Stephen Lawrence - justice denied by criminal corruption?

[Keith Millea]

Jan,

Has it ever been established where the ecstacy originated from?I've heard before that South Africa and Israel were world suppliers at one time.Just curious........

[Danny Jarman]

If I had to guess, I'd say it would have came from the Netherlands via Belgium. The majority of E in Europe comes from there.

Thanks for posting this Jan.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Keith - Danny is correct.

Most of the Ecstacy in Essex and Kent, the two counties on the south-east "heel" of England, was shipped in across the English Channel from the Netherlands, where there were big manufacturing labs. The coastline was huge, and small boats could easily make it across.

The other route was small private planes, dropping dope into land, even ponds, on remote farms - think Once Upon A Time in America meets Dustcropper Dope.

There are lots of documentaries, of varying quality, and B-movies about the Rettendon murders and the "Essex Bad Boys".

They nearly all studiously avoid naming Noye.

Anyway here are some, which do at least give a flavour of the dope-fuelled violence:

[Jan Klimkowski]

A rather fascinating find in the video below, from c7minutes to c9minutes.



After the death of Essex teenager Leah Betts, the so-called Essex Boys - associates of Noye - attempted to take the intense political heat off them by framing an innocent man named "Packman" as the dealer of the "Apple E" that had killed Leah.

To do this, they set up a newspaper sting involving a criminal associate, Bernard O'Mahoney, and secret filming by.... Murdoch's News of the World.

[Magda Hassan]

I am just reminded in all this about how Murdoch business partner and close friend, Sir Peter Abels, whose transport company TNT was allegedly implicated in moving large quanitities of drugs around Australia. They had an airline together too, I wonder.....? Sir Peter's trucks were also used to good effect in breaking the picket lines bringing in scabs and bringing out papers when Murdoch moved operations to Wapping and engineered the confrontation with the unions to brake the powerful print unions.

[Danny Jarman]

Kenneth Noye: road rage killer moved to 'holiday camp' jail

The road rage killer Kenneth Noye has been secretly moved to a "holiday camp" prison, it has been reported.

Noye, 64, was jailed for life in 2000 for the murder of 21-year-old Stephen Cameron, whom he stabbed to death during a fight on the M25 four years earlier.

The multimillionaire gangland killer, who fled to Spain after the stabbing but was extradited in 1998, denied murder, instead claiming it was self defence, a claim rejected by the Old Bailey jury.

Just two years earlier he had been released from jail after serving eight years of a 14-year sentence for his part in the £26 million Brink's-Mat bullion robbery in 1983.

On Friday it emerged he has been secretly transferred from the high-security HMP Whitemoor to Category B Lowdham Grange, near Nottingham amid tight security.

Inmates suggested the facility is similar to a "holiday camp", claiming the prisoner will have a cell to himself, complete with a TV, PlayStation console, fridge and an en suite shower.

Sources suggested the move will prepare him for his eventual release, which could be in as little as four years' time.

While it was claimed he has been a "model prisoner" over the past five years, Mr Cameron's family reacted with horror to the news. "He is still a very dangerous man,"
his father Ken Cameron, 64, told the Daily Mirror from his home in Norfolk.

"They are moving him to a softer prison and didn't even let us know. It's outrageous.

"He's got around three-and-a-half years to go in prison. Surely this is too early to de-categorise him to Category B."

He added: "With his money and his contacts, it must make it easier for him to attempt to escape."

Noye is said to have planned an escape during his time at high security HMP Whitemoor.

Six years ago, he was moved to another jail after officers were said to have discovered Noye had arranged to have a mobile phone which he planned to coordinate his breakout with smuggled into the unit in a box of Weetabix.

He was transferred under armed guard to the maximum secure Full Sutton prison in York before later being moved back to Whitemoor.

Noye was involved in laundering the proceeds of the Brink's-Mat robbery in the 1980s. While under investigation in 1985 he stabbed to death an undercover detective, John Fordham.

Noye was cleared of murder on the grounds that he was acting in self defence. He was, however, convicted of handling stolen gold and sentenced to 14 years in prison. He was released in 1994. Mr Cameron was murdered in 1996.

Noye's was convicted in 2000. Appeals in 2001 and 2004 failed. But last year his case was referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Earlier this year he lost his bid at the Court of Appeal to overturn his murder conviction.

A spokesman for the Prison Service said: "We do not comment on the location of individual prisoners."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/c...-jail.html

[Jan Klimkowski]

Follow the money.

