A former undercover police officer has made explosive new claims that senior managers actively prevented him from revealing the covert surveillance of Stephen Lawrence's family to a landmark public inquiry.
Hostile Exchanges Over Disclosure
Peter Francis, a whistleblower from the Metropolitan Police's controversial Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), testified that he had "hostile and heated" exchanges with his superiors in the late 1990s. He wanted to disclose his secret monitoring of the Lawrence family's campaign for justice to the Macpherson inquiry, which was examining the police's catastrophic failure to properly investigate Stephen's racist murder in 1993.
Francis told the ongoing Undercover Policing Inquiry that he argued "quite forcefully" that the inquiry should be informed. He was reportedly told that if he continued to push the matter, "the consequences for me would be bad." One manager allegedly ridiculed his concerns, insisting the secret unit would never be exposed.
A Campaign Targeted from Within
Francis infiltrated anti-racist and leftwing groups for four years from 1993. He stated that gathering intelligence on the Lawrence campaign and black justice groups was his top priority. He further alleges a head of the SDS instructed him to find any information that could be used to "stop or undermine" the Lawrences' fight for justice, a claim the police deny.
The Macpherson inquiry, forced by the Lawrence family's pressure, ultimately concluded in 1999 that the Met's investigation was marred by "professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership." Its published report contained no reference to the undercover surveillance. A panel member has confirmed they were never told about the operations.
Moral Conflict and a Public Reckoning
Francis described feeling "conflicted" and that it was "morally wrong" to spy on black justice campaigns, given historic police violence against their communities. His anger reportedly boiled over during one tasking, leading him to tell managers: "go back and tell the police to 'stop fucking killing black people'."
The Lawrence family only discovered the surveillance more than 15 years later, after Francis first disclosed it to the Guardian in 2014, leading to the establishment of the Spycops inquiry. The Met has since apologised. Francis is the only officer from the SDS, which spied on thousands of activists from 1968 to 2010, to have blown the whistle on its activities.
The current inquiry continues to examine the conduct of approximately 139 undercover officers, with Francis's testimony providing some of the most damning evidence yet of institutional attempts to conceal controversial operations from official scrutiny.
