HN301 ‘Bob Stubbs’ was recruited by the Metropolitan Police in the late 1960s and Special Branch in the early 1970s. A married man, Stubbs joined the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) in late 1971. He believed he was recruited into the SDS because of his ‘Middle Eastern’ appearance, and this concurs with his first assignment, which was to befriend a member of the first iteration of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC).
After a couple of months in the back office of the SDS, with little formal training but some meetings and mentoring from more experienced undercovers and managers, Stubbs was deployed in early 1972. His cover identity was rudimentary and did not employ the name of a deceased infant or person. He had two cover jobs, the first as a hospital lab technician, which was predicated upon his target, and later as a driver and handyman for a garage.
Stubbs’ first assignment to infiltrate the PSC was a failure, so he made his primary focus infiltrating the International Socialists (IS), which he had achieved by mid-1972. He became treasurer of the Hammersmith and Fulham branch of the IS and, over the following years, was able to move into other branches and operate at district level. He reported on branch and district IS meetings, as well as annual and delegate conferences, providing information on IS members.
Stubbs’ entry into the IS also created opportunities for him to infiltrate the Anti-Internment League (AIL) in 1972-1973 and, later, the Troops Out Movement (TOM) from 1973-1975. Although he generally tried to avoid violence during demonstrations, he noted that this was difficult given the National Front's (NF) growing strength.
At the Red Lion Square anti-fascist demonstration in 1974, Stubbs was violently assaulted by a police officer. He was one of several undercovers to be assaulted by his uniformed colleagues during their deployments.
Stubbs was withdrawn from his deployment in early 1976, after four years in the field for the SDS, and left the Metropolitan Police in the 1990s.
Unless otherwise indicated, the information below is taken from the first witness statement of HN301 ‘Bob Stubbs’. Although Stubbs gave a witness statement to the inquiry, he was not called to give oral evidence.
HN301 ‘Bob Stubbs’ was born in the 1940s and joined the Metropolitan Police in the late 1960s. He was deployed to C Division, policing the central West End district of London. Stubbs always intended to be recruited by Special Branch as he considered it ‘to be an elite unit’. In the early 1970s, he achieved his aim, joining as a detective constable (DC).
Stubbs had little awareness of the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) prior to his recruitment. He stated that in Special Branch there were ‘rumours of an undercover infiltration unit’, but knew few details beyond that.
Recruitment
In late 1971, Stubbs was contacted by HN332 Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Cameron Sinclair , a senior officer in the SDS, and asked to join the unit. Stubbs retrospectively speculated that the reason for the approach was because of his appearance:
I suspect that those in charge hoped that my relatively dark skin would allow me to infiltrate protest groups with primarily Middle-Eastern members. At the time, the ‘Black September’ group and Palestinian hijackings were of significant concern.
Stubbs agreed to join the SDS because he was new to Special Branch and had been ‘flattered to have been asked’. He was informed that the job involved long-term undercover work, but he did not recall any SDS manager discussing the possible impact on him, or his spouse. Stubbs remembered that he and his wife had attended an SDS social event with other SDS officers before he was formally accepted into the unit.
Training and tradecraft
Stubbs stated that he received no formal training upon joining the SDS. Instead, like many other SDS undercovers in the period, he spent two or three months in the SDS back office in New Scotland Yard before his deployment. During this period, he was given intelligence files to read on various protest groups.
He also attended weekly meetings of SDS undercovers and their managers at the SDS safe house. This was an opportunity for him to ask questions of active undercovers in the field and to ‘pick up general advice and guidance’.
SDS undercover HN343 ‘John Clinton’ , who had infiltrated the Croydon branch of the International Socialists (IS) in late 1971, was present at these weekly meetings. He became an informal mentor for Stubbs both before and during his deployment.
Stubbs maintained that while in his back-office role, he never saw anything resembling a tradecraft manual or the Home Office circular 97/1969, titled ‘Informants Who Take Part in Crime’. Stubbs stated retrospectively that ‘it should have been obvious that we weren’t to participate in criminality’.
Stubbs acknowledged that there was no formal training or guidance on how much he should get involved with the private lives of individuals while deployed, nor whether it was acceptable to enter into sexual relationships in his cover identity. Crucially, Stubbs, defining his role as an undercover, noted retrospectively:
I understood that the SDS function was to gather information about groups and individuals that posed a threat of public disorder and violence. That said, the SDS gradually morphed into more of a general intelligence-gathering unit.
Undercover identity
Although it is unclear how Stubbs came by his cover name, he stated that ‘he did not use a deceased child’s identity or make use of any aspect of a real person's identity’. His undercover identity was not developed beyond his cover employment, on the basis that:
I think the general wisdom was not to let things get too complicated as it would be easy for the story to fall apart under investigation.