Swindler ran empire with army of thugs

By John Steele

12:00AM BST 24 May 2001

Daily Telegraph


JOHN PALMER, a semi-literate former market trader and scrap dealer, built a reputed fortune of more than £300 million. Some was earned from legitimate timeshare developments and jewellery trading but much, police suspect, came from swindles, violence, racketeering and money laundering.

Until now, he had escaped jail. He was acquitted in 1987 of handling gold bullion from the £26 million Brink's-Mat raid - a case which earned him the nickname Goldfinger - and has twice been given suspended jail sentences for minor frauds.

Yesterday, however, he was jailed for eight years for masterminding a huge timeshare fraud. Palmer rose from a deprived childhood in Birmingham to enjoy a life of yachts - including the £6 million Brave Goose - executive jets, helicopters, fast cars and personal security guards.

He controlled a timeshare empire based in Tenerife from behind a labyrinth of companies and expanded his empire with the help of a small army of thugs. In the mid-1980s, he was one of a group of men thrust into the public spotlight in the inquiry into the robbery of three tons of gold from a Brink's-Mat depot at Heathrow in November 1983.

Police followed the trail of the bullion to the West Country and Scadlynn, a gold and jewellery dealing company set up by Palmer and a fellow director, Garth Chappell. Scadlynn was at the heart of the operation to disguise and pass the bullion back on to the legitimate gold market.

Palmer's British home was a Georgian house, Battlefields, built by the noted Bath architect John Wood the Younger, near Lansdown, outside Bath. He shared it with his wife, Marnie, and two daughters.

He also had a home in Spain, and was living there in 1985 when the police moved in on those suspected of handling the Brink's-Mat gold. He was one of 20 wanted men named later that year by Scotland Yard at the invitation of the Spanish interior government.

However, a new law introduced by Spain stating that fugitives could remain in the country only with a valid passport forced him to look elsewhere when his passport ran out in 1986. After failing to get into Brazil he returned instead to England to face trial for handling Brink's-Mat gold.

Despite a hidden gold smelter at his home, and clear links to Scadlynn, the Old Bailey jury accepted his assertion that he did not know he was smelting Brink's-Mat ingots, and acquitted him. Chappell was jailed for 10 years. Palmer was later forced to pay a substantial sum to loss adjustors acting for Brink's-Mat.

He returned to Spain, where it was clear that he had struck another sort of gold in Tenerife. He had started with £30,000 borrowed from his brother and was by then reportedly investing £5 million in 450 timeshare villas capable of earning him £72 million.

His army of touts, mostly Britons seeking employment, promised free champagne and children's gifts to entice holidaymakers to buy time in the villas. They even persuaded holidaymakers to invest in timeshare apartments yet to be built. Palmer sold time in apartments that could only be built with holidaymakers' money.

The empire was run by intimidation and violence. Intelligence from the National Police and the paramilitary Civil Guard, disclosed in the Spanish media, is said to link him and his associates to swindles, protection rackets and extortion, death threats, violent attacks, as well as money laundering and dealing with the Russian mafia.

His name was a common denominator in cases of violence on the streets and in the shady nightspots of Playa de las Americas and the neighbouring resort of Los Cristianos. Incident after incident involved a group of men identified as John Palmer's "security men". Palmer often wore body armour.

There were attacks with knives and baseball bats, cars were set on fire and properties smashed up. There were also stabbings and on one occasion a Briton was shot dead in a turf war between rival timeshare businesses. Touts from other timeshare companies were forced to pay extortion money to operate and protection money was demanded from bars selling sex and drugs.

If threats or violence from Palmer's henchmen did not work, they could call in two South American heavyweights, who drove around the resort in a black limousine and were known as The Sharks. One of Palmer's companies had sales offices in Russia whose methods, according to a National Police report, "used tactics more appropriate to a mafia organisation than to the rule of law".

In 1994, The Cook Report television programme secretly recorded Palmer offering to launder up to £60 million a year for an investigator posing as a heroin trafficker. Palmer demanded a 25 per cent commission, saying: "I'm not cheap, but I'm good."

The Cook dossier was delivered to Scotland Yard, where sources said there was "cogent intelligence" that Palmer was involved in laundering drug money. But clear evidence also emerged of timeshare fraud. Roy Ramm, then a commander in the Metropolitan Police's specialist operations department, concentrated on the fraud.

"I had to make a decision on what was the best way to spend public money. It's a bit like Al Capone. They got him on tax."

