Barry Moss, the undercover HN218 'Barry Morris', was born in 1945. He joined the Metropolitan Police in 1964 and started working in Special Branch as a detective constable in January 1968, covering the Communist Party of Great Britain and other left-wing groups in the Barnet and south Hertfordshire area.
Part of the original cohort recruited into the SDS by HN325 Conrad Dixon in July 1968, he infiltrated the October 27th Committee for Solidarity with Vietnam and spied on other Maoist groups associated with Abhimanyu Manchanda. He also spied on the Earl's Court and Notting Hill branches of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign.
Moss says he was the first SDS officer to leave the newly formed unit, departing at the end of September 1968 to start an accelerated-promotion course at Bramshill police training college. After completing this, he spent years in various Metropolitan Police Special Branch squads and CID before returning to take charge of the SDS as a detective chief inspector in 1980. He later rose to become Commander of Special Branch in October 1996, staying in that role until his retirement in 1999.
Unless otherwise indicated, the information below is taken from the Moss' first witness statement to the Undercover Policing Inquiry. It covers Moss' period as an undercover officer with the SDS in August and September 1968.
Information about his return to SDS as its operational head in 1980 will be added at a later date, along with discussion of the accusation by former undercover-turned-whistleblower HN43 Peter Francis' that Moss instructed him, when he was Commander of Special Branch, to withhold information from the Macpherson Inquiry.
Moss joined the Metropolitan Police in 1964 and Special Branch in January 1968. He was tasked with reporting on meetings and collecting information on activists in the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and other left-wing political organisations in Barnet and south Hertfordshire, most likely for C Squad and, when requested, MI5. He did this by attending meetings in plain clothes and using false names, but he did not join the groups he was spying on.
The Inquiry has released 15 reports on meetings attended by Moss between 6 August and 23 September 1968 covering several anti-Vietnam war groups. Those dated between 6 August and 4 September read more like conventional Special Branch surveillance reports than ones written by an officer operating undercover; it is possible they predate Moss' time with SDS or that he started off surveilling anti-Vietnam war groups rather than infiltrating them until he encountered leading Maoist activist Abhimanyu Manchanda and found his mark.
As Moss was a very early recruit to the SDS, during his initial time in the unit its offices were still based in Scotland Yard, though there was also 'a discreet office in West London' where undercovers and managers could meet. He guesses he went to Scotland Yard in his real identity each morning and attended meetings of his target group undercover in the evenings and weekends. 'I spent a few hours every week with my targets. There wasn't much happening during the week, most of the activists had jobs.'
Work at Scotland Yard included researching his target activists and groups by looking up their Special Branch registry files, attending meetings, typing up reports and discussing with HN325 Conrad Dixon and HN1251 Phil Saunders what he was observing while undercover.
Explaining the major difference between working in SDS and one of the other Special Branch squads, Moss said he had more choice over his work and did not have to be available for routine Special Branch tasking.
'In normal Special Branch work you were given tasks with specific enquiries: you were handed a file with a task in it and you were required to complete the task in a reasonable timescale,' Moss explained. 'You were also told to attend public meetings. Additionally, you would have to undertake "reserve duty", where you manned the phones in Special Branch, answered enquiries and undertook searches. In contrast, whilst on the S[D]S you had a lot more freedom.'
Like other early SDS officers, Moss said the management structure of the SDS was fluid, but Dixon was unmistakably the boss. 'Conrad Dixon managed the SDS by force of character and in a "hands-on" manner. He was larger than life physically, mentally and had real charisma', Moss wrote in his witness statement. 'If he as a Chief Inspector told you to do something, you did it.'
Dixon and Saunders were unusual as managers in that they took part in plain-clothes work spying on activists, rather than just staying in the office. Although they were 'appreciative' bosses, according to Moss, 'if one of us had strayed they would have put us straight'.
Moss denies any knowledge of his colleagues 'straying' during his two months with the SDS in 1968 and says he did not have sex with target activists while undercover, assume any positions of trust within the groups he was spying on, take part in, witness or incite any criminal acts, give evidence in court under a false name, spy on elected politicians or hear any legally privileged information. The intelligence he gathered was not used in any criminal prosecutions.