Stubbs’ initial employment was determined by a target individual the SDS wanted him to befriend. Consequently, he worked for a few months as a full-time laboratory technician at Guy’s Hospital in Southwark, where the target was also employed.
This was unusual for most SDS undercovers in this period, who either created fictitious employers or were provided with cover workplaces where they could claim employment. Likewise, it was uncommon for a person to be targeted by the SDS, at least for an initial deployment, especially at a workplace.
After his brief time at the hospital, Stubbs became a handyman for a Volkswagen garage and showroom on Finchley Road, north-west London. In this regular job, he drove vehicles between garages and washed cars. He had an additional cover job prepared, as a runner for a firm of solicitors, but he never used it in practice.
Stubbs’ first cover flat was in Clapham, south London, though in practice he never actually stayed there. It merely functioned as a home address, had anyone asked where he lived.
Latterly, he rented a room in a private house in Ealing Common, west London. Once again, he rarely stayed there, using it as a cover address and a place to park his cover vehicle without suspicion. Stubbs stated that no one else lived there and no activists targeted by him had ever visited his cover addresses.
Stubbs used the months spent in the back office of the SDS to alter his appearance by growing his hair and a beard and began wearing casual clothes in preparation for his deployment. Initially, the SDS supplied him with a driving licence and a rented vehicle, which he shared with SDS undercover HN338 , who was infiltrating groups in west London.
After a period, the SDS began purchasing vehicles for undercovers, and Stubbs received his own car. This he used to go to the weekly meetings at the SDS cover flat and to meetings of his target groups.
Stubbs could not recall ever being advised by his SDS managers how he should approach his deployment, how he should conduct himself or what information he should gather. This laissez-faire approach by SDS managers was common in this period; Stubbs learned from watching the other SDS officers and the sort of information that they provided. He noted:
I was also given a substantial amount of free rein and to a large extent I directed my own tasking.
Unlike some undercovers, who spent time acquainting themselves with the areas where their cover accommodation, employment and targets were located to develop their undercover identities, Stubbs decided to begin his attempted infiltration immediately upon his deployment.
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Stubbs began his deployment in early 1972 and was tasked by his SDS managers with ‘befriending’ a member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) , who was working in the laboratory at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, as mentioned above. The plan was for Stubbs to get to know him at work and then transition to attending PSC meetings with him and thus infiltrate the group.
Despite working at the hospital for several months, Stubbs was unable to achieve proper contact with the target, something which he had assessed as ‘unrealistic’ in the first place.
Most likely, the target was Norman Temple, who, in his witness statement, said he worked as a technician in a hospital while active in the PSC. However, while Temple’s activities culminated in a trip to Jordan in the summer of 1969, his involvement ended in late 1969 or early 1970.
At that time, political tensions in Ireland ratcheted up, and Temple became active in the Irish National Liberation Solidarity Front (INLSF). From January 1971, HN347 ‘Alex Sloan’ infiltrated the INLSF and reported on Temple undertaking a trip to Ireland.
While Temple was still listed by Sloan as a PSC member in June 1970 , it is unclear why Stubbs would be targeting Temple more than two years after his last pro-Palestinian activities, and with the PSC by then in a state of decline. Temple did, however, return to pro-Palestinian activism a few years later.
International Socialists
After his failure to infiltrate the PSC, Stubbs refocused on the International Socialists (IS) , attending publicly advertised meetings of the Hammersmith and Fulham branch in west London, local to his initial cover flat in Clapham. Having become a fee-paying member of the IS and successfully infiltrating the branch, Stubbs stated that he used his ‘IS involvement to attend meetings of other politically aligned groups’, see below.
Stubbs made the IS his primary target for the whole of his deployment, though his first reports on the party only appear in April 1973. These reported on a joint meeting of the International Marxist Group (IMG) , the Socialist Labour League (SLL) and the IS, and gave a detailed and comprehensive report on the annual conference of the IS at St Pancras Town Hall in London on 17-20 March 1973.
The latter report, written by Stubbs, included a nine-page analysis of the political debates and policy making within the conference and numerous attached documents, including the conference agenda, economic and political assessments, lists of identified people elected to the national committee of the IS and those branches, with named members, who were present at the conference. It also drew reference to impending splits and expulsions within the IS, providing position papers from the various factions.
In his witness statement, Stubbs contends that he became the treasurer of the Hammersmith and Fulham branch of the IS early in his deployment. This came about because a vacancy arose, and he had been encouraged by another SDS undercover, his mentor, John Clinton:
to take positions that would permit them access to information about the membership of the [target] group.
This role would have given him greater access to privileged information and the ability to move amongst branches and the district meetings.
There is a dearth of reports on the IS after April 1973, lasting until the following year, and it becomes clear that Stubbs was moving between branches of the IS in west London. In November 1974, he reported on the Wandsworth and Battersea branch, and in March 1975 on the aggregate meeting of eight branches of the South West London District of the IS.
