#181 “Deep Deception”: When the Police Targets Women

FiLiA

"It was shocking. I felt a great sense of betrayal by the Police. How could they possibly do that to me? What right have they got? I've paid my taxes all my life and they spent that paying a man to come to sleep with me and deceive me. They were playing with our lives because they thought they could get away with anything so they just had a good time while doing it."

FiLiA Spokeswoman Raquel Rosario Sánchez speaks with Belinda, Alison and Helen Steel - co-authors of Deep Deception: The story of the Spycops network by the women who uncovered the shocking truth- who share their experiences of being deceived by the State, the process of writing their powerful book and how they found the courage to move forward.

These five women were targeted by the UK Police, through men who deceived them into intimate relationships in order to get access to their activist networks.

At the time they were targeted, Belinda was a 24-year-old non-activist who worked as an accounts assistant with the Central Electricity Generating Board. Helen Steel was a 22-year-old gardener and environmental and social justice activist with London Greenpeace. She later became one half of ‘the McLibel Two’ in a gargantuan fight against the McDonalds corporation. Alison was 29 years old at the time and was an English and Media Studies teacher and political activist with the Colin Roach Centre.

Deep Deception is not a book about men. This is a book about women who found a tremendous source of strength within themselves, and with each other. It is a book about women who are fighting an institutional form of misogyny: the infiltration of policemen in activist groups and what happens when the State decides to deliberately target women.

This could have been a book about women whose lives were destroyed and who were left with no trust in each other or in justice. Instead, Deep Deception is an inspirational story of fortitude, truth and dignity.

You can purchase Deep Deception: The story of the spycop network, by the women who uncovered the shocking truth from the FiLiA Book Shop. Please learn more about the women’s stories at the Police Out of Our Lives website. You can also read more about the Spycops scandal on the website built by the women who were targeted by the Police.

At the moment, there is a public inquiry about the Spycops scandal. You can learn more about the inquiry on its website which started hearing evidence in late 2020.