The direct action group Palestine Action (PA) has again been generating more news than we can cover. They bumped up their acquittals total, won victories targeting suppliers of the Israeli-owned arms company Elbit Systems UK, and carried out a string of property damage actions.
Also, PA had their first known infiltrator, a journalist named Max Parry from the Daily Express, who gave information to the police that led to five arrests for ‘conspiracy to commit public nuisance’…
Five women give first-hand accounts of four undercover police spies who targeted them between 1987 and 2010. It is gripping and sickening to learn the extent of abuse that these women – and others – experienced. The format of the book involves short, dated sections from each of the five women, so that their stories are woven together. This can be confusing at times but it keeps the reader’s focus on the progress of their grooming, gaslighting and ghosting – and on their partial victory…
Women deceived into relationships with undercover police officers have condemned the further delays that have been announced in the government’s Undercover Policing Inquiry. On 20 May, their campaign group, Police Spies Out Of Lives, said: ‘The idea that we have to wait until 2024 for the next tranche of hearings is beyond belief. Justice delayed is justice denied. We urge the inquiry to rethink this timeframe.’
In 2015, the Metropolitan police apologised to seven women and paid…
After 11 years of struggle, Kate Wilson won another victory on 30 September. Kate is an activist who was deceived into a relationship with the undercover police officer Mark Kennedy (who was posing as an environmental direct actionist called ‘Mark Stone’).
Further ‘unreserved’ apologies, from London’s Metropolitan police and from the national police chiefs’ council, came after a damning ruling by the official Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) on 30 September.
The IPT found…
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) revealed in mid-September that it had been a target of the Metropolitan police’s undercover Special Demonstration Squad during the 1980s.
Two undercover police officers were involved, according to the long-running Undercover Police Inquiry (UCPI).
‘John Kerry’ worked in the CND office in London between 1981 and 1984.
‘Timothy Spence’ inserted himself into a CND group in East London (as well as defence campaigns against the…
Today, 3 May 2018, former undercover police officer Jim Boyling has been found guilty of gross misconduct for pursuing an unauthorised sexual relationship with 'Rosa' (a pseudonym) using his false identity, failing to inform his line management of the extent of his relationship, and…
Today, Peace News is publishing the first full-face photographs of 'Andy Davey', the identity taken by undercover police officer Andy Coles in 1991 when he infiltrated the nonviolent direct action group ARROW.
Coles was publicly exposed as a police infiltrator on 12 May, after investigation by the Undercover Research Group. On the same day, details emerged of an abusive sexual relationship…
Statement by the eight women:
In the apology issued today by assistant commissioner Martin Hewitt, the Metropolitan Police finally conceded that 'officers, acting undercover whilst seeking to infiltrate protest groups, entered into long-term intimate sexual relationships with women which were abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong' and that 'these relationships were a violation of the women’s human rights, an abuse of police power and…
In mid-April, Peace News managed to interview the man known as ‘Megaphone Mitch’, who organized the 800-strong ‘March against Corruption’ on 1 March. The report in PN described some of the fascination surrounding a man with ‘little track record’ of activism. (PN 2568-2569).
Some accused Mitch and his supporters of having links with British intelligence or the police; others accused him of being anti-semitic or being too ‘rightist’. Many demanded on social media to know who he was.…
The women were deceived into having long-term intimate relationships with undercover police officers who were infiltrating activist groups.
One of the women, who had a relationship with undercover officer Mark Kennedy, exposed by Nottingham activists in October 2010 (see PN 2528), told the house of commons home affairs select committee on 5 February: ‘We are talking about degrading and inhumane treatment. I think what happened to us has been akin to…
On 25 January, Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, was finally sentenced to pay compensation for planting spies inside the Swiss campaigning group, ATTAC Switzerland. The civil court of Lausanne, which heard the case against Nestlé a year earlier, in January last year, has apparently ordered Nestlé to pay €3,000 per person for ‘moral damages’.
The two exposed spies were infiltrated into ATTAC with false names in 2003 and then in 2008.
Former British police spy Mark Kennedy, who infiltrated anti-climate change and other activist groups between 2003 and 2010 (see PN 2530), is now working as a security consultant for the Densus Group in the US, providing ‘investigative services, risk and threat assessments’, according to an entry on his online LinkedIn profile.
The new job, like Kennedy’s initial exposure, was first reported on the activist media website Indymedia before being picked up as ‘exclusive’ breaking news by…
Police spy Bob Lambert fire-bombed the Harrow branch of Debenham’s in July 1987, Green MP Caroline Lucas told parliament on 13 June. The attack was perhaps ‘a move to bolster Lambert’s credibility’ within the Animal Liberation Front, which he had succeeded in infiltrating.
Lambert then helped convict two other members of the group, Geoff Sheppard and Andrew Clark, who carried out fire-bombings of Debenham stores in Luton and Romford at the same time as the Harrow attack. Sheppard and…
