The British state sent a "rape gang" of cops to abuse women

British authorities have too often failed to bring male abusers to account for their crimes against women and children. And that’s hardly a surprise when they actually sent a “rape gang” of undercover cops to abuse women for decades simply because they wanted a better world – also known as the Spycops scandal.

Spycops: ‘a boys’ club of rapists’

Spycops.info‘s Tom Fowler has been closely following the inquiry into the British state’s unjustifiable targeting of hundreds of left-wing groups with a decades-long political-policing project in service of the rich and powerful. And he told the Canary about the misogynistic culture of abuse at the centre of the Special Branch and its Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), insisting that:

Misogyny is something that goes to the heart of the society we currently live in… Women’s bodies are disposable objects as far as a great deal of men are concerned. And I think that the police in general are a particularly egregious example of that.

Ex-spycop Graham Coates, for example:

said the attitudes towards women, minorities, and homosexuals within Special Branch was much worse than the rest of the police, and that the attitudes within the SDS would have been shocking even within Special Branch. So we’re talking a pretty extreme sort of views.

Fowler added:

It was a boys’ club. And from what we’ve heard – particularly from [whistleblower] Peter Francis – about the language that was used, it was a rape gang that was covering for each other and celebrating the sexual conquest they had of women in the field.

In 2015, after a years-long legal struggle, women whom police had spied on finally received an admission from the Metropolitan Police that officers’ behaviour had not only been “abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong” but also “a violation of the women’s human rights” and “an abuse of police power” which had “caused significant trauma”.

The dark depths of establishment extremism

Spycops weren’t just “professional groomers” with “huge resources behind them”, as film-maker Madoc Roberts told us in 2024. Racism and self-interest were also at the core of their activities, leading them to spy on people with “no political connections or persuasions” like the family of Stephen Lawrence rather than going after his far-right killers. As Fowler told us about the Lawrence case:

the police were looking to protect their reputation, because they weren’t doing their jobs properly when it came to investigating racist murders. They weren’t targeting the far right in any way. The underlying reason’s because of institutional racism. And when that was called out, they were deploying undercover police against the people who were calling it out, to try and neuter that threat.

And because they felt invincible, there were few limits to what they would do. For example, one spycop stole the identity of dead children even when it was no longer a regular practice. Another, meanwhile, was undercover for “about five years” but “stayed in touch with two of these women [he had deceived] for 20 years”. This spycop, James Thomson, “would send occasional emails asking for explicit photographs, and then meeting up for romances and sex with one of these women”. His deception continued even after the inquiry had started.

The British state enabled all of this, simply to protect the interests of the rich and powerful. But by sending extremist police officers to undermine left-wing groups, it didn’t just ‘fundamentally change Britain‘ and traumatise good people in the process. It also exposed the sickening entanglement within the establishment of power, misogyny, and racism. And if we’re going to challenge that successfully, we must learn the lessons of the spycops scandal.

Featured image via the Canary