True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 242: Spycops III Aired: 2022-07-29 Duration: 01:05:03 === Tiny Plane Baggage Gap (07:50) === [00:00:00] Welcome to the Bay Vest. [00:00:01] No, stop it. [00:00:02] No, it's all right. [00:00:03] No. [00:00:04] Rice Belden's Caress. [00:00:07] Welcome to it. [00:00:08] Do you like that? [00:00:09] It was just a little tip of your knee right there. [00:00:11] Would you like a shoulder? [00:00:12] No, get away from me. [00:00:14] Can't reach that without our mics overlapping. [00:00:18] Would you like another? [00:00:19] Would you like to tune in? [00:00:21] The only way I know you're a British person is you trying to touch me. [00:00:24] No, that's not true. [00:00:25] you an adult what the fuck accent was that No one ever knows what accent you're doing. [00:00:56] It's crazy that I can do that. [00:00:58] I say, you know what I should say is that you should coin a new thing, which is that this is the accent of the Commonwealth. [00:01:04] And then just let people think about it and then you run away. [00:01:07] Yeah, I'm mixing. [00:01:08] So we should have to deal with it either. [00:01:09] Yeah, I'm full Commonwealth. [00:01:11] I'm historical Commonwealth, too. [00:01:12] I go from South Africa. [00:01:14] Sure. [00:01:14] To Australia. [00:01:15] Yeah, hop on over. [00:01:16] To the banks of Montreal. [00:01:18] Absolutely. [00:01:19] Well, that's not legally as it is. [00:01:23] And England, the Commonwealth. [00:01:28] I got to tell you something. [00:01:29] I want to get something off my chest before we introduce ourselves. [00:01:32] Okay, I was going to say. [00:01:32] There needs to be federal hearings on air travel. [00:01:35] Oh my God. [00:01:36] Here we go. [00:01:38] Do you disagree with me? [00:01:40] I haven't said anything. [00:01:41] I'm just saying, you travel just a little bit straight on down south to Flowrida, which, by the way, it wasn't that long ago. [00:01:50] You said, oh, I just got that. [00:01:51] Yeah, it's true. [00:01:52] Flow Rida. [00:01:55] And now you are just full on, we got to commandeer the airlines. [00:02:00] I'm saying that. [00:02:01] And the airports. [00:02:02] I'm in this airport yesterday, Key West Airport. [00:02:05] I'm doing that. [00:02:06] Teeny, tiny little thing. [00:02:07] Teeny. [00:02:07] Yeah. [00:02:08] Oh, believe me. [00:02:09] If I had a nickel for every time someone said teeny tiny little thing to me in the past few days. [00:02:13] Oh my God. [00:02:13] Let me tell you, I'd have enough to buy five gumboards. [00:02:16] And in Flowrida. [00:02:18] I'm in this airport. [00:02:19] 800 sweaty, chin-strapped revelers returning to their homes. [00:02:27] And little old me. [00:02:28] I'm doing diamond push-ups in the terminal. [00:02:33] Sure. [00:02:33] Or I'm doing a diamond push-up. [00:02:36] And very carefully. [00:02:38] Some fucking, yeah, it's really slow. [00:02:40] Some voice gets on the intercom and it's like, due to a minor security breach. [00:02:46] Which they weren't talking about you. [00:02:47] They weren't talking about me. [00:02:48] I'd been in the airport for a while. [00:02:50] Yeah. [00:02:50] Yeah. [00:02:50] Nothing minor. [00:02:51] Stopping guys' feet in the fucking stalls. [00:02:53] Yeah. [00:02:54] And wide stance. [00:02:56] Wide stancing in the stalls. [00:02:57] And he's like, due to a minor security breach, everybody has to leave the airport. [00:03:04] And I was, I've never heard of this. [00:03:06] I've never heard of this in my life. [00:03:08] All 800 sweaty revelers are forced to. [00:03:12] I'm calling them revelers. [00:03:14] A lot of these people were. [00:03:15] Were they still mid-revel? [00:03:17] Many smelled of Seltzner. [00:03:19] Sure. [00:03:20] And we had to leave the airport and then single file come back in. [00:03:24] Single file? [00:03:25] Single file come back in. [00:03:26] Did people do it? [00:03:28] What are you going to do? [00:03:29] Stay in Key West? [00:03:30] There's nowhere to go. [00:03:31] No, no, did they single file? [00:03:32] I mean, we had to single file. [00:03:34] There was only one guy to let you in. [00:03:37] Interesting. [00:03:37] And they could manage the single file. [00:03:39] They couldn't manage the single file. [00:03:40] I get on the plane. [00:03:42] I'm going to tell you this. [00:03:43] These seats are too small. [00:03:44] Oh, because you're on tiny plane. [00:03:45] I'm on tiny plane. [00:03:46] Well, this is actually mid-tiny plane. [00:03:48] There's not enough plane. [00:03:49] I'm, you know, I'm, you know, me. [00:03:50] Are the seats too small? [00:03:51] Are you too big? [00:03:52] No, I'm, oh, believe me, I'm small on the airplane. [00:03:55] I tell you, I do sideways profile. [00:03:57] I sit like this. [00:03:59] You can't see it, listeners, but I sit on my side directly facing the person next to me to make my profile. [00:04:05] Sure. [00:04:06] And make them more comfortable. [00:04:07] Exactly. [00:04:07] Because it gets cold in airplanes and my hot breath kind of heats them up. [00:04:11] There's not enough room for people's bags. [00:04:14] Oh, yeah. [00:04:14] That's a whole new thing. [00:04:16] That's a crazy thing. [00:04:17] Well, now, because also everyone's losing their bags. [00:04:19] Everyone's losing their bags. [00:04:20] And so, welcome to Airport Talk, by the way. [00:04:22] Everyone's losing their bags. [00:04:24] What's the deal? [00:04:28] And so now everyone, smart, little brains, big brain style, are like, no, I'm bringing a carry-on. [00:04:34] Now there's not enough room for the carry-on. [00:04:36] Because the carry-ons, so then they say, oh, you brought a carry-on. [00:04:38] Too bad. [00:04:39] You're too slow. [00:04:40] Slow-mo. [00:04:41] You got here late. [00:04:42] Now you got to check it. [00:04:43] Yeah, you got to check it. [00:04:44] But it's free now? [00:04:46] Yeah, I don't know. [00:04:47] And yeah. [00:04:48] This is what I don't get. [00:04:49] The other thing, too, all these comics used to complain about airplane food. [00:04:53] What's the deal with that? [00:04:56] I'm not even asking what's the deal with airplane food. [00:04:58] I'm asking, where is the airplane food? [00:05:02] I don't think you get it anymore. [00:05:04] Not a morsel to be handled. [00:05:06] A tiny bag of nuts. [00:05:07] Tiny bag of nuts, yeah. [00:05:09] And then what? [00:05:09] You're going to give me a little thimble full of sprite to wash it down with? [00:05:13] Oh, yeah. [00:05:14] The thimble cup is a real. [00:05:16] You're asking just, oh, could I have just the bottle of water? [00:05:20] No. [00:05:20] No, no bottle of water. [00:05:22] Wouldn't want to pollute on this jet plane that we're on. [00:05:25] Why don't you fill it all with ice? [00:05:27] And you know when you flush on those things, that thing just goes out the bottom. [00:05:31] Oh, my God. [00:05:31] It's, yeah. [00:05:32] That's not. [00:05:33] Anyways, I gotta tell you. [00:05:36] There needs to be federal commissions on this. [00:05:38] These airlines are totally unregulated. [00:05:41] They really, yeah, they're. [00:05:42] They really, it's a wild west out there. [00:05:44] Yeah. [00:05:45] Anyways, everyone. [00:05:47] I apologize for all of that. [00:05:49] My name is Liz. [00:05:50] Wish that you weren't Liz saying that, but the CEO of every airline company to me, Brace Belden, and our producer, of course, travel uh blogger, Young Chomsky. [00:06:04] The points guy, the points guy. [00:06:06] Every time you just try to Google a thing, it's like the points guy comes up. [00:06:10] Who is this guy? [00:06:10] You know what's gonna make me sound really fucking stupid? [00:06:14] You know those credit cards? [00:06:15] Like, if you get a gap credit card, is your bank the gap now? [00:06:19] No, what are you taking your checks to the gap? [00:06:24] I don't have credit cards, the bank of easy. [00:06:27] I feel like gap doesn't exist. [00:06:28] I have a easy credit card, yeah. [00:06:30] No, I have a red gap credit card. [00:06:34] Oh, red, like bono style with the parentheses. [00:06:36] I don't even know what those guys were raising money for. [00:06:38] I think it was AIDS. [00:06:40] Yeah, I don't know. [00:06:41] Yeah, what else do we want to talk about? [00:06:45] I gotta say, mice, like for computers. [00:06:48] No, wait, you know, real quick. [00:06:50] On the airplane, there's like six buttons on Young Chomsky's mouse. [00:06:54] What are these for? [00:06:56] It's for gaming, I think. [00:06:57] It's definitely not a gaming mouse. [00:06:59] Um, it looks very ergonomic. [00:07:03] Um, one last thing I'll say about the airlines. [00:07:05] Now, this is a little interesting fact I found out. [00:07:08] Apparently, one of the big reasons for the pilot shortage is because of the huge growth of the private plane industry. [00:07:18] Really? [00:07:18] Yeah, so now taking these things. [00:07:21] Everyone, everyone charters, not everyone we know. [00:07:24] We don't know anyone then, but every insane wealthy person, of which there are many, charters flights. [00:07:30] Every celebrity chart, like, remember where