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The Independent
06-03-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
For over a decade, I had no clue the man I shared a bed with was a Met police spy
For 40 years, dozens of women in England and Wales were deceived into forming long-term intimate relationships with undercover Met Police officers – I am one of those women. There have been over 50 of us identified as survivors of this appalling deception. The real number is likely to be much higher. Some relationships lasted up to six years, and four of the officers even fathered children with the women they targeted on deployment. The ongoing Undercover Policing Inquiry was announced in 2015, but delays from anonymity battles and legal arguments meant it only started in 2020. There is much to cover. From 1968 until at least 2011, 140 officers from the Special Demonstration Squad [SDS] and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit [NPOIU] targeted over 1000 political groups. We now know that many of the police spies on active duty in these units formed deceptive sexual relationships with activists as an operational strategy. Andy Coles, the former SDS member turned Tory councillor, even produced a tradecraft manual: a 'how-to' for infiltrating people's lives. In an ironic twist, it was Coles' high-profile brother, Rev Richard Coles, who let slip that he was a spy in his autobiography. The relationships were used as part of the police's strategy to glean information from target groups, bolster the undercover officers' fake identities and allow police spies to infiltrate left-wing and progressive groups, often climbing to positions at the highest level. Other tactics included spreading misinformation to disrupt relationships and inciting activists to commit offences. Several miscarriages of justice have occurred as a result. Of the 25 police spies we know of who formed these abusive relationships over the years, only two were women. The majority of the male undercovers were married. Their wives were equally unaware of their husbands' secret identities and of us women being deceived into intimate relationships. For more than two years, I was deceived into a relationship with the Metropolitan Police officer Carlo Soracchi, codenamed 'Neri'. We met in September 2002 at an anti-war demonstration in London. Carlo was a steward on the march, alongside friends of mine who were trade union and anti-racist activists. We were immediately inseparable, and within six weeks, he moved into my flat, asking me to marry him soon after. We lived together for two years and were planning to have children until he left suddenly in 2004 in the guise of a mental health crisis. Like many women before me, I discovered a decade later that Carlo had led two lives – one with me, as a locksmith and left-wing activist, and the other with his wife, as a highly-trained undercover officer, operating in a secretive unit within the Metropolitan Police. For over a decade, I had no clue that the man I had lived with was a spy, paid to lie by the state. The discovery of the officers' true identities has left most of us suffering from trauma. Unsurprisingly, we struggle to trust people and to form new relationships. For some, the relationships happened during the years when they might have had children, creating a whole other layer of loss to process. Now, a new ITV series shines a very strong light on one of the darkest aspects of the spy cops scandal and reveals the scale of our betrayal by the state. The three-part documentary follows the stories of five women who uncovered the truth about the men they had believed to be devoted partners but who abruptly exited their lives, as Carlo did mine, using harrowing – and fabricated – stories. Carlo left after appearing to have a breakdown. Leading up to his final disappearance, he went missing several times and threatened suicide. Through detective work, detailed research, and even travelling abroad, the women worked together to unmask these men and expose their true identities as undercover police spies. The five women who feature in the documentary series, Belinda Harvey, Helen Steel, 'Alison', 'Lisa' and 'Naomi' (the latter three are pseudonyms) were part of the first group of eight to uncover the scandal and initiate the legal action which ultimately forced the Metropolitan Police to make an unprecedented public apology. The Met said that the relationships were 'abusive, deceitful, manipulative, and wrong' and admitted that the officers' managers had failed in their duty to prevent the relationships from happening, as a result of a systemic culture of sexism within the force. The five women wrote a book about this state-sponsored betrayal and their incredible journey towards exposing the truth. A new edition has been released to mark the TV adaptation and renamed the only thing it could be: The Undercover Police Scandal. Let their bravery – and our stories – be what people remember from this. That, and how the police and government betrayed the very people they are supposed to protect.
