Undercover police officers were ‘authorised’ to target arms trade campaigners

Testimony given to the Undercover Policing Inquiry this week has provided further details of systematic targeting against anti-arms trade campaigners, including Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT).

On 23 March, the inquiry heard from CAAT’s media coordinator, Emily Apple. She testified to the impact of undercover police spying on CAAT and other anti-arms trade and environmentalist groups.

HN3, an undercover Met police officer operating under pseudonym ‘Jason Bishop’, had been “authorised” to target CAAT as an organisation, the inquiry heard. Among other groups Bishop targeted were Disarm DSEI and protests at the RAF Fairford base.

Bishop had even managed to become a signatory to the Disarm DSEI bank account, managed its PO Box, and had access to the organisation’s email address.

An internal police report on Bishop’s undercover activities dating to 2003 shows that the Met police’s motivation to target DSEI protesters was borne out of concern that the protests:

could influence the financial wellbeing of the State.

139 undercover officers under examination

The inquiry is examining how 139 undercover police officers working for the Met police’s Special Demonstration Squad / Special Duties Squad (SDS) spied on over a thousand anti-war and environmentalist groups between 1968 and at least 2010.

The inquiry twice refused core participant status to CAAT, despite SDS targeting it. When the inquiry initially began in 2015, it argued there was no substantive proof that the SDS had spied on CAAT.

The inquiry rejected CAAT’s second application in 2024 on the grounds that reports on CAAT were due to ‘collateral intrusion’ – meaning consequential invasion of a third party’s privacy – arising from spying on Apple.

However, in her testimony, Apple pointed to a report by SDS manager, HN49, who confirmed that HN3 (Bishop) had been:

authorised to target CAAT because the group was known to hold protests and demonstrations, which had the potential to result in serious public disorder.

CAAT was also the victim of systematic corporate spying by Martin Hogbin, who infiltrated the organisation from 1997-2003 and provided information to BAE Systems.

CAAT has asked the inquiry to investigate the relationship between its undercover officers and corporate spies, and whether any of the information reported by Hogbin to BAE Systems ended up with the Met / SDS, since Hogbin and Bishop (HN3) knew one another.

A spokesperson from CAAT said:

The latest revelations from the Undercover Policing Inquiry provide yet more sordid details of the Met’s systematic, invasive and manipulative spying on anti-arms trade and environmentalist campaigners.

It is now abundantly clear that Met police undercover officers were explicitly authorised to target CAAT, in brazen contempt for our right to protest and campaign against a corrupt and destructive arms trade. This revelation further calls into question the inquiry’s refusal to include CAAT as a core participant.

Given the established links between corporate spies like Hogbin, and police spies like Bishop (HN3), it is high time the inquiry corrected course and examined the links between corporate spies and undercover police.

At a time when the British state is at its most authoritarian and repressive towards anti-war and anti-genocide campaigners, a full accounting of all skeletons in the Met’s closet is a must.

Featured image via the Canary