Subversion, Surveillance, and the Nation

Political surveillance is an enduring aspect of policing, and with serious consequences for civil liberties, democratic freedoms, and collective struggles. The covert nature of surveillance poses difficulties for activists seeking to protect themselves and for researchers attempting to understand the scale, methods, and impacts of police and state infiltration. While state censorship often prevents access to accurate information about undercover policing and other covert forms of surveillance, the figure of the spy is ubiquitous, a mainstay of film and television, used to mediate wider experiences of national decline.

About the speakers:

Chris Brian — ‘From Subversion to Collateral Intrusion’

Abstract:
Between 1968 and 2010, 144 undercover officers were deployed into groups, filing 1000s of reports on their activities and intertwining themselves, often damagingly, into the lives of political activists.

The Undercover Policing Inquiry has revealed that of the thousands of now-published Special Branch reports, only a few contained information relevant to the undercover unit Special Demonstration Squad’s (SDS) stated primary objective: controlling public order. Instead, most of the reports recorded the legitimate and unremarkable meetings of activist groups – very few of which discussed disorder or criminal activity of any kind. In other words, they interfered with the right to privacy and freedom of expression on a massive scale.

‘Cold War’ logics and the surveillance state obsession with monitoring so-called ‘subversive activity’ partially explains this. Or at least gave the secret police unit a convenient justification to reach for.

The Cold War ended in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Subversion also slowly faded from use. In 2000, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act - surveillance legislation governing these secretive state activities was introduced.

This legislation required that any surveillance was compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). This included considering whether the surveillance was 'necessary' and ‘proportionate' and required the authorising police officer to assess the risk of ‘collateral intrusion’ – the recording of information from the surveillance of individuals irrelevant to the task at hand. Therefore, it might be assumed that the surveillance continued after this date would have operated entirely differently. However, it continued as if neither the Cold War had finished, and human rights legislation had not
been enacted. Why?

About the speaker:
Chris is part of the organisation the Undercover Research Group, which began by supporting those activists most effected by the surveillance described here – and worked piecing together the fragmentary and limited evidence that was in the public domain before the Undercover Policing Inquiry began. Now, with thousands of documents and hundreds of hours of testimony available, they work to assist activists in the inquiry, by collating and summarising this huge and unprecedented release of information detailing the workings of the secret state. Chris is a major contributor to the articles on the Undercover Research Group's new website: spycopsresearch.info. He also has also contributed a chapter to the forthcoming: 'In solidarity, under suspicion': The British far left from 1956' (Manchester University Press). He also makes regular appearances on the #Spycops Info podcast.

Adam Elliott-Cooper — ‘The Surveillance State's Imperial Entanglements’

Abstract:
The racism of British policing emerges from an entanglement with the counterinsurgency policing in the colonies. This imperial histories can help us to situate the Metropolitan Police’s covert surveillance of the Stephen Lawrence campaign, bringing into sharp relief how institutional and overt racism is produced by undercover policing. This will be done by contrasting police inaction over the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, with covert police efforts to discredit the Stephen Lawrence Campaign, using racist stereotypes. Highlighting institutional and individual culpability, the this underscores the urgent need for covert policing to be abolished and for activists and families to remain vigilant of ongoing infiltration.

About the speaker:
Adam Elliott-Cooper received his PhD from the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, in 2016. He has previously worked as a researcher in the Department of Philosophy at UCL, as a teaching fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick and as a research associate in the Department of Geography at King's College London. His first monograph, Black Resistance to British Policing, was published by Manchester University Press in May 2021. He is also co-author of Empire’s Endgame: Racism and the British State (Pluto Press, 2021). Adam sits on the board of The Monitoring Group, an anti-racist organisation challenging state racisms and racial violence.

Sita Balani — ‘Defensive Fictions: Domesticating the Spy Cop’

Abstract:
In Britain, spies have become part of a national imaginary, grounded in novels and films. But while the secret agents of the twentieth century have become part of Britain’s sprawling heritage industry, the ‘spy cop’ is a more difficult figure within narrative genres. In this paper, I will explore recent television dramas Undercover (2016) and Sherwood (2022) to consider how these attempt to resolve the crisis in policing through narrative means. I will consider their insufficiencies, contra the spy fictions of an earlier era, as a synecdoche of a broader crisis of national authority.

About the speaker:
Dr. Sita Balani is a fellow of the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences and senior lecturer in English at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of Deadly and Slick: Sexual Modernity and the Making of Race (Verso, 2023) and co-author of Empire’s Endgame: Racism and the British State (Pluto, 2021). She has published in Feminist Review, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, and Wasafiri, as well as in outlets aimed at wider audiences, such as Vice, Tribune, the White Review, Salvage, Five Dials, and Protean.

Venue: Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS [The precise location of this lecture will be circulated to registered ticket holders only].

Subversion, Surveillance, and the Nation

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