A veteran left-wing campaigner testifying to Britain’s Undercover Policing Inquiry has stated the Metropolitan Police spied on now-Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s work when he was an up-and-coming lawyer in the 1990s.
An undercover police officer used a deceitful sexual relationship with a member of a London’s left-radical scene to gain access to legal briefs created by Keir Starmer (above, left, in a 2004 file photo). Starmer was considered a ‘radical barrister’ at a time when the law profession was still instinctively conservative, the Undercover Policing Inquiry heard according to The Times.
Widely known as the ‘spycops’ inquiry, chairman Sir John Mitting called on veteran London Greenpeace activist David Morris (above, centre) to give his opening statement on Tuesday, where he said a former undercover police officer had admitted to spying on the Greenpeace group and Starmer during the period of the infamous ‘McLibel’ trial, the longest in British legal history.
Morris, a self-described “lifelong community activist” and ‘vegan anarchist‘ said he was also speaking on behalf of Helen Steel (above, right), who had a long-term sexual relationship with an undercover police officer using the identity of a dead child. Morris said Helen Steel had been “effectively prevented” from testifying herself at the inquiry because of what he called bad procedure by the inquiry itself.
He told the inquiry of the police spying against the now Prime Minister: “Denied legal aid, we had to represent ourselves throughout. A young barrister, Keir Starmer, now Sir Keir, offered to provide us with free legal aid. He did so behind the scenes for ten years… The [undercover police] shockingly infiltrated the campaign and secretly collaborated with McDonalds before and during the case. This was a serious miscarriage of justice.”
As the case progressed, Morris said: “We finally got legal aid to take the British government to the European Court of Human Rights where we were formally represented by Keir Starmer… Dines was exploiting Helen while they lived together by getting details of our confidential legal strategy following the private meetings we held with Keir Starmer. As Dines said, quote: ‘It is accurate to say I was by the side of Helen Steel and Dave Morris in 1991 and relaying the legal advice back to my bosses in the [undercover police]’.”
While Helen Steel was not present to speak yesterday, she has gone on record on her relationship with the undercover officer Dines in the past. She had previously said she had later met Dines again after he left the police in 2016, and he had told her that “he was tasked with reporting on everything that was going on in the North London anti-capitalist, animal rights, poll tax and environmental movements – everything that was a bit alternative. I did not go out with him until 1990. If I had known he was using me to spy on groups of people whose politics I shared then I would never have had a relationship with him”.
The Spycops inquiry is examining the conduct and activities of undercover officers, mostly deployed against left-wing groups, from 1968 to 2008. One of the key focusses of the inquiry is the apparently reasonably common tactic of what in the intelligence world, if not policing, is known as ‘Romeo’ spies who form romantic attachments to target females.
Although the deceitful relationships with women were one of the motivating factors in setting up the inquiry, the proceedings have appeared to inadvertently reveal some deeper workings of domestic surveillance in Britain.
Sensationally, in August, a former undercover police officer testifying in defence of the Scotland Yard — claiming that their infiltration of radical leftist movements had saved lives — seemingly confirmed that the domestic intelligence service MI5 did “smear” individuals in activist circles.
He said: “nonsense. That’s not what we’re about, we’re about gathering intelligence, not smearing individuals. That’s a Security Service job, let them do that. We’re about gathering intelligence, that’s what we were doing… Sorry, I shouldn’t say that… let’s scrap that last bit, I’m not saying that”.
The live feed to the inquiry was then abruptly cut, and journalists in the room warned not to report what had been said in the period where the cameras were off.
