Evil infiltrator Roger Pearce withdraws false allegation Dave Morris was among anarchists who he claimed planned to bomb US/UK base
nfrom thefreeonline on Jul 15 2024 by thecollective at Anarchist News (on (Telegram: t.me/thefreeonline)
An undercover Spy Cop who went on to become the head of the Metropolitan police’s special branch has admitted he accused a blameless activist of planning to plant bombs at a military base.
Pearce as already been outed as sending people he knew to be innocent to long jail sentences, including the Italian student Patrizia Giambi, to further his ‘illustrious career’.
Roger Pearce, the undercover officer who infiltrated anarchist groups in the 1980s, had alleged to a public inquiry that he drove to Aldershot with a group of anarchists to “recce bomb sites”. He accused Dave Morris of being one of the anarchists..
On Tuesday Pearce withdrew his allegation after it was denied by Morris. Morris is a longtime radical campaigner who was one of the defendants in the 1990s McLibel case..
Dave Morris is a highly respected and hard working community based anarchist who has been active in London for nearly 50 years.
The retraction of the allegation against Morris was heard at the judge-led public inquiry which is examining the activities of about 139 undercover officers who spied on more than 1,000 political groups since 1968.
The current phase of the inquiry is looking at covert operations in the 1980s and 1990s.
Pearce pretended to be an anarchist between 1980 and 1984 using the fake name of Patrizia Giambi,
He was a member of the Metropolitan police’s special branch, the secretive division which was responsible for monitoring political groups. By 1999, he had been promoted to the head of special branch, a post he held until 2003.
In his witness statement, Pearce had claimed that during his deployment, he had been “drawn into helping to recce’ing bomb sites” at the Aldershot military barracks. He alleged that he drove a group of four or five anarchists in his car in a spontaneous trip to the town and named Morris as one of the group.
‘Spycop’ scandal hits new low with claim that officer … – CanaryExploitation During 1980 and 1981, police officer Roger Pearce used the cover name Roger Thorley to spy on members of the anarchist Freedom Press in London’s Whitechapel.
On Monday, Morris, giving evidence to the inquiry, said the claim was “a load of rubbish”, suggesting that Pearce had made it all up.
He added: “I don’t believe I’ve ever been to Aldershot and I certainly would never have been recceing a place for whatever he’s accusing me of.”
On Tuesday, Pearce backed down after he was challenged by David Barr, the inquiry’s barrister. “Yes, Mr Morris, I am convinced, was not involved in the reconnoitre of the Aldershot barracks, so this is a mistake,” Pearce said.
Pearce still maintained he made the trip with anarchists who were not named at the inquiry. He added that “nothing came of the reconnaissance”.
Morris is best known for his involvement in the long-running McLibel trial. In that David v Goliath case, he and another environmental campaigner, Helen Steel were finally victorious, after being sued for libel by the US fast food giant McDonald’s who paid infiltrators to spy on them, over a leaflet they had distributed criticising the company’s practices.
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IMAGE CAPTION: “Dave Morris, who was accused by Roger Pearce of ‘recceing bomb sites’, is known as one of the defendants in the McLibel case. Photograph: Getty Images”
Exclusive: The Met Spy-chief who infiltrated Freedom
Spycops Inquiry to hear evidence of Freedom infiltration
From Freedom News UK July 12th 2024 via Anarchist News By thecollective
Undercover Roger Pearce — later head of the Special Demonstration Squad — attempted to link to Northern Irish republicans in the 1980s
The Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) will today hear about the infiltration of Freedom Press during the early 1980s, when a police spy was apparently searching for links between the British radical left and Northern Irish republicans. Steve Sorba, Secretary of the Friends of Freedom Press, will give evidence on behalf of Freedom.
The Inquiry has started up again after a long break. The opening statements took place last week, hearing from barristers for the Home Office, various undercover officers, and those who were spied upon, known as Non-State Core Participants (NSCP) .