you'd be like a kid and be like, oh, my, you know, someone, so-and-so ran into someone on the airplane. [00:07:38] Yeah. [00:07:38] And it was like a cool song. [00:07:39] So he saw, he saw Vince. [00:07:41] Yeah. [00:07:42] My friend saw Vince. [00:07:45] Shit, what is that guy's name? [00:07:48] Why are we? [00:07:49] Shylene Woodley. === Pilot Shortage Insights (06:15) === [00:07:50] No, no. [00:07:51] Oh, Andy Dick. [00:07:52] My friend saw Andy Dick on it. [00:07:53] That's the worst guy to see on an airplane. [00:07:56] Yeah, I think he was voice. [00:07:57] I'd turn around and get my ass off. [00:07:59] Yeah. [00:08:00] He's either going to do a prank or he's going to grab somebody. [00:08:02] I'm going to go to the other side who's probably turning to their side because they're so small and scary. [00:08:05] Could you imagine? [00:08:06] You and your wife are like going to Barbados and Andy Dick's in the middle, just fucking plum wine. [00:08:13] In the middle? [00:08:14] Yeah. [00:08:14] He's in the middle. [00:08:15] Oh, because you try to do the smart thing where you're like, oh, you take the window. [00:08:17] I take the aisle. [00:08:18] No one's going to take the middle. [00:08:20] Dick takes the middle. [00:08:22] And then, God, and then he, Jesus Christ. [00:08:25] What's up with that guy now? [00:08:26] I don't know. [00:08:27] Another thing I want. [00:08:27] He's not well. [00:08:29] No, he ain't okay, man. [00:08:30] There's something wrong with that fella. [00:08:31] I never really found him very charming. [00:08:33] He was like Tom Green, but more abhorrent. [00:08:36] Yeah. [00:08:37] And somehow around more. [00:08:39] I don't like, he's like, I don't know what happened to Tom Green. [00:08:44] You don't know? [00:08:46] That's why they did red. [00:08:49] What? [00:08:50] Oh, green red. [00:08:51] Yeah. [00:08:51] That doesn't make sense. [00:08:52] No. [00:08:53] Tom Green is, I think, still around, but like not anywhere we would see him. [00:08:59] One thing I want to bring up, too. [00:09:01] This is what we call the airing of the grievances. [00:09:03] A lot of times you look at people's comments on our Patreon or whatever, which we have, and there are many more episodes available at. [00:09:14] This is the first time in 300-something episodes that we remember to do that. [00:09:19] A lot of times people will be like, how come they talk so much before the regular party says that? [00:09:24] People would be saying that, which is a cool way to say a small percentage of people be saying that. [00:09:31] I want to ask you this. [00:09:32] Next time, I would like, next time that you attend the symphony, if you ever do, you're going to see the Nutcracker. [00:09:42] I want you to go down into the orchestra pit and I want you to assail every single person tuning their instrument down there and be like, no, you shouldn't do this. [00:09:54] When does the Nutcracker start? [00:09:56] No. [00:09:56] I want to hear the Nutcracker. [00:09:58] I want to hear them. [00:09:59] Don't tune. [00:10:00] Let me just hear the please just play the Nutcracker. [00:10:02] Can you give me the time stamp for this show of the Nutcracker when the Nutcracker starts? [00:10:07] You know what you should do after you do that? [00:10:12] Let me tell you what you should do. [00:10:13] You should take the advice of a certain monk in Vietnam who is protesting. [00:10:19] Okay, hold on. [00:10:20] The regime of the Catholics that were in charge of that country and their oppression of the Buddhist minority. [00:10:26] And I want you to go right into your nearest town square, douse yourself in a little bit of kerosene. [00:10:31] All right, let's be like, this has gone far enough, but you guys know what I'm getting at. [00:10:35] Yeah, you know what I'm gesturing towards. [00:10:37] Exactly. [00:10:37] I want you to gesture towards something. [00:10:39] Exactly. [00:10:40] Then I want you to fall onto a candle, which wouldn't be enough to do anything there. [00:10:47] Don't do any of that. [00:10:48] But this is a good point you raise. [00:10:49] Yeah. [00:10:50] I like this little metaphor. [00:10:51] I'm just like, you know what? [00:10:53] The artist needs to. [00:10:56] What you're saying is we're tuning our instruments. [00:10:57] We're tuning instruments by talking about airliners. [00:11:00] You know, whatever. [00:11:01] We do what we want. [00:11:02] What about that? [00:11:03] Check this out. [00:11:04] Start your own podcast. [00:11:16] All right, let's get Tom on here. [00:11:17] Wait, one last thing. [00:11:19] What? [00:11:20] What did we say? [00:11:21] But it's been three years. [00:11:22] Happy anniversary. [00:11:24] That's true. [00:11:26] Three years ago on July 23rd. [00:11:29] 23rd? [00:11:31] 20. [00:11:32] Jesus Christ. [00:11:33] Both Jan Chomsky and I know this off the top of our head. [00:11:36] And you. [00:11:36] I got a lot going on, but yeah, you're going to Florida. [00:11:39] You're going on vacation. [00:11:40] That was not a vacation. [00:11:43] July 23rd of 2019. [00:11:49] We all met for the first time. [00:11:54] And we've been doing episodes. [00:11:56] Why am I having to be the one who has to talk about this? [00:11:58] I don't know. [00:11:58] You just started. [00:11:59] I don't have to anything. [00:12:00] But you're doing the thing where you have your hands in your lap and you kind of look at me like this. [00:12:04] No, I'm just doing that the whole time. [00:12:06] You know, Liz, why don't you give a three-minute uninterrupted speech right now about a student podcast for three years? [00:12:11] That's not, I don't, I'm not here to speechify. [00:12:13] I just wanted to say it's been swell. [00:12:16] It's been swell. [00:12:17] And love you guys. [00:12:18] Love you guys too. [00:12:19] And here's to three more years? [00:12:23] Let's just take it a day at a time. [00:12:25] All right. [00:12:26] Here's to taking it a day at a time. [00:12:28] And with that, let's get on with the show. [00:12:44] Dong. [00:12:51] Creak. [00:12:54] Shump. [00:12:57] As you hear the footsteps go up the stairs of the old bailey, the skeletons creaking underneath their graves. [00:13:08] You think to yourself, well, I've been here, a bewigued British judge, for nigh on 90 pence years and a tuppence besides. [00:13:20] And in all that time, since I pulled the sword from the stone, since I pulled the gavel from the bench, I've never seen the likes of a prisoner like this. [00:13:31] And all right, for this part, Tom, I'm your American lawyer. [00:13:35] Hold on, what's going on here? [00:13:37] You cannot execute this man just for the charge of coming back to Truanon. [00:13:43] That's right. [00:13:43] We have with us today Tom Fowler back for round three to talk to us, one of our most requested guests, one of our most beloved guests, both from the team and from the audience. [00:13:56] We're talking Spy Cops episode three. [00:13:59] Tom, how are you doing? [00:14:00] Welcome back. [00:14:01] And I'm sorry for the intro. [00:14:02] I'm good, man. [00:14:03] That's a great Australian accent. === Two-Year Silence Break (15:08) === [00:14:06] I love what before we started recording. [00:14:09] Tom was like, have you done your goofy British accent yet? [00:14:11] And we're like, no, we're not going to do it. [00:14:12] I didn't do that this time. [00:14:13] Well, technically, I did. [00:14:14] You didn't. [00:14:15] Great. [00:14:16] I'm incapable of doing a British accent. [00:14:19] I can only. [00:14:20] Because Australian accents are so much funnier. [00:14:23] Yeah, you could try a Welsh accent one day, man. [00:14:26] Try Welsh accent next time I come on. [00:14:27] Though I can speak fluent Welsh, I choose not to because I feel like our listeners feel it's condescending. [00:14:34] Yeah. [00:14:35] Yeah, fairly. [00:14:36] Tom, we have you back here in the tower to talk about recent updates in Spy Cops. [00:14:42] You know, actually, before we really get into it, would you be able to give our listeners, perhaps some new listeners, because it's been a year since you've been on, a summation of what is the spy cops case? [00:14:56] Yeah, sure. [00:14:56] So, I guess, like, the story starts with the exposure of, guys, like 12, fucking hell, it's 12 years ago now, where an undercover police officer was exposed by activists who he was deployed within, which led to the unraveling of it. [00:15:15] It turned out that there were two groups in the British police, the Special Demonstration Squad and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, who were sending undercover officers into political protest groups for five-year deployments from 1968 onwards. [00:15:32] These officers would infiltrate the lives of all sorts of progressive groups, anti-war groups, animal rights groups, environmental groups, across the left, interestingly, not the far right, and seek to gather intelligence, but would not, and also to disrupt, but wouldn't gather evidence for a court case. [00:15:53] Unlike normal undercover cops who kind of go were deployed and then there's a day in court and they go, I've got all this evidence. [00:16:00] These