In the interim, he received information from the IS central committee on the formation of an IS lawyers group, and on the controversial decision to stand an IS candidate in a potential byelection in Walsall.
This pattern continued through 1975, Stubbs providing information on individuals and decisions at branch level, interspersed with more sensitive information, which could only have come from the upper echelons of IS. The latter included membership numbers, the creation of new departments in the organisation and expulsions of factions.
By the autumn of 1975, Stubbs was attending the Paddington branch, part of the Inner West London district of the IS. He became treasurer of the branch in January 1976, though this may merely have been the result of the Hammersmith and Fulham branch splitting to form the Paddington branch.
The activities of the IS in the latter part of 1975 and into 1976 were dominated by two main issues, the increasing and threatening street presence of the National Front (NF) , and the emerging Right to Work (RTW) campaign. Stubbs reports on both branch and district planning meetings for these protests and confrontations, as well as the events themselves, some of which were outside the capital.
Stubbs claimed that he participated in numerous pickets, marches and demonstrations while undercover, estimating ‘that there was probably at least one per week’, though this is not necessarily reflected in the reports that are available. However, confrontations with the NF aside, Stubbs stated that protests organised or involving IS were generally ‘relatively peaceful’.
Generally speaking, he tried to stay out of any violence or public disorder and not to put himself in a position where he could accidentally become involved.
There was one major exception, the June 1974 confrontation between the Metropolitan Police and anti-fascist demonstrators in Red Lion Square , that led to the death of a protester, Kevin Gately. Stubbs remembered being hit by a police officer during this protest, though he did not do anything to warrant being hit by the officer:
When I got punched at Red Lion Square I happened to be towards the front of the protest and so was unable to get out of the way [...] I think the situation must just have been rather chaotic and frightening for the officers present so I do not feel aggrieved about what happened.
This particular event occurred during a period – November 1973 to November 1974 – where there is an absence of reports attributed to Stubbs.
Reports on other groups
Irish solidarity groups
Stubbs explained in his witness statement that he used his ‘IS involvement to attend meetings of other politically aligned groups’.
It appears he was introduced to the Anti-Internment League (AIL) via members of the Hammersmith and Fulham branch of the IS. Unsurprisingly, this led him to infiltrate the AIL’s Hammersmith and Fulham branch. This explains the timing of the opening report, available from Stubbs’ deployment in May 1972, a few months after he had joined the IS.
Stubbs claimed that he was not directed by his SDS managers to focus on the AIL, but:
Since the activities of AIL were connected to the Troubles [war in Ireland], there was automatic interest in their activities and there was a desire to obtain any available intelligence on Irish matters.
Once he had the opportunity to go to AIL meetings, Stubbs cleared it with his SDS managers and began the process of spying on the organisation. His infiltration of the AIL was aided by the lack of an official branch membership, as ‘members were effectively anyone who went along to the meetings’.
Stubbs reported on the Hammersmith and Fulham branch of the AIL from May 1972 until it ceased to function in February 1973. The AIL’s main objective was to stop the practice of imprisoning people in Northern Ireland without trial. It was trying to bring this practice to people’s attention but, by and large, Stubbs stated, the public in England was not very sympathetic to this cause. The AIL was opposed to British involvement in Ireland, however, he said:
I do not specifically recall AIL members approving of the use of violence as a method but I suspect that some did given their political leaning. I cannot remember the AIL posing any particular threat of public disorder.
This assessment makes one wonder what the reason was for reporting on this group, based on the reasons given for the existence of the SDS.
Stubbs also noted that, because the AIL had already been infiltrated at this time by other SDS undercovers, including his car-sharing colleague HN338, and HN298 ‘Michael Scott’ , the SDS reports were an amalgamation of their intelligence. Indeed, all three would have known each other. HN338 infiltrated the Hammersmith (and Fulham) branch of the AIL in October 1972, and Scott the Central London branch from September 1972, until its demise the following year.
As expected, they were all present to report on the AIL national conference at the North London Polytechnic on 7 and 8 October 1972. This conjunction of SDS undercovers within one organisation at the same time raises the question as to whether they collaborated in any way to further their spying activities.
Stubbs’ reporting on the AIL included other branch and delegate meetings, conferences and collaborations with other groups such as the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA).
The typical contents of these reports were particulars of policies approved by members and delegates, plans for protests, summary transcripts of speeches by leading figures, numbers present, details of any elections and comprehensive lists of identified attendees and their branches or political affiliations.
The founding and growth of the Troops Out Movement (TOM) in late 1973 began to attract activists from the AIL, NICRA and other groups campaigning over the war in Ireland. Stubbs followed this path, infiltrating the West London branch of the TOM from November 1973 to at least July 1975.
