HN326 ‘Douglas Edwards’ joined the Metropolitan Police in 1964 and Special Branch in 1968, where he was posted into C Squad as a detective constable, monitoring communist and other potentially subversive left-wing groups. He was recruited into the SDS shortly after the 27 October 1968 anti-Vietnam war march by SDS manager HN1251 Phil Saunders, part of the second cohort of officers to join the squad.
After attending a few Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) meetings in late 1968, Edwards was tasked with infiltrating anarchist groups in east London. He reported on meetings of the West Ham Anarchists and anarchist publisher Freedom Press, before SDS manager Conrad Dixon redirected him into the Independent Labour Party (ILP).
Although the ILP was nominally Edwards’ main target from June 1969, he described the group as a ‘handle to swing’ into several other organisations on which he reported.
These included the Tri-continental Committee, the Dambusters Mobilising Committee, Action Committee Against NATO, the VSC, the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign and the Socialist Alliance Against Racism.
According to Edwards, his deployment ended at his request in May 1971 and he spent the rest of his career in other parts of Special Branch before retiring in the early 2000s.
Edwards gave written and oral evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry. This profile is based on these documents and, where mentioned, intelligence reports bearing Edwards’ name released by the Inquiry.
Doug Edwards joined the Metropolitan Police in 1964 and after completing his initial training was posted to a north London police station. Unhappy in this uniformed policing role, he successfully applied to join Special Branch and in 1968, having passed the relevant course, was posted to C Squad.
This unit dealt with communists and subversives, public-order issues and what was later labelled ‘domestic extremism’ ; ‘left-wing enquiries’, in Edwards’ own words:
Day-to-day, I would carry out these enquiries. Sometimes there would be a little bit of subterfuge involved. We would do what was called a 'knock-knock' and pretend to be someone else to find out about the individual who was the subject of an enquiry.
In this context, he said that to be a Special Branch officer:
You needed to identify people and try and understand what their political beliefs were. And it was... reported back so that there were records of these people to be called upon if need be.
Asked why people’s political beliefs were being recorded, he answered:
Well, it was just part and parcel of being an SB officer, to try and get this information, to try and understand what groups they were allocated to; because there's all sorts of rivalries in different groups and some were Trotskyite [sic] people that were bent on causing violence, and anarchist groups that were causing violence at demonstrations.
Edwards stated that before joining the SDS, the only undercover policing of sorts that he had carried out was when he had been assigned to monitor a fellow officer drinking after hours.
However, evidence released by the Inquiry shows that before the founding of the SDS, in early August 1968, Edwards was gathering intelligence in plain clothes on behalf of C Squad. He reported on a Marylebone Magistrates Court hearing on 3 July 1968, describing three people being sentenced with fines for a demonstration in Powis Square in Notting Hill, west London on 25 May 1968.
Another report mentions Edwards, then still at C Squad, joining four undercover officers attending a large public meeting of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) in October 1968 just after the large anti-Vietnam War demonstration. Among them was SDS founder and commanding officer HN325 Conrad Dixon.
These reports show how the SDS was, in a way, a continuation of intelligence-gathering on left-wing groups by Special Branch’s B and C squads. From there, Dixon set up the SDS and recruited former colleagues into the unit for long-term undercover operations.
After a short time, during his two years’ Special Branch probation, Edwards was recruited by HN1251 Detective Inspector Phil Saunders. He was deployed after the 27 October 1968 anti-Vietnam war demonstration and therefore does not belong to the very first cohort of undercovers.
Having serving in the back office of the SDS from November 1968, Edwards’ first report is from February 1969. He left the unit after just over two years, in May 1971. To date, no one from Edwards’ target groups has provided information on his infiltration, and it is unclear how much effort the Inquiry made to locate contemporary witnesses.
This means that any comments on Edwards’ attitude and personality entirely rely on his written witness statement or on the transcripts of his oral testimony at the Inquiry on 13 November 2020, 50 years after his deployment. Furthermore, the Inquiry hearings asked Edwards no questions about his cover personality.
Training
Like most other former SDS officers, Edwards said he ‘did not receive any training, formal or informal, for the role of an undercover police officer’ before he was deployed. Nor did he get formal ethical guidance on whether it was permissible to enter to sexual relationships with members of the groups he was monitoring.
Edwards said: ‘In those days, we lived by what I perceive to be higher moral standards than today.’
