Born in the 1930s, HN330 'Don de Freitas' joined the Metropolitan Police in the 1950s. Towards the end of the decade he joined Special Branch's C Squad as a detective constable and worked across several other Special Branch squads during his career.
De Freitas joined the SDS in September 1968 as a detective sergeant and left shortly after the 27 October 1968 Vietnam Solidarity Campaign 'Autumn Offensive' demonstration. Returning to conventional Special Branch duties, including close-protection work, he resigned from the Metropolitan Police at an unknown later date after being demoted to a uniformed sergeant.
De Freitas was unhappy to be asked to give evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry, arguing that his involvement with SDS almost 50 years earlier had lasted a matter of weeks and that he wished to be left in peace. He did not remember details of his SDS deployment such as his cover name. In his witness statement, he wrote that being in the SDS was very similar to being in other Special Branch squads, but this could be because he has few specific memories from spending just over a month in SDS.
The information in this profile comes from the his first witness statement to the Undercover Policing Inquiry unless otherwise stated.
Documents from May 1968 released by the Inquiry show de Freitas was working for C Squad prior to joining the SDS.
The first document is a report, dated 13 May, on a planned speech by Tariq Ali to the Havering Young Liberals a week later. It is not clear whether de Freitas was the source of this information or merely received it over the phone and typed up the report. Havering Young Liberals did not have a Special Branch registry file when this report was made.
It is worth noting, however, that de Freitas's final Havering VSC meeting report lists five attendees, all redacted, one of whom, it was noted, had 'previous mentions re Havering Young Liberals and Committee of 100 activity'. It is likely, therefore, that the planned activity outlined in the 13 May report was surveilled by Special Branch officers, possibly even de Freitas, and attendees' names recorded.
The next three documents are all telegrams dated 25 May 1968. They are reports on a joint demonstration between the Notting Hill VSC and the Notting Hill People's Association about the lack of access for local children to a communal garden in Powis Square, Notting Hill, west London.
Special Branch and uniformed police attended and ten arrests, including of the organisers, were made. Plain-clothes Special Branch officers watching the march identified two Black Power activists also observing it and anarchist group, the Hyde Park Diggers, in attendance.
Although the aim of the march seems mundane, the people involved in the demonstration represented many of the political groups that Special Branch suspected of being subversive and/or a threat to public order in the febrile atmosphere of 1968.
De Freitas' time with the SDS was very short. He appears to have been tasked with infiltrating the Havering branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) immediately upon joining in late September 1968.
There is no documentary evidence of him doing any work for SDS beyond submitting reports on the Havering VSC and he says he left straight after the October 1968 demonstration.
De Freitas remembers SDS as being run without a clear chain of command – everyone reported to HN325 Conrad Dixon regardless of rank. Tasking for de Freitas' activities came from Dixon. Working for SDS had no impact on his pay.
When not undercover with Havering VSC, which was most of the time, de Freitas spent his days at Scotland Yard. He thinks there were two SDS flats in Bayswater for undercover officers but did not visit them.
While in the office he met regularly with Dixon to discuss Havering VSC and typed up written reports; his own and others’. One report dated 14 October 1968 , noting that a group of up to 50 students from Swansea was planning to attend the October march, bears de Freitas' name but was almost certainly based on intelligence from a different officer and just typed up by him in Scotland Yard.
He also remembers having a lot of downtime, as SDS officers were exempt from being asked to do ad hoc tasks for other Special Branch squads: '[To] be honest this was a little like being on holiday as during the day you would have little to do.'
He does, however, appear to have been given one ad hoc task on 3 October 1968. This was to investigate a tip off that had arrived via telegram from a Special Branch officer that someone had been trying to procure chemicals from pupils at a school in Forest Gate to make smoke bombs for the October demo.
Recruitment
De Freitas' recruitment to the SDS was very casual. He says he knew Conrad Dixon socially and one day, while passing each other in a corridor in Scotland Yard, Dixon asked him if he'd like to join SDS. 'My attitude was that I would try anything once so I joined.' No one explained what the job would involve or the impact it might have on de Freitas and his family. No managers talked to his spouse before he joined.
Training and welfare
He says the SDS operated quite informally and 'the job evolved as we were doing it'. He was not told how long he would be on the squad but understood that his task was to collect as much intelligence as possible in the run-up to the October 1968 demonstration.
Shadowing a more experienced SDS officer was usual way to learn the ropes. After that, 'so long as you got the information that was needed, you were left on your own'.
