HN336 ‘Dick Epps’ is a former undercover officer with the Special Demonstration Squad who was deployed into the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, the Stop the Seventy Tour and the International Marxist Group (IMG) from late 1968 to mid-1970. In 2002, Epps appeared on the True Spies television documentary, using the pseudonym ‘Dan’.
Epps provided a witness statement and appeared before the Inquiry on 16 November 2020. Several Special Branch reports he authored, or that were based on intelligence he gathered, were published by the Inquiry. However, Inquiry core participants Peter Hain and Diane Langford made submissions contradicting part of Epps’ evidence regarding the Stop the Seventy Tour (STST).
At the Inquiry, Epps repeated the admission he made on True Spies, that he made copies of the keys to the IMG office so that MI5 could enter the building. Epps’ evidence was also distinguished by his low opinion of his own efficacy as an undercover officer.
After the SDS, Epps worked in the Industrial Section of Special Branch. He gave contradictory evidence on the nature of the relationship of that department with trade union blacklisting organisation, the Economic League.
Epps was born in the 1940s and joined the Metropolitan Police in the late 1950s, before becoming a Special Branch officer in 1964. Before joining the SDS he served in B, C, and D Squads within Special Branch, attending political meetings in plain clothes, without using a cover identity. Epps said that some of his fellow Special Branch officers would deliberately dress smartly in ‘a suit and tie’ so that they would not be admitted to political meetings and could go home early.
He said he was recruited to the SDS from B Squad by HN325 Conrad Dixon. Like most of the other undercovers recruited to the SDS in 1968, Epps said there was little training or assistance with his fake or ‘cover’ identity. He chose a driving job as cover employment, and said he was not tasked to infiltrate any particular group, his only brief being to provide intelligence on potential public disorder.
Epps gives more insight into his views and character than other police witnesses. For instance, he makes no secret of the impact on him of a somewhat alarmist speech by Chief Superintendent Bert Lawrenson , his boss in C Squad.
According to Epps, Lawrenson warned that Britain could be under the ‘yoke of communism’ within ten years. In his evidence, Epps repeated his claim from the BBC True Spies programme that he thought his work in the SDS was the frontline of defending democracy:
[I] think we as a society have an expectation that there will be people guarding the edges of our civilisation to prevent an… overrunning… and a disturbance of our political status quo...
Epps spoke about his limitations as an undercover officer, saying that others had more ability to ‘glide into another persona’ than he did. This is perhaps borne out by the fact that he was forced to move groups three times due to his self-confessed inability to blend in.
Epps’ criticism was not reserved for himself, however. He described his SDS boss Conrad Dixon as a ‘brash chancer’.
Conrad was a clever man, but also an ambitious and devious man. He saw an opportunity for himself as well as an opportunity to create something useful.
Like later undercovers HN345 ‘Peter Fredericks’ and HN339 ‘Stewart Goodman’ , Epps had a brush with the law after being involved in a road-traffic accident. Epps said he was told that, in the event of a car accident, the procedure was to contact the local police’s garage sergeant.
When Epps did this, the garage sergeant was so annoyed about being called out that he reported the incident and Epps was summoned to appear before a Magistrates Court. He did so in his real, rather than cover, name and was fined.
Epps also stated that he had one informal meeting with an MI5 officer in a pub. During this Epps was asked his views on the ‘impact of protests within his field of deployment’.
Controversial reporting issues
One issue that emerged during the Inquiry hearings was that to merely attend a meeting was seen to justify including someone’s details in a report and opening a Registry File on them.
And so, Epps reported on a woman who was simply interested in ’grassroots politics’ who had attended Camden VSC meetings. Similarly, another report focused entirely on another woman who had just arrived in London. Epps was perhaps particularly interested in this woman because of the ‘attractive features’ he recorded in this report.
Epps was questioned about the sexist nature of this report in the oral hearing , about how such a subjective description could have been relevant for identification. He replied:
That would just be an interpretation of… mine… I've no idea what – if she had a wart on the side of her ears, or something like that, I would have commented upon that maybe. It was just [that] she was a pretty woman, a young woman.
In another report, on the STST campaign, Epps described a woman as having a ‘well-developed bust, slightly Jewish appearance’. Questioned about this during his hearing, Epps said: ‘I would have viewed them to be a helpful build [sic] of a picture for somebody to cast in their mind’s eye.’
He added that to describe a woman having a ‘Jewish appearance’ only seemed problematic from today’s point of view.
Epps’ target groups were the Britain Vietnam Solidarity Front (BVSF) , the Camden branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign , British Council for Peace in Vietnam and the Stop The Seventy Tour.
Britain Vietnam Solidarity Front
Epps said he started by infiltrating the Maoist BVSF for three months. He said that one of its leading figures, Abhimanyu Manchanda, was always suspicious of him. This led Manchanda to directly challenge Epps on part of his backstory.
Most of Epps’ reports on the BVSF were written jointly with HN135 Mike Ferguson , although in the Inquiry Epps suggested they operated independently, as Ferguson had already established himself within the group. Questioned about the authorship of the reports, Epps was unsure whether he or Ferguson wrote them.
