responsibilities and citizenship. Over the last 18 months, it has completed 12 of the 40 cases it has managed.

The Street project was founded by Abdul Haq [sic] Baker, who is its secretary and one of its directors. Mr Baker is also a trustee of the Brixton Mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre…

Companies Houses notes that there is a proposal to strike Siraat off the register, that the last accounts are ten months overdue, and that the last tax return, which should have been filed in February, hasn’t been. STREET is in similar straits.

So it seems that not everything Dr Robert Lambert MBE turns to gold. The Police Community engagement for Conflict Transformation (PCCT) hub, set up by University of Birmingham academics, seems to be taking no chances and makes no mention of Lambert or the CSTPV, with which (according to Bob) they are in partnership.

Still, there’s always the likes of the Cordoba Foundation to fall back on – you may remember that their journal Arches published a puff piece on the Met’s Muslim Contact Unit (MCU) written by Dr Robert. You know, the one linking Islamists to anarchism. Anyway, the Foundation’s chief executive is one Anas Altikriti, who just happened to be on the advisory board of the CSTPV. Given that both Bob and Cordoba – which in 2009 was accused by David Cameron of being “a front for the Muslim Brotherhood” – appear to be on the (currently) losing side in some kind of turf war between competing strategic viewpoints in Whitehall, I’m sure we can expect to see future cooperation between them.

Notes:

^[1] For more on 54 Anson Road, see the next post on Bob Lambert.

^[2] And here’s a bonus prize: from its establishment in February 1998 until its dissolution in 2001, a company called Al – Anssar – founding director one Dr Abdul Haqq Baker – was also registered to 54 Anson Road.

^[3] ‘Jack Barclay’ appears to be a pseudonym. The CGCC paper describes him as “the Director of Scanner Associates, a counter-extremism consultancy that works with governments to help them better understand and challenge violent extremist radicalisation. He is based in the United Kingdom.” Scanner Associates is not a company name registered in the UK. A google on ‘”jack barclay” “scanner associates”‘ throws up a single result – a spreadsheet of work done hosted on New York’s City government website(!) – this lists one Richard Scanner from Scanner Associates at 10 Richmond Terrace, Staten Island NY 10301, telephone 718 816 4321, amongst nearly 1,500 other entries.

‘Jack Barclay’ pops up in other counterterrorism articles published by other think tanks I’ve never heard of, like ‘Challenging the Influence of Anwar Al-Awlaki‘ (International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, September 2010), and those I have, such as ‘The Language of Jihad‘ (Royal United Services Institute, December 2011).

In the former, the biography of ‘Barclay’ reads thus: “Jack Barclay is a Strategic Communication consultant specialising in the use of strategic messaging to counter violent extremism. He works with a range of organisations to improve their understanding of radical Islamist ideologies and the strategic communication activities of Salafi-Jihadi movements. He has provided support to counterterrorism strategic communication research and campaign development by a range of public sector agencies. He is based in the United Kingdom and can be contacted at jack_barclay@yahoo.co.uk.”

In the RUSI one, it says: “‘Jack Barclay’ is a strategic communication adviser specialising in the study of violent extremist radicalisation, extremist strategic communication and the use of strategic messaging to counter violent extremism. He works closely with a range of public sector organisations, both foreign and domestic, to improve their understanding of radical Islamist ideologies and the strategic communication activities of violent jihadist and other extremist movements.”

^[4] It may be worth mentioning that a google on “siraat, counterterrorism” gives as a top-ranking result a link to the front page of the National Counter Terrorism Security Office (second when I did it); a search on just “counterterrorism” brings up the NaCTSO in a lower placing (eleventh).

^[5] Does anyone know anything about ‘Impact’? Without any firm information on it it’s rather tricky trying to trawl the usual data sources. ETA: Many thanks to Piombo for correctly identifying Impact as the Initiative For Muslim Progression & Advancement of Community Tolerance, AKA West London IMPACT.

Hey – guess who was a director of and consultant to IMPACT, from inception in December 2009 until May 2012? It’s our friend Dr Abdul Haqq Baker! Also serving through the same period was one Valerie Chung, with Graham Michael Cowan appearing to have done the paperwork. Electronics trader Najeeb Ahmed – a professional businessman, it would seem – remains a director, and unlike Siraat and STREET, IMPACT is up to date with its company filings.

Registered to an address in Southall in west London, IMPACT appears to have been established as a ‘deradicalisation’ programme for west London following “confidential discussion [between Hounslow Council’s Corporate Community Investment and Cohesion Unit and] the Office of Security and Counter-Terrorism in the Home Office,” based on “the award winning and successfully established work streams of STREET”.

Edited: 7 September 9:30am to add bits about Al – Anssar and IMPACT.
Edited: 8 September 3:30pm to add links & sort out typo.
Edited: 9 September 4:15pm to modify internal links.
Edited: 15 October 11:15am to correct a couple of typos only just spotted.