De Freitas was not given any training, advice or instructions on the parameters of ethical behaviour while undercover but says he would have 'reviewed the Special Branch files or criminal record files of attendees of the Havering VSC meetings, if they had such files'. He did not receive any support for his welfare during or after his deployment.
Tradecraft
For de Freitas, his time in SDS was similar to his regular Special Branch work, the main differences being that he used the same false name for several weeks rather than one day, and that his work focused solely on the 27 October demonstration. He therefore relied on the tradecraft he used for regular Special Branch work.
Even though Dixon warned him that the people he was spying on might try to verify his identity, de Freitas does not seem to have put much effort into his legend. He says he carried his warrant card with his real name on it while undercover, did not use cover accommodation and drove his own car to Romford, near where the Havering VSC was based.
In terms of his appearance: 'For my work on the SDS I stopped wearing a tie'. He let his hair grow for the month of his deployment and wore his weekend clothes. His cover job was as a driver for Shell, though his attempt to get a Shell employee to pretend he worked there if anyone rang did not go well.
He did not use a deceased child's name and says his undercover name was not based on a living person. In September 1968, a London-based Black Power activist called Michael de Freitas, aka Michael X, was regularly appearing in the press and in Special Branch records. Subconsciously, this might have inspired de Freitas' cover name.
De Freitas recalls that: 'My remit was to find out as much as possible about the plans of the Havering VSC for the demonstration on 27 October 1968, in particular what they hoped to do at the demonstration and identify the people involved in the group'. Within these parameters, he says, he and HN334 'Margaret White' were 'left to our own devices'.
On 26 September, de Freitas attended an open meeting of Havering International Socialists in Romford attended by 29 people including members of the VSC and Young Communist League. During the meeting, committee members for a newly formed Havering VSC were elected and the branch's first meeting planned for 30 September.
White and de Freitas infiltrated the Havering VSC between September 30 and 29 October 1968, de Freitas submitting reports from branch meetings on 30 September, 5, 19 and 29 October. 'The work with the Havering VSC generally occurred in the evenings or for the duration of an event during the day', de Freitas remembers, 'after which the group and I might go to the pub'.
In his witness statement, de Freitas asserted that White was deployed alongside him as his girlfriend simply to give him cover and played no active role in intelligence gathering. In fact she had been working for SDS for about seven weeks before he joined, surveilling various groups in plain clothes.
White submitted three reports on Havering VSC, albeit brief ones. Although de Freitas outranked White, there is no evidence that she was the lesser partner in the infiltration of Havering VSC.
De Freitas' 30 September report , describes a private meeting of nine members of the new Havering branch; it is not clear whether this number includes the two undercover police officers. The report is notable because the meeting took place in the house of a local Labour Party official, who had been recorded by Special Branch as belonging to two other groups on which it was gathering intelligence.
A subsequent report revealed that the official, secretary of the Emerson Park ward, had just resigned his Labour membership. De Freitas said in his witness statement that an activist holding a position in a mainstream political party would have been of particular interest to MI5 which, he knew, would receive his reports.
Membership fees were taken during the meeting, including new members' dues, so it is likely that de Freitas was considered a member of the branch, contrary to his witness statement. The meeting also elected a branch secretary and treasurer, most likely a combined role.
Both de Freitas and White submitted reports on a meeting at the King's Head pub in Romford on 5 October. De Freitas' report names the chairman and committee members of the Havering VSC and he has clearly had time to cross reference them with existing intelligence on IS, as he notes by each one that they have 'mentions' or 'several mentions re International Socialism'.
He also records that the Havering VSC members decided to restrict their activities to handing out leaflets locally and 'perhaps' fly-posting posters for the 27 October march and that they would concentrate most of their activity until the week before the march to avoid 'running out of steam'.
They arranged for 2,000 leaflets to be printed. De Freitas thinks he may have done some fly-posting while undercover in the Havering VSC, but cannot remember whether he discussed his participation with Dixon.
The next meeting of the Havering VSC on 15 October 1968 was again held in a private house, where membership dues were taken and 200 leaflets each given to the eight members present to distribute. Three copies of this leaflet were included in a report submitted by White on 19 October.
There is no report by White or de Freitas from the 27 October march itself, though de Freitas remembers attending the October 1968 demonstration, chanting 'Ho Ho Ho Chi Min' alongside the rest of the Havering VSC branch.
