Belfast-born Ernie Tate (1934-2021) was a lifelong socialist activist, a co-founder of the International Marxist Group (IMG) and of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC).
Born into a Protestant working-class family from the Shanklin Road, Tate left school aged 14 to join Belfast Mills as an apprentice. He sympathised with the Irish Republican movement and, having travelled to France in the mid-1950s, was inspired by solidarity protests with anti-colonial struggles in Vietnam.
In 1955, Tate emigrated from Belfast to Toronto, Canada, where he joined the North American section of the Trotskyist Fourth International. In 1965, the movement dispatched Tate to London to set up the UK section of the Fourth International, the International Marxist Group (IMG). Tate then co-founded the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC).
On returning to Canada in 1969, Tate focused on trade union work, becoming a branch chief steward and vice-president within the Canadian Union of Public Employees. Having retired, he wrote a two-part memoir and travelled across Europe and Latin America with his partner and fellow activist Jess MacKenzie.
Tate submitted a written statement to the Undercover Policing Inquiry on 31 January 2020 but by November was too ill to give evidence in person. He died of pancreatic cancer in February 2021.
In 1965-1969, the Canadian League for Socialist Action (SLA) sent Tate to England to organise the Fourth International in the UK. Tate settled in London and launched Pioneer Books to distribute socialist books and pamphlets, many published by the US Fourth International section, the Socialist Workers Party (no relation to the UK SWP).
Having connected with the Nottingham-based Fourth International-linked International Group (IG), in 1966 Tate co-founded the International Marxist Group (IMG) as the UK section of the Fourth International. The IMG then co-founded the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC), which mobilised mass anti-war protests in the late 1960s.
Tate and other socialists organised a huge protest outside the US embassy in March 1967 that ended with violent clashes in Grosvenor Square between police and marchers. The protest’s size, scale and anger prompted senior police managers to form the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) in July 1968, to monitor a march planned that October.
The SDS was set up to infiltrate and report on the VSC and other ‘left-wing direct-action groups’ in England. [[Formation of SDS]] As a leading figure in the Fourth International and a prominent VSC activist, Tate became one of the SDS’ earliest targets.
In his witness statement, Ernie Tate listed six SDS officers who spied or reported on him between 1968 and 1969. These were:
- HN325 chief inspector Conrad Dixon
- HN299/342 David Hughes
- HN321 ‘William Paul Lewis’
- HN329 ‘John Graham’
- HN326 ‘Douglas Edwards’
- HN332 Cameron Sinclair
Foundation of the Special Demonstration Squad
The Special Demonstration Squad was formed in 1968 to infiltrate the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) and other groups associated with the mobilisation for the anti-Vietnam war demonstration in October 1968.
As co-founder of the UK Fourth International section of the International Marxist Group (IMG) , and as a leading player in VSC until 1969, Ernie Tate was also named in reports submitted to the secret government committees on subversion.
Tate called out the scale and scope of undercover police intrusion, notably when trusted IMG member HN336 ‘Dick Epps’ copied keys to the group’s offices and passed them on to MI5, which staged a burglary to seize its membership and financial records, ‘which is a crime’. Tate added that the undercover policing scandal:
reveals how far democratic rights in Britain have been abused over the past fifty years. It has become the norm, it seems to me, for the State to put the boots to anyone it doesn't like. If you're a socialist or Marxist or someone who has different ideas about how the economy and society should be organized, should we expect dirty tricks from those who are supposed to protect us?
Tate called out prejudice and contempt in SDS reporting, noting that unit founder Conrad Dixon set the tone for the officers who came after him:
Dixon’s report is very distorted, but just what I would expect from a secret policeman. His characterisation of Tariq Ali as a 'mob orator' and Ralph Schoenman as a 'notorious agitator' and the general tone of the report suggest a policeman with a deep loathing of his subjects: he is perhaps aware that his career is better assisted by producing alarmist reports of this nature for his superiors than more carefully considered ones; the creation of SOS had to be justified.
Impact of being targeted
Ernie Tate told the Inquiry that the International Marxist Group (IMG) saw public disorder as a barrier to the socialist cause and that VSC leaders were ‘totally committed to peaceful demonstrations’. He described police spying on political activists as ‘gross violations of people’s civil liberties’ and ‘an outrage’. He said:
We knew the police were interested in what we were doing, but because we were not doing anything illegal, we explicitly warned our members against pointing fingers of suspicion at anyone, based solely upon rumours and innuendo. We were too well aware of the long history of the working class, where the police and the employers and malicious factions have used this vicious tactic for their own ends, to help split and destroy the movement.
He welcomed the Inquiry into undercover policing, but urged it to ‘decide whether it will simply protect the interests of the police and the State, even after all these years, or whether it will come down on the side of civil liberties and the right of people to have a private life free from intrusion by State security forces’.
Ernie Tate was asked to give evidence as a non-state core participant in December 2019. He submitted his first witness statement to the Undercover Policing Inquiry on 31 January 2020.
Because Tate was too ill to appear at the Inquiry in person, his legal team presented his witness statement to the hearings in November 2020. Tate died in Toronto in February 2021, aged 86. In February 2023, Counsel delivered a joint closing statement to the Inquiry for Ernie Tate, Tariq Ali and Piers Corbyn.
Tate received 23 Special Branch intelligence reports in his witness pack from the Inquiry, which dated from February 1965 to February 1969. These were filed by officers from the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS). Tate noted in his witness statement that Special Branch had opened a registry file on him in 1966:
I understand that [Special Branch] intelligence reports would routinely be passed to MI5, now known as the Security Service and that my full file remains ‘Top Secret’ despite the fact that I left the UK some 50 years ago.
He accused the Inquiry of failing to disclose the bulk of material that undercover officers gathered on the VSC and IMG and for failing to supply him with witness statements from the UCOs who spied on him, or from their managers.
Tate died three months after the Inquiry heard his evidence. In February 2023, NSCP lawyers submitted a joint closing statement for Tariq Ali, Piers Corbyn and Ernie Tate, via his partner Jess MacKenzie. This stated that all three men were public figures who should never have been spied on, who had nothing to hide:
The state core participants have failed to provide any credible justification for why it was lawful to spy on Tariq Ali, Ernie Tate or Piers Corbyn. Tariq Ali and Piers Corbyn remain politically active today. Are they still under surveillance, more than 50 years after Registry files were first opened on them? And why are they still being denied access to those files, even during an Inquiry into undercover policing?