Ten years since the beginning of the Undercover Policing Inquiry, the scale to which undercover police officers deceived women into intimate relationships between 1968 to 2010 is finally being revealed.
Last night, ITV aired the first of a three-part series titled The Undercover Police Scandal: Love and Lies Exposed, which is available to stream online.
The show exposes how undercover policing units infiltrated overwhelmingly left-wing political groups and trade unions using manipulation and deception, illustrating the disgusting lengths the British state was willing to go to preserve its rule.
Over the course of more than 40 years, about 139 officers spied on over 1000 political groups and organisations. The spies created fake identities through adopting the names of dead children.
New revelations show at least 25 of these officers started sexual relationships with women who they had met while under fake identities, with some of these relationships being serious and long-term – the longest lasting up to six years.
Alison, for example, was active with the Colin Roach Centre, an organisation which exposed police corruption, and promoted trade unionism and left-wing politics.
From 1995 to 2000, she fell in love with Mark Cassidy, whose real name is Mark Jenner. They went on holiday together, family weddings, and he played with her nieces and nephews. Then, as if vanishing into thin air, he disappeared.
Absolutely Shocking what these “Police Officers” where allowed to do to these women #SpyCops
— Joe (@Joehill100) March 7, 2025
Mark Jenner was in reality an officer for the Metropolitan Police Special Demonstration Squad. He had a wife and children at the same time as being with Alison, meaning he was paid by the state to have an extra-marital affair!
In the most heinous cases, some officers even fathered and subsequently abandoned their children. All the women involved were left seriously traumatised when these officers deserted them to go back to their real lives.
By tricking and manipulating these unknowing women into sexual relationships, this meets the legal definition of rape. These officers were encouraged by the British state to rape women in order to gather intelligence about left-wing groups.
A few bad apples?
The establishment will portray these horrifying crimes as the result of negligent recruitment allowing a few ‘bad apples’ into the police force.
They might point to the fact that this all happened decades ago. Attitudes were just different back then, they may say, and the problem has been mostly resolved.
Yet the systematic abuse of women by the police did not stop when these undercover units were wrapped up, nor will it end with the revelations of this inquiry.
Recent scandals – from the murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Cousins, to the officers who mocked and shared pictures of murdered sisters Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry – illustrate this. The Metropolitan Police’s own Casey report found that the force is institutionally sexist, racist, and homophobic.
The purpose of the state launching an investigation into one of its own institutions is not to carry out meaningful reforms, but to distance the force from its most nakedly vile elements, and paint a picture that everything is better now.
Real role of the state
The blame lies squarely on the British state and this rotten system which necessitates the use of the police, and fosters a mindset which is not about protecting the community, but preserving the status quo.
In order to ensure its dependability as a tool of repression, police forces recruit from the most backwards and bigoted sections of society. The most disgusting, reactionary views about women and minorities are then allowed to fester in locker rooms and squad cars.
Fundamentally, the role of the police is to defend private property, profits, and the political interests of the ruling class. The actual job of ‘protecting’ and ‘serving’ people is ultimately secondary.
Why is it, for example, that the police treat domestic violence cases as low priority, while mobilising en masse and sparing no expense to crack down on peaceful Palestine protesters?
When threatened by the labour movement, the ruling class will always preserve their interests by any means necessary. The inquiry has shown that includes fake relationships, sexual relations, and even fathering children to innocent women.
The Undercover Police Scandal – on ITV Thursday March 6th.
How women who had been deceived into intimate sexual relationships by undercover policemen turned detective and fought together to expose #InstitutionalSexism & secret political policing units in the UK. #Spycops pic.twitter.com/CgVNoKYbmp— Helen Steel (@helensteel12) February 27, 2025
It’s no accident that the groups they infiltrated were activists, left-wing organisations, and trade unions. The establishment is hostile to anyone trying to fight for a better future, and this scandal is a stark example of that.
So long as we live in a system built on the exploitation of the masses, the police will be necessary as a repressive force to clamp down on class anger. With nothing left to offer workers in the form of increasing living standards, the ruling class will have to lean more and more on these repressive methods to preserve itself.
These repulsive practices reveal the system’s weakness, not its strength. The only conclusion we can draw from these revelations is that we can have no trust in the police, the state, or the capitalist class that it serves.
