The Undercover Policing Inquiry, which on Monday 13 October started its Tranche 3 phase of investigations, has been strongly criticised by the Blacklist Support Group (BSG). The BSG represent workers who were blocked from employment by bosses fed information by the undercover Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). The officers in the SDS unit infiltrated trade unions and other left wing groups on the basis they were:

…subversives planning to overthrow parliamentary democracy.

In many cases, supposedly ‘subversive’ workers were simply engaged in conventional trade union activity, seeking safer working conditions or better pay.

In an opening statement before the inquiry, Imran Khan KC declared that:

BSG argue that the Inquiry’s entire approach to the issue of blacklisting is fundamentally flawed.

“Irrational” choices at the Undercover Policing Inquiry

The statement read by Khan raised the refusal for the Undercover Policing Inquiry to allow BSG’s Dave Smith – himself a blacklisted worker – to address the inquiry. Smith has petitioned for a Judicial Review to be taken against the inquiry’s chair Sir John Mitting for an “unreasonable and “irrational” decision barring Smith from giving oral evidence. This is despite the fact that after the inquiry proceeding for a decade, this is the first occasion on which blacklisted workers have been given the chance to provide oral evidence about their mistreatment.

Khan also placed a particular focus on the inquiry’s failure to broaden its scope to look into how evidence gathered by SDS officers was passed to the likes of Special Branch and MI5 for vetting of government employees. It is already documented that Special Branch shared information with the Consulting Association, a business that maintained a massive database on construction workers who were active trade unionists, or regarded as in any way militant. The database was used by employers to blacklist workers who might contest employers for improved working conditions.

Khan said:

Operation Reuben accepts that Special Branch and MI5 shared information about activists with public and private sector employers and with the notorious blacklisting organisations the Economic League and the Consulting Association. This is no longer conjecture by trade unions and activists, this is a fact acknowledged by the police.

Unfortunately, after more than a decade since it was set up, the Inquiry has failed to investigate the mechanics of this state orchestrated blacklisting operation.

Operation Reuben was a 2022 internal review conducted by the Met Police into the their role in the blacklisting of workers. Khan also raised the evidence from Tranche 2 of the Undercover Policing Inquiry, in which an MI5 source, when talking about someone formerly a member of the Socialist Workers Party, said:

…it was likely that her employment with [a government body] would be terminated.

“Vetting” – a means of keeping anyone left-wing out of government jobs

In terms of the Undercover Policing Inquiry, Khan went on:

It makes no difference if the process is described as vetting or blacklisting, the effect is exactly the same. Workers were unemployed because of their political beliefs; families struggled to pay their bills causing tensions and contributing to poor mental health, and in some cases suicides.

Unemployment due to reporting from UCO’s that was based on a police mindset that viewed leftwing activists with suspicion and conflated perfectly normal political and union activities with violent subversion.

Many SDS officers are known to have gone on to careers within MI5 but BGS statement decried the lack of rigorous questioning into the extent to which their knowledge of left-wing groups, or intel gathered, was used by the security services to ‘vet’ – i.e. deny employment to – potential government employees.

The BSG statement went on to describe the “giant elephant in the room” – the extent of current UK security vetting (UKSV), which still accounts for 200,000 checks per year. The breadth of these checks is vast, and not limited simply to those involved in high-level aspects of national security. The dragnet of checks draws in anyone “employed in posts that involve proximity to public figures”. This could include “building workers, security guards, cleaners and educators”.

Former SDS officer turned whistleblower Peter Francis described how the likes of the BBC kept ‘the wrong sort’ out:

For example, the civil service, BBC and certain companies had a direct line of communication with Special Branch, for vetting purposes, that prevented subversives getting into, or achieving high positions within their organisations.

This is very much the sort of thing people mean when they talk of a ‘deep state’ – a network of police and security services that work to ensure the establishment is kept permanently clear of anyone outside a narrowly defined set of ideological beliefs.

Khan went on to say:

There is an expressly stated political aspect to UKSV.

“The enemy within” – Thatcher’s vision of the left still in force

This is due to it using much the same definition of political subversiveness as the SDS themselves – basically anyone vaguely left-wing. A statement from then prime minister John Major in 1994 said:

No one should be employed in connection with work the nature of which is vital to the interests of the state who is, or has been involved in, or associated with any of the following activities: … actions intended to overthrow or undermine Parliamentary democracy by political, industrial or violent means; or is, or has recently been: a member of any organisation which has advocated such activities; or associated with any organisation, or any of its members.

This form of thinking was interpreted very broadly, to the extent that the inquiry has already concluded that only three of the 1000 spied on were justifiably surveilled.

Cases highlighting this include bricklayer Brian Higgins, who appeared in at least two SDS reports for entirely ordinary trade union activity, relating to improved safety practices and general organising. Francis described how “trade unionists were seen by nature as being subversive” and as “the enemy within”, echoing the rhetoric used by Margaret Thatcher. US President Trump has lately revived such rhetoric for his own attacks on the American left.

The Undercover Policing Inquiry’s scope goes beyond attacks on workers. The inquiry this week has also heard from the Lawrence family, who were spied on by the cops in an attempt to undermine their fight for justice following the racist killing of Stephen Lawrence in 1992.

The Labour Party’s current crackdown on peaceful protest is a reminder of the extent to which they share the viewpoint of the establishment revealed in the spycops scandal – a ruling class that view the left as dangerous and fundamentally illegitimate. Any prospective left-wing movement with an eye on power must view a complete overhaul of the permanent security apparatus as a key task of ensuring their own survival, and the wellbeing of civil society as a whole.

Featured image via the Canary

By Robert Freeman

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