Seven years later, Palmer - representing himself at the Old Bailey - accused detectives of waging a vendetta against him because of his acquittal in 1987. Mr Ramm rejected this in the witness box. At least four times during Palmer's questioning of him, Mr Ramm described Palmer as "a serious organised criminal".

The former officer said yesterday: "It was all a red herring. As a commander, I had a duty to spend public money chasing the criminals who most deserved it. In my view, he was exactly that."

Monday, 26 January, 2004, 17:30 GMT


Following the Brinks money trail


The Brinks robbery remains an underworld legend

Two days after Robinson and McAvoy were jailed at the Old Bailey Garth Chappell withdrew £348,000 from Scadlynn's account at Barclays Bank in Bedminster, Bristol.
Over the next three weeks he withdrew another £1.1m from the same account.

The withdrawals were actually going on throughout the trial.

In total about £13m was paid into the account of Scadlynn.

The money was paid by respectable gold merchants, such as Johnson Matthey and Engelhards, for large amounts of gold.

Unbeknown to the buyers, the gold had been smelted from the high-grade Brinks Mat gold - using a smelter purchased from a foundry in Worcestershire - and mixed with copper to disguise its origins.

The Assay Office in Sheffield, which is responsible for handing out hallmarks to jewellers and gold merchants, had been an unwitting accomplice in the scam.

Scadlynn approached the Assay Office with the newly smelted gold and received a seal of approval, effectively given the "dirty gold" a clean bill of health.

While police were soon onto the robbers - Micky McAvoy and Brian Robinson were arrested 10 days after the raid - it took them much longer to get a lead on the gold.


Noye was acquitted of murdering PC Fordham

In January 1985, as they closed in on Kenneth Noye - one of those brought in to help with the smelting and laundering process - he stabbed to death PC John Fordham in the grounds of his Kent home as he conducted surveillance.

Noye was later acquitted of murder on the grounds of self-defence, having argued he thought the masked man in the darkness was a burglar.

But Noye, along with Chappell and two others, was later jailed for handling stolen gold.

The conviction of Noye and Chappell was by no means the end of the affair.

Brian Perry, an old friend of McAvoy, and his pal Gordon Parry began taking flights to Jersey, the Isle of Man, Switzerland, Spain and the United States.


Anthony White was found personally liable for £26m

A crooked solicitor, Michael Relton, also became a major conduit.
They paid money into newly created bank accounts, purchased plots of land on the Costa del Sol.

One account, in a bank in Liechtenstein, was in the name of the Moyet Foundation. Perry apparently named it in honour of his favourite brand of champagne, Moet & Chandon, but misspelt it.

In 1985 Anthony White, who had been acquitted of the robbery the previous year, bought a £146,000 house in Beckenham, Kent with cash.

Mr McCunn said: "In the autumn of 1986 the police had discovered the property empire created using the robbery proceeds, and the involvement of Relton.


The proceeds of the robbery are still circulating and have gone up 10 times in value. The cash has been invested in everything from ecstasy smuggling to building projects.


"Almost his first reaction on being arrested was to talk to the loss adjusters. We assumed he feared a long sentence, and hoped to reduce it by co-operating and assisting in the recovery."

Relton provided the police and Shaw & Croft with detailed information about bank accounts and property and gave the latter letters of authority to overseas banks so they could collect evidence directly.

He stopped co-operating after receiving threats, but Shaw & Croft already had enough detail - and the crucial letters of authority - and they went about freezing various bank accounts and assets both in the UK and abroad.


Gordon Parry: Took frequent flights to Zurich

Most of these - including an oil well in Kansas - were eventually recovered by Mr McCunn's team.

But Noye's biographer, Wensley Clarkson, told BBC News Online: "There is still a lot of gold which has never been turned into hard currency.

"The proceeds of the robbery are still circulating and have gone up 10 times in value. The cash has been invested in everything from ecstasy smuggling to building projects."

He said: "The value of the robbery - £26m - would be worth about £100m in today's terms and it has not all gone on parties and drugs."

But Mr Clarkson said there was something of a curse on the money: "A lot of people have paid the ultimate price for keeping hold of the money. Some people were upset that they did not get their fair share of the loot."

Conman keeps £33m after court blunderComments

[URL="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-182085/Conman-keeps-33m-court-blunder.html#ixzz1us3OfIwe
"]Daily Mail[/URL]

Fury has erupted after a blunder by judges allowed Britain's biggest conman to keep £33 million he swindled from vulnerable pensioners.

