Police have spied on thousands of us. Let the spotlight now fall on them

The latest publications on the website for the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) prove that the British state has secretly gathered intelligence on the political activities of thousands of its citizens for decades. Those of us who have been saying this for years feel vindicated. But it’s a bitter victory.

The searchable database produced in partnership with the Undercover Research Group and published by the Guardian explains that since 1968 police have spied on more than 1,000 groups, including environmentalists and peace activists. There is no official list of all these groups but, of those confirmed, 121 are leftwing and three are rightwing.

Until very recently no one except a small alliance of dedicated activists and people affected by these undercover operations have seemed especially bothered by the potential scale of what is being uncovered and its significance. I shared my life with one of these spies for five years, believing him to be my life partner. I’ve had a reason to be bothered.

The public has been understandably shocked by stories such as mine and others whose human rights have been abused by these undercover deployments. But up until now the public interest has been focused on a relatively few core participants, currently 210. This latest set of legal wrangling draws into play the interests of a far wider public. It’s going to make this story personal for many more people.

Lawyers for the state and non-state core participants are being asked to make written submissions to Sir John Mitting, the UCPI chairman, by 10 January for an oral hearing in the Royal Courts of Justice on 31 January about how the inquiry hears evidence in summer 2019. The outcome of this hearing will establish the extent to which police evidence to the inquiry is transparent and open to the public.

Problems have arisen, however, because of new laws governing data protection and the privacy rights of individuals. Included in the 9,000 intelligence reports of undercover police officers read so far by Mitting are the names of thousands of ordinary British citizens. Thousands of ordinary people have been logged and reported on by undercover police officers and their names stored in secret files which were never expected to reach the public domain.

These are not names of criminals. Not even suspects of crimes. They are names of politically engaged citizens attending meetings of protest groups such as the Anti-Apartheid Movement, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, the Anti-Nazi League, Greenpeace, the Greenham Common peace camp and for being members of unions such as the Fire Brigades Union, the RMT, the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, and the National Union of Teachers. Also included among these names are family members involved in campaigns to fight for justice for their loved ones killed in police custody.

The scale of reporting on innocent people is so vast that the inquiry is having difficulty working out how on one hand to protect innocent members of the public from having their identities exposed without having the opportunity to exercise their right to privacy, whilst on the other hand keeping police evidence open to public scrutiny.

To help the lawyers consider their answers, the inquiry has produced two mock intelligence reports. Deconstructing these documents is a fascinating exercise. They give insight into the scale of the state’s monitoring of public dissent, political activism and political debate since 1968. If these mock-ups are authentic in terms of style and content – and I believe they probably are – the public must ask why on earth the Metropolitan police has been collecting this quantity and detail about the political lives of ordinary people?

If the person in the street has not been sufficiently stirred by the cases of the women deceived by undercover police into intimate relationships, or by the accounts of undercover police spying on family justice campaigns or by any other element of this sordid scandal, I hope these documents generate concern about the true extent of police surveillance of those trying to organise for social and political change.

The detail is extraordinary and the officers are not simply reporting facts. In the fake report about a meeting of the “South West London Revolutionary Campaign Movement”, the source makes judgments about their targets with a perspective informed by long-term infiltration: “Anderson launched into a tirade to the effect that political change was not going to be achieved without action, it was politically indefensible to hold back and he was the only one who ever did anything. Since Anderson does not, typically, do much at all, it was difficult to avoid the impression that the entire outburst was motivated principally by an attempt to impress his new boyfriend Chris Carter…”

In the same report, we are told the following of group member Emma Evans: “Normally one of the loudest of the movement in calling for violent revolution and the overthrow of all authority by any means, seemed shocked and rather embarrassed to have caused any actual injury, even inadvertently; she was subdued and left early.”

A similarly patronising tone runs through both reports. We can see the officers’ eyes roll as they describe their targets’ revolutionary fervour.

The second document produced by the inquiry is more chilling, set in a meeting for the Argento justice campaign, a family-based group with links to feminist organisations. When listing those present, the reporting officer makes the following comment: “Amongst those present were about 10 members of New Age League (NAL) and three members of the Campaign for Change (CfC). Elora Esposito of the Justice Always Group (JAG) was also present as the sole representative of that august body.”

As well as sarcastic asides such as these, the officers’ role seems to be to report on campaigners’ personalities and the relationships between them. Where there is discord, this is deemed “interesting”. The purpose of these documents is to focus lawyers’ minds on privacy laws. But their immediate impact is stark. They indicate the shocking truth about how much information on ordinary, law-abiding citizens has been collected in the name of national security. And they reveal the scorn special branch officers had for their targets.

I will feature in many such documents, written by the man I naively believed once loved me. Their contemptuous tone is another reminder of the deep betrayal those spied upon have suffered.

For this reason, the inquiry must take on board the fact there is no symmetry in this process. We are not the ones under investigation. Those of us named in documents such as these must have our right to privacy respected – and to be informed of what is held on us. I have been trying for years to get some disclosure, some answers to the gaps in my life. But, like many others, I’ve been stonewalled by the police all the way and have never seen anything.

In its approach, the inquiry seems to be prioritising police over victims, keeping us at arm’s length. We could be of great benefit and ease its burden considerably if it took an approach of cooperation rather than hostility towards groups such as the Undercover Research Group.

The thousands of names in these reports are potential witnesses who can corroborate or contest the narratives offered by the ex-undercover officers. These people should be searched for, contacted and offered the opportunity to have their names and personal details redacted from documents. They should be invited to make witness statements. They are the public and it is their scrutiny the police are under.

It will be a costly exercise but it is a crucial one. Millions of pounds have been wasted on tasking officers to produce reports such as these. And millions more so far on investigating this tasking.

So now is not the time to tell those who have experienced human rights abuses as a result of these deployments that a genuinely public inquiry into the secret state is looking impracticable.

• Alison is a pseudonym for one of eight women who successfully took legal action against the Metropolitan police over the conduct of undercover officers