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The UK 'spy cops' scandal, explained
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Police surveillance operations targeting political activists over a period of at least 40 years using highly questionable tactics are now the subject of a public inquiry, the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI). Some 139 police officers from at least two units – the National Public Order Intelligence Unit and the Metropolitan Police's Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) – were given fake identities infiltrate more than 1,000 predominantly left-wing political groups, from 1968 on. Some lived with, and even had sexual relationships with, members of the groups they had infiltrated. Four undercover officers are known (or alleged) to have fathered children while living under aliases. To gather intelligence about anti-Vietnam War protests. In the late 1960s there were violent clashes between police and protesters; on one occasion, in 1968, protesters had almost gained entry to the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, London. Plans for further campaigns by hard-left activists had sparked concern at the highest levels of government. The only way to gather intelligence on these demonstrations, the police concluded, was to attend preparatory meetings undercover, posing as supporters of the protests. In the event, subsequent protests passed relatively peacefully. But in the following decades, undercover officers infiltrated political groups ranging from the Socialist Workers Party to hunt saboteurs and animal rights groups, to anti-racist activists. Few were planning to commit serious crimes. Officers adopted fake identities – including those of about 80 dead children – and were issued with fake passports. They fabricated cover stories and immersed themselves in the groups, claiming to be sympathetic to their causes. Some moved into shared houses, living side-by-side with their targets. Tactics varied according to the group they were targeting, but some of the methods used can be found in a 1995 "Tradecraft Manual", which was written by former undercover officer Andy Coles (brother of the broadcaster and priest Richard Coles). It suggests techniques for blending in with activists, whom it refers to disdainfully as "wearies": that officers should grow their hair long and wear "big sloppy jumpers", for instance. "Being a little untidy, smelly and rumpled is a natural state for many of [them]", it states, adding that "the smell of fresh clothing from the suburban washing line" could arouse suspicion. The manual suggests that officers should "try to avoid" sexual relationships, and gives detailed instructions about how to go about adopting a dead child's identity. Initially, through a chance discovery during a holiday in Italy. Lisa Jones (a pseudonym) found a passport belonging to her boyfriend of six years, who went by the name Mark Stone. Inside it, she saw her boyfriend's photo beside a stranger's name: Mark Kennedy. She discovered that Mark wasn't the environmental activist he had been posing as for seven years, but an undercover police officer with two children. The discovery set in motion a chain of events that led to the collapse of a major trial of environmental activists accused of conspiring to break into a power station; and to further revelations about such relationships. In 2015, the then-home secretary, Theresa May, ordered a public inquiry, following revelations that Scotland Yard had infiltrated the family of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence. The UCPI is one of the most complicated, often-delayed and expensive public inquiries in British legal history. Chaired by Sir John Mitting, it finally got under way in 2020. Three years later, it published an interim report, covering the period from 1968 to 1982, that was highly critical of the police. Mitting said that undercover operations to infiltrate left-wing groups, though carried out with government approval, were unjustified, and should have been rapidly shut down. The report found that police infiltration was legally justified on grounds of public safety in the case of only three groups – (Provisional) Sinn Féin and two unidentified organisations – out of hundreds targeted. It also revealed the human costs of the undercover operations. Officers collected a "striking" and "extensive" amount of information about the personal lives of political activists, ranging from their body size and holiday plans to their bank details. Police targeted trade unionists, some of whom suffered years of unemployment as a result. And at least six undercover officers had sexual relationships with women while on deployment between 1968 and 1982. Since then, the inquiry has heard evidence covering the 1980s and 1990s, including testimony from multiple further women who said they had been deceived into relationships with officers. It has also heard claims that crimes were committed or incited by serving undercover officers. The police have sought to paint the scandal as largely historical: barristers acting for the Met Police apologised for the "indefensible" use of undercover officers to infiltrate political groups in the past. Police guidelines have been rewritten to ensure that undercover officers stay within the law: intrusion must be proportionate to the perceived crime or harm; it is "never acceptable" to have sexual relationships while undercover. Since 2016 there has been an oversight body. But when Mitting asked, in 2020, whether police are still infiltrating political groups, he received no answer. He made clear that he expects the questions to be answered before the inquiry ends; it is expected to report by late 2026.