Fraudster John "Goldfinger" Palmer had the money seized after being jailed for eight years for a bogus Tenerife timeshare scam. Palmer's slick salesmen ripped off an estimated 17,000 victims - many of them pensioners who lost their life savings hoping to enjoy their retirement in a holiday home in the sun.

After being jailed for eight years at the Old Bailey and losing his cash, Palmer ordered his lawyers to go to the Court of Appeal last July over a £33,243,812 confiscation order and the cash was given back on the basis that there had been crucial flaws in the procedure followed.

On Friday, Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, ruled that the court had "misunderstood and misapplied" the law and Palmer's case had been "wrongly decided".

But Palmer will still keep his cash.

Appeal judges last November blocked an attempt by the Director of Public Prosecutions to take the case to the House of Lords - the only court with power to quash the ruling.

As a result they cannot overturn the decision to quash the confiscation order - so Palmer will keep the proceeds from the crime.

Norman Brennan, a serving police officer and director of the Victims of Crime Trust, said: "Who has got any faith left in the British criminal justice system?

"Who said crime doesn't pay? It's never paid so well for Palmer. A lot of vulnerable people, who worked hard all their lives lost their life savings and at the end of the day his sentence, eight years, was not that long anyway."
Palmer, in Belmarsh Prison, south London, is now the richest category A high security inmate in prison history.

[Jan Klimkowski]

More.

Trail of gold grains offers £8m clue to mystery of Brink's-Mat robbery

Detectives believe bullion found in suitcases could be breakthrough to solve crime after 25 years
Mark Townsend, crime correspondent

The Observer, Sunday 8 June 2008



The site of the Brink's-Mat bullion robbery in 1983. Photograph: Frank Martin


It is one of the most enduring mysteries of British criminal folklore. But now the riddle of what happened to the millions of pounds worth of gold bullion stolen during the Brink's-Mat heist may have been solved after quarter of a century.

Scotland Yard detectives last week found six suitcases crammed with gold inside a London deposit box. They could help solve a crime so spectacular it panicked the international gold market, reconfigured London's criminal map and left a trail of murders in a gangland feud over the whereabouts of the missing bounty.

The gold 'grains' - carefully wrapped in plastic and wedged inside travel luggage - were hidden inside a deposit box raided by the Metropolitan Police last week as part of a huge two-year investigation into the proceeds of organised crime. Scotland Yard sources, pointing out it was too early to glean the origin of the gold, have confirmed they are examining the 'possibility' that it may have come from the 1983 heist in which bullion worth £26m was stolen from the Brink's-Mat warehouse near Heathrow Airport by six armed robbers.

Commander Allan Gibson of Scotland Yard's specialist crime directorate said his officers had never seen anything like it. The haul is thought to be the single largest discovery of unexplained gold seen in Britain. Provisional estimates suggest the suitcases' contents could be worth £8m, potentially a significant portion of the Brink's-Mat loot never recovered, and eclipsing the £2.6m stolen during another of Britain's most high-profile crimes, the Great Train Robbery of 1963. Alongside the gold, Scotland Yard officers last week found £30m in cash, much of it stuffed into plastic supermarket bags, which officers believe are also the profits of organised crime.

For those officers investigating what happened to the unrecovered bullion stolen in the Brink's-Mat raid the find may yield vital clues to a crime that has perplexed some of Scotland's Yard's finest. Although the Metropolitan Police would not reveal the weight of last week's discovery, Gibson said the suitcases were so heavy officers struggled to pick them up. The weight of the stolen Brink's-Mat gold was three-and-a-half tonnes.

'We have identified six suitcases of gold grains which, if real, could be very, very valuable. It's a phenomenal amount. They were wrapped like a large packet of peas and were so heavy officers couldn't pick them up,' said Gibson. Police are stressing that the focus of their inquiries is on the people who rented the boxes.The raids on thousands of deposit boxes in London last week were based on intelligence indicating they contained the proceeds of crime syndicates who for years had viewed the storage space as a safe deposit for assets.

Although last Thursday's discovery of gold in Operation Rize, which yesterday still involved more than 200 officers, has still to be fully analysed, sources said the gold appeared to be the genuine article.

Numerous attempts to locate the Brink's-Mat bullion have been made over the years. In 2001 police excavated land owned by a builders' merchant in Kent after receiving a tip-off that gold bars had been buried there, but as in other instances found nothing. Unsubstantiated rumours, meanwhile, claim that proceeds from the gold have been invested in property abroad.