The earliest of Epps’ reports published by the Inquiry, dated 20 February 1969, is on the north-west London branch of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign , which included several BVSF members. It is a largely procedural account of the meeting, offering little personal opinion. A further 14 reports on the BVSF, or groups associated with it, followed until June 1969.
Epps’ reports are fairly typical of those that other SDS officers filed at the time, most documents covering meetings, some focusing on the individuals who attended them. Epps said they reported on all the causes that the BVSF was involved in, including Palestine and women’s rights.
Epps attempted to justify this, saying that BVSF involvement indicated ‘revolutionary tactics… that would involve violence’. Diane Langford, a BVSF member at the time, strongly denied this. Her first witness statement takes issue, more generally, with the weak justification for the surveillance carried out by Ferguson and Epps. Indeed, none of the BVSF reporting included any accusations of violence.
During his oral evidence, Epps was confronted with a passage of a speech from one such joint report by him and Ferguson. In it, Manchanda is quoted speaking about the prospect of armed revolution; the spin given by the authors is that he is advocating – or predicting – an armed revolution in the UK.
Langford suggests such an interpretation is ridiculous as the BVSF had no revolutionary army to overthrow the government, which is at least acknowledged in a later note in the report. This undercuts Epps’ assessment that the BVSF was a violent threat to the UK, not least as he also admitted that he never witnessed the BVSF being violent.
Despite this, Epps maintained that, through his words, Manchanda was involved in fomenting public disorder, saying that his speeches may have been interpreted by someone to be advocating violence.
Epps also claimed that Manchanda was ‘one of the principal drivers of student unrest’, alongside International Marxist Group leader Tariq Ali. Asked about some aspects of this reporting, for instance, passing on information about reading lists on women’s rights, Epps suggested that this could have been of use to MI5 rather than to Special Branch.
Camden VSC
The earliest report by Epps on Camden Vietnam Solidarity Committee (VSC) released by the Inquiry is dated 3 October 1969. Epps attended these meetings by himself. Epps commented that the Camden VSC members were more relaxed and accepted him more than those in the BVSF, although this seems to have been short-lived.
In 1968, HN325 Conrad Dixon and HN329 ‘John Graham’ had infiltrated this branch. Epps described the Camden VSC as more ‘communist party-led’ – presumably referring to the Communist Party of Great Britain. However, it seems that others viewed the branch as ‘Maoist’.
Epps’ grasp on the politics of the group was perhaps not very sophisticated. For example, he recalls being called a ‘Trotskyist’ and ‘reformer’ by members of both the BVSF and Camden VSC, but mistakenly interprets this to mean that Trotskyists have a political reformist agenda, whereas their aims were just as revolutionary as those of the Maoists.
Epps’ views on the political outlook of the groups he infiltrated are important because they show a low level of understanding of other groups the SDS was targeting, as well as its bias. Another such indication was the prejudiced phrasing in his descriptions of individuals, as is noted above, Epps was prone to sexist comments.
British Council for Peace in Vietnam
Epps said he gained access to the British Council for Peace in Vietnam (BCPV) via his involvement in the Camden VSC, He thought that, like Camden VSC, BCPV was also a ‘communist front’, although, in reality, it seems to have been a less radical, broad-left organisation.
The BCPV met in Belsize Park, in a ‘chap’s house’, and Epps said he attended meetings for around six months. Epps said the methods were peaceful but they ‘would whip up anti-war fervour’. The Inquiry has not released any reports on this group’s meetings, but it is mentioned in one of Epps’ reports on the Camden VSC.
Stop the Seventy Tour
Epps says he was introduced by the BCPV into a group that would become a main target for the SDS in the early 1970s; the anti-apartheid focused Stop the Seventy Tour (STST). His published reporting on the STST campaign between March and May 1970 overlapped with his reporting on Camden VSC, so it seems that he was monitoring the BCPV, Camden VSC and STST simultaneously.
Epps attended the north-west London branch of the STST during his seemingly haphazard journey through north London’s left-wing milieu. Epps said he attended meetings for ‘several months’ but did not consider himself to be close to anyone.
He suggested that the campaign had the potential to be violent, despite it adopting exclusively non-violent direct-action tactics. Epps expressed this being a concern of a senior officer in True Spies, saying there ‘would be an awful lot of blood spilled on the streets of London, and that was the view that was held in some circles at that time within the police service’.
This hyperbolic assessment of the STST campaign was shared by HN1251 Phil Saunders in the 1970 SDS Annual Report, saying it presented an existential threat to public order in England. This analysis was dismissed by Mitting in his Interim Report.
The 1970 SDS Annual Report stated that it had six officers targeting the STST campaign, although four were on its ‘periphery’. Epps said that an STST protest at Twickenham rugby ground was the one time he witnessed disorder while undercover:
There was the instruction to STST protesters that, on given signals around the ground, the… police would be attacked, attempts would be made to rush the pitch, perhaps push players around and generally disrupt the game.