guys would just deploy for five years and then they would disappear and they'd be replaced by somebody else who would carry on that sort of that path of deployment. [00:16:10] Yeah, and they've been doing it for since 1968, since the particularly big anti-Vietnam War protest that happened in London. [00:16:22] As part of their deployment, it turned out that they were using the identities of dead children, which they were stealing. [00:16:27] They were deceiving women into long-term intimate relationships. [00:16:35] They were subverting democracy in lots of ways. [00:16:37] All sorts of groups that were maybe not considered in any kind of way of a threat by most ordinary people, campaign groups, anything which made the cops look in a bad light. [00:16:46] They were infiltrating those groups and behaving very much outside the law. [00:16:51] This led to like a number of legal cases being brought by women, some of whom had children with these officers not knowing that they were undercover cops. [00:17:02] That led then to a public inquiry being called in 2015. [00:17:07] Obviously, with the British justice being the fastest you can buy, it's been like seven years and we've just got through like tranche one of that. [00:17:17] Yeah, I guess that's like the short version. [00:17:20] Well, I mean, we shouldn't neglect to mention too that this also personally affected you. [00:17:26] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:17:27] I think it would be worth saying that I think if you were involved in any form of radical politics from 1968 through to 2010, it probably affected you too, but you just don't know it yet. [00:17:41] Yeah, I mean, we're talking everything from, you know, sort of the most like, you know, stuffed-shirted Trotskyites to, you know, anarchist to green kind of anarchist groups to, you know, children's groups to women's groups. [00:17:53] Really, I mean, and no group too small either. [00:17:56] I mean, some of these, some of these organizations had like 20 people in them. [00:18:00] Yeah, I mean, some of them had three. [00:18:03] And like, they were, they were like, I mean, particularly when they're infiltrating the Maoists, they were like, you know, splits upon splits, which led to, you know, like undercover cops setting up their own little parties with two other people whose, the entire role of the party was to denounce the other parties, you know, I mean, just some real classic sort of leftist infighting information we've got through this process of looking at. [00:18:27] I think one thing, too, that's really marked the, you know, what makes the spy cops case so unique in terms of, you know, comparing it to like similar cases in the U.S. with how the police has infiltrated leftist groups is the role that these cops played, [00:18:45] like marrying women, having children with women, having these kind of, you know, complete and total double lives and infiltrating social circles in a way that was just completely and totally, I think, just traumatic and destructive and horrific on so many different levels. [00:19:06] There's been a number of women that have come forward to kind of give testimony during this, the course of these inquiries, right? [00:19:15] Yeah, there has. [00:19:16] In fact, some of them have just published some books, which are well worth your time of Small Town Girl by Donna McLean and Deep Deception by Helen Steele, Alison, Belinda and Lisa, which both were well worth reading. [00:19:33] I mean, essentially, the whole sort of story was broken open by these women. [00:19:39] In some cases, these men, like, you know, part of the relationships weren't like some sort of collateral sort of intrusion has been suggested by the cops. [00:19:49] It would appear these were very much, this was the tactic with which to very deeply embed these officers into groups very quickly through these relationships. [00:19:58] So they would target these women with like being the sort of ideal partner to these women. [00:20:04] So obviously when they left, there was a lot of trauma about how they left, which led some of these women to spend years trying to find them afterwards, which led them on to just come up with the idea that maybe these men had been undercover cops. [00:20:18] And, you know, it took them in some cases decades to get to a point where this was confirmed and they were no longer thought of as mad by their friends and family. [00:20:26] And it's actually completely true and a matter of public record. [00:20:29] God. [00:20:30] I mean, yeah, that's just like trauma heaped on trauma heaped on fucking. [00:20:35] I mean, that would drive anyone insane. [00:20:37] You know, Tom, you mentioned that there's a couple of books that have come out. [00:20:40] There's a couple of television shows too. [00:20:42] And it's sort of, I know that there have been, I think as far back as 2016, at least involving sort of spy cops as a storyline. [00:20:51] And I really, I mean, it's hard to gauge from over here because the spy cop scandal is literally a non-story in the U.S. [00:20:59] No one has heard of it. [00:21:00] This is, I mean, I think even people who are pretty clued into politics or like, at least, you know, news heads. [00:21:07] Even people who clued into British politics, I'm not sure they know. [00:21:11] Exactly. [00:21:12] Yeah, that's true. [00:21:13] How do you gauge it over there? [00:21:15] Is there like, I mean, what's the amount of sort of public scrutiny or public attention that this stuff is given? [00:21:22] I mean, it's incredibly limited. [00:21:24] I mean, you mentioned like TV. [00:21:25] There's been some recent TV show, I think it was BBC called Sherwood, which was like a TV drama that like used the spy cops thing as like a major driver to its plot. [00:21:36] I mean, that got more media coverage than the last hearing of the inquiry. [00:21:42] Significantly more coverage. [00:21:44] I mean, it was quite depressing how many articles were written about that speculating on which one was the spy cop than there was about the actual inquiry with the real, oh, who are these spy cops? [00:21:54] But I mean, I'm not a fan of TV drama. [00:21:57] I don't really follow that kind of stuff. [00:21:58] So like, I didn't watch it or anything. [00:22:01] But yeah, weirdly, it seems like that sort of stuff has a bigger role to play in public awareness of these things than like the actual facts, which is kind of depressing, really. [00:22:12] But yeah, I mean, for the most part, it's not a story. [00:22:18] It was a story when it first broke because it was quite sensational. [00:22:23] There's a lot of sex involved with it. [00:22:25] So obviously that kind of got a bit of interest from the tabloids. [00:22:30] But then there's a thing these days where tabloids kind of feel they followed it. [00:22:33] They've done it. [00:22:34] They kind of, it was about the sex thing. [00:22:37] That's kind of it. [00:22:37] That was their interest. [00:22:39] That's kind of it, you know. [00:22:40] And I don't think they really, there's no really interest in the wider sort of ramifications of the fact that every progressive movement in British society was infiltrated and destabilized and undermined systemically 50 years. [00:22:53] That aspect of it is not really like, no, nobody mentions that at all. [00:22:57] But I think slowly, like the concept that these units existed is becoming kind of a given, you know. [00:23:03] But you get that sort of thing where people go in like, oh, we know that. [00:23:06] We know that. [00:23:07] And it's like, well, but we don't know the detail. [00:23:10] We don't know exactly what. [00:23:13] Yeah, and I think the details here are important, especially if we're parsing. [00:23:17] I mean, this is in some cases very recent history, but even just the history of the sort of, you know, post-68 left in Britain. [00:23:27] You know, one thing that sort of strikes me is that like the actual granular detail that these police operations took on when they were seeking out targets, when they were going into people's lives. [00:23:41] I mean, I know that we covered this in past episodes, but it is nothing short of astounding the knowledge that the police had of just like these people who were, I mean, and I don't mean this in like a in an insulting way at all, but you know, in the grand sort of historical scheme of things, relatively unimportant people, right? [00:24:00] Like, you know, we're not, they weren't exactly like, you know, on the, on the sealed train to Russia with Lenin. [00:24:06] Like, you know, they were, they were at like Potluck's where people were talking about, you know, chaining themselves to a power plant. [00:24:13] Yeah, I mean, in some cases, people had files opened on them because they bought a copy of Socialist Worker, which was a Trotsky newspaper. [00:24:19] Okay, well, with that, I've opened files on people for the same thing. [00:24:24] But yeah, I mean, it seemed to take, and like, you know, a lot, like a lot of people, whilst as children, you know, had attended some demonstration and they got a file opened on them. [00:24:32] What we're really