In his written statements and at the witness hearings, Edwards emphasised that undercover officers were not allowed to take part in any criminal activity, no matter how minor. His memories on this, though, seem to be quite contradictory.
He claimed he did not attend any meetings of the East London Libertarians, because the group engaged in criminal activity such as sit-ins. However, he did recollect West Ham Anarchists, whose meetings he did attend, committing minor criminal offences.
For the same reason, Edwards said that he would never get involved in occupying houses, see below. However, squatting was not a criminal offence in England and Wales until 2012.
Tradecraft
Before his deployment, Edwards was not given any guidance or instruction about creating a cover identity: ‘I was just told to get an identity and to get a job.’ Like many officers from the early days of the SDS, his ‘legend’ was not well developed; he ‘just played it by ear’ and relied on his cover employment as a lorry driver.
This is an early example of SDS use of fake – ‘duff’, in SDS parlance – jobs that required working away from home to give the officer an excuse not to be at their undercover address. Additionally, this job meant that he could not easily be reached by telephone.
Edwards changed his appearance by growing his hair and beard to fit better into the activist milieu. It was this tactic that gained the SDS the nickname, ‘The Hairies’. The only identity document that Edwards had in his cover name was his rent book for his cover address in the E15 area of east London.
Secrecy
Discretion and secrecy was the order of the day, Edwards explained in his written statement:
Say nothing about anything, this was communicated to me right from the very start. Even other members of my unit were not aware of my undercover name and which groups I infiltrated.
At the time of his deployment, he was living with his parents: ‘I told them I was on the Drugs squad.’ Edwards couldn't recall a conversation about secrecy at the end of his deployment: ‘It was just the nature of the job that you didn't talk about it’.
Report writing
In his written statement , Edwards sketched out the report writing process, aimed at suggesting that little can unambiguously be attributed to him personally:
After attending a meeting or a demonstration, I wrote out by hand or typed out what I had learnt on a bit of paper in the [SDS] flat. This bit of paper would then be taken over to the Yard via a secure bag: either someone from the Yard would come to the SDS flat with the secure bag in order to pick up the information, or we would meet someone at a location away from the Yard in order to hand the information over. Sometimes it was [Detective Inspector] Phil Saunders who would go between the Yard and the SDS flat to collect our intelligence, but it was also often an officer of a lesser rank.
Reports were then collated and typed up in full in the office, either by the officers in the office — Bill Furner, Roy Creamer and Dave Smith— or by the typing pool. They typed the reports with the appropriate formatting and alignment on a better typewriter than we had access to in the SDS flat. When drafting the reports, those in the office would collate all of the information provided about a particular meeting, demonstration, or issue. They would look at the information I provided on the bits of paper alongside other information.
His detailed account of the process of the creation of the reports, contrasts with his somewhat vaguer recollection of content, as shown below. Edwards also suggested that some reports were attributed to him and other undercover officers to justify their deployments:
When there were quieter periods for SDS officers, I assume that intelligence reports were put in their name to justify their continued deployment. It is an assumption I have made since being shown the reports […] because there are certain reports which bear my name but I do not recall having any involvement with these groups.
Edwards was tasked to infiltrate anarchist groups in the East End of London, his only direction being to ‘hang around’ Piccadilly Circus to be recruited into a group as, he said, ‘this was where they thought these anarchist groups tended to congregate’. He also mentioned that among other back-office staff in the SDS, the supposed police expert on anarchist groups, HN3093 Sergeant Roy Creamer gave him some advice.
Having failed to make any inroads with the anarchists around Piccadilly Circus, Edwards moved his attention to the East End of London, frequenting local pubs where he thought such people would meet. He went to a few meetings to find out what groups were doing.
The names Edwards could remember were West Ham Anarchists (WHA) and Freedom Press. Some of these groups were ‘quite nasty pieces of work insofar as they would cause criminal damage and go wild at demonstrations’, he told the Inquiry:
For example, I remember at a demonstration outside the South African Embassy in Trafalgar Square cries of ‘Anarchista!’ and demonstrators throwing objects at the Embassy...It got a bit tasty. They started smashing windows and it was violent and – there we are. The mounted police came in then, to try and stop things.
West Ham Anarchists
The West Ham Anarchists (WHA) appear to have been active between 1966 and 1969 in the East End of London. During the run-up to the 1966 general election, they disrupted a hustings which was captured on film.
