I Was a Victim of Undercover Police Abuse. I Fear We Won’t Get Justice

Alison Anon: For many of the ordinary people attending, the Royal Courts of Justice building – with its endless gothic corridors – is intimidating and alien Here in the Royal Courts of Justice we are listening for crumbs of information about the officers who used and abused us. But nothing is revealed. I’ve been researching undercover policing ever since the boyfriend I knew as Mark Cassidy left me in spring 2000. Like the other female activists bringing cases of undercover police abuse to light, I have become skilled in scouring documents, interrogating and interpreting evidence. We’ve fought a legal case against the Metropolitan police to expose its institutional sexist practices, and waited for five years for an apology that should have been given much earlier. Now I’m one of the 180 “non-state core participants” (NSCPs) in the public inquiry into undercover policing. Established in March 2015, the inquiry was due to report in July 2018, but it’s looking unlikely any evidence will be heard until 2019, and the end date is no longer even in sight. Sir John Mitting, the inquiry chair, is sitting for three days this week in the Royal Courts of Justice in London, listening to legal arguments and counter-arguments about police anonymity. He obliquely responded to a letter from October signed by 115 NSCPs expressing our concern about the inquiry’s lack of openness and transparency, stating that his priority was to “discover the truth”.

Read more: Alison Anon, Guardian, http://bit.ly/2zpMekJ