starting to kind of get a sense of through the inquiry is that, you know, once a file is opened, it needs feeding. [00:24:40] And that like, even though these, you know, a lot of these files, people don't really get up to much, but there was a file opened on them because they were, you know, close to an undercover cop at some point in their life. [00:24:51] And then it becomes a self-fulfilling thing because they've been reported on once, then they're a person of interest. [00:24:57] So there's this kind of feedback loop where like, you know, their files are constantly being updated and undercover cops are monitoring them for years to come because they were once monitored, you know? [00:25:08] Yeah, that's something we've talked about before too, is just that, you know, with them infiltrating these, you know, like you said, sometimes like three-person groups, right? [00:25:17] Because the program had grown and expanded so much and resources were already, it was, you know, the wheels were already in motion. [00:25:23] They had to even just find places and people to infiltrate and kind of give, you know, reasons for, you know, their program to keep existing. [00:25:32] And so you see them in like smaller and smaller. [00:25:34] And, you know, so it's that same sort of kind of feedback loop that you would see kind of mirrored with the surveillance. [00:25:40] I mean, one of the things we saw at this latest round of the inquiry was the disclosure of a lot of the annual reports, which like kind of gave, which was their justifications basically for why they needed continued funding. [00:25:52] And in some of the years that has, you know, been declassified, not a lot happened. [00:25:58] Yeah. [00:26:00] They're having really like, you know, grasp some very thin straws. [00:26:04] You know, they were talking about the Angry Brigade right into the early 1980s. [00:26:08] It's been 10 years since anything had happened, but they were at any moment they could restart. [00:26:15] Somehow the left were just like kind of biding their time, looking for an issue that they could jump on to like restart their campaign of chaos on the streets. [00:26:26] But I mean, yeah, like a lot of these institutions, they've got a budget, they've got a remit. [00:26:30] They want to just keep it going and keep expanding it and keep increasing their budget as much as they can for as long as they can. [00:26:37] Well, yeah, I mean, you mentioned this recent round of inquiries. [00:26:39] And so, you know, for those who might be like, well, how come Tom's coming on in such a year and then another year and then another year? [00:26:49] It's because these inquiries, these official inquiries into the activities of the spy cops is taking so long that we're actually probably going to have a hundred-year anniversary of when this unit started by the time that we get to maybe tranche three. [00:27:07] Yeah, I mean, like, you jest, but I mean, like, I think, you know, it's not that kind of like the way that things are going, it's, I mean, it's been seven years, right, since it started. [00:27:19] And like, the period that has been covered so far is like before any sort of digitization of any records. [00:27:28] So a lot of the records have been very thin. [00:27:30] So the period which has been covered by the inquiry so far, which has taken this long, has been 68 to 82. [00:27:38] The amount of material for that time period is much less than later periods. [00:27:43] So it doesn't bode well. [00:27:46] There's going to be a two-year break now after this mission. [00:27:48] Oh my God. [00:27:51] Wait, a two-year break? [00:27:53] Two-year break, yeah. [00:27:55] But why? [00:27:56] Well, so what they're saying is, is to give them the opportunity to prepare everything so that from there on, the rest of the inquiry will take place live in hearing form continuously until its end. [00:28:11] So we're going to have a two-year break and then from then on, for months on end, we will have daily hearings, Thursday. [00:28:18] Brace-style excuse. [00:28:20] It's like I've heard this before where it's like, it's like, no, no, let's just take the two-year break. [00:28:24] And then I promise it's going to go real fast. [00:28:28] This is going to come back. [00:28:29] I mean, no, this is a really good tactic, especially. [00:28:32] I mean, what, you know, all right, if you're coming at this from the government's point of view, or at least from, let's say, even you're coming out from like the SDS, like the, you know, the, the, the, the police, just the even specific like policemen, the Metropolitan Police, whatever's point of view, is you would want this to drag out as long as possible because dragging, stretching it so thin across so many years, there's naturally going to be, I mean, that the way news cycles work, the way that public interest works, it's going to die down. [00:29:00] It's going to ebb. [00:29:01] And people are going to be like, oh, they're still doing that spy cops thing. [00:29:04] Well, that's, you know, not only did that was that ancient history when it happened, that was ancient history when I thought this trial, when I last read about this trial. [00:29:12] So there must not be anything more important or new to learn. === Stolen Identity, Denied Knowledge (04:02) === [00:29:15] Yeah, totally. [00:29:15] I mean, and that's the exact effect that, I mean, you said, where people are like, oh, yeah, that's the thing we've always known about. [00:29:20] And because the thing stretches out for so long, you kind of convince yourself, you know, you become numb to the knowledge where it's like, oh, yeah, this has just always been common. [00:29:29] It's like, no, it hasn't. [00:29:30] And it still hasn't, even though it's been going on for a couple of years. [00:29:32] It still hasn't ever been common knowledge, you know? [00:29:35] Yeah, totally. [00:29:36] And also, people die. [00:29:38] You know, lots of people die. [00:29:40] Like, since we've had the last hearing, Ernie Tate, who was one of the people who was spied on, sadly died. [00:29:46] Barbara Shaw, who was the mother of Rod Richardson, whose identity was stolen by undercover cops and used. [00:29:53] She died just a couple of weeks before they decided that it was probably unlawful that he'd done that. [00:29:59] Yeah, and as people die, or cops retire, move abroad, all these kinds of things, there's less and less people to carry the can, less and less people to like be annoyed about what's happening. [00:30:10] It's definitely a police tactic. [00:30:12] People often say in Britain that public inquiries are an exercise in kicking the ball into the long grass. [00:30:20] And it's like they're always trying to extend that as much as they can. [00:30:25] And I mean, like, it's been laughable, like the way in which the police lawyers are going, like, kind of trying to complain about the delay themselves. [00:30:33] And like, well, it is going on so long. [00:30:34] It's like, it's because you bloody kept dragging your heels on disclosure, on anonymity, on, you know, so many of these things. [00:30:42] So, what have we learned from this last phase of phase three of tranche one? [00:30:49] Yeah, so I mean, so this one finally, because the first two took place during COVID. [00:30:56] So, this one actually looked like an inquiry. [00:30:58] So, we actually got to see the whites in person, see the whites of the eyes of the officers. [00:31:03] And the whites of the wigs. [00:31:05] The whites of the wigs, yeah, and all that caper. [00:31:07] Yeah, I mean, yeah, there was it was a full, it was, I mean, it was in a in a posh hotel conference room rather than in court because it's the size required. [00:31:15] But um, it was actually felt like felt like it was actually a like previously, I'd been going to this viewing room and watching giant TVs of what was going on with everybody else. [00:31:24] It was a really weird sort of interaction. [00:31:27] So, this one actually did feel like an inquiry. [00:31:30] Um, unfortunately, these we didn't hear from any undercover like field officers this time. [00:31:35] This was all backroom staff. [00:31:37] Um, so they were maybe a bit more kind of less likely to trip up, and it wasn't like it was you, you were the guy who pretended to be the other guy. [00:31:47] You know, you didn't have that moment, which is a bit of a shame. [00:31:51] Uh, they definitely, you know, I mean, they were more, they'd forgotten more than they'd ever remembered in their life. [00:31:57] You know, I mean, it was as usual. [00:31:59] Um, they all denied all knowledge of any of the sex, or I mean, some of them they denied knowledge that their kids' identities had been used, which just was nonsense. [00:32:10] Um, we did, I mean, like, the things that we did find out were more kind of sideways, really. [00:32:16] Like, so there had been a secret hearing, what they called the phase four, though it happened before phase three, because I don't know why, which was five undercover officers giving evidence in secret. [00:32:29] In secret? [00:32:31] Yeah, completely in secret. [00:32:32] So we don't know