Beyond this, little is known about the group’s activities, although it did publish a newspaper named Black Mass in 1969.
The Inquiry released three intelligence reports based on Edwards’ spying on the WHA. The first is dated 22 January 1969 and discussed some leafleting the group was planning to carry out around a local byelection, and making another leaflet to attack the fascist National Front (NF). The leaflet was to be printed at Freedom Press, home of the longest-running British anarchist newspaper and print shop.
The next report is dated 26 April 1969. A gap of almost four months between the first and second report suggests that several reports based on Edwards’ intelligence are missing, or for whatever reason have not been disclosed by the Inquiry.
This report pointed out the decline in the frequency of meetings and the number of people attending to ‘no more than 12’. Whether this represented a marked decline in membership of the group is not known; however, to put this in context, the anarchist movement from this period, and to the present day, is often small and local groups of this size are commonplace.
The report goes on to describe dismissively the group as students and school leavers all around ‘20 years of age’ and ‘long haired’, participating in activities such as anti-Vietnam war marches and ‘minor acts of malicious damage’ against the local Conservative and Labour Party offices.
It then critiques the members’ supposed lack of knowledge about anarchist political theory. It singles out one particular member for being connected with other groups, including the umbrella London Federation of Anarchists , the Ilford Branch of ‘the International Socialism Group [sic]’ and the aforementioned Freedom Press and East London Libertarians. A West Ham Anarchists member’s mother is noted to have moved away from anarchism towards Christianity.
Another member is described as being involved in a ‘breakaway group which committed minor criminal damage’ after a demonstration outside Rhodesia House on 12 January 1969. Interestingly enough, this incident was discussed in the House of Commons, with members asking questions about how the police made their decisions on the day and about whether any prosecutions would follow the arrests.
The third and final report by Edwards on the WHA is dated 29 April 1969 and contains personal details about two members.
It says the father of one is employed as a motor mechanic and that the other’s is a clerk at ‘Stratford Goods Yard, E15’. Asked why this was recorded, Edwards had nothing to say beyond that this was probably intelligence inserted by the back-office of the SDS.
From 1970 onwards, no listing or mention of the group has been found in any archived anarchist publications. The group’s apparent demise is not known to be connected to Edwards’ infiltration, which happened around the same time – although it does beg the question why the SDS needed to target the group at this point.
The Family Squatting Campaign
A group with a particular focus on squatting, the East London Libertarians set up the Family Squatting Campaign in 1968, following various squatting movements in the first half of the twentieth century. Among its organisers was Ron Bailey.
The Libertarians operated in the same area as the West Ham Anarchists, leading to an overlap in activities that is mirrored in SDS reporting. At the WHA meeting on 20 January 1969, a member of East London Libertarians proposed a squatting action a fortnight later, which was discussed.
The plan was to ‘establish some homeless families... in empty council houses’. The Libertarians occupied four houses in the borough of Redbridge and some members of West Ham Anarchists squatted a former post office building on the nearby Cleveland Road, also in east London.
It is unclear if SDS intelligence on the planned squatting action was passed on to uniformed police. Since the anarchists succeeded, the police may have been wrong-footed by the fact that the organisers had said they would meet at Manor Park station in the neighbouring borough of Newham.
‘A waste of time’
It became apparent to Edwards and his supervisors that these anarchist groups were ‘a waste of time’. The decision to withdraw was approved by Conrad Dixon , then commanding officer of the SDS.
The 1969 SDS Annual Report revealed a bit more about the SDS‘ departure from anarchist groups:
The distasteful nature of the way of life of such people, which officers must assume, adds to the difficulties of penetration. Small groups can be and have been penetrated with some success by the [SDS], but their tendency to act in isolation makes the value of full time coverage questionable.
Independent Labour Party
Leaving anarchist circles, it was decided that Edwards would join the Independent Labour Party (ILP), a small, left-wing political party.
Established in 1893, the ILP’s heyday predated the second world war. In the early 1960s, it was involved in opposition to the nuclear arms race and promoted ideas such as workers’ control. It also campaigned for decolonisation.
