'Margaret White' was the cover name of Woman Detective Constable HN334, an undercover officer in the Special Operations Squad, later known as the Special Demonstration Squad, between August and November 1968.
Recruited by HN325 Conrad Dixon from Special Branch's B Squad, she attended various branch meetings of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) and International Socialists (IS) in plain clothes in August and September 1968 and did back-office work before being given an undercover assignment.
Tasked at the end of September 1968 with infiltrating the Havering branch of the VSC, she pretended to be in a couple with HN330 'Don de Freitas' who joined the branch at the same time. The pair attended four branch meetings and the 27 October 1968 VSC 'Autumn Offensive' anti-Vietnam war demonstration as a couple. She did not witness any subversive, violent or unlawful activity while undercover.
After this deployment she returned to regular Metropolitan Police Special Branch duties before leaving the police altogether in 1972.
Unless otherwise stated, the following information comes from her witness statement to the Undercover Policing Inquiry. White provided the Inquiry with a number of photographs of SDS undercovers including one of her in her undercover clothes and a long brown wig, that has been published in redacted form.
Having just turned 19 when she joined the Metropolitan Police in 1965, Margaret White moved to Special Branch in 1968, where she undertook research and enquiries for B Squad. Her reports suggest she was assigned plainclothes tasks by A Squad. She also remembers possibly working for D Squad (naturalisation) after leaving the SDS.
The first documentary evidence of her surveilling the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) is a report of a failed attempt to find a meeting of the Hackney branch on 22 June 1968. Her next report, on 2 August, was a profile of a female student activist.
White explained in her evidence that she believed this, and a 6 August report on a meeting of the Camden branch of International Socialists , would have been the result of tasking by A Squad. She attended the 6 August meeting with HN68 'Sean Lynch' , who was a member of the SDS, however, so it is possible her assumption about this meeting is not correct.
White was recruited to SDS, most likely by its founder HN325 Conrad Dixon , at the start of August 1968. She had no spouse when she joined and cannot remember how much, if anything, she was told about what the job would involve before starting.
She said she joined because she was asked to and did as she was told. She felt if she had turned the offer down, 'Special Branch would have looked askance'.
The SDS office was based in New Scotland Yard during her time and White worked there when not attending meetings undercover. There was no extra pay for the change in working hours and conditions while White was working undercover. She says she must have been reimbursed for expenses such as the rent for her cover accommodation, thought, as she would not otherwise have been able to afford them.
White used a long brown wig, the same colour as her natural short hair, and clothes she would not normally wear as a disguise.
She rented cover accommodation in Basildon and arranged a phone number that would be answered to confirm her cover employment, should it be checked. She cannot remember what her cover employment was and did not actually do any work, or stay at her Basildon address often.
Unusually, Special Branch paid for her to rent another room in Kensington, and it was here that she mostly stayed during her time undercover. De Freitas did not use her cover address. She remembers that she created her legend herself, with no input from her managers. She did not drive a car during her deployment.
Her efforts at disguise were not always entirely successful: 'I remember that at one meeting, which I attended in my cover identity, an activist accused me of being a police officer. I said that I did not think I would be allowed to join the MPS with long hair like this and the activist suggested that I was wearing a wig.'
She does not remember receiving any formal or informal training before going undercover or information about the group or people she would be reporting on. She was not given any guidelines about appropriate behaviour in the field, although gave evidence that she would have known that having an intimate relationship with an activist was 'a no no'.
There was no process to monitor her welfare in the field. At the end of her time undercover she did not receive any guidance on how to exfiltrate and was not debriefed afterwards.
White understood Special Branch to 'have a role in countering subversive activities' and that her reports were being copied to MI5 'for reasons of national security'. She says did not witness any subversive or violent behaviour during her undercover deployment, however, and had no personal contact with MI5 during her time in Special Branch.
For her first two months in SDS, White attended meetings in plain clothes with other SDS officers and did back-office work such as typing up reports. Her attendance at meeting of the Camden International Socialists (IS) at the Dublin Castle pub on 6 August 1968 may have been her first SDS assignment, or that may have been later on 13 August.
Between August and October 1968 she is recorded in SDS reports as an officer present at meetings of the following VSC and IS branches:
- VSC Ad Hoc Committee, whose activists' car number-plates she wrote down while they held a planning meeting for the 27 October anti-Vietnam war demonstration, sometimes known as the Autumn Offensive, at Toynbee Hall on 13 August.
- VSC Kilburn, for whose meeting on 14 September she and HN332 Cameron Sinclair looked in vain before giving up and deciding it had not gone ahead
- VSC Earl's Court on 26 September with HN327 'Dave Fisher'.
- VSC Earl's Court on 10 October with undercover SDS officer HN322.
In addition, between 6 and 18 September White typed up SDS reports on Notting Hill VSC meetings for HN68 ‘Sean Lynch’ and HN331. These can be seen by visiting their profiles. White only authored three short reports herself, recording the VSC Ad Hoc Committee's car number-plates, explaining the Havering VSC's 27 October demonstration travel arrangements and passing on copies of a Havering VSC leaflet.
