Spycops meeting, HCDA and Hackney Trade Union Support Unit publications

HCDA banner at Chats Palace spycops meeting

The recent meeting about spycops at Chats Palace was disturbing and inspiring in turn. Disturbing because of the level of state-sanctioned emotional abuse suffered by activist women – and inspiring because of their dignified and tenacious campaign for justice.

“Alison” (formerly of the Colin Roach Centre) and Helen Steel (formerly of London Greenpeace, McLibel etc) were joined on the platform by Graham Smith (founder member of Hackney Community Defence Association) and Mark Metcalf (formerly of HCDA, Colin Roach Centre, Hackney Trade Union Support Unit etc).

It was good to see the Hackney Community Defence Association banners in action once again (see pic above – “Alison” understandably did not want to be photographed, hence the empty stage).

Even better than that was the diverse cross-section of Hackney radicals who were present – I reacquainted myself with people from my union branch, Hackney Independent, Hackney Anarchy Week, various radical history initiatives and from doing zines in the 1990s.

Attendees were all given a useful HCDA timeline, which I have now added to this site.

The meeting picked up coverage in the Hackney Gazette amongst other places.

The ongoing campaign is ably covered by Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance (COPS).

Since the meeting, Mark Metcalf has republished scans of two pamphlets of interest on his blog:

Hackney Trade Union Support Unit report 1988-1990

HCDA’s “A peoples’ account of Hackney anti-poll tax demonstration on March 8th 1990”

I’ve not had much time to work on this site recently, but will steal both of those and add them here in due course. In the meantime, do check them out on Mark’s blog alongside his other writing and see what he has to say on twitter.

Also since the meeting, Graham Smith has written an interesting blog entry on Undercover Policing, Democracy and Human Rights which covers HCDA and the forthcoming Pitchford enquiry into undercover policing. Graham can now be found on twitter here.