Undercover Policing Inquiry: ‘A very British Stasi’

On Monday 13 October 2025, the Undercover Policing Inquiry will begin its Tranche 3 (Phase 1) hearings, examining Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) operations from the early 1990s through to 2008.

The Inquiry has exposed the extensive and systemic abuses committed by Britain’s covert political policing units, particularly the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), which operated from 1968 for over four decades. The SDS conducted secret infiltration of social justice movements, peace groups, trade unions, socialist and communist organisations. 

The PILC legal team: Paul Heron (solicitor), Piers Marquis (Doughty Street Chambers) and James Scobie KC (Garden Court Chambers) will be there during that period representing the following: Youth against Racism in Europe (YRE), Lois Austin (YRE, Socialist Party), Hannah Sell (YRE, Socialist Party), Judy Neishon (Socialist Party), Dave Nellist (former Labour MP in the 1980s) and ‘Lewis’ (anti-fascist campaigner spied on).

Opening Statements and Live Evidence

The first three days will feature online Opening Statements from the Metropolitan Police and Core Participants, setting out the disturbing evidence that will be explored in the weeks and months ahead.

Our Opening Statement to the Inquiry will be delivered on Wednesday 15^th October 2025 at approximately 12.15pm. this can be watched on YouTube here. (*this is subject to a 10-minute delay)

In-person ‘live witness’ hearings will then commence on Friday 17 October 2025 at the International Dispute Resolution Centre.

A timetable of witnesses scheduled to give evidence can be found here

Spycops Inquiry – limits and hopes 

There is no doubt there have been serious limitations to the Inquiry. However, it has illuminated the hidden machinery of political policing in Britain. While the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) justified the SDS as a response to “public disorder” and “subversion,” the Chair of the Inquiry, Sir John Mitting, found in his 2023 Interim Report that the unit should have been “brought to a rapid end” within a few years of its creation. 

Instead, it persisted for decades, with successive Home Secretaries authorising its increasingly unethical operations, and civil servants and the Cabinet itself receiving reports from this covert unit. 

In this Tranche 3 covering 1993 to 2008 thousands of previously secret documents will be scrutinised and made public, as the hearings provide an unprecedented opportunity for the public to witness the covert state exposed through its own evidence.