At least nine officers from London’s secret undercover policing unit, known as spycops, aided the infiltration and surveillance of anti-nuclear protests in Scotland between 1978 and 1983, The Ferret can reveal.
Two spycops, who had adopted the names of dead children and pretended to be anti-nuclear activists, joined attempts to occupy the site for a nuclear power station at Torness in East Lothian in 1980 and 1981. They were both picked up, detained and then released by Lothian police.
The pair, one of whom said he was nicknamed “Trotsky”, were supported by three senior officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), who travelled to Scotland to liaise with local police.
Along with four other spycops, they produced 16 reports for the Met’s Special Branch and the UK security service, MI5, on anti-nuclear groups active in Scotland. The groups included the Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace (SCRAM), the Torness Alliance and Friends of the Earth.
The SDS reports contained minutes of meetings, mailing lists, internal briefings and funding appeals. They included details of hundreds of individuals and groups across the UK, and gave inside accounts of campaigners’ plans, problems and disagreements.
The revelations come from documents and statements released by the SDS and MI5 and published by the UK government’s Undercover Policing Inquiry in London. The inquiry was launched in 2015 and is aiming to produce its final report in 2026.
Activists who were spied upon have condemned the SDS’s undercover operations, with one saying he felt “sick and angry”. They claimed their campaigning had suffered “profound damage”.
Anti-nuclear campaigners in Scotland have also been very critical, suggesting that spycops were “out of control” and “an affront to the very idea of democracy”.
The Met defended undercover operations as a “vital policing tactic that continues to keep people safe”. But it apologised for officers using the names of deceased children, and stressed that undercover policing had undergone “radical reform”.
MI5 accepted that spying on some groups “may appear surprising”, and said that “different judgements” would have been made if it had known then that they did not pose a threat to parliamentary democracy. It has since scaled back its surveillance of “left wing” groups.
The Undercover Policing Inquiry has discovered that a total of 139 undercover officers spied on more than 1,000 mainly left-wing groups across the UK over four decades. Four officers reportedly fathered children with women they were spying on.
The SDS was disbanded in 2008. In July 2023 an interim report by the inquiry’s judge, Sir John Mitting, concluded that the spying was not justified.
The inquiry’s remit, however, is only to investigate undercover policing in England and Wales. Campaigners have challenged the failure to inquire into undercover policing in Scotland, but so far without success.
In 2021 The Ferret reported initial evidence to the inquiry suggesting that Scottish anti-nuclear groups had been spied upon. In July 2024 the inquiry released more than 100 SDS reports on the surveillance of the anti-nuclear movement across the UK in the 1980s.
According to the Guardian, they revealed extensive spying on the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in England, as well as on women who protested against nuclear missiles at Greenham Common in Berkshire.
Inquiry documents have also disclosed the hitherto unknown extent of spying on anti-nuclear protests in Scotland. Spycops active north of the border have been named, and some of their undercover activities exposed.
One of the most prolific of the anti-nuclear spycops was Roger Pearce, who went on to become head of the Met Special Branch and then joined the Foreign Office as a counter-terrorism adviser. Now retired, he is the author of three spy thrillers.
He worked as an undercover officer with the SDS from 1980 to 1984 using the cover name of a deceased child, Roger Thorley. He told the inquiry that he now viewed the adoption of dead children’s identities as “a distasteful practice and a violation of privacy”.
Pearce altered his appearance to go undercover, growing a beard and shoulder-length hair. “l wore red and black clothing with a denim jacket and shoes with worn-through soles,” he said. “I was called Trotsky”.
He attended anti-nuclear meetings in London, joined anarchist groups, and became a member of the editorial group of Freedom Press. He travelled north with anarchist groups for a “week of action” at Torness from 15-17 May 1981.
‘I was arrested’ says spycop
According to Pearce, his “anarchist associates” planned to cut through the Torness perimeter fence, trespass onto the construction site and set fire to a building. He said he “disappeared and found a phone box” to alert Lothian police.
