A veteran Marxist who was involved in demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s has said the head of the SDS published "alarmist" reports to try and justify the undercover squad’s operations.
Ernest Tate, who is now 86 and lives in Canada, did not address the Undercover Policing Inquiry himself but his answers to questions put to him were read out by a barrister, Nick Stanage, on Thursday, 12 November.
Mr Tate, who was a member of the International Marxist Group and was on the national committee of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, was asked about a massive anti-war demonstration near the US Embassy in London in 1968.
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He said: "Thousands of demonstrators tried to enter Grosvenor Square but were met by hundreds or even thousands of police officers who acted in a very aggressive manner to try to prevent them getting into the square. Regretfully violence erupted. I hold the police responsible for that."
Mr Tate was then asked about a number of reports about the IMG and VSC, many of which were compiled by Conrad Dixon, the former head of the SDS, and forwarded to Box 500, a codename for MI5.
Dixon referred to Tariq Ali, one of the leading anti-Vietnam war protest leaders at the time, as a “mob orator” and called another man a “notorious agitator.”
On Wednesday, 11 November, Tariq Ali had told the inquiry he was not trying to foment revolution and said: “You would have to be slightly deranged to think that the VSC demonstration would trigger off a revolution in Britain…where around 60 to 70 percent of the people supported the Vietnam War at the time.”
But Mr Tate said Dixon clearly had a "deep loathing of his subjects" and he added: "Alarmist reports of this nature for his superiors are not surprising. The creation of the SDS had to be justified."
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He said Dixon, who died in 1999 aged 72, was trying to “foment public hysteria” to frighten people away from joining the anti-Vietnam war protests.
Mr Tate said much of what was in the reports was “a product of the fevered imagination” of Dixon and other SDS officers and was designed to scare the government of the then prime minister Harold Wilson.
Mr Tate said only three Maoist-influenced branches of the VSC were espousing violence and added: “Only a tiny number of people were desirous of a clash with police.”
Asked what he thought about the recent revelations about the existence of the SDS and the deceptions they practised, especially on women, Mr Tate said it had been a “gross violation of civil liberties” and he described undercover officers sleeping with female targets as a “repulsive tactic.”
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Mr Tate said it had now become clear that an SDS officer had copied the keys to the IMG’s office and passed them on to MI5, who burgled the office in order to obtain membership records, which he described as an “outrage”.
Mr Tate concluded: "The inquiry has to decide whether it will protect the state or come down on the side of civil liberties. I hope it will lead to legislation and public oversight."
Earlier John Graham, an undercover officer whose cypher was HN329, told the inquiry he got involved in disorder at one meeting and was punched in the ribs by security personnel.
Graham, who grew a beard to fit in with the anti-Vietnam War protesters, said he “pretended to put up resistance” but did not want to “blow his cover” by getting arrested and charged.
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The inquiry also heard that HN329 made detailed reports of various VSC meetings, including one in which Tariq Ali compared the Vietnam War to racism.
The SDS, which also spied on the Women’s Liberation Movement, Justice for Rhodesia, Save Biafra and the Shrewsbury Two Defence Committee, was disbanded in 2008. Seven years later the Met settled seven claims from women who suffered from the “unacceptable behaviour” of a number of undercover police officers working for the SDS.
Last week, in an opening statement, a former undercover police officer who became a whistleblower, Peter Francis, said “state-sponsored deception” could only be justified in future if its targets truly posed a threat to people and the state.
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On Thursday the inquiry also heard a statement from a former undercover officer known by the cypher HN218, who was a member of the SDS and infiltrated the anti-Vietnam War campaign in the late 1960s.
HN218 - who used the cover name Barry Morris - left SDS in 1981 and was later promoted to Head of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch in 1996.
The final witness was Margaret White, a former SDS officer known as HN334, was deployed against the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and played the part of the girlfriend of Don de Freitas, who was another undercover officer.
She has previously said she worked for SDS between 1968 and 1972 and left the police in the late 1970s.
