The Socialist 22 October 2014

Priced out? Strike Back!

Priced out? Strike back!

100,000 march against cuts and for a wage rise

The unions' pay battle must continue

50 years of socialist ideas and workers' struggle

Where's our recovery?

Socialist change to halt climate change

A Freudian slip?

Undercover cops report - a whitewash

Them & Us

Ebola outbreak: one face of austerity

International day of action for abortion rights in Ireland

PCS members again show anti-austerity determination

"No Raise - No Rays!" - say radiographers

POA hospital workers join public sector strike wave

St Mungo's Broadway strikers stage 19 pickets

Care UK strikers lobby Miliband for public support

Sheffield green workers' unofficial walkout

WEA tutors' victory

Leicester council hits homeless hostel

Reckless Ukip circus

Anti-eviction success!

Save Bitterne walk-in centre!

Socialist Party "part of political landscape"

Local services suffer under Welsh Labour

Hedge fund owners will never blush

Private companies hold NHS to ransom

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Link to this page: https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/830/19547

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Undercover cops report - a whitewash

Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance

A massive new report on undercover policing from HM Inspectorate of Constabulary was published last week.

It reveals that 1,229 officers are trained for undercover work. However the police National Undercover Index only lists 568 of them. This 'renders the database unsuitable to the task for which it was created,' says the report.

Seven types of deployment are listed, but there is no mention of the political spycops. For a report commissioned as a response to the revelation that the Stephen Lawrence campaign had been spied on, after several years' groundswell following the exposure of Mark Kennedy in 2010, this is no mere oversight. It's a dodge.

Campaigning for social justice or for the proper investigation of the death of a loved one due to incompetent or malevolent police is left entirely unmentioned in all 206 pages.

But the report tells us that if society wants the police to identify and apprehend some of its most dangerous criminals, it has to allow individual police officers to "get their hands dirty".

The report is only critical of administration, training and support for officers, rather than the impact on citizens and the sinister intent of certain undercover operations. Essentially, it is saying that a little bit more oversight and authorisation will make everything alright.

The authors find it 'reassuring' there is apparently 'a universal understanding by the undercover officers and those managing them' that intimate relationships aren't allowed and 'there are good safeguards in place' to prevent it.

But out of the 14 spycops so far exposed, 13 had sexual relations with citizens they spied on.

There are 49 recommendations at the end of the report. None are about the known outrages of these relationships, let alone others such as undermining family justice cases and political campaigns, and the police collusion with illegal corporate activity.

This report is yet another bucket of bitter whitewash written by police and their associates. It insults those who've been abused by the undercover officers from the counter-democratic political police units. Beyond that, it insults anyone who believes in the right to make a stand for environmental and social justice.

It is another decoy, papering over deep cracks in a rotten architecture. It must not distract from the need for a full, open, public inquiry that examines each aspect of undercover political policing in detail and takes testimony from all those impacted by it. COPS will continue to campaign for such an inquiry.

In this issue

£££ Britain needs a pay rise

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