Last week's discovery was found in storage vaults belonging to a firm called Safe Deposit Centres Ltd, of which two directors have been arrested on suspicion of money-laundering offences and bailed to return to a central London police station in September.

The firm was established in 1986, three years after the Brink's-Mat robbery, raising the possibility the gold was kept in temporary storage before being hidden inside the vault. Investigators will attempt to ascertain whether such a large amount of one of the world's most precious metal - its price reached a record high last March as the global financial crisis increased its investment appeal - can be linked to any modern crime, although it remains more likely the stash relates to a more historical crime.

It remains unclear how much of the £26m of Brink's-Mat bullion has been recovered or melted down so far. After escaping from Heathrow with their haul, the robbers turned to one of Britain's most notorious criminals for help in transforming the bullion into cash. An expert in his field, Kenneth Noye even mixed some of the gold with copper to alter its purity and disguise its origins.

Detectives investigating the crime found 11 gold bars worth £100,000 wrapped in cloth in a drainage trench at Noye's former Kent home. The 60-year-old was jailed for helping to launder some of the proceeds, but not before he stabbed to death an undercover detective staking out his house. He was cleared of murder after pleading self-defence, but later jailed for murdering Stephen Cameron on a slip road of the M25 in a road rage incident. The killing is just one brutal episode in a trail of death and wrecked lives among those who have become embroiled in a deadly feud over where the gold from Britain's biggest bullion haul might have been stashed.

Last year two ageing hitmen were jailed for the murder of millionaire businessman George Francis, a former associate of the Kray twins, who had survived a murder attempt in 1985. He was the sixth person linked to the Brink's-Mat heist to have been murdered. Another two have killed themselves. Francis was entrusted with part of the haul belonging to 'Mad' Mickey McAvoy, who was jailed 25 years for his part in the robbery. McAvoy is one of only two men convicted in connection with a crime that involved armed men bribing a security guard to let them into the Brink's-Mat warehouse at 6.30am on 26 November 1983. Once inside, they poured petrol over staff and threatened them with a lit match if they did not reveal the combination numbers of the vault.

Another well known criminal, conman John 'Goldfinger' Palmer, was cleared of smelting and recycling the Brink's-Mat bullion in 1987. Palmer, who allowed Noye to use his jet to flee the UK after he stabbed Cameron, was accused by Spanish police last year of masterminding a crime organisation in Tenerife. The 58-year-old spent four years in prison from 2001 after being imprisoned for timeshare fraud that affected up to 20,000 victims.

So far, officers have investigated a third of the 7,000 storage units. Gibson said: 'It is a difficult job in difficult conditions and officers are working through the night to get the job done. Every box is a story, a potential investigation.'

[Jan Klimkowski]

And so it goes on.

Blinded by the light.

The mechanic is told to fix the car. He may think he knows why, but he usually doesn't have a clue.

Stephen Lawrence family and friends targeted by police 'smear' campaign

Exclusive: former undercover officer Peter Francis says superiors wanted him to find 'dirt' shortly after 1993 murder

Rob Evans and Paul Lewis
The Guardian, Sunday 23 June 2013 19.11 BST
Jump to comments (155)


Stephen Lawrence who was murdered in 1993 and whose death has been the subject of a long-running police investigation. Photograph: Rex Features

A police officer who spent four years living undercover in protest groups has revealed how he participated in an operation to spy on and attempt to "smear" the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, the friend who witnessed his fatal stabbing and campaigners angry at the failure to bring his killers to justice.

Peter Francis, a former undercover police officer turned whistleblower, said his superiors wanted him to find "dirt" that could be used against members of the Lawrence family, in the period shortly after Lawrence's racist murder in April 1993.

He also said senior officers deliberately chose to withhold his role spying on the Lawrence campaign from Sir William Macpherson, who headed a public inquiry to examine the police investigation into the death.

Francis said he had come under "huge and constant pressure" from superiors to "hunt for disinformation" that might be used to undermine those arguing for a better investigation into the murder. He posed as an anti-racist activist in the mid-1990s in his search for intelligence.

"I had to get any information on what was happening in the Stephen Lawrence campaign," Francis said. "They wanted the campaign to stop. It was felt it was going to turn into an elephant.

"Throughout my deployment there was almost constant pressure on me personally to find out anything I could that would discredit these campaigns."