At the time of Edwards’ infiltration, its national membership totalled 742 and the London Division, which he monitored, included branches in west London, Woolwich, Bexleyheath and Tower Hamlets. While the choice of Edwards’ initial targets appears to be related to the SDS’ remit of public-order issues, the same could not be said of surveilling the ILP, as Edwards acknowledged himself:
They were quite left-wing but very pleasant, sociable people wrapped up in the world of intellectual Marxism. They were people who would like to have been politicians. The ILP did not do very much, to be honest. They would support different demonstrations depending on the issue.
In his written statement, Edwards contradicted himself about the nature of this group. First he said that the ILP ‘did support demonstrations that were seen to have the potential to undermine parliamentary democracy’, but later in the same document he stated that the group did not participate in criminal activity or public disorder.
In the SDS Annual Report for 1969, however, the ILP was presented as a ‘main threat to public order’ of that year.
Reporting on the ILP
If you wanted to stay a member, you had to go to branch meetings, Edwards explained in his statement, adding that he was also involved in ‘making flyers and things’. Although he claimed he only interacted with members at meetings and drinks afterwards, it is clear that he got quite integrated into the group.
For instance, he was invited to the wedding of two ILP members and and attended their reception. He also became the treasurer of the Tower Hamlets branch, a position indicating a degree of trust, given the access to bank and membership details that come with it.
His first report on the ILP, dated 16 June 1969, is an introduction to the party, its structure and size, and political tensions described as being between a revolutionary and a non-revolutionary wing. ‘The I.L.P. are on the whole content to work within the framework of conventional politics’.
However, ‘there is a trend within the party towards Revolutionary socialism and this has brought some of its members to notice in a public order context’.
This seems to serve as an implicit justification for monitoring the group, though when asked at the hearings how militant the Tower Hamlets branch he infiltrated was, Edwards answered:
I don't think they were that [militant], there were some pleasant enough blokes there. They'd turn out for the usual demonstrations, that's all.
Edward’s second report, dated 14 June 1969, records a meeting of the Tower Hamlets branch, a planned demonstration against a fascist rally at Laurie Hall in Romford, Essex on 29 June 1969 and a leaflet regarding a local rent struggle. At that point in time, there was a registry file on the ILP, but not one on the Tower Hamlets branch.
The third report dated 22 August 1969 contains the details of a member of the ILP, name redacted, who is said to have taken part in two demonstrations organised by the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign (ICRSC), see below.
The next three reports, from late September and late October, mainly concern the organising committee of the ILP and plans for a controversial debate with the fascist National Front.
The last of these is a report on a meeting held on 14 October 1969 that was attended by only three people. When asked at the hearing about his involvement in decision making, Edwards stated that he definitely did not influence the ‘direction of travel’ of the group – without explaining how he avoided expressing support, or opposition, for proposals at meetings with such a low attendance.
Edwards also played down the significance of his role as Tower Hamlets branch treasurer in this regard, seemingly not understanding how having had a position of influence in a group he infiltrated might be controversial, instead emphasising the very small amounts of money involved.
National Front Debate
The planned debate between the ILP and the NF led to one of the few incidents during his deployment that Edwards could remember, though he got confused about the details.
Debating with fascists had generally been seen as unacceptable – with a ‘no platform’ policy across the left, inspired by popular anti-fascist actions all over the UK both before and after the second world war. The proposed ILP-NF debate attracted similar criticism.
Edwards recalled that the plans ‘got a bit out of order’:
The fascists [sic] got to hear of this debate taking place and there was a mob... we were all sitting outside the pub having a pint before the meeting when... a big swarm of people came in and started punching everybody and sorting it all out.
However, Edwards corrected himself by saying that, in fact, it was members of the International Socialists , later known as the Socialist Workers Party, who attacked the ILP, angry about the debate with the NF.
The rest of the story sounded like an anecdote he had told before, perhaps at an SDS reunion. He said that his supervisors HN1251 Phil Saunders and PN1748 Riby Wilson were in a car outside the pub – and claimed that if he had been attacked they would have helped out. The punchline was Edwards doubting if indeed they would have intervened.
Edwards’ involvement in the ILP came to an end when he realised he had had enough of being an undercover officer in the SDS. He stated: ‘I simply stopped attending meetings and demonstrations and disappeared from the ILP: they wouldn’t have missed me’.
The SDS did not have any real interest in the ILP, Edwards said. There was another reason why the party became his main target between 1969 until 1971:
[It was] to have a ‘handle to swing' into other groups. By this, I mean that I could use my membership of the ILP as a means of going to almost any other meeting.
