The Undercover Policing Inquiry was due to restart this week. But authorities have postponed it yet again. In a Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance (COPS) press release, the group said “the latest delays are symptoms of fundamental problems” with what has turned the Spycops Inquiry into “one of the longest public inquiries in UK history”.
The massive scandal of decades of anti-left political policing
As Madoc Roberts, one of the film-makers behind the Spies Who Ruined Our Lives documentary, previously told the Canary:
unless you joined all the dots together, you wouldn’t have known that this was political policing, until you discover that it’s 1,000 groups and that all the groups just happened to be left-wing.
He also insisted about Spycops:
I think it is one of the biggest scandals that we’ve seen. But the irony of it all is it just gets treated as ‘a story for today, a story for this week’, and then it’s dropped again and then it’s dropped again. Yet it started in 1968, and we’re only getting to know about it in the last 10 years or so. It’s a massive scandal.
A lack of resources, and a lack of time for Spycops Inquiry
As COPS explained in its press release about the latest Spycops Inquiry delay:
Established in 2014 with completion promised by 2017, it took the UCPI until 2020 to hear the first evidence. Four years later, it is not half way through evidential hearings, and doubts are mounting that the UCPI can even fulfill its Terms of Reference.
It continued by insisting that:
The Inquiry’s internal disorder is such that disclosure remains unfinished and timetables are yet to be published for the next hearings.
Kate Wilson, who “was one of the first eight women who brought a claim against the police”, said:
The police have been forced to admit spycops units were out of control and their actions unjustifiable, but the inquiry is still reviewing material from decades ago. It is running out of time and cutting corners while there are many more revelations to come. The Home Office should not be complicit in sweeping this under the carpet. Denying us and the public the answers we need is neither justice nor a public inquiry.
Spycops Inquiry core participant Zoe Young, meanwhile, stressed that:
The Inquiry has been pandering to the needs of the police, the abusers in this scandal, and is now placing intolerable pressure on their victims. The Inquiry have created a situation where they are unable to manage the volume of material and the privacy issues arising. But the solution is not to make the victims, who have waited over a decade already for answers, pay the price for their crisis.
Final deadline remains
COPS added that “the [Spycops] Inquiry itself has noted that its timeline and resources are an issue”, asking the question:
Will some of the most important matters relating to police spying in the period after the introduction of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) in 2000, be examined at all?
And its stressed:
The problem is that while inquiry timescales keep slipping, the final deadline is not being moved. Campaigners note that the next hearings are due to deal with some of the most controversial officers – Bob Lambert, John Dines, Matt Raynor and Mike Chitty. Between them, these men are known to have deceived women into relationships; fathered a child; & been involved in serious criminality in their undercover roles; also returned to invade the lives of their targets after their operations ended; and behaved with such arrogance that their own colleagues referred to them as ‘the Cabal’.
Public interest in evidence about these officers’ operations is high. Yet as it stands, not a single current or former police officer will give evidence in October or November. Some, such as John Dines, are refusing to appear; and Mitting has declined to compel them. The Inquiry has also abandoned their practice of publicly reading summaries of evidence relating to those officers not appearing onto the record; so no evidence from these officers will be heard by the public.
Finally, it noted that:
A protest and press briefing will be held outside the Inquiry venue on the opening day of in-person hearings October 21st, 2024, 9:00-9:30 a.m.
International Dispute Resolution Centre, 1 Paternoster Lane, St. Paul’s, London, EC4M 7BQ.
Featured image via the Canary