Being assigned to the SDS had no effect on his pay – Moss said detectives received a flat-rate allowance for doing out-of-hours work and so would not have been offered additional overtime pay for SDS duties.
Moss gave some useful information about the wording of SDS reports, explaining that when they indicated information had come from an informant, this actually would have come from the officer who wrote the report. 'I didn't use informants on the S[D]S and we used that phrase commonly at that time to refer to ourselves,' he said.
Presumably writing up reports like this was meant to obscure the fact that there was an undercover officer in the group. Of course SDS undercovers could not use informants, as this would have revealed to the informant their true identity as a police officer.
An undercover might, however, sometimes indicate their true identity to uniformed colleagues at an event, to direct their attention to certain activists. 'On a rare occasion you might as a Special Branch officer highlight to your uniformed colleagues trouble makers,' Moss explained.
Public meetings attended and reported on by Moss were often also attended by uniformed police, and sometimes several other SDS officers, including Conrad Dixon. He did not witness any public disorder, violence or subversion while undercover, concluding: 'The group I joined wasn't really trying to overthrow the government, they just wanted a big demonstration.'
Nonetheless, Moss felt the SDS had done a good job averting public disorder at the October 1968 march and noted that a 'byproduct of that work was identifying the membership of these groups which may have been of use to Special Branch further down the line’.
Moss did not comment on whether it was ethical or proportionate for Special Branch and, by extension, MI5 to retain intelligence on activists and groups that had shown themselves to be neither a threat to public order nor to democratic government. Moss claims that, as a relative newcomer to Special Branch, his understanding of the relationship between it and MI5 was limited, though he was aware that part of Special Branch's remit was to share information with MI5 to help counter subversion.
Moss gave evidence in his witness statement that the SDS sent 'a high volume of information' to MI5, though he did not have any personal contact with MI5 during his short deployment.
Recruitment
Moss had spent only a few months in Special Branch before being asked to join the SDS, probably at the start of August 1968. He says he understood the SDS' role to be limited to intelligence-gathering about the activists and groups involved in planning the 27 October anti-Vietnam war demonstration in London, writing in his witness statement: 'We all believed the SDS was short term.'
Moss was assigned to the SDS and had not applied to join it: 'In those days you did what you were told by people of more senior rank than you.' As he was single at the time, the issue of any potential impact on a partner did not arise and he does not remember whether there was any explanation what the work would involve. Part of the very first cohort of SDS undercovers, Moss recalls:
...being called into a room with Detective Chief Superintendent Arthur Cunningham, along with a dozen or so others, most of us there were newbies... I think that was why we were chosen, as we were less likely to be recognised. At the meeting we were told that we had to go out and get sufficient intelligence on the October 1968 event in order to prevent injury and damage to property. We were then left with DCI Conrad Dixon and DI Phil Saunders.
Tradecraft
Prior to seeing documents released by the Inquiry, Moss claims he could not remember his undercover surname, guessing it was either 'Morse' or 'Morris'. He says he did not arrange cover employment or spend any time researching or living in his cover identity before being deployed. In terms of appearance, he dressed the same as he had when working in plain clothes for Special Branch.
I would go around unshaven and generally looked a bit unkempt,' Moss remembers. 'I would also have worn a leather jacket and had longer hair than usual.
Showing how casually risk was managed in the early days of the SDS, Moss says he used his own car registered in his real name while undercover, even occasionally giving activists lifts in it. He did arrange a cover address, however, as his real home was in special police accommodation. He chose a place in west London but did not stay there.
Training
Moss, like other early SDS undercovers, says there was no formal training or welfare provision. 'The operation was unsophisticated and we thought it was only short term.' He relied on his Special Branch experience to know what information was worth passing on. 'It was the human side you were interested in,' Moss explained. 'For example the individuals associates, rather than the politics generally – unless there was a subversive element to it.'
He would check activists' names against registry files once back at Scotland Yard. If undercovers had questions about their deployments, they could ask managers Dixon and Saunders for advice.
Undercovers received no guidance on ethical issues such as forming sexual relationships while undercover, reporting on activists' families and private lives, avoiding inciting or taking part in criminal activity, what to do if arrested while undercover or how to handle legally privileged information. Neither did they ask for nor receive any support for their welfare. 'The culture in 1968 was such that you probably wouldn't have admitted the need for support even if I had needed it,' Moss reflected.
