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Demonstrators outside the Amba Hotel at Marble Arch, London, where the Undercover Policing Inquiry are holding hearings looking at the activities of the Met's Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) between 1973 and 1982
by Bethany Rielly
at the Undercover Policing Inquiry in the Amba Hotel, central London
AN UNDERCOVER officer who was unmasked as a spycop was ordered by senior police to claim that his bosses were unaware of his clandestine activities, the continuing public inquiry heard today.
After his cover was blown, “Dave Robertson,” an officer who infiltrated small Moaist groups in the 1970s, said he was paid a visit by the Metropolitan Police’s deputy commissioner and the head of the force’s special branch.
He claimed senior officers had created a “masterplan” to deal with the problem, and said that if he was confronted for being a spycop, he should say that he was “acting completely ‘off my own bat’ and that my superior officers were unaware of what I was doing,” the inquiry heard.
BEN CHACKO reports on the struggles against sexism, racism and the brutish British state that featured at Matchwomen’s Festival this year