Tranche 6

Tranche 6 of the Undercover Policing Inquiry’s work looks at the management and oversight of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit. This includes mid and senior officers within the police, other agencies involved and also government departments. It also includes how intelligence was disseminated to them. 

For this reason, it has sought evidence from parties such as the Security Service (Witness Z) and officers who could attest to the distribution of SDS intelligence within Special Branch (e.g. HN3093 Roy Creamer HN3093 Roy Creamer Roy Creamer was born in 1930 and served as a Metropolitan Police officer between 1954 and 1980. He was a founding member of the Special Demonstration Squad in 1968 and worked for the unit in a back-office role until 1969. Creamer was later involved in two police investigations into alleged anarchist bombing conspiracies. Full page: HN3093 Roy Creamer ) and the Metropolitan Police Public Order / A.8 branch (witnesses: HN1742 Anthony Speed HN1742 Anthony Speed Anthony 'Tony' Speed joined the Metropolitan Police in 1957. His written statement to the Inquiry dated 10 August 2022 outlined that much of his career from 1970 to 1999 was spent in the Metropolitan Police's public order unit- 'A8'. He said he was not aware of the existence of the SDS but gave an account of how Special Branch passed on information to A8. He retired in 1999. , John Cracknell John Cracknell John Cracknell was a Metropolitan Police officer who worked with the public order unit (A8) in the 1970s. He gave evidence via a witness statement about how A8 functioned and its relationship with Special Branch. He later became a Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in 1982. ). 

Due to the elderly nature of many of the witnesses for earlier periods, the Inquiry decided to run this tranche concurrently with the early ones, contrary to its original plan to run the tranches consecutively. In the Tranche 1 hearing, this was covered in the Phase 3 (T1P3) hearings. No senior police managers for the SDS in the Tranche 1 era (1968-82) were alive at the time of the hearing.

Likewise, the Tranche 1 Phase 3 hearings also included material relating to Modules 2(b) and (c) which looked at senior police managers, the handling of undercover intelligence and the involvement of other government bodies with connections to the Special Demonstration Squad.