Francis also describes being involved in an ultimately failed effort to discredit Duwayne Brooks, a close friend of Lawrence who was with him on the night he was killed and the main witness to his murder. The former spy found evidence that led to Brooks being arrested and charged in October 1993, before the case was thrown out by a judge.
Peter Francis Peter Francis, the former undercover police officer turned whistleblower. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

The disclosures, revealed in a book about undercover policing published this week, and in a joint investigation by the Guardian and Channel 4's Dispatches being broadcast on Monday, will reignite the controversy over covert policing of activist groups.

Lawrence's mother, Doreen, said the revelations were the most surprising thing she had learned about the long-running police investigation into her son's murder: "Out of all the things I've found out over the years, this certainly has topped it."

She added: "Nothing can justify the whole thing about trying to discredit the family and people around us."

In a statement, the Metropolitan police said it recognised the seriousness of the allegations and acknowledged their impact. A spokesman said the claims would "bring particular upset" to the Lawrence family and added: "We share their concerns."

Jack Straw, the former home secretary who in 1997 ordered the inquiry that led to the 1999 Macpherson report, said: "I'm profoundly shocked by this and by what amounts to a misuse of police time and money and entirely the wrong priorities." Straw is considering personally referring the case to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Francis was a member of a controversial covert unit known as the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). A two-year investigation by the Guardian has already revealed how undercover operatives routinely adopted the identities of dead children and formed long-term sexual relationships with people they were spying on.

The past practices of undercover police officers are the subject of what the Met described as "a thorough review and investigation" called Operation Herne, which is being overseen by Derbyshire's chief constable, Mick Creedon.

A spokesman said: "Operation Herne is a live investigation, four strands of which are being supervised by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, and it would be inappropriate to pre-judge its findings."

Francis has decided to reveal his true identity so he can openly call for a public inquiry into undercover policing of protest. "There are many things that I've seen that have been morally wrong, morally reprehensible," he said. "Should we, as police officers, have the power to basically undermine political campaigns? I think that the clear answer to that is no."

Francis has been co-operating with the Guardian as a confidential source since 2011, using his undercover alias Pete Black. He assumed the undercover persona between 1993 and 1997, infiltrating a group named Youth Against Racism in Europe. He said he was one of four undercover officers who were also required to feed back intelligence about the campaigns for justice over the death of Lawrence.

Francis said senior officers were afraid that anger at the failure to investigate the teenager's racist killing would spiral into disorder on the streets, and had "visions of Rodney King", whose beating at the hands of police led to the 1992 LA riots.

Francis monitored a number of "black justice" campaigns, involving relatives of mostly black men who had died in suspicious circumstances in police custody.

However, he said that his supervising officers were most interested in whatever information he could gather about the large number of groups campaigning over the death of Lawrence.

Although Francis never met the Lawrence family, who distanced themselves from political groups, he said he passed back "hearsay" about them to his superiors. He said they wanted information that could be used to undermine the campaign.

One operation Francis participated in involved coming up with evidence purporting to show Brooks involved in violent disorder. Francis said he and another undercover police officer trawled through hours of footage from a May 1993 demonstration, searching for evidence that would incriminate Brooks.

Police succeeded in having Brooks arrested and charged with criminal damage, but the case was thrown out by a judge as an abuse of the legal process. Francis said the prosecution of Brooks was part of a wider drive to damage the growing movement around Lawrence's death: "We were trying to stop the campaign in its tracks."

Doreen Lawrence said that in 1993 she was always baffled about why family liaison officers were recording the identities of everyone entering and leaving their household. She said the family had always suspected police had been gathering evidence about her visitors to discredit the family.

"We've talked about that several times but we never had any concrete [evidence]," she said.

There is no suggestion that the family liaison officers knew the purpose of the information they collected.

Francis claims that the purpose of monitoring people visiting the Lawrence family home was in order "to be able to formulate intelligence on who was going into the house with regards to which part of the political spectrum, if any, they were actually in". The former policeman added: "It would determine maybe which way the campaign's likely to go."

In 1997, Francis argued that his undercover operation should be disclosed to Macpherson, who was overseeing the public inquiry into the Met's handling of the murder. "I was convinced the SDS should come clean," he said.

However his superiors decided not to pass the information on to the inquiry, he said. He said he was told there would be "battling on the streets" if the public ever found out about his undercover operation.

Straw said that neither he nor Macpherson were informed about the undercover operations. "I should have been told of anything that was current, post the election of Tony Blair's government in early May 1997," he said.

"But much more importantly, [the] Macpherson inquiry should have been told, and also should have been given access to the results of this long-running and rather expensive undercover operation."

[David Guyatt]

It brings a new definition to "law and order", where the prefix "fuck" works better.