[A-List] UK state: counter-subversion

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Thanks to Ed George for this.

I have expressed my reservations about Peter Taylor before, largely on the
basis of an incredible whitewashing of the John Stalker affair that he
broadcast in a BBC documentary way back in 1991. There is no question that,
whatever his limitations, much very useful and indeed very damaging (to the
British state) information has emerged thanks to his journalistic activities
in Northern Ireland, most notably his "Brits" series. However I remain
sceptical of Taylor's ability or desire to dig as deeply as he ought. Since
it will probably be a long time before I get to see this series perhaps some
kind A-lister would keep us informed about how it develops. I would
especially be grateful for any dirt that emerges on the miners' strikes of
1972, 1974 and 1984/5 (especially the latter, given the mobilisation of the
police during that civil-war-in-all-but-name). And let's not forget
Grunwick, the "winter of discontent", the steel strike of 1980, the dockers,
railway workers, etc., etc. Or will Taylor opt for laughs by focusing
primarily on loony groups so far out that (ho ho) the silly spies should
have known better than to bother infiltrating them?


Inside job

They were the 'hairies' - undercover cops who created false identities to
infiltrate radical protest groups during the 60s, 70s and 80s. Until now
their existence has been secret. Now for the first time, they are talking.
Peter Taylor reports

Wednesday October 23, 2002
The Guardian

When Dan joined the Metropolitan police special branch in 1964, he was
astonished when a senior officer warned that it was "quite likely that in 10
years Britain could become a Communist state". The new police recruits were
being introduced to the subversive agenda of the Communist party of Great
Britain, the prototype "enemy within". Its intention, they were told, was to
use the trade unions as a revolutionary instrument to undermine
parliamentary democracy. "It felt as if you were paddling in a pool of
subversion," Dan says. Soon the pool deepened as the Vietnam war radicalised
thousands of young people and swelled the ranks of Trotskyite organisations.
The climax came in 1968, when tens of thousands marched on Grosvenor Square
and laid siege to the American embassy. The ensuing violence between police
and demonstrators had never been seen before on British streets. The police
were completely unprepared. They had no training and weren't given any
detailed briefing on what was likely to happen. Intelligence on the
marchers' intentions was rudimentary.

For the Metropolitan police, Grosvenor Square was a wake-up call. Special
branch needed to rethink its intelligence-gathering techniques. Sources
within the revolutionary left who'd traditionally passed on the odd titbit
in return for a few pounds and a pint simply weren't enough. As a result, an
elite unit was set up within special branch whose existence has been kept a
closely guarded secret until now. It was known as the "special demonstration
squad" - or less prosaically as the "hairies" because of the way its
officers dressed, looked and lived. "It was a shadowy section of the branch
where people disappeared into a black hole for several years," says Richard,
a veteran hairy.

Members of the squad adopted new identities, or "legends", lived away from
their families in grotty flats, took real jobs as cover and gradually
infiltrated the hard left. Later, when the hard right also became a growing
public order problem, there were skinhead hairies with rather less hair.
Wilf, who became one of the hairy handlers - a contact point in the outside
world - had great respect for his undercover colleagues. "They were true
spies. What the SAS did for the army, the hairies did for special branch."

Sometimes MI5 was also a recipient of the political intelligence they
gleaned. "Occasionally somebody from MI5 would come to a meeting and ask,
either individually or generally, if anybody could help with the identity of
a photograph," says Brian.

As most police officers at the time sported short back and sides, certain
adjustments had to be made to fit their new personae. Brian says he looked
"outrageous with shoulder-length hair and bushy beard six inches beneath the
chin". Geoff had a problem because his hair was so fine, so he went to
hairdressers and had a perm. "I ended up looking like Marc Bolan - big
hair!"

Dan was "slightly dirty and slightly smelly". Richard was a long-haired,
shabby manual worker with dirty jeans and boots. "I made sure my fingernails
were always dirty and cracked." On one occasion, the Metropolitan police
commissioner was taken to a secret location to meet the hairies. He clearly
wasn't ready for what he saw. "I've never seen a person more flabbergasted
in my life," says Geoff. "You could see his jaw dropping lower and lower. I
think he could see his knighthood disappearing out of the window."

Each hairy worked out his own legend and memorised. Richard had just read
The Day of the Jackal and decided to adopt a new persona like Frederick
Forsyth's assassin who assumed the identity of someone who had died young.
"I spent weeks and weeks at St Catherine's House studying birth and death
records. I was looking for child who'd been born about the same time as
myself and died soon after. I found him and resurrected him." Richard
visited the town where the boy who was providing his cover was born - and
from which the family had conveniently moved away - and researched every
detail of the family's history.

Being a hairy was nerve-wracking and dangerous. Infiltrating the Troops Out
Movement, with its Irish republican connections (as Brian did) or the Anti-H
Block campaign (as other hairies did), or working on the fringes of
terrorist organisations such as the Angry Brigade or the Free Wales Army was
a high-risk and potentially life-threatening operation.

There's no doubt that most hairies believed that the organisations they
penetrated were genuinely subversive, however dismissive of the notion we
may be today. "They were interested in seizing power, and not by
parliamentary means. They saw the police and army as tools of the state to
be defeated and overthrown," says Geoff.