It’s worth saying that the other groups that Douglas targeted, discussed below – the Tri-continental Committee, Dambusters Mobilising Committee and anti-apartheid groups – hardly fitted into the category of posing a risk to public order or of subversion.
While Edwards claimed his membership of the ILP gave him a ‘handle to swing’, he did not seriously penetrate any other groups during his deployment. Going by the Special Branch reports the Inquiry managed to locate and publish, there is not enough evidence to claim that he infiltrated any of the groups mentioned by its Chair John Mitting.
The three reports on the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign (ICRSC) only laterally touch on the group itself; hardly evidence of Douglas infiltrating them. None of the three reports about the Dambusters Mobilising Committee published by the Inquiry were really his.
Edwards’ redacted signature appears on three reports of meetings of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) in the autumn of 1970, two years after the large October 1968 demonstration.
Similarly, Edwards denied that information about a meeting held by the British Albania Society in Derbyshire in May 1970 and chaired by Harpal Brar of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) could have been based on his direct knowledge as he could not remember anything about the group or event.
Action Committee Against NATO and Tri-continental Committee
Edwards reported on just one joint meeting of the Action Committee Against NATO (ACAN) and Tri-continental Committee, which was attended only by its chair and two others: it is unclear whether these others included the undercover officer.
The group was, apparently, preparing a forum on 10 December 1969. The report mentions printing posters, advertisements in Socialist Worker, Black Dwarf and Peace News and organising music and a film. A deposit for a room in Conway Hall, central London, was paid by Tri-continental, a small Cuba/Moscow-oriented group.
As part of the organising, letters were to be circulated to a list of groups that were probably on the committee as well; the African National Congress, Portuguese Student Alliance, the Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation , the Haslemere Group, League for Democracy in Greece and the Committee Against Greek Dictatorship.
Interestingly, the SDS report mentioned that the letter was duplicated by someone in the Tower Hamlets ILP but, as the name is redacted, it is unclear whether this relates to Edwards. Still, according to the report, these letters had been ‘previously drafted by the Committee (and submitted with report dated 24th October, 1969)’.
Unfortunately, that 24 October report has not been disclosed, but it seems fair to conclude that Edwards had access to the letter, was probably at the meeting where it was drafted, and may have volunteered to duplicate it.
At the Inquiry witness hearings this issue of Edwards’ role was not brought up. When asked why the SDS was monitoring the group, the undercover officer uttered some generalities – referring to NATO’s importance in the UK’s security policy, and that some of the people attending were likely to be troublemakers.
Dambusters Mobilising Committee
The Dambusters Mobilising Committee (DMC) was a coalition of groups that included the Anti-Apartheid Movement, Haslemere Group and Committee for Freedom in Mozambique, Angola and Guiné. Its focus was preventing the construction of the huge Cabora Bassa dam in Mozambique, a project intended to supply electricity to apartheid South Africa.
The Inquiry disclosed only three reports on DMC associated with Edwards, none of which – on closer inspection – were really his.
The first, dated 11 February 1970, is merely a summary of the minutes of a DSM meeting ‘received from an informant’ on possible plans and previous events. All Edwards – or more likely his SDS colleagues at the back office – did was add ‘references to persons mentioned in the minutes’.
The second, dated 7 October 1970, is probably wrongly associated to Edwards by the Inquiry, as it does not carry his name and is signed by HN339 Detective Sergeant ‘Stewart Goodman’ , another undercover officer who had just started spying on this group as well.
The third report, from 5 April 1971, just before Edwards’ deployment ended, is signed by an inspector, name redacted: Edwards was a constable at the time. While it might be based on intelligence gathered by him, such as undisclosed reports on recent DMC meetings, this focuses on the activities around the AGMs of several companies involved in plans for the Cabora Bassa dam.
The report signals that members of DMC had purchased shares in Barclays Bank to make their voice heard at the AGM, while others would picket outside. The Inspector anticipated, ‘because of the amount of persons holding shares that on this occasion the protest will be more vociferous than previously’.
Though the disruption planned seems hardly an issue of public order or subversion, Special Branch is on top of things: ‘Enquiries by the Branch are in hand to determine the details of all the shareholders mentioned above’.
Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign
The Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign (ICRSC) was closely connected to the International Socialists , later the Socialist Workers Party, and counted as a member the well-known civil-rights campaigner Bernadette Devlin, who was an MP from 1969 to 1974.