Moss thinks he may have been arrested for either fly-posting or for being drunk and disorderly while undercover but did not give, and was not asked to provide, any details. He also recalls discussion in the SDS office about how fellow undercover HN68 'Sean Lynch' should handle being arrested, after SDS managers were told he was going to be for fly posting. The consensus, Moss remembers, was that Lynch should accept being arrested and plead guilty at court.
For more information about this see the profiles of Lynch and HN3093 Roy Creamer and entry on Undercover Arrest Policy.
SDS head HN325 Conrad Dixon did the tasking, according to Moss, but within this undercovers had latitude to join groups they thought worth reporting on. Moss thinks he joined the Britain Vietnam Solidarity Front (BVSF) on his own initiative after seeing a meeting advertised on a noticeboard at a polytechnic he says he attended. It is not clear from he evidence whether he meant was studying there in real life or as part of his undercover identity.
Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC)
The first two of Moss' 15 reports released by the Inquiry, dated 6 and 7 August, are about a public meeting of the Notting Hill VSC that the local Harrow Road police station notified Special Branch about earlier in the day.
As one is marked to be circulated to HN325 Conrad Dixon, it is unlikely to have originated from his newly formed SDS. The other, information on the identities of the speakers at the meeting, contains the information that Moss has covertly followed them back to someone's house after the meeting, so he cannot have been accepted as a fellow activist at that point or there would have been no need for subterfuge.
Moss's presence at an 11 August public meeting of the Notting Hill VSC is noted in a report by HN327 Dave Fisher , who was an undercover officer in the SDS at that time. A copy of Black Power organisation, the Universal Coloured People's Association's (UCPA) publication Black Power Newsletter is included in the report. A UCPA member, Tony Soares, attended meetings of the Notting Hill VSC.
The report dated 16 August is a digest of the contents of the Lambeth VSC branch's magazine Co-ordinator, which Moss notes he acquired at Speaker's Corner on 11 August 1968. As Speakers' Corner was a regular haunt for Black Power activists and plain-clothes Special Branch officers monitoring their activity, perhaps Moss was there attempting to gather more information about the distributor of the Black Power Newsletter from the 7 August meeting.
The 4 September report is an update on Maoist activist Abhimanyu Manchanda's movements, undertaken by covert surveillance , again suggesting that Moss was not yet undercover.
October 27th Committee for Solidarity with Vietnam
Moss only recalled spying on Maoist groups, expressing surprise in his witness statement at the reports on other groups signed by him. While he may simply have spied on groups like the Notting Hill VSC, by mid-September he was in a position to infiltrate the Maoist October 27th Committee for Solidarity with Vietnam , which was formed at a meeting in a pub in Islington, London on 15 September 1968.
The Committee was the brainchild of Manchanda and brought together groups that were unhappy with the direction of leadership of the VSC on the planned 27 October 'Autumn Offensive' demonstration. These included, but were not limited to, the Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation (RSSF) , the Earl's Court branch of the VSC and Manchanda's Britain Vietnam Solidarity Front (BVSF).
In his guise as a Maoist activist, Moss attended meetings of other groups such as the Joint Committee of Communists on 7 September, at which Manchanda suggested the group should try to take over the Trotskyite RSSF and the VSC Ad Hoc Committee on 17 September, where Maoists heckled the speakers.
He attended meetings of Earl's Court VSC on 9 September, where committee members were elected and a motion passed that the branch would disobey the VSC leadership and march to the American embassy on 27 October , on 12 September where the meeting was chaired by exiled Peruvian Maoist political activist Adolfo Olaechea and on 23 September, where Moss' replacement HN335 Mike Tyrrell took over reporting duties.
A 19 September report contains an internal paper on the RSSF written by International Marxist Group (IMG) and VSC founder Ernie Tate. As well as attending meetings, Moss said he went to Maoism political discussion groups, banner-making sessions and to the pub with his target group.