As a result, Pearce claimed, the plan was foiled. “We were arrested, detained for a short while and then released without charge. I gave my cover name upon arrest,” he said.
He insisted that he was a “bystander” and had not acted as an agent provocateur, which was “completely taboo”. But he added that, if the fence had been cut, “I would have gone through the fence with them to see what happened.”
In January 1981 Pearce drove from London to Edinburgh to attend a planning meeting for the Torness protests organised by the Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace (SCRAM). “I remember spending a lot of time with a female activist when I was in Edinburgh,” he said.
Pearce was the source for an SDS report on the meeting for the Met Special Branch in February 1981, which included the minutes. “SCRAM would like to see individuals get onto the site, but do not want violence used against people (including the police),” the report said.
According to the Undercover Policing Inquiry, Pearce was also the source for a further six SDS reports on SCRAM and other anti-nuclear groups. One gave a detailed account of a meeting in Newcastle in January 1981, providing the names of 11 people who attended, and another discussed a meeting in London the same month.
Two reports were about a Torness planning meeting organised by SCRAM in Edinburgh in February and March 1981, including the minutes. Another gave a lengthy and colourful description of events at the Torness protests in May 1981, highlighting tactical disagreements. In May 1983, another report passed on a SCRAM fund-raising appeal.
As well as reporting to the Special Branch in London, Pearce said he had regular meetings with MI5. A series of memos published by the inquiry showed that MI5 was keen to spy on anti-nuclear groups.
In September 1979, MI5 asked SDS for “agent coverage” of a planned meeting to form a new “militant anti-nuclear movement”, led by the then miners’ leader, Arthur Scargill. A MI5 memo from 5 May 1981 asked SDS for advance information on the Torness protests later that month.
Another MI5 memo in July 1981 thanked the then Lothian and Borders Police for their “comprehensive report” on the Torness protests. It added the names of six people “who had come to notice” during the protests, one of whom was Roger Thorley, the cover name for Pearce.
Pearce defended police and MI5 interest in anti-nuclear groups at the time as “legitimate”. There was “growing concern”, he said, about “the growing anti-nuclear movement and the possibility that propaganda and ideas could tip over into direct action.”
The second spycop who came to Torness used the cover name, Tony Williams, again taken from a dead child. His real name has not been released by the inquiry, and he was deployed by SDS from 1978 to 1982.
Williams grew a beard and his hair, dressed in jeans and infiltrated the London Workers Group, a libertarian collective. He was elected as the group’s treasurer, then secretary.
He said he was “authorised” to travel with the group to Torness for a demonstration from 2-5 May 1980. “l would have looked silly if I had not been involved in trespass,” he told the inquiry.
“I recall that the outer wire fence was cut, which I did not do myself. I assume I went through a hole in that fence,” he said. “I was picked up by the police, but was not formally arrested. I did not give away my true identity or role.”
Police ‘heavy-handed’ at Torness
He added: “The police in Scotland in Torness were somewhat heavy handed in dealing with what was essentially non-aggressive trespass.”
Williams insisted that he “never encouraged or provoked criminal activity”. He believed that his reporting “assisted with the protection of the public and assisted in managing public order”.
According to the inquiry, he was the source for four SDS reports on anti-nuclear activities in Scotland. One was an 11-page report on the May 1980 Torness protests, listing 27 people who were arrested, 14 others present and 17 groups represented.
Another report recounted a meeting of the Torness Alliance umbrella group in Oxford in June 1980, including a list of most of the 19 people present. A report in June 1980 listed over 200 organisations and individuals on the alliance mailing list, one of whom was Tony Williams.
In November 1980 the SDS reported on a meeting in London deciding to wind up the Torness Alliance, but warned that there could still be “activity” at the Torness site. “The Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace are taking a keener interest in the issue and may organise an occupation next year,” it said.
