by Alison from Police Spies Out of Lives
It’s been nearly ten years since I first met with the founder of Centre for Women’s Justice, Harriet Wistrich when she took me seriously about the outlandish and paranoid sounding story I recounted of my ex-boyfriend, Mark ‘Cassidy’ Jenner, who I believed to be an undercover policeman.
A lot has happened since then and this week represents another significant landmark on our road to truth and justice. The public inquiry into undercover policing has started. Our barristers, Phillippa Kaufmann QC and Heather Williams QC, will be delivering our opening statement on Monday 9th November setting out our experiences of the systemic sexual abuse of women by undercover police units since 1968.
“Sex sells newspapers and betrayed women are recognisable archetypes”
Since bringing the first case against the Metropolitan police with seven other women, I have become accustomed to the police’s avoidance and delay tactics, despite their protestations to the contrary.
This public inquiry came about as a direct result of our litigation and the evidence we had uncovered about the abusive behaviour we’d suffered at the hands of the Met.
The appalling revelations of whistle blower Peter Francis that the Lawrence family campaign for justice was spied upon was also a key factor as was the Guardian’s reporting of both his testimony and our case.
Yet David Barr QC, counsel to the public inquiry, in his opening statement on Monday 2nd November, completely ignored the role of the women in exposing this scandal. He offered a timeline of events that made no mention of our litigation or the unprecedented apology we received from the police.
Despite being at the forefront of campaigning for justice and police accountability, we are often pigeon holed – even by our supporters and allies - as the human interest element of the story. As if the real politics lies somewhere else. As if our stories – terrible though they are - are purely personal. Some of us weren’t even activists, they note.
Sex sells newspapers and betrayed women are recognisable archetypes. The questions we’re so often asked by journalists and others reflect this personal engagement with our experience.
‘How do you feel about him now?’
‘What would you do if you saw him?
‘Is there anything you want to say to him?’
And whilst we are comfortable exploring these deeply personal questions between ourselves and with those closest to us, our campaign focus is public facing and political.
We want it to be a crime for an undercover officer to have an intimate relationship with a member of the public. We want the inquiry to make a finding of institutional sexism in the police. And we want our files.
Our experience brings together the personal and the political. One is not a way into thinking about the other; they combine to highlight the institutional sexism of these police deployments which impacted also on the officers’ wives.
Although the experiences of the wives is different from ours, we recognise that they too are victims of institutional discrimination against women by the state.
None of us consented to this state-sponsored deceit and none of us have received any disclosure or explanation for why or how it was allowed to happen.
“Our campaign aims to raise public awareness of the whole policing scandal: the sexism, the racism, the prejudice attitudes towards protest and working class organisation, and the sinister workings of the secret state”
The inquiry is being chaired by Sir John Mitting – a member of the men only Garrick club who is not keen on the term ‘sexism’ and questions the MacPherson definition of institutional racism. He stubbornly refuses to accept a panel of advisors with expertise in these issues and seems out of touch with the ordinary lives of the core participants.
The police position in a nutshell is to justify the tactic of covert surveillance whilst highlighting that the wrong doing is historical, that things have now changed for the better. They argue that some core participants were totalitarian, violent extremists; the rest were collateral intrusion.
It was explained by one lawyer representing the police, that the SDS was established to avoid having a paramilitary force on the streets to maintain public order. We should be grateful, it seems, that whilst a few of us had to take a hit for the team, we saved the rest from teargas and plastic bullets.
Our campaign aims to raise public awareness of the whole policing scandal: the sexism, the racism, the prejudice attitudes towards protest and working class organisation, and the sinister workings of the secret state.
We found the story and we shout about it loudly. Too shrilly for some, I expect.
We understood from the outset its political significance.
The opening statements so far have proved us right. There has been institutional collusion with the systemic abuse of the human rights of British citizens for decades perpetrated by the Met police, Special Branch and MI5.
We will keep making a noise until we achieve truth and justice.