Today’s evidence hearing will begin covering the actions of the Metropolitan police’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) from 1983 to 1992. Transcripts for each day’s proceedings are available on the UCPI website and the streamed footage can be watched on their YouTube channel.
Sorba’s testimony will focus on Roger Pearce (known as “HN85”) who joined the Freedom Collective as “Roger Thorley”. From 1980-1981 he wrote articles for the Freedom periodical.
It seems Pearce used Freedom in an attempt to access the radical community in Northern Ireland via supposed or manufactured connections to British anarchists.
The Troops Out Movement was also infiltrated during this period and will be among the groups giving evidence. After a fact-finding mission to Belfast he disappeared from sight.
After his deployment, Pearce went on to lead the SDS itself and eventually becoming the Met’s Director of Intelligence and head of Special Branch, before retiring to write a number crime novels about an undercover officer in London.
While there was initially some suspicion that Freedom might have been spied on in the early 1980s, it was only in 2018 that someone was able to identify him.
That year, Freedom (as the Friends of Freedom Press Ltd) was finally granted NSCP status by the current Chair of the inquiry, John Mitting, after the initial application was refused by the former Chair, Christopher Pitchford, in 2015.
Others giving evidence in the coming weeks will be Dave Morris of McLibel fame, as well as members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), City of London Anti-Apartheid Group, the Greenham Common women’s peace camp, Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist–Leninist), and the Socialist Workers Party
While research by activists has already revealed much about spycops’ sexual targeting of women and the unit’s last days, the Inquiry’s work has been very slow. Over almost a decade, it has only heard evidence about cases of infiltration between 1968-1982.
From the get-go, NSCPs have been forced to endure late disclosures and short deadlines, restriction orders have prevented the discussion of the content of documents with other Core Participants, and many parties who should be present have been prevented from getting NSCP status.
These and many other such impediments have led many activists to accuse the Inquiry of facilitating a whitewash.
Given how many Labour MPs were spied on by the SDS, there is a possibility that the new Labour government would like to expand Inquiry. However, given that the incoming Prime Minister, Kier Starmer, is also the former head of prosecutions, such optimism should remain cautious.
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The main focus is the activity of two undercover units who deployed long-term undercover officers into a variety of political groups: the Special Demonstration Squad (1968-2008) and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (1999-2011).
Officers from these units lived as activists for years at a time. More than 1,000 groups were spied on, though the Inquiry has only named 83. Activist researchers have produced a more complete list of those targeted.
Beyond collecting information personal details about people’s lives, officers often:
- stole the identities of dead children
- took key roles in the organisations they infiltrated
- encouraged and participated in illegal activity
- formed emotional relationships with children of people they spied on
- supplied personal information for illegal blacklists of politically active workers
- orchestrated wrongful convictions of activists
- deceived women they spied on into long-term intimate relationships
Law Unto Themselves: Spycops & Miscarriages of Justice – up to 7,000 wrongful convictions
In legal cases, the prosecution have a duty to disclose anything that may be helpful to the defence. By the time the Ratcliffe 6 came to court, te SpyCop Mark Kennedy had been exposed as a police officer, so they asked to see his evidence. Rather than hand it over, the state dropped the charges. The other twenty then had their convictions quashed.
A year earlier, Kennedy had been a driver for 29 people who had stopped a train of coal on its way to Drax power station in Yorkshire. They were convicted but have now also had their convictions wiped. This brings Kennedy’s personal total to 49.
If the other 150 or so officers have similar tallies, it means about 7,000 wrongful convictions are being left to stand. Even if we conservatively estimate just one false conviction per officer per year of service, it adds up to about 600. It may well be that spycops are responsible for the biggest nobbling of the judicial system in English history.
Some spycops went all the way to court themselves. They would swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and, from the first question asking their name, they lied and lied and lied. This fits anyone’s definition of perjury and perverting the course of justice.
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Anarchism and Spycops by Dave Morris
The Free 