Can you help us to produce an historical record of evidence heard at the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI), and provide accessible real-time reporting to enable people to engage and understand the testimony as it happens...?
The UCPI is a judge-led Inquiry, currently investigating political state spying in England and Wales since 1968, providing the kind of disclosure and insight into political policing and State persecution of political movements that normally only occurs after major revolutionary change.
Under pressure from the government, the Inquiry is rushing to finish.. and this year, turns its attention to the 1990s & 2000s. This means we have a lot of work to do in 2025-2026: an urgent, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Spanning almost 50 years of political policing, from 1968 to 2014, the evidence coming out in the UCPI from the police, the Security Service (MI5) and other state agents, provides a wealth of information about the historical and ongoing surveillance of political groups. The inquiry’s terms of reference include establishing the impact of undercover policing on individuals, social justice movements and wider society, as well as recommendations to prevent future abuses. Understanding the revelations coming out of the inquiry is of vital importance to social movements, activists and society as a whole.
However, the Inquiry is often described as the most secretive public inquiry ever. Anonymity for state agents, restriction orders, closed hearings, and the complex and secretive nature of the material under investigation means it incredibly difficult to follow.
This project aims to increase public awareness of and access to the material as it emerges, through written, video and audio reporting; and social media and press work. Our website contains the only complete repository of coverage of the hearings, outside of the Inquiry’s own transcripts (not all of which have been published, and which can prove very difficult to read).
We have a proven track record, with campaigners, lawyers and journalists describing our reporting as ‘invaluable’. Our sister organisation, the Undercover Research Group, is doing well funded coverage and archiving of the historic documents the inquiry is releasing, but we are the only people providing comprehensive coverage of live witness evidence.
The Inquiry is not only providing an unprecedented insight into political policing in the UK, it also constitutes a fascinating repository of popular history. There are more than 200 civilian core participants and witnesses, most of whom were part of the movements spied upon. Witnesses are given the opportunity to study the secret police files kept about them and then give evidence. The result is an incredible social record of groups and movements right across the spectrum of the political left. So far we have heard from protesters against the Vietnam war and members of the Troops Out movement; the Stop the 70 Tour campaign and the anti-apartheid movement; the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND); the women’s liberation movement; the 1981 Brixton riots; the Animal Liberation Front and the Hunt Saboteurs Association; opponents of the Poll Tax and members of the Trafalgar Square Defence Campaign; suppporters of the Miners’ and Wapping print workers’ strikes; anti-racist movements and family justice campaigns such as the Trevor Monerville Defence Campaign; and countless other revolutionary Marxist, socialist and anarchist campaign groups from the 1970s and 1980s. As we move into the 1990s and 2000s the evidence will follow these movements, and move on to emerging environmental direct action, social justice, anti-capitalist, anti-globalisation and worker’s movements as they developed over the years.
The COPS network is made up of seasoned campaigners from across the SpyCops’ affected groups. Between us we have direct experience of the movements affected, going right back to the 1970s and up to the present day. We know these movements from within, and over the past decade the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance has achieved something very special: our campaign unites activists from across the Left – Marxists, Maoists, socialists, anarchists, feminists, environmentalists, trade unionists, animal rights activists, anti-fascists, family justice campaigns, police accountability groups, community organisations, and many many others – all working together to expose the abuses of Britain’s secret political police.
We have been directly engaged in the public inquiry as Core Participants (CPs) since the beginning. We have more than a decade of experience in navigating the Inquiry & engaging with affected communities. Our deep-rooted understanding of the issues at stake & the nature of the evidential material means we are uniquely positioned to deliver this project. We work closely & in tandem with sister organisations Police Spies Out of Lives (https://policespiesoutoflives.org.uk/) & the Undercover Research Group (https://database.spycops.info/).
Through sustained campaigning, COPS have successfully increased visibility of spycops’ abuses & applied pressure on the Undercover Policing Inquiry to ensure victims' interests & cases are fully represented. While the process remains an uphill struggle, the campaign has achieved significant concessions from the Inquiry & has kept the issue on the public agenda for more than ten years through sporadic but impactful media coverage, effectively supporting affected communities & disseminating information to broader audiences.
COPS as an organisation has been operating for over 10 years. We have been at the forefront of efforts to expose spycops’ injustices & bring them into public consciousness, countering attempts by the state and mainstream media to obscure these seminal stories, and distort the real history. The organisation is entirely volunteer run, and the only way we can carry out this project is for people to put their habitual earnings on hold & commit to working on this for a few weeks. That means we have to pay. (Even then, it will remain the case that those doing paid work for COPS will do do more work for free than on the clock.)