their names, their cover names. [00:32:37] These people, I would assume, because of the time period, are very likely no longer actively undercover either. [00:32:43] Oh, I mean, no, not at all. [00:32:45] This is, I mean, they were deployed during the 1970s. [00:32:48] Exactly. [00:32:48] I mean, they were advanced years. [00:32:50] Part of their anonymity is that because of their advanced years, they shouldn't be felt or feel at risk at all. [00:32:56] I mean, further anonymity has been given because for fear of embarrassing their children, which, I mean, it's just, yeah, I mean, like, the anonymity. [00:33:04] The anonymity is so deep for the undercover cops that they're one of the families of a dead child whose identity was stolen. [00:33:12] They can't identify themselves. [00:33:15] They cannot be named, so they can't speak to the press. === Anonymity and Amnesia (03:27) === [00:33:17] They can't do any kind of, they can't say this is injustice been done to them because that cop has got anonymity. [00:33:23] So they can't name themselves because their child's name was stolen. [00:33:28] Wait. [00:33:28] Which is just like a ridiculously sick. [00:33:31] So an undercover cop stole the identity of their dead child, but they're not legally allowed to talk about it because the identity of their dead child was illegally used or not. [00:33:43] Ray or illegally, yeah, by an undercover police officer. [00:33:46] Yeah, and he's got anonymity by the inquiry. [00:33:50] Jesus Christ. [00:33:52] Right, yeah. [00:33:53] Grim, yeah. [00:33:54] You know. [00:33:55] How do you contain yourselves going to yourself? [00:33:57] Go into these things, man. [00:33:58] I mean, this is. [00:33:59] So generally, I mean, I'm quite lucky. [00:34:01] I think, thank God we live in 2022. [00:34:03] Because, I mean, what I can do is like when I'm like, you listen to the hearings and then you get a break and you get to go into a side room and then I can just like stream live on Twitter and go, what a bunch of motherfuckers these motherfuckers are. [00:34:16] They're disgusting human beings and they all want fucking shooting. [00:34:19] You know what I mean? [00:34:20] Like you get, which makes it a bit easier. [00:34:22] I mean, like some, like during this round of hearings, we had like Jeffrey Kraft, who was like a particularly odious senior manager. [00:34:33] Whilst we were talking about the infiltration of the funeral of Blair Peach, Blair Peach was a member of the Social Workers' Party who was killed by a number of members of the Special Patrol group. [00:34:45] His funeral was infiltrated by undercover cops who took photographs and built up dossiers basically on people largely, you know, from the photos taken. [00:34:53] It was quite common for people's photo in their file to be from the funeral. [00:34:59] When he was asked about that, and maybe that was insensitive, he in the same room as Celia Stubbs, who was Blair Peach's widow, and like numerous other people who had known Blair Peach who was friends and comrades, said that none of these people really cared about Blair Peach anyway. [00:35:14] was just using his death as an opportunity to attack the police and they were fair game i mean like the insensitivity of these people is galling do you know what i mean they're just yeah yeah yeah reading through the tranche and you know it's notable how how protective and defensive a lot of these police officers were you know i i think i think probably everyone listening out there has done some things in their lives that they're not proud of And you know, sometimes pride does indeed get in our way of admitting that. [00:35:44] But, you know, there are some things that are so unequivocally and unjustifiably wrong that even if you know, you know, even if in the in the like whatever, in the interest of national security, if any of these cynics actually believe that, you know, they can't even recognize it like, oh, we had to do some hard stuff in order to, you know, break up a Trotskyist group of 40 people or, you know, what have you. [00:36:10] But no, they're like, no, we had to do this. [00:36:13] This was necessary. [00:36:13] We had to do it. [00:36:14] And like, it actually wasn't that bad that we did it in the first place. [00:36:16] Like, it was totally fine to do. [00:36:19] Yeah, I mean, there was like quite a significant amount of pride from these officers about the role of the unit, but then a complete amnesia about the specifics of what they did. [00:36:30] You know, it just, yeah, there's this complete. [00:36:34] I think I might have said it last time I came on. [00:36:36] If you want to see real solidarity, watch a cop being asked about the wrongdoing of his fellow cops because they will never do each other in. === MI5's Shadowy Direction (14:49) === [00:36:45] I mean, like, in some of the previous phases, we'd heard from former undercover officers who like kind of blamed their senior officers for what they got up to. [00:36:56] So, I mean, that was put to some of these senior officers that, you know, you were told by the, you'd recruited this officer. [00:37:02] No, that definitely didn't happen. [00:37:03] That definitely didn't happen. [00:37:04] What? [00:37:05] You don't remember? [00:37:06] Like everything else we've said? [00:37:07] No, no, no, I remember. [00:37:08] That definitely didn't happen. [00:37:09] I didn't recommend that officer. [00:37:11] I mean, like, as soon as there are any specifics they could be drawn on, they were, no, that didn't happen. [00:37:17] But otherwise, they just forgot. [00:37:19] You know, there was a great deal of that. [00:37:21] But they were thought that, I mean, one of the David Smith, one of the other senior managers, he opened up by saying that the general public would have been proud of the work they were doing because they gave the, they were responsible for giving freedom to the people of Britain to live in a representative democracy. [00:37:41] You know, there's, I mean, it's long been the case that cops kind of consider any form of left-wing activism as a form of criminality. [00:37:48] But like these officers kind of took it beyond that. [00:37:51] They almost took it personally that people dared to be involved in like kind of movements for social change. [00:37:57] Yeah, it's funny. [00:37:59] You know, a general theme that you can get from reading through the tranche is that there's a culture of real impunity there. [00:38:08] Oh, yeah. [00:38:09] And it's a sort of something that something that comes up a lot is, I mean, and this is also a way of covering your ass if you're in the government. [00:38:15] Don't ask, don't tell, where I don't necessarily believe them. [00:38:18] I do believe they were asked and I do believe they told. [00:38:21] But that is always a very convenient excuse if you're sort of a lower or middle level, you know. [00:38:28] Are these super grasses or a grass? [00:38:30] A supergrass is a guy who snitches. [00:38:32] Yeah, a simple grass is a snitch. [00:38:34] Yeah. [00:38:34] Well, I mean, a supergrass would be, yeah, yeah, someone who's turned snitch, like not an infiltrator. [00:38:40] So an infiltrator like this, you know, it's a really good excuse because they're like, well, my, my, my superior didn't know. [00:38:47] And then their superior could be like, well, I didn't tell them to do that. [00:38:50] And so it's sort of these things just appear out of the ether, right? [00:38:53] Like these things just sort of happen in a passive way in history. [00:38:57] And I was, you know, or like accidentally drawn into it. [00:39:00] I am, I'm sorry, I had a baby with this woman, but like, you know, it's just, it's, it's just, it's what we needed to do for the mission that we were not told to do by anybody. [00:39:09] So I mean, one of the things that came up quite a lot, and an area that we really weren't expecting, I don't think, was the high level of involvement of MI5, which is the security services, which are like the proper spooks, I guess. [00:39:21] Because I mean, one thing which like some people kind of get confused just to like explain the differences between like different elements of the security service. [00:39:28] When we're talking about the spy cops, we're talking about like plod, you know, like proper like cops, you know, not, these are not specialists, these are not like, these are not spies, these are not James Bondy type dudes. [00:39:40] These are, these are genuine cops. [00:39:42] Like, and previously, they might have been on their bike doing like the, doing on the beat, you know, yeah, yeah, they've become reflective best. [00:39:49] Yeah, right. [00:39:49] So they've been brought into special branch, they're special branch officers, then they become, you know, they're already political police, then they come undercover police, but they're still just cops. [00:39:59] MI5 is like the security services. [00:40:02] These are like, these are your James Bond type. [00:40:07] I mean, that's looking themselves as, but, you know, they do proper spooks. [00:40:13] You know, they're armed, they're involved in like coups around the world and all these