Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police

by Lewis, Paul

  ‘I knew the key to getting alongside my targets would be to not be too keen,’ he says. ‘You can’t get into a situation like that already believing whatever particular brand of politics it is that they are spouting. You need to let them convert you, or at least think they have converted you. My attitude at the beginning was “Fuck off with your poxy student politics” and letting them come and try to prove me wrong. You have to allow them to come to you. If you go in and you say, “Oh, I love the left wing, I think you are all wonderful,” then you might as well put a sign on your head.’

  Within days Black had what he considered a lucky break, allowing him to get close to the Kingsway student he was told was a key figure. It happened in the college canteen. ‘I was in a queue for lunch and there was some sort of altercation between a couple of people in front of me and the lady who was serving,’ he says. ‘I didn’t hear the beginning of it but it actually then took on a really racist undertone. I’ve never liked bullies or racism. It was nothing to do with being a police officer because at that moment the last thing I wanted to do was break my cover. I was just intervening because it was the kind of thing I would have done in my personal life. I barged forward and said to the person who was causing this trouble that this woman does not deserve this. She is just doing her job. It’s irrelevant if she’s fucking black or white or whatever, you shouldn’t be giving her a hard time. He then turned round and had a swing at me. And that was that, it was all over in a second and he was on the floor.’

  The fracas was seen by a student who was friendly with Black’s target, the Kingsway anti-fascist campaigner. A few days later, the two of them tried to persuade Black to join a demonstration against the BNP.

  ‘I went into my full spiel: “I’m not going along to do anything with a bunch of student wankers”,’ he recalls. ‘“It’s a student wanker demonstration and I’m not interested.” He tried to explain that it wasn’t like that at all and that by going along I’d be making a stand against racism, something I clearly believed in because of the way I had reacted in the canteen. I told him that was nothing to do with racism; it was just a mouthy git who got what he deserved. He shook his head and told me that whether I realised it or not, I had been making a stand. I knew I couldn’t be seen to be keen and I thought that I seemed to have played it just right.’

  After initially appearing reluctant, Black agreed to take part in the demo that weekend. The following day, he reported everything back to the head of the SDS. His boss commended Black for befriending his target so quickly, but warned him not to seem too hungry. ‘If I got burned, they explained, then my tour was going to be the shortest in the history of the SDS,’ he says.

  As it transpired, the Kingsway anti-fascist students never suspected that their new recruit was a police spy. Why would they? They had no reason to believe police would plant a spy in their ranks; they were students, in a tiny, mundane group which was barely noticed in the wider anti-racist movement. However, it was common practice in the SDS to first target marginal groups such as the Kingsway anti-fascists, so that the spies could gradually build up their credibility and wheedle their way into the centre of a movement.

  Within weeks, Black was gathering intelligence on a large demonstration that was planned to take place to protest against the BNP at Welling on October 16. The presence of the BNP in Welling had been a febrile political issue for some time. The extreme right-wing party occupied a building that was ostensibly a bookshop. On the outside, 154 Upper Wickham Lane looked innocuous. But behind the locked and bolted doors, the building was the headquarters of the party.

  The location of the BNP building was considered incendiary. South-east London had become notorious for racial attacks and murders. In the previous two years, there had been three racist killings in the area, including the shocking murder of 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence in April 1993. Anti-racist campaigners said that racial attacks there had sharply increased after the BNP arrived in 1989, a statement backed up by Home Office figures which record that the number of racial attacks increased from 292 in 1988 to 811 in 1992. Richard Edmonds, the BNP’s national activities organiser, and a convicted criminal, openly said that the party was ‘100 per cent racist’.

  Campaigners had persistently called on the local council, police and government ministers to close down the building. But the BNP headquarters remained open, and campaigners resorted to increasingly confrontational tactics. There were angry demonstrations outside the building in May that year, including one attended by Duwayne Brooks, Stephen Lawrence’s friend who was with him on the night he was murdered just a few weeks earlier. Declassified Home Office documents show that the prime minister John Major was personally briefed on the disorder, as Sir Paul Condon, the Met commissioner, came under pressure to stop the escalating confrontations.

  By the autumn, it became clear protesters were planning a major demonstration at Welling. The date was set for October 16. This was going to be the big one. Organisers informed police that up to 50,000 campaigners were going to march, one of the biggest protests against fascism since the 1930s. It fell to the SDS to work out whether that prediction was accurate and, if so, whether the march would turn violent.

  It was at times such as these that the SDS was under pressure to justify its existence. Their forecasts would inform senior commanders, enabling them to deploy the right police resources on the streets. Ever since the days of Conrad Dixon, this was considered to be the main purpose of the SDS, and it was essential that its spies delivered the goods. If the undercover officers failed to anticipate the level of conflict, police might be overrun. Then again, if they exaggerated the threat, police might waste resources preparing for a damp squib of a demo. ‘At the end of the day, that was what the SDS was there for – when Condon or the Met commissioner really does get the big cheque book out, it’s not wasted,’ says Black. ‘If he has to spend so many millions, it’s totally justifiable.’