At the end of September, with a view to his impending exfiltration, Moss took his planned replacement undercover Mike Tyrrell to the 22 September meeting of the 27th October Committee, where he introduced him as his 'best pal'. The pair also attended a 23 September public meeting of the Earl's Court VSC, on which Tyrrell wrote a report.
Moss' last undercover assignment appears to have been a private strategy meeting of the planning committee of the October 27th Committee in an activist's home on 24 September. That he was invited to this meeting suggests Moss had taken a position of influence within the group.
He doesn't recall how he exfiltrated: 'I think I may have made up a family incident which required me to leave London.' He was the first SDS officer to exit the squad, leaving safe in the knowledge that Tyrrell would continue spying on the October 27th Committee in his place.
The Inquiry released four documents relating to Moss' time after his initial SDS posting but before he rejoined the squad in 1980.
The first is a report from 10 July 1970 on an anti-apartheid activist, written by Moss while in E Squad in response to a request for identification of and information on the activist by a different branch of the Metropolitan Police. Even though Moss' report states that the activist has no criminal record and neither he or any of his associates have previously come to the attention of Special Branch, a cover note shows that Moss' report was still shared with MI5.
The other three reports are from 1-2 November 1971 and are SDS reports on meetings of the Lambeth branch of the International Socialists by HN339 'Stewart Goodman' , signed by Moss as acting chief inspector. This seems to imply that Moss was temporarily back in SDS in November 1971, covering for the squad's usual chief inspector HN332 Cameron Sinclair.
Reports signed by Sinclair as chief inspector dated 29 October and 8 November have been released by the Inquiry, so if Moss was acting as chief inspector in the SDS it was for a very short space of time. Moss was asked about this by the Inquiry and gave an explanation in his second witness statement and during his oral evidence on 13 May 2022.
Identifying handwritten markings on a report cover sheet , Moss stated that they indicated the document was an SDS report that had been passed to C Squad where he was a detective inspector at the time. 'In these cases, I was on C Squad and was receiving SDS reports and deciding on their action and further distribution.'
One of the markings that Moss said showed the reports emanated from the SDS was the code S9090 on the bottom left-hand corner of each report, which he said showed they were documents produced by S Squad, aka the SDS. Presented with the information by Counsel to the Inquiry that S Squad was not set up until 1974, Moss did not change his explanation, so this discrepancy remains.
Moss had a long and illustrious career in the Metropolitan Police, retiring as commander of Special Branch in 1999. After his initial two months as an undercover in the SDS, he returned to lead the squad in 1980 and held other senior management positions in Special Branch, the responsibilities of which included oversight of the SDS.
Moss's first destination after leaving the SDS in September 1968 was Bramshill police college, to start an 'accelerated promotion scheme'. After this he returned to Special Branch, spending time working for all the different squads to gain experience. Promoted to detective inspector, he says he worked on the Irish Squad and ports duty for three years, before leaving Special Branch to work in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).
Returning to Special Branch as a detective chief inspector in 1980, he was in charge of the SDS for a year from February 1980 before being promoted to the rank of superintendent, with overall responsibility for the SDS and other things. In January 1982, Moss says he was moved to a squad dealing with international terrorism, staying there for three years. He describes the rest of his stellar career:
In 1984 I was promoted to Chief Superintendent and worked in the uniform branch. In 1990 I was promoted to the rank of Commander responsible for the North East of London. In 1991, I returned to Special Branch as one of the two Commanders in the Branch but wasn't responsible for the SDS. In 1995, I became the Commander of Operations in Special Branch whose remit included the SDS amongst many other matters. In October 1996 responsibility for Special Branch was devolved from the Deputy Assistant Commissioner to Commander level and I became the head of Special Branch as a Commander. I retired from the MPS in that role in 1999.
All the documents mentioned in this section can be found under the Procedural tab of this profile.
Moss' real and cover names were released in May 2018 as no application for a restriction order was made. He submitted two witness statements; the first, dated 7 January 2019, was published on 12 November 2020 at the same time as a Rule 9 request for a further witness statement.
This second, much longer, witness statement was submitted on 26 July 2021 and published on the day of his oral testimony to the Inquiry, 13 May 2022. The second statement answered some further questions from the Inquiry and gave detail about his career from from 1980 onwards. Moss was questioned about both of his written statements during his oral testimony.