07/03/2025
Campaigners have successfully exposed the scandal of 50 years of secret undercover political policing. In fact activists are also celebrating 5 decades of struggles for a better world, despite police spying and repression.
In 1968, following huge demonstrations against the Vietnam War, the Metropolitan Police secretly set up a ‘Special Demonstration Squad’. Since then over 1,000 groups campaigning in the UK for a better world have been spied on, infiltrated and targeted by ‘spycops’ deployed by secret political policing units. This was part of the police’s wider ongoing efforts to try to control and undermine protests and movements for much-needed change.
Such spycops targeted groups campaigning for workers’ rights, equality, justice, the environment and international solidarity, for rights for women, LGBTQ, for animal rights, for community empowerment, and those campaigning against war, racism, sexism, corporate power, legal repression and police oppression and brutality. Such groups have represented many millions of people throughout the UK who want to make the world a better, fairer and more sustainable place for everyone.
Almost any group of any kind that stood up to make a positive difference has been or could have potentially been a target for secret political policing, employing shocking and unacceptable tactics. Spycops, each living as fake ‘activists’ for up to 5 years at a time, hoovered up mountains of personal information, all sent to the Secret Services (Mi5). Individuals within those campaign groups have been spied on, subjected to intrusions in their personal lives for years, been victims of blacklisting (when applying for jobs) and miscarriages of justice, and some women were deceived into intimate and abusive relationships with secret police – in some cases spycops even fathered children and then disappeared without trace.
In July 2015, after campaigners succeeded in exposing this scandal, Theresa May, then Home Secretary, was forced to set up an Undercover Policing Public Inquiry. It was tasked with getting to the truth and recommending action to prevent such police wrong-doing in future. The Inquiry has so far cost over £100m, and has heard evidence of the unacceptable spying operations from 1968-1992. Dozens of spycops and their managers, and dozens of campaigners targeted have given evidence – and the police and Mi5 have been forced to release tens of thousands of reports and documents previously buried in their archives. The next hearings, about police operations from 1993-2009, will resume in October. A final report is expected in 2026.
In 2023 the Inquiry admitted that the police tactics were unacceptable and that the secret unit, despite being officially sanctioned by successive Governments, ‘should have been disbanded’ 50 years ago. The police have already been forced to apologise for their sickening sexual targeting of women campaigners, the use of the identities of deceased children, and for spying on anti-racist groups and family justice campaigns.
However, despite all the spying, the movements for positive change which police infiltrated are still here and growing, and have had many successes on the way. For example: · the Vietnam War was a debacle
· apartheid in South Africa was abolished
· the poll tax had to be scrapped as unenforceable
· mass blockades of military bases successfully prevented the siting of US cruise missiles in the UK
· hunting foxes for ‘sport’ is now banned
· the ‘McLibel’ trial brought by McDonald’s ended up as a disaster for the junk food corporation
· equality laws were enacted to outlaw race and other discrimination
· blacklisting of trades unionists was made illegal
· the climate emergency has been recognised by Parliament.
It is clear that campaigners have been on the right side of history all along, and the police on the wrong side.
We are many, but the police (and the powerful they protect) are few.
Let’s all continue to support each other in the fight for what’s right.
www.campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com
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