  The SDS was fortunate that seven out of the 10 spies in the squad were sufficiently embedded in the right political groups to supply intelligence in advance of the demonstration. Some of them of course were only on the periphery. But one SDS officer was masquerading as an activist in the Anti-Nazi League, one of the main groups organising the march. The ANL, which was previously infiltrated by the SDS in the 1970s, had been relaunched after a decade’s dormancy. It was supported by trade unions and some Labour MPs, but widely viewed as a ‘front’ for the Socialist Workers Party, the Trotskyite revolutionary group.

  Another well-placed spy was Black, newly enrolled at Kingsway College and quickly making the right friends. He and the other operatives formally submitted their predictions for the October 16 demonstration. The collective wisdom among the spies was that the march would be bigger than previous protests and that serious disorder was likely to break out. Scotland Yard responded with a huge show of force. Police leave was cancelled and more than 5,000 riot officers and 84 horses were deployed to control the demonstration along the narrow streets of Welling.

  On the eve of the march, Condon told the public to stay away, warning of ‘mob violence’. He said his commanders would allow the march to go ahead but had banned it going past the BNP headquarters, which he feared would be the scene of violent attacks. Organisers of the demonstration accused Condon of making inflammatory remarks. They said they planned a ‘peaceful but determined’ march and knew of no plans for violence, insisting they wanted to walk past the BNP headquarters because it was a symbol of racism. It was a delicate, potentially explosive mix.

  *

  On October 16, Black was on one of 550 coaches that transported campaigners down to Welling for the demonstration. He was preparing himself for ‘biggest ruck since the poll tax riots’ three years earlier. He says he readied himself to behave with ‘the same dumbshit mentality’ as campaigners, during any tough, physical confrontations with police.

  The very idea of trying to take on lines of riot police struck Black as futile. ‘How are you going to fi
ght the rozzers with all their shields and everything else? You are dumb as a fucking loo-brush. But if this lot want to give it a go, my role is to be as dumb as a loo-brush with them as well.’

  The likely flashpoint had been obvious to many for some time. It was a fork in the road: to the left was the police-designated route the demonstrators were being ordered to follow; the right side was the road that took them directly to the BNP bookshop.

  That route was blocked by row upon row of police in riot gear, with instructions to corral marchers away. After a standoff, the inevitable fighting broke out. Black recalls seeing his SDS colleague in the fray who was trying to dissuade others from heading toward the BNP building. ‘There was a moment when I am an SDS officer going forward with my group, and there’s another SDS officer in the Anti-Nazi League running backwards, calling on the crowds to go with him away, trying to get people to follow him.’ The ANL did not have the same reputation for street confrontations. It would have been out of character – and frowned upon – for Black’s SDS colleague to do anything other than try to lead his friends away from the violence.

  They were not the only police spies on duty that day. On the other side of the police line, an SDS officer infiltrating a vicious right-wing group called Combat 18 was patrolling the outskirts of the demonstration, in the company of hard-core Nazis. They were beating up any anti-racists unlucky enough to stray from the march and find themselves isolated.

  A fourth SDS spy was actually inside the BNP bookshop. For some time, he had been a trusted member of the party. He and others were expected to defend their headquarters in the event the crowd broke through the police lines and started attacking the building. ‘He was bricking it,’ Black says. ‘We had to protect the bookshop that day as Condon knew that there was an undercover police officer in there.’

  True to predictions, Welling was the worst public disorder since the poll tax demonstrations, although the police lines held together. Afterwards, away from the public row about who was at fault for the violent clashes, Britain’s most senior police officer paid a visit to a quiet residential flat in Balcombe Street in Marylebone. As commissioner of the Met, Condon felt indebted to the intelligence the men of the SDS had provided and he had gone to the squad’s safe house to thank them in person.

  It was a rare visit from Condon. Every commissioner since 1968 had known about the work of the SDS, but its existence was barely mentioned, and of course never admitted, outside of a close circle of top cops and Whitehall mandarins. Black recalls the visit from the VIP as a ‘good moment’ for him and the rest of the unit. Condon gave them a bottle of whisky. ‘We had done what we were there for,’ he says.

  For his troubles, Black was rewarded with a smaller, private meeting with the commissioner, who asked him about his undercover work and what happened on the day of the demonstration. But Black detected a slight discomfort on the part of the police chief.

  The sight that confronted Condon that afternoon was a world away from the police control rooms and borough stations he routinely visited. In the flat in the Georgian block of Brunswick House were 10 scruffily dressed people who looked nothing like police officers. They were in ripped jeans and bomber jackets, many sporting beards and long hair. With his earrings and long, bushy ponytail, draped over his shoulder, Black could not look less like a cop if he tried.

  But as he burrowed deeper into the anti-racist movement, Black realised that it was not just his appearance that had changed. He would soon find himself questioning the ethics of his entire mission.

  CHAPTER 8

  Changing Course

  For the seventh night in a row, Pete Black felt alone and isolated in the middle of the Bavarian forest. It was the summer of 1995, and one of the most stressful experiences of his life. Normally his nerves were pretty resilient. But camping in a giant, thick spruce forest, surrounded by more than 1,500 anti-racist activists from 18 different countries, he was gripped by a fear that he would be found out. Part of the reason for his paranoia was the knowledge that if anything were to go wrong, there was no effective back-up for miles around. He had no mobile telephone or tracking technology. He was on his own and the fear of what might happen if he attracted suspicion was terrifying.