kind of crazy shit the security services do. [00:40:21] What we've discovered is that there's just quite a large amount of direction from MI5 towards the SDS from the very beginning, really, about asking them to target people, presenting lists of people they want monitored. [00:40:38] Specific requests for information. [00:40:41] A number of the former officers, back the senior officers, the management, like hinted that there was a two-way street with this kind of information. [00:40:53] Somehow that MI5 were feeding, like they were feeding their information back and forth. [00:40:57] But for the most part, they talk about being a client relationship, you know, that they were going out on the MI5 was their customer and they were going out and getting information for them. [00:41:07] But The inquiry, I mean, the MI5 and the Cabinet Committee on Sedition in Public Life, which is like the senior government sort of repression, sort of sinister title. [00:41:20] Yeah, everything in Britain has a sinister title. [00:41:23] Yeah, very, I mean, like, this is the wider sort of infrastructure of oppression. [00:41:29] And we like, we're starting to see how like these spy cop units were just really just the tip of the iceberg and that there's a much bigger and wider repression infrastructure that involves all sorts of other sections of the British state. [00:41:44] But because they were part of that, the spy cops kind of felt that they could behave outside the law. [00:41:49] You know, they broke a lot of like kind of fairly basic kind of common law things about like illegal entry and seizure and trespass, which a normal cop would never be allowed to do. [00:42:01] And like technically, they had no legal, they had no legal justification for it. [00:42:05] But because they were doing work for MI5, they thought they could behave like MI5. [00:42:09] So this culture of impunity seems to have, I mean, partially maybe come from that. [00:42:14] But so the looking at MI5 isn't part of the terms of the inquiry, but the list of questions that's come out of this, the inquiry's like published a list of like areas of inquiry. [00:42:30] And it's MI5 and the Committee for Sedition and Public Life. [00:42:35] What role they played is obviously, it's much bigger. [00:42:38] It appears that there's much more direction. [00:42:41] The idea that we kind of got this impression maybe that these units were set up and they went along on their way and they just did whatever they pleased and they weren't really answerable to anybody. [00:42:51] But we're getting the impression now that there was much more direction of them and they were being given direction, though the specifics of it are quite hard to get out, but that they were being given direction to spy on certain people, spy on certain organizations. [00:43:05] We had the situation where one of the undercover officers was discovered as having a relationship by some other form of surveillance that was taking place on the group he was infiltrating. [00:43:14] And you kind of get the glimpse of a much bigger picture of it's not just like these groups of like a handful of people didn't just have one undercover officer in them. [00:43:22] They also had like informers and this thing and that thing and some people under five monitor them as well. [00:43:27] So you're really getting like a picture of, you know, like it's a wonder Wonder that anything on the left happened in Britain during that time period, you know, because the levels of oppression are so high. [00:43:40] Yeah, I was going to ask if that kind of, I mean, I don't know if I want to call it collaboration. [00:43:45] I guess what you're saying about it being contracted out maybe probably makes more sense for that relationship between MI5 and SGS. [00:43:51] But if that kind of collaboration is common or like in other instances, or if this is kind of, you know, one of the first where you've seen that like blurry boundary, because I think what you're saying about it hinting at a larger infrastructure is like a pretty massive breakthrough that should be getting much more attention, right? [00:44:13] Like, you know, MI5, MI6 notoriously opaque, obviously, but that sort of infrastructure then kind of like crawling out into the domestic surveillance, I think would probably or should probably get the attention of some of the British press, you would think, right? [00:44:33] Right, yeah, totally. [00:44:34] I mean, it just isn't. [00:44:36] Yeah, it's, I mean, it's really depressing how it isn't, but it just isn't. [00:44:39] But I agree, it should. [00:44:40] And I think like the what it means, what like the discovery of this means about like kind of how Britain's developed politically over the last 50 years. [00:44:50] Absolutely. [00:44:51] And that like, you know, because particularly when you consider that they didn't do this the far right. [00:44:56] Yes. [00:44:57] And like, particularly when you think about like the groups that they were infiltrating, like particularly the early ones, right? [00:45:02] Like the anti-apartheid movement, the anti-Vietnam War campaign, these were groups with mass popular support. [00:45:10] You know, like it was, it was, you know, it was a mainstream like majority opinion in Britain that we shouldn't go into Vietnam. [00:45:18] Those demonstrations were representing the majority of the people. [00:45:22] Most people in Britain, like at the time, you know, kind of different. [00:45:25] But like these days, you won't find anybody who's supporting apartheid like South Africa. [00:45:28] You know, these are like, these were, these were campaigns with really large-scale popular support. [00:45:33] Yet the legacy of them in British politics is negligible. [00:45:39] It's non-existent. [00:45:39] The people who led these campaigns didn't go on to other things. [00:45:42] They got blacklisted and never bloody worked again. [00:45:46] Whereas on the right, there's no infiltration in the far right. [00:45:49] They're allowed to blossom as much as they want. [00:45:52] They never really get that much popular support. [00:45:55] But you look at now how much they've influenced mainstream politics and how much they've got, the way in which Britain was shaped by the things like the UK Independence Party and Farage and all that kind of shit. [00:46:07] Largely because that tendency was allowed to blossom, whereas the left was completely crushed, despite totally different levels of public support. [00:46:15] Yeah, I mean, well, you sort of have to marvel at that because you're correct in that, yeah, I mean, Britain did not officially enter the War in Vietnam. [00:46:26] And at the same time, these groups that were trying to prevent what actually turned out to be the will of the British people were being infiltrated and spied upon and steered in this way by the security services of the United Kingdom, which is just astounding. [00:46:46] It is a direct intervention into politics in a way that you see sort of. [00:46:55] Obviously, spying on some small anarchist or communist or whatever group is as well. [00:47:01] But this is something that, as much as I hate to admit it, it's very unlikely that a Maoist organization was going to take control of England or really any part of the UK during that specific period. [00:47:14] Although, of course, the terrain has changed and we're only a few months or even weeks away from it now. [00:47:20] But, you know, it's sort of just astounding, just like totally like, you know, they were treating these groups that represented the will of the British people. [00:47:29] And it doesn't even matter if they didn't, but they did and trying to steer them and destroy them and put them in a different direction. [00:47:36] You know, one thing that you mentioned too is like Nigel Farage, you know, you can draw a fairly direct fucking line from the National Front to the fucking British National Party to what's the other one they had? [00:47:51] They have to change their name so much. [00:47:52] I think English. [00:47:53] UKIP. [00:47:54] English Defense League. [00:47:55] English Defense League. [00:47:57] Exactly. [00:47:58] All of that is like the same through line. [00:48:01] Right. [00:48:01] And then you get to a guy. [00:48:02] All the same guys have been around forever. [00:48:03] Exactly. [00:48:04] You know, and they might not be skinheads on the street anymore. [00:48:07] They don't need to be. [00:48:07] I mean, the circumstances have changed, but like, you know, it is just a straight line. [00:48:12] And like, I mean, yeah, it is, it is sort of, what was there, what was the test? [00:48:18] I mean, these were, a lot of these guys, you know, sort of their foot soldiers were skinheads who beat the shit out of like, you know, smelly hippies who might want it to be okay for a couple of dudes to, you know, hook up. [00:48:30] Yeah, I mean, like, the violence of the far right during the 1970s in Britain was, yeah, like significant. [00:48:35] There were a number of racial murders. [00:48:37] There was, you know, they were organizing race attacks. [00:48:40] People burnt out their homes. [00:48:43] It was quite