The Security Service plays an important but ancillary role in the Undercover Policing Inquiry and the spycops scandal. Though formally titled the Security Service, it is often referred to as MI5, Box 500, or given the abbreviation SyS. Part of its remit was to monitor the activities of political groups deemed subversive. In this, it worked closely with Special Branches across the UK, and this work was mentioned in Special Branch Guidelines.
This included the Metropolitan Police Special Branch and the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). Intelligence reports from the SDS were routinely passed to MI5, or marked for their attention.
MI5 was usually referred to by the code ‘Box 500’ on SDS reports and cover sheets. Within MI5, the department which dealt with 'subversive' political groups and campaigns was labelled ‘F’ for much of this period, and it had specialist subdivisions which were given numbers, for instance, F.4, whose responsibility included anarchists and Trotskyists. These sometimes changed.
The relationship between Metropolitan Police Special Branch and MI5 varied, and sometimes depended on the attitudes of the different unit heads involved. MI5 was aware of the SDS's undercovers and the groups they were targeting. This led them to make requests for intelligence. The degree to which MI5 influenced and directed the activities of the SDS is a matter of open investigation by the Undercover Policing Inquiry.
MI5 is not a core participant in the Inquiry, though it is cooperating in supplying material to it. It has provided the Inquiry with the majority of SDS reports from the Tranche 1 period (1968-1972) which the Metropolitan Police did not have, and released internal MI5 memos and notes of meetings between MI5, SDS and senior Special Branch managers.
It has also supplied one witness statement by ‘Z’, a senior manager in the ‘covert human intelligence operations capability’, setting out what the organisation knew or understood about the role of the SDS and its relationship with it.
It appears that MI5 also provided some training to Special Branches.
The following is a list of names of MI5 officers who make appearances in the Undercover Policing Inquiry's disclosure, or are otherwise named in connection with the Special Demonstration Squad. The names of many MI5 officers, particularly those who met with or were in receipt of SDS intelligence, have been redacted by the Inquiry.
- JS Elliott
- Martin Furnival-Jones
- Derek Hamblen
- Michael Hanley
- John Jones
- Cathy Massiter
- DW Ranson
- RT Reed
- CAG Simkins
- Richard Thistlethwaite
- Mr. Whyte
- Mr. Woodroffe
- Stella Rimmington
- Witness Z
- Witness Y