Albert Beale

AN environmental campaigner has recalled the moment he “outed” an undercover detective in front of hundreds of people.

Albert Beale has filed evidence to an independent inquiry into the “spy cops” scandal which has revealed the scale of police infiltration tactics. At its most shocking, an undercover officer fathered a child with an activist who had no idea of his real identity.

This was Bob Lambert, who went undercover to investigate the London Greenpeace group which was based in King’s Cross.

In a statement to the ongoing Undercover Policing Inquiry released this week, Mr Beale told how he unmasked Mr Lambert during an anti-racist conference in Congress House, Bloomsbury, in 2011. Mr Beale was among activists handing out leaflets that accused him of being a police officer posing as one of their group, and it fell to him to hand one to the man himself on stage.

“I hadn’t seen him for well over 20 years, and it was quite an upsetting experience finding myself face to face with him in that context,” he said.

“Though I accept the occasion might have been upsetting for him too.”

The story is told in a blistering and wide-ranging 67-page statement from Mr Beale, which raises ethical questions about police betrayal and political surveillance.

A secret police officer infiltrated the London branch of Greenpeace

The inquiry – already the longest and most expensive in British history – is probing the work of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a secretive police unit that sent dozens of officers undercover to “infiltrate” left-wing organisations over four decades.

The SDS was set up to prevent “disorder” by monitoring “extreme left-wing political factions” but ended up disgraced after its officers began moving in and having intimate relationships with activists they were spying-on and used the identities of dead children for their code names.

Mr Lambert – who fathered a child with a campaigner without her knowing he was working undercover – infiltrated London Greenpeace using the name “Bob Robinson”.

He was one of several undercover officers who were monitoring and writing up reports about Mr Beale and others while working in its King’s Cross offices. The London Greenpeace offices were according to the reports considered to be a “significant contact point for the animal rights movement” as well as the environment and were increasingly showing “anarchist” tendencies.

Mr Beale’s statement tells how “Bob Robinson” joined the group in the 1980s, describing him as “active and enthusiastic”, adding: “For some time he was one of the more active (and hence more influential) people in the group.”

He recalled Mr Lambert making a pamphlet about McDonald’s mistreatment of animals, while also “pushing the activities of the group in a certain direction, towards animal rights activities”.

Mr Beale recalled how Mr Lambert and another undercover officer, John Dines “would be chatty in the pub with others of us after meetings, and each seemed to take an active part in the meetings themselves”.

He said: “My reaction when members of London Greenpeace discovered that we had been subject to infiltration by undercover police was of course one of betrayal – they were people who had behaved as though they were friends and comrades. This shock was obviously exacerbated by discovering that at least two such police spies had engaged in fake ‘relationships’ with women who were known to me – friends in fact.”

Bob Lambert was working undercover

Mr Lambert fathered a child while undercover, and after his police career went on to become a lecturer at London Met before his past caught up with him and students protested against him being on the staff. Mr Beale refuted SDS reports filed by Mr Lambert as Bob Robinson which suggested London Greenpeace had a “violent anarchist vision”.

Mr Beale’s statement traces his pacifist awakening back to school, recalling a time officers had arrived at a neighbour’s door looking for someone who had “gone AWOL from National Service”. He gave an example of his group’s campaigning: they helped a Friends of the Earth action which saw them “dump a lorry load of their newly non-returnable glass bottles” in the entrance of Schweppes offices near Marble Arch.

Mr Beale was an editor of Peace News, and was involved and active in dozens of campaigns for groups including the Peace Pledge Union, War Resisters’ International and Camp against Arms Trade, throughout his lifetime.

Answering questions about his views on “disorder”, his statement said: “ ‘Disorder’ is a matter of shaking up the status quo; in my view our world is in great need of some ‘disordering’.”

Asked whether London Greenpeace was intent on “overthrowing parliamentary democracy”, he said the current democratic system left “millions of people effectively disenfranchised”, adding: “I do not believe we have a system worthy of being called democratic.”

In conclusion, Mr Beale said: “I worry that this inquiry will not get to the full truth about undercover deployments; and in any case, I know from my personal experience that dealing only with infiltration of this sort still leaves much of the damage done by political policing in maintenance of an unjust world untouched.”