  Black was in Germany for a summer camp organised by the YRE. By now, he was heavily involved in their campaign, a key London organiser. The camp, in a big clearing in the forest, was designed partly to be a holiday for European anti-racist campaigners, a place they could meet each other, socialise and let their hair down. There was a disco tent, a chill-out area and a marquee where attendees could be entertained by some German rock bands.

  But this was also a political gathering, a meeting of minds where ideas could be swapped between anti-racist activists from across the continent. The location of the camp deep in this particular forest was no coincidence. It was a two-fingered salute to neo-Nazis, who claimed this part of Germany as their heartland. The camp was protected around the clock against attacks from fascists, with regular patrols around the perimeter. ‘I had to do night-time patrols as well,’ Black recalls.

  One corner of the campsite was taken over by the Black Bloc, hard-core anarchists who, Black says, had brought firearms with them. They were notoriously frosty to outsiders. One night, the activists were woken by gunshots. The next day, the anarchists insisted it must have been hunters shooting wild boar – or Nazis firing bullets into the night sky to scare the campers. Whoever was responsible for the shots, they only added to the anxiety gripping the undercover police officer.

  ‘It was scary, an absolute nightmare – I can’t begin to explain it,’ he says. Black’s fear was compounded because he had made a crucial error that made it far more likely he would be exposed as a police infiltrator. He had failed to anticipate that he and the other activists would be sleeping beside each other in a large tent. Black feared he would talk in his sleep, and he was terrified he would inadvertently mutter something about being a police officer when dreaming.

  Back in England, when campaigners stayed at his flat, Black had a technique to stop himself from blurting out something incriminating in his sleep. ‘No matter how many bedrooms you had they would always – bar the occasional female – camp in the lounge, so when I went into the bedroom, I could slam a chair under the door handle and sleep.’ In the depths of the Bavarian forest, that was not an option.

  ‘I could not sleep properly for a week,’ he says. ‘Your weakness is always when you’re asleep. With the benefit of hindsight, I should have brought my own tent. But I had never built into my cover story anything about a tent. If you brought your own tent, but did not know how to use it, it would have looked like you had deliberately brought a tent to be by yourself.’ He had no choice but to bed down with five other activists, bury his head in his sleeping bag and hope for the best. ‘I thought, “Fuck it, go with the flow,”’ he says.

  Black says that week in Bavaria ‘was the most intense pressure’ over a sustained period of time he had experienced on the job. ‘You are undercover trying to pretend you are enjoying yourself, in this huge drinking environment,’ he says. If activists had been harbouring suspicions about Black, he knew the remote camp was the ideal opportunity to confront him. The camp organisers had taken and photocopied everyone’s identity documents. ‘I thought: if it really did go tits up, my identity had to be perfect. I could not get out of the camp as they had my passport.’

  Underneath his calm exterior, Black was riddled with paranoia. He worried about the most improbable of scenarios. For example, when he was much younger, Black spent a few years living in a German village. Now he was worried that someone from his younger days might by sheer coincidence attend the camp and recognise him. He kept rehearsing this and other unlikely scenarios in his head, preparing himself for the unexpected. ‘What you do in the SDS is you hope, if not pray for the best,’ he says. ‘But you always plan for the worst.’

  Black had himself to blame for finding himself in the German forest. He had
insisted the SDS should let him travel to the camp, even though the squad had until then never dispatched one of its spies abroad. He had gone through ‘a world of pain’ to get special approval from Special Branch and the German police authorities. By then he had risen to become the secretary of a branch in the YRE and he thought it would have been deeply suspicious not to attend the camp.

  ‘Everyone knew that I had German connections, with my mother being German,’ he says. ‘It was beyond belief that I would not go.’ For the SDS, the experiment in foreign espionage was a gamble. Special Branch bosses stipulated that another officer had to travel with Black and meet with him regularly, but it turned out to be too risky for Black to slip out to speak with his handler.

  ‘We had no contact during the week,’ he says. Instead, Black’s handler spent the week relaxing on the SDS expense account in a nearby hotel.

  Given this was the first foreign mission for the SDS, the unit decided Black should be accompanied by a particularly senior officer – a man who had recently rejoined the squad. And so it was that as Black was sleeping fitfully through the night, terrified at the prospect of being exposed, Bob Lambert was taking in the scenery at a safe distance. ‘I was – I kid you not – in the middle of an isolated Bavarian forest; he was holed up in a hotel a few miles away enjoying himself,’ says Black. Even though Lambert was some distance away, he was a reassuring presence for Black. The older man’s reputation preceded him. ‘He did what is hands down regarded as the best SDS tour of duty ever,’ Black says.

  Under the deal Lambert struck with German authorities, Black was required to provide an extensive report on the country’s home-grown activists – in addition to his routine work for the SDS. He was under pressure to record everything that was happening around him but felt unable to resort to writing down notes.