In his evidence to the Inquiry, core participant Peter Hain, a prominent STST activist, rejected this accusation by Epps, writing that if there was any violence it came from the fans at the sporting events. This point was even more thoroughly addressed in Hain’s oral testimony.
Epps suggested that the threat of public disorder caused him to move away from the STST campaign, despite the fact that providing intelligence on such disorder was the SDS’ remit.
Epps also repeated the claim, originally made by HN474 Wilf Knight in the True Spies programme, that another undercover officer HN135 Mike Ferguson became Peter Hain’s right-hand man in the STST. This is denied by Hain in his written and oral testimony.
Knight’s comments are now thought to be based on second-hand information, or perhaps completely fictitious, because Knight was not a member of SDS as he claimed.
One of Epps’ reports on the STST stands out, as it concerns a plot to kidnap the South African ambassador from his residence in Notting Hill. Such plans for serious crimes are rarely seen in the Inquiry documents. This unrealised and perhaps fanciful plot did not come from the STST campaign; Epps was reporting chatter he overheard at a party the group had hosted.
International Marxist Group
As mentioned, Epps’ attendance of meetings of the Camden VSC, STST and BPCV overlapped. Epps said he had to move groups again due to his perception that BPCV did not see him as ‘communist party material’. Epps said that he moved into his final group, the International Marxist Group , for three to five months.
In his written statement, Epps confirmed that he appeared in the BBC documentary, True Spies , using the pseudonym ‘Dan’. This was the first and only public acknowledgement of the unit’s existence until the Spycops scandal broke in 2010.
BBC journalist Peter Taylor, who presented True Spies, was given permission to approach Epps by senior MPS management, including Special Branch Commander HN85 Roger Pearce, ‘Roger Thorley’.
In the documentary, Epps revealed that he took imprints of the keys to the IMG offices while spying on the group.
Epps recalled that he volunteered at an IMG meeting to be the keyholder for the building, suggesting that he had gained some degree of trust within the group. He told HN1251 Phil Saunders that he had access to the keys and was instructed to take pressings using plasticine. He was told by Saunders that the office might be visited by MI5.
In his oral testimony Epps attempted to play this incident down, saying it was ‘more a comic story than anything sinister’. It was not the only time that SDS officers copied keys, however. HN332 Cameron Sinclair , the most SDS senior officer in 1971-1972, also instructed HN45 ‘Dave Robertson’ to obtain keys to Maoist bookshop Banner Books.
Suspected by both the BVSF and Camden VSC, Epps was challenged for a third time by members of the IMG. This time it led to him leaving the SDS. Epps said he had been told by HN1251 Phil Saunders that:
A telephone intercept had overheard Tariq Ali telling someone that he thought I was a reformist, not a revolutionary. Phil Saunders informed me that I would be challenged at the next meeting.
Since this would be the third time this happened during his deployment, Epps explained to Saunders that he was not comfortable with his abilities as a secret police officer any longer.
As forewarned by the intercepted telephone conversation, Epps was invited to the pub by members of the IMG, where he claimed they got him drunk and questioned his politics. He said there was never any mention that anyone thought he was an undercover police officer.
Epps claimed to have ‘kept his cool’ throughout the experience but said that he was so drunk that when he met Saunders afterwards he had ‘trouble staying upright’.
The only posting after the SDS that Epps goes into any detail about is his time with the Special Branch Industrial Unit. This was set up in 1970 to spy on unions and its connection to blacklisting workers is an issue within the Inquiry.
Epps said he had no direct connection with the Economic League but, seeming to contradict that claim, also said the Industrial Section was ‘swimming in the same pool’ as Special Branch. He also said they would get background information from them.
Additionally, substantial evidence of more direct contact between the Industrial Section and the Economic League, the organisation that succeeded it, was uncovered by Operation Reuben.
Epps said he retired from Special Branch as a detective constable in the early 1990s. His only known involvement with Special Branch after this time was as part of the BBC documentary True Spies.
Epps gave evidence about the repercussions of his appearance in the programme, which was broadcast in 2002. He said that after the programme aired, his former colleague and friend HN244 Angus Macintosh came to see him and asked why he had been involved. Epps said he replied:
The things I had talked about had occurred 37 years previously and given how unsophisticated the unit was at that time that I was a part of it, I thought it was incredibly unlikely that what I had done would bear any resemblance to now.
Macintosh was extremely angry, according to Epps; he had not spoken to him since. He said he lost several other friends due to his participation. Former colleagues had even accused him of ‘creating the demise of Special Branch’. Epps also related how, when attending a police social event, he was verbally abused by a fellow officer, who had to be restrained.
The Metropolitan Police Service applied for a restriction order over HN336’s real name on 31 July 2017. On 27 February 2018, the Inquiry released Epps’ cover name and target groups.
On 27 March 2018 Inquiry Chair John Mitting ruled that the real name could not be published as it would infringe HN336’s right to respect for his private and family life and that of his family under Article 8(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
HN336 signed a written statement dated 9 May 2019, which was submitted to the Inquiry. He appeared before the Inquiry on 16 November 2020.
All relevant procedural documents can be found towards the bottom of the Documents tab.