Peter Francis operated undercover in student protest groups

A SPECIAL Branch detective grew his hair long and posed as a heavy metal fan as he enrolled at Kingsway College to spy undercover on an anti-fascist student group in the mid-1990s.

Peter Francis, who used several aliases while working for the Met’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), spied on “subversives” at the college when it was based in Holmes Road, Kentish Town. He lived at four different undercover flats in Islington while he joined up with the Kingsway College Anti-Fascist Group (KCFAG) that confronted skinhead newsletter sellers and far-right demonstrations against minority communities in north London.

One of the KCFAG’s organisers, “Lewis”, in his mid-20s at the time, was initially targeted for an alleged role in “leading a charge against the BNP”. The activist, whose real name is protected by an anonymity ruling, gave evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry on Wednesday. The long-running inquiry, launched 10 years ago, is investigating whether the Met’s SDS, which was set up to prevent violent public disorder, ended up motivated by institutional racism.

Last Wednesday, Lewis told the inquiry he had first started organising at Kingsway College to persuade people to “reject the idea that open fascists could sell newspapers or march through streets”. One of Francis’s SDS reports, from 1993, said: “A new violent anti-fascist alliance is forming… One such is based at the Kingsway College, NW1, and is led by ‘Lewis’. He has established himself in left-wing circles for his determination to rid Brick Lane of British National Party presence.”

Asked about his own thoughts on violent protests, Lewis told the inquiry it was no use simply “sitting round all day reading bits from Lenin”.

But he strongly rejected any suggestion he had ever set out to cause public disorder.

Recalling his first interactions with Mr Francis at Kingsway College, Lewis told the inquiry: “He wore T-shirts with heavy metal band names on them, leather jackets, and had very long hair. That kind of look, if you like, was not something you’d see in an inner-city college in the 90s very often.” Despite his jarring attire, the idea he was an undercover agent “never crossed my mind”, adding: “I think we would have thought you were as paranoid as could be if anyone thought that.”

One of the Kingsway College groups he was involved in and was reported on was the Revolutionary Internationalist League, which had just 10 core members at the time, the inquiry heard. Another was a justice campaign group for another Kingsway College student, Shah Alam, who had been stabbed by skinheads in east London.

The inquiry heard how the Alam campaign had been taken up by Geoffrey Bindman, a solicitor who died last week, and the focus was similar to the Stephen Lawrence campaign in bringing his attackers to justice.

One Francis SDS report also accuses Lewis of being part of an “extremely dedicated group of left-wing activists strongly intending to burn down the BNP bookshop” at a historic demo in Welling, south-east London following the Lawrence murder.

Recalling one day opposing the BNP following the Lawrence murder, at a “Blood and Honour” concert of a “Nazi band” in east London, the group ended up being “kettled” by police in a tube train on the District line at Becontree before it was driven out of the station and moved through 26 stations until Earl’s Court, the inquiry heard.

When the group were allowed out “there was like a line of police hitting people as they got off the train”, Lewis told the inquiry.

Mr Francis has already admitted engaging in “sexual affairs” with people he spied on saying in his statement he had tried to rationalise the liaisons as “meant nothing emotionally and that I was cynically using the sexual relationships for the purposes of gaining intelligence”, adding: “The SDS management knew that I was behaving in this way.”

Lewis said he did not know of any sexual relationships with anyone in the Kingsway group but recalled cooking “pasta or chilli con carne” for him during meetings at his home.

He added: “I probably feel more sorry for him than anger … I did feel violated to have been spied on and to see things made up against me.”

The UCI launched in 2015 after it was first revealed the “spy cops” fathered children with activists they spied on.

Mr Francis became a whistleblower that helped expose the scandal.

He is due to give evidence to the inquiry on December 1.