significant. [00:48:45] It was quite telling then to hear like former Spy Cops managers saying that they weren't a problem, that the National Front wasn't a problem at the time, you know, which, but whereas the anti-fascists were, you know, because they were causing the problem by not cooperating with the police when they were going out to disrupt National Front marches and stuff. [00:49:03] But I mean, yeah, I mean, you got the impression from the former officers that they were sympathetic to the views of the National Front. [00:49:11] And, you know, it is ever thus like, isn't it, you know? [00:49:15] Does this make you or has this had sort of an effect on the left wing in the UK? [00:49:23] Sort of going over telling the losses and the victories, you know, of the past. [00:49:28] I can't do math. [00:49:29] Since the 60s. [00:49:30] Yeah, we genuinely have no historical institutional memory. [00:49:34] I would say that's the that's the lasting effect, right? [00:49:37] Yeah. [00:49:38] So I mean, the Socialist Workers' Party still exists from the 70s to now. [00:49:44] But like, I mean, they're an incredibly problematic organization in a number of ways. [00:49:47] Agree. [00:49:48] They were the most infiltrated with, you know, like two members of their central committee were undercover cops during the 1970s. [00:49:55] Incredible. [00:49:56] You know, there was 24 undercover cops that we've known of so far who infiltrated the Socialist Workers' Party. [00:50:02] I mean, they still exist. [00:50:03] But you kind of wonder if they kind of exist on purpose because there were so many, because it was such the, it was always the first place undercover cops would go. [00:50:13] They'd be like, oh, join local branch of the SWP and then leave that and then join some other left-wing group. [00:50:19] That was kind of the normal path. [00:50:21] So they kind of needed the SWP to continue to exist. [00:50:24] But other than that, none of these other groups really last. [00:50:27] There is no institutional memory. [00:50:30] I think that's largely part of the reason why it's not a bigger story is that people have forgotten a lot of these social movements. [00:50:37] They've forgotten them completely, you know. [00:50:39] And they're not, so people don't see the significance of them being wiped out. [00:50:44] It's not like the troops out movement. [00:50:47] Again, it was not like most people didn't think we should have British soldiers on the streets of Northern Ireland. [00:50:52] Sending the troops in wasn't popular. [00:50:54] People thought it was felt that it should be just short term. [00:50:57] They should be withdrawn. [00:50:59] That movement, which was run within a couple, very quickly, was run by undercover cops, who are literally general secretary of the movement, and then totally dismantled. [00:51:09] But then most people just kind of forget these things were things in the first place, you know. [00:51:16] Yeah, I mean, in terms of the coverage thing, there was a bit more coverage. [00:51:20] Kate Wilson, one of the women who brought the case and was the only one that was able to take it on to the IPT, the Investigative Powers Tribunal, which is like a secret court, unbelievably won her case back, I think it was October now. === Discovery Over Inquiry (07:49) === [00:51:34] I think that we've kind of discovered more from that really than we have from the inquiry. [00:51:39] There was a bit of coverage of that, still not that much. [00:51:42] But I mean, that was probably the most significant, like kind of in terms of revelations about how the undercover cops operated on the day before they were. [00:51:51] It's a lot more recent because obviously she was in a relationship with Mark Kennedy, who was the cop who was exposed whilst deployed. [00:51:58] And we got to see kind of his, as part of that, we got to see kind of bits of like his notebooks, his logs of him dealing with his handlers and just the level to which there was just like minute by minute monitoring. [00:52:14] A lot of the time, we kind of have this idea of like the officers in the field reporting back occasionally. [00:52:19] But by the time he's deployed, which is like the early 2000s, he's reporting back every like 10, 15 minutes to his handler with text message, phone call, whatever. [00:52:32] All sorts of different methods, but like constantly updating at all times and feeding information, getting fed information about people around him when he's in situations. [00:52:42] Yeah, we learn a lot more from that than we did really anything else. [00:52:46] There is due to be some other cases which should be going like over the next two years before we go back to the inquiry again. [00:52:53] There should be some other things that should go to court. [00:52:56] But because of the nature of the inquiry, like there's arguments from the police that these things should be like held off on until the inquiry is finished, which obviously is a farce. [00:53:07] I mean, I know we've talked about this before, but what do you mean? [00:53:10] What do you really think in any concrete, but also in any sort of maybe non-concrete ways, although it's a pretty clumsy way to put it, effects might these inquiries actually have on both both British political life. [00:53:26] I mean, obviously there is not as, let's say, radical a left wing there as there once was. [00:53:32] But British political life, you know, the idea of the British public, but also, I mean, there is essentially no chance that any of the actual people involved in these, let's say, extra-legal activities are actually going to face any measure of justice, legal or social, right? [00:53:51] Oh, no, not at all. [00:53:53] No, I mean, the most we can hope for really is the embarrassment level thing. [00:54:00] I mean, like, so Vincent Miller, who was one of the first officer to be exposed as having had a sexual relationship during the last set of hearings, because he admitted to deceiving a number of women into sexual relationships after the hearings, his real name was given, which is Vincent Harvey. [00:54:17] And it turned out he was quite a senior police officer who went on to run the serious organized crime agency for a while. [00:54:23] Like, that's like seems to have caused him personally some distress to be outed like that. [00:54:30] But I mean, that's kind of it, right? [00:54:32] I mean, like, there's no, there's no, like, nothing. [00:54:36] Like, I mean, still Andy Davy, as he was when he was deployed undercover, Andy Coles is still a conservative counselor at Peterborough Borough Council. [00:54:47] You know, he's continued his political career. [00:54:50] I mean, essentially, what the inquiry does is just keeps the issue alive, realistically. [00:54:56] If it wasn't for that, I think like it kind of solidifies it as fact. [00:55:00] And there's still a huge part for those of us who were personally affected. [00:55:04] It's huge to be part of kind of getting the narrative on our side. [00:55:08] This is fact, right? [00:55:09] This isn't some conspiracy. [00:55:10] This isn't like, oh, who can tell? [00:55:12] No, this is like there were this many officers and they were in this unit and they were deployed at this time and they've got names and faces. [00:55:19] And just, I mean, doing that is not a victory, but like it's an end in itself, right? [00:55:24] Yeah. [00:55:24] So I mean, like, in terms of what comes out of this process, I don't, I'm not hoping for any kind of like useful kind of recommendations from the inquiry. [00:55:32] I mean, there's meant to be an interim report that will come out before the next tranche because it's been so delayed. [00:55:39] There is, I mean, there's a there's a theory that at a Home Affairs Select Committee meeting in Parliament maybe a month ago, a representative of the Home Office suggested, floated the idea that perhaps after the interim report, they might wind up the inquiry because it's been so expensive. [00:55:54] It's been shut the whole thing down. [00:55:58] Yeah. [00:55:58] Too much. [00:55:59] Not in public interest. [00:56:00] Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, like, since the inquiry's been called, we've had like a lot of changes in the law in the UK that makes a lot of this activity legal. [00:56:09] There's, I mean, the discourse generally, I mean, there's like the Tories proposed removing the ability to prosecute British soldiers who commit war crimes. [00:56:22] Yeah. [00:56:22] Yeah. [00:56:23] Which was supported by the Labour opposition, you know, I mean, like there's... [00:56:26] Oh, yeah. [00:56:27] I mean, that's the kind of level of politics in Britain. [00:56:31] So, you know, there's a kind of a feeling that it was like maybe it was hastily done, this inquiry being called, and perhaps it's not really in the public interest. [00:56:38] It's out of emotion. [00:56:40] Yeah, right. [00:56:41] So there is a thing, I think, that, I mean, hopefully it will, the ego of Sir John Mitting, the chair of the inquiry, will mean it carries on because he's a high court judge, a retired high court judge. [00:56:52] And, you