HN328 Joan Florence Hillier was born in the 1930s. She joined the Metropolitan Police in November 1958 and Special Branch in March 1968 at the rank of detective constable.
One of the original members of the Special Demonstration Squad, she joined the unit at its inception on 31 July 1968 and stayed for about a year. In the run-up to the 27 October 1968 anti-Vietnam war demonstration she attended some activist meetings and often slept at the SDS cover flat to give it the impression of being occupied. After the 27 October march, her role in the SDS became entirely office administration until she left in July 1969.
Hillier says she did not have a cover name or infiltrate any groups undercover. However, between 2 and 30 October 1968, she did attend four meetings of the Notting Hill branch of Vietnam Solidarity Campaign with fellow female officer HN323 Helen Crampton.
At one of these meetings, Crampton said she was given a leaflet by a leading Black Power activist encouraging violence at the forthcoming October demonstration. Her report and later sworn statement on this led to the activist’s arrest and a trial at which Crampton testified. Subsequently he was imprisoned for two years. Hillier claims to remember nothing at all about this despite an otherwise impressively detailed recall of her time in the SDS.
Unless otherwise referenced, this profile is based on Hiller's first witness statement and oral testimony to the Undercover Policing Inquiry. The Inquiry has also released two redacted photos of Hillier with other officers including Helen Crampton at a party in Scotland Yard in 1968, some time after the 27 October demonstration.
Hillier joined the Metropolitan Police on 17 November 1958 and moved to Special Branch as a detective constable on 18 March 1968.
She was posted to B Squad, where reports released by the Inquiry show she was already attending public meetings of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) and rival Maoist organisation the Britain Vietnam Solidarity Front (BVSF) before joining the SDS.
Hillier was one of the original recruits to the SDS, joining on 31 July 1968. She described attending an initial meeting with several other Special Branch officers that was addressed by HN325 Conrad Dixon , the founder of the unit.
He explained that the purpose of the SDS was to gather intelligence about the planned 27 October 1968 demonstration to stop a recurrence of the police publicly losing control as they had at its predecessor in March 1968.
She thought the impetus to start the SDS came from the home secretary, ‘not that he said "let’s form 'the hairies",' as we called the SDS, but that he put pressure on the police to come up with a solution to stop what happened in March 1968 happening again’.
Early meetings of the SDS involved all officers being asked for their ideas on which tactics might work best to achieve this goal, Hillier explained. In the context of the continuation of the unit after the October 1968 demonstration it’s worth noting that Hillier told the Inquiry that she did not witness any public disorder or violence while she was in the SDS.
Hillier was not married when she joined the SDS and felt that being approached to join the squad was more of an order from senior officers than an invitation. What the job would entail and her welfare were never discussed. No training was given; she relied on her ‘common sense’.
She stated that apart from one occasion when she wore a wig for ‘a little bit of fun’, she did not use any tradecraft as she did not go undercover. For the few activist meetings she did attend, she just ‘dressed down’ and would have given a false name if asked.
From the start. Hillier and fellow female officer HN323 Helen Crampton were expected to do administrative tasks, starting with finding a suitable flat to use as an SDS safe house. Once it was procured, Hillier regularly slept at the SDS flat to give the impression it was occupied: other undercovers who met there recall seeing her personal possessions in the flat.
Male undercovers dictated reports to Hillier and Crampton at the safe house who would then type them up and sign them in lieu of the undercover officer. Most of the reports released by the Inquiry that bear Hillier’s name were created this way. A few other of her reports contain intelligence researched from the back office.
Hillier wrote flatteringly of Dixon in her witness statement, describing him as ‘a nice man’ and ‘very approachable’, adding, ‘Conrad was respected and he got the best for the officers involved and got the best out of them’. In her opinion, the SDS was very well managed and regarded as a successful experiment. ‘After October 1968 everyone was delighted with the work we had done.’
Once the 27 October demonstration had taken place, Hillier says she became purely an administrator, used ‘largely as a go between for the Yard and the other office [a safe house in west London]’. She brought reference files requested by undercovers and typed reports for signing from Scotland Yard to the safe house and returned with deployed officers’ expense diaries and draft reports for typing up.
When not at the safe house, she says she worked on the 18th floor of Scotland Yard, sharing her SDS administrative duties with HN3095 Bill Furner: ‘We did the filing, organised the card systems, post and took phone messages.’
The working atmosphere was convivial: ‘we were all a close group and very friendly. I wouldn't really describe my colleagues as managers, it was far less formal than that.’
Although she says she had no direct contact with MI5, Hillier understood that SDS intelligence was being shared with the Security Service and was clear about the relationship between the two agencies: ‘We, as Special Branch officers, were an extension of MI5, were agents for them, carrying out enquiries on their behalf.’
Hillier says that although her name appears on several reports, she only actually attended four meetings of Notting Hill VSC; three in the run up for the 27 October demonstration and one afterwards. She also attended the demonstration itself, again with Crampton and the Notting Hill VSC group.
Notting Hill was a key branch of the VSC and had already been infiltrated by two other undercovers – HN68 ‘Sean Lynch’ and HN331. From a tactical point of view, it did not make sense to send in two further spies. Hillier’s role was to accompany Helen Crampton who was involved in an almost unique task for an SDS officer: evidence-gathering for a criminal prosecution.
At one of the meetings, Crampton picked up two flyers that subsequently formed the basis of the prosecution of a Black Power activist for incitement to riot. In February 1969, Crampton was a prosecution witness at his trial, in doing so revealing her role as an undercover police officer. Again, this was unheard of for an SDS officer and not repeated throughout the unit's history. For more on this case, see the profile of HN323 Helen Crampton.
Hillier claims to remember nothing at all about this, despite an otherwise impressively detailed recall of her time in the SDS. Her explanation is she just accompanied Crampton as it would look less weird than a woman going to a meeting on her own.
The role that Hillier and Crampton played in attending these meetings is described in quite some detail in Conrad Dixon’s blueprint for the future of the SDS titled Penetration of Extremist Groups.
In the context of collecting evidence of serious offences, he suggested the use of ‘an uncommitted officer’ – someone who was not known to the activist group who could be sent to a meeting to obtain evidence and then disappear. Specifically, Dixon thought women would be very good at this, to protect their male colleagues:
This blueprint was written in November 1968, just after the arrest of the Black Power activist and Hillier is marked, in appendix B, as having been an ‘uncommitted’ officer. However, none of the women SDS officers recognised this as a role they had fulfilled, including Hillier.
Upon leaving the SDS, Hillier stayed within Special Branch but moved to E and A Squads , where she undertook administration and vetting work.
In February 1975, the cover sheet attached to an SDS report shows that Hillier and another officer were directed to attend a public meeting of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. Though not clear from the report, this was most likely on behalf of E Squad, as at the time it dealt with what was perceived as threats from abroad. Hillier retired at the rank of detective constable in 1984.
Hillier did not use a cover name and no application was made to restrict her real name. She submitted a witness statement to the Inquiry on 6 November 2018 and a second witness statement, about identifying fellow officers in photographs, on 19 February 2020. These were made public when she gave oral evidence on 13 November 2020 and can be found under the Procedural tab on the Documents page of this profile.