Undercover cops were actively involved in protests

On 26 February, the Undercover Policing Inquiry, taking place in London, heard further testimony from Lois Austin. She was speaking about her experience during a mass police kettle in central London in 2001. Among details the inquiry heard were further accounts of the involvement of undercover officers (spycops) in protests.

Austin described how police contained her and 3,000 other May Day anti-capitalist protesters and bystanders for approximately seven hours at Oxford Circus. Police held protesters in tightly cramped conditions with no access to food, water, shelter or toilet facilities.

At the time, Austin was a breastfeeding mother. Despite repeated requests, she said officers refused to allow her to leave to collect her baby from a nursery, causing significant distress.

Cop in the kettle

Austin also referred to recent revelations that undercover police officer Carlo Soracchi was present inside the kettle alongside Socialist Party members. She told the Inquiry it is inconceivable that he was not reporting to his handlers throughout the events and would therefore have known she had a baby outside the kettle which needed to be collected.

It has further been revealed that on the night before Austin testified in a legal case brought in 2005 by her and around 150 other claimants in relation to the kettle, Soracchi attended a secret meeting with a barrister representing the Metropolitan Police and leading the cross examination of Austin at the High Court. He was identified as John Beggs. It has been reported that during that meeting, discussion included what “winds Lois up”.

The following day, during Austin’s court testimony, hostile questioning raised the fact that her partner was Irish and had been an active socialist in Belfast. It was asserted that there were many Irish people on the May Day demonstration, with the clear implication that Irish participants were likely to be violent or linked to paramilitarism.

Austin was also questioned about individuals among the 150 claimants and witnesses, with the implication that they were secretly Socialist Party members.

Austin rejected these insinuations. In reality, there were not large numbers of Irish people participating nor were there any Socialist Party members disguising their affiliation to act as claimants or witnesses in the original civil cases against the Metropolitan Police.

Of the approximately 150 claimants and witnesses, only four to five were Socialist Party members, including Austin. The suggestion otherwise, she said, was an attempt to undermine the credibility of the protesters’ case.

Both Soracchi and another former undercover officer who gave evidence to the Inquiry on 26 February stated that they witnessed no violence among those kettled.

Undercover provocateurs

Recent revelations have also indicated that, at previous anti-capitalist protests in June 1999 and May Day 2000, instances of criminal damage were instigated by police agent provocateurs. They supplied lorry loads of scaffolding and breeze blocks for the June 1999 protest. A reflective article from after the event thought that these materials had just been “lying around”.

During the May Day 2000 protests an undercover police officer supplied turf and manure from a lorry for ‘guerilla gardening’ action at Parliament Square.

None of this was disclosed in court at the 2005 civil proceedings brought by Lois and other claimants against the Met Police. Indeed, these incidents were cited by the Metropolitan Police as justification for kettling tactics during the 2005 and subsequent civil proceedings brought by Lois and other claimants in the 2000s. Surely the May Day 2001 judgement is now unsafe and that case needs to be re-opened.

The 26 February Undercover Policing Inquiry hearing once again raises serious concerns about the conduct of the Metropolitan Police, the use of undercover officers within political movements, and the broader question of the protection of the democratic right to organise, rally and protest, and the role of the capitalist state.

Featured image via Urban 75