Jim Boyling met future wife while infiltrating Reclaim The Streets

Couple had two children but later divorced

Ex wife: Undercover work wrecks lives

Boyling: Having sex with activists was 'necessary tool in maintaining cover'

A green campaigner told yesterday how she married a police spy and had two children by him.

The revelation about another undercover officer has led to calls for an independent public inquiry into covert operations.

The policeman, Jim Boyling, is even said to have persuaded his wife to change her name by deed poll to hide their relationship from senior officers.

Spy: Metropolitan policeman Jim Boyling used the alias Jim Sutton to infiltrate environmental group Reclaim the Streets

Last week the focus was on Mark Kennedy, a police spy whose exposure led to the collapse of a trial of eco-activists.

And two more undercover officers were named yesterday: Lynn Watson and Mark Jacobs, who is said to have had at least one affair with a campaigner. Mr Boyling met a woman, Laura, in June 1999, near the end of his five-year stint monitoring the protest group Reclaim the Streets.

The 40-year-old revealed his identity a year later and they married in 2005.

But Laura said their relationship was built on lies and she felt like a prostitute when he told her sexual relations with targets were a necessary tool in maintaining cover.

Double life: Jim Boyling maintained the false name in the dock after infiltrating Reclaim The Streets

She said: ‘I know of multiple cases. We’re talking about a repeated pattern of long-term relationships and, for me at least, the deepest love I thought I’d ever known.’

Laura claimed Mr Boyling named at least two other officers who served undercover and indicated other political activists he suspected were police officers.

She told the Guardian: ‘Initially he promised me that he was the last officer in my movement and he was pulled out because the police no longer had any interests or concerns there, but that was a lie.

‘I found this out when he insisted we hide on our first visit to Kingston Green Fair because he had seen another undercover agent who knew us both and that this man would take it straight back to his superior.

‘Everybody knows there are people in the movement who aren’t who they say they are.

Former policeman Mark Kennedy as he was while working undercover (left) and as he is now (right): He is currently in hiding in the U.S.



‘Being too paranoid would hinder everything. But you don’t expect the one person you trust most in the world not to exist.

‘It wrecks lives. I don’t think the Met consider us at all. I find it shocking that so much public money is being spent to put members of the public under surveillance.’

Mr Boyling, a policeman’s son, used the name Jim Sutton for his undercover work. As ‘Jim the Van’, he drove for Reclaim the Streets, becoming a key player in the protest movement run by anarchists and anti-capitalists.

But when his assignment ended in 2000, he vanished, telling Laura he was off to South Africa.

She used up her savings trying to find him only for them to meet by chance in a bookshop in Kingston, South-West London.

He confessed to being a policeman and divorcee but they married in 2005 and moved into a flat in East Molesey, Surrey.

Protest: Reclaim the Streets protesters on bicycles block Fleet Street in London as they target the financial district of the city

Their marriage, which ended two years ago, produced children now aged seven and five. Mr Boyling is now with Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism unit. Yesterday the police chief managing the crisis in undercover operations insisted officers were banned from sleeping with their targets.

Jon Murphy, head of serious and organised crime for the Association of Chief Police Officers, also said undercover officers provided crucial intelligence on crime and disorder.

He denied that it was common for officers to sleep with their targets, saying: ‘It is absolutely off limits and should not happen. I have authorised more undercover operations than anyone and I have never come across it before.

‘Something has gone wrong and it’s right that it be subject to significant public scrutiny.’ Three inquiries into undercover policing have been launched in the wake of the revelations about Mr Kennedy, a Metropolitan Police officer who had multiple affairs while working undercover for seven years.

Earlier this month, the £1million trial of six eco-activists accused of plotting to occupy a power station in Nottinghamshire collapsed when their lawyer demanded details of his role and the former officer agreed to testify for the protesters.

Yesterday Green Party MP Caroline Lucas said: ‘Given the discovery of even more undercover officers like Mark Kennedy ... we need a full, independent, public inquiry.’



