At least 140 individuals will have a key role in the public inquiry into the undercover infiltration of political groups, and the total may rise.
The list of individuals gives an indication of the scope of the inquiry which is headed by a senior judge, Lord Justice Pitchford.
He will be examining the activities of undercover police units that have infiltrated hundreds of political groups since 1968. His inquiry is expected to start hearing evidence in public next year.
The Pitchford inquiry has granted what is known as ‘core participant’ status to more than 140 individuals so far. This status means that they are given access to evidence, and can have their legal costs funded by the inquiry.
They include :
- Doreen and Neville Lawrence, the parents of murdered teenager Stephen, and his friend, Duwayne Brooks;
- those who have campaigned for justice, such as the families of Ricky Reel, a 20-year-old student whose body was discovered in a river after he was abused by racists, Cherry Groce, who was shot and paralysed by police in a raid on her home in 1985, Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician who was shot dead by police in 2005, as well as Celia Stubbs, the partner of Blair Peach who was killed at a protest in 1979;
- women who were deceived into long-term relationships by undercover officers, and a child from one of those relationships;
- seventeen police officers who worked undercover or were involved in the covert operations. All are anonymous except for Mark Kennedy who infiltrated environmental groups for seven years;
- Peter Francis, the former undercover officer who has become a whistleblower;
- three trade unions - the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians (UCATT), and Fire Brigades Union (FBU);
- workers who were blacklisted by multi-national firms;
- Barbara Shaw, the mother of a dead baby whose identity is believed to have been stolen by an undercover officer;
- Piers Corbyn, the brother of the Labour leader, who was involved in squatters’ campaigns in the 1970s;
- Sharon Grant, the widow of former MP Bernie Grant;
- the Metropolitan Police.
The list of individuals appears to chart the history of protest stretching back many years. It includes activists in groups such as London Greenpeace, an environmental campaign set up in the early 1970s, the Genetic Engineering Network which was established in 1997, Reclaim the Streets, another campaign active in the 1990s, Unite Against Fascism, Defend the Right to Protest, and animal rights campaigns.
Also on the list are green campaigners who were wrongly convicted over protests at the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in 2009, and the Drax power station in 2008.
At a preliminary hearing on Wednesday, the inquiry heard from another tranche of individuals who want to be granted core participant status. It was refreshing to see that the inquiry gave them time to make their pitch.
They included families whose relatives died in the 1989 Hillsborough football disaster. One of their barristers, Peter Weatherby, said that “the families should have an answer to the question definitively whether they were subjected to undercover covert policing, because we say that, given their status as victims, there could be no proper basis for that.”
Many have argued that they cannot show that undercover officers have monitored them unless the police are compelled to disclose the evidence.
Lawyers argued that the onus should not be on individuals to prove that they were spied on by undercover police officers before they are allowed to take part in the inquiry. Courtenay Griffiths, a barrister representing four families, told the inquiry :”The burden cannot, we submit, be placed on victims who lack the means, the resources, the time or drive, much less the memory, given how long ago these events occurred, to investigate these matters themselves.”
This argument - over how much evidence the police should be compelled to hand over - is likely to be crucial in the long run in determining how open the inquiry is seen to be.
Pitchford is due to announce in about a week’s time the up-to-date list of core participants. Anyone can apply to be a core participant at any time during the inquiry which is expected to last three years.
