Arthur Cunningham was a chief superintendent in Special Branch before and during the early years of the SDS. He was involved in setting up the squad and was SDS head HN325 Conrad Dixon’s superior officer. He strongly supported the continuation of the SDS after the 27 October 1968 demonstration. Awarded the Queen’s Police Medal for distinguished service on 1 January 1969, Cunningham was promoted to Commander of Special Branch in June 1969, remaining in the post until August 1971. His career beyond that is unclear.
During the first day of opening statements for the Tranche 1, Phase 3 hearings of the Undercover Policing Inquiry, Inquiry Chair John Mitting speculated that Cunningham could have been the person who introduced the practice of undercover officers using dead children’s identities. Remarking that there must have been some documentary evidence of the genesis of this policy, Mitting expressed hope that the Metropolitan Police Service could find it, as otherwise there would be no way of turning his speculation into something more concrete. No further evidence on this was provided to the Inquiry.
Documents released by the Inquiry relating to Arthur Cunningham cover a four-year period from 22 August 1967, almost a year before the SDS was created, to 19 August 1971.
A chief superintendent during the October 1967 and March 1968 anti-Vietnam war demonstrations organised by the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) , Cunningham played a role in the creation of the SDS and the extension of its lifespan beyond its original remit; to collect intelligence to prevent public disorder at the 27 October 1968 VSC demonstration.
In rank, Cunningham was the superior of chief inspector HN325 Conrad Dixon and detective inspector HN1251 Phil Saunders , who both led the unit in practice. There is little of interest in the few released documents with Cunningham’s name on them. A significant minority of them are memoranda from Dixon and Saunders asking Cunningham to request money from the SDS budget to be disbursed. Many others are minute sheets or covers of reports with Cunningham’s name listed as someone who has seen, or should see, the enclosed document.
The most interesting document is perhaps a 12-page collated report, ‘The Autumn Offensive—27th October Demonstration’, dated 28 October 1968 and signed by Cunningham. The report is a blow-by-blow account of the demonstration, describing the various incidents on the march, including the confrontation between police and protestors in Grosvenor Square. It also lists participants and groups, giving brief assessments of their intentions and political outlook.
The information in the report would have come from numerous sources and mostly from observing events on the day. On page 12 of his Interim Report, Inquiry Chair John Mitting emphasised how Cunningham reported that ‘despite successive determined charges, accompanied by the throwing of fireworks, small home-made bombs, bottles, staves and other objects, the police prevailed’.
The MI5 ‘file notes’ on meetings between the security service and Special Branch leadership that carry his name are detailed in the ‘Cooperation with MI5’ section.
Cunningham’s support for extension of the SDS after the 27 October 1968 demonstration is shown in a memo dated 8 November 1968. Writing in support of a proposal by SDS head Conrad Dixon for the squad’s continuation, Cunningham described SDS intelligence as ‘invaluable’ and stated: ‘I am convinced that with discretion there are handsome dividends to be earned in this field and that the operation so successfully begun should be continued.’
Contributing to a long chain of memos going all the way up the Special Branch chain of command to Commissioner HN1877 John Waldron , Cunningham later argued that SDS intelligence was ‘more accurate’ than information gained by other means and ‘would not have been obtained at all by our usual sources’.
Cunningham also suggested that Conrad Dixon’s blueprint for the structure and operation of the future SDS, titled 'Penetration of Extremists Groups' , should be shared with MI5, though this suggestion was dismissed by Commander HN1253 Ferguson Smith.
Reviewing SDS progress after a further six months, on 20 May 1969 Cunningham advocated again for its continued existence in a memo to Commander Smith, writing, ‘in certain sensitive areas information is being obtained which could not be secured by the most skilful Special Branch officer using orthodox methods’.
He also noted that ‘the emphasis of the squad’s work is shifting somewhat’ towards ‘gathering and recording information for long-term intelligence purposes’ as well as ‘obtaining evidence and identifying suspects in relation to breaches of the law before, during and after demonstrations’.
One other noteworthy document in Cunningham’s disclosure is a recommendation for a commendation for SDS undercover HN323 Helen Crampton and three other Special Branch officers on 28 February 1969. Adding a note in support of the commendation, for the collection of evidence that led to the conviction of a Black Power activist, Cunningham wrote on 1 March that: ‘I have no doubt that this case will have a most chastening effect on the more militant extremists for some time to come’.
For more information on this case see the profile of HN323 Helen Crampton.
Cunningham was happy to oblige MI5’s requests for information-sharing from Special Branch informants. MI5 memos show Cunningham was instrumental in a September 1967 agreement between MI5’s F4 division and Special Branch’s B Squad, where Conrad Dixon worked as a chief inspector , to share information from two of Dixon’s paid informers.
MI5’s F4 division should not to be confused with the Home Office’s F4 division that dealt with MI5 and the police. B Squad, in those years, was occupied with left-wing groups and subversion. A few years later this was taken over by C Squad, and B Squad focused on Irish issues.
On 1 August 1968, right after the creation of the SDS, Cunningham, Dixon and Commander Smith met with three senior MI5 officers to coordinate plans for coverage of the 27 October 1968 demonstration on the day. The MI5 author noted that the SDS and MI5’s F4 branch ‘were already working closely together [redacted] against Trotskyist and Anarchist targets’.
On 14 January 1969, there was a further meeting between Cunningham, Dixon and MI5’s F4 division. ‘The main purpose of this meeting was to assure the Metropolitan Special Branch officers that we were still intent on the utmost cooperation in the field of Trotskyist/Anarchist agents’ concluded the author. ‘[I]t became apparent from their reaction that they fully share this sentiment.’
As part of this cooperation, the author records that ‘we went through the targets as agreed between ourselves and F.1.A [part of MI5’s counter-subversion branch focused on the left]’ and asked Cunningham for help finding ‘long term sources against these targets’.
Conrad Dixon then joined the meeting and explained on which groups the SDS was spying. The author met with SDS head Dixon the following day to discuss streamlining of information-sharing with MI5.
Notably, MI5 warned Dixon and Cunningham of the negative consequences of groups finding out they had been infiltrated by police, as had recently happened in France, saying that they ‘hoped that this would not occur in this country’.