HN2401 Anthony Greenslade served as a Special Branch officer from 1960 until his retirement in 1987. He was seconded from the Bomb Squad to the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) at the rank of detective inspector in mid-1973.
During his six months in the SDS, Greenslade helped to manage and support seven undercovers. They were spying on the International Socialists (IS), International Marxist Group (IMG), Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) and various Irish solidarity organisations in several districts of London.
Greenslade’s duties included procurement and maintenance of SDS vehicles, locating safe-house properties and, in weekly sessions, training undercovers to pass their promotion examinations. The latter served a welfare function amongst the undercovers and led to Greenslade organising social events to improve low morale in the unit.
Outside these tasks, Greenslade denied he had any role in the decision-making process within the SDS. Greenslade made it clear in his witness statement that he disagreed fundamentally with the principle of undercover policing on the basis that it damaged some of the officers involved.
Unless noted otherwise, all references pertain to Greenslade’s witness statement, dated 21 July 2021.
Anthony Greenslade was born in 1938, joined the Metropolitan Police as a cadet in 1954 and became a constable in 1957. Three years later he was posted to Special Branch as a detective constable (DC) working in C Squad.
In the summers, Greenslade was engaged in duties in airports and ports in Lydd, Lympne, Folkestone and Dover, working full-time at the latter for three years from 1964.
In 1967, Greenslade returned to New Scotland Yard and was assigned to ‘sensitive duties’ before being sent to the British Overseas Territory of Anguilla in the Caribbean in November 1969.
In February 1970, Greenslade returned to Special Branch in London and was posted to a section investigating Black Power groups and individuals. Greenslade’s line manager was HN325 Conrad Dixon , the founder of the SDS, who apparently disliked him, and less than a year later had him moved to the Bomb Squad.
Greenslade worked in this squad from 1971 to 1974, and during this time was introduced to the SDS. At the time of his secondment in mid-1973, he had been running a surveillance operation on the Angry Brigade and was working on an inquiry into their actions, supervised by detective inspector (DI) HN3378 Derek Brice.
Greenslade stated that DI Brice was effectively managing the SDS along with its de facto leader, the unnamed Special Branch officer, DI HN294.
Recruitment
Up to this point in his career, Greenslade claimed he had only vague knowledge of the existence of the SDS, had undertaken no undercover work and had not used a cover identity. He stated that he was selected by detective chief superintendent (DCS) HN1254 Rollo Watts to help to manage the SDS, while officially remaining in his posting in the Bomb Squad. This effectively amounted to a six-month secondment to the SDS at the rank of detective inspector.
The reason for this short-term posting appears to be the need to cover the deputy role in the SDS while DI Brice was attending training at the National Police College at Bramshill, in Hampshire, now renamed the Police Staff College.
Brice, who worked closely with Greenslade in the Bomb Squad, had apparently recommended him to DI HN294. Greenslade believed this was because ‘I was a safe pair of hands and I got things done quickly’.
Training
According to Greenslade he received no formal training, advice, guidance or instructions when he joined the SDS. The lack of training was not unusual in Special Branch at the time, which relied on newcomers learning ‘on the job’ with a more senior officer acting as a mentor. With Brice at Bramshill, Greenslade’s senior officer was DI HN294 , who he described as:
The king pin of the SDS at the time was HN294. He virtually ran the SDS as fiefdom. I do not think he was very good at management.
Duties
Over the six months of Greenslade’s term in the SDS the maximum number of undercovers deployed at any one time never exceeded six, and he helped to provide support for seven undercovers in total. Of these, six were already deployed when he arrived in the SDS.
Only one undercover, HN303 ‘Peter Collins’ , was mentored and deployed during his secondment. Two others finished their deployments under his charge; the unnamed HN338 and HN343 ‘John Clinton’.
Greenslade stated that his initial task in the SDS was given to him by DCS Rollo Watts, and involved buying 12 vehicles for the unit, with a budget of £5,000. Watts was also keen for undercovers and managers in the SDS to be promoted and benefit from the experience.
At the time, the SDS personnel had a poor record for passing promotional examinations, and morale in the unit was low. Greenslade claimed he was brought in to deal with both the training for promotion and morale issues.
Every week, Greenslade travelled to the designated safe house to meet the deployed SDS undercovers and ran three- to four-hour teaching classes for the promotional examinations. He claimed that he taught six undercovers over this period, and three passed the examinations. These meetings also served a welfare function, Greenslade even organising cricket matches to improve the undercovers’ morale.
