Pressure on university to sack academic who fathered child with activist and was involved in spying on Stephen Lawrence family

Campaigners are stepping up their efforts to compel a university to sack one of its lecturers. London Metropolitan University has been resisting calls to dismiss Bob Lambert from his post lecturing students about criminology.

The campaigners say that Lambert’s past work for the Metropolitan Police’s undercover unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, makes him unsuitable to be employed by the university.

This previous blog sets out some of the revelations surrounding Lambert’s covert work. He for instance fathered a child with a campaigner and then abandoned both of them, deceived other women into intimate relationships, stole the identity of a dead boy, and was involved in spying on the family of Stephen Lawrence.

On Friday, campaigners from Islington Against Police Spies are holding another demonstration at the university calling for his removal. This here is what the group says.



Anatomy of a betrayal: the undercover officer accused of deceiving two women, fathering a child, then vanishing Read more

Meanwhile there has been a vigorous exchange of arguments for and against dismissing Lambert in the pages of the Times Higher Education newspaper.

Here Stefano Bonino, an academic, argued in defence of Lambert, writing :”In short, the campaigners make a weakly argued moral case, but fail to make a robust legal or a pragmatic case, and in such circumstances, dismissing Lambert would seriously undermine the credibility of any autonomous institution. The campaign against Lambert is tantamount to institutional hijacking and attacks the very essence of the university as – in Benjamin Disraeli’s words – “a place of light, of liberty, and of learning”.”

A group of academics responded with a letter to the same publication, citing a “growing clamour from politicians, opinion formers and the wider public for Lambert to be sacked”. Their letter can be read here.

They argued : “Given the long-term deception of so many people by Lambert, including the sexual exploitation of women, which the Association of Chief Police Officers’ Sir Jon Murphy has described as “grossly unprofessional”, we ask is there anyone less well-qualified to teach the next generation of senior police officers and management staff?”

Activist Merrick Badger, on his Bristling Badger blog, weighed in with further arguments for the removal of Lambert from the university. He wrote :”When a criminology lecturer devoted decades to abuse of citizens and the counter-democratic undermining of campaigns for seemingly no reason other than they threaten established power, it demolishes their credibility and legitimacy.”