Documenting and navigating the Spycops Scandal

Since the Inquiry began in 2015, hundreds of hours of witness testimony have been heard, and thousands of previously secret documents have been released.

How to make sense of it all? The organisation I work with, the Undercover Research Group, has been working on a website since 2023:

The SpycopsResearch.info database is a project of the Undercover Research Group. It aims to make the material released during the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI) accessible to all. Spycopsresearch.info

The sheer volume of material is not the only issue to be addressed. The term “Professional Liars” was famously used by spycop-turned-whistleblower Peter Francis to describe his former undercover police colleagues during an early Inquiry hearing.

 Although the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch once labelled these reports as ‘reliable but delicate sources’, contradictory evidence presented at the Inquiry has shown that the officers themselves— the spycops—were far from reliable.

Crucially, there was no quality checking of their ‘intelligence product’, despite the reports’ potential to adversely affect those who were spied upon, as it was distributed to official and non-official bodies, including MI5, the Home Office, and blacklisting organisations.

Peter Francis, giving evidence to the UCPI, December 2025.

Addressing the Reliability Problem

It is now at least possible to address this reliability problem by comparing the accounts of undercover police officers with an increasing number of civilian witnesses (‘core participants’) and with open-source information from both mainstream and activist or alternative publications. However, understanding and analysing this material is still formidable, given its immense scope, complexity, and volume.

Nearly 10,000 documents have been published by the Inquiry so far, a number expected to double by its conclusion. Some individual documents consist of hundreds of pages, and the reproductions of the older material often make them difficult to read. More importantly, many documents are partially censored.

In addition to documentary evidence, there are now hundreds of hours of witness testimony to consider.

These testimonies come not only from the undercover officers and their managers but also from those who were spied upon. For example, Peter Francis, the whistleblower, had ten civilian witnesses who testified about his deployment.

With 139 undercover officers, their managers, senior uniformed police witnesses, dozens of civilians, and hundreds of groups targeted, the challenge is to make sense of the multitude of stories contained within the Inquiry.

The individual stories are often the most intimate and emotional, including campaigners’ motivations, the spycops' outrageous interventions in the justice system, as well as traumatic accounts of abuse and betrayal.

The Inquiry is not just about individual experiences; it also encompasses broader narratives spanning 1968 to 2011 concerning state surveillance in the 20th and 21st centuries, the British justice system, the Cold War, and the histories of the British Police, MI5, and the Home Office.

How Our Website Helps Navigate the Scandal

Our website offers essential tools for navigating this vast and interconnected web of stories. First, it provides a searchable database of the Inquiry’s initial disclosure of material. Unlike the official state website, ours allows users to search for keywords and terms and offers diverse options to filter searches by time frame, document type, or author. In addition to the Inquiry’s disclosed material, we also have a library section that provides essential documents and resources not released by the Inquiry.

Articles

Spycopsresearch.info

In addition to the raw material, the website features hundreds of articles that analyse and summarise the evidence presented at the Inquiry. These include detailed profiles of undercover officers and their managers. Although some of these articles are substantial, we have undertaken a rigorous editing process to keep them concise and focused, which is challenging when witness statements run to hundreds of pages and hundreds of documents are linked to individual police witnesses.

Groups Targeted

We also provide brief overviews of the groups targeted by spycops. These overviews are not intended as comprehensive histories but rather aim to provide readers with sufficient context on how and why campaign groups operated, and when and by whom they were monitored.

Analysis

The most varied part of the website is the ‘Analysis’ section. Here, users will find pieces on how the undercover operatives carried out their work—their ‘tradecraft’—as well as articles on specific themes that have emerged from the Inquiry, such as surveillance of children. There are also in-depth analyses of major protest events, such as the Grunwick Strike. This section also examines how, when, and why the spycops unit was established and provides brief background information on other state employees involved in the scandal.

Additionally, we are developing a smaller but expanding section detailing the various police bodies involved in the scandal.

Inquiry Section

Alongside these ‘evidential’ sections, our website also includes a part dedicated to explaining how the Inquiry works – or does not work. This section may be of interest to those who are involved in the other twenty-one public inquiries occurring today. It explains the legislative framework under which the Inquiry operates, its procedures, and the tensions and controversies that have arisen between non-state core participants and the Chair of the Inquiry, Sir John Mitting.

To emphasise, this is an ongoing project. New articles are added weekly, sometimes daily. The Inquiry has been struggling to publish disclosure coherently, causing technical issues for us.

Of course, the Inquiry will also continue to release material for another two years, as it is now unlikely to conclude until 2028, making it the longest-running statutory public inquiry.

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