Kate Wilson: 'This inquiry is pandering to the police'
It's probably unlikely that, by now, you won't have heard of the so-called 'SpyCops Scandal'. Central to the complaints of the core participants in the ongoing inquiry into undercover policing was the 'systemic sexism' within the police. Among many other women, Kate Wilson was deceived into a relationship with an undercover cop. The officer she formed a relationship with was called Mark Kennedy, but he posed as Mark Stone and infiltrated a meeting for the mobilisation against the G8 summit in 2005. She described him as charming and disarming, and he quickly became involved in every aspect of her life. But none of it was real. Mark Stone wasn’t real, Mark Kennedy had a wife and two kids and the reason he became involved in her life was to spy on Kate and the groups she belonged to. This week, Wilson’s 10 year fight for the truth brought her case to the investigatory powers tribunal, which examines allegations that the state has misused its surveillance powers. She spoke to Jon Robins, over a somewhat shaky zoom line, about the process, the inquiry and the still remaining trauma of her ordeal.