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Police are investigating complaints from four campaigners who say they felt intimidated by covert officers who tried to recruit them as informants.
The four campaigners have alleged that coercive and at times repeated approaches from the police caused them to give up their political campaigning, or left them stressed and paranoid.
They have also said that the covert operation to spy erodes free speech and the freedom to protest. Among the proposed targets of the surveillance were students at Cambridge University, Unite Against Fascism, environmentalists and anti-cuts campaigners UK Uncut and Cambridge Defend Education.
One 23-year single mother said she abandoned campaigning against racism after police threatened to prosecute her if she told anyone, including her mother, about the attempt to persuade her to become an informant.
The official watchdog, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, said :”We are concerned by the allegations regarding the manner in which two officers of Cambridgeshireshire Constabulary have allegedly attempted to recruit informants to infiltrate various political organisations.”
Cambridgeshire police acknowledged the “serious nature of the allegations”.
For more details of the allegations and complaint, see these Guardian articles - written with my colleague Matthew Taylor - here and here. The quartet of campaigners are being represented by lawyers at civil liberties law firm, Bindmans - Jules Carey and Rachel Harger.
The IPCC has decided that the complaint will initially be investigated by Cambridgeshire police. If the campaigners are not happy with the verdict, they can then appeal to the IPCC which says they would “review the completed investigation and its outcome”.
Cambridgeshire police have in the past admitted that they tried to recruit the campaigners, but have denied, without offering any detail, some of the conduct alleged by them.
In a statement, they have said that its officers had used “covert tactics to gather intelligence, in accordance with the law, to assist in the prevention and detection of criminal activity”.
Last November, Cambridgeshire police were criticised after an activist revealed how he had covertly recorded police trying to persuade him to pass on information about the political activities of Cambridge students, and other campaigners.
The revelation prompted three more campaigners to come forward and describe how the police had tried to entice them into becoming informants.
It is likely that police forces across the country have turned political activists into informers. This article here looks at some of the techniques used by police to recruit informers in political groups. Cash and blackmail - as discussed here - are often used.
However approaching campaigners to become informers can - for the police - be hazardous, as this article examines.
This here is a guide, written by activists, on what to do if the police do make an approach. Netpol, the Network for Police Monitoring, has also made criticisms of the use of informants - see here.
