HN351 ‘Jeff (Geoff) Slater’ (hereafter Jeff Slater) was recruited into the Metropolitan Police in the mid-1960s and, as a detective constable, joined the Special Branch in the early 1970s. He became a member of the SDS in early 1974 and was deployed on active duty as an undercover in the summer of 1974. Slater was one of the first SDS officers to use a deceased child’s identity for his cover.
Slater claims he was not initially given a specific target by his Special Branch managers but encountered the International Socialists (IS) through attending anti-fascist demonstrations. From this point onward, his superiors agreed that the IS would be his primary target for infiltration.
Between November 1974 and April 1975, Slater infiltrated the Tottenham branch of the IS, attending regular branch meetings and aggregate meetings of IS branches in north London. In January 1975, Slater was made branch organiser for Socialist Worker. At his own request, due to the stress of living as an SDS undercover officer, Slater was withdrawn from active service in April 1975.
Over this period, Slater supplied regular reports to the SDS on the political subjects and discussions of the Tottenham branch of the IS. He also provided detailed lists of attendees at these meetings and events, in some cases with expanded personal information, including on parents and spouses of those with children in the north London branches of the IS.
In his witness statement, Slater questioned his authorship of most of the SDS reports attributed to him. This may have been because his handwritten accounts were transcribed to documents before he signed them.
Slater joined the Metropolitan Police in the mid-1960s and by the early 1970s had been recruited into Special Branch. In the period before he joined the SDS, Slater took part in plain-clothes undercover tasks for Special Branch. Typically, these were very short-term assignments limited to a ‘day or so’ and targeted supposedly ‘direct-action, aggressive and potentially violent protest groups’.
These taskings to monitor one-off demonstrations, marches, and pickets did not require a fully developed undercover identity. Instead, according to Slater, it was standard practice for Special Branch officers to use a different false name each time.
Slater was aware of the SDS’ existence, and his experience in the field, although limited to short periods, made him an obvious candidate. Slater stated that it appeared to be a:
good career move as the participants were spoken of highly in general terms within Special Branch and it sounded interesting and would be challenging.
In spring 1974, the SDS’ new detective chief inspector (DCI) HN819 Derek Kneale , who had recently replaced DCI HN294 as its head, reported that Slater had been recruited into the unit. Kneale would be Slater’s manager when he was deployed into the field.
Training and tradecraft
Slater was initially given back-office duties in the SDS, which involved general clerical work, but also allowed him to mix and learn from experienced undercover officers. This included HN68 ‘Sean Lynch’ , who had recently come to the end of a deployment lasting around six years. Slater also attended weekly meetings with active SDS officers, where he was able to ‘receive anecdotal information’ and ‘pick up advice’.
Aside from these informal discussions, Slater claimed there was no formal training and no tradecraft manual. He explained, in his witness statement, that:
I was not given any specific guidance on: how far it was acceptable to become involved in the private lives of those I met while undercover; sexual relationships; participation in criminality; encouraging others to participate in criminality; what the ethical or legal limitations of my deployment were; what to do if I was arrested or brought before a court; or what to do if I obtained legally privileged information.
Instead, he was expected to rely on his previous experience as a plain-clothes Special Branch officer.
When Slater joined the SDS, he was a married man, though as far as he was aware, his managers had not approached his spouse to discuss his deployment. Slater also claimed in his witness statement that:
I did not engage in any sexual activity while in my undercover identity. It did not even cross my mind and it was certainly not something that was discussed within the SDS in my presence.
Undercover identity
The evidence suggests that by mid-1974, Special Branch managers had sanctioned the use of deceased children’s identities for SDS undercovers who were going into active service. Slater appears to confirm this in his witness statement when he stated the practice was the ‘convention at the time’. This is backed up by other SDS officers who were deployed in the same period as Slater and who he knew personally, such as HN297 Richard Clark (‘Rick Gibson’).
Whether the use of deceased children’s identities was a convention at the time of Slater’s recruitment is debatable, as the evidence suggests that Slater was one of the first SDS undercovers, along with HN353 ‘Gary Roberts’ and HN200 ‘Roger Harris’ , to employ this tactic in the field.
Slater stated that when he used the child’s identity it was fairly crude, only employing ‘the name and date of birth of the deceased’ rather than creating background stories using more comprehensive information about the deceased.
At this stage, the task of building an identity was considered by SDS managers to be largely the responsibility of the individual undercover, though Slater recalled that Special Branch provided him with ‘a rent book and a library card and I… had a driving licence’, though no passport. Slater’s cover employment involved two part-time jobs; a car washer at a dealership and work at a plumbing supplier. The SDS also gave him a car, with instructions for it to be used to ‘ferry activists around and attend meetings’.
Slater’s cover accommodation was a single-bedroom flat in north London, which, although he frequented, he rarely stayed overnight at. In line with the SDS nickname ‘the Hairies’, he changed his appearance by growing his hair and a beard and by switching to wearing scruffy clothes, which he purposefully refused to wash.
Target groups
Slater was in the field by the summer of 1974, and claims he wasn’t given a defined target organisation by his managers. He gravitated towards anti-fascist protests and, through his attendance, he claimed he encountered members of the International Socialists (IS). After reporting this contact in his weekly meetings with SDS superiors, he was tasked with specifically infiltrating the IS.