know, being told we can't do that anymore might piss him off. [00:56:56] But there is a possibility the inquiry just gets wound up. [00:57:00] And then, like, you know, we think people aren't interested now, like, see how less interested they are when there's not some official backing to these facts and figures coming out, you know. [00:57:08] Yeah. [00:57:09] I think it's highly likely that it would, like, the issue would die even more without the inquiry being ongoing. [00:57:15] First of all, that's fucking insane to me that there's still sir guys there. [00:57:22] Oh, yeah, man. [00:57:24] You guys have the house. [00:57:25] I got to be real with you. [00:57:26] I'm kind of played dumb on the show here sometimes, but I know a thing or two about politics. [00:57:32] What the fact that you guys have a house of lords and that you can basically just pay to be in it is the most astounding thing to me about, I think, modern media. [00:57:44] Now you have a new goal. [00:57:45] Yeah. [00:57:46] Yeah. [00:57:47] Well, I mean, so one of the people who was one of the things we heard about during the last two years of the inquiry was the infiltration of the Workers' Revolutionary Party, who one of the main faces of it was Vanessa Redgrave. [00:58:02] Oh, yeah. [00:58:03] And her husband, right? [00:58:04] No, dame Vanessa Redgrave now. [00:58:07] You know, I mean, like. [00:58:10] Forget about that. [00:58:10] Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:58:11] She is. [00:58:12] She is a dame, so like you know, there is maybe this helps you yet. [00:58:14] Maybe you will end up in the House of Lords one day. [00:58:16] I mean, enough other people have sold out enough, you know. [00:58:20] Sort of classic trajectory. [00:58:22] Well, Tom, I mean, is there anything else do you want to let our listeners know about this stuff? [00:58:27] I mean, there's loads of things. [00:58:29] I mean, as usual, my general disorganized sort of pattern, I probably missed a thousand things that have happened since I was last on. [00:58:37] There will be more things coming out before the next sitting of the inquiry. [00:58:44] I mean, not least, though, the judgment's been handed down in Kent Wilson's case, like the kind of the full disclosure of that hasn't fully come out yet. [00:58:54] So, there might be more to come from that fairly soon, hopefully. [00:58:57] But it might be a while, you know, like fairly soon in Spy Cops world is like, you know, measured in years rather than months. [00:59:06] But yeah, if anybody wants to like kind of follow the things as they come out, follow me on Twitter or check out the website spycops.info. [00:59:15] We'll link both. [00:59:16] Find everything you want there. [00:59:17] We'll still do the podcast very rarely, but we're still doing it occasionally. [00:59:20] Spycops Info podcast, subscribe to that. === Gotcha Moments (05:39) === [00:59:24] I am. [00:59:25] Well, Tom, I got to be honest with you. [00:59:29] It is a. [00:59:29] I hate that we have to talk about what we have to talk about, but it is a delight as always to honestly. [00:59:34] As always, yes. [00:59:35] Cheers. [00:59:35] Well, on that thing, you told me on email earlier that you had a story for me about MDC. [00:59:40] I'm going to see on Thursday. [00:59:41] So tell me about that. [00:59:42] Talk about that. [00:59:43] Yes. [00:59:43] Yeah. [00:59:44] We were maybe going to have to reschedule this interview for Thursday. [00:59:48] Although I don't, whenever this comes out, that might not make sense to our listeners. [00:59:51] But anyways, it's Monday right now. [00:59:54] When I was in middle school, I was a fan of the band MDC, which they changed what it stood for sometimes, but it was an 80s hardcore band from San Francisco. [01:00:03] Well, originally from Dallas, I believe, or Austin. [01:00:07] That stood for millions of dead cops. [01:00:09] And I had a t-shirt that I wore in, I think, sixth grade that had it was half cop and then half Klansman. [01:00:18] And he was pointing a gun at the, it's a sort of most famous logo. [01:00:22] And I wore it to school. [01:00:23] And my principal made me take it off, which in retrospect, well, this is pre-Columbine. [01:00:33] And I had to take it off. [01:00:34] And I was like, what? [01:00:35] I can't wear, I can't wear a shirt that just says millions of dead cops with this on it. [01:00:41] And I was like, you're trampling on my political rights. [01:00:43] So I wrote to Dave Dichter, the singer of MDC, an email, the first email I ever sent in my life. [01:00:50] And he sent a letter to my principal saying that it was actually should be okay for me to wear it. [01:00:56] Do you have that letter? [01:00:58] I do not, but it used to be on the MDC website. [01:01:01] Oh, we got to get that letter back. [01:01:03] It is, it is, I tried to find it. [01:01:05] Yeah, baby Brace Felton should be able to wear his t-shirt. [01:01:08] Yes. [01:01:09] And they did not let me wear the t-shirt again. [01:01:13] Well, it's unhappy ending to the story. [01:01:17] Great guys, man. [01:01:17] Great band. [01:01:18] They stayed at my house once years ago. [01:01:20] They're playing on Thursday night, so I'm going to go and see them. [01:01:23] Who are they playing with? [01:01:23] Oi Poloy? [01:01:25] No, they're playing with Zero again, which is like my mates' band. [01:01:29] And I try to remember, there's another band they're playing with, but I can't remember who they are. [01:01:34] But yeah, it'll be good. [01:01:35] It's in the Exchange in Bristol, which is a great venue. [01:01:39] And Zero again, a great band. [01:01:40] They're my mates' band. [01:01:41] They include ex-members of Grand Collapse. [01:01:43] Okay. [01:01:44] We're one of the greatest punk bands to come out of the UK. [01:01:47] The lead singer of which, my dear friend and comrade Calvin Sewell, sadly died a couple of months ago. [01:01:52] So I really recommend everybody go and check out Grand Collapse and download all their shit, man. [01:01:57] Absolutely. [01:01:57] Yeah. [01:01:58] You heard of here. [01:01:59] Finally, we get to a subject that I know things about. [01:02:03] Tom, it has been a pleasure. [01:02:05] And, you know, I've had a whales of a time with you. [01:02:11] Oh, my God. [01:02:12] Jesus Christ. [01:02:13] Fucking fretful. [01:02:15] If all else fails, try whales. [01:02:17] Yeah, man. [01:02:19] Classics. [01:02:32] We really fucked up by not introducing him the first time we had him on as Tom of Ink. [01:02:38] What the fuck was that? [01:02:40] Dude, actually, when I was on the train coming here, Lightning, I saw Lightning, and I'm like, I'm on a fucking train. [01:02:47] Like, you're not supposed to be on a train in Lightning, right? [01:02:51] No. [01:02:51] I feel like that's dangerous. [01:02:53] I think you're pretty good there, yeah. [01:02:54] What if it hits, like, the third rail? [01:02:56] Wouldn't that, like... [01:02:57] That already has lightning. [01:02:58] But wouldn't something happen? [01:03:00] Yeah, make your train go faster. [01:03:02] I don't think so. [01:03:03] Anyway, I got real. [01:03:04] It was crazy when it happened. [01:03:05] That was fucked up. [01:03:06] I'm sorry. [01:03:07] That was crazy. [01:03:10] Anyways, we should have called him Tom of England. [01:03:14] Oh, my God. [01:03:16] That's very cute. [01:03:17] Yeah, and we didn't. [01:03:19] I mean, he's Welsh. [01:03:20] So let's not. [01:03:20] I don't want to. [01:03:21] Oh, yeah, I think we would offend him then if we know, I know, but he would get it. [01:03:25] It's close enough. [01:03:26] I don't. [01:03:27] Shouldn't we just call him Tom of Wales? [01:03:28] Tom of Wales? [01:03:30] Yeah, I like that too. [01:03:31] It doesn't work as well. [01:03:32] Welsh Tom? [01:03:34] Tommy the Welshman? [01:03:36] I feel like we're just coming up with maybe incessant nicknames. [01:03:40] Welsh? [01:03:41] Well, if we're coming with a real incisive nickname, we'd be like, there's that fluent Welsh. [01:03:50] You can recognize it anywhere. [01:03:54] Yeah, that's Street Welsh. [01:03:57] Not a lot of people speak that. [01:03:58] That's the gutter Argot. [01:03:59] Argo? [01:04:00] How do you pronounce that? [01:04:01] A-R-G-O-T. [01:04:03] Argot? [01:04:04] Sounds right. [01:04:05] Stumped. [01:04:05] No, you're just saying that. [01:04:06] You don't know. [01:04:07] No idea. [01:04:09] Yeah, if you know, don't let us know. [01:04:12] Okay, and on that note, I'm Liz, my name, my name is, my name is Scottish John, and we have with us producer Young Chomsky, and the podcast is called, let's all do it at the same time because it's our three-year anniversary. [01:04:33] One two three, True Anon. [01:04:37] I didn't do it, gotcha. [01:04:39] That's not a gotcha. [01:04:41] All right, one more time. [01:04:42] No, I'm not doing it this time. [01:04:43] One more time, no way. [01:04:44] Complete one two three, true anon. [01:04:49] Oh, I didn't do it this time, gotcha. [01:04:52] Well, let's just do it one more time. [01:04:55] One two three, true anon. [01:04:58] No, we all did it. [01:05:00] There we go And we'll see you next time.