Met Police Acknowledge Wrongdoing in Decade-Long Surveillance of HCDA Founder
The Metropolitan Police have conceded that it was wrong for senior officers to direct undercover operations against the Hackney Community Defence Association (HCDA), an organization established to expose wrongdoing within the Met. HCDA and its founder, Graham Smith, were covertly monitored over approximately a decade, from 1988 to 1998, during which 44 surveillance reports were produced.
HCDA played a significant role in assisting victims of police violence to sue the Metropolitan Police and helped uncover corruption, notably a high-profile case involving the Stoke Newington station. Despite this, undercover operations were authorized as part of a broader judicial inquiry into the Special Demonstration Squad's long history of spying on left-wing campaigners from 1968 through at least 2010.
These surveillance reports contained detailed personal information about Graham Smith, including sensitive details about his marriage and his father's terminal cancer. An undercover officer named Mark Jenner was deployed in Hackney for five years starting in 1995. Internal management documents described HCDA as suitable for an undercover officer to develop an anarchist reputation. Jenner provided personal details on Smith to officers managing a secret file maintained by Special Branch, which had been monitoring HCDA activities since 1988.
Smith has challenged the accuracy of many surveillance reports about himself and HCDA, asserting that the organization was neither anarchist nor criminally run as the reports suggested.
