Dave Fisher joined the Metropolitan Police on 30 June 1952 aged 20, and joined Special Branch as a Police Constable on 10 October 1955. Already involved in surveilling the Notting Hill branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) before the creation of the SDS, between August and October 1968 he reported on the Notting Hill, Earl’s Court and Croydon branches of the VSC, the VSC Ad Hoc Committee and the Maoist October 27th Committee for Solidarity with Vietnam, as well as on activist Tariq Ali.
Of the limited number of reports written by or mentioning Fisher released by the Inquiry, most fit the pattern of standard Special Branch plain clothes attendance at open meetings or SDS back-office research rather than undercover work. His involvement appears to have stopped straight after the 27 October 1968 anti-Vietnam war demonstration. A Detective Chief Inspector in 1978, he retired from the police after 31 years at the rank of Detective Chief Superintendent. He is now dead and his cover name is not known. The MPS did not apply to restrict his real name, however, and so his real name and, unusually, a photo have been released by the Inquiry.
The information in this profile is taken from reports either written by Fisher or that record his presence.
Dave Fisher joined Special Branch as a Police Constable in October 1955 and by 1968, at the age of 36, had achieved the rank of Detective Sergeant. Very few details of his career before or after his brief involvement in the SDS have been released, but a telegram from 29 June 1968 and report on 11 August 1968 show that Fisher and other Special Branch officers were already watching the Notting Hill branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) immediately prior to and around the time of the creation of the SDS.
Fisher’s report on the public meeting of the Notting Hill VSC on 11 August records the presence of HN218 Barry Moss ‘Barry Morris’ , who also joined the SDS around this time, and an unidentified acting Woman Detective Constable. The SDS had only just been set up at the end of July 1968. Officers were being recruited from other Special Branch squads, some of whom were already spying on the same groups they would target undercover for the SDS.
In this very early period, therefore, it is sometimes hard to distinguish reporting for the SDS from that undertaken for other Special Branch squads. In the case of the 11 August report, a handwritten note directs the contents to be circulated to A Squad and ‘C.I. Dixon to see’ – implying it had been created by Special Branch’s C Squad.
A further report signed by Fisher on 15 August 1968, regarding a phone message received by Special Branch about an anarchist who claimed to be making weapons to use against the police at the 27 October 1968 demonstration, appears to be work undertaken for C Squad.
Fisher’s involvement in the SDS came during its early transition period when conventional Special Branch methods were still used alongside new techniques of undercover infiltration.
Apart from attending a few meetings of the small Croydon VSC branch with HN318 Ray Wilson , where the pair might possibly have been considered members, Fisher's spying appears mainly to have consisted of attendance at open meetings where he would not necessarily have needed a full undercover identity. A few of his other reports appear to be the result of desk-based administration and research, which would have been carried out at the SDS back office – at that time still in Scotland Yard.
He was one of nine SDS officers attending a large public meeting of the VSC Ad Hoc Committee on 17 September, reported on by SDS head HN325 Conrad Dixon. On 24 September 1968 Fisher noted that the Croydon VSC branch was about to recommence meetings after a hiatus over the summer. He and Ray Wilson attended meetings of the small Croydon branch on 7, 14 and 30 October.
Fisher and HN334 ‘Margaret White’ attended a public meeting of the Earl’s Court VSC on 26 September 1968. A few days later he was present, along with Detective Inspector HN1251 Phil Saunders and Wilson at a public meeting of Abhimanyu Manchanda’s Maoist October 27th Committee for Solidarity with Vietnam on 3 October 1968, where the VSC Ad Hoc Committee’s plans for the 27 October march were denounced.
Back-office administration and research undertaken by Fisher included typing up a telegram received from HN331 on 17 October about a student meeting at the London School of Economics and a report that Tariq Ali was due to address a different student body on 4 November 1968.
A more serious intrusion into Ali’s life is revealed in a report from 18 October. This was presumably researched or at least written up by Fisher in the back office and details the results of an investigation into the identity of a person believed to be an ‘intimate contact’ of the International Marxist Group leader.
Very unusually, a photo of Dave Fisher has been made public by the Inquiry. SDS officer HN334 'Margaret White' provided the Inquiry with ten photos of early members of the unit at what was probably a Christmas party at Scotland Yard, taken some time after the 27 October 1968 anti-Vietnam war march.
One of the photos shows Dave Fisher and Ray Wilson in plain clothes. Fisher, identified by White in her witness statement as the person on the left, sports a beard, glasses and beret, in the style of a beatnik.
The Metropolitan Police did not apply to restrict Dave Fisher’s real name and his cover name is unknown. On 3 August 2017, Inquiry Chair John Mitting published a ‘Minded To’ notice, noting that no application to restrict Fisher’s real identity had been received.