The purpose of deploying undercovers into political groups was to find out more about their plans and intentions to protest. This meant moving beyond attending public meetings to joining groups and seeking to become more involved. Naturally that meant attending smaller organisational meetings and social events, building personal links with those they were targeting.
Special Demonstration Squad parent body Special Branch was interested in information on public disorder from demonstrations, and in anything that might be considered subversive.
Because Special Branch vetted people for government positions, any information that undercover officers were able to discover was readily gathered and passed on. This would have been seen as part and parcel of Special Branch work and the undercovers were only reflecting this.
Talking to people linked to the political groups they targeted – at meetings, protests and social events – allowed undercover officers to gather all kinds of information and gossip. Once embedded in these groups, undercover officers built friendship networks to do just that.
Many of the disclosed reports provide details on people’s intimate and personal lives, some of it coming from gossip within the target group, some of it from personal conversations with the people directly concerned. The Undercover Policing Inquiry has questioned undercovers why gossip and intrusive personal information was in their written reports, and their managers as to why they signed this off without question and forwarded on this material.
It is clear that some of the undercovers focused on key individuals who they believed were significant in a group and thus were likely to be unwitting sources of valuable information. A notable case is HN297 Richard Clark ‘Rick Gibson’s targeting of Richard Chessum but, as detailed below, there are multiple similar examples of targeted friendships.
Beyond gathering information, building these friendships – and entering into sexual relationships – also facilitated an undercover’s entry and acceptance by a group. Undercover officers targeted some people because they provided stepping stones to others.
Building these personal relationships could lead to involvement in personal events of people they targeted, being invited to weddings or funerals. Undercover officers offered themselves as confidants when people faced difficult or distressing times, everything from medical emergencies to family deaths. Others took on positions of trust, such as being a babysitter.
Building strategic, targeted friendships is a tactic that continued throughout the history of the SDS and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit. The ultimate form of this tactic was undercover officers starting sexual relationships with the people they targeted.
Undercovers claim to have received little or no guidance from their managers about whether such intrusive tactics were appropriate or justified.
Questioned about it by the Inquiry, undercovers from the tranche one period uniformly said they were advised not to make close friends among the people they were spying on and so did not. While they conceded they often went for a drink after meetings with activists and, less frequently, visited them at their homes or away from the rest of their group, they asserted that they deliberately avoided close friendships because it made maintaining a cover identity harder.
Despite the former undercovers' claims, the Inquiry heard plenty of evidence in Tranche One to the contrary. In fact, officers worked hard to build their targets' trust, to a point where activists invited spycops into their homes, workspaces and private lives. Rather, they readily took up opportunities to ingratiate them into the social lives of their targets.
HN45 ‘Dave Robertson’ was so trusted by Maoist bookshop owner Galawin Bijur that he was asked to take over running Banner Books. Robertson also claims activist couple Abhimanyu Manchanda and Diane Langford asked him to babysit their infant daughter, though in her witness statement to the Inquiry, core participant Langford said she would never have left her child with him.
HN106 ‘Barry Tompkins’ gave evidence he ‘spent quite a lot of time with’ two activists (names redacted), socialising about twice a week on top of meetings and describing their friendship as ‘reasonably close’.
HN299/342 ‘Dave Hughes’ said he visited the home of one North London Claimants Union activist several times, adding that ‘he would have seen me as a fairly close friend’.
HN326 ‘Doug Edwards’ attended Independent Labour Party activist Terry Liddle’s wedding. HN329 ‘John Graham’ took a young female Vietnam Solidarity Campaign activist out to dinner after his deployment had ended: he said it would have been ‘impolite’ to cancel the date.
These tactics of befriending continued throughout the unit with the same process being described over and over again, with various witnesses telling how they would have shared personal information with undercovers they considered a good friend they could rely on.
Indeed, Graham’s behaviour prefigured many future undercovers who went far beyond taking female activists out to dinner, deliberately targeting them for long-term sexual relationships in order to build their credibility and source further information.
As of spring 2025 it is known that twenty five undercovers deceived activists and members of the public into sexual relationships.