Met Police Agent Provocateurs

[Magda Hassan]

Mea culpa. Four years ago, when I first read about Mark Stone, I made a series of flip remarks. He was the environmental activist who had been uncovered as an undercover police officer, Mark Kennedy, and the story carried quotes from "Anna" who had had a relationship with him. Stone's goatee, earring and shaggy hair were just a cover, it turned out.
"We've all been there," I wrote. We've all met someone who didn't quite live up to billing. The nice man with the love of literature who turned out to be not so nice and read Harry Potter. Or the friend who, horror of horrors, accidentally slept with a Tory."
Except it was nothing like that. A year later, I read and reviewed the brilliant book written by the Guardian journalists Rob Evans and Paul Lewis, Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police, and the truth was shocking and horrifying. By then, all sorts of revelations had come out: how police had spied on Stephen Lawrence's family, how they had taken the identities of dead babies.
But it was the women's stories that I couldn't get out of my head, women who'd been gulled, hoodwinked and systematically deceived by officers trained and paid by the state. Women, who, when the truth started coming out, encountered nothing but evasion and obfuscation. It has taken four years for the Met to even acknowledge that it happened. But yesterday it finally did and issued an apology. The relationships "were abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong".
It's a landmark moment, a huge victory. And yet, at some level, it seems as if the case has failed to generate the horror it should have. It has been a busy news period, but yesterday's announcement barely caused a ripple. And you can't help but wonder if that's because these were crimes against women. Crimes disguised as domestic disappointments: love affairs gone wrong, hearts broken, trust betrayed. The stuff of everyday life. And yet it wasn't that at all. You only have to read some of the stories.

It's easy to make accusations of sexism, but there is something deeply troubling about the case

Jacqui's, for example, who in 2012, sat down for a cup of coffee in the garden with a copy of the Daily Mail. And there was a photo of a man who had vanished from her life back in 1987: her son's father. "I had not had news of him for approximately 24 years and there was his face staring back at me from the paper. I went into shock. I felt like I couldn't breathe and I started shaking." She'd met "Bob Robinson" when she was 22 and was involved with an animal rights group. He was in his 30s and they embarked on a relationship that became increasingly serious. They moved in together and later had a baby. And then, when her son was 18 months, he vanished.
There were no letters, no child support, no contact. Until, 24 years later, when she discovered via the Mail that he was actually called Bob Lambert and at the time he met her he already had a wife and two children. He was promoted to the deputy head of his division the special demonstration squad and later left the police to become an academic. He is, to this day, a lecturer at London Metropolitan University.
Jacqui's "crime" was to be loosely affiliated to an animal rights group. Another woman, Alison, told the Commons home affairs committee about her five-year relationship with a man she knew as Mark Cassidy but who turned out to be an officer called Mark Jenner. "I met him when I was 29 and he disappeared about three months before I was 35… for the last 18 months of our relationship he went to relationship counselling with me about the fact that I wanted children and he did not.[…] This is not about just a lying boyfriend or a boyfriend who has cheated on you. It is not even about a boyfriend who is having another relationship with somebody else. It is about a fictional character who was created by the state and funded by taxpayers' money." Alison's crime? She was an anti-racism campaigner.
It does make you wonder what would be different if these abuses had been perpetrated, not against women, but men. Because it's easy to make accusations of sexism, but there is something deeply troubling about the case. About the way that it was women who were targeted, abused and exploited systematically, institutionally. About the way the Met dealt with the fall-out and the question that remains: what is still happening, in our name, paid for by our taxes, carefully concealed from sight? This was sex used as a weapon. Emotional intimacy as a instrument of state surveillance. These were bystanders, members of the public. They had been convicted of no crime. The policemen acted as "the judge, the jury and the person who sentences", said another woman, Clare, in her testimony. "They can do what they like to you. There is no oversight. You do not get a trial."
Can it ever be justified? the MPs asked. "Would you task an officer with raping a child to infiltrate a paedophile ring?" responded Alison.
David Cameron has suggested that the events in Paris could lead to a fast-tracking of the investigatory powers bill. Boris Johnson declared in the Telegraph that he had "less and less sympathy with those who oppose" increased surveillance powers. And George Osborne announced that the budget for surveillance and cyber-crime would double to £2bn.
Bob Lambert graduated from spying on animal rights groups to become head of the Met's Muslim contact unit. The stakes are higher today. It's not just vegans and anti-racists who need rounding up. Is sex still being used as a weapon? Against women who have been convicted of no crime?
Not by the Met, according to Friday's statement. But other police forces? Other agencies? Who knows? We certainly don't.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree...r-policing