This process clearly took some time, as his first report was on an IS public meeting on 1 August 1974 at Conway Hall in central London, concerned with the recent Turkish invasion of Cyprus. It wasn’t until November 1974 that Slater began to supply more detailed information. On 6 November, he attended an aggregate meeting of the north London branches of the IS, suggesting that he had been recruited by the party. This is corroborated by the following day by his spying on a public meeting of the Tottenham branch of the IS, suggesting that this was his formal entry point into the organisation.
Slater’s reports are detailed, framing each speaker's political positions and describing the content of their speeches, while also providing lists of those present at each meeting and copies of any leaflets produced by IS.
The main political subjects covered in the period apart from Cyprus, were the jailing of the Shrewsbury Two building workers Ricky Tomlinson and Des Warren , various critiques of the Labour Party, the lorry drivers’ industrial dispute, the rise of Scottish nationalism and the ongoing conflict in Ireland, particularly in relation to the recent Birmingham pub bombings.
Slater makes occasional personal comments in the reports about these subjects, in particular chiding one IS ‘comrade’ post-hoc for her ‘limited knowledge’ of Lenin’s position on imperialism. This suggests he may have studied this subject in some detail, or that he was just repeating what someone else had said at the meeting.
Slater also reports on organisational issues within the IS concerning the formation of new branches, the restructuring of branches and district committees, and the appointments of officers. He also provided details of IS officers, including personal information such as their occupations, salaries, home addresses, and the people with whom they were living. In some cases, this extended to their political backgrounds, physical descriptions, and notes on the vehicles they used and whom they gave lifts to, suggesting some degree of clandestine surveillance by Slater.
On 2 January 1975, Slater was made Tottenham branch organiser for Socialist Worker, the paper of the IS. It is likely this allowed him to gain access to the branch membership records, which he then supplied in an SDS report on 7 January. These contained almost two pages of identified persons who Slater stated had been involved since September 1973 in ‘fund-raising, anti-racist work and all matters of industrial contact visiting’ for the Tottenham branch of the IS.
Slater’s spying also extended into the broader social activities of IS branches such as film, poetry and folk music events, as well as private parties held by IS members. In one report, he lists attendees at a joint birthday party, stating they were either ‘students or members of the International Socialists’.
Recording the social and domestic arrangements of those who were spied upon is commonplace in SDS reporting. However, of note is Slater’s recording of the baby-sitting rotas for the north London district of the IS, which he immediately passed on to the SDS. The subsequent reports list six sets of ‘parents’ along with an unknown number of baby sitters, certainly in the realm of two dozen people in total.
Slater explained that his weekly meetings with DCI Kneale and other senior officers at the SDS flat also included other SDS undercover officers. This meant that everyone present heard weekly accounts from all the active undercovers present. Slater supplied written information, which he had prepared at his home, to these meetings and supplemented it with regular phone calls to Kneale, sometimes daily if required.
Slater, in reviewing his pattern of life as an undercover, stated:
I would be in my undercover identity for most demonstrations that happened in London at the weekends and I would attend roughly one meeting of IS per week and would also go to my cover employer about once per week in my undercover identity. I would estimate that I would be in my undercover identity two to three times per week for a number of hours each time.
As to his involvement in demonstrations, Slater remarked that he had witnessed:
plenty of serious public disorder and violence … but I am unable to recall the specifics. It would have been during demonstrations that got out of hand. I saw severe beatings of policemen by activists and activists beating up members of the public who intervened. I also saw activists damaging street furniture, cars, waste bins, windows, etc and trying to take on their adversaries. I also saw violence between counter-protest groups.
This account, specifically where it refers to members of the public intervening to stop the alleged instances of protestors attacking the police, is not backed up by any other police or non-state witness evidence. Slater claimed that he had not engaged in any violence or criminal activity himself.
Slater recalled that he found his life undercover:
more intensive, more anxious and more debilitating than it had been in the rest of Special Branch. I was anxious and fearful all of the time.
Finding himself exhausted by this constant pressure, he concluded ‘that he was not suited to it’ and made his superiors aware of this. His request to leave active undercover duty was apparently ‘granted without hesitation’ by DCI Kneale.
Slater made his final reports to the SDS on 24 March 1975, and he was withdrawn from the field just over a week later on 2 April. There is no information as to the effect of his sudden removal from IS, or a ‘cover story’ for his exfiltration.
Slater’s deployment from 1974-1975 as an SDS undercover officer was relatively short, only nine months or so. Upon his return to ‘normal duties’, Slater worked in the ‘back office’ at the SDS undertaking general clerical work once again. After a few months, he was moved to a role involving low-stress investigative work.
In the latter part of 1975, Slater was moved on from the SDS to New Scotland Yard. He worked in Special Branch for the rest of his career, ‘across all of the squads’, retiring in the mid-1990s at the rank of detective sergeant. Slater claimed that:
My time on the SDS did have a long-term effect on me in terms of my emotional wellbeing and mental health but thankfully I was able to put up with this and get on with normal life.
On 23 March 2018, lawyers for the Metropolitan Police made an application to restrict the real name of HN351 ‘Jeff Slater’. Inquiry Chair John Mitting indicated his inclination to grant their request in a Minded-To notice on 26 April 2018.
No application was made to restrict his cover name, which was published on 9 October 2018. HN351 ‘Jeff Slater’ made a witness statement on 10 April 2019.
You can find the procedual documents mentioned on this page via the documents tab of this profile.