Eveline Lubbers, Undercover Research Group, 15 October 2018.

From 1968 to 2011, undercover police officers spied up on more than 1,000 political groups. However, no definitive list of these groups has ever been made public. That is changing now. Working with The Guardian, we present a Who’s Who of Spycop Targets, listing what is known to date from official sources, whistle-blowers and our own investigations

The list gives an idea of the breadth of groups that have been targeted through the years and reveals some patterns, such as the focus on particular groups, and lack of attention given to others. Many of the groups will question why they were infiltrated or reported on.

To help you find out more, you can search for names of groups, on certain periods of time, for specific political categories and by cover name of spycops. You will also find links to profiles of the undercovers published by the Undercover Research Group, to The Guardian or to the SpecialBranchFiles.uk project for a greater insight into the groups and how they were targeted.

Additionally, we also present an interactive timeline of all SDS spycops known to date, and their deployments over the years.

Update: in October 2019, we launched a new project to investigate how many black family campaigns were spied on by undercover officers.



A work in progress

We started from the minimal list provided by the Undercover Policing Inquiry, adding groups that we know were infiltrated from our own research, work done by Rob Evans (and Paul Lewis), and from whistle-blower Peter Francis. We only included groups that were targeted by officers from the Special Demonstration Squad and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit – the two Special Branch units which carried out the vast majority of such activities.

The Who’s Who project is very much a work in progress, and will be updated as soon as more information emerges. If we have missed any out, please let us know. Likewise, if you have suggestions to improve the descriptions or if you are aware of website we can link to that will help others learn more, do get in touch. Even if you didn’t encounter the undercovers, broadening out our knowledge of the groups is always helpful.

How many groups were spied on?

This is a less straight-forward question than you might think, for instance, some groups have been infiltrated by more than one undercover officer over the years. Also, the definition of what is meant by ‘infiltrated’ and ‘targeted’ varies – some groups were definitely infiltrated with the undercover becoming a leading member; others were reported back on from public meetings, or even more indirectly. That’s the reason why we have not added a counter to the list.

We know relatively little at present; and how much detail we have on the undercovers’ activities varies widely. Groups with an anarchist background for instance feature a lot on this list. A slightly distorted view maybe, influenced by the fact that people from these circles have been very active in investigating and exposing undercovers in their midst – more than most other groups at least. Some undercover deployments are well documented now, on others there is next to nothing.

Do have a look at our interactive timeline of all SDS spycops released to date, including those only known by number, to get an idea of the many deployments between 1968 and 2008.The colour codes of the various categories link to those used in the Who’s Who.

What have we learned?

Working on the Who’s Who project has indeed given some insight into the pattern of infiltration by the SDS and NPOIU.

A very obvious conclusion to draw is that the SDS overwhelmingly focused on left wing groups – no matter what their background is. At the top of the chards is the Trotskyist splinter group the Socialist Workers Party (formerly International Socialists) with 24 different spycops in their midst over the years (not including the multiple front groups they set up to campaign on specific issues). The second place is for the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign with nine officers so far reporting on who were organising the demonstrations against the US involvement in the war in Vietnam (again, not counting the many groups involved that were infiltrated at the same time).The third place needs to be shared between animal rights groups.

Irish solidarity groups also had special attention throughout the history of the SDS. And, based on the limited information available about their work, the NPOIU clearly focused on overlapping anarchist / environmental networks. More is still to come out, or so the Inquiry has promised.

Only a handful of SDS officers that we know of engaged with far right groups. The British National Party, Combat 18 and the United British Alliance were targeted, but two of the spycops were never deployed, due to the closing down of the SDS in 2008. The real number of spycops having joined racist or fascist groups might be slightly higher, as some of them have been granted anonymity by the chair of the Inquiry. However, without any further detail released, this is just supposition.

Family Justice Campaigns

It is quite unclear so far how many family justice campaigns have been spied on. We have included here those campaigns that have heard from the Metropolitan Police that intelligence about them was collected. Representatives of some campaigns have been given heavily redacted SDS files; some have been shown photos of known undercovers. But no new information has come out; the campaigns are kept in the dark – yet again.

Also listed are the campaigns that SDS officer turned whistleblower Peter Francis says he has infiltrated. Another set are the campaigns that were supported by the Movement for Justice in the years that the group was infiltrated by undercover officer ‘Dave Hagan’ (or N81) – but his exact involvement with each of them is yet unknown.

Update: In July 2019, the Inquiry released the cover name Bobby Lewis, also known as ‘Anthony’, active in the SWP/ANL 1991-1995, but failed to list the campaigns he targeted. The first black undercover officer we know of to date, he was close to people who knew the Lawrences and reported on them, and on Duwayne Brooks.