This was the full extent of their protest: 'They were peaceful. On the day of the demonstration itself they didn't even attend Grosvenor Square and disbanded before that point in the demonstration.'
The last report by de Freitas, is dated 29 October 1968. It concerns a meeting of eleven Havering VSC members to have a post-mortem on the recent demonstration.
One striking feature of the report is that there is a greater level of detail and intelligence about attendees. For example, comments on individuals present include the note that '[redacted] has in the past been wrongly identified as [redacted] in reports dealing with the October 27th demonstration' and, as previously discussed, another member is involved with Havering Young Liberals.
As with previous public Havering VSC meetings, Socialist Worker was for sale and under 'future activity' de Freitas noted a recruitment drive for International Socialists was planned for November. It seems that VSC activity was stopping and the branch was returning to IS activities.
Attendees were recorded describing the 27 October march as 'a complete and utter disaster', although reasons why are not explained, and de Freitas remarked that 'the morale of Havering V.S.C. and I.S. has hit an all time low'. Given the state of morale, he did not think the planned IS recruitment drive was likely to be very successful.
After the demonstration de Freitas had no exfiltration strategy other than to stop attending meetings, which he did after a post-march post-mortem meeting on 28 October 1968. Conrad Dixon told him his deployment was over and de Freitas believes HN326 'Douglas Edwards' replaced him in SDS, though not in Havering VSC.
De Freitas was not debriefed at the end of his deployment or offered any support or advice; he didn't feel he needed it. He thinks Conrad Dixon told the SDS that its work had been commended by the home secretary after the October 1968 march.
Although he did not personally have any contact with MI5, de Freitas knew the information he gathered for the SDS was being shared with them. '[E]verything we did was generally reported to the Security Service, it was just how it was.’
As noted, the presence of a local Labour Party official in the group would have been of specific interest to MI5. '[I]t was part of [MI5's] remit, as I understood it, to consider whether there was any infiltration of legitimate left wing political organisations by extremists.'
By de Freitas' own admission, however, Havering VSC was not an extremist group: 'I don't think what I witnessed in the Havering VSC amounted to subversive activity.'
De Freitas went back to C Squad immediately after his SDS deployment. Seven reports between January 1969 and June 1970 show him reporting on public meetings of various other groups for Special Branch.
These are a telegram containing future events dates announced at a meeting of the International Marxist Group on 25 January 1969 , a two-page report on a South Africa Freedom Day commemoration event by the Anti-Apartheid Movement at The Roundhouse in Camden on 6 July 1969 , two contemporaneous telegrams reporting on a peaceful demonstration by the Anti-Apartheid Movement outside South Africa House on the morning of 25 October 1969 and a report on the same event.
The last two reports show how intelligence from SDS was circulated to other Special Branch squads for action. The first is a telegram dated 25 June 1970 from Detective Inspector HN1251 Phil Saunders , an SDS manager.
It contains information from a 'reliable but delicate source', almost certainly HN294 who signed the telegram, about a planned action outside 10 Downing Street by the Anti-Apartheid Movement four days later. De Freitas's name is handwritten at the top of the document, presumably because he was tasked with attending the event.
His report on the event, dated 29 June 1970, notes that it was peaceful and uneventful and that a petition against selling arms to South Africa was handed into 10 Downing Street. This was copied to MI5, with a note that all the signatures on the petition would later be forwarded to the Security Service too.
Some time later, de Freitas resigned from the Metropolitan Police 'on bad terms' the day after being transferred to a uniformed branch by the assistant commissioner. This was not related to his work on SDS and may have been many years later, as he has not disclosed the date.
He was not given any guidance about using his undercover training in the private sector when he left the Metropolitan Police and says he did not do any undercover work in the private sector.
The Metropolitan Police Service applied to restrict HN330's real name in June 2017 and put forward supplementary submissions, a personal statement and a risk assessment in support of this.
HN330 refused to meet with the risk assessor, described the risk-assessment process as 'a pantomime' and made his desire to be 'left in peace' very clear in his personal statement. He is not a core participant in the Inquiry.
Mitting acceded to MPS's request, issuing a Minded To notice on 3 August 2017 and making a restriction order on 8 December 2017.
As HN330 could not remember his cover name, his identity remained completely anonymous until another former officer remembered his cover name in their evidence.
No further application was made to restrict HN330's cover name, and so it, and his target group, were released on 6 March 2018. The procedural documents relating to his involvement in the Inquiry can be found on the Procedural tab of the Documents page of this profile.