CND Spycops Scandal

Posted: 15th September 2021

It has emerged this week that in the 1980s the Metropolitan Police placed spies in CND’s head office in London.

Files released under the 30-year rule indicate that Special Branch reported on a number of CND events, including a national demonstration in October 1983 which was attended by over 200,000 people.

Police spies under the cover names ‘John Kerry’ and ‘Timothy Spence’ also infiltrated CND’s head office and an East London group, sending regular reports to Scotland Yard and MI5 on CND’s activities. Their true identities are still not publicly known.

CND has a long record of democratic engagement, working in a peaceful and open way to question and challenge government policies that put citizens in the way of great harm. It’s shocking to discover that public resources were wasted on ‘infiltrating’ CND as if it were a risk to life or limb, or a threat to the security of the realm.

We have instructed the Public Interest Law Centre (PILC) to represent us at the ongoing Undercover Policing Inquiry, the judge-led public inquiry at which this disturbing discovery was made. 

We need your help

We are urgently looking to hear from any current or past CND members who may have information about the activities of ‘John Kerry’ and ‘Timothy Spence’, the two undercover officers known to have targeted CND in the 1980s. If you have any information, we urge you to contact the responsible solicitor at [email protected] so this information can be brought before the inquiry. 

We need your solidarity

The extent to which the British state has actively sought to to infiltrate and destabilise peaceful and democratic protest movements should alarm us all.

We urge everyone with a CND badge or item of clothing to wear it in solidarity. The right to oppose government policies and to protest are hard-won and long-held democratic rights, and we must resist any attacks on them. If you join CNDwe will send you a badge and use the money to stand up for the right to protest and to campaign for a world without nuclear weapons.