As the secondment progressed, Greenslade was given other practical tasks such as arranging maintenance of SDS vehicles and finding west London premises for a safe house. Greenslade described this, and another safe house in south-east London, as essentially being the SDS ‘office’, as far as he was concerned. He noted that undercover HN45 ‘Dave Robertson’ was asked to stay in the west London safe house as a ‘sort of housekeeper’.
Greenslade sometimes called in at the offices of DI HN294 and DI Brice in New Scotland Yard and was aware of the SDS back office there, but never visited it during his secondment. He had a desk in the Bomb Squad section of Special Branch but never the equivalent in the SDS.
Other than these duties, Greenslade stated categorically:
I was not involved with training undercovers or other members of the SDS; tasking undercover officers or choosing their targets; inventing, developing or assessing undercover identities; obtaining cover documents; provision of cover employment: deployments of undercover officers; anything to do with intelligence or intelligence reports; exfiltration; paying undercover officers or authorising overtime; producing any SDS paperwork; liaising or otherwise dealing with the Security Service (MI5), the Home office or other government body.
It appears that the short-term nature of Greenslade’s secondment to the SDS, and the centrality of DI HN294 as its sole ‘leader’, meant that Greenslade was excluded from most of the day-to-day decision making. However, he was able to comment on some important SDS practices.
Positions of influence in target organisations
Regarding the issue of SDS undercovers taking on positions of responsibility in organisations they had infiltrated, Greenslade noted the advantage this gave in gathering information about target group membership. He also stated that such actions by undercovers should have been pre-authorised by SDS management.
Reporting personal information
Greenslade defended the activity of gathering personal information about members of groups targeted by the SDS. He claimed there did not need to be formally defined limits to this intelligence gathering ‘because it was standard within Special Branch’ and ‘everyone would have the experience of what to do’.
Turning to details of trade union membership he stated:
Information about trade unions would have been reported because of the effect of trade unions on the economy. This was at the time of Arthur Scargill. The information would have been of use to Special Branch and/or the Security Service (MI5) when concerned with the disruption to the economy.
At the time, Arthur Scargill was president of the Yorkshire area of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). UK miners went on strike in 1972 and 1974, and the second dispute led to the collapse of the Tory government. Essentially, Greenslade’s argument is that any boundaries to the collection of personal information of members of target groups were contingent on the political situation.
Sexual relationships
Greenslade asserted that sexual activity between undercover members of the SDS and ‘civilians that they met in their undercover identities’ was ‘unacceptable’. He also claimed to have had no knowledge of any SDS undercover engaging in such activities during his secondment. However, he added:
To my knowledge, no manager gave undercover officers orders, instructions, advice or guidance about sexual contact whilst operating undercover.
This begs the question as to whether this issue was even being considered by SDS managers at this stage of the unit’s development.
Greenslade also stated that the lack of ‘orders, instructions, advice or guidance’ from SDS managers to undercovers applied to the commission of criminal offences while undercover, the question of ‘agent provocateurs’, contact with the criminal-justice system and legally privileged material.
Undercover policing
At the end of his written evidence to the Inquiry, Greenslade added the following statement:
The only matter I wish to add is that I disagreed fundamentally with the principle of undercover policing. It was damaging to individuals: many suffered from the work, and some left the police afterwards. I think some people are psychologically unsuited to that sort of work, as I am.
Although an interesting admission, the lack of concern for the impact on those targeted is notable but also in line with many of the police witnesses who have given evidence to the Inquiry. Whether Greenslade had more evidence to add regarding the effects of long undercover deployments upon Special Branch officers was not probed further by the Inquiry.
After six months working in the SDS, Greenslade left at the end of 1973. In January 1974, after becoming unpopular with management in Special Branch having been criticised for spending too much money on surveillance, he was reposted to port security.
Greenslade was dispatched to work at Folkestone for three years before returning to B Squad in 1977. He was then assigned to protection duties for the successive Home Secretaries Merlyn Rees and William Whitelaw.
From 1980 to 1982 Greenslade helped manage the protection squad, before becoming the deputy Special Branch officer with responsibility for the security at Heathrow Airport. In 1984, he returned to New Scotland Yard to take charge of the protection squad.
The following year he returned to his duties at Heathrow, this time as the senior Special Branch officer. Greenslade retired in 1987 at the rank of detective chief superintendent (DCS).
There are procedural documents relating to Greenslade. He submitted his written evidence on 21 July 2021 and was not asked to give live evidence.