Other SDS reports referring to anti-nuclear groups in Scotland drew on intelligence from three other spycops, with the cover names Graham Coates, Phil Cooper and John Kerry. Reports were signed by senior SDS officers, whose real names were Trevor Butler, Barry Moss and Nigel Short.
In a statement to the inquiry, Butler said he went to East Lothian in May 1980 to liaise with Lothian and Borders Special Branch about the Torness protest. “I am reasonably certain that they understood that we had an officer with the activists in the camp, even if this was never stated expressly,” he said.
Moss said that he attended Torness twice, and that information passed to the Lothian police “was useful in preventing serious disorder and damage to property”. Another senior SDS officer, Christopher Skey, also said he went to Edinburgh twice in relation to Torness.
Activists who were spied upon have condemned spycops’ surveillance. “Many of the tactics employed were absolutely sickening,” said Dave Morris, who took part in Torness protests in 1980. “It’s pathetic, and it makes me feel sick and angry.”
Morris was involved with the Torness Alliance and the London Workers Group, and was reported on by Tony Williams. He also later came to fame as one of the McLibel Two, who fought off a ten-year legal action by the fast food company, McDonalds.
Another Torness protestor, Martyn Lowe, said it was difficult to comprehend the full scale of spycops’ activities because many of their reports had been destroyed or withheld.
“Yet one fact is very obvious to us all,” he told The Ferret. “The various spycops were acting as agent provocateurs, which resulted in profound damage to all our campaigning activities.”
The spycops were also strongly criticised by anti-nuclear campaigners in Scotland. “This is the kind of stuff you expect to hear from the bad old days of Eastern Europe,” said Dr Richard Dixon, the former director of Friends of the Earth Scotland.
“Spying on legitimate groups trying to promote peace and protect the environment, some of them registered charities, is an affront to the very idea of democracy. Police infiltrators taking part in illegal activities and thereby, wittingly or unwittingly, encouraging others to do so, shows just how out of control this spying activity was.”
Pete Roche, who worked for SCRAM and Friends of the Earth in the 1970s and 1980s, said: “So far from being a threat to democracy, we were seeking to protect it from an autocratic government system that, as we now see, was prepared to use underhand tactics to force through unpopular policies.”
Undercover policing ‘continues to keep people safe’
The Metropolitan Police has apologised to the families of the deceased children whose names were used. Working undercover was “a vital policing tactic that continues to keep people safe,” it said, and officers “did important work, at personal risk, to gather intelligence to prevent future disorder”.
Commander Jon Savel added: “Undercover policing has undergone radical reform over the years, with greater regulation, professional codes of practice, and judicial oversight. The way in which undercover policing was conducted in the 1970s bears no relation to how it is conducted today.”
In evidence to the inquiry, MI5 has also defended spycops, but said that its surveillance of “left wing” groups had been scaled back to a “watching brief” in 1996.
“MI5 accepts that it may appear surprising to the inquiry and to the wider public that such groups were studied by MI5, particularly when viewed through a modern lens,” said an unnamed MI5 deputy director, known as Witness Y.
“MI5 acknowledges that the threat against which the counter-subversion mission was targeted (namely that parliamentary democracy would be overthrown or significantly undermined by domestic subversive activities) did not materialise,” the witness added.
“Had MI5 known during the 1980s what it now knows about the course that history subsequently took, I expect that different judgments would have been made about the extent to which it was necessary to investigate many groups and individuals.”
The Scottish Government rejected a separate inquiry into undercover policing in Scotland in 2018 because there was “no evidence of any systemic failings” by Scottish police. A review by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in Scotland had provided “reassurance” on the use of undercover officers since 2000, it said.
Police Scotland declined to comment. Roger Pearce did not respond to requests to comment via his literary agents.
Before he became a journalist, Rob Edwards was an organiser with the Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace (SCRAM) in 1977-78. Cover image of protest at Torness in November 1978 thanks to SCRAM.