Geoff and his colleagues found that infiltrating these organisations was
relatively easy. They would go along to meetings, look interested and
gradually be drawn in. The groups were hungry for new recruits. Dan
infiltrated the International Marxist Group (IMG) as the Vietnam war raged.
Brian infiltrated the Troops Out Movement in the early days of the Irish
conflict. Richard joined the Socialist Workers Party at the time of the
Falklands. Hairies were never pushy and would wait to be approached so that
the initiative always appeared to lie with the so-called subversives.

They became experts in dialectical materialism and the different ideologies
of the far left. Some even confessed they became so involved they almost
went native. And they made very good friends, many of them women. But sex
was strictly off-limits. "They were nice people but wrong," says Geoff.

Once inside the organisations, they could gradually work their way up
because they were prepared to do the boring jobs. They rose to become
membership secretaries, treasurers and trusted comrades with access to the
vital records that MI5 was interested in. Some admit they could have been
almost running the organisation, but that was strictly taboo. "As a rule of
thumb, you could allow yourself to run with the organisation," says Richard,
"but you had to stop short of organising or directing it."

Street cred could also enhance a hairy's cover. At one demonstration Geoff,
who had also infiltrated the Socialist Workers Party, had an altercation
with a police officer. "Seeing me with my long hair and beard, he grabbed me
in a vice-like grip and started to pummel and drag me towards a police
vehicle. So I grabbed hold of one particular part of his anatomy and
squeezed it rather hard which made him leap up and release me. I legged it
and everybody thought I was a hero of the working class."

On one occasion, Geoff found himself collecting money for the Anti-Nazi
League next to the young Peter Hain at the huge Rock Against Racism concert
in London's Victoria Park in 1978. "I can remember sitting next to him on a
large sack of cash. There was money everywhere. We had to get Securicor to
take it back to ANL headquarters." Hain had no idea who his fellow collector
was. Nor did he know that this wasn't the first time he'd been sitting next
to a hairy.

During the Stop the 70 Tour campaign, which first brought Hain to national
prominence in 1970, a hairy called Mike was virtually Hain's
second-in-command. Special branch had targeted the campaign after warnings
that there was likely to be "blood on the streets". Mike has since died but
his handler, Wilf, is still very much alive. "I don't think Hain ever
realised he had a hairy as his number two," he says.

Mike provided the intelligence that enabled the police to deal with the
disruption planned for a big rugby game between the Springboks and the
Barbarians at Twickenham. The demonstrators planned to throw smoke bombs and
metal tacks onto the pitch, but thanks to Mike the police were ready with
sand and electric magnets. News film of the time clearly shows them being
used. There was the inevitable inquest into how the plan had been thwarted.
"Hain felt, quite rightly, that there was a spy in their midst," says Wilf.
"Mike looked down the room at one poor devil and said: 'I think it's him!'
He was thrown out and Mike survived. Bless him."

On occasions, the hairies were of more practical use to MI5 in helping
provide covert access to premises where the all-important membership lists
and financial records were stored. Dan, who'd infiltrated the fringes of the
IMG, spent a few evenings baby-sitting the offices of the Vietnam Solidarity
Campaign, an offshoot of the IMG. The bunch of keys he was given also
contained the keys to other IMG premises - he copied them. The offices, he
says, were subsequently "visited", presumably by MI5 who normally did
burglaries.

When I told Tariq Ali about what had happened to his keys (at the time he
was editor of the IMG's paper, Black Dwarf) he was almost lost for words as
he searched to remember who the hairy could possibly have been. "It's quite
amazing. It's a betrayal. He must have been trusted to have had a key to
that office. He must have been liked and must have made friends." But Dan
has no regrets about what he did. "There was always a policeman within me,
so I didn't have a problem about exposing people if necessary." All the
hairies agree. Betrayal was part of the job description.

Whereas most thrived on the adrenalin-pumping work, in the end Dan found the
strain too great, not least because of the eternal fear of being
compromised. The final straw came in a pub. He'd been tipped off as the
result of a telephone tap on the IMG warning that Dan had come under
suspicion. He was taken to a pub where he had to drink nine pints of beer
under intense questioning from his comrades. Remarkably, his cover held. "My
thought processes remained ice-cold," he says. The ordeal over, he staggered
off to meet his handler. "That's when my legs collapsed." By then, Dan had
decided that enough was enough. "It took a huge toll on my family life. On
reflection, I didn't enjoy it."

But most hairies felt very differently. "It was the best job I ever did in
my police service," says Geoff. "It was salaried schizophrenia but I think
we did prevent serious disorder on the streets of London and even stopped
innocent people being killed. But I think our major role was to stop people
from trying to short circuit parliamentary democracy and, yes, perhaps
overthrowing the government. I'm very proud of what we did."

Not surprisingly, those on the receiving end take a different view. Ali is
appalled at the revelation. "That's the undemocratic nature of the
intelligence agencies," he says. "The state is defending itself against its
own democratic citizenry. In order to do so, it has to disregard some of the
democratic values it believes in." He still can't believe that it happened.
But it did.

· The names of the hairies have been changed. Peter Taylor's True Spies
series begins this Sunday on BBC2 at 9 pm.