CND calls for answers from inquiry over 1980s police infiltration

A leading anti-nuclear campaign has called on a public inquiry to conduct a thorough examination of how undercover police officers infiltrated its movement at a time when it powerfully challenged government policies.

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) issued its demand after the inquiry, led by the retired judge Sir John Mitting, confirmed that police planted an undercover officer, John Kerry, in its headquarters between 1981 and 1984.

The inquiry has also disclosed that police deployed an undercover officer to spy on a local CND group in east London in 1985 and 1986, and another to infiltrate the Greenham Common peace camp between 1983 and 1986.

At least two other anti-nuclear groups were monitored by undercover police officers in the 2000s.

Mitting has said that he wants to examine why police spied on CND and other peace protesters when they “posed no serious threat to public order”.

The long-running inquiry is scrutinising the conduct of undercover police officers who spied on more than 1,000 mainly progressive political groups over more than four decades in lengthy deployments that started in 1968.

CND attracted huge support during the 1980s when, in a dangerous phase of the cold war, many feared that tensions between the west and the then Soviet Union would lead to nuclear conflagration.

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