Spycop ‘Jason Bishop’ – the only photo of him.

Chris Brian, Undercover Research Group, 11 September 2018.

Today, we publish the profile of the undercover police officer who used the cover name of ‘Jason Bishop’. The information that Bishop was a state-sponsored infiltrator was first made public back in 2013 and was rubber-stamped by the Undercover Policing Inquiry earlier this year.

Bishop was deployed between 1999 and 2005, and during this time he targeted activist groups including Reclaim the Streets (RTS), Earth First! and Disarm DSEi. After an apparent six-month break from his deployment in early 2005, he was later recalled for the G8 in Scotland that summer, before making his last appearance at the London Anarchist Bookfair in October of the same year.

Recently, Jason Bishop’s deployment has been at the centre of a fierce debate within the Undercover Policing Inquiry. The chairman had previously stated that Bishop’s deployment was ‘uneventful’, but those who were targeted by Bishop have substantial experiences which suggest otherwise.

Two arrests and two civil cases

In 1999, Bishop started to attend RTS meetings and it was his involvement in this group that brought about his first arrest as he was transporting a van full of manure to the ‘Guerrilla Gardening’ protest at the London Mayday in 2001. However, it was not until the end of his deployment during the 2005 G8 in Scotland that he was arrested again. This time, he was transporting a group of anarchists known as the W.O.M.B.L.E.S. from the train station to the activist camp in Stirling. This arrest was notable, both for the fact that fellow undercover ‘Dave Evans’ was arrested with him, and its spectacular manner:

The bus had travelled just two blocks when they were suddenly blocked in and surrounded by five vans of riot police, some 12 police motorbikes and three vans of police dogs. A police helicopter circled overhead. The 11 people were arrested on suspicion of ‘conspiracy to cause a breach of the peace’ and then bundled into a police prison transporter van with tiny blacked out windows and individual cells.

Despite the resources involved, and therefore the apparent importance of the arrests to the police, no charges were ever brought. In hindsight, this was likely due to Bishop and Evans being among the arrested.

As well as accompanying Bishop at the G8, ‘Dave Evans’ was also Bishop’s flatmate. The nature of this close working relationship is unique amongst the undercover officers that are currently known to us.

Bishop was not only involved with criminal cases. During his time infiltrating Disarm DSEi, there was a civil case brought against the Metropolitan Police for their indiscriminate use of stop and search powers during the anti-arms fair protests in the Docklands of East London in 2003. The case reached the European Court of Human Rights and found in the protester’s favour. Bishop would have likely had privileged knowledge of this case, which was not revealed to the courts.

The Fairford Coaches

Perhaps even more significant was Bishop’s involvement in another anti-war protest, which also ended up with again a notable legal win for protestors, this time in the House of Lords, the ruling was hailed as a landmark victory for liberty and human rights.

It concerned the infamous Fairford Coaches case in 2003, in which two coaches of protesters to an anti-Iraq war demonstration were illegally detained by police and then forcibly escorted back to London. On this occasion, Bishop was aboard the mini-bus for the legal team and had also been involved with organising the hire of the coaches. As has been discussed on these pages, another spycop, Rod Richardson was actually on one of the buses that were stopped. A submission by the non-state participants made to the Inquiry states that Bishop would have had privileged knowledge of the case and that this should, again, have been disclosed in the legal proceedings that followed.

Upgraded to: ‘apparently unremarkable’…

In response to this argument, Mitting altered his provisional opinion of Bishop’s deployment from being ‘unremarkable’ to ‘apparently unremarkable.’ This small shift in opinion is unlikely to satisfy non-state participants and also raises the more general question of how undercovers’ behaviour is currently being viewed by the Inquiry.

For instance, Bishop’s ‘unremarkable’ deployment is seemingly labelled as such on the basis of what he did not do: have sexual relationships with activists or commit perjury in court, though according to a statement made to the Inquiry:

He is also known to have taken part in many instances of direct action involving criminal damage, both as a driver and as a participant.

This also ignores the fact that the extensive and intrusive infiltration of political groups is both extraordinary and unjustified in and of itself. It further glosses over the of psychological damage that the (non-sexual) fake friendships formed by undercovers caused. A complaint about to be heard in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal includes the allegation that Kate Wilson’s ‘right to privacy was also infringed by the extensive presence in her life’ of six undercover officers, including ‘Jason Bishop’.

Bishop’s parting shot was an appearance at the 2005 anarchist bookfair in which he acted as the distraught partner, mourning his fictional girlfriend’s miscarriage. Emily Apple has written that episodes like this within her phoney friendship with Bishop causes her a ‘never-ending grief’.

This type of emotional manipulation surely should not be thought of as unremarkable. Moreover, as has been discussed above, Jason Bishop was involved in several legal cases without his presence as an undercover officer having been disclosed..