This then led in December 1974 to Stubbs spying on the Belfast Ten Defence Committee, set up to campaign for the release of a group accused of carrying out IRA bombings in London in March 1973.
Overall, there is a notable lack of reporting on demonstrations or other events which may have been a public-order concern for the police.
Stubbs recalled that, outside the SDS office in New Scotland Yard, the unit ran various flats as safe houses. Although the location of the flats changed while Stubbs was on the squad, he recalled there being at least three, located in central, north west and south London.
Once his deployment began, Stubbs never visited the SDS office for security reasons. Instead, he would visit a safe house once or twice a week for meetings with the SDS managers and other undercovers. By the end of his deployment, the routine had changed and he would go three times per week on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday. All undercovers would be expected to attend and meet with the managers from the SDS. They would spend most of the afternoon there unless they had somewhere else they needed to be. Stubbs recalled:
We took food there and would cook together. It was also a social occasion as well as a time to hand over reports and discuss matters with the bosses.
According to Stubbs, as the undercovers did not get to socialise much, he suspected that these sessions were considered by their managers to be important for their welfare. There was little structure to these regular meetings; they would be general conversations about how they were getting on, who they had interacted with that week:
There was a fair bit of cross-over of membership between the various activist groups so it was not uncommon that some of us would know the same activists.
They would have a general chat about their personal lives too; ‘the usual things that you would discuss with colleagues’. Managers were present for most of these conversations that they had and would have overheard them.
Outside these meetings, Stubbs, while deployed, had no contact with any SDS personnel apart from HN13 ‘Barry Loader’ , with whom he socialised outside work.
Stubbs recalled that on one occasion Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Robert Mark visited the SDS managers and undercovers at the unit’s safe flat in northwest London. This confirms that there was both knowledge and interest in the SDS at the highest levels in the Metropolitan Police at that time.
Stubbs’ routine in his cover identity varied according to the cover employment he was engaged in at any particular time. Typically, he would have some mornings, evenings and weekends off duty and occasionally would spend time at his cover flat, though more regularly he was ‘at work’ in his cover job. He attended meetings with activists at least once a week, usually in the evenings, went to a protest or march most weekends, and sold copies of Socialist Worker on Saturday mornings.
Most of the information Stubbs gathered was passed to his SDS managers in the form of written reports in the weekly meetings. However, he gave additional information orally at these meetings or would phone in to the SDS desk at New Scotland Yard. Sometimes, this was almost-real-time information about who was present and what had happened if something urgent needed to be passed on:
I would try to slip away from the demonstration and find a phone-box to call while the names or other details were still fresh in my mind. I remember one occasion when I saw someone throw a brick through a window during a demonstration and I called the office to report this.
Stubbs recalled the disordered nature of living his ‘real identity’ while undercover:
I spent time writing reports at my family home, phoning in to the SDS office and attending the meetings at the SDS flats. My working life in the SDS was quite different to that in Special Branch as there was no set pattern to my day.
Stubbs claimed he did not engage in any sexual relationships while in his undercover identity. He did admit to drinking and socialising with activists in pubs after meetings, though he did not recall forming any ‘particularly close relationships’. There was one exception to this; someone he ‘may well have spent more time with then others’, though he added, ‘I would not say it was a close relationship’.
Stubbs recalled being informed by an SDS manager that his deployment was coming to an end. By the beginning of 1976, he had been undercover for four years, though he was aware that this was flexible to some degree:
I recall that HN68 [‘Sean Lynch’] was undercover for a long time; I presume because his position and intelligence were of particular value.
Stubbs’ planned exit strategy was merely to inform the various activists he knew that he was moving away from London to Portsmouth, as he had been offered a job there. He remembered:
I certainly do not recall any grand send-off and I doubt anyone paid much notice to the fact that I left.
In fact, Stubbs was recorded in a Special Branch report from 3 May 1976 on the Paddington branch of the IS as now ‘living and working in Portsmouth’, suggesting his strategy had been successful.
Upon his return to the SDS, Stubbs was presented with a commemorative cup to recognise his four years’ service as an undercover officer. He could not recall having a period of rest, being debriefed or receiving any specific support following his withdrawal from the field.
After leaving the SDS unit and returning to Special Branch, Stubbs was given a role where there would be no possibility he could meet any activists who might recognise him. He did not think that working undercover had any long-term effect on his welfare:
I tended not to dwell on my time there and it was not something I thought about that much until this Inquiry.
Stubbs left the Metropolitan Police, at the rank of detective constable, in the late 1990s.
On 31 October 2017, the Metropolitan Police made an application to restrict HN301’s real name.
In November 2017, the Inquiry decided that the cover name should be published and in February 2018, it released HN301’s cover name and details of his target groups.
HN301 ‘Bob Stubbs’ submitted a written statement on 25 October 2019 but was not called to give live testimony at the Inquiry.
All procedural and evidential material can be found in the documents tab.