Undercover Policing Inquiry concludes Special Demonstration Squad should have been shut down

Women deceived into relationships call for release of resulting files

The UK’s Undercover Policing Inquiry has today published its interim report on the activities of the Metropolitan Police Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) between 1968 and 1982.

Inquiry chair Sir John Mitting concludes:

The principal, stated purpose of the SDS was to assist uniformed police to control public order in London. Long-term deployments into left-wing and anarchist groups did make a real contribution to achieving this end, even though this was or could have been achieved to a significant extent by other, less intrusive, means. The question is whether or not the end justified the means set out above. I have come to the firm conclusion that, for a unit of a police force, it did not; and that had the use of these means been publicly known at the time, the SDS would have been brought to a rapid end.

In response to the report, the campaign group Police Spies Out of Lives has released statements from a number of women deceived into sexual relationships by SDS officers.

One such woman, ‘Alison’ stated:

We never should have met these men. They should not have been in our lives because these units should never have existed. These police operations were unjustified and undemocratic, and it’s time for the police to stop protecting themselves, to give us our files and identify all officers involved.

A number of women criticised continuing non-disclosure of the files kept on them. The interim report itself has a closed version, to be presented only to the Home Secretary.

The open evidence is available on the inquiry’s website, and has been extensively analysed at the Undercover Research Group’s wiki portal.