Havering VSC
At the end of September 1968, White and HN330 'Don de Freitas' were told to attend all meetings of Havering VSC and the 27 October demonstration, pretending to be a couple. De Freitas authored all the reports concerning the pair's joint deployments at branch meetings, noting White's presence on 30 September, 5, 19 and 29 October and at the 27 October march. For information from these reports, see de Freitas’ profile.
White understood her role to be 'to obtain information about the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) demonstration in October 1968 in order to prevent a repeat of the violence that was witnessed at the March 1968 demonstration'. The Havering branch of the VSC, however, was small and peaceful. White said that her only involvement with the Havering VSC beyond attending meetings and the 27 October demonstration with de Freitas was to help to sew a banner for the march.
Infiltrating the group, was easy, according to White. 'I simply started attending meetings with HN330 and when asked why we were attending we said that we wanted to be involved in the October demonstration.' White said she and de Freitas would have been regarded as members of the Havering VSC, which is confirmed by the reports that mention membership dues being collected from people attending meetings, although there appears to have been no formal membership register.
Both de Freitas and White submitted reports on a meeting at the Kings Head pub in Romford on 5 October. White's report set out the travel arrangements for coaches to transport a predicted 80 International Socialist and Havering VSC members to Charing Cross embankment to attend the 27 October demonstration.
On 10 October, unusually for an undercover SDS officer, White attended a meeting of a different branch of the VSC in plain clothes rather than her undercover identity. She submitted a report on a public meeting of the Earl's Court branch of the VSC, which she went to with HN322 rather than de Freitas. Nothing of interest was reported.
She explained in her witness statement that this would have been a result of ad hoc tasking by A Squad at Scotland Yard, which took place daily at 6.30pm. By contrast, de Freitas said in his witness statement that SDS undercovers were exempt from this kind of ad hoc tasking, which made his experience in SDS feel 'a little like being on holiday'.
The next meeting of the Havering VSC on 15 October was held in a private house, where membership dues were taken and 200 leaflets given to each of the eight members present to distribute. Three copies of this leaflet were included in a report submitted by White on 19 October. A handwritten note by Conrad Dixon on White's report states that 'this information is being included in the weekly reports' and a copy of the Havering VSC leaflet can be found in the Inquiry evidence titled 'Vietnam Solidarity Campaign Bulletin 5'.
There is no report by White or de Freitas from the 27 October march itself. The last report, by de Freitas, is dated 29 October 1968 and concerns a meeting of eleven Havering VSC members to have a post-mortem on the recent demonstration, which they regarded as 'a complete and utter disaster'. At the meeting, White used the perceived failure of the 27 October demonstration as a cover reason for quitting the VSC. In reality, her deployment had come to an end.
White provided the Inquiry with nine photographs that she thinks came from a social event at Scotland Yard at the end of October or start of November: some of the photos are stamped 'Nov 1968' on the reverse, White presumes by the company that printed them. This would have been to mark what was regarded as a very successful campaign to avert public disorder at the 27 October VSC march.
She recalls returning to B Squad 'soon after the demonstration', most likely in November 1968.
After White's posting to the SDS ended in November 1968, she returned to B Squad, undertaking occasional tasks for A Squad. She also remembers possibly working for D Squad in the four years before she resigned from the Metropolitan Police in 1972. She described this work as 'pretty mundane' in her evidence.
Between March 1969 and March 1971, she filed four further reports for Special Branch on International Socialists member Duncan Hallas , the North West London Stop the Seventy Tour committee , Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and the Women's Liberation Workshop
White is also recorded as the officer who took a telephone report on the Dambusters Mobilising Committee day of action on 9 June 1971. She says these were not undercover assignments, but the result of specific daily ad hoc plain clothes tasking.
It is worth noting that being sent out in plain clothes to cover these protest events and meetings, which could conceivably have been attended by members of the Havering VSC branch she had infiltrated, posed a small risk of White's undercover work being exposed.
White's decision to leave the MPS in 1972 was partly due to a lack of career opportunities for women:
My rank on leaving Special Branch and the MPS was that of Detective Sergeant. I had passed the Inspector's exam prior to leaving the MPS but there was no position in that rank available to me; at the time, there was only one position available for a female Inspector and it was occupied. Accordingly, I was never formally promoted to the rank of Detective Inspector.
Another factor was her change in marital status, at a time when many women did not work after getting married. Leaving Special Branch on good terms, she remembers she was told to 'come straight back if my marriage did not work out'. She signed a confidentiality agreement about her time in SDS and did not return to the Metropolitan Police. She was not given any guidelines about using her police skills and knowledge in the private sector.
In the late 1990s/early 2000s, White attended an SDS 30-year anniversary party at Scotland Yard with many of her former colleagues. She provided a photo of the event to the Inquiry, not made public, which was taken by a professional photographer and forwarded to her by HN318 Ray Wilson.
The documents mentioned in this section can be found in the Procedural section of this profile
The Metropolitan Police applied to restrict HN334's real name on 1 August 2017. Inquiry Chair John Mitting issued a Minded To notice on 14 November 2017 accepting their request. HN334's cover name and target group were released on 6 March 2018. A restriction order for her real name was published on 15 May 2018. In response to written submissions on 8 May 2018 challenging the restriction of her real name, Mitting published a further order on 9 October 2018 confirming the restriction of HN334's real name.