The group was extensively monitored and infiltrated by several other SDS officers: HN68 ‘Sean Lynch’, HN340 ‘Andy Bailey’ and HN135 Mike Ferguson. In the opening hearing of the Inquiry, legal representatives of the various police bodies pointed to the political situation in Northern Ireland at the time to justify the continuance of the SDS.
The Inquiry put Edwards’ name to three Special Branch reports which mention the ICRSC but the undercover said he never attended any meetings of the group, so could not see how he would be the source for the intelligence attributed to him.
A closer look at the reports shows that each touches only laterally on the Irish group: the first is a telegram about something Edwards overheard while he ‘was attending to another matter’ in a pub where the ICRSC held a meeting.
The second and third consist of intelligence on individuals allegedly supporting the Islington branch of the ICRSC , and the fourth mentions an Irish Solidarity Campaign leaflet attacking the use of CS gas in Northern Ireland, although the pamphlet is not disclosed.
Miscellaneous
Two other reports signed by Edwards are best categorised as miscellaneous. The first mentions the founding of a new group called Socialist Alliance Against Racism and the factions involved in its formation.
During the evidence hearings, the Counsel to the Inquiry asked why this information would have been of interest to Special Branch. It questioned how a group that had not yet started could be designated either a public-order or subversive threat to allow targeting by the SDS.
In response, Edwards muttered that it was unfair to criticise the gathering of such information in hindsight, especially given the political context of the times
The second report covers an even shorter announcement where and when the British Albania Society would hold a meeting in Derbyshire, noting that it would be addressed by Harpal Brar, who was chair until 2018 of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist).
Again, Edwards could not recall anything about this group – understandable, in this case, if it was only the one event and ‘received from a reliable source’.
The Inquiry has released a number of reports submitted in the name of Douglas Edwards, see Document Overview, over which the former officer threw doubt on the authorship and provenance of the intelligence. However, at the hearings, Edwards agreed he was likely to be the ‘reliable source’ of at least some of the information in most of the reports.
Often, when asked about particular details of a report or fellow officers, he exclaimed that he could not be expected to remember after such a long period: ‘Cor, blimey! I can't remember that. Goodness me.’
In contrast, he was able to specifically deny he attended two meetings of the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign.
Edwards remained in Special Branch for the rest of his career, but could not remember the details of the roles he undertook or how long he stayed in each posting.
He ‘spent a few years on D Squad, dealing with naturalisation enquiries and writing lengthy reports for the Home Office about people I had interviewed who were seeking British citizenship’. He was posted to P Squad, the Ports Office and, beyond that, a long section in his witness statement on ‘other sensitive postings’ is redacted.
In the last two or three years of his police career, he was posted to the ‘vetting office’. This section of the Special Branch conducted security vetting for applicants for jobs within the Metropolitan Police Service, with Edwards describing it as a collaborative process with MI5.
Edwards retired from the MPS at the rank of acting detective sergeant in the early 2000s. The exact date is redacted in his witness statement.
Edwards was not happy with the way the Metropolitan Police treated him when it investigated the undercover-policing scandal, as he explained in his risk assessment.
Having been involved in the deployment of HN16 ‘James Straven’ , Edwards was asked to provide information about Straven to the Inquiry. Edwards said he had specifically requested officers from ‘an operation’ – redacted but probably from Operation Herne – not to come and see him at home.
Two – in Edwards’ words ‘unthinking officers’ – came to his home anyway, ‘creating a great deal of distress’ for his wife.
The MPS applied for a restriction order over Edwards’ real name in August 2017. Since no application over his cover name was made, it was formally disclosed in the same month, see document tab. In his Minded-To note, Inquiry Chair Mitting wrote:
He has been careful to preserve his anonymity and is worried about disclosure of his real name. He is concerned that it may be discovered by organisations such as undercoverresearch.net and fears media intrusion. He suffers from conditions that may be exacerbated by worry. His cover name will be published.
The Inquiry's non-state core participants, i.e. people who were spied upon, argued against this in October 2017, but after a hearing on 21 November, Mitting ruled in favour of the restriction on 5 December 2017: ‘I am satisfied that publication of HN326’s real name would interfere with his right to respect for his private life and that the interference is not necessary to permit the terms of reference of the Inquiry to be fulfilled’.
The Restriction Order over Edwards’ real name was made on 8 December 2017.