Piers Corbyn has been politically active since the 1960s, as a student marching for nuclear disarmament and against the Vietnam war. Corbyn joined International Marxist Group (IMG) youth group the Spartacus League as a student, becoming active in the parent group and going on to campaign for Irish civil liberties, fair rents and squatters’ rights.
In 1982, Corbyn left the IMG to join the Labour Party. He was elected a Labour councillor in Southwark from 1986 to 1990. In 2003 he resigned from Tony Blair’s Labour Party in protest against the war in Iraq.
In the 1990s, Corbyn launched Weather Action, a controversial service that uses data on solar cycles to model future weather patterns. Corbyn rejects the scientific consensus on climate change and is a climate-change denier and anti-vaxx campaigner. He is an older brother to former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Piers Richard Corbyn was born in Chippenham, Wiltshire in March 1947, one of Naomi and David Corbyn’s four sons. His parents, a maths teacher and an electrical engineer, were peace campaigners and Labour Party members who met in the 1930s at a Conway Hall fundraiser for republicans fighting in the Spanish Civil War.
Academically gifted, Piers Corbyn left home at 18 to study physics at Imperial College, London. Having stayed on as a postgraduate researcher in solid-state physics, he left without gaining a PhD. In 1980, he joined a two-year Masters degree course in astrophysics at Queen Mary College.
In London, Corbyn became politically active, joining Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and anti-Vietnam war protests, elected president of Imperial’s student union. He joined the large protests that the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign (VSC) organised in spring and autumn 1968, writing about both for the London student newspaper Felix.
The Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) was set up in March 1968 to police future VSC protests. Corbyn met International Marxist Group (IMG) members in 1970, when he was editor of the University of London Union newspaper Sennet. Initially, he joined IMG youth wing the Spartacus League , becoming a full IMG member in 1971 or 1972.
Housing was precarious in London. Having won a fair-rent tribunal only to be evicted, Corbyn moved into a squat with his brother Andrew, becoming active in the squatters’ movement from around 1972, first through the IMG-backed Squatters Action Council (SAC) and later in the London Squatters Union (LSU).
Corbyn campaigned on broad socialist causes, from anti-racism to support for Irish republican groups, as an IMG member. He left the IMG in 1982, then joined the Labour Party. As a local councillor in Southwark from 1986 to 1990, he campaigned against hikes in London transport fares.
In the 1980s, amid growing awareness of global threats linked to climate change, Corbyn launched a business predicting long-range weather patterns, based on solar cycles. Climate scientists model their global heating forecasts based on greenhouse-gas emissions.
Despite this, Corbyn’s business, Weather Action, was briefly listed on the London Stock Exchange. Corbyn remains a director of Weather Action Ltd.
In 2003, he quit the Labour Party over the war in Iraq. More recently, Piers Corbyn has argued against switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy, campaigned against vaccines and, after declaring the Covid-19 pandemic a hoax, has been labelled a ‘conspiracy theorist’. He stood as London mayor in 2021.
Evidence disclosed to the Inquiry suggests that at least eight Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) undercover officers spied on Piers Corbyn, infiltrating the Spartacus League , the International Marxist Group (IMG) and Irish republican and squatters’ action groups to report on his activities.
Corbyn’s disclosure named eight spycops who targeted him. They included HN294 , deployed undercover in 1968-1969, who by 1971 was head of the SDS, and HN340 ‘Andy Bailey’ to infiltrate the IMG-run North London Red Circle and the Irish Civil Rights Solidarity Campaign (ICRSC).
HN299/HN342 ‘David Hughes’ spied on Corbyn, having infiltrated the IMG, Troops Out Movement (TOM) and the Irish Solidarity Campaign (ISC) from 1971-1976. HN338 , was deployed from 1970-1973, mostly to report on IMG-related groups.
Deployed from 1972 to 1976, HN298 ‘Michael Scott’ reported on Corbyn’s work with the Anti-Internment League (AIL) central London branch. Scott was tried and convicted for obstruction under his fake identity while infiltrating anti-apartheid groups.
A fifth officer, HN353 ‘Gary Roberts’ , reported on Corbyn while infiltrating the IMG and the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) from 1974-1978. HN80 ‘Colin Clark’ reported on Corbyn while spying on International Socialists (IS) and the SWP from 1977-1982. HN155 ‘Phil Cooper’ reported on Corbyn from inside the SWP and the Waltham Forest Anti-Nuclear Campaign in 1979-1983.
Lack of disclosure in the Inquiry
Corbyn noted that the Inquiry supplied no photographs of or witness statements from any of the officers who reported on him. With no supporting information, he vaguely recalled the names David Hughes, Alan Nixon and Phil Cooper.
Catch-all reporting on the left
Piers Corbyn noted that Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) undercover officers reported on him long after he left the IMG, joined the British Labour Party, became a borough councillor in Southwark and remained active in south London as a former councillor.
After a gap in disclosed SDS reporting of more than nine years, a report from 13 November 1990 linked Corbyn to a meeting on socialism in Russia that the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) had organised at Lambeth Town Hall. The undercover officer listed Corbyn, then a former Southwark councillor, as one of the meeting’s sponsors.
Delivering Corbyn’s opening statement, his KC Rajiv Menon noted how little SDS reporting focused on his client’s 1970s squatters activities – said to be the reason that Corbyn came to SDS attention. Menon said the answers lay in Corbyn’s registry file, the dossier that SDS compiled and sent to the security services:
…but nobody ever gets to see their Registry File, not even during a public inquiry into undercover policing. Unlike his friends in Germany, who were given access to their STASI files in the 1990s… Mr Corbyn will sadly remain none the wiser about the full nature and extent of the British secret state’s interest in him…
Why will the British state not release Piers Corbyn’s Registry File, even after decades have passed, if only to Mr Corbyn himself? Why is this Inquiry unable to compel the state to do so… Is it because most spying is in fact so tedious and routine and unnecessary that any sensible citizen might question why so much taxpayers’ money is being wasted? Or is the state afraid of something else? We will never know.
Despite having been spied on by at least eight Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) officers, Piers Corbyn played down how being targeted had affected him personally.
Instead, he focused on inequalities in disclosure to the Inquiry – on being asked to recall undercover officers who submitted no statements, and with no contemporaneous photographs to jog his memory.
Piers Corbyn asked to give evidence to the Undercover Policing Inquiry in 2015, when Theresa May first announced it. Called as a witness in December 2019, he submitted his written statement in April 2020.
Corbyn received a witness pack of 53 Special Branch intelligence reports attributed to the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) that mention him, the earliest dated 2 September 1971 and the most recent on 13 November 1990.
Piers Corbyn’s Registry file number is 405/69/690 or 402/69/695. The prefixes 405 and 402 were given to Extreme Left Wing and to ‘Non-Specific’ personal files. The middle two digits indicate that the file was opened in 1969.
Based on his registry file number, Corbyn believes the security services first monitored him when he became president of Imperial College student union. Since 1969, spycops have passed on reports on hundreds of people to Box 500 – in other words, to the UK Security Service. None, including Corbyn, have seen their own registry files.
On 23 April 2021, Corbyn made his opening statement to the Undercover Policing Inquiry. He addressed the Inquiry in person on 28 April 2021. On 16 February 2023, Corbyn submitted a joint closing statement with Ernest Rodker and Tariq Ali.